Cause Celeb (17 page)

The door of my hut rattled.

“Bloody hell, what's going on? Have you got a black man in there?” Henry barged in carrying a bottle of gin and a packet of dried orange juice.

“I say, have you got a bottle of water?” he said. “Thought we might have a last little drinkie together while you're still in one piece, all goddesslike limbs still attached, so to speak.”

I suddenly felt very affectionate, possibly because I was scared, and hugged him.

“I say, steady on, old girl. Don't want Sir Horace Hard-on joining the party or where will we be?”

Henry had already had quite a few when he came in. When he'd had a few more he got uncharacteristically serious.

“You sure about this barking mad, foolhardy, gung-ho, misguided, mercy-dash-style excursion?”

We had a craze at the moment for using long strings of adjectives.

“Don't mince your words, Henry. Feel free to speak your mind.”

“Road mined. Air raids. Job on line if you get caught. Camp left in lurch again for four days. Is it worth it, old thing?”

“I wouldn't go if I didn't think so.”

He was swigging from the bottle now.

“Love to put absolute confidence in your judgment, old girl, absolutely love to. Choice of traveling companion worries me, have to say.”

“But Muhammad's a great man.”

“Not talking about Muhammad. Talking about bloody Cedric Sex God.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Cedric Sex God.”

So he was jealous of O'Rourke.

“O'Rourke is not a sex god.” It was only half a lie. “He is a kindly, sensible, responsible, earnest, sturdily booted, borderline-bossy doctor. And you know why he has to come.”

“Quite so, quite so. Need man. Need doctor to sew legs back on. Can't take me. Have to leave deputy in charge, anyway, not doctor. Can't take Betty, Betty doctor but not man. Also mad.”

All memory of minor parts of speech had departed from the Montague brain.

“That's right. That's why he should come.”

“Wicked seducer.”

“Don't be ridiculous. There's nothing going on between me and O'Rourke and he is not a wicked seducer. Apart from anything else you're not in a position to cast aspersions, with your appalling romantic record.”

He giggled. “Different.”

“Not different.”

“Think I better go 'stead of you.”

I hadn't seen Henry properly drunk before. I'd forgotten how young he was. He looked frightened. Maybe it was being left in charge of the camp which was the problem.

“It's only four days. You'll be fine. We'll go over everything. You know exactly what to do.”

Suddenly he flopped over and put his arms round my neck, nuzzling his head against me, as if he was a small child. “Scared, Rosie. Everything out of control. Don't want you blown up by bomb. Don't want everything all blown up, starving dead people all over the shop.”

Henry: not so well sealed and varnished as I had thought. I liked him better for that. I stroked his head and soothed him like a baby.

It was about forty minutes after we had crossed the border between Nambula and Kefti. I could tell O'Rourke was tense because he was holding the wheel at ten to two, and gripping it tightly, instead of holding it at the bottom and leaning one elbow out of the window, which was his usual style. I was watching his knees in his jeans, next to my knees in my cotton trousers. I was doing that because it took my mind off what was happening. We were following the KPLF vehicle at two hundred yards, driving within its tracks. There were three soldiers in the KPLF truck and Muhammad, who wanted to ride with them until we got into the danger zone so he could speak with them. We had two soldiers with us in the Toyota, sitting in the back. When we got to the danger area we were going to park up till it got dark, then Muhammad was going to ride with us again and we were going to drive on with shades over the
headlights. Now it was about three o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was still high.

The road was starting to climb, we had left the desert and there were bushes and trees on either side of the road. It felt damp and cooler and the air smelt fresh. The KPLF vehicle had disappeared out of sight round a bend in the road. What we heard was a low boom. O'Rourke hit the brakes. Black smoke billowed up above the trees. The two soldiers behind us shouted and jumped out of the back, running off into the bushes to our left.

I reached for the door handle.

“Stay in the cab,” said O'Rourke quietly.

