Cleopatra's Sister

by Penelope Lively

  They will kill him, she thought. They are killing him at this moment. They have already killed him. He is dead, and I am not.

  3.44.

  Everything that had happened up till now had been endurable, she saw. It had been a question of keeping calm and rational and taking each day as it came. This was of another order. This was a further dimension. The rest was a warm-up.

  You have known this man for five days.

  She got up and walked around the courtyard. She stood talking to Molly Wright. Molly Wright said, ‘That poor girl is frantic about her husband. She’s trying to keep a stiff upper lip but she’s in a bad way. She’s pregnant, you know. I hadn’t realized that.’

  Lucy went into the refectory. The nuns, clustered together in one corner, gave off a gentle murmur. Praying. Lucy passed them, out into the corridor and up the stairs.

  She used the evil-smelling lavatory. She lay on her bed. She lay on her bed for a long time, but when she stood up again, checked her watch, it had been twelve minutes only.

  So long as nothing positive is known, then nothing positive has happened to them. So long as we do not hear anything bad, then nothing bad has happened.

  Five days. Out of twenty-nine years, ten months and a couple of weeks. During all of which time you never missed him.

  She sat down on the bed, took out her notebook and began to write. She recorded what had happened. She wrote tersely in language that seemed such a mocking representation of those heightened minutes that it made her impatient. ‘Talking to Howard B. in the courtyard at about 3.30. He got up to go into the building to fetch something. As he was about to enter the refectory, soldiers appeared. Also the interpreter. The following were seized and taken off: Howard Beamish, James Barrow, Ted Wilmott, Paul Morrison, Clive Stirling.’ She paused, staring at the paper, and saw the whole process unreel again: the men pushed and shoved by the soldiers, the interpreter shouting and pointing, Howard turning to look back at her. She completed the account. Then she turned back the pages of her notes and determinedly reread her entry for the day before. She made a correction, and expanded in a couple of places. Then she put away the notebook and checked the time: 4.15.

  She came down again, past the simpering Virgin on the bend of the stairs, past the bleeding Christ and the radiant rising Christ and the smirking angels. I have never been so close to iconoclasm. Nor I, thought Lucy. Nor I.

  She reached the foot of the stairs at the same moment as the officer in charge emerged from the room used by the guards as their headquarters.

  She confronted him. ‘Where are Mr Barrow and Mr Beamish and the others?’

  He shook his head dismissively.

  ‘Where have they been taken? When will they be brought back?’

  He went to pass her and she nipped in front of him. He was a big man. She looked up into the black bush of his moustache and smelled his lunch on his breath.

  ‘Where … are … they?’

  He roared at her. ‘Is not your business! These men are taken away.’

  He started to push past her. She sidestepped so that she was in front of him still. All rationality was gone; she was caught up in a gust of anger and fear. ‘You’re a bunch of shits, you and your masters – that’s what you are. Shits!’

  He put out a huge hand and batted her aside. She staggered against the wall. He paused, and for a moment she thought he was going to hit her. And then he spat. A jet of saliva hit her cheek and trickled down on to her T-shirt. He roared at her again – words she could not understand. Then he stamped off down the passage.

  She turned and ran up the stairs. In the dormitory she ripped off the T-shirt, put on her spare one, and took the other to the bathroom. She held it under the tap, wrung it out, and spread it over the end of her bed. She was shaking now, and near to tears. She sat down until the shaking grew less. She ground her teeth against the tears.

  Molly Wright came in. ‘Are you all right, Lucy? Someone said one of them was bawling you out.’

  ‘I’m OK. I tried to find out what’s going on.’

  ‘Hugh’s had a go. I’ve had a go. Lots of us have. They won’t give an inch.’

  ‘They’re shits,’ said Lucy. ‘Bastards.’

  Molly put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Come downstairs. Don’t sit up here festering on your own. It won’t help.’

  ‘In a minute.’

  Presently she came down. She saw the officer through the open door of the guards’ room, and stalked past.

  She walked again in the courtyard. She sat in the refectory. Sometimes she was alone; sometimes she was with others. She saw the sun inch down the sky, through the branches of the casuarina tree in someone’s garden, into a mesh of television aerials. She saw its rim touch the roofline of a low apartment building. 5.30.

  Perhaps he is seeing the sun go down, too. Perhaps he is not seeing anything, any more.

  Five days.

  The sun fell behind the apartment block. Presently the sky took on that fragile, bruised look of early evening. The place was very quiet. People talked in low voices, or not at all. 6.20.

  Lucy went back into the building, yet again. Yet again she wandered upstairs, came down. And as she did so she heard a commotion in the forecourt. A vehicle door was slammed. She froze, standing at the angle of the staircase.

  The front door opened. A soldier came in. He stood aside. James Barrow came … the airline steward … the young father. Ted Wilmott.

  Howard.

  People converged upon them. Howard said, ‘I think someone should look after Ted – he’s had a rough time.’

  ‘He threw up, that’s all. Poor little sod. And they clobbered him a bit for it. Well, more than that … I’ll tell you. In a straight line, though, when I can think straight again.’

