by Jane Shemilt
Birdsong came through the window, Sam was snuffling in the cot next to me. I opened my hand wide in a patch of sun: back-lit, the edges of my fingers were translucent, as though light were trapped inside. I leant from the bed to stroke Sam’s hair, it was thicker now and stuck up in glossy twists. I’d always thought happiness belonged to children or the faintly stupid, that it was pointless to strive for something so illusory; I must have changed or been changed. Now it seemed that the silky texture of happiness was just within my reach.
Teko was waiting in the kitchen. I had grown fond of her. She had hardly learnt a word of English but it didn’t matter: she seemed to know what I wanted before I told her. Though I invited her to join us at meals she always refused, seeming content to be on the edge of things, watching. Perhaps life had taught her to be wary.
She took Sam and bent her head to his face. She was close to him, that was all that mattered.
Elisabeth’s plimsolls made a soft slapping sound on the wooden floor as she stepped backwards and forwards while sweeping the sitting room.
Adam caught my expression. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Just … guilt. Elisabeth does everything.’
He poured coffee from the jug into two mugs and passed one to me, the steam curling in the morning air. ‘She seems content. She’s paid for the job she does.’ He took a sip of coffee, his gaze following a blue starling as it waddled on the lawn. ‘Does she really need your guilt?’
How could I not feel guilty? Sitting down as Elisabeth worked around us felt wrong, though when I offered to help she shook her head, looking away as if embarrassed. At work my guilt intensified: most of the illnesses were due to poverty, but at the end of the clinic I walked away to plenty. I drove home wondering whether I was helping the patients I saw, or helping myself to an illusion; since my conversation with Kabo I realized most of my patients saw traditional doctors as well.
Oddly, with Josiah I felt none of this conflict. After work I lay in the hammock under the gum trees, Sam hiccupping and wriggling on my stomach. Josiah worked nearby, his eyes resting on Sam, his battered hat pulled low, the faithful dog somewhere near. I’d watch the smooth swing of the hoe hitting the ground and I wouldn’t feel guilty at all.
As if my thoughts had conjured him, Josiah walked past the veranda, giving the children a little salute.
‘His dog’s not there,’ Zoë announced, with surprise, as she hung over the balustrade, her legs in the air. She was right: for once there was no lolloping animal at his heels. I watched the old man walk slowly towards his shed, a small bag of biltong strapped to his belt. I’d seen him share the strips of meat with the dog: he wouldn’t be far away.
‘Asleep, I expect, Zoë. Put your feet down, darling, or you’ll fall off.’
‘He’s yucky. I hope he’s gone and never comes back,’ Alice muttered.
Adam put down the paper he was reading and looked at her. He must have noticed the dark smudges under her eyes at the same moment I did. ‘Do you need a fan at night, sweetheart? You look as if you’ve hardly slept.’
She stared at him. ‘It was you who kept me awake, creeping around, banging into things.’
‘Did I?’ Adam pushed back his chair. ‘Sorry, Ally.’
‘You were breathing outside my door. I heard you whispering.’
‘Sorry.’ He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. ‘I don’t remember. Maybe I got up for a drink – or perhaps I was sleepwalking.’ He winked at her, but she turned away.
‘What do you mean the dog’s yucky?’ Zoë’s eyes filled with tears. ‘He’s nice, I want him back.’
Alice shrugged, got down and walked out without answering.
‘She’s only teasing.’ I wiped Zoë’s eyes, wishing Alice wouldn’t exert her power over her sister; it was so easy to reduce Zoë to tears. ‘I’ll ask Elisabeth – she’ll know what’s happened.’
Kabo arrived after breakfast. As he waited for Adam to gather his things, he leant against the door to listen to the radio. Local elections, diamond trading, new rural roads planned. ‘That would be good, if only I could believe it.’ Kabo sounded resigned. ‘The roads are worse than ever.’
His grumbling was good-natured. It was hard to imagine Kabo upset about anything. His bulk matched his kindness. Even Alice relaxed with him, trying out her Setswana, laughing when he teased her about her accent.
The men left, Kabo’s head bent to Adam’s as they walked, studying the sheet of results for their presentation. Adam swung round as they reached the car to wave at the girls, who were straddling the veranda. Zoë waved with both hands. Alice nodded. They jumped down, Alice running swiftly to the zoo, Zoe following slowly, stopping to inspect the ground as she went.
