The Canal House

by Mark Lee

  It was the white season in East Africa. The grass was brittle and dry, and the earth was cracked open as if gasping for water. After the sun went down, the wind blew east from Kenya. In the daytime, when the ground warmed up, the wind changed direction and came from the northwest so that it seemed as if it pushed the refugees across the border. The tents shuddered and flapped like a fleet of sailboats. Wind picked up the red dust and swirled it around the camp. Dust was in the bottom of our sleeping bags and in the toes of our boots. It got into the cooking pots and I could taste it in our food. Three days before Richard was to arrive, I went to the toiletry case to get some nail scissors and discovered that the glass bottles and the makeup were covered with dust. I hadn’t opened the case since London, but dust had forced its way through the brass zipper and settled in a faint red haze on the bottles. It smeared when I touched it with my hand.

  WE ARE CONNECTED in large ways by a web of small decisions. I wanted to think that I had guided the direction of my life, but so much of what happens seems to be governed by coincidence and chance. Twelve hundred people were living at Kosana because I got a phone call and went to Cambridge for a conference and accidentally met Richard Seaton. At that time I was on contract with the British Department for International Development. I worked at a Sierra Leone hospital for three weeks at a time, then returned to London for a week of rest. There was no reason to take a lease on a flat so I was staying with my friend Laura in Islington. I had just fed her dog and was thinking about ordering take-away curry when Charles Hart called, a classmate of mine from medical school. Charles had worked in Rwanda after the genocide, but it had all been too much for him and he had gotten typhoid. Now he was a consultant for private foundations involved with international aid.

  “Hello? Julia? I heard you were back from somewhere.”

  “Sierra Leone.”

  “God. That’s a disaster zone. What did I read about it in the Times? The Little Boys’ Army?”

  “The Small Boys Unit. The Revolutionary United Front kidnaps them and gives them assault rifles.”

  “Sounds hideous. You’re in Freetown, right? How’s it going?”

  “There’s supposed to be a peace agreement, but it doesn’t mean much. The war lords are still in charge of the countryside. We’ve just gotten a power generator at the hospital. The petrol supply isn’t reliable, but I’m hopeful.”

  “You always are.” Charles laughed as if he had gone beyond that and finally become an adult. “Look, we’re having a foreign aid conference at King’s College and I want to put you on a panel. Do say you’ll come. Lots of wine and good food. It’ll be a little holiday.”

  I didn’t like conferences, but I wasn’t doing anything that weekend. Laura was traveling to Scotland with someone named Roger who shaved his head and designed nightclub lighting systems. I could have called up my friends Susan and Michael and gone over to their flat for dinner. But they’d gotten married that summer and were buying furniture together. I was happy for them, but I wasn’t in the mood to see their settled life.

  “All right,” I told him. “I’ll be there.” I packed my one good dress and borrowed a pair of shoes from Laura.

  Cambridge hadn’t changed much, just a few more gourmet restaurants on Sydney Street. The conference had the usual mix of participants: a few young aid workers who had actually touched starving people but didn’t want to mention it, plus aid administrators from the government and international NGOs who didn’t know much but did most of the talking. After the first two hours, Laura’s shoes began to hurt my feet. The welcoming speeches were a tepid flood of murky sentences with a few real words floating along by themselves. Mumble. Mumble. Hunger. Mumble. Mumble. AIDS. I began to wish that I was back at the flat, eating chocolate and watching Roman Holiday on television.

  My panel was supposed to discuss emergency medical relief aid. I spoke for a few minutes, answered some questions, and didn’t make a complete fool of myself. Afterward I got ready to slip away. I thought I could change my shoes and take a walk along the river. There’d be willows reaching down to the water and, perhaps, some swans. I had unfastened my name tag and reached the hallway when someone called my name.

  “Excuse me? Dr. Cadell?”

  I turned. A man in his early forties, blond, with pale blue eyes, was smiling at me. He wore a tweed jacket and carried an expensive leather portfolio. Some sort of academic, I thought, the sort of person who reviewed books for the Guardian and gave end-of-term parties at which the students actually had a good time.

  “I was impressed by your comments, Dr. Cadell. I’m sure it was difficult to run a clinic in Sarajevo.”

  “It was a challenge, but I enjoyed that. Relief work is medicine without the nonsense.”

  “Listen, I—oh, I should introduce myself—I’m Richard Seaton. Charlie Hart is a friend of mine. He thought I could learn a few things this weekend.”

  “I see. Have you?”

  “Yes. It’s all been rather informative, especially hearing your remarks. I wondered if we could have a drink together. Tea. Or something stronger. Whatever you want.”

  “Thanks, but actually, I was going to take a walk.”

  “Brilliant. I’d like to get out of here for a few hours.” Richard smiled again. He was very sure of himself without being overbearing about it. “I’ve always hated schools and seminar rooms. Chalkboards make me sneeze.”

