Chapter 15
The Night He Came Again
The morning of that Friday was bright, and ordinary, and she would never forgive it for being so.
She woke at six, to a clear pale sky and a cock crowing. She dressed in the half-light, in her uniform, with the bag she had packed under the bed, and went out, as she did every morning, and stood for a moment on the back step, in the cool, looking at the yard. The mango tree was in flower. The roses were wet. A line of ants was moving, in a dark thread, along the edge of the path. There was dew on the water tank, and behind it, in a gap between the tank and the wall, under a square of plastic sheeting held down with two stones, a small blue bag, which she checked, quickly, with her heart beating, and found as she had left it.
Still there.
Three weeks.
It was what the day said, in a hundred small ways, as she walked down the hill, among the market women, with the smell of frying dough, and the shouts of the boda men, and the pale hot sun coming up over the roofs. Three weeks. The bursary committee had met on Tuesday. Mr. Kato had passed her in the corridor, with a book under his arm, and said, without turning his head, in a voice like a man commenting on the weather, I think it will be all right. He had not stopped walking. But she had seen, in the corner of his face, a thin line of something that was nearly a smile, and had felt her knees go weak.
The first of April.
The Easter break. A bed in a dormitory. A key that is mine.
She had said it to herself, in the night, so many times, that it had begun to sound like an incantation. It had a rhythm. It went with her feet. Three weeks. Twenty-one days. Fifteen school days. She had been counting for nine weeks, and now the sum was small enough to hold in one hand. She was nearly there. She was nearly over the wall.
Please, she thought, to nobody, to the sun, to the thin blue sky. Please. Only three more weeks.
"Your mother has gone," said Peter.
He was standing at the school gate at four o'clock, in his suit, beside the silver car.
She stopped dead.
It was the wrong place. It was the wrong time. He had never, in three and a half years, come to the school. He had sent a message, once, by a boy. He had never stood at the gate, in front of two hundred girls, with his hands behind his back, looking up the long dusty drive with an air of pleasant, expectant patience, as a father does who has come to collect his child from a party.
She felt every head on the drive turn.
"I thought I would fetch you," he said, as she came up. He opened the passenger door. His voice was warm, and carrying. "It's a long walk. And you looked tired this morning. I thought, I'll save her the climb."
"I always walk."
"I know." He smiled. "But your mother has gone to Masaka. For the funeral. She went at noon, on the taxi. I said I'd look after you."
"I know about the funeral."
"I am sure you do." He held the door. "Get in."
"I am going to Miriam's."
"Not today."
"I've arranged it. Her mother has..."
"I have spoken to Mrs. Namubiru." He said it very gently. "I met her in the market. She was kind enough to say that you were welcome. But I explained that it was a family evening. With your mother away. I did not like to think of you imposing." A pause. He was looking over her shoulder, at the crowd of watching girls, and his smile had broadened. "She understood."
He has been to the bakery.
The sun hit her on the back of the neck. She stood, with her bag in her arms, in the middle of the drive, while the whole of the afternoon went on round her, the shrieking of a netball practice, the thud of a skipping rope, a bell. She saw Miriam, at the far end of the drive, in the shade of the flame tree, standing still, with her satchel dangling from one hand, staring.
Nobody can make me, she thought.
I am eighteen. I can walk off. I can go to the police post. I can say, I am not getting in.
She did not move.
It was not that she could not. It was that she saw, with a clarity that was almost physical, the whole of the drive, the watching girls, the staring teachers, a hundred pairs of curious eyes. She saw the man at her elbow, in his good suit, with his hand on the open door, smiling. She saw how it looked. It looked like a father. It looked like a doting stepfather fetching a tired girl in the afternoon. And if she walked away, in front of all of them, what would they see? A sulky girl, who had refused a lift.
He has chosen the place.
He has made it so that I can't say no without a scene.
And if I make a scene, I'm the one who was rude.
"Come along," said Peter, softly. "There's a good girl."
Tomorrow I will go to Mama Betty's, she thought. Or tonight. When he's busy. I'll take the bag, and go.
It is only one night.
It is only one.
She got in.
The house was very quiet.
She walked up the path behind him, at his heels, in the long gold light of the late afternoon. He went ahead, with his keys, whistling. The gate had been closed behind them. She heard it, a long slow groan of iron, and a heavy click, as he swung it to, and slid the padlock through the hasp, and turned the key.
She heard it go into his pocket.
