‘Ah, yes, thank God,’ replied Sarah, and meant it.
AT THE HOPE CLUB THE WOMEN NOW SAT SMILING IN the darkness. While Hannie had recounted her story, evening had come, but no one had got up to put on the lights.
Elizabeth Lord said cheerfully, ‘A happy ending.’
‘And here’s the Hope Club’s share of it,’ Hannie added in a practical voice, taking out her chequebook.
3. The Adventure of the Small African Child
Three months later a seedy Christmas filtered through the narrow streets of Soho. Silver Christmas trees twinkled in sex-shop windows; restaurants bulged with office parties; weary, footsore women who had lost their way in Regent Street or Oxford Street trailed past strip clubs looking for somewhere to get a refreshing cup of tea.
Recently the Hope Club had begun to change. The members had decided to expand the premises, and Elizabeth had been put in charge and quickly got the plans under way. With money from the club’s account, she bought the house next door from some departing Maltese businessmen who were glad of a fast sale with no questions asked. Then she got planning permission and knocked through some of the rooms. The renaissance of the Hope Club had begun. Forgetting a five-year-long breakdown, Elizabeth bullied, nagged, cajoled, checked plans and accounts, greased palms and buried the sums involved deep in the accounts.
By December there was a new façade to the club over the second house. A large lobby had been set into the front of the building. Inside was a small porter’s lodge to be run by Mr or Mrs Knott. Beyond that lay a vast restaurant with acres of white tablecloth and subdued lighting. In the basement there was to be a sauna and a gym. There was already a writing room, a library and a small computer Elizabeth was using at present for the accounts. More bedrooms were added. Elizabeth had even bought up, lock stock and especially barrel, a gentleman’s wine cellar.
Above the portico, in gilt letters, hung the sign ‘The New Hope Club’.
At lunchtime one day Elizabeth, Margaret and Julie all met in the restaurant and then moved to the chairs by the fire in the long, cream sitting room. At the end of the room, double doors led into the writing room, which was not yet in use.
Elizabeth, holding out. her hands to the fire, said, ‘I’m glad no one suggested Christmas decorations. It’s a relief to find one place which doesn’t remind you of turkey and bath cubes.’
‘We should think about the opening of this place,’ Margaret said. She was due back in court later and wore a black suit with a white stock at her neck. ‘Is it members only or do we want some prominent women as well?’
Elizabeth looked startled. ‘Do we want publicity at all?’ she asked. ‘We’ve got enough members to fill up the Club and quite a lot who’d like to join. Anyway, I’ve got a vested interest in keeping quiet. My husband knows what I’ve been doing but not quite on what scale. He’s pleased that my little job has cheered me up, but still can’t understand why it takes so long for me to get carpets cleaned. Frankly, you can think what you like, but I’d rather he didn’t find out from the papers that I’ve been in charge of buying, gutting and planning a whole building.’
‘You can’t tell him the truth?’ Julie asked.
Elizabeth said bluntly, ‘It’s hard enough telling myself the truth. I know he wants a well woman, but only in his way, and his way makes me ill. I’m working on a solution which means I can have the man I love and the father of my children and still manage to get out of bed in the morning. But I’d just like to keep the opening quiet. Apart from that, I can’t see the point. The women who come here like the privacy. This is where we come to talk, relax and sometimes just hide out, or if we want a good laugh, time to be alone and think, or support and advice from our friends. If the club gets too much publicity, it could become the kind of place everybody rings when a woman goes missing—“Try the police. Try the hospitals. Try the women’s refuge. And now, try the Hope Club.’”
‘But my instinct tells me that we ought to face that out,’ Julie said. ‘That maybe we’re not private, but hiding. That maybe we’re acting like women always have done, talking in secret like slaves and hush-up when massa comes around.’
Margaret nodded. ‘Men’s clubs have always worked because men could go there when they wanted to relax among friends or their wife was threatening a row. And they’ve worked as places where you could swap professional information and get tips on the Stock Exchange or the 2.30 at Kempton Park. If them—why not us?’