  I changed my shoes and we took a taxi to the River Cam and walked through the Backs. I’ve always liked rivers. It’s not just their sound and the damp smell and the birds, but the feeling that a river is going somewhere; if you just pushed your boat off from the shore, the rushing water would carry you away. I never thought of a destination in these daydreams; it was the sense of escape that inspired me.

  I began thinking how I’d describe Richard when I saw Laura on Sunday. He was in that special category she called a CSM: a clever, single man. Single was an assumption on my part—Richard never mentioned a wife—but the cleverness was quite evident. I didn’t have to explain everything to him. If I described the outline of an idea, he immediately grasped the whole, and the conversation could move forward, skipping and dashing along with a quick rhythm.

  “Do you ever want to quit?” he asked. “How do you keep working when all these terrible things are happening around you?”

  “It’s a discipline,” I said. “It’s not easy at first, but you train your emotions.” I told him that I still remembered my first patient who died, an old woman at the hospital in Bristol. I had been devastated by the loss, felt guilty and miserable, but gradually learned how to distance myself from what was going on. It was better for the patients if you were able to stay objective, but sometimes it just wasn’t possible. I had another shock the first time I worked abroad, in Pakistan, and watched a little girl die of cholera. That was even worse because I could have saved her had we been in England. Her death was hard to accept—it took me several months to adjust to the shortages and lack of equipment.

  “You do everything you can,” I told Richard. “And sometimes, it’s just not enough.”

  We took another taxi to Trumpington Street and had lunch. I was probably one of the few people in Britain who didn’t know that Richard was the famous “I Bought My Home with Richard” who owned the Riverside Bank. My ignorance about his celebrity must have amused him. He seemed pleased when I insisted on paying for my share of the lunch.

  I asked Richard about his background, but I could tell that I was getting the edited version. He’d grown up in Chelmsford. He was a businessman and worked in London. Mostly we discussed international relief aid. Richard wanted to know what kind of organization I’d create if I had unlimited money and support. We drank a bottle of wine and I told him all the plans I had been thinking about for several years. I talked a bit too much, but Richard kept nodding sympathetically and taking notes. When I mentioned a recent government report on aid, he made a dismissive gesture. “I don’t worry much about politics,” he said
. “I’m results oriented.” Apparently, he had decided that helping refugees was a good idea and now he wanted to find the most efficient way to do it.

  We got back to King’s College in time for the cocktail party and Richard went off to find two more glasses of wine. I was pinning my name tag back on when Charles Hart sat down on the couch beside me.

  “So you’ve met Richard?”

  “We spent the afternoon talking. Or, rather, Richard asked questions and I blathered on.”

  “That’s wonderful, Julia. I’m very pleased.”

  “He’s some sort of businessman. He wants to get involved with refugee aid.”

  Charles looked amused. “Dearest Julia, you’ve spent far too much time overseas. Don’t you know who he is?”

  “I guess not.”

  “He’s the Richard Seaton who owns the Riverside Bank. You just spent the day with one of the wealthiest men in Britain.”

  Embarrassed, I tried to remember what I had said about medical aid. When Richard came back with the wine, he seemed to know that I had learned his identity. Suddenly, he acted distant and somewhat wary. As we talked, Charles tried to get Richard involved with an international conference on hunger. Richard said he’d think it over, then announced that he had to leave.

  “You’re not staying for dinner?” Charles asked. “We were going to put you up at the head table.”

  “Sorry, but I’m catching a helicopter back to the city. I’ve got to prepare for some meetings tomorrow morning.”

  Charles said he’d send brochures to the Riverside Bank, then rushed out of the room to change the seating arrangements. Richard turned to me, shook my hand, and didn’t let go.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Julia. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  “Yes. Well, I do hope it all made sense.”

  “I’ll contact you in a few days,” he said. Then he left.

  Laura told me that men like Richard never called you back. “It wasn’t a date,” I told her. “We talked about infant dehydration.”

  “Steamy sex in an automobile, infant dehydration: it’s all the same to them.” Laura had recently broken up with a wealthy Saudi graduate student who turned out to have two wives. “They say they’ll call, swear they’ll call, but they never do.”

  I had stayed away from relationships for the last three years. If I was in a war zone or a famine area, I was there to save lives. Getting involved with another person seemed irresponsible, even though the after-hours social scene at the relief camps was as active as Club Med on a Saturday night. There’s nothing like the presence of death and disaster to encourage love affairs.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about Richard and our conversation. He was intelligent and perceptive and interested in helping others. When Laura saw Richard’s bank commercial on television, she shouted at me to come downstairs. I resisted the first time, but later that night I gave in. Sitting on the couch, I watched Richard paint a house with some pensioner in Scotland.

  “Is he that handsome in real life?” Laura asked.

  I watched the commercial. Richard was walking away from the old man. He stopped and glanced back at the house with a satisfied smile. “I guess so.”

  “I’m sure they put makeup on him and style his hair before he does these commercials.”

  “Not really. He looked basically the same.”

  Laura was wearing her black silk kimono with the embroidered dragon on the back. She turned toward the phone and wiggled her fingers as if casting a magic spell. “Call. You will call. Do it, or be cursed.”

