Hallowed Ground Read online

  ‘As you’re the first, you should claim the best bed,’ Sarah suggested. ‘How about that one by the window?’

  ‘Good thinking Mother,’ retorted Hannah in a mock haughty tone, plonking her rucksack down in a territorial statement.

  ‘I have to be right occasionally,’ Sarah responded.

  ‘Hmm. Not necessarily.’

  Their banter was tinged with sadness at their imminent parting.

  ‘My God it’s upside down,’ Hannah cried on nearing the window.

  Just outside the dorm window was the most extraordinary tree she had ever seen. The tree appeared to have buried its head deep in the earth, like an ostrich, lifting its roots into the air in an act of defiance.

  ‘Reminds me of you, Hannah, doing your hand-stands,’ her mother remarked.

  Hannah laughed in recognition: ‘It looks in a strop…like a sulky child.’

  ‘Too old to be a child,’ her father intervened. ‘Those trees can live up to three thousand years old. That’s a Baobab if I’m not mistaken.’

  Just then, a plane appeared, visible through ‘the roots’, which were, in fact, the branches, of the Baobab. Hannah recognised the flag on the tail fin as the Rainbow Flag: South African Airways. The plane started to circle, flying so slowly it seemed almost impossible that it would stay aloft. It looked strangely elegant in the pale afternoon sunshine.

  Hannah fixed her gaze on it. In the back of her mind a thought started to form: ‘Something extraordinary is about to happen.’

  2

  The Augustineum

  Hannah woke with a start. Something was screeching, possibly a monkey outside in the garden but she couldn’t be sure. It was a primitive sound and it tore into her sleep. She looked at her watch. She’d been asleep on her bed for over an hour. Still no-one had arrived in her dorm.

  The upside-down tree outside her window perfectly expressed how she felt. She smiled, remembering her mother’s remark.

  She suddenly felt the loss of her parents in a rush of adrenaline, a child-in-the-cot feeling of being unutterably alone. She scrunched up the bedsheets and used them to pull her rucksack towards her. She opened the top pocket and took out her mobile, her daemon.

  She opened her photos from that morning, the selfies at the airport with her parents, and warmed. She rolled over, pointed her phone at the baobab tree and snapped repeatedly, raising and lowering it like a periscope, playing with the angles.

  A tall man, slim and lithe from a lifetime of hard work, was weeding and raking the garden. Basarwa was dressed in khaki, his shirt pocket embroidered with the school logo. A sun hat flopped over his head like an empty jelly mould. His beard was trim and elegant, his face calm and wise. He turned, as if aware of her gaze, and smiled enigmatically at her. She shot back from the window, embarrassed that he’d seen her.

  Then she posted her photos on Instagram, selecting a filter that seemed to do justice to its madness. She added a post on Facebook as an insurance policy against being ignored…

  ‘Hey guys. This is the crazy upside-down tree outside my window. Yes, I’m finally here in Namibia in my frankly weird, new boarding-school. Missing you all. Which is a not too coded way of saying “Flood me with loving messages.”’

  She lay back, waiting for the reassuring ping of responses, but before any arrived, the door to her dorm burst open.

  A cockatoo-like plume of blond, unkempt hair, floated into view from behind the opening door. It seemed for a moment as if it didn’t belong to anyone. It simply added to Hannah’s sense that she was in a dream. The hair was followed by the pale-skinned, sculpted face of a boy peering into the dorm.

  ‘Hello!’ Freddie said taken aback at finding Hannah sprawled on her bed. ‘I don’t think I should be in here… a girl’s dorm that is.’

  There was something about his grinning, English awkwardness that instantly charmed her.

  ‘Possibly not,’ Hannah replied, ‘Is that why you did it?’

  ‘Probably, knowing me. I heard that the girls’ dorms were down here and for some bizarre reason, I was attracted to explore.’

  Hannah was charmed by his coyness even though she realised this was precisely his intention.

  ‘I’m Freddie by the way. Freddie Wilde.’

  ‘As in Oscar?’

  ‘Same spelling, yes. Sadly, not descended. And you?’

  ‘Hannah.’

