health. Consult my doctors.’ Clare saw what was being threatened: the forcible hospitalization, sedation, electroconvulsive therapy, interminable confinement – an assault on the mind. She knew she would have to tread carefully, but was struggling to find the reserve to control herself.
‘We will have to get to the bottom of it, madam. But I assure you, we are very good at what we do, and we will get to the bottom of it, one way or another, no matter how long it takes.’ Ms White smiled almost benevolently and stood, signalling the end of the interview. She did not say goodbye or offer her hand, snapping the binder shut before dropping it into her briefcase. ‘I can find my own way out.’
‘I will show you,’ said Clare. ‘Allow me that courtesy at least.’
Clare
Is it unfair for me to think your notebooks, your final letter, a load I must bear? It pains me to read them, to compare them with the official accounts, the TRC transcripts, the news clippings, the competing histories and revisions of the past that I have accumulated in an ever-expanding file of materials, compiled so long after the events they seek to describe. I begin to accept that distance can only breed distortion. I read a line in your handwriting, compare it with the other things I know, the memories of you, the birthday and Mother’s Day cards you gave me over the years even when I know it pained you to offer me any sign of love. I cannot go on. Reading a single page is alpine ascent. A day’s worth of writing – one of your days, your account of a single day – is ocean crossing. I held Sam’s hand and he looked so trusting , I read, and put down the notebook before I make the ink of your words run lividly across the page. Why do I not have more in your hand, Laura? Your wild child’s handwriting turned tight and regimented in adolescence, just like your politics, for a while so unlike ours, so foreign to anything your father or I would have countenanced as correct or proper or simply good. The flag you insisted on flying from your bedroom window. The salutes. The singing of the anthem. Your peculiar militarism. It was torture for us – torture and embarrassment. And the tiny marching rows of letters, so finely written your teachers complained that your essays were almost illegible and required the use of magnifying glasses. And then, along with your politics, the sudden shift in your hand halfway through your first year at university, the strange hybrid of cursive and print, your own invention, beautiful but unruly, adhering only to the barest outline of rule. Radical and unrulywhere once you had been so conservative. You were old enough to know what you thought, to realize when you’d been wrong in the past, to know your ignorance and realize the terror in that unknowing.
Even now, when so much has changed and nothing has changed, there are difficulties. There is something in your case, and others like yours, which pricks consciences and embarrasses your former colleagues. No one will tell me what or why. I admit I have made only limited enquiries, asked discreet questions of a few people at official events, where they cannot speak without fear of being overheard, where I must look like a pathetic and desperate old woman hungry for justification and reassurance and some explanation for why your name is not on the roll of heroes. I can only guess. Perhaps it is the cold-bloodedness of what you did, the extraordinary determination in the way you carried out your mission. You were nothing if not a zealot. You had innocent victims, if any one of us can be called innocent or victim .
Who do we believe? There are lacunae in the archive I have assembled, the filing cabinet that contains what remains of you, gaps yawning between your account to me in the letter delivered on your behalf, your account to yourself in the ten notebooks you bequeathed to me, and the accounts of the former government, the news reports, the testimony of your
‘We will have to get to the bottom of it, madam. But I assure you, we are very good at what we do, and we will get to the bottom of it, one way or another, no matter how long it takes.’ Ms White smiled almost benevolently and stood, signalling the end of the interview. She did not say goodbye or offer her hand, snapping the binder shut before dropping it into her briefcase. ‘I can find my own way out.’
‘I will show you,’ said Clare. ‘Allow me that courtesy at least.’
Clare
Is it unfair for me to think your notebooks, your final letter, a load I must bear? It pains me to read them, to compare them with the official accounts, the TRC transcripts, the news clippings, the competing histories and revisions of the past that I have accumulated in an ever-expanding file of materials, compiled so long after the events they seek to describe. I begin to accept that distance can only breed distortion. I read a line in your handwriting, compare it with the other things I know, the memories of you, the birthday and Mother’s Day cards you gave me over the years even when I know it pained you to offer me any sign of love. I cannot go on. Reading a single page is alpine ascent. A day’s worth of writing – one of your days, your account of a single day – is ocean crossing. I held Sam’s hand and he looked so trusting , I read, and put down the notebook before I make the ink of your words run lividly across the page. Why do I not have more in your hand, Laura? Your wild child’s handwriting turned tight and regimented in adolescence, just like your politics, for a while so unlike ours, so foreign to anything your father or I would have countenanced as correct or proper or simply good. The flag you insisted on flying from your bedroom window. The salutes. The singing of the anthem. Your peculiar militarism. It was torture for us – torture and embarrassment. And the tiny marching rows of letters, so finely written your teachers complained that your essays were almost illegible and required the use of magnifying glasses. And then, along with your politics, the sudden shift in your hand halfway through your first year at university, the strange hybrid of cursive and print, your own invention, beautiful but unruly, adhering only to the barest outline of rule. Radical and unrulywhere once you had been so conservative. You were old enough to know what you thought, to realize when you’d been wrong in the past, to know your ignorance and realize the terror in that unknowing.
Even now, when so much has changed and nothing has changed, there are difficulties. There is something in your case, and others like yours, which pricks consciences and embarrasses your former colleagues. No one will tell me what or why. I admit I have made only limited enquiries, asked discreet questions of a few people at official events, where they cannot speak without fear of being overheard, where I must look like a pathetic and desperate old woman hungry for justification and reassurance and some explanation for why your name is not on the roll of heroes. I can only guess. Perhaps it is the cold-bloodedness of what you did, the extraordinary determination in the way you carried out your mission. You were nothing if not a zealot. You had innocent victims, if any one of us can be called innocent or victim .
Who do we believe? There are lacunae in the archive I have assembled, the filing cabinet that contains what remains of you, gaps yawning between your account to me in the letter delivered on your behalf, your account to yourself in the ten notebooks you bequeathed to me, and the accounts of the former government, the news reports, the testimony of your
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