Coincidence: A Novel (11 page)

‘What do we look like?' Azalea said. ‘Like a couple of survivors from Waterloo – you with your arm and me with my rib.'

Thomas offered up a grudging smile.

‘Creeping into the dark shadows of a little coffee house,' said Azalea, demonstrating something of her flair for the dramatic, ‘to nurse our wounds and share battle stories.'

Thomas stirred sugar into his tea.

‘It's just as well,' said Azalea, ‘that we're not sneaking off here to have an affair! Imagine trying to do that with your arm and my rib.'

‘Imagine,' echoed Thomas Post.

They found their way back to the story of p. j. loak, and Azalea told Thomas about her childhood. She explained the events at the fairground in Totnes, and filled him in on the scant details she had learned about her mother.

‘Peter Loak was convinced that he was my father,' she said.

‘And you're not so sure?' asked Thomas.

‘I don't know what to think. They didn't marry – Peter and Marion. She was quite a few years older than him. He offered to marry her, but she refused. She said that God had told her to raise me on her own, just as she'd been raised by her mother. So, by and by, he went back to England, just a few weeks after my christening; back to his father's old house in Cumbria, while Marion stayed on in Port St Menfre.'

‘Then Peter joined the navy. It was what he'd always wanted to do. He was nineteen, and I think it was something he needed to get out of his system. One day when he was back on shore leave, my mother turned up at the Buttermere house with me. I must have been around two, or two and a half. I don't remember it, of course. And then they made up their differences – at least some of them – and for a while, Marion would return to Port St Menfre when Peter was at sea, and then cross back to England when he was home on leave. Then, in the autumn of 1981, Peter set off on HMS
Sheffield
to the Middle East, and they toured there for a few months until the spring of 1982. She was thirty, and he was twenty-two. It can't have been easy. He promised her this would be his final trip. She was terrified that he'd be lost at sea. And they had words. From the way Loak tells the story, they just about stopped speaking. He didn't know if she'd be waiting for him back at the house in Buttermere, or if he would ever see her or his daughter again. He cabled to tell her that the
Sheffield
was on its way home. But of course it wasn't. The
Sheffield
got sent off to the Falklands. And then –
kerbang
! One duff Exocet missile later, Marion paid off the rent on her cottage in Port St Menfre, packed all she had into two suitcases, bundled them into her old car and took the ferry over to Liverpool. Then she drove up to Buttermere and let herself into the empty house. She hadn't spoken to Peter on the phone, but she'd been in touch with someone on the hospital ship where he was taken. That hospital ship, by the way, was called the
Uganda
. Anyway. Somehow a message got through to her to say that Peter had been hospitalised in Uruguay, and that he was coming back to a naval hospital in Plymouth. So Marion left her belongings at the house, packed a small overnight bag and strapped me into the car. We drove all day from Cumbria to Devon so that we could go and see him in hospital. Only that never happened. We never got as far as the hospital. We didn't even get as far as Plymouth. I was found wandering alone in a fairground. And Marion was never seen again. No one knew, for a long time, if she was still alive.

‘When Peter Loak was eventually discharged from the naval hospital, he went home to Cumbria. Marion hadn't been to visit him in hospital, of course, and he figured that she was probably gone from his life. She never answered his letters. He wrote to the vicar of Port St Menfre, and he received a reply saying that Marion had never returned to the village. Someone else was renting the cottage on Briny Hill Walk. So he stopped writing. What else could he do?

