The Execution

III

I spent an hour or two in the library yesterday morning, going through the Jarawa clippings. At the same time I was making notes on my laptop, organising details from the news articles into a life story – almost as if I were writing an obituary. After I’d finished, I looked through what I’d written. His childhood, the Sorbonne scholarship, the volumes of poetry, the 1968 events, the political career, the UN posting, the business empire … a feeling of boredom set in as I scrolled down. Then after a while I realised it wasn’t so much boredom but frustration.

I looked at the exploded image of my face reflected in the cellophane cover of a book the librarian had got out for me. It was a compilation of profiles of African writers, published by some Canadian university. I turned to the interview with Jarawa, largely a self-serving mix of anecdotes about his early struggles. They struck a more personal note than anything in the newspaper clippings, though. There was even an apocryphal-sounding nativity story – his birth had been a difficult one and his father had supposedly remarked to the midwife: ‘If it’s a choice between the mother and child, save the mother.’ That was what a malevolent uncle had told Jarawa when he was five or six. It had marked him for life and had underpinned his determination to succeed, he said.

Another of these anecdotes caught my eye. It was about a poem Jarawa had written in the sixties. The subject is a kid with Down’s syndrome. He’d lived in the village where Jarawa had grown up. He wasn’t allowed to come out of the house. So his whole world was the house to the garden wall. Years later Jarawa returned to his native village for a visit, and he happened to see this kid. Jarawa had grown from a child to an adult, but the kid still looked exactly the same. Jarawa had travelled around Europe and yet this kid’s world was still the same house and garden.

This story reminded me of something but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. As I photocopied the pages I wondered for the first time whether I would ever get to meet Jarawa.

When I got back to my office I checked my voice mail. There was a long, garbled message from Christian – he didn’t say who he was but I recognised the slightly whining quality of his voice immediately. He sounded distraught and repeated several times that he had to talk to me about something, that it was urgent. After that there was a pause of about a minute or so and I could hear him breathing unevenly into the receiver. Finally he said he’d never forget what I’d done for him the day his wife died and then hung up. I’d been meaning to ring Christian to see how he was but what with all the work on the Jarawa campaign I hadn’t got round to it. He’s on compassionate leave and no one’s replacing him so the Jarawa team’s just me, Jo and a few volunteers. I have to admit that I prefer it that way because to be frank I hadn’t been looking forward to working with Christian.

I listened to the message again. I knew I should ring him back now but somehow I just didn’t feel in the mood for it. So I called Marianne instead to see if she wanted to meet for lunch, but she wasn’t at the gallery. She wasn’t at home either. Then flipping idly through my Filofax I noticed the card Charlotte Fisher had given me at the gallery. I’d forgotten about her. I’d forgotten that I’d said I’d call. The phone rang for ages and just as I was about to hang up she finally answered: ‘Oh hi it’s you – I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.’

‘Why not? I said I’d call.’

We small-talked our way cautiously around each other then finally she said she was going home to cook some pasta, why didn’t I come round? I replied: ‘It’s such a nice day though, why don’t we go for a picnic instead?’ It’s true that it was a nice day, but I also wanted to be on neutral ground – I wasn’t yet sure what exactly I wanted from Charlotte.

Outside it was warm, peculiarly warm for London for this time of the year. A lot of pubs and cafés had put chairs on the pavement, dance music blared out from the open doors of clothes shops and hairdressers. People were hanging about on street corners, talking and flirting – everyone was dressed for summer and there was a sort of sexual buzz in the air. As I walked up Camden High Street to Charlotte’s flat that curious sense of well-being began to surge through me again. It was like a feeling of infinite possibilities, maybe even immortality.

Charlotte had had her hair cut into a summery-looking bob and was wearing an orange cotton dress that really showed off her legs, which were lightly tanned. I’d forgotten how good-looking she was and complimented her on her appearance. I kept looking at her as we walked down the street – I could see she was getting a lot of pleasure out of my reaction to her and I knew she was still interested in me.

