by John Halkin
She drove the Range Rover herself to Heathrow just to get the feel of it, dropping Jeff at Terminal Two. He was catching a Paris flight, then transferring at Charles de Gaulle Airport, though he still would not reveal his final destination. Before getting out of the car he leaned across to kiss her. If anything went wrong, she thought, he might easily be killed. Oh God, she’d seen so many deaths since this all started…
By the automatic doors he paused for a second to wave, then he was gone. It left her feeling even more apprehensive than usual.
Leaving Heathrow, she was tempted to head into London but decided against it. It was so hot, there was a muggy white sky over the capital and the crowds would be unbearable. At home it was too risky to sit outside, but at least they could open the windows now they had gauze over the frames. They had also had the creeper cut away from the walls, just in case. Perhaps when all this was over – if it ever did end – she could coax Bernie away for a few days to somewhere cool. Iceland, even. One last fling before she surrendered him to Lesley.
If Lesley was prepared to have him back: there was always that.
Ginny had gone over it again and again, but there was no solution: only hard facts. It had happened. Not all her tears – locked in the bathroom to hide them from Bernie – could change a thing.
She swung the Range Rover into a lay-by to wipe her eyes and blow her nose yet again, ignoring the curious glances of the lorry drivers. It was twenty minutes before she felt ready to go on. Then, when she got home, she found a message from Bernie on the tape to say Jameela had been killed the previous night while visiting friends in Kingston. A caterpillar attack.
Ginny sat on the nearest chair and stared at the blank wall, trying to take in what he had told her. Was it even worth going on, she wondered. It all seemed so unfair.
Phuong disentangled herself from four-year-old Caroline who had been climbing over her demanding a story and went into the kitchen to make a start on the meal. Upstairs she could hear Lesley scolding first daughter as she did so often now. Of course Frankie was noisy and often got up to mischief, but that was not the reason, as Lesley herself knew.
In Phuong’s opinion she was wrong not to let Bernie speak to her. In her eyes the doctor was a good husband who provided well for his family. A good father, too. If he took another woman – his wife’s sister, which perhaps was worse – that could cause much unhappiness but it would pass. To maintain the family should be Lesley’s main concern now. For that reason alone she should talk to Bernie. In moments like this families needed the mother’s strength if they were not to suffer.
Thinking it over while she cut a few slices of root ginger, she knew she could never speak to Lesley herself on the subject, not unless invited to do so. That was not her place. But she could see danger signals. Mary, as the unmarried headmistress of this large boarding school, naturally had different ideas. She had welcomed them warm-heartedly into her home when they needed to escape from the caterpillars, but she was the first to talk of divorce. Phuong had overheard them together.
The tone of Mary’s voice had worried her, she remembered as she picked up the knife and began finely chopping the ginger. No regret that Lesley was unhappy, – but a note of satisfaction that made Phuong dislike her. She was actually glad that her view of marriage had been proved right.
As she worked, the music on the kitchen radio gave way to the announcer’s voice. She reached out to turn it off but stopped with her fingers on the switch, catching the opening words of a news flash.
‘… report having seen the aircraft surrounded by a large swarm of giant moths which may have been sucked into the jet engines, causing them to stall. No figures for casualties have yet been released but the crash is said to be the worst ever experienced at Heathrow and …’
‘Phuong, what’s “casualty”?’ Wendy’s voice piped, cutting across the rapid tenor of the announcer.
She flicked the radio off immediately and tried to hide her feelings with a quick laugh. ‘Oh, I didn’t hear you come in!’ she exclaimed, putting the knife down and scooping the little girl up in her arms. ‘Have you finished playing with the doll’s house?’
‘The dolls are asleep,’ Wendy informed her. ‘What’s “casualty”?’
‘Oh – that means people who are hurt.’ She put her down again and continued working.
‘In hospital?’
‘Yes, they do go to hospital. Look, I’m doing cabbage today. My way – you like it my way, don’t you? Can you bring me the cabbage from the larder?’
