I am in the village, thinks Trevor. I’ve got here. This is me, on my own, with nothing else.
He has just become a lot lonelier, having tried to switch on his phone in the dark, the fragile filament of electronic life that links him to the city, and got less than nothing, the ‘phone crossed out’ icon. A definitive X. No reception. Oh bugger. He has really arrived.
But where is he exactly? It feels like nowhere.
He is lying on a mattress on the floor. It is very hot. There are crickets singing, and other insects, somewhere, rustling and whining, not very far off, but apart from that, he’s in a great, deep pit of silence, torn across briefly, from time to time, by hoots and shrieks that must be birds or monkeys. He didn’t really wash, at bedtime (except down there, where his mother taught him to wash every day), because his bowl of tepid water wouldn’t go very far, and besides, he didn’t want to wash his face and arms because then he’d have to reapply his insect repellent. He’s brushed his teeth, but he couldn’t find his toothpaste – he hasn’t had to go to bed in the half-dark since a power cut in London ten years ago, and then what a fuss all the neighbours made! Though he, Trevor, thought nothing of it. For the village, of course, this darkness is normal.
Is he getting a toothache? He hopes he isn’t. Too far from home. He thinks, root canal, and the dodgy nerve winds down into the dark, and he dozes, worrying, then jerks himself awake: he isn’t going to get a bloody toothache. He’s Trevor Patchett. He’s perfectly all right.
(Will he be bitten, though? By mosquitoes? By snakes? He’s never been a coward, but this is the unknown. OK, Mary’s nearby, in the next-door building, but she’s not the same woman he remembers from England, easy-going, sensible, admiring him. Once her family was there, she had practically ignored him, talking solidly to brothers and uncles and nieces in the language he naturally could not understand, though he sometimes knew they were talking about him by the way they turned and stared, half-smiling. What the hell was Mary Tendo telling them?)
Bloody hell, I’m on the other side of the world. No, I’ve fallen off the edge of the world.
No lights, no electricity, no gas, no phone. No anything. Just people, goats, chickens. Not much farming, and I was a chump to think that they were resting the land. Mary soon put me straight on that. ‘It is because so many have died of AIDS. Those who remain cannot work the land.’ Hardly any adults, but so many children. An army of children compared to back home. I couldn’t believe there were so many of them, and so few of us, so few adults. Back home it’s the opposite; like Justin and Zakira, two adults fussing over every little kiddie.
(And then it strikes him: or like Ness and me. We never managed to have any more children. Didn’t hold it together. Too young and daft. So Justin had to hack it on his own, with two great grownups dancing around him.)
Plus the nannies and minders and carers and what-not. Not that Justin and Zakira have got a nanny.
But those village schools I saw today ... they were like factories of children. Sort of mass-produced. Learning everything by heart, in identical uniforms. A few knackered teachers and hundreds of children. And those buildings. In England, they’d do for farm animals. No lights, no glass, no floor, no loos.
And they’re going to grow up. One day they’ll grow up. What if they found out how rich our lot were? They might grow up and come looking for us.
Trevor Patchett tosses and turns on his itchy mattress. He’s never gone in for insomnia, but he’s never slept in an African village. In the middle of nowhere. The back of beyond.
Is he anyone, really, if no-one here knows him? He hopes he can be some use to them.
Then suddenly it starts, on the roof above him. A stuttering, a tapping – then the skies fall down. Trevor’s stunned into sleep by Ugandan rain.
In London, Justin is half-woken by crying. The digital horror: 3.30 AM. Rain blows against their windowpane.
‘I’ll go,’ says Zakira. ‘It must be my turn. I expect Abdy’s kicked off his covers.’ Then she lies there. If you give it a minute, he sometimes stops crying.
(Alternatively, Justin goes instead, but she does not consciously count on this.)
In fact, Justin is snoring again. Zakira hauls herself up from the beautiful depths of adult slumber, and tries not to think about work tomorrow, and needing her sleep to be on top of things. There is still a possibility she’ll have to go to Brussels, but they didn’t ring, so she’s praying it’s off. She loves her son more than life itself. Is it possible she loves him more than Justin? She reminds herself there’s no need to decide.
Justin wakes up to find her gone. Her side of the bed feels cold; she’s been away some time. He can hear Abdul Trevor snuffling and whimpering, and the soft intermittent voice of his mother. Zakira is there; he can go back to sleep.
She is back. ‘Hallo Mummy,’ he says, dozily. ‘Is he OK?’
‘I think he was cold. He had kicked off his covers. It feels like winter to me,’ says Zakira. ‘I covered him up, but he was very restless. And that rash ... you didn’t give him eggs again?’
‘Course not. Or avocado. Don’t ask. It’s not always my fault when he gets a rash.’ (It’s a white lie about the avocado.)
They lie in the dark. Nearly a quarrel. But they don’t want to quarrel. They love each other.
‘Maybe you should take him to the doctor,’ says Zakira. ‘I know it’s a drag.’
‘No,’ says Justin, ‘it isn’t a drag.’ (But it is, it is. You have to wait for ever. And he plans to drop in on Davey, in the morning. They don’t need the doctor. Abdy will be fine.) ‘I think he’s just hot,’ Justin continues. ‘You’re Moroccan, you think our autumn is winter. Anyway, well done, he went to sleep.’
‘Well I gave him some, you know,’ Zakira sighs. ‘It always works.’ Baby paracetamol.
‘You don’t think we give him too much?’ asks Justin.
‘Well, it’s meant for children,’ says Zakira. ‘Baby paracetamol, the gift of the gods.’
‘The gift of sleep,’ says Justin, kissing her. They cuddle like children, they make spoons, warm spoons, he curves soothingly against her, till the spoons start melting, become meltingly tender, and some parts soften as other parts harden, and although they need sleep, the sweet chance is there, they’re awake and not busy, they’re soon moving together, and their cries of contentment merge with rain and autumn, the first birds singing, a late awakening.
7.30 AM. They have missed the alarm. Zakira’s annoyed to have overslept. The problem is Justin, who rarely hears it. The day ahead looms, full of challenges: she’s new in her post, she must prove herself, and if the markets keep falling, she won’t be there long. She pulls on her clothes, grabs coffee, leaves.
Abdul comes in, coughing, and strokes Justin’s face.
‘We’re going to play with Dubois, today.’
‘Yey!’ shouts Abdy, then coughs again.
The morning, actually, goes well for Justin. Davey thinks he has work for him.