‘Why not us?’ said Elizabeth. ‘Why not us?’ She looked at the others. ‘I don’t think you live in the same world as I do. I live in the one where men think that a conspiracy is three women and a baby being together for three-quarters of an hour and not talking about nappies and knitting. And it’s not getting any better; as women start doing more and men’s jobs start being more threatened, it gets worse. A lot of men are very frightened now. They daren’t admit it but they are, and men are trained to hit out when they’re frightened. Put this place on the map with a public opening, Margaret, and we’ll have to cope with everything from domestic spite to getting our windows smashed in by men who think that it’s a lesbian club. Or we’ll leave our houses with a barrage of jokes in our ears—“Out for a night with the girls, then, are you? Don’t lose all the housekeeping money playing poker. Let me hear all the dirty jokes when you get back!” And if we put this place on the map, it’ll start looking desirable and friendly and nice, and men don’t like the feeling they’re excluded from nice places by women. And what about reprisals? Not just sarcastic remarks and nasty atmosphere. You’re a barrister, Margaret. You know the statistics about violence against women.’
Margaret looked at her soberly. ‘I don’t like the idea of being intimidated,’ she said.
‘All right then,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Try this one and see if you like it. Men are a problem. What about women?’
‘What about them?’ Margaret asked impatiently. ‘I’m due back in court in three-quarters of an hour …’
‘She’s right,’ Julie told her. ‘Women have got a lot of problems. This place could look like the spot where they find solutions.’
‘We look privileged,’ Elizabeth said. ‘No wonder—many of us are. Some of us earn a lot of money. Admittedly, some of us have nothing, but I’m the person with the pocket calculator here and I’m telling you that most of us are better off than the average and some of us are very well off indeed. If that weren’t so, we couldn’t keep the place open at all. So we have a lot of women with large incomes and many more with skills and abilities. And outside the walls of the club there are women in trouble crying out for support. Their children have been taken away by the local authority and they can’t get them back. Their husbands beat them up and they don’t know where to go …’
‘We can refer women to the people who can help them,’ Margaret said stiffly.
‘That’s where they’ve already been,’ Julie told her. ‘And what about the new problems, where there isn’t anybody to go to? Would you have believed ten years ago—fifteen years ago—that one day you might have to start thinking about Asian girls who were being pressured into marriage? Or maybe some girl who’s had a baby for money and now she doesn’t want to give it up?’
‘There are laws to cover these things,’ Margaret said doggedly. Julie looked sceptical. ‘Anyway if we’re so rich and clever,’ she continued, ‘why should we have to hide from men, in case they punish us? Or from women because they think we could help them? It’s a bad idea to hide—things usually catch up with you in the end and when they do, it’s worse.’ She glanced at her watch. As she stood up, the telephone rang. Margaret answered it. ‘It’s for you, Julie,’ she said.
Julie raced over and took the phone. She spoke for a minute and banged down the receiver. She turned back to the others.
‘They double-booked the recording studio,’ she said in rage. ‘This album will be released the day my first grandchild is born.’
‘I must go now,’ said Margaret picking up h
er briefcase. But just as she made for the door the telephone rang again.
‘It’s for you, Margaret,’ Julie told her.
Now Margaret spoke for several minutes and replaced the receiver. She looked furious. ‘That was my clerk. Five members of the jury have gone down with gastroenteritis. They think it must have been something in their lunch. The judge says he’ll call off the trial for this afternoon and try again tomorrow. Otherwise he’ll have to swear in a new jury and start the trial afresh. Oh, well, I might as well sit down again for a while. We can go back to this question of the opening. It isn’t just a matter of the opening. It’s a whole set of principles we’re talking about.’
Julie yawned. ‘Why don’t we all get together after Christmas. Everyone should have a chance to speak.’ She thought about it for a minute and said, ‘I expect I’ll be able to speak. In a kind of strangled voice.’ Dropping into broad dialect she said mockingly, ‘Me moder—me auntie—and me auntie girl, her wid the baby which never sleep, not one second of the day or night he close he eye—they all comin’ to London to see they Julie. Oh my. Oh my, oh my.’
