by Lesley Lokko
‘No more than two. I’m watching my weight, remember?’
He suppressed a smile. She looked the same to him as she’d always done. A tall, striking woman, always with an elaborate, beautifully coiffed hairdo. The years in jail seemed to have had remarkably little impact on her. It was his father who had changed, so much so that his first sighting of him was a shock. He’d always remembered him as tall and thin but the years on Robben Island had worn him down, quite literally. He was thin to the point of emaciation. It was the first time the consequences of his parents’ sacrifice had been hammered home to him. In the years since their release, however, his father had changed again. Now, like many men who’d existed on a Spartan prison diet, the rich food and wine post-release had produced a small but noticeable paunch, a little potbelly, which was the source of much teasing between his parents. The rest of him had remained lean, but the stomach gave it away. He was as fond of a good steak washed down with red wine as anyone else. ‘You wait,’ he said now, looking enviously at Solam’s washboard stomach, ‘it’ll happen to you too.’
‘Never,’ Solam laughed. He wasn’t given to vanity, not by a long shot, but he loved sport too much to even contemplate being out of shape. Running, cycling, rugby . . . those were his passions, not Cuban cigars or barrel-aged whisky.
He kissed his mother goodbye, leaving her on the phone. Her driver and bodyguard were waiting discreetly in the corner of the restaurant. He crossed the plaza, conscious of eyes on him as he went. There were precious few black faces in the Rosebank Mall who weren’t waiters or security guards. He cut an odd figure, he knew, with his smart suit and polished brogues. He caught the eye of a waiter who turned to look at him as he passed, pride in his face. Solam knew that he represented a new kind of black man – educated, erudite, confident. He walked through the Mall as though he owned it, a whole generation and class away from those who’d carried the hated dompas, the piece of paper allowing blacks to be in urban areas for no more than seventy-two hours without permission. It had been over a decade since the pass laws were repealed, but their memory was hard to erase.
He crossed the road and jogged up the steps to the car park, ignoring the cluster of beggars who were permanently stationed at the entrance. He could get used to many things, but not the beggars. The high, hard summer light bounced off the sleek cars and the puddles left in the ground by the earlier sudden rainstorm. He was still getting used to the reversal in seasons. Winter in the northern hemisphere was summer in the south. Christmas in summer. It still didn’t feel right.
He got into his car, enjoying the smell of new leather. Yes, a convertible BMW was something of a cliché, but it was also one of the finest cars he’d ever driven. He manoeuvred his way out of the parking lot and turned into Sturdee Avenue, enjoying the weight and thrust of the car’s powerful engine. He drove fast, flying through the intersection of Jan Smuts, heading towards the inner city. In a few weeks’ time, he thought to himself with a faint smile, he’d be coming home to his own place, his first home.
He felt his phone vibrate gently in his pocket. He tugged it out and looked at the message as he waited at the lights. Don’t forget to look up Kemisa Mashabane. I promised her mother. He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat with a sigh. When would his mother realize that he didn’t need her to organize his love life? He had plenty of expertise and experience in that department without anyone’s help, least of all hers.
10
For a few moments, none of the surgeons clustered around the gurney spoke. Everyone’s concentration was on the patient lying in front of them. Mr Fairbanks, the neurologist in charge, cleared his throat. ‘Dr Mashabane, will you take over?’
Kemi swallowed nervously. There was absolutely no time to waste. It was only her second craniotomy, but she knew why she’d been singled out. She was in her first year of the neurosurgery programme and she was the only female on the team: she had to get it right. She adjusted the focus on the high-powered microscope and leaned over. From the screen to her left she knew the tumour was located just under the right temporal area. Fairbanks had guided the removal of the dura and the delicate pink mass of the brain was already exposed.
