Hugh was shocked. ‘Aren’t they endangered? Should he be doing that?’
And Gerhard responded coolly, ‘What do you think the “special meat” advertised in the villages is?’
* * *
When Hugh skyped his wife that night and tried to tell her the story—horror for the spidery legs, sorrow for the mother—it was lost in the two-second delay. He noticed that Kate had developed a strange diffidence over the screen, probably because they weren’t used to gazing directly at each other: sitting side by side, feeding the children, watching television on the sofa, but never opposite like this. He could see she was embarrassed, then she jiggled the computer away from her face and he saw flashes of wall, skirting board as she moved to the children’s bedrooms, zooming in on their sleeping faces—a fringe of dark lash, a soft doughy arm flopped over a teddy. He felt the pain of not being there, of not breathing in their skin.
‘When are you coming home?’ he heard Kate say, her face off-centre and forehead looming larger at this angle.
‘Three weeks, max.’
There was a pause, or was it the natural delay, and then she said, ‘Love ya,’ and he replied without hesitation, ‘Love ya, too.’ So easy to say; their trademark words exchanged in such a nonchalant, throwaway manner, and with the same tone his own mother would invoke when he looked a little melancholic as a boy and she would invariably say, Chin up.
He should have explained to Kate that there was a certain rhythm of life in West Africa, how what would normally be a one-week job stretches out to a month. How in the mess it takes five women to scrape the plates clean; at the building site, six men to watch one man work the jackhammer. And it wasn’t that the locals were lazy. Hugh had seen enough of slackers on projects over the years to call them out. No, it was something different, maybe the pace of village life where a frenzy of activity like hunting or farming preceded a quiet time of mulling over the significance of the kill and the crop. And for years the locals had been promised the bounty of the iron mountain and still the project was in the evaluation phase and nothing had eventuated, being stopped by one obstacle or another: a change of government, or a massive plummet in the ore prices. Or maybe they were just pacing themselves, taking one long, deep breath before things really got started.
Hugh looked at the clock by his bed. He wasn’t tired but if he didn’t sleep now he would be struggling to wake in time for breakfast with the team in the mess. He could imagine Kate padding across the kitchen lino and brewing her first cup of coffee before the kids woke for school, lining up squares of white bread across the sink to defrost for school lunches. They would share the coffee in the pot, talk about the children and the other women in the town, and then one child would awake, and, like a noisy domino effect, suddenly it would be mayhem, screams and laughter and little arms lifted in the air to be dressed and then the hot, cross shouts from his youngest daughter as Kate tried to tame the frizzy scarecrow hair into two pigtail bushels.
There was that familiar pang across his chest as he remembered all of this, and then it was subdued as quickly as it had come.
* * *
The latest delay was the matter of the chimpanzees. Hugh was at the meeting in the superintendent’s office when the environmental officer delivered the grim news.
‘A colony of chimps to the east of the mine. It will be tricky getting approval.’
The Chinese manager’s face was a death mask. A man in his thirties with skin as smooth as a woman’s, not a single blemish or wrinkle to mar his oval face.
‘Get it sorted.’
‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ answered Gerhard. ‘We have the animals’ interests more at heart than the locals do.’
And that was probably true. Hugh hadn’t told anyone about the previous day, when he had gone into the cafeteria and the food was the usual inedible, unrecognisable slop, except for the fish heads bobbing in an oil-slick stew.
‘I’d like to know what happened to the rest of the fish,’ joked the Australian guy ahead of him in the line.
Hugh decided to skip the stew and piled a mound of the green vegetable onto his plate instead. Kava, he thought the young woman standing at the bain-marie had said when he asked her what it was. He must have heard incorrectly. It looked like silverbeet and tasted of the earth. He had seen it growing everywhere in the fields, seeded behind the sheds and in the gullies, and there was always a constant haze of smoke as the villagers cleared more land for the ubiquitous crop.
