‘Do you have a significant other?’ Venetia asks.
‘I do. She’s a Canadian journalist.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘She’s in Toronto.’
‘Do you visit her there?’
‘No, not at the moment. I met her in Jerusalem, but four weeks later she was taken hostage in Cairo. That was a couple of months ago and she’s still recovering.’
‘How awful,’ says Huntingdon. ‘How absolutely beastly. Was she harmed?’
‘She wasn’t treated well.’
‘Poor you,’ says Venetia. ‘And poor, poor girl. What’s her name?’
‘Noor. She’s half Palestinian.’
‘I’m desperately sorry.’
She puts her hand on my forearm for a moment.
Huntingdon pours us all another glass of his favourite Sangiovese. He knows the grower, a wonderful fellow called Aldo: ‘Down-to-earth chap, who knows how to live. Vivre pour vivre, as the French say.’
I ask how he squares this vivre pour vivre business with his dislike of the European Union.
‘The problem with the EU is that they want to impose a sort of straitjacket on all of us. The French, the Italians, even the wretched Greeks. The Greeks would be far happier pottering about in their little boats trying to catch the odd octopus for supper or renting their spare room to tourists, than trying to keep up with Stuttgart and Frankfurt. They’ll never do it, so what’s the point? Different temperaments. Different culture. One size does not fit all.’
‘Boring,’ says Venetia in a loud singsong.
Huntingdon doesn’t take offence. Actually I think he makes some sense: in my experience in Jerusalem, for instance, Arabs and Jews, despite hundreds of years living side by side, seem to live only to proclaim their differences. The Scots see their prime virtue as not being English and the Canadians take comfort from not being Americans.
‘Sorry,’ Venetia says, ‘I am afraid my husband is something of an obsessive.’
‘We are having a beef stew now. Or roasted vegetables,’ says Huntingdon.
‘Two of our many children are vegetarians, so we are always prepared for the young,’ Venetia explains, as if to apologise for the vegetable dish.
‘Stew for me,’ I say, not wanting to look like a self-obsessed food faddist.
‘That’s the ticket. Your father was great fun, you know. Great fun. Rather wild. The girls liked him. He was what you young call a “babe magnet”. There weren’t many girls in Oxford in those days; there were only enough to go round if they went round fast enough. Your father was very good-looking and, as far as I can remember, he was never without some young girl. He regularly climbed over the walls of the women’s colleges late at night.’
‘I never really knew what happened when he was sent down.’
‘It was really a grave injustice. Your father didn’t supply drugs to Sam Gordon-Mowbray. There was no commercial transaction. They both smoked a bit of weed, and dropped acid occasionally, but because Sam was the son of the Foreign Secretary, they had to find a scapegoat. I am afraid your father took the rap because he had spent the evening with Sam before he died.’
‘Was he as good-looking as Richie?’ Venetia asks.
‘Very nearly.’
The suggestion that I am good-looking always makes me anxious. It’s unearned.
I quickly ask Huntingdon, ‘Do you think the incident ruined my father’s life?’
‘Yes, I do, to some extent. I think that is true. He was bitterly disappointed to be sent down. Humiliated. And – I have often thought about this – possibly it drove him to his – forgive me for saying this – sillier ideas. But I still kept up with him. All our meetings were joyous. The difference was that when I got married for the first time I settled down. When he got married a few years later, to your mother, he kept right on with the alternative life. It had become a mission. I think possibly that it was, as you suggested, a reaction to Oxford. He often said there was more to life than Oxford. He felt that the people in charge were repressing us, and of course he had clearly suffered a miscarriage of justice. Being in court was humiliating for him.’
He pauses. He seems to be considering carefully. A small speck of spume has gathered in the corner of his mouth. Venetia reaches across to wipe his mouth with a napkin.
‘It was a great shame. I loved your father. But it was a life lost. Absolutely.’