We bought some picnic stuff from Safeway and went to Regent’s Park. For a while we ate in silence, watching the joggers – middle-aged men with tortured faces – and the mothers and au pairs with their babies. Then after a few minutes Charlotte put me through a kind of interrogation. First she wanted to know how many times I’d been unfaithful to Marianne. Only once, I replied, a few years ago, before Jessica was born. As I said the word ‘born’, I remembered how Marianne had told me the other day that she was pregnant again. I’ve been so busy that we’ve barely talked about it since and it hasn’t really sunk in – it struck me now that having a second child would in some ways mean an even more radical change than having the first: a couple with a child is still a couple with a child, but two children means a proper family.

Charlotte asked me lots of questions about my infidelity. But it was so long ago and had been so brief that I could hardly remember anything about it. She was Australian – she’d had that Australian habit of ending sentences on a rising note. She was about nineteen or twenty and on her year out from college, doing a stint in London at Bryant Allen. We’d slept together a few times in her cramped South Kensington bedsit which she shared with another Australian girl, who was sent to stay on a friend’s floor while I was there.

Charlotte wanted to know whether Marianne had ever found out about the ‘affair’. I said I didn’t think so. She asked if I thought Marianne would have left me if she’d found out and I answered, ‘How would I know?’ But didn’t you feel guilty, she pursued. I said no. Why not, she asked, didn’t I have any obligations towards Marianne, didn’t I want to make her happy?

I thought about that for a moment. Finally I answered that yes, certainly I have obligations, certainly I want to make Marianne happy, and that means that if I’m unfaithful I should keep it separate from our life together.

‘In other words, if you lie about it, it’s all right.’

Again I thought.

‘No, because if she ever confronted me outright, I’d tell her the truth.’

She was about to interrupt me but I wanted to pursue my line of reasoning. I told her it’s more subtle than that. Marianne essentially knows who I am, she probably realises I’m capable of infidelity but in the end she doesn’t want to know the details, because as long as it’s an abstract and not a concrete reality, she doesn’t really care one way or the other. Charlotte said she didn’t believe that. She said she didn’t believe there was a woman in the world who didn’t care one way or the other. And she said she didn’t believe either that deep down everyone knows what their partners are really like. She, for one, had never suspected that Nick was being unfaithful.

I didn’t answer her. Then after a pause she said she didn’t quite know what to make of me, but I was probably some kind of bastard. She said it half-jokingly, half-seriously. We both laughed and after that we didn’t talk any more. We looked at each other quite intensely and I noticed that her eyes were purple-blue, like a bruise. We kissed. The lunch had made me drowsy and I lay down on the grass. The sun slid behind a streak of clouds, but it was still warm … I stared up into the sky and thought I could make out the shadow of the moon, then I closed my eyes. Charlotte was resting her head against my chest. The weight of it had the effect of making me aware of my own breathing. I felt the air enter my lungs. I put my arm round Charlotte and could feel her chest rise up and down as well. I was so relaxed and it felt so good to have Charlotte’s head against my chest that for a bizarre moment I felt I almost loved her.

I walked Charlotte back to her flat, and while we walked she asked me a lot of questions about Marianne and her painting. She wanted to know how she was represented and did I think she might be interested in signing up for a better financial package. The trouble with a lot of the more thoughtful artists, she said, was that they were so show-orientated they tended to miss ‘the bigger picture’. They didn’t understand the need to ‘cultivate themselves more generally in the media’. I said I didn’t know, but Marianne seemed quite happy with Joseph Kimberly. He’s a charming man, of course, but totally incompetent, said Charlotte.

Outside her door we kissed for a while, clumsily. Eventually Charlotte asked me in and got a bottle of champagne out of the fridge. We didn’t drink it though, because we started kissing again then went to the bedroom and undressed each other. We lay down on the bed and Charlotte ran her fingers across my shoulders. Your body’s so nice and taut, she said, how do you keep it like that? I stay in shape, I said, I swim, I play squash. The curtains were drawn and the room was dark like some seedy boudoir. For a long time we made love in silence, then at some point I said wait a second, I’ve got a condom. But Charlotte said no, let’s not bother with that.

