The Red Pavillion

‘Right,’ Blanche admitted uncompromisingly. ‘I’ve tried doing things the legal way, but now I’ll use any way I can — just like these terrorists and their molls.’

When everything was unloaded at Rinsey, Liz watched as her mother took the glass of tea A

‘Go sit by her, Miss Liz,’ A

‘No!’ she heard herself say sharply. ‘No, I can’t, A

‘Miss Liz!’ A

‘She’s so used to coping alone. I don’t mean to sound heard, it’s just a fact, isn’t it!’

‘Alone is not when expecting someone come back,’ A

‘I know,’ she answered, with the ring of such loss in her voice that her amah caught her in her arms.

‘Now all three know,’ she said. Liz held her tight. Their great sorrows seemed as close as the ghosts of their lost ones around them.

‘Perhaps I will go out.’

Liz was looking out and A

‘Oooh!’ A

‘The jeep’s not left to fetch them yet so don’t worry.’

A

‘I’ll do the front,’ Liz said. But as she reached the door and the sandbagged windows and looked out across the wide shadowed verandah, she could see their guards standing in the middle of the drive arguing.

‘What is it?’ she called.

‘This man thought he saw someone prowling around.’

‘I sure. Twice, three times I see man going from tree to tree.’ He made graphic pictures with his hand, half-circles moving rapidly along. ‘He coming closer without coming in the open. So I shoot.’

‘And missed?’ Liz asked.

He shrugged apologetically. ‘I think he big man.’

Chemor, who had opted to stay at Rinsey after his boss’s arrest, came from outside the gates. ‘We’re looking all around, miss. There was someone, been here some time by the look of the tracks, but he gone now.’

‘Good,’ Liz said, ‘and thanks, Chemor, all of you. We must all stay alert.’ But as she went back to the bungalow she thought that, as for herself, she did not much care what happened to her.

She reported to her mother and A

From the kitchen window she could see her mother and A

Older women were right to comfort each other, but she wondered if they did not forget what it was like to feel deprived of all that made life worth the trouble. They had a grave to grieve over; she wanted flesh-and-blood arms around her. She needed life, not death — unless death brought reunion.

She must get away, out, leave the house or she’d suffocate. She had to go, walk out, just be free of this compound with its grief and panicking guards — outside was her country, too. She picked up her rifle and left by the front door, then made off to the side and the tu

At the far end of the tu

As she drew near to the falls she also remembered tracking her father’s car to the edge and beyond. On the second visit she recalled ru

He had tried to still her weeping, afraid the depth and ferocity of her sobbing would make her ill. She had touched the depth of mourning for her father that day, but now there were no tears. Her grief seemed sterile, without a physical centre. She felt a sudden great pang of pain for all the women who had lost their men in the war, men with no known grave. For the first time she began to know what that meant. It was like having a terrible pain you could not locate; there was no focus, only the pain.

Reaching the flat platform of rocks above the falls, she recalled how awed he had been by the beauty of the place. ‘War in paradise,’ he had said, and she had said, ‘Love, too.’

The falls were much swollen by the recent heavy downpours. She guessed the path they had walked on the far side would be under the swirling rush of white water. The flat tables of rock they had walked across so easily were covered by a swift-moving deep slide of water. She longed to go to the cavern under the falls and sit on the shelf of rock, drowned in the sound and the memories.

She knelt down by the edge, watching, feeling stupefied by the ear-filling crash of the waters and pulled forwards by the sight of the speeding torrents. After a while it seemed easier to think of just slipping over into the water, into oblivion, than to walk all the way back to Rinsey, to explain where she had been, to go on living.

It would not be painless, there were rocks she would strike and she guessed that even in extremis her body would still make frantic and futile efforts to breathe — but it should not last long. She felt it a sin, was vaguely afraid of divine retribution — felt exasperated by some stubborn streak of life force that still held her to the rock refused to accept being thrown down, extinguished before its time.

‘Some part of my mother in me, deep down,’ she mouthed, sitting back on her calves. ‘A lot of Daddy, the outside bits, the arty bits, but perhaps the core is Mother.’ She sighed and sat down with her legs outstretched, put her arms straight behind her and leaned back, head turned up to the sky.

She tried to review what she was certain of. It would certainly grieve her mother — and poor A

As she turned and her eyes adjusted from the glare of the sun, her eyes sca

Then she caught a second movement — two people at least. Her heart began to thud and she recognised the irony or hypocrisy of her self-indulgence — one minute seeking a way to end her life, the next panicking to save it.