Lucy Read online

  “Lucy.”

  “Lucy. That’s a nice name. How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Did you grow up here?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you survive the attack?”

  “I hid in the trees.”

  “You are Dr. Stone’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m so sorry about your father.”

  “Death is natural, but theirs was not. Humans bring grief wherever they go.”

  “Did your father teach you these ideas?”

  “He taught me everything.”

  “What about your mother? Where is she?”

  “She died.”

  Jenny was about to question her further when Lucy paused in her eating and lifted her nose. “The wind has changed,” she said. “I can smell the river. It won’t be long now. Let’s go.”

  As they set off through the forest, Jenny took heart in the girl’s confidence. Lucy fairly flew across the ground now. Jenny had to run to keep up. As they hurried along, they frightened a pair of pheasants, which went cackling and complaining into the woods. Lucy held up her hand. At first Jenny saw no reason to stop. Then a snake as thick as her leg flowed out of the forest and across the trail. When it had passed, Jenny was about to ask Lucy how she had known to stop before the snake appeared. But the girl was already far down the trail.

  As they drew closer Jenny began to smell the river, and the flies and mosquitoes grew more persistent. The river had a scent that was unmistakable, a mixture of perfume and sewage, of life and death. The trees grew closer together and were lashed up with vines and creepers. Giant white flowers exploded out of the darkness, gathering what little light there was and broadcasting it about them like skirts of lace.

  At last they caught sight of the metallic surface of the water, a substance at once bright and black. The air was suffocating with heat and moisture. They quickened their steps down the last reach. Then Lucy held up her hand and they stopped to take in the full view of the Congo. Hippos wallowed in the shallows, and crocodiles sunned themselves on the silver sand. The water beyond was sluggish and mobbed with small islands of ravening vegetation. A flock of cormorants appeared from the right, flew low along the span of the river, and settled onto the surface, each leaving a silver wake that vanished into the oily blackness.

  “We won’t stay here,” Lucy said. “We’ll go downriver. There’s a landing this side of Lisala.” She began walking west along the river at a respectful distance from the crocodiles. Jenny followed her into the shimmering afternoon.

  They reached the landing in an angled light. A wooden pier stretched from the forest out into the slow current. As Lucy and Jenny sat on the landing, eating and watching the river, Lucy seemed to stiffen. She raised her chin.

  “Let’s go into the forest.”

  “Why?” Jenny asked.

  “There’s someone coming.”

  Jenny had heard nothing, but they gathered their fruit and retreated into the darkness. They sat in hiding with a view of the river. Half an hour passed before Jenny asked, “How do you know someone’s coming?”

  Before Lucy could respond Jenny heard the engine. Then a gray steel cutter swung into view with 40 mm cannons mounted on its deck. Riding low in the water, the boat was crowded with men bearing Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Lucy and Jenny watched, barely breathing, as the craft hammered past. Diesel smoke hung in its wake above the gleaming black water.

  They slept in the forest again and woke in the night to fight off a swarm of ants. The next day they watched the river. At midday they saw two black and bloated bodies float past facedown, one with a shiny raven on its back. That night they slept once more. On the following morning they were picked up by a family in a wooden boat, a man, two women, and a small child. Lucy knew them and spoke to them in Lingala.

  As soon as they had boarded the boat, Jenny fell asleep against a cargo of aromatic grain in burlap sacks. When she woke it was late afternoon and she came to consciousness with the realization of how rigid she’d been holding herself for days.

  They reached a small village at dusk. It was a squalid littoral of huts and trash with pigs and chickens wandering to and fro and naked children who hid behind their mothers when Jenny and Lucy appeared. Swarms of black flies hung in the shifting smoke of cook fires. Lucy spoke to a man in Lingala, and he led them to a hut at the forest’s edge. A cable ran out of the hut and up to the top of a crude wooden tower where a metal antenna pointed a crooked finger at the sky.

