Refuge

by Andrew Brown

  He thought to protest the jibe, but there was nothing playful in her demeanour. This is the real thing, he thought. He must not panic, he knew, but his heart was pumping hard. It was difficult to think clearly and it worried him that he was seated. He felt like immobile prey in front of her.

  ‘Just tell me honestly. Did you know about David and this ridiculous pole-dancer?’

  Richard felt a rush of warm blood across his chest. He hadn’t realised that he had been holding his breath. David Keefer and his Russian stripper. A smile of relief started to form but shrank in the face of his wife’s bitter glare.

  ‘Did you know anything about this? Did you go to that club where she worked? Did you, Richard?’ Instead of waiting for a reply, Amanda unburdened herself. ‘I can’t believe that he would be so stupid. Stupid! Do you know that he’s left Charmaine? She’s devastated of course, poor woman. I mean, it’s just so demeaning. It’s bad enough when they run off with the secretary. Or the effing typist from the typing pool. But, for God’s sake, Richard, a Slavic pole-dancer! It really is too much. What the bloody hell is he thinking?’

  Richard nodded and clucked in agreement. But just as he thought that this might be enough, she turned on him again. ‘Richard?’ She said it slowly, as if his name was itself a threat.

  ‘Christ, Amanda. I can’t believe that David would be so stupid. It’s … abominable. I had no idea he was planning to leave Charmaine for this … stripper.’ Even as he said it, he realised that he had stumbled onto a path of disclosure. It was too late to pull back; the only route to safety was to seek out her sympathy. ‘You know, I’ve wanted to talk to you for a while now. About David. But, well … David swore me to secrecy.’ Amanda’s face hardened in anger. ‘Wait, hear me out. David let slip about this infatuation. I was horrified, of course. But he made me promise that I would keep it to myself … and in exchange for my loyalty he absolutely vowed that he would break it off and stop seeing her. I had no idea that it was continuing … or, my God, that he planned to leave Charmaine.’

  Richard paused to assess his wife’s reaction. He could see that he still had work to do. She glared at him disapprovingly.

  ‘It’s been so unbearable for me,’ he went on, almost believing his lie. ‘You have no idea. I found out about her just before that dinner party. And then I had to hold a conversation with Charmaine, knowing all the time that David was … carrying on. God, it’s an impossible situation. When your friendship puts you in conflict with … your morals, with what you know is right. I was so angry with him.’

  The words nearly stuck in his throat and he felt a terrible shame well up. But he continued undaunted: ‘That’s why I behaved so badly at the dinner party. I wanted to apologise properly to you, to explain, but I couldn’t. David was beside himself. He felt guilty and sorry for messing things up for me. He told me he was ending it. But now it seems he …’ His voice tailed off in what he hoped was a convincing display of bewilderment.

  Amanda seemed to have softened a little, although she made no move towards him. She pursed her lips in thought, as if considering her verdict.

  ‘Hmm … I don’t know, Richard. Charmaine is also our friend. I’m not sure that loyalty between men overrides decency and honesty between spouses. I understand that David put you in a difficult position. I just don’t know that you made the right choices on this one. Either way, I think you must talk to Charmaine, so that she understands.’

  Amanda whistled to the dogs and started back into the house. He felt his body heave with relief. How had his life suddenly ended on a knife-edge? That he had to resort to such theatrics to escape detection?

  ‘And, Richard,’ Amanda stopped and turned back to look at him. ‘Don’t you dare go anywhere near that club again.’

