“I think what we have to do is just get on with it for a few days, get the system up and running, get used to the new situation,” I said, trying to sound confident. “We’re handling it well. I was very proud of us all when I got back yesterday.”
The attempt at a rousing speech sat in the middle of the table like a big wet fish.
“That’s all very well, isn’t it, but we shouldn’t be in this situation,” said Linda, her mouth tight.
“It’s not Rosie’s fault,” said Sian.
Debbie looked mortified. “I’m not saying it is. Of course I’m not. It’s just a bit of a bugger, that’s all.”
“Quite so. Bloody Serena Sackville-System is to blame,” said Henry. “Must say you’re looking bloody sexy with that smudge across your eye, Sian. Making me a bit on the frisky side.”
Sian looked upset, and started rubbing at her face. Even Henry’s jollity jarred tonight. Poor old Sian, so fastidious and neat, hadn’t had time to wash. Normally Henry would have known not to mention it. The whole chemistry of the group had been altered. We weren’t sure of each other anymore. I thought that I should be a better leader, more capable of rousing the troops and getting something done.
“If I still can’t get through on the radio tomorrow I’ll go up to El Daman,” I said. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to let another disaster happen.” Rash words. “Meanwhile, we’ve just got to show what we can do.”
“Show who? Who are we supposed to be showing?” said Linda.
She had a point. We were really alone. What were we supposed to do? We could try and control disease, but once we ran out of food and drugs, if these malnourished, infected refugees kept flooding in, we were scuppered. There was silence among us and we listened to the crickets out there in the blackness. A donkey was braying madly and forlornly like a car horn.
O’Rourke spoke eventually. “I think we’re all seeing the blackest side because we’re tired,” he said. “We might well find that this all blows over in a few days and it is contained. Whatever, we have to let our responsibility stop somewhere. We are just a small group of people. There is only so much we can do, and we’re doing it. Aren’t we?” he said, looking at me. He was trying to be supportive.
“Yes,” I said.
“Right, come on, team. Subject closed. Put in a box for time being. Time off,” said Henry.
It seemed like a very forced occasion. I tried to join in the din-nertime chat, but wanted to be silent. Possibly everyone else did too.
“I wish we could call a grown-up.” The words slipped out without me wanting them to, but for once they were the right thing to say.
“So do bloody I, I can tell you,” said Debbie.
“Me too,” said Henry.
“I am a grown-up, and I want my mother,” said O’Rourke.
It was all better after that. Only Betty stayed silent. She went off as soon as the meal was finished, looking most unlike herself. It worried me. I left it a while, then went after her.
*
Betty was surprised to see me at the door. I rarely went into her hut. She ran a hand distractedly through her hair, knocking her glasses off-kilter. “Oh. Hello. I was just, er, having a little tidy-up.”
I looked past her. There was a can of spray polish and a duster on the Formica table. Polishing Formica? Anxiety took people in the strangest ways. She was still standing there, blocking the door.
“Can I come in? I wanted a chat.” She’d done this often enough to me.
“Of course, yes, come in. Would you like a glass of water?”
When she was turned with her back to me, pouring out the water, I saw her shoulders starting to shake. She was crying. I half got up.
“Betty—”
“Oh, don’t, don’t, please don’t. Don’t be sorry for me.”
She turned back towards me, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I’m just a stupid old woman. A stupid, silly, useless old woman.”
Part of me, I must admit, thought, “Well, you might have a point.” Then I saw her looking so sunken and sad and felt real grief. I sat down next to her.
“I’m old, I’m old. Old and finished. Look at me. Everyone thinks I’m a silly old woman. You don’t need me here. You have O’Rourke. Much better than me. You’ll all be glad to see the back of me. Then you can all be young together. Just useless, useless.”
“You’re not useless. How can you say that? You’re a brilliant doctor.”
“What’s the point? What’s the point? We can’t do anything about it all, can we?”
She cried for a bit.
“We can. We are doing. We’ll do it.”
This just made her cry even more. She was getting hysterical.
“Betty, look at me.”
She looked at me hopefully. Her eyes were tiny and pink behind her glasses, like a little pig’s.
“I came to see you to ask you to stay. We need you to stay.”
