by Maggie Gee
‘So there are wells in London?’ Jacob asks Trevor.
Trevor feels the pressure of expectation, and of Mary, watching him narrowly. At last, he is visited by inspiration. ‘Yes, well, there are fountains, which is almost the same thing. I do do them,’ he says, quite truthfully. He’d fixed up a fountain for Vanessa’s frog pond.
‘It is true,’ says the uncle, with some excitement. ‘My daughter is in London, as you all know. You remember the postcard she sent to the school, because her brother was afraid of lions? There was a photograph of fountains, and stone lions, and she said this was a very famous square, in London –’
‘Trafalgar Square!’ Mary interrupts, triumphant. ‘Yes, Trevor built the fountains in Trafalgar Square. Is it true, Trevor?’
‘If you say so, Mary.’
The uncle nods, deeply impressed.
Having gloriously soared over this bar, Trevor is taken by the men on a tour of the village while the women cook in the room at the back. Two boys go with the men, carrying giant yellow jerry-cans.
‘For fuel?’ he asks.
‘No, for water.’
‘I will come with you, of course,’ says Mary Tendo, and the men, for a moment, look at each other. But they daren’t say no: she is not a normal woman. She went to the city and came back rich.
The tour soon feels quite long, to Trevor. The sun has gone for good: there is sullen heat, and he soon finds his t-shirt is drenched in sweat. It is open, rolling, scrubland, with patchy cultivation. He inquires: that’s coffee, that’s cassava, those are little green spikes of ginger, and he recognises scrawny tassels of maize.
But most of the land is unused. It makes it look attractive, to the casual stroller: skinny goats browse, under the care of watchful, half-naked children; a few chickens run squawking and pecking on the grass. Perhaps they are resting the soil, thinks Trevor.
They are certainly not resting their legs. The boys set off across the fields with their cans. ‘How long do they have to go to get water?’
‘It is not far. Perhaps two, three miles.’
They stop at the Protestant school where Jacob teaches. It is a one-storey building, a series of low brick-built huts, like the Nissen huts Trevor remembers from the war, which lingered as classrooms and homes through the sixties. ‘The school I went to looked a bit like this,’ he says, but he sees that they do not really believe him.
‘The school needs many things,’ says Jacob.
Trevor sees, painted on one exterior wall, a faintly familiar shape, in bright colours, a big bulging triangle next to a circle. Jacob is pointing to it and smiling.
‘I think you will recognise this,’ he says.
Trevor screws up his eyes. He can’t see it. And then he does. It’s a map of Great Britain, but the ragged head of Scotland has been sharpened to a point, and Ireland is a vague, squashed circle.
‘UK!’ says Jacob, triumphantly. ‘Very important.’
Trevor feels surprised. Is it really still important out here? Maybe more will be expected of him, then. As he gets closer, he notices how the edges of the bricks have washed away. They look as though they have been eaten by insects, the straight lines turned to frail lace.
‘It is the rain,’ says Jacob, as Trevor indicates the brick. ‘It washes everything away.’
And the windows: when he looks again, there is no glass in them. They are just holes, like eyeless sockets. Maybe glass is expensive, in Uganda. He starts to see that Charles and Mary’s house in Kampala was well appointed by Ugandan standards. No windows! It is a bit of a shock.
A female head teacher appears to greet them. She is youngish, in a blouse and fitted jacket; she must be boiling in this heat. ‘She is not from here,’ hisses Jacob as they leave her. ‘We do not think that she will stay. We cannot pay her enough money.’
‘Not enough?’ asks Mary, furious. ‘She should be happy to be a head teacher at her age. And she has enough money to straighten her hair.’
Jacob shows Trevor and Mary around, and in every dark classroom, children rise to their feet en masse and stare expectantly at them. There seem to be hundreds and hundreds of children.
‘Good afternoon, children.’
‘Good afternoon, Master.’
Otherwise they do not seem to speak much English, yet Mary assures him all exams are in English, the exams they must pass to go into their future. The children look both strange and curiously familiar, and Trevor realises their uniforms are modelled on English ones of the ’50s, tunics like his elder sister wore, with big box pleats (though the heat has melted their sharpness), and low loose waists, and although some of these girls look as though they’re almost 20, they wear ankle socks, like much younger children, and their shaven heads make them look like babies. And the desks: small, ancient, stained black with ink, they are desks he remembers from infant school. And that scrape of chairs as they all stand up.
