The Drowning Lesson

by Jane Shemilt

  Another beat of silence. ‘I’m so sorry for the wait. The housekeeper left and it’s taken two days to track her down. It’s not good. David passed away four months ago. Cancer. I knew he’d gone to hospital but I’d no idea … I wish he’d said …’

  Passed away: passed where, exactly? As if dying is a gentle wafting from life into some better world, not the brutal tip into the void I’ve seen so often on the wards.

  ‘Emma, are you still there?’

  ‘Did he have a wife?’

  ‘She died a long time ago in a car crash on the road to Francistown.’

  A car crash. Brief words, like ‘missing’ or ‘stolen’, containing a world of wreckage and suffering. ‘So does anyone know where we can find his orphanage?’

  ‘There’s no one left to know.’ Her voice is low. ‘When the nuns retired, only my parents and David were left. After Mum and Dad died, the mission closed. David got involved with the orphanage instead.’

  ‘The deputy manager at the hospital told Adam the same thing so he went to every orphanage in Molepolole. But no one knew Teko. I don’t understand.’

  ‘This is Africa, Em.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ A get-out clause? A reason bad things happen? A bad thing has happened, but that wasn’t because of Africa; it was because of me.

  ‘Things come to an end very quickly when the money runs out. David would have used his own finances to keep the orphanage going. Now he’s dead, there’d be nothing to pay staff or to feed children with. It would have been disbanded in days, the children sent to state-run orphanages anywhere in the country.’

  ‘What about his own children?’

  ‘He didn’t have any.’

  ‘Your parents …’

  ‘I told you, Em. Both dead.’

  It’s vanished, then, the world Megan grew up in, with parents who never had time to talk to her, the long queues they tended amid the dust and the flies, the songs from a tin-roofed church, weaving up into the burning air through the pine trees, the orphanage that grew out of that; a world of effort and children and tragedy. All gone.

  ‘It’s my fault. I know it is. If I hadn’t contacted David in the first place this would never have happened … I feel completely responsible.’ Her voice fades miserably.

  ‘Teko could have come from any orphanage, nothing to do with you or David.’ My suspicions about Megan were mad, I see that now. ‘We presumed it was from his orphanage but there’s no proof of that now. We were told people can simply turn up for a job here with no introduction …’ As I repeat Kabo’s words, I see Teko as a random stranger who came upon us by chance; if so, there is little hope of tracking her down. She could be anywhere in the country now, anywhere in the world.

  ‘I could come out, if you like,’ Megan offers. ‘I could look after the girls and free you both up?’

  There is no both, not since this morning: but the drift had already begun, though it’s difficult to pinpoint when that was: when Sam was taken or when he was born? Maybe it was when I fell pregnant, or further back still, when Adam accepted the post, keeping it secret from the family.

  ‘I’ll look up flight times,’ she continues. ‘Just say when.’

  I hold the phone tightly, wanting to accept, knowing I mustn’t. She is needed at home; our family is not the one she used to know; I’m not the same either. ‘I can’t possibly let you come out, Megan, but thanks.’

  Can she tell there are tears streaming down my face? Tears of shame as well as loss. What have I ever given Megan that comes close to what she gives me? She wouldn’t understand the question if I asked her: love isn’t a balance to her, there’s nothing to equalize.

  ‘Tell me if you change your mind. I’m thinking about you all the time,’ she says. ‘Sam was on the front page of The Times today, Adam’s picture was on the ten o’clock news. At work …’

  There is a scream from outside. Alice’s scream. Dropping my phone, I run down the steps and across the grass to where she is staring down into the leaves of a large cactus.

  ‘What is it, Ally? Are you hurt?’

  She points between the thick stalks as they crowd together. A dead snake lies twisted in the cobwebby depths of the plant. The jaws are open, the eyes swarming with ants. The long, sinuous body has been neatly skinned and is glistening with flies.

  ‘It’s dead. It can’t hurt you.’ I tighten my arm round her. ‘It was a nasty kind of snake, darling. I asked Josiah to kill it.’