  Jenny followed Lucy and the man into the darkness and let her eyes adjust. She listened to them chatter, catching only a few phrases. The man who owned the radio was old and withered and as black as a nut. He wore a Rolling Stones T-shirt and surfer shorts. The floor of the hut was littered with beer cans and the place smelled of urine and stale cigarette smoke. The old man, whose name was Denis, smiled with but a few teeth left in his mouth. The people of the village began crowding into the hut to see what was going on.

  Lucy spoke to Denis in French, gesturing at Jenny. “He speaks French,” Lucy said.

  “How many languages do you speak?” Jenny asked.

  “Oh, not many. French and Lingala. English, of course. Italian and Spanish. A little German. Dutch.” Lucy laughed. “Well, Dutch is easy.” Then she seemed embarrassed and stopped talking.

  Speaking French, Jenny told Denis that she needed to talk to David Meece, the British ambassador at the embassy in Kinshasa.

  Denis sat and worked the radio, speaking first in Lingala, then to someone else in French. As he did so he sipped from a can of Bud Lite and smoked a Marlboro. Denis wheezed heavily as he waited for someone to get David Meece on the line. He finished his beer and sent the can clattering to the floor. At length a man’s voice came on the radio speaking in French. Denis stood and motioned graciously for Jenny to sit. She picked up the microphone.

  “David? Is that David Meece? It’s Jenny, over.”

  “My God, Jenny. Yes, it’s David. Are you all right, over?”

  David Meece was from a family of diplomats, old money from London. He wore bow ties even in the African heat. Jenny’s oldest friend, Harry Prendeville, was a doctor who came to Africa once a year to volunteer for Doctors Without Borders. He had introduced Jenny to Meece the first time she came to Congo. They’d become fast friends, and David had helped Jenny out on more than one occasion.

  “They’ve killed Stone. Things are very confused. I have his daughter with me. We came downriver with some locals and are now in a village hoping that you can get us out of here, over.”

  “Damn straight I can.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Can you give me your position, over?”

  “Stand by, David.”

  Jenny spoke to the old man in French, asking if he knew the coordinates of the village. He rummaged in a desk drawer and brought out a Garmin GPS. Jenny rolled her eyes. She clicked the mike and said, “Hang on, David, they have a GPS here, if you can believe that, over.”

  She heard him laugh. “Not bloody surprised, over,” he said.

  The next morning they heard the helicopter long before they saw it. It came thundering in and circled a few times before landing in a clearing a short distance away. The entire village turned out to examine the machine. Four hours later they were touching down at the Kinshasa airport. In another hour they were in an office at the embassy watching David Meece hurriedly pack his things.

  “The rebels are just a few miles outside the city, I’m told. We have a plane going to London. I can get you on, of course. But what about the girl?”

  “I found these.” Jenny fished the passports out of her filthy pack and handed them to David. He opened one and set it aside with a sad shake of his head. He opened the other and studied it with a frown. Jenny looked over his shoulder and understood David’s expression: The passport had been issued when Lucy was four months old. David tapped it in the palm of his han
d, muttering, “Spot of bother about that photograph … No visa. She’s been in-country illegally for fourteen years?”

  “I don’t know. Lucy?”

  “I don’t understand,” Lucy said.

  “Do you have any family in England who can vouch for you, dear?” David asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “No one? Really?”

  “I grew up in the jungle. I was in London only once. I was a baby.”

  “How irregular.” David thought for a while, then said, “Well, right now, we have to get out of here.”

  Jenny looked at the girl, so exotic and smart. She seemed pure even in her filth. Jenny wondered what would become of her. She looked as if she were still in shock.

  “I hear the guns.”

  “She has incredibly keen hearing,” Jenny said. “If she says they’re coming then they’re coming.”

  “Come along, then. Spit-spot. We’ll talk about this on the plane. I’ve had my whack of this place.”

