by Sarah Dunant
I began the Long March. From the table across the room, through the heavy swing door out to the reception desk, and up interminable stairs to a dimly lit corridor to Room 22.
I locked the door behind me and lay down on the bed without bothering to remove my clothes. Sleep, near to instant unconsciousness, rushed up to greet me. As I gave myself up to it I heard Lenny’s words—“Everything else can wait till morning.” And in a corner of my mind I saw a dark cubbyhole at the top of a Paris cupboard. Five kilos of high-grade cocaine. Of course. Out of Lenny’s two lovers, only one was dead. There was, for him, comfort in sorrow. Tomorrow. It could wait until tomorrow.
seventeen
It was early that morning they found her.
I woke at 5:00 A.M., as if by alarm, to find the pain lying in wait for me, an ambush on the edge of sleep. It descended like a physical attack, a poisonous cloud of despair, the weight of it pinning me to the bed, making it hard for me to breathe. I struggled against it, driven by an even greater fear of paralysis, of being discovered hours later by some scuttling maid or, even worse, by the dapper figure of a morning Lenny.
I heaved myself off the bed and into the bathroom, where I put my head under the cold tap. The shock stunned me into a few precious moments of alertness. I used them to change my clothes and get myself out of the room before the walls began closing in.
Downstairs, the dawn had made little impression on the nooks and crannies of the mahogany reception room. The front doors were locked. I pushed my way through the heavy fire doors into the bar, where stale beer and cigar smoke lingered in the air. The French windows had a key in them. I turned it and was released into a gray morning and a long slope of lawn down to steps onto the beach.
My feet crunched shingle. Out at sea a wind was driving long white furrows into the shore. The air was sharp with the taste of salt. I walked down toward the water, feet slipping on wet pebbles, dragging my sorrow with me. At the edge, where the waves sighed over the stones, I stopped, then walked a little more. I felt the cold of the sea on the soles of my feet. Then the water crept up over my ankles, curious and playful. In my head, a percussion of blood beating in tune with the waves. I took a few more steps. To the right a piece of driftwood pounded onto the beach, dumped by a rush of surf. I thought of a body, pulling sluggishly in shallow water, facedown, the fabric of a skirt billowing free. On the feet a flash of white plastic. Then I saw a second corpse, larger than the first, fair hair matted and dark with water, limbs bloated, while small fishes darted in and out from under the face, a meal already in progress. Together we gorged, they and I, on images of death and oblivion. The water sucked at my trouser legs, reaching greedily for my knees.
I had begun to cry, although I do not remember when. The horizon blurred with the rain of my tears, and the images washed away. The blur turned to blindness, closing up my eyes and clogging my nostrils. Elly. The loss of her blotted out the whole world, an abstract force, so much itself, so selfish that it brooked no competition. I became aware of a sudden relief, as if the real pain had come from resistance. She had been part of me: part of me was dead. I heard round me a kind of wailing, my own voice like the roar of the sea. The water clutched at my thighs. It seemed it would go on forever, this drowning. How long had it taken her? Would I feel the same instant of extinction now, if I opened my arms and lungs to the sea? It seemed so close, so easy. But something inside me held on and would not be released. A symbolic death mine, nothing more. And so, eventually, like water after high tide, the sorrow and the tears began to recede and I pulled myself back from the ocean.
When it was past, I examined myself for damage. I found I was squatting in the surf, my chest pressing close to my knees, arms locked around my body. A vise grip. So tight I could feel a pain in my ribs, cutting out the chill of the water. I uncurled a little and felt the wind tugging at my skin, drying salt on salt, spray upon tears. I was quieter, more real. After a while I looked down at my watch. Seven-twenty A.M. I had been at sea for hours.
