Liberty Silk (42 page)

How Lisa wished that Cat was heading for this island paradise in the South Seas instead of the war-torn Congo! There were vivid descriptions in the book of market stalls heaped with all kinds of exotic fruits and vegetables, of beautiful, smiling girls in jewel-coloured pareus, of scarlet-blossomed hibiscus, of white tiare and red pandanus flowers, of purple mountains and endless ribbons of silvery sand edging emerald bays. The illustrations were wood engravings of exotic fish, and palm trees snaked around with vines, and of bare-breasted beauties lazing by lagoons; all in simple black and white, all exquisite. No wonder Tahiti had become a Mecca for painters; no wonder Gauguin had settled there.

A sound came from upstairs; Gervaise must have returned. Lisa slipped the books into her shoulder bag and left the library to go and say hello.

On the landing, Cat was folding the heavy blackout curtain that had been used to convert the spare bathroom into a darkroom.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m just finishing up here. I was hoping I might run into Gervaise; I have a present for him.’ Cat laid the curtain on a carved blanket chest, then looked back at Lisa. ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

‘Your hair,’ said Lisa.

‘You mean my lack of hair,’ joked Cat. ‘What do you think?’

‘It makes you look . . . like an elfin creature,’ said Lisa.

‘A pooka?’

‘That’s Irish, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘A pooka, then. Or a sprite. Something from a fairy tale.’

It was true. Cat’s cropped hair gave her the appearance of an illustration from a book that Lisa remembered from her childhood, of Rapunzel whose marvellous hair had been shorn by a witch. But the loss of her hair had ultimately given Rapunzel her freedom, and she saw now that freedom suited Cat. She looked just the way she did in Lisa’s recurring dream, when they found each other on the mountainside.

‘You’re beautiful. Beautiful and strong. What a joy it’s been, to watch you get better.’ Lisa stepped forward and embraced Cat, then took her hand. ‘Come with me,’ she said, leading the way down the corridor. Outside the door to Jessie’s boudoir, she paused. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘I’m going to cry.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll see.’ Turning the handle, she opened the door, gesturing for Cat to precede her into the room.

The portraits that hung over the baroque divan were mirror images of each other: Jessie and Lisa, barefoot and clad in floral patterned silk. Luxuriant hair cascaded over their shoulders, and their generous mouths were curved in smiles.

‘It’s you!’ exclaimed Cat. ‘You and . . .?’

‘My mother,’ said Lisa.

‘Gervaise knew your mother?’

‘They were lovers.’

‘So you’re Gervaise’s daughter?’

Lisa smiled. ‘If only it were as simple as that. No, I’m not. His daughter Ghislaine lives in Paris. My mother was pregnant with me when she met Gervaise. But he loved her, and was very good to her. She lived here once-upon-a-time; her clothes are still here, in that closet.’ Lisa indicated the double doors behind which her Balenciagas and her Molyneux languished in the arms of Coco Chanel’s priceless creations.

‘How amazing!’ Cat’s eyes went back to the portraits on the wall. ‘You’re wearing the same dress.’

‘Yes. The Liberty silk. It’s in there somewhere still.’

‘What happened to your mother?’

Lisa shrugged. ‘Nobody knows. She went missing.’

‘And your father?’

‘Oh, he was a vagabond artist. The kind, I imagine, who kissed the girls and made them cry.’

‘They’re beautiful paintings. Companion pieces.’

‘Yes. I’d like to think that wherever they end up, they’ll always hang side by side.’ Lisa gave Cat’s hand a squeeze, and was just thinking how tender a moment this was, when a voice came from behind them.

‘A sentiment worthy of a Mother’s Day card.’

Gervaise was standing in the doorway.

‘You horrible old cynic,’ said Lisa, giving him a cross look.

‘Gervaise! I’m so glad to see you!’

The smile Cat sent him was one of ingenuous delight, like that of a schoolgirl seeking approbation from her favourite teacher. How funny to think that just a week ago she’d been scared of him!

‘I have a present for you, to say thank you.’ Cat moved to him, and linked his arm.

‘Thank you for what?’

‘For sorting out a darkroom for me. I’ve cleared everything out now, and your bathroom’s back to normal.’

‘So you’re off?’

