I had never been in a car.
I want to be accurate. I had been near cars. I had been splashed by them, deafened by them and once, memorably, run over, very slowly, by a minibus that did not notice me. But I had never sat in one, with a seatbelt and a window and a very tall man in the front who kept asking if I was comfortable.
"Is it too cold?" said my uncle.
"No, sir."
"Is it too fast?"
"No, sir. It is not fast at all. We seem to be standing still."
"We are doing a hundred and ten kilometres an hour."
"Then the road is moving very politely."
Steven, in the front passenger seat, made a noise like a small kettle.
We had left at dawn. It had been quite a morning. My mother had packed a bag for me, with a clean shirt, a spare pair of trousers and, after some argument, a pair of Derrick's old shoes, which were two sizes too big and rubbed my heels. My father had stood at the gate in the first light, in a clean shirt of his own, and shaken my hand. He had held it for a long time. He had said, "Be careful," and I had said, "I will," and he had said, "I'm coming too. Tomorrow. With your mother. I just have to—" He had stopped.
"I know," I had said.
"I'll be there."
"I know."
Then I had got into the car, and put my forehead against the glass, and watched the little house at the end of Highway Road slide away behind a hill, until it was only a dot.
"Do you want to turn back?" said my uncle quietly.
"No," I said. "I just wanted to look."
* * *
I will not tell you everything about the journey, because most of it was long. We drove for three hours. We stopped at a roadside stall, where Steven bought seven groundnut bars and tried to keep five. We went through a forest, and over a very high bridge, and along a narrow road with a river beside it that was exactly the colour of tea.
But I will tell you about the last hour.
It was nearly noon when the road began to climb. The trees fell away. The air changed. It had been dry and hot, and now it was cooler, with a clean, sharp, salty tang, like a coin on the tongue. I rolled down the window. Wind came in, and with it a sound I did not know, a deep, slow, rolling roar that seemed to come from everywhere.
"What is that?" I said.
"The sea."
I stared.
I had never seen the sea. I had read about it in books. I had drawn it, once, in school, with a blue crayon and a lot of enthusiasm. But I had never heard it. It was far louder than I'd imagined. It sounded like the whole world breathing in and out.
The road crested a hill.
And there it was.
It filled the entire window. It stretched from one side of the sky to the other, huge and blue and silver and ceaselessly moving, with white lines crawling across it like the marks of fingers on a cloth. Gulls hung over it, small and bright. A long way out, a single ship sat on the line of the horizon, so tiny and still that it looked like a toy.
I did not say anything.
I could not. My mouth had gone dry. I looked at the water, and felt something very odd, very quiet, begin to happen in my chest, as though a door that had been shut for a very long time had been pushed gently open from the other side.
"Yes," said my uncle, softly, watching my face. "It does that to us too."
* * *
The house stood on a cliff.
It was a very big house. I want to be clear about this. I had thought I knew what big meant. I had been inside the Okoro supermarket, and the post office, and the church. But this was a different order of thing. It was a long, low, white building, three storeys high, built of pale stone, with a red tiled roof and rows and rows of tall windows. It had a terrace along the whole front, and a flight of wide steps, and a pair of stone lions on either side of the door.
It looked like a house that had been standing there for a very long time, and meant to go on.
"Welcome," said my uncle, "to Seaward."
I did not answer. I was too busy looking at the garden. It was an enormous, green, rolling, tumbling garden, full of palms and flame trees and bougainvillea the colour of sunsets. There was a lawn with a fountain. There was a long avenue of trees, and a stone wall with a gate, and, at the very end, where the cliff dropped away, a small white pavilion open to the sea.
A line of servants waited on the steps.
I counted fourteen. They were all in dark clothes. They all stood very still, with their hands folded, and their faces carefully blank. As the car drew up, a ripple went along the line, a slight, startled straightening, as though a gust of wind had passed through a field.
I got out.
I stood on the gravel in Derrick's shoes, with my bag in my hand. I felt very small. I felt, I think, as I had felt at the gate of the park. I could see a hundred windows. I could see every one of them was watching.
