someone else.”
“I’m afraid you don’t grasp the situation, Mrs. Eldred. You can never return to Elim, as I imagined I had made adequately clear. After all, there is no one who could give a guarantee as to your conduct.”
“You make us sound like schoolchildren,” Ralph said.
“You are little more, Mr. Eldred.” The man closed his eyes. “Little more.”
Ralph took Anna’s hand. “We must decide.”
“Yes.”
“Anna, you look ill. Perhaps to go home would be best.”
“I’m not ill.”
“I can’t risk you. I love you, Anna.” Cooper looked away in distress.
“If we go home now we will have failed.”
“Oh God,” Ralph said. “I wish we had never seen this bloody country. I wish we’d gone to Dar.”
“No,” Anna said. “I wouldn’t have missed Elim, Ralph.” It will always be the place where we grew up, she thought. I shall never forget Flower Street. She looked up at Cooper. “All right, we’ll go.”
“I congratulate you on a brave decision.” Cooper put his hand out. Ralph ignored it.
In the small hours, the train set them down on an empty platform. Their two bags—their trunks would be packed for them, and sent on later—were placed at their feet; then the train gathered itself for the next haul, and steamed away up the line.
The darkness was total. They heard footsteps approach, shockingly loud. A railway employee called out a curt greeting in Afrikaans. Anna answered him. “We are late. There’s no one to meet us, where can we stay?”
The railway employee was a man of few words. “He says there’s only the waiting room. And it’s here behind us. And he says that everyone knows the train is late. Everyone concerned.”
“They won’t abandon us,” Ralph said. The footsteps retreated.
The waiting room had a cement floor and two wooden benches. It seemed to offer no more comfort than the platform, so they took up their station on the single bench outside. Though it was midsummer, the starlight was cold. They leaned together, their heads touching. “We’re nowhere now,” Anna whispered.
Ralph said, “We are in the heart of Africa.”
“Yes. Nowhere.”
She lay down on the bench, her head on his knees, a cardigan draped over her. His head drooping, he dozed.
Ralph woke to a touch on his shoulder. A torch beam flashed into his face. As soon as he looked up the torch was switched off. An African voice, a man’s, said, “Mr. Eldred, sir. Come, baas, come, madam.”
Hands reached for their bags. Anna stood up, stiff from sleep, disoriented, chilled. Beyond the station compound they saw the lights of a truck. “This is yours?” Ralph asked.
“No, baas.” A silence. Ralph thought, how can I stop them calling me that? I never want to hear that word again. The man said, “It is mine and my brother’s truck, and his brother’s also. Mrs. Pilane, the clinic nurse, has asked me to lift you to the mission.”
“Thank you,” Ralph said. “The train is very late. We thought no one was coming.”
“I was coming,” the man said calmly.
As they approached the truck, they saw by torchlight a half dozen figures rise from the ground, draped in blankets. No one spoke. One by one, the half dozen climbed into the back of the truck, handing up to each other parcels and sacks. “Who are these?” Ralph said.
The man replied, “They are people who are traveling.”
Ralph pushed Anna into the cab of the truck and scrambled in beside her. “Do you work for the mission?” Ralph asked.
“No. There is only Salome. And there is Enock.”
The man did not enlarge on this. He kept his own name to himself, a private possession. They drove on in silence. The track was rough, and stones clattered away from their wheels; ruts jolted their spines. Small branches brushed the sides of the truck with a metallic
Almost imperceptibly, the sky began to lighten. The road became less bumpy. “We are arriving,” the driver said. The village of Mosadinyana took shape about them: the cattle kraals of plaited thorns, the shaggy thatched roofs of the rondavels, the mud walls which enclosed each yard. The driver pulled up. There was a moment’s stillness; Anna looked at the walls; a pattern was set into them, striped and zigzagged, ochre and dun. The travelers melted away, wrapping their blankets more tightly around them; the women balanced their parcels on their head.
The sun was almost up now, but the pale light could have been dawn or dusk. Anna looked up beyond the village. Her vision filled with low brown hills, an interminable range of hills: like the mountains of the moon. Around the borehole, donkeys bent their necks and plucked at the scrubby ground.
They jolted up to the Mission House a few minutes later. The driver dismounted to take down their bags. “You may give me three shillings,” he said.
“Gladly,” Ralph said. “I am very grateful to you.”
Money changed hands. The Mission House was a low building, its walls gleaming white in the half light. There was a candle burning on a table on the front stoep. As they watched, it was extinguished. The sun burst over the hills, born fully armed: a great disc of searing gold.
They found inside the house the sticks of furniture left behind by their predecessors, Mr. and Mrs. Instow. There were dusty, sagging armchairs, the