I stood up slowly, unlocking my arms and lifting them above my head. My body felt light, like in that children’s game where someone pushes down on your head, then suddenly releases you. I stood on tiptoe and stretched and stretched until my muscles sang. I pushed my head down onto my chest and felt rivulets of strain running down through my shoulders. Then I lifted my head and let it fall backward until all I could see was the sky, the world upside down. My body had been clamped shut for so long holding in the pain. Even in sleep I had been rigid. Now at last, in this early morning with the world deserted, now I could let go. I began to do a few simple exercises, stretching, flexing, pushing into the wind, taking long deep breaths until my heart was beating hollow in my chest and the blood pumped at the sides of my temples. I became almost lightheaded. I, me, Marla, was feeling these things. My muscles, my limbs, my rib cage expanding and contracting, breathing in my life. I could mourn Elly forever. I could love her as hopelessly as you can love only the dead. But I was still me, still here now, alive—and she was not. I could not share her death, not even by experiencing my own. I could not black myself out for her. The realization of that swept over me like a last unbearable wave of pain, but I held my ground, and in its wake it brought unexpected comfort.
I stood for a while getting my breath back, letting my body settle. Then I turned back toward the land. Beneath me the gray-and-white façade of the hotel sat, brooding and stained by salt winds, its curtained windows like closed eyelids overlooking the sea. All, that is, but one. Because there, in the middle of the third floor, out on a stone and iron balcony, stood Lenny, immobile, watching, trespassing on my sorrow.
I whipped away from him, feeling like some child caught in forbidden games in a dark corner. I had no way of knowing how long he had been there, or how much of my catharsis he had witnessed, but the idea of his cold observation drove me mad with panic. And there was something else; even over the distance it was impossible to mistake its meaning. Animosity, like electricity, pulsating across the sands. In that second of silent communication there was more truth than in all his words of the night before. The knowledge was like chain mail; it must be worn next to my skin always. That way there could be no surprise attacks. I turned back, but he was gone, curtains drawn again. I made my way up the beach to the hotel. In the dining room, breakfast was being served. The day had begun.
I was sitting over cold coffee when the police officer arrived. I knew immediately why he had come. Lenny was waiting in the lobby, smart trousers and lamb’s-wool sweater, new and blue as his eyes. The policeman watched us greet each other: half smiles, a quick hand on my shoulder. Collusion. Comfort exchanged. Ours was a private battle. In public we would appear friends.
The morgue was in Ullapool, the best part of an hour’s drive from the hotel. They had taken the body there early this morning, after it had been carried up from the gorge, found at first light half a mile downstream. That much we were told. We asked no further questions. In the back of the white car we sat together in mutual neutrality, both of us conserving our energy for what was to come. Around us stretched miles and miles of purple heather. We were driving the same road I had traveled yesterday. Yesterday by this … But I would not think of that. Ullapool, the policeman told us in a vain attempt to lighten the silence in the car, was one of the Highlands’ more interesting towns. Founded by the British as a seaport in the early eighteenth century, it had become an important embarkation point for thousands of emigrants, survivors of the highland clearances, heading for America. The ships had been run by men out to make a fast buck, and they had packed the people like rats belowdecks. It was a dark memory for Ullapool and for the whole of Scotland. Nowadays the place had happier associations. Hands across the sea. The port was used by Russian trawler fleets, and it was not such a strange sight to come across Scots and Russian fishermen drinking in the same bar. No cold war here, although of course once in a while someone would drink too much and have to be “looked after” for the night.
>
He chattered on, encouraged by the odd prompting from Lenny. Strangely enough, the horror stories were not upsetting. Sometimes stories are the only things you can listen to. Interesting, I thought, how quickly history becomes stories rather than reality, one step already from the truth. Was that how Elly’s death would be? Another small piece of Ullapool history to be related to next year’s visitors as a modern-day tragedy.
The police station was a large granite house constructed to withstand the weather, with the surreal addition of a palm tree outside, tethered to the ground by a ship’s hawser, testament to a warm gulf stream in a cold climate. The morgue was a makeshift affair hidden away in the bowels of the building. The sergeant at the desk seemed familiar, yesterday’s gentle questioner. I studied his face as we shook hands, noticing a small scar over the left eye. Given the sleepy nature of the town, I couldn’t help thinking this must be a leftover from some childhood bicycle accident rather than the trophy of gangland warfare. On the other hand … a vodka bottle smashed in drunken Cossack fury? Anything to keep my mind off the task in hand. His manner was friendly, the Scottish caress softening the bald horror of his words.
