The Road Between Us

by Nigel Farndale

  I looked around and got more of a sense, through the gloom, of the dimensions I had until now only been able to guess at. I was in a cave, and it had sloping walls that met above me, where the hole was. There were more voices again, and a painful jab of torchlight in my face.

  I said something I had learned in Pashto. ‘Salam? … Sho Ismak?’ Instead of answering, one of them directed the torch at a basket that was being lowered on a rope by the other. As my eyes adjusted again, I could see that both men were wearing black lungees (sp??) on their heads, which meant they were Taliban. The one holding the torch had a beard and a Kalashnikov hanging from his shoulder. He was wearing my watch. The other man had his face covered with a black and white keffiyeh (sp?) scarf. This, I remember thinking, might be a good sign. The man would not have bothered to cover his face if he was there to perform an execution.

  I considered telling them my name, but already I was making calculations calibrations: perhaps they weren’t the Taliban and they didn’t know I was a British diplomat; perhaps I would be in less danger if it stayed that way.

  I asked them what they wanted. This time there was a clinking sound followed by radio static and then some excited chatter on a walkie-talkie. I could now see a third, taller man looking down. His lank, bearded face was uncovered wasn’t covered either. He had calm and neutral eyes. Full lips. He was wearing a camouflage jacket.

  The basket had reached the cave floor floor of the cave. Adopting an unthreatening posture, I edged towards it and saw it contained a chunk of unleavened bread, a bowl of rice, a spoon and a plastic bottle of water. I reached for it and, as soon as I’d taken the items out, the basket was pulled back up. The torch was shone across to the corner of the cave. ‘Hammam,’ one of the men said. It means loo lavatory. My eyes followed its beam and took in two planks across a raised rock formation. I heard the scraping sound overhead again, and, as I looked up, saw the boulder was being rolled back over the hole.

  The cave seemed even darker than it did before. Colder, too, and I found myself trembling. Only after I had been swearing for a few minutes to give myself courage did I regain my nerve and realize what I was doing. I stopped and ground my teeth instead. I remembered from the Foreign Office ‘Hostile Environment’ course (check name??) I had been required to attend, that it was important to remain calm. I also recalled that it was essential to retain your dignity. If your captors respect you, they will find it harder to kill you. Do not grovel, beg, or become hysterical. Try to establish a rapport. Make them humanize you.

  I tried to work out how long I had been down there, but there were no markers. The only way I could calculate the passage of time was through my hunger. I remembered the food and, feeling for the pitta bread, took a bite. It was stale. The fullness of my bladder also gave me an indication of how much time had passed.

  I groped in the direction of the two planks they had shown me, then moved on my hands and knees. I couldn’t find them at first. When I did, my hands could feel that there was a gap between them. The updraft of air meant a drop below. I stood to relieve myself and the length of time before the piss liquid splashed against a surface indicated that the pit was several yards deep. For a moment I wondered if this might offer a means of escape, but it seemed to be nothing more than a crack in the ground that led nowhere.

  Feeling my stress levels beginning to rise again, I tried to order my thoughts. I had been kidnapped. The Foreign Office would know I had been kidnapped. They would be having a Cobra meeting in Whitehall to consider their options. Niall My friend and colleague Niall Campbell would be making a big fuss on my behalf. In all probability they would have an SAS squad on standby to helicopter themselves in. My job was to stay calm and try and keep out of the crossfire when they came.

  But then doubts crept in. How were the SAS going to find me? There were caves all over Afghanistan and I could be anywhere. In the north. The south. I could even have crossed the border into Waziristan Pakistan. I had no idea how long I had been unconscious for; it could have been days.

  My thoughts returned to Frejya. She would have received the ‘next-of-kin’ phone call from the FCO Foreign Office. This would have set off a cycle of speculation and uncertainty for her. At least I knew what was happening to me, even if I wished I didn’t. Frejya would not have the same consolation. She would be wondering if I was dead, or being tortured, or if I was going to be executed. The thought of her facing these questions on her own filled me with guilt and anger.

