Weeks in Naviras (27 page)

All the rooms I walked past were vacant, their doors wide open so I could see their empty beds. The interiors were plush but the corridor itself had seen better days; the paintwork on the outer doorframes was peeling and had seen many knocks. After the corridor turned a corner to the left I couldn’t go any further. Two large double doors with thin vertical windows blocked my way. Beyond them I could see the corridor continuing, more rooms on either side. I couldn’t push the doors open, they didn’t have handles or obvious locks, not even a keycode panel. Instead I saw a round, glossy oval embedded into the wall to the right of the doors, about the size of a dinner plate. I pressed my index finger on it and a white glow remained at the same spot as the edges of the oval turned red. I placed my palm flat on the panel, feeling a mixture of guilt and irritation at the red glint of denial.

The old me would’ve just gone back to my room and waited. She wouldn’t have banged on the window, gently at first but increasingly loudly and angrily when it didn’t seem anyone could hear me. Shortly the two doctors who’d seen me earlier emerged from a room halfway down the corridor and walked towards me quickly. The double doors opened inwards after one of them pushed their palm against a panel on their side. I took a step back to avoid bumping into the opening doors.

‘Mrs Weeks, is anything the matter?’ The taller of the two doct
ors took a step forward. ‘I aplogise, but this area isn’t open access.’

‘I was left alone,’ I said.

‘I can arrange for your husband to join you if you’re feeling isolated?’

I was about to say something when Gavin Cross appeared in the same doorway down the corridor, turned and looked at me. He was wearing a charcoal grey suit jacket but no tie. ‘Hang on, guys,’ he called, walking towards the three of us. ‘Well Ellie, I don’t think either of us expected to end up here.’ He stopped between the two doctors, uncertainly. ‘I’m glad to see you’ve recovered, I was told you were too weak to see me.’ He said it mildly, but his eyes darted at the two doctors before focusing back on me.

There seemed less to grab hold of compared to when I’d last seen him, less of a circumference. Perhaps he’d lost weight during his time in hospital, I thought. He was exceptionally upbeat, far more so than me. I asked him how he was feeling.

‘Lucky,’ he grinned. ‘And blessed. Although of course I’m sad so many weren’t as fortunate.’

‘And that the deal’s ruined,’ I added, for him.

‘Well, yeah, but maybe something good could still come out of this.’ He wasn’t just speaking for the sake of it, there was a fervour to his words. ‘Mysterious ways, and all that. Listen guys, can we have a few moments?’ I’m sure he was looking at me with a hint of concern. The doctors looked troubled at the thought of leaving us, still they quickly retreated back into the room they’d come from.

Gavin asked me how I was feeling and I said fine, just a bit tired. ‘I feel like my brain’s full of cotton wool,’ I said. ‘And my legs ache a bit.’

‘Oh, I think it’s just because you haven’t used your muscles for a while,’ said Gavin. ‘Maybe you could try some embrocation, after a hot bath. I always used to find that helpful.’

‘What, after skiing?’ It came out without me thinking, I had no control over it.

Gavin frowned, paused for a second. ‘Yeah, and after a lot of exercise. Still, maybe that’s not the right course of action here. You could ask these guys, they seem very good.’

‘I think Ellie’s seem quite enough of those for a while,’ said James, who appeared without warning behind Gavin. I hadn’t noticed him walking down the corridor. ‘Gavin, I assume we’ll be seeing you this evening at Arlington?’

‘Yeah, that’s going to be difficult,’ he rubbed his hand on his temple. ‘But hopefully that’ll mean people can move on, to an extent.’

We left each other, James taking my hand and guiding me back to my bedroom. ‘Sorry about all this security, L,’ he said. ‘It’s to keep people out, not in. They’re still really jumpy after everything that’s gone on. Shall I help you pack up? We’re taking a chopper soon.’

