Coincidence: A Novel (9 page)

The six-year-olds who started in Mr Luke's class normally demonstrated an aptitude for learning that might have surprised an outsider. Language skills came quickly to them. Numbers seemed to come even quicker. Perhaps in the environment these children occupied, the ability to count and calculate was an essential survival skill.

Rebecca Folley's class of older children was an altogether quieter regime. Rebecca herself was no singer, and the requirement for chanting no longer applied to children who by now knew their numbers and their letters. Rebecca taught an eclectic mix of skills. She had a textbook on Ugandan history, and she taught this to the children because this was a National Requirement, and if ever a government inspector should happen to call, which was rare, it was nonetheless helpful to have the book open on the top desk and a map of Uganda already drawn on the board. Then Rebecca could select a child with the requisite knowledge and demand, ‘Onyo – please tell our esteemed visitor about Yoweri Museveni, the President of Uganda,' and the child would happily oblige. But apart from coaching her most accommodating pupils, Ugandan history was not an especially large part of Rebecca Folley's curriculum. She taught First Aid, and human biology; how children were conceived, and how AIDS was transmitted. She taught practical nursing and simple paramedical skills: how to treat broken limbs, how to recognise the symptoms of malaria, how to avoid parasites, how to protect against mosquito bites. She taught fundamental life skills – basic economics and business. She taught agriculture and horticulture, how to improve the yield and efficiency of small family farms, how to treat and care for the soil, how to water, till, crop, rotate and plan for the next season, and while these were skills that most of the children would learn in other ways, they were proficiencies that Rebecca was sure would benefit the children when it came to making their own farms succeed. Rebecca also taught some geography, and she tried to get the children reading. The mission would receive occasional parcels of books sent out from kindly charities in the West, and these would be registered into the school library and then lent out, and frequently they were also returned (because only by returning a book would a child be allowed to borrow another). On trips to Gulu and to Kampala, Rebecca would buy comics and comic books because these were always a way to encourage reading, and every afternoon the older children would have their reading hour in silence while Rebecca settled into a deep chair with a book of her own, the glorious peace only interrupted by the chanting from the primary class and the raised voices of the water queue.

In the evenings the farm boys would lead the cattle into the barn and tether them there out of reach of opportunist thieves, and then they would do the same with the goats. The hens and the cockerels would find their own way into the shed, and the farm boys would shut and bolt the doors and clip the padlocks into place. By the time they had finished, the bell in the mess hall would be ringing for tea; Azalea and Anyeko would be pulling on the bell – ding . . . ding . . . ding – a slow and steady ring because
that
was the rhythm for the mess bell, one ring every second like a steady pulse; a reassuring rhythm, a comforting call to dine.

There was another ring this bell could make, but then it wouldn't be the dinner bell. The other ring was fast and urgent – a dingdingdingdingding – rapid and fierce, loud and deafening, a rhythm that panicked and called out ‘danger danger danger'. These were the rings that they only did in practice, and Luke would prepare them in advance; this was the
alarm
bell ring. ‘When you hear the alarm bell ring,' Luke would tell everyone at the mission, ‘then this will be your order to flee. When you hear the alarm bell, you must
run
!'

The orders for the alarm bell were clear, but all the same they rehearsed them. The village children would flee the compound. In any direction – or all directions – they would escape the mission with every ounce of energy they could muster. Some would run back up the driveway, others would cross the fields, others would head into the farmstead and loop around; but whichever route they took, the instructions were very plain – the schoolchildren should get home to their villages, to their circular Acholi huts, as fast as they could and seek out their parents or elder siblings. There they should hide in the hidey-holes and small dark places that had been prepared for them, and they should not return until their families were confident that it was safe. For the mission orphans the instructions were much the same. For each of them there was a hiding place in Langadi town. If the compound was surrounded, then they should scatter as widely as possible. If the danger did not seem imminent, then they could run for the mission bus – but
only
if one of the mission staff was driving.

For the adults of the mission, the alarm bell spelled out a different message. The adults were to assemble by the mission buildings, with no sense of panic; they should not suggest by voice or by gesture that the children had taken flight. Whatever the crisis that had summoned the alarm, the adults were there to project calm.

