The Girl Who Saw Lions Read online

  ‘Tchk! Money! What do I want with money!’ His mother swiped his arms away. ‘I won’t let you take Abela away from me. She’s all I’ve got.’

  Thomas stood up again and shook the dust from the knees of his trousers. ‘And you’re a selfish old cow. In England she’ll have shoes on her feet and good food in her belly. She’ll sleep in a big house and go to a proper school. She’ll get a good education. She’ll get good medical care. I’m offering her the chance of a lifetime. Ma, listen to me. I know about these things. There are other little girls that I have found homes for – I know nice English families who want little girls like Abela to help them in their big house. There’s plenty money for you and me.’ He rubbed his thumb and first finger together. ‘And plenty good life for my sister’s child. Who are you to turn it down for her?’

  ‘She won’t want to leave me,’ Bibi muttered. ‘She loves her grandmother.’

  ‘She loves Susie already. You saw them, hand in hand. They’re getting on like a house on fire.’

  ‘A house on fire!’ His mother was horrified. ‘What a terrible thought.’

  The next day, Abela wore her new yellow and black kanga and Susie wore a red and green one that Abela had chosen for her in the market. They walked solemnly behind Uncle Thomas to the next village, where they met two strangers in a concrete schoolhouse. One of the men talked in rapid Kiswahili, which Thomas translated for Susie. The other man, glistening with sweat, sat at a desk and wrote meticulously on three pieces of paper. Abela noticed that he didn’t use a pencil, but a black pen with a gold nib. From time to time he shook it to make the ink flow. When he had finished writing, he asked Uncle Thomas and Susie for their signatures. Then he produced a camera and ushered them outside, and took photographs, one of the group together, one of Thomas on his own, one of Susie with Abela, one of Thomas with Abela, and one with Abela on her own.

  ‘Smile!’ Uncle Thomas shouted. ‘Look happy! It’s my wedding day.’ He looked at the other men and squawked with laughter. Abela was too frightened to smile. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. What happened to her when the camera was pointed at her like that? She had heard that it took your soul away, to have a photograph taken. She clutched her arms across her chest, holding her soul in place.

  ‘That should cover all possibilities,’ Abela heard the man with the camera say to her uncle. ‘That’s done now.’

  Both men shook hands with Thomas and Susie and pronounced them married.

  ‘Is that it?’ Susie asked doubtfully. ‘Is that how you do it here?’

  ‘It is when you’re in a hurry,’ Thomas told her. He kissed her hand, which was melting with sweat by now. ‘We’ll do it again when I’m home in England with you. You can have a church wedding and a white dress like a fairy, and a taxi to the church, and a big party.’ He spoke to her as if she were a little girl deserving treats for being good.

  Susie frowned, knowing that that was unlikely too. Her parents didn’t like Thomas at all. They’d met him twice, when they had visited her in London, and they had told her then to keep clear of him.

  ‘He’s using you, Susie. Promise me you won’t marry him. All he wants is a British passport. It’s not you he’s interested in,’ her mother had warned her.

  ‘He loves me,’ Susie insisted.

  ‘He loves your blonde hair, that’s all,’ said her mother cynically. ‘I know you love him, but that’s a different thing altogether. I don’t want you to be hurt.’

  So she didn’t tell her parents when Thomas was deported from England because he had stayed without a visa, an illegal immigrant. She was very much in love with him. She couldn’t bear to be without him, so she agreed to go with him to Tanzania to be married. She simply told her parents that she was going on a long holiday because she needed a break from her work. She didn’t tell them, either, that she was going to have his baby, or that she had miscarried at five months. She thought she was going to lose Thomas then, too, because he seemed to lose interest in her at that point. But coming to Tanzania with him had brought them closer together. And then when he said he wanted to marry her, all she could think of was that he loved her after all. What would her mother think now of this bleak little ceremony in a concrete hut, in a language she didn’t understand, with only a little girl as a witness? She watched Thomas as he brought out some bank notes and handed them to the men.

  ‘Is that usual too?’ she asked, doubtful again.

