Now there are flashbulbs and Edward is being dragged along on a gurney again. The flashes are creating a stroboscopic effect. Voices are calling his name.
‘What was it like, Edward?’
‘Was there a deal done for your release, Edward?’
‘What did you think when you heard about your wife, Edward?’
His next realization is that he is on a military plane of some sort – as cavernous as a hangar, as empty as space – and he is being strapped to a bed. A screen is being put up around him. There are more drips on stands. More electrical equipment. More lights. Webbing is clattering against the metal sides of the cabin. His stomach is lurching. They are taking off.
Level now. He can hear the steady throb of an engine. Stars are visible out of the small porthole but, having forgotten what they look like, he takes a while to register what they are. Needles are being stuck in his arms. He soon finds himself submitting to the spin of sleep.
Edward’s longest period of consciousness comes when he is in a hospital bed with a cage above it – a chrome contraption with pulleys. To his left is a machine with lights that are grey – grey? – a monitor of some sort. It is making a humming noise. There are electrodes taped to his chest.
Am I hurt? He says this wordlessly; a thought that does not carry to his mouth. He doesn’t feel ill. There is no pain. A rhythm is pulsing in his head. I need a little time to wake up, wake up …
Sensation is returning in a flood now, a surge of warmth. He notices the oxygen mask by his bed and the drip taped to his arm. There is another tube taped to his stomach.
I’m being fed through a tube?
A woman appears in the doorway. She has pale, tumbling hair. Her grey eyes are flecked with grains of sugar. The eyes of a snow leopard. To Edward she is unmistakable. He has called out her name many times over the missing years, to himself, to the walls of the cave, to the darkness, but now the word comes as the sort of soft, gummy, slack-mouthed noise that dental patients make before the anaesthetic has worn off.
‘Frejya!’
The woman’s face contorts. She holds a hand to her mouth, then turns and leaves.
A tall doctor with hairy wrists and unnaturally white teeth arrives. He is wearing a grey, hospital-issue gown.
Why am I seeing everything in black and white?
‘Mr Northcote,’ he says. ‘Edward … You are in a hospital. The Cromwell Hospital in London. You are safe now.’
‘Frejya!’
‘I’m afraid … A lot has happened.’ Pause. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Frejya!’
‘That wasn’t your wife you saw. That was …’ The tall doctor puts his hand to his mouth, as the woman had done. ‘Let me call … There’s someone waiting outside to see you. He’s from the Foreign Office. He will explain everything.’
With his well-pressed, navy-blue suit and cream-coloured, open-necked shirt, Sir Niall Campbell looks like what he is, a formal man who has removed his tie to try to make himself look informal. The tie is rolled up in his hand and he stares at it for a moment before stuffing it in his pocket.
In his other hand he is carrying a laminated TRiM card. It lists the standard Trauma Risk Management questions he is supposed to ask on behalf of Human Resources, so that an assessment can be made as to whether, or rather when, Edward will need to see a ‘psych’. Niall knows that the questions will be irrelevant in Edward’s case – Have you had any flashbacks? Any recurring dreams? Are you drinking more than normal? – but he finds it reassuring that he won’t be entering the ward empty-handed.
He breathes in, buttons up his jacket, the middle of three, then unbuttons it again and breathes out. Why is he stalling? Why doesn’t he simply march in like the busy man he is? He knows why. Northy might not recognize him. Niall has put on weight in the past decade. About two and a half stone. His once-thick and dark hair, meanwhile, has gone thin and grey.
When he enters, his personal vanities evaporate. The skeletal figure on the bed bears only a passing resemblance to the tall, dark-haired, heavy-shouldered young man he had first met on the rugby field as a student. Edward had been a flanker, Niall a fullback. A bitingly cold wind had been blowing in over the Fens and they had grinned at one another as they shivered. Niall had felt slightly in awe of Edward as a student, not least because he had been an all-round sportsman – as useful with a tennis racquet and a cricket bat as he was with a rugby ball – as well as a witty and persuasive speaker at the Union. Yet he had also been a man of quiet modesty and decency, all substance and no show, liked and known. And because Niall was part of his circle, he found himself becoming liked and known, too.
