The Death of Rex Nhongo (24 page)

J
erry took a phone call over dinner. He stood up from the table. When he returned, April said, “Who was that?”

“Tapiwa,” Jerry said. “My work permit's been approved.”

“Great! That's great news!” Her husband made a face. “What? It's great. You can get a job.”

“Right. I can get a job.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I can get a job.”

April sniffed. She pursed her lips. He knew she was fuming, but she avoided confrontation by turning to Rosie, who was sitting next to her. “Look at you!” she said. “Eating your chips! You like chips, Rosie? Of course you do. Don't forget your broccoli. And some omelet. What good eating!”

Jerry found her sing-song tone infuriating. Rosie was eight years old, not a baby. He said, “When's your dad coming back, Rosie?”

The girl answered, through a mouthful, “I dunno.”

April glared at her husband. She said, “He's back tomorrow.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Yeah, I spoke to him.”

“Oh,” Jerry said. “You didn't tell me.”

Rosie had been with them three nights. This would be the fourth. April had said, “A couple of nights, max.” Truth was, it was no skin off Jerry's nose either way, but he allowed himself to be annoyed. He told himself that he didn't much like Shawn Appiah “taking the piss,” but really he just wanted an excuse. Now Jerry was no longer at the clinic, he stayed home with the kids while April went to work, but it was actually easier with two than one. Theo worshipped the little girl, following her around like a puppy, and Rosie was sweet and endlessly patient, casting their son as the baby in her various games of fantasy families.

If her presence presented a difficulty, therefore, it was only because April was getting home from work at half past five—“You know,” she said, “it was me who said we'd take her. I really want to try to be here.” April and Jerry now shared two hours before the kids went to bed and at least two hours thereafter. And the atmosphere between the couple was one of unalloyed irritation: of sharp comments and muttered asides, sulking and skulking.

Both Jerry and April were dismayed by what was happening to them. Each approached the end of every day determined to be patient, loving and kind. Jerry, for example, was not drinking (three days—he deserved a medal). He bathed Theo in time for his mother's return and greeted his wife with a kiss. But, somehow, he'd become so sensitized to his diminished role as husband, father and man that April's smallest reaction inevitably opened some or other long-standing wound. A comment about the broken security light undermined him as husband, a change of pajamas for Theo undermined him as father, an unreturned kiss undermined him as man. And his wounds would fester and inflame. As for April, she was riddled with guilt though she couldn't admit as much. Instead, therefore, she decided it was all her fault, not because she was sleeping with another man, but because she had settled for a fundamentally kind but lumpen husband who hadn't the sophistication to match her intellectual, social, emotional and sexual ambition. She genuinely tried to use this admission as a spur to loving action, but that's not how love works. The fact is that some people choose a partner in the belief they will change, others in the belief that they themselves never will—and they are equivalent mistakes.

Jerry pushed his chair back from the table and said brightly to Rosie, “Bath time!”

April looked up at him. “Don't worry. I'll do it.”

“No. It's fine.”

They were both trying to be nice. The mutual antipathy built.

Rosie asked, “Can I bring Sasa?”

“Sasha?” Jerry said. “Who's Sasha?”

“Sasa,”
the girl repeated.

“Sasa,” April said. “It's Rosie's friend. In her imagination.”

“Right.” Jerry nodded. “Why not? The more the merrier.”

While Rosie bathed, April put Theo down. The kids were sharing Theo's bedroom—there were two beds, it made sense. But it had been another source of conflict.

On the first evening Rosie stayed, Jerry had found Bessie changing the bedding in the spare room. He had asked his wife about it. She said, “For Rosie.”

“Isn't she sleeping in Theo's room?”

April looked uncomfortable. She pointed out that Theo often stirred in the night and she went to him and sometimes climbed into bed with him too. Maybe it would disturb the little girl.

Jerry stared at her. He said, “She won't wake up.”

April appeared more uncomfortable still. She stumbled over a further explanation. She shook her head. She shrugged. She said, “I don't know…after the pool…I don't know…I just feel uneasy.” Then, off the laugh Jerry stifled in the back of his throat, she brought up the visit Shawn had described from his mother-in-law and her pastor—the accusations of demonic possession.

Jerry listened incredulously, but he didn't ridicule her. In fact, he suppressed a cold shiver. “Christ,” he said. Then, “So her father sent her to us because it's madness, right? So, now are we going to start believing it too?”

“Theo's our son!”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Jerry said. “I mean, what do you think's going to happen?” April's jaw tightened. She looked at him resentfully, but she had nothing more to say. Jerry sniffed, creased his brow. “And where will I sleep?” he asked.