Afterwards we dozed for half an hour then Charlotte got up and went into the sitting room. I could hear her speaking to someone on the phone but couldn’t make out what she was saying. The tone sounded intimate though. I heard her go into the bathroom and I opened my eyes and looked around the room. It was a mess of clothes and open drawers, with various pots, lotions and lipsticks lying on every available surface. It was the exact opposite of our bedroom back at home – Marianne has a mania for tidiness. In amongst the heap of clothes on the floor I noticed a discarded pair of men’s underpants that were not my own. It annoyed me. Not because Charlotte had a lover, but because she couldn’t be bothered to take the most elementary steps to hide the fact.

Charlotte came back with two glasses of champagne but I didn’t really feel like drinking. I watched her with curiosity as she walked about, sipped the champagne, brushed her hair out of her eyes with her hand. The way she did these things was so different to Marianne. Charlotte said: Why are you looking at me like that? Like what, I asked. Like your eyes are following my every movement. I said I like the way you move. Well don’t look at me like that, she replied, it makes me feel self-conscious. It gives me the creeps. OK, I murmured, and I closed my eyes. I could feel her getting back into bed and we made love again, then dozed a little more in each other’s arms. Eventually I got up though. I had to get back to work.

I bought the Guardian to read on the tube as I travelled back into the West End. They’d put Jarawa on the bottom of the front page. The headline read: AFRICAN WRITER AND DIPLOMAT RECEIVES DEATH SENTENCE. Inside, there was more coverage and a potted biography as well, with the usual stuff about his political career and the books he’d written. A right-wing Cambridge professor was quoted as saying he considered Jarawa’s poetry ‘dreadful doggerel’, rated only because of the colour of the author’s skin.

A photo of Jarawa accompanied the article. I’d already seen it that morning, while going through the clippings. It must be over thirty years old, taken when he was a student in France. He looks quite striking with his extremely dark skin and fine bone structure, like a Nubian. He’s posed very stiffly and he’s wearing a three-piece suit which makes him look more like a thirties poet than a sixties student. There’s an intense expression on his face. It’s as if he were furious about something. I also noticed a watch chain dangling from his waistcoat pocket – a dandyish touch that sat strangely with his fearsome face.

When I’d left for lunch it had been strangely quiet at work; now it was bustling with people. I went back to my office and wrote out the protest letter for the ambassador, the one all the academics are signing. As I was picking up a copy from the printer to fax to the signatories for approval, I bumped into Jo and congratulated her on the Guardian spread. She sort of grunted in reply and refused to meet my eyes. I said: ‘What’s up with you?’ but she just walked off. I followed her down the corridor and caught up with her: ‘Listen, if I’ve done something to offend you we may as well have it out now rather than later.’

‘Well where the hell do you think everyone was this morning?’

‘I wouldn’t have a clue.’

‘You should have.’

Then it occurred to me. It was Susan Tedeschi’s funeral that morning. Jamie had sent round a memo with the time and place of the funeral. He’d written that he hoped everyone who’d worked with Christian would come and show solidarity at this tragic moment of his life. I’d meant to write down the details in my diary but I’d been talking to someone on the phone when whoever it was had passed me the memo, and I’d glanced over it, then put it down and continued with my conversation. After that it must have got lost in a pile of papers or something and I’d just forgotten about it. I felt bad about it but it didn’t entirely account for Jo’s anger. She and Christian are friends of a sort, but then so are Jo and I, and I’ve never had much to do with Christian.

‘That’s terrible of me. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not me you should be apologising to, it’s Christian.’

