Mary Graves took out the pistol she had been concealing in her coat and considered it, not so much seeking assurance as giving in to an unconscious anger, and then thoughtfully levelled it.
"It is the way of the world." She heard Bates say to Henderson.
Mary stood but a short way from them, regarding the tent at the centre of the military cantonment. The KAR, a multi-battalion British colonial regiment raised from British possessions in East Africa, had been founded thirty-two years ago.
There was no conscription and extremely selective, recruiting soldiers from ethnic groups with supposedly inherent military qualities, the so-called 'martial races.' In the last decade, these included the Kamba, Kalenjin, and Somali, pastoral and semi-pastoral groups from impoverished regions. In contrast, the Kikuyu and Meru of central Kenya were hardly found in its ranks.
Mary Graves levelled her gun at the central tent that may to another seem unremarkable. Mary gritted her teeth, and imagined she could see the figure of a tall woman within the tent.
Somewhat behind her, Henderson hummed to Bates: "But there was a time when revolutionaries tended to be made out of idealism, not cynicism…"
"Maybe that's what's botched up all the revolutions so far!"
Henderson threw Bates a vile look. The old man grinned; there was no joy to be found in his eyes. Henderson stood, as a man made dumb, frowning and looking at the bivouac. There was a bitter tightnesses in the corner of his mouth, and his jaw tensed and released just the once.
Then McBryne was there: "Are ye hungert? ah hae, uh, eggs, and talipa, sausages."
Joseph Bates grunted and considered the cook. "You mean goat testicles, don't you? I prefer to call things what they are."
"Howfur dae ye lik' yer eggs?"
"Served around noon."
"Reek that. Cohiba. Ah ken ye'r a fan. Even though ah dinnae smoke anymair, doesn't mean ah cannae... "
"Disgusting habit." Henderson said.
"Aye. Sae dae yi'll waant eggs or nae?"
"Same as yesterday." Mary spoke. She lowered the gun.
It was an hour or two before noon. The sun was high and hot. The air acrid. Dust caught up in the wind that swept between the heavy-duty convoy trucks and military issue tents. Rows upon rows of canvas and khaki, their flaps drawn back to reveal scarce glimpses of worn cots and duffel bags. Each tent bore the marks of wear and tear, signs of countless battles fought and survived. Of lives lived on the move.
Around the bivouac, soldiers sought solace in quiet moments of respite. Some sat upon folding chairs, their weary bodies sinking into the canvas, while others leaned against crates, their faces etched with the exhaustion of combat. A game of cards unfolded upon a makeshift table, the sound of shuffling and muted laughter punctuating the otherwise cruelly ironic serene morning. In the centre of the camp a water barrel stood sentinel. Some twenty men stood lined up, canteens in hand.
Mary felt more than saw Bates slide up beside her. He coughed, and leant heavily on his cane.
"How's the pain?" She inquired, not taking her eyes of the tent.
"Like shit on a roof." The answer came.
"In plain view and a pain to get rid of?"
"Like shit on a roof."
"Like the Bard himself." Mary spoke, and then tore herself away from the view and walked off in a direction she did not know herself.
The harriers circled overhead. And once more, she saw Henderson move towards the water to stand with booted feet in the river, a line between his fingers: his eyes distant. He was not the only affected thusly.
Mary had spoken to each of the kids. It had been the first thing she did.
Beneath his brazenness, a suggestion of something forced, uneasy, and abashed had been detectable in Robert Leigh. Effrontery is a display of shame and fright. And when asked whether he had eaten yet, Leigh had merely shrugged.
"Go to McBryne," Mary had said. "He will get you something."
"I'm not hungry. Why would I eat. Why would I eat if—" here, he'd stopped, fixed his dull gaze on Mary and burst out laughing, saying in a tone that contained every anguish stifled by every cynicism: "Bah!"
Mary had grasped him by the shoulders. Leigh, trembling, had endured it with an empty apathy that was bellied by the sheen over his eyes.
"And now I want you to go eat something, Robert," Mary had said. "And then I want you to go to your tent and wash up and sleep. Will I need to come with you?"
