The wolf hour, p.21
The Wolf Hour, page 21
‘He has done bad things,’ Dominic said. ‘Some would say evil things.’ He lightly touched the crucifix he wore around his neck. ‘I know this, I have travelled his path. We who have killed—’ he glanced at Stephen then back at her ‘—must learn that reconciliation is the only way.’
He went to meet Francis. Together they walked across to the bench seat and sat down beneath the compound’s shady kigelia tree. Tessa could see them through the window. Dominic angling himself to face Francis, while Francis shrugged or moved restlessly, as if checking to see who was behind him.
Someone—Beatrice, perhaps—had given Francis one of the standard-issue Bibles they usually kept in the classrooms. At one stage Francis lifted it up and pointed to it, but when Dominic shook his head, Francis pitched it across the grass as though it had caught fire, then stuck out his chin, a gesture that seemed hostile, almost threatening. Then, just as quickly, he turned away again and, dropping to the ground, he crouched with his face buried in his hands, the curve of his back convulsing.
Tessa would have gone to him but Stephen stepped forward and held her by the upper arm. She could feel his fingers dig into her flesh. She struggled against him, but he held her fast.
‘Leave him,’ he said, and in that moment Francis got to his feet and ran off, his legs scissoring with long powerful strides.
Tessa pulled herself free from Stephen’s grip and stepped away.
‘There are boys like him all over this country,’ Stephen said.
‘Oh, right,’ Tessa said and shot him a furious look, but Stephen held her gaze as if issuing some kind of challenge.
‘Yeah right, so do you really think you can change things?’
Her stomach clenched, she wanted to strike him, just as she might have done when they were kids. ‘What are you saying?’ she asked in a low whisper. It was the certainty in his voice that sickened her.
‘Look, Tess, I’m sorry if life doesn’t meet your expectations—maybe you think your idea of “humanity” can work, but let’s face it: you’re wrong. People who want to change the world burn out from disappoinment. Humanity is nothing more than a biological label for the animal species we belong to.’
‘Oh, fuck your self-serving philosophy, Stephen! Cherie was right, you’re a complete arsehole. You know, not everyone’s an opportunist like you. You think your theories justify your behaviour? They don’t. You make them fit to suit yourself. You go into business, Reba’s Firearms. What’s that, anyway? You provide people with guns.’ She glared at him, but his face remained impassive. ‘That’s what you do, don’t you? You provide people with a means of killing each other and then you go off and swill expensive wine. You …’ But her voice faltered.
Stephen’s jaw tightened. ‘I run a legitimate business,’ he said in a reasonable tone. Then he smiled and gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Besides, everyone who comes here, whether it’s the celebrity do-gooders who organise anti-poverty campaigns or the geologists or the aid agencies, they’re all the same. NGOs replace missionaries. They all stake their claim. How am I any different?’
Tessa threw her hands in the air. ‘Because what you do—oh my God—because what you do has different consequences.’
Stephen laughed. ‘Does it? And why should that worry you?’
‘Because you’re my brother!’
‘Right. But there’s something you never seem to get, even after everything that’s just happened to you, and it’s this: I’m no different from anyone else. We’re all here to make a buck, including you.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Really? You say you’re here to do some good, but just like everyone else you’ve got something to gain. Or have you forgotten you’re advancing your career, Dr Lowell?’
He had circled her, worn her argument into the ground. His ability to turn the blame from himself and call her bluff gutted her. He had risked his life to rescue her—what right did she have to call him out when she had followed her own impulses, put others in danger? But worse, and she knew it, was that she had come all this way only for Stephen to show her what she most feared about herself, and there was a flicker in his eye that told her he understood: You’re the problem; you should think more about yourself before judging me.
30
After landing on Gulu’s bumpy tarmac the plane came to a standstill. In the window seat, Neil waited for the engine to shut down. The sun was just beginning to rise, and in the early-morning light he could make out the thick tufts of grass that grew between the cracks in the asphalt.
