by Robert Edric
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning he’ll want from you what he couldn’t get from any of us. You and Frere spent a great deal of time together. A great deal of time away from us, from here.’
‘Almost as though you were in league together,’ Abbot said.
‘Shut up, Abbot,’ Fletcher said.
‘That’s what Nash believes.’
Fletcher turned to me. ‘He believes Frere might have told you something about what he intended doing before he did it. And if that’s the case, then it proves intent. He wasn’t sick or lost or out of his mind when he left us. You above all others knew how single-minded he was when he wanted something. That’s why he came out here – not to serve the Company; to serve himself.’
No-one spoke for several minutes, each of us alone.
‘Nash hasn’t said anything about wanting to interview me,’ I said eventually.
‘He will,’ Cornelius said, his tone less harsh. ‘Or perhaps he’ll only want to see you to tell you what he knows, and what, presumably, he believes you to already know. He’s hardly building a case for the defence, don’t forget.’
‘And anything I told him might have done that?’
‘Anything you told him would only have dug the hole deeper for Frere,’ Fletcher said. ‘Listen to yourself. You behave as though the man could do no wrong. Well, he has done, and he knows he has, and he did it deliberately and he’s confessed to the fact. I doubt Nash could believe his luck when he realized how little he’d have to do to prove his case. It’s why he behaves as he does. He’s leaving you till last because he neither needs nor wants to hear you pleading on Frere’s behalf. Everybody else here has told him the same story. And they’ve told him the truth about what happened, about what Frere was like, what he did, about his ambitions.’ ‘And that, above all else – that ambition – is what has condemned him,’ I said.
‘Shut up,’ Cornelius told me. ‘He was involved in the killing of a child. And he might or might not have indulged some other passion. That’s what condemned him. We all have, or all had, ambition, yet none of us did what he did. If anything, you should consider yourself lucky that Nash hasn’t interviewed you. Every time you open your mouth you halve the effort he himself needs to make.’
I felt stunned by all this. Cornelius handed me his bottle and an empty glass. I filled and drained the glass.
A further silence followed. It was no longer raining, and we heard the noise made by the small apes scrambling across the roof.
‘He runs circles round us,’ Abbot said eventually.
‘We do that ourselves,’ Cornelius said.
‘He’ll come for your charts before too long,’ Abbot said.
‘My charts? What do you mean?’
‘He has the authority. He spent two hours last night telling me which of my accounts he wanted to see, which ones he might take away with him.’
‘And so you’ve no doubt been busy filling in all the blank spaces and amending all the wrong sums,’ Fletcher said.
‘I sat up all night. Where’s the harm?’
‘What will he want my maps for?’ I said.
No-one answered me.
‘They only show him what’s already there,’ I insisted.
‘He’ll want whatever you mapped in connection with your wanderings with Frere,’ Fletcher said.
There were at least thirty of these.
‘Are there many?’ Cornelius said, interrupting my thoughts.
‘A dozen or so.’
‘He’ll know,’ he said.
‘Know what?’
‘Know if you’re keeping anything from him. Frere will have told him everything.’
The half-drawn map of Frere’s final journey remained weighted and covered on my desk.
‘Be careful what you do,’ Cornelius said.
‘I’ll be as careful as Abbot,’ I said.
Abbot took offence at this and left us.
I myself left soon afterwards.
Crossing the compound, I saw Nash and Klein standing together in the light cast from the chapel doorway. The small building was brilliantly lit in the darkness, and they stood in this light as though it were a liquid and they were bathing in it. Other members of Klein’s congregation stood around them. The two men spoke loudly. There was a great deal of laughter at what was being said. I searched for Perpetua or Felicity, but could see neither woman. By then, Klein had been with us almost a month, and the latest rumour was that he was finally close to concluding a deal which would allow him to begin work on his new mission on the far shore, and that Nash was instrumental in helping this to happen. I could imagine all that Klein might have told the man – not about Frere, necessarily, but about the rest of us, what we had become, what we had allowed ourselves to become, and how we now compared with those on the far side.
They saw me watching them and fell silent for a moment. Then Klein beckoned to me and called for me to join them. My first instinct was to walk away, pretend I hadn’t heard, but instead I went. It surprised and unsettled me to see Klein and Nash on such friendly terms. I did not remember having seen Nash laugh before, other than at one of his own remarks.
Everyone turned to look at me as I came into the lighted ground out of the darkness, and most nodded in silent agreement at something Klein said, but which I did not catch. He then told these others to go, which they did. Several of the younger women approached him and he drew crosses on their foreheads and kissed them before they went.
‘You have no doubt been discussing my instructions,’ Nash said to me.
‘Among other things.’
‘I doubt that.’
‘Poor Mr Frere,’ Klein said, unable to tolerate his exclusion from our exchange.
‘You sound as though he’s already been tried and found guilty and had sentence passed on him.’ I looked hard at Nash as I said it, but he gave nothing away in his response.
‘Father Klein has been telling me about van Klees’s unfortunate “wife” and child,’ he said.