It was after they graduated and sat their civil service exams together that their friendship deepened. For eighteen months, they had shared a desk at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in a room with a fireplace. The fire was no longer used by the time they arrived, a tradition that had disappeared along with women having to resign when they got married. But on mornings when they had hangovers they would rest their heads on their desks, knowing that FCO custom meant they would not be disturbed (it being assumed that they had worked through the night).
It had been Edward, with his urbane manner and starred First, who was the one everyone tipped to go all the way. Then, with his posting to Norway, something changed. He fell in love. Had a child. Got married. And the price for his contentment was a loss of ambition. Edward had once confided to Niall that he sometimes thought of giving up the diplomatic service entirely to live off the land: growing his own vegetables, fishing, chopping wood. His wife’s family had a log cabin they rarely used, up near the fjords where the summers are short and the winters long. It was theirs for the asking. He could write a book there. A novel perhaps.
And Niall encouraged him. But instead Edward and Frejya moved to London, with plans to settle there and perhaps have a second child, and that book was never written.
Now, according to the chart on the end of his bed, Edward weighs just under seven stone. Niall has heard that they decided to test his DNA to be sure it matched that of the Edward Northcote they had on record. He has also been told that, in the five days since Edward first opened his eyes in daylight, he has not managed to keep them open for longer than a few minutes.
Whether he is still aware of what is being said to him when his eyes are shut is debatable. Apparently there is not much sign of recognition, and scant evidence of memory.
But however prepared Niall thought he was for this encounter, the reality of it is shocking. Seeing a pedal bin in the corner of the room, he walks over to it, opens the lid and drops in the TRiM card.
Edward’s eyes have closed again now, and there is a clear fluid dribbling down his chin. His right arm flails, then goes limp. The bones are pushing against his skin, smoothing it out and leaving baggy creases where it falls away. His eyes appear to be sinking deep into his skull, as if his face is melting. The membrane inside his mouth is protruding so that it looks like part of his lips. Behind them, his teeth look too big for his mouth, brown and decayed with pus oozing out from the gum line. His hair is silvery and long, hanging below his shoulder blades. He has a beard that reaches his barrelled ribs, and his skin is yellow and leathery, almost translucent. The plastic hospital ID band around his wrist is loose on him. He looks a hundred years old.
‘Northy? Can you hear me?’
Niall wonders if his friend will remember the circumstances that led to his kidnapping, how he had been the one who persuaded him to go. The assignment had made sense, at the time. Because Edward had once worked as a cultural attaché in the Middle East – and spoke some Arabic – he had been asked to join a multinational UNESCO team being sent into the remote mountain region of Hazarajat in central Afghanistan. There had been reports that the Buddhas of Bamiyan, two sixth-century monumental statues carved into the side of a cliff, had been dynamited and destroyed by the Taliban. That was in March 2001, six months before the jihadists hijacked two passenger planes and flew
them into the Twin Towers.
When Edward’s convoy had driven into an ambush, he had been in the third of four Land-Cruisers. A rocket-propelled grenade attack. Officially, there had been no survivors. But when eleven out of thirteen bodies were recovered and identified, Edward’s was not among them. In the weeks that followed, Niall had awaited the inevitable ransom or demand for the release of political prisoners, but neither came. Although the possibility that he had been taken hostage was never ruled out, the unofficial presumption was that he must be dead – and dead was what he was officially declared after he had been missing for ten years.
But what he seems to be going through back home in London is not so much a resurrection as a regression. His reflexes are those of a baby, especially his hand-grasping, sucking and asymmetrical neck reflexes.
‘Northy. It’s me, Niall. Niall Campbell. Do you remember me?’ He holds his hand. ‘We worked together at the Foreign Office. I was best man at your wedding. You were best man at mine. Can you speak?’
