by Ireland, Tom
When she was on her own she sat in the chair placed at the desk. The park was deserted. There was no sound but she felt the beat of her heart.
The envelope contained the promised bank drafts. She stared at the sum; it was as much as a banker would have enjoyed in the old days. A handwritten sheet - Bibby's own writing - gave her the title of Theresa, Countess of London. There was a Diplomatic Passport in that name, with her picture mounted in it. Not an identity card; a passport. There was a sheet of information about the time and place of birth of an unnamed baby boy, together with the names of those present. It also listed the full qualifications of the doctor and midwife. If the child was alive she could find it. She picked up the 'phone and ordered afternoon tea.
A china pot of Darjeeling; smoked salmon sandwiches, the crusts cut off; a display of iced cakes, each a work of art.
'With the compliments of the manager, my lady'. Lady Theresa sipped and nibbled like a true aristocrat. Unlike a true aristocrat she was wondering where the bugging devices were hidden. She'd bugged him, and paid the price for it. It would be routine for him to have her followed, listened to, watched. That's what Watchmen did. Somewhere, concealed in her body, would be a locating device. It would be stupid to try to locate it; it would be death to tamper with or remove it. She poured another cup of tea and re-read the notes. Better to behave and live; best of all, find the child, make sure it was dead, and take a chance that His Excellency, Professor, Doctor, and Lord Protector of England, Geoff Bibby could, perhaps for the first time in his life, be trusted to keep his promise. How stupid is that? she thought.
Theresa, Countess of London, rang the bell for room service. A maid appeared, curtseyed, requested instructions. The Countess requested that the tray be removed and that a bath be prepared. It was done. She dismissed the maid, who had looked as if she might have been willing to share the bath, and stripped. The bathroom mirror was large and flattering. She had survived the years well, she thought. Little had headed south; little had run to fat. She moved back from the mirror and performed a passable salute to the Sun. Might as well give the Watchers something to watch, though she didn't want fat Geoff to realise how much he missed her and recall her to his service. His intimate service. She stepped into the scented water and relaxed. Could she wash away every trace of that monster? She wondered how his new plaything was coping with her job from hell. Surely the girl must be of age? Of course she wasn't; that was the reason for her dismissal. Fat Geoff had acquired a taste for younger flesh. No concern of hers, of course. Better to plan the execution of her own task, and if she survived that, plan her escape. She would call the clinic where the child had been born and request a meeting with whoever the manager of the place was. It was too late to that now; first thing in the morning, perhaps. Managers would be at home in their executive, Watchman approved, villas with double garages and obligatory hectare of lawned garden in Alderly Edge. Much more unsettling if the polite request, obviously an announcement of an inspection, greeted him or her on arrival in the office. Unsettling would be good. An early night and then Lady Theresa would be on her way north to find a dead child and contrive her escape. Could she rescue the child and take him to freedom? Not possible, not at all possible. Death was a partner in all Geoff Bibby's schemes. She watched the water circle its way out of the bath. Would her own life run out as quickly? Why had he slapped her after that final fuck? Usually he was either sloppily sentimental or downright brutal, generally the latter. That slap had been almost friendly by comparison. Had it been his demented version of a fond farewell? And the award of a title; he hadn't needed to do that. A diplomatic passport? There were only a dozen or so of those in existence and they could only be issued with the agreement of the whole Committee. She shivered; time to dry herself and go to bed, alone, at last. She wrapped herself in the thick white towel and took a last look out of the window as daylight faded on the deserted park.
27
Sirra and Binta and Rachel watched the sun set from the veranda of Binta's house. Binta was debating whether she should make another brew but the women had been busy and, as Sirra said
'Sometimes it is good just to sit.'
'Can I ask a question?' Rachel had been wondering about etiquette and polite behaviour in her new culture.
'Can I stop you? You already have the reputation of a determined mind!'
'Sirra, it is about this very matter I wish to speak. I don't fit in, do I? I was different in England and I'm different here. Help me. '
'I think you fit in very well; your husband sounds very pleased with you, and you with him!' Binta laughed at the shocked expression which greeted her words. Rachel blushed as violently as a Victorian maiden.
