My Driver

by Maggie Gee

  Oddly, Kony and his henchmen do not agree. When this message of no comfort arrives, they send out feelers for more supplies, more grenades, more ammunition. Weapons can be found in DRC: everything is there, if they slip away westward. Business as usual, then. Peace falls apart.

  31

  ‘Soon we will be at the Rift Valley,’ Isaac tells Vanessa. ‘This is very important. It is historic. You may take a photo.’

  She thinks, he talks as though he owns this country, and then she realises, he does, in a way. ‘I know about the Rift Valley,’ she says. ‘In fact, we all come from the Rift Valley.’

  He casts a sideways glance, unbelieving.

  ‘Yes, even bazungu,’ she pushes the point. ‘We all came from Africa, originally.’

  He stares, briefly, at her tense pale face. This madwoman believes she is African.

  Then the car bumps and lurches. They have left the tarmac. The road from now onwards will be unmade. It has been cut, with great effort, into the hillside. They roar uphill, but the motor is straining. It starts to rain: slow, getting faster.

  She looks out of the window, very quickly, then back again. The land has gone. There is nothing but air. She watches a tiny group of bright birds, hanging on nothing, for a second, a scintilla, the last bit of sunlight catches their heads, then they drift slightly leftwards, swoop, soar – and fall into the valley, plunge over the edge, disappear like a cloud of pollen into darkness. She dare not watch to see if they come back up. She can’t breathe, for a moment. Something has happened.

  The talks between Uganda and DRC are ending in failure, in bad temper, tired people, the smell of stale air in exhausted rooms. The DRC delegation gets ready to fly home. M7 asked for everything and offered nothing. Why should DRC offer to do Uganda’s dirty work by expelling the renegade LRA from its borders? Who wants to take on the LRA? Museveni’s been trying to crush them for years. But the men from DRC do not actually say this. They talk like statesmen, at the conference table, about respecting the peace talks in Juba, about respecting international law, about the rights of Congolese fishermen who live on the islands of Lake Albert; as if that was what mattered about Lake Albert, and not the billion barrels of oil beneath it. The Ugandan delegation knows they are liars. It is all about territory and power and money. It is all about gold, all about oil. And because they don’t talk completely frankly, the two countries press on towards war.

  Trevor gets on fine with James, the man from Mary’s village who is happy to be driving him to Mweya. Has James ever been to Mweya Lodge before? The man explains, no Ugandans go there, but he has a friend in a nearby fishing village. Trevor finds this information reassuring. The trip is more relaxing now Mary is not driving, refusing to let any other car overtake. The two men mostly keep a companionable silence. It’s a bloke thing, Trevor thinks, it’s international. With Soraya, there was always, well, nattering. And she complained I didn’t communicate. Funny, because Vanessa talked more than her, and I didn’t mind it. It’s weird how I miss her.

  They have to drive through an epic rainstorm. The tarmac road ends abruptly as it starts to rain, giving way to a long straight swathe of red dust which is soon a ribbon of splashing mud. Trevor stares through the opaque boil of rain on the windscreen and contemplates Mary’s instructions for the car: ‘Do not rev the engine. Do not dirty it.’ In the end, James has to go more and more slowly; they can see nothing: there is only blind rain, grey gallons and gallons of thick sliding water. They can’t see the trees, the sky, the road. It all goes on for a very long time. But then, just as suddenly, the windscreen lightens, the sun comes out, and a vast rainbow leaps across the horizon, from side to side, as bright and clear as if painted on a window. It hangs there, amazing, on the blue darkness, above which the African sun pours down. ‘It’s quite something, your country,’ says Trevor. And then they leave even the red mud behind, turning off on to a narrow dirt track through scrubland.

  Now James rocks the little car through two hours of scrubland, of long yellow grasses darkened with rain, thorntrees that remind Trevor of ones he’s seen on television, shaped like low flat-topped thunderclouds. At last the track climbs with a new sense of purpose. ‘We are nearly there,’ says James with a smile. There’s a lake on their left, but they go on climbing, and at last turn a corner to imposing double gates. Then an elephant! Huge, glossy, brown, its trunk upcurled, catching the sun. A brief double-take, but it is made of resin. Yet all around them, the cricket-trilling bush, the howls of animals, snorts and gibbers. The clouds have retreated; late golden light. Suddenly Trevor sees lawns and flowers.