Niall has drawn the short straw. It was decided that, because of his involvement with the Friends of Edward Northcote campaign, the bad news Edward would have to hear at some point would be best coming from him, someone he knew rather than an anonymous civil servant. But the doctors have advised that the patient may be too fragile. Niall should wait until Edward has built up his strength. The shock could kill him.
‘Northy? Can you tell us anything about what happened?’
Edward raises his chin and opens his eyes. They are dilated with panic. He makes a heavy-tongued noise.
‘Frejya?’
III
WHEN EDWARD’S FIRST REASONABLY CLEAR SENTENCE COMES, TWO and a half weeks after returning to London, it is directed at Niall. ‘Where am I?’ he says in a slurring voice.
‘You’re at the Cromwell Hospital in London. It’s good to have you back, Northy.’
‘I know you.’
‘Yes, it’s me, Niall. Niall Campbell.’
Edward’s beard has gone now and his hair has been cropped close to his skull. He looks around the room and raises his hand towards the mirror.
‘You want to see a mirror?’
Edward shakes his head stiffly.
‘You think I should look in a mirror, is that it?’ Niall is speaking in the kind of loud, laughter-edged voice adults use with children. ‘You think I’ve changed?’ He pats his stomach. ‘I have changed, Northy, and so have you. It’s been a long time.’ He pulls up a chair and takes his friend’s hand. ‘Can you talk about what happened?’
Edward blinks but says nothing. Niall knows better than to try to fill the silence. There is emptiness in Edward’s eyes. They are red-rimmed and unfocused, like a sleepwalker’s. Is this, he wonders, what is meant by the thousand-yard stare?
A minute passes before Edward finally speaks. ‘The Cromwell? Not St Thomas’s?’
Niall gives a snort of laughter, his friend’s memory for Foreign Office protocol taking him by surprise.
‘We’ve made special arrangements for you … Can you remember anything? Do you know who was holding you hostage?’
‘There was a boy with a cricket bat.’
‘He was the one who found you.’
‘My hands were tied.’
‘Who tied them?’
‘I never …’ Edward’s mouth dries up mid sentence.
Niall is struck by the absence of emotion in his friend’s voice. It is a whispery monotone devoid of strength and expression, like a guitar without tension in its strings.
The tall doctor who has been hovering by the door now enters, pulls down the bed cover and jabs a pin in the patient’s foot.
Edward jumps.
‘You can feel that?’ the doctor asks. ‘That’s great. Can you clench your fists?’
Edward manages a half-clench.
Next the doctor sits on the bed, holds up a pencil and moves it from left to right and up and down to see if Edward’s eyes can track it. They can. A small torch is now being shone in his eyes.
‘Don’t do that, please.’
‘Sorry.’
‘They shone torches in my face.’
‘They?’ Niall leans forward.
Edward does not elaborate.
‘How is your vision?’ the doctor asks. ‘Is it OK?’
Edward thinks for a moment. Blinks. ‘Everything is black and white … Why is everything black and white?’
‘You can’t see any colours?’
‘Only grey … Like Niall’s hair.’
Niall grins.
Edward blinks again. ‘Where’s Frejya? Where did she go?’
Niall looks down. ‘That wasn’t Frejya you saw.’
‘But she was in here a minute ago.’
Niall exhales slowly. ‘That was a couple of weeks ago. You’re going to have a problem with time gaps for a while, until your brain recalibrates itself … And it wasn’t Frejya you saw. It was Hannah.’ He sighs again, more heavily this time. ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Northy. This is all going to seem really fucked up, for a while at least. You’re just …’
Edward has fallen asleep.
The doctor flips over a sheet on a clipboard and gives Niall a sidelong glance. ‘You family? I recognize you.’
‘A friend. I’ve been interviewed on the news a bit lately, talking about Edward’s release.’
‘That’s it; you’re the guy from the Foreign Office. Sir Niall …’
‘Campbell. And it’s pronounced Neil. It’s Scottish.’
‘You don’t sound Scottish.’
