Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [25]
Jessica didn’t want to think about that night. When she did she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.
‘Of course, the white settlers in Kenya had come to accept these social conditions as normal,’ continued Mrs Woodcott. ‘Even families with a tiny income could live in a kind of luxury, providing they were white. They had household servants to help with all their domestic tasks.’
The car sped steadily along, engine buzzing and tyres hissing as they traversed a motorway, shiny and black as oil.
The road surface was still wet but the rain had stopped now.
‘These servants were accepted, trusted, taken for granted. They were so familiar that, like wallpaper, they faded into the background of everyday life.’
The moon was shining in a high cold sky, pale neutral light coming through the windscreen. Jessica watched Mrs Woodcott’s face in the moonlight. Concentrating on the road, not looking at Jessica, the old woman continued to talk, like someone speaking in a trance.
‘Just think about it,’ she said. ‘Those courteous, obedient eyes. Eyes which you can’t read. Teeth flashing in smiles.
But who knows what those smiles really portend? What thoughts really go on in those alien skulls?’
Now, Mrs Woodcott did look up from her driving for a moment. Her dark eyes glittered at Jessica. She looked like an old school mistress fervently hoping her pupil will give her the right answer.
‘Many things have the power to frighten us, but we reserve a particular dread for invasions from within. A disease you catch may be awful, but how much more awful the disease that comes from within your own body, traitor cells in the self. You do see what I’m getting at, dear?’
Jessica grunted something. How much more of this crap did she have to listen to? Never mind. She could endure it.
Nice comfortable car and the rain’s stopped; almost home now.
‘So it was for the good white people of Kenya with their servants on the inside. Trusted, taken for granted, ignored.
Imagine the horror when these trusted servants suddenly rose up to butcher their masters.’
Jessica counted the street-lamps as Mrs Woodcott went on about the Mau Mau uprising, telling horror stories of blood and torture, and bestial ceremonies called oathings.
She seemed to take pleasure in relating the gory details, glancing over at Jessica from time to time to watch the expression on her face. Telling of children murdered while sleeping between clean sheets, by the hands which had so recently laundered those sheets.
Jessica was hardly listening. She nodded her head at what seemed to be suitable intervals, only speaking when it became necessary to give Mrs Woodcott directions. Finally they pulled off the motorway and into the sprawling council estate where Jessica lived.
The Mercedes pulled up outside her house and Jessica thanked Mrs Woodcott and opened the door. As she got out, Mrs Woodcott said, ‘Don’t forget what I’ve been telling you, dear. Be careful.’
‘I will, good night.’ She heaved a sigh of relief as the Mercedes pulled away. Then she took out her keys and turned to face it.
Home.
It was a small pretty maisonette with a rose-bush trailing up the brickwork. Jessica took a deep breath of cool night air.
Despite all the things that had happened, despite what Roy had done to her, Jessica found that she was delighted to be back. The moon was high. It was a clear cold night here, on the London orbital road, and there was surprisingly little traffic.
She walked up the concrete ramp that led to her garden gate. At the bottom of the ramp she resolved not to think about Roy again for a few days. But halfway up the ramp Jessica already found herself glumly wondering what fatal flaw in her personality had caused him to dump her.
She paused outside her front door, and took another deep breath. She had to prepare herself. Her little house might look the same in the moonlight, but it had been subtly altered. Everything had changed since she went away.
She stood hesitating with the key in the lock. This would be her first time stepping over this