The Drowning Lesson (10 page)

An iridescent reflection of water shimmered on the ceiling – it must come from the dam behind the house. As I walked towards the windows at the back of the room, my heart jolted: a man and a woman were standing silently against the wall, watching me. The man, with grizzled grey hair and milky irises, stood shoulders back, as if to attention. The woman was younger, neat-featured, plump. She wore a faded dress, a green woollen hat and battered plimsolls. Her eyes shone in the gloomy room. A second passed as we gazed at each other. As the shock ebbed, I managed to smile. She stepped forward, introducing herself to us in broken English; she was called Elisabeth; the old man was her brother, Josiah. He looked after the garden but spoke only Setswana. She was in charge of the house and the food. They worked for the owner and lived here, keeping the place going between his visits.

A gardener? A housekeeper? Servants had never been part of the deal. I'd thought it would be just us, together as a family; that had been the point. That, Adam's work and my research. An awkward guilt began to burn. It was easy enough to have help in England but I wasn't sure of the rules in Botswana and already it felt crowded, though I could hardly ask them to leave.

Then Adam was there, smiling and proffering his hand. Josiah took it with a little bow. Adam asked where his village was and how he managed his plot of land. Elisabeth, beaming, began to translate. Having taken his jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled up, Adam looked cool and at home. My linen trousers were rumpled and Sam had dribbled milk down my back. Plot of land? Adam had done his homework – he was better prepared than I was, ahead of me already. The bitterness began to return.

A distant wail rose above Elisabeth's quiet voice. Sam. His crying would have woken the girls and they'd all be frantic, not having seen where we'd disappeared to.

I ran, tripping over the rug and banging my shin on the table. Adam moved forward to help, but I was quickly outside and at the car; even as I was wrenching open the door, I could see that it was empty. I looked around, frantically scanning the garden and the drive before I realized they were right next to me under the tree, with Teko. She was crouching down and crooning in a low-pitched tone, holding Sam, her hand cupped over his left cheek as if to shelter the naevus from the sun. He was hiccuping, absorbed in pulling her necklace towards his mouth, the blue stones shining in his small fingers. Zoë was leaning against Teko's shoulder, one foot swinging back and forth to the rhythm in the tune. Alice, a little apart,
jumped up and down, watching how the dust ballooned around her sandals. This was worth a thousand references.

Adam came breathlessly up behind me.

‘You win. She can stay,' I said.

He hugged me, laughing. I noticed Kabo grinning, doubtless relieved that we were behaving like a normal couple. He probably thought my earlier irritation was because of tiredness. The rules that allowed us to slip between the roles of lovers and competitors were complex. Adam could win now: compared to the things we usually fought over, it seemed unimportant.

Once Kabo had gone, and the cases had been unloaded, Zoë ran up and down the corridor, her feet thudding on the floorboards. Adam whistled as he took out his books and stacked them on a shelf in the sitting room, pushing together a row of the owner's to make space. Alice walked about on tiptoe, opening cupboards, peering inside and closing them again. Leaving Sam with Adam, I stepped through the front door onto the wide veranda that ran the length of the house. A table and chairs were grouped in the shade. In front of me a vast sweep of brown land stretched to the distance, pierced by thousands of thorn trees and carved into uneven ravines. A line of mauve hills crumpled against the horizon.

I felt a prickle of apprehension. Despite Kabo's warning, I hadn't imagined we would be quite so alone. There was no sign of buildings or domestic life although some goats clambered among wild fig trees in a gully by the track. The sky was wider and
emptier than any I'd ever seen. It was difficult to take in that thousands of miles away in England this high flawless blue would become a low, rain-smudged blanket of cloud.

Zoë joined me, wanting to explore. I remembered the shimmer on the ceiling and, longing to be in cool water again, I pulled out our damp swimming things from the overnight bag and hurriedly sprayed mosquito repellent onto Zoë's skin. It hadn't seemed necessary by the pool yesterday but it was hotter here, much wilder. Zoë ran, whooping, down the scrubby slope behind the house; I followed more slowly, searching the ground for snakes. It wasn't until I reached the edge of the water that I saw there wasn't a dam after all. In front of us was a small circle of brown water crusted with green scum and invaded by reeds. The trees around the edge were looped with trailing creepers that reached down to the water's surface. A line of cup-like nests dangled over the pond, small yellow birds darting in and out. Zoë bent to slip off her sandals; we watched as the mud rose up between her toes, like small, brown slugs. Insects buzzed in hoof-prints around the muddy edge.

‘I don't like it, Mummy.' She backed away, shaking her head.

‘I made a mistake, darling. It's not for swimming. Let's put on your shoes, we'll go back.'

I wiped the mud off her feet with the damp towel.
She put on her sandals and ran back up the slope to the house. It had never occurred to me that out of the frame of Adam's lake picture there might have been patches of scum on the water, or insects in the puddled mud at the edge.