  ‘I’ve told you, we’re in a hurry. And these men have come a long way. You don’t expect them to do it for nothing, do you? If you didn’t have to go back, we would have had more time. But how could I let you go back to England without marrying you? I love you too much for that.’

  He kissed her then, and Abela, hovering behind Susie, lowered her eyes and smiled. She still didn’t like her uncle much, but she already loved his princess bride. She didn’t know yet about the plan to send her to England. Her grandmother was too upset to tell her. Her uncle wasn’t sure that her forged passport would be ready in time, so he said nothing. And as for Susie, she simply didn’t know.

  *

  After the wedding, Uncle Thomas went off somewhere with the two men. He told Susie he was going to sort out his documents. The three men walked away, laughing, Thomas in the middle with his arms over the shoulders of the other two. Abela saw them heading for the local pombe bar where a strong beer made of coconut palm sap was sold, but she said nothing. She knew her mother had hated that place where men liked to go for hours on end, often shouting and silly by the time they came home. Bibi hated it too. There was no reason to suppose that Susie would want to go there with him. So they walked back to Bibi’s house hand in hand. Boys tending their goats in an overgrown cemetery shouted greetings to them. High above their heads men were working in the trees collecting honey, singing loudly. Monkeys jabbered a shrill chorus. A laughing jackass cackled down at them. It was a day like any other day, but it should have been a special day. Abela could sense that Susie was sad; she wanted to make her smile again.

  ‘Tell me English,’ she said.

  Susie laughed, a strange, dry, choked laugh with no sunshine in it. ‘Today is my wedding day,’ she said. ‘Your Uncle Thomas is my husband. Do you understand that, Abela?’

  ‘No,’ said Abela, trying to pout.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Susie. ‘All I want is to go back home with Thomas, and be happy.’

  ‘Happy,’ said Abela. ‘I know the word happy.’

  ‘Are you happy, Abela?’

  ‘No,’ Abela said. ‘No Mama. No happy.’

  Bibi had made them a wedding feast of beans and chillies cooked with bananas and rice, and a special pudding of mangoes cooked in coconut milk. She was angry when she saw that Thomas wasn’t with them.

  ‘Where’s he gone?’ she asked Abela. ‘To the pombe, I suppose.’

  ‘He’s getting the documents,’ Abela said.

  ‘Tchk! Documents!’

  They waited till after dark for Thomas to come, and when he didn’t come they ate without him, sitting outside around the charcoal fire so the smoke inside the hut wouldn’t make Susie cough. The stars were huge and brilliant, the frogs and the insects were singing loudly and brightly.

  ‘The stars are like showers of spray from a fountain! It’s a beautiful night,’ said Susie softly, aloud, even though Bibi couldn’t understand. ‘And this is a beautiful country. But oh! I’m longing to go back to England. Home.’

  ‘Home,’ repeated Abela, knowing the word.

  It was morning before Thomas came back, neither shouting nor silly, but deeply angry. Abela was giving Susie a cookery lesson. Susie was perched on a tiny wooden stool, twisting a coconut round the little serrated knife attached to it.

  ‘This stool is called mbuzi,’ Abela told Susie. ‘It has same name as goat.’

  ‘Boozy,’ Susie laughed. ‘That’s what my husband is, I’m afraid! Where are you, you boozy goat?’

  ‘You scrape the coconut, and I catch in
clay pot. Now we squeeze with our hands, like this, all juice come out.’

  ‘With my hands! Oh yuck! My mother would have a fit if she saw me doing this!’

  They were laughing together, concentrating deeply, when Thomas walked into the compound. ‘Look, Mister Goat! We’re making coconut sauce!’ Susie shouted. He ignored her and went straight to his mother.

  ‘I can’t get a passport for Abela. She can’t leave when Susie does,’ he told her. He paced round her, kicking angrily at the skinny cat who was mewing round their feet for the coconut milk. ‘They’re idiots, those men. They said they knew someone who could find me one in time.’

  His mother clicked her tongue. ‘It is not good to do things this way,’ she said. ‘It is not lawful.’

