The Beautiful Mother

by Katherine Scholes

  Ian just stared at her, as if unable to find anything relevant to say. With her spectacular beauty Diana looked like the human version of a pedigree dog. Instead she was the result of a potpourri of nationalities. She could have been one of those people whose large teeth didn’t fit into their small face, or whose head was too big for their trunk. Instead, in the game of genetic roulette she was a winner. Of course, it wasn’t really just a matter of luck. Diana had been born into a wealthy family; her father owned a whole chain of hotels. That fact alone increased her chances of being beautiful. Her mother had managed to attract a marriage proposal from a rich and successful man. She would most likely have had appealing features, such as facial symmetry and thick lustrous hair, which her daughter could inherit.

  ‘Tell me more,’ Diana said. She reached for another cigarette. ‘Tell me everything.’

  Ian smiled. ‘That would keep us here all night.’

  Essie stood up to go, before the conversation started again. As she got to her feet she was suddenly reluctant to leave. She wanted to hear what topic would come up next. She felt like a child having to go to bed while the adults were still up. Whatever happened next – the talking, laughing, drinking – she would miss out on. She had to force herself to cross to the pram, release the brake and wheel the baby away.

  Essie lay next to Ian, her body so close to his that she could feel his warmth across the space between them. She was on her back, looking up. The lamp had been turned off and the only light came from the moon, filtered through the gauze windows. Above her the mosquito net merged with the roof of the tent, making a single zone of grey. Essie turned her head as Mara murmured in her sleep. The baby was beside the bed, installed in her fossil crate; the makeshift cot had turned out to be less intrusive in here than the elaborate bassinet.

  Ian was silent, but Essie knew he was still awake. He’d finally come to bed after helping Diana settle into her quarters – Essie had heard their voices in the distance as she waited for him to appear. Now they were alone together at last, Essie wanted to return to the unfinished conversation about the baby. She wouldn’t be able to sleep until the issue was resolved.

  ‘Where did we get to?’ she asked Ian. ‘About Mara.’

  ‘You’re the one who has a choice to make.’ Ian’s voice seemed to float, disembodied, above them. He sounded weary. The time in Arusha had been stressful, Essie knew. He’d told her that Diana’s enthusiasm had been inspiring but having a third person to consider had added a whole layer of complexity. Then, the journey home had been long. Essie felt a pang of guilt that he’d had to deal with conflict around the supper table. And now, she had to bring it all up again.

  ‘I know what I want,’ Essie stated. ‘I want to look after Mara.’

  Ian turned to her, his face a blur in the gloom. ‘Then you can’t be part of the excavation team.’

  Essie took a breath. She knew the price she was agreeing to pay. Julia had clearly warned her. You could lose your place. She glanced towards the spot where Mara was sleeping. ‘I understand that.’

  Ian shook his head as if her decision made no sense to him. ‘What on earth are you going to do all day?’

  Essie smiled to herself. She’d have wondered that, too, until she began looking after a baby. The whole day just seemed to vanish. ‘I want to keep working, a little. Nothing difficult; just whatever I can fit in around Mara. I could do some scouting.’

  At Magadi, ‘scouting’ was the term used for walking through an area in a way that was systematic but fairly quick. The idea was to look for surface fossils that suggested a proper survey was worthwhile. It was really a way of allowing a chance discovery to occur. A stroke of luck. It was not described in these terms, though. The closest Ian would come to endorsing the concept of chance – otherwise known as fortune, coincidence, serendipity – was to quote Louis Pasteur, the microbiologist who’d brought the gift of immunisation to the world.

  Fortune favours the prepared mind.

  For the person engaged in scouting, being prepared entailed having a thorough knowledge of subjects like anatomy, geology and history. It also meant being able to hold on to an intense focus while searching – not slipping into a daydream.

  ‘Scouting could be helpful, with new projects on the agenda,’ Ian said cautiously.

  Essie risked pushing on. ‘I’d like to keep Simon on as my assistant.’

  ‘Absolutely, you must,’ Ian said. ‘I don’t want to spend my time worrying over what might happen to you out in the field.’ He paused for a moment. ‘But how will you manage the baby?’

