The Memory of Love (26 page)

CHAPTER 24

I slept in the chair, unable – in both senses – to lower myself to the floor. I slept for perhaps two hours, doubled over myself. Nobody knew where I was except Johnson. I could see what he was doing. Leaving me to ruminate, to soften me up – the phrase they used in films.

I tried to focus on the facts at hand. I had not been arrested or charged with anything. So far I had cooperated. Johnson had trampled all over my goodwill. He was trying to drive me into a corner, provoke me into behaving as though I had something to hide. Well, there was nothing. So far Johnson had accused me of precisely nothing. Then again, how exactly do you prove
nothing
? How do you fight
nothing
? The thoughts turned over and over in my mind.

At one point, in the depth of the night, I had a sudden image of myself from the outside. A dark, untidy shape, hunched over itself on a chair in that small and empty room. My shape, my outline, in my mind’s eye, was devoid of detail. It was not me, but the shadow of me, of what remained. It was as though I had already disappeared. I am not one given to flights of fancy, nevertheless I could not control the thoughts that emerged, indistinctly, from sulphurous places in my mind.

Once I woke from dozing with a start, certain I had heard the sound of a cry. I listened. From somewhere in the building I heard a thump, then nothing. Impossible to know whether I had imagined the sound, if it had come from outside or been part of my dreams.

When dawn came I was exhausted, relieved the night was over, even knowing that in all likelihood the day ahead would be a difficult one. At least it held some hope – if only for the prospect of progress. Today was Saturday. Friday morning, when I’d been brought here. Normally I would be drinking coffee at home, reviewing the newspapers. Nobody was expecting me, I had no social engagements.

At ten o’clock a guard came for me. I could smell the foulness of my own breath, felt the rough stubble on my chin, the flakes of dried sweat under my arms. My clothes were stained and crumpled. I’d eaten nothing since I was brought in the day before. The last drink I’d had was when I’d drunk some water out of my cupped hand at the basin when I went to the lavatory.

My escort didn’t look at me but pushed me by the shoulder out of the door. We turned left back towards the entrance of the building. For a brief moment I dared to hope perhaps I was being released. I was wrong. We turned away from the entrance and went up two flights of stairs to another floor, another passage, another room. My guard opened the door and pushed me inside. I was in Johnson’s office. He was seated at his desk.

His first words to me were, ‘I am sorry, Mr Cole, it was not my intention to delay you overnight. A matter of some urgency arose. Please accept my apologies.’ He didn’t offer me a seat. I remained where I was, standing before him. He repeated his apology, placing the emphasis on the first word, ‘
Please
,’ and then in a softer voice – a technique which served to heighten the sense of threat and to increase the impression he was giving an order, ‘accept my apologies.’

‘Very well.’ If that was what was required.

‘Please sit down.’

I sat.

‘Can I get you anything?’

I was hoarse. I needed a drink of water. He called the guard and ordered him to bring a jug of water and a glass. Upon his desk lay an open pink folder containing a number of papers. While I drank, he leafed through them. All very theatrical. I remember his old man’s hands, wizened and small, like those of an ancient Chinaman. He reminded me of my old headmaster, who was given to this sort of display, designed to demonstrate who was boss.

‘I’ve been reviewing your file.’

What the hell? ‘What file?’

He ignored me. ‘You recently attempted to publish a political tract.’

‘I’ve done nothing of the sort,’ I replied.

‘Is that so?’ He looked at me directly.

‘That’s right,’ I said. About this I was confident. A thought formed. No, I daren’t allow myself to think it. There’d been a mix-up. A mistake. Quite possibly Johnson’s. I might yet get one over him. But it wouldn’t do to goad him, provoking him into justifying himself. I kept my voice neutral as I continued, ‘I think there’s some confusion, a mix-up. Perhaps somebody has mixed me up me with another person.’ I deliberately avoided use of the second nominative pronoun. Not his mistake, someone’s mistake. Men concerned with power and the display of it required some kind of face-saving device.