  They arrive to the offer of a warm wet scented flannel on a china plate in the huge shining foyer. James is carrying his bags, despite Trevor’s protest, and one of them, of course, is the heavy toolbag, but the porter takes them away from him, silently, then grunts with surprise as he feels the weight. Then James fades away: there is only one flannel. Bit rich, thinks Trevor, when James did the driving. His hands need a warm flannel more than mine. But I suppose, to them, he is just my driver – same as how, in London, I was only the plumber. We aren’t really people. We aren’t really there.

  So he’s glad, for a while, not to be seen as a plumber. He is paying: he’s Sir: he’s a gentleman. The flannel soothes his hands, then there’s an ice-cold fruit juice. Trevor yields to it all. Yes, he’s in bliss.

  That night, the restaurant repels the dark with ‘International Cuisine’ and piped music. The waiters wear white jackets as spotless and stiff as the snowy napkins, and Trevor chooses chicken, Coronation Chicken with Duchesse Potatoes that are whorled and curled like a duchess’s hairdo, and taste dry, like paper, but he’s glad enough to eat them, and down two large whiskies on the trot.

  ‘Your Queen is coming to Uganda,’ says the waiter. ‘She first came here after her coronation. She is welcome.’ Trevor’s just heard him say the same thing to the man at the next table, who also ordered Coronation Chicken. ‘Glad Her Maj is welcome,’ Trevor smiles. The whisky burns beautifully, like life, like the rich strong flavour of his week in Uganda. He is dozing at his table when the waiter comes and asks him if he’s putting the meal on his tab. ‘I’ll pay,’ says Trevor. He always pays up-front. His parents were too poor to dare to do different. It was something he and Nessie both understood. In many ways they were quite alike, though people often said they were an odd couple.

  ‘So are you going on the game drive tomorrow?’ asks the waiter. ‘Service is not included, Sir.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ says Trevor, and adds on a thousand, then another when he sees the man’s slight disappointment. ‘They tell me I am,’ he says. ‘6 AM start.’

  ‘That is interesting, Sir,’ says the waiter.

  Back in his room, Trevor is too tired to switch his phone on. Early wakeup: he’s going on a game drive. He likes the sound of it: a game drive. Whoever would have thought Trevor Patchett would do that?

  32

  Far in the west, the green west of Uganda, Vanessa has quarrelled with her driver. How badly, she is not quite sure. Or whether he’ll be there in the morning. And yet they have made it to their destination, at the very end of the journey of horror!

  The rains had eroded one side of the road so badly that they had to inch their way forward, hugging the side of the steep mountains that form the upper rim of the Rift Valley. OK, Isaac was not such a bad driver (despite his negligent attitude) but she could not help blaming him for her terror. And perhaps it annoyed him when she winced and gasped and clutched her seatbelt, or grabbed at the dashboard, but the terror was so visceral: when they nosed up, she feared slipping backwards: when they went down, they might fall for ever. Isaac offered, several times, to stop for a photograph, but she almost wept as she begged him to drive on. The idea of stopping on that hideous road ...

  And then came the rain. A black wall of rain. The windscreen wipers could do nothing against it. And Vanessa closed her eyes and prayed. She clung to her notebook, herself, her camera. She bargained wi
th Death, for she was not ready. She had things to write, Justin needed her ... suddenly she thought, I have nothing to offer. Perhaps she doesn’t understand how Death chooses, for the rain lessened and the sun came out; like grace, like beauty, her prayer was answered, and the road eased, and they were out of the Rift Valley. But they had lost time. Was the light already going?

  Isaac drove through the narrow central street of Butogota, the last big village before Bwindi, at five, and the streets were thronged with tall people, women with long necks and high noble cheekbones, men wearing suit-jackets over cloth wraps, walking home from work or just standing and staring. She felt they were driving through a field of wheat, like an ugly machine with a single purpose, but she needed him to hurry, she was still afraid.

