The Water Thief Read online

  Kate’s stationery set and fountain pen lay on the filing cabinet where Nick had placed them before he slept. Light deepened the watermark into swirls, glossing the twinned embossed initials. N&K. Those letters sent a rush of unexpected fondness through him. The stationery had been intended for use in their wedding announcement; it had arrived the week before his departure. Take it with you, she’d said. It’ll remind you of what’s here to come back to. She’d given him the pen at their last meal together, over braised chicken and chablis. He’d kissed his thanks, their lips numbed by the chill of alcohol. I’ll miss you, he’d whispered, willing it to be true.

  Now he sat at the desk, resting his fingers on the crisp white of the top sheet. Picking up the pen, he wrote:

  Hello from deepest darkest etcetera. I’ve survived so far. It’s not so bad. Actually, it’s quite beautiful. I’ve spent so much time filling spaces with shapes that I forgot how stunning empty space can be. Driving up here through miles and miles of nothing, I had this bizarre feeling that it wasn’t really empty at all – but part of something bigger, too big to see from the ground. Very disorientating. Or maybe it was just the jetlag . . .! My hosts are interesting. The doctor’s an Victorian gentleman – Dickens in the desert. I thought he was putting me on at first. But he seems genuine enough. He even hauled a grandfather clock here all the way from Portobello Road. He worships it, like an idol. His wife is much younger than him. She seems out of place here – a closed book.

  He paused at a sudden, disconcerting flash of recall – her laying down dinner plates in silence, a long arm brushing against his sleeve; that shared flicker of contempt, separating them briefly from the table’s chatter.

  Anyway, today I’ll find out what I’m supposed to be doing and hopefully not make a complete mess of things. Wish you were here.

  A bubble of ink burst from the nib, staining the white sheet. Nick cursed, watching the words smudge under the spreading purple. He scrunched the paper into a tight ball. Now he’d have to start again.

  Outside, the world was wrapped in easy stillness. He stood in the doorway, his rucksack on his shoulder, shielding his eyes from the daylight’s brilliant surge. Dr Ahmed’s vegetable garden rolled away to the gate, dotted with dark green shoots. Miss Amina sat on her porch in her tangerine-coloured wrap. Nick raised his hand; chicken fat wobbled under her chin as she replied with a wary jerk of the head. A car’s engine pulsed far away; closer, Nick heard the bleating of unseen goats.

  He walked to the corner of the porch, looking around it and into the garden. A flash of colour made him draw back – Margaret, tall and oblivious, came out of the kitchen with a basket full of wet clothes. Nick watched from his hidden corner, the long line of her back twisting as she reached up to her neck, wiping beads of sweat from under her hair’s dark knot. He pulled his eyes away, feeling the furtive guilt of a thief.

  Dr Ahmed’s surgery door was open a crack, an antiseptic reek slicing into the soft outdoor smells. Nick could see the outline of shapes: the frail curve of a limb stretched out, a white rectangle obscuring part of it – and then suddenly a sharp line of steel.

  As he stepped backwards, the voices inside hushed. Steps crossed the floor. A moment later, Dr Ahmed’s beaming face was framed in the doorway. One gloved hand was visible in the morning sunlight, the pale latex streaked with blood.

  ‘Nicholas! You slept well?’

  ‘Very well.’ He averted his eyes from the bloody glove, looking over the doctor’s shoulder to where two other pairs of eyes glowed white in the dimness. A girl stood by the examination table, her face bird-thin, barely emerging from a clinging circle of black fabric. One pale hand clutched the folds of her abaya, drowning her small frame in its dark waves.

  Beside her, a little boy lay on the table – legs poking from his dirty shorts. A pink-stained cotton pad covered his right shin. His eyes flicked towards the sudden light, and Nick saw the clouded whiteness at their centre.

  ‘Just in time,’ Dr Ahmed was saying, gesturing for Nick to enter. ‘I need a surgical assistant.’

  He stepped reluctantly inside, feeling the clench in his stomach. The girl drew her robes around her, fingers dark yellow against the cloth.

  ‘Hello.’ Nick bent his head to her. She looked to Dr Ahmed, bewildered. He spoke to her quietly, his large hand dwarfing her shoulder.

