Pearl (The Pearl Series) (17 page)

“You’re very modern, I didn’t think e-readers had caught on yet in France,” I remarked.

She jumped up and hid the thing behind her back. She looked mortified, her cheeks flushing a deep pink. “Alexandre. Darling! How wonderful to see you.”

I came up to her and kissed her on both cheeks. “Did I interrupt something, Maman?”

She quickly switched off the contraption and composed herself. “No, of course not. Just a non-fiction, non-descript book, you know. Quite dull, actually.”

Yeah, right.

She smoothed her hands over her skirt. “Where’s your friend? The girl you said you were bringing to meet us?”

“She had an important meeting in New York, sadly. Had to get back early.”

“Oh. How disappointing. This is the first time you’ve asked a woman to come here to meet us so I was all excited. I figured it must be someone very special to you. I’ve got all sorts of delicious treats for dinner.”

“Yes. Yeah, she is special to me. Look, Maman, I’m so sorry but I can’t stay long. I
also
need to get back to New York. I just came by to say hi and pick up Rex. I’m sorry you went to so much trouble for dinner, I feel terrible. But we have a jet waiting for us; I’ll need to get going any minute.”

“A jet? A
private
jet?”

“Yes, I didn’t want Rex to travel in the hold.”

“I know you’re doing very well, Alexandre, but a private jet for an
animal?”

“Sure, why not? Speak of the little devil!” Rex came bounding in from his walk with my stepfather who stood in the doorway awkwardly holding his leash. Ever since I had started making so much money, my stepfather felt redundant.
As if a man’s merit is measured by his wallet
. But I guess that’s how he felt. I stroked Rex’s soft black ears and kissed him on the nose. “Thanks for looking after him so well.”

Silence was thick in the air, save the tick-tock of a grandfather clock in the hallway. The house was replete with antiques and Persian rugs which gave the atmosphere an even more somber air. More reminders, I supposed, that I had furnished this house with these luxuries. You can’t buy love. Only fear, respect, and resentment. My stepfather smiled at me uneasily and came over to shake my hand, and patted me on the back.

“Still in flip-flops and jeans even when you can afford the best shoes and suits that money can buy,” he quipped, eyeing my feet disdainfully. It was only a matter of time before he suggested I get a haircut.

He was a tidy, attractive man but he lacked charm and charisma, something my father had oozing from every pore. That was when he wasn’t carrying his dark passenger about with him—the character who took him over at any unexpected second. If only my stepfather knew my mother’s secret.
If only he knew.
He’d probably pick up the phone and call the police, I suspected. No wonder she stashed her erotic romance behind her back when I walked through the door. He would have been shocked. He saw her as perfect. The man had no idea whom he was married to. Not
a damn clue.

Still, he wasn’t beating her up, so in my mind, he was worth his weight in platinum.

“Look, I feel so rude to do this to you, but the jet, even though it’s private still gets a slot, you know, a take off time. Rex and I really need to get going. Come and visit me in New York. Any time. There are some great Broadway shows, fabulous restaurants—”

My stepfather cut me short with a chuckle. “We have the best food in the world in Paris, why would we be tempted by foreign cuisine?”

“Whatever,” I answered. “But you know what? You’d be surprised what you discover when you scratch beneath the surface. When you dig deep, you never know what you may find.”

My mother gave me a look that was more potent than a poison dart. “Bye darling, she said. “You’ll need to
leave
now so you don’t miss your private jet. Bye, Rex, baby,” she said, cupping Rex’s head and giving him a kiss—and she added with dry sarcasm, “Do send us a postcard from New York, sweet doggie, and let us know how you’re getting on with the American cuisine.”

I winked at her and smiled. My stepfather eyed up my mother—her seamless perfection—my comments flew right over his head.

Good. I wanted it to stay that way.

