by Joan Smith
‘I make films, perhaps you can call me?’ Amanda’s grip on her arm tightened. ‘OK, Amanda. Let’s go.’
‘Take it slow.’ The man moved away and Ingrid helped Amanda to turn in the direction of the car.
‘What’s he doing here? I mean, a doctor from Ukraine?’
‘I heard some Russians had arrived at the hospital — Russians, Ukrainians, most of the people here would not know the difference.’
‘There’s a hospital in the camp?’
‘Of course, many thousands of people live here. Most of the doctors are foreign. Volunteers.’
Ingrid started talking about an interview she’d done with a Malaysian doctor who had worked in the camp for many years. Amanda concentrated on staying upright, not wanting to lean too heavily on her. After a while, sounding anxious, Ingrid said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Mmm — it’s not as bad as I thought.’
‘Let’s stop and have a rest.’
They stopped next to a gate. Amanda leaned gratefully on the top bar, letting it take her weight.
‘Thank God you’re here,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t have got this far on my own.’ On the other side was a field, unevenly carpeted with grass, where banners had been strung between several tall trees. Amanda screwed up her eyes, unable to read the writing. ‘What do they say?’
Ingrid did not reply straight away. Then she said, ‘This is where they buried the bodies.’
‘The bodies?’
‘After the massacre. Here, under the grass.’
‘What massacre?’
‘In 1982. September 16. Next month will be the anniversary. Haven’t you heard —’
Amanda’s ankle was beginning to throb and without thinking she lifted her foot off the ground. ‘Ingrid, I was fifteen in 1982.’
‘OK.’ Ingrid dipped her head. ‘Ariel Sharon surrounded the camp to stop anyone leaving and the Falangists came in.’
‘Who?’
‘Lebanese Christian militia. It went on for three days.’
‘Why?’
‘They wanted revenge. Always it is like this in Lebanon — their leader had been killed.’ She hesitated. ‘There were bodies everywhere. Women, children — bloated in the heat, you can imagine.’
Amanda looked at the scene, peaceful now except for the banners. The pain was intensifying and she bit her lip.
Ingrid glanced down. She exclaimed, ‘Your leg is swelling. Do you think you can make it to the car? We’re almost there.’
Moments later, she helped Amanda into the passenger seat. She opened the glove compartment and took out a plastic bottle of water, which she placed in Amanda’s lap. ‘I’ll stop for painkillers,’ she said, hurrying round to the other side. She looked increasingly worried: ‘Shall we call Madame Boisseau? She will understand —’
‘No!’ Amanda massaged her leg, not wanting to go back to the hotel alone and dwell on what she’d just seen. ‘I’m fine, really.’
‘Are you sure? My doctor—’
‘I don’t need a doctor. Why don’t you — what was the name of that singer?’
‘Fayrouz.’ Ingrid looked at her uncertainly, then slid the tape back into the cassette player.
They set off for the nearest pharmacy, where Ingrid parked outside. When she returned, she was clutching a packet of pills and a bandage.
‘Here goes.’ Amanda had never heard of the tablets but she swallowed one, hoping for the best.
‘The pharmacist said you should not mix them with alcohol,’ Ingrid warned.
Amanda rolled up her trousers and gently smoothed the bandage over her ankle.
‘Not exactly elegant but it’ll do,’ she said. ‘OK — now for Madame Boisseau.’
‘My God, what happened to you?’
The woman with red hair held out a hand and drew Amanda into the narrow hall of her apartment. She swung a strong arm round Amanda’s waist and guided her into a small sitting room, where she helped lower her into an armchair. A door was open on to a balcony, although it didn’t make much difference to the temperature in the room; on a low table there were cups, saucers and a plate of cakes, identical to the ones Ingrid had ordered in the cafe. Séverine Boisseau studied Amanda, hands on hips. ‘You should have called me, I would have come down. How did you manage the stairs?’
‘Slowly.’ The lift to the second-floor apartment was out of order and Amanda had had to use the banister to haul herself up to Séverine’s front door.