  Buhoma, when they got there, was just a small huddle of shacks, a few hotels. Then at last they are on to the track to Bwindi; banana thickets, then increasingly tall trees, then the forest cover thickened and darkened, darkened and thickened. There was no more light. Vanessa thought, have we left it too late? But her eyes adjusted. It was not quite nightfall.

  And then the argument began.

  After the silence of terror, she had started talking. Most recently she had been speaking, not quite honestly, about her ‘husband’, an ‘engineer’, in a last-ditch effort to impress on Isaac, before journey’s end, that she was married, a person of substance (for an ex-husband is almost a husband, and a plumber is practically an engineer). She became a little strident: she insisted. She was talking to an impassive profile. And then the vehicle bumped to a halt. ‘You will get out now,’ said Isaac, tersely.

  Is he going to murder me?, thought Vanessa. But she could not sit in the jeep on her own. They were standing at the bottom of a flight of steps that led up, and up, through the tall trees. Isaac pointed to them, unsmiling. ‘It is up there,’ he said, and shrugged. She spotted a small notice: GORILLA FOREST CAMP.

  ‘The Gorilla Forest Camp?’ she asked. ‘I have to walk to it? Up through the forest?’ He nodded, stern-browed.

  ‘Then you will have to help me.’

  ‘Of course I will help you! Or you could not do it.’

  Did he have to remind her?

  He struggled up the steps ahead of her, loaded up like a pushbike carrying a bedstead, precariously balancing all her bags. Sometimes he slipped backwards, sometimes forwards. But it seemed to her that he was going too slowly. The trees to either side blurred away into blue darkness. Some of the shadows looked like men, watching. A harsh bird cackled overhead, and it mizzled, drizzled, down the back of her neck.

  ‘Are we late?’ she asks. ‘It is nearly dark. Perhaps you could hurry –’ (he grunted, furious, and tripped on a tree-root, and nearly dropped a bag) ‘or no-one will be there to welcome me.’

  Suddenly Isaac began talking again, loudly, aggressively, though panting with effort. Isaac was determined to inform her about the etiquette of welcome in Ugandan houses. ‘In Uganda, wives welcome their husbands by kneeling,’ he says, shooting a malicious look over his shoulder.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she says, annoyed. ‘I believe it is just one particular tribe. One people, I mean. Is it the Banda people? Some name like that. A rather backward people.’

  He was actually snickering. Yes, she could hear him. ‘Banda is a word for house,’ he said.

  ‘In any case I think it’s ridiculous,’ Vanessa snapped, lobbing cultural tolerance away into the trees. She was tired, it was steep, she wanted her tea. ‘My husband would not want women to kneel. My husband would laugh at that idea.’ And she tried to laugh, but it came out wrong, like the humourless, jarring cry of a peacock.

  At this Isaac stopped, put the bags down, looked round. He stood above her in the blue-green light, furiously male, utterly different. They stared at each other, didn’t like what they saw. ‘But even in UK, I think,’ he asked her, earnestly, ‘surely you do not believe men and women are equal?’

  She was speechless for a moment. He hauled up her bags again, ready to go on, but paused there a second, his back to the slope, and held her gaze, demanding an answer.

  ‘You Ugandans are living in the last century.’

  ‘You British people have gone crazy.’ He was haring up the slope again, a lopsided Christmas tree.

  ‘You are backward! Very backward! ‘She screamed it after him. It seemed he neither saw her nor heard her. She was paying him, yet he did not respect her. Vanessa can’t bear being called crazy; she feels like a hated child again, the girl in the village who no-one liked, with the sullen father and insane mother. ‘NOBODY WANTS A BACKWARD DRIVER!’

  Isaac dumped her luggage three metres away from the wooden verandah of the Gorilla Forest Camp, without saying goodbye, and disappeared into the gloom. An engine roared. Her driver was gone. (She will never know that he wept with anger. He is bitterly hurt. He is twenty-one. He is not backward, he’s intelligent, he knows he is, he has thoughts and opinions, but until he has saved a million shillings he cannot afford to be a student. It lasts a few minutes, and then he stops, and the hurt contracts into a tight ball of hatred which will stay with him for over a decade, long after Vanessa has forgotten him.)

  For an hour she feels utterly justified, and then small doubts start creeping in. Perhaps she should have shown more understanding. Although very annoying, he was still quite young. Is it possible she has let herself down?

