Brazzaville Beach (26 page)

When that had passed I lowered myself to the streambed carefully, and shook the dirt from my hair and clothes. I washed my face in the trickle of water and walked downstream to a place where I could climb up unaided.

I walked slowly back through the glade and joined the main path that led to the camp. Only then did I remember the fight and wonder what had happened to Clovis and Rita-Lu. I stopped and
deliberated for a while whether to go back and search for them, but I realized that this late in the day any solitary efforts I could make would be a waste of time.

I set off again, turned a corner and met Roberta Vail.

It shocked me to see her there. I felt the breath driven from my body.

“My God,” I said. “Jesus, Roberta…”

“There you are,” she said, matter of factly. “Eugene wants to see you.”

We walked back together. She seemed to me to be almost unreasonably calm, though I realized that might simply be in contrast to my own jangled and unsettled state. She said she didn't know what Mallabar wanted to see me about. He was away somewhere and had radioed back to camp asking her to find me and bring me to him. The Land-Rover was waiting. All she knew was that he had something to show me.

“How did you know where I was?” I asked.

She tapped the walkie-talkie strapped to her belt. “I called up João. He told me you were heading back, so I came down the path to meet you.” She glanced at me. “Why are you so dirty?”

“I had a fall. I slid down the side of this ravine.”

“Got to be more careful, Hope.”

“I know.” I had an idea. “Did you hear any chimps?”

She paused. “Ah…no. I didn't. Did you?”

“Yes. A hell of a din. I was trying to follow. That's when I fell.”

“No, I didn't hear anything.”

Perhaps it was because she seemed so incurious—but I thought she was lying. And a suspicion entered my mind then, like a thin splinter worked into the palp of a finger, small but indisputably there, that—perhaps, possibly, conceivably—that rock the size of a medicine ball that had missed my head by an inch or less had been dislodged by something else, and not by the exertions of my overeager climb.

 

Back at camp we got into a Land-Rover and were driven, first to Sangui, and then south, heading, I soon realized, for the goalpost village. By the time we arrived it was almost dark and the headlights were switched on. In the village we were directed on, and
soon we saw Mallabar's Land-Rover and a group of about two dozen villagers gathered round the goalposts.

I opened the door and climbed out. I felt stiff and weary. There was a cool breeze blowing and carried on it was a distinct smell of wet earth. It would rain tonight.

Mallabar left the crowd and strode toward us. I could tell from his posture and the conviction of his walk that he was both excited and pleased with himself.

“Hope. Sorry to drag you down here. But it's important, you'll see.”

He led me back toward the crowd. Hauser was there; he smiled and greeted me. I felt suddenly apprehensive, as if these people were now my enemies. The crowd parted and I saw why I had been called here.

Strung up by its hind legs to the crossbar of the goalposts was a large, dead leopard. In the glare of the headlights the white fur on its groin and belly looked almost indecently clean.

“There, Hope.” Mallabar presented it to me triumphantly as if it were some exotic hors d'oeuvre.

“There's your predator. That's what's been killing your chimps.”

FAME

Hope is more honest with herself since she came to live on Brazzaville Beach. She can admit to herself now that, almost from the day she saw Bobo being killed, and certainly from the death of Mr. Jeb, there were other motives forcing her to act in the way she did. Alongside her alarm and her shock had been another sensation: excitement. She felt lucky, almost blessed. It was Hope Clearwater who was witnessing these extraordinary events. What was taking place at Grosso Arvore was unparalleled, revelatory—no matter what explanation might be offered up later. And Hope was aware, from very early days, that there was every chance that
it would be her name forever associated with this new knowledge and understanding
.

John Clearwater had this need in him, too—John and his fierce desire to make his mark. Hope wondered if her own ambition was entirely self-generated: it seemed strange and new somehow—something of John that had lodged and grown in her. But whatever its origin, its presence was irrefutable, its urgings impossible to resist
.

