A Dry Spell

  ‘Do you think he’s all right?’ Nina asked.

  Hugo, who was about to embark on a detailed explanation of the fieldwork requirements of the next week – principally, who was to do what and when – was not to be so easily derailed and waved her down again. ‘The plan is, we each spend two hours in turn out on the dune, taking readings from the anemometers every two minutes. There’ll be a small tent there, with the recording equipment in. I’ll show you exactly how to use it. You’ll be dropped off and picked up by Guy or Martin, and the rota will run continuously, twenty-four hours a day, provided there’s any wind, of course. I’m happy to do a double stint at night, but basically you’ve got two hours on, six hours off, so you should be able to grab some sleep between shifts. Any questions?’

  Through the silence came the distant sound of violent retching. ‘Uh-oh,’ said Nina. ‘I’d better go and investigate. I did warn him not to drink that iced water.’

  ‘What? He drank some of the . . . He didn’t!’ Hugo exploded, almost dashing his head against the wall in frustration. ‘That was the last thing I said! Oh Godalmighty.’ He pointed a finger at Nina as if she was as much to blame. ‘Well, we’re starting work tomorrow, whatever.’

  ‘Don’t go overboard with the sympathy, Hugo,’ Nina retorted, as she turned her back and strode indoors. She wasn’t sure whom she was more annoyed with – Martin for being ill or Hugo for being callous and self-centred. Her anger with Martin evaporated as soon as she found him kneeling over the hole in the filthy toilet floor, streams of bilious sick erupting from his mouth and nose. This was nothing like the restorative Vomit Stops they had made on the journey down; this was something altogether more virulent. He looked up at her through watering eyes, his skin drained of colour, and gave her a weak smile before another spasm bent him double. Nina supported his forehead and felt him straining against her hand, until at last the retching stopped and he sat back on his heels.

  ‘Oh God,’ he said, wiping his face with his hands which he then smeared down his shorts. ‘I think I’m going to die.’ His teeth were chattering uncontrollably.

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Nina helped him to his feet. ‘You’ve just got a bug from that water. You’ll be better now it’s out of your system. You’ll probably feel fine in the morning,’ she said, with a voice full of optimism and a heart full of fear.

  27

  ‘Where’s the nearest hospital?’ Nina asked Hamid when he arrived the next morning. She had sat up with Martin most of the night while he thrashed from side to side, clutching his stomach and drawing his knees up to his chest with the pain. He had been sick half-hourly and was delirious with fever.

  ‘Tamanrasset,’ said Hamid, with a helpless shrug.

  ‘How far’s that?’

  ‘Seven hundred kilometres.’

  Hugo rolled his eyes in horror. Nina knew what he was doing: totting up exactly how long the Land Rover and both drivers would be out of commission.

  ‘Hospital? That’s a bit melodramatic, isn’t it?’ he said, his calculations complete. ‘He’ll pick up, if we just keep a close eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t dehydrate. That sort of thing.’

  They were sitting in the meteorological station, Nina and Hugo on chairs, Guy and Hamid on the floor, while Martin dozed on his camp-bed in the annexe – a small office-cum-storeroom next to the toilet.

  ‘How are we supposed to do that when he can’t even keep water down?’ Nina wanted to know.

  ‘There is a doctor in the town,’ said Hamid without much conviction. ‘We could call on him.’ His tone of voice implied that this was best attempted only as a last resort. ‘I can’t guarantee his . . . expertise.’

  ‘Well, it’s something to bear in mind if Martin takes a turn for the worse,’ said Guy. He felt oddly detached from the situation. Martin’s health wasn’t his problem, and neither was Hugo’s PhD. In the teeth of such majestic indifference it was easy to be calm, judicious, unselfish. ‘But I’ll gladly drive him to Tamanrasset if it comes to it. No trouble.’

  Nina gave him a grateful smile. He seemed to her infinitely capable and rational – an ideal of maleness in this depressingly masculine country. In fact, she thought, he was the only good thing about the whole dismal, stinking half-arsed exercise, and if he hadn’t been there to keep her cheerful she’d have bailed out long ago.