‘First thing in the morning.’

Gervaise looked at her fondly. ‘I’ll miss you, little Cat. How sweet of you to think of getting me a present. What is it?’

‘It’s the portrait I made of you. I had it framed, and left it on the table in the kitchen with a bottle of Margaux. I know that’s your favourite.’

‘In that case, we shall uncork it at once, and toast your next adventure. Will you join us on the terrace, Lisa?’

‘In a minute.’

Together Gervaise and Cat left the room. Lisa could hear their voices receding as they made their way along the corridor to the back stairs, Cat’s light and animated in
contrappunto
to Gervaise’s dark baritone.

Lisa wished that Cat could stay a while: just a week or two longer, a month – or more; a year, a lifetime. She wished she could make up for all the time that she had never spent with her daughter, and now never would. She wished she could imprison her in a tower, just like Rapunzel, and keep her safe from harm for evermore.

What scared her more than anything was that, by going to the Congo, Cat was effectively playing Knocky Door Ginger with Death. If only there were some talisman that could protect her, an invisible sword or shield that would keep her safe.

Moving to the closet, she pulled open the double doors. She knew that none of the costume jewellery laid out in the leather-lined trays would interest Cat, but there was one item there that Lisa sensed might have totemic powers. It was the little charm she had found that had belonged to Jessie.

She had questioned Gervaise about it shortly after she had happened upon it, and he had told her that it was fashioned in the image of Anubis, the Egyptian funerary god. On seeing Lisa recoil, Gervaise had smiled and said: ‘He’s actually one of the good guys – the god you wouldn’t mind having on your side if you were in danger. He was a pal of Isis, the mother-goddess.’

‘So he’s benevolent?’

‘Yes. He takes care of the most precious souls,’ said Gervaise, ‘and makes sure that they get safely into the next world.’

Lisa opened the drawer where the charm lay in a tiny velvet casket. If Cat was heading off on her own into a theatre of war as bloody as the Congo, she would need somebody to watch over her.

CAT WAS STROLLING
through Piccadilly, having just seen the Beatles cavorting in a mildly enjoyable
Yellow Submarine
at the Odeon. Although it was bitterly cold it was a dazzlingly sunny December day, and a wino sitting on a bench was holding his face up to the sky. The geezer behind the counter of a nearby hotdog stand was frying onions, and Cat’s mouth started to water as it always did when she was assailed by delicious smells. The food she’d been offered while travelling a year ago had smelt disgusting. But she’d overcome her disgust and accepted it with good grace because the alternative was – well, there
was
no alternative. The bottom line was you just didn’t get to eat.

When it came to the ‘eat or be eaten’ credo, jungles were the worst, especially after sundown. Even by day in the city, Cat instinctively watched shop windows for reflections, because that way you could see what was going on behind you. She always walked towards oncoming traffic, and listened out for what might be heading from the opposite direction. In a restaurant, she would sit with her back to a wall, near a service door or window. She kept her wits about her at all times.

At night her jangled nerves would not allow her to sleep without copious amounts of local brew to dull her senses to a tolerable level, and every morning she relied on hits of strong black coffee to blast herself into activity. The energy that was left over from keeping herself alive, she spilled into taking photographs.

Cat had covered the Congo in ’64, Vietnam in ’66 and famine-stricken Biafra in ’67, and her vision of hell came back to her every night in the form of a recurring dream. In this dream she wandered the wards of a children’s hospital. None of the children spoke – they just gazed at her with wide, unseeing eyes – but she could hear their unvoiced thoughts whispering to her, pleading for help, and the sound was like dead leaves rustling in the wind.

Cat saw them as through the lens of her Leica. There were children with missing limbs, children with shattered faces and children with gaping shrapnel wounds. There were palsied children tied to their beds, lying in their own vomit and excrement, there were children with bellies distended by hunger. And there was no-one to feed them, no-one to look after them.

Clutching her camera, Cat drifted between the beds like a revenant, weeping, crying out for someone to come and clean the wounds, administer morphine, hold cups of water up to parched lips, but no-one came. No-one. Cat was the only grown-up, the only undamaged person in that hellish place, and she could do nothing to help.

