Coincidence: A Novel (26 page)

But then, of course, the Acholi have to labour. They have to rise early and tend to their animals, and they have to bend at the waist and work their fields, and they have to carry water and firewood and bundles of produce; and here there are no weekends or bank holidays, no coffee shops or supermarkets, or escalators or tube trains. They have to work, these people of Africa, Thomas thinks. Or else . . .

Or else what?

Or else, perhaps, they die.

He sits down to rest again. A great weariness after three days of travelling is starting to descend. He isn't used to this intolerable heat. The weight of his bag is making his shoulders ache. His feet hurt. He is painfully thirsty. What is he doing here? He is a pale, urbane philosopher used to little more than the corridors of Bloomsbury and the commuter routes of London. His natural habitat is a seminar room overlooking Gower Street, or a squash court in Camden, or a coffee house in Soho, or the dusty back room of a bookshop on Tottenham Court Road.

Perhaps – just perhaps – it is getting cooler. He throws the bag across his shoulder and sets off again. A trudge this time. A slow, methodical plod. One foot in front of the other, then another, that's a yard. Then again, that's two yards. Counting the paces, watching his shadow.

Some way ahead of him on the same side of the road a woman sits on a stool in front of her hut, selling something. Whatever it is, he shall buy it. Unless it's charcoal, of course. But if it's water, or mango, or prickly pear, hang the cost, he will buy it. One foot in front of the other; then another. How faint he suddenly feels. His head is beginning to spin. Heatstroke, he thinks. I really should have brought a hat.

One hundred yards to go. The Acholi woman is motionless on her stool. Her face is turned away.

Fifty yards and he can see. She is selling beans of some sort. Pulses. He feels a crushing disappointment. Then she turns her face towards him and for a moment his heart stops. She has no lips.

He closes the distance between them and makes himself look at the gums and teeth that define her face. On impulse he scoops up a handful of beans. ‘How much?' He pulls a banknote from his wallet, an indefinable sum of money, and thrusts it into her hand. She must be a survivor of Joseph Kony, he thinks.

‘Do you have any water?' he asks. He mimes the request for her. ‘Water?'

The woman rises and disappears behind the roundhouse. She returns with water in a tin mug. Thomas drinks it all. He thinks about all the infections that he might catch. Amoebic dysentery, perhaps. He doesn't care. He passes back the mug.

‘How far is it to Langadi?' he asks, not sure if the woman will understand; or if she will even be able to reply.

But the lipless woman holds up her bony fingers. ‘Langadi,' she says, ‘three.'

‘Three what? Three miles?'

The woman nods mutely.

‘Is there a mission in Langadi?' Thomas asks.

She gives him a piercing gaze as if computing the question.

‘A mission?' he asks again. ‘St Paul Mission?'

Very slowly she shakes her head. ‘No.'

‘No mission? Are you sure?'

She looks as if the question has alarmed her. ‘No,' she says again.

Thomas releases a long and heavy breath. What stupid, futile thing has he done? He is a day late, anyway. Azalea will be dead. Or she will be alive. Like Schrödinger's cat, she is maybe dead and alive at the same time. Maybe she will be alive until he finds her. Maybe he will never find her. There are countless villages in this part of West Nile. He can't search every one.

The heat is making his head swim. He looks up and down the long dirt road, but even now, turning back seems less attractive than going on. He slips the handful of beans into a pocket and hefts the bag back onto a sore shoulder. One more foot in front of another.

And then the ring of a bell. A bicycle bell. Coasting down the gentle slope behind him comes the bicycle boy from Moyo with a wide grin across his face. ‘Boda boda?' he calls to Thomas, knowing well what the answer will be.

This time as they wobble off, Thomas keeps his long legs out of the way. I'm such a fool, he thinks. This is what I should have done all the way from Moyo. Ahead of them is a little township.

‘Is this Langadi?'

‘Yes.'

‘And is there a mission here?'

The boy shrugs and shakes his head. Thomas pays him and feels a new wave of energy. A cluster of low buildings with shops and workshops are strung out along the road. No mobile-phone stores here, Thomas notes. West Nile seems still to be holding out against the encroaching technology. He lost the signal on his own phone sometime after Laropi.

