Annie's Promise

by Margaret Graham

  She sat still because the heat was too much and it was only nine in the morning. They were out now amongst short scrub grass and there were flat-roofed houses squatting beneath the sun. She closed her eyes, feeling the sweat bead her forehead, then run into her eyes, her mouth. She felt the flies on her lips, everywhere, hearing them all around.

  They drove and drove, stopping at midday for fuel at a broken-down shack. She shook her head at the food hawkers and just drank warm water from her bottle, standing beneath the shade of the awning, looking out across the plain which shimmered and danced and she could hardly breathe. It was only April.

  They drove all afternoon and the woman who sat next to her, her body pressed too close, smelt of curry. They passed scrub, and the horizon danced as villagers squatted beside cow-pats kneading them.

  ‘To cook,’ the woman beside her said.

  Sarah turned, surprised. ‘You speak English.’

  ‘Many do. I am having a little.’ She smiled, slight against Sarah’s European build. Ravi had made her feel coarse, huge. Would he remember her? Would he let her stay?

  They drove past a fair. The bus stopped and everyone clambered off, buying food from the fly-specked stalls, and music blared from a loudspeaker tied to a tree. She ate nothing but thought of the fair in Whitley Bay, the cool east wind – Davy. Did broken hearts mend? She thought not and wanted to die, but that would be too easy.

  They drove on until well after dark, when the driver stopped at the crossroads of a town.

  ‘Missy,’ he shouted above the chatter, standing up, pointing at Sarah.

  She struggled through the people, murmuring, ‘So sorry, I’m sorry.’

  They smiled or shrugged – all stared.

  She took her rucksack from the driver and walked towards the bazaar where old natives were smoking pipes, fruit and vegetables were being sold and derzies were sewing. Did nothing alter? She hired a tonga and now it was cooler but the mosquitoes were biting. The horse was thin, his hooves kicked up dust, it was in her mouth, her nose. The moon was bright and she could see to the horizon. They turned off the road, on to a track between fields until they came to the gates of a compound, the shapes of the buildings flat black against the moon.

  She paid the tonga wallah, heaved her rucksack on to her back and walked through the gates, towards light which came from behind a building. She reached the entrance to the courtyard and stood looking at the women who sat on charpoys around a fire of cow-pats.

  ‘Ravi,’ she said into the silence that fell. ‘Is Ravi here?’ Did her voice sound as desperate as she felt? Did it sound raw with pain and despair?

  He came to her, hurrying across the compound from a long low building. She stood, letting her rucksack fall to the ground, wanting to run to this man from her past but she didn’t need to because he was here, holding her, leading her away out of the circle of light, away from the silence and the stars, holding her hands in the soft light from the moon. ‘You came,’ he said. ‘I hoped you would. But you have come alone?’

  ‘Yes.’ That was all.

  He looked at her and nodded. ‘You are tired, but you are also different. We will talk tomorrow.’

  She held his arm. ‘No, I don’t want to talk, I want to work. I want you to. use me, please.’ There was the sound of cattle moving, lowing, the soft voices of the women, and Ravi’s eyes were gentle.

  ‘You need sleep, come with me. I will use you, but – forgive me – perhaps not yet in the clinic.’

  ‘I will do anything.’

  Ravi nodded. ‘Come with me, you need sleep, my dear Sarah.’

  She followed him to a room beyond the courtyard. She sat on the charpoy.

  ‘Wait here, I will be back.’ Ravi left her and Sarah lay back in the coolness of the windowless room. Tomorrow she would work in the heat, the dust, the dirt, with the flies, until she dropped and at last there was a sort of peace within her and she closed her eyes and slept.

  Ravi returned carrying chapattis and water. He stood over Sarah, seeing the exhaustion in her face, the shortness of her hair, hearing again the pain in her voice. Where was Davy, whom she had loved?

  Davy stood in Annie’s office, waiting until she had finished the phone call. She was so drawn, so grey and though she smiled at him, at everyone, there was always agony in her eyes.

  Annie put down the receiver. ‘Hi, how’s it going? Did the design work as well in practice as in theory?’