'I can't help it. It's what he does to me, it's so lovely and exciting.'
'I think my son also finds it exciting. He has no complaints about your behaviour. You are not of our culture but that is no harm. Ed-Lamin's father, our late husband, belonged to your tribe too and he adapted very well to our way of life. You are expected to be different; you run every morning, you sometimes wear trousers, you have been seen driving one of my husband's cars; you are also seen to be willing to learn our language, you can cook Gambian food quite well, and you help the women to improve their spoken and written English. So why worry? I think that before the end of the year you will bring me the gift of a grandchild?' Rachel's face was red.
'You see, the song you sang as you loved my son was heard in heaven! I think all the women in the village heard you sing it and they are happy for you.'
'I haven't sung any s… Oh, no! You mean I was so loud that … I can never go out of this compound again. Every time one of the village ladies smiles at me I'll think she's remembering me making wild noises when we …'
'Rachel! We are teasing you! You could not be heard outside this compound. Honestly. I could barely hear you at all across the road in my husband's house. I doubt if more that a dozen women have heard you.'
'But remember, Sirra' said Binta with a grin 'those dozen women will have told all the others!'
'I bet the girls at my old school never thought I'd become a shameless hussy. For years I never once thought I would enjoy sex, making love, so much. I have a good teacher; we can love and laugh at the same time. It isn't something dirty or something to snigger at. I love Ed-Lamin. I never thought he would even look at me but now ... did you know we're going to build a boat together?'
'Rachel' said Binta, 'please, never stop amazing us. We love you. Can we help you?'
'We can call it "Binta Boat" if we work together. I made my first boat when I was eleven. We'd just been on a holiday and I learned to sail. I built a Mirror dinghy and sailed it on the river. I was so proud of it. Then a man in the sailing club asked me to crew for him on his converted shrimp boat and I sailed it to Ireland in the summer holiday. Dad, Andrew, bought it for me a few years later and I used her for fishing. She's the boat I used for the underground railway - Ed-Lamin had a voyage in her - and she's the boat that brought all of us here. She's on the bottom of the River Gambia now after the ferry sank us. River Mersey to the River Gambia. Not a bad final voyage. She's staying here and I hope we are too.' A small lizard, soaking up the sun's last rays on top of the wall, cocked its head and listened to Rachel's words, still and solemn. Binta saw it and shuddered. It might be a descendent of the one that had witnessed her rape, all those years ago. How different her life had been, transformed in a matter of minutes from a happy teenager to a sinful woman whose future as a prostitute seemed certain. But Sirra had arranged everything; the child was given a home with a childless woman, and brought up by a refugee woman who had been a prostitute before she was able to escape with her own child to the village. Two boys, two women; together the children had been raised in love and security. Together they had been educated and now, together with their respective wives, they ran a very successful hotel catering almost exclusively for bird-watchers from Europe. Now she had children born from love and her first child was respected
in the village and knew that she was his birth mother.
Sirra was recalling her life with Ed, father of Ed-Lamin. She had thought herself ugly, unlikely to ever marry, certain she would never be a mother. She had dedicated herself to becoming a teacher and it was because she was a teacher that she had met and married her man. True, he was from a different culture, had a different colour of skin and a different language but he had loved her, supported her and encouraged her to accept the position of Alkalo, village chief. Now, sadly, he had gone to whatever after-life white people enjoyed and to her surprise she had been invited to marry again, this time to a village man, her lovely Ebou. He too was gentle, a loving husband and a good friend. He had seemed surprised that she had accepted him; he was not educated, he had failed in several enterprises but Sirra saw that he was not greedy, not jealous. He was a gentleman in every sense and she was proud of his eventual success in a business founded on trust and reliability.
The compound was dark; night had fallen as the three women sat, wrapped in their thoughts. Binta set about the task of brewing a final pot of Atayah. Each of them was anxious to be in bed with their respective men. Three respectable women, their past lives not quite forgotten but certainly not a source of ghosts to haunt their dreams.