  ‘Well then, what I propose is that Nina stays here with Martin; Guy, you drive me and Hamid out to the dune and I’ll get everything set up and show you both how to take readings. I’ll do the first two hours, then Hamid, then you, then Nina. Whoever’s left behind looks after Martin.’

  The others cautiously agreed to this. It still irked Nina to see how inflexible Hugo could be when anything threatened, even temporarily, to stall his research. Hamid offered to do Nina’s shift for her but she refused. It was Martin, not she, who required special favours, and she didn’t want it flung back at her later that she hadn’t done her bit.

  A faint groan from the annexe alerted them that Martin was stirring. He opened his eyes as Nina tiptoed in and knelt beside him. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like shit.’

  ‘You look it.’ Through his suntan his skin was grey and the blond fuzz of his beard had formed into crispy strands, fused together with dried sweat and vomit. The blue of his eyes looked even more intense than usual against their pallid background. ‘I’m so cold,’ he said, trying to nestle deeper beneath his sheet sleeping-bag. ‘Are there any blankets?’

  Nina laid the back of her hand against his forehead. ‘You’re not cold. You’re burning up. Do you think you could keep a paracetamol down?’

  ‘I’ll try.’ As Nina stood up he caught the hem of her dress in his hand. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he pleaded. She smiled down at him, a reluctant Florence Nightingale in cheesecloth and clogs. Such babies, men.

  ‘I’m coming back,’ she promised, easing the edge of her smock from between his fingers. She didn’t want it torn – not now that she’d crippled her only needle.

  In the courtyard the three men were preparing to leave. Hugo had taken a frozen bottle of squash from the icebox of the mini-fridge and replaced it with a warm one from their supplies. ‘Is he okay, then?’ he asked, climbing into the Land Rover and slamming the door on her answer so that she had to wait until he’d wound the window down to repeat herself.

  ‘I don’t know. If I knew, I’d be a bloody doctor, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Well, you do whatever you think,’ said Hugo.

  ‘I’ll be back in half an hour,’ Guy called across to her, sensing that Hugo’s breezy abdication of responsibility wasn’t quite what she wanted to hear.

  ‘Well, go on then.’ She could sense their agitation to be gone, to shake off the stale atmosphere of the sickroom. By the time she had returned to the annexe with the paracetamol and a glass of boiled water Martin had dropped back off to sleep. She found him curled up in the foetus position, a thumb resting against his lips. He was flushed with fever and his skin was hot to the touch. She had meant to wash him down and take his temperature, but it seemed a cruelty to wake him, so she crept out again and had a drink of the warm orange squash from the fridge, then made herself as comfortable as possible on the two chairs, and was asleep herself in minutes.

  She awoke some time later to find the blackest man she had ever seen leaning over her. He was wearing a vivid purple shirt, and holding six bottles of Orangina. She jerked upright, her hands automatically smoothing down her dress.

  ‘Adji,’ said the man, nodding and smiling.

  ‘Adji?’ Nina looked blank. ‘Oh, Adji.’

  ‘I met your friends yesterday,’ he went on, in what it took Nina a while to realize was French. ‘I’ve brought you these.’ He raised the glass gourds which dangled between his fingers by their necks.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nina. ‘That’s very kind.’

  He put them down on the desk beside the fridge, ducking past the flypaper and unceremoniously shoving aside files, papers and synoptic c
harts to make room. ‘Where is Hamid?’ he asked.

  ‘They’ve gone to find some sand.’ This was the best she could do in her schoolgirl French. The word for dune had never come up in her studies of Balzac and Racine.

  Adji roared with laughter. ‘We’ve got plenty of that. You’ve come to the right place.’ He would still be slapping his leg and guffawing over it when he left. ‘Tell him you’re all coming to dinner tonight at Adji’s. Cous-cous, goat, very good.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nina, wishing she could provide firmer evidence of her proficiency in French. She wondered if she should mention Martin, who wouldn’t be going anywhere, but before she could frame a simple sentence of explanation, Adji said, ‘Your friend is ill.’