“What we are looking for is positive identification that the body is that of Eleanor Cameron.” We were not to be too upset, he added. Although the body had been badly battered by the fall, it had not suffered the ravages of time in the water. To my unspoken question he went on to say that though there had been no postmortem as yet, it seemed certain that death had been instantaneous. Her neck had been broken by the fall. He had talked our way down the corridor, and we were now standing by the door. Were we ready, he asked. I nodded, and Lenny put a hand on my arm. I did not look at him.
The door opened onto a small room, obviously some kind of doctor’s surgery converted for the occasion, all white with scrubbed surfaces and a sink, the smell of hospitals and public baths. In the center was a trolley. On it a body covered by a white cloth. I could make out the shape of small sharp toes, but there was no label hanging out from under the feet, as in the movies. I had hoped to be protected by the familiarity of such images of other people’s deaths, people whom I didn’t know or care about. But when it came down to it they were, indeed, just make-believe, and here in front of me was the real thing, seen for the first time. I walked to the head of the trolley, taking the lead because I could not bear to stand and watch. The policeman marked my step. At the top he stood by me, ready. I nodded, and he pulled back the sheet. I steeled myself and looked down. Elly.
I don’t know what I had expected: crushed bone and open flesh, a scream of death amid cruel lacerations. But it was not like that. Yes, she was damaged. There was a long gash along her left temple, and puffing and bruising on the left cheek, but it was not unbearable. On the contrary, her skin had a smooth, almost waxy quality to it, and whatever fear there may have been in the eyes, they were closed now. Her very fragility was lovely. She looked almost peaceful, as if death had resolved the pain and the conflict. Elly in marble. It suited her. I put out a hand but withdrew it again quickly. Cold flesh would destroy the illusion. And it was just an illusion. I stepped away, making room for Lenny. The policeman was watching me. “Yes,” I said. “That is Elly Cameron.” I began to walk toward the door. Behind me I heard a sharp, theatrical intake of breath from Lenny. And I tasted bile in my stomach.
Afterward, over the inevitable cup of institutionalized tea, there was more to be said. Separate statements, just for the record. And a few leading questions. What could I tell them about Elly’s state of mind? Was she at all depressed, in any kind of trouble, perhaps? Any reason why she might think of …? No. None. None at all. I would not even hear the word spoken. What poisonous seeds had Lenny planted in their little brains? Ridiculous. Not her. Not Elly. What about Lenny then? How long had I known him? Had there to my knowledge been any problems between them? Once again it was casually put. And casually answered. No, nothing I could think of. What else could I say? Oh yes, I knew the other story by heart, but even if I told them, they would never catch him. Not Lenny. He would squirm and charm his way off their hook, leaving me in his place, dangling on the skewer of my violent jealousies and previous unstable mental history. What was it J.T. had said about trapping Lenny? No, the Ullapool police force were not the right fishermen. This one needed larger bait.
It didn’t take long. They were easily satisfied. A holiday tragedy. They had seen it all before. The only really controversial thing about it was the rottenness of the wooden post that had torn out of the ground under her weight. That would make the local news for a season or two, agitation on the borough council. Everything else was technical. Contact had been made with the Cameron family in the Sudan. It was not clear whether Mr. Cameron himself would be able to get away, but his wife was taking the first plane out and should be with them in forty-eight hours. It was to be expected. Patrick Cameron had been too busy for his daughter’s life. Why should he find time for her death? Dorothy would sweep in, stricken with grief and immaculately groomed. That she had hardly seen her daughter in the last nine years would be irrelevant. She had given up on Elly a long time ago, unable to bear the fact that her only child refused to live life the way her mother had planned it. Elly’s death would return her to the fold. “A desperate tragedy … such a waste … my daughter, who would, if she had lived …” et cetera, et cetera. Dorothy would mourn the Elly she had always wanted, not the Elly she had had. And any aggression toward Lenny, the man who had stood by and watched her daughter fall, would undergo a sea change when faced by the power of his Princeton manners and his upwardly mobile charm. The apartment, the house, the chain of stores, it would all be Mozart to her ears. In her mind Dorothy would make a company director of him, endowing her daughter with a posthumous respectability. Let Lenny stay and meet her, hold her hand and listen to her revisionist memories. Their stories would soothe each other.
It was lunchtime back at the hotel. The thought of yet another meal together was more than I could stomach. But there was still unfinished business. Lenny was mind reading.