  ‘Here.’ He pointed to the little boy’s leg. A surgical needle was pinched between thumb and forefinger, thread dangling towards the ground. ‘We are fixing a very small accident. But I need you to hold the leg. Yes, just like that. This fellow is an old patient, eh, Hassan?’

  The milky eyes swivelled in the small face, searching. Nick fought an urge to reach over and close them against the hopeless strain. The skin of the leg felt rough and hot under his hand, jerking slightly with each tug of thread as Dr Ahmed worked away. The girl reached across the child’s face, passing an anxious hand over his forehead. Nick realised with shock she must be his mother.

  ‘Nearly done,’ the doctor said. Nick sensed a note of reassurance, perhaps meant for him. He wanted to apologise for his queasiness – to explain why he could not look at the wound, why he was fighting the urge to run while the boy lay with stoic stillness. But honesty was a habit he’d buried long ago. Instead, he hid the rising bile with conversation. ‘So these are your patients?’

  ‘I spread my net wide.’ Dr Ahmed bent over the leg, lips curled in a smile. ‘These two are from the Town. They come on market day with the vegetables. I started treating this boy’s injuries two years ago. He does not know he is nearly blind, you see.’ Dr Ahmed stretched, rubbing the small of his back. He took off his glasses with his clean hand and wiped his eyes.

  ‘How can he not know?’

  ‘Wishing can create many illusions. This boy wants to run and play like his friends, so his mind tells him he can see. During my clinical training we learned about it as a rare brain disorder, nothing more. But his mother might say its roots are in the heart’s desire. And sometimes,’ he pressed the wound gently under the dressing, ‘there are consequences.’

  Nick forced himself to meet the white pupils, the ghost of a reflection staring back at him. ‘Could his sight not be cured?’

  ‘It is a service I cannot provide.’

  ‘But when this hospital is built in the Town . . .’ Nick felt a renewed surge of purpose. He reached up to the boy’s face, heard the small catch of breath as he touched the round cheek.

  ‘Ah, yes. Your hospital.’ Dr Ahmed cut the final thread and put the needle down on a tray behind him. Intrusive shards of daylight speared off the metal; the old man’s gaze followed them to the door’s crack and the invisible world beyond. His jaw worked silently for a moment, eyes unfocused, and Nick wondered what he was seeing. Then he turned back to Nick, with a renewed smile

  ‘Did you know, you are already an important figure in young Hassan’s life, Nicholas? And in this little enterprise of mine? The rent I get from your organisation goes to fix many of these little accidents – and more besides. So these strangers,’ he gestured to the girl and her child, ‘are not really strangers in a way.’

  Nick smiled back at him, feeling a tug in his chest. His father had taken him on house calls every summer when he was a little boy of six or seven, too young to resent wasting his school holidays. In dark country lanes and narrow fishermen’s cottages, he’d watched red beads swell from drawn splinters or around the knotted lips of wounds pierced by the suture needle. He’d loved it back then: the silence, the sharp scents of iodine and Dettol, the sound of his father’s laughter as he soothed and reassured – a kinder man at these moments, less godlike – the almost sacred presence of healing.

  ‘And long may that last,’ he replied, sincerely.

  A sharp sound outside caused the little boy to jump. From the doorway, Nick saw a Jeep pulling up by Dr Ahmed’s gate, yellowed by dust. Its driver was bull-shaped, a flaming red beard punching out of his chin. One thick, freckled arm waved from the window.


  Nick picked up his bag, smiling apologetically. ‘I think that’s my ride.’

  ‘Of course.’ Dr Ahmed raised a hand in farewell. ‘Have a wonderful first day.’

  ‘Morning!’ the driver roared as Nick hurried down to the low gate. His booming voice chewed up the quiet. ‘Welcome to our little castle in the desert!’

  Nick met the bruising grip of the outstretched hand. ‘You must be Eric,’ he said.

  ‘Guilty.’ The blue eyes were friendly, slitted above slab-like, bristled cheeks. As Nick climbed into the passenger seat, Eric’s muscled forearm slammed on the horn. ‘Good health, Dr Ahmed!’ he yelled towards the open surgery door. And then Nick was pinned to the seat by the Jeep’s acceleration, shooting towards the village square.

