‘I can hardly believe I’m in Uganda,’ says Trevor. ‘It’s great, Mary, honestly.’
They are bowling along the road from Entebbe; they’ve left behind the lake, they are hurrying through forest that has recently been cleared, leaving pearl-pale stumps, and new buildings are rising, and workmen are singing, and others are walking to work along the road. Huge billboards ask questions: ‘ARE YOU READY FOR CHOGM?’
‘So it’s a very big deal, this CHOGM?’ he asks, as they drive past the umpteenth billboard. ‘What does it stand for again? Commonwealth Heads of what?’
Mary tuts scornfully. ‘No, it is nothing. Commonwealth Heads of Government. The Queen will come. For half a day, maybe. And they tell us to get ready.’ She speeds up, crossly, then brakes deftly as a bicycle wobbles in front of her. He notices she is wearing her glasses. With her glasses on, she is a very good driver. In London, once, she had picked him up in Vanessa’s car when his van was in the garage, and she’d had to drive with her nose on the windscreen, peering short-sightedly at the road.
‘Nice car, by the way. You must be doing well.’ Not that he himself would drive it. It’s a red Toyota, circa 1998.
‘It is Charles’s car. Soon he will buy one for me. If you talk to Charles, he will say something different about CHOGM. Charles is delighted the Queen is coming, I do not know why, she will do nothing for him. But many Ugandans think like Charles.’
‘Good woman, in my view,’ says Trevor, cautiously. ‘Better than a president. But then, you Ugandans have presidents.’
‘They are useless,’ says Mary. ‘They have all been useless. And Museveni will come and meet the Queen, and he will wear his bush-hat, which is supposed to remind us that he was in the bush with the NRA, and was a soldier, and a hero. But we do not believe that he was a hero, because it was his brother who did all the fighting, and even then, he got children to fight for him.’
‘Right,’ says Trevor. ‘I see. I’ll have to read up on Ugandan history. I had the impression things were better now. You know, more peaceful than under Idi.’
He looks across at her; he wants to get things right, but her nostrils are flaring in a scornful way, and her eyes behind her small gold glasses have narrowed.
‘That is like saying a day in the Sahara is cooler than the middle of Virunga volcano. And we must stop talking about Idi Amin, because he is the only thing you bazungu know about Uganda, and he does not help us. First because he was a lunatic, though funny, and second because everyone says, like you, ah everything is good now, because he has gone.’
She is talking rather fast, and quite loudly, and Trevor remembers that Mary has a temper. Plus, she’s glaring at him, and not looking at the road, and although it’s very straight, it is not without its hazards, since the oncoming traffic is fast and heavy.
‘I don’t mean to annoy you, Mary, old thing. You’ve got to remember, it’s my first time in Uganda.’
‘Yes, it is your first time in Uganda, Trevor. I remember that. So I must give you information. You told me many things, when I was in London. And I was grateful. But now things are different.’
But she suddenly smiles at him, forgivingly, and looks back at the road just in time to miss a truck that says ON THE WAY TO HEAVEN on its windscreen.
‘Are you tired, Trevor? If you are not tired, we will go to lunch at Lake Victoria. It is not far. And you will learn something about water in Uganda. And then, tomorrow, we will go to my village. I hope you have got your implements with you.’
‘My tools? What do you think’s in the leather bag?’ He cranes round his neck for a moment’s reassurance. Battered and stained, his whole life is in there. It sits on the seat, heavy, solid. ‘At your service, Madame. Trevor Patchett Plumbing.’
‘Though of course, Trevor, you will not be charging callout.’
It is very hard to read Mary Tendo’s expression. Trevor settles, with a small sigh, back into his seat, in which he can detect one spring is broken. Now they’re on a section of road that’s not mended. Why does he always seem to deal with difficult women? Bumpy ride, he thinks. Hang on to your hat.
Vanessa’s in Reception at the Sheraton, trying not to get cross with the receptionists. Two or three of them have gathered protectively around Rachel, the girl to whom Vanessa addressed her query.
‘It can’t not be there, my friend works there. Look, Nile Imperial. N-I-L-E, I-M-P ...’
The little gaggle of girls in their golden jackets exchange looks with Rachel nervously. They have all been taught not to contradict, but then how are they to deal with deluded bazungu, these strange, blind people who know they are right?
‘Yes, Madam. I know the Nile Imperial –’
But Vanessa interrupts. She is in a hurry! She will miss the minibus to the first session! They are dragging their feet deliberately!
