Vanessa’s sitting, just after sunset, surrounded by the other writers and a smattering of giant schoolchildren, through an ‘Evening of International Writing’ at the dark, dank National Theatre, which squats, hot and airless, like a square, chocolate brown excretum from the ’60s, slap, plop in the centre of Kampala. Though at first she was astonished not to be on the programme, she soon realises these are mostly second-raters.
This was more or less what Peter Pargeter hinted when she found him to ask about the omission. (And Tadjo, for example: Tadjo’s name is not there.) ‘Oh, you’re reading tomorrow, in a more intimate context. We felt that would show your gifts to advantage.’ He looked uneasy, and then added, with a little flourish, ‘And obviously, someone of your experience will have had many chances to read in bigger venues. Which is not true of all the Africans here.’
But Deirdre Mullins was quite full of herself when they met in the foyer before the event. ‘You aren’t reading? Oh, what a shame ... I expect we’ll be hearing from you tomorrow, then.’
Vanessa looks at her hard. Is she patronising me? ‘Yes, I will be reading with a different group of writers, who I believe include Veronique Tadjo.’
‘Oh no, she’s gone home, haven’t you heard?’ babbles Deirdre, her large plain face glistening with sweat and eagerness.
‘You had better go and practise your reading,’ says Vanessa. ‘I think there are a lot of first-timers, this evening.’
And so it has proved, or if it wasn’t their first time, they had learned nothing, and should soon give up. Yet some of them go on for ever, as does Geoffrey Truman, who has clearly had a few. How the heart sinks when the performer begins by saying, semi-audibly or shouting loudly, ‘I am going to read from four of my books’. One will be sufficient, surely, she thinks.
But a few of them are a revelation. It is galling, yet good for her, Vanessa decides, to find that Deirdre Mullins has talent. When she finishes, Vanessa has tears in her eyes. And one or two others set the stage alight, and remind them all that what they do has a point.
Later she lies contented in her vast white bed, looking forward to her own reading tomorrow. She knows, for some of them, she’s quite a dark horse, since the African writers are franker than British ones, unless you include Geoffrey Truman (‘Vanessa Henman? No, I have not read you.’) A white horse, maybe. A pale horse ... A pale horse running over endless white sheets ...
And her hot little feet start to twitch against the mattress.
But then something wakes her: for it’s death, is it not? She is falling, soundlessly, and then she’s awake. Something about Death on a pale horse. Vanessa still feels young. She’s not ready to die. She’s not going to die for ages and ages, till she’s written her not-yet-written books, and is famous ...
But do I look old, to all these young people?
What worked this evening? The simplest things. Little bits of story that seemed – true. Details. When someone else’s life came before you, bright and naked, saying, ‘Look, I’m like you.’ Even when it was Deirdre Mullins, because the point was, the point was ... She is drifting, but recalls herself, because it is important.
The point was, Deirdre Mullins only looks like Deirdre Mullins, and sounds like her, someone silly and boring, but really, it’s just a façade we wear, our looks, our habits, the things we say. Something temporary, a crude tent for protection. But inside the tent, there is something living. And even that poor woman in the ill-judged kaftan, who talked such rubbish about ‘positionality’. Her body was trying to make contact with us.
So Vanessa changes her mind about her reading. She’d intended to read from her novel in progress, the novel that stalled so long ago, a passage about the self-conscious writer, the doubts and self-protectiveness that cripple you. And suddenly that seems trivial, irrelevant. Real writers try to make life real for others.
She decides, I’ll read a passage about my father. My father and the chickens. About my childhood. From my abandoned autobiography. And if people like it, I will be encouraged.
Because she does need encouragement. The last few years have been tricky. Of course she is happy that Justin is married, but naturally there has been – more of a distance. And Trevor himself ... Dear old Tigger. Fair enough, he has this other woman – though he once lost his temper when she called Soraya that; ‘She is not the other woman, I am living with her! It is thirty-odd years since you threw me out!’ – but why does he have to fixate on Soraya? After all, it was not as though he’d married her. (No, whereas he had married Vanessa.) Yet he made strange complaints about ‘giving them a chance’. He no longer seemed to want their special times together, which had gone on, quite unchanged by their divorce, for decades. Quite suddenly he ‘mustn’t be unfair to Soraya!’ He is so old-fashioned! Yet how she has missed them.
No Tigger and no Justin. The house has felt empty. There was a brief fling with a mature student, but too much to explain, too much to unlearn, and she realised how long it would take to train him. Whereas Trevor, well, he was already trained. (‘I am not a dog,’ he had told her, once. ‘Though you can be a bit of a bitch, Vanessa.’ And when she was outraged, he only laughed. ‘Don’t talk about having to train me, then.’)
It was almost as if he didn’t care any more. As if he didn’t care about Vanessa. Yes, she is always busy with her teaching, but teaching writing doesn’t feed the soul. And perhaps the house has felt a little empty, with Justin so busy, and Trevor away.
Of course there is little Abdul Trevor. Her grandchild, when she sees him, is a total joy. (‘They’re the meaning of life,’ she’d once said to Fifi, which was ill-advised, since Fifi has no children. Yet Vanessa does believe it, in a way. Fifi has her cat, Vanessa has Justin, and Fifi’s always seen the two things as the same, but she has no equivalent for Abdul Trevor. And it’s through little Abdy that life goes on.) The way he pretends to read a book to her, with great expression, but upside down, the little gifts he thrusts into her hand – a spoonful of rice he doesn’t want to finish, a squashed leaf he has kept in his pocket. And once he drew her: an enormous sun, or it might have been a collapsing balloon, with lots of straggly rays coming out, or perhaps they were legs, and she was a spider. ‘It’s lovely, darling. I will keep it for ever.’ She feels faint at the thought of Abdy ill or unhappy. If he is all right, the world is all right. If he is not, it cannot be borne. Like the time when he caught an infection from the pool, and his temperature shot up to 103 ... Abdul Trevor must live for ever. And her thoughts circle back to Mary Tendo, and her little girl, who must be Abdy’s age.
But it’s too painful to think about Mary: the demolished hotel: the gift still in her suitcase, in its pretty paper, with its pictures of storks, for the child whose features she will never see.
With an effort, she drags her thoughts away. She must just do her best, with the work, and with people. She gets things wrong, she can’t deny it, but she tries, she tries, she makes an effort.
And falling asleep, powerless to edit, agnostic Vanessa half-smiles, half-snuffles as her thoughts slip away into green valleys among flocks of drowsy, browsing sheep ... I hope Someone Up There notices. I hope I’ll get a bit of credit.