 

This was the day in Langadi when everything changed for Azalea, and yet everything about the morning was normal. The goats were milked, the breakfast was served, grace was said. The farm boys squabbled. Maria the matron barked sharp commands at the orphans. Rebecca lingered over her tea and her cigarette. Luke savoured his coffee. The VSO couple sat uncommonly close to each other and whispered things that no one else could hear. Odokonyero oversaw the whole meal with the righteous bonhomie of the cook, and Mzee Njonjo, the nightwatchman, hobbled to his hut to sleep away the day. This was June 1992. The mission dogs were drinking old milk from the cooking pan. A yellow-backed weaver bird hopped among the tables looking for crumbs; a gonolek bird flickered across the dusty yard. Crickets were calling; cockerels were scratching. The orphans began to trail off towards the schoolhouse in twos and threes, holding hands. Matron Maria lifted herself heavily out of her seat and started putting Little Michael, the only baby at the mission, into a wrap to tie on her back. The VSO couple disappeared off to their rooms in the mission hall. The nurse wandered over to her clinic. One dog barked and the gonolek flew up into a tree.

And then it was uncommonly quiet, for just a brief and precious moment. Azalea slid down from her bench, and still in her nightdress she walked out of the mess hall and into the yard. A little dust devil, whipped up by the wind, tumbled past the mess hall and was gone. The dog barked again. And then there was a man in the drive.

Azalea saw him first. He looked like an army man, in camouflage fatigues with a gun slung over his back like a quiver. He stopped when he saw Azalea, but now the dogs had seen him too and they rushed towards him, barking.

Odokonyero came out, in his position as head of security, to investigate the commotion. He stopped as if struck by a stone, and shouted to the man in Acholi. The man shouted something back in a language unfamiliar to Azalea. Probably he was saying ‘call off your dogs'.

Odokonyero whistled and the dogs drew back.

There followed an exchange between the two men. It did not sound friendly.

Luke Folley emerged. ‘What's going on?' he demanded.

Odokonyero spat on the ground. He grumbled something in Acholi.

A second, younger man came sauntering down the driveway wearing the same combat uniform. The first man spoke to him. They approached Luke.

‘What do you want of us?' Luke asked.

The first man began a long, angry-sounding tirade.

‘Wait, wait, wait,' Luke flattened out his hands as if trying to calm the situation down.

The second man started now. There was a demanding urgency to his voice. Luke replied, and suddenly all three were speaking at once, and the volume was rising as each man competed to be heard.

Then Rebecca Folley floated out, blowing smoke rings, and all three fell silent. ‘Darling,' she said, ‘what is all this noise? I can barely hear myself think.'

‘This man says . . . he is LRA,' said Luke.

Rebecca took a long pull on her cigarette. ‘My dear, if he's a visitor you shall have to invite him in for tea. Or coffee. I suppose Odokonyero will have some of that disgusting brew left.'

‘My wife says you must join us for tea,' said Luke, talking in Acholi.

‘And get him to explain to us what an “LRA” is,' said Rebecca in English. She had never made much progress with the local languages. ‘I think we get every acronym known to man in this godforsaken shithole. NRA, UPDA, SPLA, God-knows-what bloody A. It's so nice to be able to add another one to the list.'

‘Rebecca, it may be wise not to upset this man,' said Luke.

‘They all end in A, don't they? Have you noticed?' Rebecca gave a sweet and wholly insincere smile to the LRA soldier. ‘You're just a bit too late for breakfast,' she told him. ‘But I can offer you a cigarette.' She held out a packet of menthols.

The LRA man seemed taken aback by the gambit, but he took a cigarette with the demeanour of a man who had learned never to refuse a gift, however small, and the second man did likewise.

‘Do you speak English?' Rebecca asked, adopting an imperious tone as she lit the man's cigarette.

‘I do,' he said. ‘My English is very excellent.'

‘Splendid,' said Rebecca. ‘In that case, we shall get on.' She turned and drifted back into the mess hall. ‘Odokonyero,' she called, ‘tea, please.'

Rebecca Folley had not been the most willing of recruits to the mission in Langadi. It might be more truthful to say that she had
resisted
the move from Cornwall to Uganda with the fiercest determination. Nevertheless, now that she was here, she was not the kind of person to let a fracas with a make-believe soldier spoil her morning.

Rebecca and Luke had met at university while both were studying for a degree in education, and somehow, more by chance than judgement, they had ended up together. As a student, Rebecca had been a serial dater, never in a relationship for much longer than a term or so, the kind of person who always has the next boyfriend lined up and ready before the tenure has expired on the present one – and it just seemed to happen, like a roll of the dice, that Luke Folley had been the incumbent suitor when Graduation Day came round. Another term might have seen the romance fade, as so many had done before. But there wasn't to be another term. Somehow Rebecca and Luke ended up at the big empty family house in St Piran, and it just seemed right and sensible to make a home there with no rent to pay. It was even exciting for a while. Luke started teaching at the local village school and Rebecca started work at another, in a village just around the headland. And so it was, just weeks after graduation, that they were settled and happy and earning. The school terms came and went. Rebecca became Mrs Folley, and they threw open the big windows of the old rambling home, they swept out the dust and waited for a family to arrive.

