Touch (20 page)

Across at the pool, the man was bathing. He was kneeling by the water, naked to the waist, alone with the morning. His body was pale as a birch wand when the bark has been cut away. He threw the water up over his head and shoulders and it fell back in splinters of light. His fair hair gleamed like wheat. All his movements were wary, contained, like a creature that has escaped capture. But not free, not yet. The child woke beside her and began to cry. She sat up and put it to her breast, wincing as it sucked. Its strength was amazing, its need to take from her. Its puckered face was red and angry with life.

The city was burning. That was the only certainty. Martin was out there somewhere. The father of this child. He might be dead or alive. She had no way of knowing; her past hardly seemed real. That had been someone else, somewhere else. Another life. Vague, distant, without meaning now. And the future? That was wiped away so that she existed in moments only; her only identity was through sensation and fragmented thought. A song thrush hopped near the hut and began to call out, puffing up its breast and stabbing the earth for grubs.

 
The man returned, buttoning his shirt, suddenly self-conscious. His face was shiny and alert and she saw that it was heavily pockmarked. His eyes were less pale next to clean skin. He looked down at the woman and child, shy to enter his own living space.

‘You'd like something to eat?'

His voice hummed, soft with unexpected bass notes. She nodded and he brought brown bread, toasting it on the fire and spreading it with meat-paste from a jar. The woman ate, gulping down the mug of coffee the man had poured for her. She felt hollowed-out by hunger. She smelled of fire. The charcoal burner squatted before the burning logs, allowing his face to absorb the weak sunlight. She put the child to her other breast drawing her blouse close around it.

‘What's your name?'

The man started, her question unexpected.

‘Peter.'

‘Peter?'

She repeated the name like an incantation, touching the baby's forehead with her finger.

‘I'll call him Peter, then.'

The man laughed abruptly, a short yelp of embarrassment. He shifted on his haunches. A gust of wind rolled a heap of leaves through the clearing.

 
He rose and filled a bucket with water, hanging it over the fire so that she could wash. Her child had taken life in his hands, between his hands. The charcoal heap emitted thin plumes of smoke, a scent of heated earth. She fell gradually asleep again, dozing with the child, vaguely aware of the man, busy around her. The fire had grown dull again, whitening to ash. The charcoal burner took his axe and went to fetch more logs. It was a keen, fresh morning. He filled his lungs with air, the awakening scents of the forest, alert to every sound. He came to a heap of sawn beech logs and began to split them. Where his mind had been empty or slumbering the woman now lay. He remembered the lock of hair that had fallen across her face. Like a black wing against snow. He had touched her, then.

Resting on the haft of his axe, he stared into the sky's deepening blue. High above, the fuselage of an aircraft glinted in the sun. Its engines droned. Dead leaves drifted around him, rustling their incomprehensible speech. Winter would soon be here. He'd need to rebuild the hut, to seal it against snow and wind. He swung the axe high above his head, balanced it for a moment then brought it down upon the log. It split cleanly and fell into two halves. The woman would stay.

The light at the wing tip tilts as the plane circles. Its bright planet had seemed fixed at the horizon. Now it scribes a wide arc as the plane banks into darkness. Local time in Nairobi is 6.05am. The aircrew bring a tray of hot towels. Miles wipes his face and hands. The towel is almost too hot to touch, but cools quickly. The plane tilts again and the porthole shows the dawn coming. The sky is still black above the wing. Below, it falls in shades of indigo, folded drapes that sink to a line of smoking orange where the sun is splitting the horizon.

Miles dozes, then feels the plane lurch again as it hits turbulence. The seatbelt light beeps above his head. Below the wing the land is dull khaki. Dark hill ridges come into view, an avalanche of grey mist frozen into each valley. Light strengthens from the widening band of crimson at the horizon. Then a flat, parched landscape etched with settlements, the circles of old kraals scarring the veldt. A few tiny lights flicker, forming lines, squares, rectangles. Dawn chill is waking the villages and farms below. Miles imagines the people beneath them. Hearing the choir of engines through sleep. Glancing up from kindling a fire or guarding cattle to see a silver fuselage and vapour trail. Yet the plane gives little sensation of flying, just this turgid droning progress. He stares down as the land rises under its dipping wing. The bare peak of Mount Kenya appears to the left and recedes, a glowing cone of rock that is lost as the plane slips into cloud.

