This Is Where I Am (26 page)

One drink turned into many. When the Swanepoels learned Callum was the Maxwells’ son – that we were Scottish, just like funny old Angus! – they insisted that whisky be fetched to join the wine and beer. And when they realised I was pregnant (not simply fat), well, champagne was called for too. I sat and sipped my Coke, but I didn’t mind the lack of alcohol. Callum and I had tried so hard to have a baby . . . I find it hard to remember, even now. To
remember
– what am I saying, it’s carved into my pointless gut. I remember each and every cell. Four little lost people.

Four.

But now it seemed that this one was here to stay, I would have happily sipped plain water for the rest of my life. We’d never told Callum’s parents about our troubles, nor my mum and dad. I let them think I was selfish for making them wait. I don’t know why. Because it was better than letting them know I was faulty and should be returned to the shop? That my womb was as inhospitable as an Afrikaner mother-in-law?

The Swanepoels were nice people. More folk joined us – Mrs Swanepoel’s sister and her husband, plus two of their friends. The friends, both older men, were a bit more raucous, the type who think it funny to tell jokes about
kaffirs
as black waiters bring them drinks. But it was fine. We laughed and drank, ate some nibbles (chewy leather on a stick, anyone?). Then Mr Swanepoel started talking about going to a ‘duck shoot’. All the men laughed, except Callum.

‘What do they mean, Dad?’ he whispered.

‘Och, it’s just an excuse for a piss-up, son. Erik’s got a wee outhouse on his land. Men only, pool table, darts. Got a nice big fridge an all.’

Erik Swanepoel leaned over to our wee huddle. ‘You coming, son-of-Angus man?’

Myra answered for him. ‘Of course he is, Rikki. Let my son see what he’s missing by not coming to live in Africa, hu?’ She patted Callum’s knee. ‘Miss you, baby boy.’

‘Och, Mum, we need to get back –’

‘Nonsense.’ She downed another gulp of wine. ‘Erik has a great big Land Rover, don’t you, Rikki?’

‘I do indeed. Boy!’ He clicked his fingers at a passing waiter. ‘Get me my car keys. Quickie-quick, yes?’

‘So. You and Daddy go have some fun. I’ll take poor Debs home.’ Myra smiled wanly at me. ‘She’s finding all this
so
hard, aren’t you, dear?’

The baby did a little kung-fu kick.
Kill Granny, darling. Kill her!
He’d only begun to stir in the last few days, and we guarded each movement jealously. As soon as I went ‘oop’, Callum would know junior was shifting, and he’d rush over to cup my belly. But not here. I wasn’t sharing
here
.

‘I’m fine.’

‘No, no. You’re looking very . . . grey. I shall miss the duck shoot and take you home.’

‘You weren’t even invited to my duck shoot, lady!’ said Erik.

‘Is that so?’ His wife pretended to smack him. ‘Well, just for that, I will come also, Erik Swanepoel.’

‘Never! A woman in
my
clubhouse . . .’

‘Tch. Clubhouse! I mean, it’s just a little shack. Well, as I am your driver for the evening, darling,’ poking her husband’s belly, ‘I think you’ll find that I will decide. So, I will have the ladies back to the house, and you lot can go and play at being savages.’

There was a lot of laughter at this, especially as a young black boy dressed as a Masai warrior had just brought Erik his keys. I tried to make Callum look at me, but he’d been swallowed into the beery belly of camaraderie, was earnestly explaining the difference between blended and malt. Even my saviour Angus was entering the fray, growing more pseudo-Scottish by the minute. ‘Ach away, ya daft gowk. You canny whack an Islay malt.’

Beside me, Myra struggled to get out of her seat. Her skinny arms folded in on themselves as she tried to push up from squashy suede.

‘Can I give you a hand, Myra?’

She slapped me away. ‘Don’t fuss, girl. This stupid couch is slippy.’

I put on my jacket and waited for her to rise. Noticing she finished her wine first.

‘OK,’ said Mrs Swanepoel. ‘All the men in my car please. I shall drop you reprobates off somewhere in the bush. Um – Myra – do you have room for Monique in your car?’

