Terroir (10 page)

A couple of brown parrots were quarrelling in the bushes. The leather of the shoes had a deep burnish where I'd wiped the dust off. I thought about Nayanprit Singh, serene in the depths of his shop. I thought of the shoemakers of Nakasero and of my father. The last circle of hell would be an everlasting absence of good footwear. I thought about Helen and the girls and how I could have tried harder. Maybe. I'd call her when I got home, get some presents for the girls in Wandegeya where they sold banana
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fibre dolls, hippos and giraffes carved from wood.

McKenzie was smiling at something in the paper. Moses appeared at my elbow carrying a tray. I'd forgotten to order English tea and there it was, African tea with the milk already in the pot.

– Tea, sah?

It didn't matter. Nothing did. Kites turned in thermals above the city. White clouds puffed up at the horizons. The voice of the Imam sent a pair of doves fluttering from the trees. It was going to be a beautiful day. Tomorrow we'd clear some emails then load up the truck and James would drive us to another river. Up country. Later on today we'd get the maps and plan a route. Then James would change it, the way he always did.

A dragonfly hovered by the toe of my shoe, a blue rod of iridescence. What was that song I kept remembering and forgetting? It was on the tip of my tongue.
Believe
. That was it. McKenzie looked up, surprised. I must have been thinking aloud. He raised a ginger eyebrow. I shook my head.

– Nothing.

– Didn't sound like it.

He folded the newspaper then cracked his knuckles. Which reminded me of Armstrong in a way I could have done without. Then the gate of the tennis court clanged shut and the boys were walking past us with their racquets. There was something vacant about McKenzie in the end. As if he had no imagination. As if he was just here, now, and nowhere else.

A GLASS OF WATER

She brings him a glass of water. A tall glass beaded with droplets that sweat against her hand. He's crouching in the garden, a heap of stone piled up, a string stretched between two beanpoles. A spade against the cherry tree, the lump hammer set aside. He waves away a wasp, pulls off the leather gauntlets and takes the glass. Zoscia touches his arm. His skin is brown from a long summer, his hair faded blond across the line of muscle.

– It's looking really good!

Sunday morning. The bell is ringing at the new church, a single repetitive note that blurs with distance. He's looking beyond her. A flycatcher is working the air between a telegraph post and a crab
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apple branch bright with fruit. In the war they shot three partisans against the old church, then burned it down. Carl pulls his shirt from his armpits. The sun is still hot, even in September. Zoscia tries again.

– It's going to be nice.

– It'll do. It'll have to. The stone's pretty useless…

He's taken down an ornamental flowerbed and is re
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building it against the boundary wall as a long border. That way they can get the mower in and things won't look so fancy. Instead of marigolds and violets they'll grow tall poppies, St John's wort, mint and sage. Borage maybe.

– We can have lunch soon.

– OK. Bring my testing kit would you? Before we eat.

He watches her saunter back to the house, picking some leaves from the rosemary bush, rubbing them between her fingers. She's let her hair go grey. Once it had been golden brown. But it suits her, cut close to the nape. There are buddleia flowers turning from purple to brown. A few butterflies linger there, dabbing and retreating. Cabbage whites. Peacocks. He pulls out more stone, finds snails that have died in the wall, their nacre like dried sperm.

The stone's all wrong, river boulders that have been rounded by the current. Slabs of shale that have started to rot in winter rain. Hardly anything flat or square. It's a bodged job. No through
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stones to tie it together. He's got a bucket filled with smaller stuff to fill in with, but it's not the way to build a wall. There's no rear access to the garden, no way to bring in more materials. When he's out and about in the car and sees something suitable he stops to haul it into the boot. He's heard of a farm worker in the next village who did that, building a house for his old age. They said he could tell where every stone came from. Every one had a story. One of these days, Zoscia says, he's going to get caught and they'll all end up in court. For what? And who cares? Good stone is hard to come by. It's hardly stealing.