"No." Leigh had said.
"Are you sure?"
Leigh's eyes had left hers, and he'd merely nodded.
In the aftermath of the events at Trujillo, Mary had suffered. She'd felt an anguish in her heart, which nothing relieved, and which augmented every day; she no longer knew whether it was winter or summer, whether it was raining or shining, whether the birds were singing, whether it was the season for dahlias or daisies, whether the work she did was more satisfying to her than others, whether the prosecutions that followed her at home in England were just or unjust, whether her friends wished her well or ill; and she remained dejected, absorbed, attentive to but a single thought, her eyes vague and staring as when one gazes by night at a black and fathomless spot where an apparition has vanished.
There was left to her but one distraction: that was that of work.
When Mary Graves began working again, she had gradually begun experiencing a contentment which she did not even perceive, so gently and naturally had it come. Then, there was a new excavation, and new discoveries to be made, and this new appetence for life and discovery bore away with it a portion of her sadness; then came new opportunities, like the daybreak of summer, fresh as dawn always is, like Jason stepping onto the Argo. In that time, she rediscovered her passion for archaeology and buried her sorrows deep into her heart where only, now and again, her conscience could grasp at it.
She had resumed her tasks, and set her sights on Kenya.
And to the outside world, it had seemed to them that Mary Graves had never been at war with herself at all. It was a punishing process, that dulled the senses and the mind, and left behind an empty, unhealthy, washed-out feeling of loss. It was a well-trodden path. And it kept her going.
Now, Mary sighed, watched the harriers, and returned to the excavation site.
On her way back, she passed and regarded the procession of victims being led to the improvised medical centre put up by the KAR. Labourers with their decrepit limps, deep sores and soot. Mary watched as a child with a burn mark across his face sat waiting patiently. The boy must have been no older than fifteen.
His hands were big and his body terribly long and thin, the elbows and knees standing out like knots on a pollard willow and both his knees were covered with deep scrapes. And still he looked extraordinarily small, so that it struck Mary as a strange thing that so much suffering could be condensed into a single point. He had a flat, angular, harassed, and infinitely patient face, the eyes without glance; as if there was nothing beyond him but the sand before his feet in which he shifted his toes.
He seemed abnormally calm. And sorrowful.
She shuddered, thinking of burns and what charred skin smelled like. She gagged, and thought that even even now, she could still hear the screaming.
Getting back to work was supposed to make that stop. It was a good form. It was supposed to make the echoing violence fade.
She couldn't say or do anything that would make a difference to the dead. The damage done to them was permanent. They were gone, and they couldn't hear her, they couldn't care. What she felt and why wouldn't matter to them. She didn't expect it to.
She wasn't asking for a miracle. She just wanted to be left alone.
It was when Mary took another step, that the boy's gaze fixed on her, and the immediate vindictiveness and resolution that could be glimpsed behind those eyes was overwhelming. Outwardly, the boy kept his calm. But Mary, at that moment, could not conceive how she had ever mistaken his calmness for acceptance; it was unnerving, as if the spirit of the callous hyena had taken over this boy's body.
And at this, Mary Graves felt a strange feeling of unsettlement.
She swallowed, and was the first to break the spell. Perturbed and shaken. How was it that some things passed over her without afflicting any of its horrors upon her, but this boy struck her so deeply?
❧
The niggling sense of wrongness remained throughout the afternoon. It kept gnawing at Mary Graves as she worked alongside Henderson and Bates.
Their work had been postponed as a dead ceiba tree stood in the way of any further expansion of the excavation site. Silva and Bates had, with the help and expertise of some of Tendaji's workers, taken the trunk down. All that now remained were the roots.
It was a delicate operation.
The danger of the tree falling over into the dig site had been adverted, but the roots ran deep and large and while some were rotting, others were too overgrown and heavy to get out easily.