  A week later, a big man with reddish hair showed up at the flat. I knew right away that he was ex-military or some kind of police officer. There was an aggressiveness in his manner that suggested a familiarity with violence and power.

  “Morning, Doctor. I’m Billy Monroe, Mr. Seaton’s assistant.”

  I smiled, but I didn’t invite him in. “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Monroe?”

  Billy evaluated me for a few seconds, then handed over a large manila folder. “My phone number is in there,” he said. “If you want to contact Mr. Seaton, call me.”

  I went back inside and brewed a pot of tea before I allowed myself to open the envelope. Then I began to read. It contained photocopies of legal documents that created a nonprofit organization called Hand-to-Hand. I was listed as the executive director and Richard as chairman of the board. There were sketches for a hand-clasping logo and checks for a bank account with ten thousand pounds in it.

  I put everything back in the folder, took a walk around the park, then came back and called Billy’s number. A minute later, I was talking to Richard at his office. “You didn’t ask me,” I said.

  “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “It is, but—”

  “Then it’s done. I can assure you that it didn’t cost me anything to set this up. I’ve got solicitors sitting around all day with nothing to do. If you’ve changed your mind and don’t want to run an organization, then I’ll cancel it out.”

  “But you assumed I’d say yes.”

  “Not at all. I only knew we’d have this conversation. But now it’s a real choice, isn’t it? Not just talk. Not just a possibility. So tell me, Julia. What do you want to do?”

  MOST PEOPLE WOULD have been ecstatic if a wealthy man had appeared on their doorstep and announced, Yes, all your good deeds have been noticed, and now we’re going to create your dream. But I’ve always been suspicious of anything that seems too easily achieved. Why did Richard want to get involved with refugees? He didn’t seem very idealistic and he certainly wasn’t religious. Perhaps he was doing this as an act of pride, like a patron who wanted his name on a concert hall. I usually don’t care why people decide to help others, but I had to wonder how Richard Seaton would deal with failure or, worse, a controversy.

  Though I was supposed to be executive director of this new organization, I doubted if a man like Richard could resist the desire to be in control. And what was the nature of our own relationship? Was this his way of courting me? Was Hand-to-Hand the sort of indulgence that rich men bought for their lovers, something a bit more elaborate than a boutique in Knightsbridge?

  “For godsake, just take it!” Laura told me. “He’s giving you what you want.”

  “It might not work out.”

  “Nothing ever works out, Julia. But we do it anyway.”

  In the end, I offered a compromise. I didn’t want to be the executive director, but I would set up and run the first refugee camp. Richard hired a bookkeeper and a secretary; then the research staff at his bank began to monitor guerrilla wars and natural disasters. While we waited for the right opportunity, I continued to shuttle between London and Freetown.

  The president of Sierra Leone had campaigned with the slogan “The Future Is in Your Hands,” so the rebels decided to chop off the hands of everyone they suspected of having voted. I was in charge of the clinic at Connaught Hospital and my first week there had been somewhat harrowing. The patients lay on straw pallets in the corridors, frail, exhausted, terrified. I wasn’t prepared for the number of children who had been raped and mutilated. It seemed as if the country was determined to release its fury on those least able to defend themselves.

  The hospital was a large cavernous building with rocket holes in the south wing. There was a stench from a broken sewer pipe and a half-burned garbage pile that smoldered in the courtyard. One night the power failed, and as I walked through the shadowy rooms with a candle I felt like I was living in a distant age. The patients were grateful and there was a pleasure in helping them. But my most popular idea was the organization of a rat squad. We’d march down the hallways with homemade brooms and the rats would flee in front of us, scrambling over the patients, making little squeaks and leaping through the air. There were shouts and whistles, the laughter of the chase, and then a wave of rats would scurry down the central staircase to a courtyard where a fifteen-year-old boy named Morgan would beat them to
death with a shovel.

  I’m scared of rats, but I pretended to be positive and confident. Most of the time, I could get away with it, but down in the courtyard, when I counted up the bag like a gamekeeper and handed out little rewards, a few of the rats would start moving again and crawl toward me. I would talk quickly then and step back to the staircase, trying to keep the scream from exploding out of my throat. At night, I would return to my blue toothbrush at the British military compound and go through my little rituals. A shower, if possible. If not, a sponge bath. Then I’d light a mosquito coil and sit on my cot with a flashlight and spend twenty minutes or so with a book that had nothing to do with my life. If I was relaxed enough, I’d lie down and search through my memory for a pleasant image, usually from my childhood. At the beach, perhaps, lying on the warm sand. Or on a lake in a rowboat, drifting through some flowering lily pads.

  Two months after I met Richard, I finished my three-week interval and got back on the plane to London. I was recovering from dysentery and still felt tired and feverish. All I wanted was a bath and a bed with clean sheets, but Billy Monroe was waiting for me in the arrival area. “Mr. Seaton thought you might want a ride,” he said.

  It was a crucial point in my relationship with Richard, but of course he wasn’t actually there.