  Nina nodded towards the annexe doorway. ‘Very sick.’ She was almost embarrassed at this admission as if it showed them all in a bad light: pale, weak creatures, naïve and unprepared, constitutionally unfit for travel, but Adji didn’t appear to hold it against her. Indeed he affected outrage that the doctor had not visited.

  ‘Lazy dung-beetle,’ he muttered, brushing aside Nina’s protests that the doctor had not in fact been summoned and therefore could hardly be expected to . . . ‘Leave it to Adji.’ And he departed, leaving Nina with the uneasy feeling that she was being drawn into a private feud.

  Outside in the courtyard Guy was sitting in the shade eating a large wedge of melon. ‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ he said, wiping his chin, which was shiny with juice. ‘This is lovely. Do you want some? There was a bloke selling them by the roadside.’

  ‘Well . . .’ Nina looked doubtful. After Martin’s experience it was hard to feel confident about foodstuffs of such dubious provenance, but it was so long since she’d tasted fresh fruit. ‘. . . Go on then.’

  Guy cut her a slice with his penknife and she sank her teeth inelegantly into its cool, green flesh. ‘I’ve just met Adji,’ she said, between mouthfuls. ‘He doesn’t look Algerian, does he? Not like the others.’

  ‘He’s Touarega, according to Hamid,’ said Guy. ‘I can’t understand a word he says.’

  ‘He’s promised to cook us goat tonight.’

  ‘Where would you graze a goat around here?’ Guy wanted to know.

  They were just debating whether to share the rest of the melon and dispose of the evidence, or save half for the others, when the side gate opened, and a young Algerian, smartly dressed in short-sleeved shirt and well-pressed trousers, came in. He was carrying a clipboard and pen.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to check the rain gauge.’ His English accent was good – even better than Hamid’s. He bent down to inspect the brass funnel contraption that was sunk into the ground. ‘I have to do it every day,’ he explained, smiling at their surprised expressions.

  ‘How long is it since it rained here?’ Guy asked.

  ‘Seven years,’ said the man, laughing. ‘I’m just making sure it hasn’t filled up with sand.’ He checked the Stephenson’s screen before he left, opening the white slatted door and noting down readings from the wet and dry bulb thermometers. ‘Forty-three,’ he said on his way out. ‘Cooler than average.’

  The next visitor to call was the doctor. They could hear his hacking cough while he was still halfway down the street. It reached crisis point just outside the meteorological station. ‘Médecin,’ he called, hoarsely, rapping on the door.

  ‘Where is the patient?’ he asked, when Nina and Guy had let him into the office. He spoke the same brand of non-European French as Adji, requiring all Nina’s concentration to decipher it.

  ‘He’s in there,’ said Nina, pointing to the door of the annexe. It wouldn’t have surprised her to learn that he had been recently roused from his own sickbed. Before he could advance two paces he had been seized by another paroxysm of coughing, and stood hawking and wheezing as if in the last stages of tuberculosis.

  ‘Physician, heal thyself,’ Guy muttered to Nina as the man staggered past them into the makeshift sickbay, where Martin, who had been woken by the commotion, lay shivering and groaning. A rancid smell of sweat and sick and exhaled air caught the back of Nina’s throat, making her gag. She picked up the bucket, recently used, and rinsed it in the toilet, her eyes watering at the effort of keeping her gorge down.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ the doctor asked, crouching beside the camp-bed. ‘Any vomiting? Diarrhoea? Fever?’ he asked, flipping open his black bag. The contents were revealed to be a single, primed syringe. Clearly, no matter what symptoms the patient had described, the cure was the same. He was getting whatever was in that syringe.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nina, replacing the bucket. ‘All of those. And he gets quite delirious from time to time.’

  ‘He needs to drink. Give him boiled water only. From a spoon if you have to.’ He averted his face for another burst of lung-clearing. Within two minutes of his arrival he was on his way, having given Martin a jab in the gluteus maximus without committing himself to a diagnosis.

  ‘I bet it’s just a placebo,’ was Guy’s comment. ‘Some of that saline water the place is supposed to be famous for.’

