Something to Hide (18 page)

The yard smells of urine. The place has become a slum, an English rather than African one and therefore less excusable. I dump the shopping on the kitchen table, raising a cloud of sawdust. The termites are eating this house; soon there'll be nothing left. When I opened a book last night it disintegrated in my hands.

Bev comes in and slumps down in a chair. ‘What's for supper?'

‘I need a drink.'

I pour us two tumblers of gin and tonic. Bev's telling me that she's booked a flight to Cape Town, just for a couple of nights, so she can visit her friend Maxie before we finally leave Ngotoland. Apparently Maxie has Crohn's disease and an errant husband.

‘Next month she's having another section cut out of her gut,' says Bev. ‘That's three and counting, poor poppet. Adrian's been no bloody support at all. She thinks he's still carrying on with his little black friend. Can you believe that? Honestly, the woman's got a
colostomy bag.
'

The words echo, far away. I drain my glass, trying to summon up the courage to speak. The gin has gone straight to my head. ‘Bev, I've got something to tell you. Something I heard in the market today, about Jeremy's death.'

Bev puts her glass carefully on the table. ‘What about it?'

‘It's just – I know it sounds ridiculous – but there's this guy who charges up mobile phones and Clarence says he reads people's text messages—'

‘Clarence? What's he got to do with it?'

‘Well, Clarence thinks so too.'

‘Thinks what, sweetie?'

‘That Jeremy – that there was some plot. I've been thinking about it, you see – I mean, Zonac had it in for him and they're a pharmaceutical company, after all, they know about poisons and stuff—'

‘Poisons?'

Bev stares at me. Suddenly she looks like the schoolgirl I once knew. We're cooking up a plot against the teachers, we're childish conspirators in this dark room with its prison windows.

I take a breath. ‘He might not have died of natural causes.' Now I'm onstage, in a creaky old drama by Agatha Christie. ‘He might have been murdered.'

The word hangs in the room. Bev doesn't reply; she's looking at a Cabbage Patch doll lying on the floor. It's one of the dogs' toys, and its stomach has burst open.

I labour on. ‘I was just thinking that, well, maybe we should get in touch with the police—'

‘The police?' Her head rears up.

‘Or the British Consul in Assenonga, the chap who came to the funeral.'

‘Don't do that!'

‘Why not?'

‘Don't you dare!' She glares at me. Suddenly she's the girl with the slugs. Her ferocity takes me aback.

‘Shouldn't we – well, just make some enquiries? I mean, I know you're a nurse and everything, but nobody seems to know the cause of his death. Maybe he was poisoned, maybe Clarence was in on it, don't we owe it to Jeremy to find out?'

‘No!'

‘Why not?'

She looks at me, her eyebrows raised. Her rag scarf has slipped sideways, giving her a mad, jaunty air. She says: ‘Because it's true.'

‘
ACTUALLY, IT'S A
relief that you know,' Bev says. ‘I've hated keeping it a secret. After all, we've always told each other everything.'

My head's spinning. I gape at her as she sits there. She looks quite calm.

‘I don't believe it.'

‘Sorry.'

‘But—'

‘You don't want to know the reason,' she says. ‘You so don't.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because you were fond of Jeremy, and it's best to keep it that way—'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Just forget it, Petra!'

‘What do you mean? What has he done?'

Bev sighs, a sigh of profound weariness, and sinks her head in her hands. There's something theatrical about this, something that I don't understand. I feel sick.
You don't want to know the reason.

In the next room, the clock strikes the hour … I count the chimes, as if my life depends on it. My life and Jeremy's, my past and my future.

‘You know nothing, pumpkin,' says Bev. ‘Nothing about this rotten country, you with your
Guardian
and your nice London house. Why don't you keep it that way? Monkey hear no evil, monkey speak no evil.' She laughs shrilly, like Clarence. ‘All this little monkey wants to do, to be honest, is to get the hell out of here.'

WHEN THE CONTRACTIONS
start, Kelda is there for her – Kelda, her friend from across the street, and now her confidante. Lorrie has told her everything. Kelda can be trusted, having led a double life herself for years: she has a lover at the beefstock auction house who she visits when her daughter's at dance class.

Lorrie told her about the slimming pills but Kelda says she wasn't fooled. ‘I knew something was up, honey,' she says. ‘I mean, there's fat and there's
fat.
' Lorrie doesn't understand what she means by this.

There's nothing confusing about the contractions, however, and they're bang on time. Todd is not due home for another two weeks and Lorrie feels a wave of gratitude towards the baby, who is co-operating so obediently with her plan. That's the Chinese for you, she thinks. Sticklers for punctuality. She collapses into hysterical laughter which is stabbed by another cramp.

