Stone Kingdoms (21 page)

‘No thanks,' I said, turning the bracelet on my wrist and walking on.

‘I'm a very passionate man,' he called. ‘But you know that already, don't you?'

I stopped and looked back to where he stood in the doorway, holding up a bottle of beer in salute. ‘You're full of shit,
Charlie,'
I called and then walked on to my tent, the sound of his laughter ringing in the silence.

In the morning, word came from Stanfield that no reliable guarantees could be given on our safety. We were summoned to the clinic and told that we were to leave at dawn the next morning, transporting the medicines and portable medical equipment in the truck and jeep. Only those employed in a permanent capacity by the Agency were to be taken. Everyone and everything else was to be left. The utmost secrecy was to be preserved and no obvious packing was to take place until the final moments. Charlie was on a high, bouncing around on his trainers as if he were about to make some big play in the final stages of a game. It was supposed to be a secret but everywhere I looked, every set of eyes I looked into, it felt like they already knew and the guilt of that knowledge seeped into the smallest action. When school ended for the last time I was grateful that Nadra had gone with her mother to the clinic and wasn't there to watch as I took the little that we had and gave it out, making sure that each child got something, however small. Suddenly it seemed the most pathetic of gestures, a pitiful attempt at compensation. They smiled up at me and tugged my trousers with gratitude and each thank-you shamed me. Each smile, each pat I gave in return, became an act of betrayal, and in a short while would be the final confirmation that trust was an act of foolishness.

In our tent, Veronica was excited, glad to be getting out and closer to home. In my head I had often been hard on her, but she had survived like all of us, fighting off her homesickness, her disillusionment and the physical hardships, and I respected her for that. Martine was quiet, hardly saying anything as she threw her few possessions into her bag, not bothering to fold or pack them in any semblance of order. When she had finished she lay flat on her back and smoked a cigarette, blowing out
funnels
of smoke. I went over and sat at the bottom of the bed, but she didn't acknowledge my presence.

‘What's the first thing you're going to do when you get to the capital?' I asked her.

‘Have a shower, wash my hair, find clean clothes. Maybe find a man.'

We laughed at her, and Veronica asked her to find one for her, then went to the clinic to collect some personal possessions.

‘What will you do, Naomi?'

‘Wash my hair for sure, maybe swim in the sea if it's safe. I'd like to see that reef again, spend more time with the proper equipment. It was very beautiful.'

‘Yes it was. I'd almost forgotten it. It seems a long time ago.' She sat up on the bed and looked around her. ‘Do you think we'll ever come back here?'

‘I don't know. It feels too much like we're running away, deceiving them. Do you want to come back?'

‘Je ne suis plus sûre de rien. I think I want to go home but part of me says that if I go now, all I'll ever have to remember is Baran. I think I want to put something between me and it, something just as strong to carry with me. I thought I was strong . . .'

‘No one should be that strong, Martine. I couldn't even touch the bodies. You were stronger than me.'

She shook her head slowly as if she couldn't accept what I said and, even though I tried, nothing would make her feel better. When she finished her cigarette she turned over on her side and closed her eyes.

After dark, Haneen drove the truck and the jeep to the front of the clinic, but nothing was loaded and they merely sat there in readiness for dawn and our departure. I stood outside our tent, wrapped in a blanket, watching Charlie, Haneen and Aduma moving about in the clinic. Once there was the sound of
something
being dropped and of breaking glass, but beyond the fence the camp slumbered, only the spasmodic cry of a baby bruising the stillness of the night. I thought of Daniel and the painted print of his hand on the newspaper, the pages of his book flapping open on the wet path to his house. I remembered too the musty smell when my father opened the doors of the church on Sunday mornings, the weight of the silence which seemed to surge around us as I followed his echoing footsteps down the aisle, and I knew what it was I wanted to do.