  Vanessa does not sleep all night. No-one had explained to her in advance that Bwindi is literally a rainforest: that most of the time, they will be in cloud. No-one had explained that the Gorilla Forest Camp is not so much a single, luxury hotel as a series of isolated, upmarket tents, separated by dense, dripping jungle and reached by long narrow paths through the leaves, which is perfect if you’ve come with a lover or husband, but if you are on your own, pure terror. Leaves crash against the window: things shoulder through the bushes, maybe monkeys or bush-pigs, but maybe humans: soldiers, rebels, murderers.

  Every time she begins to drift off to sleep, there are dizzy flashbacks of the journey here; as her blood pressure drops, she keeps tripping, falling, waking herself up in a plunging panic. And Isaac has probably gone for good.

  She starts the night warm: the staff have left two hot-water bottles waiting in the neatly turned bed. Soon she finds out why: all the sheets are damp. Then she realises, everything is damp. Everything is damp because they are in cloud. And when things are damp, their natural state is cold. Within an hour, she is clutching the lukewarm rubber of the rapidly cooling hot-water bottle.

  And tomorrow is the test, the ultimate test, when she, Vanessa, goes to look for the gorillas. She has wanted to do this for half her life, but is she fit enough? Can she do it? The website says you need ‘above average fitness’. Of course she is fit, superbly fit, she is always doing sit-ups or yoga or Pilates, but when she first saw the forest, her heart failed her. It seemed to go straight upwards, so the top of one tree was waving against the bottom of the tree behind. At supper, the staff had explained about tomorrow. There are four groups of habituated gorillas, but some of them are a day’s hike away, whereas some of them are relatively close.

  Which group will Vanessa be assigned to? Will she be unlucky? She is often unlucky. She stretches, anxiously, against the damp duvet, and flexes her muscles: above average fitness. Then her knee starts hurting: savage little prickles that she associates with arthritis. Of course, she was cooped up in the car all day. But what if her body lets her down? At 5.30, with half an hour to go before her phone alarm shocks her awake, she falls asleep, thinking, ‘Health is all that matters.’ Light is filtering through the curtains.

  33

  Wincing, limping, he keeps on walking. Where is the border? He has no idea. He knows where is east, because the sun is rising, red sky leaking through the gaps in the leaves. Once red sky did not make him think of blood. Once he was a child like any other. He must keep heading east, but where is he going? If you lose your past, can you ever go back? How can he ever exp
lain to his father: his mother? (Once his mother used to hold him close. She loved to talk to him in funny voices. He cannot bear to remember his mother.) He has become a shame to them, a curse, worse than nothing. And yet, he gets up, and he forces his feet to accept the cruel yoke of his ill-fitting boots, and he ignores the hunger, and the sores on his back, which he has not been able to resist scratching, and his eye, which is infected, and half-closed. Through crooked lids, he sees leaves, sunlight, as the sun strains up above the horizon. He is sick of leaves. He is sick of sunlight. He is sick of it all. But somehow he keeps going.

  Davey Lucas sits with Justin in the waiting area at the big North London hospital, which is undergoing modernisation, which has been undergoing it for over a decade. The waiting area and foyer are splendid, but the wards and corridors are crowded and narrow. The local paper says infection rates are high: MRSA, Clostridium difficile. Old people go in and never come out. But it’s still a hospital, with modern medicine, and highly trained doctors hurrying about. The two men sitting here have to be hopeful.

  They’re not talking much: there’s not much to say; but they’re thinking, hard, in their own separate worlds. Davey Lucas is ashamed of the direction of his thoughts, and keeps trying to swing them back to kindness, but he’s swept by tides of anxious self-interest: ‘If poor little Abdy has meningitis, will Dubois get it, and Harry? Will I? Please don’t let my children catch it. What about the new car? Is that infected?’

  He looks across at Justin, and pats him on the arm. ‘All right, old son?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Justin. ‘Thanks, mate. It’s just, you know, the waiting.’ But really Justin’s thinking, ‘It’s all my fault. Why didn’t I take Abdy to the doctor earlier?’ But perhaps it is Zakira’s fault, as well. Why was she so sure the rash was eczema?