Rift

by Beverley Birch

  The notebook pages blurred. Nothing to write. Chomlaya, Chomlaya. Inspector Murothi’s got to take me there. Then I can do something, look for Charly, find her.

  Half past six: two hours before he’d return to the hospital. Joe still asleep. She looked at him lying facing her, blind to her presence.

  She shuffled back on the window-sill and drew her knees up, propping the notebook open. She’d bought it weeks ago, to write a diary of the visit Charly’d planned, the two of them travelling together when the student camp at Chomlaya was over –

  Together.

  Skittering from the thought, she scribbled quickly:

  27 February

  Well, here I am – Nanzakoto Regional Hospital. It’s hundreds of miles north of Ulima where I landed yesterday, and it feels like a century later. I keep thinking, what if Charly and me HADN’T already got the visa and passport and stuff sorted for when I’m SUPPOSED to be here WITH HER? What if people had INSISTED on knowing why I wanted to change the ticket and who was meeting me? What if I’d had to say, my sister’s VANISHED, I’m just going to find her.

  Don’t know what I’d have done if they’d stopped me! But there I was on the plane, taking off – 11 in the evening, 8 hours flying ahead, we were in the air, they were turning the cabin lights down, and all around me people just went to sleep! It got quieter and quieter and quieter, and that’s when I REALLY saw what I’d done! I just sat there, wide awake and thinking, thinking, wondering, wondering. What did they MEAN, your sister’s disappeared? What did they MEAN, ‘continue to hope’? ‘We’ll let you know’!!! What did they expect me to do – just hang about, waiting?

  I remember the captain telling us that we were crossing the coast of North Africa. But I couldn’t see anything – just blackness outside, and the horrible gloominess inside, and then I MUST have gone to sleep, because next thing the whole cabin glowed, the sun was a great fire on the horizon, even the wing of the plane seemed to burn. We were already low, crossing forest along the coast. Then we circled out over the sea and back, and came in along a narrow strip of land to the airport.

  Charly, if this was the holiday we meant, if I was coming to join you like we planned, if I wasn’t here because you’re LOST, I’d have been so excited. I could just see Ulima ahead – palm trees and white buildings and purple flowers, it looked fantastic in the pink light – magical – and the sea was deep blue with frothy white sandy edges, just like all the pictures you showed me. I don’t know what I expected, but we got off the plane and it was steamy-hot, sticky-damp, slow and sleepy. Then it was such a shock because you’d written about the dry, baking kind of heat at Chomlaya, choking dust, drought, I remember you called it PITILESS, and somehow finding this instead was like I’d come to the wrong place by mistake, and I felt really afraid, sort of swirling inside, and I had to remind myself it’s the right place, just a different part of it.

  And when everything seemed to take a hundred years (even the flies are half asleep), it was all like some weird hallucination, like watching a film of myself from a distance. The airport was still mostly shut, so it was an hour before I could ask anyone for help, and I still couldn’t stop digging over what the people from your office said on the phone – what they HADN’T said. Wondered if I should ring them, but phoning all the way back to London now, when I’d already got here, just felt silly.

  First discovery: no such thing as a regular plane to Nanzakoto, or anywhere near. I could charter a plane !!! Or 9 hours drive by ‘taxi’, or 2 or 3 days on buses. Then 5 or 6 more hours by Land Rover (IF you could find one to take you) from Nanzakoto to your camp at Chomlaya Rocks.

  I decided to go to the police station.

  Second discovery! At the police station, everyone knew NOTHING about ANYTHING.

  Ha! I was ready for that! My taxi driver TOLD me he saw it in the newspaper, so I knew I’d get an answer from SOMEONE. Didn’t think of going to the British High Commission – don’t know why (probably, deep down, knew they’d just send me back on the next plane). But after 4 hours I was giving up hope, worrying how I’d find somewhere to stay for the night. Don’t have any kind of map (how stupid is that! You’ll be furious with me when you find out!) I really wished I’d asked the taxi driver to come back for me – he would have, and he’d have taken me to an OK hotel, he was that kind of person.

