Soul Sisters

by Lesley Lokko

  ‘You’ll be staying with me and you’ll be painting every day . . . you won’t need much. It’s only three months.’

  ‘I know, I know. But I’d still prefer to talk to him face-to-face than over the phone. He’ll probably just put the phone down on me. If I’m standing in front of him, he won’t have much choice.’

  Kemi said nothing. She’d just hoped Jen would actually do as she promised and go up to Edinburgh. If not, she’d be spending the long plane journey down the length of Africa alone.

  She stood up, yawning. She had another week of work and then four glorious days off. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had more than a day off . . . whole weekends off and bank holidays and the like seemed to belong to another lifetime. Her rotation had come to an end, but UCH was one of the capital’s busiest hospitals and there seemed to be no let-up to the stream of emergencies that came flooding through the doors. For a moment her mind drifted to the previous night’s conversation with Carrick. Most odd! She’d bumped into him coming out of theatre. He’d rushed up to her, already breathless, as though he’d been running.

  ‘I just heard the news!’ he said, startling her.

  She pulled her mask aside. She hadn’t even stepped out of her surgery boots. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Mark just told me! You’re leaving!’ The look of distress on his face was almost comical.

  ‘Er, yes . . . it’s only temporary. I . . . I applied for a fellowship in South Africa,’ she answered, bewildered. Why should it even matter to him? She wasn’t on his team.

  He stood there, looking utterly dejected. ‘You . . . you never said,’ he said finally, his voice trailing off.

  Kemi was even more puzzled. Aside from the one time they’d had a drink together and the occasional encounter in the hallways or the medics’ staffroom, where she couldn’t recall ever saying more than ‘hello’, she’d barely spoken to him. ‘I didn’t . . . well, I just didn’t think it mattered—’

  ‘When are you going?’ he interrupted her.

  ‘In about a fortnight. I’m finishing up with Fairbanks on Saturday, then I’m on call for a week . . . and then we’re off.’

  ‘We?’

  She felt her face grow warm. It seemed ludicrous to even think it. No . . . surely not? ‘My sister. She’s coming with me for the three months.’

  ‘Oh.’ He seemed to be struggling to speak. ‘I . . . I was rather hoping you might consider cardiology,’ he said finally. ‘Once you’d finished with Mark, of course.’

  Relief flooded through her, followed immediately by embarrassment. Of course, it was professional interest. How on earth could she have even dreamed it was anything else? ‘Oh, I’d love to,’ she said quickly, aware as soon as she said it of how silly she sounded. You didn’t just jump from neuro to cardio on a whim. ‘To . . . to chat about it. Once I get back, I mean,’ she added lamely.

  ‘Yes, of course. Well, I . . . I hope you’ll, er, stay in touch. Here . . . I’ll give you my email address. I’ve only just got one, although I must confess the whole thing seems like a rather bad idea to me,’ he said with a short laugh, fishing a card out of his pocket.

  ‘Yes, all our case notes are being digitized. I spend more time at my computer than I do with patients,’ she agreed.

  ‘Exactly. Well, I suppose you’ve got lots to do,’ Carrick said briskly. ‘I hope you enjoy it. Look forward to hearing about it when you’re back.’ He gave her a quick farewell salute and turned around. Before she had a chance to respond, he’d disappeared through the swing doors.

  She felt embarrassed thinking about it now. He was old enough to be her father . . . in fact, hadn’t he said he’d actually worked with her father? She walked into the kitchen, wondering if there was anything edible in the fridge. What would Jen be doing at that very moment? she wondered. She suddenly felt a pang of longing for those long Edinburgh summer nights when the light stayed in the sky until almost eleven, and the pubs and street cafes were full. It had been years since she’d been back.

