Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms (10 page)

“Don't you worry about me, my girl. You look after you, and I'll look after me,
ja
?”

Or perhaps it was the way she leaned toward him, one hand unconsciously held out, aching to touch him, to lay
a thumb on his tired eyes and to love him back to his old, wheezing, leather-skinned, indomitable self. Whatever it was, it made him shiver, and sigh again.

“I'll write to you, my wildcat. Cynthia thinks I should wait a month or so—give you time to settle in,
ja
? But after that. And you'll write to your old captain, won't you?”

“Ja.”
Will tried to smile.

“And you look after yourself. England's a good place. But don't forget how to be brave out there, Will,
ja
? Will?”

“Ja.”

“Right. Don't you get out of the habit of bravery. Even if you think nobody's seeing, hey? It's still so important, Will, my girl. So important . . .” His voice trailed off. He looked desperately around for something to say.

There was the sound of a car horn. The captain touched Will lightly on the cheek. “Safe travels, little Wildcat. Brave, remember? No tears, hey?”

Will swallowed. It was all she seemed to do these days, say good-bye. She'd worked out that silent partings were easier than noisy. There was less to regret later. She nodded. “No tears, Captain Browne.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss the rough-stubbled cheek. Then without another word, without looking up again at the old face, Will walked out to the waiting car.

There she stumbled, brought up short. There had been two car journeys into town (for the shopping, and for a passport photograph—Will liked the photo; her bird's nest of hair stood up at the back like a halo, and she was scowling ferociously, because the jolly photographer kept telling her to “Say chongololo”), and for both they had taken the captain's rusty red Toyota pickup. It had smelled of petrol and sawdust, and Cynthia Browne had sat in the cab with gritted teeth, but for Will it had been the best part of each expedition, a tooth-rattling ride in the open back with a gang of farmhands. Will had looked forward to the drive to the airport. “It'll be my Last Ride,” she'd said to Simon—they'd spoken about it in capital letters. “
Ja
—it's going to be wind-rushing and bumpingly good; it'll be my Ride Out of Africa.”

But the car that waited in the drive was a hire taxi, large and monstrously sleek. It was the sort of car that mustn't be scuffed and mustn't be smudged. Nobody had ever sung in that car, or wound down the windows and perched on the sill and snatched at fruit from the trees by the side of the road. Will felt, with a new coldness in her chest, that when she climbed in, she would be opening the door to a new way of being. It would be a different version of reality. And any world that you reached this way, through chrome and a
smell of leather (it was a smell of
false
, she thought, a smell that bypassed nostrils and shot straight to the brain) could not be a good world. It was that simple.

The boys had gathered to see her off. Will had already given out her parting presents. She didn't have much she could give; her most treasured possession was her box full of books, which none of the boys wanted. In the end she forced Simon to take them, with strict instructions to teach the younger ones to read. To Lucian Mazarotti, she gave Shumba's saddle and reins, and she would have given him Shumba, but she wasn't sure he was hers to give now. To Tedias she gave her precious green tin mug and her collection of cricket balls, and she had sewn her sheet into a shirt for Lazarus. To Simon, best of all, she gave Kezia, and now the monkey hung from Simon's neck, chattering nervously, perhaps picking up the stiffness that had come over the children.

Simon had given Will a flashlight. “The batteries aren't great, hey,” he had said. “It's a bit flickery. But they probably have loads of batteries in England,
ja
.” She had felt oddly swollen in her chest. It had been one of his most treasured things, because it meant light at night without smoke. Lucian had given her a scarf and gloves; the gloves were leather, and he had made them himself from his own cow's hide.

As she approached the car, Simon held out a small parcel wrapped in newspaper and strong sisal grass. “I made it for you, Will. I . . . ah . . .
ja
. You don't have to open it now.”

But Will was already tearing at the paper. Inside was a little cat carved out of limestone. It had an arching back and pointed ears. “Tedias helped. It's a wildcat. Because of what your father called you,
ja
? To remember us.”

“Okay.
Ja
,” said Will. She held it to her chest. And then, “Thank you, Si. I like it. I—
ja
. Thank you, hey.”

His face was scrunched up, his nose flaring in and out to control emotion.

“Miss you, Will.”

“Miss you, Si.”

And as Will climbed into the evil-smelling backseat, he leaned in through the open window, and whispered, spraying her with excitement, suddenly fierce, “I'll give her a headache and a half, Will; struze fact. We'll send her proper mad.”

He thumped the hood of the car. The engine started.

“You be happy, madman!”

And Will, leaning out the window to wave, shouted back,

“
Faranuka
!
Simon, boy,
faranuka
! Lazarus,
faranuka
! Lucian Mazarotti! Peter, Tedias,
faranuka
!”

The car gathered speed, and the host of barefoot boys
ran down the dust track after the car, tapping the trunk, and then falling back, ululating and laughing.

And then the car left behind the farm and Will's sunlit childhood, and the only way of being that she had ever known.

“
Faranuka
.” It meant “be happy.” And what other choice had there been, in a world like hers?

W
ILL'S FIRST SIGHT OF THE
school was colored black with rain and cold and misery.

