Cleopatra's Sister

by Penelope Lively

  ‘I insist that we are given an opportunity to …’

  ‘It is not possible. The audience is finished.’ The interpreter had his hand on Howard’s arm, hustling.

  ‘There hasn’t been an audience, this is …’

  ‘Come. We leave now.’

  ‘Look,’ said Howard. ‘At the very least we must be allowed to …’

  Two of the attendant military had now stepped forward and began, with the interpreter, to herd them towards the door. Behind them, Omar could be heard roaring into the telephone. In the corridor, people scurried to and fro.

  ‘His Excellency has heard some very bad things,’ said the interpreter, in an accusatory tone. He looked sternly at Howard. ‘Your government is very foolish and uncooperative.’

  ‘What has he heard?’

  ‘I am not able to say.’

  ‘Why?’

  They were chivvied down a flight of stairs, at the trot.

  ‘What has our government said?’

  ‘I cannot discuss these things.’

  ‘If the President would give us an opportunity to …’

  The interpreter halted. He was infused, it seemed, with righteous indignation. ‘Your government is most arrogant and unreasonable. I think the consequence will not be good.’ He glared at them.

  ‘If we are to be told nothing,’ Lucy began, ‘how can we …’

  ‘I cannot discuss further. Come now, quickly.’ Tight-lipped, the interpreter turned away. He hurried on. The escorting military closed in behind Howard and Lucy, and the group proceeded in a rush down further stairs, along further corridors and out into the waiting car. The interpreter sat in hostile isolation in the passenger seat as they hurtled once more through the streets of Marsopolis in the direction of the convent.

  8

  ‘He’s mad,’ said Lucy wearily. ‘That’s all we can tell you.’

  They had given their story to the entire group, at a hurriedly convened meeting in the refectory. Now they mulled it over once more with the smaller cabal of James Barrow, Calloway and Molly Wright.

  Howard said, ‘I’ve led a sheltered life so far as political leaders are concerned. Indeed, this is the first time I’ve come face to face with one. But frankly I would not imagine that a session with an American president, say, or a German chancellor or a French what have you, or indeed the large majority of rulers around the world, could be anything like what we’ve just experienced.’

  ‘What’s he like, then, this man?’ persisted Molly Wright.

  ‘Mad,’ said Lucy again. And then, ‘No, not that, exactly. That’s a simplification.’ She thought of the room at Samara Palace, charged with that volatile and torrential presence. More like a climatic condition than a human being. Like something elemental and unstoppable. ‘You can’t describe him,’ she concluded. ‘It’s like coming across some entirely new kind of individual.’

  ‘For you, maybe,’ said Calloway. ‘Not for our Foreign Office people, we must assume.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Howard bleakly.

  There was a silence, broken at last by Molly, determinedly striking a note of cheer. ‘Anyway, thank heaven poor Lucy didn’t have to go through it on her own. That was an inspired move of yours, Howard.’

  James Barrow grinned. ‘Good grief! In the middle of all this we’ve never got around to congratulating the pair of you. All joy and prosperity! When can we look forward to the patter of little footsteps?’

  Howard got to his feet. He said, ‘Shut up, you stupid fool.’ Then he walked out of the refectory into the courtyard.

  He dumped himself down on the ground against the wall under one of those desiccated orange trees. He fended off the conversational overtures of the airline girls, of various others. Then Lucy was beside him. He said, ‘I shouldn’t have behaved like that. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You were fully entitled. He was very irritating.’

  ‘The point is that I have not yet had a chance to apologize to you. For putting you in this position. It was an appalling thing to do, I now see. In one sense. But at the time all I could think of was that no way was I going to let them take you off alone. Absolutely no way. It came into my head, and it worked, rather surprisingly, and now I feel appalled. I’m extremely sorry.’

  ‘Are you?’ said Lucy. ‘I’m not.’

  He looked at her. ‘You don’t mind too much, then?’

