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When the twentieth Colombian casualty was admitted to Kingston’s accident and emergency department, the hospital administrator, keenly aware that bed-space was dwindling, called in the army to establish a field infirmary behind the main building. Meanwhile, the Special Investigations Bureau, with government approval, imposed a press blackout. Still bodies arrived. The rank-and-file police were instructed to keep their distance, and an amnesty of sorts was installed so the WPJ could continue the influx of victims without fear of arrest or detention. Parton died in a cot in an anonymous ward an hour after being picked off the airfield. Ruby sat beside him, holding his hand for reasons even she couldn’t fathom. A team of Cuban doctors arrived as part of the inflow of medics, and Vilma switched smoothly from taking-life to saving-it mode, joining her colleagues and donning a surgical apron and a mask, then pulling bullets from torsos and helping interns transfuse blood. Walker had driven off after dropping his friends and two casualties at the hospital door. He didn’t reappear.
Ruby had no further part to play. She felt obtrusive, so she said goodbye to Vilma and left the hospital. She didn’t know whether they’d ever see each other again, or even what was going to happen right now, and she felt vaguely nauseous.
Her plane ticket was in the car, and the car had gone. More, she had no way of identifying herself. She’d changed out of her army fatigues on the way here. At least what Poynter had given her – a grey trouser suit and white blouse - looked respectable, although it was getting a little crumpled. The night air was cold and people rushed from place to place without pleasure, as they might do in a city under a state of siege. Eleven days till the election and a storm looked nigh.
Probably time to visit the British High Commission. Poynter would help her. The only trouble was, her plane was due to leave early, and Poynter wouldn’t be at work for at least – how long? She didn’t even know what time it was.
She wondered if anyone would tell him Parton was dead.
No, because, besides Vilma, no one at the hospital knew who he was. And Vilma didn’t care.
Right now, she needed a place to stay. She was four and a half thousand miles from home and she didn’t have any money or connections or favours to call in. All she had were the clothes she stood up in.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She never cried. But neither did she feel like laughing.
She suddenly remembered something from when they’d trained her first time round, five years ago. If we ever have occasion to give you clothes in a foreign location, you’ll find money sewn expertly into the lining.
She felt around her suit and stopped at the lapels. My God, there it was. She went back to the hotel entrance, and tore the stitching. Two hundred American dollars. Enough for a night in a good hotel and a phone call to the British High Commission.
She was saved.
She laughed.
She spent the night at a mid-range hotel on the seafront. She awoke early, showered, got dressed in yesterday’s clothes and presented herself at the British High Commission at 7am. Not as grand a place as she’d expected: cream walls, wine-coloured carpet, a chandelier and a narrow staircase leading off to the left. And of course, the obligatory picture of the Queen.
Jamaica to England took ten hours, and she was expected at the airport by nine at the latest for a ten am departure. She explained what she wanted to the receptionist – a thin white woman with a blonde bob and a northern British accent - and she directed her to a waiting room to her left. Poynter, she said, would be already in his car, so there was no way of contacting him.
He arrived an hour later. She began to explain her predicament, but he stopped her in mid-flow. He’d already heard about last night’s events from the Governor-General. He didn’t seem pleased, but neither did he seem angry. She guessed the rollicking would come when she got back to England. Meanwhile, Poynter had already arranged for a new plane ticket, to be picked up at the airport, and a taxi. They shook hands stiffly and he cleared his throat.
“And ... er, Parton?” he said.
“Dead,” she replied.
He nodded slowly, as if, in the time between him asking the question and her answering, he’d travelled far away, and the news was something he heard from a distance. Impossible to comment on it now.
“In that case ... goodbye,” he said.
She’d had enough of the British High Commission now. “I’ll wait for my taxi outside,” she said.
Suddenly, his mood changed. He grasped her hand in both his and shook it ardently. “Well done,” he said. “The whole thing. Well done indeed.” He looked her hard in the eyes. “I have the feeling we’ll meet again, Ruby. I’m sure we will.”
She intended to turn and leave him, but he didn’t give her the chance. Suddenly, he was the one walking away, and she was the one standing behind, looking bemused.
As her taxi passed the brightly-painted shops, miles of telegraph wires, high-spirited market-day bustle, and bikes, buses and cars all fighting each other for space and progress, she experienced a mixture of emotions. She felt horribly sorry for herself, like Jamaica had somehow used her and she was being spat out. She felt guilt and grief. She should have returned to the hospital and said goodbye to Vilma. Her vague presentiment that they might never see each other again had become a conviction. And she could hardly bear it.