An infant in front of him was crying—desperate gulping sobs, its fuzzy head just above the headrest. Its mother, whose bangled arm jingled as she cupped its small plump shoulders, cooed, until finally it stopped and, laying its head against her neck, smiled back at him.
Neil glanced across at Leigh. She appeared older than she had before they left—drawn and tired, her eyes puffy and her skin had a pale greyish tinge. It had been a long journey, with numerous delays and too many stopovers. Since their argument in the hospital he had been trying to reconcile the tension between them, but the gap was wide and he felt it extending both back to old grievances and beyond them, into the future. They had said things to each other that could not be unsaid and had spoken little throughout the journey, both understanding that if they did it would only make things worse. He knew that Leigh was trying to work out what she could on her own. It was what made her a good doctor, perfect in an emergency, although she could close off. Still, he could hardly criticise her for that; he too took charge and had the same tendency to shut people out. It was why they were here, wasn’t it? Neither of them could leave things to others.
He reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. On her lap lay a map that included Murchison Falls. At any other time, they might have been setting off on an adventure instead of coming to this troubled place to try to help their daughter. The details were still unclear. Tessa was back at the centre, although there were concerns. ‘She is not doing so well,’ Dominic Oculi had said, his voice becoming reserved and formal when he told them that she had been to the medical clinic and had admitted to shooting one of the rebels. ‘According to the reports, the man died.’ He wouldn’t say any more. All he told them was that he didn’t have enough information himself. The image of Tessa being assaulted and shooting the man left Neil with a rising sense of panic, his thoughts scrambled as if he’d taken a dangerous drug. What good was his knowledge of coelacanths and earthquakes or geological timelines, all those obscure facts that had consumed him—that octopuses have three hearts, that sharks close their inner eyelids for self-protection—what did any of that matter, the endless hours he poured into understanding the world, when he could not keep his own family safe?
As the other passengers gathered their belongings and waited to disembark, he pulled out his phone and switched it on. Gulu airfield was little more than a large paddock with a small makeshift terminal at one end and a dozen or so junked planes—UN mostly. On the other side of the runway he saw a spray of headlights where a business jet and a couple of four-wheel drives were parked. The figures standing there were too small for him to make out the details: a group, probably all men, two of them white, clustered together. As far as he could tell, some kind of uneasy meeting was taking place. He tapped the camera icon on his phone and, holding it to the window, snapped a series of shots in rapid succession. He might have taken more, but Leigh was already standing. ‘Come on, let’s get going.’
As they descended the stairs they were met with a warm breeze. Neil tried to stifle his apprehension by taking in their surroundings. The sun had lifted above the horizon to reveal the landscape just beyond the tarmac. It was intensely green with waist-high grass and shea trees in clumps, their crowns branching against a brooding sky. On either side of the runway, dirt roads cut away, exposing the russet-coloured soil. A crowned crane lifted from the grass; he heard its hooting call and watched until it disappeared from sight. He’d produced half-a-dozen documentaries in Africa, although he’d never had the opportunity to come to Uganda, this wet fertile country of thunderstorms and purple skies. As they walked towards the terminal the smell of the earth rose; it filled his nostrils and he absorbed it—a sickly-sweet scent, the kind he associated with other warm places where people with few means lived close to the ground and in tight proximity. Cow manure, sewage, burning rubbish. In the snow, you could bury those kinds of smells, but not here where everything flourished in the fetid air and seeped into every pore.
When he looked again at where he had seen the men on the tarmac, no one was there. The four-wheel drives had gone and the business jet stood motionless, like a giant insect drying its wings in the morning sun.
He left his phone in his pocket—the battery had run flat over the course of the long journey—and followed Leigh, who was moving through the crowd of people towards the battered carousel. They collected their luggage then located the driver they’d arranged to pick them up. A thin man with a gold-capped tooth, he stood with their names written on a torn piece of cardboard and a welcoming smile at the novelty, or perhaps predictability, of their white faces.
‘Hello, sir, madam. How are you?’