28
Rachel lay in her lover's arms and smiled. Queen Victoria, she remembered reading, had enjoyed making love with her prince. She hadn't enjoyed giving birth to the resulting babies though. Rachel stroked her belly, slowly, gently. She was sure that a brand new person had taken up residence there; a new life was forming. Ed-Lamin would look after her. There was a good clinic in the village, and a new hospital was being built alongside the old Victoria |Teaching Hospital in Banjul. If only the Queen of England had been so fortunate. Her movement woke her man, who reached for her and kissed her on her neck. She nuzzled up to him, happy and warm.
'Perhaps I should leave you untouched until she's born? That might be the safe thing to do?'
'I'll be very sad if that happens. He wouldn't want me to be sad, would he?' Ed lay silent, remembering the child Jane had carried. He didn't even know if it been a boy or girl.
'While you were on your way here, before your boat sank, before Jane died, did she ever talk to you? You don't have to say, if you don't want to. Sorry, I shouldn't have asked.' He drew away from her. He had done a stupid thing. Did he even want to know?
'Yes, of course we talked. She shared the night watches with me; she was going to make a great sailor. I loved her. Ed, what are you asking me?' Silence; then
'Did she ever talk about our baby?'
'Of course she did. How couldn't she? She gave birth to a lovely healthy baby boy. She only held him for a moment then he was snatched away from her and she never saw him again. She never found out what had happened to him. It drove her mad. They took her to another hospital. She had an operation to make her a virgin again. She was force-fed drugs. All the time she was determined to get back to you; she did, but she didn't have time enough to talk to you about how she managed it.'
'How did she? Did she tell you?' Rachel put her arms round him, her head on his chest. How could she tell him the truth?
'Rachel, I loved her. Please tell me. I don't want secrets between us, not now. Please?' So, reluctantly, she told him. Jane had worked as a prostitute, a "comfort woman", in a detention centre. She had been regularly raped, by every member of the staff; her body had been the reward for assaulting, torturing, killing prisoners. He lay silent. What have I done? she thought. He cannot love me now. I've just told him the woman he loved before me was a whore … she rolled away from him.
'Stay, Rachel, please stay; hold me. Stay, don't leave me. I'm crying for Jane and our baby, of course I am, of course I will. She was so brave, so brave. No, stay; just hold me, if you can bear to, please. I love you.'
The night passed slowly; they made love, carefully, gently, as dawn broke. Again they lay, entwined, sleepy, relaxed.
'Rachel?'
'Nice. I like this too. I love the loving but I like the relaxing afterwards. I wonder if Queen Victoria liked it? Did Prince Albert lie with her afterwards? Did he, was he allowed to stroke her boobs like you do? I wish mine were bigger. Do you wish …?'
'Rachel.'
'What?'
'Shut up. You're perfect. If you had three heads and one boob I'd love you. Can I ask you something else?'
'Not if it's boob linked. Anything else is fine.'
'You want to build a boat?'
'Yes, of course. Boats are what I do.' Why?'
'A boat nearly killed you. You were missing for a while and everybody was going frantic. How can you ever want to step into another boat?'
'It wasn't the boat that nearly drowned me. Human error. I was so tired I wasn't keeping watch. It wasn't the ferryman's fault. He was busy leaving the dock and I was on his blind side. In a way, it did me a favour. I couldn't see it at first, but that's how it was.'
'How can you think that? You lost everything when your boat sank. You might have drowned.'
'That's the point. I arrived here like I was new born; I was naked and wet through. I'd stripped my clothes off to swim better and everything that tied me to my old life was at the bottom of the river. I washed up on the shore by Banjul market and the traders wrapped me up and took good care of me. I knew I was going to be O.K. Look at me now, starkers in your bed. Who needs things?'
'Can I take that as an instruction?'
'I'll regret this. What instruction?'
'The "Look at me now, starkers" instruction.'