The others laughed.
Margaret said snobbishly, ‘This Christmas I’m entertaining my husband and his mother, my father and my lover, and my lover’s two young sons. That’s the nucleus. There may be more. This year I’m making my husband and my lover pay contributions towards the cost of extra help. This year I shall maintain the normal, rational, pleasant nature of my life for the full fifty-two weeks, not just fifty-one and a week spent presiding over the court of misrule. This year plans will be made, contingencies covered, and I shall lie on the sofa, doing no more than keep the peace.’
‘Between Edward and Robert?’ asked Elizabeth incredulously.
‘No, between Robert and his mother and between Edward’s sons and my father’s dog. But this year,’ she emphasized, ‘I shall have all that under control.’ She leaned back in her chair.
‘Congratulations,’ Elizabeth said.
The door opened and a tall, elegant figure came into the room.
‘Oh you’re here,’ cried Hannie as she swept across the carpet. ‘How wonderful!’ She was in evident good spirits, wearing a flashy purple cape and thick leather boots and carrying several bags.
‘Hannie,’ shouted Elizabeth and Margaret with one voice, ‘where have you been? You’ve been gone for weeks!’
Slumping into a comfortable armchair, Hannie lit a thin cheroot and said, ‘I’m surprised to find you all here. Why aren’t you out at work? Or chopping down the turkey or stuffing the Christmas tree? How can you sit there idly at this time of year and call yourselves decent women?’
Margaret smiled. ‘We don’t want to think about all that now. Tell us where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing.’
‘I will,’ Hannie said promptly. ‘And, in a way, it’s a seasonal tale…’
And so, as the Salvation Army band struck up in the street, and a rendition of ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ wafted up to the windows of the Hope Club, Hannie Richards began her story.
HANNIE THOUGHT OF WATER—MINERAL WATER, TAP water, iced water, fountains, waterfalls, water in abundance. The hot sweat flowed down her back as she bumped in her Land Rover along a track, once part of the old Mediterranean trade route, in the Republic of Chad in central Africa. Far, far away she could see through the haze the faint line of the mountains of the Tibesti region, where she was headed. Otherwise the long plain, dried-up and sparsely covered with small, scrubby trees and bushes, seemed endless, stretching ahead, behind and all around, parched and featureless. She had been travelling like this for three days. The village should, if her calculations were right, be thirty miles ahead. If they were wrong, she was in trouble.
Meanwhile, she was desperately thirsty. She dreamed of that neglected bottle of mineral water which had lain so casually on the marble surface of the table where she had been sitting, under a plane tree, just a week ago in warm Roman sunshine.
The man opposite her had been plump and middle-aged. He wore a smart, pale suit such as successful businessmen wear. He had gold cuff links and a slim gold watch. He had mild, clever brown eyes and spoke impeccable English, better than her own, in a low, calm voice. He puzzled her.
‘The matter,’ he said, ‘is obviously made complicated by the civil war which has gone on there for many years. I should never have thought of sending a woman, but when I looked at the male candidates, I had to reconsider the question. They were drug-runners, mercenaries, men of the worst character. They were, if it does not seem too exaggerated to say so, stamped with vice. To employ them was unthinkable. Fortunately at that moment someone suggested your name. You were recommended to me as a woman not dead to all feeling and, above all, honest. Since the matter involves a child—’ he shrugged, ‘I can think of no one better.’ He looked closely at Hannie and said, ‘You seem doubtful. We are offering a good price. What are your objections? Is it the danger?’
‘I should like to know more,’ she told him.