There is only one direction to go, and that is onwards. He walks the length of the town and the buildings begin to peter out. But somewhere, he thinks, the old mission must still be standing. He should at least try to find them. Someone would have seen Azalea when she came here in February. Someone, surely, would know what had become of her.

A young man is walking towards him. There is something ungainly about his gait. As he draws closer, Thomas can see that he has no arms.

‘Good day to you sir,' he says in clear English.

‘Good day to you,' Thomas replies.

‘Can I help you, sir? Are you looking for something?'

‘I don't know,' Thomas says. ‘I was looking for a mission. But it seems that there is no mission in Langadi any more.'

‘No, sir. There is no mission in Langadi.'

‘Then I think perhaps I've had a wasted journey.'

The young man shakes his head sympathetically.

‘Do you know how I might find someone to take me back to Moyo? A taxi perhaps?'

The young man smiles. ‘There is an Englishman at the Centre,' he says. ‘He has a car and a driver. I'm sure his driver can take you.'

Thomas feels the first stirrings of relief. ‘Thank you,' he says. ‘Can you show me where I might find this man?'

‘Of course. Just follow me.' The man with no arms turns around and starts down the road in the direction that Thomas had been heading.

‘You speak excellent English,' Thomas tells him.

‘Thank you. I had a very good teacher.'

‘Where did you go to school?'

‘Here in Langadi,' the man says. ‘At the Centre.'

A bright red bird flies across their path and for a moment Thomas's attention is diverted. Thomas looks at the man. ‘How did you lose your arms?'

‘They were cut off, sir. When I was just a boy.'

‘Cut off?' It seems almost too appalling to say. ‘By Joseph Kony?'

‘You know of Joseph Kony then?' the man says.

Thomas nods.

‘It was his men. His men did it.'

Something is surfacing in Thomas's mind. ‘What is this Centre you mentioned?'

‘It's here, sir.' They have rounded a corner and there in front of them is a signboard, one of the thousands of signboards that decorate the roadways of Uganda. This one reads, ‘The Rebecca Folley Centre for the Children of Conflict'.

Thomas's heart begins to race. ‘This is it!' he cries. ‘This is the mission!'

‘No, sir. This is a rescue centre.'

‘A rescue centre?'

‘Yes sir.'

‘A rescue centre for children who were abducted by the LRA?'

‘Yes sir.'

A dirt driveway leads from the road to a cluster of buildings almost hidden among trees. Around the compound is a high wooden fence, and topping the fence, a coil of barbed wire.

‘It looks like a prison,' Thomas says.

‘No sir, it isn't a prison,' says the man with no arms. ‘The wire is to keep the LRA men out.'

The driveway is protected by a high wire gate. A tall man, wearing fragments of a uniform, lets them through. They walk up the murrum drive. A cluster of children gather to watch them. Most of the children, Thomas is relieved to see, are undamaged.

As for the ‘rescue centre', it isn't quite how Thomas has pictured it. It is shabbier, somehow, than the mission in his imagination. The buildings are dusty and rather unkempt; the once whitewashed walls are stained the colour of overripe bananas. The vegetation grows wild and the grass is sparse. But ahead is an inviting, open-sided building that can only be the mess hall. This would be the place where Kony and his men first confronted the Folleys. There are tables and benches and a kitchen space where a large, greying Acholi man is stirring a huge stewpot over a charcoal stove. He is barking commands to a clutch of teenage assistants, and one is setting out forks and knives on tables in preparation for dinner.

In a winged wicker armchair, looking out over the compound, sits a European man; his mirrored sunglasses, weathered face and long grey hair lend him the look of an ageing rock star.

The man with no arms addresses him. ‘Mr Boss,' he says, ‘I have a visitor here to see you.'

The grey-haired man turns in his chair to face them. ‘You'll forgive me if I don't get up,' he says.

Thomas holds out his hand but the man appears to ignore it.

‘I don't get many visitors,' he says. ‘Do I know you?'

‘No, sir. My name is Thomas Post,' says Thomas.

‘Ah,' says the man. ‘Then I do know who you are.'

‘You do?'