After a few glasses of port in front of the fire, which is still crackling quietly and persistently, Huntingdon is dozing, his mouth open. Venetia asks me to sit next to her on the sofa and she whispers in my ear: Huntingdon is impotent and she wants to have sex with me when he’s gone to bed. She breathes a warm, alcoholic dew on me. I am not sober either.
‘I’m engaged.’
‘I’m married. Don’t be a wuss. I’ll come up to your room when he’s gone to his bedroom.’
Almost as if he has heard his cue, Huntingdon wakes up.
‘Sorry, I dropped off. I’m off up the wooden stairs to Bedfordshire.’
‘I’m off too,’ says Venetia. ‘Goodnight, Richard.’
With a few small groans Huntingdon stands up. On one side, the fire side, his face is brick red.
I feel affection for him and gratitude for his generous assessment of my father, who is becoming more visible and substantial to me, as if I hadn’t been able to see him properly.
On Sunday, as I was leaving for Oxford in the Porsche, Venetia came down to see me off, near the magnolia tree. I apologised for my behaviour the other night. I told her from inside the car that she was fantastically attractive, but that my personal life has been so traumatic that I could not have lived with myself if we had gone to bed. I was very uneasy.
‘That’s all right. I was tipsy and wanted to sleep with you. You can’t imagine what it’s like here in winter. I was a model, with lots of boyfriends, and then I married David and came up here. At first I loved it, but I missed London. I missed all sorts of things, actually. I go to our place in London once a month, but it’s often full of mad Eurosceptics. My escape now is my three months in Argentina.’
‘Do you have sex with gauchos?’
‘What sort of question is that? Not gauchos, usually with the professional polo players or the estancieros. Richard, it’s worse to have once been young and beautiful.’
‘You are still beautiful,’ I say, but without the conviction required for effective flattery.
‘I know enough about men, too much, to know that if they really find you attractive the scruples aren’t an issue.’
‘I’m so sorry. Please, believe me, it’s more complicated than that; I didn’t want to offend you. I certainly didn’t mean to.’
‘I was hurt. But that is life. Off you go, dear Richard.’
The Porsche’s boot is in the front and it holds my bag, three precious folders of copied documents and a brace of pheasant. Huntingdon and his friends were impressed by my shooting, particularly by a couple of left-and-rights. After shooting speeding grouse, pheasants appear to be on a suicide mission.
Before I set off, Huntingdon told me again that the Robin Hood document, which my father lost, was probably a forgery, commissioned by his grandfather, who wanted to believe that he was descended from Robin Hood. I saw that Huntingdon was trying to boost his friend in my esteem. I was touched.
Still, Sherwood Forest is not far from the family estate, and Richard the Lionheart did ride out there one day in 1194.
16
Noor
My darling Richie,
I am recovering slowly. I have had five operations, but they are now almost over. As I lay in hospital I remembered our time in Jerusalem together. Through all the pain, I clung to that; it was a lifeline because I was very low.
I have never been so happy as I was in Jerusalem. I felt blessed to have met you, and I still do. The shock of the discovery that we have the same father threw me into deep despair; I had so wanted to be married to you. I loved you so much that I even had t
o ask you to marry me. Were you surprised, and do you regret saying yes? It must have been obvious to you that I was totally in love with you. Your room in the American Colony became in my mind our small heaven. We seemed to be perfect together.
Sometimes, very briefly, I wish you had never smiled at me in the Cellar Bar, because of the pain it has caused both of us. Whatever our future holds, I will never, never regret what happened. I heard from Haneen that you had a short stay in hospital after a breakdown. I pray (in a secular way, I know you believe in rationality) that you are better. I wasn’t going to write to you so soon, but I was just so worried. Are you alright now? When I heard the news, I knew that I had to write to you, even though I have been advised – I have had counselling and some psychiatric treatment too – that it is too early and might impact my recovery. But I couldn’t wait. The thought that you had suffered because of me and my work was hard for me to bear. I am so, so sorry. I wanted to call you, but I decided that I would not have been able to speak to you without cracking up, and also because any calls I make would be monitored, I am sure. When they captured me, I was able to make that call before they took my phone, and it broke my heart when I heard your voice for a moment. Even now, as I write these words, I am crying again.