  ‘Wait a bit,’ she said. ‘Don’t try right away …’

  ‘I’m OK. A bit punch drunk. Christ … Is that really the time? It felt like days, not a couple of hours.’

  ‘There’s a slight bruise on the side of your face,’ she said.

  ‘Is there? That happened when they chucked us into the van, I expect. There was nothing to sit on and they were pretty … unceremonious. I fell over. There were a couple of them in with us – peculiarly nasty types – and they jabbed the end of a rifle into anybody who uttered. So we shut up. And they seemed to be taking us for miles – God knows how long that bit of it went on. There was plenty of time to speculate about things, anyway, I can tell you. Not comfortable at all. I thought … Well, I thought of course that they were going to dispose of us, to show they meant business. Or something along those lines. It would have been a fairly standard move.’

  Lucy said, ‘I think a lot of us thought that, too.’

  ‘Then in odd moments of optimism I thought no, they’re going to use us to put pressure on London, in some way. That didn’t feel very encouraging either, though, thinking about it. I think I sort of stopped thinking and tried just to go along with it. And then suddenly we’d arrived somewhere. The van stopped and there was a lot of shouting and milling about and they bundled us out and into some long low building. An army barracks, I’d say. It all happened so quickly there wasn’t any chance to get one’s bearings but I feel as though it may have been outside the city. There was a sense of space. Anyway, they hustled us into a room with bars on the window that was very definitely some sort of guard room, or prison cell. Just concrete floor and a bench and a bucket in the corner. That was a pretty grim moment. And one of them standing outside the door glaring through the peep-hole and threatening to give us another jab if we talked. So we just muttered to each other a bit, feeling pretty glum. I mean, for all we knew we were going to be in there for days, weeks. But then after half an hour or so the door opened and we were off again – hustled off into another place, a big bare room with a desk. Pictures of our friend His Excellency on the wall. And a military bloke behind the desk, high-ranking evidently, much by way of brass buttons and gold braid. And the interpreter.’

&nbs
p; ‘Him,’ said Lucy.

  ‘Him. The arch apparatchik. Because that’s all he is. I’m convinced of that, after today. I’d been wondering if he didn’t have some more influential role. But now I’m sure. He’s the ultimate yes-man. There he was, dancing attendance on this big shot. Doing his stuff. Because the big shot set about haranguing us, right away. A stream of abuse about how our government was an enemy of Callimbia and London would learn that it could not act with such arrogance and we had been brought here to see that the government of Callimbia was strong and determined. And so forth and so on … the interpreter was hard put to it to keep up. It made pretty worrying listening. We deduced that the negotiations weren’t going too well. So anyway, when he paused for breath I tried to say that it would be useful if we could be told the state of play, that if we were better informed we could be more helpful, that sort of thing. But he just roared back and the interpreter said, “You are not here to take part in discussions, you are here to understand that this is a serious situation.” Barrow then started trying to say that in the circumstances we’d never for a moment thought otherwise but the interpreter cut him off. “Nobody is to speak, it is not permitted that you speak.” And the big shot harangued a bit more and then suddenly broke off and walked out of the room. The interpreter said, “Now you will be taken to a place that you will find interesting.” And he went too.’ Howard broke off. He blinked, shook his head.

  ‘Don’t go on if you don’t want to,’ said Lucy. ‘Have a rest. You look pretty shattered, you know.’

  He ignored this. ‘So then soldiers closed in on us – several of them, and some sort of officer – and it was back in the van again. They didn’t take us very far this time. Just a few minutes. And then we were at some other sort of barrack or prison or something. A lot of concrete passages, that was the impression one got. Unpleasant smells. Being marched past a lot of closed iron doors. Once we heard someone groaning. At least I think we did. And then they pushed us through a door and there was a big enclosed compound, with a very high wall topped off with barbed wire. We just stood there. We didn’t understand at first what it was all about. There was this rectangular space and high walls, nothing else. The soldiers sort of watched us. And we went on standing there, vaguely looking round, and then we began to see. The surface of the compound had been scattered with sand, and the sand was an odd colour. It was soaked with blood. It had been put down to cover it, and the blood had soaked up through.’

  After a moment Lucy said, ‘Perhaps it was animals. A slaughterhouse or something … to make you think …’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Howard bleakly.

  After a few moments he went on. ‘When they were sure we’d registered – taken in what we’d seen – they started to herd us off again. That was when Ted Wilmott threw up. He threw up on the floor where we were standing, and one of them whacked him with a rifle butt and then they made him get down on his hands and knees and eat his vomit. We protested, and Barrow got whacked too. Then they let Ted get up and moved us on. I was pretty dazed by then, I can tell you. I was only taking things in at half cock. I remember they took us to a room where there were these dark stains on the floor and the walls. And once we passed a man just lying on the floor in a passage with his hands tied behind him. I think he was dead. To be honest by then I thought I was going to throw up too. Or pee myself. And then suddenly time was up, or they’d got bored with us, or something, and they were taking us outside again and shoving us back in the van. I was beyond having any idea what to expect next by then. It could have been anything. I just sat there being rattled to bits – the driver was going hell for leather – and then we stopped again and they hauled us out and I saw we were back here. I think it’s only now that I’ve completely taken that in. We’re back here. I’m seeing you again. That was one thing I do remember quite clearly – the only clear thought I had at one point. I thought – if they’re going to do something ghastly to us, I’ll never see Lucy again. And then I thought that I’d only known you for five days, and that didn’t seem possible.’