In the kitchen Elisabeth’s hands were deep in soapy water. I put the tray of breakfast things by the sink. ‘Josiah’s dog wasn’t with him just now.’ I began to unload bowls and cups. ‘Zoë was worried. Do you know where he is?’
‘He wanders off into the bush sometimes,’ Elisabeth said. A look of mild exasperation crossed her face as she shook her head. ‘We never know where he goes but he’ll come back when he’s hungry.’
Today Simon was earlier than usual. On work mornings I’d have left by the time he arrived. I offered to call the girls, but he shook his head. ‘I came early to catch you,’ he said.
I sat with him in the sitting room, conscious of the minutes ticking by. Behind his pebble glasses, Simon’s brown eyes were anxious. He cleared his throat. ‘Alice has finished the syllabus in maths already, and Zoë understands addition.’
I watched his larynx move up and down as he swallowed; he pulled his fingers until the knuckles cracked. ‘They’re doing well. We’re grateful, Simon –’
‘I have to hand in my notice,’ he said quickly. ‘My wife has just heard she’s in the running for a new job further away. Our son is only six months old …’
‘I see.’ My heart sank.
‘I’ll sort out a replacement. A colleague is looking for extra hours, and has a degree in biology. I could ask him.’
‘When do you have to go?’
‘Tomorrow will be my last day. We didn’t know until last night and she needs to prepare.’
‘The girls have got so used to you, especially Alice,’ I said. His forehead shone with a fine film of sweat: he felt bad enough already. ‘But congratulations, of course. Your wife must be excited.’
‘She is.’ His hands relaxed. ‘She’s standing for election as secretary of the village development committee in Serule. It’s important for her, the first rung on the political ladder.’
Just then Alice pushed open the door, her face alight. Zoë followed. I said goodbye. Zoë would be fine, but I dreaded telling Alice.
On the outskirts of Kubung, an old woman walked across her yard as I drove past, a couple of small children staggering in her wake: AIDS orphans. How could I worry about Simon leaving? It was a tiny blip in the children’s lives. There were so many broken families here.
Mmapula was the first patient in the antenatal clinic, her pretty face distorted with pain; on examination she was in early labour with a breech presentation. She shook her head when Esther translated my offer to take her to Thamaga maternity unit immediately: her boyfriend had a car, she would call him right now. She disappeared quickly. Two hours later, when I phoned the unit to check, she hadn’t arrived. Glancing at Esther’s worried face, I gathered a delivery pack – forceps, gloves, syringes, needles and anaesthetic. Together we hurried down the steps, Esther panting directions as we ran.
The concrete hut was half hidden behind a large thorn tree. As we ran across the yard, chickens scattering from our feet, I could hear groans coming from the door of the hut. Mmapula was lying on a mat just inside. Her face was wet with sweat; she was writhing in agony. Gazing wildly at us, she gasped a few words. Esther, translating, shook her head angrily: the boyfriend had been drunk, asleep in his hut. She knew the man – he was always drunk.
We asked Mmapu
la for permission to examine her. Even without a torch I could see the tiny buttocks at the introitus. Esther listened to the baby’s heart with a Pinard stethoscope; it was slow, there was no time to move her. She held Mmapula’s hand while I tore open the delivery pack and wrenched out gloves. I washed the vulva with disinfectant soap from a sachet and injected local anaesthetic. I cut down rapidly, then eased in forceps and tugged, sweating, with each contraction. A few tense seconds passed. Suddenly a tiny male trunk slithered out, the head and shoulders still trapped inside. I loosened the cord around the neck, repositioned the forceps and pulled. On the third tug, the head came free. A little bloodstained boy lay blue, motionless and unbreathing in my hands.
I heard Mmapula ask a question, and Esther murmur a reply; I lifted the silent child with one hand, thumb over the chest and rummaged for the aspirator, elbowing my hair from my eyes. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the tiny chest heaved and the familiar cat-like cry filled the hut. Shocked, reprieved, eyes burning, I lifted him onto Mmapula’s abdomen. Her hand came down to rest on the small back and her eyes closed.
