My Driver

by Maggie Gee

  Thus cued to respond, Charles says, ‘Thank you, my love. I am fine.’

  ‘What is happening in the world?’

  ‘I am listening,’ says Charles, with a stern little frown to deter conversation, not his river-bed frown, a social frown that says he is master in his own armchair, in his own moment, with his own beer. This is men’s business. No woman understands about the news, how men must listen, to keep a grasp on events. Women frequently talk right through important announcements.

  ‘And so what have you heard?’ She is insistent.

  ‘Oh there is a problem with DRC, as usual. A border incident, in the west. Some people have been killed on Lake Albert. And now there are arguments between Kabila and Museveni.’

  ‘They are both devils.’

  ‘Shhh, you must not say so. And besides, I must listen, Mary.’

  And she thinks about her car, and smiles at him forgivingly, then goes back into the kitchen, where the rich orange velvet curtains are spread across the table, and the beef stew is bubbling on the cooker, and the baby – who is no longer really a baby, being three years old, though for some reason, not yet talking – is sitting on the floor, watching something, rapt.

  ‘Kiki Dora?’ asks the maid, who talks to the child although she never answers, whereas Mary Tendo does not seem to try (Jamil started talking at eleven months old, and his mother still remembers the joy of that, his lisping, singing bubbles of speech.)

  Mary peers downwards. Two beetles, fighting. With a sharp exclamation, Mary kills them both. Theodora gasps, and runs to Mercy.

  Now Mary’s attention has returned to the curtains. ‘Did you measure them carefully?’ she asks the maid.

  ‘Yes, Aunty. I held them by the windows. I marked the shape of the windows on the curtains. And then I cut, very carefully.’

  ‘So the curtains are the same size as the windows ...’ And Mary tuts, sharply, grabs hold of the velvet, takes them to the window and tuts again. ‘You stupid girl, have you never seen curtains?’

  The maid stares at her, frightened, with big round eyes. ‘Nedda, Aunty,’ she says, deferentially. ‘In my house we did not have curtains. Only we had something to hide my father’s mattress.’

  ‘You have made them too short, so the light will rush in. The curtain must be longer than the windows. And so my friend Trevor will wake up too early. And you have spoiled this expensive velvet.’

  ‘I could sew it back again,’ the maid says, desperate. ‘I did not throw any of the trimmings away.’

  ‘And this would look like what? This would look like rubbish!’ shouts Mary, exasperated past endurance, and then her small daughter begins to wail. ‘And besides, you have been giving too much food to the cat. She is getting fat, and food is expensive!’

  This is not true, but Mercy dare not deny it. In fact, she does not like the cat. ‘I am sorry, Aunty. I wanted to please you.’ She picks up the child, and strokes her hair, and at once the little girl stops crying. Mary thinks, at least she is good with her.

  ‘You told me you could sew,’ says Mary, more reasonably. ‘Your father said you could cook, and sew. It is true that he did not mention curtains.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry. Please do not tell my father.’

  Mary sees a small tear creep down the girl’s face, and at the same time, the small chubby hand of her daughter reaches up, gently, and rubs it away.

  ‘I will not tell your father.’

  ‘Oh thank you, thank you.’ And yet this remission makes more tears flow. ‘Aunty, please take the money for the curtains from my wages.’

  ‘They are not wages,’ says Mary, annoyed. ‘You are “in the family”, as they say in Europe. Arn Fameey. It is French,’ she explains. ‘We supply you with everything. It is spending money.’

  ‘Please take from the spending money,’ begs the maid. ‘I am ignorant, Aunty. I have never been to secondary school. I do not know about French, or curtains.’

  Then Mary, whose self-esteem has been boosted by a demonstration of her worldly knowledge, bursts out laughing, and stands, arms akimbo. ‘I will not take away your spending money!’ She looks at the pair of them, and shakes her fist. ‘No more crying,’ she says ‘from either of you. And we shall not talk any more about the curtains. It is only sunlight. Trevor will survive it.’

  And then all three of them are laughing, and Charles, who has been keeping his head down as he picked up waves of discord from the room next door, comes cautiously through, and, with his head on one side, and a look he has perfected, both charming and wheedling, says, ‘I think we will be eating supper soon? My beer has made me a little hungry.’ In minutes, the gleaming green banana leaves are being unwrapped to show golden matooke, and the chunks of beef-bone, heavy with meat, are being ladled on to the clean white plates that were part of what Mary brought to the household, and so what if they came from the Nile Imperial, and still bear the hotel’s illustrious initials, with its tacit reference to a long-ago empire?