‘The civil war in Chad has gone on more or less since the French gave up responsibility for the area twenty years ago. Should we agree that you are to go, I shall provide you with a complete briefing. For the moment, imagine an enormous area, five times the size of Great Britain in fact, half desert, containing 192 peoples speaking 110 different languages. The war is basically between the Islamic groups, living mainly in the north, and the Christians of the south. The French left control in the hands of the southerners. Ever since then the battle for leadership has gone on. There are factions, factions of factions, loyalties of faith, family and tribe. Violence, corruption and treachery are never far away. The Libyans have backed the Islamic side, the Christians have called in the French. They sent the Foreign Legion. The neighbouring states have tried for agreements to end the war, but no solution has remained in force for long. The area to which you would go is in the uplands, among the foothills of the mountains. It is a very arid area, quiet at present so far as we know, but our intelligence is poor. At any rate it is 600 miles from the border with Nigeria and frighteningly close to the real Muslim strongholds in the mountains—and a people called the Toubou, so well known for their ferocity that some have called them the Sicilians of Chad. As you can see, there is danger.’
A white-coated waiter flicked two pigeons from a table on the other side of the tree.
Hannie felt inclined to confide in this soft spoken and very calm man. She said, ‘I often find that the most doubtful part of the jobs I do is not the job itself but the people who hire me. I usually prefer to know who they are and why they need me. You’ve already said that you won’t tell me. You need an African child exported from the Republic of Chad with no questions asked. You’ve satisfied yourself that I’m not from the back end of my business, where the personnel are scum. You’ve failed to find your Bogart, or Mitchum, tough, a little frayed around the edges, perhaps, but still capable of chivalry to the ladies and fidelity to friends. That’s because they don’t exist. Ninety per cent of the people in my trade know that women and friends are for using, not helping. I’m not exactly like that—which is why I’m the person who asks the questions. There’s a child, as you point out, involved here. I have to examine the risks, which include you, before I take on the job. Otherwise I may lose my life, and the child may lose his. If he does, I’m the one who has to watch him die, not you.’
She looked into his peaceful face and realized what was unusual about him. He was not challenging her as men almost always did at this stage in the proceedings. This man—Signor Sebastiano he had called himself—was not even thinking of her as a woman. He was measuring her as if he wanted a servant for a position of trust. More than that, he was measuring her in many different ways, so many that she could not be sure what he was looking for. He said nothing and she went on, ‘Let me put it this way. Matters of this kind usually involve politics, money, sex or the family. Perhaps you could give me some indications.’
He was reading her, s
he thought resentfully, a great deal better than she was reading him. She still could not fit him into any context. He was not a politician, not a businessman, certainly not a crook.
He said unhesitatingly, ‘The closest definition is—family.’
Hannie felt furious. She should never have offered him categories into which he could fit himself. He had taken advantage of this to mislead her. But the truth was that she and Adam were short of money. That simple house in the country, that wholesome country life, even with their earnings from the farm, cost a fortune to maintain. She needed this job. She asked, ‘Can you tell me more than that? The word family doesn’t really seem to explain a lot, here.’
He said, ‘I’m afraid I can tell you no more. Each of us must trust the other. I have been as honest as I can about the dangers. I am very eager to get the boy out of that dangerous country, where famine and illness are probably a greater peril than bullets.’
Hannie said, ‘All right. But I want 40,000 dollars, over and above expenses. And I want it in gold.’
His smooth, rather pasty face did not move. ‘Of course,’ he told her. ‘I’ll give you half now, if you’ll tell me what arrangements you would like to make. The other half, naturally, will come to you when you return.’
Hannie thought—half stays here; from now on only half of anything goes back to England. She surprised herself by this thought. What was she—a squirrel burying nuts for the winter? She stared up into the leaves of the plane tree, autumn leaves. Well, she thought, if it’s autumn that’s what I’ll be—a squirrel.
‘Is something troubling you?’ Sebastiano asked. Hannie looked at him. He was fast, very fast. She said, ‘No, nothing.’
‘The rainy season’s ended,’ he told her. ‘So you can travel any time now.’
‘As soon as possible,’ said Hannie. A leaf floated down on to the marble top of the table. It lay beside the half-empty bottle of mineral water.
Hannie Richards Page 9
