‘It’s not true, Bev. You know it’s not true,’ I say at last. ‘Jeremy would never be involved in anything like that.’
‘You think that hasn’t gone through my head, a thousand times? It’s insane, isn’t it?’ She barks with laughter. ‘Poacher turned gamekeeper, hm? Well, it’s poacher turned fucking poacher!’ She leans back, her legs spread out, shaking with a grisly sort of mirth. Two little hearts are sewn on the knees of her jeans.
‘Look, it’s late, let’s go to bed.’ I lean forward, reaching out my hand.
She snatches her hand away. ‘Don’t fucking patronize me! Didn’t I tell you it was terrible? How do you think I feel? The man I’ve loved, my soulmate, my own fucking husband? You can’t even start to imagine what it’s like, it’s like a pit’s been opened up, a rotten stinking pit, and everything’s been swallowed up into it, everything we had together, our whole fucking life! I feel sick, even talking about it!’
One of the dogs starts barking, then the others join in. On all sides I’m assaulted by hysteria.
‘You’ve only got a newspaper cutting,’ I say. ‘How do you know it’s him?’
‘Because he put a whole lot of money into my bank account.’
I don’t reply. My guts shift and churn.
‘That’s how I found out,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a separate account, for Dewdrop. He never touched it and suddenly there’s all this money in it.’
I’ll move some money into Beverley’s bank account so she’s taken care of …
Bev’s words have thrown me. My head spins, I can’t catch up with what’s happening.
So Jeremy did what he said. But Beverley thinks it was for another purpose entirely.
She’s watching me, her eyes narrowed. ‘You’re wondering why, aren’t you?’ She smiles grimly. ‘I guess he was trying to hide it, to shift it to me so it couldn’t be traced. Stupid really, considering we were married, but that’s Jeremy for you. Hopeless with money.’
I still can’t speak. I know I’m behaving oddly but she’ll just think I’m in a state of shock. She sighs, a deep, sorrowful sigh, and turns to gaze into the garden.
‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ I say. ‘Does it?’
‘Of course not! It was just funny, that’s all. So I did a little investigating.’
She gives me a long, hard stare. For a mad moment I think she’s discovered about Jeremy and me. She’s certainly looking at me in a curious way.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ she says. ‘You don’t believe he was capable of such a thing. Well, nor could I. But then I traced where the money came from.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘You think I’m thick, don’t you?’ she blurts out.
‘No I don’t—’
‘With your straight As and your professor parents—’
‘Don’t attack me,’ I snap. ‘I didn’t kill the bloody elephants.’
We glare at each other, breathing heavily. Then she leans over and strokes my knee. ‘I’m sorry, babe. It’s just … sometimes I felt that you and Jem were laughing at me.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘You didn’t realize you were doing it. That’s because you were posh. It’s like a club and sometimes I felt just a teeny bit left out.’
‘Look, Bev, there was nothing going on.’
‘I didn’t say there was anything going on, dummy.’ She pinches my knee. ‘I never thought that.’
‘Good.’
She withdraws her hand. ‘Anyway, he said you weren’t his type.’
‘And he wasn’t mine, so that’s that.’
There’s a silence. The dogs have stopped barking. This conversation seems to have veered off in a sickening direction. Almost as sickening as what she’s going to tell me now.
For she returns to the elephants. She says she traced the money to a massive poaching operation in the tribal lands where the Kikanda live. ‘Who knows if the charity was just a front. I don’t know and I don’t care. I knew there was poaching going on, I’d read about it on the Elephants in Peril website. It got worse a couple of years ago. When I asked Jem he said that the Kikanda had always lived peacefully with the elephants but now they’ve given up their nomadic life all that’s changed. The elephants have been destroying their crops, you see, so they’ve started killing them.’ She pauses. ‘He just shrugged the whole thing off, and changed the subject. I thought there was something odd about his attitude, just poo-pooing the whole thing when he knew how desperately I cared.’
‘None of this sounds like him.’
‘How do you know?’ she flares up.
I pause. ‘Well, he just doesn’t seem that sort of person.’
She sighs. ‘Yeah. Well, if you feel that, imagine how I feel. He said they were just picking off a few intruders. In fact they were poaching ivory on an industrial scale and shipping it to Asia, and he was involved in that, my own husband.’