  They eat. They are happy. And then they sleep, though Mary lies awake, just for a while, after making love to Charles, who is snoring gently, totally content, and thinks about Trevor, and the trip to the village, and then a little shadow comes creeping towards her, the shadow of the absence that never goes away.

  11

  Geoffrey Truman is the first disappointment, although Vanessa will warm to him later. His jacket photos must have been taken a decade ago. She spots him in the lobby, on the way to the reception, and recognises him with a sinking heart: the heavy eyebrows, which are boot-polish black; an amused, even cynical, twist to his mouth. But he is smaller, rounder-shouldered, greyer, balder in every way than she had imagined. Certainly not a romantic prospect. His face is red, and he is clutching a glass.

  ‘Geoffrey Truman? Vanessa Henman,’ she says, going up to him, little white hand extended, showing off her rings, with her kindest smile, for he must be aware, poor chap, that his readers will compare him unkindly to his photos. But he looks at her blankly, as if she isn’t there.

  ‘Vanessa,’ she repeats. He is probably drunk. ‘The International Writers’ Conference.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ he says. ‘Are you the organiser? Cos there’s no bloody bath-plug in my bath –’

  ‘No –’

  ‘I’ve asked in reception, and they don’t know owt. And I can tell you, I’ve sweated like a pig in this heat.’

  Very true, she realises, and steps back slightly; he has certainly sweated, and not changed his shirt. ‘I’m a writer, like you,’ she says, repressively. ‘Vanessa Henman, novelist.’

  ‘Never ’eard of you. Never mind!’ he says. ‘Would you like a drink? I’ll stand yer one.’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ says Vanessa. He is old, and ugly, and the literary pages wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole, which is probably why he is getting tanked up, because sales, she reflects, aren’t everything: he must feel nervous coming into this company, herself and Bernardine and Veronique Tadjo, and even poor Deirdre gets reviews. And with that comforting reflection, the sting disappears of that terrible ‘Never heard of you’.

  So, pitying him, she is saved from hurt, and can sail onwards like a butterfly in her thin, inappropriately youthful kaftan, fragile but afloat on a warm breeze of hope, the September hopefulness that comes before winter. It drives her on; it buoys her up. She escaped from her village, escaped from her parents, she got to Cambridge, she will make it as a writer. So what if the cold shores of fifty and sixty are somewhere in the mists of the middle distance? Vanessa will make it; she will; she must.

  How she loves her lapel badge, though it looks a little odd perched precariously on the tiny straps of her new top. ‘Dr Vanessa Henman: Novelist, UK’. No-one, surely, could argue with that.

  By contrast, the place-names on the tables in the big hall are very badly written, which is silly when some of the writers are mature, like Vanessa herself, with her slight problems of focus. She finally finds her placement on the table near the microphone, right next to t
he Director, Peter Pargeter, which is gratifying, and her heart lifts with pleasure, but all she clearly makes out is the ‘V’, and the ‘Henman’, frankly, is just a hopeless squiggle.

  She sinks down with a sigh of relief next to Peter. ‘Did someone Ugandan write these place-names?’ she asks, with a forgiving, faintly conspiratorial smile. He seems oddly surprised to see her there, but then she realises, he’s just nervous. It’s her reputation as an intellectual, and perhaps that ‘Dr’ intimidates some. She widens her smile, tries to dazzle him. But he still splutters, rather hopelessly.

  ‘Er ... no. Oh, I see. I’m sorry ... In fact, Veronique – that is to say, Vanessa, that Veronique – but look, never mind – no, stay, stay, it’ll be OK. She seems quite happy where she is.’ And puzzlingly, he’s indicating Veronique Tadjo, who is sitting at a table of other Africans. ‘She has a lot of friends,’ he finishes.

  Vanessa would not want a comparison to be made. She had too many friendless years at high school. ‘Oh yes, we had a wonderful lunch together. We joined them, my friend Bernardine and I. I also have friends in Kampala, as it happens. A Ugandan writer called Mary Tendo, who I made great efforts to get published. She has been to stay with me in London.’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t heard of her. Pity. As you know, I only recently replaced Richard Weyers. We might have invited her to join the programme. Our local links aren’t always perfect. Perhaps it’s not too late, Vanessa.’