When the cord stopped pulsating, I clipped and cut it, glad the research would benefit this little boy; Esther delivered the placenta and then we helped Mmapula stagger across the room into bed and gave her the wrapped baby. While Esther held the torch I repaired the episiotomy. I had no more local anaesthetic to give her but Mmapula lay completely still, gazing at the tiny boy in her arms.
Esther left to start the lunchtime tuberculosis clinic. I stayed on to check the blood pressure. Mmapula and her son slept. It was dark and quiet; the labour ward in my hospital had high lights, humming machinery, bleeps and drips, scalpels. Masks. I hadn’t known my patients’ names. They’d trusted my skill but not me: they hadn’t known me. Here, that separation didn’t seem possible. The baby mewed. I leant to check his pulse; the tiny fingers curled round mine, holding tight.
The hut began to fill with neighbours, a can of hot sorghum was produced, cups of tea, ginger beer. When Esther returned, Mmapula was still sleeping and I hurried back for the afternoon clinic.
It had started raining by the time I drove home; the old woman and the children I’d seen earlier had disappeared. The village looked a different, grimmer place. The ash under the cooking pots was dark with water. There were no families sitting in the sun, no children playing in the dust.
It was quieter in Adam’s absence. I noticed more things. Alice moved everywhere with Teko, helping with Sam. They talked in whispers; I couldn’t hear what they said but I wouldn’t have understood anyway. It was time I learnt Setswana – it would be helpful in the clinic. When I took Sam from Alice at his bedtime, her anger surprised me. ‘Why are you putting him away?’
‘I’m not putting him anywhere, Ally. It’s his bedtime. He needs a routine.’
‘You mean you do,’ she said loudly. ‘I know you don’t want Sam to be part of the family.’
What had triggered this? I tried to put an arm round her but she shrugged me off. Her words echoed in my head as I fed Sam by his cot. She was partly right – I did want a routine – but she was also wrong. He was loved, even if I hadn’t shown it from the start. I touched his birthmark gently. As he drowsed to sleep, I stared absently at the white walls, noticing that dark fingerprints had appeared near the glass doors. The children should take more care: it was our house on loan only. I turned the key in the door and put the keychain in a drawer, then settled Sam and found the girls in their room.
‘Ally, Zoë, remember to wash your hands when you come in from the garden. There are fingermarks all over the wall by the doors in our room. I’ve locked them now, the keys are in the bedside drawer in case of emergencies.’
‘What emergencies?’ asked Zoë, jumping off her bed. ‘Will lions come in our room, or elephants?’ Her voice shook with excitement.
‘Fire, stupid,’ Alice muttered.
Zoe looked crestfallen. Tears welled.
‘Elisabeth says the dog’s gone off on his own little adventure,’ I told her quickly. ‘He’ll be back soon, you’ll see.’
Zoe had recovered by supper and as we sat together over Elisabeth’s pumpkin stew I told both girls that Simon was leaving us, explaining that his family had to move. I was watching Alice as I spoke but I was still unprepared. She pushed her plate away, knocking over a glass of bougainvillaea flowers. ‘It’s all your fault!’ she shouted, then ran to her bedroom and locked the door from the inside. She refused to open it; in the end Zoë had to sleep in our bed.
‘Why is Ally so cross?’ she whispered, as I tucked her in.
‘She’s upset because Simon’s leaving,’ I whispered back. ‘She liked him.’ It was more than that. For the first time a teacher had responded to who she was, taking her seriously. Had I neglected this? Trying to understand her emotions, had I forgotten her mind? But emotions were part of this too – she’d adored Simon.
I took the mobile phone outside. The darkness was dense with moisture. I called Adam. His phone went to voicemail. I tried the hotel and was put through to his room. He picked up immediately; he’d forgotten to recharge his mobile.
‘I’ll see if I can come home early,’ he said, when he heard about Simon. ‘We’ll do something nice this weekend – a camping trip?’
‘I won’t say anything yet.’ He might be held up but, with luck, this would make a good surprise, just what Alice needed. ‘I miss you.’
He said something in reply, which was lost in a storm of background noise, and then the connection had gone. Flashes of lightning lit up fragments of the hills miles away; I’d never before told Adam I missed him. It had been hard to admit, even to myself, that I needed him. I’d waited in the kitchen in London drumming my fingers on the table with irritation if he was late, wondering what he was doing or achieving. It was simpler now. I just wanted him here with all of us.