‘Loak drew a services disability pension from the navy, and that's what he lived on – and still does – apart from a very modest income from his poetry. And then, about ten years after moving back into the house, he employed a decorator to do some repairs and other general improvements on the house. The decorator said, ‘ “What do you want me to do with these two suitcases?” Marion's cases were still on top of the big oak wardrobe in the bedroom, exactly where she had left them. Loak, being blind, had never seen them – and his various cleaners had simply dusted over them and never mentioned them. The decorator opened up the cases and told Loak what they contained. That was when he realised that something must have happened to Marion. He called the police out from Cockermouth, but no one seemed interested in ten-year-old suitcases or a missing woman and child. Eventually he lost patience with the police. He had given up all hope of ever seeing Marion again, but he was desperate to see his daughter. I use the word “see” the way a blind person uses it – the same way Loak uses the word. Of course he would never see either of us. But he still wanted to
see
his daughter, as a blind man does. He had a photograph of me as a three-year-old on his mantelpiece – a strange thing, you might think, for a sightless man to have. But every now and then, if he had visitors, he would direct them to the picture and he would ask them to describe me. Then he would write down their descriptions, and sometimes he would turn them into poems.

‘Finally Loak went to a private investigator in Keswick – a lady called Susan Calendar. It took her less than two weeks to uncover everything he needed to know. She was thorough. She drove all the way to Exeter to examine the police files, and then she wrote up a report and delivered it to Loak in person. She had a Braille copy made especially for him. Loak still keeps the report in the desk in his front room.'

Azalea looked across the café table to Thomas. His tea had gone cold.

‘Am I boring you?' she asked.

‘No,' he shook his head. ‘Tell me what the report said.'

Azalea drew a breath. ‘The report said that Marion Yves had been abducted and raped by a man called Carl Morse. This was the very first time I'd heard this story. Morse had murdered her and had thrown her body into the sea from a place called Millook Cliff in North Devon. When she was finally washed ashore there was no way to identify her body. The daughter was adopted in November 1982 by Luke and Rebecca Folley, teachers from a village called St Piran in Cornwall.' She nodded thoughtfully and turned her face away. ‘Luke and Rebecca were my parents,' she said.

‘I see.'

‘In January 1984 the Folleys went to run a mission school in Africa, taking me with them, of course. That's what the report said, and that's what happened. Then, in June 1992, according to the report, just one year before Susan Calendar's investigation, the mission in Uganda was raided by a militia group called the Lord's Resistance Army. Four orphan children were taken to become child soldiers. The Folleys and their daughter were slaughtered.'

There was a long silence at the table; elsewhere, the clinking of crockery and the hiss of the espresso machine and the murmur of voices.

‘Of course, that isn't what happened,' said Thomas. ‘Or you wouldn't be here.'

‘It isn't exactly what happened,' said Azalea.

They listened for a while to the coffee-shop noises.

‘Have you ever visited the spot where your mother was killed?' asked Thomas Post. ‘Your birth mother, I mean, Marion.'

Azalea looked down. ‘No,' she said. ‘Why would I want to do that?'

‘I don't know. Maybe to lay some flowers.'

There was another long silence. ‘I would like that,' Azalea said.

The espresso machine emitted a geyser of steam and someone in the café started a loud conversation on a mobile phone.

‘What were you planning to do this weekend?' Thomas Post asked.

13

June 1992

T
he day had begun so well. The augurs didn't cry and the carrion crows didn't circle. The two LRA men and the Folleys settled themselves inside the mess hall. It could have been a cosy business meeting.

Odokonyero, who rarely sat for meals, came and placed himself firmly between them. When Rebecca cast him a reproving look he said, ‘Mrs Rebecca – I know these people. You don't.' And that was that.

Luke Folley took his familiar place at the head of the table. Now comfortably into his forties, Luke had arrived at a time in his life when the intersecting paths of providence were well behind him, and where the work he did and the role he played rested easily upon his shoulders. The faint echoes of youthful rebellion had long been silenced. His past and his future had melded into a single broad river; he knew where he came from and he knew where he was headed, and while there may still have been invisible rapids around the bend, the riverbanks themselves presented no diversions. His destiny was clear. He was the fourth Folley to run the Holy Tabernacle Mission, stepping confidently into the shoes of Lesters I, II and III. Lester III, of course, had been his brother. One day, he felt, he would hand it all on to his daughter. Azalea would make a fine teacher. Luke was sure of that.

