One Secret Summer

by Lesley Lokko

  104

  DIANA

  London, New Year’s Eve, 2000

  In the corner of the room, a TV screen was dancing with light and static. A reporter was speaking, saying something meaningful, no doubt, about the new year that was nearly upon them. Diana lay back against the cardboard-stiff sheets, her left arm upturned and lying loosely by her side as the nurse skilfully inserted one needle after another in the pale patch of skin of her elbow, producing only the slightest sting as she drew blood. There was a plastic bubble taped to the soft flesh beneath her shoulder and several more plastic discs from which tubes sprouted like a potato she’d once found as a child, playing underneath the kitchen sink. She’d screamed as she touched it and then stood back in horror as it rolled clumsily out of the cupboard and on to the ground, all gnarled bumps and desiccated, wrinkled-looking skin, much like hers would be … No, stop it. She made a small sound of impatience within herself.

  ‘Nearly done,’ the nurse said cheerfully, deftly transferring the syringe full of bright-red blood – her blood – into one of the purple-tipped vials that stood waiting on the sideboard. ‘One more to go and then you’re done. Lucky you.’

  It was on the tip of Diana’s tongue to enquire how this – being prodded and pierced for an hour every other day in preparation for what looked like six months of absolute hell in front of her – could possibly be described as ‘luck’, but she held herself in. In half an hour, Geoffrey would come through the door with the results of the tests they’d just run, and together, she and he would discuss her options. It sounded like some kind of bedtime drink, she thought to herself drowsily. Or a new kind of perfume. For a whole day the previous week, she’d moved around with a flattish metal canister in a holster that recorded the weather of her body – every drop and rise in temperature, every fluid ounce of sweat, everything … dreams, thoughts, the taste of metals in her mouth and all. From those records, and from the results they were drawing from her body today, a plan would be made. She turned her head warily to one side. It had all happened so fast. Caught in the middle of some ordinary, mundane act – answering the phone, writing up a brief, perusing her notes, cooking, even – she became aware that her body had deserted her, gone off on its own, haywire course, in much the same manner as her thoughts. She fancied she could feel it engaged in its silent, secret war against itself.

  ‘All done.’ The nurse was relentlessly cheerful. ‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  Diana shook her head. She lay for a few minutes longer, aware of the blood pumping through her body and the low, steady drumbeat of her own heart. The sound of it filled her ears. The door opened in the corner of the room and someone came in. There was another sound; someone was speaking. It took some effort to listen. It was Geoffrey. She nodded where she thought it appropriate, stretched the muscles of her face in response, although she’d taken in practically nothing. Treatment … promising … good preparatory results … twice a week … The words drifted round and round. ‘Yes,’ she murmured drowsily. ‘Yes, yes.’ Yes to everything they said. Her attention wandered off. The nurses moved about her purposefully; they all had parties to go to, they told her cheerfully. New Year’s Eve. She would be able to see the fireworks from her window, they said. She lay back against the pillows, too exhausted to think. She was waiting for Harvey. He would be here any moment now in his theatre robes, ready to take her home.

  She woke suddenly. She didn’t know what time it was. She sat up cautiously in bed, trying to tell from the quality and sound of the silence outside whether it was day or night. She dimly remembered climbing into bed – Harvey at her side – and then the sound of his voice as he began telling her something … and then the rest of it was blankness, blackness. She was so tired; it seemed as if she’d never been more tired. She lay back against the pillows, exhausted. It was night, slipping towards morning. Outside she could just hear the earliest morning birds in the oak tree at the bottom of the garden beginning to stir, their voices rising slowly into the sky. The air around her was dark and still, layers of sleep suspended over the bedroom and the rest of the house. She turned her head – Harvey wasn’t there. He must have got up and moved to the spare room. He’d done that several times that week. She knew he often found it too painful to sleep next to her. Poor Harvey. He didn’t know the half of it, and already his world had been turned upside down.

