Around lunch-time, what Trevor feels should be his lunch-time, for his normal working day is punctuated by snacks, by digestive biscuits and his flask of tea, there’s a trading post by the side of the road, a single-storey concrete building hung with plastic mops and buckets and rugs and thin striped mattresses and Coca-Cola signs. He’s missed his caffeine, now he needs his tucker. But he won’t say so: Trevor is a stoic.
‘We are nearly at the village,’ Mary says.
Partly because he’s feeling peckish, Trevor goes in with Mary and pays for the shopping. Groundnuts, white bread, flour, a big kettle she spots and looks at admiringly. He insists on buying it, which makes her smile a little. ‘You are a good man, Trevor,’ she says, grudgingly. Then they suddenly share a real, warm smile. They are over the quarrel. Possibly it was just something to get out of the way, so that he and she could be friends again. It’s a bit like South Africa, he thinks. The whatchamacallit, Truth and Reconciliation business. Things had to be dragged right out into the open. He is in Uganda, and on her ground. She has to let him know this is not like London – though that doesn’t mean he is going to like it.
Round the side of the building is an open stall where a man in a bloodied white jacket with rolled-up sleeves is selling meat in the flickering sunlight, as cloud begins to stream up over the sun. Dark individual hunks of flesh swing from the roof of the stall on string. The butcher has a giant machete, with which he hacks off great bony lumps of beef to Mary’s instructions, splitting the spinal chord with a practised ‘thuck’. To Trevor, the meat looks almost black in the daylight, and it has an iridescent retinue of fat flies, though a thin child with a whisk is employed to disperse them. Mary indicates ‘More’: the blows keep on coming, the muscular arm hacks the beast to pieces: there are splinters of bone, and brighter blood spattering. She’s buying so much, almost a quarter of a cow. Trevor wonders if they have a fridge, in the village. The meat is wrapped in leaves, a glistening sticky bundle. ‘The village will be happy,’ Mary says to Trevor. ‘Thank you, Trevor.’ So he pays again.
Whenever, later, in faraway London, Trevor tries to describe his arrival in Mary’s village, he is never sure that he is believed. And he also wonders: did it really happen like that? He thinks it did. Yes, he is sure. The kneeling women. The children flocking. The way they stared at him between their fingers.
After the trading post, they lurch on to the track that veers off at ninety degrees from the main road to Kampala, and are soon rocking like a ship on the sea, swaying helplessly from side to side as the track rears up and dips down underneath them, its ruts deepened to potholes by long-ago rain. Behind him he hears the maid laughing as she’s thrown about as if riding a donkey, a happy memory from her lost village childhood, and soon Theodora starts laughing too, and he realises: that child never talks. Not like little Abdy, babbling away.
This road is a joke. Trevor thinks about the weather. If this is the only way in and out, they could easily get cut off, in the village. The rains, everyone says, can last for weeks (and last night Charles was so sure the rains were coming. ‘It can rain any day,’ he had said, laughing with the huge good temper life seems to have inspired in him. Did he have any worries? Trevor doesn’t think so. How pleasant it must be to be Ugandan! The pace of life is so different to London – though it can’t be a cinch, living with Mary ...)
They are slowing to a halt outside a bleak concrete house. Mary says, ‘I think this is my brother’s house, because I know he built it near the path that leads to the mango tree where we children told stories. My brother’s wife is expecting us.’
And, hearing the engine, people come from the house. A thin man, not young, in pale shirt and dark trousers, then children, running, in ragged clothes, jumping and laughing, then suddenly shy, one or two of them hanging back and staring. ‘My brother Jacob,’ says Mary softly, turning off the engine, ‘but he has grown old.’ It is nearly a whisper. Trevor sees that her lips are moving in silence and is touched to realise Mary is praying. But it’s only a second: with a powerful movement, she’s out of the car and hugging her brother.
Jacob comes across and pumps Trevor’s hand. ‘Welcome,’ he says. His eyes are bloodshot, and milky, but his smile is wide, showing strong white teeth. ‘You have come to help us in the village. Thank you.’
Two other men come and shake Trevor’s hand. ‘My neighbour. And this is my uncle, the village councillor.’
‘An important man,’ says Trevor, politely, and is rewarded with a laugh of pleasure.