Hence the urge to have something in print; hence the reticent and scrappy way she proceeded with Mallabar. If she told him too much, if she shocked him into sacking her, then the killings and the fate of the southern chimps would either be misconstrued or go undocumented. Or, worse still, someone else would break the news to the wider world. Though she was reluctant to admit it for a long time, Hope was in thrall to a vision of the future in which her name glowed with lasting renown. She had to be very careful that she did not throw this opportunity away
.

 

Five-Acre Wood. Hazel, sallow, beech, hawthorn, maple, sycamore, blackthorn, birch, oak, ash and elm.

The elms were dying.

When Hope pried away the friable, seamed bark she saw the shallow, vermiculate grooves running along the wood beneath. The scars looked too small to injure great trees like these. But the evidence was irrefutable. Even now, with winter almost arrived, and only a few yellow leaves clinging on, Hope could tell which were the dead, diseased branches: twigless, furry with lichen and without the true whip and give of live boughs in the wind.

She walked through Five-Acre Wood. It was a cold day with low, heavy clouds, mouse gray, dense. The stiff breeze spat drops of sleety rain. All around her the wood seemed to sway and heave in the wind. She was well wrapped up but her cheeks and nose were numb from the cold. Beneath her feet the path was wet and muddy and the clayey loam stuck to her boots in a thick, ochre rind. As she made her way through the wet underwood, the blackthorn and the hawthorn scratched at her oilskin. A strand of hair that had escaped from her woolly hat flapped annoyingly in front of her eyes.

The wind was blowing in cold off the gray, tossed Channel, sweeping up the cliffs and across the downlands and winter fields
to tug and worry at the trees of Five-Acre Wood. The light was cold and neutral, with a urinous hint of yellow that probably meant snow that evening.

Hope thought with pleasant anticipation of her small cottage. The Raeburn heater in the kitchen stuffed with wood and coal; logs burning in the grate of the sitting room fire; upstairs in her chilly bedroom an electric heater buzzed, her bed hot from the wire grid of her electric blanket. Everything went full blast in the cottage these winter evenings; she was careless about her fuel bill. The windows would weep with condensation, the hot water pipes would ping and shudder as the Raeburn bulged with heat…. And what would she have for dinner? she thought. She was putting on weight again, making big spicy stews for herself—lamb and chicken, oxtail and pork—slathering potatoes with butter and salt. But these days she did not care.

All this fantasizing about her cottage and her evening meal made her suddenly want to be back indoors and out of the cold. She was heading for Green Barn Coppice, one of the five remaining areas of woodland that she had still to date and classify. She had intended to make a start today, but she felt tired and buffeted by all this raw weather.

She picked her way carefully down a bank, slithery with fallen beech leaves, onto the drove road that led to the quarry pits and Green Barn Coppice. She stopped. If she turned right instead of left she could cut through Blacknoll Farm to East Knap and be there in fifteen minutes. She stood for a moment in the muddy lane, her brain dull with the effort of thought, trying to goad herself into making a decision. What the hell, she thought, the coppice will be there tomorrow, and I've got a lot of potatoes to peel. She turned right, into the wind, and walked down the lane toward the farm.

 

Since she and John had separated Hope had been back to London only once. John had cleared out all his belongings but had left the flat dirty and untidy. So she had spent an afternoon houseworking, hoovering and dusting and wiping down surfaces, as if attempting to expunge John's smell from the place, and remove all
lingering traces—stray hairs, fingerprints, toothpaste smears—of his presence.

She bought some flowers, a new bedside lamp and a whistling kettle. She threw many things out: some ugly glasses with a sailing-ship motif, a thin rug, a blackened frying pan, a bathroom blind with two waterstains the shape of New Zealand. All these changes were more then cosmetic. She saw them as punctuation marks: a full stop here, a new paragraph there. Her life had changed now, and these alterations signaled that fact. She was not returning to a former state, she felt, this was the next step. Many of the bits and pieces she discarded had no association with him or of their life together; she simply wanted the atmosphere in her flat to be subtly different—the old place made new, for whatever was coming next.