Oh dear. This had just popped out of my mouth. It was a half-formed thought which seemed like the perfect way to cheer her up.
She brightened a little, then started to cry again. “You’re only saying that to make me feel better. What have I got to go back to?”
“What about your husband—”
“That . . . that monster with his stupid young women. Nobody wants me. You wait till you get to my age. Nothing, nothing. On the scrap heap.”
“Don’t say that. It’s so unfair. That’s just the way women are made to feel. It’s not true.”
She sniffled some more.
“You are a wonderful doctor, you know how valuable you are—you know everything there is to know about medicine in Africa. They love you in the camp. We’ll be lost without you if you go. I’m going to go to El Daman to tell Malcolm we have to have you to see us through this.”
“But you have O’Rourke now.”
“O’Rourke isn’t you. He doesn’t have your . . . your . . . qualities. Will you stay?”
She seemed calmer now. “Well,” sniffle sniffle, “well, I suppose if you want me to . . . if Malcolm says I can.” She gulped and pulled herself together. “You know, I know I’m a dreadful old busybody, but I really am so fond of you, so fond of you all.”
When I left her she was calm and dozy, tucked up in bed to go to sleep. It occurred to me that if Africa needed us, sometimes we needed Africa a great deal more.
*
Thirty more refugees arrived in the night, and in the morning the radio still wasn’t working. I decided there was nothing for it but to drive up to the capital and start kicking ass with Malcolm and the UN. Presumably messages had reached them by now, but they had to be made to take this seriously. By the time I hit the tarmac of the El Daman road, it was the busiest time of the day: five o’clock, when the desert came to life and the amber light glowed through the dust. The buses, trucks and rusting cars were joined by herds of goats and camels headed for their watering holes, pack animals, almost obscured by bales of straw, with thin comedy legs scampering beneath. Ahead of me the sun was dropping and dissolving like a vast crimson pill, touching the sandy wastes with redness and fire.
I was tense, watching. The lorries in Nambula were splendid beasts, decorated with fairy lights, paintings of jungle animals, and bits of tin and Christmas decorations. Their loose wheels wobbled precariously, their overloaded rears tipped at terrifying angles. Every few miles you would pass some garish testimony to what could happen—an upside-down truck lying with its wheels in the air;another broken down with a line of three cars squashed into the back; an overlong one collapsed in the middle with a small car underneath.
I didn’t crash, but I was pulled over at two security checkpoints and had to bribe my way out. By the time I reached the outskirts of El Daman it was eleven at night. The traffic was heavy here, even at this time. I passed the first shanties of the city, dotted with fires; the great twinkling monolith of the Hilton, set apart from the smells and noise like some medieval castle. I skirted the center on the busy airpo
rt road and entered the quiet wide streets of the ex-pat area where the houses of government officials and aid organizations peeked out from behind concrete walls with their molded see-through patterns. When I drew up at the gates of the Malcolm Colthorne World HQ, or SUSTAIN office and residence, no one was up except the watchman. He was up in the sense of upright, but also asleep.
Eventually he was woken by my loud rattling and banging at the gate, and he let me in. I tiptoed into a guest room, and luxuriated in being in a real bed, surrounded by real walls.
*
I have a fear of ceiling fans. When I watch those heavy albatross wings whizzing round I imagine what would happen if they fell off. They would whang wildly round the room chopping off arms and heads. The fan in Malcolm’s office had a wobble. I kept a vigilant eye on it, leaning my head back against the wall as I listened to his slow verbal forward rolls and back flips.
What Malcolm had been explaining to me, for what seemed like most of the morning, was that he had just been given a bollocking from head office for raising a false alarm about a bunch of orphaned children, ten thousand strong, ranging hungry, naked and armed with Kalashnikovs on the borders of the civil war in the north. When they were located by a Reuters journalist, there were in fact twenty of them, armed with little sticks. What Malcolm was working towards, in an extremely roundabout sort of way, was that he wasn’t about to make an ass of himself with a second scare story in a fortnight.
I leaned forward calmly, resting my elbows on his desk and staring at him. It took him a while to wind down.
“Malcolm,” I said, “in the four years we have worked together have I ever insisted upon anything?”