“It could be an ambush. We've got to get out.” I was whispering too.

“Wait.”

“We must drive on, Muhammad's in—”

“Wait.”

And then there was a second explosion ahead. The air in front of us danced like the air above hot tarmac. We waited again, straining with the tension. It seemed unbelievable that this had happened so soon.

“OK,” said O'Rourke after a while. He put the truck in gear and started up. We followed the tracks slowly, tensed for another shock till we rounded the corner.

“Oh, Jesus.”

The cab had been blown fifty feet away from the rest of the vehicle. At the side of the track to the left I saw the bottom part of a leg lying by the road. The rear section of the truck was upright with a hole torn in the side and Muhammad's djellaba was hanging out spattered, bright red, with blood. One of his legs was hanging limply over the side of the hole and the stump of the other, below the knee, was bleeding heavily. O'Rourke was already halfway out of the truck with his bag in his hand. I started opening the door at my side.”

“Come out this side and follow me.”

I did as he said. We went to Muhammad, who was conscious but incoherent.

O'Rourke tied a tourniquet above Muhammad's knee. The stump was still pumping out bright red arterial blood. I turned away and threw up. There were blotches in my vision. I thought I was going to pass out.

“Just sit down where you are. Don't look at anything.”

“I'll go and check out the cab,” I said, and started walking past the truck towards the track ahead.

“Wait,” O'Rourke said. I carried on. I thought I was behaving normally. I felt his hand on my arm. He turned me round to face him, put his hands on my shoulders. He was looking at me very calmly. “Just wait,” he said. “Stand here for two minutes. Just stand here and watch me.”

He went back and I saw him getting something out of his bag and giving Muhammad an injection. Muhammad was lying with his upper half on the bench seat of the truck, his lower half still hanging out of the gash in the side of the lorry. Then O'Rourke lifted what was left of Muhammad's legs and laid him flat along the seat. I saw that the back of O'Rourke's shirt had a huge dark patch of sweat and his arms were covered in blood up to the elbows. He wiped his hands on his jeans, then looked up at me.

“OK.” He gave an energetic smile, as if we were performing some kind of challenge and doing very well at it. This time when he came up he put his hand on my back and guided me ahead towards the cab. “Now. Don't look in here until I've seen what there is.”

The wheels were gone so the cab was resting on the wheel arches. O'Rourke opened the door and climbed in. I looked over his back and saw the driver's head which was smashed on the dashboard, leaking clear fluid and blood. The blood was coagulating in the hair. The older soldier seemed to be bent in half. I looked away again.

“They're both dead,” said O'Rourke, coming out of the cab. “Where's the other one?”

We found the soldier in a thicket a little way away. The man had a piece of metal from the side of the truck stuck in his stomach. I helped O'Rourke with the soldier, getting him the things he
needed out of his bag. It was starting to get darker. Together we carried the soldier back to the truck, me holding his feet. O'Rourke had left the metal in his stomach. The bloodstain in the dressing grew like ink on blotting paper, darker round the edges. We laid the soldier on the floor at the back of the truck and I supported his legs while O'Rourke climbed up into the back. Then I climbed up too and we laid him along the bench on the opposite side of Muhammad, whom O'Rourke had covered with a blanket. He was still unconscious from the painkiller.

I sat down on the bench seat beyond Muhammad. I lifted his head onto my knee and stroked it. He was warm and breathing heavily. I was glad he didn't know what had happened to him yet.

“Do you think he'll be OK?” I said.

“Maybe,” O'Rourke whispered.

It occurred to me then that I had first suggested this trip, so it was my fault that this had happened and Muhammad had lost his leg. My vision broke up, and then a long time later I could hear O'Rourke saying, “OK now, OK.” I was lying somewhere in the dark, covered in a blanket and I could just see O'Rourke in the light of a torch and I remembered what had happened. He was kneeling next to me, and gave me some water to drink.

“Shouldn't we get Muhammad back to Safila?” I said. “Can we move him?”

