The Drowning Lesson (13 page)

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.

Picking a cotton hat out of my bag, I nodded to the watching children and set off down the road, arms swinging. This was an adventure, I told myself, the word Adam had used to lure me here in the first place. As I walked past the last hut of the village, I thought back to the moment he'd first told me about Africa, how worried I'd been about my work, how angry. Looking back, it was as though I was remembering a play I'd seen once, about a woman in a story I'd almost forgotten.

The hot evening closes around the track; the rasp of cicadas dense. My feet crunch quietly on the stones. Walking seems as easy as breathing; my thoughts loosen and drift in the warm air.

Adam will be sipping beer, happy; that new word … Zoë, maybe under the trees with a lizard in her hands. Alice will be near Teko, reading, dark hair sweeping the page, calmer than this morning. The scent of supper diffuses into the garden; Elisabeth puts flowers in a glass.

A crested bulbul startles up from the track, his staccato call tearing the peace:
be quick, be quick, Doctor, be quick.
The gold light darkens between the trees; a desert flower flares red in the shadows, and then it's dusk.

Supper time. Bath time. Sam might be crying.

Another bird answers the first and another, then all the trees are full of their broken sounds. The darkening air feels thick as cake in my mouth.

In front of my feet a thin snake slithers lightning fast across the track and disappears into a gully. I
want a drink with gin in it. I want Adam to be impressed I made it home on foot – sorry he forgot to check the car, sorry he didn't charge his mobile.

The gate is shrouded in shadow by the time I reach it, though the wood is still hot under my hand. It swings back with the familiar two-tone whine. The frogs have started their night-time belching in the pond behind the house. When I kick off my slimy flip-flops, the dust is soft under my feet. Relief at being home blooms like a pain under my ribcage and I round the curving sweep of the drive, impatient to see the first lights pricking across the scrubby lawn.

It takes seconds to register that all the lights in the house are blazing, that torch beams are moving jerkily across the lawn. Adam is shouting, his voice a low-pitched bellow, like an animal in pain. He's over by the trees. When I start running, his face turns towards me, glimmering white through the dusk. Zoë, inside, stands against the wall, crying quietly. It's not her, then. Alice squats in the corner, she sees me and stands with fluid grace. It's not her either.

And then I know.

The shadows in our bedroom flicker differently: it takes me a second to see that the curtains are torn, and moving a little in the slight wind. A glittering pile of glass lies in front of the window on the carpet, a few jagged shards still lodged in the frame.

The cot is empty.

Kabo's car roars down the drive, slows, stops at the road, and pulls away, the noise fading to nothing. It will be two hours before they reach the police station in Gaborone. Kabo will be talking, not Teko. Adam will be silent, hoping, as I am, that Sam will be at the police station: lost property, handed in. But people don't hand in babies, not ones they've just stolen.

The house is quiet, but the kitchen has a life that turns on its own. The stove roars. Thin strips of meat for Josiah's biltong are hanging from hooks in the ceiling, stirring in the hot air. Elisabeth sits at the table, pushing at a lump of dough. Josiah feeds wood to the fire, staring at me as if he doesn't know who I am. His eyebrows are drawn low, wrinkles deeply furrowing his forehead, eyes sliding to the sides of the room, confused. If he doesn't understand what has happened, I don't either.

‘Tell me what happened, Elisabeth. You were in the garden?'

She nods. ‘Teko was inside looking after Sam.' She glances at her brother. ‘Josiah was sleeping, in his hut.'

Catching his name, he turns his eyes to her trustingly, like a child.

‘Teko made a noise,' she continues. ‘We ran in. Sam had gone.'

‘Where have you looked for him?'

‘Everywhere.'

‘Everywhere?'

‘All the rooms.' Her hands begin to work the dough again. Her voice lowers. ‘In the cupboards.'

A small body could be bent to fit into a tiny space, pushed deep into a dark recess. The fridge in the corner hiccups and starts a deep whirring. I've hardly looked at it before. Never inside. I stand up and pull the door open; the movement startles Elisabeth to her feet with a little cry. There is almost nothing on the shelves. A little butter, some milk. Green leaves tied together. Elisabeth's dismay hovers in the air. Josiah wipes his hands across his face and goes out of the door, shutting it behind him.

‘I'm going mad,' I whisper.

Elisabeth is silent. She puts the dough into a tin by the stove, covers it with a cloth, and begins to sweep the floor.

‘The chief's wife is coming tomorrow.'

She nods without looking up.

‘I found Josiah's dog, Elisabeth.' I get the words out quickly. ‘He's dead.'

She looks at me then, shaking her head, as if what I am saying fails to make sense.

‘He must have been hit by a car. The body was in a ditch. I'm sorry. I'll tell Josiah.'

Her mouth tightens; she glances at the door. ‘I'll tell him,' she says.

I leave the kitchen. It will come better from her. For a moment I picture the small yellow puppy he must have once been, racing and tumbling in the garden, sleeping under his master's bed. Then Sam's face fills my mind again. His mouth is open, his cheeks shiny with tears, his body in a stranger's grasp. Somehow I have to wait out the hours until Adam gets back. Kabo will go home and tell his wife. Soon all our neighbours will know. Our disaster will ripple outwards further and further, seeping into other lives.

The late news on television shows men shouting on a platform, holding banners, crowds. Elections. I turn off quickly, my head ringing with fear.

The wine bottle in the cupboard is half full; I drink two glasses quickly before I notice the telephone cord has been severed. They used a knife – the cut is clean. I back away as though the cord is dangerous.

Zoë is lying asleep on her side, but Alice is awake,
eyes wide in the moonlight. She turns her face to the wall when I tiptoe in. I lie beside her, hoping my presence is some comfort. An hour passes before her body softens into sleep.

In our room, the bedspread is smooth. They didn't have time to sit down. They had bent, reached into the cot, lifted and turned away in one curl of movement. Deft. Maybe practised. The pile of towels and the stack of nappies next to it on the chest of drawers are undisturbed. Why didn't they take those? It would have been better if they had, a sign of kindness, a plan to keep him alive.

His right eardrum will be bulging by now, the thinly stretched skin smoothly red. He will be screaming with pain but they won't understand. Will they punish him? I slide down the doorframe and sit, rocking, on the floor, my head bent into my hands.

I surface. He shouts from the boat, telling me to move my arms and legs.

I sink again. It's silent and dark under the water.

The water fills my throat. I am drowning.

The minutes hang, like meat from the hooks in the kitchen, lengthening silently.

I finish the wine. Sleep, when it comes, hits like a truck.