Debatable Space

by Philip Palmer

  Then… I do not know. The missing months of my life. All RAM erased, no memories left.

  Then my memories begin again, a few months later. I was living in a flat in Peckham. I was overweight, my hair had gone totally grey. The flat was bleak and the wallpaper was peeling. Maggots crawled in the sink, among the remains of an abandoned apple. And I realised I was missing Andrei badly. I ached for him with such intensity, it felt like I would die.

  So I went back to him in the villa on Lake Como, apologetically, desperately, tail between my legs. But by then he’d changed the locks. He’d burned all my clothes on a bonfire. And he already had a new girlfriend, who was wearing my jewellery. And I was consumed with jealousy so strong it made my jaw ache.

  I tried to hit him in fact, but he was too fast, too strong. Damn him. I left, weeping. The girlfriend looked scared.

  Now, when I look back, I realise I was right to leave him. It was the beginning of my beginning. At the time, though, I cursed myself and hated myself. How could I have given up the love of my life? What kind of woman was I?

  And I decided, in my blackest moment, I would never forgive myself. I flew to Australia. I became an actress, and failed in that career. I drank, I took drugs, I crashed two cars, I had a nervous breakdown. I wasted many many years. And I didn’t see Andrei again until he was almost a skeleton.

  But I dreamed of him constantly. And I missed the slaps. I found myself yearning for them. I sometimes stared at myself in the mirror, stroking my cheek, imagining the slap. I went to the karate dojo and sparred and deliberately dropped my guard so that I would be punched or kicked in the face. Just to feel that joyous shock once again!

  With time, the slap-yearning faded. I internalised my insanity. But it’s still there. I don’t need a therapist to tell me that my desire for Sex and Death and my longing for a strong man to strike me are signs of an dangerously unstable psychology. I know I am, deep down, all wrong. I just hide the signs.

  I’m.

  All.

  Wrong.

  Life begins at a hundred and forty…

  … that’s what I always say.

  After I broke up with Andrei, and after the drink and drugs years, I decided it was time to settle down, behave more sensibly. So I sobered up, detoxed, and forgave myself. I bought a whole new wardrobe, having decided to dress older. And I dyed my hair an attractive grey.

  Then I went to university and did a BA in Maths, followed by a BA in History. I started a PhD in Marine Biology but abandoned it. Then I travelled a bit more. Then I became a schoolteacher for two decades, at a series of independent secondary schools in the UK. I taught history, and politics, and organised all the school trips. It was, in its own way, exhilarating and challenging. Then it got boring, the staffroom in-fighting started to piss me off, so I quit.

  And I was old now, very old indeed. One hundred and forty-three years old. But though I now favoured a slightly mature-woman look, my joints were as supple as ever. I could run a mile in four and a half minutes. I could bench-press those two big weights, whatever they are, the biggest ones. I could swim for an hour. I could sleep with two different men on the same night, and satisfy both. Though that happened quite rarely and gave me little pleasure. I could read very small print without reading glasses. And I had surgically implanted memory chips to help me keep track of all my experiences.

  I was no longer unique, or even unusual, however. This was a boom period in physical and mental rejuvenation. The cost was falling year by year; even middle-class people could now aspire to live for ever. Admittedly, I was among the oldest of the rejuves, but who’s counting?

  But we rejuves were a revelation even to ourselves. We would snowboard, break limbs, and have them healed within months. We were optimistic, cheerful, and always willing to believe the best of others. We went for walks at night; we chatted to rebellious teens; we believed profoundly in giving criminals a second chance. The young were a bitter, listless generation, unable to outdo their elders in the most basic things. The old had no cellulite, no wrinkles, no saggy boobs, no creaky joints. The old were the new young; the young were simply callow.

  Which serves those cocky bastards right…

  After I gave up teaching, I spent about twenty years enjoying myself, in moderation. Then my conscience kicked in and I got a job working for Save the Children, for about nine years. Then I applied for a job as chief executive of a new charity called African Aid, and I got it. And after a few years of that, I got broody and I went to the baby bank and asked for my baby back. Peter was unfrozen and then born. I became a mother.

