Coincidence: A Novel

by J. W. Ironmonger

  By nine in the morning the day would already be hot. Schoolchildren from Langadi township would start to arrive in their dark blue shorts and pale blue shirts (for boys), or their dark blue cotton frocks (for girls), clutching their exercise books and pencils, in twos or threes, often holding hands and chanting songs. There were two rooms in the schoolhouse. Luke Folley taught the younger children, Rebecca Folley taught the older ones. There was no grading or streaming by age; rather it was done by height and general ability, and by the need to keep around thirty children in each class at two to a desk. Luke taught reading and writing and numbers, and since most of his starters spoke little or no En-glish, he also taught the English language. He taught with a great deal of chanting and repetition because this, he knew from his own childhood, was a technique that commended itself to Acholi children. Every day they would chant the alphabet and multiplication tables, and then they would break to sing songs, and often Luke would strum along on his guitar. They would sing English and American songs: ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’, and ‘Blowing In the Wind’, and ‘In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight’. And if there was a noticeable absence of gospel tunes or hymns, well, nobody remarked upon it – and anyway, the children would sing these with Pastor David at Morning Prayers and again at Afternoon Prayers, so perhaps it didn’t matter. Luke read poetry to the children, and every morning he would tell them a tale from Aesop’s fables. ‘Today we will hear the story,’ he would say, ‘of the lion and the jackal and the donkey. All three agreed to go hunting together, and all three agreed to share the kill.’ All voices would hush and all eyes would turn to the teacher. Later they would learn more English words, and Luke would draw the pictures and write the words on the blackboard so that the children could chant them – lion – elephant – snake – bicycle – gun – fish – pencil – banana, and then the children would write down the words and there would be a lot more chanting, for Luke Folley never taught in silence except when he was telling a story.

  ‘Can’t you teach more quietly?’ Rebecca Folley would complain. ‘How can you expect my class to learn anything with all that singing and wailing going on in the next room?’

  But Luke only knew one way to teach, and this was it, a successful enough formula for him. Six-year-old Acholi children – or children of about that age – would arrive at the start of term, often with no uniform, no shoes, no pencils, no understanding of English, no appreciation, even, of why they were there at all. Luke would apprehend the parents to explain the rules. Attendance at St Paul’s was free of charge, but certain conditions applied: the parents would need to make a solemn oath that once their children started at the school, they would continue until at least their thirteenth birthday; they would not miss classes except for a family funeral; they would wear a uniform, and they would uphold the reputation of the mission at all times. The family would be expected to make a contribution to the mission: whatever they could afford, that would be enough. The contribution could be in the form of money, or it could be produce from the family farm, or it could be hours spent working in the mission fields. Either way, Luke told them, they had to understand the value of education for the children, and what better way to appreciate value than to contribute something. Luke would base his decision on what that contribution should be on his own assessment of each family’s ability to pay. But given that most of these children were from the poorest families in a region that was already poor, and some lived not with parents but with the brothers or sisters of parents who had died, there was little expectation that the contribution would make any real difference to the mission coffers.

  There was, of course, a final condition, which would normally be that the family attend the mission’s Sunday service, but Luke was never particularly vigilant about this requirement. Pastor David would complain that mothers in Langadi were sending their urchins to the school yet were not attending the church, and Luke would hold his palms upwards, feigning despair – What can we do?

  The six-year-olds who started in Mr Luke’s class normally demonstrated an aptitude for learning that might have surprised an outsider. Language skills came quickly to them. Numbers seemed to come even quicker. Perhaps in the environment these children occupied, the ability to count and calculate was an essential survival skill.

  Rebecca Folley’s class of older children was an altogether quieter regime. Rebecca herself was no singer, and the requirement for chanting no longer applied to children who by now knew their numbers and their letters. Rebecca taught an eclectic mix of skills. She had a textbook on Ugandan history, and she taught this to the children because this was a National Requirement, and if ever a government inspector should happen to call, which was rare, it was nonetheless helpful to have the book open on the top desk and a map of Uganda already drawn on the board. Then Rebecca could select a child with the requisite knowledge and demand, ‘Onyo – please tell our esteemed visitor about Yoweri Museveni, the President of Uganda,’ and the child would happily oblige. But apart from coaching her most accommodating pupils, Ugandan history was not an especially large part of Rebecca Folley’s curriculum. She taught First Aid, and human biology; how children were conceived, and how AIDS was transmitted. She taught practical nursing and simple paramedical skills: how to treat broken limbs, how to recognise the symptoms of malaria, how to avoid parasites, how to protect against mosquito bites. She taught fundamental life skills – basic economics and business. She taught agriculture and horticulture, how to improve the yield and efficiency of small family farms, how to treat and care for the soil, how to water, till, crop, rotate and plan for the next season, and while these were skills that most of the children would learn in other ways, they were proficiencies that Rebecca was sure would benefit the children when it came to making their own farms succeed. Rebecca also taught some geography, and she tried to get the children reading. The mission would receive occasional parcels of books sent out from kindly charities in the West, and these would be registered into the school library and then lent out, and frequently they were also returned (because only by returning a book would a child be allowed to borrow another). On trips to Gulu and to Kampala, Rebecca would buy comics and comic books because these were always a way to encourage reading, and every afternoon the older children would have their reading hour in silence while Rebecca settled into a deep chair with a book of her own, the glorious peace only interrupted by the chanting from the primary class and the raised voices of the water queue.

