Coincidence: A Novel (27 page)

A girl arrives with tea in a teapot, milk, sugar, a china cup and a bottle of water. Thomas thanks her, and pours himself a cup. ‘Do you want some?' he asks Luke.

‘No thanks. I'm a coffee drinker.'

‘Of course.' Thomas grins even wider. ‘Azalea told me you liked your coffee.'

‘Did she now?' This seems to please Luke.

‘When did you say she'd be here?'

‘Soon,' Luke says.

‘Did Azalea ever tell you . . . about her prediction?' Thomas asks.

‘What prediction?'

‘It was a . . . a . . . thing that we did on the internet.'

‘Ahh yes.' Luke is contemplating this. ‘I have heard of the internet,' he says. ‘Never used it, of course.'

‘No.'

‘Nothing like that in Langadi.'

‘No. I just wondered, you know, if Azalea ever mentioned . . .'

‘Mentioned what?' says Luke. He is looking somewhere off into the distance, somewhere where the deep green hills roll away into the valley of the Nile.

‘I thought that Azalea might be dead.' How foolish this sounds. How petulant the logic that might lead to such a thought. Yet saying the words wounds him still.

Luke turns his face from the vista of the mountains and the valley. ‘You did?' he says, with a measure of surprise. ‘Now why ever would you think that?'

Why indeed? Thomas tries to picture the great clockwork universe, the brass cogwheels, the cosmic pendulum. But no image coalesces in his mind. The elegant model that seemed so easy to visualise in the cool comfort of a London office has evaporated here at the equator. ‘She predicted it.' It seems a weak response.

Luke turns away again. The red of the sunset is reflected in his glasses. ‘I'm not sure why she would do that,' he says, softly. ‘But I think you'll find it had something to do with you.'

‘Something to do with me?'

‘I think so.' Luke shrugs. ‘Does it matter?'

Thomas casts his eyes around. There are thirty or forty children in the mess hall now. Some have injuries like the ones he has seen on the roadway – like the woman who sold him beans. One or two walk with crutches. One is in a wheelchair. All are crowding around the tables, ready to eat. A little yellow bird no larger than a sparrow is hopping between the tables, experienced in the search for crumbs.

‘I don't know,' Thomas says, and as he says it he knows what the answer ought to be. ‘No,' he corrects himself, and he contemplates this dawning truth. ‘No. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all.' His experiment, he realises at that moment, will be inconclusive. That is the honest outcome. There is no God. Or maybe there is. No one is messing with our lives. No one is pulling the strings. Or maybe they are. Coincidences happen. Wishes come true. Or maybe they don't. He would prove nothing. But, he realises for the first time, maybe that is the right result. The truthful result.

‘I think,' Thomas says, and his grin is beginning to fade, ‘that I may have been a bit of an ass.'

‘Occupational hazard of the English male,' says Luke.

‘Not on this scale.' He stirs sugar into his tea and tries a sip. ‘Azalea predicted that she would die. Yesterday.'

Luke looks surprised. ‘And you believed it?'

‘I don't know. I don't know what I believed. I think she just wanted to survive Midsummer's Day.'

‘I see.' Luke nods. ‘Twenty years after Rebecca died?'

‘Twenty years after Rebecca. Thirty years after Marion. Ten years after Gideon.'

Luke rocks slowly in the big wicker chair, and for a moment Thomas wonders if, perhaps, he has said too much.

‘She told me about Marion,' Luke says, after a moment. ‘And Gideon.' He turns his face away so that Thomas cannot see his expression. ‘And about Peter Loak, and John Hall.'

‘Azalea told me she feared that she would die on the same day as Rebecca and Marion and Gideon.'

‘She told you that?'

‘Yes.'

‘I see. It sounds like something Azalea might say. Azalea would say that everything that happens, happens for a reason.'

‘I know. She used to say that to me too.'

‘And you don't believe that?'

‘Do you?'

Luke takes some time to answer. ‘Once I believed it,' he says softly, ‘then I stopped believing it; and now I'm not sure what to believe.' Once, he might have said, a very long time ago, when I played my guitar for money and wore flowers in my hair and read the writings of Trotsky and Marx; then I might have believed it. But a time came when I lost every fragment of belief that I ever held. And now?

