Alarm Girl (5 page)

Daylight was coming and the sky looked like someone was colouring it in, as if a giant hand was choosing red for the sun and pink for all around it. Purple for the hills. I was in a picture of Africa with Dad and Robin and Zami but you weren’t in it.

We stayed for ages while the day began. The others were waiting for Young Lady to eat the dead buffalo and I was waiting for Dad to make us get out of the Jeep then drive away and leave us. I was twisting and twisting my scarf but luckily Robin couldn’t see because he was sitting in the front.

The lioness just stayed under the tree. I had a go with the binoculars but they made everything jiggly and all I could see was my own eyelashes. Tell us more
adventures you had with Mum, I said. I was trying not to think about that fairy story. Dad said we needed to be quiet otherwise Young Lady would never move or do anything but after ages of sitting there with no one saying anything and the lion just looking at us he said that when you and him came home you had the biggest adventure of all. Robin said What was that? Dad said Having you guys, of course. Robin said That doesn’t sound like much of an adventure but Dad said no matter how many amazing sights you and him saw before and how many places you visited, me and Robin were your biggest adventure. He went all serious about how we were the best thing that ever happened to you and him and he asked if we still had the photo of the Funny Man. Robin didn’t know what he was talking about but I did. It was a picture of you two at a temple with an Indian priest. Funny Man is what we used to call him when we were little because he had a massive beard and face paint. The photo used to be in the hallway in our old house but now it’s in my bedroom at Nan and Grandad’s.

If you love us so much how come you live in a different country, I said, but Robin told me to shut up and that was when Dad decided to move the Jeep. Sometimes the engine won’t start without a whack so he had to get out. I was scared Young Lady would attack him. Don’t be an idiot, Robin said, she’s got a great big buffalo right there, she’s not hungry, but Robin doesn’t know everything and she could have been annoyed
with us for spying on her. I watched her the whole time Dad was standing in front of the Jeep, waiting for her to pounce on him and rip his head off with her claws, but she just watched him like a lazy Young Lady or like a normal cat that people have in their houses as pets. When he got the engine started we drove right up close to the buffalo’s dead body. We could see where the guts had been eaten. Its skin was black but inside was all bloody and red. I felt sorry for it.

Being in Africa is like being on a different planet, not just a different country. Even though I know you came to Africa with Dad before we were born, this time where we are now is a planet where you have never been. It’s like when it’s rainy at school compared with when it’s sunny – they are two separate places even though everything is the same: I am the same, school is the same and the teachers are the same.

We found our way back and the way I made sure to remember the journey was to think of me and Robin for the two small trees we passed and Dad was the big one. There was no tree for you. Even though it was dark and cold like winter when we were having breakfast the sun was burning hot by the time we got back to Dad’s house. My legs were stuck to the seat of the Jeep so when I stood up it felt like my skin was being torn off like the buffalo’s.

Me and Robin played on the tyre swing. I said to him Don’t you think it’s strange there aren’t any photos of Mum at Dad’s new house? Robin said There aren’t
any photos of anyone, it’s not his style. It’s true – Dad’s house looks like one in an advert with not much in it except sofas and ginormous bowls and vases. Nan’s got photos all over the place, including ones of you and Dad and including our really bad school ones like the one from Year Two where Robin’s got a mullet. She puts flowers in vases but Dad’s are empty or just have twigs in.

We wanted Zami to come on the tyre with us because it’s better if two people push but he couldn’t join in because he had jobs to do. The sun was high in the sky so we went indoors to get away from it. Robin and Dad were looking through the telescope. I said to Dad Is Zami your servant but Dad laughed and said he didn’t have servants so I said What about Silumko and Robin said Silumko is a chef, stupid. Dad said in Africa some people call Zami a houseboy but instead of that he is a friend. I said Zami couldn’t be Dad’s friend because he’s a boy. It seemed more like he was his son. Dad said he already had a son and he put his arm around Robin when he said it. I could tell Robin was embarrassed. Then Dad went into the kitchen bit of the room which isn’t a separate room like in most houses. You’ll meet another friend of mine this evening, he said. She’s coming over later. He opened the door of the fridge when he said it so his head was hiding inside. Me and Robin looked at each other then quickly looked away. Robin pretended to be busy looking through the telescope but I could tell he wasn’t seeing anything.

