‘Yes please, with lashings of Oxford Thick Cut.’
‘You must be happy, Rich. I mean, you know, that she’s safe.’
‘Yes, yes. Yes, I am. Underneath I am ecstatic, over the moon, mate, but a little fucked up.’
‘I won’t be long.’
As he stands up I see a gap open between the top and the bottom sections of his pyjamas. The revealed skin looks strangely patterned, like an orchid.
I try to remember Noor in the American Colony. Of course I can remember her – the outline of her – but I can no longer summon up those vivid, erotic, blessed hours; they have passed into another, desiccated, world, like Sandy’s butterflies, in a glass display, beautiful but without vibrant life. It seems to me that she has acquired the insubstantiality of a dream.
Our revels now are ended.
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air . . .
When Ed comes back he is wearing a dressing gown. It’s as though he has regressed to his first term at boarding school. He’s carrying mugs of tea and a mound of toast.
‘We should speak to Lettie, Rich. She will be able to ask questions.’
‘Are you sure she’s not a spy?’
‘No, I’m not, but I don’t think she’s actually a spy, but I think she’s on the lookout for talent. I think she puts names forward to be approached.’
‘How do you figure that?’
‘She asks about people I know.’
‘What did she say about me?’
‘She likes you, but she hasn’t asked any, you know, pointed questions.’
‘Ed, why did Annabel leave you?’
‘She had an affair.’
‘Who was he?’
‘She was, is, a girl.’
‘Oh Christ. Sorry. Was that a terrible shock?’
‘To be honest, I knew something was wrong for a year or more. Before I was fired I used to get in to Snaufels and Montacute at 6 a.m. and come home at nine or ten at night, but after I was sacked I hung around the house all the time and finally she said she was leaving me and told me the reason.’
‘You never guessed?’
‘I did, I think, but I just pushed it to the back of my mind. We were in deep trouble, and I was under extreme stress. I knew the hedge fund was going tits up but of course you can’t imagine what it’s like to find that the fund you launched, with others, by the way, had lost nearly one billion pounds. I couldn’t think of anything else. When Annabel told me she was going, I wasn’t really listening. It seemed like a minor problem by comparison, easily dealt with.’
‘How? Aversion therapy?’
He smiles wanly.
‘I thought we could live with it. But I wasn’t rational. I was in a blind panic. I would throw up two or three times a day thinking about the money we had lost. The bank wanted to pin it all on the three of us, the maverick rogue traders, as we had suddenly become. What really fucking well destroyed me was the ruthless way the inner circle, who of course loved the fund when it was making huge amounts of cash for their bonuses, buried us. I am OK now, but it’s taken time. Look, Richie, I am sorry, I am burbling. Your Noor has been freed. That’s the main thing. The important thing. I’m sorry.’
He sits on my bed; the strawberry rash is stronger, and making its way up his neck towards the fatty substance that has blurred the line of his jaw. The dressing gown has hearty, Jermyn Street, stripes of red and black. It’s a rich garment, made for a prince of finance, but in this small bedroom, lined with a sort of knobbly paper, which is aggressively mildewed in one corner above the flimsy skirting board, it seems to be signalling a message about human frailty.
‘Jesus, what a fuck-up,’ Ed says, generously including me in his assessment.
Three days have gone by. I have tried to contact Haneen again, wanting to believe that the reason that she has not contacted me is because she is under pressure from various directions. But her phone numbers no longer exist. Then I had a thought: Father Prosper has seen nearly fifty years of Jerusalem, the turbulent Holy City. He would know something.
I called the École Biblique. He was summoned from the library. I could hear his shoes slapping on the stone floor as he approached the desk. I could even picture the phone booth off to one side, under a mosaic of St Catherine of Siena.
‘Hello, Father.’
‘Who is that? Is it Richard?’
‘Yes it is.’
‘I believed that you would call me one day.’
‘Yes, I should have spoken to you earlier. You have heard the news, of course.’
‘Yes, Richard, I have. Noor is safely in Ottawa, so I have heard.’
‘And Haneen, where is she?’
‘She is in Toronto. Her house is all closed.’
‘She wouldn’t speak to me.’
‘She told me you called, but she could not speak.’
In the background I hear the bells of the church start up.
‘What’s going on, Father?’
‘I don’t know precisely. I think you should talk to Haneen in Toronto.’
‘Have you got a number for her?’
‘No. But she will call and I will let her know that you want to talk to her. I believe she has some private matters to discuss with you.’
‘Do you have any idea what they are, Father? The private matters?’
‘It’s complicated.
Raconter tout serait impossible
– de Maupassant. It means it would be impossible to tell everything. This is Jerusalem. Nothing is ever complete, nothing is completely true.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Haneen will tell you. I know that, as a fact, she is very fond of you. I have to go now to vespers. Goodbye, my boy. God bless you.’
I envy Father Prosper, walking to the chapel through the cypress trees, the doves warbling their Gregorian chants decorously and timidly as the evening thickens, the bells sounding boldly as they have always done, wrapping him in the comfort of ritual. If he lacks for anything, it is human sensuality. The church has drained him; he lives amongst ossuaries and parchments in a dry world. On the other hand his life is calm, bounded by bells and based on simple rituals. It occurs to me that, safe in the École Biblique, he is like one of those fish I saw in Aqaba all those years ago through my cheap, fogged goggles, holed up in the coral, peering out at the flux of marine life. Also, it is clear to me that he and Haneen have conferred over Noor’s kidnap.
