Hidden Gods

by Anthony Masters

  ‘Where have I heard this before?’ he asked with sarcasm.

  ‘Many times, I would imagine.’

  ‘Can’t you reconsider?’ He changed tack. ‘It’s going to be different now.’

  ‘I shan’t be moving in with him yet.’

  She was right, of course. He had abandoned them. And how could he have been so naïve, or so arrogant, as to have seen Lucy as the conveniently busy conservationist who would remain celibate, dutifully visiting her schizophrenic son, counting the days until her husband returned complete with drinking habit? Without doubt, he had only lived on the surface of his mind, like a dragonfly skating over a scummy pond.

  ‘Do you want a divorce?’

  ‘Not now. I want to see how things work out’

  ‘There’s no chance of us trying again?’ He struggled to steady his voice.

  ‘There’s Tim – ‘

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting a threesome.’

  She shook her head, warding off his feeble attempt at humour. ‘I’ll be moving out in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Don’t hang around for me,’ said Hugo savagely.

  ‘The last thing I mean to do,’ said Lucy wearily, ‘is to argue about this. I just want you to appreciate that while you were away, no doubt being outstandingly brave on assignment after assignment, collecting all those awards, not to say the most striking pictures – we were here. Waiting for you.’ Her intense bitterness cut through the weariness, chilling him to the bone. ‘Finally, you were forced back here – but it was too late. Far too late for me – and Brent. Look what’s happened to him.’

  ‘You said his illness would have happened anyway,’ said Hugo resentfully.

  ‘He loved you, Hugo. He was close to you, as I was. You gave us an idyll, but only the promise of a future. You never told us the idyll was going to end.’

  ‘I didn’t know, either.’

  ‘I need Tim. Do you understand?’

  Hugo nodded.

  ‘Are you coming back?’

  ‘I’d like to walk on a bit,’ he said. ‘You go home. No, wait. Will you change your mind?’ Hugo asked in sudden desperation. He had never felt so alone.

  ‘No,’ she replied gently, the bitter anger temporarily spent. For a split second she hesitated, and then turned hurriedly away.

  Left to himself, Hugo walked down to the water’s edge, watching the tide gradually coming in with hardly any sound at all. Gazing out to sea, knowing Tiderace was there, he had the unsettling sensation that the past was catching up with the present and governing the future. He had reached a painful impasse. His marriage was over, there was nothing left of the middle life. Was this the old life lapping menacingly at his feet, the expanse of dark water inviting him, drawing him in as Brent had been drawn to the cliff edge? Or could there really be a future? What did his shared visions with Brent mean? And who was Philippa?

  *

  ‘Do you know who Philippa Neville is?’

  Brent, his eyes closed, was slumped in a deck-chair in the gardens of St Clouds. A nurse hovered around a table of other patients and the sun shone out of a glorious May sky that was full of darting, puffy clouds. A stream ran through the bottom of the valley, glinting in the luminous light, its banks studded with cowslips, and a small, pagoda-like bridge linked the grounds to a field of grazing sheep. The idyllic setting, the freshness of it all, contrasted sharply with the pallor of the patients’ closed faces and, in some cases, closed-in behaviour patterns, almost as if the sunshine and the pastoral scene was a stage set – a painted world that was mockingly out of reach.

  Brent shook his head and Hugo felt a surge of elation at even this minimal piece of communication.

  ‘I think you know her.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Of her?’

  ‘I’m tired, Father.’ At least he was recognizing him today. But Brent was apathetic and Hugo felt a growing, unreasonable, dangerous anger. Could he prise anything out of him with aggression? Were there any short cuts? He was sure that he was notorious with the hospital since the Tiderace débâcle so, in a sense, what did he have to lose; he had lost most things in his life anyway. He also felt physically lonely, as if he had reached a plateau in his recovery and had stopped climbing up – or out.

  ‘I feel we share something. Something important,’ he persisted.

  ‘You have to make your journey.’ The weary voice replied faintly.

  ‘How do you know I’m going on a journey?’