  ‘So they finally fucking sent you, eh?’ Eric stank of sweat and stale leather. ‘Did they have to wait for school holidays? Teacher let you out?’ He roared at his own joke. ‘Sorry, can’t help it. Anyway, it’s about fucking time. Six months I’ve been waiting here, construction stalled and everything. Fucking bureaucrats.’ His guttural accent made Nick think of drunken Norse gods.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’

  ‘Why should you be sorry? We’re a team now. All hunky-dory.’

  The Jeep tore along past the mosque, swinging northwards past market stalls heaped with tyres, rubber shoes and decomposing vegetables.

  ‘I still don’t really understand why they need me here,’ Nick said. ‘You know the ground and the people. Why bring in an outsider?’

  ‘Well, I’m no bloody architect, am I? J.P. says you have degrees from here to Copenhagen. Half these bloody buildings don’t last five minutes. And then there’s the cash. The boss doesn’t want a naughty little boy like me fiddling with it, does he? Outsiders are always honest.’

  The northern highway was fast; a red wind whipped through the car. Eric shouted over it – a list of complaints: J.P.’s meddling, never being paid enough or on time, the arrogance of foreigners and the thievery of local hires. He even had some words of friendly enough scorn for Dr Ahmed. ‘Nice guy, but completely bonkers if you ask me. Wants to be an English gentleman in the middle of nowhere. His wife, though . . . She’s fucking beautiful. You can’t say that about these Islamics, mind. But she is.’

  Nick was silent, but Eric needed no encouragement. ‘They should hire Dr Ahmed in the Town, not leave him stuck out here. He’s another one with degrees coming out of his arse. But it’s all politics, eh? There was some trouble once, between his family and the governor. Anyway, Dr Ahmed isn’t welcome in the Town, I know that much.’

  Nick replayed Dr Ahmed’s almost obsessive civility compared to his firebrand guests at last night’s dinner. To picture him as any kind of revolutionary seemed nonsensical.

  ‘And what about us?’ Nick asked. ‘How welcome are we?’

  ‘Very fucking welcome. We’re the ones with money. The governor really wants his hospital. He’s had planning permission for a year now – that’s what the last of you boys managed before he buggered off. It took bloody forever, all this participatory bullshit – local consultations and everything. But the rains were so bad, the governor had to give extra money to his farmers to buy water. He’s been waiting a while for someone to come with more cash, and he’s not a patient fellow at all. There’s a construction firm on standby. You’ve the plans – some clever bastards from the capital made them. They’re supposed to be architects, too.’

  ‘They’re bad plans. And overpriced.’ Nick had sat up late into the night memorising them, desperate to make a good first impression.

  ‘So make them better. Make yourself bloody useful. Keep the books, pay the bills, kiss the governor’s arse and moan to J.P. all about us lazy, thieving fuckers. Ha ha ha!’ Eric’s laughter was propelled out of the open window, speeding towards the dark and busy horizon.

  As they neared the Town Nick noticed more trucks, massive dust clouds spinning in their wake. They swept past like hallucinations, lurid ribbons of paint around silver mirrors and warped iron trellises, trailers piled high with strange cargoes: wooden chairs, old mattresses, salvaged metal. Men clung to the top, turbans wrapped close against the stinging wind. As one truck passed, Nick breathed the stench of defecation. A cow’s eye caught his as the metal slats whipped by, a dark brown circle of uncomprehending fear.

  Some of the trucks were marked with bright blue logos, ragged lines leaking onto the road behind them. ‘Water,’ Eric said. ‘The governor controls the only reliable source, an hour or so north. It’s his company that sends out the tankers and sets the prices. Good management, he says – making sure there’s enough to go round. And we’ll need it. It’s going to be a bitch of a dry season.’

  Dry season. The land around them looked like it had never seen water, lying flat under a haze of dust, as pale and hard as bone. This was nothing like the deserts of Nick’s imagination, the smooth, sculpted gold of sand and light he’d first marvelled at on the television screen, curled up next to Madi watching Lawrence of Arabia. It’s not real, Madi had assured him. Those places don’t look like that.

  They might, Nick had said, still dazzled. How do you know?

  Coz I saw them, English. So I know.