I think Gavin must’ve been disappointed at the funeral service, which was sombre but rich in military tradition. There was a wartime edge to it, a notion that before long there’d be more ceremonies along the same lines. Morgan’s speech confirmed as much. ‘I have no doubt that the weeks and months ahead will be difficult and painful,’ she said, delivering the collective eulogy. ‘We have been tested, and we will continue to be tested. But we will prevail.’

Those words were not just for those gathered at Arlington, they were for a televised audience. James must have known this, which is why I found his speech even more perturbing. ‘Those whom we honour today were entrusted with protecting lives,’ he said, his voice breaking slightly. ‘Now our task is to protect a way of life, one which has been threatened and which will continue to be threatened. Our task now is to ensure that way of life, to shield it and nurture it wherever it wants to flourish, and if we can do that then the lives of these men and women will not have been in vain.’

After the funerals we attended a low-key reception in a building not far from the Kennedys’ graves. I watched Morgan work the room, spending a lot of time with the families of those who’d been killed at Ben Gurion. She was listening more than talking, but her eyes couldn’t seem to focus on one thing for more than a second, she was like a sparrow drinking from a birdtable, constantly checking around her.

James made sure I kept close to him, constantly engaging me. It was only because I was keen to speak to Gavin that I became aware of my husband’s attempts to keep us out of the First Gentleman’s orbit. Finally I excused myself, went to the bathroom and was lucky enough to find Gavin not far from me when I returned to the room. He was speaking to a balding four-star general, whom I caught glowering at me as I approached them. Gavin still looked tired. ‘Ah, Ellie, feeling any better?’

Before I could reply he introduced me to the general, whose hand I shook. ‘Mrs Weeks, I hope you’ve found our hospitality to your liking.’

‘I have, thank-you, but obviously I’m keen to get home and see my children.’

‘No doubt. Excuse me, sir.’

The general turned and walked away. Gavin winked at me. ‘They don’t do small talk.’

‘No, that’s our job isn’t it?’

We talked about our flight plans to get back to London, Gavin said he was under pressure to resume his normal schedule as quickly as possible. ‘I doubt I’ll see much of Morgan for the next couple weeks. It’ll be the same for you with James, I’m sure.’

I stopped. ‘I feel like I’ve spent too much time wondering where James is, already.’

‘Yeah, I get that.’ He looked across the room, towards Morgan. ‘You know something, Ellie? Hardly anyone knows I used to go skiing.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You mentioned it, at the hospital.’

‘I must’ve read that about you somewhere,’ I blushed at the suggestion I’d taken an unhealthy interest in him. ‘Probably some article.’

‘I guess,’ he said. ‘But when you said that to me in the hospital, it reminded me that I ought to go skiing more. It was frowned on, you know, Morgan’s people said it wouldn’t set the right tone. But fuck it, now,’ he grinned. ‘There’s an indoor slope just outside DC, and it’s something I think I’d find relaxing after all this.’

‘I know,’ I said, even though I didn’t. It was a hollow sense of knowing and it was disturbing. I looked across the room to find James looking straight at me, anxiously. I turned back to Gavin. ‘I didn’t like the hospital,’ I said quickly, clasping my hands together and tugging at the engagement ring on my finger.

‘Me neither,’ one of his eyebrows was raised. ‘It wasn’t like any I’ve been in before.’

‘Yeah, and we get to visit enough hospitals,’ I said, smiling weakly. ‘Not normally as patients, though. I think our time is up,’ I added, seeing my husband striding quickly across the room, his head bowed in thought.

‘Sorry Gavin, I’m not letting this one out of my sight again,’ said James lightly when he arrived, taking my left hand. ‘She’s already given me quite a scare.’

‘Gavin, if I don’t see you before we leave, I hope you and Morgan make a speedy recovery.’ I leaned forward and kissed him on both cheeks, my body blocking James’s view so he couldn’t see me lift up the flap of Gavin’s suit pocket and deposit my engagement ring inside. ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other again, soon,’ I said, before James shook Gavin’s hand, said goodbye and we started to make our way towards the doors and the waiting limousine.

‘Preciso do seu Caralho dentro de mim.’

‘Sempre que!’