Zoscia's stepping across the lawn, the muscles in her calves broad and tight. She's bringing a tray of sandwiches now, a bottle of Pilsner, a bottle opener next to the black pouch. There's a packet of crisps, sliced cucumber, gherkins, baby tomatoes from the greenhouse. The tomato plants are turning white with mildew. They'll need clearing soon. Carl cracks a stone in half with the hammer and a splinter strikes his face.

– Shit!

– You ok?

He shakes the gauntlets off and kicks fragments towards the wall.

– Ach! Bastard thing!

– Come for your lunch … come on, you're tired.

Carl walks away from his work, rinses his hands under the garden tap and dries them on his polo shirt. Zoscia watches him, a little stiffness in his movements. His hair is cropped close and his head is tanned. His stomach is still taut and lean, his legs slightly bowed. Footballer's legs. Though he hasn't played in twenty years. Zoscia pulls a chair away from the table for him. He sits down, letting his shoulders sag for a second, dangling his hands in mock exhaustion. His grey eyes flicker towards her. He's still handsome when his face catches a smile.

Carl unzips the black pouch and takes out the meter. He puts in a new testing strip and sets the symbol: an unbitten apple. He fiddles a needle into the lancet, twists off the plastic cap, then shoots it against his little finger. Zoscia watches the droplet of blood squeeze out. It's like a ruby or rowan berry. Carl touches the strip to it and the blood is drawn away.

– What does it say?

Digits are counting down from five to zero. Then a new number appears.

– Five
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point
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eight.

– Is that good?

– Pretty good, I guess. Anything over seven is high.

Carl shrugs and packs the kit away.

– I'll live at that.

Zoscia takes a crisp and holds it for a second.

– Anika rang, by the way.

– What did she want?

– Just to Skype us with Michal. I said we were busy. Maybe tomorrow.

– Are they ok? She usually wants something.

– They're fine. She said so.

Carl sucks his finger clean and for a moment they sit with their faces turned to the sun, soaking in the heat. It feels like a dimming ember, slowly sinking to autumn. Winters are cold this far inland. It's a good feeling when the leaves fall and the days turn crisp and the lawn glitters with frost in the morning sun.

Under the table, her open
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toed sandals and brown ankles; his work boots and frayed cargo pants. Against the garden wall, sunflowers, espaliered fruit trees heavy with pears and plums, a hollyhock still in full bloom. There are foxgloves everywhere this year. Bees are working the purple and white bells, crawling along the stems of lavender, brushing stamens on the ragged pink flowers of the dog rose. Their low thrumming and the clanging of the bell meld together. The partisans' names are cut into a slate plaque with a line of poetry. Once a year there's a ceremony with a wreath and the local scout group. It's said the priest gave them away. But that hadn't saved the church. The bottle hisses as Carl pours it, catching the excess with his mouth as it overbrims the glass.

Carl sits for a moment, feeling the beer cold in his stomach. Cold like metal. Then he puts the glass down and massages his neck, rotating his head from side to side to stretch the tendons. Zoscia is watching him, the way the skin tightens and slackens around his jaw.

– Is it still sore?

– It's going to be.

She stands behind him and massages the sides of his neck and he groans with pleasure.

– You should take it easy.

– This is taking it easy.

– You know what I mean, after what happened.

Carl shrugs her off and reaches for the glass of beer. He stretches his toes and calves, sending a wave of tension through his spine. His neck still feels tight after all this time.

He'd been driving through wads of early morning mist, leaving the hotel in the company car to get to a sales meeting. He fumbled the keys into the ignition. The engine turned over then died. Carl tried again, watching white smoke fan out behind as it fired. The clutch retracted smoothly against his foot and he pulled away.