“Shh. Just take it easy for a while.”

“Don't you think we should get back to the camp?”

“I've got a feeling we're only a few miles from Adi Wari. I think we should take him there and hope there's a hospital, and if not, pick up an escort and go back to Safila.”

“What do you think about driving?”

“No.”

“So wait until it's light, then start walking?”

“Guess so. Carry Muhammad.”

“What about the soldier?”

“He'll be dead by tomorrow. If I take the metal out he'll die now, if I don't take it out he'll be dead by tomorrow.”

There was the sickly metallic smell of blood in the truck and we
couldn't smoke because there was kerosene all over the floor. So we stood outside for a while and had a cigarette. We could have lit a fire and made some tea, but we didn't want to risk being seen from the air. Instead we just ate a little bread and drank some water. We climbed back in the truck, sat down side by side on the seat next to Muhammad and wrapped the blankets round us. We would all have been more comfortable in the Toyota but we didn't want to move the injured men again. Muhammad was quiet but the soldier was delirious and shouting every so often.

We looked at the map and found that Adi Wari was only about four miles away. O'Rourke offered me a sleeping pill but I wanted to stay alert. Still, I think he may have put something in my drink because the last thing I remember before I woke up the following morning was sitting wrapped in the blanket leaning against him, with his arm round me very tight, really too tight. I felt a mixture of emotion, shock, guilt, dread, but at the same time I felt an odd form of elation, just because I was alive.

I
woke with the first gray light filtering round the tarpaulin at the back of the lorry. When something terrible has happened, the second moment after waking is the most unbearable. You start with your mind washed clean by sleep, and then you remember.

Muhammad was comatose. So was the soldier. O'Rourke wasn't there. I climbed out of the truck and went into the bush for a pee. I was starting to have paranoid thoughts. I was thinking this was all my fault, and I was a bad person.

I walked back to the truck. O'Rourke was standing there, rubbing the back of his head. His hair was sticking up on one side like a duck's tail, and he needed a shave, but he had a clean shirt on. He looked as though he was in control, and civilization had not stopped.

When I came up, he put his arms round me and rocked me a bit, gently. “You OK, trooper?”

I said nothing. He took me to sit in the cab of the Toyota and talked to me. He was very good with me that morning. I think misfortune is hardest of all to deal with when you feel an element of guilt or shame about it. It takes away the option of a sustaining fantasy of yourself as a hero. I don't know how people manage to cope with accidents which are definitely their fault. But I know that people can emerge more or less intact from the most outrageous situations if they learn to think about them in the right way. I was
very fortunate that O'Rourke was with me at that time. He reminded me that everyone had made their own decision to go; we had all weighed up the odds and decided that the end justified the means. He told me that we knew that dreadful things happened all the time, and that when one happened to you, or someone close to you, you mustn't allow it to shake your confidence in the world, because the world was still the same place. You were just beginning to understand it better.

“I can't face Muhammad,” I said to him.

“Yes, you can,” he said. “You'll see. He will handle it better than us. He'll turn it into an asset.”

O'Rourke was right, as it turned out. Out here, the attitude towards losing a limb was totally different from in the West. I once heard a Red Cross prosthetics worker describe how in Switzerland his patients were desperate that their artificial leg should look real so that under trousers no one would know, whereas he would give a Keftian the first crude attempt at a wooden limb fitting, and probably never see them again. As long as the limb worked, they just wanted to get on with their lives. It wasn't something they bothered to disguise. Maybe this was because of the war and the proliferation of mines. I suspect it had more to do with what they valued in each other.

When I climbed into the back of the truck Muhammad was conscious and sitting up. It was a shock, in the light, seeing him in a dirty djellaba. It was gray with smoke, and covered with great caked patches of dry blood.

“Rosie.” He held out his hand to me. “I have become one of the war wounded. Will you love me the more for it?”

I took his hand but I couldn't speak.