Lorrie can't quite believe it's happening, it still feels unreal – still, after all these months. She's dreamed her way through this pregnancy, as she has with the previous ones … those months in limbo, time stretching out interminably, and then, at the end, suddenly sucked hissingly down a tunnel, as if it had never existed. Do all women feel like this? she wonders. Not like
this,
however – no crib waiting, no diapers stacked in readiness. The contractions jolt her into a panic. She must be crazy. Months ago she stumbled into this and now she's terrified out of her wits. What happens if there are complications and she has to have a caesarian? Or the baby's born deformed? Or Mr Wang Lei's plane crashes and she's left with some explaining to do? Todd's been sending increasingly horny emails –
I wanna kiss your hot sweet pussy.
Thank God for Kelda, who takes her in hand and says it's all going to be fine.

They have arranged that Kelda will take care of Lorrie's children for the three days she'll be away, supposedly visiting an old schoolfriend in another city. A cab has been booked to take Lorrie to the hospital, which is only ten blocks away. The kids are in school; the cab-driver is thankfully a stranger, an Indian guy who asks no questions and is engrossed by the game on the radio.

As the cab drives down the street Lorrie turns, with difficulty – she's huge – and waves to the diminishing figure of Kelda, a sturdy figure in her pink sweats, who vigorously waves back. And then the cab turns the corner and she's gone.

Tears prick Lorrie's eyes. She's alone, utterly alone. There's no husband to hold her hand. There's no future with the baby who's beginning her turbulent descent into the world. That childhood, with its laughter and tears and bruised knees, will not belong to Lorrie. Nor will Lorrie be a mother in the years to come in that unknown place called China, a place that her daughter will call home. She'll become a teenager in a strange land without Lorrie to give her advice about hairstyles and boyfriends. Their nine months together is over.

Lorrie, convulsed with another contraction, grips the door-handle as the cab speeds along the highway. She tries to fix on the place that's always done the trick, the quarry she played in as a child just a few miles from here, the rope she swung on, the branches rushing past as her brother pushes her higher and higher. But her brother's gone too, his laughter wiped out by heroin. They've all gone. She's alone with her terror, and there's nobody to help her. Only strangers await her, in hospital gowns, ready to deliver her baby into a foreigner's hands.

BEV STANDS ON
a chair, taking down the wind chimes. I'm watching her, not helping. She gets off the chair and dumps them in a box. They collapse together, tinkling and sighing.

‘You must tell me what Jeremy did.'

‘No.'

‘Please, Bev—'

‘No.'

‘You owe it to me.'

She swings round. ‘What do you mean, I owe it to you?'

‘I mean …' I pause. ‘I mean, I've come all this way and …'

‘And what?'

‘Well, I just need to know what happened.'

Bev gets up again on the chair. She can barely reach the hook. I could do it easily but I don't move. In the darkness, the tree frogs whirr.

Bev flicks the glass with her fingernail. ‘I bought this one in Singapore. Pretty, isn't it?'

‘Listen, Bev, I don't care how bad it is.'

‘Ha, you really think so?'

‘It's worse for you to go through this alone. That's why I'm here.' I try to smile. ‘Blood-sisters and all that.'

Suddenly we're illuminated. We both jump. It's the intruder lights. The garden springs close.

‘It's just something in the bushes,' Bev says.

‘Something or someone?'

‘It's nothing!' she snaps. ‘It's always happening. They can't get in, whoever they are.'

I watch her in the harsh light. It's like being under interrogation. She gets down and dumps the wind chime in the box. There's the sound of glass breaking but she doesn't seem to notice.

‘It just feels weird,' I say, ‘that you've been keeping something from me.'

‘You mean I've been lying.'

‘No—'

‘You're right, sweetie-pie. I have.' She slumps down in the chair. ‘All these weeks I've been lying to you. I've felt really bad about it.'

In the glare her face is drained of colour. I can see the tiny lines around her mouth. We're both old women.

‘You really want to know?' she asks.

No, I don't want to know. I want to stop this moment, now. I want to go back to England with Jeremy solid in my heart, unchanged. In my ignorance I can remain loving him for ever.

But surely it can't be that bad? He's just done something silly, something foolish that he never told her, and now she's feeling bitter and betrayed.
You don't want to know.
So she's been lying to me? So what? She has her pride. The perfect marriage wasn't so perfect after all.

I feel a surge of satisfaction. Bring it on!

‘OK then. You asked for it.' She sighs. ‘Actually it's a relief. I've been feeling such a fraud, you see. All these weeks, people saying how wonderful he was. And there's me, smiling and nodding and accepting their condolences, me the biggest muggins of all.' Her eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh God, Petra, it's so awful. Because all this time it was
him
who was lying to
me,
the cunt.'