He had never rediscovered his lost faith; but many a clergyman in a fine house, drawing a comfortable salary, had found ways to balance the contradictions between personal faith and professional duty, and Luke, in a much more modest way, would make the same concessions. He had learned to enjoy the fragile sliver of status that came with heading a small mission in a small township in a forgotten corner of an overlooked country. He didn't have to wear a suit and tie for work. No one appraised his performance. He didn't battle his way through commuter traffic, or worry too much about a pension plan. There were anxieties, of course; the strained political map of northern Uganda was a constant focus of harassment by political or militia groups. And then there were the events that had befallen his parents and his brother, Lester III. Their deaths were always there in the background, a reminder that he should never grow too complacent. But the years came and went, and the mission routine survived all attempts to derail it, and Luke acquired the skills of a manager, a teacher, a fundraiser and a politician, and all of the related talents required to steer the little enterprise through the years of the Uganda Bush War and into the uncertain new millennium that lay just a few years ahead.

Luke stretched out his arms and entwined his fingers. He may have been shaking – but only slightly. ‘If you're here to meet with us, gentlemen, perhaps we should introduce ourselves.' He glanced around the table as if seeking approval for this very Western formality. ‘OK, then. Let me begin. My name is Luke Folley, and I'm the director of this mission. The mission was founded by my grandfather, Lester Folley.' He indicated the whole compound with a broad sweep of his arm. ‘We have a school here where we teach sixty children from Langadi village. We have an orphanage where we look after fifteen children. We also operate a small medical clinic, a hospital of sorts with around sixteen patients, and a church. We employ a full-time nurse and three part-time nurses, and three – or is it four? – nursing assistants, who don't have any professional training but who help out in the hospital. Our clinic takes place twice a week, led by a Swahili doctor who drives up from Gulu. Is this helpful to you?'

The two LRA men seemed discomfited by the sudden formality of the meeting. The more senior man nodded.

‘Very good,' said Luke. ‘In 1982 I was in England with my wife Rebecca,' he identified Rebecca with a generous gesture, ‘and our daughter Azalea. While we were there,' he said, and he tapped the table in thought, ‘while we were there . . .'

‘Luke,' said Rebecca, ‘you don't need to do this.'

‘No, it's all right. It's all right.' He gave a thin smile at the men. ‘While we were in England in 1982,' he said, ‘two SPLA men walked into the camp. Just the way you did now. Straight after breakfast. One of them had a Kalashnikov.' Luke pointed at the gun slung over the first man's shoulder. ‘Just like the one you've got there.'

The two men shuffled in their seats.

‘
You
know what happened next, don't you?' Luke asked. ‘Of course you do. You gentlemen are Acholi, aren't you? You probably know the story very well. My parents, my brother . . .'

The man with the rifle reached over his shoulder and unclipped the weapon. He lifted it onto the table. ‘Of course, Mr Luke,' he said. ‘We know what happened here.'

‘In that case,' said Luke, ‘you can understand why we don't welcome people who come marching in here with guns.'

‘We are not SPLA,' said the man, as if this would excuse everything.

‘Perhaps not,' said Rebecca, adding some urgency to the conversation, ‘but this is an orphanage, not a bloody shooting range. Anybody is welcome to come in here and talk – but not with guns.'

‘Missus – my gun is on the table,' the LRA man protested, pushing it a bit further away. ‘We have not come here to make trouble.'

‘Then why have you come?' Rebecca demanded.

The two men conferred softly in Acholi. Then the first man said, ‘If you please, Mr Luke, Mrs Luke, it is my turn to make my introduction.'

Luke leaned back and raised a hand to silence Rebecca. ‘Very well,' he said, ‘your turn.'

‘I am a man of God,' the soldier said, ‘I am a preacher like you.'

Luke nodded without correcting him.