  ‘It will be fine. She’s so little. I’ll just carry her around.’ Essie hoped she sounded more confident than she was.

  ‘It will limit where you can get to. You’ll need to choose carefully. I’ll give it some thought.’

  Essie’s jaw tensed. She could feel the chance of making her own plans slipping away. ‘Maybe leave that to me.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘I’ll visit a few places, see what I think will work, with the baby.’

  Essie didn’t want to name the foothills as the focus of her interest. She wasn’t aware of the exact location where Robbie had gone missing, and the chance of the cave in the Hadza story being in the same area was not great – but still, it would be best to find the rock tower without involving the other Lawrences. The last thing Essie needed right now was to upset either of them any further.

  There was another reason not to reveal her plans to Ian and Julia. The survey would then become ‘their project’. Essie would lose control. And the dream of surprising her husband with an amazing discovery would be lost.

  The two lay in silence. Essie listened to the night sounds outside. It was surprising how loud they were, once one focused on them.

  Ian let out a deep sigh. It sounded sad, but frustrated – even angry, as well.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Essie had to ask, even though she was reluctant to hear the answer. She feared that whatever problem was weighing on his mind, there was a fair chance it had been caused by her.

  ‘It’s just . . . I don’t think you really understand,’ Ian said. ‘Having that baby here brings up things Julia and I have struggled to put behind us. That’s why we’d rather she lived in the workers’ camp.’

  Essie nodded. At least now it was clear what had been behind Julia’s emotional outburst earlier. It wasn’t to do with Diana’s interference. Nor was it concern for her daughter-in-law’s career or personal wellbeing. She simply wanted Mara out of the way.

  ‘I can see how it affects Julia,’ Ian added. ‘Every time she hears the baby crying she thinks of . . . him.’

  Essie knew Ian didn’t even like speaking his brother’s name. The grief, though old, was still raw for both of the Lawrences.

  There was a short pause. Essie heard Ian swallow. ‘How could you imagine what it was like for us to lose my brother? To have him just disappear and never be found? Not to know how he died . . .’

  Essie felt a wave of sympathy for him. It was unfair that he, and his mother, should be thrown back into a terrible trauma. But the past couldn’t be allowed to control the present. If painful memories were being brought up by Mara’s presence here, it was better they be talked about.

  She reached over, touching Ian’s forearm. ‘Tell me,’ she said simply.

  In the stillness she could feel her heart beating. Then, from over near the doorway, came the sound of Rudie dreaming – a faint whimper and the twitching of paws on the mat.

  ‘Okay. I’ll try.’ Ian took a long breath, the sheet tightening over his chest. ‘Well, that day . . .’ His voice faltered. ‘That day, Julia was doing a survey over in the foothills. We were with her, my brother and I. So was her field assistant, Kisani. It must have been late afternoon when she discovered a fossil. A piece of jawbone, with two intact teeth. She knew straightaway it was important.’

  Once Ian had begun his account, the words flowed freely, as if he were telling a story that had been practised over and over. Essie u
nderstood that only some of what he was saying was his own memory; gaps had been filled in with what he’d learned later on.

  ‘Normally she would have returned the next day with William but there was a journalist back at the camp – someone big, from the New York Times, I think. It was in the lead-up to the war, so it was hard to get anyone to show interest in a place like Magadi. He was leaving first thing in the morning. So, of course she wanted to show him the fossil, but she had to do the proper documentation before she could disturb the site.

  ‘I was playing with my brother. I kept hiding and waiting until he got scared because he thought I’d disappeared. Then I’d jump out at him. You probably don’t understand that kind of game because you’re an only child. And a girl . . .’ He was quiet for a moment. Essie sensed the tension in him, making his body rigid. ‘I used to torment him. I don’t know why, really. Maybe I was jealous because he was the favourite.’

  Essie turned to look at him. He’d spoken as if delivering an undeniable fact. ‘Whose favourite?’

  ‘William, the visitors, the Africans . . . Everyone. But especially Julia.’