‘Did you fall? What is it, your ankle? Let me look.’ Séverine pulled up a stool, lifted Amanda’s foot on to her lap and pushed up her trouser leg. She rolled down the bandage, her fingers moving over the swollen flesh. ‘No wonder you are in pain. I will get some ice.’
She hurried from the room and Amanda heard doors opening and closing in another part of the flat. A moment later Séverine returned with crushed ice cubes in a plastic bag, knelt and arranged it over Amanda’s ankle. She lifted her head: ‘When did this happen?’
‘Not long ago. I’ve just taken some painkillers — anti-inflammatories.’
Séverine got up, went to a cupboard and poured a small amount of cognac into a glass, which she brought to Amanda. ‘Drink,’ she ordered. Amanda hesitated, remembering the pharmacist’s warning, but decided to ignore it. She spluttered as the alcohol burned her throat, but immediately felt warmed by it. Séverine stood over her, making sure she finished it.
‘Take your time. Would you like some tea? Something to eat?’ She gestured towards the cakes.
‘I’m not hungry, thanks.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘God, what a mess! Can I use your bathroom?’
‘Through there. Let me help you.’
It was off Séverine’s bedroom. When Amanda limped back, her face and hands washed and most of the dried mud brushed from her trousers, the Frenchwoman was in the kitchen. She returned, holding a teapot.
‘I will let it — brew, is that the word?’
She opened the door a little wider and returned to the sofa. She was wearing narrow trousers and a fitted white shirt which looked as if it came from a little boutique in Paris. Her hair was short, pushed back from her wide forehead, and there were fine lines around her eyes. Amanda guessed she was in her late forties, possibly a little older, though very well preserved.
‘You want to ask me about Fabio Terzano.’ Séverine’s voice was husky, and Amanda was not surprised when she reached for a packet of cigarettes. ‘You don’t mind?’
Amanda shook her head, although she didn’t like breathing someone else’s smoke. A lighter flared.
‘I was sorry to hear about his death,’ Séverine continued, inhaling, ‘even though I have not seen him for years.’
Amanda hesitated in the act of switching on her tape recorder. She gazed at Séverine: ‘You didn’t keep in touch?’
The Frenchwoman threw back her head and laughed. ‘Good God, no! Fabio wasn’t interested in me! He came to me at the beginning, that is true, but then he met Jean-Baptiste. My husband,’ she explained. ‘They, how do you say — they bonded like a couple of boys. Old soldiers, you see.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Jean-Baptiste was in Algeria. He went back to France but he could not settle, and so we came here.’
She was silent for a moment. Eventually she leaned forward and tipped a column of ash into an ashtray. ‘Fabio ate with us some nights, when the shelling was not so intense. It was all war, war, war — as if we did not get enough of it every single day! Who was up, who was down, what the Israelis were doing... I used to go into our bedroom and watch TV and they would sit till the early hours, with that door open’ — she nodded towards the balcony — ‘talking and drinking. There was not much else to do in those days, except read the papers and find out who had been killed.’
A phone rang. Séverine turned her head, tutted and stubbed out her cigarette. She got up and answered it, speaking in Arabic but occasionally throwing in a French word or phrase. When she had finished, she returned to her place on the sofa, smiling broadly.
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br /> ‘Excusez-moi. Voulez-vous —’ She shook her head. ‘I should not speak French! Shall we have some tea?’
She poured for both of them, handing it to Amanda without milk. Amanda thought about something Séverine had said a moment before: ‘You said Fabio came to you? What for?’
Séverine looked surprised. ‘Massage,’ she said, flexing her hands in front of her. ‘I am a masseuse.’
Amanda thought of Séverine’s fingers moving deftly over her ankle — like the Ukrainian doctor’s, she now realised. Something else occurred to her and she said distractedly: ‘Of course, he was wounded, wasn’t he?’
Séverine looked as though she was about to burst into more peals of laughter. ‘Not in Lebanon, no! He came to me because he was having trouble with his shoulder.’ She patted her own with her hand. ‘What do you expect, I said to him, carrying that e-nor-mous bag? He was practically lopsided! I told him, you will have trouble as long as you carry so many cameras. He did not believe me, he wanted me to make him better just like that.’ She snapped her fingers, the noise reverberating in the still air like a gunshot. ‘I did my best but the tissue was very hard. Really, that is the only thing we talked about — apart from my cassoulet!’ She smiled at the memory.