But none came.

The old Folley house on the cliff paths overlooking the bay cried out for children. There were empty bedrooms galore. Rebecca took brisk walks along the cliffs to improve her circulation. She swam off the shingly beach. She ate healthy meals. She gave up smoking for a while. But each month came and went, and with each passing season the hope Rebecca had seemed fainter.

The doctors diagnosed polycystic ovary syndrome. ‘It's a hormone dysfunction.' The doctor in St Piran shook his head when he delivered the bad news.

Rebecca, it must be said, was made of stern stuff. When Luke arrived home from work, she sat him down in the kitchen. ‘Darling,' she said, ‘I've got bad news and I've got good news. Which would you like first?'

‘I think I'll start with the good news,' said Luke.

Rebecca lit a cigarette. ‘Well, the first good news is that I'm smoking again.' She took a long drag on her cigarette and let the smoke leak out between her teeth, half closing her eyes to savour the moment. ‘And as for the second bit of good news . . .' she said, pausing to allow for effect, then looking Luke directly in the eye, ‘is . . . I've made a decision. We're going to adopt a baby.'

12

March 2011 / November 2009

A
zalea slid a slim paperback volume across the desk to Thomas Post. ‘Take a look.'

It was the day that they met in Thomas's office, the day that Thomas had returned to work with his left arm in plaster. Both had registered surprise when Azalea popped her head around the door.

‘Good Lord – it's you! From the escalator. Did you track me down?' Thomas had asked, aware, as he did, just how awkward this question sounded.

‘Of course I tracked you down. But that was because of your paper.' She held the document up to show him, and they both found themselves looking at it with expressions of surprise. ‘It had nothing to do with what happened at Euston.'

Thomas suffered a moment of bewilderment. ‘Are you . . . are you all right?'

Azalea screwed up her face. ‘All right how?'

‘You know – after the accident.'

‘Ah.' She put her hand on her side. ‘I did break a rib.'

‘Of course. You thought you'd broken a rib, didn't you? I mean . . . you said at the time you thought . . . you know, you'd broken one. A rib.' Thomas found his grasp on the English language crumbling. ‘Is it . . . you know . . . in plaster, or anything?' Another stupid question. Of course it wasn't in plaster. Was he blind?

‘No, it's not,' said Azalea. She gave Thomas a sideways smile. ‘It hurts like hell, though. How's the arm?'

‘Bloody awful.' He held up the cast.

‘At least people can
see
you've been injured. With me I just get the pain and no sympathy.'

Thomas gestured for her to take a seat. ‘So let me get this right,' he began, ‘you sought me out because of a paper I wrote on coincidences?'

Azalea lowered herself carefully into the proffered chair. ‘Shouldn't we introduce ourselves first?'

‘Oh, how rude of me.' Thomas extended his good arm. ‘Thomas Post.'

‘You'll forgive me if I don't shake hands. I'm Azalea Lewis. I teach at Birkbeck.'

Thomas withdrew his arm. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Pleased to meet you, Ms Lewis.'

Another smile.

‘Isn't that funny?' she remarked. ‘After all, we
have
already met. After a fashion.'

‘Yes. But we were never properly introduced,' Thomas said. ‘Can I rustle you up a tea – or maybe a coffee?'

‘Do you do real coffee, or instant?'

‘Ahh.' Thomas looked apologetic. ‘Only the plastic stuff, I'm afraid. I'm a bit of a tea drinker myself.'

‘Well then, I shall have tea.'

While Thomas busied himself with the kettle, they talked about the incident on the escalator. Azalea confirmed that she had been taken to the Royal Free Hospital. She told him that no one she had seen there had been seriously hurt. Thomas told her that one woman at UCLH had broken her neck. She was all right, but it could have been touch and go.

They talked about the whole risky business of commuting in London. Azalea declared that she would never go on an escalator again. ‘Not unless there are hardly any people on it,' she added.

Thomas returned with the tea. ‘I almost tried tracking you down,' he confessed. ‘I thought about phoning the Royal Free. Only I bottled out.'

‘What would you have done if you had phoned, and if they
had
given you my name?'

‘I don't know.' He looked sheepish. ‘Sent you some flowers, maybe.'

Azalea offered a disarming grin. ‘You old romantic.'

‘Less of the “old”, if you don't mind.'

