The Sudden Appearance of Hope

by Claire North

  You know place near here? I know place near here.

  Do you understand what I’m talking about?

  Good good. Yes, of course, very good.

  Tola leaning across the table, one hand reaching out to caress the buyer’s thigh. A slap; he pushed it away, she recoiled, animal hurt now on her features.

  I dialled the mobile phone in the café.

  mugurski71 answered.

  “Yes?”

  “Too many guns in the room,” I said. “Diamonds say bye-bye!”

  He tried to speak, but I hung up, pulled out my battery and SIM card, and threw them in the rubbish on my way out.

  I left Oman that night, stealing a ticket from a passenger on a cruise liner heading for the Red Sea. I couldn’t use the passenger’s cabin; she had shouted her way back on board, and a search was quickly underway for the stowaway. But I could sit by the bar, ordering a series of desultorily alcohol-free concoctions and waiting for security to give up, declare “Maybe you lost it, ma’am,” before we pulled out of port. I could bring no luggage that would attract attention, so walked round with my stolen goods, and stayed awake until 3 a.m., when I finally managed to snooze during a screening of a bad romantic comedy in the ship’s all-night cinema lounge.

  By day I slumbered on a balcony overlooking the sea, as the engines roared above and grumbled below. I bought a bikini from the over-priced on-board shop, changed in the toilets, swam in the cruiser’s outdoor pool, washed myself in the fountains that spurted up either side of the deck, dried in the sun, met a preacher and his wife, a retired commander of the RAF, a former tap-dance teacher and her four abhorrent children, a man who reported himself to be in “commodities” and who I suspected of being an arms dealer, and a group of student actors who every day put on the “happy matinee show for the kiddies!” (The Big Friendly Giant) and then in the evening, on the same stage, performed the “grown-up show for culture” (Richard III).

  “I play King Richard,” whispered one conspiratorially. “It’s a big part, I mean, a big deal, and like, an amazing role, just so amazing, but between you and me, I’m happier being a talking broccoli in the matinee.”

  “I didn’t realise there were any talking broccoli in The Big Friendly Giant.”

  “Me neither! But the director’s inspired like that.”

  A couple in the first-class dining room, I didn’t think I’d seen such beauty before. His radiance, rather than obscuring hers, seemed to set it off, and the whole room turned to look at their entrance. Waiters scurried to fulfil their wishes – which was for a bland vegetarian option and an obscure protein drink – and all the while she rested her chin on the back of her hand and laughed at his jokes with the high sound of silver tapping on a crystal glass, and didn’t look at his face, but scanned the room, like an animal wary of predators in the grass.

  I approached them out of curiosity, told them I was a producer with the BBC, and forgive me intruding, but had I seen them on the TV?

  “Not yet,” replied the man with a dazzling smile.

  “Oh a producer, how wonderful!” exclaimed the woman, and a few short sentences later and a couple of references to my friend the director general and how exciting it was to meet new talent, I was at their table.

  “I’d just love to be on the TV,” she exclaimed. “Not for the fame, you understand, but just because I think there’s so many important things I could say.”

  Her partner joined in when I mentioned Top Gear, wondered if I’d met the boys, driven the cars.

  “They’re darlings, such darlings – that chemistry you see on screen, it’s real, all of it, it’s just so real,” I lied. “Are you interested in cars…?”

  Why yes, yes he was, he’d just bought his first Jaguar…

  “He wanted a Ferrari,” exclaimed the missus, “but I won’t let him do anything so silly.”

  I listened to them a while, dropping in occasional total lies and abject flatteries, until at last the woman leant over and said, “Have you got Perfection?”

  “Why yes, of course. Though I haven’t used it for a while.”

  “Changed. Our. Lives,” she intoned.

  “Changed our lives,” he concurred.

  “This trip – elite access, VIP upgrade to first class. It said ‘you need a break’ and you know, it was right, I mean, of course it was, it had GPS on me, knew I spent far too much time at work…”

  “Far too much…” sang along the mister.