  In the evenings the farm boys would lead the cattle into the barn and tether them there out of reach of opportunist thieves, and then they would do the same with the goats. The hens and the cockerels would find their own way into the shed, and the farm boys would shut and bolt the doors and clip the padlocks into place. By the time they had finished, the bell in the mess hall would be ringing for tea; Azalea and Anyeko would be pulling on the bell – ding . . . ding . . . ding – a slow and steady ring because that was the rhythm for the mess bell, one ring every second like a steady pulse; a reassuring rhythm, a comforting call to dine.

  There was another ring this bell could make, but then it wouldn’t be the dinner bell. The other ring was fast and urgent – a dingdingdingdingding – rapid and fierce, loud and deafening, a rhythm that panicked and called out ‘danger danger danger’. These were the rings that they only did in practice, and Luke would prepare them in advance; this was the alarm bell ring. ‘When you hear the alarm bell ring,’ Luke would tell everyone at the mission, ‘then this will be your order to flee. When you hear the alarm bell, you must run!’

  The orders for the alarm bell were clear, but all the same they rehearsed them. The village children would flee the compound. In any direction – or all directions – they would escape the mission with every ounce of energy they could muster. Some would run back up the driveway, others would cross the fields, others would head into the farmstead and loop around; but whichever route they took, the instructions were very plain – the schoolchildren sh
ould get home to their villages, to their circular Acholi huts, as fast as they could and seek out their parents or elder siblings. There they should hide in the hidey-holes and small dark places that had been prepared for them, and they should not return until their families were confident that it was safe. For the mission orphans the instructions were much the same. For each of them there was a hiding place in Langadi town. If the compound was surrounded, then they should scatter as widely as possible. If the danger did not seem imminent, then they could run for the mission bus – but only if one of the mission staff was driving.

  For the adults of the mission, the alarm bell spelled out a different message. The adults were to assemble by the mission buildings, with no sense of panic; they should not suggest by voice or by gesture that the children had taken flight. Whatever the crisis that had summoned the alarm, the adults were there to project calm.

  This was the day in Langadi when everything changed for Azalea, and yet everything about the morning was normal. The goats were milked, the breakfast was served, grace was said. The farm boys squabbled. Maria the matron barked sharp commands at the orphans. Rebecca lingered over her tea and her cigarette. Luke savoured his coffee. The VSO couple sat uncommonly close to each other and whispered things that no one else could hear. Odokonyero oversaw the whole meal with the righteous bonhomie of the cook, and Mzee Njonjo, the nightwatchman, hobbled to his hut to sleep away the day. This was June 1992. The mission dogs were drinking old milk from the cooking pan. A yellow-backed weaver bird hopped among the tables looking for crumbs; a gonolek bird flickered across the dusty yard. Crickets were calling; cockerels were scratching. The orphans began to trail off towards the schoolhouse in twos and threes, holding hands. Matron Maria lifted herself heavily out of her seat and started putting Little Michael, the only baby at the mission, into a wrap to tie on her back. The VSO couple disappeared off to their rooms in the mission hall. The nurse wandered over to her clinic. One dog barked and the gonolek flew up into a tree.

  And then it was uncommonly quiet, for just a brief and precious moment. Azalea slid down from her bench, and still in her nightdress she walked out of the mess hall and into the yard. A little dust devil, whipped up by the wind, tumbled past the mess hall and was gone. The dog barked again. And then there was a man in the drive.

  Azalea saw him first. He looked like an army man, in camouflage fatigues with a gun slung over his back like a quiver. He stopped when he saw Azalea, but now the dogs had seen him too and they rushed towards him, barking.

  Odokonyero came out, in his position as head of security, to investigate the commotion. He stopped as if struck by a stone, and shouted to the man in Acholi. The man shouted something back in a language unfamiliar to Azalea. Probably he was saying ‘call off your dogs’.

  Odokonyero whistled and the dogs drew back.

  There followed an exchange between the two men. It did not sound friendly.

  Luke Folley emerged. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

  Odokonyero spat on the ground. He grumbled something in Acholi.

  A second, younger man came sauntering down the driveway wearing the same combat uniform. The first man spoke to him. They approached Luke.

  ‘What do you want of us?’ Luke asked.

  The first man began a long, angry-sounding tirade.

  ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ Luke flattened out his hands as if trying to calm the situation down.

  The second man started now. There was a demanding urgency to his voice. Luke replied, and suddenly all three were speaking at once, and the volume was rising as each man competed to be heard.

  Then Rebecca Folley floated out, blowing smoke rings, and all three fell silent. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘what is all this noise? I can barely hear myself think.’

  ‘This man says . . . he is LRA,’ said Luke.

  Rebecca took a long pull on her cigarette. ‘My dear, if he’s a visitor you shall have to invite him in for tea. Or coffee. I suppose Odokonyero will have some of that disgusting brew left.’

