The Long Forgotten Read online

  And this, Dove supposed, would be the last Lara saw of him. He’d be kicked out of university for sure. But she would never know that this figure being hoisted off by two security guards, kicking, screaming, from Aurélien’s body (now rising from the ground, clutching his face but otherwise OK) was not Dove, but the shadow thrown by his father a long, long time ago.

  Dove pushes Zachariah’s wheelchair towards the Rose Garden so quickly Rita barely has time to gather what remains of the picnic. Beyond the entrance the path splits into seven smaller routes, each lined on either side by banks of rose bushes as far as the eye can see. Thousands of shy pinks and deathly reds, millions of petals applauding their arrival. And it is working. He can feel the headache coming, a gentle patter but growing like the first drops of rain landing inside his skull. Dove will remember. He’ll remember what became of his mother.

  ‘Slow down,’ Rita says, holding her dress in a bunch at the front as though she might launch into a bold flamenco. But it is as though Dove is running into the memory and needs to reach the very core of it. So he pushes faster and faster, turning a corner so quickly the chair tilts onto one wheel, and the weight then is too much for him to balance. It tips. He digs his feet into the gravel, but they slip. Zachariah spills out into a bush of thorns that track bloody scratches down his face beneath his eye.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ Rita says, reaching them, out of breath. She is righting the wheelchair, lifting Zachariah back into it.

  ‘I just need to know where he wants to go. I need him to remember.’

  ‘Remember? I should box your head until you remember nothing. This is over.’ But Zachariah’s finger is still pointing ahead, up the path towards the far wall of the Rose Garden, and the ache in Dove’s head is thrumming, stronger and harder.

  ‘Look at him,’ she says, stabbing at the air around Dove’s chest. ‘He’s an old man. You could have killed him!’ A young couple, who’d been struggling to take a picture of themselves in front of a tall, graceful Atlas cedar, pretend they haven’t stopped to watch, and Rita’s voice is carried by the wind towards a busload of tourists fresh from seeing the azaleas.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Dove says, desperate now, a hot sword of pain in his eyeball, through his skull.

  ‘Oh, I understand perfectly.’

  ‘I need him to remember, then I’ll know who I am.’

  ‘And I need to get him back to the . . .’ And that’s when she stops dead, and all sound falls away, but for the gasps of the couple by the cedar tree and the crunch of Zachariah’s feet on the gravel. ‘Oh my. Oh goodness me.’

  Dove’s not sure what he’s expecting to see beyond the blinding sunlight bouncing off the arc of the glasshouse. But not the old man, some fifteen feet away, walking completely unaided down the path that slinks between the rose bushes, his feet still bare, now bloody.

  ‘Zachariah,’ Rita says, ‘you’re walking.’ He doesn’t respond to anything but the lure of what’s pulling him onward, his finger then his hands then his arms then his whole body set a-tremor as he nears it.

  He comes to a stop at the furthest end of the garden, where a small, bespoke glass dome houses a bloom set apart from the other camellias; for its rarity and fragility, its splendour, the best of them all, gifted a place of its own. And Dove knows it because the old man knows it. A mesmeric squad of pink petals, tightly bunched and shaped like a heart. Beguiling, beautiful, utterly unique, upside down in the tears that search his cheek. The Middlemist’s Red.

  And Dove remembers. He remembers because the old man remembers. He knows then because the old man knows. Dove knows what became of his mother, and who he really is.

  SIXTEEN

  Two days after arriving in Sumatra, Peter sat on the uppermost of four steps leading into the small tin-roofed house he and Harum had hired from a distant cousin of hers on the outskirts of Bukittinggi, and watched a turquoise haze twist above the gaunt horizon. Black smoke rising from rainforest fires took on a pearly lustre, forming a thick cloud of pollution that hung above the land like a guillotine over a traitor’s neck. It ran from east to west, bleeding out into the curve of the earth.

  ‘We can’t go until it lifts,’ Harum said. ‘It’ll choke us in the mountains. We won’t see the Rafflesia like this even if we are standing beside it.’

