The Execution. Hugo Wilcken
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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.
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