The Last Witness

THIRTY-FIVE

So many emotions.

Elena knew already what he looked like from photos at the Donatiens, so she found herself studying other things: the way he moved, the inflection in his voice, the way he looked at her and smiled — what few smiles there were.

She’d spun so much around in her head of what to say that in the end she was tongue-tied. She just stood there stuttering ‘How are you?’ Then, realizing she’d already said that on greeting, added hastily, ‘It’s so good to see you at last.’ And she wasn’t even sure whether to hug him — whether that would be too bold, presumptuous.

So in the end she was rooted stock still, blinking like an idiot — she was still adjusting after her hours in the darkness. And as he’d finally advanced a step, smiling hesitantly — possibly in response to how awkward and nervous she must have looked — they embraced. But it was still slightly stiff, almost formal — far from the emotional catharsis she’d envisioned. She could feel the barriers of three decades without contact with that first touch. They wouldn’t be torn down in the first minutes, or even in the few hours she had.

But as they sat down and someone called Russell offered her coffee, at least they started to make progress. She hesitatingly started to explain, but as she faltered at one point, not sure where to head next, the questions started coming: My father, what was he like? And your father? How old did you say you were when it all happened? Where did you live then? Were you long at the orphanage — did you look around much? So you found out through my stepfather’s brother: I haven’t seen him since I was a child — what’s he like now?

At first she was glad of the questions, she no longer had to think of what to say next to explain. But at some point they started to feel slightly mechanical, as if she was at a job interview: Georges gauging if she was good enough material to actually be his mother, or if she could score enough points for him ever to be able to forgive her; she could clearly pick up the anger in his undertone on some words. And she’d already started to become uncertain again, fumble slightly, her hand trembling on her coffee cup as she sipped at it — when the crunch question came:

‘You having to give me away I can understand — you were so young. But why didn’t you try and find me in the years since?’ He shook his head and looked down morosely, his eyes slowly lifting again to meet hers challengingly. ‘All those years. Why?’

And she started to stumble through the rest: her blanking it from her mind, her work with orphaned children to try and bury the guilt, telling herself all along that he’d have gone to a good home somewhere — until Ryall and Lorena. But as she got to that point and her thoughts turned again to what Lorena was now facing and the nightmare odyssey that had brought her here: Lowndes, the Stephanous, the orphanage, tears streaming on the phone to her mother when she learnt the truth about her father — all those years wasted not only with her son lost from her, but harbouring a grudge that was long-since misplaced — her eyes started filling. She’d got so much wrong for so long. That was a loss that she’d never make good on, let alone in these few hours now.

As her body started gently quaking and she dabbed at the tears with the back of one hand, he moved closer and hugged her again then.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry to push you so.’ He gently patted her back. ‘It’s just… just that I felt I needed to know.’

‘No, no… it’s okay.’ She sniffled back, got more control. ‘You have every right to know.’ And within the space of the time they’d been talking, she felt that his embrace was suddenly different: more open, welcoming. Maybe there was hope yet that she’d be able to break down the barriers.

As they broke from the embrace and Georges surveyed her face — saw the shadows of the years of pain and guilt in her eyes — that was the first moment he could truly say he warmed to her. He’d spent the first forty minutes clinging tight to his own long built-up resentment for anything else to filter through. But it came more through admiration than any emotional bond or love — maybe that would come later. In that moment he appreciated and admired what she’d gone through to try and see him. She could so easily have just shrugged and turned her back on him for the other half of her life, saved herself the grief.

He smiled ruefully. ‘Explains one thing. You father being a hot-shot banker.’ He’d always had trouble relating to Nicholas Stephanous’ weak-spirited defeatism, wondering how he could possibly be of the same blood. But he wondered now if that too was what had made him look up so to Jean-Paul: the image of the proper patriarch in his mind inescapably entwined with money and power.

‘Oh, I see.’ Elena was a second late catching on. She remembered the Donatiens telling her that Georges was in banking.

Their hands were the last thing to part, and there was an awkward lull for a second. Elena glanced towards the glass sliding doors and the veranda: inky blackness beyond, only a faint moon picking out part of the lake and the ring of trees beyond. Her eyes had been naturally drawn there upon first walking in, a relief from the stark room-light after her hours in the dark.

‘Well, now you know a bit about me. Such as it is,’ She lightly chewed her bottom lip, turning back towards Georges. ‘I heard quite a bit about you from your stepparents, the Donatiens. They’re very proud. But there was a lot we — ’ She suddenly froze. At that moment all the lights went out: all-enveloping blackness, the distant moonlight on the lake the only visible light.