'Of course you can. You can touch too, if you like. One thing, though. I've just realised a mistake. It's our bed, so lie back and I'll do the looking and touching, starting with this …'
29
Theresa drove north. She had been provided with a brand new Range Rover. She struggled at first with the automatic gearbox but quickly learned to leave the business of changing gears to the machine. There was little traffic to impede her; trade, as usual, was bad; there was no money to buy things so why bother to transporting them? She had been expecting to be provided with a driver-spy but she realised a better indication of her trustworthiness was to be left to her own devices; every inch of her journey would be observed and recorded. The Lord Protector would know immediately if she put a foot wrong. The car was probably wired to explode if she deviated from her task. "Find and destroy the child" was her instruction. After that she must engineer her escape, though God only knew if that was possible. Geoff Bibby would not want her to remain alive; she would truly know where the bodies were buried.
Her instructions directed her to a five star hotel in Knutsford, a stately home liberated from the now defunct National Trust and re-furbished to accommodate the top brass of the Peoples Purity Party and their orgies. She turned off the motorway and the sat-nav directed her through quiet Cheshire lanes to a gatehouse next to huge iron gates. The gates opened as she approached and she followed the drive as it progressed through deer-infested parkland. It was easily the most hazardous part of her journey. She pulled up in the stable yard and a uniformed man bowed low, opened the car door and handed her down.
'I trust you had an easy journey, my lady? Your maid will escort you to your room.' Her maid curtseyed and led the way into the mansion. Theresa guessed that it was unnecessary to enquire about her baggage; that would be taken care of.
The room was large, overlooking the parkland. There was an en-suite bathroom the size of a tennis court, beyond which was a sitting room, beyond which she couldn't be bothered to investigate. Her maid had unpacked her belongings and tidied them away.
'Where will you take dinner, my lady? You have the choice of the state banqueting hall, or here, in your private dining room?' The lady thought she would dine in private. Private, apart from the bugs, of course.
'Dawson has drawn your bath, my lady. If you agree, dinner can be served in an hour's time?' The lady agreed.
Her 'phone bleeped. The clinic would be delighted
to receive her at ten the following morning. Theresa climbed down from her cloud. Tomorrow she would have to return to type; just another of Lord Bibby's hired thugs. She stripped, bathed, dressed and waited to dine. The Watchers were most impressed.
Next morning her maid provided breakfast in bed. Her tea was the desired blend, her orange juice freshly squeezed, the scrambled eggs perfectly cooked. She re-read her briefing notes as she ate. She showered and dressed; fresh clothes exactly the right size were waiting. She glanced at her reflection; a perfectly suited company director stared stonily back at her out of the early Victorian cheval mirror.
The Rover was washed and waxed and re-fuelled. Three-quarters of an hour later she drove up to the magnificent sandstone portico of the clinic that killed babies. She marched into the office of the Director and, without waiting to be invited, seated herself in his comfortable chair. She waved the startled man to the plain wooden seat at the other side of the desk.
'Right; you're Doctor Autton? Sit down man, sit. Qualified, are you? Let's see your papers then. No? You are expecting me? Were you expecting a quiet little chat then, Doctor? Nice cup of Darjeeling and a few nice biscuits? Right, get your documents, a list of all the staff you've ever had here, similar list of patients and a very carefully complete list of every single child that's ever had the misfortune to be born here. Oh, and a list of where those children are now. Not prepared, Doctor? Half an hour then. You can send in the tea tray now. I'll just go through your desk, if that's OK. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Move, man, move!' She waited till he reached the door. 'Oh, Doctor; your documents had better match my documents. Can you imagine the trouble there will be if you miss out just one teeny tiny baby?'
Tea and biscuits arrived immediately, the documents followed shortly after.
'Right. So you are a proper Doctor after all. What's the saying? "Thou shalt not kill but needs not strive officiously to keep alive?" Let's check the records then. Let's compare all the records of people named, named, Charlesworthy. How many of them have you got? Better go through every page. Can you find any? No? That's good, there shouldn't be any. Don't want you inventing babies just to please me, doctor. Now, the Craigs. You should have two of them. Found them? Good, let's see. Right. Now let's try …' the morning wore on. The Doctor was completely bamboozled by Theresa's machinations. Finally, about three o'clock, without a break for lunch, she mentioned the name that mattered.