The Flower Plantation (13 page)

“Just thought I should pop by and let you have the news,” said Dr Sadler, brushing crumbs off his chest and onto the floor for Romeo to snaffle up.

He said things such as “Ruhengeri has been captured”, “the border is closed” and “fighting has broken out in the mountains”. And he told Father, “There's a curfew from dusk to dawn.”

“I'd better call the lab, tell them I might not make it in,” said Father, when a knock came at the front door. It was so loud it made the doctor jump. Father opened the door: it was the witch!

“L-laura,” he stammered. I wanted to hide behind the sofa. Father bravely went outside and shut the door. The door was made of glass and opened straight into the living room, so it was easy to hear what they were saying.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in a hushed voice. I supposed he was trying not to wake Mother. I waited to hear the witch's reply, but Dr Sadler started puckering his lips and making little whistling noises while drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair.

“Well,” said Dr Sadler helping himself to another biscuit, “Fabrice certainly does make an excellent biscuit and cup of tea. Time I got a Fabrice of my own.” Dr Sadler was beginning to annoy me, his blathering prevented me from hearing what was being said outside. “Of course, I had someone once, someone to press my suits and make me supper, but—”

At that point the door swung open and the witch came into the living room.

“I don't think it's a good idea for you to…” Father didn't finish his sentence. Instead, he closed the door between the living room and the bedroom corridor.

I clung tightly to Romeo and tried not to look at the witch.

“Hello, Laura,” said Dr Sadler, attempting to rise from his chair, but he only managed a tilt before sitting down again. “How are you?” The witch put down her huge backpack on the floor and bunched her unruly hair into a ponytail. She didn't look quite so frightening with her hair tied back, wearing jeans and hiking boots.

“They've no right to force me out of my home,” she said angrily. “They're bullies. If they had any balls at all, they wouldn't target a single white woman. Who the hell is going to look after the gorillas while I'm gone – check the snares?” I hoped the soldiers had set her caged gorillas free. “Who's going to protect them from the poachers? They can't stop me from going back. They can't.”

“Best not to fan the flames,” said Dr Sadler. I wasn't sure what he meant.

The witch knelt down and emptied the contents of her backpack onto the floor as if she was planning to stay. Father paced by the front door, switching glances between her and the bedroom corridor.

“Did you say a curfew was in place?” Father asked Dr Sadler, looking at his watch.

“Dusk till dawn.”

“Perhaps—”

Mother opened the living-room door. She was wearing trousers and a blouse, but I could see her nightie poking out where she hadn't tucked it in properly. She stood in the doorway staring at the witch. The witch didn't meet her eye.

“Martha—” said Father.

“What's
she
doing here?”

“Her camp's been taken over,” Dr Sadler answered for Father.

Mother noticed the doctor for the first time.

“Edward,” she said, her voice calmer. She pinched at her cheeks, fluffed her hair and smoothed down her blouse, but didn't tuck in the bit of nightie that showed. “Excuse us,” Mother said to Dr Sadler. “Albert.”

They went into the back lobby and closed the door. This time Dr Sadler didn't make annoying noises, and the witch sat quietly on the floor sorting her things – clothes, camp gear and notebooks. We could hear everything they were saying.

“I want her out of here. Do you understand? I don't want her anywhere near us. I can't believe you would do this.”

“I didn't invite her, Martha. She just showed up. Her camp's been destroyed. We can't just throw her out.”

“
We
won't be doing anything;
you'll
bloody well do it yourself!”

Mother came back into the living room, put her hand on Dr Sadler's shoulder and said, “Edward,” before turning to me and saying, “Arthur, bed.”

It wasn't anywhere near bedtime – we hadn't even had dinner – but Mother's tone made it clear I should do exactly as I was told. She paid no attention to the witch, just turned her back on her and led me to my room. Mother returned to her bedroom, and I sat on my window seat, my butterfly in its farm next to me, looking out over the garden as dusk began to fall.

After a while Father, the witch and Dr Sadler went out to his car. The doctor got in, and the witch put her pack on the back seat. She and Father stood having a conversation I couldn't hear. The witch was no longer angry: she looked a bit upset. Father placed his hands on her upper arms and kissed her lips.

It was as if, for a moment, my world had stopped.

When it started spinning again, I wanted to bang on the window and scream “No!” But I couldn't.

All I could do was watch Father kissing the witch.

16

For weeks after seeing Father kissing the witch I tried to make sense of what I'd seen. I came up with endless explanations. At first I convinced myself that the witch must have poisoned Father. When Father had gone out to talk to her, they had closed the door: anything could have happened. The witch could have offered Father a drink, or something to eat, or even injected him with some potion like the ones the gardeners talked about. Had she cast a spell on Father to make him fall in love with her and out of love with Mother?

The longer I thought about these things the more I became convinced that this wasn't the case. A nagging doubt, like a tiny mouse trapped inside me, scratched away day and night, trying to find its way out.