The slippery, slimy vegetable barely made a dent in his appetite, and Hugh left the cafeteria hungry. A startling aroma drifted across the compound, assailed his senses and he found himself following the smell to where two black women were standing at a large iron cauldron, smoky tendrils enveloping their bare arms and shiny, generous faces.
A group of men sat on benches under a tarpaulin and Hugh could see that this was the cafeteria designated for the unskilled labour force. The women were animated, unlike those serious young girls who worked in the main mess hall, and when they saw him, they stopped their chatter and lowered their eyes.
‘Smells great,’ said Hugh, peering into their pots and seeing a bubbling meat stew.
The older woman burst into laughter, couldn’t contain her grin. ‘Would you like to try?’
Hugh hesitated, sensing a joke, but the hunger gnawing at his belly had become untenable and he nodded. ‘Why not?’
Her strong arms stirred the pot, scraping the tastier, fried bits caught at the cast-iron bottom. She lifted the heavy ladle onto a tin plate and he marvelled at the strength in her upper forearms—not fat and swaying like hammocks but hard, firm muscle—and the beads of sweat like an intricate tattoo on her forehead. He took the plate to the low wooden bench, sharing the space with two skinny men who looked as hungry as he was. No-one spoke, but he could feel all eyes on him as he tucked in. Like the food he had previously eaten, there was an absence of seasoning or spices, but this time there was a depth to the meat, a richness that was enough to satiate his desires.
‘You like?’ laughed the woman, and the younger girl rolled her eyes, and her large bee-stung lips clamped tight over a smile.
And Hugh understood now what was in the pot, and how the humour in the poster he could see hanging on the wall in the superintendent’s office was misplaced. A cartoon chimp sitting in a cauldron with a red line across it. One of the many posters that Gerhard said were displayed across the village to stop the locals from eating the endangered animals. Put a missionary in the pot and it would have the same comic effect.
* * *
‘Wait,’ Kate said incredulously. ‘You ate a chimp?’
Hugh could tell that Kate was enjoying this. They hadn’t spoken for a couple of days and she looked more relaxed than usual. He could see an empty wineglass at the corner of the screen.
‘What did it taste like?’
‘Like chicken.’
She laughed. ‘We can’t tell the kids—they’ll be mortified!’ He knew what she meant. They had stopped telling them they were eating roast lamb, instead calling it roast meat ever since little Maddie had made the connection.
‘Tell me something else.’
‘It rains all the time—because of the mountain.’
‘Is it hot?’
‘Not as hot as home.’ Hugh could see she was wearing her singlet top and pyjama shorts, whereas he had a light windcheater on. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘The usual. The kids mostly. Oh, and Denise caught me running in bare feet to put the bin out again.’
It was an ongoing joke. How the old lady across the road had nothing else to do but watch her neighbours’ every move and chastise Kate and the other younger women in the street for not wearing shoes on the blistering bitumen. Denise was English and had moved to the mining town in the seventies, and even after her husband had died and her children had left for Perth, she had stayed on in the small bungalow. A huge woman, who wore tent-like floral dresses, and as Kate had once remarked, h
ad grown to the size of her pond—like a koi. It seemed as if all the women in the town had gotten larger over the years, those that stayed on in this small-pond life, and even Kate was a little fleshier these days, though Hugh didn’t mind. There was more of her to cling on to at night.
‘So, you’re home at the end of the month?’
‘I think it will blow out longer.’
‘Wait—what?’ He could see Kate leaning forward across the table and frowning so that a deep cleft formed between her brows.
‘It will be longer.’
‘How much longer? What about the holidays?’
‘We weren’t going anywhere.’
‘The kids have VacSwim.’
He had forgotten the swimming lessons; his treasured role in spurring on his second child, Lucy, who was their bookworm and struggled with anything physical. He would miss the mornings at the town pool, the Indigenous children ducking and diving in the deep end whilst the white kids did their lessons back and forth in the designated lanes. Parents bonding over missed levels and lack of good tuition for the children.
‘I’ll email you the dates,’ he answered, then to wind things up because he knew there was no point continuing with that frown, casually said, ‘Love ya.’