  Freddie walked over to her bed and offered his hand.

  Brought up strictly, like me, Hannah thought to herself, shaking his hand. Dad would approve!

  ‘Hannah’s a palindrome,’ Freddie observed.

  ‘Yes, Baba says I go backwards as fast as I go forwards…like my name. Clearly they called me Hannah in order to make the joke.’

  ‘Baba?’ Freddie queried, smiling.

  ‘It means father,’ she explained. ‘In Chinese.’

  ‘So, what’s your surname?’

  Hannah laughed.

  ‘Chiang.’

  ‘Hannah Chiang. So, are both your parents Chinese?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘No, just my dad. My mum’s English.’

  ‘I’m straight up English on both sides.’ His voice was poised and middle class, unlike his appearance which was raffish and unkempt.

  ‘You don’t say!’ Hannah observed, needling him and giggling in equal measure.

  ‘Well, there’s some wild Irish thrown in there for good measure of course,’ he said, trying to inject some colour.

  He sat down on the bed opposite her which creaked ominously under his weight.

  ‘Blimey, let’s hope the beds hold up,’ he laughed, partly from embarrassment.

  ‘Let’s hope we hold up,’ Hannah said. ‘Another country, another start.’

  ‘How familiar is that?’ he responded.

  They exchanged the knowing look of two nomads dragged around the world by the vagaries of their parents’ careers.

  ‘So, how did you end up here?’ Freddie probed.

  ‘My dad’s a mining engineer. He’s been posted here. And my mum’s a teacher.’

  So, they’re not in Windhoek?’

  ‘No…’

  Hannah ran her finger over a map of Namibia that she had stuck with Blu Tak on to the wardrobe next to her bed.

  ‘No, they’re just here… in Swakopmund.’

  ‘I sailed past there this morning, before we docked at Walvis Bay. Odd looking place. A German seaside resort on the African coast! Who would have thought?’

  ‘I know. But then, things in Namibia do seem odd, jumbled up, don’t you think? I feel like Alice in Wonderland. I’ve tumbled down some enormous hole and... So, wait, did you come by ship then?’

  ‘Yes, my mother had this romantic idea we should arrive in Namibia by sea. Unfortunately, this meant being greeted by hundreds of shipwrecks. Not that you could see much of them because everything was smothered in fog.’

  ‘Fog? Something else you wouldn’t expect.’

  ‘How many countries have you lived in?’ Hannah asked, her curiosity in Freddie deepening by the minute and her loneliness thawing. Nothing could beat the first, delicious moments of a new friendship.

  ‘I think this is my fourth. My dad’s in the diplomatic service. He’s the new High Commissioner to Namibia.’ He then worried that this sounded like bragging.

  ‘OMG, you’re going to be living in the Embassy,’ she cried. ‘Any parties on the cards?’

  ‘If you’d been to any Embassy parties you wouldn’t be quite so enthusiastic. Good food though!’

  ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ Hannah asked, as she always did.

  An affectionate smile stole across Freddie’s face.

  ‘I do. I have a totally infuriating but wholly adorable, nine-year-old sister called Clara. You?’

  Hannah felt a knot tighten inside
her.

  ‘No. Sadly not…’ she replied. She wasn’t going to say any more at this point.

  They both gazed out of the window, at Basarwa pruning the lushness that enveloped him.

  ‘It’s so different here…’ Hannah observed.

  ‘I know, wonderful, isn’t it?’

  Hannah felt uplifted by Freddie’s enthusiasm. Someone who had started as a disembodied quiff of blond hair was shaping up to be a half-decent companion.

  Joe’s Brooklyn accent felt very familiar. The tone of it reminded Freddie of his childhood, of American comedies watched in the sunlit sitting-rooms of his childhood homes, curled-up, pyjama-clad, on the sofa. Somehow, canned American laughter was a reassuring constant in his ever-changing world. America felt cosy to Freddie even though he knew it probably wasn’t.

  He had found Joe, unpacking in his dorm on returning from his chat with Hannah. Joe’s trunk seemed huge and was over-run with stickers like an outbreak of measles: stickers from camps and maths competitions, interspersed with flags from every country where he’d lived.

