Agnes Markham asked me for Christmas dinner. The Denbeighs invited me to stay in Dorset. New friends, inherited from Marian. And of course Marian, looking worried, begged me to come down to Wiltshire. I am lucky to have kind friends. I know that, I’m always grateful, I don’t earn the kindness by being clever or amusing or interesting. I’m an extra woman. At Christmas, family people are specially sorry for extra people. They think they can take you into their home and make you feel you belong in their family. They don’t understand this is the most dreadful of all. They don’t understand that you cannot bear it. I have learned how to be an extra woman if no one fusses, if I am left alone to manage the way I have learned. Perhaps other extra people are happy to be asked to join in someone else’s Christmas.
And I am afraid of being a burden, of people saying to each other, ‘Poor Diana, she’s alone, we must do something about Diana.’ On the worst days, I imagine voices talking about me with pity, and also boredom. A duty, a burden. I fear that. But even more I fear I will not always be able to behave properly. Cheerfully. It is essential to behave cheerfully.
I lied to everyone, saying more or less the same thing. ‘How lovely, thank you so much, what fun it would be, but I’m meeting American chums in Switzerland, ski-ing for a few weeks.’ Nobody could check on this harmless lie and nobody would. The English don’t pry, that’s one of their best points. Marian was delighted, I could see she felt I’d cheered up wonderfully if I was planning to go off on a ski party. I didn’t want to speak of Africa, explanations, comments, excitement. Switzerland is usual but it would sound very eccentric to say I’d read an advertisement on the back page of The Times and was launching myself alone into the blue. I meant to sneak off quietly and come back quietly. No one knows where I am. I am lying on a bed in a luxury hotel by the Indian Ocean and I don’t understand why.
But I do understand. Sun was an excuse. I was swamped in loneliness, drowning, it gets worse all the time, not better the way people tell you. I ran away as far as I could, running from everyone and everything that reminds me of Christmas when I had a child and a family. I knew it would be easier alone in a place so strange that I’d be a stranger to myself. Why do I have to go on acting like a normal woman? ‘Adjusted’ is the word. Why do I have to get up and wash and work at my time-filling jobs and shop for food and telephone about repairing the fridge or the TV and buy clothes and pay bills and chat with friends and smile and pretend to care when I don’t care about anything on earth? Why can’t I scream and scream and scream I hate it all, I don’t want to be here, I want to die, leave me alone.
No. NO. Peering people. Doctors. The hospital. Be quiet. Be orderly. Calm. Now I have to start again, I’ve made it harder for myself. Marian will be astonished when I tell her how I planned my trip and kept it as a surprise for when I got back. The night flight was appalling, wedged between two men, cramped, I was so worn out that Nairobi was just blinding sun and the smell of the warm wind and a blank wait in the airport. Another plane, yellow empty land, blue grey hills, too tired to look, and the airport here, jungle trees, terribly hot, the hotel car, the hotel room and sleep.
Then it worked better than I’d dared imagine. I didn’t mind being a lone woman, the hotel didn’t make me nervous, I was invisible anyway. I’m the invisible age, too old for flirtations around the pool, too young to be motherly, a nice old lady that people talk to. It was fine, wasn’t it, and so clever to have thought of this, and so energetic to pull it off.
One morning I decided to make a short trip to see some birds I’d heard about and lunch at another smaller hotel. I felt the car plunging into the ditch, a split second, not enough time to think, and I was knocked unconscious. When I came to I was in the passenger seat covered with dust and dry grass. Facing back the way I’d come which was impossible but it seems the car turned over on its top and then rolled back on its wheels. Someone told the police and they told me. The windscreen didn’t shatter. A freak accident. There are millions of road accidents every year all over the world. I never had an accident before but millions of people have an accident the first time. It was just another road accident. That’s all it was. That’s absolutely all it was and now I’ve got it straight and tomorrow I’ll talk to the assistant manager about a plane to London.