‘Of course I do. Can I offer you a drink? You must have travelled a long way.'

Thomas feels the weariness flood over him again. He sinks down onto a stool. ‘Yes please. I should love something to drink.'

‘I'll get one of the boys to fetch it,' says the man with no arms. ‘Tea, coffee, or something stronger?'

‘Tea,' says Thomas. ‘Tea, please. Not too strong. And water, if you have some.'

‘Of course.'

‘Azalea told me you're a tea drinker,' the grey-haired man says.

Thomas feels his head spinning. ‘Azalea told you?'

‘Indeed. She tells me everything.'

Tells me. The glorious present tense. Thomas finds himself choking on his words. ‘Azalea . . . so she . . . she's . . . still alive?'

The man looks puzzled by this remark. ‘Of course. Why shouldn't she be?'

Thomas shakes his head. His eyes have filled with tears and he turns his face away, not wanting to be seen. He feels a sob emerging like a deep eruption within his chest and he fights to keep it from bursting to the surface. Instead he manages just a whisper. ‘Azalea is alive. She's alive.'

‘My dear young man, what were you imagining?'

‘I don't know. I'm not sure. I . . .' Thomas can't turn to face the man in the wicker chair, not yet; not with his eyes brimming so. Instead, he looks out over the compound, over a raggle-taggle of buildings and trees. That low building there must be the old mission house. And that long rectangular structure – the school, perhaps? Or maybe the hospital? A man is washing a minibus with water from a bucket. A group of children are tethering some cattle to a tree. Somewhere he can hear voices singing. Children's voices.

‘You must be Luke Folley,' he says.

‘I am.'

‘Azalea thought you were dead.'

‘I know.' The man who is Luke Folley nods slowly. ‘She thought I was dead, and I thought she was dead. And so we wasted twenty years.'

The voices of children are coming closer. Thomas feels a sudden sense of urgency to understand everything; to know everything. ‘Why didn't you track her down?' he asks, aware as he speaks that his voice is cracking, but aware too that it doesn't matter any more. Nothing seems to matter any more. Azalea is alive. The thirty years since Marion's death are like the lost pages of a manuscript telling an ancient story that no longer has any relevance.

But Luke answers all the same. ‘No one called Folley ever left Uganda, or Kenya, or Congo, or Sudan.' Luke says. ‘Not one soldier of fortune ever returned to Uganda. I tracked down Kony's men and they told me that all the children had been blown up on the truck. They showed me the burned-out lorry. What was I to think?'

‘I'm sorry,' Thomas says; and he truly is.

‘Worst of all,' says Luke, ‘Azalea never came home.'

Thomas nods.

‘This place was a war zone for twenty years. We had LRA and SPLA and Uganda government forces all at each other's throats. You couldn't move in or out for a long time. The roads were blocked; the airfields were closed.'

‘I see.'

‘I was abducted myself by the LRA.'

‘You were?' Thomas is surprised. ‘I never knew that.'

‘Why should you? Until four months ago Azalea didn't even know I was still alive.'

‘How long did they hold you?'

‘Two months. I drove up into Sudan to find them, and when I found them they were afraid I might tell the authorities where they were. So they held me captive.'

‘Did they . . .'

‘Did they what?'

‘Did they . . . mistreat you?'

Luke gives a snort and his shoulders shake in a silent laugh. ‘Oh yes,' he says. ‘Oh God, yes. They mistreated me.'

‘What did they do?'

‘You don't want to know.'

There is an awkward silence. And then a group of children come around the corner of the big rectangular building that might have been the schoolhouse. They sing and call to one another gaily as they start to file into the mess hall.

‘You will join us for dinner?' Luke asks. The discomfort of their last exchange has passed.

‘I should love to.'

The shadows are growing longer.

‘Is Azalea here?'

‘No,' Luke says, and then he smiles. ‘But she will be.'

‘When?'

‘Soon.'

The mess hall is noisy with voices now, and alive with movement. Someone rings a bell, a slow, persuasive, ding, ding, ding. Thomas finds that his face has drawn itself into a wide smile.

‘The mission bell,' he whispers.

‘Not any more,' says Luke. ‘This isn't a mission any more.'