  So there I was – with a baby, and a job, and a conscience, all at the same time. I was a devoted mum; and I was also Chief Executive of a major charity. Humanitarian. Liberal. Idealist. Workaholic-with-child.

  My home was in Johannesburg. But I had offices around the world, so I had two live-in nannies to help me look after Peter. I breast-fed for a while, but got tired of leaking milk in meetings. So I paid the nannies to take lactating tablets and provide a regular supply of breast milk. I hated the idea of giving my baby formula milk, I always felt the natural way was so much better. I took great joy in passing Peter from one nanny to another, and I loved the smell and the look of these women’s ripe breasts as they suckled my child.

  I was fascinated at all that screaming business. One minute, my Peter was a little bundle of joy, so cute you wanted to lick him all over. Then something would be wrong, he’d be hungry or cold or hot or consumed with angst or whatever it is that troubles babies so, and he’d swell and turn red and bawl and bawl. A breast was usually the solution. But sometimes the crying continued and continued, and I marvelled that a single small human being could contain so much unfocused rage.

  I think having a baby was a humbling experience for me. It made me a much richer, more grounded person. I would recommend it to anyone. Even if it’s only for a couple of years, it’ll really change your life. Trust me.

  But I regret, really, the fact that I was working for African Aid at the time I had Peter. It was bad planning really. There have been so many periods in my life when I had time on my hands, and I would amble through the day, taking breakfast at noon and watching daytime TV until it was time for the first drink of the day. If I’d had my baby during one of those periods, we could have had so much fun with each other. We could have gone to the park, rolled on the floor together, played with choo-choo trains, maybe even gone to mother-and-baby movie shows. All those sharing moments. How I wish I’d had them.

  But in this period, I was a driven woman. I felt a genuine idealistic passion for my work, and I was convinced that I was going to make the world a better place. And my love for Peter turned in on itself and transformed into an unshakeable desire to make the world fit for a new generation. I wanted to end poverty and infant mortality and corruption. I wanted to redeem Africa. I was, I’m not afraid to say it, an idealist. But because of my ideals, my hours with Peter were sadly truncated.

  I travelled a lot, across Africa, to America, and over Europe. So weeks would go by without me seeing my child. And I worked long hours at the office, and slept no more than three or four hours a night. But when I was most ready to play – usually at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. – Peter would all too often be fast asleep. And I would have to gently shake him awake, so I could cradle him, and place his toys in front of him.

  I was taking nildormer tables of course to help me reduce my sleeping hours. The pills had the effect of keeping me on a constant adrenalin high. I had big plans, and broad objectives. I had the ability to keep dates and priorities in my head, and unripple complex strategies as if I was opening a spreadsheet. My attention to detail was legendary.

  And I built a team of acolytes who were devoted to my passions, and subordinated their entire lives to my dreams. Amy, John, Michael and Hui, these were my core team members. Amy was from Dorking, with raven-black hair, and a nose that could easily, in my view, have been corrected with cosmetic surgery though she seemed to like
it the way it was. When I first got the job, she was a visibly bored and underfulfilled secretary. But I promoted her to be my assistant and she blossomed, and became my brilliant right-hand woman.

  John was black, South African born, a lawyer by training, and spoke in a babble of energy that made him hard to understand. But he was always worth listening to, and had a wonderful sense of humour and always laughed at my jokes. John was an orphan, both his parents murdered in a Nairobi carjacking, and he had a sad soul.

  Michael (London born, black) and Hui (New York Chinese) were the fact-finders. Fast talking, fast thinking, astonishingly astute. He was broad-shouldered and intense, she was funny and witty and had heartbreaker eyes. Michael and Hui were very tactile, very horny, very much in love. Then Hui spoiled it by having an affair with a journalist on the local paper, which she then told Michael about, in graphic detail. I don’t know why the hell she did that – was she afraid of being happy? Would it really have been so hard to keep her affair a secret? But anyway, they broke up, bitterly – but carried on working together.