  “…‘The perfect holiday for the perfect you,’ it said and, well, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t it just?”

  “You don’t feel like you’ve just been sold a package?” I enquired.

  “Of course we’ve been sold a package,” he replied, bristling at the notion that any thought might occur in this world which had not first occurred to him. “All these cruise companies and holiday companies, they all have tie-ins with Perfection, of course they do. But then, it is the perfect holiday…”

  “… the perfect holiday!”

  “… isn’t it?”

  I smiled, and looked at this couple again, and imagined the hours they’d spent in dentists’ chairs, the wash of the general anaesthetic before plastic surgery, the days lost to shopping trips, the friends abandoned for lack of social graces.

  “The perfect holiday, for the perfect couple,” I murmured, and stole their room key, and while they were finishing their dinner I used their shower, stole his watch, their currency and her make-up bag.

  Chapter 19

  Choices for the lonely: to seek human company in all its forms, or to be content with the fact that you have no company at all.

  I switch between the two.

  I made it fifteen days by myself in a cabin in the forests of Canada before breaking. In the end, paralysed and sobbing, I had to phone the police to come and rescue me.

  A woman in a brown hat picked me up, and when she arrived I clung onto her arm, and said I was sorry, I was so sorry, I don’t know what came over me, but I couldn’t move, my legs couldn’t move, I tried walking and my legs wouldn’t lift me, I’d crawled on my belly to the phone and there were shadows in the windows, sounds in the dark, and I thought I’d be okay and I hadn’t been, I hadn’t been at all.

  She held me tight, this perfect stranger, and said, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you’ll be okay. The forest gets to people sometimes. You’re not the first one to call, and won’t be the last I reckon. It’s okay.”

  In any other place, she might have charged me with wasting police time, but here, where her beat was nine hundred square miles of forest, where she knew the name of every person that lived within, she wasn’t about to stand on ceremony. She drove me fifty kilometres into town, invited me into her home, made coffee, turned on the TV and said, “My kids will be home soon. You wanna stay and watch a film?”

  We watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a lesser-known Disney romp involving con men, Nazis, soccer-obsessed lions, rabbits and magic.

  “When I grow up,” said the youngest child, and I waited for her to proclaim her intention to be a witch, a knight, a soldier, “I want to own a museum.”

  When the light was out and the kids asleep, I thanked the sheriff calmly, and said I didn’t know what had come over me.

  “Some folk just ain’t built for living solo, I guess,” she replied. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, if that way ain’t for you.”

  In the months that followed, I travelled across North America. I met psychologists and attended conferences, studied journals and newspapers. I talked with scholars and monks, men and women who’d been held in solitary confinement for years on end.

  You find the happiness you can, one said. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes you gotta dig deep, but it’s there, the thing inside that you can be content.

  I asked what happened when he’d been freed from his prison cell after seven years in isolation.

  I went to the hotel and met my wife. She was crying, holding me, but I didn’t say anything. All my feelings
were cold. It had been seven years since I’d last had to speak, I didn’t think I knew how.

  A prisoner from a supermax in Florida, sat on the end of the hospital bed.

  I’m lucid now, he said, but I been in the hospital for eleven days. They had me in administrative segregation before. That’s where they segregate you from the population, so as you can’t do no harm to another.

  “Did you do harm?” I asked.

  I killed a man, he replied with a shrug. He was gonna kill me.

  “You sure of that?”

  Sure I’m sure. I seen the way he were looking at me, like he knew I were gonna die. I had to get there first, is all.

  “And why are you in the hospital now?”

  Tried to strangle myself with my own bedding. This is the third time I try to kill myself, and I feel okay now, now that the doctor seen me, but I guess when they send me back I’ll try again until I get it right.

  Calmly, so calmly, sat with his chin in his hands, three-time killer by twenty-two, segregated for life.

  I used to dream when I were in solitary, he explains, staring through his hands. Now I don’t dream so much. I’m just waiting.

  “Waiting for what?”

  Dunno. Just waiting.