  ‘I think it did, Da’s looking at it now. May I sit down?’

  Annie nodded, leaning back in her chair. There were daffodils on her desk.

  ‘I want to go and find her, Auntie Annie.’ Davy said. ‘I love her so much and it’s my fault. I’m better, fitter, I feel like I did before I went to London.’

  Annie smiled at him. He was fit, he was the boy they’d known, gentle and strong. She shook her head. ‘No, don’t go. Where would you look?’

  ‘I’ve been getting all the names and addresses of friends abroad. I wrote to them all last night, telling them I was coming. I’ll just comb the streets until I find her.’

  ‘The trouble is, my dear, she just doesn’t want to be found.’ Annie’s voice was quiet. ‘We’ve had private detectives trying to trace her. They’ve found nothing. They’ve checked the airports in and out of Venice, Rome, everywhere. They’ve checked the airports into and out of India, America, everywhere, the seaports too.’

  Annie touched the daffodils, the yellow was so brilliant. ‘Wait until you hear from your friends. If they’ve heard anything, then do go. Please don’t rush off, Davy, just stay until you hear, or we might lose you too.’

  Sarah woke at first light, and heard the animals moving in the byre. She lifted the mosquito net, eased her feet on to the dirt floor, searching for and finding the Indian sandals she had bought at the fair. There was a broken cane chair at the end of the bed. Her rucksack had been unpacked, her money, passports and address book were on the small table by the bed. Had Ravi noticed the second, false, passport and visa that the pimp in the Colosseum had provided?

  She stood in the doorway looking out across the land which seemed huge, the sky which seemed even bigger. In the distance was a derelict fort, at her feet was dust and in her face was heat.

  Ravi waved to her from the entrance of the courtyard.

  ‘Come, Sarah, you must be hungry, but first you will need the more basic things of life. Maji will help you.’ He smiled and beckoned to her.

  Maji took her to the thunder box which her da had told her about. She shut her mind to her past and washed in bowls of water, standing behind the wall by the pump, stripping, throwing it over her body, letting the heat dry her.

  She ate chapattis, drank water with the women around the fire, squatting as they did, her skirt in the dust.

  ‘Ravi?’ she said, feeling the panic in her. She must work, couldn’t he see that? There was not time to eat or talk or feel.

  They smiled and pointed towards the clinic.

  ‘He will be here,’ Maji said.

  He came, his feet kicking up the dust, telling her that he had to go to the outlying villages for three days. His father was away and so a male nurse was in charge of the clinic.

  ‘Do you wish to rest or to work?’ he said.

  ‘To work.’

  That morning she took the four beasts out into the fields to graze, eating their dust, tapping them with her stick, looking across at the yellowed wheat, sparse and limp, the same colour as the huts. Within minutes the sky grew pale with heat and she walked on widening cracks. Did the cracks go down to Australia? Was that how Annie’s Aunt Sophie had gone? How absurd and who cared anyway?

  She moved slowly in the heat and Maji gave her lime juice and salt to drink and said she must stop in the heat of midday, everyone did. She didn’t want to but her head was bursting, her tongue swollen and Maji was calling her, so she came in from the fields and lay on the charpoy, her hands and arms and feet burned and blistered by the sun. Sleep wouldn’t come, the
re was only Davy’s voice, her mother’s. There were only memories.

  She brought in the beasts when the sun went down, carrying fodder on their backs, she carrying it on her head, as Maji did. The dust was no longer wheat yellow but deep ochre from the low tired sun – it cloaked her and Maji. She watered the beasts and cared nothing about her blisters as she sat around the fire with Maji, with Ritu, feeling her head aching, her feet burning, wanting total exhaustion, wanting more discomfort. Sleep didn’t come that night, only echoes, and for God’s sake she didn’t want those, she ground out into the darkness of her mind.

  The next day she took the beasts to the fields again and then squatted and kneaded the cow dung for fuel, carrying it in, dropping it in the courtyard.

  ‘This is not for you to do,’ Maji protested, shaking her head.

  ‘Yes, it is for me to do,’ Sarah said.