Wearing the blanket like a cloak, I moved between the fence and the truck, and quietly opened the gate, then headed for the concealing alleyways of the camp. By now I knew the place and found it with little difficulty, helped by the waxy light of the moon, and as I walked I listened for the last time to the low murmur of sleep that came from all around me. When I found them there were more children than I had seen before – maybe as many as twenty. It was hard to tell where one body started and another ended as they squirmed into trapped pockets of warmth under the polythene. I wondered how they protected it, where they hid it during the day. Its tattered ends were weighted with stones and a couple of old tyres. There they slept now like bodies frozen under ice. Ice. Daniel walking across it, it breaking under him, struggling to get out, the coldness of the water. And then I found a space, pulled the blanket tightly around me and lay down amongst them and tried to sleep.

I woke long before dawn with coldness gnawing at my legs and arms, and listened to the snuffle and whimper of the children. Sometimes someone turned restlessly, tautening the polythene and contouring each body into a new shape, or a voice would call out, speaking the language of some broken dream. As I felt the hard press of the ground beneath me I turned on my side and a child snuggled into the hollow of my back, his arm falling across my waist and tightening like a belt. Sometimes he pushed his head into my shoulders, clinging to my warmth and shelter, and I could feel the steady pulse of his
breathing
on the back of my neck. But soon it was nearly time to assemble and slowly, carefully, I had to ease myself out of the child's grasp, whispering and soothing his disturbance into a new fretful sleep. As I walked the length of sleeping shapes only one face turned towards me, and as I bent down I knew it was one of the blind. Walking back to the compound I felt my footsteps echoing in his head.

Thin spears of pink and yellow were lancing the darkness as I reached the compound, and the hulking shape of the truck loomed large and black, dominating the space in front of the clinic. When I got back to our tent, Veronica and Martine were just beginning to stir, slowly edging themselves into consciousness, and I lay down on my bed still wrapped in the blanket and closed my eyes. Soon I felt Veronica's hand waking me from what she thought was sleep, and as I sat up she stood back from the bed.

‘You look like a nun in that blanket, Naomi. Were you cold last night?'

‘Yes, I felt cold. Is it time to go now?'

She nodded her head and the three of us got ready, moving silently across each other's paths, delicately circling our consciousness of what was about to happen. Everything I had was already in a bag. I washed, then changed my clothes. It was still cold and I draped the blanket over my shoulders again, then looked about the tent, the bare table, the bed where I had slept. The only things remaining which marked my presence were the ebony mirror frame and Rollins' small painting. There was a tiny sliver of glass still trapped in one corner of the frame and I held it close, angling my reflection into it until I saw again a girl who searched another face, another place, as the grey scrawl of sea and sky seeped into the glass. And in my mouth I tasted again the bitterness of failure.

‘We'll come back, Naomi,' Martine said. ‘We'll come back.'

I nodded, and placed the frame and the painting in the top of my bag and pulled the draw-string. As I did so Aduma
appeared
at the tent and told us it was time to eat. The clinic shutters were closed and it was lit by one small lamp low in the corner. When we all sat at the long table the light distorted each face, blurring and bleaching out the features, shadowing the parts blocked from the light. On the table which had been set the night before were bread and jam, grapefruit, milk and tea. I cupped the warmth of the tea in my hands, felt the sugary sweetness flow over the dryness of my throat, but I couldn't eat anything.

‘Make the most of this, it could be some time before we have another chance,' said Charlie, peeling the segments of a grapefruit and eating it like an orange. I watched Rollins cutting a slice of bread, his hunched body, the grey swathe of stubble, the knife held delicately in his hand. He looked down at me and his mouth smiled, his eyes lost in the yellow slash of light. ‘You should eat something, Naomi,' he said. ‘Make the journey easier for you.' I nodded and went on sipping the tea as the stuttering shadows of our hands fretted across the bare walls and ceiling. I kept the blanket wrapped around me and bunched up over my shoulders as Haneen and Aduma started to load the packed crates into the back of the truck. Sometimes Charlie looked up from the table to urge more care with the delicate contents or to ask if they saw anyone moving outside the compound, but beyond the fence everything was quiet. The only sounds were of the crates being lifted into the truck and the scrape of wood on metal as they were slid towards the cab. Through the open doorway seeped the first grainy filament of daylight. It brushed and skirmished with the yellow light of the lamp, thickening and elongating the shadows.