‘You are very welcome to the village,’ says the man. Then he embraces Mary Tendo, and they have a short conversation in Luganda from which Mary emerges looking displeased, but there isn’t time to think about that, because now the women come from the house. Jacob introduces a queenly figure, taller than Mary, nearly taller than Trevor, in a wide-sashed dark red printed dress down to her ankles, with big puffed sleeves, and a square neckline that shows off her elegant neck and high cheekbones, but just as he is thinking, ‘She looks like a duchess,’ and wishing he weren’t wearing a sweaty t-shirt, she sinks to her knees in front of him, in a fluid motion, bowing and smiling, clasping her hands together in what looks like prayer. ‘My wife,’ says Jacob, looking proud.
‘No need for that,’ says Trevor, touched but alarmed, and takes her by the hands, and pulls her up again, which causes a wave of surprised laughter. And then two golden adult daughters come from the house, and again they sink down, like trees bending in the wind, and come up again, gracefully unbroken, and he thinks, ‘I could get used to this,’ but he catches Mary Tendo looking across at him with an ironic expression, and as they follow the family into the house, she hisses in his ear, ‘Do not be mistaken, Trevor, I will never do that to you.’
‘I know that, Mary. It’s OK.’
‘It is not OK. But they are village people. My uncle said I had come back too late. He does not understand, life is hard in the city, and hard in UK, and I tried to send money, and I am very sad that my parents are dead, but I have been sad about it for a decade, and I paid for their drugs, in hospital, and it-hurts-my-heart-that-I-could-not-come-sooner.’ This she rattles off rapidly, sotto voce, and Trevor pats her on the arm as she stares at the ground, and in a second, she’s herself again. Then a sister arrives, a cross-looking sister, and squints at Mary, and smiles at Trevor, but another sister, she explains, is away, and Mary translates: ‘Trevor, you will stay in the house of my sister, not this sister but the sensible sister’ (her sister looks at her suspiciously) ‘who has taken her daughters to boarding school, so you will only meet this other sister, and her silly daughters, who are worse than their mother. This is Martha.’
‘How do you do,’ says Trevor.
‘Do not bother, Trevor, she does not speak English.’
And then Jacob’s younger children are introduced, and their clothes are smarter than the clothes of their friends, and they stare at Mary for a long time, as if they have heard a lot about her, and five minutes later they reappear, having shucked off their smart outfits and got back into their shorts. There is much exclaiming over Theodora, and Jacob picks her up, and the daughter wails, and Mary removes her from her brother, irritably, and says, ‘She is not used to the village yet,’ and puts her back in the arms of the maid, who nobody at all has greeted. But some part of every child understands the country, and soon the little girl, despite Mary’s protests, which become increasingly half-hearted, has shed her cardigan, her socks, her pretty dress, that fairy-tale cloud of pale pink nylon, and is running round half-naked in a conga of children, a joyous, noisy, animal procession, and all the adults are smiling at her. The maid, meanwhile, whose face has set like stone, is to be seen through the window with a giant pestle, thumping it, thud-ah, in a crude wooden mortar. Trevor asks if she’s all right, for she’s only a girl, could he help, could she use a bit of muscle? – but Mary tells him she’s just grinding groundnuts. ‘No, she enjoys it. Do not bother yourself, Trevor. We will have our food today with groundnut sauce.’
Mary has other plans for him. ‘You will go and get the things from the car, now, Trevor.’ He does her bidding, helped by several boys who are much stronger than their fragile limbs suggest.
The rice, the flour, the soap, the oil, all the big packs of foodstuffs are received without comment, as if they were expected, and almost insufficient, but some cans of Coca-Cola, three plastic footballs and two packs of biros are exclaimed over. The clothes are certainly the star of the show: Jacob takes some shoes, and tries them on, appreciatively, slowly, watched by his family, and the uncle is delighted with his grey zipped jacket. He zips it up: he zips it down. Then Mary shows the meat, and everyone laughs, and the women of Jacob’s family take it and disappear behind a thin red curtain that divides the kitchen from the living space.
‘You have done well,’ says Mary Tendo to Jacob. ‘This house is larger than our parents’ house.’
‘Our parents’ house was large,’ Jacob comments.
‘That is what I say. You have done well.’
Trevor looks around him, but notices absence, despite the wealth of smiling faces, the children peering in through the windows. Yet Mary Tendo thinks they have done well. No carpets: just a stained concrete floor. No curtains. The sofa is a skeleton, brown upholstery worn through to the wooden bones. There is a table, and a tablecloth, but only two chairs for all these people. No pictures on the walls. No papers or books. Another neighbour has arrived to join them, and they stand, awkwardly, looking at Trevor.
But in a second, Mary’s brother is showing him a book, a battered paperback, a textbook, which he keeps in a place of honour by the sofa. ‘Macmillan Schools English,’ he says, smiling. ‘We are all learning it. My children study. I am a teacher at one of the schools.’