  (Should maybe have a section here about Frejya’s campaign in London … Niall to write??? Or get him to talk me through it??)

  Not long after this I remember waking to a warm rain on my face. I looked up and saw the silhouette of a man urinating on me. I got out of the way and saw that he looked more like a boy of about eleven ten. As I spluttered and wiped my face, he laughed and shouted: ‘Haraam!’ It means ‘unclean’. But at least the boy had spoken to me. At least I had had some human contact.

  ‘My name is Edward,’ I said. ‘What’s yours?’

  The boy frowned.

  ‘Namey shoma chiyst?’ I tried instead.

  Seeing the boy was wearing a football shirt – it looked like Man U Manchester United – I said: ‘David Beckham?’

  The boy laughed, threw down some food, and then, as an afterthought, ran a finger across his neck. Another guard appeared, there was an argument and then the boy was cuffed across his head. Seemingly on his own, the man guard then pushed the boulder back over the hole and I had a sudden feeling of compression. Enveloped in darkness once more, I began shouting.

  The image of the boy running his finger across his neck came back to me and I started crying shaking again. I knew that was how they killed infidels there, slitting their throats like sheep. I had once watched a man perform such Halal butchery behind a restaurant in Algeria, binding three legs together before feeling for the carotid (sp??) artery and drawing the knife across the ewe’s throat in one quick movement. As blood spurted out, the ewe took jerky breaths, eyes closed, its deflated chest trying to heave. Then it lay still for a minute before its free leg started to shudder violently.

  Despite willing myself not to, I found myself imagining what it felt like when your head was pulled back and the knife cut into your skin. Can you taste the blood in your windpipe before you die?

  To distract myself I tried to picture the boulder. As I recreated its movement in my memory, I realized that it must be hollowed out, intended not to keep me in so much as to disguise the opening in the roof of the cave. I thought if I could only climb up there I could perhaps dislodge it myself.

  I crawled until I reached a wall, then I stood up. As I scraped my way along it, I came to something small and round. It was cold and hard … Metal. There was another one a few feet further farther on at the same height and, at my feet now, the rattle of more metal. It was a chain. Feeling my way along it, I came to a flat, rounded surface and, when I realized it was a manacle, I dropped it. This cave had been used as a prison before. I wondered what happened to the previous incumbents, whether they had been released.

  But at least this meant the guards sometimes came down there. They must have a ladder. I tried to work out whether I could hide the next time they brought food, then, when they would come came down to look for me and I could overpower them. But I knew I was deluding

  My lack of resolve left me feeling cowar

  I attempted to find foot- and handholds in the wall but soon realized that its overhang made climbing impossible. I had another attempt, but succeeded only in breaking a nail.

  Walking stiffly, I began to pace backwards and forwards. Three steps, turn. Three steps, turn. I kept this up for about an hour before I decided to try a circuit of the cave, to measure the circumference. Then my feet touched something. It was a toshak, one of the narrow mattresses that Afghans use instead of chairs or beds. It was hard and thin and stank of sweat and urine, but it was a mattress nonetheless. I found there was a blanket on top of it so I lay down, pu
lled it over myself and shivered, more from solitude than lack of warmth.

  After this the days and weeks merged into each other. The dripping noise which had sounded so loud now seemed quite distant. I would try to focus on it but it would keep slipping from my attention. I was becoming deaf to its repetition.

  The slightest bump from ‘upstairs’, as I had begun thinking of the world above me, made me jump, but it was the absence of noise that frightened me more. The absence of contrast. The sensory deprivation. Already I was cursing the contortions of my mind imagination. As my eyes strained, trying to make out shapes, I fancied I was staring at my own sanity, as if it was an entity with which I was sharing the cave.

  III

  One year and two months after Edward’s release

  WHEN SHE HEARS THE DOORBELL RING, HANNAH PUTS HER GLASSES on and looks through the spyhole. If this is the journalist, he is ten minutes late. Whoever it is has his back to the door and is holding a mobile to his ear.