‘It can’t be true.’
She stares at me. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I was just thinking—’
‘Why are you defending him?’
‘I’m just thinking that maybe you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘If only! This is killing me. Killing me. I wish I hadn’t told you, but now you know.’
My head’s reeling. I need to get away from the horrors of this conversation.
‘It’s so horrible,’ she says, as if she’s reading my mind. ‘I hate him so much that sometimes I’m glad he’s dead. And that’s the most horrible thing of all.’ She pushes back her chair and gets up. ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘Why was he killed?’ I can’t say the word murdered, it’s even worse.
She shrugs. How small and thin she is! She’s lost weight these past weeks, even her breasts have shrunk. ‘He must have fallen out with them, or bribed the wrong person. Who knows? My guess is that one of the Kikanda poisoned him, they’re experts in that. Slow poisons, fast poisons. That’s why he was ill when he came back. He thought it was the flu.’
‘But wouldn’t it have showed up in the autopsy?’
‘Probably out of his bloodstream by then. Look, Petra, I haven’t a clue and I don’t want to know. I just want to get the hell out of here. God knows what would happen if they realize I know the truth.’ She pauses. ‘And now you do too. I told you it was dangerous.’ She kisses the top of my head. ‘Night-night, chuck.’ As she leaves, she kicks the cardboard box. There’s a clanking protest from within. ‘Blithering wind chimes. That’s what Jeremy said. They gave him the willies.’ And she’s gone.
I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling fan. Hours pass. It’s like a pit’s been opened up, a rotten stinking pit, and everything’s been swallowed up in it, everything we had together. My heart’s racing. I haven’t even started to get used to a Jeremy-less life – the loneliness, the empty space which all those conversations and laughter would have filled, the warmth of his body.
How could he? It sickens me, to try to connect the Jeremy I loved to this newly revealed, loathsome version of the man. I knew he was dodgy, of course; that was part of his charm. I remember him arriving with a bunch of flowers which I realized, in retrospect, he’d picked from the mad woman’s garden down the road. One could hardly equate such larky pilfering, however, with the slaughter of elephants.
But there were more serious incidents. The insurance scam, for instance, and that car accident in KL which I suspect was hushed-up with some pay-off. His legal work for Zonac had been unedifying at best, until he saw the light and went over to the other side.
Ah, but maybe he didn’t. Maybe the charity was a front. He was certainly capable of lying; I’d had plenty of evidence of that. In fact he was pretty good at it; I remember overhearing those chatty phone conversations with Bev, the ease with which he had spun a story. Even at the time they made me uneasy; could he lie like that to me? Now I’m thinking the unthinkable – that maybe he was never going to leave her at all, he was just a grub
by adulterer, up for a bit of sex with a desperate, ageing woman.
This is the worst thought of all. It couldn’t be true, could it? He had, after all, put the money in her bank account – his running-away money. In that respect he had done what he promised.
But did he have an ulterior motive? After all, I have a large house in Pimlico which is now worth a fortune. If he was capable of betraying Bev he was capable of betraying me. He could divorce me, claim half my house and be set up for life.
I feel disloyal even thinking such a thing. Disloyal to the old Jeremy I loved and who is fast slipping away from me. And surely, if there is a new Jeremy, he wouldn’t need my money anyway. He was creaming off profits from a multi-million-pound ivory trade.
How ridiculous this sounds! Indeed, insane. Yet the more I think about it, the more it thickens up and gains credibility. The clock strikes four. I lie there, seasick with these speculations which blunder around my brain.
Is Bev, too, unable to sleep? I can sense her, through the wall. She’s lying there hunched, the polka-dot T-shirt pulled over her knees. Beside her, incense smokes up from a mosquito coil. It’s the scent of her married nights, of decades in the tropics, of lying in bed with her husband’s treacherous arms around her.
When I wake up the dogs have gone. I sense it in the silence even before I go into the garden. Their pen’s empty and the gate’s open; their rubber toys lie scattered on the concrete.
Bev sits in the kitchen, cutting her hair with a pair of scissors. Her fingers move nimbly, layering and feathering. When I ask about the dogs she leans towards the mirror, inspecting herself with a frown, and snips at her fringe. ‘The vet came with his van and took them away.’