Hugh waited for the reply, but Kate sat squinting at the screen, and then she disappeared, became a ghostly silhouette icon again.
Hugh glanced at the travel clock on his bedside table. It was late, but not late enough to attempt sleep, so he considered the book he had picked up in the mess. It was a Wilbur Smith novel, huge glossy lettering and a lion leaping across the front cover. He had a feeling he had read it years ago, with a different, more muted cover. He propped himself up with a pillow and spread his legs out on the bed. It was hard to concentrate on the printed words. He could hear sounds coming through the thin walls: a toilet flushing, then a gurgling and stammering of water through pipes. And then another sound, like a crying child. No, not a child, but Matt, sobbing on the other side of the wall. Hugh sat upright, not knowing whether he should cough and make a noise so that the young man would know he could be heard. Or did he really care? Most nights Hugh would half-catch the rambling phone calls to the girlfriend, sometimes angry rants that ended in love-worn murmurings as soft as a cocoon. And although Hugh only heard one side of the conversation, the man’s point of view, it was clear that the girl was sleeping with other men and partying hard. In that first trip driving out to the mountain Matt had handed Hugh his phone, presenting it like a trophy, and there were the photos of Renee, all boobs and spidery eyelash extensions and a tan from a can, and he could see from her sculptured profile and jutty jaw that she was too much for soft-natured Matt.
The sobs were messy, embarrassingly so, and Hugh got up and walked with heavy steps to the cupboard. He opened the doors and banged them shut. Opened and closed the chest of drawers, but the sobs continued and Hugh wondered whether his generation were weaker than Carston’s, and not made of the stern stuff that enabled them to leave their women behind in search of the iron roots of a mountain. He faked a cough, cleared his voice as if readying himself for a speech, and then the sobs became more muffled and gradually faded away so that all Hugh could hear was his own rapid breathing.
* * *
Hugh woke at 5am, before his alarm went off, feeling as if he hadn’t been asleep at all, or if he had, they were brief, unsatisfactory snatches where he dreamed mainly of the children, their laughs and screams distant cries like circling seabirds. There was a kink in the flimsy louvre blinds, and he could see the gradual glow of day creep through the gap. Soon it would take over the whole sky in that way you never see happening, when you can’t know its true beginning. And then at dusk, the day would disappear in a different way, a sinking orange ball so easy to track before it dissolved to a stain on the horizon. And in all these different versions of light, the mountain range would always be a looming presence—sometimes a hazy, smoky outline, and sometimes that undeniable, unshakeable jaw.
Hugh was keen to get up. Today he would be journeying to the east side of the ranges to check out the chimpanzee colony with the environmental team, and he felt the relief of getting away from the campsite to see the mountain close up and drink in the colours and smells of the earth. Hugh had more samples, too, he wanted to collect, with always an eye out for rocks to bring home for the kids—ideally quartz or granite, so that they could be shattered for weeks in the rock tumbler, worn down into the best versions of themselves: smooth and soothing indents, to be stroked like worry stones. And, of course, high-grade powdery haematite for the girls, so sparkly that it looked as if it had been drenched in silver glitter.
* * *
Hugh dressed and made his way to the mess. It was too early for breakfast but he could get the first coffee from the urn, and catch up on emails before the day officially began. He was surprised to see others already up and about: a few African men who looked like village elders though dressed as pastors hurrying across the compound, one with a white shirt still with the telltale creases from its packet, those envelope- perfect folds. And Gerhard and the Chinese manager, Xiu, deep in conversation as they entered the mess hall before him. Hugh followed and stopped in surprise. There was the whole team, already gathered for breakfast, though now he could see no-one had drinks or food trays, and all eyes were on Gerhard and Xiu.
Hugh looked around and saw Matt standing with the other Australians. He walked across to stand next to him, but the younger man seemed embarrassed and looked down at the ground. Matt looked terrible: his face was deathly pale, though tiny pinpricks of colour dotted his neck like a colony of ants.
‘What’s going on?’ Hugh asked him.