  There was no moon – the room wouldn’t have been so dark otherwise. Suddenly, out of her lassitude, something had changed. She began to think very clearly, as if the emotions of the day had settled in her mind like sediment and all her faculties were suddenly awake and clear. A sudden slow sweep of headlights came into the room; outside, a car was making the turn around the street, heading towards the main road. She heard the engine fall away and then she was cocooned in silence again. She pulled an arm out from beneath the thick, warm duvet and let it fall back on to the cover. She was afraid to look at it, to look at herself. Outside of her body, life went on … her family came and went, her sons … one of them, Rafe, his filial concern mingling with another, professional kind of angst that made conversation between them, for the first time ever, difficult. They came every day, one or the other. Julia, with her high, swollen belly; Aaron so full of touching, father-to-be pride. Maddy, distracted and distracting as ever, absorbed with some new part she was playing, settled at last. And Niela, of course. She let her mind drift for a moment. How unexpected that had turned out to be. Dear, sweet Niela. On those days when she went into hospital for her twice-weekly dose of chemotherapy, Niela was often waiting for her when she got home. She said very little in those first few hours afterwards, instinctively reacting to Diana’s inability to do anything other than just be. She would sit beside the window in the upholstered chair that Harvey had brought in from the study, sometimes reading to Diana in her lightly accented, careful voice, at others just looking out of the window at the garden below, lost in her own thoughts but always attuned. Niela. She’d come to depend on her in a way that she’d never thought she would depend on anyone, ever. There were things she could tell Niela that she dared not utter to anyone, not even Harvey. One morning, a few weeks earlier, she’d come downstairs after a particularly bad night. She’d walked into the kitchen and caught sight of Harvey sitting at the table facing the French doors that looked out over the garden. He was eating breakfast alone, his head bent over a bowl of cereal or some such. He didn’t hear her come in. At the sight of him, the childish dread of abandon flowed over her. Did all those years together mean nothing? Forty years – a lifetime. If it happened to her as she knew it would, Harvey would be alone. She turned around and crept back upstairs, unable to bear the thought.

  The birds were singing properly now, and in the far corner of the window, the faint light of dawn was beginning to show. She’d been lying awake a long time. She pushed aside the covers and slowly slid her legs out of bed. She stared at them for a moment: thin, pale, white … not the legs of a few months previously. Tanned, slim, toned. She’d always been proud of her legs. She slipped out of bed and walked towards the window. She pushed back the remaining heavy bunch of curtain and looked out into the slowly lightening sky. The stars were still out, those hard, blossoming points of light with which she’d suddenly found herself connected. She had the clear-headed sense of being a source of light herself, just like those twinkling above her. The grainy reality of her own life and the certainty of death grew stronger in her as she stood in her nightgown, watching. Her eyes travelled the length of the sky, taking in its richness. She was suddenly overwhelmed. Too many things were happening; too many memories, too much pain and guilt … When the stars began to blur in her eyes, it was the welling of a deeper pain that was the overflow of the moment. She raised a hand to brush them away. She’d told Josh the truth. And Niela. No one else needed to know. No one else mattered. Not even Harvey.

  She turned from the window and went back to bed. The slow, even beat of her heart played out a steady rhythm … a
live/afraid; alive/afraid … she was tired again. It was time to put down the burden she’d been carrying for so long. She climbed into the soft mass of feather duvet and pillows. She groaned aloud, since there was no one to hear her. She spread her hands out in front of her; her wedding ring and the heavy, solitary diamond Harvey had given her, all those years ago, sat awkwardly on her finger, now that she’d lost weight. The diamond slid to one side, the flesh underneath showing up as a white band against the slightly darker, tanned skin of her hands. She tugged it off and put it down on the bedside table. It settled with a satisfying clunk, the last sound before silence.

  Epilogue

  Djemmorah, Algeria, October 2001

  The car crested the last hill, and suddenly the village and the long, thick line of olive trees opened up in front of them, snaking through the valley, skirting the foothills but hugging the road. The hills around them were dotted with white rocks and the odd, solitary tree. Josh was silent as he shifted gear and plunged downwards. Niela too was quiet as they began to leave the barrenness of the desert and descended into green. The buildings were made of the same pinkish, sandy mud as the hills – square, rugged buildings with the odd curiously elaborate embellishment across the doorway or windows. The air was dry and cool, slowly warming up as they drove down into the valley. The sky was a piercing blue, dazzling in its intensity, broken only by the faintest wisps of white leaning in wide, shimmering streaks towards the horizon. On her bare knees in front of her was the map they’d been consulting ever since leaving Algiers. All they had was the name of the town – to which Josh had once been, unbelievably, en route to somewhere else – and an ages-old letter addressed to Mohammed Ben Ahmed, rue 13 Fevrier, Djemmorah. Rufus had given it to Josh just after the funeral.