She did not look back. She walked on, up the gravel, past the roses and the mango tree and the green water tank, to the veranda, and the front door, which stood open, in the cool shadow. The hall was dim. It smelled of floor polish. A clock ticked, somewhere, solid and slow. It was the sound of a house in which there was nobody else.
"I'll change," said Peter. "I will be in the garden. I've the cement to ring about."
"Yes."
"Do your homework. There's food in the kitchen. I'll eat later."
"Yes."
"And Sarah."
She turned.
He was in the doorway of the master bedroom, with his jacket over his arm, loosening his tie. He looked tired. He looked, for an instant, in the shadowy light, like an ordinary man at the end of a long day. His eyes were soft. They rested on her face, kindly, as on a child who has had a trying week.
"Be good tonight," he said. "Please. For me."
She went to her room.
The next hours were the longest of her life.
She sat on the bed, with her back to the wall, and her feet drawn up, and her father's list in her hand, which she read, and read, and did not see. The light slid slowly down the wall. It went from gold to orange, to a dull red. A moth blundered in. She heard him in the garden, a murmur of talk, on the phone, a long phlegmy laugh. She heard him go to the shed, and come back. She heard a cupboard open. She heard, at seven, the familiar sound of a bottle being uncapped.
She went to the kitchen.
She did it quickly, on the edges of her feet. She cut a piece of bread and ate it standing, with her back to the wall, and her eyes on the arch. She drank a glass of water. She heard his voice, in the garden, rise and fall. She stood by the table, in the cooling dusk, with the smell of cold matooke and old oil, and a heap of peelings by the basin, and a short black-handled knife lying beside it, where she had left it at lunchtime.
She looked at it.
She did not pick it up. She stood, with her hand on the back of the chair, and looked, and her mouth was dry. It lay on the wood, in a smear of green juice. It was small and worn and entirely harmless. She had used it a thousand times, to take the skin off a fruit.
Don't, she thought.
She turned away.
She went back to her room, and put a chair under the handle, and set the tin on the floor. She sat on the bed. And at about eight o'clock, as the last light went out of the window, she heard the car.
It started. It reversed. It turned, on the gravel, with a long crunch. She heard the gate groan open, and shut, and the click of the padlock, from the outside.
She was on her feet in a second.
She ran down the passage, and through the sitting room, and out onto the veranda, and down the path, in the blue dusk, as fast as she could go. The gate was a double one, of heavy green iron, nearly three metres high, with a row of spikes along the top. She reached it with her hands out. She seized the bars. She shook it. It rattled, a little, in its frame, and was still. A thick chain ran through the hasp. A brass padlock, the size of a fist, hung from it. It was locked from the outside.
He has locked me in.
She stood still, with her hands round the cold iron.
She looked up. The wall that ran on either side was of concrete, rendered smooth, three metres high, with a line of broken glass set into the top, in a thick glittering row of green and brown. She had seen it a thousand times. It had never occurred to her that it had a purpose. She stood there, in the dusk, with her face pressed to the bars, and looked out through them at the road, at the long red empty hill, and the first lamps coming on, down in the town, one by one.
I can't climb that.
I can't climb it. I'll cut my hands to ribbons.
She turned. She ran round the back of the house, along the wall, in the dark, feeling it with her palms. She went to the kitchen door. It was locked. The key was gone from its hook. She went to the window. It was barred. She went to the gap behind the water tank, and knelt, and lifted the plastic sheet, and touched the blue bag, still there, small and solid in the dark, and let the sheet fall, and stood among the long grass, in the thin starlight, looking at a wall.
There must be a way.
There's always a way.
She walked the whole length of it. She walked it twice. She went right round the compound, in the hushed blue dark, with a bag in her arms, and her heart beating in her ears, and found nothing. There was no gap. There was no loose brick. There was only a high pale wall, and a line of cruel glass, and the sound, from the town below, of a radio, and a woman laughing.
She thought of shouting.
She stood in the middle of the lawn, with her mouth open. She thought of Mama Betty, four hundred metres away, at the bottom of the hill, in her kiosk. She thought of the neighbours, behind their own walls, with their televisions on. She thought of what she would say. Help. She thought of the faces that would come to the windows. She thought of Peter's voice, easy, warm, amused, saying, I am so sorry, she is overwrought, it's the exams.
Nobody will come.
They never do.
She did not shout.
