The room in which they gathered was bare and whitewashed, with a long refectory table pushed up against the wall, and chairs stacked upon each other. A wooden crucifix hung at one end, with a lectern beneath on which rested a large battered leather-bound Bible. High windows looked out on to an enclosed courtyard in which grew some dusty orange trees.
‘A convent,’ said Lucy. ‘Of all places …’
Howard scrutinized the room more carefully and saw a green baize noticeboard peppered with drawing-pins, a large framed blackboard almost covering one wall, and a clutch of desks pushed together in one corner. ‘A convent school, what’s more. I suppose the nuns are going to see this as some sort of distorted answer to their prayers.’
She looked at him. ‘At least you can joke.’
‘Actually,’ said Howard, ‘I wasn’t.’
As soon as they were assembled, clutching hand luggage, distressed, calm, noisy or quiet according to disposition, an officer entered the room. A different officer – a big burly fellow with a rather better command of English than his predecessor. He demanded silence and rattled out a series of instructions and informative points. No one might leave the building except to exercise in the courtyard. Both floors of the building were at their disposal; there was sleeping accommodation on the upper floor. Meals would be served here at eight o’clock, one o’clock and seven o’clock. There would be provision of essential medical equipment and sanitary necessities. Cameras and recording equipment must be surrendered now. A luggage search would be carried out shortly.
He finished, and barked an order to a subordinate, who began to tour the room collecting up cameras. Most of the group had received the spiel in glum resignation, but a few now tried to raise queries or objections, which were cursorily brushed aside or simply ignored as the officer stood at the door, tapping his thigh with a swagger stick and observing the confiscation of cameras.
And then Ted Wilmott flipped.
He had been standing apart, very white about the face and – as Howard vaguely noticed – shaking slightly. The soldier came up to him to demand the camera that was slung over his shoulder and he was pitched at once into hysteria. His voice, shrill and beyond control, rang around the room.
‘You can’t fucking do this! Leave me alone! Just bloody well leave me alone!’
The soldier hesitated. The officer walked over, contemplated Ted for an instant, and then hit him. His fist came up and smashed into Ted’s face. Then he turned and walked back to the door.
Ted staggered. Blood poured from his nose and mouth. Someone screamed. Children were crying. People converged upon Ted. A chair was brought. The soldier finished collecting cameras and piled them on the refectory table. The officer conferred with him for a moment and then left the room. The soldier stood at the door, observing with detachment as people milled around the bleeding boy in the yellow T-shirt.
And Howard, watching mesmerized, saw in hideous bewildering juxtaposition the chalk-smeared blackboard, the ink-stained desks, the wooden crucifix and Ted Wilmott’s scarlet glistening mask. He put his arm round Lucy’s shoulders.
6
‘He’s lost a few teeth,’ said Molly Wright. ‘And his nose was like a fountain. But I don’t think there’s anything worse than bruising, we could have had a broken jaw to deal with.’
The incident had quenched any further resistance. Those who were not too demoralized set about exploring the building and assessing the facilities. Downstairs was the large room which had apparently served the convent school as refectory and classroom, and four further rooms, two of which were occupied by their guards. Upstairs were several dormitories equipped with rows of beds and half a dozen small cell-like bedrooms. There was a bathroom and lavatory and a further lavatory on the ground floor. The kitchens were locked off and out of use; food would be brought from elsewhere, evidently. And there was the courtyard, a rectangle bounded on three sides by the house and its ranges of outbuildings and on the fourth by a high wall topped with barbed wire. At one end were netball posts and at the other the battered orange trees and a wooden bench.
Ted was now in the care of the nuns, one of whom turned out to have nursing qualifications. Molly had taken charge of the inspection of the convent and proposed that the individual rooms on the upper floor should be allocated to families while everyone else disposed themselves in male and female dormitories. Lucy found herself putting her holdall down on an iron bedstead with a thin flock mattress and a couple of blankets. On the wall behind the bed a childish hand had drawn a face with pigtails and a grin, and the words Marie-Hélène est ma copine.