  That isn’t what Vanessa wants at all. If Mary were invited, she would be, frankly, insufferable. Fond though Vanessa is of Mary. She would get the idea she was – on the same level.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think Mary is quite ready for that. She is, in some ways, unsophisticated. She still works at the Nile Imperial Hotel.’ Vanessa realises too late this will make Peter Pargeter think her African contacts are rather low level. She swiftly tries to turn this remark to her advantage. ‘Not that that in any way lessens our friendship. One cannot afford to be a snob, as a writer.’

  ‘No indeed,’ says Peter Pargeter, but Vanessa sees his attention is elsewhere; there’s a man tinkering with the microphone. ‘Ah. Very good. I’ll have to leave you for a minute. I think we’re nearly ready to begin.’

  Peter Pargeter’s speech is full of jargon. She thinks, ‘He likes the sound of his own voice. My father would have called him “pleased with himself”.’ Then there is dancing, not the traditional Ugandan dancing she has seen before, which is really most impressive, including strong-thighed leaps and kicks in the air and vigorous wrigglings and thrustings of the hips like the ones Mary had deployed so freely at a Sussex village dance on her visit to England (when Vanessa had, admittedly, been rather embarrassed, because there is a time and a place for these things, and the men had all stared, which made the other women tetchy, and Mary had looked like a bit of a show-off) – and yet, in context, with the blue grass skirts, it would surely be a better advert for Uganda than the anaemic pair of modern dancers who wind and unwind themselves in coloured sashes, not quite reflecting each other’s movements and at one point plainly getting tangled up, while a third dancer squats like a sack of potatoes in a corner, playing the unrewarding role of the Outsider, as Peter Pargeter helpfully explains to Vanessa in a stage whisper. ‘Rather fine, don’t you think?’ Then the sack of potatoes suddenly jumps up and unravels the sashes, and they all join hands. Everyone claps.

  And then there is Veronique Tadjo’s speech. Vanessa is not jealous, fortunately. She has never been jealous of other writers. And yet it is an effort for her to listen, partly because she is asking herself questions, such as: ‘How much younger than me does Veronique look? Is she a good reader? Is she better than me? Is she really the best writer in this room?’ Perhaps the point is, she is African. But Vanessa claps at the end, like all the rest, and says to Peter Pargeter, ‘That was very nice.’

  ‘She’s a star,’ he agrees, still clapping loudly and smiling. ‘Jolly lucky to get a name like her.’

  But am I a name, wonders Vanessa?

  ‘Trevor Patchett,’ says Trevor to the smiling woman who is ticking off names at Gate 27.

  ‘Ah yes. I see you’ve got an upgrade,’ she says. ‘You’ll be flying Business Class this evening.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asks Trevor. ‘Trevor Patchett?

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Bloody hell, that’s great,’ says Trevor. ‘I’ve never flown Business Class in my life!’

  She looks at him briefly, his astonished face, his rumpled red t-shirt and untidy hair, his flight bag, a plastic carrier from which a crumpled Private Eye pokes out, and quickly looks down at her list again. ‘You are Trevor Patchett ... No, that’s correct.’ And her smile steadies.

  He’s got an upgrade! Yes, he’s ahead! He can’t help thinking how he’d love to tell Vanessa. His mobile’s in his pocket. He hasn’t talked to his ex-wife for weeks, because of this stupid secrecy business, which he’d never liked, but Mary insisted. If he’d called Vanessa it would have slipped out.

  He misses Vanessa when they’re not in contact. He is used to her. He is fond of her. And maybe that, in a way, was at the bottom of how things turned out in the end with Soraya. A lovely girl! Everyone said so. Everyone said how lucky he was. Mates of his own age were green with jealousy. And she was a lot more than just a pretty face: she was clever, she could paint, she was sweet-natured, though in four years she’d made no progress with English, while her Iranian mates spoke English like duchesses. Without language you could share few jokes, and Trevor has always been a bit of a joker.

  His friends had assumed it was all about sex, probably because of the age difference. He thinks, most blokes are unimaginative. There’d been a lot of nudging, and thumbs-ups, and inquiries about whether he was getting exhausted. In fact the truth was, from that point of view, Nessie was – well, they’d been very lucky. It was perfect, really. And over the years, even after the divorce, he still fancied her like mad. He didn’t know what it was about her.