He was tired, even though he hadn't had a drink with Jonas and the others last night. If he went to the doctor it'd mean more tests. He just needed to slow down a little. The news presenter's voice filled the car, smooth and reassuring. Syrian refugees were flooding into Iraq; suicide bombers in Pakistan; an attack on a church in Kano. He'd been there once, before he met Zoscia, working in pharmaceuticals for a British company. It hadn't lasted long, just three months or so. Then he'd had enough of backhanders, of never knowing where you stood.
And that was just the Brits. The voice went on to the exchange rate, the FTSE 100. Then the weather, which was supposed to be mild when the mist burned away. It thinned and gathered again like cannon smoke from a movie.

Carl switched on his fog lights. Then the headlamps, dimming them as they bloomed against blank air. He drove down the slip road to join the motorway. Something moved in the corner of his eyes and he braked. A family of fallow deer crossed the road ahead. First a stag with small pointed antlers, testing the air, then a dappled doe and her foal following, stepping with dainty footsteps across the tarmac. Sometimes he surprised an early morning heron or caught a hawk working the verges. He never tired of that: nature was out there, going on despite everything. Carl watched them leave. They seemed bewildered for a moment then made a way through bushes that lined the slip road, finding a way to disappear.

Animals had senses that humans lacked. Dogs had some organ that mingled taste and smell, but was neither. Maybe deer, too. It was hard to fathom stuff like that, things there were no words for. He slipped the car into gear and pulled away, picking up speed as he swirled into sparse traffic. There were container lorries heading for the ports. Guys like him in ties and pressed shirts, risen from hotel rooms to shower and shave. Now they were moving on to the next thing, their faces grim and tight. Six
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thirty. Zoscia would be just waking up now, pressing down the lever on the kitsch alarm clock that Anika had given them one Christmas. She'd be pulling open the curtains to look across the fields and they'd be lost in mist. He'd been away for three days already. One more meeting, one more PowerPoint presentation, then home to decent food, his own bed.

Zoscia lay in late, deciding not to go into the office that day. She'd work at home on her laptop. It made no difference in the end, whether you were in your office emailing the colleague next door or emailing from home. They all existed as pixels on a screen now, text messages, scraps of thought, binary code pulsing through fibre optics. Disembodied, as if their flesh and muscle and blood had been superseded. Before you registered on the system you were a non
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person. Username. Password. Then you existed through your virtual self. You were your own avatar. Though that was to do with something else.
Vishnu?
Some god or other in human form. She pulled the sheets back and stepped into the shower, letting the water fall against her breasts and tighten them.

She could use the time she'd spend driving to the office doing jobs around the house or just relaxing, taking a few minutes to herself. She towelled herself dry and dressed in casual clothes: slacks and an old shirt of Carl's, washed but not ironed. She didn't bother with a bra and the soft cotton seemed promiscuous against her skin. She caught its faint scent of detergent and fresh air where it had dried on the line in the garden. When she opened the kitchen blinds the lawn was covered in bluish dew and there were jackdaws hopping across the turned earth of the flowerbeds. Beyond the garden were fields of maize and barley, cabbages spreading to the flat line of the horizon. Last year it had been sunflowers.
Turnesol.
The mist had almost cleared.

She made coffee, poured breakfast cereal into a bowl, plugged in the laptop at the kitchen table and piled up a stack of case notes with the report she was working on. The house was at the edge of the village and it was quiet, just the odd farm vehicle moving on the lane outside. It led nowhere, to a farm gate, to those fields of drilled crops. She ate the cereal walking barefoot on the lawn where there was no one to see her except the jackdaws squabbling in the ash tree now.
The dew was numbingly cold, like needles against her toes.

Zoscia dried her feet, dropped the dishes into the sink, found her spectacles and set to work. She thought about Carl waking in a hotel room, finding a crisp shirt from his luggage, shaving, fastening cuff links, pulling the lapels of his suit jacket tight. She frowned at the dry air of a hotel, anonymous rooms, air conditioning, the breakfast queue. Malaysian and Filipino maids moving between tables in tight uniforms. The way Carl would watch them. All that smiling politeness, their real lives somewhere else.