I really just existed during the flight across the Atlantic and the drive down to Hampshire. I was very aware, as I went through security in Houston, that I was carrying a deeply subversive document, or at least a document they would consider subversive. I had never been so grateful for the electronic tag on my passport. I was one of the good guys, or so they believed, and the check was cursory. We flew overnight and I barely slept, but the plane was quiet and the service in business class unobtrusive, and I lay back with my eyes closed, reliving the last few months, and the pretty American stewardess left me alone.
Driving down from Heathrow to Amy’s village was harder. Since my training, when I was in my late twenties, I have rarely been aware of any prolonged stress symptoms, but my heart was pounding and my mouth was dry. I have driven a lot, in all sorts of vehicles, but I twice found myself making silly mistakes. Once I realised I was driving on the right, the result of being in the States, I suppose, and I took a wrong turn on a road I know well, leaving the motorway to head for Amy’s village. I told myself it was exhaustion. I had barely slept since I saw Alice in that awful place, but I think I knew, really, that it was grief.
I arrived at Amy’s at about ten in the morning. There was a gradual thaw in progress. They had not had as much snow in Hampshire as in more westerly parts of the country, although even in Amy’s village there were dirty piles and heaps beside the roads, where conscientious local citizens had cleared paths and lanes. Amy’s drive was white but it had obviously been cleared, probably several times. She had family living nearby and of course they would see to it that she was all right. In fact, knowing Amy, half the village would come to her aid if needed: retired colonels, the postman, the son of the vicar and no doubt the few American residents, brought up to believe in good neighbourliness, as long as their neighbours were fellow whites, and not too radical in their politics.
Amy must have heard the tyres of my car crunching on the snowy gravel. She came to the door wearing a beautiful Norwegian-style knitted jumper in shades of grey and red, but looking haggard despite her immaculate turnout. I left my bag in the car and almost ran to her. We embraced there on the doorstep and I could feel her shaking in my arms as I held her. When we parted she had tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Karl!” she said, and then gulped. “Come on in.”
We went into the kitchen and without asking she poured me coffee and put a plate of home made biscuits in front of me.
I had intended to be strong. I thought I might bring comfort to Amy, who had just lost her much loved sister-in-law, but when I looked up at her red eyes and strained face, it was suddenly all too much.
“Amy,” I started, intending to say some words of comfort, although I can’t imagine what. A comment about executions being quick and painless? But we both knew that was not necessarily true. Some inane remark about dying for what one believes in? But nobody should die for their beliefs in a free country, only for their actions. Perhaps some cliché about being in a better place? But I did not believe that stuff then, and I had no idea whether Amy did, although of course she was a pillar of the local Anglican church.
“Amy,” I started again, and then suddenly it was all too much. I could see Alice’s face, not as I had seen her behind bullet proof glass in her prison in Texas, but the way she had looked in the soft light of the cottage in Wales, where only a few weeks ago, we had talked together about politics. I, fool that I was, had been supporting the status quo, and Alice had been disagreeing, and even as we talked I had wanted to reach out and touch her. She was so strong and so vulnerable. By common consent, though, we rarely had any physical contact. That part of our relationship was long since over, although to be honest I often longed for her. I will never know, now, whether she felt like that about me.
Then it all washed over me. Alice was dead, and although I had tried, I was not entirely innocent of her fate. She was gone. And then I was crying. I did not have a few controlled tears in my eyes, I was not weeping gently, I was howling, my grief suddenly overflowing, overwhelming. I managed to put my coffee mug down on the table, and then I just let go. My body was racked with misery, I was choking on it, consumed by it, it was too much, I could not even express it. In my mind, I saw Alice’s serious face, and I saw her as she had been when I had last seen her in that awful place, and I wailed and shook from head to toe.