‘Say please!’
‘Please.’
It was one of the games they played when Phuong was cooking. She watched Wendy march off to the larder. English food was the rule, naturally, and usually Lesley was in charge, but everyone liked Phuong’s method of preparing cabbage with crushed ginger and garlic. When she could, she tried to divert the children’s attention from the news by asking them to help, hoping to ease them away from the nightmares which regularly disturbed their sleep since the Spring Fête.
Her own father had done the same, of course. When she was small, American bombers had flown daily across their patch of sky on their way to kill Vietcong; to calm her fears he’d made up stories about them in which war and death played no part. Later, in that little boat when she’d really needed his strength, he’d been one of the first to die. She’d had to help her mother and brother tip his body over the side.
‘Cabbage!’
Wendy returned proudly bearing the spring cabbage in both arms, hugging it like a teddy bear.
Phuong was on the point of asking her to put it on the table when, turning, she caught sight of a green, hairy caterpillar slowly appearing from among the leaves and manoeuvring itself on to Wendy’s T-shirt. She stared at it, uncomprehending. Everyone said they were safe here, didn’t they? No caterpillars here, surely?
‘Wendy!’ Lesley appeared in the doorway. Her voice was hardly above a whisper. ‘Wendy, stand absolutely still, d’you hear?’
‘I’ll take the cabbage,’ Phuong said, trying to speak normally. She reached out her hands for it. ‘You’re being a real help today, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She grasped the cabbage and slowly moved it away, praying the caterpillar would choose to remain on the leaf. Luckily, Wendy still hadn’t noticed it.
But it didn’t. Its rear end suddenly curled on to the T-shirt which it gripped like a brooch.
Dropping the cabbage, Phuong plucked the caterpillar away from Wendy and stepped back with it between her fingers to deposit it in the sink. Immediately its hairs seemed to bristle and she felt a sharp pain shooting through her hand, causing her to cry out.
She had to get rid of it… she had to kill it somehow before it… but it clung to her… she couldn’t shake it off…
Her eyes misted and she felt herself staggering back against the draining board. New pains drilled into her wrist as the caterpillar’s mandibles set to work. Something hit the back of her head. She was lying on the tiled floor moaning and screaming… so much screaming… so much burning… all over her body…
Lesley was shouting something. She could hear the voice faintly. And Frankie? Was Frankie there?
No, it was the ghost whistle of the American jets overhead, and her father swinging her up in his arms, and the hot tangy smell of the sea as it lapped against the side of the boat.
Down through the water he carried her, gripping her tight as they left all sounds far behind.
Lesley had been able to do nothing to save Phuong and blamed herself bitterly for it. Pondering it afterwards while Mary fussed around her, trying to comfort her when all she wanted was to be left alone, she could no longer grasp how quickly it had all happened. She had gone into the kitchen and seen Wendy with the spring cabbage. Even as she was shouting her warning – or that’s how it seemed – Phuong had knocked the cabbage out of Wendy’s hand and was picking the caterpillar off her T-shirt. Sacrificing herself, because she knew the dangers well
enough.
Then suddenly she was rolling on the floor and Frankie dashed into the kitchen, wanting to get the caterpillar off her, grabbing it as she’d grab a handful of sand and screaming hysterically.
Oh God, it was all so confused! Somehow, Lesley remembered, she’d got the caterpillar away from Frankie and crushed it under the rubber tip of her walking stick till its guts squelched out. Frankie, bleeding and unconscious by now, she’d hoisted on to the kitchen table.
Only then had she noticed that two more caterpillars had emerged from the heart of the cabbage and were attacking Phuong’s throat. It was too late to prevent them.
The doctor had wanted to keep her in hospital, pointing out – with the medical profession’s gift for understatement – that she’d had a shock. Phuong was dead, though Frankie was expected to do all right. But how could she stay in hospital with Wendy and Caroline still at home? She wanted Bernie – the old Bernie from before any of this had happened – but of course he wasn’t there. Gone for good.