  The highway narrowed; suddenly Nick saw billboards advertising washing powder and shampoo. Smoke rose from busy street stalls over charred maize. Aerials bristled from apartment blocks, their balconies bright with draped clothes.

  They circled a central roundabout, around men hard at work planting flowers. One stood up as they swung past, dust tracing hungry lines down his face. His blue T-shirt screamed Go Dodgers! World Series Champions 1988.

  The signposts were now all in English – one to a university, another to an Islamic school. At the third turn they reached a checkpoint. A skinny youth in dark green came to the window, clasping Eric’s hand with a quiet, ‘Hi, man.’ A long-barrelled gun bobbed over his shoulder as nervous eyes scrutinised Nick.

  ‘For the governor,’ Eric said. The soldier stood back and waved them through, Adam’s apple pale in the hollow of this throat.

  ‘I thought we were meeting at the hospital construction site,’ Nick asked, puzzled.

  ‘That we are.’

  The road opened into a wide forecourt. To their right, a fountain threw out arcs of foamy water; behind it stood a large mansion of white stone.

  Opposite was a hospital – with ambulances parked in the courtyard and electric doors opening onto a raised porch. A doctor in an immaculate white coat smoked by the entrance wall.

  Nick was bewildered. He turned to Eric. ‘There’s already a hospital here?’

  ‘One hospital.’ Eric pulled up the handbrake and hopped out of the Jeep, dusting the sweat off his khakis. ‘And you’re building another. You saw the site plans, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’ His recruitment files had described a children’s hospital planned next to an old administrative centre. In bed at night, with Kate’s back turned to him, he’d given it shape – standing out from its background in clean, white stone, an island in a sea of sickness. He’d even captured it in a painting, setting aside his slide rule and compass and bringing out his mother’s watercolours for the first time since childhood. He’d laid it at her unresponsive fingertips on the plastic table during his final visit. See, Mum? I’m going to build this. One of the nurses had peered over his shoulder, patting his mother with brisk condescension. Isn’t that nice, Mary? And what a rare treat to get a visit from Nicholas, eh? I’m sure he’s very busy. His mother just stared ahead, her eyes a blue fog. And he’d thought of the quotation she’d inscribed under her portrait of Madi, still hanging in their old kitchen. And God shall wipe all tears from their eyes. And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying.

  Cigarette smoke drifted over their heads from the hospital lobby. He breathed it in with the sharp taste of disappointment. ‘They said it would be the only hospital in the region. A life-saving project.’

  ‘And so
it will, the only children’s hospital. What’s the big fucking worry? Come, the governor is over there.’ Eric pointed to the white building. ‘All will be revealed.’

  The governor’s office was on the second floor of his residence. As the heavy doors swung open, Nick became conscious of his damp armpits and palms, the treacherous scent of uncertainty.

  The governor sat behind a desk, signing papers. He looked up as they entered, removing large-framed reading glasses.

  ‘Ah, Eric.’ A gold watchstrap circled his wrist. Smooth flesh swelled around it, vanishing into a white tunic.

  ‘Good morning, sir. How are things?’ Eric shook his hand and eased himself into a chair on the other side of the desk.

  ‘And you must be our new brother-in-arms.’ The governor took Nick’s hand with courteous attention, his palm as large as Dr Ahmed’s. But while the doctor’s was bone-hollow, the governor’s was full, power pulsing under the skin.

  He motioned Nick to sit down. The chair rocked awkwardly on the carpet; he had to clutch the desk to keep his balance. ‘I’m very happy to be here.’

  ‘And we are happy to have you. The delays have been frustrating.’ The governor’s English was flawless. Behind his head, Nick saw framed degree certificates. One showed a white shield quartered with a red cross, around a rising sun. The governor turned to follow his gaze.

  ‘Brown University, in Rhode Island,’ he said, ‘Economics major. An Ivy League school. Did you study economics?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Nick replied. ‘I stick to buildings, they’re more predictable.’

  The governor laughed. ‘You’re lucky. People and systems are rarely that. How to make them work is a constant puzzle. Coffee? It’s a local variety, from our tropical south. This country sends all its best home-grown coffee abroad. In the States, they sold it back to me as American coffee. Human economics, you see.’