  ‘They don’t seem to have street names,’ Niela commented as they drove slowly into what seemed to be the centre of the village. An open square, surrounded by mud-walled buildings, with a few crooked signs hanging haphazardly above shop awnings and the beautiful walled maze of streets leading away from the square. It was just after three o’clock in the afternoon and the shadows were already long on the ground. A few men looked up curiously as Josh parked the car to one side of the road and opened the door. Niela quickly wound a headscarf around her head and fastened the remaining buttons on her long white skirt.

  ‘Come on.’ Josh held out his hand to her. ‘Let’s start with those men over there.’

  She followed him but hung back as they drew near. ‘Salaam alaikum.’ The greetings flowed back and forth between them. She stood to one side, acknowledging their curious glances but making no attempt to join in. She half-smiled to herself, listening to Josh’s Arabic as he asked the whereabouts of Mohammed Ben Ahmed or his daughter, Khadija.

  ‘Ben Ahmed?’ one of the older men asked, squinting up at Josh. ‘You sure of that? There’s no one in the village by that name.’

  ‘Yes. He worked in France for a while. I think he came back here … around thirty years ago?’

  They looked at one another, pulling faces and shaking their heads. She could read the disappointment in Josh’s stance. ‘No, there’s no one here by that name. Ben Ahmed, you said?’

  ‘Yes. Mohammed. He had a daughter … Khadija … they came back together from France.’

  ‘Why d’you ask?’ Someone spoke suddenly. Niela watched as Josh turned to him. He was a short, stocky man, in his early forties, perhaps. He wore the same closed, suspicious face that she’d seen in villagers everywhere – a natural defence against strangers and the unknown. Her pulse suddenly quickened. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, looking from Josh to Niela and back again.

  She saw Josh stiffen and his shoulders hunch in the way she knew so well. There was a moment’s pause as he gathered himself, and then the words were out. ‘I’m his grandson. I’m Khadija’s child. The one they left behind.’

  The air was thick with the sweet, cloying scent of flowers and herbs. They ducked under one doorway, then another. Josh was holding on to Niela’s hand tightly, as if for dear life. Ahead of them, pushing their way impatiently through lines of washing, the two women who’d been summoned by the men outside hurried down the narrow alleyways towards some unknown destination. Niela’s heart was thudding painfully inside her chest as she was half-dragged, half-carried along with them. They began the high, excitable ululation that she remembered so well from Mogadishu – a cry of welcome and pain and blessed release. At last they stopped before an intricately carved wooden doorway, but before they could pound on it, it was flung open. A young man stood in the semi-darkened doorway; Niela put a hand to her mouth. It was like looking at a younger Josh, the features oddly familiar, at once different and the same. He looked up at Josh, a slow frown of puzzlement appearing on his face. The women were crying out for Khadija … the dialect in these parts was hard for her to follow. There was a great flurry of commotion and noise – Josh and Niela were swept into the darkened rooms and told to wait. The young man, with a stunned backwards glance at them both, was dispatched outside and told to wait. What was about to happen was for his mother’s eyes and ears alone.

  She was small and dark-skinned. She sat in the middle of the room on an arrangement of colourful rugs, dressed in the soft woven cloth that the women of her village wore. Her eyes were brilliant, outlined with thick black kohl pencil. She listened without saying a word to the excited chatter of her neighbours and friends, and when they’d finally run out of words, she dismissed them all with a quick, imperious wave of her hand. To Niela’s great surprise, it was Diana she brought to mind.

  ‘Viens.’ She said the word out loud, breaking the silence that had descended upon the room as the last of the women had left. Her French still carried with it the sun and the lilt of Provence. ‘Pas vous,’ she said, shaking her head at Niela. She looked up at Josh from her seated position. ‘Toi.’

  Josh walked uncertainly towards the centre of the room. He knelt suddenly, squatting down beside her, bringing his face almost on a level with hers. Niela’s breath caught and held. There was a pause of a few seconds. Khadija reached out a hand from beneath her robes and let it fall beside his. She waited a few seconds, then turned the palm of her hand towards his. A simple gesture. The first touch. The first touch in over thirty years. Niela felt the sharp tug of tears in her throat and turned away. It was a gesture she recognised only too well. One of the last that Diana had made; a mother’s touch, both tender and strong. She looked back as she surreptitiously wiped the tears from her cheeks. Josh’s hand was held within Khadija’s own. The first touch. But not the last.

  Copyright

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Orion Books.

  This eBook first published in 2010 by Orion Books.