by Maggie Gee
‘Want THIS book,’ says Abdul Trevor, cunningly, pointing to the formerly despised Hans Andersen. ‘Daddy, read “Mary had a little lamb”.’
‘But that’s in neither of the books,’ says Justin, floored. ‘Never mind, Abdy, I know it by heart. “Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went, That little lamb would go ...”’
And he thinks about Mary: Mary Tendo. When she’d come to the house, he was the same age as Abdul. He can just remember her: round, funny. She let him have chocolate. She made him laugh. And she’d taught him all sorts of things his mother didn’t know, in her own language, and his mother didn’t like it. I suppose Mum was jealous, he realises now. Sometimes Zakira is jealous of me, because Abdy and me have our little secrets.
‘Wanta lamb,’ says Abdy, sleepily.
‘Read it again?’ Justin asks, incredulous. He can never get over the child’s capacity for wanting the most boring things again and again.
‘No, wanta LAMB!’ says Abdy, pointing.
‘Oh, you want your fleece, sorry. Silly Daddy.’ And Justin fetches his son his lambskin, on whose soft wool he used to lie as a baby, but which, Justin reflects, as he scoops it up, must have come from a very young dead lamb. ‘Isn’t it a bit hot for the fleece?’
‘Lamb,’ says Abdy happily, clutching it. ‘I love you Daddy’. And he curls up his knees. ‘Too hot,’ he mutters, but Justin can’t hear him.
Abdy’s coughing, again, but half asleep, and Justin decides to tuck him down. ‘Do you still want that water?’ he asks, softly, too softly to wake him, because he’d rather not go, and the boy turns over with a little grunt, his thumb in his mouth, dead to the world. Justin almost lifts him gently on to his back, just for reassurance, to feel his small forehead one more time, to check it isn’t really hotter than usual, but he’s tired too. He wants a cold beer. No point in worrying; he turns down the child light, pulls up the blanket over fleece and baby, closes the door, and almost stumbles and falls as he slops downstairs, his loose heavy sleepy body crashing into the banisters. The noise is so loud that he fails to hear the deep operatic rumble of the storm, coming closer.
22
I am in the village, thinks Trevor. I’ve got here. This is me, on my own, with nothing else.
He has just become a lot lonelier, having tried to switch on his phone in the dark, the fragile filament of electronic life that links him to the city, and got less than nothing, the ‘phone crossed out’ icon. A definitive X. No reception. Oh bugger. He has really arrived.
But where is he exactly? It feels like nowhere.
He is lying on a mattress on the floor. It is very hot. There are crickets singing, and other insects, somewhere, rustling and whining, not very far off, but apart from that, he’s in a great, deep pit of silence, torn across briefly, from time to time, by hoots and shrieks that must be birds or monkeys. He didn’t really wash, at bedtime (except down there, where his mother taught him to wash every day), because his bowl of tepid water wouldn’t go very far, and besides, he didn’t want to wash his face and arms because then he’d have to reapply his insect repellent. He’s brushed his teeth, but he couldn’t find his toothpaste – he hasn’t had to go to bed in the half-dark since a power cut in London ten years ago, and then what a fuss all the neighbours made! Though he, Trevor, thought nothing of it. For the village, of course, this darkness is normal.
Is he getting a toothache? He hopes he isn’t. Too far from home. He thinks, root canal, and the dodgy nerve winds down into the dark, and he dozes, worrying, then jerks himself awake: he isn’t going to get a bloody toothache. He’s Trevor Patchett. He’s perfectly all right.
(Will he be bitten, though? By mosquitoes? By snakes? He’s never been a coward, but this is the unknown. OK, Mary’s nearby, in the next-door building, but she’s not the same woman he remembers from England, easy-going, sensible, admiring him. Once her family was there, she had practically ignored him, talking solidly to brothers and uncles and nieces in the language he naturally could not understand, though he sometimes knew they were talking about him by the way they turned and stared, half-smiling. What the hell was Mary Tendo telling them?)
Bloody hell, I’m on the other side of the world. No, I’ve fallen off the edge of the world.
No lights, no electricity, no gas, no phone. No anything. Just people, goats, chickens. Not much farming, and I was a chump to think that they were resting the land. Mary soon put me straight on that. ‘It is because so many have died of AIDS. Those who remain cannot work the land.’ Hardly any adults, but so many children. An army of children compared to back home. I couldn’t believe there were so many of them, and so few of us, so few adults. Back home it’s the opposite; like Justin and Zakira, two adults fussing over every little kiddie.