‘But … I thought you were going to let them loose.’
‘Quicker this way, sugar plum.’
‘You’ve had them put down?’
‘Uh-huh.’
I’m astonished. She’s actually humming under her breath. She catches my eye in the mirror and gives me a wink.
‘Shame they haven’t got tusks,’ she says. ‘We could’ve made a fortune.’
She sits there, shaking with giggles. I back away from her and busy myself with the kettle. Has she gone completely mad? This is almost worse than last night, if such a thing were possible, because now I’m actually alarmed.
Bev’s chair scrapes as she gets up. When I turn round she’s shaking out the towel in the sink.
‘How do I look?’ She twirls round. ‘Smart enough for a city gal?’
She wears a yellow trousersuit I’ve never seen before. The shorter hair suits her, though it makes her grey roots more visible.
‘Don’t worry, I’m getting my highlights done when I’m there,’ she says, mind-reading again. ‘Sure you’ll be all right in this place alone? You don’t want to come?’
I shake my head. She’s catching the noon flight to Assenonga and then flying on to Cape Town. She’ll be away for two days; then we’re booked to fly home to London.
I can’t wait for her to go. For three weeks we’ve been closeted together and the old irritations have surfaced, irritations from the long-ago days in our Pimlico basement. That glinty-eyed cloyingness, those fluffy endearments. That, of course, is the least of it. What’s much, much worse is the strain of holding her together when I’m unravelling. It’s becoming impossible to bear, and after last night’s horrors I’m even more desperate to be alone. Only then, in an empty house, will I be able to think.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say, fetching a teabag. ‘I know my way around now. I need to buy some presents for people, knick-knacks, stuff like that, to take back home.’
‘What we asked people to bring were PG Tips. The tea’s so disgusting here, isn’t it? Jeremy said it tastes like cats’ piss. He said that was his only reason for visiting London.’ She flicks the hairs off the front of her jacket. ‘I go all that way, he said, just for a decent cuppa.’
Bev’s gone, and my head’s cleared. Now I know what I’m going to do. It was brewing while we talked about tea. Brewing. Ha ha! Jeremy’s booming laugh. Sorry it’s been such a strain … Geddit?
This time, however, his laughter rings hollow and I don’t respond. Jeremy’s not funny any more and our jokes have turned to ashes in my mouth.
My mind’s made up and I’m seized with a mad recklessness. Bev’s flight has departed and I’ve found Clarence. That’s easy. He’s sitting on a stool in Mera Market, smoking a cigarette and watching the world go by. His tro-tro is parked nearby. Like all the tro-tros it’s a people-carrier, painted cream with a turquoise stripe along the side. It’s not like the others, however; it’s bought Clarence’s silence. This gives me a strange, one-way intimacy with it.
I ask Clarence how long it would take to drive to Manak. This is the village out in the bush where the Kikanda live, and where Jeremy’s charity is based. I try to sound casual but my heart’s pounding. ‘I’d like to see the work he was doing before I go back to England,’ I say. ‘Could you take me?’
Clarence doesn’t look surprised, but then nothing seems to surprise him. He says it will take at least half a day, depending on the state of the roads. He names a price and we shake hands, our old complicity restored. Or maybe I’m just a client. I have no idea what he’s thinking, nor how much he knows about Jeremy’s death. I won’t ask him. I suspect he was deeply loyal to Jeremy – they were in cahoots over me, for a start. God knows what other secrets they shared. He liked Jeremy a lot more than Bev, and I don’t want to disabuse him of this.
On the other hand, he might know the whole story – who killed him and why. This is something I don’t want to discuss. I need to find it out for myself.
I know this is dangerous but I don’t care. Maybe I, too, am marginally deranged. But I can’t just sit in that suffocating, dusty house for two days, surrounded by packing cases; I’d go stir-crazy. Besides, I don’t even need to look after the dogs. They’re dead.