  ‘Look,’ she whispers, still pointing. Half hidden under the bloodstained body of the snake are the two little lizards, also crawling with flies. They’ve been decapitated and skinned.

  ‘It’s horrible, disgusting …’

  ‘A rat must have got them. Or a mongoose.’ I hope she believes me. ‘It would have been quick. A clean death.’ Another euphemism.

  ‘You let them go. It’s your fault.’

  She runs back to the house, disappearing through the door.

  The bodies are stuck to the leaves with dried blood; they feel crusty in my hands. Could they be useful evidence of some kind? In Josiah’s toolshed by the compost heap, I balance them on a rafter for now, further away from any ants. The harsh creosote smell in the shed brings back my father, painting a fence against the winter.

  I’d gone home as a student, on the cusp of giving up; I couldn’t remember why I’d wanted to do medicine.

  ‘It’s too hard, Dad. It’s not interesting.’

  He doesn’t look at me, just carries on painting. He is wearing glasses. Is he getting old? Can he hear me?

  ‘I can’t do it.’ My voice gets louder.

  Silence for a few minutes, maybe five; he paints very carefully, running the brush down each thin slip of wood, catching the drips before they fall.

  ‘It’s all right, Emmie. You keep going.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’s the wrong question.’

  ‘Dad, I can’t remember why I’m doing this.’ I’m shouting now, starting to cry.

  He moves his tin, and starts a new section. ‘The question isn’t why, the question is how.’

  ‘What does that mean exactly?’

  ‘It means you work out how you’re going to do it first. The reason will come to you. Some things don’t bear too much why.’

  He smiles up at me and then I remember exactly why. His smile. So now I have to work out how.

  As I walk back to the house, the heat is fierce on my neck, the shadows short and black at my heels. I find the phone where I dropped it and text Megan to explain. Alice and Zoë are sitting at the kitchen table, watching while Elisabeth chops a pile of herbs. The air is fragrant with the woody lemon scent of wild thyme. Peo sweeps the floor, crooning a song.

  ‘I’m sorry you were frightened, Ally,’ I whisper as I rinse my hands. ‘I’ve got rid of them now.’

  For a moment she is quite still, staring at me as if I’m a stranger. She gets down and walks out. Zoë runs after her, asking questions; I hope Alice doesn’t tell her what she saw.

  I turn to Elisabeth. ‘Alice showed me the snake Josiah killed. It had been skinned, and so had the lizards. Why would anyone do that?’

  Her hands stop moving.

  ‘Why, Elisabeth?’

  ‘Spells,’ she says quietly, and resumes chopping, but her knife misses, cutting into the board.

  Someone from the village then, someone who has crept very close; even Elisabeth is frightened. We should take up Kabo’s offer of guard dogs: I send him a rapid text.

  Peo is murmuring to Elisabeth, who tries to smile as she translates, but her mouth quivers. ‘Peo says all the people are looking from her village. Many men looking all the time.’

  I stare out of the window at the arid landscape, as if expecting it to be crawling with men, spread out, searching with sticks through the undergrowth as they would in England. What do the villagers hope to find? If Sam had been left out there he wouldn’t last a day. Why would they search the bush, unless they’re looking for a
body?

  But the question isn’t why.

  I shower, change into clean clothes, brush my hair. There is a crunch of wheels on stone: the police are arriving later than usual.

  Kopano walks round the back of the house. Goodwill comes into the sitting room to find me, his eyes darting over my thin sundress. Too exhausted to wash clothes, unwilling to burden Elisabeth further, I’m down to my flimsiest things. Adam has left a jacket on the chair. I shrug it on but it smells of his sweat and I discard it again. Goodwill watches, missing nothing.

  The question is how.

  ‘Where’s Josiah?’ I aim for a pleasant tone, conversational, even.

  Goodwill moves to the window. His fingers tap on the sill as he looks outside, and he cranes his neck to see up into the sky, an expression of interest on his face, as if wondering whether it’s going to rain. He is ignoring me. My heart thuds with anger or fear, I’m not sure which.

  ‘Why did you arrest him, Goodwill, apart from the fingerprints on the cages?’