  As she releases the latch, the phone in the hall rings and the man turns and smiles. He has a few days’ stubble on his face and looks to be in his late twenties, early thirties. ‘Have I got the right house?’

  ‘If you’re from the Guardian you have.’

  The journalist touches an icon on the screen of his mobile and the phone in the hall stops ringing. ‘Damn. I’m from Farmers Weekly. Wrong house.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry. Joke. Attempted joke. I am from the Guardian. And that was me calling to check the address.’ His voice is warm, well modulated, as Irish as whiskey with an ‘e’. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  They shake hands. His is dry, hers, she realizes, is clammy. ‘Hannah, right?’

  ‘Right.’ She is rubbing her palm on the seat of her jeans, wishing she could remember his name. Too late to ask now.

  ‘Martin Cullen,’ he says.

  With his beige cord jacket, open-neck shirt not tucked in properly and scuffed suede shoes, he looks to Hannah more like a part-time lecturer at her college than a full-time journalist from a national.

  ‘Come in,’ Hannah says. ‘Your photographer is still out in the garden with my dad. I think he’s nearly finished.’ She closes the door as the journalist steps in. ‘They take a lot of shots, don’t they?’ she adds.

  ‘Oh, they’d go on all day if you let them. Some of them even try to …’

  Hannah doesn’t hear the rest of the sentence. She is feeling dizzy as if she has just risen from a hot bath. The gaps between the objects in the hallway seem to be warping.

  ‘What?’ Cullen is wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Have I got …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You were staring at me.’

  Hannah looks away. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean …’ She feels hollow and full at the same time. And in motion. As if she is standing on wet sand, sinking. ‘I think I’m going to …’

  When she comes round she is lying on the sofa and the journalist is standing over her, holding out a glass of water.

  ‘You fainted,’ he says. ‘Are you OK?’

  She sits up and takes a sip. ‘I’m fine, thank you. I think I just need to …’ She reaches for a banana from a fruit bowl on the coffee table, peels it and eats half of it. ‘I haven’t eaten anything today,’ she says between mouthfuls. ‘Completely forgot! I’m not normally like this.’

  ‘No worries.’

  Hannah looks around as if only now realizing where she is. ‘Did you carry me in here?’

  ‘Well, you sort of fell into … my …’ He holds out his arms and grins.

  ‘Thank you.’ She fans her face with her hand. ‘That wasn’t embarrassing at all. Where would you like to do the interview? I thought maybe the kitchen or in here. You won’t be disturbed in either.’

  ‘Here, then. Thanks.’

  She watches the journalist’s eyes flick around the room. His hand is being drawn to a signed rugby ball on a stand. He strokes it like it’s a baby seal. ‘Yours, I take it?’

  Hannah smiles. ‘Yeah, I was tight head prop for the Quins.’

  Cullen has now picked up the carved handle of an African switch and is flicking the horsehairs over each shoulder in turn, dispersing imaginary flies. ‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ he says. ‘That must have been so hard for you.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘And hard for your father to come back and find that his wife … I guess you have had to take on that role.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. You know, just … hard for both of you.’

  Yeah, she thinks. Funny how I almost wanted to become my mother, to help my father adjust. Bring her back to life, for my benefit as well as his. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Yeah, it was hard. Can I get you a coffee?’

  ‘Do you have any herbal tea?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Cullen studies her for a moment then asks a question which seems vague and yet to a purpose. ‘Have you and your father been living together since he got back?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘Had a couple of friends living here with me.’

  ‘How would you describe your relationship with him?’

  ‘Good. Why? Has someone said different?’ Hannah laughs falsely.

  ‘Can I just check? This is an exclusive, right?’

  ‘The interview? Yeah, I think so. I didn’t set it up. But I’m sure Dad’s not talking to anyone else. And as far as I can tell, he didn’t want to do this one. My godfather had to bully him into it.’