At the airport she ran straight past the man sent to pick her up, tripping over her shoelaces and stumbling past rows of exhausted-looking people. She wouldn't talk to anyone. She'd just find a corner and wait until someone came for her. Will closed her eyes and brought her knees up to her chin and bit on them, hard. It left bite marks on her skin, but it was a way of ignoring the terror in her chest.

Running and hiding, it turned out, had been the wrong thing to do. When the stewardess and the driver found her half an hour later, crouching under one of the long airport
benches, they said so. Will stared wordlessly at them as they said it several times over, in unison, like a fretful duet. The man sent by the school brandished a sign at her. It said,
WILHELMINA SILVER. LEEWOOD SCHOOL
.

“Didn't you see the sign? Do you speak English?”

Will struggled to speak. She could only bite the inside of her cheeks.

“Oh, Lord Almighty,” the driver said. “What do they speak in Africa?
Parlez-vous anglais
?
”

Will nodded, but found she couldn't find words. She wanted to explain that her name was
Will
(or Wildcat, or Cartwheel, but she kept herself from saying that); he had turned away, looking for her luggage. She tried to apologize, but his large square back was already receding, and she had to run to keep up.

The man remained brittle and tight-lipped for the drive, which was endless and swerving and so fast that Will's stomach was feeling green and swollen before they were halfway there.

At home the roads were mostly potholed and dusty, and the tractors and trucks traveled over them slowly. Will had always thought the trucks looked like fat fastidious women, and when she'd been allowed to drive the pickup along the more deserted tracks, she'd made dirt spurt and the air whip by with speed—but even then she hadn't been able to coax
the speedometer past forty. Now she pulled her legs up to her chest and hid her head between her knees and tried not to think about her father sitting in the passenger seat, laughing, with one hand hovering over the emergency brake.

The driver was watching her in the mirror. But “Feet off the seats, please,” was all he said.

Will did not think her heart could ache more. It felt redraw, like a popped blister. Then as the car pulled up at the school gates, she saw she was wrong. Her heart clenched like a fist. Will hunched farther into her corner and stared. She stared so long that her eyes turned dry and prickling. It was pure ugliness, she thought desperately; it was misery in concrete form. Everything was gray—the square main building, the benches, the bark on trees, and spread out above the school, the gray sky—everything was the color of an old photograph. Will tried to breathe properly.

The man pulled up outside the largest of the buildings.

“Out you get. That's right. Mind the leather.” Will stumbled, tripped over the metal doorframe, and flinched away from his supporting hand.

He looked pointedly at the mud her boots had left behind in the car. At home, Will thought, mud was to be cultivated and adored—mud and water and the sun and mango trees. They went together.

There were no children in sight. The man looked at his watch. “Twelve o'clock. They'll be in class. They expected you by morning break.”

Will didn't speak.

“Never mind; can't be helped.” He looked curiously at her. What sort of child stood so still? “Wait here while I park the car. Sit on that bench, by the playground, there. That's right. Don't move. I'll be right back.”

It started to drizzle. Gray drizzle. Will felt herself smile a tiny smile at the thought: grizzle. Her legs were stiff and heavy after two days and a night of sitting still. Experimentally, she waggled her ankles. They still worked. Slowly she walked up and down the asphalt, breathing in rain and air. It wasn't like African air. It was thicker, and smelled of rubber and something sharp, but still . . . Will took in gulps of it. It was air. Air was beautiful.

Her legs still seemed to be warming up, so she sped up; she tried to practice her handspring, but the concrete was cold, and shards of it stuck to her hands. She ran instead, and forward-rolled and star-jumped until she felt warmer and she could jump and touch her toes in the air. She cartwheeled, and her hair flew out behind her just as it had at home. (Gravity still functioned, then, she thought. That was something.) There was a leafless tree growing against the
largest of the school buildings. She pulled herself up into it and breathed the living-bark smell. She jumped down, put both ankles behind her head and rolled around the asphalt. Then she stood on her head against a bench until her face turned red. Her limbs stopped feeling like chair legs. Her heart started beating again.

Faces appeared at a window overhead. Will didn't see them; she kept cartwheeling, faster and faster round the edges of the asphalt playground.

“Who's
that
?”

“Look at that! How does she do that?”

“Did you see that, Sam? Is that the new girl?”

“Look! Samantha! Did you see that, Sam?”

The girl called Samantha gave a chilly little laugh. “So what? I can do that.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” Samantha blew on the glass.

“Sam! Now we can't see!” Another girl started scrubbing at the mist.

“I hate people who show off.” Samantha was the tallest by a head. Everyone agreed she was the beauty of the year.

Almost everyone; one girl said, “But she doesn't know we're watching.”

“So?”

“So, she can't be showing off, can she?” And the girl's twin added, “You can't be showing off if you're by yourself, can you?”

“Shut up, Hannah.”

“But you can't!”

“Shut up, Zoe.”

Below them the driver reappeared and said something to the girl. They watched through the glass his mouth open and shut like a goldfish's, saw him tap his watch and saw his shoulders heave a sigh; and they saw the girl guiltily scramble upright and follow him, brushing asphalt stains from her palms and smiling a tiny secret smile to herself.