She knelt on the grass, with the bag in her lap, and put her forehead against her knees, and breathed. She stayed like that for a long while. Overhead, the stars came out, thick and white, as on the night on the roof. A bat went by. The mango tree rustled, and a single ripe fruit fell, with a soft thud, in the dark.
Think.
What would Taata do?
She did not know. She had asked it so often that it had stopped meaning anything. She knelt in the cold grass and tried to see him, a long thin man, in a crooked tie, standing in the dark, with his hands in his pockets. She tried to hear what he would say.
He said nothing at all.
But in the silence that came where his voice should have been, she heard, very faintly, something else. It was not a voice. It was a kind of shape. It was a plain, flat, practical, quiet intelligence, a thing she had never noticed in herself, that said, You have a bag. You have forty-two thousand shillings. You have the numbers. You have your hands.
You are not helpless.
You are only locked in.
And a locked door is not forever.
She got up. She went to the house. She did not take off her shoes. She went and sat on the bed, with her back against the wall, and the chair under the handle, and the tin on the floor, and waited.
At nine she heard the gate.
She had been listening for it. She heard the long groan, the crunch of tyres, the engine cut. She heard a door slam, and the cough, and a pair of shoes on the gravel. She sat so still that she could hear her own eyelashes. She heard the key in the front door. She heard it open, and shut. She heard a bolt.
It was a heavy bolt, on the inside. She heard it drawn across. And it was only then, in the silence that followed, that she understood. It was not a lock against thieves. It was a lock against her. It was a man, at the front door of his house, at night, turning the last key, and putting it in his pocket.
Now I'm in the cage.
And he has the key.
She sat, with her fists clenched on her knees, and breathed.
Time went by. It went by in small distinct pieces, like drops from a tap. She heard him in the sitting room. She heard the television, a babble of voices, a burst of music, a long laugh. She heard a glass. She heard it set down. She heard his steps, in the passage, going to the bathroom, and coming back. She heard a tap. A long silence. The clock in the hall chimed the half, with a thin cracked note.
Ten o'clock.
Ten fifteen.
Please. Please. Please let him fall asleep.
She said it to herself, as a child says it. She sat with her eyes closed and her lips moving. She made a bargain. If he sleeps, I'll never ask for anything again. She promised everything. She would go to church. She would forgive her mother. She would be good, and quiet, and clean, and never say a word.
The television stopped.
She heard it go off, with a click. She heard the soft sound of the settee, as a heavy man rises from it. She heard a long breath.
And then, very low, flat, contented, with a note missing in the middle, she heard him begin to whistle.
"Sarah."
She stood up.
The whole room was dark, but for the thin yellow light under the door. She stood in the middle of the floor, in her shoes, with her arms at her sides, and every muscle in her body locked. The slippers had stopped. They were just outside. She could hear him breathing, slow and level, like a man at rest.
"Sarah. I know you are awake."
She did not answer.
"Open the door, my daughter. I only want to talk."
"Go away," she said.
It came out as a thread. She hated it. She stood there, with her knees shaking, and heard her own voice, and thought, I sound like a child.
I am eighteen.
"There is no need to be rude," said Peter.
The handle turned.
She heard it go, slowly, round, and stop, against the chair. There was a very small pause. And then she heard him say, with a rueful, indulgent, almost fond amusement: "Ah. You have put a chair."
"Please go away."
"Do you think that will stop me?"
"Please."
"It is late. You are tired. You are tense. That is all it is." A long pause. And then, very low, in a voice that she had heard only once, in the dark, three years before, with his breath on her ear: "Your mother is not here. And I have given you three years of food and fees and a roof. I do not think that I am asking very much."
The door shook.
It was not a loud blow. It was a single, patient, heavy push from the shoulder, and the chair slid an inch on the floor. She stared at it. And she thought, with a clarity so intense that it was like a light going on in a room, This is the moment.
This is the one.
This is where it happens, if it is going to.
She did not decide to run.
It was her legs. They moved of themselves. She dragged the chair away and wrenched the handle and went through the gap as the door opened, ducking under his arm, and he said "Sarah!" in a voice of enormous, wounded surprise, and she was in the passage, in the dark, running, with her shoes slapping the cold tiles.
The front door.
It was bolted. She hit it with both hands. She felt for the bolt, in the dark, and found it, thick and heavy, and wrenched at it, and it did not move. She pulled with all her strength. It was stiff. It had been oiled, and set, and was stuck. She felt the iron cut her palm.