  Her mobile gave a faint ping. She smiled. It was probably Jen, either tearful or triumphant. She walked back into the living room and bent down to retrieve it. Her heart missed a beat. It wasn’t Jen. She stared at the little square screen in shock. Solam Rhoyi. There it was, flashing out at her from the backlit screen. She hadn’t heard from him in three months! She pressed the ‘read message’ button with shaking fingers. Hi, how’re things? Past couple of months have been busy. Hope all’s well. Solam. She stared at it. How’re things? She almost threw the phone across the room. Jen was right. He was a prick. A world-class prick. She shoved the phone angrily into her back pocket and walked back to the kitchen. There was a bottle of wine on the top shelf. She pulled it out, unscrewed the cap and poured herself a glass. It was totally out of character but she didn’t know what else to do. She carried it back to the living room and continued her methodical packing. One folded T-shirt after another, a pair of folded jeans, another sweater . . . a hat. Anything to take her mind off the phone and the fact that she longed to text him back.

  32

  As soon as he pressed send, he regretted it. What had possessed him? Either to send it or to have ignored her for the past twelve weeks in the first place? He didn’t have a good answer. He didn’t even have a bad or weak answer. He’d been an asshole, plain and simple. After that night with the hookers when he’d lost control, he’d felt so angry with himself for giving in that he’d deliberately stopped himself from reaching out, at least until the memory of his loss of control had faded. She’d tried to call him during the week and he’d been too ashamed to answer, thinking he’d ring back at the weekend, when things had calmed down. But the weekend came and he found himself out with Dirk once more, with a different group of women this time, equally beautiful, equally willing . . . and then a week had stretched to two, and then three. And by then he felt too stupid to call her, so he’d done nothing. It niggled him like a toothache. What would he say? Sorry, I’ve been busy? I miss you? I’ve had sex with a whore, not once but twice, and I’ve been an asshole? None of the above. At least three times in the past few weeks he’d pulled out his phone, hoping for a message or another voicemail from her, wondering how to break the ice until finally, after nearly three months, he’d had enough to drink and pressed send before he could change his mind.

  Cursing, he got up and walked to the window. He dragged the sliding pane open and looked down onto the street below. It was nearly midnight but the heat of midday was still trapped in the smooth black tarmac, wafting upwards, making him sweat. The sky fluttered eyelids of lightning, briefly competing with the neon sign across the road, Best in Africa Life Insurance, sending flashes of green light down onto the crowds below. Midnight was midday; day was night. Braamfontein throbbed like a giant, human pulse. In a city that had been emptied from the inside after the fall of apartheid, it was fast becoming the place to be. The mix was heady. Students from the nearby university poured out of lectures on Friday afternoons, taking up residence in the streets – or so it seemed – until Monday morning. Abandoned buildings had been taken over as squats by white hipsters, looking for more adventure than the gated suburbs could provide. They hung out on street corners, openly smoking, revelling in the mayhem. Aspiring models and actors from the township prowled the clubs and bars. In amongst them all, the security guards and parking attendants hustled everybody, all day, all night. It was a spot that never seemed to sleep. Someone shouted out to a passer-by. He watched as two men tried to shake down a woman who’d parked her car in the wrong spot before being chased off by her friends.

  He pulled the window shut, despite the heat, and turned to go back through the loft. His phone was still silent. He looked at it for a moment, then put it away. It was his own damn fault. He wouldn’t blame her if she never replied. He looked around. The loft was vast, made even bigger by the almost total absence of furniture. Directly in front of the building, work had begun on the new Mandela Bridge, linking up the two business a
reas of Braamfontein and Newtown. The inner city was slowly coming back to life. Given time, Johannesburg would become the Manhattan of the south, the beating heart of the continent. He stopped himself. He was beginning to sound like the realtor who’d sold him the loft. He looked at his phone again. Nothing.

  He walked over to the dining table where his briefcase and laptop stood waiting for him. He pulled out a sheaf of papers and sat down. 1997 Minerals Yearbook. Niobium (Columbium) and Tantalum (Advance Release). He read it through quickly at first, frowning as he concentrated. Dirk had tossed the file his way the night before with a breezy, ‘Have a read through, tell me what you think.’ What did he think of what? The report was part-technical, part-economics. Domestic data surveys, production figures, consumption . . . what did this have to do with anything? He read on, wondering what he was supposed to be looking for. About halfway through, a headline caught his eye. World Minerals Review. He frowned. It was a listing of all the world’s niobium-containing carbonatite deposits: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Democratic Republic of Congo. He forced himself to concentrate. He dimly recognized some of the place names from geography lessons. Katanga, Kivu, Maniema and Orientale Province. The report mentioned coltan several times. Coltan? He frowned. Where had he heard of it before? What was it used for?