The word jolts me. She pushes back the chair, gets up and goes into the living room. I see her through the window, rummaging in a box. There's a muffled curse, then she forages in another box, flinging out papers faster and faster, a blizzard of them. Finally she grabs something and brings it out to the veranda.

It's a newspaper cutting. As she puts it into my hand the security lights go out. I peer at the page, dim in the lamplight.

It shows a photo of what look like boulders. Putting on my spectacles, I inspect them. No, it's elephants. They're lying on their sides. Their tusks and their faces have been hacked off.

‘That's what he's been doing,' she says.

I can't speak. I have the strangest sensation, as if I'm dissolving through my wicker chair.

‘Not personally, of course', she says. ‘The Kikanda actually killed them. Jeremy just organized it.'

She's making it up. It's a sick joke. Deranged with grief, she's punishing Jeremy for dying; I've heard about cases like this. Bereavement can drive people insane. I look at Bev, challenging me; her chin juts out and there's a triumphant glitter in her eyes. She's been behaving erratically recently; I must tread warily.

‘It's not true, Bev. You know it's not true,' I say at last. ‘Jeremy would never be involved in anything like that.'

‘You think that hasn't gone through my head, a thousand times? It's insane, isn't it?' She barks with laughter. ‘Poacher turned gamekeeper, hm? Well, it's poacher turned fucking
poacher
!' She leans back, her legs spread out, shaking with a grisly sort of mirth. Two little hearts are sewn on the knees of her jeans.

‘Look, it's late, let's go to bed.' I lean forward, reaching out my hand.

She snatches her hand away. ‘Don't fucking patronize me! Didn't I tell you it was terrible? How do you think I feel? The man I've loved, my soulmate, my own fucking
husband
? You can't even start to imagine what it's like, it's like a pit's been opened up, a rotten stinking pit, and everything's been swallowed up into it, everything we had together, our whole fucking life! I feel sick, even talking about it!'

One of the dogs starts barking, then the others join in. On all sides I'm assaulted by hysteria.

‘You've only got a newspaper cutting,' I say. ‘How do you know it's him?'

‘Because he put a whole lot of money into my bank account.'

I don't reply. My guts shift and churn.

‘That's how I found out,' she says. ‘I've got a separate account, for Dewdrop. He never touched it and suddenly there's all this money in it.'

I'll move some money into Beverley's bank account so she's taken care of
…

Bev's words have thrown me. My head spins, I can't catch up with what's happening.

So Jeremy did what he said. But Beverley thinks it was for another purpose entirely.

She's watching me, her eyes narrowed. ‘You're wondering why, aren't you?' She smiles grimly. ‘I guess he was trying to hide it, to shift it to me so it couldn't be traced. Stupid really, considering we were married, but that's Jeremy for you. Hopeless with money.'

I still can't speak. I know I'm behaving oddly but she'll just think I'm in a state of shock. She sighs, a deep, sorrowful sigh, and turns to gaze into the garden.

‘That doesn't prove anything,' I say. ‘Does it?'

‘Of course not! It was just funny, that's all. So I did a little investigating.'

She gives me a long, hard stare. For a mad moment I think she's discovered about Jeremy and me. She's certainly looking at me in a curious way.

‘You don't believe me, do you?' she says. ‘You don't believe he was capable of such a thing. Well, nor could I. But then I traced where the money came from.'

‘How did you do that?'

‘You think I'm thick, don't you?' she blurts out.

‘No I don't—'

‘With your straight As and your professor parents—'

‘Don't attack me,' I snap. ‘I didn't kill the bloody elephants.'

We glare at each other, breathing heavily. Then she leans over and strokes my knee. ‘I'm sorry, babe. It's just … sometimes I felt that you and Jem were laughing at me.'

‘That's not true.'

‘You didn't realize you were doing it. That's because you were posh. It's like a club and sometimes I felt just a teeny bit left out.'

‘Look, Bev, there was nothing going on.'

‘I didn't say there was anything
going on,
dummy.' She pinches my knee. ‘I never thought that.'

‘Good.'

She withdraws her hand. ‘Anyway, he said you weren't his type.'

‘And he wasn't mine, so that's that.'

There's a silence. The dogs have stopped barking. This conversation seems to have veered off in a sickening direction. Almost as sickening as what she's going to tell me now.

For she returns to the elephants. She says she traced the money to a massive poaching operation in the tribal lands where the Kikanda live. ‘Who knows if the charity was just a front. I don't know and I don't care. I knew there was poaching going on, I'd read about it on the Elephants in Peril website. It got worse a couple of years ago. When I asked Jem he said that the Kikanda had always lived peacefully with the elephants but now they've given up their nomadic life all that's changed. The elephants have been destroying their crops, you see, so they've started killing them.' She pauses. ‘He just shrugged the whole thing off, and changed the subject. I thought there was something odd about his attitude, just poo-pooing the whole thing when he knew how desperately I cared.'