  ‘I don’t mind in the least.’

  She was sitting in the dust beside him, with her arms clasped round her knees. Sunshine fell strongly on the side of her face and he could see a faint down of golden hairs. He saw also the neat curve of her nostril, the line of her foot, the sheen of her fingernails. He could smell her, he could feel the warmth of her. The words she had just spoken hung still in his head. It came to him that possibly this was the most significant moment of his life.

  He said, ‘I love you, you know.’

  ‘Yes. I thought perhaps you did.’

  ‘And … is there any chance that …’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do too.’

  Howard sighed. He felt now as though he hung suspended, free of time and place, connected only to this exquisite sensation of delight. Whatever happens, he thought, there will have been this.

  He said, ‘I should very much like to kiss you.’

  ‘I’d like that too,’ said Lucy.

  ‘But if I do there will be twenty people looking on.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And there is absolutely nowhere we can go.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There isn’t.’

  ‘It will have to wait, then,’ said Howard. ‘I shall think about it a lot. I’m not sure if that will make things better or worse.’

  ‘Both, I think.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ll be thinking about it too?’

  ‘Yes. It does.’

  ‘I shall be thinking about a lot of things,’ said Howard. ‘Not just kissing you. I shall be constructing whole scenarios. I love you, Lucy. Will you get tired of me saying that?’

  I doubt it. Oh, I very much doubt it. Say it again. And again.

  Howard’s hand lay on his knee. She saw that, and the crease-lines of dirt on his trousers, and a very small ant of which he was presumably unaware which tracked doggedly across his fingers. I shall always see that ant, she thought, and the scratch on his thumb. Like I’ll always smell orange leaves and cigarette smoke and sweat. And I’ll always hear what he’s just said. ‘What sort of scenarios?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll go into that,’ said Howard. ‘Not now, anyway.’

  She said, ‘Something most odd is happening. I don’t feel as though we were where we are any more. I feel as though we had escaped it all somehow. As though we were on another level.’

  ‘Oddly enough, I know exactly what you mean.’

  ‘An illusion is a very peculiar thing to be sharing.’

  ‘It’s a good start, though, I should think, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘It’s the perfect start,’ she said. ‘In the circumstances. I’d like to hang on to it. Stay inside it. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes and no. I also have a compelling urge to get on with things. The rest of life has never seemed so enticing.’

  ‘Getting on with things is just what we can’t do.’

  ‘Someone, I trust, is getting on with them for us.’

  ‘Men in dark suits,’ said Lucy. ‘In offices in Whitehall. I can’t imagine them. They are more incredible than the guard there. The one who smokes all the time. Or the President.’

  He swivelled to face her. He took her hand and pulled it down to lie in his within the little dusty area of privacy between them. Two yards away, the guard finished his desultory patrol of the perimeter wall, ground out a cigarette butt and turned to go back the other way. A child threw a quoit. A group near by were talking, every word audible, intelligible but somehow unheard. She saw the blaze of Howard’s eyes and the configuration of his face, both infinitely familiar and constantly amazin
g.

  He said, ‘Don’t give any of them a thought, just at this moment. They don’t exist. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  At 3.20 the next morning she swarmed up from some brilliant confusing landscape in which jack-booted military figures streamed to and fro down avenues of flowering trees. Arriving on the hard mattress in the convent dormitory, she was aware at once, before identifying her surroundings, that there was something very bad and something else that was wonderful. She lay for an instant helplessly in the grip of these schizophrenic sensations, and then her mind cleared and she knew where she was and everything that had happened. Emotion was fused with hard perception; she saw the dim outlines of the other beds, heard the stirrings of her companions, the shuffle of feet in the passage outside, the sound of a toilet flushing. In her head, there flickered the violently contrasting images of Samara Palace, that room, Omar’s frenetic presence, his ranting voice … and Howard.