On the flight back to New York, I nodded off. Perhaps it was the hum of the plane—whatever, something reminded me…

I’m entangled in this web of ferocious filth. Fifteen years old and seeing stuff that no person could ever imagine in the span of a whole lifetime. I’m a cog in this wheel of destruction that I brought upon myself. Round and round—there’s no end. The woman is pleading with me, “If the president says no to the peace deal and the French leave, the Rebels will kill us all. The French can’t leave. We owe you our lives.”

She’s on her knees now, trembling, her hands clutching the material of my combat pants.

I look down at her, a specter of a woman, her hair matted with dirt, dried blood on her makeshift dress, as mosquitoes buzz around us in the hazy, dusty heat. She has been witness to horror. Her uncle was chopped up into tiny pieces in front of her, her younger sister decapitated, but she’s grateful to be alive after ten rebels raped her consecutively at gunpoint. I hold her hand. What else can I do? What can I tell her? I can’t assure her that everything will be okay, because it won’t. These little villages are swollen with pain, each on the frontline of terror and war. A country broken and maimed. No matter how many rebels I kill, they double in droves. Like angry, maddened wasps. Fearless. Relentless. Some of them even younger than I am. Just children. Children! Young boys wielding machetes and rifles almost half their bodyweight. It’s them or me. It’s kill or be killed.

But still, some of these ‘Rebels’ are children.

“I’m sorry,” I say to the woman. Behind her I see the smoke and ashes of what was her house, burned to the ground. Yet she is still grateful. Grateful to be alive.

A man who must be in his late twenties, his eyes hollow graves, tells me, “My youngest cries herself to sleep every night. They took my wife from us, dragged her into the street and shot her. Like a wild animal, they shot her in the head. My daughter sees images of blood before she goes to bed at night. Please help us. You have to stop the Rebels. Please don’t abandon us.”

I jerked up in my seat, sweat dripping on my back and brow. The memories had snuck up, unexpected. The shadows of war. The horror that had been buried in some dark corridor of my mind had been unleashed once more, letting in the demons which were keen to knock at my brain’s back door.

The words tumbled out of my mouth as I rolled them on my tongue, “The Ivory Coast,” I mumbled to myself. It sounded so romantic—just the name conjured up a tableau of elephants, yawning sandy beaches, and thick forests. But for me it was one long nightmare, not the glamorous dream I had conjured up. Joining the French Foreign Legion had been a wild impulse. I lied about my age. I was just a lad of fifteen bursting to explore the world. An idealist. How are boys meant to know that fantasies will crumble to dust right before their very eyes?

I got up, ambled rockily to the airplane toilet and splashed my face and the back of my neck with cold water, trying to shake the cruel pictures from my mind, imbedded there like crimson etchings. I replaced the graphics of blood and gore with fields of lavender, the undulating waves of the Mediterranean—anything to let a sliver of peace ease its way into my assaulted brain. I splashed more water into my eyes, on my chest, my stomach, in the hope that it would help wash away the ghosts intent on sneaking into my soul. Because when you’ve been in war, your soul is seeped in black, however hard you may pretend it isn’t. It’s your secret. A secret you don’t share with your loved ones because the pain, the dark knowledge of the truth, would be too great for them to bear. You have to convince yourself you did the right thing. You can even believe it. But your soul will never lie to you.

The adoration shimmering in Rex’s eyes was tonic to my battered psyche. Dogs are great forgivers. Dogs don’t care who you are, what you’ve done, if you haven’t had a shower (the stinkier the better, right?), or how much money you have. As long as they get fed and watered, walked and loved, they’ll stick by you. Rex was traveling in style but he was oblivious. He was about to live in one of New York’s swankiest districts with a private roof terrace which boasted a lawn and trees and a view to Central Park. I had even hired a dog walker-nanny for him, Sally, who’d need to stay over sometimes if I was away on business. I didn’t want Rex to be alone. Spoiled much? You bet.

Rex…my buddy. The one who could forgive all. Because as far as he was concerned, there was nothing to forgive in the first place.

