by Jane Shemilt
‘Well, good for Megan for following through. We’re very grateful,’ Adam said heartily. He nodded at Teko. ‘You’ve arrived in perfect time.’
‘Like magic.’ I turned to Kabo. ‘How did she actually find us?’
‘She was given the address by the boss at the orphanage. She got a bus to Kubung village, then a lift with a farmer going to Thamaga,’ he answered, looking at her and nodding approval. She had managed a complex journey, his words implied; she must really want the job.
‘So when do you want to start? Now?’ Adam asked, with a smile. Teko looked back at him, the tight skin around her eyes relaxed, but she didn’t answer.
‘She can’t speak English,’ Kabo put in, ‘but that’s not a problem.’
Not a problem? How could we employ someone we couldn’t communicate with?
‘We need a tutor more than a nanny, Kabo, someone who can speak English.’
‘I can find you a tutor, no problem,’ he replied. ‘But I think you might be glad of Teko’s help all the same. She understands a few words. If you can just demonstrate what you want, she says everything will be easy to understand.’ The glasses slipped down again.
Everything? Alice’s anxiety? Zoë’s exuberant demands for attention? Sam, whose routine was already shot to pieces? Would she mind the rumbling conflict between Adam and me? I doubted if anything in our family would be easy for a stranger to understand.
‘It’s not as if you won’t be here all time in the background. It might give you a chance to work in peace,’ Adam said. Then he was distracted by a bright blue bird that was bustling in and out of the branches above our heads. ‘Blue starling,’ he murmured. ‘Fantastic.’
He flashed me a triumphant smile, like a small boy who has discovered hidden treasure. He’d read up about the birds here but, preoccupied with Sam, I hadn’t had the chance to do the same. If I’d had time, I might have learnt some words of Setswana, or found out about the plants that grew here so I could show the girls. Even on the plane there had been no opportunity to leaf though the pamphlets about Botswana in the seat pocket in front of me. Bitterness began to rise.
‘It would mean you could complete that research on cord clamping,’ Adam continued, patting my arm. I pulled away, infuriated. He glanced at Kabo, who was inspecting the bird, whistling softly to himself.
The blue stones in Teko’s necklace were the exact colour of Sam’s eyes. As if sensing my interest, her hand fluttered up to touch her necklace; she smiled shyly. It occurred to me that if I refused her offer of help Kabo might think I was rejecting her because she was a local African girl. He might be offended. If we employed Teko, I could spend more time with Alice; even the woman by the pool had advised me to accept help if it was offered.
Kabo leant forward, putting an arm around Adam and me. ‘Why don’t you make up your minds later? There’s no rush – have a trial run, if you like.’ He smiled cheerfully. ‘Come and have a look inside.’
The children were still asleep. Kabo had parked in the shade. I hesitated, glancing at the house, then Teko stepped closer to the car; her right foot dragged slightly. Childhood polio, perhaps, common in parts of Africa. It must have meant a difficult childhood. Perhaps work was tricky to find – maybe she’d thought this time she would be lucky. She nodded at me, she was going to keep watch while we went inside. Kabo was right: communication without words seemed easy.
‘This is the country home of a businessman,’ Kabo was continuing, as he led the way to a flight of stone steps cut into a dry earth slope. ‘He built it in the traditional style for his family but now they all live in a grand way in Gaborone … Diamonds.’ His gaze swept the gardens that surrounded the house: there was a large brownish lawn, with scattered beds of succulent plants and a group of gum trees at the far edge. ‘He had three guard dogs,’ he added. ‘They were tied up in the day, but let loose at night. They’re kennelled at Thamaga now. I could ask him to lend them to you. You’re isolated here – it might be sensible.’
Huge animals, probably, panting fiercely around the garden in the dark. What if the girls sneaked out to play on the lawn late one night? What might happen if Zoë tried to pet one?
Adam looked uncertain. ‘Up to you, Em.’
‘Thanks, Kabo, but I’m planning to be here all the time. Adam will be around at night. Besides, what kind of message would it send the community?’ Rich whites, fearful of African neighbours. That’s what the message would be, though I didn’t say it aloud. We’re here to help, but we don’t trust you an inch.