  Then, bang! Slamming doors, and a policewoman rushing out to find me. Turned out this new inspector had arrived, just been given the ‘Chomlaya Case’. A few minutes talk with HIM, and he’s rung the British High Commission to report I’m here (lectured me for not telling them – he sounded just like the taxi driver, all disapproving). And he made me own up about everything – he wanted to contact someone in England about me, so I had to tell about there being just you, and he got quiet and looked all shocked and worried. Then he made me explain how this time I wasn’t actually staying next door with Holly and Christine at night, they were just keeping an eye on me, and I sneaked a note under their door when I left so they wouldn’t see it till too late to stop me getting the plane. Then he started to get sort of angry – or it was frustrated, maybe – and gave me a lecture about the dangers of what I’d done, but then he stopped, and sort of looked at me, and said sorry, and went quiet all over again. And then told me about Joe being found, and went away and phoned lots of people, and then said he’s taking me on the plane bringing him up here to Nanzakoto, and he showed me the English-language newspaper that said about Joe –

  She’d become aware, slowly, of the rising drone of an aircraft. It struck her that it might be a helicopter heading for Chomlaya and she lifted her head, scanned the sky. But it was a large plane passing high overhead, moving steadily south, and she thought again of her own flight from London yesterday, wondered if she’d passed this close, even flown above the camp where Charly’d been. These distances had meant nothing to her before: she hadn’t understood at all from Charly’s letter and emails.

  She slipped off the window-sill and went across to her pack. She unzipped a pocket, pulled out a wad of folded pages and returned to her seat in the light.

  On top was Charly’s first letter, dated more than two weeks ago, 9 February. The bit Ella remembered came near the end . . .

  I keep wondering what these kids – city spirits, every one of them – are really going to make of all this. Just think – it’s 600 miles from Ulima to Nanzakoto. Another 50 to the camp, but it might as well be 500 – straight across the plain, no roads – impassable in the rainy seasons, though baked dry now. Tracks like corrugated iron, so it’s 4-wheel drive only. Some of the kids started moaning the moment we got off the tarmac. I swear, not an unbruised bone left in my body. Whole truck rattling to bits. Hot as hell – hotter!! Spied 1 human habitation in the whole brown expanse – maybe 20 homes inside a great barrier of thorn branches piled high. To keep out lion and leopard! You know, Elly, I read things like that, I see it in films, but I don’t really grasp any of it. There’s something terribly blinkered about that, isn’t there – is it just me – maybe I don’t have the imagination?

  But then I do see it: people digging for water in a dried-up river bed. No other hint of water between leaving the tarmac road and reaching the camp. Tiny kids herding sheep and goats, miles and miles from any village. Bony-thin cattle running with zebra and wildebeest (like some weird prehistoric creature, all gangly and heavy-headed). I had a sudden attack of nerves about this whole trip – about how superficial it’ll be, really. I’m sure the kids will learn something (though I have my doubts about some of the teachers). When you talk about people enlarging their horizons and all such lofty intentions – it depends what you’re prepared to see, doesn’t it? I can think of at least three kids here who aren’t going to see much beyond the tent they’ll flop about in, the suffocating heat, the creepy-crawlies, the absence of running water to wash their hair. They’ll complain endlessly of nothing to do. They’ll spend a whole month here, and go away with no sense of place or person in the scheme of thing
s, no sense of any of this place’s LIFE (and death). I know it’ll sound like a ridiculous cliché, but as we headed out over the plain towards Chomlaya Rocks, I had this sudden overwhelming picture of how weak and absurd we were, rattling along through this immensity in a rickety tin box . . .

  Ella lifted her eyes from the letter. She stared, unseeing, at the hospital grounds. She hadn’t particularly recalled that last comment. Now it penetrated with unusual force. With it came a memory of yesterday: herself in the little four-seater plane flying from Ulima – Inspector Murothi and the pilot and her. She’d leaned her head against the window, watching mangrove swamps and lush coastal forests below give way to low hills, then to a canvas of tawny swirls and purple shadows, chains of narrow lakes studding the floors of flat brown valleys, a sweep of yellowing plain, ragged trees, gashes of raw red earth, like wounds. Finally they’d circled down towards the landing strip at Nanzakoto, the plane’s shadow racing across the ground like a giant bird. There’d been a herd running below. But she’d not really been paying attention, eyes skimming ahead to the river and its sprawl of low buildings, to the knuckles of far-off mountains beyond. Then with a lurch of astonishment she’d grasped that the animals were not cattle. Zebra, antelope, giraffe scattered in a fast gallop, drifting to a halt as the plane banked away. She’d let out a cry – delight – amazement – shock – it was so close – and the inspector had glanced across theplane at her. ‘Let me say this, Miss Tanner – in these regions people’s lives are . . . cheek by jowl with the wild . . . That is, I think, how you could say it, in English –?’