Luis is teaching me Portuguese. The two of us lying in bed in Room Seven, the torrential rain coming down outside the only other sound. I sit up slightly. ‘Is Lottie downstairs?’

‘She’s not here,’ he says, his hand on my breast lightly pushing me back down. ‘Nobody’s here. Not Lottie, not Carolina, not your stupid husband.’ He leans over and whispers in my ear, his stubble tickling me. ‘Seu marido estúpido.’

I laugh. ‘I’d love to tell James to fuck off forever.’

He buries his head into my left breast and blows a raspberry on my flesh. ‘Vá-se foder.’

‘Si? Vá-se foder, Prime Minister.’

‘No,’ His index finger traces underneath my bottom lip. ‘Vá-se foder, primo ministero, if you want to be accurate.’

I kiss him slowly. ‘Accuracy’s very important, in politics.’

‘I can be accurate,’ he says, gently moving one arm across me and rising up to support himself, his kisses circumventing my nipples before trailing down, down, down. ‘Isso é verdade?’

I can’t say ‘Si,’ out loud. It comes out as a whimper. The rain sounds like it’s falling even harder, thrumming against the gravel of the driveway below and making a lapping sound as it hits the leaves of the poplar trees in the garden. It’s like a film, I think, my back arching upward as his hands grip my hipbones. A film starring me and him, our names side by side as the credits roll. But what is his second name, his family name, as the Portuguese would say? Then it hits me that I can’t remember my own name, the name I was born with, my maiden name. It’s gone. Use it or lose it, as they say.

‘I never found out your family name,’ I murmur, staring up at the ceiling. ‘Your second name.’

‘What’re you talking about L? It’s Weeks, obviously.’ I look down to see James’s face between my legs, the last place I’d ever expect to find it. ‘Now you’ve had your fun, my turn,’ he says, trying to turn me over. He’s not naked, his body’s covered in black fur. Two wings quickly sprout from his back, unfolding and starting to hum as they erupt from his body. He’s got two pairs of arms but no hands; just black claws where they ought to be. One of them is digging into my abdomen, making a tear in my skin. It doesn’t hurt but black liquid begins to seep from the wound.

The reassuring chime of the plane’s PA system woke me up. Then a man’s voice. ‘This is the captain, we’re now ten minutes to landing. Please return to your seats and buckle up.’

James hadn’t noticed me jump, barely looked up as I ran my hand through my damp hair. ‘Oh, you’re awake. I’ve been thinking,’ he said mildly, ‘I’d really like to have the kids christened.’

‘Oh?’ The whining of the plane’s engine’s increased as it we turned sharply to the right, descending quickly and making me feel queasy. ‘I thought we’d always said we wouldn’t.’ I looked out my window at the endless grey suburbs and roads beneath me, my heart still fluttering from the nightmare.

London hadn’t changed, the mishmash cluster of
skyscrapers next to Tower Bridge seeming to revolve as our plane banked above them. A new building under construction had grown quite a bit since I’d seen it last, its glass cladding extending noticeably higher up its core. There must be more power available for construction, I thought. We’d descended through rainclouds; a trail of water streaked across my window, frightening me at first because it looked like a crack forming in the glass.

We weren’t on a scheduled flight, the government had chartered a smallish plane for the journey from DC. The press were in the back, penned in by not just a curtain but two burly special branch officers. Rarely for such a trip not one journalist had been called forward for a briefing, no little nuggets of information they could cobble into a story. Instead a news conference had been scheduled inside Downing Street and to my displeasure I’d been asked to attend. ‘Everyone needs to see we’re both okay,’ James explained.

It seemed rather late to have Bobby and Sadie baptised. It would only prompt questions about why we’d waited eight years in Bobby’s case. I said so to James, who just replied, ‘If we hadn’t made it out of this alive, who would’ve looked after them?’

‘Your parents, of course,’ I said. ‘Who on earth else?’ I was irritable, hadn’t slept properly at all on the bumpy overnight flight.

‘Sure, but I like the idea of them having godparents,’ said James. ‘Someone who’d have their backs if anything happened to us.’

