The Dhow House Read Online Free PDF Page A

Julia wearing a necklace of cameras and binoculars.
    ‘Why did you stop?’
    ‘Digital came in and I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t adapt. Everything was so fast . I used to have to persuade businessmen to take my photographs back to New York or London with them. I’d put the rolls of film in an envelope and write useless if delayed . Everyone did that then, all the AP and Reuters people, until they got satellite. I bought a digital camera in London but I never liked the process. It was too easy. I think the magic was destroyed, for me.’ Julia was silent then, heavy with something unexpressed. ‘It got too real. I saw people killed.’
    Julia’s lovely, unlined mouth tensed. ‘I decided I wasn’t built for it,’ she went on. ‘I couldn’t get what I’d seen out of my mind. Other people I worked with could. Mind you, they drank more than I did. On one of my last assignments – it was in Brazzaville – I met Bill.’
    ‘How did you meet?’
    ‘Around the pool at a hotel.’
    That moment when Julia and William encountered each other appeared to her fully realised, as if she had lived it herself. The green glasses containing weak gin tonics, the scruffy palms on the street outside, the unhealthy algal glow of the pool, and a man, Bill’s blue eyes shrouded in sunglasses, looking so much like the son he would eventually bear with the stranger in a blue-and-white-striped bikini sitting two tables away.
    The light had thickened. It fell into the kitchen in a yolky wedge. ‘Rebecca?’
    Her name, in Julia’s mouth, sounded old, settled. As if it belonged to another person.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘You’re tense. You know, you’re as stiff as a board. Any little noise makes you jump. We’re worried about you. Maybe it’s right that you’ve come here. You need to relax.’
    Julia’s face flared. ‘You look like you’re going somewhere.’
    She turned around to see Storm walk across the living room wearing a black T-shirt and a pair of shorts. He moved with purpose, a rangy, long-legged stride.
    ‘You look a bit groomed.’ Julia all but winked at her. ‘For Storm that means he runs a hand through his hair.’
    ‘I thought I’d make an effort for your party.’
    ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Julia swivelled towards her. ‘We’re having a small cocktail party. Only thirty people or so. I’d like you and Storm to circulate. Bill can’t be here, so we’re going to fly the flag.’
    ‘Isn’t he coming home today?’
    ‘Unfortunately, no.’ Julia cast a glance in Storm’s direction. ‘He’s still away on business.’
    ‘I’m happy to help,’ she said. ‘What should I wear?’
    Julia shook her head. ‘Wrong person to ask.’ She pointed to herself. ‘Old person.’
    Storm had not greeted her or even acknowledged her presence. He seemed magnetically attached to his mother.
    Storm gave his mother a smile then. His face was exploded by it, dislodged from its stasis and thrown into another dimension. ‘You’re not old,’ he said.
    She spent the afternoon reading. She had bought a novel in the capital, a famous book she knew about but had never got around to reading, the story of a Frenchwoman who had come to the country to work with a wildlife conservation organisation. She had raised several leopard from cubs. Everyone had thought her mad, they had expected her leopards to kill her. Leopard were the most wild of cats, was the accepted wisdom, she read. They could not be tamed. The woman had been killed by her assistant, a local man. Her story had recently been made into a film.
    She looked outside the window to where a coconut palm leaned over the ledge of the land. The light was foil-like yet liquid, a green-gold colour she had not seen anywhere else.
    At six o’clock she descended the stairs to the living room to find twenty people assembled. She had time to observe them before she was seen. The older people among them were not tanned and had a strange pallor. Blue patches mottled their brows, the