‘None of this sounds like him.'

‘How do you know?' she flares up.

I pause. ‘Well, he just doesn't seem that sort of person.'

She sighs. ‘Yeah. Well, if you feel that, imagine how
I
feel. He said they were just picking off a few intruders. In fact they were poaching ivory on an industrial scale and shipping it to Asia, and he was involved in that, my own husband.'

‘It can't be true.'

She stares at me. ‘What's the matter with you?'

‘I was just thinking—'

‘Why are you defending him?'

‘I'm just thinking that maybe you've got the wrong end of the stick.'

‘If only! This is killing me.
Killing
me. I wish I hadn't told you, but now you know.'

My head's reeling. I need to get away from the horrors of this conversation.

‘It's so horrible,' she says, as if she's reading my mind. ‘I hate him so much that sometimes I'm glad he's dead. And that's the most horrible thing of all.' She pushes back her chair and gets up. ‘I'm going to bed.'

‘Why was he killed?' I can't say the word
murdered,
it's even worse.

She shrugs. How small and thin she is! She's lost weight these past weeks, even her breasts have shrunk. ‘He must have fallen out with them, or bribed the wrong person. Who knows? My guess is that one of the Kikanda poisoned him, they're experts in that. Slow poisons, fast poisons. That's why he was ill when he came back. He thought it was the flu.'

‘But wouldn't it have showed up in the autopsy?'

‘Probably out of his bloodstream by then. Look, Petra, I haven't a clue and I don't want to know. I just want to get the hell out of here. God knows what would happen if they realize I know the truth.' She pauses. ‘And now you do too. I told you it was dangerous.' She kisses the top of my head. ‘Night-night, chuck.' As she leaves, she kicks the cardboard box. There's a clanking protest from within. ‘Blithering wind chimes. That's what Jeremy said. They gave him the willies.' And she's gone.

I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling fan. Hours pass.
It's like a pit's been opened up, a rotten stinking pit, and everything's been swallowed up in it, everything we had together.
My heart's racing. I haven't even started to get used to a Jeremy-less life – the loneliness, the empty space which all those conversations and laughter would have filled, the warmth of his body.

How could he? It sickens me, to try to connect the Jeremy I loved to this newly revealed, loathsome version of the man. I knew he was dodgy, of course; that was part of his charm. I remember him arriving with a bunch of flowers which I realized, in retrospect, he'd picked from the mad woman's garden down the road. One could hardly equate such larky pilfering, however, with the slaughter of elephants.

But there were more serious incidents. The insurance scam, for instance, and that car accident in KL which I suspect was hushed-up with some pay-off. His legal work for Zonac had been unedifying at best, until he saw the light and went over to the other side.

Ah, but maybe he didn't. Maybe the charity was a front. He was certainly capable of lying; I'd had plenty of evidence of that. In fact he was pretty good at it; I remember overhearing those chatty phone conversations with Bev, the ease with which he had spun a story. Even at the time they made me uneasy; could he lie like that to me? Now I'm thinking the unthinkable – that maybe he was never going to leave her at all, he was just a grubby adulterer, up for a bit of sex with a desperate, ageing woman.

This is the worst thought of all. It couldn't be true, could it? He had, after all, put the money in her bank account – his running-away money. In that respect he had done what he promised.

But did he have an ulterior motive? After all, I have a large house in Pimlico which is now worth a fortune. If he was capable of betraying Bev he was capable of betraying me. He could divorce me, claim half my house and be set up for life.

I feel disloyal even thinking such a thing. Disloyal to the old Jeremy I loved and who is fast slipping away from me. And surely, if there is a new Jeremy, he wouldn't need my money anyway. He was creaming off profits from a multi-million-pound ivory trade.

How ridiculous this sounds! Indeed, insane. Yet the more I think about it, the more it thickens up and gains credibility. The clock strikes four. I lie there, seasick with these speculations which blunder around my brain.

Is Bev, too, unable to sleep? I can sense her, through the wall. She's lying there hunched, the polka-dot T-shirt pulled over her knees. Beside her, incense smokes up from a mosquito coil. It's the scent of her married nights, of decades in the tropics, of lying in bed with her husband's treacherous arms around her.

When I wake up the dogs have gone. I sense it in the silence even before I go into the garden. Their pen's empty and the gate's open; their rubber toys lie scattered on the concrete.

Bev sits in the kitchen, cutting her hair with a pair of scissors. Her fingers move nimbly, layering and feathering. When I ask about the dogs she leans towards the mirror, inspecting herself with a frown, and snips at her fringe. ‘The vet came with his van and took them away.'