  ‘I can sense it – like I always did.’ The voice was stronger now.

  ‘I’m going on a short photographic assignment’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  Brent did not reply.

  ‘Am I to discover something in the Middle East?’

  There was no response and Hugo’s frustration grew.

  ‘Look. Do you have anything to tell me?’ He was painfully aware of how ludicrous he must seem. Brent was a schizophrenic, incapable of rational communication. What was he trying to prise out of him? Hugo rose to his feet, horrified at what he had been trying to do. ‘I’ve got to go now. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘That’s what you always say, Dad.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Brent had opened his pale blue eyes and was sitting up, the agitation showing clearly in his face. ‘You always said a couple of weeks. But it never was.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re not sorry. You left me on my own. You’re leaving me on my own again.’

  ‘Mum’s here. She’ll be in tomorrow.’

  ‘You left us both on our own – both of us.’

  Hugo knew there was going to be a scene – knew that the situation was running out of control. The sylvan setting seemed to have changed. The sun was behind a cloud, the stream was dark, the flowers and grasses waved uneasily in a scudding breeze, a sheep turned its head towards them almost menacingly. Then the sun came out again, the luminosity returned – but Brent was standing up, holding on to the shaky deck-chair, shouting, ‘You’ve got to be different’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Got to be.’

  ‘Sit down, Brent’

  ‘Got to be different. You have to start the journey – the real journey – but you won’t be able to do it. Not like this. Not as you are. You’ve got to change.’ The staccato sentences were like machine-gun fire. The nurse was running towards them, and out of the corner of his eye Hugo saw Paxton walking hurriedly from the house. Had he been watching them?

  Brent collapsed into the deck-chair, a ludicrous Chaplinesque figure, waving hands and legs, an object of mockery and derision – made so by Hugo. Already Paxton was with them, looking grim, lips pursed, talking calmly and quickly to Brent, disentangling him patiently and with dignity.

  ‘We’ll have a rest inside,’ he said, signalling to the nurse to take his arm. He went, leaning on her, staggering geriatrically, without looking back.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Hugo felt totally at a loss.

  ‘He seems to react to you badly.’ Paxton’s voice was neutral, but there was condemnation in his eyes.

  ‘Brent feels I deserted him.’

  ‘He’s very ill.’

  ‘Much worse?’

  ‘He doesn’t write – or even dictate – his journal.’ Paxton seemed to think that was very serious. ‘Not now.’ He shook his head.

  ‘What does the doctor think?’

  ‘Dr Hibbs feels that he’s withdrawing into himself. He’s discussing another drug regime with your wife tomorrow.’

  ‘Aren’t I to be consulted?’

  ‘I believe you’re going away.’ Paxton sounded accusing.

  ‘I am.’

  Hugo left the hospital feeling that he was escaping again. But what had Brent meant about being different? ‘You’ve got to change,’ he had said. ‘You have to start the journey – the real journey.’ The question was not just what, or even why – but how.

  4

  The Jour
ney Begins

  Iraq

  Gus Knowles of Time Magazine sat in the back of the beaten-up dust-covered Porsche and yawned. ‘How much longer?’

  Beside him Hugo checked the camera. The driver, Kuwaiti-born journalist Anwar Hayat, was confident. ‘I know the Iraqis are coming over tonight.’

  Hugo adjusted his night viewer and tried to relax. Around him the scrub desert landscape rolled into infinity, the sand rippled, soiled with rubbish, ash grey in the moonlight. ‘We need you,’ the magazine editor had said over the phone. ‘It’s the big one.’ And he had seized the opportunity, unable to think of a reason not to rejoin the old life. There was nothing else.

  On the way back from the hospital he had felt guilty and depressed. It had shocked him deeply that Brent had thrown off his silence and withdrawal only to accuse him so vehemently. He had never felt so inadequate. Plunging back into work, he had told himself, was the only way to blot out the ravings of his mad son.

  The Kuwaiti shanty town was silent, and above them a huge sickle moon sharpened outlines and penetrated shadows. Hugo heard an argument going on in a one-storey building with a scattering of chickens at its base, a dog began to howl and a radio started up, playing a Muslim singer he had heard before but could not place.