Azalea looked into her tea. Thomas reflected that she was prettier than he'd remembered; perhaps she was prettier than he wanted to remember.

Now aged either thirty-two or thirty-three, depending on which birthday she might select, Azalea Lewis still possessed the willowy frame of the thirteen-year-old Azalea Folley and the russet hair of the foundling Azaliah Yves. Her features may have been unremarkable – nose and mouth and chin – but she had a subtle asymmetry to her face, like an imperfect painting, mismatched freckles on her cheekbones, smile lines that turned this way and that and of course that trace of a scar. Perched carefully on the edge of the armchair, with one arm cradling her ribs, there was, Thomas noticed, an intensity about this woman. He could feel it. She turned her face upwards to look at him and the glance of her deep green eyes felt almost physical; he felt captured in their beam, unable to break her stare until she released him and he could cast his eyes away. He found himself recalling that faint scent, the dark olfactory memory of the day they had squeezed together on the cold stone floor of the subway. With deliberation he inhaled through his nostrils. There it was again – a musky, feminine odour, unfamiliar in the dank masculinity of his room.

On that day they talked about the coincidence of meeting after the escalator pile-up. ‘And as you know, I've been reading your paper on coincidence,' Azalea said.

‘Ah, that.' Thomas Post was in a light mood. ‘And what is your interest in the subject, Ms Lewis?'

Azalea seemed to reflect upon this. She nodded slowly, resting her teacup on his desk. ‘I seem to be afflicted by coincidences, Dr Post.'

‘Afflicted?'

‘Afflicted. Affected. Benighted. Bedevilled. Whatever word you wish to choose. They seem to follow me, or infect me. I don't really know how to explain this. I was hoping perhaps you might help.'

Thomas raised his eyebrows. ‘Help? How could I possibly help?'

‘Well, not in any practical way, I don't suppose. I mean, I'm not looking for an exorcist. I don't expect you to mount a white charger and take on the forces of nature, or anything.'

‘Pity,' said Thomas, ‘I quite fancy the white charger.'

‘It wouldn't suit you,' said Azalea, sweeping away the fantasy. ‘I was hoping you might be able to help me to understand it. To make sense of it.'

‘I see.' Thomas narrowed his eyes. ‘And now, I suspect, you'll add this very meeting to your list of strange coincidences.'

Azalea nodded. ‘I think I was less astonished than you,' she said. ‘I'm getting used to the universe springing surprises.'

‘Would it help if I were to explain why coincidences happen? Why it is that we frail humans have to find patterns in nature?'

‘It might help.'

‘I'm not a psychiatrist.'

‘I don't need a psychiatrist. I'm not going mad, Dr Post.'

‘Good.' Thomas pulled a sheet of paper from his desk and slid it across to her. ‘Do you have a pen?'

Azalea produced one from her bag.

‘I want you to draw a squiggle on this sheet of paper. Just a scribble – as random as you like.'

‘Like this?' Azalea let her pen zigzag and curl over the page.

‘Splendid.' Thomas drew the paper back to his side of the desk. ‘Have you played this game before?' he asked. ‘You draw a scribble, and the other person has to turn it into a picture. So if I turn this loop here into a hat,' he added a few lines, ‘and if I give him an eye, and maybe this bit here could be a moustache . . .' He sketched for a moment, then stopped. ‘There.' He flipped the page back to Azalea. ‘Charlie Chaplin.'

She took the picture and laughed. ‘You're an artist, Dr Post.'

‘Thomas.'

‘So what's that supposed to prove?'

He grinned at her. ‘It doesn't prove anything. But it does illustrate the extraordinary human capacity to see patterns in random shapes. We look at the moon and we see the face of a man. We look at clouds and we see animals. Pareidolia. That's the name for it.'

She smiled at him. ‘ “Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?” '

‘Is that a quotation?'

‘It's Hamlet. He's teasing his girlfriend's father. Polonius says, “ 'tis like a camel, indeed”. Then Hamlet says, “Methinks it is like a weasel”, and Polonius has to agree. He says, “It is backed like a weasel.” Hamlet says, “Or like a whale?” “Very like a whale,” says Polonius.'

‘There you go, then.' Thomas gave a laugh. ‘That was very good.'

‘I teach English literature.'

‘I see. The point is that we human beings have a great ability to take random events from our lives and construct patterns around them. Synchronicity is a curious thing when it happens to us, but only because we neglect to include in our calculations the seven billion people in the world that it didn't happen to. One person wins the lottery and that person has just experienced a fantastic coincidence, an almost unbelievable piece of serendipity, a fourteen-million-to-one chance that the very six numbers they chose on their ticket were the exact same numbers that came out of the machine during the draw. But we don't call that an amazing coincidence, do we? That's because we know that twenty million people have tickets that didn't match.'