  ‘He was her baby,’ Essie pointed out. She’d heard women describe the youngest in the family as their ‘baby’ even when the child had grown into an adult.

  ‘That’s why she couldn’t bear it,’ Ian said. ‘If someone had to die, it should have been me.’

  Essie wanted to deny his words, but knew it would make no difference – his tone was so certain. She put her hand on his shoulder, drawing light circles on his skin with her fingers.

  ‘Julia told me to look after my brother while she and Kisani worked. We knew never to go out of sight of an adult. But I took my brother further and further away. It was part of the game. Then I decided it was time to go back, but I must have walked in the wrong direction. I panicked when I couldn’t see the adults. I remember running, dragging my brother with me. And all the time I was thinking how angry Mummy was going to be with me.’ Ian shook his head. ‘We just got completely lost.’

  ‘Didn’t you have a dog with you?’

  ‘No. That rule came in afterwards. Then, suddenly, I couldn’t see Robbie. I turned around to make sure he was following, and he was gone. I kept looking for him, calling out his name. Then I tried to go back and get help. I was just running. I would see a rock or a tree that I thought I’d seen before. When I got to it, nothing else was familiar. I was afraid of leopards, snakes – everything. I crawled into a gap between a tree and a pile of rocks to hide. I must have fallen asleep in the end, I was so exhausted. I woke up, hearing our names being called out. Julia had driven back to camp to get help. A Maasai found me. It was nearly dark by then. He carried me on his back. I can still remember the smell of ochre in his hair, his sword bumping against my leg.

  ‘When we found Julia she ran towards us. She was relieved to see me, but she was looking for someone else: another Maasai, carrying a second child. But there was just me. She was crying. She kept shaking me and shouting, “Where’s Robbie? Where is he?” I didn’t know. I just kept saying I was sorry.’ Ian fell silent for a few moments, then took a long shuddery breath. ‘I was frightened. I wanted her to comfort me. But she just walked away. She didn’t want to be near me, because it was my fault that he was lost.’

  Essie could hear the child’s faulty logic still shaping his thoughts. ‘You were only a little boy,’ she said. ‘Julia and Kisani were the ones responsible for taking care of you both.’

  She could feel Ian dragging his thoughts back to the present. He turned to her. ‘Julia knows that. She can’t forgive herself.’ He rolled onto his side, propping himself on one elbow, looking down at Essie. In the low light, his eyes were dark hollows. ‘The fact is, she was trying to do two things at once.’

  Essie knew he was waiting for her to say that she now understood why she’d been asked to make a choice between work and looking after Mara. But surely the outcome of one story didn’t determine how another would unfold? Mara was so little; there was no danger of her being left unobserved. Essie decided to say nothing. Instead she lifted her hand, smoothing the tight muscles of Ian’s face. Eventually she felt them relax.

  ‘I’ll miss working with you in the korongos,’ he said.

  Essie felt a sense of loss, as he put it this way. In the five years they’d been a couple they had done nearly everything together. No wonder he didn’t want to lose that intimacy. Essie didn’t want to lose it either. She felt a thread of doubt tighten like a knot inside her.

  ‘I’ll be at the camp each day when you get home,’ she said. ‘And it’s only a few months. Just until the rains come.’

  Neither spoke for a while. A gust of wind made the tent walls ripple. Somewhere outside a piece of loose tin creaked as it flexed.

  ‘Then you will hand her over,’ Ian said. ‘The Hadza will leave. And we’ll go back to normal.’

  The quiet suddenly felt fraught. Essie’s stomach tensed.

  ‘But you will be heartbroken.’ There was an accusatory edge to Ian’s voice.

  ‘I won’t,’ Essie said, ‘because I know she’s going back to them. I’ll have that in my mind, all the time.’