  A blare of sound snapped the memory, raucous cawing blasting from the roadway. A lone dog trotted along the metallic sheen of the tarmac. Gaunt, sway-backed, his long-legged, large-headed shadow paced below him like a monster-beast on crooked stilts. Languid on slow-beating wings, crows wheeled, dropped down, melted into the patchwork foliage of trees.

  She thought suddenly of hyenas, wild dogs, vultures, and her heart pounded for Charly.

  For several minutes, Joe had been watching her. She reminded him of Charly. But she was smaller, younger, and her hair was dark and long, not like Charly’s short, fair –

  The vision seeped through him gently – a flow of colour warming the still, quiet room. He saw Charly, Silowa: Charly kneels by the stream, rinses something, shakes droplets of water, inspects, dips again . . .

  Shaded sand below trees – he remembers it soft, cool to the toes, pockmarked with birds’ feet, ringed with reeds. They rustle like a whisper passed from leaf to leaf, and Charly turns, smiles, speaks. Silowa laughs, strides through water, patterns star-splashed in the dust on his legs, he leaps the bank into sunlight and the birds fan up, whirring blurs of brilliance, yellow birds, hundreds of yellow birds, making Anna duck, squeal, and Matt –

  Police. Yesterday. When did you leave the camp? Police, yesterday, yesterday, yesterday. Here, in the hospital: he wrestled to keep hold of the knowledge.

  . . . burning rock – great blunt fingers point to the sky, and Silowa’s feet climb towards them, puffs of dust from his heels, Anna chattering, like the chittering of monkeys above – quivering branches, sun flickers through leaves . . . Matt scrambles, slithers, and Silowa shouts Matt, here! Joe, up! Up, up!

  When did you leave the camp? Police. Police –

  A soft, slight sound crossed the room. The girl – the shuffle of her moving. She was turning a page. She pushed hair off her face, tucked it behind her ears, stared into space, began writing again: write, think, write.

  He looked round the room. He took in the camp-bed, the open backpack, sandals kicked off in the middle of the floor. He spread his hands on the mattress below him, found its edges, square, solid, real. He breathed the bright air that flowed through the window, saw, beyond the girl’s head, that a bird rode the wind lazily across the sky –

  . . . remembers the blue-orange blaze of a kingfisher skim the water – across, and back, and out again, everyone gathering firewood, fetching water, tents lifting, canvas billowing, hammers thudding, and that whirlwind of rainbow colour swoops down and away along the stream, and from somewhere else, somewhere high and beyond, a long, trailing cry rises to the crags –

  No, Joe thought. Not then. It wasn’t then; was that later? struggling to order the pattern of days and failing.

  Ella, sensing his gaze, turned and saw he was awake.

  ‘Joe! Are you OK? I’ll fetch the nurse –’

  Joe shook his head. Partly saying no, partly warding off the half-remembered sounds, rising from nowhere, smudging all other thought. With effort, he sat up. He threw back the sheet. He put his feet to the floor and stood up, wincing in surprise at bruising, at toes that felt like pincushions. He sat down again, heavily.

  Ella was hurrying towards him. ‘Don’t! They’ll want you to stay in bed –’

  ‘I’m OK.’ He demonstrated, stretching against the shrieking stiffness of muscles in his back, stomach, legs, standing up again.

  ‘Wait, I’ll find the nurse . . . ’ Ella paused, he said nothing, and she rushed on, flustered now, because awake he no longer looked young, small, vulnerable, but was large, dishevelled, her own age, he wouldn’t want her fussing – a stranger. ‘Sorry – I slept here – I mean – well – the inspector said – everyone else’s still at Chomlaya . . . you know . . . ’ She ended lamely, embarrassed at the avalanche of unnecessary gabble. ‘I’m – I’m Charly’s sister,’ she blurted. ‘Ella. I mean my name’s Ella. I’ll – I mean – oh, I’ll go!’