Every night the dream ended the same way. She rounded a corner and found herself in a corridor. At the end of the corridor a child stood on legs that looked too fragile to bear his weight, clasping to his chest an empty tin bowl. His eyes were the saddest and wisest Cat had ever seen – wise with awful knowledge, and sad with the horror of experience.
Take my picture
, he commanded her mutely as she approached.
Take my picture and tell the world that evil is commonplace, and atrocity just around the next corner
. . .

And Cat took his picture again and again, wanting to vomit with self-loathing each time she clicked the shutter, struggling to focus through increasingly blurred vision. She would wake with a great howl of anguish and raise her head from a pillow saturated with sweat and tears, then reach for the vodka bottle on her bedside table, hoping that its contents might help her escape for a while.

But Cat knew that, however far she ran, she couldn’t hide. Liberty lay some place else entirely, and so far, she didn’t know where.

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you’ve some appetite for a skinny chick.’ Stuart Seow – her editor – and Cat were having lunch in a restaurant not far from his offices in Kensington High Street. He had been outlining how his publishing house proposed to market Cat’s forthcoming book of photographs.

‘I’ve learned to eat my fill when I can get it,’ she said, scooping up a last mouthful of pavlova and setting her spoon down. ‘You have no idea the kind of food I was expected to eat in Biafra. Congo meat has no blood and no bones.’

‘I’m sorry – what do you mean?’

‘Have you ever eaten giant snail?’

‘Jesus! I’m glad you told me that
after
I’d finished lunch.’ Stuart leaned towards her with his elbows on the damask-covered table; steepling his fingers, he regarded her with an expression of intense interest. ‘Tell me about Biafra,’ he said.

Cat shook her head. ‘No. I don’t talk about it. The photographs speak for me.’

‘I guess that’s fair enough. Nobody could argue that your pictures aren’t extraordinarily eloquent.’ He reached for the heavily embossed menu. ‘I’m not sure I’ve room for cheese,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

Cat shook her head as the waiter set a cafetière on the table and plunged it. ‘Perhaps you’d care for a brandy with your coffee, madam?’ he asked.

Stuart gave Cat a look of enquiry.

‘A brandy would be good,’ she said.

‘You can bring us two Rémy Martins VSOP,’ instructed Stuart.

‘Certainly, Mr Seow,’ said the waiter, removing the dessert dishes. The smooth response was accompanied by a nod that was borderline obsequious. Mr Seow was clearly a regular in this very exclusive joint.

Because of the exclusivity, Cat had made an effort with her appearance today. She knew that if any of her colleagues happened to stroll into the restaurant, they’d walk right by her. They’d never seen her in anything except fatigues or camera jackets or dripping wet oilskins.

‘It’s difficult to imagine you on the battlefield,’ Stuart remarked. ‘You’re so very feminine.’

‘That’s an illusion,’ Cat told him, with a smile. ‘I’m tough as old boots, really.’
I’m also a terrific liar
, she could have added.

‘Well, if that’s what old boots look like, I think they look great.’ Stuart winked at her, then held out a pack of Marlboro.

Cat accepted the cigarette. She had no truck with remarks like that, but she’d let it pass. This man was publishing her book, after all, and she wanted it to sell. The more people who sat up and took notice of the horror contained within its pages, the more likely it was that something would be done to put an end to said horror. She was determinedly lighting candle after candle in benighted places.

‘It can be useful to be a woman in a war zone,’ she said. ‘People don’t perceive you as much of a threat. I’ve gained access to areas that my male colleagues would never be allowed to penetrate.’

‘I have to say that I don’t know how you could have taken some of those pictures without breaking down.’

Cat couldn’t tell him the truth: that visiting these places had become more and more difficult for her. She had spent every night of every assignment lying on the ground in a foetal position, wrapped around her Leica, crying the tears she wasn’t allowed to cry by day.

Instead she said, ‘It can be tough. I’m thinking of taking some time out.’

‘I’d say you’ve earned it. Where will you go?’

‘I’d like to go home to Connemara. A friend of mine – an artist – once said that landscapes had become as dear to him as the faces of his loved ones. I’d like to familiarize myself with those faces.’

‘Take some photographs?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a market there, you know, that’s ripe for exploitation.’

‘What do you mean?’