  In the end dinner chez Adji had to be abandoned. Hugo would be out on the dune; someone – Nina – was required to stay behind with Martin, and Guy’s halting French was not nearly adequate to sustain a conversation, however unambitious.

  ‘No problem,’ said Adji, when they broke the news to him. ‘Another night. Dinner will keep.’

  In this heat? thought Nina. She was not sorry to be spared a night of socializing. It was an effort just staying awake late in the evening, without having to act as interpreter and raconteuse. And her stint at the dune had wiped her out. Guy had warned her about the infernal heat in the tiny tent, and the grinding tedium of the task, but even he hadn’t managed to articulate its full horror. A sense of spiralling panic had engulfed Nina the moment she had seen the dust from the departing Land Rover, and it didn’t altogether recede until she was picked up again two hours later. The job of noting down wind-speed readings from the meter, which was wired to two anemometers at the horns of the dune, was not sufficiently interesting or challenging to provide a distraction from the heat (48°C under the canopy) and the nausea. On the contrary, it was checking the second hand of her watch to observe the two-minute intervals that taught her how very slowly unpleasant experiences pass.

  She tried closing her eyes and imagining she was Captain Scott, holed up in a blizzard, with frostbitten feet, but it was no use; that sort of transcendental meditation couldn’t be practised in two-minute slots. Then she tried singing ‘In the bleak midwinter’ but her voice sounded weak and alien, and besides it was a soprano’s song – she’d never been able to hit the top notes. To crown it all, after carefully eking out her ration of iced squash for the first hour so that she wouldn’t run short in the second, she had fumbled with the lid and dropped the bottle. Before she could snatch it up half the contents had leaked away into the sand. She had hit a high C then all right – a screech of fury that could have tripped an avalanche. It was the little things that sent people over the edge, she decided, as she wept stinging tears of rage. In facing tragedy and disaster, the human spirit had proved itself remarkably resilient, but it was no match for the perversity of inanimate objects. Nina herself would be the proof of this: when the real time of trial came, she would be stronger than any of them.

  28

  When Nina woke up in the dark and couldn’t see the stars she panicked. Then she remembered: she had moved her camp-bed into the meteorological station so that she would hear Martin if he called out during the night. They had been at In Salah for four days now, and although Martin’s condition had not deteriorated, it had not exactly improved either. The injection – whatever it was – had stopped the vomiting, but he was still running a temperature which only occasionally dropped to normal, had no appetite, except for boiled water, and was consequently as weak as a rag.

  There hadn’t been enough wind to ruffle a feather for the whole of the previous day, so
work on the dune had been abandoned. Guy and Nina did their best to hide their relief, while Hugo stood in the courtyard staring at the paralysed anemometer and wind-vane on the meteorological station roof and making no secret of his frustration. ‘Bloody, buggering, pisspot waste of a day,’ he said, slamming a kick into one of the Land Rover’s tyres. ‘I’m going to Adji’s.’ The two men seemed to have hit it off. The friendship, greatly simplified by the lack of a common language, was based on compatible superiority complexes and a shared love of hashish.

  Guy and Nina had spent the morning at the palmery and the afternoon back at base, playing Scrabble, drinking Coke, shoring up Martin’s spirits during his waking hours, and reading five-year-old copies of National Geographic, which Guy turned up in one of the filing cabinets in the annexe.

  ‘I’ve now read every single book we brought with us,’ said Nina, closing Scott’s Last Voyage with a bang so that a trickle of sand slid out of the spine. ‘I shall have to resort to snooping through your diary.’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Guy, shifting Scrabble tiles around. ‘It would probably send you into a coma with boredom. Did you know that Nina Osland is an anagram of LAIN ON SAND?’ he mused.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said, watching him pull out the words UGLY and BORE from the letters of his own name.

  ‘Besides,’ he went on. ‘You might come across a reference to yourself.’

  ‘Really? In what context? My irritating little ways?’

  ‘Oh no, nothing incriminating like that. I can’t get it out of my head that one day someone or other might read it, so I’ve kept it incredibly bland. The other two might come in for a bit of flak now and then, but for some reason I don’t find you nearly so annoying.’