She turned.
The passage was empty. A square of faint light at the far end showed the arch to the kitchen. There was no sound. There was no whistling. She stood with her back to the door, breathing hard, in the dark, and thought, Where is he?
Where is he?
And then she saw him.
He was standing in the doorway of her room, at the end of the passage, with the lamp behind him. He had not hurried. He was in his vest and a pair of old trousers, with his arms hanging loose, and his head a little on one side, looking at her, down the length of the dark. The lamp made a halo of his hair. His face was in shadow. She could see only the shape of him, large and still and patient, and the gleam of his eyes.
"There is no need to run," he said.
She did not move.
"You know that there is nowhere to go." He took a step. "The gate is locked. The door is bolted. The windows are barred. I did it myself. I'm a man who likes a house to be secure."
"I'll scream."
"By all means."
"They will hear."
"Who?" He came on, slowly, down the passage, with the slippers slapping. "The neighbours? They are all at home. They are watching their programmes. They have heard a great many things in this street. They will say, Ah, a family argument. They'll turn up the volume." He was very near now. "And if somebody does come, I'll open the door. I will say, I am so sorry, it's my stepdaughter. She is unwell."
"I am not..."
"You have been behaving very strangely. Everyone has noticed. The school. The teacher. Your friend. It's been remarked." He smiled. She could see his teeth. "They'll be so concerned for you."
She turned.
She ran for the kitchen.
It was the only place left. It was a small tiled room at the end of the passage, with a back door that she knew to be locked, and a window with bars, and a table, and a stove. She went through the arch, and stopped, in the middle of the floor, with her back to the cupboard. She stood with her hands behind her, spread flat on the wood. The tiles were cold through her shoes. A tap dripped.
He came in after her.
He stood in the arch. He did not hurry. He filled the whole of it, broad and heavy and dark, with the light from the passage behind him, and his face, from where she stood, was a blank. He was breathing through his nose. She smelled beer, and soap, and sweat, and under it, sour and sharp and close, something that she could not name and that was, she knew, the smell of his intent.
"I said that I only wanted to talk," said Peter.
"I do not want to talk."
"You never do."
"I'm telling you no." She heard her voice, high and thin and cracking. She forced it down. She made it flat. She said it as a witness says a thing in a court, as her father had taught her, a plain statement, in a clear voice, to be heard. "I am telling you no. I am eighteen years old. I am saying no. I'm saying it to your face. I do not consent. I don't agree. I want you to leave this room."
"Ah." He took a step. "That again."
"Do not touch me."
"Be quiet. The neighbours."
"I want them to hear!"
"Do you?" Another step. He was very close. "Who will they believe, Sarah? Eh? Who will they believe, a man who sits in the front row of church, or a girl who cannot even keep her marks up?"
He said that before.
He has said it before, almost word for word.
She knew it. She knew it with a small cold flash of recognition, as one recognises a smell. It was the same sentence. He had said it in the dark, in the first week, at the edge of a bed. He had said it as he had said everything, in the same pleasant, patient, rehearsed voice, as a man says a thing that has worked.
It is a script.
He has been saying the same thing for three years.
And in that flash, in the middle of her terror, something unexpected happened. Something shifted, very slightly, in the place where the fear was. It was not courage. It was not strength. It was a tiny, cold, clear, astonished thought, like a coin dropping in an empty room.
He is not powerful.
He is only practised.
It did not make her any less afraid. It did not change the weight of him, or the size of the room, or the bolt on the door. But it was there, distinct, in the middle of the dark, and she held on to it with both hands.
"Stop," said Sarah.
"Come here."
"Stop."
His hand closed on her wrist.
She would not remember what she said.
She knew she screamed. It was a short ugly cracked animal sound, that went out through the bars of the window and was swallowed by the dark. She knew she twisted, hard, and that her back struck the edge of the table, and that something fell, a cup, a tin, with a clatter. She knew that she struck at him with her free hand, and that it was like striking a wall. She knew that he said, in a low, exasperated, almost weary voice, "Do not make this difficult."
She knew that his other hand came up over her mouth.
It was hot, and wet, and tasted of salt. It covered her nose. It pressed her head back against the cupboard, with a crack that rang through her skull. She could not breathe. The whole room narrowed, to a small bright circle, with his face in the middle of it, large and calm, and a sound in her ears like the sea. She thrashed. She kicked. She felt the cloth of her wrapper tear, and his weight come down on her, enormous, smothering, and she thought, clearly, in a high clean cold voice, a voice she had never heard before:
I am going to die in my mother's kitchen.