“How about a walk on the beach, Marla? Get some fresh air after the car?” It was, in the circumstances, an offer I could not refuse.
The tide was out now. Shingle petered out into sand, grubby and gray, decorated with crisscross patterns of seagull prints and wormholes. There were mounds of fresh seaweed strewn over the shore, pulpy and wet. That, and the gusting wind pushing off the sea, made it the perfect British landscape, sand in the eyes and skins tinged blue with the cold: childhood without rose-colored spectacles. I pulled my jacket around me. What, I wondered, would an East Coast American make of it all? If indeed he was from the East Coast. It seemed to me the more I learned about Lenny, the less I knew who he really was. Still, after all this time, the single consistent fact about him was his charm, and that was the one quality which could not be believed. We walked on in silence, our feet making small sucking noises on the wet sand. He was waiting for me to speak. He could wait for the rest of his life. After a mile or so we came upon an upturned fishing boat halfway up the beach. I directed my feet toward it. Clusters of barnacles clung to its hull. I picked a smooth patch and leaned back against it. On this rock will I build my church. It was time to talk.
“Well, Marla,” he said at last.
“Well what?”
“I was wondering what your silence meant.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it means there’s nothing more to say.”
“Is that right? Nothing more. No thoughts, no questions about last night?”
“No.” I said. “None.”
“So, you believed me?”
I scuffed sand with my foot. I would not lie to him. At least not on this. “I said nothing to the police, Lenny. Isn’t that enough?”
“Is it all you’re willing to give?”
“It’s all that I have,” I said bluntly. “Her death takes everything but that.”
He looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Then I accept it. And I’
m grateful to you for not lying to me.”
“What would be the point? As you yourself said, it’s over now. I don’t mean to be rude, Lenny, but I don’t see what else we have to talk about.”
“Don’t you, Marla?” He frowned. “Don’t you really? I would have thought you had realized the kind of danger you were in.”
I had made a mistake. It was not just his charm that was consistent. It was also his unpredictability. Inside me a small depth charge was released. “Tell me,” I said.
“It’s very simple. You have something that doesn’t belong to you. Sooner or later the people who own it are going to want it back. And then they’ll come looking for you.” He paused to let the words sink in. “I must admit, Marla, I underestimated you. I never thought you’d do it. Take it away from Elly, yes, but not bring it with you. I figured you’d leave it in New York somewhere. Stash it in the apartment maybe—which is why I made the place unavailable. I didn’t relish a sudden police visit the day after you’d left. Or send it back where it came from, mail J.T. a ticket for some left luggage somewhere. I tell you, I was pretty impressed when Elly told me you’d carried it with you.
“Now I understand that this isn’t the perfect time to talk about it. But believe me there isn’t going to be a better one. And if we don’t talk, then it may be too late. God damn it, Marla, I’m not ready to identify a second English corpse.”
It was a speech designed to cause panic. I swallowed. “Are you trying to frighten me, Lenny?”
“No. But I am trying to explain to you that business is business. Especially in this profession. And that what may be over for you isn’t over for everyone. What did you imagine, Marla? That they’d just let you walk away with the best part of five kilos of high-grade cocaine? Because at a rough guess that’s how much you’ve got stashed away in those precious little balls. Purchase price maybe fifty-five, sixty thousand dollars. Street price? Well, I don’t know exact going rates in England, but let’s say five, maybe six times as much. At a conservative estimate, let’s call it three hundred thousand dollars. Certainly, you’ll agree, enough to put me away for a satisfying number of years. Especially here and now. This was a professional operation, remember. They’d done their homework. Picked their customs post with care. Your Iron Lady has been pushing for stiffer penalties for years. With a lot of success. Things have gotten much tougher here. No one gets the benefit of the doubt anymore, even first offenders. I should be flattered they went to so much trouble. Spent so much money on me. They could have gotten a hit man cheaper. Then at least they would have gotten value for money. This way they don’t have the money or the satisfaction. Now I suppose they could just write it off to experience. But I wouldn’t if I were them. All it needs is for J.T. to whisper your name and my bet is, when they find out Elly is dead, they’ll come looking for you. And I don’t see them leaving without what they came for.”