Later that day Lettie texted me; she wanted to meet urgently. She suggested the coffee bar in Blackwell’s. I left the Bod, as we regulars call it, and crossed the road. She was sitting in a corner, wearing a short skirt and black leggings. Her face glinted impatiently. I saw that she was a woman with a taste for the higher intrigue.
‘Hello, Richie. How are you?’
‘Bearing up.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
I think it was said without irony.
‘And you?’
‘Oh fine. I have a few things to tell you. I’ll get the coffee. What would you like?’
Around us students chattered. Snatches of their conversations came to me, flirtatious and cheerful. There was always a mist of youthful sexuality hanging over the place, invisible but pressing. Already I felt the distance between me and them stretching away, unstoppably. I wondered if they had ever read what Plato wrote, that philosophy is the study of death. Religion and death also have an intimate association. Religion’s unique selling proposition is that it can offer a way of avoiding death absolutely. I remembered A.J. Ayer:
Since the religious utterances of the theists are not genuine propositions at all, they cannot stand in any logical relation to the propositions of science.
They may not, but for many people, the propositions of science are a dry and narrow way of looking at the world, not applicable to daily life.
Against a backdrop of espresso machines and muffins and rising steam, Lettie came back carrying two cups of coffee. She looked to me like a character in a romcom.
‘Sorry it took so long.’
There were hearts on our coffee, corporate romanticism, which is an oxymoron.
‘Tell me what you know, please.’
‘Absolutely. Look, this is quite complicated. My contact says that a Canadian Christian Arab consortium raised half a million dollars to get Noor out. Actually the group that was holding her treated her badly. They accused her of being a Mossad spy, and it could have been much worse for her, but the Canadians applied a lot of pressure, mainly on the subject of future financial aid, and the President’s office intervened. The money was delivered. Noor was released onto a street at midnight, and the group holding her were arrested; one or two were killed later, after a fire-fight. Amateurs, according to my contact.’
‘What do you mean by “treated her badly”?’
‘That is all I was told. But, Richie, I don’t think you can rule out rape. I’m sorry.’
I sat silent, winded.
‘Is Noor a spy?’
‘Yes, I think she is. At least my contact believes she is. She works for the Canadians and they are in close touch with Mossad. Journalism is her cover, of course.’
‘Lettie, tell me, why would she spy?’
‘Spying isn’t simple stuff. It is more about intelligence gathering than invisible ink. Governments naturally want to know what is really going on in the Middle East. And journalists hear things. If you ask me, she was probably recruited when she was at McGill and she probably believed it was a great cause. The Christian Arabs are having a hard time all over the Middle East.’
I asked the question that had been worrying me:
‘Do you think I was cover?’
‘It’s possible, but I don’t have that sort of knowledge.’
‘She hasn’t spoken to me or even sent me a message.’
‘Have you tried to speak to her again?’
‘For starters, I don’t have a working phone number for her and also the Canadian High Commission is stonewalling.’
‘That’s their job in a case like this. It doesn’t look as if Ottawa wants to go public.’
‘Lettie, please, tell me what I can do.’
‘I don’t think you should do anything. Just sit tight. But remember, the facts may never come out.’
‘I have to ask you this, Lettie: are you working for anyone?’
‘I am not on any side, no. I’m an academic, a visiting fellow. I teach and I am writing a book about the role of the covert services in international economic relations. That’s it. Nothing more sinister.’
‘And you are helping Ed with his Ph.D.?’
‘I am his supervisor, on part of it. I understand his subject.’
‘He is very vulnerable.’
‘You and he both.’
She stood up and kissed me on the cheek.
‘I have to go to a departmental meeting now.’
‘Thanks, Lettie.’
I walked across the road, towards the thirteen busts of Roman emperors, and I wondered what she meant by saying ‘you and he both’.
Back at my desk I find it impossible to concentrate. Noor has been hurt and abused and I am unable even to speak to her. I feel a panic rising. I take my papers and leave the library and walk down towards the river, passing onto Christ Church Meadow through a gate, beyond which the vista opens dramatically. It’s a cool afternoon, and the river in the distance is blue. The cows that graze on the meadow are being taken in. I have no idea where they are housed. Is that big wooden building over there a barn? There are joggers, more women than men, running in all directions with grim determination. Most of the women clutch a water bottle.
I believe in my heart that Noor has been raped. Her contemporary kind of beauty would probably be an affront to some.
I am on the Paddington train. Yesterday Haneen called and asked me to meet her in London, at a hotel in Knightsbridge. I don’t know what she is doing there. She spoke unusually quietly.
I find that train journeys often produce contemplation; as we fly though the damp countryside I remember, quite arbitrarily, a photograph of my father. He is wearing a long military overcoat and a button that reads:
Help Stamp Out Reality
. What he understood by this, I think, was that life, as the establishment wished it, was dull; a new and exciting world was at hand. The old idea of reality was restrictive. The brain, with chemical help, could lead you to the true reality. I think that technology, all that idolatry of smartphones and iPads and so on, is just another version of the escape from the tedium of the real.
Now I can’t understand how I came to be in this Kafkaesque situation. Kafka is one of my favourite writers, when confined within his books; I don’t want the interactive experience myself. But it seems I have no choice. I have tried to find in writers I admire a reflection of myself and I have sometimes tried to adopt their preoccupations. All too clearly I see now that my preoccupations are a lot more real to me than any I have borrowed over the years from writers: mine have real consequences. And they may not have a happy ending, or any sort of ending.