“Of course,” he said, in his reassuring-the-troops voice. “You insist on things all the time, you’re a very insistent person.”
I began again. “I want you to understand that I mean this, and that I am completely sure that I’m right. The potential of the situation in Kefti is so devastating, life-threatening and serious that we must tell London about it now, not this afternoon, not on Monday. Now.”
There had been a time when Malcolm was known as Malcolm the Invincible Man: an ironic title, as was never more obvious than that morning. Bossed and bullied by the harridan I became, he drafted the message, dictated by me, as I loomed threateningly over his shoulder. He muttered and whined as we went along. This was what we ended up with:
SUSTAIN EL DAMAN—LONDON.
URGENT FOR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION.
ROSIE RICHARDSON REPORTS 440 ARRIVALS AT SAFILA FROM KEFTI IN ADVANCED STATE OF MALNUTRITION WITH 24 CHOLERA CASES AND 19 DEATHS. THEIR REPORTS OF LOCUST INFESTATION (BOTH HATCHING AND SWARMING) IN HIGHLANDS, COMBINED WITH POCKETS OF CHOLERA SUGGEST LARGE SCALE REFUGEE INFLUX MAY BE IMMI- NENT IF SITUATION WORSENS. REPORTS APPEAR TO CON- FIRM RUMORS CIRCULATING STRONGLY AMONGST RESOK OFFICIALS FOR LAST 2 WEEKS.
HOWEVER [this was Malcolm’s bit], EARLY WARNING SURVEYS SHOW NO DEVIATION FROM NORMAL PATTERN. YOU WILL UNDERSTAND REPORTS ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO CON- FIRM AS SUSTAIN PERSONNEL FORBIDDEN TO ENTER KEFTI.
SHIPMENT FOR EAST NAMBULA OVERDUE AS YOU ARE AWARE. ENTIRE REGION ON SHORT RATIONS. SAFILA CAMP HAS FULL RATION FOR ONLY WEEKS. MEDICAL SUPPLIES ALSO LOW, IN PARTICULAR REHYDRATION SALTS, IV FLUIDS, ANTIBIOTICS, AND MEASLES VACCINE.
ROSIE REQUESTS LONDON APPROACH UNHCR AND EEC RE SUPPLIES. REQUEST THAT DR. BETTY COLLINGWOOD BE RETAINED IN ADDITION TO DR. ROBERT O’ROURKE UNTIL THREAT IS RESOLVED.
PLEASE RESPOND, URGENT TODAY.
Malcolm was an old coward. He insisted the whole message came from me, not him. Then, later in the morning, when I saw what had finally been sent, he had added this paragraph.
I WOULD LIKE IT TO BE UNDERSTOOD THAT THIS TELEX IS BEING SENT AT ROSIE RICHARDSON’S INSISTENCE. I PER- SONALLY HAVE HAD NO OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE FIRST- HAND ASSESSMENT AND AM RESERVING JUDGMENT.
In other words he was refusing to endorse my position. The more I tried to argue my case the more Malcolm told me I was overreacting. He reminded me of all the scares we had had in the past. He pointed out the diplomatic drawbacks to crying wolf. He told me to go back and do some more research.
It was Friday, the holy day, and everything was closed. I phoned round the UN, the other aid agencies, COR, the EEC. No one was in. My one stroke of luck was that there was a party that night at the home of the British consul, Gareth Patterson. Most of the people I needed to talk to would be there.
I hung around the office all day, writing letters, making phone calls, which were unanswered, watching the telex. I drove to the UN stores at the airport, but the guard wouldn’t let me in. There was no reply from London. I was furious with Malcolm. This was his fault. He had turned it into a back-of-the-in-tray telex. And time was ticking away.
When Malcolm and I drew up at the British consul’s residence at six-thirty the party was already in full swing. The house would have looked well as part of an African-village-style luxury hotel on the Kenyan coast. Patterson had designed it himself, plumping for open thatched rooms with cane chairs, squashy cushions, tumbling tropical plants, a parrot in a large wooden cage and a heavy emphasis on batik in the soft furnishings. The establishment was all on one level except for an exotic upstairs bedroom. Where the soft white sand and lapping blue waves of the Indian Ocean should have been, there were the sluggish brown waters and mudflats of the river.
