by Jane Shemilt
When I woke next morning, my uncertainties had melted away. The sun lay across the bed in bright yellow stripes. Adam stirred beside me, the warmth of his body reaching to me. We hadn’t made love since Sam was born and it was as if we were meeting again after a long time apart. When he realized he wasn’t hurting me, he pushed more and more deeply inside. We had to be quiet – Sam’s cot was next to the bed. As he moved faster, Adam put his hand across my mouth, muffling my cries. This morning it was his turn to be in charge. After sex, after showering, we became our daytime selves. If Adam had told me what to do then, I would have been incensed.
We had breakfast outside, Sam sitting peacefully on my lap. He seemed happy after sleep, his blue eyes shining as he watched Zoë chattering. Streaks of sunlight lay across the bushes; chuckling birdsong came from the gum trees. ‘Kingfishers,’ said Adam, without looking up from The Rough Guide to Africa as a brilliantly coloured little bird appeared, flashing though the branches.
‘How did you know what the bird would be, Daddy?’ Alice demanded.
‘I bought a CD of African birdsong, played it in the car on the way to work again and again until I knew it off by heart,’ he replied seriously. I laughed.
There was warm homemade bread, guava and paw-paw for breakfast; the air smelt freshly of trees and grass, and a deeper, dustier scent that came from the bush in front of us. In the clear air the gnarled shapes of the thorn trees stood out sharply.
‘I don’t like this melon. It tastes of sick,’ Alice said suddenly.
‘It’s not melon, Ally, its paw-paw. I’ll have it if you don’t want it.’ I tried to take the thin sliver of fruit, but it fell through my fingers to the ground.
‘Christmas tomorrow,’ Adam said. There was a little silence as we all stared at him. Despite the trees at the airport and the hotel, Christmas didn’t feel close or even real.
‘Let’s plan something fun.’ He flourished his book. ‘There’s a game park not too far from here, with giraffes and rhinos and zebras, we could explore those hills over there or maybe we better go and say hello to our neighbours in the village.’
‘I want to see the animals!’ shouted Zoë, jumping up and hanging round his neck. ‘Please, Daddy!’
‘Can Teko come?’ asked Alice.
I nodded – she might enjoy it. As I leant to study a photograph of rhinos in Adam’s book, soft footsteps shuffled past just below the veranda: Josiah with the dog at his heels. With his hoe, like a rifle over his shoulder, and a khaki hat pulled low, he looked like an old soldier turning up for duty. He turned to nod but, catching sight of Sam, his face expanded into a wide smile; he gave a little wave before walking on, singing to himself in a low, rumbling voice. Zoë hung over the veranda railings to watch the dog as he lumbered after the old man towards a bed of flowering cacti.
By my feet, a seething heap of black ants was obliterating the scrap of paw-paw, a dark trail already marching up the steps. How had they arrived so quickly? Alice, face averted, stepped over the boiling mass, but Zoë squatted, peering closely. Soon the paw-paw would vanish completely.
The next day, Christmas morning, we left at sunrise, Zoë clutching the knitted hippo from Megan that I’d stuffed into her stocking the night before. A purple paper hat was wedged over her fair hair, her T-shirt already smudged with chocolate. She climbed into the back next to Teko and Sam, asleep in his car seat. Alice sat silently on his other side. Adam switched on the radio and carols filled the car. He and Zoë began to sing along. A sense of wellbeing spread through me: we were spending Christmas in this new country on a gap year all together. I felt lucky again and leant to give Adam a kiss as he drove. He smiled and caught my hand in a brief grip.
We passed through a small village a few kilometres down the dirt road. Men were already sitting in the rim of shade by their huts, the children gathered at the fences, staring, as we drove past. The children were thin, the roofs ragged, with gaping holes in the thatch. The yards around the huts were bone dry and mostly empty. Kabo had been right about the drought and the poverty. The lucky feeling thinned; this was a different Botswana from the prosperous capital, a darker, sadder place. Once the car was on tarmac we went faster, the dried verges glittering with rubbish; a dead donkey lay at the side of the road, its neck stretched out at an awkward angle.
