The Cinnamon Tree (15 page)

‘W
hat time is it?’ the body in the bed complained.

‘It is the first hour in the day, that is six o’clock to you, and we have to exercise Sailor.’

‘Who’s Sailor?’ The body was stirring now, so Yola
retreated
.

‘Sailor is my dog – well, not really
my
dog – but I exercise him because no one else will; he eats people.’

‘Talking of eating …’

‘Later. We exercise the dogs first while it is still cool. I’ll see you outside.’

Yola sat down on an upturned bucket beside the sickbay, where Fintan was sleeping, and watched the morning activities around her. The deminers were emerging from the barrack huts, polishing their boots and brushing the red mud from their overalls; they looked smart. Yola breathed in the cool sharpness of the morning air. The deminers were just
preparing
for their morning parade when Fintan emerged looking
tousled. He looked over to where the men were lining up.

‘My God, it looks like an army parade! I’d better comb my hair!’

They walked down the line of huts to the kennels at the far end. The barking rose to a frenzy as they approached. The Kasemban handlers seemed to be fighting and struggling with their dogs.

‘Those Alsatians, they’re huge!’ murmured Fintan
apprehensively
.

‘German Shepherds they call them. They are playing now.’

One of the men shouted to Yola in English as they
approached
.

‘Hey, Miss Yola, I see you’ve brought Sailor some
breakfast
.’

‘What does he mean?’ asked Fintan suspiciously.

‘You are the breakfast,’ she laughed.

A black-and-white collie had his paws up on the mesh and was barking with the rest when they arrived. When he saw Fintan however, he fell silent.

‘Careful,’ said Yola, ‘I don’t trust him when he goes silent like that.’

‘But he’s just like Prince, the dog on my uncle’s farm!’
exclaimed
Fintan. He put two fingers in his mouth and produced a sharp whistle. To Yola’s surprise, Sailor jumped at the wire and barked.

‘Look! His tail wagged. How did you do that?’ asked Yola.

‘Years of practice!’

‘Show me how.’

Fintan whistled again, this time a falling note. Sailor sank to the ground.

‘Sailor, what sins do you have in your past?’ He turned to Yola. ‘He was probably a sheep dog that got a taste for sheep.’

‘Now he has a taste for Kasembans,’ chuckled Yola.

Fintan stepped back sensibly while Yola opened the pen and put the dog on a leash.

‘Don’t confuse him with whistles now,’ she said. ‘Let’s give him time to get used to you. This is his toy.’ She held up the chewed remains of a rubber bear. ‘He gets a game when he’s a good dog, don’t you Sailor … Down, Sailor! Down!’

‘How do the dogs work?’ Fintan asked.

‘I’ll show you in a moment.’

They walked in file down a path through thick grass to a place where the grass had been cut back.

‘This is where I put Sailor through his paces,’ Yola
explained
. ‘I’ll put him on his long lead now, and you can watch.’ She snapped the lead on to his collar, ruffled his head, stepped back and told him to walk. ‘You see, Fintan,’ she whispered, ‘I must be able to stop him instantly. Let’s say I’ve seen a
tripwire
above him.’ She called out and Sailor froze in his tracks. Then she issued another command and he sank down and backed cautiously towards her. ‘See – he’s safe now.’

‘Do lots of dogs get hurt?’

‘I’ve never heard of one. Because they are on four paws they are too light to set a mine off on their own. As the handler’s in danger too, they are terribly careful.’

‘What does he do if he smells a mine?’

‘I’ll show you with a real one in a moment.’ Fintan looked startled. ‘It’s all right, they are safe now, the detonators have been removed,’ she laughed. ‘Dogs that look for drugs and things are trained to bark and scrabble when they get a scent, that’s their nature – like hunting rats. A demining dog has to go completely against its nature and stay calm.’

There was a place where a large square had been marked off with stakes.

‘I’ll show you how he searches now. There is a mine planted in here somewhere.’

As Yola concentrated on Sailor, she sensed that Fintan was beginning to relax, fascinated by the search. She kept the dog under strict control. She was using the figure of eight search pattern. Sailor would sweep the ground to her left, nose down, sniffing every inch of the ground, then he would loop around and pass in front of her to sweep a similar loop to her right. They progressed forward steadily. She didn’t know where the mine had been laid and was getting anxious when suddenly Sailor circled and sank to the ground.

‘Got it!’ she whispered. ‘What I do now is walk out over the area that Sailor has shown is safe, and mark where he’s pointing with this marker.’

She threw the marker. Then she gave a yip and held her arms out. Sailor, who had been whining with excitement, jumped clean into her arms. She produced his rubber bear, threw it for him and then had a deadly tussle for possession. They were both panting when Yola eventually got him to give it up.

‘Come on Fintan, there’s a tree over there, let’s sit under that and talk.’

She told Fintan about her training with the deminers and how her real job was to give mines awareness talks. She was
going
to tell him about Gabbin and the game he had played on poor Sister Martha, but she could feel her little knot of worry about Gabbin tightening. Anyway, Fintan had worries of his own.

Breakfast, and she was aware of Fintan looking with
apprehension
at the maize porridge she was preparing, but Judit rescued him.