‘There is more than one school?’
‘There are two schools. But there are many, many children.’
Trevor looks at the shabby, dated textbook, and doesn’t know what to say about it. ‘Are your children clever?’ he asks Jacob, adding hastily, ‘I wasn’t, myself.’ The older daughter brings him a Coca-Cola, which he doesn’t really like, but accepts, gracefully.
‘They are average,’ says the father. ‘They do not try hard enough.’
‘That’s what my father used to say,’ says Trevor. ‘But it didn’t stop me being good at my job.’ The daughter smiles at him, gratefully, and disappears again behind the curtain.
‘You are a builder of wells,’ Jacob says, respectfully.
‘Not exactly,’ says Trevor, before Mary can stop him, but she comes in swiftly, ‘Yes, he is. He is an expert on every aspect.’
‘Well, not every aspect, Mary – that’s going it a bit.’
‘You should not be modest. Or else’ (and she is looking at him meaningfully) ‘I would not have brought you to the village, Trevor. Before, Trevor was the Queen’s Engineer,’ she explains to the villagers, whose smiles have briefly stalled. ‘Royal Engineers,’ Trevor protests, ‘I was only in the Territorials,’ but Mary ignores him and presses on. ‘In London, rich people all want Trevor to work for them.’
‘So there are wells in London?’ Jacob asks Trevor.
Trevor feels the pressure of expectation, and of Mary, watching him narrowly. At last, he is visited by inspiration. ‘Yes, well, there are fountains, which is almost the same thing. I do do them,’ he says, quite truthfully. He’d fixed up a fountain for Vanessa’s frog pond.
‘It is true,’ says the uncle, with some excitement. ‘My daughter is in London, as you all know. You remember the postcard she sent to the school, because her brother was afraid of lions? There was a photograph of fountains, and stone lions, and she said this was a very famous square, in London –’
‘Trafalgar Square!’ Mary interrupts, triumphant. ‘Yes, Trevor built the fountains in Trafalgar Square. Is it true, Trevor?’
‘If you say so, Mary.’
The uncle nods, deeply impressed.
Having gloriously soared over this bar, Trevor is taken by the men on a tour of the village while the women cook in the room at the back. Two boys go with the men, carrying giant yellow jerry-cans.
‘For fuel?’ he asks.
‘No, for water.’
‘I will come with you, of course,’ says Mary Tendo, and the men, for a moment, look at each other. But they daren’t say no: she is not a normal woman. She went to the city and came back rich.
The tour soon feels quite long, to Trevor. The sun has gone for good: there is sullen heat, and he soon finds his t-shirt is drenched in sweat. It is open, rolling, scrubland, with patchy cultivation. He inquires: that’s coffee, that’s cassava, those are little green spikes of ginger, and he recognises scrawny tassels of maize.
But most of the land is unused. It makes it look attractive, to the casual stroller: skinny goats browse, under the care of watchful, half-naked children; a few chickens run squawking and pecking on the grass. Perhaps they are resting the soil, thinks Trevor.
They are certainly not resting their legs. The boys set off across the fields with their cans. ‘How long do they have to go to get water?’
‘It is not far. Perhaps two, three miles.’
They stop at the Protestant school where Jacob teaches. It is a one-storey building, a series of low brick-built huts, like the Nissen huts Trevor remembers from the war, which lingered as classrooms and homes through the sixties. ‘The school I went to looked a bit like this,’ he says, but he sees that they do not really believe him.
‘The school needs many things,’ says Jacob.
Trevor sees, painted on one exterior wall, a faintly familiar shape, in bright colours, a big bulging triangle next to a circle. Jacob is pointing to it and smiling.
‘I think you will recognise this,’ he says.
Trevor screws up his eyes. He can’t see it. And then he does. It’s a map of Great Britain, but the ragged head of Scotland has been sharpened to a point, and Ireland is a vague, squashed circle.
‘UK!’ says Jacob, triumphantly. ‘Very important.’
Trevor feels surprised. Is it really still important out here? Maybe more will be expected of him, then. As he gets closer, he notices how the edges of the bricks have washed away. They look as though they have been eaten by insects, the straight lines turned to frail lace.
‘It is the rain,’ says Jacob, as Trevor indicates the brick. ‘It washes everything away.’
And the windows: when he looks again, there is no glass in them. They are just holes, like eyeless sockets. Maybe glass is expensive, in Uganda. He starts to see that Charles and Mary’s house in Kampala was well appointed by Ugandan standards. No windows! It is a bit of a shock.
