by Rose Tremain
And lowers her arm.
She weighs the knife one last time in her hand. Then she tucks it between the pages of the catalogue as if to mark a place and lies down on the bed.
‘So what is happening in Caen?’
She tells him.
‘You have the names of those involved?’ He takes up his pen, waiting.
She dictates. It’s a roll-call of her friends. Barbaroux, Buzot, Guadet, Louvet, Pétion … Her voice is even, without strain. Summoning them to her side.
He writes down the names, licking something from his tongue, followed by what sounds like a titter. In his excitement, the dressing gown slips further from his shoulders, exposing something ghastly.
She leans forward, suppressing a little cough, and her hand delves into her bodice.
‘I will have them guillotined in a few days.’ Less than two yards away, the pen hovers. ‘Is that the lot?’
She leaps up, toppling the stool, withdraws the knife from its sheath, and in a single downward movement plunges it sideways into his chest. She skewers it in deeper, through veins and tendons. He has no time to respond, save with an exhalation of air as the steel tip punctures his lung. She pushes in harder, into his heart, until only the ebony handle protrudes.
The squelching sound when she pulls out the knife is not unlike a pumpkin hitting the earth. The blood jets up – over her wrist, her bare snowy neck – through a wound in the top of his chest that will be wide enough for Simone to fit her fingertips into.
He shouts out, but it is not his voice that is heard by the women who slam open the door. It is Charlotte’s scream.
Dilys goes one more time into the bathroom to check that her lipstick is not too dark. She has had her hair done in the salon downstairs and is wearing a blouse of ivory silk open at the neck and a conservative foresty green skirt. She might be on her way to the Kennel Club Show.
Anyone who looked closer, though, would see the eraser marks. Children gone, husband dead – now it’s just her. A woman left behind who has had to watch everyone leave. Her unresolvable fury is aimed as much at the President as towards her loneliness.
Her body tenses, as if it has heard one of Miles’s favourite milongas strike up. She runs her tongue over her lips and murmurs to her spectacled face in the mirror: ‘Don’t worry, darling.’
She inclines her head and very carefully slips the chain over it, tucking the laminated badge down into her cleavage. The owner of the family-run print-shop in the Funan Centre had given her a good price to have it made up, even throwing in the chain for free. It was another of Miles’s beliefs. ‘If you’ve got an identity badge round your neck, people won’t stop you.’
She returns to the room and gulps down the gin and tonic that she mixed herself from the mini-bar. She is no longer afraid. She picks up her bag from the bed and plucks the plastic room-card from the wall socket, extinguishing the lights, and leaves.
The Stamford Hospital is but a short walk from her hotel. She gets through surprisingly easily. ‘I’m visiting Mr Van der Hart,’ she tells a harassed-looking receptionist. Before the young woman has time to formulate a reply, Dilys’s face takes on the expression of blunt intransigence that so annoys her children. ‘Ward C,’ she says.
‘Are you a relation?’
‘I’ve brought him another book,’ Dilys explains in a triumphant maternal voice. The sound in her chest as she walks through the lift is like the tail of a dog beating on the carpet.
Afterword
COFFEE-PICKING IS ALL ABOUT THE RED BERRIES. The green ones aren’t ready yet. The black ones have gone bad and missed their chance. It’s the red ones that matter. The ones the shape of gooseberries and the colour of cherries. They’re the ones that are good to go. They’re the ones with the just-right coffee beans in, two in each berry, side by side. They’re the ones that end up in your cup.
And they’re the ones that have brought new hope and a new future to the people of Macala in Honduras. Come harvest time, the scene in this mountain village looks much the same as it has for generations. People still head to the fields under a sun too new to banish the early-morning chills. They still work their way through head-high coffee plants, tossing berries into wicker baskets tied to their waists until the falling sun makes it impossible to tell good from bad. And they still lay the beans out on large sheets to dry, raking them now and again and covering them at night to avoid the damp. Coffee, people here will tell you, is only coffee if it’s dried naturally, under the sun.
