The Girl Who Saw Lions Page 14

Rosa

  THEN THINGS WENT wrong. Maybe it was Molly’s fault, who knows, but it was a terrible, terrible sad thing. What Molly had told us was that Anthony’s actual adoption day in County Court would be a mere formality, a signing of papers. Nothing could go wrong now, she promised us. So when her car drew up outside the house one Saturday morning we thought nothing of it. Grandpa was with us, collecting Anthony for his first fishing trip. My ankle was much better but it still wasn’t strong enough for me to go skating, the physio had said. Fizzio, Mum and I call him, so we think of him as being someone light and frothy to make me giggle instead of making me wince with pain with all the exercises he gives me to do. Anyway, instead of going skating on her own, Mum decided that she and I could assemble the Ikea cupboard she had bought to put in Anthony’s bedroom. I could do with a new cupboard too, but I didn’t say anything.

  Molly came to the door as Anthony and Grandpa were standing there, and her face was full of woe. It told us everything, though she waited till the fishing party had left before she said anything.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you,’ she said.

  ‘The worst case scenario,’ Mum said bleakly. I had no idea what she meant by that.

  ‘Anthony’s father has been in touch with us. I’m afraid, I’m so very, very sorry…’

  ‘He wants him back.’ Mum’s voice was so flat, so empty of colour and shape, that it was like a ghost voice. I could hardly hear her.

  Molly nodded. I thought she was going to cry. I’m sure she felt like it. ‘Anthony’s social worker rang me last night. I’ve been with him to see the father this morning. He’s come back to live in Sheffield, because he can’t bear to be without Anthony any longer. His marriage is over. I’m afraid you’re right. He realises he’s made a terrible mistake. He wants his little boy back.’

  ‘But he can’t have him back,’ I shouted, full of outrage, full of passionate, hopeless, helpless anger. ‘He’s no right to have him back! Not now.’

  ‘He has every right,’ Molly said sadly. ‘He’s Anthony’s father. We could try to fight it, but I’m afraid we wouldn’t win. By law, he has every right.’

  I will never forget that day. I will never forget the day Anthony stood silently by the front door with his little brown suitcase and his fishing rod from Grandpa in his hand. I will never forget the knock that told us that his social worker had come for him. But when Mum opened the door, the social worker was sitting in his car and a strange man was standing on the doorstep; Anthony dropped the rod and ran to him and the man bent down and swung him up and they hugged each other as if they would never, ever let each other go.

  ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ Anthony kept saying. ‘Daddy, my daddy.’

  The man’s eyes were closed. His face was wet.

  19

  Abela

  JUST AFTER I left Carmel’s house, I saw something wonderful. It was a strange animal, red with a white bushy tail. I don’t think anyone else saw him as he sniffed and dipped along the street. He was like a dog, but not a dog. He was like the jackal-bweha that howls around the desert places of home, but not a jackal-bweha. And when he paused and looked at me with one foot lifted, ready for flight, I went cold and wondering with the thrill of seeing him, and I remembered the lions flickering past me in the night forest. I felt my mother and father standing behind me with their hands on my shoulders, and I felt calm again. Be brave, be brave, their whispers told me, and the red fox slipped away.

  I took deep, slow breaths, as if the air was liquid and I was drinking it down to fill up my lungs. It was the first time I had been on my own since the day I left Susie’s flat and ran to the school, following the dream trail of children’s voices. Today there was no trail. I had no idea where to go. I looked up at the sky, squinting at the sharp light of the sun. I could hear the sound of a plane up there, the big silver bird that flew free. Maybe Bibi was on that plane, looking down, full of wonder because now she knew how big the world was. Maybe I should go back to the house and wait for Bibi. But I have waited for Bibi for weeks and months. It is time for me to go to her.

  So I started to run, glancing up every now and again to keep the plane in sight so I would know which way to go, but I had not gone very far when a strange man stopped me. He just stepped out in front of me, blocking my way. He had red hair, like the fox, and his face was sharp and thin as if the wind had carved it. He put out his hand to stop me and gripped my shoulder. Then he lifted up my chin and smiled down at me.