‘I can’t think who we’d ask,’ I said, and this wasn’t just an objection for the sake of it. ‘Rav could just as easily have died in Israel. Gail’s got no time for children and certainly wouldn’t thank me for foisting two orphans upon her.’ I didn’t mention how I’d not spoken to her since Lottie had died.

‘Well that’s what you sign up for, if you choose to be a godparent,’ said James briskly. ‘Let’s talk about it at the weekend. At Chequers?’

‘Whatever,’ I said, as the wheels of the plane clunked into place beneath us. ‘But I can’t say I’m wild about the idea.’

I caught Rav eavesdropping on our conversation. He’d been sitting on the other side of James to me, looking away. But it was always obvious when he was listening in because he just froze, stopped flicking through messages. He had been very, very quiet since he’d been revived. I put it partly down to his need for concentration; two weeks out of the loop meant plenty to catch up on. Still, Rav had been through frenetic periods before and had worn it more lightly. His silent brooding had left me on edge; robbed me of the sense of camaraderie we should’ve felt, not least since Rosie hadn’t been there. She’d returned to London two days earlier, to brief the press and prepare Number 10 for James’s return to office.

Later I’d find the news helicopters had followed the plane as it came into land and recorded us as we disembarked from it, James, Rav and myself. They followed us overhead as we drove from the airport to Number 10, that we could see on our seatback screens. ‘James Weeks will no doubt want to re-assert his authority on the government after the two weeks which he was incapacitated,’ said the anchorwoman. ‘A fortnight which has been momentous in terms of events overseas. And one where in his absence, the government has taken significant decisions. Liz, do you think the PM will have any problems with assuring his supremacy?’

‘Well, Helen, it’s been a fortnight in which Robert Kitchener and Hugo Manwaring have been running the country,’ Liz Brickman sounded downbeat, she knew she was just idly speculating. ‘Both very keen to stress that neither of them was acting prime minister. But the fact remains that serious preparations were made for the possibility that James Weeks couldn’t be revived.
Had
that happened, Rob Kitchener would have been the clear favourite to succeed Mr. Weeks.’ I looked at James, who paid no attention to the subtext.

We’d been shielded from the full glare of the coverage in the US, which naturally had focused on Morgan. But Anushka had already warned me about the interview requests mounting at Number 10, speculation that I’d experienced permanent brain damage and would be ‘withdrawing from public life’ for an extended period.

All the staff inside Number 10 were waiting in the hallway and gave us a hearty round of applause as James and I walked inside. Clapping for what, I wondered? Perhaps they were relieved there wasn’t going to be yet another regime change. Of course much of the preceding fortnight had been overwritten, claims that James and I had been ‘fighting for our lives’ in hospital when really we’d just been out cold. Surely any fighting for life had been done by the doctors, not us, I thought.

The kids were waiting for me upstairs in the flat. I was glad they’d not been dragged downstairs to meet us along with everyone else, it allowed us to bond together in private. Bobby clung to me, telling me how much he’d missed me. Sadie seemed cautious, reproachful even. Perhaps she was wondering if I might pull a similar stunt in future, weighing up whether it was worth reinvesting in me. Before long both of them went to their bedrooms, both seemingly more interested in their games than me. I went to the shelves in the living room and pulled down the box at the very top, rifling through it until I found the blister pack at the bottom. I’d not taken my pills with me to Israel, at the time I’d only expected to be away from London for 24 hours. I’d since gone two weeks without taking them. The question of whether to resume my medication had been bothering me for a while.

I hesitated; not wanting to feel as wretched as I’d felt before I’d been prescribed them, but thinking also that I’d survived a terrorist attack; if I’d managed to get through the very worst of times, I could deal with anything else life could throw at me. I took the blister pack into the bathroom, slowly pushing each pill through the foil and into the toilet. Plop, plop, plop. Flush. It was a risk and it certainly felt like one, but as the water swilled around the basin I felt good; I was taking control by letting go.