And Walker – where had he gone?
Not that she cared much.
She didn’t want to go home. She wanted to stay here.
Could she? No, she’d made too many enemies. Camilla Hebblethwaite-Parton’s ‘network of friends’ probably ran the island, if not politically, at least economically. She wouldn’t be welcome here.
Anyway, her parents needed her. And vice-versa, probably. She didn’t really have any real friends in Britain, not since returning from Africa. What she’d seen and experienced out there had somehow cut her off from the usual consolations of company. She thought about it a lot, not normally in a good way.
The taxi pulled up outside the airport. Poynter had paid in advance, including a tip, but she felt duty-bound to add a little something of her own. The driver beamed. She could tell he was puzzled that she didn’t have any luggage. Or anything, even a bag. She intended to buy what she needed for the flight.
God knows how she’d manage when she got to London. As far as she knew, no arrangements had been made for her arrival. She could probably change her remaining American dollars to sterling, make enough for the train fare back to Bristol. MI6 might even call her again one day, as soon as they realised they still didn’t have any black people.
But they might have begun to rectify that now. These sorts of organisations learned by their mistakes. Usually. Which might mean she was becoming redundant. Self-pity, guilt, grief – and now gloom. She was twenty-five with no real prospects and the whole of SIS ranged against her. They’d do what they’d done last time. Keep her in cold storage till they needed her. Which might be never. Only luck had saved her last time. With Maddison gone, that had probably run out.
God, she really was wallowing in self-pity! She needed to snap out of it.
Hungry, that’s what she was. Breakfast might perk her up a bit. She should look –
“Ruby!” Behind her, a voice she recognised.
Vilma. No Why didn’t you come back, or Will we see each other again, or even I came to say goodbye. They walked briskly to each other and didn’t break stride till they were in an embrace. For a few seconds, they said nothing.
Ruby swallowed. “I thought I wouldn’t see you again!”
Vilma pulled away and laughed. “You’re crying!”
She hadn’t even noticed. She wiped her eyes and laughed. Stupid.
“Well ... have a good journey,” Vilma said.
“You’re my only friend.” It sounded mawkish, but she couldn’t help it. She knew Vilma didn’t like emotion. Neither did she, but some words said themselves.
“According to my calculations,” Vilma replied, “we’ll meet again next summer. By that time, Cuba’s going to be bankrupt and empty. Not that I like that scenario one bit, but you’ve got to look forward. I was thinking maybe we could set up shop together as private investigators. Cuesta and Parker.”
Ruby smiled.
“I’m not joking,” Vilma said. “I’m serious. Think about it. Next summer.”
“Do you know what happened to Walker?”
“He flew out last night to Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe, the bright new hope of black socialism. Everything Manley wants to be, but more brutally determined.”
“Pretty sudden turn of events.”
“He had to get away from Uncle Glenford. And probably the CIA. When’s your plane?”
“Ten.”
“Better get moving. You got money?”
“Enough for the plane and a ride home at the other end. I expect there’s a fat pay cheque waiting for me in London.”
“Look after yourself. Eat your greens. I’ll see you next summer.”
Vilma left the terminal and got into a taxi with one last wave. The way she looked, it was as if they’d be reuniting next week, not in eight or nine months’ time.
But the truth was – and she knew Vilma knew it too - they probably wouldn’t be reuniting next summer. It would take much longer than that. For all Castro’s relative virtues, he was a dictator. Dictators tended to survive because they could gear the entire machinery of state to one outcome: theirs. And he’d been in slippery situations before and always got out of them.
If she was brutally honest, the horrible truth was they probably wouldn’t be reuniting at all. Ever.
A British Airways Boeing 747. Ruby sat next to the window with a complimentary copy of The Gleaner. Nothing anywhere in there about the events of last night, just as she’d been told to expect.
The plane took off on schedule, headed south for a while, then wheeled round to point north east. As it returned over the island she looked outside for a last view. There, below her, separated with a distance of no more than twelve miles, two huge groups of people had collected about a focal point. Election rallies: probably the two leaders. She tried to imagine how events might appear from their point of view: how they were tired, anxious, full of adrenalin, passionately urging their supporters to make one last effort. But nothing from there reached where she was, and the imaginative leap somehow fell flat. In the end, it all looked completely meaningless, like a set of toys laid out by a bored child. Sound and fury without signification.