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know, one of your investigating officers, perhaps.’

‘I am not asking you who made this error, as you claim. I am asking who
you
are saying
I
have confused you with?’

That threw me, I confess, the way he took it right back to himself: ‘I don’t know,’ I replied.

‘You have somebody in mind? Somebody else who has published a political tract? A colleague, perhaps?’

‘No. I don’t.’ He had a confounding way about him, as unreadable and unpredictable as a cat. I said, ‘I’m just telling you I haven’t attempted to publish any tract or manifesto, or any political writing of any sort. I don’t involve myself in politics.’

All this time he had kept his gaze firmly upon my face. To my annoyance I found I was beginning to sweat, small prickles in my underarms, down the line of my spine. Now he looked down and read aloud from one of the sheets of paper in front of him, following the words with his forefinger. ‘Reflections on Changing Political Dynamics’. It was the title of the paper I had submitted to the faculty journal. Despite myself I felt the muscles of my heart contract, a tiny pulse.

‘That’s the title of one of my papers,’ I said. ‘I submitted it to our journal at the university. It was turned down.’

‘So you admit you are the author?’

Why did he insist on using this kind of language? In his paranoid world there were no simple facts. Everything was an accusation, a confession.

‘Yes,’ I conceded. And added, ‘It’s an academic paper, not a manifesto. Read it and you’ll understand perfectly.’

He picked up the file, holding the edge between his thumb and forefinger; he gave it a shake to demonstrate its flimsiness.

‘Your file doesn’t appear to contain the text of the article. Perhaps you can explain it to me.’

‘Yes, of course.’ I drew a breath and began to outline the context of the paper, acutely aware of the sound of each sentence, each choice of word, how a mind like his, always on the search for the telling, the incriminating, would process each one. I concentrated on rehearsing the minutiae of certain uncontroversial constitutional changes and the creation of the instruments of state in the late 1950s. I steered clear of mentioning names. This is a small country, you never knew who was related to whom. You’d be surprised how even the lowliest person might have political connections, and one might very well ask how Johnson had acquired his present position – though it had to be said, his natural aptitude for the work would seem to dispense with any need for nepotism. As I spoke I revised, edited and modified the thrust of the piece. All the time I was aware of Johnson’s eyes upon me. I kept my hands in my lap, to control any trembling. I slowed my speech as much as I dared, I focused on bringing my breathing under control.

I waited for Johnson to stop me, but he listened without interruption. I repeated myself once or twice, over the effects of the Stevenson Constitution in shifting power to the Protectorate. It didn’t matter. Much worse, that ridiculous rhyme once taught to me by an erstwhile colleague from Scotland came to mind,
Beresford Stuke makes me puke
. I had the curious sensation of feeling my mind split into two. One part controlled the movement of my lips, like a ventriloquist’s dummy, outlining my paper for Johnson’s benefit, whilst in the other the absurd ditty repeated itself over and over.
Beresford Stuke makes me puke, But in the Protectorate they expectorate
. I tried to think precisely, to engage the necessary half of my brain. I was able to hold myself together sufficiently to briefly describe my conclusions and draw to a halt.

Johnson continued to engage my gaze: ‘Well done, Mr Cole,’ and he gave me one of his pared-down smiles.

I had been unaware of the pearls of sweat that had broken upon my brow; now I felt a drop begin its descent down my temple. I had not spoken a single untruth, and yet somehow I had failed. I knew then Johnson would never be persuaded. He knew what he wanted. He wanted me. There was no getting out of this so easily. I felt angry and overwhelmingly weary. I was tired of games.

I said, ‘Why don’t you let me telephone my dean? He can explain.’ It was an imperfect strategy, not one I would have chosen freely. If news had not already reached him then I had no desire to alert the Dean to my arrest, certain it would count against me. I knew how his mind worked, I’d be marked as a troublemaker. It could have consequences for my career. But then, did that matter so very much? I was no high-flier. The very paper that was causing me so much trouble had even been declined for publication.