  Beyond a couple of walls, a dozen yards away, he too was lying awake perhaps. She concentrated upon this thought, while in some other part of her panic churned. What will happen? What will they do to us? How much longer?

  Waking again, much later, to broad daylight and the clamour of the convent’s rising, she found the panic subsumed once more into that chronic state of unease. But in some exotic emotional feat the unease was overlaid now by precarious joy. She got up, dressed, and took her turn in the washroom, and then went down to the refectory, where the first of the day’s perfunctory meals had already been delivered. She saw Howard across the room, and stood still, savouring the moment.

  As the day progressed the feeling of tension in the convent increased. People had had time to digest and consider the implications of what they had heard from Howard and Lucy. They were in the hands of some capricious lunatic. The thought was both chilling and disorienting. Morale sank to a new low, with varying effect; some sat about in catatonic misery, others gathered in groups, endlessly discussing possible options and eventualities. To compound the discomfort, there was now a high proportion of physical ailments. Several people had some kind of bronchitic infection. There were many cases of diarrhoea; the toilets stank. The man with a heart condition was displaying signs of stress. Ted Wilmott was still badly shocked, and the young teacher Denise seemed to be on the edge of breakdown. Some of the women were in need of tampons and sanitary towels, but when Molly Wright put in a request for these along with other supplies she was subjected to an outburst of abuse from the officer in charge. There seemed to have been some ominous shift in the attitude of their captors. The previous stance of indifference tempered with occasional displays of friendliness became one of unconcealed hostility. The hopscotch-playing curly-haired youth lashed out angrily when a child threw a ball at him. One of the airline girls was deliberately jostled and manhandled by another guard.

  ‘So what does this mean?’ said Hugh Callow. ‘Instructions from above?’

  ‘They’ve been told something. They know something we don’t about what’s going on behind the scenes, or they think they do, and they’ve been told we’re to be made the fall guys.’ This was James Barrow’s view. Whatever the diagnosis, everyone was dismayed and disturbed by this new evidence of volatility. The guards were treated with circumspection. There was nothing to do but sit it out, and hope that perhaps the spasm of aggression would pass.

  The midday distribution of food was even more unpalatable than usual. Someone who inadvertently dropped and broke a plate was harangued by the officer in charge and banished from the refectory for the duration of the meal.

  In the midafternoon Howard and Lucy sat again in the courtyard. Those bent upon exercise were determinedly circling, as usual; the place seemed an uncomfortable parody of a prison yard.

  ‘All right?’ he asked.

  ‘Half of me is very much all right. The other half … surviving.’

  ‘Me too. Emotional fission. I wouldn’t have believed it possible. I thought of you all night. I had improper thoughts, Lucy.’

  ‘Ah. You did?’

  ‘If these were normal circumstances,’ said Howard, ‘I would be trying to make love to you by now.’

  ‘Would you … I see.’

  ‘How would you react, I wonder?’

  ‘I’ll have to think about that. I’d … Well, I rather think I’d react quite favourably.’

  Howard sighed.

  ‘I suppose I’d be taking my clothes off,’ she went on after a moment.

  He looked at her.

  ‘T-shirt first.’

  ‘The T-shirt. Yes. And then …’

  Lucy glanced down at herself, considering. ‘The jeans next, I imagine.’

  ‘The jeans.’

  ‘No, wait. Shoes, I’ve forgotten. Back to the beginning. Scrub that. Shoes first. Then T-shirt. Then jeans.’

  ‘Yes. I see.’

  ‘Then bra, I suppose.’

  ‘Bra …’ said Howard.

  ‘It’s white, Marks and Spencer. At least it was white – it’s rather grubby now, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d mind very much about that.’

  ‘That just leaves the pants. So it has to be them next.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Howard. ‘It does.’

  ‘They’re red,’ said Lucy.

  Howard groaned. ‘I don’t think I can stand much more of this.’

