“He returned to the Congo,” she says. “He used to travel to the most awfully dangerous places. Bad things were happening to white people out there at the time, and he wasn’t terribly well . . .” She no longer seems to be directing her words at Ellie. “Men are often a lot more fragile than they seem, aren’t they?”
Ellie digests this, trying not to feel the bitter disappointment this information seems to induce. This is not your life, she tells herself firmly. This does not have to be your tragedy. “Why did he sign his name as ‘B.’?”
“I called him ‘Boot.’ That was our little joke. Have you read Evelyn Waugh? His real name was Anthony O’Hare. Actually, it’s strange, telling it all to you after all this time. He was the love of my life, yet I have no photographs of him, few memories. If it wasn’t for my letters, I might have thought I’d imagined the whole thing. That’s why your bringing them back to me is such a gift.”
A lump rises to Ellie’s throat.
The telephone rings, jolting them from their thoughts.
“Do excuse me,” Jennifer says. She walks out into the hallway, picks up a telephone, and Ellie hears her answer, her voice immediately calm, imbued with professional distance. “Yes,” she is saying. “Yes, we still do. When were you diagnosed? . . . I’m so sorry . . .”
Ellie scribbles the name on her notepad and slips it back into her bag. She checks that her tape recorder has been running, that the microphone is still in position. Satisfied, she sits there for a few minutes longer, gazing at the family pictures, grasping that Jennifer will be a while. It doesn’t seem fair to hurry someone who’s evidently in the clutches of lung disease. She rips a page from her pad, scribbles a note, and picks up her coat. She goes over to the window. Outside, the weather has cleared and the puddles on the pavement gleam bright blue. Then she moves to the door and stands there with the note.
“Do excuse me for one moment.” Jennifer holds her hand over the receiver. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I’m likely to be some time.” Her voice suggests that their conversation will not be continued today. “Someone needs to apply for compensation.”
“Can we talk again?” Ellie holds out the piece of paper. “My details are there. I really want to know . . .”
Jennifer nods, half her attention on her caller. “Yes. Of course. It’s the least I can do. And thank you again, Ellie.”
Ellie turns to leave, her coat over her arm. Then, as Jennifer is lifting the receiver to her ear, she turns back. “Just tell me one thing—just quickly? When he left again—Anthony—what did you do?”
Jennifer Stirling lowers the receiver, her eyes clear and calm. “I followed him.”
Chapter 21
NOVEMBER 1964
“Madam? Would you like a drink?”
Jennifer opened her eyes. She had been holding the armrests of her seat for almost an hour as the BOAC airplane bucked its way toward Kenya. She had never been a very good flyer, but the relentless turbulence had ratcheted up the tension in the Comet so that even the old Africa hands were clenching their jaws with every bump. She winced as her bottom lifted from the seat, and there was a wail of dismay from the rear of the plane. The smell of hastily lit cigarettes had created a fug of smoke in the cabin.
“Yes,” she said. “Please.”
“I’ll give you a double,” the air hostess said, winking. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride in.”
She drank half of it in one gulp. Her eyes were gritty after a journey that had now stretched to almost forty-eight hours. Before leaving she had lain awake for several nights in London, chasing her thoughts, contradicting herself as to whether what she was attempting was madness, as everyone else seemed to think.
“Would you like one of these?” The businessman beside her held out a tin, its lid cocked toward her. His hands were huge, the fingers like dry-cured sausages.
“Thank you. What are they? Mints?” she said.
He smiled beneath his thick white mustache. “Oh, no.” His accent was thick, Afrikaans. “They’re to calm your nerves. You might be glad of them later.”
She withdrew her hand. “I won’t, thanks. Someone once told me that turbulence is nothing to be afraid of.”
“He’s right. It’s the turbulence on the ground you want to be careful of.”
When she didn’t laugh, he peered at her for a moment. “Where are you headed? Safari?”
“No. I need to catch a connecting flight to Stanleyville. I was told I couldn’t get one direct from London.”
“Congo? What do you want to go there for, lady?”
“I’m trying to find a friend.”
His voice was incredulous. “Congo?”
“Yes.”
He was looking at her as if she was mad. She straightened in her seat a little, temporarily loosening her grip on the armrests.
“You don’t read the newspapers?”
“A little, but not for a few days. I’ve been . . . very busy.”
“Very busy, huh? Little lady, you might want to turn around and go straight back to England.” He gave a low chuckle. “I’m pretty sure you’re not going to get to Congo.”
She turned away from him to stare out of the airplane window at the clouds, the distant snow-capped mountains beneath her, and wondered, briefly, if there was the faintest chance that, right at this moment, he was there ten thousand feet below her. You have no idea how far I’ve come already, she responded silently.
Two weeks previously Jennifer Stirling had stumbled out of the offices of the Nation, stood on the steps, with her daughter’s small, chubby hand in her own, and realized she had no idea what to do next. A brisk wind had picked up, sending leaves scurrying after one another along the gutters, their aimless trajectory mirroring her own. How could Anthony have disappeared? Why had he left her no message? She recalled his anguish in the hotel lobby and feared she knew the answer. The fat newspaperman’s words swam in her head. The world seemed to sway, and for a moment she thought she might faint.
Then Esmé had complained that she needed to go to the loo. The more immediate demands of a small child had hauled her out of her thoughts and into practicality.
She had booked into the Regent, where he had stayed, as if some small part of her believed it might be easier for him to find her there if he chose to return. She had to believe he would want to find her, would want to know that she was free at last.