The two African policemen wore grey uniform shirts and shorts and long black knee socks and black boots and they were very kind, driving me back in their Landrover, and they saw my filthy dress, my hair half down, my general condition I suppose, and said very kindly, don’t worry, everything’s all right, you just relax. Everything’s all right. I started to laugh, my face cracked across the middle, and they said now now there’s nothing to cry about and I thought how weird that laughing looks like crying in Africa.
Stop, please stop, please, stop, stop! What? Am I talking out loud again? That sound, I can’t bear it, that sound like a sick kitten mewing. No, no, it’s not here, it’s all right, there’s only the sea. I fell asleep. I had a dream, very bad, but I don’t remember it. I heard the sound in my sleep. So hot, stifling, what’s the matter with the wind? My pillow’s soaking and my nightgown. Fell asleep, forgot to turn on the light, stupid. Turn on the light; what time is it? Now my watch isn’t working. Maybe it’s midnight, that would be a piece of luck, the night half gone. If I’m always going to hear that sound in my sleep, I’ll go mad. Be quiet. Listen to the sea.
Slap, thud, pause, slap, thud, pause. Small waves, the ocean held back by the reef. The long shallow beach, white sand churned into the small waves, but the water is transparent. You can see the bottom as you wade in, and warm as a bath until you swim far out and then it’s cool and silky. I never saw or felt such water; bliss. There’s no wind at all and the insects are quiet. Do they go to sleep at night? Is that possible? They’re always here, unseen, never still; I imagine hundreds of millions of them, making a high crackling buzzing whine all over Africa.
I could go out on the balcony, it would be cooler there. But the truth is the night sky frightens me, it’s too big with more stars than anywhere else, enormous and far away and silent. I don’t think people were meant to live on this huge empty land under this huge sky. I feel I’m lost, nowhere, nothing to hold to, the truth is it’s terrifying to be alone beneath that enormous beautiful black sky.
What am I going to do, lie here bathed in sweat, and wait for morning? And count over the different pains in my body and have a nice slobbering cry because I hurt so much? I wish I were like Marian. She’d make a plan. She’d know what to do next.
‘May I come in, Mrs Jamieson?’
This is the limit. Why can anyone get a key to open my door?
‘Who is it?’
‘Dr Burke. May I come in?’
The young doctor, with red hair and a dark beard, the one the hotel sent for. He ought to shave that beard; perhaps he wears it to look older.
‘What time is it, Dr Burke?’
‘Nearly seven. I thought I’d pop in on my way home to see how you’re getting on. Miss Grant reported at noon that you were resting nicely. That’s the best treatment. You had a mammoth shake-up yesterday.’
‘Yesterday? How long have I been here?’
‘In Kenya?’
‘No, no, here, now, in bed.’
‘Why, since yesterday afternoon.’
‘I thought I’d been here for days, two or three days.’
‘There’s nothing like a big bang on the head to muddle one. How does your head feel?’
I’ll tell you how it feels. Right now it feels as if steel clamps were fastened on my head above my ears, and a loop of steel joined them across the back of my skull, low down, and the clamps and the loop are being tightened and tightened until they’ll squeeze my head so the top bursts open. This is brand new, I didn’t know there was such a style of headache.
‘Not too bad.’
‘And the bruises?’
Any movement hurts. However I lie hurts. I feel as if I’d been beaten all over with a bicycle chain.
That’s how the bruises are. ‘A bit stiff. What’s happened to the wind?’
‘It always drops at sunset and sunrise. Hadn’t you noticed? This is the hottest time of year, the monsoon’s changing. Shall I close the balcony door and turn on the air-conditioner?’
‘Please, no.’ I want to hear the sea, it keeps out that other sound. Now thermometer and pulse and the doctor look on his face, studying, puzzling, calculating. There’s something I have to ask him, and I dread the words. He’s got his pencil torch, to peer at my eyes.
‘Dr Burke.’ My voice has failed again, it comes out as a whisper. I seem to have no control over my voice. ‘Can an unconscious body make a sound?’
‘Yes, of course, Mrs Jamieson. You asked that yesterday.’
So it wasn’t pain. Thank God it wasn’t pain.
‘I heard a sound after the accident. Like … like a whimper.’