When Miles looks up from his book for the last time, they're skimming the outskirts of Nairobi. The plane shudders and sinks lower, passing over a road lined with industrial units and neon signs. Then it's circling Jomo Kenyatta airport. Scrubby fields and flat-topped acacia trees and blue peri meter lights pass under the wing as they touch down.

 
* * *

 
Carol is still dozing. Maybe it's the heating coming on – water creaking and clinking into the radiators – that finally wakes her. Maybe it's the call of a jackdaw on the chimney pot above the bedroom. Every year a new brood is raised there. She sits up and notices the empty space in the double bed. It's not a surprise, but there is still a small tug of disappointment. She slips on her nightgown and opens the curtains. A thrush is busy on the lawn, thrashing a snail against one of the stones in the little herb garden Miles planted. It's not yet dawn, but there is a pale intimation of day beyond the silhouette of hills. Carol pulls the bedclothes back over the warm place where she has been sleeping and pads downstairs into the empty house.

 
* * *

 
Miles sits in the Java Café with a cup of black tea, fishing out his mobile phone to send Carol a text to say that he's arrived safely. There'll be no network from now on. Not in Uganda. He finishes the tea and makes his way to Gate Eight. The attendant frisks him half-heartedly. Then he's climbing aboard a small jet that will take him over Lake Victoria. It's just one hour's flight to Entebbe. He dozes most of the way, lulled by the sun where it seeps through the porthole. When he wakes, his skin itches with a papery sensation.

He'll get a couple of hours' rest at the hotel. Then he'll walk down to the office in Nakasero for the first briefing. He feels light headed, drunk with light. A group of small islands goes by on the lake, covered in oil palms. He sees the faint trails of fishing boats written on water. Now the light is almost unbearable. His head is a gourd that's been scoured with salt. The water below is beaten copper, a gleaming brown patina. He pulls the shade down and tries to sleep.

When Miles steps down from the plane, the runway is already heating up. Uganda wraps him in the scent of wet foliage, scorched earth, charcoal smoke, burned hide and rotting fish. Unmistakeable. The lake glistens beyond the perimeter fence and the undulating bush. There's a steady, warm breeze. Then he's squinting at the pink immigration form, entering his address and passport number. The officer in the glass cubicle looks up listlessly and stamps his visa. Now he's waiting at baggage reclaim, his palms damp and prickly with heat. A stray dog is jumping on and off the carousel, which keeps jamming as the bags lurch into view. He finds a trolley and heaves his holdall from the conveyer belt. He chooses the Nothing to Declare exit and walks on. Jjuko, the driver, greets him and takes his bag to the Land Cruiser. Then the forty-kilometre drive to Kampala along the Entebbe road. These days the road is safer, but still brings a twinge of apprehension. And they avoid it at night.

Miles becomes almost preternaturally alert. Everything seems astonishingly bright. Even at this hour, vehicles crowd the road. New hotels are being built for the Commonwealth summit. They appear at regular intervals, festooned in bam-boo scaffolding. Since his last visit, houses have appeared where there were little gardens, or shamba, before. In Uganda there are two rainy seasons and a family can feed themselves from a small patch of land. They pass little roadside markets tended by women in bright gomesis. The stalls are piled with pyramids of tomatoes and peppers, mangos and oranges, sweet potatoes and passion fruit. Dusky branches of green plantain are piled on the red earth. Sacks of charcoal and bundles of sugar cane are slung across old-fashioned bicycles, which are pushed along. The roadside bars, pharmacies, beauty parlours and pork joints look like pigeon cotes nailed together from random timber and sport racy, hand-painted signs. They pass smouldering brick kilns, stacks of pottery, workshops making lurid sofas, wooden beds, coffins and stacks of metal security gates. They're caught in a stream of white Toyota saloons, ancient lorries, sugar cane transporters, mini-van matatu taxis, mopeds and bicycles fitted with tasselled seats to carry passengers. They drive inside a haze of fumes, passing under jackfruit trees and broad matoke leaves. Closer to the city, a few high-rise buildings come into view above the Omo and Guinness advertisements. A moustached troubadour grins with his guitar from the Bell brewery hoarding.
Bell lager shares your passion
. Miles tries to remember if he's ever met a Ugandan with a moustache.