  Maji gave her a basket then, but said, ‘It is too hot, it is too dirty for you.’

  Sarah said, ‘I like the heat.’

  She drank lime juice and salt and when the sun went down she ate chapattis with dal and sat with the women again, still smelling the stench of cow dung, and that night she slept a little but not enough. She did the same the next day and this time worked through the midday heat, ignoring Maji’s pleas to rest. That night the ache in her head was too bad for echoes, for feelings, for anything and so the next day she worked in this way again.

  Ravi came back as night fell, easing himself down from the old Morris, walking towards the courtyard. She was too tired to feel pleasure at the sight of him and that was good. She watched as Maji walked towards him and spoke quietly in the darkness of the compound. She watched as he nodded and then approached Sarah, taking her hand, pulling her to her feet, easing her away from the light of the fire.

  ‘I need you in the kitchens tomorrow,’ Ravi said, his brow furrowed, his smile anxious and Sarah knew that Maji had spoken of her fieldwork.

  ‘No, I like the fields,’ she said, her voice quiet.

  ‘Please,’ Ravi said, squeezing her hands. Sarah welcomed the pain on her blisters. ‘Please, no one else likes to do it.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said at that.

  ‘And then we should talk, my little Sarah.’

  ‘No,’ she replied, looking away from him, not wanting to see or hear the gentleness that came from him, because it opened up her heart.

  The next morning she helped Maji light the fire and brew the tea, then scoured last night’s pots with yesterday’s ash and straw. She set new milk on a slow fire to make yoghurt and churned butter in an earthenware jar. She watched the sweeper brushing the verandah of the clinic, and the sun as it crept over the roof.

  They mixed chapattis before the sun rose hot and baking, rolling the dough on a circular board, chopping fresh vegetables.

  ‘For the patients?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘No, that is cooked over in the hospital, though many of the families bring food, if they have any. This is for the staff.’

  When they had eaten she washed her clothes under the hand pump, using a block of hard yellow soap, which stung her blisters. She washed other clothes, boiled up lightly soiled bandages, rolling them in the shade of the awning, watching the queues forming for the clinic, seeing the heat shimmering, knowing that she needed to be back in the fields.

  That evening she flavoured the eggs and dal with ground coriander, pepper and black cardamom and they ate by the light of a paraffin lamp, slapping at the mosquitoes, and so it went on, day after day. Now there was a pattern to the days that was comforting, predictable, safe – but she didn’t deserve that.

  ‘This is like any village, like yours in England,’ Ravi said one evening as they all sat together round the fire.

  ‘I have no village,’ she said and the pain was so sharp for a moment that she could hardly breathe.

  She washed and cooked the next day and the next and the harvest was brought in and the heat became even more intense and now she wasn’t sleeping again because the work was too easy. Instead she walked up and down the courtyard throughout the night, counting her steps, anything to stop herself thinking.

  ‘You will work in the clinic tomorrow,’ Ravi said, as he ate his dal that night. ‘You are ready, I think, and Maji tells me you walk in the night, instead of sleeping. Perhaps the ward work will help. Perhaps talk would too?’

  His eyes held hers and she shook her head. ‘No, I just want to work, not talk.’

  She walked across the square the next morning, before the heat burnt the very air she breathed.

  ‘We have pregnant women, we have children, men. All sorts. We can operate or we can just nurse,’ Ravi told her on the verandah. ‘You will work with Pitaji today. He will tell you all that you need to know, all that you need to do.’

  He left her then and Pitaji smiled and walked before her into the wards which were wood-lined, white-painted. Fans whirred and moved the hot air.

  ‘Here,’ Pitaji said, walking down the ward, ‘we have pregnant women whose bones, especially their pelvis, are disintegrating because they do not eat enough and so their babies eat their calcium. They cannot give birth normally. We try and feed them properly, we help them give birth but still seventy per cent of their babies are diseased. They will become semi-invalids.’

  Sarah followed him, looking at the large-eyed women. ‘Can nothing be done?’

  ‘How can we feed the world?’ Pitaji pushed open the door at the end of the ward and stepped through into an annexe where a man was putting food into a huge pan.