Kabo took a breath as if about to argue, then obviously thought better of it. ‘Let me know after you’ve had the chance to discuss it. It can be organized quickly. Come inside now.’
We followed him up the steps into the cool shade of the veranda. The room inside was dark after the brilliant sunshine. There was a scent of beeswax and cooking meat. A long sofa, covered with embossed velvet, stood in front of the window; a low table was piled with large books, striped cotton rugs lay on the wooden floor and a couple of heavy paraffin lamps stood on side tables. Shelves with more books reached to the ceiling. At a glance, they seemed to be about minerals and mining. A globe stood on the floor. The head of an animal with ridged, curving horns was on the back wall.
‘Kudu,’ Kabo said proudly, his eyes following my gaze. Once, this animal had been part of the landscape; now it was a decoration on the wall. I hoped Zoë wouldn’t spot it too soon.
An iridescent reflection of water shimmered on the ceiling – it must come from the dam behind the house. As I walked towards the windows at the back of the room, my heart jolted: a man and a woman were standing silently against the wall, watching me. The man, with grizzled grey hair and milky irises, stood shoulders back, as if to attention. The woman was younger, neat-featured, plump. She wore a faded dress, a green woollen hat and battered plimsolls. Her eyes shone in the gloomy room. A second passed as we gazed at each other. As the shock ebbed, I managed to smile. She stepped forward, introducing herself to us in broken English; she was called Elisabeth; the old man was her brother, Josiah. He looked after the garden but spoke only Setswana. She was in charge of the house and the food. They worked for the owner and lived here, keeping the place going between his visits.
A gardener? A housekeeper? Servants had never been part of the deal. I’d thought it would be just us, together as a family; that had been the point. That, Adam’s work and my research. An awkward guilt began to burn. It was easy enough to have help in England but I wasn’t sure of the rules in Botswana and already it felt crowded, though I could hardly ask them to leave.
Then Adam was there, smiling and proffering his hand. Josiah took it with a little bow. Adam asked where his village was and how he managed his plot of land. Elisabeth, beaming, began to translate. Having taken his jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled up, Adam looked cool and at home. My linen trousers were rumpled and Sam had dribbled milk down my back. Plot of land? Adam had done his homework – he was better prepared than I was, ahead of me already. The bitterness began to return.
A distant wail rose above Elisabeth’s quiet voice. Sam. His crying would have woken the girls and they’d all be frantic, not having seen where we’d disappeared to.
I ran, tripping over the rug and banging my shin on the table. Adam moved forward to help, but I was quickly outside and at the car; even as I was wrenching open the door, I could see that it was empty. I looked around, frantically scanning the garden and the drive before I realized they were right next to me under the tree, with Teko. She was crouching down and crooning in a low-pitched tone, holding Sam, her hand cupped over his left cheek as if to shelter the naevus from the sun. He was hiccuping, absorbed in pulling her necklace towards his mouth, the blue stones shining in his small fingers. Zoë was leaning against Teko’s shoulder, one foot swinging back and forth to the rhythm in the tune. Alice, a little apart, jumped up and down, watching how the dust ballooned around her sandals. This was worth a thousand references.
Adam cam
e breathlessly up behind me.
‘You win. She can stay,’ I said.
He hugged me, laughing. I noticed Kabo grinning, doubtless relieved that we were behaving like a normal couple. He probably thought my earlier irritation was because of tiredness. The rules that allowed us to slip between the roles of lovers and competitors were complex. Adam could win now: compared to the things we usually fought over, it seemed unimportant.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Botswana, 23 December 2013
Once Kabo had gone, and the cases had been unloaded, Zoë ran up and down the corridor, her feet thudding on the floorboards. Adam whistled as he took out his books and stacked them on a shelf in the sitting room, pushing together a row of the owner’s to make space. Alice walked about on tiptoe, opening cupboards, peering inside and closing them again. Leaving Sam with Adam, I stepped through the front door onto the wide veranda that ran the length of the house. A table and chairs were grouped in the shade. In front of me a vast sweep of brown land stretched to the distance, pierced by thousands of thorn trees and carved into uneven ravines. A line of mauve hills crumpled against the horizon.