Then they're stuck at the roundabouts below Nakasero. Tyres grind diesel fumes from the oil-stained earth. Teenage boys flit between cars, matatu and lorries, hawking bags of coffee beans for the drivers to chew. The bags are made out of banana fibre. Boda-boda mopeds flit in and out of the traffic, their female passengers riding side-saddle. Women walk beside the road, balancing jerry cans and baskets of plantain on their heads. The traffic lurches forward a few feet, spurting smoke. Hump-backed cows and skinny goats graze by the roadside. A few black kites circle the Hindu temple, watching the city below. The temple dominates the marketplace, a marquetry puzzle of cream-coloured stone. Then Miles is dozing again, his head knocking on the window in the sun. When he looks up, a marabou stork is sailing just above the windscreen, its pink gullet swinging as it wheels into blistering air.

 
* * *

 
Carol is cupping a mug of tea in her hands, watching a fleece of mist drag itself across the fields. The hilltops are already clear. She can see a stack of yellow pipes, a scar of clay running across the fell. They're putting in a new pipeline to bring Norwegian gas right across the country. Every pub and B&B in the area is putting up fitters who've come to weld up the pipes and bury them from coast to coast. It will always be known as the year of the pipeliners. Though she'll remember it for something else.

She puts the cup down among the interlocking rings that lace Miles' desk. The skin on the back of her hands is faintly mottled. It creases like vellum when she stretches her fingers. Sunflowers are drooping in the garden outside. A spider has tied its web from the corner of the shed to old bean canes tangled with brittle growth. The computer is switched off and she can see herself, ghostly on the flat screen. She could check for messages, but it's too early. Uganda is two hours ahead. Was that right? Ahead or behind? Ahead, she's sure. In which case she should switch on, but she'll be late for school.

Miles had told her not to worry about hearing from him until later in the day. Carol has never been to Africa, has never wanted to go. Except maybe to Zanzibar. The name is beautiful. It draws her, somehow.
Zanzibar
. Centre of the ancient spice trade where clove-scented zephyrs blow off the land to the sea. It was the centre of the Arab slave trade, too. She has to remember that. She can almost hear Miles correcting her, placing suffering where it belonged.

On the wall of the study is a small camel-hair prayer rug from Mali. It's flanked by four Congolese masks, their dark wood carved into grim faces with slits for eyes. They make her flinch every time she passes. Carol sips at the cold tea, slips her hand into her nightdress and grimaces. She dresses, eats a bowl of muesli, packs her briefcase, then leaves, pulling the front door shut behind her.

 
* * *

 
On the fifth day, Miles is woken by rain pattering on attic sky-lights. If he stands on tiptoe there'll be a view of green fells and grazing sheep. Carol's body is warm, just beyond his. He pushes the sheet away to reach for her. Instead, the Hadada ibis fly past, squawking over the hotel with crude, throaty cries. He remembers them now. How he's seen them on the parkland with the storks and cattle egret. Close up, they look like huge, iridescent curlews.

Kampala rain pours like sacks of rice emptied against the metal roof. Water is slapping down from the eaves, gurgling and draining away in the compound. It's a cool morning. He twitches aside the mosquito curtain and peers through the mesh in the unglazed window. There's a blue Mercedes parked next to a white pick-up truck. A man in a boiler suit is carrying a jerry can of water. He's wearing gumboots, stepping across rivulets of red where dust from the road is draining across the tarmac. Purple blossom from the jacaranda tree is being carried away by the rain.