  He pulled his phone out and dialled a London number. A man picked up on the other end. He asked a couple of questions, listened intently for a few minutes, then hung up, tapping the phone thoughtfully against his front teeth.

  So, there it was. Dirk had singled him out for a reason. For the third time in as many months, he realized the man’s cheery buffoonery was calculated, and calculating.

  33

  Julian pulled into the driveway and switched off the engine. He sat there for a few moments, his heart thumping. Upstairs Rosemary would be waiting for him, her face cleaned and scrubbed of make-up, her cheeks and neck smelling of one or other of those face creams she used. A terrible reluctance washed over him. He opened the car door and got out. His legs felt heavy and tired. He walked up the steps to the front door feeling more exhausted than he had done in months. He slid the key in the lock and opened the door. The house was quiet and fragrant with Rosemary’s cooking. He closed it behind him as quietly as he could and stood for a few moments in the hallway. It was just after 9 p.m. These days, unless there was something specific to do – a dinner party or a work function – Rosemary went to bed early, thank God. He put down his bag on the rug, taking care not to make a noise, and walked into the living room. He looked around as though trying to see it for the first time, through someone else’s eyes. It was a long, narrow room with high ceilings. Rosemary had chosen a deep, dark blue for the walls which contrasted beautifully with the snow-white ceiling and ornate covings. A single brass bowl lightshade hung over the heavy wooden coffee table, placed right in front of the fireplace. The floors were a light knotty pine, covered with plush sheepskin rugs in creamy white and chocolate brown. An L-shaped leather sofa ran the length of the back wall and at the far end, tall double sliding doors opened out onto a conservatory which they’d added the previous year. A giant plasma television disappeared into the blue of the wall; it had been a while since the two of them had sat together on the sofa, watching anything other than the news.

  He eased off his shoes and walked over to the drinks cabinet in his socks. He poured himself a small brandy and took it to the sofa, sinking into it with a semi-audible sigh of gratitude. He took a sip, leaned back and closed his eyes. He couldn’t stop seeing her face, all dark, smooth skin and those bright, almond-shaped eyes. He lifted a hand to his nose . . . he could smell her too, that faint, lemon-sweet fragrance that she wore. He knew Rosemary’s perfumes – Dior, Chanel No. 5, and occasionally Opium – he’d been buying them as presents for years. He took another sip, and then another. How on earth was he meant to go upstairs, take off his clothes and slide into bed beside Rosemary, acting for all the world as if nothing had happened? The irony was, nothing had happened. Nothing has happened. I’ve done nothing. He’d come close to making a fool of himself, that was all, that was the extent of it.

  He reached up a hand to his chin, feeling the rough bristle underneath his fingertips with a strange sense of relief. His face was exactly as it had been that morning, when shaving. He remembered looking at himself in the mirror, just out of the heat of the shower, the blood drawn freshly to the surface of his skin. Without his glasses, he’d looked at himself, seeing in his face a younger version of himself and, with some pleasure, took it to be his definitive self . . . but of course it wasn’t. He was fifty-two years old, he reminded himself harshly, frowning at his image. What was he doing? One last, desperate kick of the prostate? He dropped his hand, shame breaking over him like a wave.

  ‘Julian?’ Rosemary’s voice brought him back to himself. She was standing at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Coming. Just got home.’

  ‘What time is it?’ she called out sleepily. ‘I thought I heard the car but then you didn’t come up.’

  ‘I’ll be right there. Go back to sleep. I’ll be up in a minute.’ He drained the last of his brandy – Dutch courage? – and walked slowly upstairs, somehow remembering to switch off the downstairs lights.