  ‘You sure?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sure. Besides, I need to rest. I still feel a little sick.’ She’d been feeling nauseous and tired for a week or more, a fact she attributed to the constant travelling and the inconsistent diet of a flower hunter. ‘But it’ll pass soon, I’m sure.’

  Harum had been inside washing her clothes in a small metal bucket since first light, tingeing the air with the babyish scent of fabric softener. At 930 metres above sea level, the climate was cooler than he’d expected it to be, and he could hear Harum laughing when he sighed with relief. She had no idea it was less for the temperature than to be 6,000 miles from Hens Berg.

  Their plans scuppered by the mesmeric bank of smog, he wrote a short letter to Susan. He’d never been one for penning lengthy letters, and was as sure his brevity would infuriate her as he was that he’d receive thirty-odd pages in reply.

  Dear Susan,

  I’m in Sumatra. With Harum. I’m pretty sure you’re looking for a map of the world right now (if you go to my apartment there is a spare one in the drawer beneath my bed), but when you find one, the first thing you’ll notice is that Sumatra is nowhere near Namibia. In fact, it’s pretty much on the other side of the world.

  You probably noticed I didn’t say Hens was here. I know you’ve a pretty keen eye for the details. You’d be right. We left him in Namibia. Things got a little ugly. Let’s just say you were right not to trust him.

  Boring answers to boring questions you’re definitely asking:

  1. No, it’s cooler here than you’d expect.

  2. Yes, a lot of people speak English.

  3. Yes, I cleaned the house where we’re staying the minute I arrived.

  Which brings me to Angelica! Go see her, make friends, tell her I miss her and that I hope business is OK. Tell her I have complete faith in her and I’ll see her when I return. I guess ‘when’ is the operative word! But it’ll be soon. We’re going to go trekking – yes, in the jungle, the actual jungle – see if we can find the corpse flower (you don’t want to know, but if you do, look up Rafflesia arnoldii – there are a dozen textbooks in my apartment, it’ll be in one of them). It’s the last flower in the love letter, and now that I’ve come all this way, well, it’d be a real shame to leave before we found it. Easier said than done.

  One last thing . . . I’m really happy that we got to spend time together in Mexico, Susan. I’m only sorry it was in a tent beside a field. I’m pretty sure you’d have preferred that stupid hotel on Fifth Avenue with the chandeliers. Or that place that does the ribs on Twenty-Eighth, the one that always makes me feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack. But I can’t really tell you how much I loved it, and love you. Maybe that’s why I’m writing it down on the other side of the world. Pathetic, I know.

  I’ll see you very soon. And I hope more than anything I won’t be alone when I come.

  Maybe choose a wedding hat, but don’t buy it just yet.

  Yours, Peter

  PS. I don’t think this will happen, but if you hear from Hens, just say you haven’t heard from me. It’s best that way.

  He wrote a return address at the bottom, knowing she’d respond immediately.

  That afternoon, the haze refusing to lift, Harum and Peter walked to the centre of town, swerving tourists who meandered through the narrow streets in traditional Bendi horse carriages. Most were drawn to the area by the Lubang Jepang, a hive of underground tunnels built by the Japanese during World War II that suffused the area with the mystery of a hidden, second life. Pasar Bawah market throbbed with noise and colour. Over Sianok Canyon, despite the blurred sky, loomed hints of volcanoes Mount Singgalang and Mount Marapi. Only one was a
ctive, but Harum could never remember which, declaring with a smile that if Mother Nature saw fit to rise from the earth’s core and remind her, then it’d probably be too late to run far enough away. They drank spiced teas in a restaurant, its balcony lurching over the roadside, and watched with some amusement as an exasperated bus driver kicked his smoking engine, hurling profanities that Harum delighted in translating at length.

  ‘Is it as you remember it?’ Peter asked. She dabbed a tea leaf from her front teeth.

  ‘Even noisier, maybe. It’s impossible for me to say.’

  He examined the menu, but the foreign lettering wriggled on the card. He could feel her eyes set on him.

  ‘There is one thing I can be sure of. It is better for having you here with me.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ he said.

  ‘But I feel guilty.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘That I didn’t tell you about Hens and me before.’ He’d tried to forget about it. He didn’t like to feel jealous. He didn’t like to feel sad. He couldn’t admit to her that the thought of them together made him feel both.