The sun was high by the time we drove through the metal gates of Mokolodi Nature Reserve. Two smiling rangers appeared as we drew up, but when Teko saw their battered, open-sided truck, and realized she would have to sit in it, she shook her head and backed away, holding Sam. The outdoor restaurant was cool and empty, apart from a young waitress by the counter wiping glasses. I put Sam into his seat on the table; he was awake now and gazing around. I bought Teko a drink and sandwiches and gave her Sam’s baby bag with his bottle of water and my mobile, scribbling Adam’s number on a paper napkin. The waitress drew near Sam, shyly twiddling her fingers and smiling at him. We left, promising we would only be gone an hour or so. Adam took a photo of Teko and Sam on his phone and showed her. She touched her neck uncertainly and didn’t smile.
The truck lurched rapidly from side to side on the track. It would have been difficult to have kept Sam safe. Scrabbling for my hat by my feet, I caught a bunched movement of brown muscled skin and a flash of horns between the trees as a kudu bolted from the track. The dark eyes of a giraffe by the trees turned to follow us. After half an hour of heat and bumping and glimpses of grazing impala, the driver stopped the car, pointing to rippled dinner-plate-sized prints in the dust. ‘Rhino,’ he announced.
Climbing down with his gun, he motioned for us to follow. The cicadas scattered to either side of our feet as we walked after him in the scorching heat. Twenty minutes further on, he stopped to kick apart a pile of damp dung. The broken clods were alive with scuttling green beetles. We were near. He pointed to large grey boulders beyond the sparse foliage. Closer, they became two rhinos under a thorn tree, a mother and calf. The animals moved together, ears flicking, their breath peaceful in the hot air as they watched us with deep-lidded eyes.
In the car going home, we were all quiet; Sam fed hungrily.
‘What’s the point of all this fuss about animals?’ Alice’s sudden question made me jump.
‘To preserve them, Ally.’ I swapped Sam to my other breast and she looked away, a revolted expression on her face. ‘To stop them being poached.’
‘Why?’
‘So they don’t become extinct.’
‘What difference will it make to anything if there are no rhinos?’ Her face was pink under her cotton hat.
‘We have to look after wild animals. Rhinos were here thousands of years before us.’ I put my arm round her awkwardly, Sam still on my lap. ‘They have as much right to be here as we do.’
‘But rhinos aren’t like people.’ She pulled away. ‘They’re not important.’
Sam started crying, his fists punching the air. The naevus seemed to pulse in the heat. The surface was wet with milk and sweat. I wiped it as I sat him on my knee to wind him. ‘There are millions more people than rhino, Ally. Fewer people wouldn’t matter. Fewer people would be good. No one would notice. There’s only a few hundred rhino left. Losing even one would matter.’
‘Why?’
‘Wouldn’t you want your children to see them?’
‘No.’
Adam met my gaze in the mirror and winked, but I felt worried as I twisted to strap Sam into his seat. Alice’s response seemed unusual. Was she finding it difficult to order all the different images we had seen, the vast diamond-trading centre, the magnificent animals, the thin barefoot children and the tattered roofs? How does this hierarchy work, she might be wondering. Who should come first?
‘She’s entitled to her point of view,’ Adam said that night, as he came out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist. ‘It would be difficult to see how animals fit in when there’s so much poverty.’
‘I agree, but she ought to realize that rhino are worth preserving
.’
‘How about fewer oughts?’ He leant over me on the bed, his wet hair dripping on my face.
I pushed him away. ‘Don’t be such a hypocrite. You’re totally driven by oughts.’
‘And you’re not?’ He bent lower and kissed me. I shook my head, laughing, giving up the attempt to keep dry – the air was as warm as an oven.
He was right, though: I was driven by oughts. The word had run through my head at medical school like a chant, muted yet continuous, underlying everything …
I ought to study.
I ought not to go to the pub, stay up late, drink, smoke, have sex.
I ought to come top, be first, win prizes.
I ought to send him good news, make him smile, keep him safe.
I studied, I came first, I won all the prizes. Winning became addictive. If the costs seemed high, the pay-off was higher, and always in my head the picture of my father on the poolside, smiling. Even after he died, he watched me. Even now I had to make him smile.