But the faces: no. Nor the expressions. They are curious, yes, but they are not deferential. There are stony eyes, there are mutinous mouths. And there are so many of them, staring at him, all jam-packed into this dreamlike school which he himself grew out of so long ago. And he thinks of the schooling of his own son, the clubs, the courses, the extra classes, the gyms and swimming pools and treats and outings that went into the making of Justin ... Education coming out of his ears. Yet he’s sometimes thought the boy is a bit of a drip. He’s wondered if Vanessa spoiled him.
In the first classroom, which holds the older children, Trevor puts his foot in it. There are three Macmillan textbooks on the teacher’s table, so he holds one up, and asks, ‘Do you like reading? And books?’ There is a chorus of ‘Yes’, though to Trevor, the books look a bit uninspiring. Trying to be matey, he follows up with, ‘I bet you like television better, though!’ At the word ‘television’, these tall, thin children look at each other, blank, unsmiling. He can’t read the reaction. It’s as if they are ashamed.
It is left to Mary to educate him. ‘Trevor, these children never saw a television.’
After that, he says nothing during several introductions. Then in the last classroom, he resolves to do better.
‘Good afternoon, children!’ thunders Jacob again.
‘Good afternoon, Master,’ they reply as usual.
‘Good afternoon,’ interpolates Trevor. He has to make an effort. His country is painted on the side of their school. But what’s he got to say to them? These aren’t like any kids he knows.
‘This is Mr Patcher, a famous engineer. You will say to him what?’
The eyes look back at him, and then there is a ragged chorus of ‘Good afternoon, Mr Patch.’
‘I am from London,’ Trevor announces. ‘Who can tell me what country London is in?’ And seizing the stub of chalk on the table, he writes ‘LONDON’ in capitals on the blackboard. Then Jacob threatens the class in Luganda, inciting them to rise to the challenge. Several eager boys shoot up their hands, but most of them are quashed by a look from Jacob, who evidently knows this class well. One favoured boy remains, and Trevor says ‘Yes?’
‘Bungereza’, the tall boy says, triumphant.
Trevor can’t make head nor tail of it, so he says ‘Write it’, and mimes writing, proffering the chalk; the boy looks to Jacob for permission, and then writes ‘BUNGeReZA’ on the blackboard.
Trevor looks at it blankly. ‘I’m afraid not,’ and the class laughs as the boy goes back to his seat, his face puzzled and indignant, but Mary is pulling Trevor’s arm, urgently, as he writes ‘ENGLAND’ next to BUNGeReZA, and she’s hissing something in his ear.
‘Oh, I see, sorry,’ Trevor tells the boy, who sits there, taut, his eyes holding Trevor’s. ‘So Bungereza is your word for England. It’s not an English word, that’s the problem.’
‘It is the right Luganda word,’ Mary says loudly, and then repeats it in Luganda. ‘Wama ori mutufu. Bungereza kitufu muluganda.’ The boy nods and smiles, vindicated.
But Trevor thinks to himself, why don’t they teach
them English? Otherwise they can’t communicate.
The headmistress has something to communicate, in a moment alone as he signs the Visitors’ Book in her ‘office’, a corridor whose bare brick walls are decorated with a neat handwritten list of the School Rules, also in English, so the children won’t know them.
‘I am a headmistress,’ she says to him, suddenly, pressing his hand and looking hard into his eyes. ‘I am a headmistress. Do not forget me. I should have a proper office, and a car.’
It’s the children, in fact, that he finds hard to forget. However you look at it, it doesn’t seem right.
21
It’s early evening at the Sheraton. Vanessa will soon be doing her reading. As usual, she is a little on edge, and not entirely able to pay attention to the tide of political debate that ebbs and flows between the delegates, who are drinking complimentary glasses of wine.