  I do not fear loneliness – not any more.

  Discipline.

  I am the queen of internet dating; I am a one-click wonder. People forget me, but my digital profile remains, enshrined in binary code, remembered by the internet, so much more reliable than the human mind. The web is designed for the short-term; see something you like? Bookmark it. Like what you see, right now? Call me. I’m right here; I’m waiting.

  “You don’t look anything like your profile picture!” people exclaim when I introduce myself to them at our pre-arranged meeting.

  I look exactly like my profile picture, but my face is easier to forget than a date and time you’ve saved onto your smartphone. People usually have to blurt something out, to cover the embarrassment of not having remembered me, or recognised my face.

  “I mean, you look really good,” the gentlemen will add. “Like… much better in reality.”

  Toilet breaks are the destruction of a good date. Men who, after a mere twenty minutes, need to empty their bladders are no use to me. In the three minutes they spend in the gents, their memories fade, and by the time they emerge, even the most ardent of lovers will have forgotten my features, and the vast majority will have forgotten they were even on a date.

  Equally, men who are tedious are easily got rid of. Three minutes in the ladies, and by the time I emerge the gentleman will probably be paying the bill and texting his mates.

  Hi, he says, in town having a quiet drink by myself. You guys around?

  The mind fills in gaps, invents excuses.

  “I’m a good man,” said Inspector Luca Evard, the day he found out. “I don’t forget the people I’ve slept with; that’s not who I am.”

  Just because you have forgotten me, does that mean I am not real?

  Now.

  You forget.

  Now.

  I am real.

  Reality: the conjectured state of things as they actually exist.

  I breathe, and in the time the air takes to leave my lungs, I vanish from the minds of men, and cease to exist for anyone except myself.

  Chapter 20

  The cruise ship docked at Sharm el-Sheikh just before dawn, edging towards the quay as the sun came up. I put on make-up to hide the tiredness round my eyes and crossed the border on my Australian passport, hid amongst the tourists. Egyptian Arabic is very different from the standard and Sudanese dialects I spoke, and though I could pick up a fair amount, replying with fluency proved difficult. Even had I been able to speak, the locals weren’t very interested in conversation.

  “You want see pyramids? I take you! You want buy icon? I have all the icon you ever want, ancient goods, good goods, you come, you see! You want taxi? You want restaurant? You want see Nile? You want tour? I know best, very very best!”

  Only one local woman in the resort seemed willing to engage with me, switching to Syrian Arabic in response to my accent and saying, “You’re not a tourist?”

  “Social worker,” I replied, “with Médecins Sans Frontières.”

  “Ah! You working in Egypt?”

  “Sudan.”

  “Terrible place; you are a good woman to go out there.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Terrible place – the people! – just terrible.”

  “Egypt isn’t without its problems.”

  “Sure, but at least here your problem is only the government.”

  “Can I buy you a coffee?” I asked. “I’d like to hear more about that.”

  “I’d love to,” she replied, “but someone might think you are a journalist.”

  Rebuffed, I tried talking to the tourists, focusing on anyone travelling alone. Sharm is hotels, palm trees, swimming pools and restaurants, each more expensive than the next. Once, the crystal blue waters and salt lagoon attracted Americans and Germans. In recent years the clients were changing, and the surface of the water shimmered with a slick of suntan oil. I watched a Russian father throw his weeping son into the sea, shouting, “Swim, swim, swim!” while the boy bobbed and gurgled and half drowned in his desperation to please. I saw Brazilian daughters sniff at the food served to them on crystal platters and exclaim, “No good, too many calories!” sending it back to the kitchen.

  “Liquid foods only,” explained a Portuguese princess. “I have to watch my weight.”

  I slept during the worst of the heat, recovering from my stowaway time on the ship, and at sunset went looking for company. Crossing the town in British weather would have taken less than an hour. In the Egyptian boil, I had to stop every ten minutes to cower in shade. Even my hair felt hot to the touch.

  At night I log into the darknet, looking for Byron14.