  SEVENTEEN

  I FASEN COULD NOT touch Abayomi through the thick glass. The surface was streaked with the fingerprints of prisoners who had sat in the same chair, skin pressed to the cold barrier, seeking out their wives and girlfriends. The thickness of the glass gave the room behind her a greenish hue, like the inside of an aquarium. He was relieved in a way not to be able to touch her. He would have been unable to grasp her hand, to soil her with his filth. The violation in the prison cell had changed everything. He had returned to the communal cell hours after the incident, but had not eaten properly for days, pushing at the stodgy food with no appetite. The warders screamed at him and refused to let him exercise outside, but he could not bring himself to eat. Still they woke him early in the morning, clanging metal plates against the bars. The communal cell was always musty and over-warm from the body heat of the men. The toilet smelt foul and added to the sickly air that hung over them like a warm, damp blanket. Ifasen huddled on his rubber mattress and waited until all the other prisoners had finished their food and had been taken outside. He was too ashamed, and afraid, to take off his clothes to shower and he was aware of his own offensive odour trailing after him like a shadow.

  The violation had brought an impenetrable wall down around him. He remained motionless on his mattress until forced to stir. He moved about in a daze, jostled from one place to another within the awaiting-trial section, saying nothing. The moment he was left alone, he came to a standstill, lingering in one place, staring absently through the barred windows. On one occasion he had stood like that for over an hour until one of the warders had shoved him along the passage. He walked until he was pushed no further and inertia quickly consumed him again. The moment Ifasen stopped being part of the jostling frenzy of the section, he became invisible. He receded until he became nothing more than a piece of broken furniture, something that occasionally got in the way and had to be kicked aside, but which otherwise served no purpose. Even the warders seemed to stop noticing him after a while and he moved about the confines of the section like a ghost.

  Now he sat, untouchable and mute, separated from the only person who could help him. Abayomi clutched the plastic chair as if on a roller-coaster ride. She jumped at the sudden noises around her, the bark of the warden, the clang of the gates, the scrape of the chair legs on the cement floor. Her head turned from one side to the other as people entered and left the room, and she watched them with suspicion and alarm.

  Ifasen waited silently. He had never seen her so out of place, so lost in her surroundings. He wanted to hold her, to tell her that it would be all right. But his body seemed to fester from within. He knew in his heart he would never be able to hold her again, not in the unrestrained way that he had held her when they had first crept into bed together. Then he had been happy just to press her body to his and feel her breathing, his ear on her chest, listening to her heartbeat. He had loved her then more completely than he had believed possible. He knew that he would never love again, not Abayomi or anyone else. To love another person required an internal balance. To love without reservation required him to present his unprotected self to his lover, without fear. Those days were gone. His core had been torn from him, physically and abusively ripped out, leaving him off-balance and injured. He was no longer clean. At his centre there was nothing but an infected pustule. He could feel the contamination growing deep in his abdomen, a tumorous growth that made his stomach hard and filled his throat with bile. It was not the biting pain he felt when he moved, or the aching pressure when he sat down, or the clammy discomfort of his broken nose; rather it was the knowledge and its irrefutable memory that shadowed him wherever he went, that ruined him.

  He would tell Abayomi nothing of his rape. He did not know how to formulate the necessary sentences. What could he say to explain it to her? The vileness of the words that he would have to use made it impossible. It would remain his terrible secret for ever. It would be easier to tell her that he had strayed, that he had contracted the disease from another woman, than to admit to the brutality of the truth. To share his humiliation with her would demean him further. He should take his own life, he knew. But the vision of Khalifah, fatherless and alone in an unforgiving land, hovered. Merciless.


  Abayomi looked up at him, sensing that he had made a movement towards her. But he had just lifted his finger and dabbed at his mouth. It was obvious that he had been beaten: his nose was swollen, and his lip was still crusted with blood. His eyes seemed not to see as he looked down at his fingers, searching for blood from his mouth. The gesture was so pathetic that Abayomi started to weep. Ifasen watched the tears drip like pearls from her face, but he could not bring himself to say anything.

  Abayomi found her voice first: ‘I am so sorry, Ifasen. I am so sorry, my husband. My special husband, I love and cherish you so. I am so sorry. I gave our savings to Sunday. He was at court to pay your bail. He said he paid it. But … I am so sorry, my beautiful husband …’

  ‘But my wife,’ Ifasen managed, ‘what happened to our money? I did not get bail. I stayed here.’