  ‘Sir Niall Campbell, right?’

  ‘Right. Is there any chance we can see the piece before it goes to press?’

  ‘’Fraid we can’t give copy approval. That’s more Hello! magazine territory. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.’

  ‘You will go easy on him though, won’t you?’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘Did you see the documentary?’

  ‘Yes. Really interesting.’

  ‘I should warn you, Dad can seem quite cold and distant with strangers at first. It can be disconcerting when you’re not used to it. Sometimes it’s like throwing a brick in a lake and not only not creating a splash but not creating a single ripple. It’s like he drags everything down into the depths.’

  ‘Now you’re scaring me.’

  Hannah throws out a laugh, a single syllable. Her turn to reassure. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’m hoping he’ll talk about his time as a hostage.’

  ‘Well, good luck with that. I don’t think he’s talked about it to anyone yet. Certainly not me.’

  Cullen picks up his ringbound notepad and flicks to an empty page. ‘Can I quote you on that lake stuff. What was it again?’

  ‘Um, not creating a single ripple. As if the calm surface hasn’t been disturbed.’

  He is scribbling. ‘Oh, you’re good. Can I talk to you again after we’ve done the interview?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘If you give me your mobile number, I’ll call you once I’ve transcribed the tape and started writing it up.’

  Hannah cocks her head to one side as she tries to get the measure of him. Is he hitting on her? Possibly. Yet he seems too … gentlemanly. With his drawing-room manners he even seems a little amateurish. And she likes the calm way he holds her gaze. Before she can change her mind, she snatches his pen off him, pulls his hand towards her and, with her lips pursed to stop herself from grinning, writes her number on the back of it. ‘I was going to make you a herbal tea, wasn’t I? Peppermint OK?’

  ‘Thanks. And is there a toilet I can use?’

  ‘Upstairs. First door on the right. I think I just heard your photographer go into the downstairs one.’

  She makes her way through to the kitchen. As the kettle comes to the boil, she realizes the journalist is taking a long time. The house is silent. She climbs to the first landing, treading carefully to avoid spilling the tea.

  He is in the master bedroom staring at the c
orrugated sheets on the unmade bed. Her mother’s dressing gown, the one she sometimes uses, is on the pillow. There are a pair of men’s boxer shorts on the floor. ‘Are you lost?’ she asks.

  ‘Sorry. Big house. Lot of bedrooms.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Cullen nods at the bed. ‘Which is his side?’

  Hannah looks at him without answering.

  ‘This is his bedroom?’ he prompts.

  ‘Why?’

  His eyes fix on the boxer shorts.

  Hannah can feel with her memory the cool touch of linen as she slides between these sheets. She can hear her own laughter as her father flinches when she warms her cold feet against the backs of his legs. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘This is where he sleeps.’ Her brow puckers for a moment then clears. ‘Or tries to sleep. He gets nightmares and I have to come in here to reassure him, stroke his hair, sing to him.’

  Cullen gives a sympathetic nod. ‘All right, so.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s me who can’t sleep. When I’m frightened. Didn’t you do that with your parents? Come into their bed?’

  ‘When I was six maybe, but not …’

  ‘We’re both afraid of the dark.’

  This seems to satisfy his curiosity. ‘Well, that’s understandable.’

  Hannah tries to smile. ‘It is, isn’t it? Anyway, here you are.’ She hands over the mug. ‘Peppermint.’

  They go and check the progress of the photographer. He is finally packing up his equipment and Edward is waiting for them in the sitting room. Cullen smiles broadly as he goes to shake his hand and introduce himself.

  ‘I’ll let the photographer out,’ Hannah says. ‘Leave you two in peace.’

  Cullen is looking at a photograph in a frame on the dresser. He has his back to Hannah and seems not to realize she is still in the room. ‘She’s very photogenic, your daughter.’

  Edward rubs the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s my wife. My late wife.’