‘You were very brave, back there, when you invited them to shoot you before they took the boy,’ Hannie said, by way of making agreeable conversation.
‘It was my duty,’ said Angelica.
‘Well, not everybody does their duty,’ Hannie told her.
Angelica said implacably, ‘I try, but I do not always succeed.’ She added, ‘Yours is a strange way of life. Are you happy in it?’
‘I never think about it,’ said Hannie. ‘I do it for the money.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Angelica. ‘Is there no other reason?’
‘What other reason is there?’ asked Hannie. ‘Don’t start telling me to examine my motives—that’s just a way of saying they bloody well need examining, if not scrubbing out with disinfectant. I mean, you’re sitting next to me with a kind of Salvation Army look on your face—“And how did you come to be in this position, you poor girl.” Well, I’m not poor and I’m not a girl. I’m a successful smuggler. That means I break the law, but what laws? I might break a law preventing me from taking whisky into Saudi Arabia and come back and break a law preventing me from taking marijuana into Scotland. If I got the consignments mixed up and took the marijuana into Saudi Arabia and the whisky into Scotland, I’d be in the clear. I can walk into the Soviet Union with a suitcase full of Communist literature but I can’t bring anti-Soviet material by their own writers out. I can take the anti-Soviet literature to South Africa in truck-loads. What happens if they catch me trying to come in with Communist propaganda? You’d be surprised what’s considered contraband from place to place—contraceptives, instant coffee, marigold seeds, frozen panda semen without a licence, brandy for the parson, baccy for the clerk—the laws I break aren’t the ten commandments. They’re just what suits a particular government at a particular time. Don’t forget they used to have to smuggle in the English version of the Bible. I dare say when they did they hired some depraved character like me and then sat in the back of an ox-cart with him asking him why he led the life he did. These governments make the rules their way, and I break them my way. And, come to that, Bob’s contraband and you’re a receiver.’
And with that Hannie drank some more coffee and sat back in her seat. What had he said, Bob, when she woke him up and gave him some tea and cakes and told him he was going in an aeroplane? He had nodded, hadn’t he, and said, ‘I must.’
Not sure that he understood what he was saying she had asked him, ‘Must?’
He had waved round him at the room, still full of people and said, ‘I—’ and then, lost for words, had circled his arms, wide, as if embracing an invisible person. And Hannie, feeling the great impulse to love, protect and nurture in the gesture, had smiled and shrugged, saying, ‘I don’t know about all this. I hope it’s all right.’
‘All right,’ he had assured her. ‘Very all right.’
In retrospect, the generosity of the gesture, the hope and love on the face of the child filled her with fear for him. What would the world do to his trust and bravery? She had told him, instinctively, ‘Be careful.’ And, ‘Not careful,’ he had said and had widened his arms, as if to include everything and everybody in the room.
As she thought about this, Angelica said, ‘I’m sorry if you think I was trying to lecture you. All I really thought was—well, drugs, guns, you seem like too nice a person to be mixed up—I’m not putting this very well. It’s just that in some respects you’re very unlike the usual kind of person—’
‘I just do it for money, that’s all,’ said Hannie. ‘I lead a very expensive life.’
Bob came laughing out of the pilot’s cabin. He said, ‘I took it up to 25,000 feet. The pilot said it was good.’
The priest said, ‘I think that’s enough now. You must have some breakfast.’
‘Yes,’ agreed the boy.
‘Angelica,’ Hannie asked, ‘what is he? Why are we taking him to Rome?
Angelica said, ‘Honestly, Hannie, I don’t know. Initially, my bishop asked me to meet you, with the others you met, and take the boy to Jos and settle him a bit and get him to learn a little English. After you arrived, the orders changed. Father Martin got a phone call from the bishop saying the boy must be brought to Lagos. At the hospital I used the bishop’s name—plans changed again. This time we were to fly to Rome in a special plane. That, I imagine, was because of the attacks. But those orders didn’t come from the bishop. He had to make another call before he rang back with the plan.’
The priest, who had been having his breakfast with Bob, came down the plane to them. ‘Does he often do that?’ he said to the women.