He was excited by his new home, rushing and sniffing about, exploring the three floors of my apartment as if there was buried treasure somewhere. The staff had even bought him treats and toys. I guess they knew their way into my heart was through my dog.

Everything was almost perfect. I was setting myself up with the ideal family situation. Beautiful home, people to help me run it, money galore, dog….but the most important ingredient of all was missing: Pearl.

She hadn’t responded to a single one of my messages. Text, voice messages, emails. Zilch. She had obviously had enough. I’d have to work really hard to win her back. But I was confident I had a good chance.
Feelings like that don’t count for nothing.
With all the women I’d been with, it
felt
to me as if Pearl was genuinely in love with me, more than any of them. But who knew? She hadn’t said the words, even though I had laid my heart out to her.

It was nine a.m., New York time. I was sitting by my desk at home, listening to
Miss You
by The Rolling Stones, trying to do something other than obsess about Pearl. She’d be at work by now, I imagined. Rex and I had arrived at my apartment at 3 a.m. I didn’t feel tired, so we walked around Central Park. I practiced some Taekwondo moves—I needed to keep my black-belt polished, so to speak.

I still like to do that sort of thing—toy with dangerous situations, walk about in dodgy places at night under the cover of darkness. Places where muggers and drug addicts could be hanging out. Keep myself alert. Sharp. When you’ve been in war zones the way I have, you’ve got eyes in the back of your head. Forever. The fear, like an author’s sharpened pencil on a page poised to write, needing to write, never abandons you. You don’t want it to because it’s what you trust, what you rely on, even though it once nearly broke you. Fear is your friend. I’m a man who obviously needs adrenaline. Rock climbing. Surfing. Sex. Taekwondo. Hanging out in Central Park at 4 a.m. These things keep me alive. Keep me sharp as that pencil.

Besides, I had a Pit-Bull cross by my side; Rex’s secret. He could pin a person down at a moment’s notice if I gave the signal. His gentle Labrador side had people fooled.

I must have checked my cell twenty times. Nothing. Pearl. Pearl. Pearl. Her name rang in my head so many times, that by the end of the morning, the word ‘pearl’ sounded surreal, as if
my
Pearl was disconnected somehow, as if our relationship had been just a dream.

I wondered what direction I should take to win her back. Then again, she deserved better—
maybe I should just leave her in peace
. My mind was in turmoil, vacillating between the two extremes. I wanted her back. But if I pursued her, I didn’t want to just show up at her work or apartment. I’d played that card.

I was going crazy. Lack of sleep…the memories swirling about my brain…my dark past telling me to let her go—to allow her get on with her life without me. But my burning heart and the hole in my gut couldn’t bear to even entertain that thought. I needed to convince her to stay with me; not run away anymore. I didn’t want to hound her but I did want, at the very least, to know how she was doing. I’d need to talk to her and explain, but right at that moment, I knew she was sick of the sight of me. Sick of Sophie. Pearl would need time to simmer down. I needed to keep the bulldozer at bay.

At least for a while.

First, I needed to sort out the tangled web of madness that Sophie had spun us into. No, I wouldn’t turn up at Pearl’s work. I’d write her a letter and have it hand-delivered to her apartment, with the pearl necklace that she’d left behind.

I found the choker in my bedroom, tore off my T-shirt which I wrapped around it. Only afterwards did I realize that the T-shirt was two days old and must have stunk of my sweat, but I didn’t have time to do everything with decorum. Rex watched my every move, following me around my apartment, as if to make sure I did the right thing. I strode into my office, grabbed a piece of paper from my desk and hastily wrote a note:

Darling, precious Pearl,

You are my pearl, you are my treasure. Don’t deny me this. Don’t deny me the love I have for you.

When you left my heart broke in two. The Spanish describe their soul-mate as ‘
media
naranja’
--the other half of the same orange. And that is what you are to me, the other half of me, the perfect half that matches me. I have never felt this way before about anybody. Ever.