  ‘Mma Babira from the clinic and Mrs Stukker in Gaborone were most co-operative,’ he says, as though I haven’t spoken. ‘There was nothing suspicious to find in either case.’

  It takes me a moment to realize he is talking about Esther and Claire. I feel a stab of guilt that they have been disturbed.

  ‘The personnel in Mokolodi game park had heard of your situation. They were very sorry. All had been working at the time of the kidnapping. We made no arrests. We were quite wrong to suspect Mr Katse also,’ Goodwill continues, shaking his head at me, as if I were the one who had thought Simon was guilty. He pulls out a handkerchief and coughs noisily into it, then folds it carefully, stowing it in his pocket. It’s as though Josiah has ceased to exist.

  ‘We have questioned Mr Katse at length. When he left your house, the day before your son disappeared, he went to pick up his wife and they drove overnight to Johannesburg to celebrate with relatives.’

  ‘Celebrate?’

  ‘His wife had already been elected. We have interviewed the relatives.’ He nods now, his chin descending each time into stiff rolls of flesh.

  ‘Why did you want to question Simon? What was it you suspected him of?’

  I move a little closer and he steps sideways, repositioning his weight on widespread legs; it’s as if we’re partners in a dance, moving around something so terrible it can’t be named. Today Goodwill is wearing a red striped tie; the colour glows in the dark room. He has the power; I must be careful.

  ‘He was here just a few days before Sam was abducted.’ For a large man his voice is unusually silky. ‘We thought it possible that he might have encountered something relevant.’

  ‘Relevant like his wife’s political ambitions?’

  Goodwill turns towards me, putting his hands on his hips, becoming bigger, more threatening even. If it is a threat, I ignore it.

  ‘I know body parts can be used for power … children’s body parts,’ I continue.

  The obscene words are between us, as they have silently been all along.

  ‘Such things do unfortunately happen from time to time, but not round here.’ His eyes flick to the laptop on the table and back to me. ‘You have doubtless read of an old case in Mochudi. Nothing was ever proved, of course.’

  ‘I also know of a school child near here, who walked into the bush quite recently. He’s never been found.’ Does he know about Baruti? I watch his face closely for clues.

  ‘Children who wander in the bush are always at risk.’ He looks mildly exasperated. ‘Snakes, other animals, the heat. Parents should keep them at home.’

  Police complicity was suspected in Mochudi. Whose side is Goodwill on? In that moment, thick with conjecture, Kopano knocks and enters. He glances at Goodwill then faces me. ‘Your daughter has just told me you found reptiles in the garden that had been skinned. I will need to see them. Can you show me?’

  Weren’t there rules here about questioning children on their own? Cheeks burning with anger, I lead the way. Kopano follows. Outside the house, I turn to him. He is younger than Goodwill, less guarded. He might be willing to let slip what he knows.

  ‘What do you think Josiah has done, Kopano?’

  No answer.

  ‘Why are you interested in the reptiles?’

  He glances back at the house as he walks beside me but doesn’t reply.

  ‘Why, Kopano?’

  As we reach the shed, Goodwill’s heavy tread comes down the veranda steps after us. I have to be quick. ‘What do you know about medicine murders?’

  But Goodwill is already beside me. Kopano silently holds open a plastic bag. As I tip in the bodies of the snake and lizards, his eyes slide sideways fearfully: so he believes in spells too.

  They leave, Kopano carrying the bag at an angle from his body, as if it might be contaminated. Their car moves down the drive. I am no nearer knowing why they are keeping Josiah. Minutes later, Kabo drives in, Adam beside him in the car.

  ‘I found your husband miles away.’ Kabo gets out, shaking his head. ‘He was starting back, but sunset comes quickly.’

  Adam stands silently in the drive; he stares at his feet, his expression bleak.

  ‘I got your message about the dogs.’ Kabo’s hand grips mine. ‘I’ll be near the kennels tomorrow for my niece’s christening. I’ll call in and bring them over in the afternoon.’ He looks uncertainly at Adam, then back at me, pushing up his glasses.

  ‘Stay for a cup of tea, Kabo.’