Father began to stay even longer at work, and when he was home for dinner Mother wouldn't sit at the table: she'd take her food, and a bottle of wine, and eat in her room. From the moment I saw Father kissing the witch, Mother pretty much stopped talking. If it hadn't been for Fabrice banging pans, the scritch-scratch of Celeste's broom and the sound of the radio, the house would have been silent. Mother's silence made me more aware of my own.

Mother couldn't have seen Father kissing the witch – her bedroom didn't overlook the front of the house – but clearly she knew something. I thought she must be mad at Father for letting the witch into the house, for putting us all in danger, but as time went by I figured it must be something more.

Mother's drinking didn't just affect Father: she made the house staff and gardeners work longer hours, but for no extra pay, and she banned me from playing outside for the whole of February and March. I wasn't even allowed to go out on my eleventh birthday – which made me pretty mad. She said it was because of the “threat of soldiers”, but sometimes I thought it was really because she was worried that the witch would come back and cast the same spell on me. I thought Mother was afraid I'd love the witch instead of her.

On those days I spent most of my time staring out of the window at Nyiragongo or at my butterfly in its farm, and I desperately wanted to tell Mother how much I hated the witch for killing Monty and kissing Father. I wanted to tell her that I'd never allow the witch to cast a spell over me (though I did wonder if the witch had a spell to cure my fear of talking). But just as I was trapped inside, the words were trapped inside me.

After my birthday, my concerns about Father, Mother and the witch were replaced by events around the plantation. At night I'd lie awake and listen to the gunfire that dotted the
hills. Mother said if I ever heard gunfire outside I should lie down on my tummy and place my hands on my head. Sebazungu told me that soldiers were stealing crops and goats from the
shambas
at night, and anyone who got in their way was being shot. My greatest fear was that they'd try and steal from Beni's family. I wanted to tell her to stay out of their way, let them have her crops and remember to lie flat on her tummy with her hands on her head. I lay awake at night worrying about that a lot.

Once – when I'd sneaked outside to look for clues to find out who killed Monty – I happened upon thousands of pale-yellow false-dotted borders flitting about the field of alstroemeria. As I was wondering if this was how the butterflies at the crater would look, a helicopter passed overhead. I liked its shape: it was like one of the black tadpoles in the frog pond in the side garden. I stood gazing up at it in its pool of pale-blue sky and listened to the whomping of the blades. The blast from the rotors made funny patterns in the fields, sweeping the flowers and my hair flat and forcing the butterflies onto the ground. The helicopter came so close that I could see the pilots' faces – and they could see mine too. I waved, but they didn't wave back, which made me feel foolish. On one of the doors was a sticker of the Rwandan flag and a French flag too – it was blue, white and red.

Suddenly the pilots spun the helicopter round and began spraying bullets over our fields. Instead of lying flat on
my tummy and putting my hands on my head I just stood there.

“Arthur!” came a shout from behind me.

Thomas and Mother were running through the field of flowers. And Celeste, leaning on her
fimbo
, was trying to get to me too. Thomas hurled towards me, blazer flailing, and scooped me up. He turned right around and took me to Mother. I'd never known him move so fast. He took off his blazer and Celeste wrapped it round me. It smelt of tobacco.

“Arthur,” said Mother.

“He is OK, Madame,” said Celeste.

Mother took me from Thomas and held me tight. I couldn't remember the last time she'd done that. The trouble was it didn't feel nice: it felt like I might die from being squeezed too hard instead of being killed by bullets.

“You mustn't do that, Arthur,” she said, once we were in the safety of the kitchen. She sat me on the table and fixed my T-shirt and hair, even though neither needed fixing. “Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“I know it's difficult being stuck inside, but it isn't safe out there. You have to understand.” Mother stared at me. It was uncomfortable. I wanted to tell her I did understand. I wanted to tell her that just because I didn't talk didn't mean I was stupid. Being shot at by a passing helicopter was lesson enough: I didn't need Mother lecturing me too.

“Well,” she said, taking a step back and tying her robe tight. “Perhaps I haven't been doing enough to keep you occupied. Perhaps I should drink a little less wine and spend more time with you. How does that sound?” It sounded like a good idea. Since the witch had kissed Father, Mother had been drinking even more wine than after Monty died. It was clear that Mother's drinking wasn't helping at all.

* * *

A few days later, Mother stopped drinking altogether, and not long after that she was up and about with her hair brushed and wearing clothes instead of nightwear. She organized a new timetable of lessons for me that could be held inside and did her best to ensure I wasn't bored and tempted to go out. It took a while for me to get used to the new routine, and my knuckles were red from rubbing, but in the end we both settled into a rhythm and life felt almost normal again.

One Wednesday afternoon, I was reading from Mother's encyclopedia at the dining table when she said to me: “Arthur, I have a surprise.” Mother having a surprise was a surprise in itself. It was always Father who gave surprises.

She opened the door to the back lobby – and there, in the dim light, stood Beni. A smile broke across her thin face, which was as sweet to me as a crescent moon rising at dusk. Her almond eyes looked even bigger than usual.
I desperately wanted to shout “Beni” – but as always I was taken over by the feeling that should I talk my throat would seize up and I'd struggle to breathe.

