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She wonders if Lucian knows she is there. He breathes calmly with the help of the machine, and she hopes the tube isn’t too uncomfortable. The heart monitor continues its faithful beeping. There’s something reassuring in that.
Why doesn’t he wake up? The doctors said he should be awake by now. The surgery was yesterday; they removed some of the tissues in his throat but not his larynx. Chemo and radiation will follow, if he can handle it. Why didn’t he seek treatment earlier? Probably just thought it was a cough from the pollution. Lucian always seemed invincible, somehow, in that streetwise way of his. But he didn’t have a wife to remind him to get himself checked out.
He is her oldest friend, the only one from home who has followed her trajectory from London to Africa and then back to Madeira to nest. Like a bird, he used to tell her, in the short emails and chats they’d have. He couldn’t understand why she never moved back to where she grew up, with him.
He always had such a continuous, sarcastic edge about him. As if nothing could bother him. Nothing would move him without his grudging consent. Still lives in the same flat in Stockwell, for God’s sake.
There’s a flutter around his eyelashes. A positive sign. She squeezes his hand, hoping he can sense her there.
He doesn’t look like himself. He is wearing the hospital gown, and his hair, thinning into blond-grey wisps, falls back from his forehead. Someone ought to give him a shampoo. His face sinks into the pillow. He was always skinny – that was just his body shape. Now gravity is conspiring to make him seem even thinner, and it scares her.
How long has it been? Some months since they had a video call over WhatsApp, and Lucian was amazed at the size of Bene. Already a teenager, nearly a man. She doesn’t know why she has never brought him to London to meet Lucian in person. It never seemed to be the right time. There’s so much to show Bene, but it’s really hard to find a way to explain it all to him. How do you talk about the divide between your life before you became a mother, and everything you’ve been through since?
Bene. Even as she worries at her friend’s bedside, her thoughts go to mothering. It’s such a strange feeling. You can give birth to someone. Raise him as best you can. Watch him grow these long legs and big ideas, become argumentative and creative and kind and impatient, all in a blur of days and years. It passes so fast you don’t have time to notice or document it properly. And then he is grown. Taking his own photos, making his own moves.
But you are so used to being with him, you still talk to him, in your head, all the time. You make an observation and try to say something to him. You turn around and he’s nowhere near. You are torn between trying to remember it for later, and chiding yourself that the little details don’t need to be shared anymore.
And you remember that you gave him a plane ticket.
And then you let him go.
––––––––
He likes the view of the courtyard before dawn, once he unlocks the window bars. Even though he’s been there for decades, he’ll never get used to the number of locks he needs to do up each evening and morning. He has to unlock their bedroom. Then the gate at the staircase. Then downstairs, the kitchen door from the hallway. And then the kitchen windows, and the back door. He feels like a caged animal. Amazing how the level of crime has come to this.
But he knows he is a privileged man. Not yet sixty years old and very healthy. Uses the gym four mornings a week, comes back home for breakfast with Paradisa and Omondi before work.
The way he sees it, maybe God decided against giving him children of his own. He works long hours, and has never settled down with a wife. But God decided to put children into his life.
Kojo directs large-scale humanitarian projects that impact on hundreds of thousands of families across Africa. Over the years, he has helped reach millions of children. But also, Omondi is special. He is so smart. Eight years old and asking questions about astronauts and the universe. He memorised the flags of every country in the world. He reads with a torch after lights-out, like any inquisitive child would do.
He remembers Omondi when the two of them first moved in. He was small like a frightened baby steenbok, with eyes that seemed to be much bigger than they were supposed to be. Impossibly skinny legs, bruised shins and shoes without laces. Kojo took care of that. He went out and bought the boy a new pair of school shoes right away. Bought the whole uniform. It wasn’t much. And he started paying the school fees. Somebody had to look after the boy.
Paradisa cleaned for Kojo for months before she shared with him the story of Omondi’s father rejecting them, convinced that Omondi was another man’s child. Kojo, whose large compound is provided by his position at CWW, listened sympathetically, and said she could take the flat on the ground floor.
Paradisa still calls him Mr Appiah, and he’s stopped trying to get her to use his first name. When she knocked on his bedroom door that night, he was only half-surprised. She wanted to lie with him. He made it clear to her that she didn’t have to. But she took to this habit of coming into his bed. With her long white nightgown, and her hair wrapped in the traditional scarf from up north. She lies in his bed and says nothing. Then when he switches the light out, she turns over and wraps her arms around him in a tight hold until her breathing slows.
He doesn’t mind. He found it amusing at first, endearing. Now he’s quite used to it. When it happens, he closes his eyes and pretends to sleep too. Her hold relaxes, then he can open his eyes and look at her. Her mouth slightly open, her breath moist and smelling of toothpaste. She has a worried look on her face, even when she sleeps. He has no idea what she is thinking. Often she shouts out in her sleep. But it is in a local language from her village up north, and he is not meant to understand. She uses him as a physical presence against some demons in her unconscious. To his surprise, he is fine with being used in such a way. It’s better than being alone.
––––––––
The mobile phone is ringing. He takes it from the kitchen charger and is puzzled; he knows this is not his day for being on call. He looks at the clock, and it says 5:30 am. It’s his oldest friend, Jeanette. They worked together in Angola fifteen years ago and followed each other’s promotions and changes with an understanding of colleagues more devoted to work than anything else.
‘Kojo, wake up,’ she says.
‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, but there’s something I need to tell you.’
‘Now?’
‘It’s about my visitor, the one I told you about. The boy I wanted you to meet.’
‘Jeanette, why are you calling me now?’ He looks through the kitchen door at the stairs, hoping his voice doesn’t wake Omondi.
‘Kojo, he didn’t get off the plane. They said he didn’t board it in Paris.’
‘Call him. You have a mobile number?’
‘Not answering. His mum’s neither.’
‘What do you want me to do about it?’
‘Help me, I need to track him. He’s my responsibility you see...’
He doesn’t understand why she is so upset. ‘Wait a minute, Jeanette. Let me make some coffee. I’ll ring you right back, and we’ll figure out what to do.’
Jeanette, like him, was unmarried; what family she has is back in Ireland, and there isn’t anyone else to rely on. He knows they serve that role for each other. Humanitarians tend to gravitate within the orbit of each other, but many never quite commit.
He’s grateful for what he has – a solid reputation, good friends, a steady job and a pension secured. For what he doesn’t have, he’s not someone who focuses too much on what didn’t happen. It isn’t a wise man who tries to walk ahead in life looking backwards.