Almost like being back inside the blackened visor, except that now she could hear her son’s uncertain breathing along with her own.

Faint sound of footsteps and movement from deeper in the house, and after five seconds some weak emergency lights came on and Russell’s voice trailed from near the top of the stairs:

‘Looks like a general power outage. The lights on a minute ago at a cabin to the west seem to have gone too. Steve’s just sorting out the generator — should be up and running in a few minutes.’

Behind them, Chac’s head had peeped out of the kitchen. ‘Okay. Keep us posted.’ Then with a brief nod towards them he went back in.

She relaxed again. But as she continued talking, she could see that Georges was still on edge, eyes darting, listening out for every small noise downstairs — he was hardly listening to what she was saying.

‘What was that?’ he asked at one point, tuning back in.

‘…Just I was saying how difficult it must be for you now with your fiancee, Simone. You obviously still have strong feelings for her. Sergeant Chenouda mentioned a note that — ’

More alarming noises suddenly rose: heavy scuffing footsteps and muffled shouting, then a bang that they were still pondering whether or not was connected with the generator starting when Russell’s repeated shouts rang up the stairs.

‘Gas… gas! Get out… oouuu.’ His pounding footsteps petered out halfway up, stumbling.

Georges jumped up, his eyes narrowing. ‘You brought them here, didn’t you? You brought them here!’

Chac was already three steps out of the kitchen, gun drawn. ‘Come on! We gotta go!’

‘What?’ She was disorientated for a second. Then suddenly her heart was in her throat as it dawned on her what Georges meant. The threat that was upon them. ‘No…no,’ she pleaded, reaching out to him. But as she rose, she felt her knees buckle, something sweet in her nostrils and at the back of her mouth, her head suddenly light. And Georges was already out of reach, heading towards the veranda doors.

She wondered for a moment whether this was like the day at the Baie du Febvre convent, and she was just fainting with the upset; or maybe she was still lying on the convent floor waiting to come around and everything that had happened in between had been a cruel nightmare.

But as she saw Chac crumple only two yards away, choking for breath, and Georges sink to his knees as he opened the terrace doors, she knew different. The house was rapidly filling with gas. She saw him get the door half open and partially raise to try and stagger out — but at that moment she felt the solid punch of the carpet on one cheek and everything spun into blackness. She didn’t see whether he made it.

Nicola Ryall’s hand was shaking as she put down the phone; a shaking that became more pronounced as she reached for the bedside drawer and the gun.

‘I’m sorry to call so late. It’s about your daughter, Mikaya…’

It was an antique gun, a pre 2^nd World War Luger. She tried to remember how the end screw-top worked, put there to make it look like a replica and avoid licensing problems. Unscrewed or pulled out like a stopper?

‘…She’s okay now, stable. But a minute later with her roommates returning and it would have been too late.’

She fumbled for a second and in the end pulled it out. She checked it for ammunition, almost dropping it at one point with her hand shaking so wildly: it was fully loaded. He’d always said it was, in case of burglars. And she remembered him mentioning that he’d test-fired in the fields at the back last summer.

‘…Still, we’re sure that it was a real suicide attempt — not just a cry for help. Your daughter had no idea her friends would be arriving back at that time.’

The call was from one of Mikaya’s tutors who’d gone to the hospital with her. Mikaya was heavily sedated and asleep now, but there might be the chance to talk with her in four or five hours time.

Suicide. Nicola thought of all those years she could have done something, at least tried to stand up to him. But at every turn she’d pushed it away — took another pill or shot of gin.

My God. She’d even seen him with Mikaya one night, but still tried to convince herself that nothing was really happening. That with the heavy shadows, she just thought she’d seen more than she really had.

She raised the gun slowly towards her.

All the time the veiled threat that he’d spill her little secret. ‘We’ll just live our own lives, do our own things from hereon in. No questions asked.’ He’d stopped sleeping with her soon after he’d discovered she couldn’t have children — but still it must have been a shock to him coming home unexpectedly a day early from a business trip to find her in bed with another woman. A strange, sly smile had crossed his face, though she wasn’t to fully fathom why until later when they adopted Mikaya. A lesbian scandal would be like a napalm bomb dropped amongst her little village knitting circle of Church fete organisers and charity do-gooders, and he knew it: he had the hold over her he wanted.

She blinked for a second at the gun barrel as it came to eye level, then slowly turned it towards her as she held it out by her head.