When the loading was finished we stood round the table waiting for our final orders. Veronica started to clear it but Charlie snapped at her to leave it and get our bags into the truck. Haneen was to drive, with Rollins travelling in the passenger seat and everyone else in the back, while Aduma was to follow in the jeep with the medical equipment that could be
salvaged.
Out in the compound, thin scrags of mist twisted round our legs and the wheels of the vehicles. The sky looked as if it were slowly cracking itself open, with sharpening splinters of pink and yellow breaking free from the darkness. Martine and Veronica climbed into the truck, helped up by Charlie. He held his hand out to me and I could see myself in the mirrors of his eyes.

‘I'm not going, Charlie.'

He showed no reaction, as if he hadn't heard, and pushed his hand out towards me again.

‘I'm not going with you.'

He pushed his glasses on to his forehead. His eyes looked small and blue, staring at me as if he still wasn't sure what I had said.

‘Naomi, I don't need this shit. What do you mean you're not going? Is this supposed to be a joke?'

‘No, Charlie, it's not a joke. I'm staying here in Bakalla.'

‘Get in the truck! Get in the fucking truck!'

I shook my head. Martine and Veronica came forward and Martine pulled Charlie back, got down and put her arm round me.

‘You must come, Naomi. You can't stay here on your own. What will happen to you? You must come.'

‘I can't. What happens to me doesn't matter any more. But I can't leave.'

She hugged me, and she was crying and telling me I had to go with them and while Veronica was pleading in the background I tried to explain to her, but there wasn't time or the right words and so I said, ‘You'll have to come back now, won't you?' She nodded her head and eventually I persuaded her to get back in the truck.

‘Have you gone off your head?' Charlie shouted. ‘I'm not leaving you here, get in the fucking truck.'

‘You're going to have to, Charlie, because I'm not leaving. Put me in your report as missing property, if you like.'

‘
Will you stop bullshitting me and get in this truck right now!'

I shook my head again and suddenly Haneen started the engine, slowly cranking it into life until Charlie turned and swore at him, telling him to stop, and it wheezed away again into silence. He called now to Rollins who clambered awkwardly into the back of the truck, his head scraping the tarpaulin cover as he pushed his way through the crates. ‘She won't get in the truck.'

‘Jeez, Naomi, you're even crazier than I thought you were. Get in the truck, girl. Come home. There isn't anything here for you but a lot of pain, a lot of grief.'

‘It's no use, James, I'm not going.'

He held on to one of the metal struts above his head to keep his balance, leaned towards me and whispered, ‘You really think you can put your foot on that ring? You really think that?'

I didn't answer as Charlie looked at him in confusion and turned again to me. ‘For the last time, Naomi, get in the fucking truck.' Then Aduma called out to him and pointed to the fence where some faces pressed against the wire. From somewhere else came the sound of voices. ‘We have to go now, we have to get out of here right now. Please get in the truck before it's too late.'

‘It's already too late. Go!'

‘You're leaving with us if I have to put you in here myself.'

He called out to Haneen to start the engine and moved to the edge of the truck, but as he prepared to jump down I brought out the knife from below the blanket and he stopped.

‘You come anywhere near me and I'll cut you open.'

He looked at the blade and then at me as the exhaust spumed out fumes into the space between us. ‘You're crazy, Naomi. Crazy,' he half-laughed.

‘Maybe, Charlie, but I'm not leaving.'

He hesitated, looked at the faces gathering at the fence, then
dropped
his glasses over his eyes and, shaking his head slowly, called out to Haneen to drive and the truck rumbled forward, its long beams of light suddenly filling the dawn with the tremble of moths.

17

There
had been no plan, no preparation, and as I stood looking at the open gate of the compound I felt dazed and confused. I stared for a moment at the knife in my hand and the first threads of smoke rising from the camp, then went into the clinic and filled a pillowcase with the little of value that was left. Suddenly I heard footsteps outside and turned to see Nadra standing in the doorway. She looked at me with fear in her eyes as if she had seen some spirit, and I let the blanket fall to the floor and spoke to her until she was sure it was me.