Zoë disappeared into her room and I began to explore. The house was a series of thatched rooms, on the same level, strung together with narrow corridors. The one at the end would be ours: it was large enough for Sam's cot; we'd put him near the glass doors that opened to the front garden, where he could watch the light moving on the leaves outside. In the adjoining room, Zoë was curled next to her zebra, the owl and the knitted lions; Alice lay alongside, holding Sam's elephant, one leather ear discoloured where it had been sucked so often. She was relating a story involving the rescue of a baby elephant from lions with the help of an owl. It had been a while since I'd seen them so close; I tiptoed away.

The kitchen was a dark, stifling room, tacked to the back of the house; a small fridge hummed in the corner, a forest of bottles balanced on top. A blackened stove crackled with logs. A door to the outside gave with a creaking rush and I stumbled into a back yard with a couple of sheds, a patch of straggling maize and some sunflowers. An old dog lying by the wall woke at the noise, and nosed towards me, sniffing at my feet. Close up, there were leaking scabs on
his yellow coat. He lost interest in me, collapsing again in an ungainly heap. Under a thorn tree a goat backed away, straining at its tether, hoofs scrabbling on the hard soil. This was someone else's territory. I hurried back through the kitchen and into the sitting room, where Adam was walking up and down with Sam.

‘Can you take him? Kabo wants to show me the study he rigged up in the garage. He's managed to get us online.' He smiled as he put Sam into my arms. ‘Isn't this amazing? It's going to be such fun here.'

Fun? The dark room with its heavy upholstery and the monstrous kudu head seemed alien to me; through the window the harsh sweep of landscape was different from anything I'd imagined. How would we manage here, day after day? What would we actually do?

Later, Zoë came into our room while I was lying on the pillows, feeding Sam. Leaning against me, she stroked his head, watching how his toes wriggled as he fed. ‘Is this really Africa?' she whispered, round the thumb in her mouth.

‘Yes.' I hugged her with one arm. ‘It really is.'

She stared at me for a moment, then disappeared again.

After his feed Sam's face crumpled. He pushed restlessly against my shoulder and weariness overwhelmed me.

Teko was sitting in the kitchen. ‘Teko, could you look after Sam while I sleep for a short while?' She stood up, her hand darting to her neck to touch her necklace again, as if it were a talisman. She took him from me, frowning with concentration. I pointed to the back kitchen door and shook my head. ‘Please don't take him outside.'

She nodded.

Lying on my bed again, Zoë's question reverberated; after the leave-taking from work and school, the vaccinations and the anti-malarials we had started to take, the packing and the long journey, was this really Africa? Could anywhere bear the weight of expectation we had built up? Where the grass was green and the sun was warm and we would all be happy. The underside of the thatched roof was festooned with webs as big as bird's nests. Spiders and other insects would be moving in the darkness above me. My last thought was a prayer that nothing would fall on my face as I slept.

When I woke, Adam was snoring lightly next to me and the heat from his body had drenched my shirt. My mouth was parched. The house was silent. The girls' room was empty, and so was the kitchen. Where were they all?

‘Adam.'

He was breathing deeply, his glasses crooked, hair slicked into strands. He opened his eyes and glanced
around. ‘I'd forgotten where we were for a moment,' he said, looking amused. His eyelids drifted together again.

‘The children have disappeared. So has Teko.' My voice was thin with panic.

He pulled himself to sitting, glancing out of the window. ‘I saw them outside when I was in the garage,' he said cheerfully. ‘They were heading towards the back garden.'

The reeds around the pond had been dank and tangled. Shoving my feet roughly into sandals, I pushed open the French windows, the heat a tight fist against my face. Running down the slope, I scanned the smooth surface of the water before I heard a laugh. It was so long since I'd heard Alice really laugh that I wasn't sure it was her.

‘Ally? Zoë?'

The laughter had come from my left where there was a thick mat of flattened reeds. The muddy water bubbled between the tough strands. How much weight would they hold? The weight of a child, several children? As I pushed aside a clump of upright stems, a long insect landed on my wrist, orange wings whirring. I shook it off rapidly. There was a smell of stagnant water and decaying vegetation. Was it deep? Deep enough to be dark and silent at the bottom? Fear tightened like a band around my chest.

‘Alice?'

The water closed above my feet. I pushed aside another thick wall of reeds, and glimpsed the red of Zoë's dress, then Sam's waving fists. He was lying in a shallow container made of woven plastic balanced on a mat of reeds, gazing at the branches overhead while his reaching hands opened and closed. Teko, crouching by his side, held the edge of the container; the girls squatted next to her. Water rising to my ankles, I stepped forward and snatched him up. He began to wail.

Alice scrambled to her feet. ‘You're spoiling our game.' Her voice was loudly indignant, but she must have known it was dangerous.

‘Come inside. Teko, I asked you not to take the children outside.'