All of them were hot and sweating. There still hung an uncomfortable electric charge in the air after the happenings of last night, and Bates and Mary had agreed on allowing the kids to rest for the day. Themselves, aware of their mutual restlessness and lack of an output, agreed on fulfilling the arduous task of getting the roots out. Henderson, in all quietude, had joined them after disappearing for an hour. Charles had showed up with him, and an air of companionable silence hung about the two men as they worked.
Mary stretched upright to release some pressure from her back, to see Charles on his knees, pulling inexorably on a stubborn root. Light shone down on him from above, the sun beating on his back, glowing over the shirt stuck to the hard muscle of his back. Mary stood, transfixed by the push and pull of his arms, the way his strong hands closed over the root and gave it no option but to yield. He had planted a foot flat, and used his whole body to subdue the sinew of this ancient tree; thigh muscles hard in his dusted trousers, his stomach contracted and taut, his chest pulling out as the root gave in and came quietly. He was panting softly, his skin shining with moisture.
A casual gesture of Charles's hand across his loosened collar left a smear of dirt on his neck. Just that; just a simple thing. His long, clever fingers, brown with earth, pulling along the damp skin by his throat. The way he heaved a breath, and rested his other hand on the inside of his thigh.
It wasn't that Mary had never realised how much she cared for the man, or that she'd never recognized the familiar flicker of desire. She had. God, she had. But as with most things in her life — principally her marriage — she just happened to be aware that sometimes things did not work out simply because you wanted them to work.
The trouble was that the last few weeks had amplified everything she'd been trying to suppress; throwing it open and leaving it out to explore. The body reacts to stress, Mary reminded herself. This was not an unusual response. But they'd tried being married in more than name only. Many times. And the unavoidable miserable aftermath just wasn't worth it.
Charles caught her eyes and straightened, looking at her in that minimalist way he had, creases around his eyes and an impression of warmth and little else as he removed the earth from his hands with broad, absentminded sweeps of his palms against one another.
"I will be leaving on the morrow." He began. Mary couldn't quite hide her surprise, and he conceded: "some of the victims require more help than the field surgeons can provide for them here. I will be driving them to Loiyangalani."
"Does the Handley yield enough space in the back?"
Charles nodded once and threw a glance in the direction of the medic tent. "No more than sixteen. But we need no more. That's all the beds we have back at the clinic."
"What about the mission at Lekumai?"
"They're… a French Roman Catholic Mission."
Mary remained silent. Charles looked away. The din from Grigg's camp carried to where the both of them were standing. The air reeked of metal and sun-baked mud and sand.
"Those labourers are Hindu, traditional Mijikenda, and Mohammedan." He said at last.
Once again, Mary didn't answer. Charles knew her well enough that she did not need to. More sounds from the military encampment reached them. Charles grew pensive, as he was wont to do. The harsh light coloured him sharply and made his profile appear startlingly rough.
"Do you think this place shaped us?" She asked.
"How do you mean?"
"When I walked across camp this morning, I wondered: did it mean anything? If it's just a place we spent some years of our lives or was it something more?"
"I don't know."
"The whole thing is a sham. The only reason I got it is because the institute owed me a favour. They slapped my name on it. Politics. Like everything else."
"Not everyone has that kind of people owing them favours."
"Oh— in fifty years they'll slam someone else's name on it. Maybe Henderson's— then I won't even mind that much."
"You'd still have done something, no matter what people think." He said. Mary felt warmth at her back. Charles took another step and was now leaning against her shoulder.
Mary hummed. "The excavation doesn't matter; but I like to think this place did."
"It just meant a lot to us, then."
"And what about us?"
"Honestly, I haven't thought about it that much," he lied. "We were so young."
"That first evening you taught me how to dance the Argentine tango and how to make a cocktail with two banned liquors."
"Three, by now."
"And years passed."
"And years passed. Made me happy to make you happy, Mary. Didn't see any harm in it."
"You meant something to me. I believe that."
And they were quiet and watched the site.
"Does it happen to everybody?" Mary whispered.
"I suppose so. Anyway, it can only happen to us once."
"And now it's like living in a house of the dead." She murmured. "It's so goddamned tiring." She huffed. It wasn't a laugh so much as a signal of onsetting melancholy.