Still she should have said something. Should have done something. Her precious village-circle reputation in exchange for what had now happened with Mikaya? She closed her eyes, shaking her head. All those years Mikaya must have silently suffered. A feeble, pathetic trade-off. And poor Lorena was no doubt now suffering the same. Each time the pain wormed deeper: the pills and gin needed to numb it increased. She was at her limit: she couldn’t face the pain or guilt a second longer.

She levelled the gun by her right temple, her hand shaking so wildly that she was worried she might miss at even those few inches.

She remembered hearing about a famous political couple where the wife had developed lesbian preferences later in their marriage. They’d stayed married for the sake of image, and the husband had responded by playing away from home — except that unlike his wife it surfaced and hit the headlines. For a while that had made Nicola feel better about herself, not such a freak — but it was little consolation now. And the husband’s playing away had been with twenty-somethings, not little girls!

A slow tear trailed at the corner of one eye, and she scrunched her eyes tighter shut as she tensed her finger against the trigger, her pulse pumping a wild tattoo. No other way out. No other! Too much pain. Gently squeezing, thinking how poor Mikaya must have felt in that same moment… but at the last second she suddenly eased her finger, her held breath rushing out in one. Her eyes blinked slowly open again. She’d been a coward all the way through, and now this was the coward’s final way out.

If she pulled the trigger, still she wouldn’t be doing anything: she’d be making a pathetic gesture, not a stand! He’d just look at her body and sneer, the final proof that she never had the guts to stand up to him. Worse still, poor Lorena would be left alone with him: there’d be nothing left then to stop him.

She lowered the gun. And where was he now? Lorena’s first night back, and still he hadn’t been able to resist sneaking along to her room.

She got to her feet, her legs shaking and her head so light that she thought she might topple over for a second; then with a brief pause to get her head clear and a last swallow of resolve, she started her way uncertainly towards Lorena’s room.

Roman’s breath rasped heavily as he ran around to the front of the house, echoing back at him within the gas mask. The night-sight vision also took some getting used too: a strange grey-green with a slight blur left in the wake of any movement. With the jolting as he ran, almost everything ahead had a blurred edge.

Everything had gone well at first. They’d got to the back of the house before the generator came back on. Funicelli had cut a whole in the back door glass pane, slipped the latch and slid three gas pellets into the downstairs corridor.

The gas should have hit the S-18 guards in the rooms each side and seeped upstairs about the same time. But a guard from one of the rooms came out only seconds after the pellets had been thrown — perhaps he’d heard their faint skittering along the floor even through the closed door — and instantly he was heading for the stairs and shouting.

A door opened the other side with another two guards who decided to head in their direction at the back, but didn’t make it far: one collapsed halfway along the corridor, and the other, staggering, managed to get one hand on the door before Roman decided it was too close for comfort. He stepped from the shadows and shot the guard through the face from two foot away.

Immediately the guard fell, Roman’s ears were keened sharp to movement upstairs: footsteps at the front of the house, the sound of a door sliding open. And when he heard the faint creaking of boards on the front deck, he started sprinting around. The rest followed five or six yards behind.

By the time he’d got around to the front of the house and could pick out shapes clearly from his jolting grey-green vision, the running figure was at least seven yards clear of the bottom of the veranda steps on the far side, heading towards the nearby trees and bushes: Donatiens! At any second he’d be lost amongst them.

Roman steadied for a second, levelled and fired — and saw Georges duck down for a second and disappear amongst the foliage. Roman wasn’t sure whether Georges had been hit, or was ducking to weave through the branches.

Roman ran on. His breath fell hard, almost deafening inside the gas mask; and as he realized it was smothering practically every other sound, he ripped it off and threw it. No danger of gas this far from the house, and listening out for Georges’ movements was now the best guide: the tree foliage was too thick for him to see much.

No fallen body in sight as Roman hit the trees: he’d either missed or only clipped Georges. But as Roman started pushing and weaving his way through, it suddenly struck him that it was immaterial. Georges wasn’t going anywhere! The trees stretched for no more than forty yards before hitting the edge of the lake wrapping around. Then there was at least a hundred yards of frozen lake before the next landfall.

As soon as Georges started to cross it, Roman would have a clear shot at him. He wouldn’t be able to get away.

Georges struggled to get his head clear.

He’d been close to black-out by the veranda door and had taken deep breaths of the cold night-air, finally managing to raise and stagger out. He gradually picked up stride, but still his head was fuzzy, his step uncertain. He’d stumbled and almost fallen down the last few veranda steps in his haste — then at the edge of the trees when he heard someone behind and a shot zipped through the leaves only a foot away, again he almost stumbled as his legs turned to jelly with fear.