  What a team they were.

  And I took pride in how well I led them. I was authoritative, inspired, never at a loss, fearsome and demanding, but secretly full of love for “my” people. They were my everything, really – I was all work and no play. A total workaholic, with sensible shoes and a “don’t flirt with me” attitude. Sometimes my staff liked to speculate about what kind of sex life I might have had as a young woman; not much was the consensus. I would cheerfully eavesdrop all this with my enhanced hearing, and smile to myself. If only they knew…

  Our job was to coordinate the global initiative to redress decades of political and economic chaos in Africa. We ran research projects, we funded irrigation schemes, we turned deserts into farms, and turned badly run farms into finely honed money-making machines. It was the most important job in the world; we were saving an entire continent.

  And it was, and is, the greatest of all Earth’s continents. For me, Africa is Eden. It is pure wilderness; its animals and its indigenous people seem to me to evoke the beginning of time. My heart was captured by the place, and all it symbolised.

  I remember the first time I went on safari, when I was in my late nineties. We drove out into the savannah, the sun beat down on us, and my skin prickled with excitement. I was with a party of Americans, our guide was a white Kenyan who was tall, square-jawed, and came from military stock. And the aim of the safari was to “shoot” – i.e. take digital photographs of – as many lions and leopards and cheetahs as we could find. This was a cut-price Big Game Camera Safari, and my fellow holidaymakers were a nightmare. They whinged, they whined, they believed in a vengeful God with a soft spot for Midwesterners, and they had canteens full of Coca-Cola instead of water. And eventually, I lost patience with them all, and wandered off by myself. I found a waterhole where an impala was drinking its fill. I walked up close, then closer still. For some reason the animal wasn’t in any way afraid of me. I was close enough to see the veins in its eyes, and smell its fur. So I hunkered down beside it and drank from the same watering hole, cupping the water in my hands and slurping it.

  “Fucking idiot!” screamed my guide from behind me, and the impala ran off. I got up slowly, carefully, as the guide berated me with language that would make a docker blush for having gone off unaccompanied. I said nothing, I just walked back with him to the jeep. He continued to berate me during the whole journey home. Some of his comments were fair, but some were cruel, and undeserved, and patronising, and sexist, and just plain rude. I was tempted to karate-strike the bastard, but I refrained. And to be honest, I wasn’t much bothered by what he said. I was lost in that moment – me, hunkered down, drinking next to the impala, at one with the animal kingdom.

  Then I flew home and sued the travel company for sexual harassment, winning back the entire cost of my trip. I had, of course, taken a tape recording of the abuse meted out to me, which made for entertaining listening. But though I took my revenge, I took little pleasure in it. I preferred to think back and savour the memory; a moment of total peace. Drinking at the watering hole.

  And so, many years later, I still felt Africa was in my blood. It was my adoptive country. And besides, I needed a cause, a mission. Palestine was at peace now. Iraq was a capitalist beacon state. Northern Ireland had a stunningly popular government ruled by a coalition of Catholics, Protestants and Muslims. Africa was the last of the great causes.

  And I was the last of the great idealists. Or so I felt. And in pursuit of my dream to save a continent, I was ruthless, determined and guileful. I blackmailed, bribed, told lies, and shamed people into helping me. I was by now a great amateur psychologist, and knew a million devious ways to make my requests and needs the first priority in the hearts and minds of those in power. And for many years, I was convinced I was doing something marvellous. I honestly thought that we were really making a difference.

  But slowly, the truth dawned: the work we did was largely futile. Our “new communities” were glorified refugee camps, and had the pernicious side effect of making native Africans dependent on Western i.e. white largesse. Our grand economic schemes kept foundering because of the appalling corruption of everyone, high and low, important and inconsequential. And appalling illnesses continued to sweep away entire generations – as HIV/AIDS was cured, it was replaced with contagious osteoporosis, and that in turn was replaced by the deadliest disease of all, the Immuno-Suppressant Plague that killed literally tens upon tens of millions of Africans in the most appalling manner possible.

