A Change of Climate by Hilary Mantel

Author:Hilary Mantel [Mantel, Hilary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Psychological
ISBN: 9780312422882
Google: 1G0-lIAic7AC
Amazon: 0312422881
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2003-08-30T08:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

At midnight the train stopped. Anna raised herself on one elbow, then scrambled from the top berth, reaching out with her bare toes for a foothold. She swung herself to the floor, pulled down her nightdress, and put her head out of the window. A man was walking by the side of the track. She could not see him, but she could hear the crunch of his boots. She could see the tip of his lighted cigarette, bobbing and dipping with each step.

Ralph said, “What time is it?” He eased himself from the lower berth, put out his head in turn. A moonless night. Not a breath of wind. Useless to ask, why have we stopped, when will we go again? Best just to wait. They had crossed the border. They were in Bech-uanaland, moving north through the night. Not moving now: becalmed. They had been late at Mafeking, late at Lobatsi; “I’ll give you a bed,” the conductor had told them. “You can try sleeping two hours, three. You’ll reach your station before dawn.” He brought two flat pillows and two railway blankets, and four sheets that were as white and crisp as paper.

“There must be a village.” Ralph had picked out the glow of a fire, far to their left. If there had been a wind, it might have brought voices to them. Closer at hand, a baby was crying, ignored, from some outlying hut: Anna heard the thin insistent wail.

She climbed back to her bed. She had wanted the top berth because she felt there was more air, with no other body stacked above hers. It was December now, midsummer; sunset brought some relief from the heat, but it was best if you kept moving. Ralph passed up their bottle of water. It was tepid and stale. She closed her eyes, and disposed her body carefully so that no part of it touched any other part. But the berth was narrow; she folded her hands across her ribs, till the heat and weight of them became unbearable.

The night settled about her like a black quilt. Lucy Moyo had packed a bag for her in Elim, and handed it to her at the prison gate; her cotton nightdress had been starched and smelled of the iron, but now it was a sodden rag. The sheets the guard had given them were rucked damply beneath her hips. Her hair stuck to her neck; she put her arms by her sides again, looked up at the roof of the train. It was a metal coffin lid, a coffin in the air. Hands folded, she made a decorous corpse.

She imagined her voice, floating down to earth. “I think I am pregnant, Ralph.”

What then? What if she said it? What would they do? Lurch from the train at some desert halt, and begin to navigate their passage back to civilization? How would they do it? The South Africans might not let them back over the border. They had been given the choice: take the plane home, or the train north.

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