‘It’s terribly near. I mean, I could walk there, but obviously it’s easier if I phone first. I am just asking you to connect me. To phone, you know, to the right number.’ And she mimes phoning, elaborately.
Now none of them will meet her eyes, and they are calling over an older man, to whom they speak rapidly, in their own language. Vanessa can’t believe how slow they all are. Outside she can hear some vehicle hooting.
‘Good morning, Madam. I would like to ask, is it possible your friend is at the Serena?’ His smile is professional, intentionally soothing.
‘I have told them eight times, it’s the Nile Imperial!’
‘Madam, there is no more Nile Imperial. It has been demolished, two years ago. It has been replaced with the Serena Hotel.’
Vanessa is silenced. ‘Demolished. Oh.’ A stone of disappointment. ‘Why couldn’t they explain? Nobody told me.’
And with that, leaden-hearted, she turns away, leaving a cooing chorus from the women in reception, who are genuinely sad they cannot help her. ‘Ah, sorry, Madam. Ah, sorry.’
But what she really feels is hurt about Mary. She had thought they were friends. Why didn’t she tell me? And how can she possibly search for her, in this suddenly large and unknown city? She could be anywhere. She could have gone away.
Is it possible Mary never liked me?
She gets into the minibus, with the others, but looks out of the window as they chatter. At first she stares at every woman they pass, all those smartly dressed women, walking steadily onwards down their own paths, smiling, impervious, the morning sunlight blanking out their features and making all of them, potentially, Mary.
Were we ever close? Did we share my son? – Of course a carer was very different from a mother, but Mary had certainly done a lot for Justin, both when he was little and as a young man, when the strange shadow came over him. I thought, in a way, we loved him together.
– I wasn’t always good at loving him.
She rejects this thought in a split second.
But Mary – poor Mary had lost her own son. Their driver suddenly hoots, in a long deafening wail, as a lorry teeming with dusty workmen cuts in front of them onto a roundabout. No, they’re not workmen. She looks again. Khaki battle-fatigues. Oh, they’re soldiers.
‘Soldiers,’ says Bernardine.
‘They make me nervous,’ says Deirdre Mullins; but they all feel a chill.
Vanessa tries to focus on Mary’s son. His name was Jamil. She called him Jamie. I didn’t encourage him to play with Justin. I felt she would be getting away with it, somehow, being paid by me to look after Justin and caring for her own child on the side. Perhaps I was jealous, since I was too busy to spend whole days with my own child. And then obviously, when Jamil was ill, it was unreasonable of her to want to bring him with her. I couldn’t let Justin be infected. Even when he was well, I had concerns about language. The child’s father spoke Arabic, Mary Luganda. Her English is more than adequate, but I thought Jamil might be less forward than Justin. A second child would have held Justin up, a second child less gifted at language.
But then of course Jamil disappeared. Which was a tragedy. Somewhere in Libya. Or on the way back. Mary hardly ever spoke of it. If she had confided, I might have been able to comfort her. I would have tried. She didn’t trust me.
In any case, Mary had been very lucky. When Vanessa last saw her, she had been pregnant.
(They look so strong, all the women on the pavement, with books on their heads, or baskets, or fruit, so glossy and unstoppable that Vanessa feels jealous; Mary doesn’t need her; she’s gone on into her future, powerful and fertile, ignoring her.)
And yet a small tear creeps down Vanessa’s cheek, which she dashes away quickly before anyone sees. ‘I think I’ll close the window, the air is so dusty,’ she says, and it glides like a veil over the day, and she polishes the instant of grief away, but she is thinking of the package at the bottom of her case, nicely wrapped in silver paper with a pattern of balloons. It’s a carefully chosen present for Mary’s baby. Not a baby any more: Theodora must be three. Not so very much younger than her own Abdul Trevor.
‘Those storks are amazing,’ says Bernardine, and Vanessa half-registers them, lined up like sentries, along the high roof of the Parliament Building, listening, perhaps, to the speeches inside.
The little book, for Mary’s Ugandan baby, cannot be recycled for Abdul Trevor, because Vanessa has already given him a copy. It is Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales. There is a picture of two tall storks on the cover, looking out on the world with intelligent eyes.
‘I think I like animals better than humans,’ says Vanessa, suddenly, with conviction, which just for an instant, silences the minibus.
‘Odd woman,’ hisses Deirdre Mullins to Bernardine, as they get out and troop across the car park to the social club where this session will be.
‘Oh I quite like her,’ says Bernardine.