‘It’s hard luck, I’m afraid, splitting you two up like this,’ said Molly. ‘But I think it’s only fair to give the rooms to the couples with kids.’
‘We’re not a couple. We only met here.’
‘Oh, God! Putting my foot in it as usual. Sorry, my dear. I’d just assumed … Anyway, you see what I mean – like that they’ll have more chance of quieting the children down, and the rest of us can muck in somehow. The bathroom’s pretty basic but if we get some sort of rota system going we should all be able to make do.’
As though this were a Guide camp, thought Lucy. No, that’s harsh. She’s a decent well-meaning woman and probably this sort of hard-headed energy is exactly what’s needed. The other way lies panic, and despair.
‘I’m going down,’ continued Molly. ‘The idea is to have a general meeting in that refectory as soon as everyone’s sorted out their sleeping arrangements. Talk things through and work out a plan of action. Hugh Calloway’s going to take the chair, as it were – keep things as calm as possible.’
Lucy went to the window. The shutters were half closed but through the gap she looked down into the courtyard, where a soldier with a rifle wandered about. Beyond the high wall she could see only trees interrupted by rooftops. In the far distance was a line of hills. There were telephone wires, a television aerial on a rooftop, a street light visible between two palms. This must be a suburban area, and she was facing inland. The soldier halted, lit a cigarette and glanced up. She turned back into the room, where others were glumly inspecting the truckle beds and sorting out their belongings. The young teacher, Denise, was sitting on the bed next to Lucy’s, with her head in her hands. Lucy said, ‘Are you OK?’
‘Not really. I’ve just been sick.’
‘Come downstairs. There’s going to be some sort of meeting. You’ll feel better with something to think about.’
‘I doubt if that would cut much ice,’ said Hugh Calloway. ‘But I’m prepared to discuss it if anyone else thinks it a useful course of action.’
No one did. The suggestion of a selective hunger strike had come from a middle-aged couple who had been on their way to a safari holiday. They wished to volunteer.
We’re going round in circles, Lucy thought. Crackpot ideas like that, and the same things being said over and over again. Criminal behaviour … Callimbian politics not our affair … the United Nations … the Foreign Office … But it probably relieves people’s feelings. And what else can we do?
Now the discussion was centred again on second-guessing the possible responses of their own government. ‘They can’t hand these people back,’ Howard was saying. ‘That’s for sure.’
‘Well, hold on …’ said Calloway. ‘In principle, no, they can’t – I agree. But in practice – well, there’d be ways round it. Guarantees of fair trial. UN supervision …’
‘If you believe that …’ Howard exploded.
The computer salesman broke in. ‘The way I see it, it’s them or us, isn’t it? And it’s their bloody country, not ours. If these guys have got themselves into some sort of political trouble, then they’ve got to face the music, haven’t they?’
‘Not music,’ snapped Howard. ‘A firing squad.’
‘Well, you may be prepared to stand in for them, but I’m bloody well not, I can tell you that.’
‘This sort of argument will get us nowhere,’ said Calloway. ‘I think
we can take it as read that none of us feels inclined to face martyrdom in the interests of a situation that doesn’t concern us. The point is that we are now involved, willy-nilly. We have to work out the most sensible way to react while those responsible for our safety find a way to get us out of here.’
At the outset of the discussion Calloway had invited Captain Soames of CAP 500 to give his account of events. There was a distinct aura of resentment as he began to speak. ‘Right, mate,’ said the computer salesman, not quite sotto voce. ‘You got us here. There’d better be a good explanation.’