But while the process of tending the earth has changed little over time, the lives that many families in Macala live because of the earth have altered completely. Most people here rely on farming to earn a living. Many of them used to struggle to get by, earning very little for a lot of effort. But because of the determination of a small group of people the future has become a source of hope, rather than fear.
Things began to change around a decade ago, when a group of women got together and decided enough was enough. Tired of working tiny plots of land for very little return, and sick of the domestic violence many of them were experiencing, they began running workshops, discussing what women could do to earn more and put themselves on an equal footing with men. As people listened and started getting involved, the women made efforts to learn and share new skills. They found out more about farming and how to get the most out of the land. They organised sessions on things like bookkeeping and business administration. With confidence growing, people started to believe that they had the power to change their lives.
Oxfam got involved and began offering support a few years later, enabling the women – who work as a co-operative – to buy land, which they farmed together. They began growing a bigger variety of crops and selling them more widely, for a better price. Ten years on, the co-operative has more than 250 members. They grow grains, vegetables and aloe vera products, as well as Fair Trade coffee, which is now exported around the world.
It’s an inspiring story, and a revealing one. With a little investment and a lot of resolve, the local community has been rejuvenated. Many more people now have a reliable source of income. Men and women are working more closely together, and women have more confidence to stand up to violence. There are less obvious consequences, too. More children are in school, because their parents no longer need them to work to earn extra money. And people are able to eat a more balanced, more nutritious diet. It’s an incredible, wide-ranging turnaround, and one that’s come from the ground. From the earth.
At Oxfam, we talk a lot about the ‘right to a sustainable livelihood’. It’s essentially the right to a decent job, a safe place to call home, clean water in your cup and enough food on your plate. The basics, in other words. Except that, for a lot of people, they’re not.
And that’s why projects like this one in Honduras are so valuable. They help people to see their rights become a reality, to get the basics and start building on them. We work on similar projects around the world, listening to people’s ideas and offering whatever support works best in each situation.
So in Tanzania, we’re working to help farmers grow drought-resistant rice. It’s a simple idea, based on learning new farming techniques, but it means people can rely on a better income, even if they can’t rely on the rain. In southern India, we’re working with cotton growers as they start to use organic methods. They no longer need to rack up huge debts paying for expensive, dangerous pesticides, their land is now in better condition, and their yields are improving. In north-eastern Brazil, where keeping livestock is tough, we’re supporting people as they turn to bee-keeping instead. And, in Ethiopia, we’re helping people with negotiating skills, so they can push to get the best possible price for their goods.
In all of these projects, the thinking is the same. Work with small farmers, and big results follow. With practical training and investment in basic services and infrastructure, people in rural areas start getting more from the ground. By working together, they can negotiate more effectively an
d earn more. And, as incomes grow, the benefits ripple through communities and beyond.
Other parts of local economies, not just agriculture, start to prosper. People who previously struggled to make themselves heard – often women and people without land – get involved and begin to find a voice. The push for better schools and medical services begins, diets improve, and so on and so on. Soon enough, agriculture becomes the catalyst for change on a much wider scale. And in places like Colombia and Mali, where we’re working with tens of thousands of farmers on projects like these, that means a profound ripple effect.
Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas. So when we get to grips with rural poverty, the world will start to look very different. But government support and aid money for agriculture has been falling for years – and what support there is hasn’t focused on small farmers.
At the same time, the climate has already started to change. With the weather in many places getting more unpredictable, farmers face new challenges. Challenges that can be met – by growing drought-resistant rice, for example – but not ignored. That’s why, at the same time as focusing on places like Macala, we keep pushing governments to recognise the huge role small-scale agriculture has in the fight against poverty. It’s also one of the reasons climate change is now central to our work.
There are thousands of places like Macala. Thousands of places where people are already thriving in tough conditions. And there are millions of people who, given the right support, will follow Macala’s lead. There’s no doubting the difference that small-scale farming can make. All that’s needed is leadership. It’s time to make the earth move, for everyone.
oxfam.org.uk/development