‘If everything happens for a reason then someone must be in control,' Thomas says.

‘That's the bit,' says Luke, ‘that I find hard to believe.'

The two men sit motionless for a time. It is growing cooler. Thomas pours himself a long glass of water and drinks it in a single draught.

‘I expect you might be ready for a beer,' says Luke, and he gives a slow smile. ‘A cold beer?'

‘I'd love one.'

Luke calls out a name and one of the older children comes running up. ‘Lakwo – could you bring a cold beer for this man – and one for me too?'

‘Of course, Mr Luke.'

‘They seem very fond of you,' Thomas says. ‘The children, I mean.'

‘Are they? I'm not sure. They've all had a terrible time.'

‘Why did you change the place from a mission to a rescue centre?'

‘It seemed like an important thing to do,' Luke says. He leans back in the chair. ‘Some of the kids coming down from Sudan were Muslims. Some had no religion. It occurred to me one day that we were part of the problem. We were making this into a religious conflict simply by helping to sustain the ridiculous social convention that every child is born with a set of beliefs and that every child has to stay loyal to those beliefs until the day they die. All the missions in Africa – they all share part of the blame.'

‘And was it . . . a religious conflict?' Thomas asks.

‘In part. One man with a set of mumbo-jumbo beliefs decided that God had spoken to him, so anyone who disagreed could be shot, or have bits of their body hacked off.'

‘I see.'

A boy comes to the table with two bottles of cold beer. He has wide eyes and a beaming smile.

‘Thank you.' Thomas takes a long draught. A year of anxiety is starting to dissolve. He feels relaxed sitting here, with this man he feels that he knows.

‘Would it be all right if I stayed here a night . . . or two?' he asks.

‘Of course,' Luke says.

Thomas has not planned much beyond this moment. ‘What time will Azalea be here?'

‘Soon enough. She's been to Arua. Reuniting a child with her mother.'

‘Ahh.' The enormity of this responsibility fills Thomas with a sudden feeling of tenderness. Azalea is reuniting a child with her mother. A child who, presumably, has been separated from her family by war and by terror is being delivered back into the arms of her family. By Azalea. He takes another mouthful of beer.

‘So what do you believe, Thomas?' Luke asks. ‘Azalea thinks that everything happens for a reason. What do you think?'

‘I think,' Thomas says, ‘that this is what came between us. Between Azalea and me. We were compatible in so many ways, but never, somehow, in this.' He thinks about it. ‘I believe that the world is a random place. If I see a rock falling down a hill, I don't imagine that anyone is controlling the way it bounces, sending it this way or that. If there were a child at the foot of the hill, then I wouldn't think that the fate of that child would be in the hands of anything except for the laws of gravity and physics.'

‘So no overseeing angel? No great plan?'

Thomas shakes his head. ‘If there were, then I find it hard to imagine how it would work.'

‘So who
is
in control of our lives? Who manages our destiny?'

‘No one.'

Luke clicks his tongue. ‘Maybe Azalea couldn't live with such a nihilistic idea.'

‘Maybe not.'

‘The Acholi have a saying: “Each rat has its own whiskers”.'

‘Which means?'

‘It means we are all responsible for our own problems.'

‘I see.' Thomas reflects. ‘I think I've been responsible for a few problems of my own.'

‘I daresay we all have.'

‘I convinced myself that Azalea's prediction would come true. I just assumed . . .' Thomas lets the thought hang in the air.

‘Do you love Azalea?' Luke asks.

‘Yes sir. I do.'

‘Perhaps not enough, though? If you really love her, then why weren't you here for her yesterday?'

‘I should have been.' Thomas looks sorrowfully into his beer. The scale of his stupidity is looming into focus. ‘Is that what she wanted? Is that why she did this? Did she want me to be here?'

‘I don't know. You shall have to ask her.'

‘I wish she was here.'

‘She will be. Soon.'