‘I daresay they contravene Company policy, too,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But it is of little or no consequence now. Company policy or not, it was still disgraceful behaviour. Abandoning the woman like that, whatever she was, and whatever she ultimately returned to be, and then remaining deliberately oblivious to his responsibilities to his proven child. Neglecting the child even unto the grave.’
Klein smiled as he listened to all this.
‘And you got all this from him,’ I said.
‘I put everything I know to van Klees himself and he denies nothing.’
‘Cornelius,’ I said. ‘Not Frere.’
‘Ah, yes, but so … so symptomatic of how degraded and uncaring you have all become.’ He held up his hands. ‘Please, please, it is only a personal judgement.’
‘But one that will find its way into your report. You listen to men like him –’ I pointed at Klein, still without facing him ‘– and you choose what you choose to believe.’
‘I listen to you all,’ Nash said.
‘You still pick and choose and dress things up to suit your purpose,’ I said. It was a clumsy way of expressing what I wanted to say and I regretted the words; I wondered if I had drunk more of Cornelius’s brandy than I had realized.
‘I understand your anger,’ Nash said.
‘Mr Frasier is a very angry man,’ Klein said.
‘But it is anger occasioned by frustration and disillusionment,’ Nash said.
If he had hoped to provoke me to a further outburst with the words, then he was disappointed. I felt suddenly unsteady on my feet. I coughed and a bitter taste filled my mouth.
‘Are you unwell?’ Nash said.
‘How convenient,’ Klein added.
I turned to the man, but the sudden motion made my head swim. He said something else to me, which I did not hear. The bright light of the chapel blinded me. I heard a noise from within, and without speaking to either man, I went inside.
> The light there was even brighter; dozens of lanterns had been lit around the walls and on the bars of the pulpit. I shielded my eyes to look. At first I saw nothing, and then a slight motion attracted my attention. I saw Perpetua and Felicity standing against the far wall. I went towards them, but as I approached I realized that what I had seen were not the women, but only their outfits, empty and hanging there. Then one of the women called out for me to leave. I stumbled to the end of the aisle, searching for the voice. By then, Klein and Nash had come into the doorway behind me. Klein called to me, urging me on, laughter drowning his words. My head continued to spin. I resumed coughing and then started to retch. Again I heard one of the women call out to me, and I stumbled forward, clutching at the seats and scattering them as I went, until I finally arrived at the front of the small space. There, on the floor ahead of me, half hidden by the banner which Klein had draped from his altar, lay Perpetua and Felicity, naked and prostrated, neither woman attempting to rise as I approached them, both of them with their faces turned to watch me with fear in their wide eyes, their cheeks and palms pressed to the boards. They were telling me to go back, not to look, to close my eyes. I stopped where I stood, trying to steady myself, and I looked down at them, at their naked backs and buttocks and tried hard to understand what I was seeing. Klein called again to me. He told me to look hard at what I saw. He was by then alone in the doorway, his outline molten in the bright light. I looked again at the women, and as though the motion of turning along with understanding was too great for me to bear, I felt my legs buckle and fold beneath me and I fell onto them, unable to prevent myself, unable even to throw out my arms to protect myself. The last thing I heard was their screaming as they scrabbled to free themselves from beneath me, my fall broken by their naked bodies.
PART FOUR
24
I woke to the sound of voices and to someone wiping a cloth across my brow.
‘He’s coming round.’ It was Cornelius’s voice. The wiping continued.
I had some difficulty opening my eyes, but when I finally managed this and was able to focus, I saw that I was in my bed. Cornelius sat beside me. Fletcher stood at the foot of the bed, in conversation with the deformed boy. Upon hearing Cornelius, he looked across at me, gave the boy some final instruction and told him to leave us. My vision remained fractured. My face ran with sweat. I felt beneath my sheets; someone had undressed me. There was an odour of sickness in the room, of medicines and vomit. Cornelius wrung out a cloth into an enamel bowl.
I tried to push myself upright, but was unable to, and my head spun at even that small effort. I started to retch and Cornelius pushed the bowl beneath my chin. Nothing materialized and my throat felt sore from the effort.
‘I collapsed,’ I said, my voice a dry whisper.
‘We know. Nash sent for us. We found you in the empty chapel.’
I struggled to remember what had happened, what I had seen.
‘Too much drink,’ I said. ‘Last night.’
‘Last night? That was three days ago. You’ve been delirious and barely conscious for all that time.’
I shook my head. ‘Last night. Klein and Nash at the chapel.’
‘It’s painful for you to speak. You were sick. River fever, Fletcher reckons. I agree with him. We’ve been treating you. We sent to the Belgians for whatever they had. That was the boy’s errand.’ He indicated the bottles and jars arranged on my bedside table.
‘Three days?’ I said. I tried hard to recall if anything of the time remained with me. Nothing came.
‘Nash said you went inside with Klein. He left the two of you together. He saw Klein later, and the man said something to raise Nash’s suspicions. He went back to the chapel, and there you were, on the floor in the darkness. You must have gone inside, passed out, fallen and hit your head.’
‘Klein was there,’ I whispered.
‘Whatever.’