Later, as I fed Sam, rustles of unfamiliar nightlife in the garden outside came in through the window. The sky was full of different stars. I watched Sam as he drifted to sleep on my lap. The rhino would be finding their way to water, drinking in the dark, the female quietly on guard. It was comforting to think of the large animal standing calmly in the night, looking after her calf.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Botswana, March 2014
The boy stops the car at the top of our drive; the house is dark, the door wide open. Have other thieves come in our absence? There is nothing left to take; how could it matter?
The boy gets out of our car and runs off. A light goes on in the house. Kabo stands on the veranda.
Adam stumbles towards us. In the headlights his hair is plastered to his skull. A patch of scum is smeared on his sleeve. He smells of sweat and stagnant water. His face is wet against my cheek. He shakes his head, his thoughts following mine. No, Sam wasn’t in the pond.
He lifts Zoë from the car. Alice slides out and runs up the steps into the house. Teko appears silently from the dark kitchen; Alice goes towards her, then turns to give me a deep, blank stare. She looks ill.
‘It’s all right, Ally.’
Her eyes close. She knows I’m lying.
‘I’m going to drive Adam to Gaborone police station.’ Kabo’s cheeks are streaked with tears and dust, the knees of his trousers caked with mud. He must have been crawling under bushes. He puts an arm around my shoulders. ‘The police haven’t arrived, so we’re going to them. Teko’s coming too. They’ll need to ask her what she saw.’
‘Has anyone talked to her yet?’ I catch Adam’s hand but he shrugs: he doesn’t know. I turn to Kabo. ‘Has she said anything?’
Kabo shakes his head. ‘She’s too shocked. The police will know what to do.’
Kabo speaks to her but Teko stares back at him. Her eyes shift to mine, then slide away. I want to scream at her but guilt fights with rage. If Teko should have been at Sam’s side, so should I. I am his mother, she a stranger.
The men disappear out of the door – Kabo touches my arm as he passes. Teko slips past me and follows the men into the night. Elisabeth appears from the kitchen and guides the children from the room.
There is silence. The stub of candle on the windowsill that someone lit gutters in a pool of wax, then goes out.
I put my hand against the wall. There are two realities. I can switch between them, on and off. On: this is a normal Wednesday evening – the girls have gone to bed, and in the room further down, Sam sleeps in his cot, breathing quietly, his small chest rising and falling in the moonlight. Off: he is not here; he is outside in the night somewhere, being held by someone I don’t know. He is screaming because his ear is hurting. I don’t know what they are doing to him.
I am not sure how I will survive from moment to moment.
On: he is here. Off: I am falling, tipping, turning into darkness.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Botswana, January 2014
Africa suited Adam: his rash had vanished; he even looked taller. One evening I was startled to the window by an unfamiliar noise. Adam, back from work and standing outside with Kabo, was doubled up, laughing a bellowing laugh I hadn’t heard before. There were beer bottles on the veranda table. On the desk behind me, his papers had been left in spilling piles, the pens dumped in a mug. Something had loosened. I rested my forehead against the cool pane; my own life was coiling so tightly around me that I could hardly breathe. After the excitement of the first days, the world had contracted to the darkened house, the curtains always drawn to shut out the sun. Sam was fretful in the heat and the Internet failed frequently in the garage office. I slept badly: the house, cooling at night, seemed full of creaks and whispers.
How had I got it so wrong? The wide landscape had shrunk to the dimensions of a cage. There was nowhere to go. I was working, two review papers were done, but for once I didn’t feel triumphant. Adam seemed to be heading towards some other, secret, goal – I played with possibilities: results that he was keeping to himself? An affair? When I asked him outright why he was so happy, he laughed the new noisy laugh and told me it was because we were having sex again. In more sensible moments I knew he would never be unfaithful, that the heat and inactivity were distorting my vision. Megan would have restored my sanity, but she wasn’t here. On my own, I couldn’t get beyond the conviction that I was missing out.