  34

  From the pressurized cabin, thirty thousand feet in the air, Kemi looked down upon the earth, hours and hours of empty landscape unfolding beneath them as they flew south. Every now and again, she pushed up the eyelid of the oval window, as if to remind herself where they were. Every so often a wave of turbulence jolted the aircraft and her view of the golden sands, soft ridge following soft ridge, was temporarily dislodged. Algeria, Niger, Chad, then the vast expanse of green-black that was Congo, great plumes of smoke from a thousand bushfires trailing listlessly below. Beside her, Jen slept, oblivious to the world. In her lap lay her books and magazines, mostly untouched since take-off. Her mind was in turmoil. She didn’t know what to expect when they landed. Her parents were delighted with the news that she was coming ‘home’, as they put it. Never mind that it was only for three months. No doubt her mother had sensed an opportunity to mend a bridge, but in truth there was no bridge to mend. There had never been a rift. How could you fix something that wasn’t broken? When she thought about her father, there was simply an absence, a void where there should have been the presence of something – love, loss, anger, even resentment . . . anything. There was nothing. Just a vague, faint memory of the solidity of a father’s embrace, the scratchiness of a beard, the whispering sound of a voice. When it came back, all those years later, it had changed beyond recognition.

  Nowadays, when she heard her father’s voice on television or saw his words in print, it was the voice of a man addressing the masses, not her. That was how it had always been. That was how it would always be. She’d made her peace with it long ago. In the same way that she’d pushed all thoughts of her family well below the surface of her everyday consciousness until they’d all but disappeared, she had done the same with Solam. If she were being completely honest with herself, she would have to admit to the fact that all this was partly down to him. It had happened so unexpectedly. A single evening’s conversation had turned her upside down. Never mind the obvious and undeniable attraction; much more importantly, she sensed, he’d stirred an all but forgotten longing in her to pick up the threads of a past she’d grown to think of as dead and buried. But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. And for that, she mused, she ought to thank him. Once the sting of rejection had passed, she would reach out again. It was the right thing to do. Some things went beyond love and sex and all the rest of it, including, perhaps most especially, heartache.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Johannesburg International Airport, where the local time is now nine thirty. Please remain seated until the seatbelt sign has been switched off. Please take care when opening the overhead lockers . . .’

  The flight attendant’s professionally neutral voice wafted over them. The furze of blond gras
s on the side of the runway bounded into view as the plane touched back down upon the earth once more. The view was distorted by the convex slope of the window, but it was real, exactly as it had stayed in her mind without ever thinking about it. Her heart began to beat faster as they edged towards the exit. The aircraft doors opened and voices from the outside were borne in on cold gusts of wind. It was March, the start of autumn in the southern hemisphere, and in spite of the blazing sun, the air was crisp.

  She and Jen emerged alongside all the other passengers in that special daze that comes from sitting in the same position for twelve hours as the metal bird carries its load across time zones and whole continents. A cleaning woman, her bucket and mop appearing as an extension of her body, threaded her way absentmindedly between the passengers. Two young customs officials, their tight, high buttocks wiggling sexily as they walked purposefully towards the arrival hall, flicked a bored, professionally male glance over the two women, one tall and red-haired, the other short and dark. The immigration officer with long shiny red fingernails looked at her burgundy passport without comment. ‘Sawubona, Sisi,’ she said, closing it with a snap.

  ‘What did she say?’ Jen whispered, as they both passed through.

  Kemi smiled. ‘“Welcome”. She must’ve thought I was South African.’

  ‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’ Jen grinned back. Her eyes were sparkling. Their fellow passengers were all strangers again as they spilled out, no longer connected to each other but to the welcoming hands and faces. Kemi scanned the crowd, looking for the driver whom the guesthouse said they would send. Ah, there he was! Dr Mashabane. He was holding a handwritten sign. She gave a wave and the portly man came forward. His smile was wide and bright enough to power the whole terminal building.

  ‘Good morning, ladies! My name’s Derrick, yes, I’ll be taking you to the Lucky Bean Guesthouse. Let me take your luggage, no . . . please don’t worry, I’ve got it.’ He grabbed both suitcases with ease. ‘This way, ladies . . . this way, please. This way.’