How fast the sunsets are here, Thomas thinks. Azalea told him this. ‘Pfft,' she had said. Pfft, and it would be dark. Soon, he knew, the great blanket of African darkness would settle over the landscape, and all the way down the valley barely a flame would flicker in the void. And a great sweep of stars would litter the sky.

‘In my job,' Thomas tells Luke, ‘people often come to me with a story about a coincidence; something that happened to them. That's my field, you see. I'm an authority on coincidences. So someone will knock on my door, and the next thing I know they'll be telling me about the man they met on holiday who turned out to have been at the same school as their neighbour. Or else they went to buy a car, and the person selling it just happened to share the same name as them. I've heard so many of these stories. People will catch me at a dinner party, or even in the street, and they'll expect me to explain. Two sisters both married a man named Ron, and both sisters called their dogs Poppy, and both Rons have the same birthday. I'm supposed to be amazed by these stories. But I never am. I always explain that this is the way a random universe works. Sometimes when you throw two dice, you'll throw two sixes. It isn't a coincidence. It's just mathematics. And that's what I always thought. Until one day the person who came and knocked on my door was Azalea.'

‘I see.'

‘Azalea's coincidences seemed to be off the scale. They seemed to define her life. No wonder Azalea thinks that everything happens for a reason. In her universe, that is how it looks.'

‘I suppose it does.'

‘But I think I can get her to see that it isn't like that. She
did
survive midsummer 2012. There's a big question mark over some of the other dates, anyway. No one is pulling her strings.'

Luke is rocking gently in his chair. The hubbub of voices in the mess hall is making it difficult to hear the conversation. ‘Maybe,' he says, so softly that Thomas has to lean forward to catch his words, ‘she wants to believe it?' He makes this into a question. ‘And if so, maybe you need to be comfortable with that?'

Thomas looks at him.

‘If it came between you last time, why let it come between you again?' Luke says. ‘Maybe there's another way. Did you ever consider that?'

‘I'm not sure I quite understand . . .'

‘Azalea's life is a mess of contradictions and coincidences and peculiarities; things that shouldn't have happened but did; things that couldn't possibly have happened, but did. You're the expert, Mr Thomas Post. Stop trying to explain it. Start trying to embrace it. Don't poke around looking for evidence of a conspiracy. But don't try to dismiss it all, either. Enjoy it. Relish it. Look forward to the next big shock. Because there will be one. If Azalea's life teaches us anything, it at least teaches us that we need to be prepared – because anything can happen, and it probably will. Azalea came to you looking for an explanation, and you've been busy trying to provide her with one. But perhaps you don't understand what is really going on, Mr Post. Perhaps you don't really understand Azalea. What if Azalea doesn't want an explanation at all? What then? What if the thing that Azalea really wants is support? Or understanding? Did you ever consider that? What if all Azalea wants is someone to face life's surprises with her?'

It is a long speech, and it seems to have tired Luke out.

An ancient-looking man with a white beard stands up at the far end of the mess hall and taps loudly on the table.

‘Time for grace,' Luke whispers. ‘A bit of a hangover from the days when this was still a mission.'

The voices of the children subside and everyone stands politely.

‘For those of us who believe in God, let us thank him for this meal,' the old man intones in heavily accented English. ‘And for those who do not believe, let us thank the farmers who grew the food, the donors who paid for it, the kitchen staff who cooked it and the friends who brought it to our table. Amen.'

‘Amen,' chant fifty voices.

‘I've never heard a grace like that,' Thomas tells Luke.

‘It is our compromise,' Luke says. ‘Will you help me to the table?'

‘Why yes,' says Thomas, surprised. He lifts himself clumsily off his stool and holds out a hand. ‘Are you in some difficulty?' he asks, painfully conscious of the tactlessness of the question.

But Luke rises effortlessly from the wicker chair with a chuckle. ‘It's these sunglasses,' he declares. ‘They fool a lot of people.' He holds out an arm. ‘It helps if you take hold of my shoulder.'

Thomas grasps Luke's upper arm.

‘Now,' Luke says, ‘we have a democratic seating arrangement here, apart from me.' He swings his free arm to point in the direction of one of the tables. ‘There should be a couple of spare seats at the head of that table.'