In a dream the previous night she’d been naked in bed with Bernie and Ginny together, not doing anything, but in a close, warm embrace as they floated with me bedclothes around them. Then she’d woken up, to lie awake working out how to kill herself without upsetting the children.
Not possible, of course. She had to go on.
Mary went into her own room to telephone, leaving her alone. Wendy and Caroline were in bed, having cried themselves to sleep at last. Then Mary came back to say she intended putting the emergency plans in hand for the transfer of the whole school to Scotland. She had discussed it with the chairman of the governors and she had agreed. Several individual caterpillar attacks had now been reported in the county. It was best to make the move before the panic started.
There was no news. Ginny rang Jeff’s house two or three times and at the last attempt Alan answered. All the equipment was in working order, he assured her. No, he’d received no confirmation yet that the plane had left West Africa. The arrangements were vague. Either there would be a telegram delivered directly, or else a phone call from some unnamed office in London. All he knew for certain was that Jeff planned an overnight flight to arrive early in the morning; if there were any delays taking off even that might not happen.
‘I’m sleeping here at Jeff’s house,’ Alan assured her as they discussed all the possibilities. ‘If he calls in on the agreed wavelength I’m bound to know.’
‘Let’s hope it’s soon,’ Ginny said fervently.
The situation was getting considerably worse and it was only the necessity to wait for Jeff which kept them in the village. Bernie’s surgeries had long since been abandoned, and there were few emergency calls any longer simply because most people had already left. Streets were deserted; farms untended. An outbreak of burglaries had resulted in the teenage gang concerned dying horrible deaths. They had been found – three girls and four boys – lying mutilated on what had once been a wealthy stockbroker’s well-kept lawn. The caterpillars had been crawling over them as thickly as ants.
From London too the news was not good. The jumbo jet which had crashed on Feltham shopping centre had been bound for New York with a full complement of passengers. Not one survived, and there was a high casualty rate on the ground. It had now been confirmed that moths in the jet engines’ air intake had been responsible.
That had been bad enough, but that same evening also saw the first attacks in the London Underground. A Piccadilly Line train arriving at Earl’s Court released swarms of giant moths on to the platform as its doors slid open. Waiting passengers ran screaming for the exits as the moths attacked them, but many were blinded. When rescue teams arrived they found more casualties in the centre three cars, though none elsewhere on the train. The following day saw more incidents as hundreds of moths invaded the tunnels. The accumulated filth blackened their wings. Soon not a single station in the central London area was free of them. Their dark forms came fluttering through the tunnels to greet every train and dart into the passengers’ eyes. The entire Underground system had to be closed down.
Ginny rang Jack’s number more often than she could count, but there was no answer. Had he been hurt, she wondered; or was he simply away somewhere? It was never possible to tell with Jack. But she kept trying, and each time could not help visualising the empty flat where there was no one to pick up the receiver.
These days that happened so often. Bernie too had commented on it. You dialled a number but no one replied. Were they even alive any longer?
14
Jeff glanced out at the white Alpine peaks immediately beneath the Boeing 707, then grinned at Enoch in the co-pilot’s seat beside him. On a passenger flight they would be crowding at the windows by now, the more optimistic among them clicking their cameras through the scratched Perspex. It was Perspex they fitted in these rattling old crates, wasn’t it?
Not that he disliked 707s; they were first-class planes. He’d flown thousands of miles in them, till the controls felt like natural extensions to his own limbs. Only this old lady creaked with arthritis in every joint. It was lucky her four aged Rolls-Royce Conway 508 engines co-operated so courageously. Perhaps they guessed they were on their way home to the country which created them; or else, with the name Rolls-Royce, they couldn’t bear to lose face.