‘Museveni is finished!’ a Ugandan declares, a bright young poet and lecturer just back from two years at the University of Iowa. His presentation about the marginalisation of local languages was misted with French deconstructionist words, but now he is crisp and vigorous. ‘He has become old and greedy, like the others. The westerners have eaten too well. Ugandans are tired of it. We will not re-elect him.’
‘That’s what people said before the last elections,’ says a white South African. ‘When he’d sworn he wouldn’t stand another time. Then he changed his mind, and they voted for him. Africa basically has kings, ja? Like Moi and Mugabe. They’re in for a lifetime.’
‘Well, you’ve got to admit he’s made things better here,’ says Geoffrey Truman, who feels almost Ugandan, with his thrice-a-year visits to Sanyu Namamonde, where he has a comfortable berth, nourishing food, and cold beers beside the Speke Hotel’s sunlit swimming pool while Sanyu gives him gentle massages, in return for which, he helps her out – there are school fees for the elder boy, and the younger one, too, will soon be boarding-school age, which is causing him to make a few calculations, and yet ... The good life. So much sweeter than London. He could never get a woman like Sanyu in London, young, healthy, affectionate to him. ‘You’ve seen Kampala. Lots of new business, hotels going up, prosperous. You feel safe on the street. The police are on top of things. Otherwise CHOGM would not be coming here. It’s a different country from what it was twenty years ago. You just can’t compare Amin and Museveni.’
‘But you should not compare them,’ says a writer from Femrite, the organisation of Ugandan women writers. ‘It is like comparing the German leader, Angela Merkel, to Hitler. Of course, the new person will look better.’
Then another Ugandan takes up the discussion. ‘In fact, under Museveni, there has always been war. For the Acholi in the north, as you are aware, there is genocide. In the east, there have been massacres of Museveni’s enemies, things that in the west you do not hear about ...’ (As he looks, briefly, at the foreign delegates, his voice drops slightly, for you never know who’s listening: in the deepening sky outside the window, there are storks, as ever, small as mosquitoes, casually planing on the early evening thermals: friend or enemy? How can you be sure?) ‘And in Democratic Republic of Congo – Ugandan army has been very busy there. There was a four-year war, in which millions died. And now our wonderful Museveni might go to war again. Perhaps State House needs more gold, and diamonds. Perhaps there will be another war, in Congo.’
Unconsciously, Vanessa is recording these words, for attention later, after her reading, but now she cannot bear to take them in; she is marshalling her thoughts; her palms are sweating. She checks she has numbered all her pages. Five minutes later, Heather calls them to attention.
And Vanessa reads, at sunset, from her autobiography, the only chapter of it she has finished, a passage about her father and the chickens, and the audience grows quiet, leans forward, listens, and the warm, squawking things seem to flutter round the room, and the listeners’ sharp bright eyes make her think of the chickens, and she even dares to imitate the birds’ contented clucking, and at once the room explodes into laughter and approval, and they like me, she thinks: yes, they actually like me. She is suddenly herself; herself, completely. After she has finished, the questions keep coming. They are fascinated by her move from the village, the transition to the city that so many of them have made, unless their parents, or more rarely, grandparents, did it for them. It’s true, she thinks, we all have to come here. Many people volunteer their own story. A Nigerian poet quotes himself, and now they are all nodding, all united:
‘... “Writing is the dark breath of the city.”’
And somehow she finds herself thinking of Mary: Mary Tendo, too, made this epic voyage.
Mary, Mary. Where are you now?
Later Vanessa lies in the warm hotel night and lets the warm glow of approval linger. All of them had shared her childhood memories, and when the writers told stories from their own childhood, they saw the lost children in these clever adults. She thinks, that was the closest our group has come; for once no-one was excluded ...
Then she starts to think about the week that lies ahead, with a little ebbing of happiness as the words of the Ugandan writer come back to her, perhaps there will be war in Congo. And she has her plans to drive to Congo. Her huge white bed starts to soak up darkness.
The boy lies in the swamp, which is rotting his feet. He dragged himself here in a search for water. He drank and drank, but then he vomited. The sun is setting. Will he live through the night? He thinks, this ditch will become my tomb. Something’s sucking at his leg he blacks out, briefly
Once he was a child he had two parents
he made the wrong choice he went the wrong way
Now he will have to be punished for ever
God’s eye is in the tomb with me
It looks at me like a sun staring it is red as a wound and hot as fire
His throat closes as the sun bores down. The All-seeing One. Vengeance has found him.
