Read Online The Boy in the River by Richard Hoskins - Free Book Online

she was, and I folded back the cloth. I saw her face.’ She groped for my hand. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
    ‘No, I don’t mind.’ I lay back and stared at the stained ceiling. ‘How could I mind? I’m glad you saw her. I just couldn’t think of anything but Abigail . . .’
    I knew I would always regret not seeing my first daughter’s face. And now it was too late. I thought of the pathetic mound of turned earth just 100 yards from the window, baking in the Congo sun.
    For Sue, our first daughter was a person who had lived, no matter how briefly, and died. For me she was insubstantial, a presence I could never give form to, nor quite lay to rest. We didn’t give her an English name until well over a year later, when we decided to call her Judith. We had only expected one child, so we had only chosen one name, and naturally her younger sister had inherited that.
    The lack of a name didn’t seem a problem then. In this part of the Congo twins are relatively rare. The elder is always called Mbo and the younger Mpia, titles which confer some status and which imply an indissoluble bond between the siblings. There is no need for other names. So for months we referred to our lost daughter simply as Mbo, when we could bring ourselves to speak of her at all. Mbo Hoskins was the name on her grave marker.
    It didn’t strike me until much later that everything had been granted to the living sister and nothing, not even an identity, to the one who had died.
    Sue was in a bad way after the dreadful events of that night and, though she showed great strength and courage, I did at first have rather more to do with the care of Abigail than I might otherwise have done.
    I relished this responsibility, the knowledge that I could do something useful for her. I fed her through a tube and walked around with her strapped to my chest in a sling. I bonded with her in a way that I suppose would have been impossible under any other circumstances. Her eyes would gaze up into mine from her pouch. I had never loved anyone – or anything – so much.
    The villagers called me a Tata Mapassa – father of twins – and as such I was eyed with much respect, but it was tinged with wariness, as if people felt it might be as well to keep their distance when dealing with me.
    I was hardly aware of this at first. Or if I was, I thought the change might have been in me alone. For one thing, once Abigail had survived the first few months and was developing well, I began to travel more. I found myself driven by a relentless desire to visit the remotest villages, far away from Bolobo.
    It seems strange to me now that I should have experienced this urge to journey away from the child who meant so much to me, but at the time it did not seem so. Sometimes when I was on my own in the house a sense of dread visited me like a presence. Having lost one daughter, I knew I could not bear to be near if the other was taken.
    At the same time there was something much deeper at work. It seemed to me that if I now strove to do good for the people of this region, God would reward me. If I did what I thought was God’s will, surely He would protect my family?
    I felt useful, bringing medicines and other supplies to the villages, bringing news, making contacts, learning every day. The villagers held white people in exaggerated esteem and would talk to me for hours about their problems, their fears and their dreams. Mostly, they just needed someone to talk to, but besides that they were influenced, I think, by the fact that I was employed by the Church. For some people I almost had the status of confessor, someone to whom they could unburden with safety. I relished the role and did my best to be worthy of it, but there is no doubt that the respect and deference of the villagers was a salve for my own pain.
    I found relief in the sheer physical experience of travelling. Electricity was the stuff of fairy tales for this whole area and running water meant the nearest