‘Didn’t you hear last night? One of the cooks has Ebola.’
Hugh turned to see that the kitchen was empty; a sterile, eerie quietness filled the space. The women who were usually lugging pots and banging utensils were all gone. How did he not know about this? And it dawned on Hugh that the conversations he missed last night and every night, the half-delivered punchlines and the snatches he heard through the walls and cracks in doors, through playground quadrangles and high school corridors, were never meant for him but always floating out of reach, into unfathomable blue sky.
He didn’t need to look at Gerhard and Xiu, could follow the essence of what was being said by watching the other men’s expressions: the grim stare for immediate lockdown, the flatlined mouth for twenty-one-day incubation period, and the twitch of disdain on their lips for the woman who dared to cross over the Sierra Leone border and clutch the body of a dead relative days before the funeral. In their eyes he could see the deep-rooted disgust for leaking bodily fluids, for beads of sweat that could so easily fall into a pot of bubbling stew. Hugh felt his heart lurch. There were moments of life that cannot be reckoned with. Dead bodies to be washed and wept over; carrying the mummified remains of your children on your back until they wither away into a relic keepsake.
When Gerhard finished speaking, those with questions stepped forward—though not angry, or accusatory; just decent, ordinary men wanting answers, a voice of reason to assuage their fears. And Hugh knew enough about Gerhard to see that he was doing his best to be that person, but Hugh wanted more than that, craved a certain levity of feeling, the release valve of laughter that keeps you from falling deeper into yourself.
So, when the group of Australian men made their way out of the mess towards the accommodation block, Hugh moved along with them, to one of the cramped rooms, where the men leaned back, shoulder to shoulder, to share their stories about all those West African outrages.
Hugh felt a warmth swim over him and his throat began to soften, and he started telling the story about how Carston, in the seventies, had followed an uncharted river system down to the African coast, doing some prospecting along the way. Three days estimated travel time turned into a week, yet still they hadn’t reached the coast and their supplies were dwindling dangerously. Suddenly they stumbled out of the jungle
onto a beach, terrifying the locals who had never seen anyone come out of their jungle before. Carston showed them his iron ore samples, and his translator asked, Have you seen anything like this before? And the village men trembled. Yes—yes. When it came, bad things happened. Chickens go missing—all our young men vanish. Carston had asked to see what they meant but the villagers refused, the fear transforming their faces, until finally the translator persuaded them to change their minds. The tribal leader pointed to a special hut housing a shrine in the middle of the village, a shrine built to appease the new angry god. Carston went to look inside, and, lo, there was a stone tablet on which sat half a slaver’s iron manacle.
There was a floating silence after Hugh finished talking. He could see that the story hadn’t helped—it needed Carston for that—and there was a stricken look on Matt’s face that might as well be saying, Are you telling us there is no God—no-one to call on, by whom we can be saved?
One man muttered, ‘Fuck Ebola. This place has already given me the shits.’ The men broke out in laughter, and that was Hugh’s cue to quietly slip away.
He walked in the other direction, away from the accommodation block, his eyes on the distant villages and the tiny plumes of smoke puffing up like geysers all over the vast plains. There was the sound of gunfire going off, little spurts of anger shooting over the hazy-blue ranges, and Hugh wondered if the men were firing at each other or at strange, black-limbed creatures that hunched and crept through the forest.
He passed the security boom gate and could see that there was only one guard on duty now. The rest must have left last night to join the other fleeing staff. Behind the company- issued wraparound glasses, it was hard to tell what the man was thinking. Too difficult to tell if he was fearful or merely disinterested; whether he was stopping others from getting in, or stopping them from getting out. The guard shouted something, but Hugh just waved and kept on walking out of the campsite and along the dirt road towards the mountain. He had promised the kids he would bring back some rocks and he couldn’t break his word now. And even if Kate would eventually throw them away, like his mother used to in her regular cleaning frenzies, his children would get to hold them at least once, feel the surety of the stone and imagine the warmth from whence they came.
Fabulous Lives Page 15