‘Animal book, Daddy,’ Abdul Trevor yells. ‘I need the ANIMAL BOOK, not the silly BIRDS.’
‘But the bird book has got some nice animals,’ says Justin, who is trying to read Hans Andersen to his son, a really very attractive copy that Vanessa had bought Abdy for his third birthday – too young, of course, but that was typical of her. Justin likes the rhythmic language, and the stories. Perhaps it reminds him of the good side of his mother, who read to him at bedtime when Mary had gone home. Now he’s reading to himself as much as Abdy. ‘There’s a nice froggy, isn’t there –’
‘TOAD!’ Abdul Trevor corrects him. ‘Not a nice toad. It’s a hobble smelly toad.’
‘There’s a reindeer you can ride on, in The Snow Queen.’
‘I like a reindeer,’ Abdul Trevor more peaceably agrees, and then veering back unpredictably, ‘Daddy, get my ANIMAL BOOK from the garden.’
This was half the trouble, the fact it’s in the garden, and requires an arduous trip downstairs. For Justin is sleepy, as he so often is by Abdul Trevor’s bedtime – young children are tiring – and once he lies down on the bed beside his son, with the Babydreams Pillow tucked under his shoulders, he often falls asleep in the middle of a sentence, to Abdul Trevor’s outrage: ‘Daddy NOT to sleep.’
‘There are funny storks in this book,’ Justin persuades him. ‘Don’t you like the storks? They can talk like us. And a nightingale. That’s a bird that sings. And mermaids. They’re, sort of, animals.’
But Abdul Trevor begins crying, softly, a whining, fretful noise untypical of him. The rash is worse. It can’t be the eggs: he hasn’t eaten any eggs. But Zakira also suspects avocado, which Justin likes to feed him because it’s nutritious. Alas, they had avocado for lunch.
‘It’s all right, baby boy, I’m going,’ says Justin, yielding to forestall the storm.
‘NOT a baby,’ says Abdul Trevor, and cries harder, and pushes all his covers off. ‘Not go, Daddy.’ And then, unreasonably, ‘Daddy go!’ Justin puts a cool hand on his forehead, and frowns: the little boy’s te
mperature seems to be back, and this afternoon he was coughing again, and when Zakira rang up (she couldn’t come home because she had to do an unexpected presentation) he had suddenly told her that his throat hurt.
‘He hasn’t mentioned it to me, darling,’ Justin had to reassure Zakira. ‘Don’t worry, I expect he was winding you up. I think he’s fine. Maybe a little cold. Just forget about it and do your presentation.’ There’s some talk of her having to go to Brussels. He doesn’t like it when she goes away.
And he wishes she didn’t have to work late as he treads the small damp garden in his bare feet, looking for the missing Animal Book, and hears his son starting to wail from the bedroom, and a small sharp thorn sticks into his foot, and there is a low-key rumble of sound that might be a tube train, or might be thunder. Thank God, there’s the book, under the hollyhocks, and he scoops it up and pads back upstairs. It’s close, in the house. Yes, it was thunder.
‘Want a drink,’ says Abdul Trevor, as soon as Justin gets there. But he’s stopped crying, and is playing with his toes. His long dark lashes are bright with tears, and he smiles an angelic smile at Justin. He knows that parents get cross about drinks, especially when it’s long after bedtime.
‘I wish you had asked me before,’ says Justin.
‘Was Ganma in the garden?’ Abdul asks, conversationally. ‘Was the gorilla in the garden? That’s funny, isn’t it, Daddy?’ And he chuckles, a little stagily, at his own joke.
Yet he does want to know. It’s a concern. Both grandma and gorilla are hiding somewhere. She hasn’t been to see him for ages.
‘Grandma is still in Uganda,’ says Justin. ‘There wasn’t a gorilla in the garden. But soon, Grandma will go and see the gorillas.’
Abdy doesn’t like to be reminded.
‘Where’s my drink? I got a thirst in my throat.’
‘Can it wait until we have read the book? Look, clever Daddy found it, out in the garden.’