  The military plane waited on the ramp with its engines running. Dozens of diplomats and businessmen were hurrying up the cargo ramp. As Jenny and David walked on either side of Lucy, the young girl stopped. Jenny said, “Come on, Lucy. Let’s hurry now.” But Lucy went rigid, her eyes wide. “What’s the matter, Lucy?”

  “I’ve never been on an airplane. Except when I was a baby.”

  “I assure you it’s perfectly safe,” David said. “Safer than here by a long shot.”

  Jenny took Lucy’s hand but Lucy pulled back and began weeping. David dug in his briefcase and came up with a bottle of pills. He shook one into his hand and offered it to Jenny. “Give her this. It’ll make her sleep.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s just Valium. Five milligrams. She’ll be fine.” He handed Jenny the bottle. “Here, take the lot. I can get more.”

  Jenny coaxed Lucy into taking the pill, explaining that she would feel better in a little while and that they had to go now. When a shell landed near the perimeter of the airfield, Lucy at last moved up the ramp and into the dark interior of the plane. She and Jenny and David took the last three seats. They were designed for carrying troops, small and uncomfortable, with tubular frames and canvas backs. The plane was taxiing before the ramp was all the way up. Everyone cheered when the wheels lifted off the runway.

  Lucy closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears, but half an hour into the flight she was fast asleep. Jenny watched her sleep for a time, then asked David, “What do you think we should do with her?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “We can’t simply throw her into an orphanage.”

  “What choice do we have?”

  “I don’t know. I brought her out. I feel somehow responsible. I could try to find her family.”

  “She says she has no family.”

  “She said her mother’s dead, but there must be someone. People don’t come out of nowhere.”

  “Well, Stone had no living relatives. He was the last in his line. Old money, gone to seed. But if the girl has relatives on her mother’s side, do you think they’d take her in?”

  “I don’t know,” Jenny said. “I want to go home.”

  “Well, you can’t take her with you.”

  “I can if you fix her passport.”

  “You’d do that? You’d take her home?”

  “Well, just for a couple of weeks. Until I find her relatives.”

  “You don’t even know her, Jenny. And in any event, I don’t know that I can fix her passport. The British authorities have gotten awfully sticky.”

  Jenny stared at her hands in her lap. “I can’t think straight. I have to get some sleep.” She covered her eyes with her bandanna and slept fitfully. Two hours later both Jenny and Lucy woke up, looking bleary-eyed. Jenny yawned and patted Lucy’s hand. “You see? We’re all just fine.”

  Lucy craned her neck this way and that to see the faces of the other passengers. Then she whispered to Jenny, “Are we flying?” As if it were a secret.

  “Yes.” Jenny pointed out the tiny window. “Look.”

  “Oh. Oh, my. I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be, dear. We’re perfectly safe. Honey, you’re shaking.”

  “Please may I tell you a story? It always calms me down. Papa used to have me tell stories when the big cats came and I was afraid.”

  “Really? Yes, of course you may. David. Lucy’s going to tell us a story.”

  “Splendid. The movie on this flight sucks.”

  “Pardon?”

  “He’s joking, dear. Go ahead. Tell us a story.”

  “Hmm,” she said, tilting her head and thinking. Then she began:

  In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth—so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was a small ‘Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale’s right ear, so as to be out of harm’s way. Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, “I’m hungry.” And the small ‘Stute Fish said in a small ‘stute voice, “Noble and generous Cetacean, have you ever tasted Man?”

  For the next hour Lucy recited stories and poetry from memory, and gradually other passengers crowded around to listen. For her finale, Lucy recited “Jabberwocky,” by Lewis Carroll. Then she announced that she was tired and promptly fell asleep again.

  Jenny watched Lucy sleeping in her filthy clothes. David asked, “Are you quite sure about this, then? Taking her home with you?”