  ‘What a pretty girl!’ he said.

  I squirmed away. I did not know what to say to him. I was losing my plane; it dipped from sight behind his head. I tried to squirm away but his grip on my shoulder tightened. I wanted to run past him, but I was afraid that if I did, he would follow and hound me back to Carmel’s house.

  ‘Where are you going to, my pretty maid?’ he asked, in a strange, lilting voice like a child singing a song.

  But I was ready for that question. I had the answer all ready in my head, the words laid out like a string of bright beads. I had been saying them to myself for many days now. ‘London, Heathrow Airport, Africa, Tanzania,’ I chanted. And in my head I added, ‘Bibi’s house,’ but that was too magic to say aloud. That would be like breaking a spell.

  ‘All that way!’ he laughed, cocking his head from side to side. ‘I hope you’ve got your passport.’

  My passport! I had forgotten all about that little book with my shy photograph inside it. It must still be in Susie’s flat, in that cupboard underneath the television set where she kept her clutter of things. I broke away from the man and started to run – now at least I knew where I was going, because I had seen Susie’s flat many times on my way to the shops with Carmel. Sometimes I would stop and look at it longingly, wondering if Susie was still there. Susie was my only link with home; she knew Bibi’s house, she could take me there if she wanted to. Maybe the social worker with hair like feathers was wrong, maybe Susie was still there, waiting to take me home.

  I could hear the man following me as I ran, calling me to wait because he knew how to help me, and I dodged across the road so a big red bus blundered between me and him, and then I darted up a side street towards the flats. I banged on the door, and when nobody answered I kicked it till my feet hurt, and at last the woman from the downstairs flat opened it up. Her big belly had gone, and she was holding a baby in one arm. She glared down at me.

  ‘You again! What’re you after?’

  ‘Please, Teacha, I want Susie,’ I said. The baby clenched and unclenched his fist, wrapping his fingers round with the woman’s hair.

  ‘No Susie here,’ the woman said, uncoiling the baby’s fingers. ‘Gone. Couple of months ago. Didn’t you know?’

  So it was true. She started to close the door, and I tried to edge inside, to slide like a cat through the gap that she had left.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ she said.

  ‘Please, I go to her flat,’ I pleaded.

  ‘No way,’ she shouted, and the baby started screaming. ‘Look what you done now. Clear off. Can’t have you wandering all over the place. There’s new people up there now. Nice people.’

  ‘Please, I want my passport.’ I could hardly make myself heard over the screaming of the baby; its voice spiralled like knives round the concrete hall and stairs.

  ‘There’s nothing of yours there, I tell you. Oh, hang on—’ She stepped back and picked an envelope off a pile of letters by the stair. ‘Is this you – Abela Mbisi?’

  She said it wrong, but I knew my name. I reached out and grabbed the blue envelope from her and hugged it to my chest in case she tried to take it back again.

  ‘It come through the post weeks ago. Well, I didn’t know where to send it, did I? People come and go, I can’t keep track of them. Now clear off.’ She hitched the baby onto her shoulder and gave me a shove with her free arm. ‘You don’t belong here no more.’

  She shut the door on me. The screams of the baby still jangled in my ears as I turned away
, desolate now, and slumped down onto the step. I put my bundle down and tore open the letter. There was no passport there, just a sheet of blue paper with some scrawled writing on it that I couldn’t read. A hand reached out to touch my cheek and I jumped up. It was the man who had followed me before.

  ‘Oh dear, she wasn’t very nice, was she?’ he said, his voice so drooling with kindness that it made me want to cry.

  ‘I want my passport,’ I sniffed, trembling to hold back the sobs that were welling up inside me. Be strong, be strong, Abela. Don’t cry in front of strangers. I picked up my things and shoved the letter into the middle of the bundle, where it would be safe for me to try to decipher later. I turned away from the man and started to walk down the road. Maybe if I got to Heathrow Airport everything would be all right. I could tell the people there that Susie had my passport, and maybe they would let me get on the plane anyway. I could tell them my uncle in Africa would pay for my ticket. They would let me go home, surely they would let me go home to Bibi.