A nightmare race: he desperately needed to gain more distance, but the more his lungs gaspingly pumped his run rather than cleared his head, still hazy and spinning from the gas, the closer he came to blacking-out.

He thrashed his way frantically through the branches and shrubs. As another shot zipped close-by, he realized that his pursuer was either firing blind towards the sound of his movements or had caught a momentary glimpse of him.

Georges stumbled on, saw the clearing ahead. But as he burst through and came to the edge of the frozen lake, he stopped. It was too long a distance for him to be in the open, vulnerable. It was then that he noticed the small jetty with a power boat and snowmobile thirty yards to his right. Sound of rapid footsteps, tree branches flaying behind him. He bolted towards the jetty.

His breath rasped heavy, he had to strain his hearing to pick up the position of his pursuer. His chest ached with the effort, and his legs threatened to give out again in the last few yards; he practically fell on the snowmobile, frantically fumbling: button dead-centre on the handle bars, pull-chord to the right.

Sound of his pursuer flaying through the last few bushes. Georges pressed the button and pulled the chord, but it didn’t start.

His pursuer appeared through the bushes, and with the gas mask now removed Georges could see that it was Roman! There was a suspended moment between them, Georges watching through his breath vapour as Roman orientated and finally fixed on him.

Georges pulled again, and this time the engine roared to life. But Roman was already raising his gun, aiming.

Georges revved quickly, leapt on and started speeding away. The first bullet whistled close by when he’d gone barely five yards, but the second hit: Georges felt it like a mule kick to his left shoulder, spinning his steering off for a second before he straightened again. The third came quickly afterwards, hitting the metal at the back of the snowmobile, and the fourth whistled clear again — by which time he prayed he was too distant for a clear shot.

Still he kept in the same hunched forward position for at least another seventy yards, teeth gritted against the pain of his shattered shoulder, before he raised up slightly and risked a look back at Roman’s position.

It took him a moment to pick out the figure in the weak moonlight: gun held limply at his side, breath heavy on the air as he stared bemusedly towards him. Georges couldn’t resist smiling, then laughing, and as he sped along the ice in no time it became a raucous whoop for joy with the sudden release of tension.

Over half a mile to the far ring of trees, and by then…

Georges thought nothing of the slight jolt at first, but it was the crack and heavier tilting as the snowmobile landed from the bump he’d hit — snow-covered tree branch or whatever — that was more worrying.

Then, as one of the skis caught against the edge of the ice, suddenly everything was spinning and Georges felt the solid thud of the ice against his side and the snowmobile jamming against his left leg. He lay there for a second, breathless, trying to orientate. But as he felt his trapped leg getting wet and saw the snowmobile tilt further and start to slide away from him, he suddenly realized with panic what had happened: the ice had cracked and he was sinking through it!

He frantically tried to scramble away as the snowmobile slipped deeper into the water — but its sheer weight tilted the severed ice block to a sharper angle, and Georges felt himself sliding inexorably with it. The water was like an icy hatchet hitting his groin. Georges clawed desperately at the ice, but it was like trying to grip onto wet glass.

The icy water rose swiftly, taking Georges’ breath away, and at the last second he thrashed his arms against the water to stay buoyant — but the suction of the snowmobile submerging seemed to draw him under as well, and he felt the water fill his mouth and lap over his head for a second before his flailing arms were able to bring him back up again.

He spluttered and spat, grappling desperately for the first solid ice edge. He grabbed on to one block, but it moved. He bobbed down again for a bit, only just managing to keep his mouth clear of the water, eyes frantically scanning as he thrashed around. He could feel his body rapidly numbing, all sensation going from his nerve-ends. If he didn’t get out fast, he wouldn’t make it!

He grappled on to one more loose chunk before finally connecting with a solid edge. But as he started to lever out, his spirits sank. He could see that Roman was only fifty yards away, and fast closing! He’d obviously started his sprint as soon as he saw the snowmobile get into trouble.

If he didn’t hurry, he’d get clear only to be a sitting target! The pain was excruciating with his wounded shoulder, he had to lever and slither mostly on his right side; he was breathless with the strain before finally sliding his torso onto the ice like a landed seal. But as soon as he raised up and put weight on his left leg, he felt it buckle and the pain shoot up through his body — then remembered it getting jammed under the snowmobile.

Georges felt any last hope slip away in that second. And as he hobbled pathetically away and heard Roman’s footfall rapidly closing in behind, he wished he hadn’t bothered. He should have just let himself sink back below the icy water: at least he’d have robbed Roman of the satisfaction of shooting him.