  “No. Far from it. But when I found her in the jungle, afraid, alone … her father shot … I don’t know. It was just horrible, David. And now this: Reciting Shakespeare and Kipling? What am I supposed to do? Abandon her?”

  “Most people would.”

  “I don’t think I can. She reminds me of the girls at the shelter where I volunteer at home. I’d always be wondering, you know.”

  David seemed to fall into deep thought for a moment. “Come to think of it,” he said, “there are a couple of chaps who might help us out with that passport.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Two SAS types who owe me a rather large favor. I helped to get them out of a Congolese prison. I take it you’ve never seen the inside of a Congolese prison.”

  “I think I’d remember.”

  “Well, they were thorough thugs and frankly belonged in a jail of some sort if you ask me. But when we’d sprung them, they made a point of telling me that if I ever needed anything—the more irregular, the better—I was to look them up. I quite think they meant it, too.”

  Heathrow was swarming with African refugees, many in native dress, along with throngs of escaping businessmen clamoring for preferential treatment. David took advantage of the confusion to press Jenny and Lucy to the head of the line. He flashed his diplomatic passport at a functionary, who gave no more than a cursory glance at Jenny and Lucy before waving them on.

  Once they were safely through customs David made a phone call and a car came to take them to an accommodation address in a London slum called Heygate Estate. The car stopped before a towering concrete apartment building with torn curtains billowing out of broken windows. The apartment was even more foul than Jenny had guessed it would be.

  “I’m sorry about this,” David said. “But it’s where these people work, for the sake of security. I promise we’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.”

  Jenny examined the small apartment and found that the bath and shower were unusable. Fortunately, the toilet worked.

  A man arrived a few hours later, a large stooped figure who might have been some sort of city inspector in his cheap suit and threadbare trench coat. “Give us the old passport,” he told David. The man studied it for a moment and then looked at Lucy, who was squatting
against the wall, her arms wrapped around her muddied knees. He crossed the room and knelt before her.

  “There, then,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot, eh?” Lucy said nothing. “Cat got your tongue, eh? Well, all right.” He reached into his pocket, brought out a small colorful plastic bag, and offered it to Lucy. She merely stared at it. “Go on then. It’s gummy bears. Big fan of gummy bears, I am.” At last Lucy took the bag and held it in her hand.

  The man stood up, chuckling to himself. He pulled a wooden chair up against a wall, scraping it across the floor. “Sit there, please.” Jenny rushed over and wiped the dirt off of Lucy’s face with a wet cloth. She straightened her hair as best she could. Then the man took Lucy’s photograph with a digital camera and went away.

  David went out and came back with takeout Chinese food. Jenny ate voraciously, but Lucy just looked at her plate. When Jenny encouraged her to eat, all Lucy said was, “Am I going to be all right?”

  “Yes, dear, you will. You’re coming home with me, and then we’ll find your family.” Jenny glanced up to see David’s skeptical frown. She shrugged at him and shook her head.

  David left them alone for the night. Jenny thought she heard Lucy cry out in her sleep but was too tired to verify it.

  The next day David returned and another man arrived a short time later. He looked like a truck driver in jeans and a flannel shirt. He handed David a brand-new British passport wrapped in tissue paper. “You never saw this,” he said. “And you never met me. I think we’re even now, mate.”

  “Absolutely. Super. Thanks.” But the man had already turned on his heel to leave.

  David helped Jenny to get money wired from the States for plane tickets. Then he drove Jenny and Lucy to the airport and stood with them at the curb amid the roaring buses and taxicabs.

  “David. Please promise me that you’ll help find Lucy’s family.”

  “Of course.”

  “She must have someone. You’ll do that, won’t you?”

  “Absolutely.” He turned to Lucy and said, “You’re a very lucky young lady.” Then he hugged Jenny and got back in the car. Fifteen hours later, Jenny and Lucy were in Harry’s car, arriving in front of Jenny’s ivy-covered house in a quiet suburban community north of Chicago.