BY FIVE O’CLOCK ON THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON she had only one more job – and that a mere formality – before she could walk out of the school, satisfied that everything was in order. The one remaining task was to tidy her own desk, and as she was, by nature, a neat, somewhat pernicketty person, this meant little save the removal of her few pieces of personal property.

The desk stood high and was the only old-fashioned piece of furniture in the whole school. It had a sloping lid which could be propped open by the adjustment of a wooden wedge. Miss Mayfield seated herself on the high chair, lifted the desk lid, swung the wedge into position and removed her own copies of The Oxford Book of Verse, Trevelyan’s Social History of England and Jane Eyre. Two Biros, one red and one bright blue, which she used for marking, she decided to leave to her successor, but the half-empty box of Kleenex she would take away and also the bottle of aspirin. She had the bottle in her hand and was bringing her head out from under the slope of the desk lid when the little wedge either slipped or collapsed, and the lid came down and struck her an incredibly painful blow across the bridge of her hose. Quite dazed with pain, she sat for a second watching the blood spatter down on her hands, on the edge of the desk and on the things she held in her lap. Then the room darkened and tilted sideways.

She recognized the hospital smell. They’d built it well away from the other buildings, but as Rose had often said, the hospital odour was more powerful even than that of Africa itself. She lay for a moment breathing it in, and then tried to open her eyes. The effort hurt and resulted in a mere slit of a view, just enough to inform her that she had wakened to daylight.

I’ve never known my eyes to be affected before! I’ve caught something from another patient! She thought, with a physical revulsion, of the variety of eye diseases prevalent in Entuba.

‘Rose,’ she said sharply. ‘Rose.’

A crisp, professionally cheerful voice said:

‘Ah, so you’re back with us. And you’re quite all right. Not a thing in the world to worry about.’

A new voice. Surely this last bout of illness hadn’t been so long and so troublesome that they’d been obliged to bring in an extra nurse.

Aloud she said peevishly:

‘Oh, isn’t there? Then why can’t I open my eyes?’

‘They’re slightly swollen. They’ll be quite all right in a day or two.’

Ah, she knew what had happened; they’d neglected her mosquito netting.

‘I’d like to see Miss Tilbury. Now. At once.’

‘I’m afraid you won’t be allowed a visitor today. You must be very quiet, just for a day or two.’