It was just like interviewing the nurse, Salma, all over again. Amanda said, ‘Your husband — would he talk to me?’
Séverine’s eyes clouded. ‘Jean-Baptiste died six years ago.’
‘God, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
Séverine dipped her head. ‘Of course, why should you. He was older — much older.’ She sighed. ‘It is not easy, being a widow.’
Amanda said in a hurry: ‘I’ve brought some photos. Would you like to see them? They might help you remember something... some little detail.’ She reached inside her bag, noticing that the brown envelope was starting to curl at the edges. She flipped through the pictures, looking for one of Fabio. ‘Here, this is a good one.’
Séverine’s mouth opened. ‘This is Fabio? He has aged! I would not have known him. Though the clothes, always so military — like Jean-Baptiste.’ She made an impatient sound: ‘And still carrying that bag! He is still having trouble with that shoulder, I can tell from the way he is standing.’
Amanda handed another print across.
Séverine’s eyes narrowed. ‘What is this? What is he holding?’
With difficulty, Amanda leaned across to see what she was looking at. In the picture, presumably taken by Aisha, Fabio was holding a framed photograph of a young man. ‘Looks like a graduation photo, doesn’t it?’
Séverine got up, crossed the room and opened a drawer in a heavy sideboard, returning with a magnifying glass. ‘Jean-Baptiste couldn’t see at the end,’ she said in explanation, sitting on the edge of the sofa. She positioned the magnifier over the photograph, studying it closely. After a few seconds, she looked up, smiling. ‘I knew him at once! It’s Marwan — Marwan Hadidi! So he went back to college, after the war.’
‘Who?’
‘I’m so glad! Marwan was a student — law I think. When his classes closed, he got work with some of the journalists — it was easy, they were all staying at the Commodore. All these kids hung around, running errands and translating, the foreign press were just about the only people who had any money. That’s how he met Fabio.’
‘I thought Fabio knew Arabic.’
Séverine balanced the magnifying glass on the arm of the sofa. ‘Sure, but these kids, they knew everyone — they had friends and relatives in the militias, and if they did not they made it their business. Fabio said he would have got into trouble many times, if it was not for Marwan.’ She looked at the picture again, smiling. ‘He was a good kid — he worried always about his family in the south. Sometimes I let him use the phone — they didn’t have one of course, his mother, she also was a widow. But there was a cousin in the village who took messages... That’s why he stayed in Beirut, to send them money. He used to carry a picture of his little sister, I expect she is married now.’
Amanda felt a prickle of excitement. ‘In the south? This village, do you remember the name?’
‘Mmm — somewhere near Nabatiyeh, I think. I wonder how old Marwan would be now? I last saw him in 1987 maybe 1988.
I remember he was crazy for — bandes dessinées, we call them in French. Superman, Batman, Fabio used to bring —’
‘The village — think, please.’
Séverine’s mouth turned down. ‘It is a long time ago. Is it important?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because?’
‘Because that would explain —’ Amanda spoke hurriedly, the words tumbling over each other. ‘Why they didn’t — they should’ve been in Beirut. If Fabio knew someone —’
Séverine looked puzzled.
‘Sorry.’ Amanda took a breath. ‘Aisha and Fabio, they were supposed to come straight to Beirut. Where they were killed, it wasn’t on their route at all.’ She pointed at the picture in Séverine’s hand. ‘But if Fabio wanted to look up this boy — what did you say his name was?’
‘Marwan. Marwan Hadidi. But the name of his village — I do not know if I ever knew it.’
Amanda groaned and sat back.
‘Wait. I have a friend, she is from the south. She might know the family —’
‘Can you ask her?’ Amanda’s eyes flew to the phone.
‘Mmm, she has young children. I should call her in maybe an hour.’
Amanda hid her impatience. ‘That would be great. Fantastic.’