It was not fear. It was something much more quiet. It was the flat, plain, perfectly reasonable knowledge of a person who looks at a road and sees where it ends.
And her right hand, which was flung out, behind her, across the wood of the table, touched something.
It was small. It was smooth. It had a handle.
She did not think.
There was nothing in it that could be called a thought. There was no decision, no plan, no wild resolve. There was only a hand, closing, and an arm, and a movement, the smallest that she had ever made, a short push, with her whole weight, toward the one thing in the world that was pressing her down.
He made a sound.
It was a short, astonished grunt, like a man who has stepped on a stair that is not there. His hand fell from her mouth. His weight came off her, all at once, and she felt the air go in, huge and cold and tearing, and she heard, from a great way off, a small bright ringing noise, like a spoon dropped in a basin. It was the knife, on the tiles. It spun, and stopped.
It was quiet.
She had not known that a room could be so quiet. The paraffin stove ticked. The tap let fall a single drop. Peter was on his knees, on the tiles, with one hand pressed against his side, looking at it, with an expression of dull baffled wonder, as at a thing that has happened to somebody else. A dark wet line crept between his fingers. He said something. It was not a word. It was a soft exhalation, a little wet sound, like a sigh.
She stood with her back against the table.
She looked at her hands. They were held out in front of her, open, as if to somebody. They were shaking so violently that she could not tell where one ended and the other began. They did not look like hers. They were thin, and brown, and clean, except for a smear on the left that shone black in the passage light.
What have I done?
What have I done?
She looked at him.
He was not looking at her. He had lifted his head, and was staring at the arch, at the dark of the passage, with his mouth a little open. He swayed. His hand, against his side, was trembling. He said, in a thin high puzzled voice that she had never heard him use, the voice of a child woken from a sleep, "Grace?"
He sagged.
It was gentle. He folded sideways, with a long slow sigh, as a sack settles, and lay on the cold tiles on his side, with one arm flung out and his knees drawn up. His eyes were open. They were turned toward her. They were wide, and very dark, and they looked at her, steadily, for a long time, with an expression that she could not read.
Then they closed.
His chest was moving. She saw it. It rose, and fell, slowly, shallowly, like the breath of a sleeper. She stood and watched it, and a great white roaring began in her head.
He is alive.
He's alive.
Oh God. Oh, God. He is alive. And I have... and I...
She did not scream. She had meant to. She opened her mouth, and her whole chest filled, and the sound would not come. It stuck in her throat, like a stone in a well. She stood there, in the kitchen, in the silence, in the noise of a man breathing on the floor, and she looked at the doorway.
She was waiting.
She did not know for whom. Her father, perhaps, in his long coat, saying, Counsel, what is all this noise? Or her mother, with a lantern, in her good blue wrapper, with her hand at her throat. Or anyone. Anyone at all, to stand in that arch, in the yellow light, and tell her what to do.
Nobody came.
It was the loneliest moment of her life. It was a moment of such total, enormous, echoing aloneness that she thought she would die of it. She stood in the middle of her mother's kitchen, in a torn skirt, with blood on her hand, and her whole body shaking, and the dripping of a tap, and there was nobody in the world. She had been waiting for three and a half years. She had waited at doors. She had waited in gardens, in offices, in the back of cars. And nobody had come, and nobody was coming, and it was done, and it was hers.
It's over.
I'm not under him.
I'm not...
She did not finish the thought. Her knees went.
She did not fall. She slid, slowly, down the leg of the table, with her back against the wood, until she was sitting on the cold tiles with her knees drawn up and her feet in a small cold puddle that had spilled from the sink. She put her hands over her face. They smelled of onions and salt and iron.
For a moment, she felt nothing at all.
There is a person on the floor.
He's breathing.
I should do something.
She did not move. She sat still, behind her fingers, in the dark of her own hands, and listened to the room. The stove. The tap. The man.
And then, from a long way down, from a place under her ribs where she had put it, every night, every morning, for three and a half years, something began to rise.
It was not a sob. It was smaller than that. It was a single hot drop, that ran out between her fingers and down the inside of her wrist.
Then another.
Oh, she thought. Oh. I'm...
I am...
Sarah sat on the kitchen floor, in the lamplight, with the tap dripping behind her, and the first tears began to fall.