"I know. We always took care of each other. We only made mistakes."
"I made the worst ones."
"No. We both made them. Let's not fight any more, though." Charles said. "At least for now."
Something in her chest caved in, and she breathed out on a sob. "Oh, damn it all to hell, all of a sudden I just can't stand it."
He took a step closer and lay a hand on the back of her neck, thump sweeping over her nape. "I know," he said, and rested his forehead against her temple. "I can't stand it either."
"Leigh asked me, you know."
"What did you tell him?"
She didn't answer. "We were so young and stupid and we were both happy and Eva was so damned beautiful—"
"Yes."
"And what will we do?"
"You do what you're doing and I'll do what I'm doing."
"I suppose we'll learn how to take it."
"Maybe."
"I wish I had broken down then but I felt just hollow sick."
"I know."
"I don't think I could have done it had I not felt so empty."
"I believe you," he lied.
"—and you should have seen her at the site, Eva was so happy there, Charles. So happy and so open and so at wonder with the world."
"That wasn't your fault." He waited a few beats, giving her time to disagree. When she didn't, he rewarded her with a tight squeeze. Mary allowed a desperate breath to escape.
"Thank god we can't see the future or we'd never get out of our beds."
A shot resounded through the wadis. Mary startled violently. It had come from the bivouac. Her spine straightened immediately. She grasped at Charles reflectively. Her breath rushed out. Charles made a half-aborted step to put himself between his wife and the violent discharge. Had an attack begun? But there was no answer to the shot, only an eerie silence.
Charles's face retained a slight grimace, one that tilted one corner of his mouth down ever so slightly, and tinted his eyes with the tiniest slither of resentment. Whether this was directed at herself or Charles's own subjection to the grim sights and stenches of the past night, Mary couldn't tell.
The silence maintained.
Some way down, Joseph Bates scrambled upright and struggled to where he had hung his cane on the ladder. Henderson, standing by the water bidon closer to the camp, had halted his return, and he and Mary Graves exchanged a look. At once, a moment of understanding passed between Henderson and Mary, and the man left to see what had happened. He came back less than a minute later, grim and silent, his face very pale.
Had a stray shot eliminated a vagrant?
The man did not speak, but by his gesture, Mary Graves found herself summoned to the bivouac, to the space in front of Grigg's tent. The passage to the tent stood open. Those who had sat within had gathered outside as well, where Mary now saw the black-haired colonel, Mathias R. Grigg, holding a pistol. At his feet, a young boy cowered— a young boy with a burn mark across his face.
The tragic picture was completed by a soldier who turned around at Mary's approach, and, when none spoke, gestured at the tenement in front of them. As Mary slowly inspected the fabric, she saw at last a scorched mark.
Grigg gave the boy at his feet a cold look. "Kusanya mwenyewe. Fikiri au uombe." He spoke. "Collect yourself. Think or pray. You have one minute."
"Rehema. Mercy," the boy groaned, then began cursing as he convulsed.
Grigg kept the gun pointed at him. Henderson turned his head away; Mary, in turn, listened carefully, for she heard in those mumbled curses a trace of the language of the northeastern plains, and a strange cadence that seemed familiar.
At Grigg's feet, the boy's face was dark and wet with terror; Mary felt distant sickness gnaw at her as she studied him. Once more she was merely an observer of where her own body was. By no cognisant decision of her own consciousness, she became a spectator; the wadis was merely a stage, and the passage of time seemed to produce no effect on her.
Then the minute was up. Without a moment's hesitation, Grigg executed the boy with a single shot from his pistol.
Henderson flinched. The entire vicinity had fallen silent. Grigg holstered the weapon; Mary kept her eyes on the dead boy's face.
"Away with that," Grigg commanded.
The soldier who had pointed out the mark quickly stepped forward. Two others followed. One grabbed hold of the right shoulder while a second took the left, the third taking the corpse by the feet.
Startlingly, it seemed ridiculous at that moment to Mary: the boy must have weighed no more than a hundred pounds.