‘Except for the Harmattan lilies,’ she responded. She was happiest talking about her garden. ‘They prefer the dry. It’s the end of the season for them.’
There came the sound of the door and of somebody entering the house. I thought it was Julius even though I had left him in my office less than an hour before. He was in the habit now of using it when he pleased. The door swung open. I steeled myself. Saffia jumped up and hurried across the sitting room.
‘Auntie? What have you forgotten? Let me fetch it for you.’
Not Julius then, but the crone, muttering and shuffling past Saffia on her way to her room. Saffia followed her, placing her body between the woman and the verandah where I was sitting, hovering outside the woman’s door. In time the woman emerged and, as she did so, seemed to catch sight of me, for she stopped, turned and shuffled forward, peering through the glass. I nodded to her, but if she noticed she ignored me. I heard her say something to Saffia, I can’t tell you what, because I didn’t, don’t speak their language, but it was all there, in the scolding tone. Saffia closed the door behind her and stood holding on to the handle, her back to me.
When she returned she had withdrawn from me further still. My visit had become untenable. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. What I did next I did out of desperation. It wasn’t what I wanted. I’d imagined it differently, over lunch or in a café, perhaps. Or in the dark hollows of a garden, at a party, left alone for a few minutes. Or walking side by side through Victoria Park. Not the Victoria Park of madmen, beggars and second-hand books salesmen. Another Victoria Park, peopled by students reading in the shade of the frangipani trees and couples like ourselves, one that existed only in the landscape of my imagination.
I had no idea when I would next get the chance to be alone with her. I panicked. I reached out my hand and would have touched her arm, had she not risen swiftly to her feet.
‘Forgive me, Elias, I really must get ready to go.’
Some days later I was in my office. Julius entered. It did me no good at all to see him.
‘Cole, Cole, Cole.’ He was shaking his head. ‘My wife …’ And he wagged his finger at me.
I confess it gave me a jolt, but then I saw he was grinning. I forced myself to smile back, and to greet him. I could hear my voice, cracked and hollow.
‘Oh, Cole, Cole,’ he said. ‘My wife is very upset with me. She asked me to give you this a long while back. And I forgot all about it. I’ve had to beg her forgiveness.’
He placed upon my desk an envelope, yellow with black squares, of the kind you get when you have a film developed. And inside — the images of me, taken at their house the day of my first visit.
So she had told him. Julius had known all the time.
He sat, perched on the edge of my desk; by then he was talking about something else. I forced myself into the appearance of listening. I was distantly aware of him punching my shoulder, of the door closing behind him. I murmured something, I let him go. I sat still, gazing at the surface of my desk. I felt a flicker of something burning in my bowels. Not dislike, it was impossible to dislike a man like Julius. Not dislike, then. A small flicker of hate.
CHAPTER 12
An evening, Friday, Adrian waits for Kai. It is early still and the bar is close to empty. His beer, a local brand, is gassy and pale. Adrian watches the other customers: a pair of African men, friends of the bartender, a small group of expatriate men at the bar. Two local girls keep company with the expats.
A trail of sea air reaches him through the other, darker odours. The beer is his second on an empty stomach. As Adrian looks around his eyes come to rest on one of the women. She is wearing a purple top, leaning her body against the man in front of her, her head over his shoulder. Of her companion Adrian can see little more than an expanse of back, a striped shirt, a tanned forearm. The woman is pretty by any standards, resting against the man with feline languor. Adrian watches her, mentally positions himself in place of the man against whose chest she leans, imagines the feel of her breasts, and wonders what it would be like to have sex with her. He takes a moment to speculate how such a thing might be managed. Would he come here alone, wait for her to approach him? Sit at the bar, perhaps?
Now he realises that she has shifted her gaze and is looking directly at him. She holds his eyes unabashed. A long, dark, opaque stare. Embarrassed, Adrian turns away.
Adrian has spent the better part of the morning at the mental hospital talking to the attendants and staff, those who might have more information on the woman patient. Accompanied at first by Salia, he had eventually managed to persuade the nurse to leave him to his own devices.
From the staff and from the hospital records, Adrian learned there was a pattern to the woman’s admissions. Loosely speaking they occurred every six or seven months. On each occasion she’d been found wandering. Hardly extraordinary in a country where so much of the population had been displaced, still the woman had been brought to the hospital by a stranger or strangers, whose names had sometimes but not always been recorded. Her psychiatric records were neatly kept though scant. No more luck, either, with the ward notes. The attendants had little in the way of formal training. Adrian had spoken to them all, careful to show due deference. A few more details had emerged. Once she had been found outside the gutted ruin of a department store. Twice she’d been examined by the visiting physician, who found her to be in good physical health. No evidence of substance abuse or epilepsy. Her sojourns at the hospital lasted a few days, two weeks at most, and concluded, Adrian was surprised to read, with a self-discharge on each occasion. Her name was Agnes.
When he was as satisfied as he could be, Adrian had gone along to the women’s ward. It was lunchtime. An attendant stood in the middle of the ward ladling rice out of steel vats on to plastic plates. The women moved forward, forming a semicircle around the trolley. From the other side of the room a woman crossed the floor with a stiff-legged gait, the Thorazine shuffle. A long time now since Adrian had seen it. In the trembling hands of others, he recognised, too, the side effects of Haldol. Agnes was sitting on the edge of her bed, holding the plate in her left hand, eating carefully with her right hand, wrist held high, delicately gathering the food with her fingers. He noticed she didn’t lick her fingers clean like most of the others, but poured water over them into a basin from a plastic kettle by the side of her bed.
Adrian approached her from where she could see him. She gave no indication of having heard him. He positioned himself so that he was standing in front of her, leaving her no choice but to look at him.
‘I am Dr Lockheart.’ Not strictly true, but he’d learned how it worked here. She looked up unblinking, the light of her eyes unchanged, either by recognition, or confusion. ‘Come,’ he said, and indicated to her to stand up. He turned and walked away, slowly at first, until he felt her following.
‘Do you know who I am?’ Adrian was sitting in Ileana’s chair, the woman opposite him. Salia had come to act as interpreter. Now he put Adrian’s words into Creole. They had discussed this already; if the woman was from the city she would understand. If she was from elsewhere Salia might or might not be able to help.
Agnes sat, curled upon herself. She offered no answer.
‘Can you tell me your own name?’
She was silent still, though she had moved her head slightly at the sound of his voice. Her fingers worried at a loose thread in her dress. He repeated the question. This time there came a sound, a murmuring, as though she was trying out sounds. In this way she failed to answer any of the basic questions Adrian put to her. The date, day or time, a knowledge of where she was. He watched her carefully, the sideways motion of the head, the pauses in the plucking of the thread. He gathered an impression that she was at some level computing the questions. She hadn’t yet looked at him.