And in a strange way I feel I owe it to Jeremy. Maybe I’ll find out he was innocent and that Bev got it wrong – after all, she said the country’s riddled with corruption. Maybe it’s Zonac that’s behind it all. Maybe they’ve paid somebody to fabricate a story to explain his death, which they themselves have caused. I feel a stir of resentment against Bev, that she hasn’t investigated as thoroughly as I’m planning to do – at some risk, too. She hasn’t bothered to make the trip; she’s just presumed the worst. And she’s his wife.
In fact, I’m starting to feel a bizarre sense of ownership. This is something only I’m prepared to do, for Jeremy’s sake. Indeed, I’m starting to feel distinctly proprietorial about him. I’m not bailing out.
Then I think, as I throw clothes into my suitcase: maybe I’m doing this simply to prove that Jeremy was a cunt. I’m travelling all that way for the grim confirmation that, when it comes to men, I’ve fucked up yet again, big time. There’s a perverse satisfaction in this. My therapist would understand; she knows my disastrous history. In fact I’m looking forward to telling her all about it, when I get back to London.
Clarence and I are leaving this afternoon. We’ll have to if I’m to get back before Bev returns. Who knows? Maybe I can share some good news with her. Jeremy’s innocent! After all, the money transfer had an entirely different explanation, if only Bev knew the truth – which thank God she doesn’t. Maybe she’s simply been mistaken about the whole thing. Jeremy can be restored to us both, in our separate hearts. And she’ll never know why I’ve gone to all this trouble.
I zip up my suitcase. Clarence says there’s a hotel not too far from the village, a base for safari tours and visiting businessmen. We can spend the night there. Out in the road he’s already honking his horn. There’s a swagger to him now he’s no longer a servant; I like him being the boss, rather than the other way round. In fact I’m looking forward to what I’m now calling a jaunt. I’m going on an adventure, deep into tribal country, with a bona fide African.
I’m bolstering myself up to believe this, so I don?
??t feel so terrified of what I’ll find.
I remember my safari holiday. Driving through the Masai Mara was like arriving in the Garden of Eden. Elephants, antelopes, giraffes, zebras … I remember vast herds of them, moving peacefully across the plains. Lions slumbered in the shade; hippos, groaning and braying, emerged from a river streaming with water and reeking of halitosis. The birds were dazzling. I remember yelping with joy, the kids piled on my lap like puppies, Paul’s camera clicking. At night we ate steaming platters of imported food and, drunk with Cape wine, slept in tents with ensuite bathrooms, listening to the symphony of animal calls.
I realized at the time that it was a kind of theme park. A vast and beautiful one, but still a theme park. The real Africa lay beyond it, and I only glimpsed it from our tourist bus as we sped through the slums of Nairobi.
Well, now I’m in the real Africa and the only animals I’ve seen so far are donkeys and dogs, all malnourished, and crows tearing at heaps of rubbish. I’m sitting next to Clarence – this seems more friendly than sitting in the back – and he’s telling me about his beautiful young wife. She’s apparently an improvement on the old one in every respect. She doesn’t overcook his dinner or nag him when he comes home drunk. She’s obedient and fertile, what more does a man want? Clarence is the only African I know and I’m eager to like him, we’re going to spend a lot of time in each other’s company, but this bragging is something I never glimpsed when he was a servant. He drives exuberantly, honking the horn as he veers past trucks, slamming on the brakes as we arrive at a crossroads where a policeman semaphores the choking queues of buses. People crowd the windows when we stop – boys holding up sachets of water, women pressing bibles against the glass. Cripples scrabble towards us on their trollies but then we’re off in a cloud of exhaust, driving past thorn scrub hung with plastic bags and rows of shacks where men sit watching the traffic. Despite the frenzied driving I sense this vast inertia. The countryside is dusty and featureless with not a zebra in sight.
We jolt along, my back sticking to the plastic seat. As the miles pass, I try to destroy my love for Jeremy. Want to know the truth? I tell him. You laughed too loudly at your own jokes. You had a big belly and repulsive toenails like shards of nicotine-stained rock. Your face went crimson when you drank. You wore yellow socks. You thought you were a bit of a rogue but you were too old for that, there was something seedy about you. Yes, seedy. You groaned like a warthog when you came and slumped asleep on top of me. Sometimes you couldn’t get it up at all. You called your cock the Major – the Major! You made offensive remarks about lesbians.