‘But you've studied this, haven't you . . . Thomas?'

‘I have,' said Thomas Post. He was enjoying this. He offered a broad and self-satisfied smile – his boyish smile that was part of his armoury for dealing with the opposite sex.

‘So you know that what you've just said is a load of bollocks?'

It wasn't the reaction he'd expected. He felt surprised and faintly hurt. ‘Why bollocks?'

‘Because no one would suggest that one person winning the lottery is a coincidence. What
would
be a coincidence is one person winning the lottery twice.'

He leaned back and gave one of his shrugs. ‘You're quite right, of course, but then nobody ever actually wins the lottery twice.'

‘Maybe after the first win they stop buying tickets.'

‘Maybe that's it.'

Azalea took a sip of her tea and let the moment hang. After a while she said, ‘So if I see patterns in my life that seem to be . . . I don't know . . . fate, destiny . . . then I'm just a simple girl seeing patterns in the clouds that aren't really there?'

Thomas opened his mouth to reply, but then he caught himself. He was suddenly unsure if he wanted to dismiss this woman quite so quickly. He tugged abstractedly on his earlobe. ‘I tell you what,' he said, ‘why don't you start right at the beginning and talk me through it?'

‘All of it? That could take some time.'

‘We may have to break for lunch,' he said, ‘and it could take more than one session.' He felt a strange sensation like bubbles floating up his spine. He tried to catch himself from beaming too widely, and looked suddenly down to conceal his expression.

‘Thank you,' said Azalea, ‘that is what I was hoping you might say.' Her voice was like a melody in his head. This was when she slid the slim paperback across the desk towards him.

A book of poems. He picked it up almost cautiously. The cover bore a rough finger painting of hills in black and a stream in grey.

‘What is this?'

‘
Dark Lakeland
. It's by p. j. loak. Have you heard of him?'

Thomas shook his head. ‘I don't really do poetry.'

Silly thing to say. Damn damn damn.

She surveyed him. Self-conscious now, he opened the book. Poems in unremitting lower case with minimum punctuation. He coughed. ‘Is there any particular poem I should read?'

‘No, it's OK. I'm not going to make you
do
poetry.'

He grimaced.

‘I teach poetry,' Azalea explained. ‘For my master's degree I needed to find a modern poet to study. I chose p. j. loak. His writing is quite plain. Unadorned. I like that.'

Thomas nodded. He leafed through the book.

‘Now here is the thing. Why did I choose Loak? I wrote a thesis on his poetry. I invested two years of my life dissecting every line he's ever written. I tried to interpret him. I deconstructed his poems like Jacques Derrida taught. I argued about his use of rhythm and metre, and I looked for hidden meanings in between the lines. These are the sort of things you do when you study literature, Dr Post.'

‘Thomas.'

‘But why did I choose Loak? I wanted a modern poet, but there are hundreds I could have picked. Shall I tell you why?' Azalea looked at Thomas and held him again with the earnestness of her gaze. ‘Loak always wanted to be a Lakeland poet. I'd never been to the lakes before I discovered his writing, so maybe I was curious. I don't know. But it turns out that Loak isn't really a Lakeland writer, he's a
damaged
writer. That should be a genre of its own. He fought in the Falklands War. I say “fought”, but he didn't actually do any fighting. In 1982 he was on a Royal Navy ship called HMS
Sheffield
. He was a communications officer. They'd been on tour in the Middle East and they were on their way home when the war began and so they were rerouted down to the South Atlantic. Loak was on Deck Two, somewhere near the galley, when the
Sheffield
was hit by an Exocet missile eight feet above the waterline. It was 4 May 1982. Twenty men were killed.'

Thomas exhaled. ‘But not Loak?' he said.

‘No. Not Loak,' Azalea said. She paused, nodding gently. ‘The missile didn't explode. It was faulty, thank God. But it severed a power main and set light to a fuel store. Loak was lucky,' she said, ‘if you can call it luck . . . He was blinded.'

‘Permanently blinded?'

‘Yes. They invalided him out of the navy and he went back to Buttermere.'

Thomas opened the book.

‘Why not read one?'

He flicked through the pages, not wanting anything too long. He found a poem and cleared his throat. ‘Shall I read it aloud?'

‘I'd like that,' Azalea said.

This is the poem that Thomas Post read:

 

an owlet slight alighted by a stream

where foxgloves grew

where all of nature scented and aglow