  ‘Take the bed next to mine,’ Freddie exhorted.

  ‘Why? Is there something wrong with it?’ Joe had been caught out with dud beds once too often.

  ‘Not to my knowledge. Test it if you like. Are you OK? You look a bit pale.’

  ‘Not really. I don’t feel great,’ Joe replied. ‘We had a terrible plane journey from South Africa.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Our plane hit an air pocket. It dropped several thousand feet,’ Joe remarked.

  The captain, had actually said, “a few hundred feet”, but Joe had no desire for the truth at this point.

  ‘Oh my God, that sounds terrifying.’

  Joe took in the sparse dorm once more. He thought it smelt damp. Some of the wallpaper was starting to peel and the paint on the sash windows was flaking. On the walls hung a number of very average drawings of the school. A Namibian flag was emblazoned across the back of the door.

  ‘Is it just me or is this place in need of some paint?’

  ‘Can’t say I noticed,’ Freddie replied, looking at the room anew through Joe’s eyes.

  Joe continued to unpack.

  Joe took out a stack of mathematical puzzle books. Freddie picked one up and flicked through it. He was sure he couldn’t even tackle the simplest one.

  ‘Hey, leave that will you?’ Joe snapped, snatching it back.

  ‘Sorry, I was just curious.’

  ‘I don’t want these damaged. They have to last me until the next trip back to the States.’

  Freddie sighed and lay down on his bed to test it, his worst fears confirmed. Great! A sagging mattress and a grumpy ‘room-mate’. His dream combination!

  After a few minutes of unpacking and grunting, Joe decided to break the silence, regretting his tetchiness.

  ‘After the turbulence - on the plane - we saw something extraordinary.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought I was hallucinating. There were thousands of them below us in the desert.’

  ‘Thousands of what?’

  ‘Circles in the sand. Like giant freckles.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘They seemed to be in patterns but indecipherable ones.’

  There was an awkward silence as Freddie failed to imagine them and didn’t know how to respond.

  ‘Do you like math?’ Joe eventually asked.

  ‘Not really. Or rather maths doesn’t like me. We tend to use the plural over here…’

  ‘Yeah I know. Just another way you, Europeans, get things wrong.’ Joe was tired of the condescension everyone this side of the Atlantic seemed justified in doling out to Americans like him. ‘Math is the abbreviation of mathematics. It’s not mathsematics is it?’ he pointed out.

  ‘I suppose not,’ Freddie admitted grudgingly. ‘I don’t really care because I’m not interested in maths. I find it dull.’

  ‘Dull? My God it’s in everything… music, architecture. Look outside, look at the plants. How can you not be fascinated by patterns? I can remember watching splashes of rain on my bedroom window for hours; ripples in the bath; the shape of snowflakes. They’re endlessly fascinating…’

  ‘What are?’ Hannah poked her head round the dormitory door. ‘Ah so this is what a boy’s dormitory smells like… I mean looks like.’

  ‘Hannah Chiang…’ Freddie said, ‘this is Joe Kaplan.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Joe,’ Hannah said, holding out her hand.

  Joe awkwardly re-balanced his weight, shifting to his left foot.

  ‘I don’t shake hands. They’re full of germs,’ he observed.

  Hannah was nonplussed.

  Hannah and Freddie exchanged knowing glances and decided to leave Joe to stew and sleep.

  There was an opening Assembly for all new boarders, with a speech by the Headmaster.

  Freddie and Hannah decided to explore the school and its grounds on the way there. Joe was dragged along reluctantly.

  The Augustineum clearly had a distinguished history. Their parents had drummed this into all of them, largely in justification for sending them there. Yet, it definitely, had seen better times. Some buildings, such as the library, were Victorian, once ornate and grand, but fallen into disrepair. Others, however, such as the science block, were modern and proudly bore the names of generous sponsors, former pupils they imagined. It was a hotchpotch of architectural styles and eras.

  Some walls were painted in turquoise and burnt orange - the colours of a Caribbean bus-stop. The main quadrangle had an ornamental pool that was clearly once beautiful. A small fountain sadly dribbled at its centre.