‘If you don’t like that dreadful stuff of Yola’s, Fintan, I have
some muesli here. There’s dried milk through it so you only have to add water, but make sure the water is from the filter or you’ll have the runs for a week.’

Yola sniffed scornfully as Fintan sidled away to take up Judit’s offer.

‘Oh Judit,’ she called, as the other girl left the kitchen, ‘Fintan wants to talk to Hans about the arms trade and I’d like to show him Hans’s collection of mines and bombs.’

‘Not this morning. I’ve got to make Hans do some serious work today. There’s a Dutch delegation coming up to see how we are spending their money.’

‘Ok, we’ll go down to the bridge and I’ll show him what’s going on there.’ She turned to Fintan. ‘I’m on holiday. Hans has given me a few days off. You can bring that camera thing of your Dad’s if you want, only don’t point it at soldiers on the bridge.’

They walked down through the town together, past the
Palace
Hotel with its swanky cars outside. As they approached the river, the houses were shell-shattered, some a mere lacework of toppling masonry. In the distance there was an explosion. They both stopped while Yola tried to locate its direction.

‘What was it?’ Fintan asked. ‘A gun?’

Yola shook her head. ‘No, more like a mine, I’m afraid, but it wasn’t from the river where the men are working. It seemed to come from the fields over there. Often cattle set them off.’

They stepped over the rusted tracks of the railway line, crossed the road and followed the track into the bush to where the deminers were working. They heard excited voices ahead; Yola gripped Fintan’s arm.

‘Come on! Perhaps I was wrong and something has
happened
here.’

They hurried forward; a small group was approaching. Yola
recognised the NPA’s paramedic, who was leading one of the deminers – still wearing his visor and protective jacket.

‘It
was
a snake!’ the man protested. ‘How could I see in bushes like that. I was feeling ahead, looking for tripwires,
gently
, gently, when I get bitten.’ Sure enough there were two pricks on the back of his hand, now beading blood.

‘You should wear your gloves!’ the supervisor snapped.

Suddenly the man was screaming. Here he was dying of snakebite and he was being told to wear gloves! The paramedic shrugged. The supervisor scratched his head. Then he saw Yola.

‘Yola, go up with this man to the hospital and have him seen to.’

‘But I’m on leave!’ Yola protested.

‘Look Miss, if I or the medic leaves the site, work stops. Be a good girl and take him.’

Yola looked around for Fintan and found herself looking into the eye of a video camera. She made a face.

‘Come on Fintan, we’ll go with him. The driver will take us. They have a snakebite unit in the hospital, they’ll know what to do.’

‘I haven’t been back to the hospital since my accident. I wonder how it will feel?’

In fact, once they had delivered their patient, Yola found herself full of curiosity to see the place again, and took Fintan on a guided tour.

‘It’s a bit different to Dublin,’ she said apologetically when she noticed that Fintan had a handkerchief to his nose. Yola found the bed she had occupied and where her mother had looked after her so well. She looked up at the slowly rotating fan and noticed with a smile that there was a fly on one of the
blades. The bed was now occupied by an old woman, an even older man sat beside her. It was unusual for a man to be
looking
after someone in the wards. Perhaps there was no one else to feed and tend the woman. She smiled down at the old man, but his eyes were too full of sadness to respond.

‘Come on! We can get out this way, past the operating
theatre
.’

They were halfway down the corridor when the double doors at the far end were thrown back.

‘Out of the way! Out of the way!’

A stretcher was pushed through the doors. The porter backed towards them, holding a drip above his head.

‘Take her into number one!’

This time the urgent shout came from behind them. Yola turned and collided with Fintan. For a fleeting moment she recognised the face of her own surgeon rushing down the
corridor
towards them, but they were blocking his way.
Swivelling
quickly, she noticed a door beside them. A peeling notice said ‘Medical students and staff only’. She tried the handle. The door gave way and they both half fell through it as the trolley swept past. For a moment they looked directly into the face of the patient; it was a child, wide-eyed and conscious. Then the door swung shut and they were left alone in semi-darkness. They were in a short passage at the foot of a steep flight of stairs; weak light filtered down from an open door at the top. Yola felt disorientated because she could hear the voice of the surgeon from up above, urgently asking for clamps. Then she realised that there must be some connection between whatever was at the top of the stairs and the operating theatre. Fintan slipped past her, his face set. This was a new Fintan, one she hadn’t seen before. He mounted the stairs without making a sound, his video camera in his right hand. She followed,
though it was more difficult for her to move quietly with her artificial leg.

They emerged into a gallery, looking down into the
operating
theatre. There, directly below them, in a vivid pool of light, was the operating table. The child they had seen in the corridor was just being lifted on to it. Yola didn’t know what to do. She was pulled by emotions this way and that; she wanted to run, to scream, to stay. She turned. What was Fintan doing? He was staring down, transfixed. As she watched, very slowly, almost as if he had no control over himself, he brought his video
camera
up to his eye. She saw his finger curl over the handle and a little red light blinked. For a second or two, she rebelled. Was this just another violation of the child below? She, Yola, had been down there, she knew! Then she realised that Fintan was right – someone had to see this, but not her. She sank to the floor with her back to the gallery wall and switched her mind off the scene below. Time passed. Fintan put a new cassette into the camera and filmed on.