  I had only gone a few steps when the man caught up with me. ‘London, Heathrow Airport, Africa, Tanzania,’ he was singing, ‘Hey ho, a long way to go! Want me to help you?’

  I stopped, clutching my bundle tightly, both arms wrapped round it. ‘Can you?’ I asked. There was hope in his words, a bright bird of hope fluttering its wings at me. He swung himself in front of me and then he looked down, smiling, cocking his head to one side like a wise bird.

  ‘Of course I can help you. Come with me. I can take you to Heathrow Airport. I can help you to get that magic thing, you know, that passport? Can’t go without that, but I can help you.’ He held out his hand. His voice was so kind. His mouth was so smiley.

  But I looked up into his eyes and saw that he was not smiling inside. How could this be? I did not understand this man, and I did not understand why I was afraid of him. He was giving me hope; my palm trees and my green monkeys, my dusty red earth, my Bibi. If I took his hand, all these things would be mine. But when I looked into his eyes I was more frightened of him than I ever was of the mad mzee swinging her panga to chop off my head in the market place. I was more frightened of him than of the lions who walked by me in the jungle. I backed away from him and turned; I started running, faster, faster than I have ever run in my life. I could hear his feet drumming behind me, his long legs stretched, his long arm reaching out to haul me back. I could hear his voice calling, ‘Come back, child, come back. I’m not a bad man. I want to help you. I want to help you.’

  I am good at running. I can run fast. I can run for miles and miles and never get tired. I can run in the sweltering heat of Africa. My feet belong to the earth; they are part of it. Long after I heard the man’s feet slowing down, long after I heard his voice growing fainter and his breath heaving, long after I couldn’t hear him at all, I kept on running. That running was like being free, like turning into a bird, it was like flying. I left everything behind. I left the man with the cruel eyes and the smiling face, I left him so far behind that I did not know whether he had really been there at all, or whether he was a bad magic dream. I left my happy school and my best friend Jasmine and my special teacher; I left scolding Carmel and The Dad who growled in his belly, and the big girls who hated me. I left it all behind, fear and hope together; I ran and ran until there was nothing left to run away from. When I stopped, I was weak with hunger and tiredness. I had no idea where I was. I saw a garden with a shed in it, the door swinging open, and I crept inside. I dropped onto my hands and knees, and then I sank onto the wooden floor. I folded up my bundle to make a pillow, and saw again the blue letter with my name written on the envelope. I have never had a letter before. Still lying there, I opened the letter and little by little, I began to untie the tangled sprawl of words.

  It wasn’t until the next afternoon that Abela was found, when the son of the owner of the house came to the shed to fetch his bicycle. He backed out again and ran into the house, where his mother was smearing white paint over the green wall of her bedroom, humming along to a pop song on the radio.

  ‘Mum!’ he shouted. ‘Mum! MUM!’ She turned and looked at him in astonishment as he ran into the bedroom and switched off the radio so she would hear him. ‘There’s a dead girl in the shed.’

  His mother dropped the brush so paint smeared the floorboards like a white exclamation mark of horror. She ran down the stairs after her son. Together they paused, and together they stepped into the shed, where the little crumpled bundle of a child lay.

  ‘Get the police!’ the mother said hoarsely. She knelt down, her heart fluttering with fright, and touched the child’s cheek. It was warm. She was alive. With a sob of relief the woman lifted Abela up and carried her into the house.

  ‘I think she’s unconscious,’ she told her son. ‘We need a doctor. Or an ambulance. Or maybe’ – she watched as Abela’s hands tightened round the blue envelope – ‘maybe she’s just in a deep, deep sleep.’

  The police and the ambulance arrived at the same time. There was a major search on for a child who had been reported missing by her foster parents, so the policewoman phoned the social services immediately to tell them that a child answering Abela’s description had been found in a shed, several miles from home, and that she appeared to be unharmed but in a state of exhaustion. They decided to send Abela to hospital for observation and there she stayed, deeply asleep between the stiff white sheets of the hospital bed, like the sleeping beauty in the forest. In the locker next to the bed were her clothes, a battered car made out of a Coca-Cola tin, a dog-eared exercise book, and a crumpled blue letter.