  And so for a while, I became bitter and frustrated. I surrendered to the belief that the entire continent was doomed, cursed by God.

  But then I thought a little harder. I began to ask myself some fundamental questions. Such as, why are things so very bad here? And how come everyone is corrupt? And why the hell, in an era where the majority of people are much healthier than ever before, is this one continent literally plagued? Because, bizarrely, the Immuno-Suppressant Plague killed only black Africans living in Africa below the age of eighteen. How weird was that?

  So I researched more widely. I read novels and newspapers. I listened to pop records. I quizzed my staff when they were off duty, and drunk. I began going into bars, picking up men, flirting with them, and then asking them about politics. I got groped, a lot, and several times got myself in very delicate and dangerous situations. And I started to get a whiff of something very, very bad indeed.

  I started going to the hospitals, talking to the Plague victims. One time I spent a week with a fourteen-year-old girl called Annie who had the Plague. I watched as she literally lost all her skin. It fell off her in thick sheets. This was the way the disease worked – it made the body’s skin allergic to the body’s flesh. Then later I sang her lullabies, and told her stories in her native dialect. I drifted off to sleep for a while, and when I woke, I stared with horror. A fly was crawling over her skinless face, its tiny wretched feet touching her exposed blood vessels and ligaments. I was too frightened to swat it, in case I hurt the child; so I had to watch until it crawled, finally, on to the pillow. Then I crushed it in my hand.

  For twelve long hours I watched her die, and blessed her soul as it parted from her body. And I thought; this cannot be natural.

  So I analysed her blood works, carefully read the toxicology reports, and surfed websites on my laptop. And after months of intensive private research, I was sure of my ground. Finally, I knew the truth.

  The IS Plague was not in fact a natural mutation, it was lab-generated. Furthermore, it was patented. I hacked into an entire directory in the US Patents website where under the innocuous title New Millennial Infective Agents I found patents for genetic creations which included the Plague and a wide variety of biological weapons sufficient to end all life on Earth.

  The patents were made out to a wide variety of companies – RGM, Intolam, Ryacino, Cortexo – but further web investigation revealed that all these companies were satellite compa
nies of one big US biochemical company, Future Dreams.

  And this uber-company turned out to be the sole manufacturer and copyright owner of the drugs which were halting the spread of the IS Plague. The girl lying on the bed, groaning and wailing in despair, was hooked up to a drip feeding her morphine and immuno-boosters made and sold by Future Dreams. Her antibody-stimulating medication was a product of Future Dreams ingenuity. My charity was spending massively in attempts to alleviate the plague – in Europe alone, we raised €9 billion to “save Africa from this deadly scourge”. This money didn’t go to Africans to spend or eat, it wasn’t used to buy land or equipment, it was spent on expensive medication to save African children from a disease bioengineered and patented by the same company that made the medicines we bought at such vast expense.

  Was this, I wondered, some strange mischance? A weird coincidence?

  Or was it entirely deliberate? Would an American corporation blight and poison an entire continent in order to boost profits by then selling palliatives and antidotes? Poison the patient, then charge the patient for the taxi which takes them to hospital…

  I went to a bar to let these findings seep in. I spent several hours talking to a barfly, and a female barkeep. And finally, feeling drunk and sorry for myself, I floated my paranoid theory about the American drugs companies – that they had deliberately infected Africa with the Plague. The barkeep, Emilia, laughed. The barfly, Prakash, looked sad. Both agreed it was possible. Maybe, just possible.

  We had another drink.

  And another drink.

  And after a while, and after a lot of digressive rambling anecdotes, they admitted that what I had said was true. And everyone knew that it was true… The poisoned knew they were being poisoned. But they understood also that if they complained, no one would listen.