of the track. She could not see him, but she could hear the crunch of his boots. She could see the tip of his lighted cigarette, bobbing and dipping with each step.
Ralph said, “What time is it?” He eased himself from the lower berth, put out his head in turn. A moonless night. Not a breath of wind. Useless to ask, why have we stopped, when will we go again? Best just to wait. They had crossed the border. They were in Bech-uanaland, moving north through the night. Not moving now: becalmed. They had been late at Mafeking, late at Lobatsi; “I’ll give you a bed,” the conductor had told them. “You can try sleeping two hours, three. You’ll reach your station before dawn.” He brought two flat pillows and two railway blankets, and four sheets that were as white and crisp as paper.
“There must be a village.” Ralph had picked out the glow of a fire, far to their left. If there had been a wind, it might have brought voices to them. Closer at hand, a baby was crying, ignored, from some outlying hut: Anna heard the thin insistent wail.
She climbed back to her bed. She had wanted the top berth because she felt there was more air, with no other body stacked above hers. It was December now, midsummer; sunset brought some relief from the heat, but it was best if you kept moving. Ralph passed up their bottle of water. It was tepid and stale. She closed her eyes, and disposed her body carefully so that no part of it touched any other part. But the berth was narrow; she folded her hands across her ribs, till the heat and weight of them became unbearable.
The night settled about her like a black quilt. Lucy Moyo had packed a bag for her in Elim, and handed it to her at the prison gate; her cotton nightdress had been starched and smelled of the iron, but now it was a sodden rag. The sheets the guard had given them were rucked damply beneath her hips. Her hair stuck to her neck; she put her arms by her sides again, looked up at the roof of the train. It was a metal coffin lid, a coffin in the air. Hands folded, she made a decorous corpse.
She imagined her voice, floating down to earth. “I think I am pregnant, Ralph.”
What then? What if she said it? What would they do? Lurch from the train at some desert halt, and begin to navigate their passage back to civilization? How would they do it? The South Africans might not let them back over the border. They had been given the choice: take the plane home, or the train north.
She thought of herself decanted into the winter at East Dere-ham, her trunks bumping up the stairs of her parents’ house for storage in the attics; she imagined rubbing together her blue hands, while she tried to explain their situation.
No, she thought. My lips are sealed.
She dozed. The train began to move. It carried her onward, into a world of dust.
The Security Branch had come for them before dawn: parking their vehicles outside the compound, and knocking politely, persistently, on the front door of the Mission House until Ralph admitted them. “Will you get dressed, Mrs. Eldred, please? And pack a bag?”
They began another search. They emptied the contents of the wastepaper baskets into bags to take away, and noted the titles of the books on the shelves. They went through the out-tray and read the addresses on the envelopes waiting for the mail. “Who is Dr. Eldred, please?”
“My sister,” Ralph said.
The letter was laid down again. It would go all the way to Norwich, greased by a policeman’s fingertips.
When one of the men approached the filing cabinet, Ralph and Anna exchanged a glance. One impatient pull … they waited for the top drawer to sail from its runners and break the policeman’s toes. But these officers were circumspect, almost reverential. “We give a receipt for anything we take away,” one explained. The drawer remained anchored, innocuous. The policemen went about their work quietly, as if not to injure or alarm the incriminating evidence. The mission staff—Rosinah, Dearie, Clara the washerwoman, Jakob and his boy assistant— had been brought from their beds to stand in a line outside the back door. Their quarters were being searched. With the same creepy-fingered care? Ralph doubted that. “Let me speak to them,” he said. “Just to reassure them.”
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Eldred,” said the officer in charge. “My men will do all the reassuring that is needed.”
“Mrs. Eldred?” They had brought a female officer; she touched Anna’s arm. “I must come with you while you get your things together.”
“Things?” Anna said.
“For a time away from home,” the young woman said.
“Where do you think you are taking me?”
“You have to …” The girl looked aside. She had a tender skin, a north European skin, and blushed easily; she was not hardened to her trade. “To prison, Mrs. Eldred.”
“To prison.” Anna digested it. The pause made her sound cool. “To prison for how long? And why? On what charge?”
The female officer glanced at her superior. She didn’t know the answer. An expression of impatience crossed the man’s face. “Just take her,” he said.
In the bedroom Anna pulled drawers open, aimless and distracted. She could not stop her hands from trembling. The female officer sat on the bed. “You hurry up now,” she said, not unkindly. “Bring your nightie. Bring soap and your toothbrush. And your sanitary protection if you think you might need it.”
When her bag was packed the woman stood up and took it from her. She ushered her back to the sitting room. The double doors to the front stoep stood wide open. The two officers had gone, and taken Ralph with them.
It was only then that Anna understood that she and Ralph would be separated. She broke away. The woman officer leaped after her, catching at her arm. A man standing outside on the steps slammed the wire door of the stoep back into her face. She heard a car drive away. She put her fingers against the netting of the stoep, as if to force them through.
There was an iron bedstead and a stained mattress; traces of vomit, menstrual blood. She had to force herself to sit down on it, but she thought it was a good sign that they had not given her sheets and blankets. Perhaps they would ask some questions, and release her before the day was out. Dawn came, her first dawn in prison. She listened to the morning sounds, still and attentive: her hands in her lap, her spine sagging slightly. They had taken away her watch, but she estimated that it was about seven o’clock when the door was unlocked. A wardress brought in a tin tray, and put it down on the metal locker by the bed. She went out again without speaking. The key turned in the lock. She heard the stout shoes squeak away.