I must tell you the whole story because I didn’t tell you everything. The truth is that I worked for the Canadian Government, for the Security Intelligence Service, which has contacts with Mossad. My job as a journalist was to interview people in the Middle East, because of my Arabic, but I was also filing intelligence assessments to my contacts in Ottawa. I had a mixture of motives; the main one was to try to help human rights activists in various countries, by publicising them. Some of these activities were through committees that the SIS subsidised. The other motive was more personal, to try to help bring the plight of the Christian Arabs to the world. They are being treated very badly.
In Egypt, just before I was captured, I interviewed the new Coptic Pope. Do you know that the Coptic Pope is chosen by a blindfolded boy drawing a name from a bowl? Isn’t that wonderful? Bishop Tawadros II is the one hundred and eighteenth Coptic Pope of Egypt. The Copts are very worried, my people in Jerusalem and Lebanon are worried, and as it goes on, possibly to destruction. I so wanted to talk to you about my assignment, but I couldn’t. In Cairo I was captured by a small group who were tipped off by some pro-Mubarak elements in the police that I had visited the Pope in St Martin’s Cathedral. (Which is magnificent.) They didn’t like that, but also they thought they could sell me on to some extreme Islamist group. But mostly they just hated me for being a woman, for not being married, for living in Canada, for not covering myself at all times and, of course, for being a Christian. I was abused – raped – and beaten for three days. Two of my front teeth were shattered. I thought I was going to die and I tried to remain strong by thinking of you constantly. I have been having orthodontic work, and also some internal reconstruction surgery. My teeth will not be right for another two months. What upset me most was that I had to have a termination, which Auntie Haneen told you. I was sure I was pregnant when I left for Egypt, and very happy about it. She has come twice to Toronto to see me.
You remember we were at Kerak and I had a panic attack? I couldn’t tell you at the time, but what I saw in Homs was the bodies of a whole family just after they were executed. It all came back to me in Kerak. Three small children shot in the head lying on the floor of the house next to the bodies of their mother and father. At night I still see the flies feeding on their wounds. It has haunted me ever since.
I have lived a life of so many deceptions over the last few years, that I no longer know right from wrong except at this level: nobody at any time or under any circumstances should kill other, defenceless, human beings. Our government has good intentions but I had already decided I couldn’t be involved any longer; Egypt was going to be my last assignment. I now believe that the democratic countries should simply help where they can – education, health and so on – and should by their own example offer a better life, but that they should not try to influence other countries by covert operations or force anything on puppet governments. The prejudices, the beliefs, the thousands of years of custom can’t be changed by the secret service. Anyway, I am now a retired agent – I have been awarded a medal to prove it.
None of what I have written to you is authorised. I am still being debriefed, and I am supposed to stick closely to the rules of the service for life, but, Richie, how could I let this deception and uncertainty drag on? I have been given the best treatment available, first in Ottawa, and now in Toronto, but my nights have been terrible, thinking about you and our situation, and it was all much worse when I heard from Auntie Haneen that you had been in hospital. Are you better now, my dearest, dearest lover and brother?
It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? How did such a thing happen? But of course there is a connection: all roads lead to our father, through Jerusalem and Haneen. In her heart I think Haneen wanted to bring us together, although not in the way it happened. She played a big part in my release, too, and sold property in Jerusalem that had been in the family’s possession for eight hundred years to pay for the ransom. Haneen has been wonderful. She also said to me that your (our) father had great difficulty bonding with you because he was so guilty about being the cause of your mother’s death. He thought he was cursed. He told Haneen all this when he came to Jerusalem. Even though she was engaged, Haneen was still in love with him and they became lovers again. I am sure Haneen never told him that they had a daughter. And now, to pile deception on deception, I can’t tell my uncle and his wife, my adoptive parents, anything at all. They see what happened to me as confirmation that they were right to get out of the Middle East thirty years ago. And also they think – they don’t say it, fortunately – that I should never have got involved in, as they understand it, human rights organisations. Deep down, despite the Canadian citizenship, they still have some old-fashioned ideas.