  If the buildings were a gap-toothed smile, the gardens were a bewitching kiss. Palms were fireworks of green. Kokerbooms - quiver trees - weren’t trees at all, but giant aloe plants, their branches searching upwards like elegant fingers. They held their green tendrils proudly to the sky. The ground was covered with succulents that needed little water and had their own beauty with fronds and spikes. Birdsong sprinkled the gardens like a rain.

  ‘Do you know why we love birds singing?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Isn’t it something to do with being safe?’ Hannah half-remembered. She often found her mind was full of remnants waiting to be fetched.

  Joe loved sharing facts in the way that some people love sharing secrets. He felt safe with facts. ‘Apparently, when our ancestors heard birdsong, they knew that no predators were near. So, they felt secure.’

  ‘I just hope they don’t wake me at dawn,’ Freddie observed.

  Hannah noticed Joe was deflated by Freddie’s brush-off.

  ‘You know they’ve discovered something similar about spiders and snakes,’ she added.

  ‘Tell me,’ Joe asked, turning to Hannah, their eyes threading.

  ‘Listen, I’m petrified by spiders. Mum says my screams can be heard in the next town and that it’s just not logical. Well, they’ve shown pictures of spiders and snakes to young babies and their pupils dilate in fear. But they don’t dilate when you show them pictures of bears, for example, that are just as dangerous.’

  ‘So, what’s the reason?’ Freddie asked, feeling left out of this frenzy of scientific excitement.

  ‘They think that for millions of years, when we all lived in Africa, poisonous spiders and snakes were our most dangerous enemies,’ Hannah explained.

  ‘So, our nervous systems were trained here,’ Joe concluded.

  Freddie suddenly jumped on Joe, growling in his ear like a wild beast.

  ‘Didn’t spot this predator, did you?’ said Freddie locking him in a stranglehold.

  ‘Get off me,’ Joe screamed with a violence that took Freddie aback.

  ‘All-right, all-right. Just chill. It was only a joke.’

  ‘Why do boys always have to figh
t?’ Hannah said. ‘Just behave you two.’ She had always been slightly jealous of boys fighting. Girls carried more tension inside themselves, anxiety that boys managed to release.

  They had by now navigated the increasingly hot grounds of the school, and, guided by the footsteps and noise of countless others, arrived at the Assembly Hall.

  Once inside, they took in the details: paintings of old headmasters; verses and proverbs designed to be inspirational; noticeboards cluttered with society notices and rosters; the slightly shoddy grand piano that looked out-of-tune even if it wasn’t. Some of the older pupils were studiously cool, boys greeting each other after the holidays with gripped arms and chest-bumps, whilst girls hugged and shrieked. A row of teachers sat on the stage taking in the new pupils, aware that the new pupils were doing precisely the same.

  In the middle of the stage sat Jacob Ubuntu in a high-backed chair. Once everyone was seated, he rose slowly and gracefully. Freddie wondered if this was because of his age or to ensure his gravitas. Since he was a slim man, who appeared agile, he plumped for the gravitas. The hall drained of noise as pupils dropped their excited chatter.

  ‘Welcome to all of you who are new to The Augustineum. Welcome back to all the others. I hope you all had a good break. This is our Spring Term. This will seem odd to those of you used to the seasons of the Northern Hemisphere.’

  ‘Topsy-turvy,’ whispered Hannah to Joe.

  ‘The water spirals a different way down the plughole,’ Joe noted sotto voce.

  The Headmaster continued.

  ‘Here in Windhoek, we are lucky to have reasonably moderate temperatures, although it may not feel that way for some of you. It’s one of the reasons this school was moved here and indeed why the capital is here. Capitals need to be places where you can think. However, expect some rain. Some of you will find that comfortingly familiar. I am thinking particularly of the English of course.’

  A laugh flickered across the hall like a brief flame.

  ‘At the Augustineum, we pride ourselves on being one of the finest schools in the whole of Southern Africa. Past pupils include a number of Namibian Presidents, Prime Ministers and Mayors.’

  ‘Didn’t know they bred horses,’ quipped Freddie in Hannah’s ear.