‘It’s not compulsory. Can I have a word with you outside?’ The two men walk out into the corridor and speak in lowered voices. ‘So what’s the situation here?’
The doctor looks over his shoulder before making eye contact. ‘He should make a reasonable recovery but we are going to have to monitor his food intake carefully. One of the mistakes they made after the liberation of Belsen was to feed the prisoners too quickly. Thousands died because their bodies couldn’t cope. Cardiac failure mostly. We’ll keep him in intensive care for a few weeks, on a controlled diet and a glucose drip, then we’ll start giving him some physio to try and rebuild his muscles.’
‘But no lasting medical problems?’
‘I didn’t say that. It’s too early to tell whether some of the conditions he is suffering from will be permanent, but so far we have detected … Well, do you want the whole list?’ He begins counting them off with his fingers. ‘Early evidence of renal failure, cirrhosis, possible diabetes, anaemia, dehydration, calcium deficiency and impaired vision which we think will leave him with a permanent sensitivity to light.’ The doctor shakes his head. ‘He also has fungi growing under his oesophagus, which makes swallowing painful for him. And our tests are showing he may have scurvy and rickets, which we haven’t really seen in this country for decades. But we think all these things will prove temporary. His long-term problems are going to be psychological.’
‘We’ve got a good therapist lined up for when he’s ready … Poor old Northy.’
‘Yes, poor old Northy,’ the doctor echoes.
When they step back into the ward, Edward’s eyes are open but they are unfocused. They seem to be looking through Niall – the thousand-yard stare again. ‘It was Frejya,’ Edward says through closed teeth. ‘She was here.’
‘Well, I’ll leave you two to it,’ the doctor says.
‘You’ve been away for just over eleven years,’ Niall says, once the doctor has closed the door. ‘That was Hannah you saw. She’s twenty now.’
Niall can see the blood pulsing in Edward’s face. Sense his dizziness and feeling of time dislocation. He now knows that his friend has been unable to take in any of the information fed into his brain on an aural drip as he drifted in and out of consciousness these past couple of weeks. This is not the first time Niall has explained to Edward that his daughter is now an adult.
For a full minute, Edward is silent. Then he says softly: ‘Hannah is nine
… She was nine.’
‘This is going to take some time to … to get used to.’
‘Can I see my wife? Where is she?’
Niall hesitates. ‘One thing at a time, Northy …’
Edward eyes him, as if recognizing him for the first time. ‘Did you say you were still at the Foreign Office?’
‘Yep. And you can come back to work for us whenever you feel ready, in whatever capacity.’
‘Says who?’
Niall looks embarrassed. ‘Says me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ll explain later.’
‘Tell me now. What grade are you?’
Niall looks away. ‘I’m the Permanent Undersecretary.’
Edward tries to sit up. ‘You?’
‘For the moment. There’s a general election expected soon and the new lot will probably want their own man in.’
‘Sir?’
Niall studies the floor and nods. ‘But I don’t use it. Tell me about the people who kidnapped you.’
Something happens to Edward’s eyes, as though a shadow is passing over them. ‘They …’
‘Do you remember anything about when you were captured?’
‘Everything went black.’
‘You were in a convoy. There was an ambush. Your Land Cruiser was hit by an RPG.’
Edward frowns. ‘Who were they?’
‘We figured it would be local opportunists who didn’t know they’d got a high-value target. We had a press blackout and notified the Met’s Hostage and Crisis Negotiation Unit. But nothing. No demands. No video posted on the web. We had no idea where you were.’
‘I was underground. In a cave. It was dark.’ Edward grimaces, as if a bubble of pain has entered his blood. ‘Do we have to do this now?’
‘No. Whenever you are ready. I understand.’
‘Can I see Frejya?’
‘You’ve lost a lot of weight.’
‘I want to see my wife.’
‘I’ve brought a mirror.’
Niall hands over a mirror, but Edward does not look in it. Instead he places it face down on the bed. His eyes look distant and cloudy again; the eyes of a dead man.
The Road Between Us Page 2