A female head teacher appears to greet them. She is youngish, in a blouse and fitted jacket; she must be boiling in this heat. ‘She is not from here,’ hisses Jacob as they leave her. ‘We do not think that she will stay. We cannot pay her enough money.’
‘Not enough?’ asks Mary, furious. ‘She should be happy to be a head teacher at her age. And she has enough money to straighten her hair.’
Jacob shows Trevor and Mary around, and in every dark classroom, children rise to their feet en masse and stare expectantly at them. There seem to be hundreds and hundreds of children.
‘Good afternoon, children.’
‘Good afternoon, Master.’
Otherwise they do not seem to speak much English, yet Mary assures him all exams are in English, the exams they must pass to go into their future. The children look both strange and curiously familiar, and Trevor realises their uniforms are modelled on English ones of the ’50s, tunics like his elder sister wore, with big box pleats (though the heat has melted their sharpness), and low loose waists, and although some of these girls look as though they’re almost 20, they wear ankle socks, like much younger children, and their shaven heads make them look like babies. And the desks: small, ancient, stained black with ink, they are desks he remembers from infant school. And that scrape of chairs as they all stand up.
But the faces: no. Nor the expressions. They are curious, yes, but they are not deferential. There are stony eyes, there are mutinous mouths. And there are so many of them, staring at him, all jam-packed into this dreamlike school which he himself grew out of so long ago. And he thinks of the schooling of his own son, the clubs, the courses, the extra classes, the gyms and swimming pools and treats and outings that went into the making of Justin ... Education coming out of his ears. Yet he’s sometimes thought the boy is a bit of a drip. He’s wondered if Vanessa spoiled him.
In the first classroom, which holds the older children, Trevor puts his foot in it. There are three Macmillan textbooks on the teacher’s table, so he holds one up, and asks, ‘Do you like reading? And books?’ There is a chorus of ‘Yes’, though to Trevor, the books look a bit uninspiring. Trying to be matey, he follows up with, ‘I bet you like television better, though!’ At the word ‘television’, these tall, thin children look at each other, blank, unsmiling. He can’t read the reaction. It’s as if they are ashamed.
It is left to Mary to educate him. ‘Trevor, these children never saw a television.’
After that, he says nothing during several introductions. Then in the last classroom, he resolves to do better.
‘Good afternoon, children!’ thunders Jacob again.
‘Good afternoon, Master,’ they reply as usual.
‘Good afternoon,’ interpolates Trevor. He has to make an effort. His country is painted on the side of their school. But what’s he got to say to them? These aren’t like any kids he knows.
‘This is Mr Patcher, a famous engineer. You will say to him what?’
The eyes look back at him, and then there is a ragged chorus of ‘Good afternoon, Mr Patch.’
‘I am from London,’ Trevor announces. ‘Who can tell me what country London is in?’ And seizing the stub of chalk on the table, he writes ‘LONDON’ in capitals on the blackboard. Then Jacob threatens the class in Luganda, inciting them to rise to the challenge. Several eager boys shoot up their hands, but most of them are quashed by a look from Jacob, who evidently knows this class well. One favoured boy remains, and Trevor says ‘Yes?’
‘Bungereza’, the tall boy says, triumphant.
Trevor can’t make head nor tail of it, so he says ‘Write it’, and mimes writing, proffering the chalk; the boy looks to Jacob for permission, and then writes ‘BUNGeReZA’ on the blackboard.
Trevor looks at it blankly. ‘I’m afraid not,’ and the class laughs as the boy goes back to his seat, his face puzzled and indignant, but Mary is pulling Trevor’s arm, urgently, as he writes ‘ENGLAND’ next to BUNGeReZA, and she’s hissing something in his ear.
‘Oh, I see, sorry,’ Trevor tells the boy, who sits there, taut, his eyes holding Trevor’s. ‘So Bungereza is your word for England. It’s not an English word, that’s the problem.’
‘It is the right Luganda word,’ Mary says loudly, and then repeats it in Luganda. ‘Wama ori mutufu. Bungereza kitufu muluganda.’ The boy nods and smiles, vindicated.
But Trevor thinks to himself, why don’t they teach them English? Otherwise they can’t communicate.
The headmistress has something to communicate, in a moment alone as he signs the Visitors’ Book in her ‘office’, a corridor whose bare brick walls are decorated with a neat handwritten list of the School Rules, also in English, so the children won’t know them.
‘I am a headmistress,’ she says to him, suddenly, pressing his hand and looking hard into his eyes. ‘I am a headmistress. Do not forget me. I should have a proper office, and a car.’
It’s the children, in fact, that he finds hard to forget. However you look at it, it doesn’t seem right.