Mountains of the Moon (13 page)

“Stay with us Louise,” the nurse says.

Please, Catherine—Catherine, please.

“Are you with us?”

I’m sideways on an iodine-scented slope. Typhoid dashes past the back of my eyes.

“All done.”

The bluebottle lands on the sonic zapper.

Catherine.

Catherine.

Everything is flashing.

I take Baby Grady over the Humps, sees the dirty Jackal, standing up on Tinker’s gate. Horses is waiting by it, swishing tails. The Jackal int no good, Biscuit int old enough for riding! She does bucking bronco all down the field, with the Jackal riding on top of her head. Reckon she’ll throw him off, might even trample him to death. I tie Baby Grady on tight and we fly up and down the Humps and swing over the river on the rope. In Tinker’s field we walk about, don’t know where the Jackal is. Somewhere sounds like crying. That’s how come we find him, in the ditch, under all the blackberries. I get a stick and bash a path. His arm is so plain snapped as a twig.

“Tinker’s gonna kill me,” he says all sniffling. “An me dad.”

Looks like agony.

“They’re gonna kill me,” he says. Tears is squashing on his eyelashes.

I try for an idea.

“Could say you fell off your bike good and proper.”

He wipes snot on his shoulder.

“I’m gonna,” he says. “You won’t tell Tinker I was on Biscuit?”

“Biscuit,” Baby Grady says.

I has to think about it.

“I won’t tell…”

“Promise?” he says.

His bottom lip is a wobble.

“I won’t tell,” I says, “long as I get my penknife back.”

We get him out of the ditch cos I kneel down and he stands on my back. Then I wheel his bike from by Tinker’s gate. The Jackal keeps stopping like to faint. We do it slow ten steps at a time, we has to sit down on garden walls. His trousers is halfway down; shirt is ripped and runckled up; Biscuit kicked him hard in the back cos the bruise is horseshoe shape.

All of the Smithers come to the door, don’t know how many there is.

“Car nearly hit me.” The Jackal starts crying, looks sideways at me.

“Uh-huh,” I says. “Lucky his bike is still in one piece.”

“Biscuit,” Baby Grady says.

And Mrs. Smithers gets him one. Custard cream.

I make me and Baby Grady a jam sandwich and we take it with us. We wait for a car to pass then we cross the road and go in the bushes and disappear. I tie Grady on my back and climb up the tree, easy on the Sandwich Man’s blocks. Then walk long through the hearts of the trees, got the planks tied nice. Grady int no trouble, he stands on the edge of the floor and leans out on the end of his rope, tends he’s flying like Superman. He int scared. Makes me nervous. I check the rope gain; it’s proper strong, won’t break or come undone. Then he sits down with his sandwich; he don’t eat it, just licks jam off. Dolly comes flipperty-jibberty and I makes her seeds of bread.

Grandad sends Mum letters; she puts them underneath her mattress. He always does a page says
for Lulu
on it. Last one said that the coleus plants is taller than me and my presents is still in the cupboard. Retired weren’t no good cos Nanny give him headache. Stead he’s being a park keeper, the trees at Cranford Park is his for looking after, and the flower beds. He was planting daffodils, ready for Lonely as a Cloud. And when the kids fall off the swings he calls amblances for them. He reckons he seen a monkey in the monkey-puzzle tree. Seen it proper in the colors of black and white. Don’t know if it’s true. Gypsies by the canal has gone. He sent a list of horses for the Derby. I picked Nijinsky, don’t know if it won.

Wonders if to write and arst him case Nanny can make the monkey a sandwich, case he can send my letters separate. I don’t get much chance for under Mum’s bed cos normal she is in it. And tell him I don’t need no more presents, my Africa book is good enough forever cos now I read the pictures and words. Don’t know how many there is, side by side, surprises me: they all mean something. I looks up
tetanus
in the dictionary. Then I final gets it, that your jaws can lock together. I looks at the Masai baby smiling
in the Africa book. I looks at Baby Grady. I looks at the little bottom teefs. I looks at Baby Grady’s teef. Don’t know if to knock one out case one time his jaws lock. I could easy save him then by blowing water in the gap.

The Great Rift Valley got a river of stones. They roll over, changing color, yellow, oringe, mauve. I look in my Africa book. Wildebeests is thousands, moving silky side by side, gray-brown looks like purple, more wider than a road. The sun is finished soon, rain clouds is starting to gather over the Mountins of the Moon. Feels lectric in the air. Beech trees is shivering. And me. Baby Grady cuddles on my lap, lucky I brung a blanket up. Africa Tree Camp is the sky of the world. Ellie Smithers is playing on the end triangle grass, sprightly dance, counting steps with a magined friend.
Seven and twenty, ten, one, thousand million and freefty-free—no you have to follow me!
She left her doll’s pram on the pavement but it’s rolled and tipped up in the gutter. Sees the Sandwich Man coming walking, wonders where he’s been. Behind him sees the flock of starlings come swirling cross the Mara. Magines if the sky is water. The starling flock swims together like don’t know how many fishes. They shift and shape and swirl and come to land, on Mr. Baldwin’s roof. He’s working in his side garden, he don’t like them, bashes his dustbin lids together to scare them off. They shift and shape way. Ellie’s on the verge by the ditch, telling time with dandylion clocks. The Sandwich Man gets to the wire, is standing there watching Ellie, case she goes in the road. He calls her over, there’s something in the Masai Mara that he wants to show her. The starling flock is back, especial beautiful cos the sky behind has gone dark pink. Beautiful! Beaut-i-f. They gone. The Sandwich Man is back on the lane, waves to somebody he knows as they drive past in a car. Spects Ellie ran off home. Or one of her brothers came by and took her home the other way. Forgot her pram, still there, tipped up in the gutter.