‘Sureoona.’ The affirmation, Mrs Swanepoel’s name; it all came out in one word. ‘You’ll come withus, Monnie, yes?’

Mrs Swanepoel’s sister Monique was slumped in a corner of the banquette. At the mention of her name, she giggled. ‘S’long as there’s more alcohol, I’ll go with anyone!’

‘A woman after my own heart,’ said my mother-in-law.

‘Myra,’ I said quietly. ‘Please let me drive.’

‘Nonsense. You’re not insured, girl. And it’s very, very dark – you’re not used to our roads.’

‘But I think you’ve maybe had too much wine . . .’

Myra Maxwell fixed two deep and glinting bayonets on me, and I think the truth of our relationship revealed itself right then.

‘Who are you to lecture me in front of my husband and my son? You are a guest, you are a –’ she stopped abruptly before the final thrust, perhaps conscious that her voice had risen, or that once she really started she wouldn’t be able to stop? It didn’t matter. No one else appeared to have heard. I shrugged, tried to fight back tears. The Maxwells had retired to South Africa before we even got engaged, but I know she saw me as the reason she was irrevocably parted from her son. Without me, he’d have joined them in her beloved Jo’burg, and her family would be complete. And if this holiday was meant to convince me to move here too . . . no, I don’t think it was, I truly don’t think Callum was ever that duplicitous. But even in the space of a few short weeks, I hated the way he’d subsumed himself, subtly altering his speech, his manner, himself, to suit his mum.

We all trooped outside – men at the front, women to the rear. Our cars had been brought round, of course. It gave the black boys the chance to drive a big car, and the white folks the excuse to clean up the steering wheel. Seriously, that’s what Myra did. She opened up the glove box, took out a pack of baby wipes and slid one round the grip of the wheel.

‘There. Everybody comfy?’

From the back seat, Monique groaned. I said nothing, just stared out of the window, into the grasping night. There were layers of black and blacker, humps that uncurled and moved as we drove through the compound’s gates, following the red eyes of the Swanepoels’ tail-lights. The humps were children, begging by the roadside. Myra had explained to me before we left that we were going to a different country. ‘Well, kind of. Sun City is in the Transkei. They don’t allow gambling in South Africa, see.’ I don’t know if Sun City still exists, but the way she told it, the casino was an act of benevolence; it brought jobs and money to this poor and scrubby piece of homeland.

‘Aye. How much of it stays there, though?’ That was Callum, but he said it, quietly, to me.

As we bounced over rutted roads, the red chips of light in front would disappear, blink, then disappear again. Each time we caught sight of the tail-lights, the distance between us and the Swanepoels’ truck was wider, until eventually the lights disappeared entirely. In the back seat, Monique snored. In the front, I clutched the padded arm-rest of my door, focusing on the jittering beams of our headlights, which pointed the way like two arthritic fingers. Just a strip of barely-there asphalt, then layers and bands of black-grey-black, but, beyond that, there was nothing. Of course there were many nothings: the black rustling trees that lunged at the windscreen, a distant, animal ululation, the thick unpleasantness that sat between me and my mother-in-law. The low, seeping sky that was everywhere.

Even in ink-thick darkness, you could tell sky from land. There were no clouds, no moon that I could find, but I’d never seen so many pale stars. From some muffled, nearby place, a creature leapt – not at us, but to the side of us. Myra cursed, fumbled her gear change. Again and again, grinding up and down until I was sure the transmission would fall out. Then she found her slot, moved smoothly into gear. Began to pick up her speed. I sensed she was panicking without the guiding lights of the Swanepoels’ vehicle; there were moments when I’m sure she lost the road entirely, and we swung and clattered on to rock or scrub. When this happened, her shoulders would dip and, with an apparently languid pull, she’d guide the steering wheel back to where it should be. Never acknowledging her near-miss – or me. The grim inevitability of her movements was terrifying. I, too, kept my eyes ever-forward. If I could just concentrate on the road, I thought, I could keep our cargo steady. The force of my will alone would prevent us from veering into the bush. Faster and faster – was she goading me to speak? Well, it worked, because I ended up yelling: ‘Will you slow down, Myra?’ Then: ‘For Christsake!’ when she continued to ignore me.

