Read Online Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta - Free Book Online
Authors: Melina Marchetta
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During the day they were always together. Sometimes he was withdrawn. Other times he was really funny. He’d break out in song and he did a really good pelvic-thrust version of “Moves Like Jagger”. He was totally obsessed with music.’ Bee was pensive for a moment. ‘They were both kind of uninhibited. This one time we were at a town fair just outside Saint-Malo and there was a platform for dancing, but it was empty. Until them. They danced like no one else existed in the world. They did most things like that. Most times.’ There was a strange quality to Bee’s storytelling. A wistfulness, perhaps. ‘On the bus she’d be teaching him Arabic. The kids at the back used to make fun of it but she didn’t care.’
‘It’s a hard language to learn,’ Saffron said.
Had she tried? Bish wondered. Once, as a teenager, he’d been intrigued enough to borrow Arabic language books and tapes from the library and study them in his dorm room. Until his father was notified by the headmaster.
‘It’s not really who we are, Bish. Your mother’s more English than the Queen. No more Arabic study now, promise?’
And Bish had promised, although he wondered why his more- English-than-the-Queen mother had named him Bashir, and why the earliest memory he had was of her calling him habibi . But he chose not to pursue it. Stephen Ortley had worked hard for the Foreign Office. He was respected and loyal to his country and he expected his wife and son to be the same. Bish had honoured that part of the deal. He didn’t know what his mother had honoured. She had been a no-show for part of his teenage years, even during those times when his parents were living not half an hour’s drive from where he was boarding. When he was home for school holidays he could see that she did her best to be the mother he remembered from when he was a child, but by the time he was fifteen he had switched off. Saffron’s saving grace in his adult life was that she was a good grandmother. Her grief following Stevie’s death almost broke her.
‘There’s no way Violette did it, you know,’ Bee said.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I asked her myself after you got her out of that cupboard, and she said if she truly wanted to blow someone up, she’d have put the bomb under Crombie’s seat.’
Bish flinched. He hoped for Violette’s sake that she hadn’t said this to anyone else.
Bish had been home for less than a day when Elliot rang again.
‘Get yourself to Kingly Court, Ortley. A colleague would like to have a word.’
He’d already downed his second Scotch for the morning. Wasn’t in the mood to stay focused. The previous evening he’d left an exhausted Saffron and Bee with Rachel and Maynard and driven home alone. Bish had always refused to break bread with David Maynard in the home he once owned. And here was Elliot trying to involve him in something he didn’t want to be involved in. It was boarding school all over again except now the Home Secretary was involved.
‘Get off at Oxford Circus. I’ll send you the address,’ Elliot said before hanging up.
Bish hated public transport. These past two years he had lived in the Isle of Dogs. He worked locally and drove there, avoiding the West End at all costs. Saffron lived in Gravesend, his daughter in Ashford, both accessible within an hour via the A20. Getting to the West End was another story. The DLR seemed unnatural to him. An automated tram was too close to a metaphor of his life, on so many levels. No one at the helm, people putting their lives into those driverless hands. So he took the Tube from Canary Wharf, regretting it in an instant. The heat and the body odour combined with his throbbing headache made him want to take up cycling.
Elliot’s directions led to a café with outdoor tables. Bish suffered from the opposite of seasonal illness. He hated sunshine, and for the life of him couldn’t understand how a man with skin as white as Elliot’s would want to sit
‘It’s a hard language to learn,’ Saffron said.
Had she tried? Bish wondered. Once, as a teenager, he’d been intrigued enough to borrow Arabic language books and tapes from the library and study them in his dorm room. Until his father was notified by the headmaster.
‘It’s not really who we are, Bish. Your mother’s more English than the Queen. No more Arabic study now, promise?’
And Bish had promised, although he wondered why his more- English-than-the-Queen mother had named him Bashir, and why the earliest memory he had was of her calling him habibi . But he chose not to pursue it. Stephen Ortley had worked hard for the Foreign Office. He was respected and loyal to his country and he expected his wife and son to be the same. Bish had honoured that part of the deal. He didn’t know what his mother had honoured. She had been a no-show for part of his teenage years, even during those times when his parents were living not half an hour’s drive from where he was boarding. When he was home for school holidays he could see that she did her best to be the mother he remembered from when he was a child, but by the time he was fifteen he had switched off. Saffron’s saving grace in his adult life was that she was a good grandmother. Her grief following Stevie’s death almost broke her.
‘There’s no way Violette did it, you know,’ Bee said.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I asked her myself after you got her out of that cupboard, and she said if she truly wanted to blow someone up, she’d have put the bomb under Crombie’s seat.’
Bish flinched. He hoped for Violette’s sake that she hadn’t said this to anyone else.
Bish had been home for less than a day when Elliot rang again.
‘Get yourself to Kingly Court, Ortley. A colleague would like to have a word.’
He’d already downed his second Scotch for the morning. Wasn’t in the mood to stay focused. The previous evening he’d left an exhausted Saffron and Bee with Rachel and Maynard and driven home alone. Bish had always refused to break bread with David Maynard in the home he once owned. And here was Elliot trying to involve him in something he didn’t want to be involved in. It was boarding school all over again except now the Home Secretary was involved.
‘Get off at Oxford Circus. I’ll send you the address,’ Elliot said before hanging up.
Bish hated public transport. These past two years he had lived in the Isle of Dogs. He worked locally and drove there, avoiding the West End at all costs. Saffron lived in Gravesend, his daughter in Ashford, both accessible within an hour via the A20. Getting to the West End was another story. The DLR seemed unnatural to him. An automated tram was too close to a metaphor of his life, on so many levels. No one at the helm, people putting their lives into those driverless hands. So he took the Tube from Canary Wharf, regretting it in an instant. The heat and the body odour combined with his throbbing headache made him want to take up cycling.
Elliot’s directions led to a café with outdoor tables. Bish suffered from the opposite of seasonal illness. He hated sunshine, and for the life of him couldn’t understand how a man with skin as white as Elliot’s would want to sit
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