There was a rather particular view on this section of the river. Some years ago Nambula had purchased a secondhand jet from Afghanistan Airlines. On its maiden voyage the pilot had brought it in over El Daman, spotted the lights of the runway and made a perfect landing. Only it wasn’t the runway, it was the river. No one was hurt, the landing was graceful, if unexpectedly amphibious. The passengers waded ashore. Opposite the spot which Patterson had selected for his home was a little island where the plane had eventually come to rest at a jaunty angle. It was still there, giving him a permanent cue for an anecdote.
There were lights in the trees that Friday night. There were umbrellas in the drinks, which were masquerading as fruit punches—Patterson had managed to get hold of a crate of rum—and a steel band was playing on the terrace. It was clear that Patterson was overdue for some leave and had been browsing through too many long-haul travel brochures. For a moment, when we arrived, Malcolm and I stood at the end of the drive, watching the party across the lawn. You could spot the field-workers because they had all had the runs so often that their clothes were too big for them. I saw June Patterson lurch from one little group towards another, carrying a tray of umbrella-filled glasses which seemed not to be long for this world. Her blond curly hair cascaded down like a pile of doughnuts. She was dressed in a tight pale-blue nylon pajama outfit and sparkling slingback stilettos. Everyone was pretending she wasn’t there. I saw Patterson spot her, leave his conversation, hurry to her and tenderly take away the tray. Then he bent and spoke to her, looking like a primary school headmaster with a naughty five-year-old. As I watched, he drew her to him protectively, held her for a second, and kissed her on the forehead. A dipsomaniac wife was not the best asset for a British consul in a Muslim country—particularly a country which grew more fundamentalist with every week that went by—but Patterson loved his wife. I think he loved her more than his job, more than his reputation, more than he cared about what I, Malcolm, the French ambassador, the UN representative or any other bugger thought. It was the best thing about Patterson by some way.
I watched him as he disappeared with the newly rescued tray. With his blue safari suit, sideburns and daft good looks, there was something rather seventies about him. He reminded me of a game-show host, or one half of the kind of boy-girl singing duo who would perform dressed in flared catsuits on matching bar stools. Then I felt a tap on my right shoulder and turned round to look. There was no one there.
“Haha! Got you with that one, didn’t I?” Patterson was standing on my left. He loved this kind of practical joke. “Hey, what are you guys doing without a drink? You are looking one gorgeous liddle l
aydeee tonight. Come and join the pardee.”
“Hi.” Caspar Wannamaker, from U.S. Arms Around the World: tall, blond, terminally boring Texan. “How goes it down on the farm?”
I told him, testing the water.
“Hell,” he said. “You don’t wanna get in a stew about it. Sure you wanna get it checked out in Abouti, alert your office, but come on, there are a hundred camps like Safila in the country. You can’t start an international emergency every time a handful of refugees turn up in one of them with a problem.”
“Four hundred isn’t a handful.”
“Oh, come on. It’s happening all the time. Anyway. That ship’s gonna be here within days. No problem.”
Then he gave me a little lecture about getting too close to the refugees. “You’ve gotta stand back, you know, take an objective view. You can’t let yourself be manipulated. You can’t be one of them, salving your little liberal conscience.”
I smiled politely and moved away. The workers from the European NGOs, the smaller nongovernment organizations like SUSTAIN, had all gravitated together. I approached a little group of French medical workers. They were the high priests and priestesses of relief chic: they wore fine cotton khaki, loose silk tops with interestingly cut necklines.
“It is ridiculous, perfectly typical,” said Francine, a pediatrician, with a toss of her head, and an irritated little puff on a menthol cigarette. She had a clipped, nasal voice and looked like Charlotte Rampling.
“The system is completely stupid,” said Jeanne, a tiny nervous creature. “It is worthless even to speak with this UNHCR. This idiot Kurt who is living down there is a complete disaster for an individual. At Wad Denazen they are hearing the same stories about this locusts. They are expecting arrivals too.”
The French worked with the Italians at Wad Denazen. It was fifty miles north of us, also close to the border with Kefti.