by Maggie Gee
Now Davey is wishing he could wash the hand that just patted Justin on the arm. ‘I know he’ll be fine,’ he says. ‘Just fine. But I’ll have to get home to the kids, in a bit. My mother’s gone round to baby-sit, and Delorice doesn’t really trust her with them.’
Home to the kids. Justin’s swept with envy. Those three words sound like heaven to him. But he has to relax. It will be all right. ‘Can’t see your mum as a baby-sitter. Amazing woman,’ he responds, vaguely. He has met Lottie Lucas: an art collector, still blonde and beautiful in her sixties. But rather self-centred. Not exactly motherly ... Why is the doctor taking so long?
‘Women,’ says Davey, ‘They’re not what they were,’ and the two men smile at each other, wryly, but at the same time, some part of them means it. What happened to comfortable, stay-at-home mothers? Why is it them at the hospital?
A white-coated doctor appears in the doorway.
34
Mary Tendo is back in Kampala. Mary Tendo is back at her post. The Sheraton liner churns on through the water, high on its hill, on the crest of its wave.
But to Mary, as ever, it’s theatre.
Mary is at the back of house, with the huge rattling washers and steaming dryers, the ironing machines and polishing machines, the unpainted corridors, the rickety doors, making sure the scenery is all in order.
At the front of the house, when the guests aren’t looking, the Floor Supervisors are walking round checking; the Shoe-shiner is scraping red mud from guests’ shoes or bringing them back in his neat cane baskets (he smiles slightly too much as he knocks at their door and they offer him a small yellow coin, or nothing); insects are being sprayed against, plastic bottles of water, two per day, are being left by basins, so the muzungu can clean their teeth in bottled water, the Director of Procurement is driving a hard bargain, the Food and Beverage Manager is frowning at the lamb which is more like mutton than ever, today, the Ken Fixit are packed into the tiny service lifts in their navy blue boiler suits, burrowing up or down to the floor which has sprung the latest leak or breakage ...
But none of this happens in front of the guests. The essential illusion: here is ease, and calm. Life is a cruise: it’s the Sheraton.
Mary’s happy to be back, with her uniform on, in her own office with the mirror on the wall so she can see what’s going on in the Desk Clerk’s room. She goes and wipes a smear off the glass of the door, and smiles through the panel at Pretty, the Desk Clerk. But why is Rachel, the Assistant Housekeeper, with her? Why is she talking earnestly to Pretty? While Mary was away, Rachel has done her job, but now Mary is back, she has her eye on her, though she does not dislike her: she is just young. Perhaps she is too ambitious, also. ‘Watch and learn,’ Mary has told her, rather often. Now Mary is back in the driver’s seat.
She checks occupancy rates on her computer. 77 per cent: that is not bad. There are more guests than usual, because of CHOGM: building contractors, diplomats, business people. Once CHOGM actually begins, they will be full. She looks back at the statistics for the week she was away. ‘Rachel,’ she calls, and Rachel comes in, looking smart and keen in her gold jacket.
‘Were the International Writers happy with their conference?’
‘I believe so, Miss. In fact, mostly they were African, but there were some bazungu, and of course the British Council.’
‘We see a lot of the British Council.’
‘Yes, they are running seminars on Leadership, Miss. They have booked the ballroom for the next eight weeks.’ Mary does not react, because she does not want Rachel to think she has told her something she doesn’t know, though in fact, she didn’t. Knowledge is power.
Rachel hesitates. ‘Perhaps I could go? I would be interested in Leadership.’
Mary looks at her sharply. ‘Why is that? This department does not need more leadership. You need education, not leadership. Your maths is still poor, and your English.’ She glowers, and Rachel looks away. ‘Whereas Pretty’s English is excellent.’
The Linen Room Supervisor knocks and enters. ‘Welcome back, Miss Mary. I have a little problem. Two pairs of sheets will not respond to stain removal.’
‘And the reason for this is?’ Mary asks, eyebrows astonished. Her staff have grown to dread this astonishment, which comes whenever everything is not running smoothly, and seems to suggest, ‘It must be your fault.’