He’s watching, he knows that’s a lie, but I can’t say how it really was, I can’t speak.
‘Yes, I guessed something of the sort. Not a whimper. What you heard was the last automatic exhalation of air from the lungs.’
My eyes feel they’re being burned. I try not to understand what he’s said. Because then it’s true, what I didn’t know or didn’t dare to know. Afterwards, sitting in the car in the ditch with the sun beating down, the road was empty. The little body on the road, nearer to the right than the middle, and the sun and that sound in the silence. I could not move and there was dust over my eyes, or in the air, I saw through a haze. Africans came from nowhere, from the empty land, and lined the road close to the child’s body, but none stepped out on to the road. Women wailed, a wild up and down wailing that didn’t break the silence. No one came near me. I was miles away, not there or anywhere. Nothing happened; nothing changed. I thought I would stay there always, alone with the little curled-up body.
The police spoke to me but I couldn’t answer. I didn’t watch what they were doing, I closed my eyes and saw the same thing: the empty road and the child and me, alone. The police helped me into their Landrover; in back were children, I didn’t see them but I knew there were children and on the floor something, a bundle. I didn’t look or hear. Everything was very slow, under the sun, the light and heat of the sun were part of it and it would never end. I was in an office on a chair by a desk and a young black policeman was talking but I don’t know what he said. He took my bag which he must have found in the car and copied things from my passport and driver’s licence.
I was trying to explain to myself what happened but I couldn’t because what happened was not believable. I don’t know if I was talking to myself or out loud. The same words went on, over and over, in my mind. I was driving on the left the way you do in this country and a child ran out from the left from nowhere and I swerved as hard as I could to the right to get away from him and I heard a soft plop, like a cloth flapping against the car behind me, and I saw the ditch and then I saw nothing until.
The policeman took my arm to move me from the chair and led me to the Landrover and helped me in and it was all very slow, with the sun beating down, but I didn’t feel pain in my head or body and I didn’t see anything except the empty road and the child and I didn’t hear anything except that sound. But I must have known he was dead only I didn’t ask and no one told me. Now I know he is dead, a beautiful little brown boy, not black, dark brown, six years old I think, naked to the waist, running like a deer, running faster than I could get away from him.
‘But I didn’t run over him. I know that. I swear I didn’t run over him. How can he be dead?’
‘Apparently he slammed head-on against the rear fender of your car. Broke his neck instantly. He can’t have seen anything or known anything, otherwise he’d have stopped. You mustn’t think of it, Mrs Jamieson. It wasn’t in any way your fault.’
‘If I’d pulled the wheel one second faster.’
‘From what the police say, impossible in that distance. Mrs Jamieson, listen to me. You did all anyone could do and more than most would. It’s a miracle your neck wasn’t broken too.’
‘I’m alive. And he’s dead. A child.’
‘You don’t know this country, Mrs Jamieson, and I do. I was born here. Believe me, if the Africans out there thought it was your fault they’d have torn you apart before the police got to you, and disappeared back into the bush. And I might add the police wouldn’t have been all that amiable.’
‘He’s dead.’
‘And so are any number of children every day of the week on the roads here, and even in the towns. They rush out without looking and get killed. It’s the parents’ fault. They don’t teach their children, they don’t train them, they don’t keep track of them. They’re ignorant and irresponsible. They’re entirely to blame for this sort of needless accident.’
‘The mother? Blame the mother?’
‘Yes indeed. No one else. It’s her duty to explain to her children about traffic. Yours wasn’t the first car ever to pass on that road. They’ve had years to learn and they don’t bother. Children have no business playing alongside a highway. The mother is at fault. It happens all the time and still they don’t look after their children properly.’
He’s insane. I don’t want him near me. Blame the mother? A woman from a poor mud village. What does he know about the mother? I know. I know she’s looking at her child and saying why, screaming why, until there’s nothing else in the world but that, why, why is my child dead. She’ll hold his body in her arms and try to make it come back to life and then she’ll start to die too, and she’ll go on dying and she’ll never remember when he was beautiful and ran like a deer, she’ll only remember him as he looked dead. She’ll remember that always, she’ll have lost all the happiness of him because she can’t forget the last, the worst.