‘Fine, thank you,’ Leigh replied. One side of the man’s face drooped and she found herself trying to identify the cause—the possible result of a mild stroke, or Bell’s palsy, maybe. ‘How are you?’ she asked as he wiped saliva from his chin.
‘I am blessed,’ the man said without irony. ‘I am blessed. Are you UN? What NGO?’
‘Neither,’ Leigh said. ‘We have come to see our daughter.’ She told him they wanted to go to the rehabilitation centre. ‘Afterwards we will go to the hotel. Will you wait?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I will wait.’
He drove badly, pointing out certain landmarks that apparently held interest for him: a new road that the Chinese were building, an authorised car dealer, a motley herd of longhorn cattle. At one point, they passed a cluster of shops where coffins were stacked against a breezeblock wall. An old man in a red T-shirt was working on one, cutting a window into the lid as if to offer the living a view of the dead, or perhaps the dead a view of the outside world.
On the Skype call Tessa had sounded detached, at times almost incoherent. ‘I don’t know what I mean,’ she had said, and Leigh fretted that if Tessa didn’t sleep, she might become even worse. What was going through her mind now? What state had she been in when Stephen found her? His brief text message had given nothing away; Stephen would avoid scrutiny at all costs. She reached for Neil’s hand, and although he took it in his, he did not look at her.
When they reached the rehabilitation centre, a group of teenagers was playing a game, kicking a handcrafted football and shouting loudly to one another. Leigh asked them where Dominic Oculi was, and one of the girls pointed to a low run of concrete buildings along which Leigh recognised the cheerful mural of laughing, blue-armed children from a photograph Tessa had sent.
As they approached the building Tessa appeared, opening a door and stepping outside, almost as if she had stepped out of the painting itself. She was thin and gaunt and there were dark circles around her eyes and purple bruising along her jaw. She smiled and hugged them tenderly, then quickly withdrew.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, as if echoing the parental voice they might use with her.
Leigh smiled anxiously. It was all she could do to stop herself from touching her daughter again—the lobe of her ear, the bruise along her jaw; she wanted to feel her forehead, check if she had a fever.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘I’m okay, really.’
‘You don’t look it,’ Leigh replied. Even as she spoke she noticed Tessa’s broken fingernails and, standing so close to her, could smell her ketotic breath. Had she eaten anything? She wore no make-up and had gathered her hair into an untidy ponytail. Her face was drawn, no longer young-looking. You could not re-create that youthful look—the before look, Leigh thought; once it was lost, it was gone for good. She shook her head. ‘Sweetheart, this is not entirely your fault, you couldn’t see how it would play out.’
‘Mum, please don’t.’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just—please don’t look at me like that.’
‘What do you mean? How am I looking at you?’ Leigh took a breath and Tessa’s eyes darted to where some of the returnees were watching them curiously.
‘Perhaps we can get something to drink,’ Leigh said. ‘A glass of water?’
They went to the canteen and sat at a table where there was a stack of tin cups and a jug of water. Leigh rested her elbows on the sticky plastic cloth and felt the jetlag take hold. A wave of inertia spread over her; the heat was thick, and it was an effort to inhale the air. In the water jug, insect larvae squirmed—juvenile mosquitoes, or wrigglers, as she used to call them when she was young: vectors, disease carriers, as she knew them to be now. She studied Tessa’s complexion and thought it yellow; her eyes were dull, she looked as if she might have a vitamin deficiency—vitamin A, or perhaps malaria. But there were deeper concerns—the fact Leigh could barely admit to herself: her daughter had been to the centre’s clinic, Dominic had told them, the word ‘rape’ said once. It lodged in her brain. She tried to out-think it and found herself worrying about pregnancy, STDs, HIV, the list went on. There would be at least a twelve-week wait before any seroconversion results. Leigh began to diagnose; she wanted a fixable problem for which, even here, among the limited medical supplies, she might find the right medication. Something achievable. She studied the dark bruises around Tessa’s throat and another, she saw now, like a thumbprint in that soft place just behind her ear. Her eyes kept returning to them.