  ‘Can you dole this out to them? We give them rice, vegetables and lentils. Then yoghurt.’

  Sarah moved down the ward with Pitaji, ladling stew into the bowls the women held up.

  They washed the bowls later, as the heat beat down on the corrugated iron annexe before moving into a ward of elderly women. They distributed stew here too.

  ‘You come to the clinic now,’ Pitaji said.

  Sarah stood behind Pitaji who wrote down the details of those who had queued since before the sun rose. One by one, they filed in, filed past, into the day clinic.

  ‘Ravi’s father is away, he is very busy,’ Pitaji said.

  ‘Can’t I do more? I’m doing nothing. I want to be used.’

  Pitaji smiled at her. ‘Go with this man, take this form and see Ravi.’

  Sarah walked beside the native, holding the form which she could not understand. ‘Can I help?’ Sarah asked.

  Ravi read the notes, then looked at her. ‘Yes, I think you can. Help Bhim to remove the foreign body from this man’s nose.’ He handed her the card. Bhim beckoned to her, leading her to the cubicle, washing his hands, telling her to do the same, then handed her a light.

  ‘Please hold this quite still,’ he said, taking an implement from the steriliser, patting the man on the shoulder, making him lie down.

  Sarah held the light as Bhim dug gently, while blood and mucus ran. He said, ‘This man is a stone breaker. It is a familiar problem.’

  The old man’s eyes sought hers.

  Bhim said, ‘Wipe him clean please.’ He withdrew the pebble.

  Sarah picked up a swab and wiped the old man’s face, nose, lips. She smelt disinfectant and there was blood and mucus on her fingers. She dropped the swab, looked at her fingers and felt the bile rise in her throat. She swallowed, wiped with a new swab and collected up the soiled pieces as the old man stood, salaamed and left.

  Ravi called through. ‘Pitaji is returning to the wards now. Perhaps you could go too, Sarah.’

  She walked into the heat, feeling it beat into her face, across to Pitaji. They bathed the old women, and the stench of their illnesses brought the bile to her throat again. They moved from bed to bed drawing back the sheets, sponging them, smiling, drying, moving on, but the woman in the last bed was dying. ‘Just her face,’ Pitaji said, handing her the last of the clean water, leaving her.

  Sarah wiped the lined brow, smiled at the woman who did not smile back but lay with her e
yes wide open, and there was no breath from her nostrils, no movement of her body, and Sarah dropped the cloth and ran from the ward, vomit spewing from her, on to the parched cracked earth.

  She ran then, back to her room, lying on the charpoy, vomiting again, crying because she had never seen death before, never touched it, because that is what she had done.

  Ravi came to her that night as she lay unmoving on the bed. He sat on the cane chair and took her hand.

  ‘Now we talk,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she replied, her voice dull.

  He gripped her arms. ‘Sarah, you are in pain, you will harm yourself. You came here to talk, not to die, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘I came here to work, not to talk, or to die. One is too difficult, the other too easy.’

  Ravi looked at her and his shoulders slumped. He touched her cheek. ‘Oh Sarah,’ he said. Then left.

  She sat up, not looking after him but at her hands which had swabbed an old man, and hated it, bathed an old woman who had died. She had hated that too. She was just like her mother. Even where nursing was concerned she was like her bloody mother.

  ‘So, where is Davy?’ Ravi said and now she looked up. He hadn’t gone as she had thought. ‘Tell me, Sarah, because I shall not leave until you do.’

  She looked at him, then back at her hands. She didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want anyone to know what she had done, but the words were coming, tearing themselves from her throat. ‘He’s alive but I nearly killed him. I used him you see, even at the very beginning. I clung to him because I couldn’t bear to be alone.’

  Ravi said nothing, just stood silently.

  ‘I even changed colleges from Newcastle to London right at the start.’ Her words were stilted, abrupt. Ravi waited but she said nothing more. Her mind couldn’t produce any more words. There was just a darkness.

  Ravi moved towards her now. ‘Of course you did,’ he said. ‘You loved him, it is what anyone would have done, you just did not know that you felt this for him.’