The pilot was a small gingery man with a neat moustache. Not, thought Lucy, the titan one imagines at the controls of those leviathan aircraft. But the group’s palpable suspicion began to ebb as he spoke, matter-of-fact and direct. The technical problem had been such that a landing within half an hour was advisable. Marsopolis was the nearest airport with a suitable runway. The alternatives would have been Crete, and Cairo which was just beyond the range that he felt acceptable. The control tower at Marsopolis had agreed – after an initial hesitation – to his request for an emergency landing. He had radioed London to inform them of his predicament and intentions; they had raised no objection. He now felt that he should have paid closer attention to that hesitation in the Marsopolis control tower; there had been indications of some sort of calculated response, of conflicting instructions, which he had taken for the confusing signals of an unfamiliar airport. But at the time he had been preoccupied with getting the plane down. He had made what he thought to be the appropriate decision. Unfortunately, as they now knew, it was not.
And so, Lucy thought, by a whisker we are not hanging around complaining in a hotel in Crete. Or in Nairobi, dispersed, the flight and its attendant delay already out of our minds. And, by a whisker, whoever runs things here acquires this interesting opportunity for creative bargaining. She stared round the room, at the shabby anxious gathering, at the soldier lounging by the door, and felt for an instant quite incredulous.
The air crew had been held at what they took to be the army headquarters. They had been required to hand over the passenger list and the flight’s documents, supplied with food and drink, and then left alone. There had been much coming and going in the building, an atmosphere of urgency. Their demands and protests were ignored. With wisdoms of hindsight, said Soames, one could now see their captors were waiting. For information. They were finding out to which country these chaps had fled in search of political asylum. They were waiting to know which national group they should hold, and which they should send on their way. Once they knew, they could move into action.
This sober and rational account somehow had the effect of both steadying nerves and lowering the emotional temperature. Soames became at once a respected figure rather than an object of suspicion. The discussion tailed off into a weary stalemate after some practical decisions had been made about how best to make use of the meagre resources offered by the convent. It was now past midday, and there was activity in the corridor beyond the room. Their guards were taking delivery of a consignment of food, which was presently brought into the refectory on trolleys. The meeting broke up, and the day inched onwards as the group melded gradually with the new environment, drifting from the refectory and the bedrooms into the sunstruck courtyard, where the children played in the dust and people conferred around the netball posts and on the slatted bench by the orange trees. They became one with the place in some accelerated process of forced identification, so that by evening their surroundings had taken on a timeless familiarity, as though they had always known these shuttered rooms with their creaking uncarpeted floors and flaking plaster walls, the echoing stone stairs and corridors, the sanitary smell and the assemblage of staring impervious icons, the Virgins, the Christs, the ascendant angels.
As it grew dark Lucy sat with Howard on the bench in the courtyard. They were all, now, hiving off into smaller enclaves when possible, into families or into like-minded gatherings, trying instinctively to find some sort of relief from the enforced proximity of so many others. The mood was volatile. There would be an outburst of frenetic merriment from somewhere, the ring of determined bravado, and then a pervasive edgy gloom. There were those who seemed anaesthetized by shock and those who were flung into ceaseless nervous activity, who endlessly paced the courtyard, talked, speculated, raged. Lucy had spent a good deal of time making up her notes and talking to others. She recorded opinions and reactions. As an objective activity, this was therapeutic; in other ways it was not.
Lucy said, ‘One of the worst aspects of this is going to be other people.’
‘Up to a point,’ said Howard. His hand closed on hers.
‘I didn’t mean you.’
‘I hoped you didn’t.’
‘Anyway, let’s not talk about it. We’ve been talking about it all day. Everything that can be said has been said.’
‘I quite agree. How do you feel?’
Lucy considered. ‘Rather tired. Strung up. Frightened, I think. And my mum will know about this now, which bothers me. Will anyone be worrying about you?’
‘My parents, certainly.’ He paused. ‘The person I lived with until recently will be taking a detached interest but I doubt if she’s losing much sleep.’
‘Why aren’t you living with her any more?’
‘Because we didn’t really like each other. It took rather a long time to realize that.’
‘Ah,’ said Lucy. ‘Well, that seems a good enough reason.’
They sat in silence. Howard’s hand was folded over hers. A few yards away James Barrow was talking noisily with members of the air crew. Children ran about. The guard paced up and down.
‘What about you?’ said Howard. ‘Just your mother?’