  Behind the hastily closed door, Joe sank to a sitting position, thankfully. The bombardment confused him. He focused hard: she looks like Charly because she’s Charly’s sister . . .

  But other things came too – doctor, police, questions, questions, questions . . .

  He stiffened, braced in case the door opened and it was them again, insisting, asking over and over, not believing that he remembered the night when they’d stayed in the tent. He could recall that so clearly, waiting in darkness, close, from outside no one’ll see we’re here, Anna’d whispered . . .

  Then just children shrieking, small hands pulling, larger hands lifting him, water dribbled on his lips, children holding branches to shade him, swatting away flies, sighing and stroking his face, and the drone of a helicopter, black against scalding skies.

  In between: nothing. Blank. Blank, blank, blank.

  Do you understand, Joe, that your friends, Anna, Matt, Silowa – all your friends – are not at the camp? The journalist, Charlotte,is not at the camp. The words came to him in the measured tones of the policeman. As if explaining to someone stupid. The memory brought a clammy sweat and a churning somewhere deep in his gut.

  He wished, suddenly, that the girl would come back. He wished he’d stopped her rushing off like that.

  He got to his feet. He found his balance carefully, and made his way towards the door.

  It snapped open. A nurse barred his way, half his height and twice his strength, sucking her cheeks in with disapproval, marching him back to bed, hijacking the next minutes with temperature and pulse-taking peppered with tongue-clicks of displeasure: at the marks on his legs, at the redness of his eyes, at whatever it was she read in the notes she carried on a clipboard, her face swept by concentration, puzzlement, irritation, finally, grudgingly, approval.

  ‘You are rested,’ she announced, gripping his wrist and pulling his arm out, then the other, turning each to and fro, inspecting briskly.

  He said, ‘It’s only bruises.’

  ‘I know this!’ She flicked the clipboard with one finger. ‘Dehydrated. Exhausted. And what is this nonsense?’ She shoved the writing at him. He couldn’t read it – all scrawls, and anyway it probably wasn’t in English.

  ‘Lost memory,’ she enunciated each word separately, and sniffed. ‘This ridiculous walk you have done! Do you leave your brains in England? Wisdom is needed to do these things. Tch! Tourists! Now all these people must run about searching for you! How many people must spen
d their time rescuing wandering children when there is other urgent work to do? Where are your teachers? I ask you this! What are they doing while you go around and lose yourselves? Dismiss them all – this I would do. Tcchk – tcchk – gone!’ With a flap of her hand she demonstrated them disappeared, and Joe didn’t try to protest that he wasn’t a child, hadn’t tried to get lost, for the prospect of certain teachers dismissed was spiced with a satisfying tang of vengeance.

  The nurse stood back. She tilted her head to one side, surveying him. Then she swung round and went to the door.

  ‘The doctor will see you, when he is free to. You will wait here. Do not wander about like your friend. I cannot have strangers in my hospital getting “lost”.’ But the jibe was coloured by an unexpected, quick smile.

  Through the door, briefly open as she left and clicked smartly shut behind her, he spied Ella being shooed away, we are not a hotel! When he yanked the door open again, there was no one in sight.

  7 a.m.

  Why is this boy, Silowa, at the Chomlaya camp? The question plagued Murothi. Silowa is not part of this foreigners’ expedition. Yet he is a friend of those who disappeared. He disappears with them, all the evidence says this. How does he come there? Is the how significant? Murothi felt it was, but he did not know why.

  He rubbed his hands across his face. Ah! To be waking in his own bed now, to have only the short walk to his own police post under the shade of the great fig tree! He had a sudden pang of guilt at the thought of Ella, waking alone in the hospital. Two continents from her own home! He could not imagine such a feeling. It is not right to leave the child there, he thought. It is a cold thing I have done.

  He stood, gazing down from the police compound across maize fields falling towards the river. Tea shacks clustered at the crossing point, and beyond crouched the brown hulk of the ferry. On both sides Nanzakoto township straggled along the riverbanks, little more than a meeting place and market for the hundreds of families moving animals about the plains. Yet raised in importance because it also had the regional hospital and this police post, planted here because of the road and river crossing and the new landing-strip for small aircraft.