As they crossed the Atlantic, she thought about her father. Time, when she got home, to sit down with him and have a proper conversation. He’d made her who she was, and since she didn’t know him, she didn’t really know herself. All that prevaricating about Parton - no she couldn’t kill him, yes she could, and then her completely unexpected reaction when she finally found him – was symptomatic of a deeper lack of identity. Vilma was the same, a doctor one minute, a soldier the next. But at least Vilma had some understanding of that. She was comfortable with it. Ruby wasn’t. It meant she couldn’t predict her own actions.
She was twenty-five now. Entitled to whatever truths or insights her father might be able to impart. But they wouldn’t come if she didn’t get tough. She’d have to make him tell her about himself. He wasn’t the kind of person who found opening up easy, and he certainly didn’t like talking about himself. It was going to be a difficult conversation. But it was her due, and she’d have to go through with it.
The bigger worry was that he wouldn’t have any grand truth to impart. Maybe what he was on the surface was all he was. A mystery without solution.
But she didn’t think so.
I expect there’s a fat pay cheque waiting for me in London. She smiled. A week’s work, that was all, but it probably paid well.
Or it might not. They’d have to pay her something, surely. They couldn’t fob her off with empty promises, not after she’d done such a good job.
On the other hand, they might not see it that way. She’d certainly departed from her original brief.
But events had forced her, and she’d reacted like a professional. She’d removed a rotten apple from the barrel. That had to be worth something.
She read The Gleaner for an hour then had a brief nap. The stewardess woke her for lunch at midday Eastern Standard Time. It was only then that she realised Jamaican time was five hours behind London. She’d taken off at ten, she was due to get in at 8pm EST.
1am GMT! She’d arrive in London in the middle of the night!
All being well, I expect to see you in London the day after tomorrow, nine am. My God, it hadn’t clicked until now. She’d had so many other things to think about. Where was she going to stay? Who’d be around to change American dollars at that time? What on earth was she going to do?
She went to the toilet, then her steak and kidney pie arrived. She ate it without enthusiasm and waited while everyone around her finished. Half an hour later, the stewardesses wheeled the bin down the aisle and took her disposable plate and cutlery away. Then they brought her a slice of bakewell tart with UHT cream. When that was gone, she laid back against the headrest and tried to sleep. Life was conspiring against her again and she felt weary.
She dreamed about Cuesta and Parker, Private Investigators. For a few hours, she was back in the Caribbean again, and happy. The best thing about being a PI, she said, was having clean clothes every day and money to spend. She owned a cat called Lightswitch.
She didn’t awake until they entered British airspace. She sat up for a moment, realised there was nothing to sit up for, and laid back again. A few minutes later, the pilot asked everyone to fasten their seatbelts for the descent to Heathrow. Then the plane seemed to slip into a different gear and she felt utterly desolate. Out of the window, only darkness. In here, only fatigue and ennui. She was going back to where she’d been just over a week ago. Pretty soon, it would be as if Jamaica had never happened. She’d be forbidden to speak about it, and one by one, even the memories would fade and die.
The wheels bumped hard along the English ground, and the engines roared as they braked. They taxied round the runway for what seemed like an age, and came to rest in what could have been anywhere. Black night-shire.
She was in no hurry to get out, and she was in a window-seat anyway. When the final stragglers were exiting, she latched on to the back of them, and descended the metal steps into the freezing cold. The stewardesses thanked her for flying with British Airways. As she’d been taught to do in childhood, she returned the thanks with new thanks and a smile. As she stepped on the metal staircase, she heard one stewardess turn to her partner and say, “What a nice girl!” and she filled with a kind of pleasure.
At the bottom of the steps, a man was waiting. At first, Ruby took him for one of the airline staff, but he seemed to be looking for someone. When his eyes caught her, his expression was unmistakable. He’d found her.
She’d never seen him before. Could she be in trouble? An expensive black car stood at a discreet distance. She guessed they were connected.
He waited till she stepped off the stairs onto the concrete. “Miss Parker?”
“Yes?”
“Would you mind coming this way, please?”
As soon as they set off for the car, its rear door opened and Maddison stepped out. He didn’t look pleased, or even happy.
She’d done her best. What the hell had had she done to deserve this sort of reception? Would you mind coming this way, please was ominous, to say the least. It bore absolutely no relation to Welcome home.
“Is something wrong?” she asked when she and Maddison were face-to-face. She tried to put some hostility into the question.
He nodded, as if uncertain how to continue. “I’m terribly sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Ruby,” he said. “It’s your father. He collapsed and died this morning at home. An undiagnosed aneurysm.”
She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God.”
“No need to go through passport control or any of that. We’ve cleared everything. The driver’s got instructions to take you straight back to Bristol.”