The thoughts of home are a dark thicket, impenetrable now. He catches sight of himself in the mirror, naked. He's slept under one thin sheet, stuffing the coverlet into a cupboard. And the night had been cooler, too. It's the second wet season, when the day starts with rain. He breathes in slowly, watching his chest inflate above the bush of pubic hair. He's lost weight and his stomach looks sunken. His penis feels inert. He pulls his foreskin back and sees the glans, moist as a seed in its pale skin. The blue vein is mysterious, a quiet river, his own blood tattooed there. Under a layer of low cloud the light is strengthening, silvering wet leaves. Brown parrots are squabbling in the trees outside. The gates open and the blue Mercedes pulls away.

Miles pushes a Malarone tablet out of its blister pack and swigs it down with bottled water. He's been bitten on the ankle by a mosquito and it itches maddeningly. That's despite long trousers and desert boots and Jungle Formula sprayed on his arms and face. Mosquito repellent and Bell Lager – that's the smell of Kampala nights for him. Bitter and intoxicating. When he gets dressed and pulls on his boots he finds a split in one of them where the welt has pulled away. He'll need to find a new pair back in England.

Today is Sunday. His first day off since he'd stepped from the plane. He remembers the wing tilting as they circled Nairobi: scrubby fields with thorn trees, then the slum-lined railway line and runway lights below. When he crossed the tarmac there were swifts flickering over the airport buildings. The same birds that fly from Spain and North Africa to breed and then scream in gangs over his roof in Yorkshire.

Miles picks up his spectacle case and goes out to breakfast in the enclosed hotel garden where a waiter is drying rain from the chairs. He picks up some pineapple, sweet bananas; a slice of watermelon. A plain yoghurt spooned from the carton. A slice of toasted bread with a dab of butter. Then coffee, weak, insipid and unforgivable when Ugandan beans are so good. The fat American he calls Big Mac is booming familiarly to the hotel staff.

‘Hiya Freddie, how're ya doin'?'

Freddie is the Kenyan who works at reception and serves breakfast and breaks eggs on a hot griddle. He looks about seventeen. The shambling American dwarfs him.

‘Be-yootiful day. Whaddya got?'

Freddie obligingly opens the silver tureens to show bacon, sausages and tilapia.

‘Summa that and summa that and… yeah, eggs over easy.'

Traffic hoots on the road beyond the perimeter wall.

‘Yeah, yeah... be-yootiful, more-a that Freddie… and gimme summa those….'

From behind him come the smooth, unbroken tones of the Brits who sit at breakfast tables in safari suits with their laptops, stirring their coffee.

…well, you can only ask these people and see what they say…
safeguards? don't make me laugh…! well you'd think so wouldn't
you...? so much of the stuff goes missing as soon as it's put down… 
you'd think that they'd respect the fact it was for their own
people… they don't see it as stealing... well, we call it corruption,
but they'd call it something else… looking after the family, I
suppose… blood being thicker than… absolutely hopeless… dispiriting in the end… my predecessor actually tried to put a stop to
it, but to no avail. Ah well… do you think Jjinja would make a
good base in your experience, of being there, I mean, or Makerere,
actually on campus?…really? on the campus? Joseph Mwiine,
oh he's very …entirely plausible... very nice chap… oh yes, we
take delivery on Wednesday… and eventually they'll take
over…. At the end of the day we can only try to help with
logistics... when Isabelle comes we'll check that… oh, she's very
able... terribly able…

 
Miles watches the American push food into his big face, blinking wretchedly as he does so. He watches the Chinese postgraduate student making an entry in his diary, column after column of neat black characters. He sees a pied crow alight on the jacaranda tree in the compound, its eye round and bright as agate. The thin girl, Mary, is wiping red dust from the steps that lead into the hotel, working in bare feet, her orange nylon overall riding up her thighs. He sees the American delve into his ear then examine his finger. Freddie watches impassively from behind the griddle. Mary flicks her rag into a bucket of dirty water. Miles rises and passes with a quiet
thank you
and slips into the gloom of his room to pack his laptop.