Noises began to percolate through the silence – rustling in the bushes, a sudden flapping of wings and sounds like quiet breathing, as though, in the darkness, the land had become alive. I stood up and went inside.
Zoë had spread her arms and legs across our mattress so I had to lie awkwardly along the edge of the bed, my arms itching with bites. I didn’t sleep well. Much later I thought I heard a door opening and closing, then Alice’s footsteps running down the corridor and, distantly, the kitchen door closing. She must be raiding the fridge, having left her supper unfinished. I drifted off, hoping there was something left for her to find.
Even before I left the next day, I was hurrying to get back. Sam woke crying and pulling his right ear. Teko held him: she was worried, her free hand hovering over her necklace as I inspected the eardrum with my auroscope. The tiny branching blood vessels over the thin skin were dilated, the early sign of an infection. The red skin on his cheek felt hot. I gave him a spoonful of our precious Calpol and found his little elephant. The small fingers closed tightly round the knitted body and he started chewing a leather ear.
The sitting room looked like home now. Alice’s jigsaw lay on the table and Zoë’s paintings were tacked to the wall. My cardigan was flung over the arm of a chair. Teko had hung the necklace of dried pods from the antlers of the kudu, and the cushions had been plumped up. The phone rang as I picked up my bag. Simon. Lightning had struck a mopane tree where the dirt track branched off the main road from Gaborone. A team was coming to clear it away but in the meantime he couldn’t reach us. He was sorry, especially as this would have been his last day. Alice should continue with her maths exercises; Zoë was to learn ten new words beginning with W and draw pictures in her alphabet book. He would email more work, and look for another tutor for us; in the meantime could I say goodbye to the girls? He rang off, apologizing.
‘What kind of words?’ Zoë had arrived, first for once; she sat down and looked at me sideways through fingers spread like a star across her face.
‘Worms, Zo-Zo, whales, wasps. Warthog?’
‘Wobbly jellyfish?’ She grinned, one of her front teeth had begun
to grow at last.
Alice had come in silently; she was sitting at the table by her books.
‘Simon can’t get through because the road is blocked. He asked me to tell you to carry on. Are you all right, Ally?’
Her face was bleached of colour, the dark marks now like bruises under her eyes.
‘Is it Simon?’
The hand on the book trembled. Tears seemed near.
‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart; I know how fond you are of him. I like him too. I’ll stand in till we get someone else. I heard you last night – did you find something to eat?’
She didn’t answer. Was she missing Adam? ‘I don’t like Daddy being away either. He’s looking forward to –’ but Adam’s early return and the camping trip were to be a surprise – ‘seeing you when he gets home.’
She didn’t reply and my heart ached for her; she would forget Simon, though she didn’t know that yet. She would enjoy the trip. I kissed her cheek. It was getting late. I had to leave; I couldn’t find my sandals so I slipped on my old flip-flops by the door.
The road was puddled and I drove carefully, expecting to see more fallen trees, but the storm here hadn’t amounted to much, or perhaps it was still to come.
By chance, it was a morning for children and old women; tomorrow could be a day for old men and pregnant women. I liked mornings like these. I liked the children, their shy dignity, the way they stood bravely, chests pushed out, waiting for me to sound them. Ibo should have been among them. When I mentioned this to Esther at lunchtime, she put her half-eaten sandwich back in her Tupperware box. ‘Mrs Munthe’s gone to Francistown, taking him with her.’
‘And Baruti?’
She shook her head and got up to lay fresh paper on the couch. Baruti’s name was left floating in the room.
The afternoon moved slowly: three men from the same family with food poisoning after eating boiled goat left to stand at a wedding, ringworm, chronic back pain, vitamin deficiency. When Esther left on her scooter, it was nearly time for Sam’s evening feed. I pulled the heavy iron doors behind me, hearing the lock catch. The sun was lower now, and the feathery tips of the maize in the small plots around the huts by the clinic were hazy with trapped light. I hurried to the car, but when I turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened. I tried again. The lights worked – there was enough petrol showing on the gauge. I opened the bonnet under the gaze of a gathering crowd of children. Enough water, enough oil. Adam’s phone went to voicemail again, still uncharged. He would have left the hotel by now. I tried the house phone but it was dead: someone had left it off the hook.