  Byron14 is not there.

  Another day spent pacing the town, bored now, bored with the sun, bored with indolence, bored with being on the run.

  “I lost five stone through Perfection!” said a British woman I swam with in the salt lagoon. “I’m at seven hundred and fifty thousand points, and it automated my online shop because I was buying too many fatty foods, put me on a seasonal diet of greens and nuts, isn’t it wonderful?”

  I looked at her, a perfect body, the perfect shape, the perfect curves, the perfect teeth, the perfect hair, the perfect smile, and realised I hated everything about her, and everything about me, and everything about this place, and snapped, “When was the last time you fucking thought for yourself?” and swam away from her as fast as I could, and dived underwater to hide the shame of my imperfect self, and stayed down until I could no longer hold my breath.

  In an ice-cream parlour at night, I logged into the darknet, waiting for Byron14 to call. When he appeared, it was one in the morning, and the party was still going strong in the nightclub next door.

  Byron14: Are you safe?

  why: How did you know about mugurski71?

  Byron14: I know his work.

  A photo, the man in the café in Muscat, taken another time, another place. He looked old in this picture, his shoulders down, head turned to one side, like a man who’d forgotten where he put his wallet – not like the stranger with a gun who’d come to claim my prize.

  _why: That’s him. Who is he?

  Byron14: Security for Prometheus.

  _why: Why is he after me?

  Byron14: His employer feels that you humiliated him by stealing from his guests. Your actions compromised a deal; he somewhat hastily pledged to find you, and return the diamonds, as proof of his company’s strength.

  _why: How do you know this?

  Byron14: I monitor Prometheus.

  _why: Why?

  Byron14: That is my business. How did you get access to the 106?

  _why: Who are the 106?

  Byron14: My questions mean you no harm.

&n
bsp; _why: I simply don’t understand them. I was after diamonds; that’s all.

  Byron14: Was it?

  I licked melting pistachio ice cream from the back of a spoon, watched the beautiful and the wealthy ambling by.

  _why: A woman died. She was my friend. She wanted to be perfect, and being perfect disgusted her. It pleased me to make perfect people afraid. I liked taking what they had.

  Then, Do you want to buy some diamonds? Cut price, for favours given.

  Byron14: Perhaps. Do you have Perfection?

  A moment.

  I sit back, and find to my surprise that I am already counting, looking out of the window. I count sports cars (three) and cars whose weight on their wheels suggest reinforced bodies and bullet-proof glass (two). I count beautiful young things in shoes ladder-high, and handbags with a value of more than two hundred British pounds. I count leaves on the carefully planted palm trees, and the number of street lamps I can see. An immaculate white four-wheel-drive passes by, briefly pulling my attention. At its back, on a trailer, is a large white yacht, its hull and cabin adorned with stickers proclaiming, “Free Palestine”. I realise I am laughing, and people are watching me, and so I stop, and return to the keyboard. Byron14 is waiting.

  _why: No. I despise everything I have seen of Perfection. Is this relevant?

  Byron14: To potential employment.

  _why: You want to hire me?

  Byron14: We should resume this conversation another time.

  _why: Why?

  Byron14: mugurski71 is looking for you, and the darknet is not immune to attack.

  _why: He won’t find me.

  Byron14: You are in Egypt, probably a coastal area, likely the Red Sea, probably a tourist resort.

  I count.

  My breaths.

  My world.

  I type slowly, carefully.

  _why: Why’d you think that?

  Byron14: I tracked mugurski71. He was in Oman five days ago. Logically you would flee after a failed exchange. Unlikely you would risk returning to Dubai; the border with Saudi Arabia is closed, and it is risky to cross into Yemen. The only options remaining are air travel or sea. Four days ago, a passenger on a cruise ship registered a complaint that her ticket had been stolen on a vessel headed for Egypt. That vessel arrived this morning, and according to customs, one passenger more than was registered on the vessel disembarked. These things are not so difficult to check. As I said: we could perhaps both benefit from suspending this conversation.