  There was no answer. Abayomi’s face was stricken with guilt, deep lines cutting into her forehead and the sides of her mouth. They fell silent again, staring past one another.

  To stop the tears, Abayomi started to talk again. ‘I went to Auntie’s naming ceremony. They named the child Orobola Adamu. His homeland name is Oluwa. These are good names, Ifasen.’

  ‘These are good names,’ Ifasen repeated, speaking slowly, as if formulating the words was physically painful. He seemed almost surprised to hear the sound of his own voice. ‘These are fine names for a young boy, Okeke. I am pleased that you were there.’ His voice was flat and without intonation. He could feel that it made his speech sound insincere. He meant what he said, but he did not have the energy, or something more subtle – the will, perhaps – to sound more interested.

  He longed to present her with his youthful, brooding strength. When they had first met, she had been in the last grade of high school and Ifasen had been a student teacher. He had never taught her class, but the moment he had arrived on their campus he noticed that she became aware of him. His tall frame had immediately attracted her attention and he caught her observing him in serious debate with other young teachers, wrangling over issues of philosophy and history as if his views might have an impact on world affairs. He argued like the leader of a major political party, rather than an apprentice teacher of history at a secondary school. But his fervour was infectious. Soon he had a band of students and teachers engaged in fierce debate during their lunchtime breaks. More learning happened over lunch than in a whole morning of tuition, one of the senior teachers had quipped. But there was much truth in the comment, as discussions ranged from contemporary politics and economics to religion and more esoteric philosophies. Abayomi kept her distance for a while, observing the growing group of debaters with interest. But once she joined in, her impact on Ifasen was immediate. Her dry and irreverent challenges intrigued him. He started to engage with her directly during these meetings, asking her opinion and often supporting her views. He only realised later that his interest in her must have been obvious to everyone in the group – the way he listened to her and smiled when she spoke. He had tried to keep his feelings in check, aware of his position as a teacher at the school. But he soon realised that he had fallen hopelessly in love with this elusive and confident student.

  Strangely, perhaps, it was only after he had acknowledged that he was emotionally captive that Abayomi’s magnificent beauty entered his consciousness. He wondered whether it had been an unrealised factor all along. But certainly it was only once he felt drawn towards her that he focused on her external appearance and marvelled that he had not been swept away by her looks beforehand.

  The realisation that he had fallen in love with a woman of such beauty was a source of anxiety in the beginning. He worried that others would judge him on this basis, viewing him as shallow or self-serving. He tried to impress on Abayomi that his attraction had preceded his awareness of her physical splendour, but she had simply laughed and scolded him for trying to hide his lust from her. And his realisation had certainly unleashed a rush of physical yearning the likes of which he had never experienced before. His desire to enter into debate with her transformed into a physical need for her presence; he felt a desperate absence when she was not nearby, a physical longing that debilitated his intellectualism.

  He knew, as he sat before her now, that her moorings would come adrift without him beside her, offering his strength and love. The trauma of her past had left her scarred beneath her adventurous exterior, and she needed a safe haven to which she could return. Yet he was powerless to provide refuge.

  Instead it was she who reassured him now: ‘You must not worry, Ifasen,’ she said. ‘I have arranged a lawyer, a good lawyer. He will get you out of here.’

  Ifasen shuddered at what their lives had become, at the clinging and tenuous hope of her statement. Even as she said it, her voice faltered and lost its resolve. He looked back at her blankly. He did not ask who the man was or how they could afford a lawyer, nor where she had found such a person. There was no reassurance in what she said, no hope now of redemption. There was no one on the other side of the high walls who could help him. He, too, was without refuge and knew nothing of the two worlds that rushed together.

  EIGHTEEN

  RICHARD WAS SIMILARLY oblivious. His thoughts were, unusually, far from Abayomi. He was sitting, irritated and reactive, in a partners’ meeting, listening to Igshaan report back on the shortlisted group of applicants for the position of senior partner. Quantal Investments and the empowerment profile of the firm loomed large in their debate. Of the five applicants, four had matriculated at private schools and three had received tertiary education at prestigious universities overseas. All came from middle-class backgrounds, spoke English impeccably and expected remuneration packages that exceeded even that of Selwyn Mullins’s. Richard had objected to the criteria applied to obtain the shortlist.