How is your Crusader art dissertation going? As we say in the secret services, it’s just cover for something else, isn’t it? And that something is Richard the Lionheart. I think you should write a personal memoir of your (our) father and Richard. It’s definitely a threesome. With your talent for expression – by the why you never told me you were awarded the top first class degree at Oxford – you could also write a wonderful novel. Just leave out your lover/sister. Nobody would believe that anyway.
Richie, please write me. I will accept whatever you decide (old-fashioned values). I have no ground to stand on at all, particularly as I didn’t level with you about Egypt or Haneen. Another thing: I have read that most men can never come to terms with rape. But that’s too dark a thought – I don’t want to go there, it makes me feel utterly abandoned. What I really want from you is to hear that you still love me, even if it is as a younger sister.
Yours, for ever,
Noor xxx
PS. I have set up a post box where you can write me privately. I can’t use email or the phone safely. It is what we in the trade call a dead drop. This is from that post box, smuggled out.
Fed Ex to Poste Restante, Box 3114, Moose Creek (yes, really) Callington, Canada. Postal Code L1C 3A6.
17
Richie
My dearest Noor,
I can’t really tell you adequately just how happy I am to get your letter. I am overwhelmed by joy.
It is true that I spent a few days – four – in the Warneford Hospital in Oxford. As my psych said to me, my motor was running too fast and I needed to slow down. I don’t think this is strictly a medical diagnosis. Its technical term is a psychotic break. It was relatively minor, though scary, and I am over it. The worst thing was abusing my friend Ed, who has been such a good friend to me. But he has forgiven me. People in general treat me leniently. I wonder why.
I think you are very perceptive when you say that all roads lead to our father. (By the way, I am delighted to share him with you.) There is a sort of phantom controlling i
nfluence at work somewhere. And your suggestion that Haneen wanted us to meet, if only to compare us, may be true. She asked Father Prosper – you met him once, the sweet old Dominican in the huge black shoes, you said they were like small boats. Anyway Haneen asked him to introduce me to her. Nothing in Jerusalem ever passes Haneen by. I think now that she probably knew some time earlier that we had met in the Cellar Bar. She also feared for you going to Cairo. It may be that someone from there tipped off people in Egypt.
Noor, I am very, very happy to have you as my sister. And as I said to Haneen in London, if I had a mother, I would have wanted one just like her.
The question you raise about your treatment in Cairo and – by implication, what you fear my reaction to it might be – is something you should put out of your mind. The only thing on my mind is that you should come out of this terrible experience and be happy. You didn’t deserve what happened to you and you have not in any way been demeaned in my eyes. What you are thinking, I am sure, is that I may find it difficult, as if rape had somehow defiled you. I am sorry to speak so plainly, but I really want you to understand that I love you, and in some ways even more intensely now that I know you are my sister, and I want you to know that our weeks in Jerusalem were, for me too, the most wonderful of my life. As I lay next to you in the American Colony and watched two drops trickle down between . . . well, you know what I am referring to . . . and outside our window there was that magical music adrift on the spiced night air, and the two of us in our room, free and enchanted, in some way floating above the world, buoyed up by the night music and the scent of jasmine, avid explorers of each other, I realised for the first time that when you are truly in love you lose yourself in the other person; you want both to possess that person and to share your essences. The cruel, but astonishing – almost unbelievable – fact is that we do share our essences, our DNA. I apologise if I sound both sentimental and banal, but your letter has released such a torrent of emotion in me that I feel I have to tell you, in my turn, everything.
Lion Heart Page 16