For the next few hours I stood along the wall behind the band, piecing over what Karen had said and wondering if she knew what had happened with Denys. He certainly wouldn’t risk coming over to talk to me, but part of me was glad of that. I wasn’t sure what I would say to him, or what I even wanted. Everywhere I looked, complex pairings came together and slid apart again, like characters in a melodrama. Lives tumbled. They changed in an instant…that’s how quickly something could be newly begun, or finished for ever. Every now and then, those things didn’t look so very different on the surface. They both cost a great deal, too.
It was nearly dawn when I left the Nakuru Hotel with D and Boy Long. I walked between them, relieved the night was finally over. I had only come face-to-face with Denys once that evening, in a moment at the bar when our gazes had clicked and locked. Then Karen had put a hand on his shoulder, and he’d turned round, and that was that. Now I was deflated and bleary-eyed. That’s probably why I didn’t realize what was happening at first. How Jock appeared from nowhere and began lurching towards us from across the street, calling out words I couldn’t understand. It jolted me even to see him.
“You were supposed to look out for her,” he slurred at D. His eyes were wild, not quite focused on anything.
I felt Boy flare beside me. He made as if to charge Jock, but D stepped forward first, saying, “Let’s talk like men and get you settled down.”
“I won’t be made a fool of,” Jock spat, and before anyone could say another word, he sent one arm wildly through the air at D, landing just shy of him, while my blood went icy and thick. Somehow he’d learned about Denys—that’s all I could think.
D ducked backwards, nearly losing his balance. I could tell he was rattled and probably panicked, too. Boy had had enough by then and made a move to grab Jock’s arm, but Jock erupted, stepping out of Boy’s reach and swinging out wide again. This time, his fist caught D on the chin with a sickening wallop. D staggered and went down on one knee, as if all the air had left his body. Boy scrambled for Jock, but he was windmilling punches now, bellowing something about getting satisfaction.
But even if my being with Denys had come to light, what did that have to do with D? Why on earth go after an old man, and an innocent one? Nothing made any sense, and Jock was so drunk he’d become wooden—flailing and rawboned and wild.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “It’s D. D! Stop!” I pulled at him from behind, slamming into his back with my fists, but he threw me off easily. I landed hard and scrambled up again.
D had fallen to his side on the ground and lay crumpled there, his arms cradling his head, while Jock went after him again. Everything was happening so fast. “Stop, stop it!” I kept crying out, suddenly terrified that Jock would kill him.
I screamed at Boy to get help from the hotel, and he finally ran out with a handful of men who wedged themselves between Jock and D. They pinned Jock to one side of the building where he strained against their grip, his face purple with rage.
“You selfish bitch,” he spat at me. “You thought you could rut around like a dirty whore and I wouldn’t find out? That I wouldn’t fight back?” With a great push, he flung off the arms of the men and then staggered away at a run, down the street and into the dark.
D was a ruin. We got him to the infirmary somehow, his eye sealing up by the moment, his mouth and nose dripping blood. A surgeon was called out of bed to treat him, and Boy and I sat for hours waiting as stitches were sewn and plaster applied. His arm had been fractured in three places, his neck sprained, and his jaw broken. When the surgeon described the extent of D’s injuries, I buried my face in my hands, overcome with shame. My recklessness had lit the fuse in Jock. I should have known what he was capable of. This was all my fault.
“Will he be all right?” I asked the surgeon.
“With time. We’ll keep him here for several weeks at least, I’d say, and once he’s home he’ll require a nurse.”
“Anything he needs,” Boy assured him.
When the surgeon had gone, I thought of Jock bolting off into the night and how he might get off scot-free. “We should go to the authorities anyway,” I told Boy.
“D doesn’t want this out in the open. He’s protecting you…both of us, probably, but also himself. How would it look for the Vigilance Committee to have him seem so vulnerable to attack?”
“I suppose…it just doesn’t seem right.”
“Right and wrong don’t always factor in cases like this.”
“Don’t they, though?” I asked him, thinking painfully, horribly, of how answerable I was to all of it.
—
When I was finally able to see D, I took in the horror of his purpled jaw and forehead, the braces and plasters, the blood snagging his white hair, the pain in his face. I took his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
D couldn’t speak, but he nodded ever so slightly. The whites of his eyes were bloodshot. He looked incredibly fragile and ancient, too.
“Is there anything I can do?” He merely turned away into his pillow.
As D stirred, his breath caught and he grimaced before his breathing fell into a steady pattern again. I watched the rise and fall of his chest for a long time, and finally I dropped into an uneasy sleep.