‘Eleven, please,’ she murmured to the theatre nurse hovering discreetly at her left elbow. A scalpel was passed along. She gripped it, remembering to relax her hold exactly at the moment of the first incision. The blade went in cleanly; not a flicker of resistance. A thin, angry stream of red traced the line of incision, whisked away before it could spread by the aspirator. Geoff Manning, second-in-command, peeled back the quivering mass of pulpy flesh with his pincers, giving her as much room as possible to view the brain. She saw it immediately. In contrast to the healthy-looking surrounding matter, the tumour was purplish and malevolent, exactly as one might imagine it. She cut away carefully at the sac covering it, Geoff holding back the flaps as she went. The melanotic tumour was nestled in the right upper corner of the exposure, glistening accusingly at her, pulsating in time with the patient’s heartbeat. The veins were clearly visible, one slightly thicker than the rest, delivering the blood on which the tumour had been greedily feeding.
‘Gently does it. Mind you don’t puncture too early.’
‘Yes, Mr Fairbanks.’ Kemi’s hand was steady.
‘Relax into it. You’re doing fine.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
She leaned forward, all her concentration focused on the jelly-like tissue sac covering the tumour. A millimetre to the left or right would result in damage to the healthy brain tissue – and who knew what that would lead to? It fascinated her – the reduction of a life’s worth of feelings, emotions and memories to the pulpy grey-pink matter that lay before her, its form giving no clues as to what lay beneath, buried within. An inadvertent slip of the blade might take out any number of experiences or skills . . . loss of language, the ability to recall, a person’s motor skills? It was what had drawn her to neurosurgery in the first place, both the terror and the exhilaration.
‘Well done,’ Geoff murmured two hours later, as the team pushed through the operating theatre doors into the anteroom. ‘Steady as she went. Couldn’t have done a better job myself.’
She smiled at him. ‘No, you couldn’t,’ she said, half teasingly. ‘But I could feel Fairbanks’s eyes boring through my skull, never mind the patient’s.’
‘He’s hard to impress,’ Geoff agreed, peeling off his surgical gown. ‘But you’re doing a fine job of it. Just watch out for those hands.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Wandering, apparently. He’s got a bit of a reputation.’
Kemi laughed. ‘Come on. He’s old enough to be my uncle. No way.’
‘Why d’you say that?’
‘What?’
‘Uncle. Most people say, “old enough to be my father”, not “uncle”.’
‘I . . . I was brought up by my uncle,’ Kemi said quickly. She knew exactly where the conversation would turn.
‘I’ve always wanted to ask you . . . you’re not related to Tole Mashabane, are you?’
‘No,’ she said smoothly, without turning around. Barely a week went by now without his name in the news. ‘It’s a common name,’ she lied. ‘A bit like “Smith”, or “Jones”.’
‘Ah. I always wondered. Wouldn’t that be something, though? If you were related.’
‘Would it?’ Kemi said politely. She picked up her handbag. ‘I’m off,’ she said firmly.
‘Aren’t you coming out for a drink with us? Come on, it’s nearly Christmas.’
Kemi shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’m meeting someone.’
Geoff raised his eyebrows. ‘Someone?’
‘No, nothing like that. My sister.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know you had a sister. You’ve never mentioned her before.’
‘Geoff, I’ve only known you for a couple of months,’ Kemi said, only half in exasperation.
‘Yes, but you know everything about me. Practically everything.’
‘That’s because you talk
a lot. I don’t.’
‘Where are you meeting? Can I come along?’
‘No.’ And then more gently, to soften the blow: ‘Maybe next time.’
‘Promise?’
‘No.’ She smiled. ‘Besides, haven’t you got a date? With the lovely Pernilla, if I remember correctly.’
Geoff smirked. ‘You know perfectly well I’d ditch her in a heartbeat if you just gave the nod.’
‘Don’t hold your breath.’ Kemi pushed the locker door firmly shut. ‘Have fun,’ she said, twirling her fingers at him. ‘I can’t wait to hear all about it.’
‘You’re just saying that,’ Geoff said, slinging his bag over his shoulder and following her out of the changing room.
‘Yes, I am,’ she grinned. ‘See you Monday.’ She blew him a mock kiss and disappeared through the swing doors.