Having spent all Saturday effecting this, she went to visit him on Sunday in a calm and confident frame of mind. He was living in a street that ran behind the Albert Hall, a high red-brick cliff of a Victorian terrace. He had rented a tiny one-room, furnished flat under the eaves. It was cluttered with cardboard boxes full of his possessions, which he had made no attempt to unpack. There was a long table which he had pushed up to the dormer window. The view took in the top of the Albert Memorial and a section of Hyde Park. The table was covered with papers and files. When she came in he kissed her firmly on the mouth. She had expected some shyness or awkwardness, but his mood, like hers, was brisk and confident. He went into the kitchenette to make her a cup of coffee.

“Nice view,” she said, looking out of the window. A fat, gray pigeon sat on the guttering two feet away, preening and making its soft cry. She rapped on the glass and it flew away.

“What?” he said, returning with two steaming mugs.

“Pigeon. Can't stand them.”

They sat down.

“Look busy,” she said, indicating the papers.

“I'm getting a lot done,” he said. “Amazing. Funny what a change of scene can do sometimes.”

She sipped the hot coffee, recognizing the mug she was drink
ing from as hers. They chatted on, not at all sadly or wistfully, but almost in a mood of quiet self-congratulation. They had done the right thing, John said. Hope agreed. He knew they would get back together again, but he just had to go a little further on his own. Once this body of work was over, then they could reassess everything and start anew.

“I miss you,” he said with a smile. “All the time. And I can't imagine not being with you.”

“Good. Exactly. That's what I hoped you'd say. I can't imagine it either.”

“But I think it's best this way, for the time being.”

“Yes. Get things on an even keel again.”

“We had fun, didn't we.
Have
fun,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “Together, I mean. Don't we?”

They rationalized further, adultly. Hope made the point that the Dorset job had perhaps come at the wrong time, had meant they spent too much time apart, had forgotten something of what it was like to be together. When she was finished it would be the perfect opportunity to make new plans.

“Perhaps we could go back to the States,” he said. “You wouldn't mind?”

“No. Well, as long as it was somewhere nice. I have to get a job as well.”

“That can be arranged. You'd be amazed.”

They explored this option for a while and each enthused the other. It was a definite possibility, they concluded.

When Hope left she was cheered up, more optimistic. When his work was going well he was a different person.

At the door he said, “I think I'm close, this time, There's something taking shape. A new set.”

A set? Hope thought. What was a set? But she humored him. With her spread fingers she framed an invisible title, a plaque in the air.

“The Clearwater Set,” she proclaimed. She saw she had said exactly the right thing.

He smiled, momentarily exhilarated, then lowered his gaze, immediately modest.

“If only,” he said quietly. “My God, if only.”

When he looked up she saw the ache of his ambition in his eyes for a second or two.

“Don't push yourself, Johnny,” she said. “It doesn't matter to me, you know. I'll be happy if there's a Clearwater Curve or a type of triangle or half a theorem, whatever.” But she saw she had inspired him.

He shook a pair of crossed fingers at her. “Don't worry,” he said, with a kind of breathless glee. “We're practically there. The big one. The Clearwater Set.”

 

She returned to Knap relieved and relaxed. To her surprise she found she could think unmoved and objectively about the affair with Jenny Lewkovitch. She was not bothered anymore by his infidelity. He was too unusual a person, she felt; his motives in life, in the way he dealt with others, were strange and one-off. Even his adultery, she told herself, came into a different category from other people's betrayals. But then she wondered if she was fooling herself, being less than honest, self-deluding. She thought about it seriously and decided that, in all objectivity, she was not being unfair.

Her new mood lasted for a few more days. All the data on the hedgerows came back from the typist and the marked-up ordinance survey maps were sent off to the cartographers. It was an impressive and thorough piece of work, Munro told her, shyly. She happily accepted his compliments: he was right. She had examined and classified 475 hedgerows. Of these, 121 had been graded as level one: ancient hedgerows of crucial ecological importance which were to be protected and conserved. Now her work on the woodland was almost complete, Munro asked her to stay on to classify the ecology of the estate's water meadows and some areas of downs and heathland. The work would take her through the following summer. She asked for some time to think about it.