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  ‘I’m just saying that he won’t get anywhere in life if he doesn’t stand up for himself,’ his father replied.

  ‘I do stand up for myself when I have to, Papa,’ Pascal protested. ‘I’m just not loud and bossy like Kamil.’

  ‘Kamil will go far,’ said Mr Camara.

  ‘Why do you think that, Papa? He’s always missing school and when he’s there he messes about. And his English is far worse than mine.’

  ‘He’s a leader. People will follow him.’

  ‘Not if he’s ignorant. Certainly not for long,’ Pascal’s mother replied. ‘Anyway, he’s two years older than Pascal. Why do you expect our son to have such confidence at the age of ten? I tell you, he’ll be fine if you leave him be. Children are all different, and Pascal will deal with things in his own way.’

  Pascal’s father shrugged his shoulders and muttered, ‘I guess you’re right’, while his mother hurried outside, loudly clattering the pans she was carrying. He grinned at Pascal. ‘You’ll find that with women,’ he said. ‘They’re always right. At least, you have to let them think they are.’

  ‘Maman is right,’ said Pascal. ‘And I know how to look after myself.’

  Chapter 4

  Every so often, the noise of gunfire could be heard in the village now. Pascal didn’t know what it was initially. The distant rat-a-tat-a-tat sounded as if it might be loggers or a carpenter or a stonemason at work, but when it happened in the middle of the night, Pascal began to ask questions.

  Mrs Camara shrugged her shoulders when, in the absence of his father, he asked her for the first time.

  ‘There are all sorts of strange noises in the night,’ she said. ‘I don’t know which ones you mean.’

  ‘It’s not just in the night,’ said Pascal. ‘Sometimes you can hear them in the daytime too.’

  His mother shrugged once more. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’ She smiled and carried on with her washing, humming quietly.

  Pascal was sure she was hiding something, and asked his cousins what they thought the noise was. They laughed loudly at him.

  ‘That’s gunfire you’re hearing, dolt,’ Kamil sniggered. He placed a pretend gun at Pascal’s head. ‘Bang, bang, you’re dead!’

  Pascal pushed his hand away. He thought Kamil meant that someone was practising shooting, until Olivier added, ‘There are rebel soldiers all around us, waiting to grab us when we’re asleep.’

  The cousins laughed again. Pascal tried to laugh with them, even though he couldn’t see the joke.

  ‘Poor Pascal, he won’t sleep a wink ever again,’ Kamil snorted.

  ‘Yes, I will, because I don’t believe you,’ Pascal retorted lamely.

  ‘Believe what you like,’ said Olivier.

  Pascal wanted to believe that it was all just stupid talk, but when he spoke to Angeline, she failed to douse his suspicion that something bad was happening.

  ‘Why can’t you tell me what’s going on?’ he asked. ‘I’m not a baby.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be concerned about,’ she replied. ‘It’s a few rogue soldiers from across the border firing a few shots to make themselves feel big.’

  ‘But how far away are they?’ Pascal wanted to know.

  ‘Far enough,’ said Angeline. ‘And our soldiers will soon send them packing.’

  Try as they might to prevent him from worrying, his family couldn’t stop him from listening to the gossip at school. Some of the children had heard that rebels had taken control of a number of nearby towns and that there was fierce fighting. Others said that the refugees from Sierra Leone and Liberia were causing trouble because they wanted to go home.

  Pascal wished his father would come home and stay home. He was scared that he might be caught up in the fighting while he was away, and that they might never see him again. Besides, he wanted his father to be there to protect them.

  ‘What if Papa is at work and the rebels come here?’ he said to Angeline. ‘What will we do?’

  ‘They won’t come here. There’s no reason for them to come here.’ Angeline tried to reassure him, but Pascal could tell that she was anxious herself.

  ‘What are they fighting about, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t really know. Perhaps they just want change. Perhaps they want a better life and fighting is the only way they can think of to get it.’

  One morning, a crackled news bulletin on the radio in the village shop told of people being attacked in another village.

  ‘Is that village near here?’ Pascal asked his mother as she hurriedly paid for her groceries and shunted him outside.