‘Detainees are not permitted to make telephone calls, other than to their legal representatives.’

Was I now a detainee? Was he trying to intimidate me? I hesitated to pursue it, for fear of having it confirmed, made solid. Then there would be no going back. I said, ‘It must be possible.’

‘I assure you, I know the rules, Mr Cole.’ He went on to quote the act and even the clause relating to communications with detainees.

I said, ‘Those laws were passed during the state of emergency.’ And by the previous regime. Reference to them was contained in my paper.

‘That may be.’ He flattened his palm on my file in front of him. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand your point.’

The guard returned and escorted me back to my room. My room, as I had already begun to think of it. I sat on the chair. Once, twice I heard sounds of other people, steps in the corridor. I waited through the afternoon and evening. Again I reviewed my conversations with Johnson. I pondered the existence of a file on me. At times the fact of it seemed momentous, at other times insignificant. Quite likely it contained nothing more than my employment and social security records, all of which he could have acquired without difficulty. The title of the paper – how had Johnson come to have knowledge of that? Who had supplied it? I checked myself. I was beginning to think like Johnson. The paper had been unremarkable – an all too unremarkable work of academia. Possibly mention of it was contained in my employment records. And yet it was an unpublished paper. How could it have acquired such status?

I thought, too, of Johnson, the practised obtuseness, the implacability of his regard and strange old man’s hands. Tiny, black and wrinkled, those searching fingertips. Monkey’s hands. Nit-picking hands. What was it he wanted? I didn’t know. If I had, I might have given it to him.

I wanted a smoke. The comforting task of lighting and inhaling. I was frightened. Nobody had hurt me so far, but one heard of things happening – to people who were activists, troublemakers. And wasn’t that precisely what Johnson seemed insistent on trying to pin on me?

How quickly in such situations one searches out comfort where one will. A small rectangle of sun from the tiny window appeared on the wall. I moved the chair, took off my jacket and sat in it. I have always had a sharp sense of mortality. I had no wife, no children. I had no regrets, I was not being maudlin. I say simply that I had a sharp sense of my own mortality. I had never possessed the kind of fearlessness one finds so often in the very young – in my brother, before his illness. In Julius.
Julius
. What had he got me involved in?

That moment, during the night before, when I’d seen myself from the outside, not myself – the vacant space I occupied – I knew my limitations. I knew I was no hero.

I must have fallen asleep. I awoke on the hard floor, grit pressed into my face. My body ached, the points of my hip and shoulder felt bruised. For a moment I forgot where I was.

Who hasn’t had one of those terrible dreams in which some unremembered crime has come to light, some dreadful act for which you know yourself to be responsible, because all the evidence is there in your own heart, and yet you can recall nothing of it? You wake up in your own bed awash with relief. That dawn, when I woke curled upon the floor of the cell, in the moment or two it took me to remember where I was, I waited in vain for the release that would tell me it had been a bad dream. I sat up. Somewhere out there people were going about their business, my colleagues, my landlady, Saffia. I’d barely thought about Saffia. I wondered what she was doing, whether she had understood the reason for my absence.

A guard came for me, just as one had the day before. I was shown into Johnson’s office. He was standing with his back to me studying the noticeboard behind his desk. I had tried to steel myself for another bout of his questions, but the truth is I was lost. When he turned to me and I saw it was not Johnson but the Dean, I almost collapsed with relief. I believe I would have cried, were it not for the briskness of the Dean’s manner. He made no remark on my appearance, though his gaze lingered over me. No doubt because of his own particularity regarding matters of personal hygiene, he looked faintly repelled. He sat down in Johnson’s chair; the table in front of him had been cleared of papers. My knees buckled slightly and I sat down heavily in the chair opposite.