  When she eventually woke up she found two women sitting on either side of the bed, watching her intently. One was the woman with hair like white feathers. The other was a stranger but not a stranger; a woman out of her dreams with loose hair the colour of lions. I know you, Abela wanted to say, but she was too tired to speak. This woman leaned forward and stroked Abela’s hand and spoke to her softly in her own language, the language of hot sun and dry winds, the language of home. Abela opened her eyes again and listened, saying nothing, and it was as if she was listening to a song. Then she drifted back into a calm sleep.

  When she woke up again it was a different time of day, maybe a different day. She could hear rain like tiny drumbeats against the window. She closed her eyes again and lay listening to it. It was a sweet sound. Then she focused in on two voices. Some of the words were familiar. Some of them meant nothing at all. She didn’t try to understand, just listened to the words.

  ‘I don’t know why she would run away from the Oladipos,’ one voice, the familiar feather voice said. ‘They’re one of our best foster parents.’

  ‘I agree. They’re brilliant with difficult teenagers. But this child isn’t a difficult teenager. She’s a child lost in the wrong country. She needs a lot of gentle care.’

  ‘Maybe we should move her to a different home?’

  ‘I don’t think so, not yet. It’s not the right time to make changes. And now there’s the letter.’

  Abela opened her eyes at once. She looked wildly around her.

  ‘What is it, Abela?’ the woman with lion hair asked her in Swahili.

  ‘My letter.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I have the letter. Soon, we’ll read it together. When you’re better.’

  Abela stared up at her. She was sure now that she had seen her before. She recognised her smell now, and the way her hair fell softly around her face. She knew her, for sure. She struggled to bring the memory up. It was like a fish, looming slowly and surely out of the murky depths of a river to rise, at last, into light. She had it. ‘You give me money,’ she blurted out.

  ‘Money!’ Mrs Sanderson said. ‘Why do you want Miss Carrington to give you money, Abela?’

  Abela ignored her. ‘Miss Carrington,’ she murmured. It was a nice name.

  ‘What is it?’ Miss Carrington spoke to her in her own language.

  ‘You came to my country. You gave me money to make my mother bette
r. You were on the bus.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Miss Carrington looked across at Mrs Sanderson. ‘Would you believe it, Tessie, I know this child already! I met her right at the very beginning of my visit to Tanzania, months ago!’ She turned back to Abela. ‘What happened to your mother?’

  ‘She died,’ Abela whispered.

  Miss Carrington closed her eyes and sighed. She remembered the day, of all the days she had spent in East Africa. She remembered the frightened child and her brave, dignified mother. She remembered her feeling of helplessness as she watched the two make their slow, difficult way from the bus to the hospital. Now she was back from her travels, her temporary replacement Tessie Sanderson was handing back her caseload. She had come to the hospital with her that day simply because Tessie Sanderson had told her that Abela was Tanzanian, and it might help her to have someone to speak to her in her own language. She had worked in Arusha some years ago. She knew Swahili well.

  Abela at last drifted off to sleep, and Judith Carrington and Tessa Sanderson left together.

  ‘You’re not leaving for another month, but I’ll take this child on now,’ Miss Carrington said. ‘I think she needs some pretty intensive support, and I think it should start straight away. I’ll take her back to Mrs Oladipo’s tomorrow and try to make things easier for her there. And I’ll talk to her about the letter.’

  I do not want to go back to the Carmel-lady house, but Miss Carrington tells me she’s a good kind lady and I’ll be happy there now. I tell her I’m frightened of the big girls.

  ‘They’ve not been very nice to you,’ she frowned. ‘But I’ll talk to them, and Mrs Oladipo will talk to them. They’re lonely, you see. They’ve lost their mums and dads too. They’ve had a bad time.’

  I say nothing. I stare out of the window of her car and I watch the great buses and trucks. When we come to the house, Mrs Oladipo gives me a hug, warm and soft like pillows, and Mr Oladipo he growls in his belly and even his mouth turns up and his teeth show to make a smile.