There was a burst of noise from outside, a voice rising and falling in the call to prayer. It went on for a minute or so, then another voice joined in, from a different part of the city.
Séverine looked at her watch. ‘Yes, I will call her in one hour.’ She glanced across at Amanda’s ankle. ‘How is your leg?’
‘Still hurts a little.’ She had almost forgotten about it in the excitement of discovery: the prospect of a totally unexpected and heartwarming story about Fabio trying to set up a reunion with a young Lebanese boy who had helped him during the civil war.
‘Good.’ Séverine lifted her arms and stretched. There was still a sticky heat in the little flat but the air coming through the open door to the balcony was growing cooler. She yawned and said, ‘Would you like a massage?’
‘What?’
‘You are very pale, and it would help your circulation. We can go on talking while I work.’
‘I — thank you. As long as I’m not holding you up.’
‘Pas du tout. I will set up the table.’
Séverine took the tea tray into the kitchen. She cleared a space in front of the sofa, drew out a folding table and set it up. She lifted the bag of melting ice from Amanda’s ankle and left the room again, calling over her shoulder: ‘Take of your trousers and top — I will get towels.’
Using the arms of the chair to take her weight, Amanda pushed herself into a standing position and undressed, leaving her clothes in a neat pile. Hitching herself up on to the table, she stretched out, shifting several times until she felt comfortable. She closed her eyes, trying not to think about Séverine’s friend, who might never have heard of Marwan Hadidi and his family. Then what would she do? The university, they would surely have a record...
‘Ready?’ There was a sweet smell in the air and Amanda felt Séverine’s hands on her shoulders.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Relax! You are so tense.’
Amanda took several deep breaths, as she did at her yoga class, and her muscles began to loosen up under the pressure of Séverine’s expert fingers.
‘Thank God that’s over.’
‘Sorry, darling?’ Carolina walked into the kitchen, closing her purse. She had just paid Lidija for helping at the party, although when she lifted her head she saw there was a stack of dirty dishes and wine glasses on the draining board. The plates were hand-painted and could not go in the dishwasher but there was no reason for Lidija to leave the glasses unwashed. Carolina saw t
here were cigarette stubs in one of them, and probably even more lying about in the garden.
‘I thought it went off quite well, considering.’
Stephen was leaning, arms folded, against the door frame that used to lead to the garden and now opened into the conservatory. There was no need to elaborate on what he had just said: this year, their annual summer party had been an exercise in smoothing ruffled feathers in Stephen’s constituency association. He had gone out of his way to be charming, standing beside the chairman’s wife and listening to her views on everything from Section 28 — a vital tool to protect the nation’s children against a homosexual conspiracy, apparently — to Princess Diana. ‘Nothing but a jumped-up little hairdresser,’ Carolina had heard the woman declare as she passed, heading for the swimming pool to make sure Lidija’s friend Danuta was keeping an eye on the younger children. ‘What that poor man has had to put up with. She’ll do anything to get back at him. It’s those boys I feel sorry for, their mother carrying on like that in public.’
Stephen was looking bored, as he had the day before over breakfast when Carolina read out a story about the Princess from Saturday’s Daily Mail. ‘That woman always seems to be on holiday,’ was all he said as Carolina studied a picture of Diana, hoping her new romance wouldn’t go wrong like her marriage. ‘I think the royal family has treated her very badly,’ Carolina had protested. ‘I think she deserves to be happy.’ Stephen threw down The Times and poured himself more coffee: ‘Christ, darling, it’s no skin off my nose. Good luck to her, if that’s what she wants.’ But he had deferred to the chairman’s wife this afternoon, nodding in apparent agreement and calling out to Lidija to ask her to top up the woman’s empty glass.
‘Don’t you think?’ Stephen said again.
‘What? Oh, it was fine.’ Carolina pulled down the door of the dishwasher and began stacking glasses, grateful that Lidija had at least emptied it before going home.
‘She seemed all right with the kids, that friend of Lidija s. Here, let me.’ Stephen pushed away from the door frame and took over the job, standing close to Carolina in the long narrow kitchen. Several guests had admired the fittings and Carolina had had to explain several times that they were made by a company in Devon.