  ‘We have to stop there anyway. We’ll talk about something quite different now. Something tranquillizing. Such as …’

  ‘There isn’t anything that would be entirely tranquillizing,’ said Howard.

  ‘Weather. Weather is always a surrogate. Actually it is much hotter.’

  ‘Is it? I hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Distinctly hotter. This sun is burning. Ironic, to get a tan.’

  Howard gazed at her. ‘Now you mention it, your nose has gone slightly pink.’

  ‘Bother. And then it will peel, which is uncomfortable.’

  ‘I have some sun-tan cream in my haversack. Why don’t I go up and get it?’

  ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

  She watched him cross the courtyard in the direction of the refectory door. As he was doing so, she noticed that there seemed to be some sort of activity inside. A clutch of soldiers. Another figure. She took a few steps in that direction, and saw that it was the interpreter. Others were now also paying attention. James Barrow, who had been sitting near by, rose and moved towards the refectory entrance. Ted Wilmott had just come out into the courtyard; he stood and looked back uncertainly. Howard arrived at the door.

  The interpreter was in a heightened state. He seemed almost frenzied. Flanked by attendant soldiers, he pushed through the bottleneck of the refectory door and stood at the foot of the steps down into the courtyard. The officer on duty was just behind. The interpreter talked, fast. The officer nodded. The interpreter gestured. He pointed, with little stabbing movements of his forefinger, at those nearest to him. A random, fortuitous selection: James Barrow, Ted Wilmott, the father of one of the young families, one of the airline stewards. Howard.

  The soldiers closed in. They grabbed each of those selected. Ted Wilmott tried to duck aside. The soldier twisted his arm backward till he yelped.

  It happened with mesmerizing speed. James Barrow was protesting, asking questions, and was dragged through the refectory door and out of sight as he did so. The soldiers were shouting to each other. Later, Lucy thought she had heard Howard say something, and strove desperately to pick up the words. At the time, she stood appalled for moments, and then hurried into the refectory and out into the corridor beyond. Others were milling about in dismay. She cried, ‘What’s happening? What are they doing with them?’ The girl married to the young father was crying hysterically. The officer was standing at the convent’s open entrance doors, shouting at people to keep away. Beyond, in the forecourt, Lucy could just see a vehicle like a large police van, into which a stumbling figure was being shoved by a soldier.

  The
officer now slammed the convent doors. People clustered round, asking questions. He shouted. Guards appeared. Lucy said, ‘Where are they taking them? What’s going on?’ Or she may have said something quite different. Afterwards, she could no longer hear her own voice, only the man bawling at her. One of the guards stepped forward and pushed her violently away, so that she fell sideways on to the stone floor and sat for a minute or so leaning up against the wall, dazed, while Hugh Calloway bent over her and the officer strode off to his headquarters at the end of the corridor.

  And now it was as though she had stepped into some new, nightmarish existence. Three minutes had passed since Howard turned to her out there in the courtyard, talking of sun-tan cream. That was now some unreachable haven of normality, of security. Even her body had reacted – gone light, unreliable, so that her legs wavered, she seemed filled with some unstable substance. She moved from one to another of the anxiously speculating groups, and nothing that was said was of any help. Indeed, she hardly heard, and if she contributed it was in some mechanical process. Periodically she glanced at her watch – for some reason the passage of time seemed of great importance – and whenever she did so the hands had barely moved.

  She went out into the courtyard and sat under the orange trees, where she had been with Howard yesterday. She felt as though she were floating, so frail with anxiety that she seemed to have become just a feverish intensified consciousness tethered in some way to a body which had lost all stability. She saw Howard, over and over again – his face, his hair, the way he stood, the way he moved. She heard his voice, saying what he had said. She looked at her watch. 3.41. She observed an ant which crawled across a fallen leaf, disappeared over the edge, came up again the other side. She saw that other ant, yesterday, back in that other existence. Someone stood beside her, saying something, and she said something back. They went away. She looked at her watch. 3.43.