  Even as she spoke, she knew it was not going to be easy. She already found herself thinking constantly about Mara, after caring for her for just under three weeks. It seemed impossible that the period was so short; the day Essie first met her felt so long ago already. The time had become stretched out of all proportion. Essie was reminded of how, as a paleoanthropologist, she’d had to learn to be able to conceive of time in spans of hundreds of thousands of years. Now the process was reversed. Every hour, marked out by nappy changes and bottles of formula, felt like an age. By the end of the dry season, Essie knew, it would be very hard to adjust to Mara’s absence. But she was planning for it. She intended to keep a little distance between her and the baby, a defensive barrier like the moat around the nesting island in the lake. She was aware of exactly how to do this; it was a skill she’d learned from living with her own mother. She knew how to harden her heart for her own protection.

  ‘I know what’s going to happen,’ Ian continued. ‘Next you’ll want a baby of your own.’

  Essie’s lips parted in shock. ‘What?’

  Ian sat up, hugging his knees. Essie did the same, mirroring his actions as if connected to his body by strings.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ she protested.

  ‘We agreed we wouldn’t have a family,’ he added, as if he’d not heard her speak.

  Ian had raised the issue of children as soon as their relationship became serious. He said he was committed to being free to live and work at Magadi, and he wanted to share this life with his wife. He didn’t want to have her based in Arusha for the sake of their children’s education, or to resort to boarding schools.

  Ian hadn’t expected Essie to give an instant response. He knew the decision he was asking her to make was even bigger than accepting a proposal of marriage. But Essie had surprised him. She’d said straightaway that she had no desire to be a mother. She could picture nothing she wanted more than to stay at Magadi and work at her husband’s side. Essie still felt this way today – especially now, with the exciting new prospects for their research.

  She put her arm around Ian’s shoulder, nuzzling her head into his chest. ‘Don’t worry. Mara won’t change anything.’ She felt quite sure as she said the words. ‘I don’t want to be a mother.’

  Ian turned to kiss her, then lowered her back onto the bed. He rolled on top of her. Their bodies were matched shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, right down to their toes. He let out another long sigh. Essie could feel him shedding a fear that had probably been there ever since Mara’s arrival. She felt strong, being able to offer him comfort like this. But as he relaxed, his full weight pressed down. Her lungs felt crushed inside her. She struggled to take a breath.

  ELEVEN

  The little plastic moon danced on its string just out of reach of Mara’s waving fingers. The baby was lying
on the change table while Essie made final adjustments to her nappy. There was a stray edge of towelling that needed to be pushed up under the plastic pants. Essie had already discovered how any exposed piece would act as a wick, spreading wetness onto bedding, blankets and clothes, including her own.

  Bending over, Essie smiled into the wide, bright eyes. ‘Ready for breakfast?’ It seemed odd to be talking to the Hadza baby in English – a language Mara would never speak in her lifetime, unless she followed the same path as Simon. But it felt even stranger to be silent around her. ‘Let’s go, then.’

  Essie paused to check Mara’s outfit. This was the first chance to really show off to Diana the beautiful clothes she’d so generously paid for. Essie had picked out the smartest of all the frocks – it was made from broderie anglaise, white with pink stitching. The plastic pants were covered in the same fabric. The dress was teamed with white crocheted booties. Set against Mara’s dark eyes and skin, the overall effect was very striking.

  Essie’s gaze came to rest on the Hadza necklace draping the yoke of the dress. Carl had told her the beads were made from fragments of ostrich shell, painstakingly shaped and smoothed into balls. They were beautiful, with a shiny white surface that reminded Essie of clotted cream. But she tucked them away, hidden from view. The tribal decoration looked out of place beside the Babyland clothes.

  With Mara on her hip and bottle in hand, Essie made her way from the nursery towards the Dining Tent. A large part of her wanted to divert to the kitchen and just get some breakfast from Baraka instead of joining the others. She couldn’t forget the conversation she’d held with Ian last night – how he’d said that having a baby around was upsetting to Julia. That Mara should be kept in the workers’ camp. Essie understood that the tragedy Ian and Julia had suffered was at the heart of their feelings – but it had happened such a long time ago. Mara didn’t deserve to reap the consequences. And anyway, an agreement had been made between Essie and her husband last night before they went to sleep. Essie could continue to look after Mara in their part of the camp, but she would keep her away from the excavation sites. That was the deal. It would be a mistake for Essie to begin this first day by choosing to eat in the kitchen.