In the hushed early hours of a Friday morning, half asleep and feeding Sam, I caught sight of Adam through the bedroom window: he was sitting on the veranda outside the sitting room. His stillness snagged my attention: his shoulders, outlined against the sky, had the austerity of a statue.
I settled Sam back in his cot, and walked out of the bedroom, along the corridor and through the sitting room to the veranda. ‘Adam?’
There was no answer. I walked behind him and put my hand on his shoulder. He reached his up to cover mine, sliding his warm fingers under the cuff of the old shirt I wore in bed. ‘Hello there.’ His voice was slow and sleepy. ‘Why are you up? It’s early.’
‘Why are you?’ He had no book in front of him, no laptop, not even a cup of coffee.
‘Sit here and see.’
‘I ought to get going. The Internet works best first thing and Simon’s coming early. He wants Alice to sit a mock maths exam before it’s too hot.’
He didn’t relinquish my wrist. I sat on the chair next to his; the dew-damp edge of roughened plastic bit into the back of my thighs.
‘This is my favourite time of day.’ He gestured to the faintly glowing sky. ‘The feeling of space before the heat narrows it down. The smell of the bush before it gets burnt away.’
‘I’m impressed you’ve noticed. You’re normally too busy to see anything.’
He shrugged, smiling. ‘There’s less to do here.’
What was it that seemed so different? His hair was longer, curling to the collar of his pyjamas. His skin looked less lined. Maybe it was just the relaxed way he was sitting, his long back curved against the seat.
‘You were always busy, especially when there was less to do.’ In the quietness my voice sounded brittle. ‘Think of weekends.’
Weekends had been almost worse than weekdays: Adam had sorted emails and international calls. In the moments between, he’d rushed to squash, Zoë’s ballet, Alice’s Mandarin lessons.
He nodded. Adam never usually agreed.
‘Being here has allowed me off the merry-go-round,’ he replied. ‘Different things seem important.’
‘What, for instance?’ He might have escaped his normal routines but, despite help, I felt trapped. The girls were settling in but the walks I’d planned hadn’t happened: the landscape was too vast, too barren, too hot. They followed Teko rather than me. I was free to study but I was jealous. I’d thought jealousy would disappear here but it was stronger than ever. Adam’s work allowed him to escape, and explore beneath the skin of this country. It made it worse that I kne
w I was being ungrateful; that here, in Africa, I should be revelling in the peace and wilderness around us.
‘I saw a woman yesterday.’ Adam gazed towards the gum trees at the lawn’s edge, still folded in shade. ‘Coughing blood. Ulcers in her mouth and vulva. Her lymph nodes were the size of golf balls. She was dying of AIDS. There was nothing I could do to help her.’
‘People die in England too.’ I felt irritated. ‘We didn’t need to come here to feel helpless about death.’ In the gynaecology ward at the Royal Free, there were women with inoperable ovarian cancers and disseminated uterine tumours. They wouldn’t recover either.
‘It’s not just about death. It’s how they die.’ He turned to face me. ‘Most of my patients don’t have electricity – they can’t get a cold drink or clean sheets when they need them. It’s like a furnace in a tin-roofed house, worse at night as heat comes back up from the ground. In the rainy season the palliative teams struggle to get to the villages.’
‘Palliative teams?’ I had an image of the hospice in Barnet, with its hushed corridors and cheerful counsellors. ‘What about family?’
‘Dying people need access to pain relief and hygiene.’ Adam sounded angry. ‘It’s difficult to get that here. I’m raising this at the AIDS conference in Gaborone in a couple of months.’ He pushed back his chair and got up. After a while he spoke more quietly. ‘But, yes, family is crucial. Everyone pitches in. Even without illness, babies are shared. Mothers give children to sisters who have none.’
‘Sounds ideal if you want to offload a child …’ He was supposed to laugh, but his eyebrows drew together, and the moment of silence lengthened. ‘I’m joking, Adam.’ Surely he could tell. ‘Though, emotions aside, you have to admit it has a certain logic.’
‘How can you put emotions aside? What do you think it would feel like to give a child away?’
The rim of the sun appeared behind the hills and the cicadas started. He stretched. ‘I must get dressed. Kabo will be here soon.’