Colin Cotterill - The Woman Who Wouldn't die

He took another pace forward. He had it in mind to strike her. She distracted him.

‘How many others know?’ she asked.

He stopped.

‘Know what?’

‘That it was you who lost them the battle.’

‘I … what are you talking about?’

‘Oh, do stop it. Surely you aren’t still denying it after all these years? Do you want me to remind you? You’d attended the meeting in London. Winston Churchill had categorically refused to give your troops any aerial support in Vietnam. You were the harbinger of that bad news. You carried the documents. You were flown directly to Bangkok and from there the shuttle to Pakse. You should have taken a night flight to Saigon but you refused. You said it was too dangerous to fly at night relying on instruments. You said your cargo was too valuable to lose. But all that was a lie. Your real reason was that you wanted to come to me. To spend the night with your little native girl.’

‘I never did such a thing.’

He shifted uneasily. It was the first indication that he wasn’t completely in control of his emotions.

‘You were head over heels in love with me,’ she said. ‘You told me so many times. You-’

‘Silence!’

‘You’d arranged travel documents. You’d bought me a little cottage in Provence.’

‘You …’

He was one metre from her, the bar raised. He was close enough for her to see the blood vessels in his eyes, to hear the rasp of his breath. But she leaned back on the swing, her feet firmly on the ground and she smiled. And whether it was the memory of that smile or merely a desire to prolong this execution — dreamed of for a lifetime — he hesitated.

‘When did you realize it was me?’ she asked, her voice still calm, her smile still held out in front of her like a shield.

Tears appeared in the old man’s eyes. He lowered the metal bar.

‘I fought it,’ he said. ‘I considered every other possibility. There were others at that meeting in London. There could have been a spy. It wasn’t necessarily me. It wasn’t necessarily you. And so, with this colossal doubt inside me, I set out to find who else could have leaked the information. Nobody suspected me. My name never came up in the endless debates. I was trusted. I was even promoted after it all. I was given more and more responsibility. But still I doubted myself. And, one by one, I eliminated every other possibility until there was only you.’

‘You poor man.’

‘The weight of the secret became a tumour and it is ready to kill me. That’s why I’m here. You are the reason I had a miserable life. You are the reason I shall die without a family. But all I ask in return for this wretchedness is that you answer one question.’

‘And I know what that is.’

‘Are you so clever? What is the question, my little whore?’

She pushed back with her feet a little more and leaned forward.

‘What it all basically comes down to,’ she said. ‘What every major decision, every career move, every stupid mistake made since the beginning of time comes down to. L’amour . You need to know whether it was real. Whether your role in the destruction of your national pride had an acceptable foundation. Was it really love we had?’

Neither spoke. Daeng looked up at the old man and wondered whether the last words she spoke on this earth would be true or false. She didn’t really know. Could she have loved him despite their polarity? Could she have followed him to France and entertained him at weekends in their love cottage? Would her life have been happier? She stared up at him.

‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘You are a hateful person. And, you’re mad. You have to admit that. Do you think I wouldn’t have recognized these faults back then? You fell so easily in love with me because nobody else had made the effort to love you before. My amour was the best, perhaps the only, love you’d ever had and you so desperately wanted it to be real that you closed your eyes to the illogic of it all. A daughter of the oppressed kneeling before the oppressor. Every minute spent with you was a minute in hell. I detested you and your kind. No, my captain. I never-’

The metal bar rose and fell in a split second. It came crashing down with a sickening crack. Blood gushed from the wound. It was a marvellous moment. Barnard smiled, gave a deep sigh that gurgled in his throat, dropped the metal bar and headed towards the jungle. It was all over.

Siri returned to their room in the administrator’s building only to find his wife missing. He washed his hands in the attached bathroom and wondered what had become of the small mirror above the sink. He returned to the guest room. In Daeng’s place on the bed was a notebook. He sat and turned up the bedside oil lamp. He flipped to the last page of writing and there in large print were the words THE END . He smiled. Madame Daeng, once given a challenge, was not one to back down. She had set about documenting her life with relish. She had included chapters that would most certainly never clear the censors at the Ministry of Information, but would take Hollywood by storm. She’d asked him from time to time whether this or that passage was appropriate. He’d told her that suitability was irrelevant. This was a life and a life was not to be reworked. In many ways, the book that he held in his hands was worth every bit as much as his lost library because this one had a pulse. It had been marvellous to read the wisdom of the philosophers but what purpose did they have with no warm body to apply their theories to? This book was Daeng. He knew he would read it time and time again with as much joy as he had derived from Sartre and Camus.

He glanced at the final paragraph above THE END and read her hurried note there.

I feel his presence. He is here to kill me and he, has arrived with a lifetime of hatred as his weapon .

Until that moment, Siri had felt secure in his decision to bring Madame Daeng to Pak Lai. But something in those words sent a chill across his shoulder blades. The words ‘The End’ suddenly took on a more ominous note. He left the room and ran across the lawn to the guest house with Ugly at his heels. He climbed the outside staircase to his old room and looked around. The space was crowded with partygoers but neither Civilai nor Daeng was there. He went back down a floor and banged on Mr Geung’s door. The guest house had no locks but something was wedged against the door handle from the inside.

‘I … I … I’ve gotta gun,’ came Geung’s voice from inside.

‘Geung,’ called Siri. ‘It’s me.’

Mr Geung freed the door.

‘Have you seen Madame Daeng?’ Siri asked.

Geung turned the colour of a Mekhong sunset. He stepped back.

‘You can … can … can search,’ he said.

‘It’s not an accusation, Geung. Just a question. Have you seen Madame Daeng?’

‘Come in and look,’ said Geung.

There was no time to repair Geung’s feelings this time. Something had happened to his wife. Of that he was certain. Siri hurried back down the stairs and walked double time around the guest house. Ugly fell in beside him with the same urgency. A full moon was rising gently beyond the river. It picked out the smiling faces of the boat crews walking aimlessly, just as they had rowed. Siri and the dog completed a circuit of the guest house grounds and were met by Mr Geung who had put his trousers on back to front in his hurry to follow the doctor.

‘Comrade Civilai is at the te … mmmple,’ he said.

‘Of course, that’s where Daeng will be,’ said Siri.

Siri’s lungs no longer filled completely and he had to stop several times on his way to the temple. But he felt that every missed second was condemning his wife to some unavoidable disaster. The last night of the races had produced a desperate surge of fun before normal life resumed the following day. Siri, Geung and Ugly waded through the thick crowd, blocked here and there by villagers who’d stopped to look at the sideshows or try their hands at throwing hoops and shying at coconuts. Siri could no longer hear the music nor sense the gaiety. It wasn’t a vast temple, but one complete circuit took fifteen minutes. At the end of it he sat on the stupa steps, his chest wheezing, his eyes red with tears.