Teko's face was expressionless as she picked up the basket and followed me silently. Zoë began to cry.

Later, Sam settled to sleep; I tucked the edges of his mosquito net under the cot mattress and sat for a while, watching his birthmark fading, blotted out with shadow as the room darkened.

Adam was reading a story to the girls in the sitting room, Zoë on his lap, Alice's hand on his shoulder. He glanced up. ‘It was ingenious in its way, Em,' he said. ‘They were playing Moses in the bulrushes –'

‘It was a ridiculous place for Teko to take them.'
Sam might have tipped from the basket, sliding without a sound under the brown water. He could have drowned immediately. ‘We ought to ask her to leave.'

Alice winced; Adam put his arm round her. ‘I talked to Elisabeth just now,' he replied. ‘Teko misunderstood Alice. She thought you'd told the children it was all right. The water was only inches deep where they were playing – I've checked. No harm done.'

A baby could drown in inches. Through the window, the pond glowed in the sunset; above, it was as if a great fire was burning in the sky, shot through with yellow, crimson and scarlet flames. A single long-necked bird streaked past, black against gold. My hands on the windowsill were trembling. Adam came up beside me, and we watched, side by side, in silence. The sunset didn't last long and in minutes the sky was black.

I lay awake for a long time, staring into the dark outside. We'd come thousands of miles to a different world. It must be because we'd travelled so quickly that I felt I had lost all my bearings.

When I woke next morning, my uncertainties had melted away. The sun lay across the bed in bright yellow stripes. Adam stirred beside me, the warmth of his body reaching to me. We hadn't made love since
Sam was born and it was as if we were meeting again after a long time apart. When he realized he wasn't hurting me, he pushed more and more deeply inside. We had to be quiet – Sam's cot was next to the bed. As he moved faster, Adam put his hand across my mouth, muffling my cries. This morning it was his turn to be in charge. After sex, after showering, we became our daytime selves. If Adam had told me what to do then, I would have been incensed.

We had breakfast outside, Sam sitting peacefully on my lap. He seemed happy after sleep, his blue eyes shining as he watched Zoë chattering. Streaks of sunlight lay across the bushes; chuckling birdsong came from the gum trees. ‘Kingfishers,' said Adam, without looking up from
The Rough Guide to Africa
as a brilliantly coloured little bird appeared, flashing though the branches.

‘How did you know what the bird would be, Daddy?' Alice demanded.

‘I bought a CD of African birdsong, played it in the car on the way to work again and again until I knew it off by heart,' he replied seriously. I laughed.

There was warm homemade bread, guava and paw-paw for breakfast; the air smelt freshly of trees and grass, and a deeper, dustier scent that came from the bush in front of us. In the clear air the gnarled shapes of the thorn trees stood out sharply.

‘I don't like this melon. It tastes of sick,' Alice said suddenly.

‘It's not melon, Ally, its paw-paw. I'll have it if you don't want it.' I tried to take the thin sliver of fruit, but it fell through my fingers to the ground.

‘Christmas tomorrow,' Adam said. There was a little silence as we all stared at him. Despite the trees at the airport and the hotel, Christmas didn't feel close or even real.

‘Let's plan something fun.' He flourished his book. ‘There's a game park not too far from here, with giraffes and rhinos and zebras, we could explore those hills over there or maybe we better go and say hello to our neighbours in the village.'

‘I want to see the animals!' shouted Zoë, jumping up and hanging round his neck. ‘Please, Daddy!'

‘Can Teko come?' asked Alice.

I nodded – she might enjoy it. As I leant to study a photograph of rhinos in Adam's book, soft footsteps shuffled past just below the veranda: Josiah with the dog at his heels. With his hoe, like a rifle over his shoulder, and a khaki hat pulled low, he looked like an old soldier turning up for duty. He turned to nod but, catching sight of Sam, his face expanded into a wide smile; he gave a little wave before walking on, singing to himself in a low, rumbling voice. Zoë hung over the veranda railings to watch the dog as he lumbered after the old man towards a bed of flowering cacti.

By my feet, a seething heap of black ants was obliterating the scrap of paw-paw, a dark trail already marching up the steps. How had they arrived so quickly? Alice, face averted, stepped over the boiling mass, but Zoë squatted, peering closely. Soon the paw-paw would vanish completely.

The next day, Christmas morning, we left at sunrise, Zoë clutching the knitted hippo from Megan that I'd stuffed into her stocking the night before. A purple paper hat was wedged over her fair hair, her T-shirt already smudged with chocolate. She climbed into the back next to Teko and Sam, asleep in his car seat. Alice sat silently on his other side. Adam switched on the radio and carols filled the car. He and Zoë began to sing along. A sense of wellbeing spread through me: we were spending Christmas in this new country on a gap year all together. I felt lucky again and leant to give Adam a kiss as he drove. He smiled and caught my hand in a brief grip.