‘I am known throughout all of Acholiland as a holy man. That is right. Your man will tell you.' He nodded towards Odokonyero.

Odokonyero looked down. ‘It is true what he says.'

‘You say everybody knows this man?' Luke asked.

‘Everybody knows him,' Odokonyero replied.

‘And he is a holy man?'

The cook nodded. ‘He is a holy man to the Acholi.'

‘I've never seen a holy man wearing an army uniform,' said Rebecca.

The holy man – or the man who claimed to be holy – said, ‘Is it only the white man, then, who can fight for the Kingdom of God?' He looked around the table and his eyes settled on Rebecca. ‘You are a child of God, are you not? Are you not commanded to take up arms to defeat the forces of evil in the world?'

The softly sinister implications of this question floated above the little meeting and settled like a moth on the rafters to watch the way the conversation went.

Rebecca said, ‘Our God commands us to love our enemies; to turn the other cheek.' She flinched as a fly landed on her face, and swatted it away. Outside in the compound an unnatural silence prevailed.

‘So,' said the holy man in the army uniform, ‘you do not know of the LRA?'

‘I was hoping,' said Rebecca, ‘that you might enlighten us.'

Luke made a show of looking at his watch. ‘You gentlemen must excuse me for just one moment. I am as anxious as my wife to hear about the LRA, and what your aims are. But we need to ring the school bell. Classes should be starting.'

‘So soon?' asked the soldier.

‘Oh yes,' said Luke. ‘Forgive me just one moment.'

He stood up and walked over to the bell rope.

‘Are you familiar with the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers – marching off to war”?' asked the solider of Rebecca.

Rebecca shrank slightly. ‘It's marching
as
to war.'

The mission bell began to ring.

‘
As
to war,' she said, ‘not
off
to war. It has a completely different meaning.'

Dingdingdingdingdingdingding.

‘It is a command for Christian Soldiers to fight,' said the man, ‘to go off to war and fight.'

‘No, it isn't,' Rebecca said. ‘It's a metaphor. The hymn is telling us that we must face up to evil – but not with violence.'

‘ “With the Cross of Jesus going on before”,' said the solider triumphantly. ‘ “Onward into battle, see his banners go”.'

Dingdingdingdingdingdingding.

The LRA man's attention began to turn towards Luke and his urgent ringing of the bell.

‘I think that's enough, dear,' said Rebecca to Luke.

The ringing stopped and Luke returned to the table. A little river of sweat was coiling down his face. He wiped it away. ‘You were going to explain to us about the LRA,' he said, settling back down into his seat.

Luke and Rebecca Folley, as it happened, needed no explanation of the three humble initials. In reality, they needed no introduction to the man who sat opposite them in the uniform of a soldier with his roughly trimmed beard, his make-believe medal bars and with his beret angled firmly across his scalp; this man who claimed to be a holy man who had levered his gun onto their table. They knew him from photographs and newspaper reports and a dozen first-hand and second-hand accounts. They had seen him from time to time in Gulu and in Moyo, always with his ragbag army of hollow-eyed, gun-toting acolytes. They had seen the way pedestrians would dissolve from the streets as he passed, had seen how mothers would scoop up children and whisk them into the shadows, had seen how the news would be telegraphed down the street so that hiding places could be found. They had talked about this man, on the veranda here in the mission, on other verandas, over coffee in the day and over cold gin cocktails and beers as they watched the sun set over a land that no one could understand any more. They had given coins to callers in exchange for information about this man, had paid to find out where he was. Where had he been seen? Who was he with? Where was he heading? He had haunted their dreams and their waking hours. And now here he was, alone except for a batman with no teeth, sitting among them, drinking their coffee, smoking their cigarettes, misquoting hymns.