  Vanessa, Vanessa. Impossible, yes, but the mother of his son. He would never forget her.

  And the thing with Soraya seemed flat alongside it. It wasn’t going anywhere. Which wasn’t fair. She’d told him before he knew it himself: ‘You never really love me, Trevor.’

  Not in the way I loved Vanessa.

  He wishes, now, that he could tease his ex-wife. He could really wind her up, with this upgrade. But if the postcard he left at Soraya’s didn’t get there, and he just rings up out of the blue from Heathrow and tells her he’s on the way to Uganda, she’ll go mental. Women don’t like surprises.

  Yet what is the point of going practically first class if he can’t show off about it to Vanessa?

  She’d be mad with envy. He chuckles to himself. And yet she would also be pleased for him. Give her her due, she would be pleased for him.

  Will he or won’t he? Ten minutes to boarding.

  All around Trevor, passengers are restlessly foraging and fossicking among their possessions, more fearful than ever that something has been stolen. Many of them are lightly encircling bags and newspapers and snacks and bottles with elbows or thighs, making informal stockades in which they contain the anxiety of flight. It’s still slightly strange for small land-based mammals to be shot through the air, thirty thousand feet up, with a thin skin of metal and two fallible engines between them and death, at five hundred miles per hour, which is seven times faster than they drive on motorways. But they have to look calm, for everyone’s sake; you can’t have constant hysteria at airports.

  Most aim a last phone call at their earthbound loved ones, an urgency suddenly puckering their minds because they know they are about to enter the silent zone between sky and land, the strange cold airlock where communication ceases, when it will be too late to change their plans, when the prospect of soaring becomes ineluctable, when massive doors will swing shut on London, on the ordinary, on their safe little lives. Last words, thinks a pessimist, then cancels the thought.

  Transitio
n time. Beginnings and endings. Always say goodbye nicely, in case, in case ...

  Of course, Trevor thinks, that’s what I should do. I should talk to Justin, and the little feller too. But I can’t do anything to hurt Vanessa.

  12

  At the end of the evening, looking back, Vanessa’s not sure when the argument began. The food is ‘international’, and not quite what she is used to, richer, oilier, and yet she is hungry. She’s drunk deep of the wine, she has eaten every dish, so why does she still feel – dissatisfied, unsated? As if she can never quite get enough?

  She has studiously been avoiding the eyes of Geoffrey Truman, who is seated on Peter Pargeter’s left, but although she herself is deep in conversation with a nice enough epic poet from Mauritius (a teeny little man with bottle-glass spectacles who’s keen to come and stay with her in London), the sound of male voices drifts across, then rises.

  ‘What we’re trying to do isn’t Thatcherism, Geoffrey,’ Peter Pargeter is saying, and he’s laughing, but you can hear he’s annoyed. ‘That’s an out-of-date model, if you don’t mind me saying so –’

  ‘I do bloody mind,’ mutters Geoffrey Truman, ‘but I don’t suppose that’ll stop yer, will it?’

  ‘– The point is, we all have to move on. The Council cannot get stuck in the past. I believe there are partners across Africa who will be eager to, um, partner with us.’

  ‘That’s not bloody English,’ Truman continues. ‘Is there any more wine?’ He calls out, more generally, until a Sheraton waiter comes over.

  ‘No need to get hung up on libraries,’ says Pargeter, affecting breezy charm. ‘We have other focuses. Like leadership. We are running a very successful series of seminars on leadership, here at the Sheraton. It’s all part of the exciting new offer.’

  ‘Why do you need an exciting new office?’ bellows Geoffrey, who Vanessa realises is deaf. ‘And what’s all this about leadership? Bloody bollocks,’ he adds, ‘that’s what it is. You’re supposed to do culture, not leadership. Africa’s got enough bloody leaders. Books, that’s what they want. Believe you me. I’ve got a girlfriend out here. I come over and see her. Without boasting, I’m putting two of her kids through school. That’s why I said “Yes” to this jamboree. I thought “Why not let the Council stand me a flight?” I pay my taxes like the next man. Maybe a bit less, I’ve got a good accountant. That’s what the British Council is, taxpayers’ money!’ He seems to be aware he is being too frank, for his next statement is more muted. ‘I mean, it’s not just a bit of “how’s your father”. I’ve been in a relationship with Sanyu for years.’