  ‘Hens?’ He pretended he didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, which she seemed to appreciate.

  ‘I wish it never happened,’ she said. ‘I believed the things he told me. I guess I didn’t know who he really was. How else would I have ended up in bed with him?’

  ‘You don’t have to feel bad about that,’ Peter said, and as jealous and as sad as he was, he meant it.

  ‘But isn’t that why he behaved the way he did?’ she said.

  ‘The way he behaves is his problem. Not yours.’

  Harum sighed, partly through relief, but Peter could tell she still blamed herself for something.

  ‘I find it odd you were ever friends in the first place.’

  ‘I was lonely,’ Peter said slowly. The words left him lighter, as if he’d confessed.

  The restaurant slowly filled with lunchtime diners. Peter was wondering how he might recreate that moment in Harum’s hotel room in Windhoek, when just for a second he felt sure he’d seen his desire mirrored. He was tired, though, and prone to convincing himself he could only have imagined it.

  ‘Harum? Harum, is that you?’ A woman approached, black hair scraped into two symmetrical buns. Harum stood cautiously. Peter found himself rising too.

  ‘Asoka,’ Harum said, ‘good to see you.’ The woman began to speak in Minangkabau, but with a polite flick of the eyes, Harum had her revert to English for Peter’s benefit, and they embraced.

  ‘Your cousin Jayakatong said you were in town.’

  ‘He has a big mouth.’ They both laughed in near-identical pitch, a delightful stereophonic trill.

  ‘But a good heart. I had to come and see for myself. And this is your . . .’ Asoka scanned Harum’s fingers for jewellery.

  ‘Friend,’ Harum said. Peter retook his seat. ‘His name is Peter.’ Asoka pushed her lips against his cheek, leaving two greasy red slugs on his skin.

  ‘Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.’

  ‘That’s nice to hear,’ Peter said. Asoka waggled her gold-painted two-inch fingernails in the air as though she might cast a magic spell and the two women spent half an hour reminiscing over schooldays. Peter insisted they use whichever language they wished, and he happily whiled away the time watching the bus driver be harangued by his increasingly irate passengers. Eventually he heard Asoka lapse back into a tongue he understood.

  ‘I hear you are a famous natural scientist these days?’

  ‘You’re getting your facts from all the wrong places,’ Harum said, blushing.

  ‘It’s what Jayakatong tells me. He says that there is nobody in all Sumatra who knows more about flowers than his cousin Harum. He is very proud. We all are.’

  ‘Like I said, he has a big mouth.’

  ‘And his big mouth tells me you’re here for the corpse flower.’ As she finished the sentence, a hush descended briefly over the other diners. Peter noticed a waiter pause before delivering a plate of vivid greens. Clinks in the background; plates in a kitchen. Harum dipped her head close to the table and whispered.

  ‘That’s right.’ Down on the road the bus driver gave up on his engine and threw his hat to the ground.

  ‘If you know so much about flowers, why would you do such a thing?’

  ‘It’s an urban myth, Asoka.’ Whatever it was Harum hadn’t told Peter, he wanted to hear it now, but she reluctantly clamped her lips together, apparently content for her tea to go cold. He turned his eyes to the awning above them.

  ‘An urban myth? In the rainforest?’ Asoka swung her legs to face Peter. She folded her hands tightly around his and spoke quietly. ‘Harum must have a very short memory.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Asoka . . .’

  ‘Everybody around here knows about the corpse flower. We even knew about it when we were children. When the corpse flower blooms it is because evil is coming. It is a warning. That is why it smells like rotten meat and is swarming with flies.’

  ‘Actually,’ Peter said, clearing his throat, ‘I think that’s more an evolutionary thing, to help it attract insects for pollination.’

  ‘But it is not, I promise you. It is a precursor to evil.’ A group of four men beckoned the waiter and asked to be moved to a table inside. Peter didn’t know what else to say. Harum shook her head, the two birds on her necklace jangling. The waiter dithered for a while, as if he’d prefer they find another restaurant, then disappeared into a dark stairwell.