The pottery people were excited about it. A great adventure, Tim said, a great adventure for all of them. In the gateway to the vicarage I step out
of the way for the postman, it’s second post, he blats around in his van. I check my postbox on the way in.

Lily of the Valley
.

Airmail from Irene. Airmail paper, hurried. I wrote to give her my new address. There’s other post, businesslike; I take it all upstairs and make a coffee; a whole coffee with milk and sugar. Final payslip from the doughnut factory. They’ve deducted fifteen pence for the doughnut I ate on the way out. See what tricky bastards they are; fifteen pence is the retail price when I actually ate a wholesale doughnut. I didn’t get the job at McDonald’s. I open Irene’s airmail letter with a knife. It is unusually brief, purple pen, a flowering paragraph.
Irene.
I walk with the letter to the front door. I take it into the bedroom. Hold it filling the kettle. Read it sitting on the edge of the bath. I walk around with it, getting lighter with every step. Think I can hear a tolling bell. I find myself sitting where I’ve never sat before: against the airing cupboard door; up on the draining board. I eat three bowls of cornflakes and use two pints of milk and drink the sugary dregs from the bowl with tears streaming down my face. Then wash up the bowl for what seems like hours, before going down to phone Heath.

“What compensation, what accident?” he says. “When?”

“I’m going the day after tomorrow.”

“Stop! Stop!” he says. “I don’t think you know what you’re taking on; I don’t think you’ve thought it through. You could be raped or murdered there, no one would know, no one would even know where you were. It’s not safe; a woman was murdered and left for the lions only last week. I heard it on the radio.”

“Yeah—but I’m not a woman, Heath.” It’s a joke of course, a long-standing one about how I’m not really a woman—apparently I don’t behave or react to things like a real woman would. That’s my trouble—I’m intimidating—I’m just too tall—I just won’t play the game.

“Why Africa of all places? What if you get sick, what about armed soldiers and bandits everywhere? I don’t think you understand you’re putting yourself in serious danger.”

He waits for me to say something. I wait for him to say some more.

“Where exactly are you thinking of going?”

“Kenya, Uganda,” I say, “Tanzania.”

“You’re going to fucking Kilimanjaro.”

I hear his
tiger
roar and his fist hits the wall; the crunch of plasterboard.

“Bloody hell, babes, I’ve only just painted that,” Sharon yells.

“Fuck-ing Kilimanjaro. I want you to take my dad’s ashes.”

“No,” I say. “Take him yourself.”

The coins run out and the line goes dead. Up the hill, the Quattro won’t start, can hear it turning over. I wait and wait, to see if Heath will phone me back but he doesn’t. Gwen has flattened the car battery now. No engine, no heater. It’s bloody freezing. I’m halfway back to the vicarage gateway when the phone rings. I go back to answer it.

“All-righty?” Heath whispers, doesn’t want Sharon to hear. “I was thinking I could fly out in a few months’ time and meet you in Tanzania. We can climb Kilimanjaro together and leave my dad on the top.”

“Yeah?” I say, eating hay with a donkey.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says. “A year is a fucking long time, out in the wilderness, it’ll be hard.”

“Not as hard as ten years in prison.”

I hear him drag on a cigarette. I thought he’d given up.

“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know exactly how that happened.” His stock line, he coughs, chokes.

“We might.”

“What do you mean?” he says smokily.

“Quentin woke up.”

I wait. He waits. He draws in smoke. Blows it out. Coughs. Moves the receiver to his other ear.

“They switched his machine off, years ago.”

“No, they didn’t.” I write
Q
with my finger in the condensation on the phone-box window. “They changed their minds; they took him to the States.”

“How do you know?”

“Because his mother wrote to me in prison. I’ve always stayed in touch with Irene.”

“Where are they, then?”

“Now?”

“Mmm.”

“South Africa.”

He draws on the cigarette. Exhales.

“I don’t expect he’s up to much—let’s face it, half of his head was missing—he wasn’t all that bright to start with.”

“I’ve got to go, Heath; the phone-box windows are icing up.”

“Kilimanjaro,” he says, “phone me when you—”

“Bye-bye,” I say.

I hang up.

Miss Connor chooses my story and she don’t even know that coming to school is my birthday present.

“Will you read it for us, Lulu?” Miss Connor arsts.

My tonsils blow up and I dies in all the eyes.

“I could read it for you,” she says.

I nod. We push all the desks back and make a horseshoe shape with chairs, stories is made for sharing Miss Connor reckons. She comes and talks to me especial and gives me a list of words for learning: There I is:
There I am
. When she reads the story out she’ll say it all proper so that I can hear the difference. Miss Connor sits forward for stories, with skirts all around her muddy boots and paw prints on her denim jacket. Her hair is dark brown velvit curtains. Shame Miss Connor int got no ears.