‘Frere?’ I said.
‘Still in the gaol. Nash has finished with him. Now we’re just waiting.’
‘For what?’
‘For what we all expected. He’s being sent to Stanleyville to stand trial there. The Belgians are relinquishing some of their judicial powers.’
I felt the last of what little strength I still possessed drain from me. Cornelius lowered my head onto my pillow. I turned into it and felt its wetness.
I slept for several hours longer.
When I next woke, it was dark. Fletcher had gone, and Cornelius sat alone at the foot of the bed, asleep, a book face-down in his lap. I watched him, making no sound. I tried to remember everything that had been said earlier and it all came back to me. I felt the remaining tremor of my limbs. I took one of my hands from beneath the sheets and held it to my face. It, too, shook, and the skin was discoloured and gathered. The veins stood out along my inner arm. In the bowl beside my bed lay several phials. The same smell of sickness pervaded the room. I held my palm to my face and smelled it even stronger there.
The motion alerted Cornelius, and he sat upright to look at me.
‘I feel better,’ I said.
‘You were ranting and raving for two days,’ he said.
‘Is the worst over?’ My voice remained dry and cracked.
‘Possibly.’ He rubbed a hand over his face.
‘And Frere,’ I said. ‘Is it all over?’
‘It seems so.’
‘Has anyone been to see him?’
He looked down at the book still balanced in his lap. ‘Speke’s Journal,’ he said. ‘“Speke, we must send you there again.”’
It was the distant past. It was an unknown landscape filled with promise, hope and wealth turned to mud and holes, and stripped of all it once possessed worth having.
As before, I tried to raise myself in my bed, but again the effort was too great for me.
‘It’s almost two in the morning,’ Cornelius said.
I felt a ravenous hunger, but knew I would be unable to eat. A metallic taste filled my mouth; my breath was sour.
‘Go to your bed,’ I told him. I watched him rise and go.
For a long while afterwards I lay awake, looking around me in the dull glow of my lantern, trying to make some sense of what had happened, knowing only that the long-gathering storm had finally arrived and blown itself out in our midst and that I had remained oblivious to its final coming and the power spent upon us. The book lay on my bed where Cornelius had left it and I kicked it to the floor.
* * *
The next time I woke it was to find Nash sitting beside me. It was daylight and the shutters at my window had been folded back to let in the sun. He held a board across his lap and was writing as I half opened my eyes to look at him. He looked up immediately and waited for me to speak.
I asked him the time.
It was one in the afternoon. He had arrived midmorning to find Cornelius asleep at the foot of the bed.
‘I changed your sheets,’ he said. ‘You needed washing. Some of your dressings…’
My limbs and chest were no longer bathed with sweat.
‘My dressings?’
‘Your joints, knees, wrists; there were sores.’
I lifted the sheets to look at the bandages.
‘You saw Klein follow me into the chapel,’ I said.
‘I left him. I came only as far as the doorway. He told me to go.’
‘He was with me when I collapsed. He lied about finding me later.’
‘I believe you. I trust the man no more than you do.’
‘Did he tell you what happened, what I found in the chapel?’
He shook his head. ‘Just that the two of you had spoken and that he had left you.’
I said nothing about the two women.
He brought a glass of water to me.
‘I took the liberty of gathering together some of your charts,’ he said. He avoided looking at me as he spoke.
‘For the Company or as evidence?’
‘Both, I imagine.’ He returned to hi
s seat.
I spilled most of the water over my chin and chest. My hands were still not steady.
‘Cornelius is convinced of your recovery,’ he said.
‘Is that why you came?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘To interview me about Frere.’
‘My work with Nicholas Frere is over. I finished two days ago.’
‘Over?’
‘As I knew it would be. He kept nothing from me. You know him for the man he is.’ He seemed weary of the task completed. He looked away from me, through the window to the locust trees covered in jasmine, the scent of which was added to the room’s other odours.
‘But there are things I could tell you in his favour, things which need to be considered,’ I said.
He shook his head at the suggestion. ‘No, there aren’t.’
‘You interviewed all the others.’
‘Background. Circumstantial events. Something to gain a flavour of the man.’
‘I know him better than any of them.’
‘I never doubted that.’
‘I shall insist on you taking a deposition.’
‘Insist?’ He closed the book in which he had been writing. ‘And what if I were to tell you that one of Frere’s own conditions for telling me everything himself was that I was not to question you?’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I am many things, Mr Frasier, but never a liar.’
‘He wouldn’t do that.’ But my voice lacked all conviction. It was precisely the kind of thing Frere would do.
‘Why wouldn’t he? He told me all about his attachment to your sister.’
‘Why would he tell you that? It has no bearing on any of this.’
‘I know that. He told me to convince me that I should comply with his wishes. He wanted you to have no involvement whatsoever in what happened following the desertion of his responsibilities here.’
‘And presumably you now know what that was.’
He nodded once. ‘I do.’
‘And?’
‘And I know that you – that you all – remain ignorant of the details, that Frere kept everything from you, that he built his moat well. Surely, you of all people can understand his reasoning in the matter.’