The Dhow House by Jean McNeil Page A

floated towards her. For him the sight of her had become the equivalent of passing a Sainsbury’s on a wet night. He plodded in her direction.
    ‘Aren’t you afraid of him?’ Andy had materialised beside her. ‘Camels are vicious buggers.’
    ‘Not this one.’ She waited until the camel filled their vision with his worn doormat nose and chocolate eyes. ‘I’ve named him Montague.’
    Andy nodded. ‘He looks like a Montague.’
    ‘Stay still or he’ll know you’re afraid,’ she instructed. The camel’s long neck extended in Andy’s direction. Andy shrank back. She put a hand on the camel’s nose. Immediately his neck drooped. He uttered a low rumble.
    ‘You’ve gone right native,’ Andy said.
    Andy left and Montague wandered back to the umbrella thorn he had been stripping of its leaves. Her eye caught a smudge in the sand near the operating theatre tent. Its glossy hue meant oil, diesel or blood. Possibly all three. The heat was thinning. In the sky was a watermelon sunset.
    ‘I’m sorry to disturb you.’
    He stood in his white shirt and torn black trousers. His beard was immaculately trimmed and a pencil was shoved behind his ear. He looked like a village schoolmaster.
    ‘My people are coming to get me.’
    ‘You are not yet healed.’
    ‘This camp is not well defended.’
    She stiffened. ‘Is that a warning?’
    ‘They might think that you will not give me up. I can’t communicate with them to tell them otherwise. I need a radio.’
    ‘I can’t.’
    ‘Are you a Shakespearean?’ he asked.
    ‘Not particularly. Why?’
    ‘I have a quotation that might interest you. Something I learned on the radio.’
    A voice called her name with the sharp urgency of something gone wrong. She bolted. After two strides she turned back to Ali, but he had melted away behind her. She never discovered which play he was so eager to recite.

III
    RED-CHESTED CUCKOO

 
     
     
     
    ‘I planned the dinner party long before you came,’ Julia said. ‘Before we even knew you were coming.’
    She nodded. ‘I hope it’s not inconvenient.’
    ‘Of course not.’ Her aunt gestured to the fridge. ‘You’re just going to have to fit in. Would you mind taking the prawns from the freezer?’
    She rummaged in the depths of the freezer, groping past tuna steaks, Italian ice cream and a frosted bottle of Jägermeister.
    Julia sounded annoyed. She felt trapped. What could she do? She called Margaux that afternoon, but she was away in Bahari ya Manda, renewing her visa.
    She stood, awkward and exposed, in the living room as the guests arrived. There were two couples, neighbours who lived in Oleander House and Zanj Mansion up the road. Then Evan’s family arrived. Although she couldn’t be sure if the man was Evan’s father or his uncle. No one introduced themselves. They seemed to expect that she should know who they were. After an hour of conversation she could still not fit faces to roles. She drank four glasses of wine in quick succession. She had an impression that she’d always been there, around Julia’s dinner table, but for some reason the hundreds of dinners she had eaten had been erased from her memory.
    Julia gave her a place at the table across from Storm. The table was lit with hurricane lamps. Julia had placed the lamps inside sprays of bougainvillea. The light was filtered through the delicate cerise flowers, casting them all in its glow.
    At one point she turned to Julia, intending to offer some automatic pleasantry about the food, and had run into Storm’s gaze.
    ‘Why did you become a doctor?’ His question was thrown across the table like a challenge.
    ‘Because I wanted to help people.’
    ‘And do you?’
    ‘I hope so.’
    She did not know if anyone had overheard them. In the corner of her eye she saw Julia flash them a steady, practiced look. She turned to talk to Evan’s uncle – at last she determined this was what he was. He had been a road engineer, he had told her, but was retired now.