“Don't be distressed. Please do not be that way. Rather you should be rejoicing because I am still here. You see,
I
am still here even though I have no leg now.”

“Shut up. Quiet.”

I thought this was rather rude of O'Rourke at such a sensitive moment until I too heard the plane. It was a distant whine to the east. Within seconds it was turning into a roar, growing until the
sound was unbelievable, as if the plane was in the lorry with us. I sat completely rigid. I was thinking: of course, this is what's going to happen, we're going to be bombed we're going to die now. The soldier, who had been lying comatose, started, then screamed at the pain from the metal. O'Rourke leaned over, and held him still. Muhammad was sitting with his eyes closed, arms folded over his stomach. We were tensed, waiting for the explosion. But the noise passed its peak, and the plane seemed to veer off, the sound fading until there was silence.

“I thought they weren't supposed to come this close to the border,” O'Rourke said, with a ludicrous calmness.

“They must know we are here,” said Muhammad.

“Right, we move,” said O'Rourke.

“But how—what about the soldier?” I said. He was lying quietly now, but his eyes were mad. He was terrified.

“Leave him, leave him—he will die,” said Muhamad.

The soldier couldn't understand English but the look in his eyes was awful.

“We can't leave him in this state—it's inhuman,” said O'Rourke.

“You are not understanding death in Africa. This is war. He is a soldier,” said Muhammad.

“But he's in such pain,” I said.

“You can end that for him,” said Muhammad.

O'Rourke said nothing. Obviously, he had the drugs.

“You can't kill him,” I said.

“We are merely speeding a natural process,” said Muhammad.

“We wait,” said O'Rourke.

“Doctor, without your ministrations this man would already be dead. You are in the heart of Africa, you cannot apply your Western standards of medicine here.”

“If I'd followed that tack, you'd be dead.”

“That is a point quite irrelevant to the argument.”

“How can you say that?” O'Rourke was angry now. “That is complete choplogic.”

“I beg to disagree.”

“Fuck it, Muhammad,” shouted O'Rourke. “You are molding the arguments to suit our interests. It's not intelligent.”

“The issue in question is the life of this man. My point concerns him. My own case is as irrelevant to the discussion as any other medical emergency.”

“You're completely sidestepping any logical argument.”

“But, surely, we must focus on our logic?”

“For heaven's sake,” I yelled at them. “You're going round in circles. Come
on.
”

We decided to take Muhammad a little way away, and come back for the soldier. O'Rourke sedated the man before we left him, and we set off with Muhammad between us, with an arm round each of our shoulders. It didn't work; his remaining leg was too painful to take his weight. So O'Rourke went back for a stretcher and we carried him. He was appallingly light.

We were in an area of woodland, with low, gnarled trees. The sun was gentle, shining through them, dappled, onto the grass. It seemed unreal. It didn't seem like war. After about half a mile we got to a big, round tree, like a mulberry tree, which gave a lot of shade. We left Muhammad there with some water and headed back.

It went against all instinct to go back to the vehicles. It seemed more dangerous than anything before. I was very, very frightened. I didn't say a word. When we were halfway there we heard the whine of planes again. We got down flat under some bushes. The noise grew, there were two planes, very low. They came right overhead, screaming. The whole area was bursting with the noise and vibrating. I was gripping O'Rourke's shoulder, digging into his flesh with my nails. I looked up and I could see the gray underbelly of a plane, filling the sky. And then there was a blast and we buried our heads in the grass feeling the whole world falling apart, shuddering, shaking, rebounding.

We were all right. We were still there. There was nothing left of the vehicles except bits of twisted metal in a crater fifty yards across. Odd how you think the selfish thing. I thought that I would get
into trouble for bringing a SUSTAIN Toyota into Kefti and letting it be blown up.

“Well, that answers that little moral dilemma,” said O'Rourke.

There was nothing left of the soldier. We looked all around for traces of the body but found nothing. O'Rourke, it turned out, had buried the other two soldiers in shallow graves in the woods very early in the morning. The graves were intact.