  ‘This isn’t an upliftment programme, Richard,’ Igshaan responded scathingly.

  ‘Well, at least not for them,’ Candice Reeves quipped, ‘but perhaps for us.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Igshaan said, oblivious to the sarcasm in Candice’s voice. ‘This is a BEE deal, pure and simple, because we need the right profile. We aren’t offering bursaries to cow herders in the Transkei, and if that’s what you want to be doing then this is surely not the place for you.’

  Richard flushed with anger and moved forward in his seat. The impudence was enraging, but Selwyn held up his hand before he could bite back. ‘Igshaan, I think you need to understand that, for some of us, this firm has been a baby that we have taken from birth to this point of adulthood. What you say is correct, of course, but I think you must also realise that the move is perhaps easier for you. You’ve joined the firm rather more lately. But some of us have been knocking around these passages for years.’

  Richard still wanted to hit Igshaan, but the senior partner’s intervention had appeased him enough for him simply to huff and sit back in his chair.

  Igshaan shrugged his shoulders, first one then the other, like a bird shuffling its feathers. ‘Perhaps in my eagerness to see this firm do the right thing – the obvious thing – I may disregard some of the sensitivities of those around me.’ Richard felt his ire afresh as Igshaan emphasised the word ‘sensitivities’, placing himself above the pettiness. ‘And for that I am sorry. But we clearly need to move forward and quickly too. Quantal isn’t going to be around for ever.’

  Igshaan handed out the packs of documents relating to each applicant. ‘Right, let’s start with the first one, Eunice Bongani Qhele. What I like about him—’

  He was interrupted by the door of the conference room opening. Nadine stuck her head around the doorway and raised her eyebrows unsympathetically at Richard.

  ‘What?’ Richard snapped, more sharply than he intended. Igshaan sighed loudly enough for all in the room to hear.

  Nadine glowered back for a moment. ‘Someone to see you. He says it’s important and can’t wait.’

  ‘A client?’ Richard knew that his diary was free for the afternoon; he had hoped to keep the part
ners’ meeting short so that he could leave the office early. But Nadine shook her head.

  ‘Oh, all right, I’m coming. I’m sure that the meeting can carry on without my input.’ His comment was intended to be stinging, but once expressed it sounded churlish. He did not wait for a response and left the conference room. He heard Igshaan start up before he had closed the door.

  Irritated, Richard walked into the waiting room but he soon came to a standstill, speechless. Sunday was sitting easily on the leather couch, chatting up the receptionist, Carmen, who was flushed and squeaking with enthusiasm. The man lost none of his charm as he leapt to his feet and switched his attentions from the boisterous receptionist to Richard.

  ‘Oyinbo! Richard, my friend. I look the parra, my brother, I know it. But, my friend, the fowl does not forget where it has laid its egg. Chei! This will put mi for trouble, but what must I do, my friend? You are the one for me now.’ Sunday bounced around the waiting area with energy, his vibey slang incongruous in the austere surroundings. Richard realised that he had to get the man and his explosive mouth out of the way before any of the other partners saw him.

  ‘Sunday, you can’t just rock up here, man.’

  Carmen had returned to filing her nails but was giggling behind the raised edge of the counter.

  ‘Come with me.’ Richard strode through the plate-glass swing doors, sandblasted with the new crest and name of the firm. He led Sunday into his office, quickly closing the door behind him, but not before he had noticed Nadine’s cold look.

  ‘O! Is this feferity, my friend, or the real ting? Ajebota, I would like to see your house because there we can do the living, my brother. And talk jazz laik dat to me, like you no know what I’m saying. You know it, my friend. You know it.’ Sunday sank comfortably into a chair, then bounced forward to pour himself some cold water from a crystal decanter.