Anushka was pleased to see me when she came upstairs with my new phone, a model I was unfamiliar with. ‘New government issue, apparently,’ she explained. ‘They’re stepping up security across the board. We’ve all been told to put all outbound calls through the switchboard from now on, that’s non-negotiable.’

‘Does that include me?’

Anushka nodded.

I’d reluctantly agreed to take part in a news conference scheduled that lunchtime. As we walked into the press room and the cameras flashed, my expectation was the journalists wouldn’t balk at giving James a rough ride, would feel the PM was getting a free pass to re-election. I stood next to him, fully aware that I was a kind of human shield to temper the most audacious questions. Still a few came.

‘Prime Minister, doesn’t the fact the government continued unhindered despite your two-week absence from Westminster say a lot about your leadership style?’

James laughed it off. ‘Equally if things had been chaotic while we were recovering, you’d be accusing of me of having run an unsteady ship.’

‘Prime Minister, isn’t it true that there’s now a major disagreement between London and Washington over President Cross’s unequivocal support for Israel, and do you share the view in the Foreign Office that any military support for the Israelis would be in violation of international law?’

‘The British government’s position has been spelt out in numerous statements, repeated in duplicate and triplicate, the position hasn’t changed,’ said James. ‘Now perhaps there are a few questions for Eleanor?’

‘Mrs. Weeks, what was it like being reunited with your two children after so long apart from them, and had you spoken to them before today?’

I paused, leaned forward to the microphone. None of your damn business, I wanted to say. ‘It’s quite strange, because it felt like a lot longer for the children than it did for me,’ I said. ‘They’ve got lots to tell me, unfortunately I don’t have much to say in return.’

‘Mrs. Weeks, so many people have been praying for you these past few days, what are your reflections on that?’ This question came from a reporter I’d not seen before, one who’d broken protocol by not announcing their title beforehand.

‘I’m very flattered by it all,’ was all I said. Rosie made a hand gesture to signal there’d be no more questions. James said thank-you politely to the reporters, before we walked out of the conference room the way we’d come in.

‘I wish you’d been a bit more effusive when you’d answered that last one, darling.’ said James, as we walked hurriedly back upstairs.

‘Why? It was a stupid question,’ I said, slightly agog at James borrowing a word which to my mind belonged to Lottie.

‘It seemed a bit ungrateful, that’s all.’ He was doing his best not to sound irritated. Still I snapped back that I hadn’t wanted to do the bloody press conference in the first place. James flinched slightly, but didn’t reply.

That afternoon I went out to Eppingham to see my father, even though I knew it was pointless. I took the kids with me, primarily because I didn’t want them out of my sight for a minute. Of course Dad had no idea what’d happened in the preceding fortnight, in fact he barely spoke. ‘You look just like my daughter,’ he said to me, in one of the fleeting moments when his eyes were focused. ‘She never comes to see me anymore.’ The kids both stared at him wide-eyed. I began to feel guilty at exposing them to the sight of their demented grandfather.

After an hour I took the kids back to the old house in Eppingham. Both of them wanted to remain there and not go back to Number 10, and who could blame them, given they had so much more space in the constituency? The house had a musty smell, the tangy whiff of under-occupancy. It reminded me of Casa Amanhã in an unpleasant way; not from when Lottie had been alive, but how I’d last smelled it the night Luis and I fell out. But there was something else disconcerting about the house in Eppingham. I had a sense that it had been burgled, that someone had been nosing through my things while I’d been away. It was intangible but I couldn’t dismiss it.

We headed back to Downing Street at dusk and I was quite shocked to find that during the afternoon the place had been inundated with deliveries of flowers. Many of them from MPs and party staffers, but some from what politicians termed ‘ordinary people’. I was touched by their messages. A few said they would never vote for James in a thousand years but still expressed gratitude at my recovery.
I have prayed for you every night
, read one card, in what seemed like a very elderly woman’s handwriting. I looked at every message, but quickly became desensitised to the little missives inside them. Until I reached a small bunch of red and yellow tulips.