  ‘Asoka,’ Harum said, ‘the world might turn more peacefully if people stopped believing in such fanciful things.’

  They left then, Harum feeling too sick to eat.

  Peter woke to the fury of a thunderstorm. The sofa was too short, and his right leg, over the armrest, stiff with cramp. He couldn’t remember what his nightmare entailed, only that he’d had one. Scratching at the cold sweat dried in salt flecks on his skin, he was calmed by the familiar odour of furniture polish trapped in the ceiling cavity, and to remember that Harum was sleeping four feet away on a thin mattress behind a translucent partition. But only by checking that the front door remained locked could he find a sense of stillness. It was dark but he could still see the haze, softly focused through the blurred wet glass of the window. He did press-ups until his arms tired, sit-ups so his gut ached. Turning an iron poker in his hand, the one they used for the firepit in the yard, he felt embarrassed still to be thinking of Hens Berg. Finally he slept again, the poker’s cold, hard handle pressed into his palm.

  ‘You stoke fires in your sleep?’ Harum stood by the concertinaed partition in a yellow silk dressing gown, pleasing in the way it caught the warm light of early afternoon. He sat up and gave his eyes time to adjust to what seemed a new reality lifted straight from his fantasies. Pushing the poker beneath the sofa, he let the matter vanish.

  ‘Can’t believe we slept that long.’

  ‘Jet lag. Waits for no man. But we’d better hurry and get going.’

  ‘You have more awkward conversations about hoodoo with old classmates lined up?’

  ‘You would like that, huh?’

  ‘Can’t wait.’

  ‘Well, you’re out of luck.’ She smiled. ‘We’re going flower hunting.’

  She pointed out of the window, and through the glass now washed by the storm he saw a clear and dazzling sky.

  A neighbour drove them to the entrance of Palupu Reserve, its awesome scale only now apparent. It felt like arriving at the shore of a new and undiscovered continent, trees stretching forever in every direction, a vast, uninterrupted wilderness. They checked each other’s rucksacks, then checked them again. Her cousin had kindly supplied them with everything they might need; some of it Peter could only guess at how to use. Apparently they’d be able to last over two weeks if they rationed their food and collected rainwater for drinking, but Harum enjoyed loading Peter with bigger concerns.

  ‘You’re not scared of Sumatran tigers, are you?’ she aske
d. He searched her face for signs she was joking.

  ‘Do we know where we’re headed?’

  She pointed to the mountains, so distant they could have been painted on the horizon.

  He swilled his cheeks with air. ‘Should have guessed.’

  The first eight miles were simpler than expected. Sub-alpine low forest scrub and shrub thickets surrendered easily to their machetes. They hacked and walked, and as they progressed he became keenly aware of how vegetation changed at altitude; how he could feel ecosystems shifting in his body temperature’s spasmodic fluctuations on a spectrum topped by fire, tailed by ice. They kept close. Though the vegetation was too thick to sustain large animal life on the ground, the darkness of the inner jungle promised to make possible any threat they could imagine. They had the sense of being watched by something inhuman, something dangerous, though Peter was slowly realizing he’d felt that way for some time. He vowed to himself that when they found the corpse flower he would tell Harum how he felt about her – a notion he conceded didn’t sound so romantic. He had a bottle of vaguely minty aftershave in his bag. Perhaps he could spray that in the air first.

  They reached the entrance to a cave system, a glittering waterfall like a curtain over the opening. Above the water, where the canopy cleared, the moon’s silvery clock face rose. Fumaroles spewed plumes of steam across it. This would be where they’d build camp.

  Harum’s clothes were discoloured with sweat. He watched, amazed, as she unpeeled them from her body until all that was left was the necklace and her underwear, washed them in the chute, then hung them over a rock to dry. She dived into the water, which seemed to part in acceptance of her form, reappearing ten feet away to find Peter still gazing at the point where she’d entered. Knowing he’d never see anything quite as exquisite as that again, he tore himself out of his boots, disrobed as quickly as he ever had and leapt into the water. They swam for close to an hour, accompanied by a choir of animal calls, before emerging slippery and new. As they lay on the bank under the stars, their breathing found a steady unison.