I was woken by the sound of pitiful, desperate retching and Sam’s sobbing. I panicked. ‘Nathan,’ I called. ‘Nathan.’ He shambled sleepily into the room. ‘We’ve got to get him to hospital.’ Without a second’s hesitation, he swung into action.
Together we wrapped Sam in Nathan’s old green dressing-gown for extra warmth, got him into the car and drove at top speed to St Thomas’s casualty department. There we huddled on chairs for an hour and took it in turns to hold our drooping son upright.
Nathan whispered reassuringly to Sam and kissed the top of his matted hair. He spoke to me only when necessary.
So we sat amid the blood, the noise, the stale air, and battled with our separate thoughts. Sam slid down on to my shoulder. So tired that my eyes burned, I held him close. ‘Nathan,’ I whispered. ‘Please.’
He turned and looked at me – at the wreckage of me. ‘Oh, Rosie,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you some coffee.’ He returned with it, and manhandled my free hand around the polystyrene cup. ‘Go on, drink it.’ He stroked my cheek – his way of saying sorry. Gratefully, I looked up into his face, and he smiled down at me. ‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘Drink up.’
Sam was admitted to hospital for observation, and improved rapidly. The paediatrician was not sure what was wrong, but was equally sure it was nothing serious. ‘He may have had some sort of shock, or an allergic reaction, and his system has rebelled. He needs rest, quiet, and no upset’
At nine thirty I rang work and told them I would not be in for a couple of days. I told Sam I would stay with him while he was in hospital. White and frightened, but still trying hard to be brave, he whispered, ‘I’m glad you’re here, Mum.’
I slipped my arm around his shoulders. I had been in danger of forgetting the wonder and terror of being a mother.
‘Just a bug,’ I told Hal, after throwing up in the plane to Brazil and then in the hot, noisy hotel by the airport. I lay down on the bed with a handkerchief rinsed in cold water over my eyes.
The sun slatted through my half-closed lids, its light and heat intrusive in a way I had never experienced before. This was the continent of lush harshness, damp, drilling heat, and a magisterial river.
It was Hal’s surprise trip, his secret expedition. I had hoped we would be going to Morocco and the desert: I longed for somewhere fierce, dry and unequivocal, but Hal was gripped by his passion for ecology. This was a new science, the way forward, etc., etc. Someone had to do it, he said, but I thought it was the romance of the subject that had got to him. Good versus evil. The little guy fighting the big ones. For the past six months, he had been working to acquire financial backing for an expedition to monitor the effects of tree-felling on the Yanomami, a people whose territory extended from the Orinoco forests in Venezuela to the northernmost reaches of the Brazilian Amazon basin.
‘No wonder you didn’t tell me,’ I said, when he sprang this surprise destination on me. I was packing up my things to leave Oxford for the last time. ‘I don’t want to go there. You should have asked me.’
He took from me the pile of clothes I was holding, dumped them on the bed and pulled me into his arms. ‘You had finals, remember. Listen, these people are under threat. They’re down to between ten and fifteen thousand and decreasing rapidly. Logging is destroying their home, and the big companies don’t care a toss.’ He buried his lips in my neck. ‘We have to take a look and alert the agencies who can do something.’
Leaving Oxford was going to be a wrench and I felt weepy and irritable, not like myself. I shook him off and stuffed a pair of socks into my suitcase. ‘You can’t just rely on me dropping everything.’
‘That’s fine,’ Hal said easily, lightly, in a take-it-or-leave-it voice. ‘I can find someone else.’ I whipped round. He lifted his shoulders dismissively. ‘Not to worry, Rose. I thought you’d like the surprise. Someone else can hop on board. Couldn’t be easier.’
It was a threat, and I panicked. ‘No, Hal!’ I cried. ‘It’s fine. Of course I’ll come. Forget what I said.’
Hal was good in triumph: unlike me, he never crowed. ‘I don’t think you’ll regret it.’ He bent over and gave me one of the kisses that reverberated through every nerve. ‘Next one the desert, OK?’ His lips moved on down and, as usual with Hal, I yielded.
I let him mould me, but what did I care? Hal was my poetry and my passion. He was the dreaming youth, the whisper of enchanted lands, the magician that transformed my life.
‘There’s nothing wrong?’ he asked me, a couple of days later.
‘No, no, nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
The study was projected to take four months, and we agreed that I would join him for the first three weeks, then return to England to begin my job. We flew into Brazil and took a connecting flight up to the small town of Quetzl where we met the guide. We spent a week wrestling with the language problem, tying up details and a timetable, and working out the supply drops. After that, we loaded up a six-seater plane and took off over the rainforest.
Mile after mile unrolled underneath the plane in a world of unimaginable dimensions. The vegetation was so thick that it was impossible to see the forest floor but here and there a tributary glinted, muddy and sullen. In places, mist lay thickly over the trees.
The plane shuddered in the thin air and the pilot took frequent swigs from a Thermos. Hal made a face at me, and I managed a joke. ‘The Chinese have a curse: may your dreams come true.’
The plane lurched, and suddenly my stomach crawled with nausea. The words shrivelled on my lips and I bent over to retie a bootlace, knowing that I had lied to Hal. There
God knew how we managed to land on the rudimentary airstrip but we did. The forest rushed up to swallow us, the aircraft ricocheted over the uneven surface and we were there.
The following morning, we trekked up to base camp, which was a deserted Yanomami settlement. Hal went ahead with the guide, keeping up a cracking pace and making light of the obstacles on the path. Behind me, the porters were loaded so heavily I felt embarrassed, but they did not appear to mind.
The forest was like a cage, built of green interlapping plates, some of which did not fit well. After several hours of slogging, I began to miss the sky, as I might a good friend. It was damp underfoot and our feet were sucked into mud of varying consistency. Roots writhed in and out of it, and strange star-shaped bright-coloured flowers bloomed among the detritus. It was an alien habitat, whose heat pawed at the skin.
Every so often, Hal turned to wave encouragement. Once he plodded back and retied the bandanna round my neck to catch the sweat. ‘Good girl, Rose.’
‘Are you happy?’ I asked.
‘Very.’
Wrapped in mosquito nets, we spent the first night in hammocks strung between trees, and listened to the noises of the rainforest at night. At intervals, a porter got up to tend the fire and patrol our camp. My stomach full and temporarily quiescent, the magic, strangeness and noises of the forest worked on me.
‘Tarzan loves Jane,’ said Hal softly.
I did not reply. In this big, strange world, words were inadequate.
After a second day of hard trekking, we reached the Yanomami settlement, abandoned after a logging company had started operations a mile away. Their huts remained, doughnut-shaped and thatched with palm leaves. Each could accommodate a large number, sometimes as many as two hundred, but every family had a hearth to itself. The central area was set aside for communal activities, such as dancing and singing.
I chose a hearth, and dumped my rucksack on the floor, which was of beaten mud. It had dried unevenly, and its colours shaded from blood to dark crimson. It was alive with insects. Any minute now, the tropical night would descend with the swiftness that took my breath away.
Hal appeared with the rest of our stuff. ‘Light’s going.’
‘Let’s get things sorted.’
‘Here.’ He handed me a cotton sleeping bag. I ignored it, clapped my hand to my mouth, ran outside and retched into the undergrowth.
I sensed that Hal was behind me. I stood upright and wrapped my arms across my stomach. ‘Tell me the truth,’ he said. ‘Could you be pregnant?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s possible,’ I whispered.