  9

  ‘This was to put the frighteners on,’ said Hugh Calloway. ‘But to what end?’

  For, twenty-four hours later, nothing further had happened. Nothing, that is, by way of information or any hint as to what might be going on. Things happened in the claustrophobic world of the convent. Ted Wilmott was in a state of near-collapse, and requiring constant ministrations from the nuns and Molly Wright. His demoralization was contagious; several others now clung precariously to their balance of mind. There had not been any collective account of what the group of five had seen and heard, but everyone knew, either at first hand from one of those concerned, or through others. A chill ran through the entire group.

  Lucy thought: it is as though a door opened a crack and you saw for a moment into a room where something hideous is going on.

  Those able to remain reasonably level-headed went over and over recent events in search of clues.

  ‘One thing I can tell you,’ said Howard. ‘It’s only us they’ve locked up. This military big-shot let that drop at one point, when he was going on generally about British iniquities. People from your country are not wanted here. All are now told to leave. More along those lines … the impression was that other Brits, whoever there may have been, were given immediate notice to clear out on day one.’

  ‘I suppose we should be relieved,’ said Calloway.

  ‘In the abstract, yes. In a practical sense, one can’t help feeling that the more people they held the more difficult it would be for them to keep on hanging on to them.’

  James Barrow had a livid bruise across one cheekbone, where he had been punched. It seemed to have knocked the stuffing out of him. He slumped gloomily on the bench in the courtyard, as a small group stood around in the early evening. The only mildly cheering factor was that the attitude of their guards appeared to have undergone yet another adjustment during the course of the day. There had been no further abuse. A delivery of soap, nappies and sanitary towels arrived.

  ‘But why aren’t they pressuring us in some way?’ pondered Calloway. ‘What you would expect, is that yesterday’s exercise was a warm-up for something. They were putting the frighteners on, and then we were going to be told to … make some sort of plea to London, I should imagine. Something along those lines.’

  ‘It may yet happen,’ said Howard.

  But the day ended without further event. The convent fell silent and into that suspended state which passed for night, when people slept, or did not, when movement diminished to the passage of footsteps to and from the toilets, and the restless shifting of those for whom sleep was out of the question.

  Lucy was in a state of emotional fragmentation. Relief and apprehension alternated with gusts of pure fear. Sometimes optimism came padding out: it has been ultimately all right so far, none of us has been seriously hurt, Howard came back, it will be all right in the end. And then the fear stalked. She heard Howard again, and saw what he had conjured up. The door opened; she glimpsed horrors. Somewhere out there, no great distance from us, other people are going through worse yet. Callimbians. People for whom last week is now some unreachable paradise of normality, just as it is for us. People who have been pitched into nightmare.

  She lay thinking of this. Out there in the night, unknown people screamed. Died. Not the grey remote figures of catastrophe in newspaper pictures nor yet the vivid cinematic characters of television film but real conceivable people with whom she shared time and space. She could give them features – iconic, Byzantine, negroid, light, dark, the whole significant freighted range she had seen around her over these last days. People who were themselves the legacy of everything that had happened in this country, and who were now paying the price for being present, and in the wrong circumstances, at another climactic moment. It was possible, she found with surprise, even feeling the way she did – the mind spinning, the body aching – to experience some community with these invisible strangers. You felt s
ubtly strengthened, by empathy and outrage.

  These thoughts were still uppermost when she joined Howard the next day. They sat opposite one another at a table in the refectory. He took her hands for a moment: ‘Hello.’

  She said, ‘I keep thinking about what you saw.’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.’

  ‘You had to tell me.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it too – for most of the night,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t much alternative. And of whatever may have happened there. In that place … Poor sods, whoever they were. Anyone with the wrong credentials, I suppose.’

  Lucy said, ‘It’s as though something hideous and primeval came crawling out. You’ve always known it was there, but you don’t think about it. You don’t really believe in it.’

  ‘The depraved regime. The mad ruler. One had hoped to go through life without coming up against them. In so far as one had considered the matter. It’s the privilege of having spent one’s life in a relatively stable political climate.’

  ‘I used to write heated pieces about abuse of the planning laws. I’d get indignant about dog registration.’

  ‘We have lived luxuriously,’ said Howard. ‘Compared with most.’

  ‘This man is half English. People like him can happen anywhere.’

  ‘Of course. When the time is ripe.’

  ‘One thing,’ said Lucy. ‘At the beginning of all this I felt that this place wasn’t really anything to do with me. It was interesting but ultimately not quite relevant, like most of the rest of the world. I don’t feel that any more.’

  ‘To that extent we’re older and wiser. One could have wished to become so rather less traumatically.’

  ‘I’m so tired,’ she said. ‘Suddenly, I want to go home. I’m not going to go under, am I?’