“I thought you could do family trees – does that sound good?” asked Mother when Beni had sat down beside me. My whole body ached to hold her hand, but I couldn't pluck up the courage to do it. “Arthur, why don't you get your photo album? It might be nice to show Beni some of your relatives.”

I went to my bedroom, where I took the photo album from under my bed, which left a perfect square of dust-free floor. I thought about showing Beni all the dead butterflies I'd been collecting and pressing in my book, next to the flower from her hair, but somehow that didn't feel right. So instead I picked up the butterfly farm, which contained only a crimson-tip egg – a yellow jelly-like egg I'd collected in January to make up for the one I'd killed with ammonia – and our butterfly, which, over the months we had all been held captive indoors, had begun to look frail.

“She is weak,” said Beni when I handed her the farm.

I nodded.

Mother laid out paper and pens and opened the photo album, apparently indifferent to the plight of our butterfly.

“Let's start with you, Arthur.”

Mother asked me to write my name at the bottom of the piece of paper. She then told me to draw a line upwards and showed me where to write her name and Father's, with a
lower-case “m” between them to indicate their marriage. Then we did Mother's parents. I showed Beni my only photo of them – two solid-looking people in heavy glasses with thick coats and wooden-looking hair. I also wrote the name of Mother's brother, whom I only knew about through Christmas cards that usually arrived in March. The photos that came in the cards were always of him and his family wearing denim jeans, Mickey Mouse sweatshirts and grimacing smiles. His family looked odd to me, but I put them in the family tree the way Mother asked, and before long a little cobweb-like diagram took shape.

“And then how about you put in Father's parents?”

I turned to the picture of Papa, so that Beni could see his stiff white collar and shiny shoes. She traced her finger over his image. I wrote his name above Father's and then added “m” beside “Immaculée”.

“Ah, but Papa and Immaculée divorced,” said Mother. “So we need to strike through the ‘m'.”

I did as Mother said.

“Immaculée is a Rwandan name,” said Beni.

“That's right,” said Mother. “Arthur's grandmother was Rwandan. Show her a picture, Arthur.”

I shrugged and shook my head.

“I'm sure there's one,” Mother took the album from me and looked through every page. “Wait here,” she said, and disappeared down the bedroom corridor saying, “I know there's one somewhere.”

With Mother out of the room I was more aware of myself and of Beni. I wanted to tell her about my feeling of guilt over killing butterflies, the visit of the witch, the helicopter that had sprayed bullets over the flower fields – and how she should be careful at night and let the soldiers steal her crops and goats if they wished. I looked at the paper and pens, and it was then that it occurred to me that I could write notes to her. I was about to start writing when Mother returned, saying:

“Here it is.” And she handed us a black-and-white photograph of a tall, pretty lady. I'd tried to imagine what Immaculée might have looked like all my life, but at that moment I didn't really care. I didn't care that she looked nothing like the laughing ladies with yellow eyes at the shops. I just wanted to write notes to Beni.

“She is Tutsi,” said Beni, interested in the photograph.

“Yes.”

“I am Tutsi,” she said, and began to draw a diagram of her own. She drew a web just like mine, but next to the names she wrote a lower-case “h” or “t” for Hutu and Tutsi.

“Very good, Beni,” said Mother, looking at Beni's tree, which read:

Sogokuru (h) “m” Nyogokuru (t)
Data (h/t) “m” Mama (t)
Beni (t)

I was plucking up the courage to write a note about the idea of there one day being a little “m” between Beni's name and mine when Fabrice came into the room. He told Beni her mama needed her at home. I wanted to shout “Stop” and tell everyone to leave us alone so we could “talk” at last. But before I could do anything, Beni took her family tree and said: “Bye, Arthur. See you soon.”

With Beni gone I felt the way Romeo must have felt when Monty died – a lone dog without his pack mate.

“I speak with you?” Fabrice asked Mother, and they went into the back lobby to talk. I sat at the table and stared into the butterfly farm. As I stared at the lonely, listless butterfly, I heard Fabrice ask Mother for a loan.

“Because of war and drought,” he said. “It is difficult.
Très difficile
.”

Mother said she would think about it and told Fabrice to return to work.

* * *

That night, when Mother was asleep and the moon was high, Romeo scratched at my door, which I opened. He ran to the back of the house, and I let him out for a pee. Only the sound of heavy wind through the trees and Joseph's muffled radio broke the quiet of the night. That was until I heard a creaking noise coming from the chicken coop.

I stood at the back door straining my eyes and ears and tried to understand what it was. I was scared that a soldier might be stealing our eggs. My chest grew tight with worry.

The sound came again.
Creak
. I saw nothing. In the dark the yard existed only in a palette of grey.
Creak
, came the sound.
Creak
.

I held my breath and wrapped my arms around myself to stave off the cold and fear. Squinting harder, I saw a flash of colour on the ground – shiny and red – Fabrice's shoes!

I breathed out and relaxed my arms.

Fabrice must be tending the chickens, I told myself, feeling foolish that I'd thought it was something more. I clapped for Romeo, who dashed in, and banged the backdoor shut.