  Mrs Camara shook her head and busied herself with Bijou.

  Olivier saw them from across the road and dashed over to them, greeting his aunt politely. To Pascal he said, ‘Did you hear the explosions last night? They sounded really close.’

  ‘Sound travels,’ Mrs Camara broke in. ‘You’ll find they were many kilometres away.’

  ‘Papa doesn’t think so,’ replied Olivier. ‘He sleeps by the door at night with an axe and a knife.’

  ‘Your father has always been over-cautious.’

  Olivier looked somewhat taken aback by this criticism of his father by his aunt.

  Mrs Camara sensed his unease and patted him on the arm. ‘It never does any harm, though,’ she said.

  Together they walked back to their homesteads and no further mention was made of explosions or fighting.

  As they approached, Pascal was delighted to see his father. He was carrying a large piece of wood across their yard, but put it down as soon as he saw them. Pascal ran to him, cheering loudly.

  ‘Hey, Papa,’ he called. ‘I thought you weren’t coming home till the end of the month.’

  ‘Well, I decided to come home early and spend some time with my family.’ He smiled, squeezing Pascal’s shoulder.

  He gave his wife a hug, then lifted Bijou high above his head. She wriggled and squealed with pleasure. They went indoors, where Angeline was preparing their meal.

  The conversation over dinner that evening revolved mostly around Mr Camara’s work at the diamond mines. Mrs Camara regularly steered the talk back to this topic if it looked like it was heading towards more sombre subjects. There were things Pascal wanted to ask his father, but he soon realised that his mother wouldn’t allow their time together to be spoiled, and in any case he was happy just to have his father there. Pascal didn’t want to follow in his footsteps, but he loved hearing about how he passed his days and the people he worked with. As a manager, his father didn’t have to pan for diamonds himself, but that didn’t stop Pascal wanting to know everything about the process of searching for diamonds and what happened when a worker found one.

  ‘What’s the biggest diamond anyone’s ever found?’ he asked. ‘Can the person who found the diamond keep it? How much do you get paid if you find a diamond?’

  Pascal especially liked listening to stories about what the miners did when they were off duty. Mr Camara and his fellow managers seemed to spend many hours playing card games, or watching sport on television in a bar in the nearby town, or kicking a ball around with the local townspeople.

  ‘I wish we had a television,’ Pascal said when he heard that they had watched the national team playing football against rival Malawi.

  ‘We only drew,’ said Mr Camara. ‘We threw away a one-goal lead, so you didn’t miss anything.’

  Pascal asked him, not for the first time, if he would teach him some card games. Not for the first time, his father promised that he would one day soon. Pascal wished he meant it, but he always seemed to have more important things to do when he came home. Sometimes Pascal felt that he would never be important in his father’s life and that he disappointed him because he was too quiet.

  Before he went to bed that night, he asked his father how long he was staying.

  ‘Just as long as it takes,’ Mr Camara replied.

  ‘As long as what takes?’

  ‘I have a few things to do and then
I must go back – unless you’re planning to provide for us instead of me.’

  Nevertheless, Pascal went to bed that night happy in the knowledge that both of his parents were there to protect him if anything bad happened. And he made up his mind that he would ask his father what he thought about the rebels and the fighting, whether or not his mother wanted it discussed. He lay listening to the sounds of the night – cicadas, tree frogs, monkeys, cattle, the low voices of his parents talking – and wondered if he would hear gunfire that night. Would it wake his father and, if so, what would his father do?

  Chapter 5

  The plantation bell. Not ringing, but clanging, harsh and discordant. Six o’clock in the morning. Still dark. Muffled groans, mumbled complaints. The bell, continuous, demanding. Ghostly shapes clawing their way out through the deep cushions of sleep and struggling to their feet.

  Pascal rolled on to his back. How much sleep had he had? It felt as if he had only just closed his eyes, only just listened to Kojo’s mutterings.

  A cigarette would be good right now, he thought.