Dad got us some ham and some cheese and some bread for our lunch and we ate it on the shady patio table. I said Why doesn’t Zami eat dinners with us and where does he eat them? Dad said Zami eats with Silumko. I asked if Zami’s parents were dead and Dad said yes. Then I said something stupid. I said Like mine. Dad gave me a funny look and Robin made a face. Dad said I’m not dead am I and then I said something even more stupid. I said You might as well be because we never see you. Robin told me to shut up and Dad told him it was okay and leave me alone. He started talking in the horrible quiet voice that grown-ups use when they are telling you something bad. He asked if we knew what a Looked After child was and Robin said Yes it means someone who is adopted. Adopted or in care, yes, Dad said. A child whose parents are dead or not able to care for them. Dad told us about the organisation he has made for children with no parents to look after them. Dad and Silumko both help do the looking-after. They have organised a football match for orphans where a cow might be killed to bring them good luck. Who’s going to kill the cow? Robin said, and Dad said most likely Silumko or maybe he would kill a chicken instead. It would be killed in front of everyone with everyone watching. When I said that was mean, Dad said it was important to respect different people’s beliefs and Robin said there wasn’t any difference from an English butcher killing a cow. A butcher is killing for meat, though, not football, I said, and I pretended
I felt sick because of the idea of it. Robin called me a pussy so I ran inside the house. I didn’t feel sick but it’s true I couldn’t stop thinking about the cow.

The other thing I was thinking about was Dad’s friend that he said was coming over later. I knew it would be a grown-up woman.

I waited in my room for Dad to come. The next picture in the aeroplane book was a boring one of a truck. I made the road that the truck was on brown first then red over the top but the dead buffalo and all its spilled guts kept getting into my head and so did the football match when Silumko would give Dad a ginormous knife and make him cut the cow’s throat. Its blood would gush out and he would drink a big cup of it with the whole crowd watching. In my thinking the cup was a big golden vase like the World Cup and Dad was drinking the blood and it was dripping down from his mouth like a vampire. My picture of the truck on the road grew dark brown and red and bloody. I coloured it in so hard the crayon broke and made a hole in the paper.

After a long time Dad knocked on my door. He tried to talk about Super Mario but what he really wanted to say was that Zami came from a different country, not South Africa but nearby, where he was starving and people were mean to him. Dad’s plan was for him to help with holiday guests and train as a wildlife guide. He said tourists and rich people like us have money that can help people like Zami and he understood I might be jealous of Zami but it was important to be kind in
the world. What he didn’t know was that all the time he was talking the only thing I was thinking about was who his friend was. At the end of his talk I said What’s her name and without asking who he said Her name is Beautiful.

KAREN SAT ON THE LOW
perimeter wall. She watched Ian emerge from the other side of the temple. When he saw her he came to join her, sitting beside her without saying anything, taking her hand in his. The landscape was bathed in soft pink mist that rose up from the valley. There was no breeze to stir the flags strung across the temple courtyard and everything was still, as if the world was waiting for something to happen, someone to act. A flock of small birds flew past. His hand felt cool. The sun had only just risen. There was no sound apart from an occasional camera shutter.

This was possibly the most beautiful place they had visited but, while other tourists murmured quietly or took photographs or reached out to one another in companionable silence, she remained unmoved. The air was too indeterminate, the delicate colour of the sky was too pale, it couldn’t touch her. Instead of appreciating the higgledy-piggledy quality of the dwellings nestling among the hills, she could only think how smug and destructive humans were. She wondered if other people around her were feeling the same, and the idea that they
might not caused a kind of vertigo. What was wrong with her? In an involuntary spasm, she gripped Ian’s fingers more tightly. He returned her squeeze.

‘Let’s get married,’ he said, turning to face her. He was panting slightly, excited as a boy. ‘Marry me and let’s have some babies.’