I had never seen Muhammad smile so much as when he saw us come back. He looked as though his face was going to crack with smiling. He embraced us both and actually wiped away tears.

“I think perhaps Allah was making a small point,” he said.

“Oh yeah. What?” said O'Rourke.

“Only that I had logic on my side.”

We had no supplies now, just water, O'Rourke's bag and a piece of cheese. It was nine o'clock. We knew we had to keep moving while the sun was still low. I felt uneasy about just going away. I thought we should do something to mark the deaths of the soldiers. Muhammad and O'Rourke thought I was mad. I made them say the Lord's Prayer with me. Then I searched for dimly remembered words, and said, “Lord, let thy servants depart in peace.”

We walked until we could see the highlands of Kefti, blue-black and heavy, rising ahead of us. We were walking through a leafy glade, the sun was warm, birds were tweeting, and all at once it seemed as if we were taking a gentle Sunday afternoon stroll. I think we all felt the same sense of release as if there was no gravity anymore and we were going to float up into the sky.

Then O'Rourke started shaking with laughter. “Those last rites,” he said. “‘Lord, let thy servants depart in peace.' That was wrong. They should be arriving. ‘Lord, let thy servants arrive in peace.'” It suddenly sounded like the most ridiculous thing we'd ever heard and then Muhammad and I started laughing too, hysterically, saying, “Lord, let thy servants arrive in peace.” We were falling about, completely helpless, so that O'Rourke and I had to put the stretcher down, doubled over, crying with laughter. And then there was a burst of machine-gun fire a hundred yards ahead.

It was Keftian soldiers from Adi Wari, looking for us. There were
eight of them, They took us to a good path and carried Muhammad's stretcher. He was beginning to look very ill and tired. The land was rising more steeply now, we walked for two hours and then joined the main track again, the one we had been driving on. It turned a corner, round a hill with smooth, round rocks protruding through the trees, and for the first time we could see the landscape ahead: undulating, wooded, dark, and gashed by a deep red gorge, with the mountains as backdrop. On the edge of the gorge was the small patch of rooftops which made up Adi Wari, with glints of bright light where tin roofs were reflecting the sun.

We were met by a KPLF truck which took us straight to the hospital. The hospital was cleaner and better ordered than the hospitals in Nambula, built in a square round a large grassy courtyard. The Keftians were organized, well educated. O'Rourke was talking to their doctors about Muhammad. Once we knew that he was settled, I told O'Rourke I wanted to go and discuss the locusts with the KPLF. He asked me if I was sure I didn't want to rest for a bit, but I said I was fine. I was glad he let me go and didn't fuss me.

As I was leaving one of the nurses came after me and said that Muhammad wanted to speak with me. He was in a room on his own lying back on the mattress. There were bullet holes in one of the walls and a square hole open to the outside, with a grille half hanging over it.

“I need to speak with you,” he said furtively.

I sat on the bed.

“There is a woman,” he whispered. “Her name is Huda Letay. Will you remember that? Huda Letay.” He seemed feverish now. “I thought . . . that perhaps . . .”

“What?” I said.

“I want you to ask for her and look for her when you are in the highlands.”

“Of course. Who is Huda?”

“She is a woman . . .”

“Yes?”

He closed his eyes.

“Don't worry. I'll ask for her.”

“Her name is Huda Letay. And she is a doctor of economics.”

“Where will I find her?”

“I thought that perhaps she might be among the refugees in the highlands. I thought that I would find her.”

“Don't worry. I'll look for her.”

“She was a student with me at the University of Esareb.”

“And why do you want me to find her?”

He looked away as if he was ashamed. “She is the woman whom I wished to marry.”

Wished to marry. I knew how he hated loss of face. “What happened?”

“Her parents arranged for her to marry elsewhere. To a man who was wealthy. And she was not able to go against their wishes.”