‘The reason is, the International Writers. They were drinking too much wine in their bedrooms. In fact, they were drinking too much in the foyer, also. I am glad they have gone,’ says the girl, indignant. (She is twenty-five years old, and a born again Christian. She has never drunk wine. She is a virgin.)
Rachel risks a smile, though Mary is cross. ‘But they were funny,’ says Rachel. ‘I thought they were amusing. One night they were dancing in the Rhino Pub.’
‘And how did you have time to go in the Pub?’ asks Mary strictly. The Pub is not a pub, though you might think so if you had never lived in London. It has just been renovated, and reopened, but it’s just another bar at the Sheraton, a noisier, rougher one than the Piano Bar. It makes Mary feel strange to hear these girls talking as if writers were a certain kind of human being. She, Mary Tendo, is also a writer.
‘I went to take a message to the new barman.’ Mary knows that Rachel likes the new barman. Normally she would tease her about it, and tell her she must concentrate on education. But her thoughts are on the International Writers. Will she ever be an international writer? She would like to write at length about the visit to the village. It filled her with so many complicated feelings. The mango tree where she sat with her cousins and told stories, gone. And her mother dead, and her brother grown old, and her uncle the head of the family, in place of her own father, who is lying in his grave, and her sister unable to discipline her daughters. But the women of the village were a comfort to her. Her brother’s wife, and the remaining cousins, these women she had known since they were children together, and when she told them about Jamil, their sorrow was real, they were all weeping. She could write how their grief made her less alone, whereas Charles will not accept that Jamil might be dead. Perhaps because Death is always in the village. They accepted it as something life brings. She will think about all these things in her journal. Yet how can she bear to write Jamil’s story? It is lost to her, he is lost to her, the flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. For a moment, the edge of her desk blurs with tears.
‘People say many writers are too fond of beer,’ the Linen Room Supervisor dares to say, pertly. ‘And some of them did not pay their bills. I heard about it from Rebecca in Reception.’
Mary stares at her. She knows nothing, nothing. ‘I think you are too young to give your opinions.’ (If the British publisher had published me, I could have already been an international writer. And then, would they say I was an alcoholic?) ‘Please put the sheets through stain removal again. I cannot authorise a new purchase.’
The Linen Room Supervisor sighs and goes, but tries to regain lost ground by giving a piece of special knowledge over her shoulder. ‘When I passed by Reception, a man was asking for the writers. He did not understand the conference was over. I think his name was Julius Something. He had a nice voice. He was a handsome man.’
‘That must be Julius Ocwinyo,’ says Mary Tendo, hiding her excitement by speaking coldly. ‘It does not matter if he is handsome. He is a famous Ugandan publisher. I must go to Reception now, to check my figures.’
She must not run in the Sheraton, and indeed Mary Tendo hardly ever runs, but she cannot wait for the lift to arrive, and she goes down the backstairs as swiftly and smoothly as a panther who has just smelled a deer on the air.
He is turning to leave when Mary confronts him. ‘You are Mr Julius Ocwinyo,’ she says. ‘I have many of the books published by Fountain.’
‘So people are still buying our books?’ he asks, his eyes smiling behind small glasses.
‘I am buying your books. And I am a writer,’ Mary says. His face falls at once, and she
is not surprised, for Mary had discovered, when she was in UK, that publishers fear and dislike writers. If they could publish books without writers, they would. And Julius happens to write well himself.
‘That is interesting,’ he says, but perhaps insincerely, his eyes on her Sheraton uniform. ‘Did you catch any of the international writers’ events?’
‘In fact, I was away.’
‘Oh, here’s a list. Come and visit us sometime in our bookshop.’
She takes the piece of paper for attention later. She must make this man see her for what she is. An unusual person, who can think and write, who has traveled widely, a person of talent, not just a Ugandan in a uniform. We Ugandans, she thinks, do not respect one another. He cannot believe I am really a writer. Or perhaps Julius is just busy. He has already switched off, he is on his way.
‘My book was to be published by Harpic, in England.’
And then he looks up. ‘Harpic? It’s a well-known name.’
‘I did not let them publish me.’ Which was a simplification, but not a lie. ‘My editor there was clean round the bend.’ It’s a very nice phrase she has picked up from Trevor. ‘But other publishers wanted to publish me.’