She couldn’t speak. Her uncertainty hung in the mist. It seeped up from the ground with the morning dew, and when she looked down she saw that the toes of her walking boots were sodden.

‘What do you think? You and me, a couple of kids, some land…’ He was still looking at her with his keen boy face.

‘Land?’ she said

‘Maybe even some animals,’ he said. ‘A veranda where we can sit out and smoke.’

‘Will we smoke?’

‘If we want.’

She wanted to tell him about the feelings she had that she suspected weren’t the same as other people’s, as his, but she couldn’t find the words.

‘A tree with a hammock,’ she said instead. There was one in the garden of the hostel where they were staying.

‘Definitely.’

‘We’ll have a girl and a boy,’ he said, ‘and a dog and a pig.’

‘A pig?’ she asked.

‘Yes, to feed our scraps to.’

A sadhu approached, tapping the ground with a wooden staff. His beard was as white as his robes and his face and arms were chalked white. He gestured at the camera hanging around Ian’s neck.

‘To take photos of your lovely temple,’ Ian said, ‘and this moment – so we can remember it.’

The man wagged his finger in a triangle whose points included himself, Ian and Karen.

‘A photo? Of the three of us?’

The man nodded and indicated that Ian should ask one of the other tourists to take the picture. Ian approached a young guy, told him that he and his girlfriend had just got engaged and asked if he would mind taking their photograph. The young guy congratulated them and took Ian’s camera. The old man adjusted his robes in readiness. The photograph was taken and the old man, having been paid the coin he requested, shuffled away to pose with other tourists.

This was a moment in which the two of them could shed their old selves and prepare for a life of togetherness, Karen thought. It would be a life in which each of them would know everything about the other and a life in which there was nothing that could not be said, nothing held back. Once more a sensation rose up in her throat, shaping itself into words that wouldn’t come.

‘Who’s to say that what anyone sees is the same as what anyone else sees?’ she said at last. Even though she hesitated to open up the possibility of difference between them, and to hint at the sense she had of her
own difference, this was a safer place than where other words might have taken her.

‘Eh?’

‘Views like this – or a work of art, say, that people think is brilliant or beautiful… It seems incredible that so many people from different places, different cultures and different experiences can all agree that it’s wonderful.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he said.

‘Who’s to say it is wonderful?’

By way of an answer, Ian waved his hand at the landscape in front of them and at the ornate temple behind them.

‘Yes, but remember the story of the emperor’s new clothes,’ she said.

‘You don’t think this is beautiful?’ he asked. He looked concerned.

‘I do think it’s beautiful – I do!’ she said, and the importance of what she was trying to communicate made her speech stall, its mechanism unfit for purpose. ‘I worry… sometimes… that what I think of as the colour blue, say, might not be what you understand… by the word blue. We might be talking about two different things.’

‘How would we ever know?’

‘That frightens me.’

‘Are you saying you don’t want to get married?’ he asked.

‘No!’

A silence fell between them.

‘It’s a leap of faith,’ he said, after a while. ‘Sharing a thought or a feeling with another human being.’

He put his arms around her and they huddled close against the morning chill.

‘All this… beauty – it’s almost too much,’ she said, but her voice was muffled against his body and he didn’t hear what she said.

‘What?’ he asked, but she didn’t repeat her words.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked, and, taking a last look at the view, they agreed to go in search of breakfast.

‘What colour would you call that?’ he asked, pointing at the streaked sky. The hills in the distance looked purple.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Indigo, maybe?’

They began their descent down the uneven path cut into the mountainside, watching carefully where they placed their feet because it was so knotted with roots.

I SAID HOW COME
your name is Beautiful and she said It is the name my mother and father gave to me. She spoke in the same old-fashioned way as Zami and she moved slowly, like she was in a dream. She was wearing flat shoes like the plaited ones in the wardrobe, except these ones were blue not gold, and she had a necklace with big beads on it. The beads were as big as tomatoes. I wanted to know what if her parents didn’t think she was beautiful, would they have given her a different name,
but Robin was really quiet and not saying anything so I was too.