The man's name was Joseph Kony. He still
is
called Joseph Kony, although if God and providence can ever join forces and do the right thing, then by now he and his tangle of associates will have been scoured from the face of the earth, and Kony will be rotting in a very deep and undiscovered grave. His people are the Lord's Resistance Army, although that wasn't always their name. When Luke and Rebecca and their daughter Azalea came to Langadi, there was no LRA. There were dozens of ragtag groups, of course, and a few of these represented the general grievances of the Acholi people. But when a president from the south, Yoweri Museveni, seized power in Kampala, then the murmuring among the northern peoples grew louder. First they were the Lord's Army, and then they were the Uganda People's Democratic Christian Army, and finally they became the LRA – but in truth it mattered not to the Folleys, or to the mothers of Acholi children, or to the Sudanese or Buganda or Karamojong. To them they were only ever Kony's men, the vacant-faced, brutalised, undead army that did the bidding of Joseph Kony and did it without question, mercy or remorse.

Early in 1992, the same year that Kony came walking into the Langadi mission, LRA men had attacked two schools at Aboke, near Gulu. One was the Sacred Heart Secondary Boarding School for Girls; the other was St Mary's Girls School. In an act that has become infamous in Ugandan history, forty-four girls were abducted. They were taken to become child soldiers and sex slaves for the nascent militia group. They were not the first, nor the last children to disappear from schools and missions in northern Uganda, but this public abduction was a startling message to Luke and Rebecca Folley, and to every school and every parent, that the ambition and brutality of the LRA was on the rise. Long after the events told in this story – and not long before Azalea had given this account to Thomas Post – the International Criminal Court would estimate the number of children snatched by the LRA at thirty thousand. Some estimates would put the number at sixty thousand. Ten-year-old boys and girls were expected to fight. The youngest armed soldiers in Kony's resistance army were often said to be five years old. They carried light arms, and could be relied upon to fire and kill with natural indiscrimination. Those children who were seized but who did not cooperate were not killed by Kony or his men. Instead they would be mutilated. Lips would be cut off. Ears and hands would be amputated. Genitals too. The mutilated – and often dying – child would be dumped back close to their home town as a warning to any future abductees. This, as the West went about its business; as we busily circled our world with satellites and criss-crossed the planet with roadways and watched our TV shows and piped our music into foreign lands – this was the fate handed down to hundreds upon hundreds of children. As we wept for a dead princess in London, as we hunted for weapons in Iraq, as we queued for our touch-screen mobile phones, children were lining up to have their hands hacked off. We are good at hiding ugly events, and after all, this was Africa, a continent effectively invisible to the outside world – not because light will fail to penetrate the darkness, but because very few will choose to look at what is revealed.

But for Luke and Rebecca, and the Mission of St Paul to the Needy of West Nile, there was to be no hiding. Joseph Kony, the butcher of Acholiland, soon to be labelled one of the most wanted criminals on earth, had brazenly walked into their compound, had accepted one of Rebecca's cigarettes and had unshouldered his Indian-made copy of a Russian machine gun onto the table where children, just minutes earlier, had been devouring cassava porridge.

 

On this June day in 1992, Luke and Rebecca were not the only Britons present in the compound. Working alongside them were two VSOs, young people doing voluntary service overseas. Their story, too, became entwined with Azalea's. On the day when Joseph Kony strolled into the mission, the VSOs had been in Uganda for exactly five days. They were doctors, each newly qualified. Or not quite; which is to say that both had concluded the arduous years of study and examination required of a physician, and only a few weeks stood between this and the awarding of a degree. Lauren Marks had just completed a five-year degree course at the University of Edinburgh, and now, before taking up a post as a junior doctor in a city-centre hospital, she had chosen to spend four months at the mission hospital in Uganda. The boy's name was Richard Lewis, known to everyone as Ritchie. He too had just completed his degree in medicine; in his case, at Liverpool. Lauren and Ritchie had been on the same flight from London but had not met, and did not meet until they assembled with a dozen other VSOs at the airport in Entebbe, there to be peeled off to their respective assignments. There was a great deal of excitement and not a little trepidation.