  He made an ‘o’ with his mouth and practised exhaling. It had been over a year since he had last smoked, but he hadn’t quite lost the addiction he had developed as a soldier. The first time a cigarette had been thrust at him, already lit, he had nearly choked on it. He had tried to refuse the second one, only to be warned that if he didn’t obey orders he would be thrashed. He didn’t know at what point his body had made the transition from loathing every minute of every drag to craving the next one. It wasn’t a craving now, not any more, just a nagging mechanical memory of the habit.

  The scuffling increased around him. The voices crescendoed, distorted at first through crusty mouths, then shrill and incessant. They managed to sound full of excitement at the unfolding of a new day, even though there was nothing to be excited about, except perhaps the knowledge that they were going to be fed in a few minutes’ time.

  ‘You gonna stay there all day?’ Kojo was standing above him in the gloom.

  ‘What’s it to you if I do?’ asked Pascal.

  ‘Nothing.’ Kojo shrugged. ‘You’ll get into trouble if you don’t hurry up, that’s all.’

  ‘You’ll get into trouble if you don’t hurry up,’ Pascal mimicked. ‘I’m so scared I think I might wet my pants.’

  ‘Sometimes you’re not much of a friend,’ said Kojo.

  ‘You’re not going to take me with you if you escape,’ Pascal jibed. ‘That’s not very friendly.’

  He could see Kojo hovering, unsure of what to do next. They usually headed off for breakfast together, but Kojo didn’t know whether to go now with the others and leave Pascal behind, or to wait for Pascal and risk being late himself.

  ‘You two coming, then?’ Tiene, one of the other boys, asked.

  ‘I’ll catch you up,’ Pascal sighed.

  He was so bored with the endless routine of it all. He was so desperate for some space just to be. What could they do to him, anyway? He’d had plenty of beatings before. It would be worth a beating to spend just five minutes alone, five minutes lying there in the darkness and quiet, freed from the constant maelstrom of activity that living with so many other boys inflicted upon him. Free to pursue his own thoughts wherever they took him, as long as it wasn’t to the carefully delineated no-go areas of his mind.

  How long would it be before his absence was noticed and somebody was dispatched to find him? It wouldn’t be many minutes, Pascal knew that much, and he didn’t want to waste his time worrying about it. There were things that he needed to pull back into focus, things that he couldn’t seem to grasp during the monotonous yet exhausting passage of each day. The one certainty was that he had to get back to his own country and find out if his mother and his sisters were still alive. If he discovered that they were, it would make everything he had gone through easier to reconcile.

  Pascal lurched to his feet and stood at the window. It was nearly light outside now that the sun was breaking through. It was going to be hot again, insufferably hot, but they would all be expected to carry on with their work regardless. On days like these, some of the younger boys came close to passing out, yet the overseers showed them no mercy, shouting: ‘This ain’t no holiday camp. You ain’t paid good money to slack. Put some effort in or there ain’t gonna be no food for you tonight.’

  Pascal had tried to intervene once when one of the eight-year-olds collapsed from sickness and hunger. He had lifted him up and carried him to his bed. For that, he’d received a lashing round his legs with a bicycle chain, a warning to mind his own business and a fine for absenting himself from work without permission.

  He could hear the sound of tin plates clanking and the boys’ voices, loud and garrulous. He moved away from the window. He hadn’t chosen to be alone to spend the time listening to them. He looked round the dilapidated wooden shack that had served as his home for the last eleven months. He had just turned thirteen when he arrived, and was now one of the oldest boys working on the plantation. The thought of it depressed him. What would happen when the overseers decided that he had served his purpose? He might be desperate to leave, but he wanted it to be on his terms and when he was ready, not when they felt like throwing him out. He had had enough of other people determining the when and where of his life. He had had enough of being bullied and pushed around, shouted at and intimidated. At least when he had been drugged . . . but that was a no-go area.

  Pascal heard footsteps approaching and knew that his time was up. He might just as well have gone to breakfast with the others for all he had achieved by staying behind. He kicked at one of the wooden pallets that the boys slept on, then walked out of the shack.

  ‘What d’you think you’re doin’ loiterin’ around ’ere when you’re supposed to be at breakfast?’ It was Le Cochon, the worst of the overseers and the one who had hit him with the bicycle chain. His real name was Mr Kouassi, but the boys had nicknamed him ‘Le Cochon’ because he was fat and because of the way he ate his food.