It was an awful question. He had been in the spare room for more than a month, but this was the first time the arrangement had been spoken about and it marked some kind of codification. April continued to look at him and, behind the anger, he recognized the desperate sadness in her eyes. In times past, that look would have broken his heart, but he was already heartbroken.

“Fine,” his wife said quickly. “Really. Whatever you want.”

J
erry was woken by screaming. Or, more accurately, it invaded his dreams and painted them electric until he had no choice but to open his eyes. Even then, like a diver surfacing too quickly, he was disoriented and unsteady. He scrambled for his phone: two a.m. Momentarily, he thought he was imagining the cacophony, but there it was again. He said, “Fuck!” and stumbled into the passage.

Now he distinguished two voices. One was certainly his wife's. He slid his hand along the wall for the light switch. It was pitch black and he couldn't find it. He said, “April!”

By return, he heard, “Jerry!” Short and sharp, breathless, terrified.

His eyes were gradually adjusting to the dark and he made out his wife's shape at the far end of the corridor, where she'd just emerged from Theo's room.

He said, “Jesus!”

“There's something in there!”

“What?”

“There's something in there!”

Suddenly they were close enough to touch. He could still hear the screaming. He didn't know who was screaming. He couldn't quite accept it as real. He didn't know what was going on. He was confused. He said, “Where's Theo?”

April said, “I've got him.” And Jerry grasped that the thick outline over her shoulder was in fact his sleeping son.

“Rosie?”

“She's in the room!” April sobbed. “She's still in there!”

“Jesus,” Jerry said. “Calm down.”

He went into his son's bedroom. He could hear the little girl wailing, panic-stricken. In the split-second it took to reach the light switch, he heard beating wings and, more poignantly, felt the presence of another creature. His blood chilled, his skin creeping. He flicked the overhead light. It blinded him almost as much as the darkness. He squinted at Rosie sitting up in bed, knees to her chest. Her hands were covering her ears. Her eyes were wide and her mouth wider still, the sound coming from it almost inhuman. He said, “Rosie!” Then, “Sweetheart! What's the matter?”

He went towards her and her arm thrust out, finger pointing to the far wall. He turned and found himself looking at a distinct black shape: a small bat, resting with its wings wide. The anxiety washed out of him. He said, “Bloody hell!”

He moved towards the bat, but Rosie turned her screams up a notch. He returned to her and sat on the bed. He looked back at the bat. It remained motionless. He put his arm around Rosie and she recoiled automatically, but he pulled her into his chest and eventually she acquiesced. He said, “It's nothing. It's nothing.” Gradually she sank into him. Her screaming had stopped. He began to laugh. He said, “It's fine.” He stood up. She clung to his T-shirt. He peeled off her fingers. He said, “It's fine. Let me get rid of it.”

He considered the bat. How the hell was he going to get rid of it? He knew nothing about bats. Was there a method? He considered calling Joseph, the gardener—a local would know how to deal with this. But the bat twitched its wings and Rosie started screaming again, and that made up Jerry's mind. He opened the window. He approached the animal cautiously before lurching the last distance to secure it in his hand. He didn't particularly want to hurt the thing anymore than he particularly cared whether it lived or died. He took two steps to the window. He felt a brief, sharp pain in his index finger. He hurled the bat outside. Heaven knows whether it landed on the veranda or flew off into the sky. He shut the window. He said, “It's nothing. It's fine.”

Jerry emerged from the bedroom with Rosie clutched to his chest. He found April cowering in the passage, their son still asleep on her shoulder. He said, “Just a bat.” The relief, the gratitude in his wife's face—he felt like a superhero. He put a hand on her arm and she leaned into him in an awkward kind of embrace, separated by the two kids. Rosie was still sniveling. “That was a shock,” he said quietly. Then, “Let's get them to sleep.”

April pulled back. Her eyes were haunted, her complexion filmy. She looked older than he remembered. This wasn't a pe­jorative observation so much as a surprising one: it was as if he hadn't seen her for a long time. She said, “I want to keep Theo with me.”

“OK,” he said.

He returned Rosie to her bed. Her terror had dissipated and her eyes were drowsy. He turned off the light, she slipped under the covers and he sat next to her, resting a hand gently on her shoulder. “You sure he gone?” she murmured.

“The bat?” he said. “Positive. He's gone. What a fuss over nothing.”

“His name Sasabonsam.”

“Who?”

“His name Sasabonsam. I call him Sasa.”

Jerry was feeling sleep steal up on him too. He said, “Your friend?”