My uncle came round the car. He did not take my hand. He only stood beside me, a little behind, in the way a person stands beside a very new foal.
"Shall we?" he said.
I looked up the steps.
"Is she nice?"
"My mother?" He considered. "She is… exact."
"What does that mean?"
"It means she says what she thinks and will not apologise for it." A small smile touched the corner of his mouth. "You will either love her or be terrified. Possibly both."
"I'd prefer both," I said. "It sounds more efficient."
He laughed. It was a real laugh, short and surprised. And together, we went up the steps.
* * *
She was waiting in the great hall.
I did not see her at first. I was too busy looking at the floor, which was made of black and white marble and so polished that I could see the whole ceiling in it. There were portraits on the walls. There were tall vases. There was a staircase that curved up into the dark like the inside of a shell.
And there, against the far wall, beneath a long window, stood a very small old woman in a very large chair.
She was perhaps seventy-eight. She had white hair pinned up in a coil, and a stern, narrow, ivory face, and a plain grey dress with a high collar. She wore a single ring. Her hands lay folded on a carved stick. She was sitting so straight that her spine did not touch the back of the chair at all.
One of her eyes was bright and grey and fierce.
The other was clouded white.
She looked at me for a long time. It was not a hostile look. It was not a kind one. It was a look of immense and terrible attention, like being studied by a very old bird.
"Come here," she said.
Her voice was thin and clear and hard, like cold water.
I walked across the marble. My shoes squeaked. I stopped, about two paces from her chair, and stood with my hands at my sides.
"You are late," said Madam Wilson.
I thought about it.
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I'm consistent."
There was a breathless silence behind me. I think it was Steven.
The old woman did not move. Her one good eye studied me, up and down, from my shoes to my hair. It took in the borrowed shirt, the too-large trousers, the bag, the scuffed knee.
Then, slowly, and for the first time, I saw something move in her face. It started at the corner of her mouth. It travelled, with great difficulty, across a cheek that had not been asked to do it for a long time. It was the beginning of a smile.
"Martin," she said.
"Mother."
"He is rude."
"He is."
"He has the eyes."
"Yes."
"And he has Don's mouth."
"Yes, Mother."
"Good," said Madam Wilson. "I never liked polite children. They always have something to hide."
She lifted her stick. She pointed it at the floor beside her chair.
"Sit," she said. "Not there. There. On the footstool. Closer. I want to see your face."
I sat.
She leaned forward. She put out one thin, trembling, ringed hand and touched my cheek, very lightly, the way you touch a thing you are afraid will turn out to be a dream.
"Twelve years," she said, in a different voice, a low, cracked, unsteady voice. "I have counted every one."
"I'm sorry I'm late," I said.
"Hush, child," said my grandmother. "You are exactly on time."
* * *
I do not know how long we sat there. Time had gone slow and strange, like honey. I only remember the light through the window, falling in long gold bars on the marble. I remember the sound of the sea, soft and far away. I remember my uncle standing quietly by the door, with his hands behind him and his eyes closed.
And I remember the cold.
It came from behind me. It was slight, and sudden, and quite distinct, like a draught under a door. I felt it on the back of my neck. I felt it in the small hairs of my arms.
I looked round.
A man had entered the hall.
He was perhaps seventy, tall and spare, in a dark suit, with a long, hollow face and a mouth like a closed purse. His hair was white and brushed straight back. He walked with a cane that he did not seem to need, and his shoes made no sound on the marble.
He had stopped in the doorway.
He was looking at me.
His eyes were not grey. They were brown, very pale and flat and slightly yellow, like old amber, and they moved over my face with a slow, patient, careful interest, as a collector looks at a vase.
"So," said the man, quietly. "This is the boy."
"Cassius," said my uncle, in a voice I had not heard before. It was very level. It was very calm. And it had, beneath it, something that made the cold on the back of my neck go all the way down my spine.
"Martin."
"You are early."
"I heard there was a homecoming," said Cassius Wilson. He smiled. It was a thin, polite, terrible smile. "I would not dream of missing it."