Hannie turned round. Bob was sitting still, in the back seat. He looked straight ahead. She had often seen him do it while they were travelling in the Land Rover, even while they sat on the rock with helicopters racketing overhead. It was what he had been doing on that first night as he lay staring up at the stars in his sleeping bag. It was true that in these abstracted moods he rarely blinked, which was strange, but she had thought his habit of drifting into periods of stillness and consideration must be tribal and, in fact, a vast improvement on table-leg kicking, asking for the TV Times, checking the fridge for Cokes and all the other ways of passing the time adopted by twelve-year-olds in her own culture. She had also wondered if it might be a symptom of petit mal. She mentioned this to the priest.
‘That could be,’ he said sombrely. He went back to the pilot’s cabin.
‘So you really don’t know what it’s all about?’ Hannie said to Angelica.
‘My bishop said that I was not to ask myself any questions, even if I wished to,’ Angelica told her. ‘I have to obey.’
‘Pretty hard not to try to put two and two together,’ Hannie said. ‘I’d think you could hardly help yourself, sometimes.’ She looked back at Bob’s small figure, still as a statue. She added, ‘I began to wonder if his breathing didn’t slow down when he went like that. Now I come to think of it—it resembles a trance condition. I wonder if that’s it.’
‘I’m forbidden speculation,’ Angelica said.
‘I couldn’t manage that myself,’ said Hannie.
The priest, coming back from the pilot’s cabin, bent over and said, ‘Mrs Richards. I’m to ask you if you could spend a few days in Rome after we arrive. There are some questions we should like to ask you.’
‘Who’s we?’ said Hannie, who had a built-in dislike of answering questions.
‘Your employers, I should have said.’
‘Who are—?’ said Hannie.
‘I’ll have to check if I’m at liberty to tell you,’ he said, moving back down the aisle of the plane.
‘Remember—no names, no information,’ Hannie called after him. Then, rather to her own surprise, she went to sleep. She seemed to be back in the column of people she had been travelling with before. At any rate, she had the same young child by the hand, and, walking beside her on the other side, two fat lambs. In this strange company she walked the dried-up trail, but this time without any pain. She was at peace. Then the others were no longer there. They climbed a grassy hill, and Hannie knew that when they got to the top they would see something wonderful which would make them very happy. As they took the final slope she was very excited and so was the child. She skipped beside her. The lambs ran a little before them. At the top of the hill the lambs stopped. Hannie and the child arrived and they all stood, awe-struck, gazing at—and then she woke up. Angelica was shaking her.
‘Oh, Angelica,’ she complained. ‘I was having such a wonderful dream. It isn’t every day I have a wonderful dream. Most of the time I have lurid anxiety dreams. I could kill you, Angelica.’
Angelica’s stiff face smiled. ‘You sound like one of my children,’ she said. ‘The children at my orphanage. I’m sorry—we’re putting down to refuel. I only wanted to tell you so that you can go and stretch your legs. What was your dream?’
‘It was—’ said Hannie and of course, she had it. She’d got it. ‘Oh, my God,’ she groaned. ‘I know what it is. I kn
ow why we’re here. I know what this is all about.’
‘What?’ asked Angelica.
‘Do you really want the purity of your ignorance sullied?’ said Hannie. ‘Are you sure it isn’t against instructions? They could take your badge away.’ She felt very depressed.
The priest came hurrying up and said, ‘I can tell you who you will be seeing in Rome. They wish you to know.’
‘I already do,’ said Hannie. ‘Tell me—was it done by computer?’
‘I believe it was,’ he said. ‘On the other side, at least. But I have a problem here, now. I told them I thought that you, who have been involved with the whole situation all the time, might suspect the truth, or part of it. It seems you have. And you can imagine we want none of this made public.’
‘You can trust me,’ Hannie said promptly. ‘I’d never breathe a word of all this. I hope that it’s all a lie, an error, a terrible mistake. I believe none of it and the sooner you find out you’re wrong, that there isn’t a particle of sense in the whole business, the better for all of us.’
He looked at her sorrowfully. ‘I cannot believe you mean that, Mrs Richards,’ he said.