‘What is wrong with you, girl? I thought you wanted to get home?’

I didn’t answer, but my shouting seemed to have slapped her out of it, because she did slow, a little. Her damp lips pursing, dropping her rigid elbows closer to her sides. We were coming to a clearing, you could make out lighter shadows where the bush had been cut away and that was how you could see it all: you could see the two dark shapes, you could see the graceful curve and the balanced basket. You could even see the swinging V of hands being held as mother and child walked by the side of the road and then you could see the skittering sky. The stars and the shapes and the dull, dull thud. The rise of the vehicle as it surmounted and drove on, drove on and the dull, dull distant wailing and you shouting, screaming.
Myra! Go back! We need to stop!

I feel Abdi lift up my hand. ‘What happened? Were they hurt? Were you hurt?’

I take my hand away. I can’t have him near me. I am filthy with sweat. ‘No. I wasn’t hurt. But the child was. I’m sure he would have died.’

‘It was not your fault, Deborah. The hospitals in Africa, the poverty. It is –’

‘The child never got to hospital.’

‘Ah.’

‘The child never got to hospital because we never stopped.’

It doesn’t matter how many times I relive it in my head. How often I prove to myself that I screamed, that I shook her, grappling with her wrists until she slapped me, hard. And she was screaming too. ‘It’s an ambush, you stupid girl. You’re pregnant – do you want to be slit from groin to neck, because that’s what these people will do?’

‘But I saw you hit him!’

I had seen his little face turn to stare at the fancy car. His small hand raised to wave as we smashed through the side of him.

‘It’s just an act. They train their children to fall beside the car, then when we stop –’ Myra struck the steering wheel – ‘you are robbed, you are raped. And you – you would have your unborn child torn from you even as they cut your throat. This is where I live, Deborah. I
know
these people.’

‘Get out and check your car, Myra! You’ll see if you hit him –’ My lungs were raw with screaming.

Finally, in the back seat, Monique stirred. Her head appeared in the mirror behind us. ‘What’s happening? Whatisit?’

‘Nothing, Monnie. You go back to sleep.’

All I can see is the little smiling boy. Smiling, big eyes, smiling then he drops. A skin closing over my throat. My double-heart beating too hard, my pitiful hands protecting my belly. So full of tears I couldn’t see. And still we were driving, ever further away.

‘An ambulance would not come out here,’ Myra hissed. ‘And how could they pay for a doctor anyway? They will have medicine men, that’s all they use. They don’t trust the white doctors.’

‘But we have to go back, Myra.’

‘And what? You want me to go to prison? You want to tell Callum that you put his mother in jail?’

Tyres thrusting forward, each second and minute moving us on. I curled on my side in the front seat, nursing my cheek where she’d struck me. When we got to a phone, I would call the police. And I’d call an ambulance and I’d send it to – where? The car bumped over a pothole, my stomach swilled into my mouth.

‘Now look, here we are.’ Myra patted my knee. ‘This is the entrance to the Swanepoels’ land. See? We are here now, and none of this ever happened.’

A massive floodlight shone on electric gates. Silently easing open as we rolled towards them, then through and into a long bright drive. White pebbles and white urns and white light scourging my eyes, shining on an ornamental stream.

‘And what would you say to Callum now, even if it was true?’ Myra’s voice was sugar-soft. ‘That you saw it and did nothing? You have come all the way here and done nothing? What kind of a woman would do that?’

Carefully, she drove our car off the clean white pebbles. Aimed it at where the water met land, and drove swiftly through the stream’s shallow breadth. A loud volley of ducks rose up in protest.

I unclench my eyes. Abdi sits across from me, saying nothing but his hands are flapping crazily, the heels of his palms are drumming and drumming on the table edge as if he is pushing it away to a rhythm I can’t comprehend.

‘Did you hear me? I said we never stopped.’

The drumming ceases. ‘Ah.’

He stares at his hands, which are safely returned to his lap.