I felt a prickle of apprehension. Despite Kabo’s warning, I hadn’t imagined we would be quite so alone. There was no sign of buildings or domestic life although some goats clambered among wild fig trees in a gully by the track. The sky was wider and emptier than any I’d ever seen. It was difficult to take in that thousands of miles away in England this high flawless blue would become a low, rain-smudged blanket of cloud.
Zoë joined me, wanting to explore. I remembered the shimmer on the ceiling and, longing to be in cool water again, I pulled out our damp swimming things from the overnight bag and hurriedly sprayed mosquito repellent onto Zoë’s skin. It hadn’t seemed necessary by the pool yesterday but it was hotter here, much wilder. Zoë ran, whooping, down the scrubby slope behind the house; I followed more slowly, searching the ground for snakes. It wasn’t until I reached the edge of the water that I saw there wasn’t a dam after all. In front of us was a small circle of brown water crusted with green scum and invaded by reeds. The trees around the edge were looped with trailing creepers that reached down to the water’s surface. A line of cup-like nests dangled over the pond, small yellow birds darting in and out. Zoë bent to slip off her sandals; we watched as the mud rose up between her toes, like small, brown slugs. Insects buzzed in hoof-prints around the muddy edge.
‘I don’t like it, Mummy.’ She backed away, shaking her head.
‘I made a mistake, darling. It’s not for swimming. Let’s put on your shoes, we’ll go back.’
I wiped the mud off her feet with the damp towel. She put on her sandals and ran back up the slope to the house. It had never occurred to me that out of the frame of Adam’s lake picture there might have been patches of scum on the water, or insects in the puddled mud at the edge.
Zoë disappeared into her room and I began to explore. The house was a series of thatched rooms, on the same level, strung together with narrow corridors. The one at the end would be ours: it was large enough for Sam’s cot; we’d put him near the glass doors that opened to the front garden, where he could watch the light moving on the leaves outside. In the adjoining room, Zoë was curled next to her zebra, the owl and the knitted lions; Alice lay alongside, holding Sam’s elephant, one leather ear discoloured where it had been sucked so often. She was relating a story involving the rescue of a baby elephant from lions with the help of an owl. It had been a while since I’d seen them so close; I tiptoed away.
The kitchen was a dark, stifling room, tacked to the back of the house; a small fridge hummed in the corner, a forest of bottles balanced on top. A blackened stove crackled with logs. A door to the outside gave with a creaking rush and I stumbled into a back yard with a couple of sheds, a patch of straggling maize and some sunflowers. An old dog lying by the wall woke at the noise, and nosed towards me, sniffing at my feet. Close up, there were leaking scabs on his yellow coat. He lost interest in me, collapsing again in an ungainly heap. Under a thorn tree a goat backed away, straining at its tether, hoofs scrabbling on the hard soil. This was someone else’s territory. I hurried back through the kitchen and into the sitting room, where Adam was walking up and down with Sam.
‘Can you take him? Kabo wants to show me the study he rigged up in the garage. He’s managed to get us online.’ He smiled as he put Sam into my arms. ‘Isn’t this amazing? It’s going to be such fun here.’
Fun? The dark room with its heavy upholstery and the monstrous kudu head seemed alien to me; through the window the harsh sweep of landscape was different from anything I’d imagined. How would we manage here, day after day? What would we actually do?
Later, Zoë came into our room while I was lying on the pillows, feeding Sam. Leaning against me, she stroked his head, watching how his toes wriggled as he fed. ‘Is this really Africa?’ she whispered, round the thumb in her mouth.
‘Yes.’ I hugged her with one arm. ‘It really is.’
She stared at me for a moment, then disappeared again.
After his feed Sam’s face crumpled. He pushed restlessly against my shoulder and weariness overwhelmed me.