“The bat. He want me to fly away with him again, only I don wanna go. I don have to go if I don wanna, do I? He can't make me.”

Jerry chuckled softly. He said, “No, he can't make you, Rosie. I won't let him.”

“And what if you not there?”

“I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to sit right here. And, tomorrow, when you go home, your daddy's going to look after you and he won't let anything happen. That's what daddies are for.”

Jerry sat for a minute or two longer until he heard her breathing even, lengthen, deepen. Then he padded out of the room and pulled the door behind him, leaving it open a crack. He was about to go back to bed, when he heard April call his name. “Yes?” he whispered. He stood in her doorway. “You OK?”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

Jerry couldn't see anything. He couldn't tell if his wife was sitting up or lying down, but her voice sounded sleepy. He was feeling a little cold. He shivered. His finger was throbbing. He didn't know what she meant. What was she apologizing for? Perhaps she was simply expressing a generalized regret for the way things were. He had no idea. And when he said, “I'm sorry too,” he didn't know what that meant either. However, when he chose not to go to her, not to climb into bed and hold her, but instead to return to the spare bedroom and its cold sheets, he assigned both their apologies their meaning.

Jerry examined his finger. He had two small puncture marks above the knuckle. He'd been bitten by a fucking bat. He went to the bathroom and bathed the small wounds in antiseptic. He'd need to get a shot in the morning but, for now, that would prevent any imminent infection.

I
t was quiet over breakfast. April seemed preoccupied. Jerry said, “You OK?”

“Just tired.”

“You have trouble getting back to sleep?”

She shook her head. “No, but I had…I don't know…terrible nightmares.”

“About what?”

She shook her head again. She changed the subject by addressing their son. She said, “And what are you two going to do today?”

Jerry answered for him. He said, “I don't know. Maybe we'll do something fun.”

April dropped Rosie at school on her way into the embassy. Jerry spent an idle twenty minutes fitting square blocks into square holes with Theo. Then he asked Bessie if she could bring her ironing board into the living room to keep an eye on him. He put the TV on: a
Teletubbies
DVD. He said, “I've got some work to do.”

He spent the morning reorganizing his Spotify playlists and browsing iTunes until he saw Ant sign in to Skype. He called him. The record shop where Ant worked was quiet, so they chatted for more than an hour. His brother told him about a gig he'd been to in London: a band he'd first seen two years ago in a Camden pub had been playing the Shepherd's Bush Empire. It hadn't been all that. It had lacked intimacy and the band's new material reflected their success; not in a good way. “Second-album syndrome,” his brother said.

“That's what happens.”

“That's what happens.”

Ant had been to the gig with his new girlfriend. She was Swiss. She lived in a basement flat in Balham, so they only saw each other at weekends. She worked as a PA in an ad agency, but she was really a graphic novelist. “Dark shit,” he said.

“Dark shit.” Jerry nodded.

The conversation meandered, but neither of them had a reason to end it. His brother asked about Theo, and Jerry briefly specified all his son's latest developments. Ant said, “That's so cool!” Then, “Where is he now?”

“With the maid.”

“The maid? How the other half live.”

“How the other half live.”

Jerry and his brother had always been close. They didn't finish each other's sentences, but repeated them in that curiously male style of lazy affirmation. But today Jerry felt the distance between them. He could no longer imagine what it would be like to work in a record shop and have a Swiss graphic-novelist girlfriend—it sounded impossibly, intoxicatingly exotic.

“What else is new?” Ant asked.

“Nothing,” Jerry said. Then he remembered the dull ache in his finger and looked down at the small twin wounds. “I got bitten by a bat.”

Ant thought this was the funniest thing he'd ever heard and laughed for a solid minute until Jerry started to laugh too. “Actually, I should go,” Jerry said. “I need to get a shot.”

He rang off. He called the GP. He made an appointment for two p.m. He checked the time. He had to pick up Rosie at twelve thirty. He was running late. He rang Patson. The driver arrived promptly for a change. He brought Rosie back for lunch. He asked Patson to wait. He ate with the kids before heading to the doctor.

For once, Jerry felt like small-talking, but Patson was even more taciturn than usual. Jerry said, “I'm going to the doctor. Last night I was bitten by a bat.” He started to laugh.

“I'm sorry, Uncle,” the driver said noncommittally.

“No!” Jerry said, still laughing. “It's funny if you think about it.”

But Patson didn't appear to find it funny, or simply didn't think about it.