They had stripped out most of the seats to make space for as many crates of monitor lizards as they could squeeze on board. That had caused some delays at Douala, but fortunately their Paying Guest was also late. In fact, this ‘flying ark’ operation was much better cover for him than their original suggestion. Everyone felt happier about it.
At that first meeting in London a couple of months earlier the idea had been that Jeff would ferry the plane back to the UK for overhaul with the Paying Guest travelling as crew. It had sounded a flimsy way of smuggling the ex-president of a neighbouring country out of Africa, but they assured him the right palms had been crossed with silver, so there should be no trouble.
But this lizard plan, they agreed when he put it to them, was far superior.
He’d also been lucky when it came to recruiting the real crew. Enoch he’d known in Nigeria and would have been quite capable of handling the whole operation alone. Pierre as third pilot, from Senegal, was less experienced but totally reliable. They had been together on several less-than-official runs before. Plus a few that were above board.
‘I’m going back,’ he said, getting out of his seat. ‘Need to stretch my legs.’
Enoch nodded.
In the first-class passenger cabin they had left a couple of rows intact. Fred, the expert animal handler who had been sent out ahead by Andrew Rossiter to organise the lizards, lay sprawled in a window seat on the starboard side, fast asleep. On the port side, the Paying Guest sat upright, contentedly turning over the pages of a magazine. Jeff dropped into the seat next to him.
‘Everything okay?’
‘Oh yes!’ He was an unashamedly fat man and his face wrinkled as he smiled. ‘I can’t tell you what a relief it is to get away! There were two attempts by their agents to kidnap me. To take me back over the border for one of their show trials.’
‘Well, that’s all behind you now,’ Jeff assured him. ‘But I need a word about what happens when we land.’
‘Don’t worry! I’ll request political asylum. They won’t refuse me. The Prime Minister is one of my dearest friends.’
‘I was really talking about the lizards.’
‘They smell, my friend. Can’t you smell them? I assume I shall disembark first.’
‘It may not be that easy,’ Jeff told him, and began to explain about the caterpillars.
The old scoundrel, he thought as they talked. If anyone deserved to be put on trial he did, considering the amount of development aid money he probably had tucked away in his Swiss bank accounts. Jeff had known him well in his old West African days. As a young man he’d been in a key position to influence the granting of building contracts and had made a fortune out of backha
nders. When he was President that fortune doubled.
‘But there’s no need to worry,’ Jeff explained confidently. ‘We’ve brought safety clothing for you which you’ll be wearing, and in any case you stay on board until we’ve checked everything is clear.’
‘I don’t like it.’ The man’s flabby cheeks were actually trembling. ‘I prefer to land at Heathrow.’
‘The situation at Heathrow is worse,’ Jeff lied. ‘As I said, I take full responsibility for your safety.’
‘You had better, my friend. I’m paying you enough.’
Jeff got up, nodding to Fred who had just woken. He went back to the flight deck. At any rate, he thought, the ex-President was right about one thing. Those lizards in their crates did smell.
‘Is he okay?’ Enoch asked as he slipped back into his seat and adjusted his headset.
‘I guess he is. We’d better call up our private control room to see how things look on the ground.’
At least there would be no trouble with either Enoch or Pierre. With them he’d laid his cards openly on the table, explained what the lizards were expected to do, shown them the safety gear and offered them double the agreed fee. They had accepted.
It was eight a.m. when Alan rang to report he’d established contact with the plane, three days late. The expected call from London had never materialised, nor had the telegram. Ginny had begun to doubt if Jeff would ever return.
In the kitchen she found Bernie had started to tidy up. His face looked strained and tired, not only from overwork. Lesley was still refusing to talk to him, and Mary had been downright aggressive on the phone. It was telling on their own relationship too. Over breakfast they’d picked up last night’s argument about how much longer they could put off moving out and had ended by shouting at each other.
‘That was Alan,’ she told him. ‘I have to get over to Gatwick. The plane’s coming in this morning.’
‘I’m coming with you.’