  I make a pot and we sit on the veranda; Adam and I avoid each other’s gaze.

  ‘We should have christened Sam,’ Adam says into the silence. His face is coated with dust, his eyes bloodshot. ‘His name means “heard by God”, remember? God would have heard him calling for us, if we’d christened him.’

  Then I do look at him – stare at him. ‘Surely you’re not going to pretend you believe in God suddenly?’

  Kabo shifts in his seat at my words, glancing from Adam to me. Adam looks up; swallows are flying in a V-formation across the reddening sky. For a moment I imagine they’re migrating to England. I’ve lost track of the seasons. Is it spring there? Summer?

  ‘Just because I need God now, doesn’t make him less likely to be real,’ Adam mutters.

  It does, though; he’s being irrational.

  ‘Maybe I should start praying.’ He laughs abruptly. ‘If Sam is dead, shouldn’t that mean he’ll go to Heaven?’

  ‘I don’t think God makes bargains like that,’ Kabo says gently. ‘He’ll look after Sam anyway.’

  We are at the point of evening when a hush falls, a small hesitation before dark. Kabo’s voice is quiet, as though he’s in church, but Adam’s is angry. ‘God should have been on my side,’ he says. ‘I came to Africa to help.’

  What had we imagined Africa would be like? The very word had once been exciting but it’s hard to remember exactly why. Adam had thought he could help and so had I. How arrogant that seems now, how naive. I doubt we have helped; our help wasn’t needed. The kind of Africa we imagined doesn’t exist. We found none of the things we thought we would. On the contrary, God or no God, it’s been a place of loss.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Botswana, April 2014

  The questions in my head distil. Is he alive or dead? Killed within moments of being taken? My mind hovers between possibilities as the hours and days tick by, not daring to settle. I hardly eat; my gums bleed. When I wake the taste of iron is in my mouth, as though I had sucked on knives in my sleep.

  My milk supply has disappeared more quickly than I would have thought; from one moment to the next, my breasts stopped hurting. I can’t rid myself of the thought that my body knows more than my mind, that my milk isn’t needed now, because Sam is dead.

  Adam goes back to the consulate three times a week, on his own. He doesn’t mention God again; he is silent and eats little. Goodwill tells me the counter-trafficking department of the International Organization for Migration is involved now but surely it
’s too late. Sam could have been transported to another country at any time in the last two weeks. As Goodwill talks about grass-roots surveillance and witness protection, I can hardly take in the words. My mind is full of images of Sam in some airless back room in a dirty cot, tear-stained and thin. At night I lie awake, wondering if he would remember me if we found him now.

  Zoë follows me everywhere, asking to be held. Walking through the house is an effort; noises and light hurt. All day I search the Internet and scour every news channel. The children want stories, though I often lose my place and have to begin from the beginning.

  The space between Adam and me widens. We hardly talk any more. We sleep in the same room but I go to bed later, when he is already asleep; he gets up earlier and has left to walk the bush or visit the consulate by the time the children and I have breakfast.

  Yesterday a press plane flew low twice over the house; luckily the girls were inside. The gum trees bent and shook. The three guard dogs, housed in large crates near the garage, usually sleeping by day, woke and slunk in circles, whining.

  Peo returns to her village early on a Wednesday. A knot of women wait for her in the road beyond the gate and she is quickly enfolded. Around us the journalists’ vans are still closed. A man’s cheek is pressed flat, a pale ham against the window. The women’s ululations wake him and he stumbles out, aligning his camera. Others follow.

  A tall girl detaches herself from the group around Peo; she approaches me, unwrapping the sling around her. Mmapula. She holds out her baby to me. The group has become very quiet, though cameras click repeatedly. The baby feels light and warm; he mews in his sleep, like a kitten. For a moment I feel light-headed; Mmapula reaches to take him back. She gives me a small bunch of bush flowers.

  ‘Ka a leboga,’ she says, and smiles. Thank you.

  Peo takes my hand. ‘Ka a leboga.’ My accent is clumsy. The murmuring swells into chatter, which fades as the group moves down the road; I want to call her back.