It was raining outside. She pulled up the collar of her coat and tucked her unruly curls under its hood. She walked down Gower Street, past the peeling facade of the old Victorian teaching hospital, now under demolition. A sleek glass-and-steel phoenix of a building was supposed to rise from its dust, or so the billboards promised. She rather liked the old, red-brick Gothic pile – it reminded her a little of Fettes. At the thought of Fettes, her face brightened. It had been almost six months since she’d seen Jen. She was back from a three-month stint in New York, apparently the maximum time she could get away with, without anything as official as a work permit in hand. Kemi had forgotten what exactly she’d been doing in New York . . . an assistant to an assistant to an assistant curator? Something along those lines and something in the ‘art world’, whatever and wherever that was. It was hard to keep up with Jen. She spoke of the art world the way some people spoke of the Third World; a separate world ‘out there’, disconnected from normal, everyday life. Wherever it was – London, New York or Miami – it seemed to Kemi to be a world fuelled largely by artists’ egos, clients’ money and a bewildering, ever-increasing circle of ‘contacts’, not people, friends or colleagues, whose every whim Jen sought desperately to please. It was amusing but exasperating, too. Better than most, Kemi knew Jen was capable of so much more. After graduating with a degree in art history, Jen had drifted from one seemingly dead-end job to another, never quite settling, either geographically or professionally. The disastrous conversation with Uncle Robert meant she’d never pursue her dreams of being an artist. Kemi listened to her long list of reasons why she’d abandoned the idea with as much sympathy as she could muster, but with little understanding. It didn’t make sense to her: why didn’t Jen just do what she really wanted? Who cared what others thought? But she’d learned the hard way not to ask.
She pushed open the door to the Thai restaurant that Jen had chosen and was shown to a window seat. It was still early; just past five on a rainy Friday afternoon, two weeks before Christmas. She looked outside; there was an Evening Standard placard almost directly in front of her. Winnie Mandela to Testify. She looked away. It was the second reminder of home in less than a couple of hours, though she wasn’t sure why she thought of it as home. How could a place she hadn’t been to once in nineteen years still be thought of as ‘home’? She picked up the menu, looking for something else to occupy her. Jen would be late; she was always late.
Ten minutes later she looked up, sensing someone coming towards her. It was Jen. She rushed to her in her usual flurry of scarves, coat, jumper, handbag, her hands tugging impatiently at her coat buttons as she dropped her gloves and shopping bags at her feet.
She got up. They collided. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured, hugging Jen tightly. ‘Gosh, you’re cold!’ Her long red hair was damp at the ends.
‘I’m late, aren’t I?’ Jen asked anxiously, throwing her coat over the back of a chair. Kemi stole a quick look at her before she collapsed into it. She’d put on weight, Kemi noticed. Jen’s weight went dramatically up and down, depending on dozens of factors Kemi couldn’t keep up with, anything from being in love to falling out of it; from finding a job to losing one. She lived at an emotional intensity that made Kemi slightly dizzy.
Kemi shook her head firmly. ‘No, I’m early. Got out of surgery at four.’
Jen clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh no, I forgot! I’m such an idiot!’
‘What?’
‘I haven’t seen you since you won!’
‘Won what?’ Kemi was puzzled.
‘That place . . . the surgery thing. On the team. You know, the place you were hoping for . . .’
‘Oh, Jen. That was months ago.’ Kemi smiled. ‘And it’s no big deal.’
‘I always forget,’ she moaned. ‘You must think I’m a complete flake.’
Kemi shook her head, smiling at her a little sadly. ‘You know I don’t think that. You’ve been busy . . . we’ve both been busy. Let’s get something to drink. What’ll you have?’
Jen brightened visibly. ‘I’ll have a glass of white,’ she said decisively. ‘No, make it a bottle. I’ve been waiting for this all day. I’ve just been run off my feet!’
‘What’s going on?’ Kemi asked, picking up the wine list. ‘I thought you said you were coming back home for a rest.’
‘No, that’s all changed. Parker found me the most amazing job at this new gallery in Mayfair and—’
‘Who’s Parker?’ Kemi interrupted, looking at Jen closely. A new man?
‘Oh, no, nothing like that,’ Jen said quickly, reading Kemi’s glance. ‘He’s gay.’
‘So?’