This time she really has his attention. She leads him to the empty Piano Bar, where one of the maids is vacuuming, and lays the list of writers carefully on the table, and commands her friend Joshua to bring them coffee. When Joshua arrives with two glasses of pale latte, sweet milky urban coffee-soup which makes her want to laugh (for she has just returned from the village in the country where the red fat berries of the coffee are grown, yet no-one ever thinks of drinking coffee), Joshua is so busy smiling, to show her respect in front of the bespectacled, distinguished young man, that he spills a little coffee as he puts the cups down, a leak of mild fluid on the International Writers’ Programme. Mary tuts, forgivingly, and picks the paper up, and finds she is looking at a name she knows well.
In a little stain of darkness, Vanessa Henman. In the list of International Delegates. For a second, she cannot make sense of it.
Vanessa Henman, here in Uganda.
The world is very big, as she knows very well, for Mary Tendo is a woman of the world, and has made the biggest journey of all, the journey that so many people dream of making, the great journey from the village to the city. But the world is also very small, she sees, as she stares at the paper, and feels dizzy: the world of the educated, rich, lucky. Vanessa Henman has got there, somehow. Can Mary join it? She’s touching it, suddenly; she’s nearly in; she’s on the edge.
By the end of coffee, she is over the frontier. This is her chance, and Mary takes it. Julius Ocwinyo will read her manuscript. Mary is quietly confident.
35
Vanessa’s little group of trekkers has nearly made it to the top. They’ve gone almost vertical for over an hour, single-file, dogged, left-foot-right-foot in the toe-holds, which are growing muddier as each one passes, the rain-slicked head of each sweating pilgrim bent earnestly over the back foot of the one before, stopping at first every ten minutes, then every five, then almost every minute, and ahead of her, Vanessa sees another woman her age in trouble, being hauled up bodily by two porters, and she hardly has time to feel superior before, as she rests, blood thudding in her ears (and the caravan below her has to halt as well as she pants, gulps, gasps at damp air), her porter Barnabas climbs lithely up beside her, overtakes her, magically not slipping in the mud, smiles down at her kindly, seizes her hand; she’s too relieved to protest, and they go up in tandem. By the time they crest the first slope, her heart is racing, her face streams sweat, and there’s a hard band of heat where her sunhat’s pulled down over her forehead, serving as a rain-hat as they climb through the drizzle; her thighs feel as if a giant has squashed them. But her feet, in their leather boots, are standing up well, and Vanessa thinks, ‘I’ve always had good feet. I’m lucky that way. I’m an excellent walker.’
Once they’ve made the top, her energy returns, though now that they are really in the forest, the vegetation’s thicker, catching at her knees, whacking at her thighs, scratching one cheek, and tree-roots and creepers tangle with her ankles, and the rain sounds heavier, battering the canopy hundreds of feet above her head. The guide reminds them to beware of ants; she looks down, and with a gasp, she sees them, great columns of them seething through the undergrowth like treacle; but alas, her feet still have to go down somewhere. Vanessa’s having problems with her combat trousers, which wouldn’t be useful in a real war. Every time she stops to tuck them back inside her socks, they descend to her hips, leaving a swathe of bare belly, which gets bitten, instantly, by small stinging midges, so with alternate hands she is hauling up her trousers and clutching at her camera and binoculars; but she doesn’t care, she feels young and free: war has stayed away: she has made it to Bwindi! ‘They are near,’ says their guide, at the head of the column, and then the most magical words they could hear, as he turns round to face them, smiling, triumphant, and lays his finger on his lips: ‘They are here.’ They pass it down the line, his whispered message: ‘They are here.’ Yes, they have found the gorillas! And the rain, with perfect timing, eases off. No (she looks upwards), the rain has stopped. Just a curtain of raindrops released by the branches.
I am lucky, lucky. Thank you, God, thinks Vanessa, the proud and vocal agnostic.
There’s a juggling of bags, a fluster of cameras, whispered swearwords as people fix settings or swap batteries or remove their raingear, and then crowd onwards, jubilant. Vanessa is peering where the guide has gone. She sees nothing, then briefly, blackness, moving, two patches of something, and then they are gone. Was that it? Their guide holds up his hand: Stop: then goes forward on his own. Then beckons.