‘Then you haven’t looked at the history of the last two thousand years,’ she declared. She went up the plane and sat down by herself.
Twelve men were dead already, she thought, watching the Irish priest and Angelica talking with their heads close together. The eight in the helicopters, three in the attack on the Mission, and Mr Omovo, the Methodist priest. If the second wave of attackers on the Mission had been Italian, as she supposed, then they were defending the party inside, especially Bob. That made the men who had come through the windows to kidnap him the opposition. So who was the opposition?
Somehow both sides had, presumably with the help of a computer, worked out that the new Messiah, son of God, had been born and was living in a desolate corner of an ignored and desperate African state. One side had decided to rescue him from the obvious dangers of famine and war. The other had either found out and decided to get him for themselves, or had started off on the quest at the same time. Anyway, Hannie’s team had been quicker. In the excitement, twelve men had died. Who would want to lay hands on the son of God? Islam could make use of a new prophet. Judaism could make use of a Messiah. She was extremely lucky, thought Hannie, that she had not had to face Jews and Arabs simultaneously. Unless, she thought suddenly, she had. It could have been a three-cornered contest. How would she know? And with that idea came terror. They were not safe anywhere with that boy aboard. Three faiths, two of them over a thousand years old and one far more ancient than that, were separately in political conflict all over the globe. A real religious leader, to inspire and transfigure his followers, would be invaluable—to, say, the Catholic Church in Poland and Eastern Europe, to Islam in the battle with Israel, to Israel itself—a religious leader backing one sect of a faith, Christian, Islamic or Jewish, would be invaluable to the sect. And twelve men had already died. How many more would there be? They themselves were in danger on the plane. They would be in danger on the ground. If the boy was accepted as prophet or saviour by anybody, the whole world would be in danger of crusade, jehad and holy war by the power which had him, against whoever had not, whether they were Christians or Muslims, Jews or Communists, Protestants or Catholics, Reformed, Orthodox, Sufis or Holy Rollers. Standing in front of all this would be skinny, black Bob, his embrace for the world turned into a stranglehold. He was an H-bomb. Already twelve men had died. Poor Bob. Poor old world, thought Hannie Richards.
Now it was an Irish Cardinal, Cardinal Riordan, who sat beside Bob on a well-upholstered, antique sofa in a small room in the Vatican. The walls were covered with florid paintings on religious and historical themes. Underneath sat a large number of people. There were many pairs of black, ecclesiastical boots on the marble floor. Hannie sat on Bob’s other side. She had bought him an electronic toy earlier. He sat fighting an electronic battle and little bleeps came out of the machine, which he had refused to leave behind. Across the room Hannie saw Angelica and Father Martin sitting on another sofa, talking to each other, like patients in a dentist’s waiting room.
Hannie, who had already told her tale, several times, to Cardinal Riordan, while a secretary took it down in shorthand, said to Bob, ‘Are you looking forward to seeing the Pope?’
The boy went on pushing the buttons rapidly with his slender fingers and said, ‘Like—you mean? I will like him?’ He was still wearing the red robe.
‘I’m sure you will,’ she said. He had been abstracted today. She hoped that the shock of so many new scenes and events was not destroying his composure.
‘I will like him,’ said Bob. ‘He will be my father.’
‘That sounds nice,’ Hannie said. She imagined they would have to test him. He’d have to confound them, the way Jesus confounded the doctors in the temple. He might have to do a miracle. Poor Bob. The electronic toy let out a series of high-pitched bleeps. The crowd sat round the room, staring. A fly buzzed.
‘How long do you think we’ll have to wait?’ Hannie asked the Cardinal. She felt Bob tugging at her sleeve.
‘I’m sure he won’t be long,’ the Cardinal told her. He had a long face and an anxious expression. He had been kind to Bob, but withdrawn. The boy tugged at her sleeve again.
‘Hannie,’ he whispered. ‘Outside.’ He pointed at the imposing double doors.
‘All right,’ she said and got up. He rose too, still holding the toy.
‘Where are you going?’ asked the Cardinal in alarm.