Neil began to fidget. ‘We need to get you home,’ he said in a voice that did not even sound like him. ‘But first, why don’t you come back to the hotel with us? It would be more comfortable there.’
Tessa looked at her father with his hooded eyes and three-day growth; her mother too, wearing a silk scarf that she had knotted around her neck. They were like two people in a boat at sea, and she suddenly felt a new burden that extended to her parents—of how what happened to her could not be contained behind the facade she was working so hard to maintain. She knew she couldn’t tell them not to worry. Her father crossed his arms and it seemed like an awkward gesture.
‘Dad, thanks. But for now, I think I should stay here.’
‘Come on, Tess, you’re in bad shape. Come to the hotel, then come home.’
‘I can’t,’ Tessa said. ‘I need to stay, at least until the inquiry.’
‘Why? Even if an inquiry goes ahead, it’s unlikely you’ll be required to remain in Uganda. We can argue that it’s not safe for you. You can return to Australia.’
Tessa shook her head then said, ‘Maybe if I show you around you’ll understand.’ She stood.
They went across to the school and the small room that, at her suggestion, had become a library. When Tessa spoke, she seemed herself again. In many ways, her parents’ arrival had made her stronger. They were a reminder of restraint, and she needed that now; if she was to stay in one piece she needed to have self-control. She noticed the way her father avoided speaking about his health and saw the tension in her mother’s face—but somehow it helped.
Like Francis had said when they had waited for the rain to ease: you must forget what had happened. Forget what had been done. Be strong. The question was whether or not that was possible.
When they reached her room, Tessa pushed the colourful curtain divider aside and ushered them in. Leigh recognised the clothes that were crumpled on the floor and the camera she’d wrapped as a Christmas present only four months earlier. Such things gave her a sense of comfort, although the bottle of local gin and the tablets in a foil pack alarmed her. Was this how Tessa was coping? Xanax, Temazepam. That she had not even attempted to hide them concerned Leigh even more. She sat on the bed, making room for Tessa to sit beside her. It was a single bed with a mosquito net above it and a slumped mattress that sagged with their weight. There were two pillows. One was without a covering, yellowed and lumpy, the other encased in a pillowslip with a faded Disney print. An ironic Western legacy that Tessa might have dryly commented on at any other time.
Leigh touched her daughter’s arm and felt Tessa flinch. An awkward silence followed and the shell of brightness Tessa presented threatened to crack. There was a strange hesitation in her manner that suggested there was something else she wanted to tell them.
Reaching down, she scratched the scabby insect bite on her ankle.
‘You shouldn’t do that,’ Leigh said in her doctor’s voice. ‘It’ll get infected.’
Tessa brought her hand back to her lap. She didn’t say it was the hand that had held the gun or that it still burnt. She didn’t say what had happened exactly or that Francis was right when he said, You find a place to leave—you go out of your body. Your brain opens a door and you go through it. In this way, you learn how to kill.
She tried for normality. ‘You’ve come all this way,’ she said. ‘And now you see how badly I’ve fucked up.’ She took in a breath and shook her head at her own statement—it was bizarre that, after everything, she was still seeking her parents’ approval. She still wanted that. Wanted them. Wanted to confess.
‘Tess,’ Neil said, ‘you were trying to do something that matters.’
‘No, Dad. I’ve done nothing anyone can be proud of.’ And suddenly there was a need to correct them. She was accountable. She had failed them, failed herself.
‘I want to know what you think is worse,’ she said.
Leigh looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean as a crime against another person …’ Tessa reached back and gathered her ponytail, then brought it over her shoulder and ran her hand down it with a taut wringing action. ‘Do you think it’s worse to rape or to murder?’ she asked.
Neil started to speak, but Leigh raised her hand, feeling some of her old frustration at Tessa’s tunnel vision. ‘Tess, darling, you were defending yourself.’