‘Plus, he’s American,’ Jen said breezily, as if that completely ruled him out. ‘We met through Mindy . . . remember her? She was at Durham with me. I’m sure you met her. Anyhow, Parker’s great. He used to work for Sotheby’s, and he knows everyone, and I mean everyone. So, he spoke to Federico at Cube, and the next thing I know, I’m on the phone to Federico’s wife, Isabella, and—’
‘Jen, I don’t know any of these people,’ Kemi interrupted her again gently. ‘But just tell me what it is that you’re actually going to be doing?’
‘Oh, I’m being silly! I keep forgetting you don’t know any of them. They’re art dealers. They’ve just bought Cube, you know, the new gallery that’s just opened on Bruton Street . . . you must have heard of it? No? Next to Tiphâne de Boissy’s gallery?’
Kemi shook her head again. She listened with half an ear as Jen rattled off a dozen names she’d never heard of. Tiphâne? Brooklyn? Federico? It was such a far cry from her own world, where people had simple, normal names, like Geoff and David and Anne. As Jen began excitedly describing the new gallery and her new job – which sounded suspiciously like all her other jobs where she was given a grand-sounding title but made to do all the donkey work – Kemi’s mind drifted back to the Evening Standard headline she’d spotted in the window, and to Geoff’s remark. She was uncomfortably aware of the fact that her parents were beginning to reassert themselves in her life in a way they hadn’t for almost twenty years. Although her mother had been released from house arrest three years after Kemi’s arrival in Edinburgh, it had been decided to leave Kemi with the McFaddens. There was little point disrupting her schooling, especially since she appeared to have settled in so well. Florence Mashabane continued the fight to free her South African husband, languishing on Robben Island with all the other ANC prisoners. Freedom in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, her home country, was matched across the border in South Africa by the defiant intensification of the slowly dying apartheid regime.
It would be another decade before political prisoners in South Africa were released. When Tole walked out alongside Mandela in 1990, Florence accompanied him to London a month later. Kemi was summoned by the headmaster at Fettes and told to prepare herself for a historic journey to London. There were likely to be reporters around, she was told, and no doubt journalists would be keen to talk to her. ‘Why?’ Kemi asked, alarmed.
‘Well, they’re your parents, too,’ Dr Osborne said, smiling benevolently. ‘As well as being heroes, of course.’
Kemi didn’t know what t
o say. As soon as she walked into the hotel room in South Kensington, she understood that the part of her life that had existed before Edinburgh was firmly over. It had nothing to do with her. The regal, aloof woman in an elaborate headdress sitting in the upright chair at the window overlooking the gardens didn’t belong to her. She didn’t even get up! She sat calmly with her hands folded in her lap and waited for Kemi to cross the room, ignoring the assembled reporters and their noisy, clacking cameras. Kemi reached her mother. She accepted her mother’s cool hand on her wrist in the same way she’d felt her hand on her head, aged nine, when she was sent away. Not even a kiss! Her mother’s head moved once, twice, the same benediction. ‘Welcome home.’ Kemi had no idea what to say. The plush suite was no more a home than the bungalow in Harare with the swinging screen door had been. Edinburgh was home. Not Harare. Not the Bentley Hotel in Harrington Gardens. She stood back and allowed herself to be inspected slowly, head to toe and back again. Her mother’s expression was unreadable, unreachable. Her father was ‘out’ and no one seemed to know when he’d be back. When he finally arrived, flanked by bodyguards, she suddenly felt the urge to hide behind her mother’s skirts. She had no recollection whatsoever of the tall, thin man who stood before her, smiling widely. At the last minute, just before leaving Fettes, she’d slipped the pocket watch into her skirt. Now she fingered it nervously.
‘Kem, you’re not listening!’ Jen’s voice broke in on her thoughts.
‘I am, I am, I promise! Sorry, it’s just been a long day.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘Couple of tough cases.’
Jen was immediately contrite. ‘Listen to me. I’ve just been sitting here prattling on about myself . . . sorry, Kem, honestly. I haven’t seen you for six months and all I can do is go on about me.’
‘No, don’t be silly. Anyhow, your life’s so much more interesting than mine, I promise you. All I do is go to work, go to bed, wake up and do it all over again. Now, tell me about next Saturday. What’s the event again? Do I need to put on a dress?’