  ‘I wasn’t hungry,’ said Pascal.

  ‘Not ’ungry, eh? We must be feedin’ you too well. Is that right?’

  Pascal stared at him defiantly. ‘Corn paste doesn’t do it for me any more,’ he muttered.

  ‘Gettin’ fussy, are we?’ Le Cochon sneered. ‘I reckon we should be grateful, don’t you?’

  Pascal stared at the ground.

  ‘Don’t you?’ Le Cochon said threateningly.

  Pascal nodded briefly. A heavy stick caught him on the elbow. He winced with pain.

  ‘Get to work before I find the other arm, and since we’ve been feedin’ you too well, there ain’t gonna be no food for you tonight.’ Mr Kouassi marched away.

  Pascal rubbed his elbow. ‘If I had my way, I’d wipe your stupid corn paste all over your stupid fat face,’ he growled under his breath. He headed off towards the field, rueing the fact that he would only be eating a measly lunch that day.

  Kojo came over to him as he collected a machete from the store. ‘I got you a banana,’ he whispered. ‘It’s in my pocket. You can have it when no one’s looking.’

  ‘You’re an idiot!’ Pascal hissed. ‘They’ll take the skin off your back if they find out you’ve been nicking food.’

  ‘They won’t find out, unless you tell them. I thought you’d be hungry.’

  ‘Look, I don’t want you taking risks for me, OK?’ Pascal looked at Kojo’s scowling face. ‘But thanks,’ he added. ‘Come on, let’s go and beat the hell out of those pods.’

  Chapter 6

  Pascal was woken the next morning by the sound of his parents talking loudly. They were outside, but their voices carried through the open door. He wondered if they were arguing, and tried to still his breathing so that he could hear what they were saying. It went quiet for a while, then Bijou began to cry and their mother hurried indoors to pick her up.

  ‘Where’s Papa?’ Pascal called.

  ‘He’s gone into the village,’ Mrs Camara replied.

&nb
sp; ‘He’s not going back to work today, is he?’ Pascal called, jumping to his feet and clambering into his shorts.

  ‘No, not today,’ Mrs Camara said.

  ‘Tomorrow, then?’

  ‘Why are you so keen for him to go?’

  ‘I’m not,’ Pascal protested. ‘I don’t want him to go at all. I want him to stay and teach me some card games and play football with me. He keeps saying he will.’

  ‘Your father has a lot of jobs to do while he’s here.’

  ‘What sort of jobs? Can I help him?’

  ‘Well, the fence needs repairing,’ Mrs Camara said carefully. ‘You might be able to help him with that.’

  ‘That’s not difficult. I can help with that,’ Pascal said eagerly.

  ‘We’ll see what he says when he comes back.’

  Pascal wished he had got up early enough to go with him into the village. He liked to be seen with his father, and it didn’t happen very often. He thought about running after him, but his mother thrust a bowl of mashed banana into his hands and told him to eat before he did anything else. He plonked himself down at the table, which rocked unsteadily on its fragile wooden legs.

  ‘We could mend this while we’re at it,’ he said, rocking the table deliberately to show his mother how precarious it was.

  ‘There are more important things at the moment, so leave it alone,’ said Mrs Camara. ‘And give it a good wipe when you’ve finished.’

  She lobbed a damp cloth in his direction. Pascal caught it, saw Angeline come through the door, shouted ‘Catch!’ and threw it at her. He missed badly and knocked a large bowl of bulgar wheat on to the floor. The bowl broke and the wheat rolled everywhere.

  ‘Oh, Pascal!’ his mother cried. ‘Look what you’ve done. How can you be so clumsy?’ She dropped to her knees and began to scrape the wheat into her hands. Angeline shot him a fierce look, then joined her mother on the floor.

  ‘Sorry, Maman,’ Pascal muttered. ‘It was an accident. I was only having a bit of fun.’

  Bijou started to cry. Pascal picked her up and carried her outside, blowing raspberries on her cheeks and allowing her to bend his fingers backwards.