‘Mrs Jamieson, please stop crying. You must, really. You’re tormenting yourself and making yourself ill. It isn’t doing your head any good. You want to get well and go home, don’t you? I’m giving you a stronger sedative for tonight and I want you to swallow these pills now. I’ll be back in the morning.’
Leave me alone. Go away. Don’t talk to me. How can you blame the mother, you’re insane, you’re inhuman, you don’t understand anything. All right, I’ll swallow the pills, I don’t care what I do, only go away.
‘Goodnight, Mrs Jamieson. Take these capsules later. You must get a good night’s rest. You’ll feel better in the morning. You’re still badly shocked but I can assure you there’s nothing wrong, no damage that won’t heal naturally.’
No damage. Bruises and a headache. And knowing that if I’d been one second faster, the one second when I saw the child directly in front of me, the stunned one second when I shouted NO, the paralysed one second of horror. Why couldn’t I have died? Always someone else, but not me. Maybe wherever I go someone will die. Maybe I bring death.
‘You’ve had a nice nap, dear?’
Everyone has a key. Anyone can come into my room. As long as I lie here I can’t stop them. It’s Miss Grant, I thought she understood I wanted to be left alone.
‘Dr Burke told me you were hot and uncomfortable. Shall we freshen up a bit? Could you take a shower while I change your bed? Here, let me give you a hand.’
I feel dull and heavy. It’s too much trouble to argue. She’s treating me the way they do in hospital, as if you’re frail and half-witted. Ah yes, the shower is nice, I’d like to stand here under the cool water until morning.
‘I found a clean nightdress. Is that all right, dear? We’ll have this one laundered and ready tomorrow. Now your bed’s all fixed. There you are. Dr Burke says you don’t like air-conditioning. Neither do I. The wind’s coming up again, it’ll soon be nice and cool.’
She is kind and it’s much better like this, in dry smooth sheets. If I could read, time would pass quicker. This day has lasted several days already.
‘May I sit down a minute, dear?’
‘Yes of course, Miss Grant. Thank you for making my bed.’
She seems nervous, or is that the way she always is, the strain of her job.
‘Mrs Jamieson, Dr Burke thinks it would be better if you went to Nairobi as soon as you feel able to move.’
‘Nairobi? What for? I’ll fly back to London.’
‘Well, there may be a delay. And Dr Burke thinks Nairobi would be better, where your Embassy is, so they can look after you.’
‘The Embassy? Why should the Embassy be expected to?’
‘Oh they will. We’ve spoken to the Duty Officer. He’s very nice. He suggested it might be a good thing if some relative came out to keep you company. We could send a cable or telephone for you.’
What is she talking about? She doesn’t make sense.
‘Miss Grant, I’m filled with some dope Dr Burke gave me so my brain isn’t working. I don’t follow you. I’m a grown woman, I’ll simply get on a plane and fly back to London. All this about Embassies and relatives is ridiculous.’
‘You see the point is, dear, you can’t right away. The police have your passport. Don’t worry, no one’s going to charge you with anything. But there are formalities, paperwork, and I’m afraid Africans are frightfully slow.’
The police?
‘Really don’t worry, Mrs Jamieson. The police spoke to Mr Hammond yesterday. He’s our assistant manager. The manager, Mr Burckhardt from Switzerland, is in Nairobi for a meeting. The police explained to Mr Hammond what happened and they were very sympathetic about you. But Africans love paperwork and they’re not much good at it. It’s such an awful stupid story.’
‘What is?’
‘According to the police, the boy’s sisters were in the ditch on the other side of the road.’
‘There wasn’t anyone anywhere. And I didn’t see any ditches.’
‘No, you wouldn’t, they’re so overgrown. Old drainage ditches. It looks as if the bush grows right up to the tarmac. But they’re quite deep, well, you know that, you poor dear. Naturally you wouldn’t see children down below the road level, hidden in that long grass. Anyway the two girls called to their brother to run across quick before the car came.’
The Weather in Africa Page 9