‘He wants to go outside,’ said Hannie. ‘I don’t know why. But he isn’t capricious or restless—if he wants to go out, he’s got a reason.’
The Cardinal followed them into a large marble hall. Two Swiss guards stood on duty outside the double doors. At the end of the hall were more doors, more Swiss guards. Bob walked into the middle of the floor, looked back at the Cardinal, who was still trailing them, stopped and said, with a smile, ‘I’m bleeding.’
‘You’re what?’ said Hannie, but not loudly. ‘Where? Where, Bob?’
He pointed between his legs and said, ‘Bleeding,’ in a reasonable way.
‘Oh, God,’ cried Hannie. Imagining some terrible complaint, she tried to tug up his red robe, but Bob, outraged, tried to tug it down again.
The Cardinal came up behind her. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ he asked.
Bob dragged Hannie a little farther off. ‘Hannie,’ he said earnestly. ‘No, all right. I am a woman. I bleed. You do bleed, many times. I bleed now. Not before, but this time.’
She looked at him carefully now. It was true that he had been modest about his bodily functions while they had been travelling together. It was true that he had driven Angelica and her out of the bathroom at the Mission before he took his bath. For all she knew, he was a girl. Either that, or he was raving mad. She would have to find out.
The Cardinal had caught up with them again. She looked at Bob, who looked pleased. She had the idea he expected her to tell the Cardinal the joyful news now. The Cardinal said, ‘You really must tell me what’s going on. The Holy Father will be here at any moment.’
Hannie spread her hands helplessly. ‘It’s like this,’ she said. ‘Well—the truth is—’ and she paused again. As she said afterwards, she had done some hard things in her time but probably the hardest ever was standing in the Vatican trying to explain to a Cardinal that the little African Messiah on whom all their hopes were pinned was also a girl, having her first period. She pulled herself together. ‘Bob says he’s bleeding,’ she told Cardinal Riordan.
‘Very good,’ Bob interrupted.
Hannie could not help smiling. ‘What he seems to be saying,’ she continued, ‘is that it’s natural. He is, in short, a girl.’
The Cardinal’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened. ‘But this is very serious,’ he said. ‘Have you any reason to think he may not be male?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Hannie.
> ‘Mother say I must always be wearing boy’s clothes,’ Bob said. ‘Because bad men may rape me when I am not in the village.’
Hannie remembered his reluctance to put on the shorts Angelica had provided at the Mission until he was assured that they were boys’ clothes.
‘Would you get Angelica Simms?’ Hannie asked the Cardinal. He seemed too stunned to move, so she opened the parlour door herself. ‘Angelica!’
Responding to the urgency in Hannie’s voice, Angelica came immediately.
‘You speak Italian, don’t you?’ said Hannie. Angelica nodded.
‘Well, you’re not going to believe this one …’ said Hannie.
After Hannie had told her, Angelica went immediately to the guards and asked them something in Italian. She went straight to Bob and took him by the hand. She led him through the next set of doors, down a corridor full of niches and statuary, through some more doors, through a small chapel, where two nuns were praying, through another door—finally she pushed open another door into a room with washbasins and two lavatory cubicles.
‘Finding a Ladies in this place is like finding a needle in a haystack,’ she remarked with Anglican disapproval.
Bob stood there smiling at them.
‘Do congratulate her,’ Hannie urged, ‘I’m sure this is a cause for rejoicing among her people.’
‘Better check first that it’s true,’ said Angelica.
‘Now, darling,’ Hannie urged. ‘Let’s just look.’ They did. She and Angelica faced each other. ‘What a turn-up for the Holy See,’ said Hannie. She took some tissues from her handbag and gave them to Bob, who washed the blood from her narrow thighs.
Angelica said, ‘I’ll go and ask those nuns for some sanitary towels. Otherwise ‘I’ll have to go miles to a chemist.’ She remembered Hannie’s instructions, smiled at Bob and said, ‘Bravo.’ Then she disappeared. Hannie heard her outside saying, ‘Yes, Cardinal Riordan. The child is a girl. Will you excuse me—I have an errand to do.’
Hannie Richards Page 13