Christian had apparently asked after me and had wanted to see me. I remembered the strange message on the voice mail. I told Jo I’d write him a letter, and ring him too. In a way it didn’t matter. But Jo can be touchy and it’s important for us not to fall out. What I mean is, it’s important for the Jarawa campaign.

IV

I was in my car, on the way to a meeting in a Park Lane hotel. As I rounded Marble Arch the traffic slowly ground to a halt. It was hot; I wound down the window and gazed out at the arch. The air shimmered with the heat rising off the cars, like trees trembling in the breeze. I was thinking about that last time I’d been caught up at this same spot, a week ago, with Christian beside me – silent and stiff as he stared ahead in some kind of trance. I recalled reading somewhere that Marble Arch was where people used to be hanged, back in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.

A hotel porter showed me to a top-floor suite with sweeping views over Hyde Park. Three black guys were sitting around a conference table. Two of them were dressed in identical black suits, as if they’d just come back from a funeral. They were members of Renouveau National, Jarawa’s party. They fled the country at the time of Jarawa’s arrest. Now they’re on a tour of world capitals, to drum up support. The third, a gaunt-looking man, was in an ill-fitting jacket without a tie. A white woman was there as well. She was on her feet, talking animatedly and gesticulating, then she abruptly fell silent as I was shown in. A couple of mobile phones lay ostentatiously on the table; beside them was a shiny brochure. I recognised the name on the cover: it was a company Jamie had been looking into, in relation to the African arms trade. One of the Renouveau National guys waved his hand and without looking up said: ‘Later, later. I told you not to disturb us.’

The porter showed me into a side room just off the suite. I could still hear the white woman speaking, with occasional interjections from one of the African guys, but it was hard to make out the words. After a while I gave up trying. Scattered over the floor of the room I was in were piles of new clothes and shopping bags from Knightsbridge boutiques. As I stared at an expensive-looking suit hanging up behind the door, a dream I’d had the night before came back to me. It was about Jarawa. He was at my door in his three-piece suit, pleading with me to pardon him and let him go. I explained that it wasn’t me who’d sentenced him but he wouldn’t believe me. A horrible sense of guilt had begun to take hold as it dawned on me that perhaps he was right …

A door opened. There was the sound of laughter. The woman was saying: ‘Well you know, we’ll talk about this again,’ then I could hear the soft ping of the lift doors. I got up and walked through to the main suite. The two guys in suits were in a huddle, talking in low voices. The other man sat apart, staring blankly out the window. There was something about his long face but what it was didn’t click at first, not until we’d finished with the introductions. The man had remained wordless as he shook my hand but his eyes had that same uncomfortable ferocity as his cousin’s.

I quickly ran through the campaign presentation. It started with what Jamie termed ‘our coup’ – the agreement with the other human rights agencies to co-ordinate efforts under my supervision. I’d already given this same presentation to a group of Labour MPs that morning and a feeling of disengagement invaded me as I mechanically repeated the words. I talked about our media strategy before moving on to lobbying, intelligence then finally Jarawa’s appeal.

I noticed that no one was really paying any attention to me. One guy sat fiddling with his mobile phone and looking at his watch while the other flicked through the brochure the woman had left. Jarawa’s cousin still sat apart, not looking at me, not looking at the others, just staring out over a Hyde Park already drenched in summer colours. I stopped speaking for a moment and the two guys in suits glanced up at me almost for the first time. I said I thought the best thing would be to organise a press briefing as soon as possible, for tomorrow afternoon perhaps, with all three of them present. Maybe it would make the greatest impact if Jarawa’s cousin spoke …

One of the other guys let out a huge guffaw: ‘He doesn’t speak English! He hardly even speaks French!’

Jarawa’s cousin looked briefly to the other two men as they sniggered then turned back to the window. It was obvious that he knew he was being talked about but his face exuded a prisoner’s passivity. There was something of Christian’s hangdog look about him too. I remembered the interview with Jarawa I’d read in the library the other day, with that story about the mongol kid. It had stuck in the back of my mind for some reason. Did Jarawa’s cousin know this story as well? Did he too remember the child? I would have liked to ask him, if there was any way I could.