As she comes through into a small clearing, the sun breaks through, the sun floods down, they are in a paradise of greenness, brightness – she sees them, suddenly, so long desired, the black beating heart at the centre of the sunlight, and where she had imagined a scattered troupe, there is one living organism, a family, a nest of interwining, yawning gorillas, sprawled on their backs, drying out in the sunshine, stretching, luxurious, languorous, dreamy, a cloud of golden midges dancing above them. The humans fan out, hardly daring to breathe, individual, intent, competing for places, determined to get the best camera angle, but the apes can hardly bear to move apart. As one passes another, the second reaches out, gently, casually, and catches a limb, and the passer-by pauses, patient, to be groomed, or they lie stroking and cuddling, face to face, or a smaller one pulls burrs and ticks off a larger one, or a young one, half-enfolded by an older sibling, begins to roll and sprawl and play and slowly kick up one small, horny grey foot in the air, and wriggle and extend each toe, sensuous. Their faces. But they are so like us. Wrinkled yet childlike, wise and passive. Their eyes are shiny, dark and still.
Happy, thinks Vanessa. It is almost not a thought. Her muscles register the pleasure of their muscles. She forgets, for a minute, to use her camera, but all around her they are busy and intent, the humans determined to freeze the moment, two rows of them, fingers flickering with effort.
An hour. It is all the regulations allow. Time passes fast, time passes slowly, for nothing happens, nothing at all, as a group of eight gorillas recover from a storm, eat myenopsis leaves, rest in the moment, watched at close quarters by a group of eight humans, who dare not look at them directly, but protect themselves from that long, opaque gaze with cameras, zoom lenses, sunglasses, layers of glass and metal and plastic, and the humans are both frozen and restless, their bodies immobilised with fear and excitement, with once-in-a-lifetime gorilla decorum, but their deft little digits are constantly twitching, their necks poke out, thrilled, anxious; whereas the older group of primates move slowly, unbothered, or make little rocking runs at an insect, a baby, a delicious leaf, each other. The adult gorillas ignore the humans: the silverback, Ruhondeza, takes one dismissive look under massive bone brow-ridges, and turns his great back: he still has a baby to decide abou
t – will it live, or die? Is it his, or not? He has killed several of the recent infants, for he has to keep control of things; it isn’t easy, being a leader. But he picks up the tiny, spider-small baby with its comical quiff and liquid eyes and stares, longingly, into his pupils. Something like him. He likes this baby. Its boldness, little pink paws, round belly. If only the stink-apes would go away – two adolescents, though, stop and gaze: what creatures are these, so pale and foul-smelling, staring, immobile, neither feeding nor playing, each in its prison of stone-things, twig-things? A young female lies on her back, stretching; she farts, gently, prrr-prrr-prr-prr, and eases her back on the bed of squashed leaves: she has eaten enough; hot sun on her fur; her long leathery feet are curled in the air; no insect is biting; this is ... she is ...
and her eyes meet Vanessa’s, who’s laid aside her camera: shadows pass over them, sun and shadows; part of it all; they look at each other;
alive like me; alive like her –
After the hour, which is over in a second, the guide makes a signal, the humans get up, bones creaking and groaning from the unaccustomed crouch, for they need to be supported with chairs, stools, sofas; and in the other team the silverback rears up, grey, mountainous, and heaves himself away, square shoulders swaying, but look, look, the skinny baby clings on to his back, and the others follow Ruhondeza with one accord, grey ships on the greenness, riding low in the waters.
At once, the humans break into a torrent of noise. The guide leads them back to the place where they left their porters. He tells the tourists how lucky they were. ‘You have had a good experience. You have seen them from close! Close!’ He thinks, and I hope you will tip us well. The pay for a porter is only 10 dollars, and without porters, you would never reach the top: you are fat, or old, or weak; you are soft and overloaded. He knows what tourists pay at the Gorilla Forest Camp: 200 dollars a day, plus extras. And yet they only pay the porters 10 dollars. He has discussed it many times with the other guides and porters, and one man said, ‘But of course they cannot pay us, they must give all their money for accommodation,’ and another man said, ‘But that is unjust, since the Gorilla Forest Camp is not owned by Ugandans. So you can understand what happened before.’