  ‘Who cares about the law!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Susie asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he told her. ‘Just some hold up with the travel documents.’

  ‘What documents?’ Susie asked. ‘I’ve got my passport, it’s OK. We are properly married, aren’t we, Thomas?’

  ‘Hey, I tell you, we’re mister and missus now!’ He pulled the signed marriage certificate out of the back pocket of his trousers to show her, and another paper fell to the floor. Susie bent to pick it up, and read the words before Thomas had time to snatch it away from her.

  ‘HIV?’ There was a frightened, frozen silence. Susie’s face had gone very white. ‘HIV? HIV/Aids? What does this mean? Aids? Why have you got these papers?’

  ‘It’s just a certificate my mother got for Abela. I’ll tell you on the bus, OK?’

  But Susie’s breath was coming in quick, sharp gasps. She backed away from Thomas. ‘Are you telling me these people have Aids? And I’ve been sleeping here? I’ve been eating and sleeping with people who have Aids?’

  ‘They don’t have Aids. These are papers to show they don’t have Aids.’ His voice was low and reasoning, pushed out between his teeth, urging her to be calm and quiet. Pimples of sweat were breaking out on his forehead.

  ‘Is that what your sister died of? Aids?’ Susie’s voice was rising to a pitch of hysteria. ‘It is, isn’t it? Why didn’t you tell me? You bring me here, knowing all this?’

  Realising that Susie was upset, but not knowing the reason for it, Abela ran to her, wanting to put her arms round her pale princess, but that made Susie panic even more.

  ‘Keep away from me!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t touch me. Go away.’

  It was impossible for Thomas to calm her down. Susie refused to go back into Bibi’s house again, convinced that she would catch Aids if she touched anything belonging to them. Abela and her grandmother stood together, bewildered and frightened, understanding nothing of what was going on, of the white fury that had taken possession of Susie. In the end Thomas took Susie to the teacher’s house, which wasn’t a round mud hut like his mother’s but a concrete building with four rooms. He asked Mrs Long to explain to Susie that she couldn’t catch Aids by sleeping in the house where HIV/Aids victims had lived, and to show her the documents that testified that his mother and Abela were clear of the deadly disease. In spite of all Mrs Long’s reassurances, Susie was still too upset and afraid to go back to Bibi’s house. In the end the teacher said she could stay there with her until the time came for her to leave for the airport at Dar es Salaam.

  ‘She stays with me,’ Thomas insisted. ‘She’s my wife.’

  ‘Is this true?’ the teacher asked Susie. Along with the entire village, she knew all about Thomas Mkumba’s expulsion from England. She also knew that it meant that it was very unlikely that he would ever be able to return there, though he boasted freely that he would soon be going back and that he would be a rich man in no time.

  ‘We were married yesterday,’ Susie said.

  Mrs Long frowned. ‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course we’re sure. We love each other,’ said Susie, completely misunderstanding her.

  ‘We have the papers,’ said Thomas, understanding her completely.

  ‘Papers,’ the teacher sighed. ‘I hope it’s all right. I hope you’ll be happy,’ she said. ‘And I hope it’s what you really want, Susie,’ she added, silently.

  *

  They both stayed at Mrs Long’s that night. In their plain room, an electric fan whirred into the sweaty heat. Susie nervously watched the lizards scurrying across the ceiling. She had had enough. All she wanted now was to go home. Coming to Africa had been a big mistake. It had been all right in the cities and big towns, where streets were lit at night and the traffic and big shops and the stylish clothes were comfortingly familiar, where all the hotels had air conditioning. She didn’t understand the people in these mud hut villages, these people who seemed to live on nothing at all, no domestic comfort, yet could still smile and gossip and sing. She wondered how on earth a woman like Mrs Long could have chosen to make her home there.

  Thomas made quite sure that the two women had no time to talk together. He had no intention of letting Mrs Long express her doubts to Susie about the validity of the marriage papers. The sooner Susie got home, the better; then he could begin his plea to join her in England.