That evening the phone rang while I was reading Jessica a bedtime story. Marianne was in the garden so I got up to answer it, with Jessica pulling at my shirt. Before I even picked up the receiver though, somehow I knew it was Christian and I had this visceral desire not to talk to him. I just felt it wouldn’t be good for me.

He sounded pretty desperate, even more so than the other day when he left that message for me at work. I could hear pub sounds in the background and his speech was slurred. I can’t understand a word you’re saying, I said, just calm down and speak slowly. I have to see you tonight, he said, there’s something I have to tell you.

‘I don’t know. It’s not really practical right now. Maybe we can see each other later on in the week.’

‘Later on in the week? I have to see you tonight. I’m in London. I can come round and see you at home. You won’t have to move, I’ll come to your house.’

‘No, where are you? I’ll come and meet you.’

I didn’t want to see Christian but on the other hand he couldn’t come round here. For a start, I’d have to explain to Marianne about that day – the day I identified Susan Tedeschi’s body I mean. I never told her about it. I never told anybody, I don’t know why.

He gave me the name of a pub in Camden so I said I’d be there in an hour or so. I hung up and went back to Jessica’s room. She was sort of dozing, lying crosswise on the bed, so I straightened her out, tucked her in, switched on the lamp on the chest of drawers and turned out the main light. But she woke up and called out to me tearfully. I sat down on the bed and put her on my knee. ‘What’s up,’ I said, ‘is it that monster again?’

‘It’s not a monster. It’s a man, I told you before, the man with the mask … Look what he’s done to Teddy!’

She reached down and picked up the teddy bear off the floor, I had to hold her round the waist so she didn’t fall off my knee. She was getting all worked up.

‘See? See?’

The teddy bear’s head is stitched onto its body, and the stitching had come loose and undone in parts. The head crooked to one side in a slightly macabre way. ‘See? Look what he’s trying to do to me too!’ She proffered her neck to me. I examined it carefully. ‘A mark,’ she said, ‘a red mark. Can’t you see it?’

I couldn’t see it. Jessica was making it up. I put her back to bed and tucked her in: ‘If that’s all the man with the mask can do then I wouldn’t worry too much about him.’

I was hungry and I’d thought about taking Christian out to dinner, but as soon as I caught sight of him in the pub I realised there was no chance of that. His face had undergone a remarkable transformation since I’d last seen him. It looked sunken, wrecked, as if it were about to slide off his skull or something. He’d always seemed younger than his age and all of a sudden he looked older, much older. His eyes were drowned and glassy. He’d obviously been drinking for some time and he stared up at me in puzzlement: ‘You’re here!’

I bought a beer and when I got back to the table Christian had pulled himself together a little. He was grinning strangely and putting on a show of small-talk normality: ‘And how are things going on the Jarawa campaign?’

‘It’s moving along … had a strange meeting today … I’m seeing the ambassador tomorrow … some military guy. I’m amazed he agreed to meet me … Jo’s doing well – did you see her on Newsnight?’

‘No. I don’t watch too much TV these days.’

‘She’s doing a fantastic job.’

‘Great. Fantastic.’

I sipped at my beer and gazed around the pub. There wasn’t a single woman in it. It was one of those depressing places with dark wood, worn varnish and greasy green carpets that give off an odour of beer, cigarettes and urine – exactly the kind of place solitary men go to get drunk.

‘You weren’t at the funeral.’

‘No, I wasn’t. I’m sorry.’

‘No need to apologise. I’m no fan of graveyard scenes either.’ He laughed bleakly and stared at his pint glass. I wondered momentarily if he’d gone mad but didn’t say anything. His mind seemed to drift off: ‘You know when I was young, six or seven years old, we had a little house in the country and it was on the road to a graveyard … I’ll never forget the sight of those coffins being hauled along. It was like a scene from the Middle Ages …’