(And then it strikes him: or like Ness and me. We never managed to have any more children. Didn’t hold it together. Too young and daft. So Justin had to hack it on his own, with two great grownups dancing around him.)
Plus the nannies and minders and carers and what-not. Not that Justin and Zakira have got a nanny.
But those village schools I saw today ... they were like factories of children. Sort of mass-produced. Learning everything by heart, in identical uniforms. A few knackered teachers and hundreds of children. And those buildings. In England, they’d do for farm animals. No lights, no glass, no floor, no loos.
And they’re going to grow up. One day they’ll grow up. What if they found out how rich our lot were? They might grow up and come looking for us.
Trevor Patchett tosses and turns on his itchy mattress. He’s never gone in for insomnia, but he’s never slept in an African village. In the middle of nowhere. The back of beyond.
Is he anyone, really, if no-one here knows him? He hopes he can be some use to them.
Then suddenly it starts, on the roof above him. A stuttering, a tapping – then the skies fall down. Trevor’s stunned into sleep by Ugandan rain.
In London, Justin is half-woken by crying. The digital horror: 3.30 AM. Rain blows against their windowpane.
‘I’ll go,’ says Zakira. ‘It must be my turn. I expect Abdy’s kicked off his covers.’ Then she lies there. If you give it a minute, he sometimes stops crying.
(Alternatively, Justin goes instead, but she does not consciously count on this.)
In fact, Justin is snoring again. Zakira hauls herself up from the beautiful depths of adult slumber, and tries not to think about work tomorrow, and needing her sleep to be on top of things. There is still a possibility she’ll have to go to Brussels, but they didn’t ring, so she’s praying it’s off. She loves her son more than life itself. Is it possible she loves him more than Justin? She reminds herself there’s no need to decide.
Justin wakes up to find her gone. Her side of the bed feels cold; she’s been away some time. He can hear Abdul Trevor snuffling and whimpering, and the soft intermittent voice of his mother. Zakira is there; he can go back to sleep.
She is back. ‘Hallo Mummy,’ he says, dozily. ‘Is he OK?’
‘I think he was cold. He had kicked off his covers. It feels like winter to me,’ says Zakira. ‘I covered him up, but he was very restless. And that rash ... you didn’t give him eggs again?’
‘Course not. Or avocado. Don’t ask. It’s not always my fault when he gets a rash.’ (It’s a white lie about the avocado.)
They lie in the dark. Nearly a quarrel. But they don’t want to quarrel. They love each other.
‘Maybe you should take him to the doctor,’ says Zakira. ‘I know it’s a drag.’
‘No,’ says Justin, ‘it isn’t a drag.’ (But it is, it is. You have to wait for ever. And he plans to drop in on Davey, in the morning. They don’t need the doctor. Abdy will be fine.) ‘I think he’s just hot,’ Justin continues. ‘You’re Moroccan, you think our autumn is winter. Anyway, well done, he went to sleep.’
‘Well I gave him some, you know,’ Zakira sighs. ‘It always works.’ Baby paracetamol
.
‘You don’t think we give him too much?’ asks Justin.
‘Well, it’s meant for children,’ says Zakira. ‘Baby paracetamol, the gift of the gods.’
‘The gift of sleep,’ says Justin, kissing her. They cuddle like children, they make spoons, warm spoons, he curves soothingly against her, till the spoons start melting, become meltingly tender, and some parts soften as other parts harden, and although they need sleep, the sweet chance is there, they’re awake and not busy, they’re soon moving together, and their cries of contentment merge with rain and autumn, the first birds singing, a late awakening.
7.30 AM. They have missed the alarm. Zakira’s annoyed to have overslept. The problem is Justin, who rarely hears it. The day ahead looms, full of challenges: she’s new in her post, she must prove herself, and if the markets keep falling, she won’t be there long. She pulls on her clothes, grabs coffee, leaves.
Abdul comes in, coughing, and strokes Justin’s face.
‘We’re going to play with Dubois, today.’
‘Yey!’ shouts Abdy, then coughs again.
The morning, actually, goes well for Justin. Davey thinks he has work for him.