‘And my brother and sister. And the odd friend, I suppose. That’s about it. I’ve never lived with anyone.’ She thought of Will, and added, ‘At least not in a very positive way.’
‘When this is over,’ said Howard, ‘I hope that you won’t just feel that I’m part of it. I mean, I hope I won’t be over as well.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so. In fact I’m sure not. This is going to be over, isn’t it? Eventually.’
‘Yes,’ said Howard firmly. ‘It’s going to be over and all right.’ His thumb caressed the back of her hand; a finger slid between two of hers.
‘Good. I feel a bit better. I’d been having doubts.’
‘Then don’t. We must concentrate on remaining sane and healthy. Are you getting cold? I could get my anorak.’
‘I’m fine. It’s a nice night. They have good stars here, if nothing else. Which is what, I wonder? Are you any good at stars?’
‘Only the obvious ones,’ said Howard. ‘The Plough, which I don’t see. That could be Orion – straight up from the TV aerial on that roof. I used to star-watch on field trips in British Columbia, but in an uninformed sort of way. Communing with nature more, that sort of stuff.’
‘And you a scientist.’
‘Quite. I should be ashamed.’
‘It’s supposed to be soothing. The permanence of it. I’m not sure that I’m finding the stars much help, right now. Are you?’
‘No,’ said Howard, after a moment. ‘To be honest. On the other hand you are – a help, I mean.’
‘Well, good.’ And at this point Lucy found herself suddenly speechless, incapacitated by a turmoil of feeling, unable to think of anything to say that was not inappropriate or inept. Her emotions thrashed around, anxiety jostling something else quite indescribable and unnamable. Her hand lay inertly in Howard’s. At last she said, ‘You know, I think I’m going to go up and try to get some sleep.’
In the event, of course, she could not sleep. At two o’clock in the morning she lay flat on her back on the lumpy mattress, staring at the ceiling. Around her, others stirred and sighed and breathed. The room took on the same insistent intimacy as the rest of the building; she had always been here, in this fuggy twilight, amid these strangers, in this place which
was alien, hostile and yet now appallingly inevitable.
She knew that she had to tether herself to a known world. She began to re-create, in her head, the landscape of her own bedroom in her flat in London. She toured it, summoning up the dressing-table with the woven mat from the Philippines, her brush and comb, the jars and bottles. The mirror on the wardrobe reflecting the yellow glow of the curtains. The white-ribbed curve of the paper lampshade. Her green dressing-gown slumped over the arm of the chair. An exercise in mnemonics. Reassuring, up to a point.
And then, as she began to shape the Pre-Raphaelite poster from the V & A, there swam into the centre not the luxuriant head of a Rossetti woman but the face of Howard Beamish. His nose, his lips, his beard, his gaze directed upon her. He too now seemed eternally familiar, but in a very different way. She thought: whatever happens to me, even if it is ghastly, at least I’ve known what it is to be in love.
Howard could not sleep either. His companions seemed to roam around all night. They made forays to the bathroom, or stood at the door, muttering to one another. Ted Wilmott had a nightmare and yelled out loud. Someone smoked incessantly.
He tried to concentrate upon rational assessment of the situation. He considered the various options available to those in London who were also, he sincerely hoped, spending a sleepless night. But this was an exercise of limited usefulness since you had no idea of the extent of their information. They must know things that he did not. Furthermore, there was no way of judging the accuracy of what the interpreter had said. They had been told that they were being held as bargaining counters against the repatriation of an unspecified number of Callimbian political refugees, and that these people were known to have fled to Britain. On the face of it, he felt inclined to accept this as genuine information. Why offer it, otherwise? They could have been kept in ignorance. Possibly at some point they would be used to put pressure upon those with whom the Callimbians were in negotiation, in which case they had to know what was at issue. But there must be a whole range of surrounding circumstances upon which one could only speculate. It was frustrating and ultimately fruitless to construct a sequence of moves and counter-moves when you were probably short of some crucial determining factor.