Teko was sitting in the kitchen. ‘Teko, could you look after Sam while I sleep for a short while?’ She stood up, her hand darting to her neck to touch her necklace again, as if it were a talisman. She took him from me, frowning with concentration. I pointed to the back kitchen door and shook my head. ‘Please don’t take him outside.’
She nodded.
Lying on my bed again, Zoë’s question reverberated; after the leave-taking from work and school, the vaccinations and the anti-malarials we had started to take, the packing and the long journey, was this really Africa? Could anywhere bear the weight of expectation we had built up? Where the grass was green and the sun was warm and we would all be happy. The underside of the thatched roof was festooned with webs as big as bird’s nests. Spiders and other insects would be moving in the darkness above me. My last thought was a prayer that nothing would fall on my face as I slept.
When I woke, Adam was snoring lightly next to me and the heat from his body had drenched my shirt. My mouth was parched. The house was silent. The girls’ room was empty, and so was the kitchen. Where were they all?
‘Adam.’
He was breathing deeply, his glasses crooked, hair slicked into strands. He opened his eyes and glanced around. ‘I’d forgotten where we were for a moment,’ he said, looking amused. His eyelids drifted together again.
‘The children have disappeared. So has Teko.’ My voice was thin with panic.
He pulled himself to sitting, glancing out of the window. ‘I saw them outside when I was in the garage,’ he said cheerfully. ‘They were heading towards the back garden.’
The reeds around the pond had been dank and tangled. Shoving my feet roughly into sandals, I pushed open the French windows, the heat a tight fist against my face. Running down the slope, I scanned the smooth surface of the water before I heard a laugh. It was so long since I’d heard Alice really laugh that I wasn’t sure it was her.
‘Ally? Zoë?’
The laughter had come from my left where there was a thick mat of flattened reeds. The muddy water bubbled between the tough strands. How much weight would they hold? The weight of a child, several children? As I pushed aside a clump of upright stems, a long insect landed on my wrist, orange wings whirring. I shook it off rapidly. There was a smell of stagnant water and decaying vegetation. Was it deep? Deep enough to be dark and silent at the bottom? Fear tightened like a band around my chest.
‘Alice?’
The water closed above my feet. I pushed aside another thick wall of reeds, and glimpsed the red of Zoë’s dress, then Sam’s waving fists. He was lying in a shallow container made of woven plastic balanced on a mat of reeds, gazing at the branches overhead while his reaching hands opened and closed. Teko, crouching by his side, held the edge of the container; the girls squatted next to her. Water
rising to my ankles, I stepped forward and snatched him up. He began to wail.
Alice scrambled to her feet. ‘You’re spoiling our game.’ Her voice was loudly indignant, but she must have known it was dangerous.
‘Come inside. Teko, I asked you not to take the children outside.’
Teko’s face was expressionless as she picked up the basket and followed me silently. Zoë began to cry.
Later, Sam settled to sleep; I tucked the edges of his mosquito net under the cot mattress and sat for a while, watching his birthmark fading, blotted out with shadow as the room darkened.
Adam was reading a story to the girls in the sitting room, Zoë on his lap, Alice’s hand on his shoulder. He glanced up. ‘It was ingenious in its way, Em,’ he said. ‘They were playing Moses in the bulrushes –’
‘It was a ridiculous place for Teko to take them.’ Sam might have tipped from the basket, sliding without a sound under the brown water. He could have drowned immediately. ‘We ought to ask her to leave.’
Alice winced; Adam put his arm round her. ‘I talked to Elisabeth just now,’ he replied. ‘Teko misunderstood Alice. She thought you’d told the children it was all right. The water was only inches deep where they were playing – I’ve checked. No harm done.’
A baby could drown in inches. Through the window, the pond glowed in the sunset; above, it was as if a great fire was burning in the sky, shot through with yellow, crimson and scarlet flames. A single long-necked bird streaked past, black against gold. My hands on the windowsill were trembling. Adam came up beside me, and we watched, side by side, in silence. The sunset didn’t last long and in minutes the sky was black.
I lay awake for a long time, staring into the dark outside. We’d come thousands of miles to a different world. It must be because we’d travelled so quickly that I felt I had lost all my bearings.