23
Breakfast and goodbyes. It’s the last morning of the International Conference of African Writing.
(Last night’s session on The Heart of Darkness became a little edgy as the delegates argued for and against Joseph Conrad. Was he an imperialist? Was his narrator, Marlow? Or were they both outsiders, in London and the Congo? It’s complicated. Voices were raised. Everyone was sure of their point of view. A woman used the ‘r’-word: racist. It was racist not to call Conrad racist; it was racist, in fact, to disagree with her. ‘We’re just storytellers,’ Vanessa said, finally, and found she was listened to with respect in the afterglow of her successful reading. ‘And so was Conrad. And so was Marlow. We’re all just trying to make sense of the world. Maybe Conrad was struggling, too?’ To her surprise, it stopped the argument. Then the writers danced, and got a little drunk, and some shy bodies befriended others. Geoffrey had had an argument with Sanyu, so was there on his own, and he waltzed with Vanessa, his hand vaguely speculative on her spine. ‘Weren’t bad, what yer read,’ he said at the end, when he’d tried to kiss her, and she turned her head away. He took the refusal good-temperedly. ‘Keep at it, lass, yer might get somewhere.’ But this was high praise, from Geoffrey Truman. Yes, she would definitely write this memoir, she thought, finishing someone else’s rosé. And she found herself remembering Mary Tendo’s journal. The parts Vanessa read were really quite striking. And publishers all got very excited, even if in the end it came to nothing. Perhaps she could take some tips from Mary Tendo ...? But she’s definitely had a little too much wine.)
Much activity today in Reception as the staff try to convince the departing writers of the number of drinks they have not yet paid for. ‘The British Council is paying the bill,’ some writers suggest, but the Sheraton staff are familiar with the ways of the British Council, and know they do not pay for gin or whisky (which are all imported, and fantastically expensive, especially with the extra Sheraton markup): or the Room Service orders of steak sandwich and chips that Geoffrey Truman’s been wolfing down after midnight: or Deirdre Mullins’s facial and massage. Reluctantly, the writers fork out, though as they’ve spent all their Ugandan money, they are forced to go to the hotel’s Bureau de Change, which changes their dollars at extortionate rates, and they all hang around in the lobby, complaining in a genial, hungover, accepting way, because arguing the bill is part of the fun, though for the receptionists, it is stressful: they don’t want missing money to be taken from their wages.
Nobody tips. They are poor: they’re writers, and writers are the outsiders of the world: why should they tip the receptionists? In any case, this is the Sheraton. ‘It’s bloody American capitalism!’ says Geoffrey Truman to Deirdre Mullins, which makes them both feel better, though in fact, the hotel is a mere franchise that Sheraton US sold off long ago. Now it’s owned, some say, by an Ethiopian, and others say, by a North African Arab, and the staff are not sure what is happening, if they’ll be sold again, if their pay will go down, if the Sheraton will survive at all now there are other, more modern hotels in town.
But ‘After all, they’re on salaries, unlike us writers,’ laughs Deirdre to Geoffrey, as they quietly discuss (though just within earshot of the staff) the etiquette of tipping in the third world, how hard it is, actually, to get it right, and conclude, as usual, that it’s best not to do it.
Vanessa’s listening, and learns something, and congratulates herself on her acuteness. They’re fooling themselves. She will tip, in future. Her pale cheeks flush with good intentions. It all adds to her happiness. The conference has gone well, she was a triumph. (She had texted Fifi to this effect, this morning, but somehow the text felt a little empty: Was a great success, darling. How are u and Mimi? xx) But she knows that something real has happened. People liked her work; it spoke to them. So her difficult childhood, which has caused her such shame, was all along one of her greatest assets! Sometimes, she reflects, I am a little obtuse. Though mostly, of course, I am very perceptive.
She has swapped emails and invitations to visit with at least a dozen of the better writers, and she fully intends to visit them, though she’ll have to point out, if it comes to it, that her house is actually on the small side ...
But then she remembers a conversation she had with a writer from Sierra Leone, to whom she had made this very point, partly because the woman was admiring her laptop, and Vanessa felt guilty about being too rich. ‘My house is tiny, really,’ she had told the woman. ‘It’s a shoebox.’ Then the other writer smiled with new warmth and revealed that her house, too, was small, that she shared a room with three sisters, that they’re all still living in their parents’ home, which is a fifth-floor two-bed flat. Vanessa had to change the subject quickly before any questioning could reveal that she herself lives entirely alone in a semi-detached house with four bedrooms.