Jerry was home within the hour. The kids were at the washing-line playing while Bessie beat the rugs. He watched Theo duck carefully between the swinging runners. He thought that if April were there she'd have been complaining about the potentially dangerous dust he might be inhaling and an article she'd read about infant asthma. He saw his son laugh delightedly at something Bessie said. He recognized how attached Theo was to her. He felt no jealousy, but he wondered at the ease with which Bessie entertained him, even as she worked. He compared it favorably to his and April's parenting, which seemed to require research, planning and endless accessories. Was this a failing in them or the whole modern Western culture of childcare?

Back in the house, Jerry bought the second album by the band his brother had watched at Shepherd's Bush Empire. He would listen for himself. The internet connection was even lousier than usual and the album took an age to download. He checked the time. He hoped it would finish before April got home and gave him grief for buying more music.

While Bessie bathed Theo, Jerry took Rosie to the bedroom to pack her bag. April was due to pick her up and take her home. Jerry folded the little girl's clothes carefully. He tried to cajole her to help, but with little enthusiasm and no success. She preferred to sit on the bed, watching him, curious. She was so strangely still and silent that Jerry felt almost unnerved. He asked her questions—what games had she been playing? Was she looking forward to seeing her daddy? That kind of thing. Rosie didn't answer one of them. Eventually Jerry zipped the bag and looked up at her. He said, “You're very quiet.”

For a moment, Rosie seemed to consider this. Then she said, “Just thinkin.” Then, “You don sleep in bed with Theo's momma.”

Jerry laughed. He said, “Not always.”

“You fuck the white bitch tho?” Rosie said. “Like Daddy? He fuck the white bitch all the time.”

Jerry stared. “Those are bad words,” he murmured.

April collected Rosie as arranged. She found her packed and ready to go. She said, “Give Jerry a hug.” The little girl briefly wrapped herself around Jerry's thighs, but he barely responded and he said nothing. April ignored his behavior. He was presumably harboring some or other bitterness. What was new about that?

She planned to talk to Shawn as soon as she got to the house. This time, she fully intended to tell him it was over between them. It felt right—she'd done him a favor; they'd had a few days without seeing each other; it was time to move on. Besides, she'd been haunted all day by her nightmares. She couldn't remember anything specific, but they'd left her with a general feeling of unease that seemed to her an unconscious spur to action. However, at Shawn's house, she found only Gladys and the gardener, whose name she'd never known.

April got out of the car and unclipped Rosie from the back. Gladys met them at the door. She appeared flustered. She said, “Madam, the geyser: it is leaking.”

April followed her inside. The house smelt thickly damp and, sure enough, the ceiling and walls of the central passageway showed a spreading brown stain. “Where's Shawn?” April asked.

“The boss is away, madam,” Gladys said. “I have not come into the house for three days. He told me not to come in. And now this has happened.”

“I know he's away. When's he back?”

“He called. He said he will be back just now.”

April looked at the maid. Her expression was panicked on account of the leak and she was looking to the white, the
madam,
for some kind of solution. April felt a momentary surge of irritation.

Behind her, the gardener said, “Excuse me.” He was carrying a stepladder, which he positioned under the hatch to the roof. He said, “I can turn it off.”

“There you are,” April said. Then, “Where did Rosie go?”

She found the little girl in her bedroom, playing quietly among her stuffed toys. She gave her a hug. She said, “Your daddy will be home soon.”

“Don worry,” Rosie said. “Sasa here an he in a good mood for once.”

April picked up a lion. She said, “This one Sasa?” Then, “Which one's Sasa?”

The little girl laughed. “None of these Sasabonsam, silly!”

“Oh, of course! Your friend.”

“He jus pretend,” Rosie said.

April was home by seven. Theo was already asleep and Bessie finished for the night. She found Jerry in the living room. He was swigging from a beer. There was an empty on the table in front of him. “Didn't take you long,” she said.

Her husband didn't look at her. He said, “I know you've been fucking Shawn.” April froze. She made an involuntary noise that might or might not have been an effort at speech. Now he looked at her. “Don't bother,” he said. “Rosie told me.
Rosie
. Jesus.”

The doorbell rang. Jerry stood up to answer the intercom. He pressed the button to open the gate. He said, “That's Patson. I'm going out. I'm going to get shitfaced.”

“We should talk,” April said feebly.

“About what?” Jerry asked. He shook his head. “Don't worry about it. I'm not even angry. That's you. That's what you do.”

April stared at him. He was telling the truth: he wasn't angry. She found him terrifying. She said, “So you're just going to get drunk?”

“Sure,” he said. “That's what I do.” He picked up his keys and left.