  Gus lit a cigarette, got out of the Porsche, stretched and leant against the hood.

  ‘Long time since we worked together. Where was it? Balcombe Street siege?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Hugo still felt disorientated.

  ‘How are the knees?’

  ‘They stiffen up, but they’re OK. I don’t suppose they’re ever going to be a hundred per cent’ They talked in half whispers while Anwar read a newspaper by the dashboard light.

  ‘And life at home?’

  He paused. This was the first time he had told anyone, but Gus, like Jaime, was an old mate. ‘Lucy’s left me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was coming – but I didn’t see it. She’s moved in with someone else. Given me the use of Lizards, though. No doubt she’s simply bearing my schizophrenic son in mind,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘In case he comes home?’

  Hugo shrugged.

  Two hours later tanks, trucks and armoured cars crossed the border and drove past the shanty town in seemingly endless procession. Hugo, lying in a stinking rubbish-strewn ditch, took shot after shot. A rat ran past him. Somehow its presence seemed appropriate.

  The convoy showed no sign of abating. Apart from the drone of the traffic the desert night was still, and he could see that the lights in the shanty town had been doused. But he also knew its inhabitants were gathered at the windows, watching the vehicles, wondering what was going to happen. He remembered Biafra and the Sudan, the Palestinian camps and Somalia. The ordinary people, illiterate and dependent on the land, forced on route marches that would predictably kill their children and later themselves. Eyes full of flies, swollen stomachs, diarrhoea and the deadly cramps of dysentery were all these people had to look forward to.

  Hugo joined Anwar who was still in the Porsche and Gus arrived a few seconds later as the procession rumbled on.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’ Gus was shaken.

  ‘It’s the invasion.’ Anwar displayed little emotion. ‘That bastard Hussein, he’ll burn in hell for this.’

  But Gus was not so sure. ‘Surely he’s bluffing.’

  ‘Bluffing?’ Hugo was scornful. ‘With that convoy? He wants to give Bush a bad time – and by God, he’s going to do it’

  They huddled together in the Porsche, the rumbling on the desert road no longer disturbing them. Hugo slept lightly.

  The headlights woke them at about four.

  ‘Armoured car,’ whispered Anwar.

  The vehicle had pulled up a few metres away. Two Iraqi soldiers got out, walked to the door of a small stone-built house and began knocking with the butts of their rifles. Hugo viewed them with professional detachment, as if he was watching a movie. Ever since he had arrived in Iraq he had felt a curious sense of unreality.

  No one came to the door so the soldiers began to splinter the pitifully thin wood with their boots. As they did so, more armoured cars rolled into the square until the whole area was lit with blazing yellow light, rather like a film set.

  A jeep arrived with an Iraqi army officer in the back and Hugo felt the first dull twinges of alarm. Because the Porsche was parked behind an outbuilding, they had so far remained undiscovered, but with a sinking heart Hugo knew that it could only be a matter of time.

  ‘We’ve a right to be here,’ said Gus defiantly, but Hugo sensed that he was feeling much the same as he was. Rights had not prevented him being knee-capped.

  ‘Where can we get under cover?’ he asked.

  ‘There’s a school house over there.’ Anwar’s voice shook.

  ‘What do you think, Gus?’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  The Iraqi soldiers were breaking down more doors and a young man was being dragged out. His protests ended in a choke as one of the soldiers clubbed him in the balls with the butt of his rifle. He fell to his knees, clutching at his testicles, emitting little whinnies of pain until one of the soldiers laughingly kicked him in the stomach. The young man instinctively rolled himself into a womb-like position, but his punishment continued.

  ‘Come on,’ said Gus. ‘For Christ’s sake – ‘

  But Anwar didn’t move. ‘Someone’s coming.’

  Hugo glanced into the wing mirror, his mouth dry.

  ‘It’s a kid.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘Watching us.’

  ‘Why can’t the little bastard sod off?’ muttered Gus.