No, she corrects herself, of course I’ll put them up. I mustn’t be mean. I am not too busy. So long as they don’t bring their boyfriends, like Mary. Vanessa had never actually met Charles, because he came for Christmas when she was away in the country, but the pair of them drank her best champagne, Dom Perignon 1990, and Mary just said, ‘We thought it was old’, so Vanessa has a prejudice against boyfriends.
Much hugging and laughing in the foyer as the British writers drift away to the Sheraton minibus that will take them off to Entebbe airport, then the BA jet that will take them back to London. And as Geoffrey Truman’s grey crest disappears through the door, his round shoulders, his stooped writer’s spine, followed by the porter with a mountain of luggage and gifts for the children of his three marriages, Vanessa suddenly feels a twinge of disquiet. In some ways, she would like to be leaving with the others. She misses home. She misses Justin, and darling Abdy, and normal shops, and coffee chains. And even Fifi, though she doesn’t listen.
But then she thinks, no, the best lies ahead. She has always wanted to see the gorillas, she hasn’t entirely given up on finding Mary, and she needs to unwind, to simply – be – in Africa. She has a week left, and the conference is over, so now she has a chance to get to know Uganda. It’s time to relax: she has worked hard. The safari is planned, confirmed, paid for. She is leaving the day after tomorrow.
But Vanessa is Vanessa. She can’t relax. She is always restlessly thinking and planning, always trying to control the future. As soon as she sits down in the Piano Bar, and orders a coffee, and reads the Daily Monitor, she finds there are floods in rural Uganda. Where is Bwindi? She’s not quite sure. Somewhere in the west ... near DRC Congo. If the roads are bad ... Will the jeep be OK? Will she be safe? Will she get a decent driver?
She starts a conversation with the charming young Ugandan who manages the Piano Bar. Does he think there will be floods? ‘No, Madam. It is rare that we get floods in Kampala.’
But Van
essa is going to western Uganda. His face falls slightly, but then it brightens. ‘The road is very good. You will stay on the road.’
‘Actually I’m hoping to go in the jungle. To Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, in fact.’ She feels proud as she says it. Now he will admire her. He winces slightly at the word ‘jungle’.
‘You will have a good driver?’ the young man asks. ‘If you have a good driver, there will be no problems.’
‘I am going with Great Gorilla Safaris.’
‘Oh yes, they are fine,’ the young man says. ‘You are going with the other writers?’
‘I am going alone,’ Vanessa says. His face falls again. They are strange, these bazungu, travelling alone. Even living alone! For he has read that the new houses they are building in England are all for single people, mostly homosexuals. Why does England encourage them? But Vanessa’s wearing a wedding ring.
‘You should ask them to send a nice driver,’ he suggests. He is losing interest now, passing on, to another muzungu who will tell him his problems. He himself has never been to Bwindi, but the guests are always crazy to go there. Why drive on bad roads to see wild beasts? But the doings of the bazungu are a mystery.
‘That’s a very good idea. I will go to see them.’ And Vanessa tips him rather generously.
At 10 AM Vanessa is ringing on the door of Great Gorilla Safaris, the company who will be taking her to Bwindi. She has marched through the streets feeling brave and cheerful, dodging through the traffic, she thinks, like a Ugandan, managing not to trip over sudden shelves of red earth where the paving-stones have cracked and crumbled, negotiating the sullen groups of workmen sweating in the sun in their hot navy overalls, counting the storks gangling haughtily along the roof-ridges of government buildings like a line of lawyers proceeding to their chambers (she stops at thirty: it’s enough for one day), smiling at the sellers setting up on the pavements, though it’s notable that most of them don’t smile back. Probably they’re angry about CHOGM, which is giving the government an excuse to clear the streets. The skies are milky: milky white heat. Her money is hidden in a money belt that she wears under a long-sleeved shirt and trousers (because you shouldn’t tempt them, though Ugandans are honest), and the flesh of her stomach streams perspiration and chafes a little where the wad of cash presses. The sky is so white, so hot, so bright. Out here, she thinks, the world is more vivid.