  The next morning they left for Dar es Salaam. Bibi and Abela went to the bus station to say goodbye to them; Bibi gave Abela a little basket made of banana leaves to give to Susie. Abela was fretful, keeping her head down, not daring to look at Susie in case she started shouting at her again. When Susie crouched down to smile weakly at her she felt as if the world had started turning again.

  ‘Please don’t go home,’ she said. She had practised the English words all the way to the bus stop.

  ‘You be a good girl. Help your grandma,’ Susie said. She ferreted in her bag and brought out a little key chain made of coloured beads, with a tiny mirror dangling on the end of it. ‘Here. This is for you, Bella.’

  ‘Look, look, Bibi!’ Abela gasped. ‘Look what Susie has given me!’

  Her grandmother turned it over in her fist. The little mirror flashed and sparkled, catching winks of blue sky and dithering leaves in its glass.

  ‘Do you like Susie?’ Uncle Thomas asked casually.

  Abela flung her arms wide open and danced round Susie. ‘I love her! I love her this much!’

  ‘I’ll sort the passport out when I’m in Dar,’ Thomas told his mother. ‘We’ll have to send the kid over on her own, then I’ll get my own visa sorted out. Meanwhile, get her clean. You know what I mean, Mama. And get that teacher to give her extra English lessons. It’ll be easier for her that way.’

  He climbed on the bus after Susie. Abela ran alongside, waving, and Susie, pale and still upset, full of misgivings, waved back. Only when the bus had completely disappeared from sight, and the roar of its engine had disappeared, would Abela agree to go to school with her grandmother.

  ‘So you like that lady, Uncle Thomas’s wife?’ Bibi asked as they waited together to speak to Mrs Long.

  ‘Yes,’ said Abela. ‘She’s very pretty. I wish she would stay here with us.’

  Bibi nodded. Maybe Thomas was right. Maybe it was selfish of her to want to keep Abela in the village without a mother and father. What was there for her here?

  ‘How good is Abela’s English?’ she asked Mrs Long.

  ‘Very good,’ the teacher smiled. ‘She’s a very clever girl. She learns very fast.’

  ‘Does she?’ Bibi’s heart was big with pride. ‘Give her lots of English words, Teacha. She’s going to live in England with her new mother and father.’ She looked down at Abela’s startled face. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now you know, Abela. Now you have your Uncle Thomas’s surprise.’

  10

  Rosa

  I DON’T KNOW why it took me so long to ask Mum that big question. I’ve practised it many times on my own, looking out of my window at the frost skin on the grass, at the little grey sparrows shivering on the bird table. Sometimes, even though it’s so cold, I open the window and breathe the words out into the spiky air. They hang there for a sec
ond, and then they float away with the specks of tiny snowflakes. And so, instead, I write them down in the stripy book that Molly gave me.

  I really enjoy writing in the stripy book. It feels as if I’m talking to someone close. It feels as if I’ve been getting to know myself, like when I was little and I used to stand on tiptoe to see myself in the mirror in the bathroom, glass finger touching glass nose. I’ve told the book lots of things that I’ve never told anyone else. I’ve even drawn sketches of me on the skating rink, Mum on the rink, Molly and her shoes. I think it was all avoidance tactics really, because the first and most important thing, the big WHY, has been there at the front of my mind all the time, like a big hovering bird, like the kestrels we see when we’re driving on the motorway. Maybe I’m scared of what I might catch, that’s why I don’t swoop down and strike. I’m scared of what Mum’s answer might be.

  ‘You’re not good enough, Rosa,’ she might say. ‘I wanted a different kind of daughter.’ She might. We’re not a bit alike, Mum and I. We don’t look alike, we don’t act alike. But I needed to know, didn’t I? I had to.

  So I waited for the right moment, like the wind-hovering kestrel waits for the little mouse to scuttle out of hiding and just sit there, whiskers quivering, enjoying the sunshine. Pounce.

  The trouble is, Mum never stops. She’s got restless hands and itchy feet, Nana says. She’s always busy. She’s never just sitting there, relaxed and smiling, waiting for me to ask her something important. So what I did was this: I made the moment happen. I took down the teddy-bear curtains from my bedroom and plonked them on the kitchen table.