Martin stands beside me. I didn’t hear him arrive.
But then I’m only imagining him.
He lights up his imaginary cigarette. Ha ha ha.
‘What do you want, Martin?’
‘It’s not easy being a mercenary.’ His Rooster is the only light, a fierce ember. I imagine him extinguishing it on the back of my neck. ‘Africa is full of problems people want solved. Do you know the last time I took a holiday?’
‘No. When?’
‘Ages. Fucking years. So don’t go anywhere else. Don’t piss me off. I’ve booked a week in Mauritius. A package deal, all inclusive, non-refundable, you see.’
‘I see, yes.’
Somewhere Jamhuri snores softly. The fishermen’s lights glitter on the reef, far out. And Martin steps away.
It’s strange — isn’t it — how I can take all the bits of the story and fit them one way, or another. I can make Martin appear and disappear. I can make him a mercenary in need of a holiday or a rapist or a man with a broken car. I can conjure a woman in a yellow shirt and the pale-skinned man who loved her.
I remember what Strebel said about narrative. But what he didn’t make clear enough was how malleable the narrative might be, how slippery the stories. Physics might fix the course of a moving vehicle away from a dog. But what of the non-physical world?
There’s a feeling I have now of crowding, shouting possibilities — that every version is true. And none. Put Martin here beside me. Leave him in Magulu, or at a titanium mine run by South Africans. Take away the tulip tree above me. Take away the mangroves and the sea. Put a different piece of cloth in a jar. In a cave. Or not in a cave.
I was mistaken. The fabric only looked like Sophie’s dress. The red cotton flannel with white and yellow flowers.
I was right. It’s the same, the exact same.
It can’t be a coincidence.
It is a coincidence.
There’s a cup in the sink, a hammer in the corner of a dark room. The fuel pump was never broken. The pieces of the cooking pot were found. The girl’s cervix dilated and the baby was born, happy, wailing. The couple and their lost dog were found, they are alive and well in a suburb of London.
All I had to do was turn around and go back to Tom and take his hand in mine and whisper, ‘Let’s have a child.’ And we walked on beside the golden lake. Elise faded, a stranger, someone we wouldn’t recall ever having met.
Tanga, May 30
Harry is at the Yacht Club bar. His face lights up. ‘Hello, pet.’ He orders me a beer. I drink it very quickly. He raises his eyebrows, but orders another. I think Harry would be perfectly happy if I became his drinking buddy. Possibly, I might, too, in a numb, muffled way. He wants to chat, wants to know what I’ve been up to. I tell him I went to the caves with Gloria.
‘Gloria hates the caves. Why the hell did she take you there? It’s a godawful place.’
‘I have no idea,’ I say. But I do. The idea creeps up my arm like a caterpillar. I take the beer, down nearly half of it. ‘What don’t you like about the caves?’
‘Bad,’ he says and takes a swig of his beer.
‘Bad?’
He laughs now, but not really.
‘Why are the caves bad, Harry?’
He shakes his head and pushes back from the bar, as if he might leave. But he can’t, I know that. I lean in, whisper gently, ‘Harry, I’m in trouble. Something happened at the caves that I don’t understand. I saw something that maybe was left for me. A message. But I’m not sure. So I need you to tell me about the caves.’
‘Why did she take you there.’ It’s not a question anymore.
‘Tell me, Harry.’
He licks his lips, then moistens them more with beer. ‘Jesus,’ he says. And takes a long draft. There’s a new feeling about him and I think it might be fear. ‘I didn’t see you coming.’
‘Harry, you’re not making any sense.’
‘Sense? You want sense? Darling, don’t stick around here.’
I put my hand on his, very deliberately, my soft, young hand over his gnarled mitt. Go on, I say with my hand. He puts his other hand over mine, and gives it a pat.
‘I’m cursed,’ he says.
‘What kind of a curse?’
‘I wasn’t always like this, a sad old sod.’
I wait, and after half a beer, he obliges. ‘A young couple went missing in the caves.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘The guide told me.’
‘People heard them for days. Longer. A week. They’d gone looking for their dog, that’s what the theory was. But no one could find them. Too many echoes, too many tunnels.’ He takes another sip, Dutch courage. ‘The local police even brought a sniffer dog from Nairobi. But it couldn’t smell anything because of the bat guano.’
I imagine them, the young couple, entering the caves with their little dog, the dog disappearing, their searching for him, possibly falling, possibly climbing into the hole. They lost their way, slowly, turn by turn, and did not quite appreciate the calamity: they thought they were found; they heard their friends calling for them; they thought they were going to be all right. And then terror when the voices faded.
‘Did you know them?’
Harry shakes his head. ‘Sisal people. Expats. Before my time.’
‘Then what do they have to do with you?’
‘Messengers. They were messengers.’
‘They were bringing you a message?’
‘She was. She came to me. She was pretty like you. Slim, dark hair. She was trying to help.’
‘What was the message, Harry?’
The bar fills up and the noise gives Harry somewhere to hide. Sikhs in neat turbans and twined beards are laughing at the bar with plump Tanzanian men, with yachtees, with crusty old-timers like Harry. Three young Muslim men play darts while their wives in black abayas drink Cokes. Beyond us, the dark sea filters out, taking the fishermen with it.
I touch Harry’s hand again, and he’s about to go on, but—
‘Hi, there.’
It’s Gloria.
‘Christ,’ says Harry under his breath.
She says, ‘Harry still telling you his glory-day stories?’
Finishing his beer, Harry takes a deep breath and finds himself again. ‘Why aren’t you home polishing your broomstick?’
‘Oh, that’s funny.’ Gloria looks at me. ‘We had a fling, Harry and I. It didn’t end well.’
‘Ended just fine for me,’ Harry retorts.
‘The thing is. The thing was,’ says Gloria. ‘He had all these stories. And then he just stopped calling. Acting like he hardly knew me. It took me a while to figure out he’d simply run out of stories. He’s nothing more than his stories. A comic book.’
‘I never enjoyed scorning a woman, Gloria. But you — it was a pleasure.’
Gloria appears to ignore this. ‘Harry was quite the adventurer. Did he tell you about the goats?’
‘Is this necessary?’ There’s an odd tremor in his voice, a return to the uncertain ground of the caves.
‘Come on, Harry. She’s not going to sleep with you.’
I don’t want this, don’t want Gloria’s elliptical conversation, her bitterness peeking out like a blood-red petticoat. I start to get down from the bar stool, but Gloria puts her hand on my shoulder possessively: ‘About twenty years ago now, Harry was screwing this woman whose husband owned a bean farm out near Tabora.’