  Other residents of the shanty town were being dragged out of their homes now and it was becoming clear that the Iraqis had instructions to evacuate the place. The officer was out of his jeep, supervising the rounding up, barking instructions and pouring coffee out of a thermos. Dogs were barking incessantly and a woman’s voice rose in prayer.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Gus inched one of the Porsche doors open as silently as he could, but despite his caution its dry hinges gave an appalling squeak that seemed to drown the dogs and the shouting.

  ‘What about the kid?’

  ‘Forget him.’

  They managed to get the other two doors open without so much noise. A man was sobbing and the officer was beginning to lose his patience.

  Hugo and Gus followed Anwar, pounding over the rough ground, so far unnoticed by the soldiers, but when he glanced back, he saw that the boy was following them like a stray. As they ran a shot rang out from the square.

  *

  They huddled inside a small concrete building that housed a generator and the boy followed, standing imploringly on the threshold.

  Anwar snapped at him in Arabic but he remained there, small, thin and wiry, his eyes dependent. Then he burst into rapid speech.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asked Hugo.

  ‘The Iraqis took his uncle – and he’s got no one else.’

  ‘We can’t help him – ’ began Hugo.

  Gus, however, was more generous. ‘Tell him to come in and shut the door.’

  Their visitor was surprisingly helpful as he dived behind the generator and pulled up some rubber matting to expose a hatch. He opened it and disappeared.

  ‘Oil store.’ Anwar began to clamber after him.

  Hugo followed, and Gus pulled the mat over the hatch as best he could.

  It’s like being in a grave, thought Hugo. They were crouched together in the oily darkness, bodies touching, and the boy was beside him, rancid with sweat. He closed his eyes and, wedged between the others, wondered if he could sleep and blot out their predicament. But of course the idea was absurd.

  They waited together silently, straining their ears, but could hear nothing. Time passed. Conscious of every movement the others made, every contraction, every drawing of breath, Hugo’s cramped position became increasingly intolerable. He caught a suppre
ssed fart, a tiny gurgle of gastric juices, a tentative clearing of a throat. He felt the boy beside him, warm, sour, shifting a little from time to time until he longed to hit him. Something crawled across his face and he slapped it away, startling them all and making Gus grunt in protest. Something else, soft and tiny-boned, ran across the dirt floor in front of them, touching his palm, but this time Hugo was able to control his revulsion. Time continued to pass, but he would not look at his watch, knowing that once he kept checking the minutes would crawl by like hours.

  Then he heard a movement above – and the hatch was pulled back so suddenly that they all gave a little whimper of surprise and fear. The torch shone down on them with a hard brilliance, running over their features with detached interest. Dimly, Hugo could see shadowed faces that seemed neither hostile nor friendly.

  Then the boy was scrambling over their heads, clutching at the arms above, chattering happily to the soldiers who pulled him up, patting and kissing and praising him.

  ‘What in God’s name is going on?’ demanded Gus.

  ‘It’s his way of earning money,’ Anwar replied. ‘The little bastard set us up.’

  ‘English?’ asked one of the soldiers, crouching over the pit.

  ‘American,’ replied Gus. ‘Knowles – Time Magazine.’

  ‘British. Photographer for Time.’ Hugo could hardly bring out the words.

  ‘Anwar Hayat. Kuwaiti. Independent Press, working for Time Magazine.’

  ‘We didn’t know who you were,’ said Gus smoothly. ‘But now we do – there’s no problem.’

  ‘This is war zone. Unauthorized.’

  ‘We didn’t know that – ‘

  ‘Kuwaiti. You come out.’ He repeated the instruction in Arabic and Anwar slowly clambered out. ‘Over there.’

  Hugo could see his feet. Anwar wore expensive slip-on leather shoes, and there was a slight scuff mark on the side of one of them. The shots rang out – maybe four or five – and the shoes skidded forward on their heels. There was a dull thump and Hugo could see Anwar’s arm. There was blood running down the wrist in a stream. He watched it hypnotically, too devastated to call out or even speak to Gus, aware there would be no reprieve this time.