  ‘My wife says you must join us for tea,’ said Luke, talking in Acholi.

  ‘And get him to explain to us what an “LRA” is,’ said Rebecca in English. She had never made much progress with the local languages. ‘I think we get every acronym known to man in this godforsaken shithole. NRA, UPDA, SPLA, God-knows-what bloody A. It’s so nice to be able to add another one to the list.’

  ‘Rebecca, it may be wise not to upset this man,’ said Luke.

  ‘They all end in A, don’t they? Have you noticed?’ Rebecca gave a sweet and wholly insincere smile to the LRA soldier. ‘You’re just a bit too late for breakfast,’ she told him. ‘But I can offer you a cigarette.’ She held out a packet of menthols.

  The LRA man seemed taken aback by the gambit, but he took a cigarette with the demeanour of a man who had learned never to refuse a gift, however small, and the second man did likewise.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ Rebecca asked, adopting an imperious tone as she lit the man’s cigarette.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘My English is very excellent.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Rebecca. ‘In that case, we shall get on.’ She turned and drifted back into the mess hall. ‘Odokonyero,’ she called, ‘tea, please.’

  Rebecca Folley had not been the most willing of recruits to the mission in Langadi. It might be more truthful to say that she had resisted the move from Cornwall to Uganda with the fiercest determination. Nevertheless, now that she was here, she was not the kind of person to let a fracas with a make-believe soldier spoil her morning.

  Rebecca and Luke had met at university while both were studying for a degree in education, and somehow, more by chance than judgement, they had ended up together. As a student, Rebecca had been a serial dater, never in a relationship for much longer than a term or so, the kind of person who always has the next boyfriend lined up and ready before the tenure has expired on the present one – and it just seemed to happen, like a roll of the dice, that Luke Folley had been the incumbent suitor when Graduation Day came round. Another term might have seen the romance fade, as so many had done before. But there wasn’t to be another term. Somehow Rebecca and Luke ended up at the big empty family house in St Piran, and it just seemed right and sensible to make a home there with no rent to pay. It was even exciting for a while. Luke started teaching at the local village school and Rebecca started work at another, in a village just around the headland. And so it was, just weeks after graduation, that they were settled and happy and earning. The school terms came and went. Rebecca became Mrs Folley, and they threw open the big windows of the old rambling home, they swept out the dust and waited for a family to arrive.

  But none came.

  The old Folley house on the cliff paths overlooking the bay cried out for children. There were empty bedrooms galore. Rebecca took brisk walks along the cliffs to improve her circulation. She swam off the shingly beach. She ate healthy meals. She gave up smoking for a while. But each month came and went, and with each passing season the hope Rebecca had seemed fainter.

  The doctors diagnosed polycystic ovary syndrome. ‘It’s a hormone dysfunction.’ The doctor in St Piran shook his head when he delivered the bad news.

  Rebecca, it must be said, was made of stern stuff. When Luke arrived home from work, she sat him down in the kitchen. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I’ve got bad news and I’ve got good news. Which would you like first?’

  ‘I think I’ll start with the good news,’ said Luke.

  Rebecca lit a cigarette. ‘Well, the first good news is that I’m smoking again.’ She took a long drag on her cigarette and let the smoke leak out between her teeth, half closing her eyes to savour the moment. ‘And as for the second bit of good news . . .’ she said, pausing to allow for effect, then looking Luke directly in the eye, ‘is . . . I’ve made a decision. We’re going to adopt a baby.’

  12

  March 2011 / November 2009

  Azalea slid a slim paperback volume across the de
sk to Thomas Post. ‘Take a look.’

  It was the day that they met in Thomas’s office, the day that Thomas had returned to work with his left arm in plaster. Both had registered surprise when Azalea popped her head around the door.

  ‘Good Lord – it’s you! From the escalator. Did you track me down?’ Thomas had asked, aware, as he did, just how awkward this question sounded.

  ‘Of course I tracked you down. But that was because of your paper.’ She held the document up to show him, and they both found themselves looking at it with expressions of surprise. ‘It had nothing to do with what happened at Euston.’

  Thomas suffered a moment of bewilderment. ‘Are you . . . are you all right?’

  Azalea screwed up her face. ‘All right how?’

  ‘You know – after the accident.’

  ‘Ah.’ She put her hand on her side. ‘I did break a rib.’

  ‘Of course. You thought you’d broken a rib, didn’t you? I mean . . . you said at the time you thought . . . you know, you’d broken one. A rib.’ Thomas found his grasp on the English language crumbling. ‘Is it . . . you know . . . in plaster, or anything?’ Another stupid question. Of course it wasn’t in plaster. Was he blind?

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Azalea. She gave Thomas a sideways smile. ‘It hurts like hell, though. How’s the arm?’

  ‘Bloody awful.’ He held up the cast.

  ‘At least people can see you’ve been injured. With me I just get the pain and no sympathy.’

  Thomas gestured for her to take a seat. ‘So let me get this right,’ he began, ‘you sought me out because of a paper I wrote on coincidences?’

  Azalea lowered herself carefully into the proffered chair. ‘Shouldn’t we introduce ourselves first?’