Breakfast and goodbyes. It’s the last morning of the International Conference of African Writing.
(Last night’s session on The Heart of Darkness became a little edgy as the delegates argued for and against Joseph Conrad. Was he an imperialist? Was his narrator, Marlow? Or were they both outsiders, in London and the Congo? It’s complicated. Voices were raised. Everyone was sure of their point of view. A woman used the ‘r’-word: racist. It was racist not to call Conrad racist; it was racist, in fact, to disagree with her. ‘We’re just storytellers,’ Vanessa said, finally, and found she was listened to with respect in the afterglow of her successful reading. ‘And so was Conrad. And so was Marlow. We’re all just trying to make sense of the world. Maybe Conrad was struggling, too?’ To her surprise, it stopped the argument. Then the writers danced, and got a little drunk, and some shy bodies befriended others. Geoffrey had had an argument with Sanyu, so was there on his own, and he waltzed with Vanessa, his hand vaguely speculative on her spine. ‘Weren’t bad, what yer read,’ he said at the end, when he’d tried to kiss her, and she turned her head away. He took the refusal good-temperedly. ‘Keep at it, lass, yer might get somewhere.’ But this was high praise, from Geoffrey Truman. Yes, she would definitely write this memoir, she thought, finishing someone else’s rosé. And she found herself remembering Mary Tendo’s journal. The parts Vanessa read were really quite striking. And publishers all got very excited, even if in the end it came to nothing. Perhaps she could take some tips from Mary Tendo ...? But she’s definitely had a little too much wine.)
Much activity today in Reception as the staff try to convince the departing writers of the number of drinks they have not yet paid for. ‘The British Council is paying the bill,’ some writers suggest, but the Sheraton staff are familiar with the ways of the British Council, and know they do not pay for gin or whisky (which are all imported, and fantastically expensive, especially with the extra Sheraton markup): or the Room Service orders of steak sandwich and chips that Geoffrey Truman’s been wolfing down after midnight: or Deirdre Mullins’s facial and massage. Reluctantly, the writers fork out, though as they’ve spent all their Ugandan money, they are forced to go to the hotel’s Bureau de Change, which changes their dollars at extortionate rates, and they all hang around in the lobby, complaining in a genial, hungover, accepting way, because arguing the bill is part of the fun, though for the receptionists, it is stressful: they don’t want missing money to be taken from their wages.
Nobody tips. They are poor: they’re writers, and writers are the outsiders of the world: why should they tip the receptionists? In any case, this is the Sheraton. ‘It’s bloody American capitalism!’ says Geoffrey Truman to Deirdre Mullins, which makes them both feel better, though in fact, the hotel is a mere franchise that Sheraton US sold off long ago. Now it’s owned, some say, by an Ethiopian, and others say, by a North African Arab, and the staff are not sure what is happening, if they’ll be sold again, if their pay will go down, if the Sheraton will survive at all now there are other, more modern hotels in town.
But ‘After all, they’re on salaries, unlike us writers,’ laughs Deirdre to Geoffrey, as they quietly discuss (though just within earshot of the staff) the etiquette of tipping in the third world, how hard it is, actually, to get it right, and conclude, as usual, that it’s best not to do it.
Vanessa’s listening, and learns something, and congratulates herself on her acuteness. They’re fooling themselves. She will tip, in future. Her pale cheeks flush with good intentions. It all adds to her happiness. The conference has gone well, she was a triumph. (She had texted Fifi to this effect, this morning, but somehow the text felt a little empty: Was a great success, darling. How are u and Mimi? xx) But she knows that something real has happened. People liked her work; it spoke to them. So her difficult childhood, which has caused her such shame, was all along one of her greatest assets! Sometimes, she reflects, I am a little obtuse. Though mostly, of course, I am very perceptive.
She has swapped emails and invitations to visit with at least a dozen of the better writers, and she fully intends to visit them, though she’ll have to point out, if it comes to it, that her house is actually on the small side ...
But then she remembers a conversation she had with a writer from Sierra Leone, to whom she had made this very point, partly because the woman was admiring her laptop, and Vanessa felt guilty about being too rich. ‘My house is tiny, really,’ she had told the woman. ‘It’s a shoebox.’ Then the other writer smiled with new warmth and revealed that her house, too, was small, that she shared a room with three sisters, that they’re all still living in their parents’ home, which is a fifth-floor two-bed flat. Vanessa had to change the subject quickly before any questioning could reveal that she herself lives entirely alone in a semi-detached house with four bedrooms.
No, she corrects herself, of course I’ll put them up. I mustn’t be mean. I am not too busy. So long as they don’t bring their boyfriends, like Mary. Vanessa had never actually met Charles, because he came for Christmas when she was away in the country, but the pair of them drank her best champagne, Dom Perignon 1990, and Mary just said, ‘We thought it was old’, so Vanessa has a prejudice against boyfriends.
Much hugging and laughing in the foyer as the British writers drift away to the Sheraton minibus that will take them off to Entebbe airport, then the BA jet that will take them back to London. And as Geoffrey Truman’s grey crest disappears through the door, his round shoulders, his stooped writer’s spine, followed by the porter with a mountain of luggage and gifts for the children of his three marriages, Vanessa suddenly feels a twinge of disquiet. In some ways, she would like to be leaving with the others. She misses home. She misses Justin, and darling Abdy, and normal shops, and coffee chains. And even Fifi, though she doesn’t listen.
But then she thinks, no, the best lies ahead. She has always wanted to see the gorillas, she hasn’t entirely given up on finding Mary, and she needs to unwind, to simply – be – in Africa. She has a week left, and the conference is over, so now she has a chance to get to know Uganda. It’s time to relax: she has worked hard. The safari is planned, confirmed, paid for. She is leaving the day after tomorrow.
But Vanessa is Vanessa. She can’t relax. She is always restlessly thinking and planning, always trying to control the future. As soon as she sits down in the Piano Bar, and orders a coffee, and reads the Daily Monitor, she finds there are floods in rural Uganda. Where is Bwindi? She’s not quite sure. Somewhere in the west ... near DRC Congo. If the roads are bad ... Will the jeep be OK? Will she be safe? Will she get a decent driver?
She starts a conversation with the charming young Ugandan who manages the Piano Bar. Does he think there will be floods? ‘No, Madam. It is rare that we get floods in Kampala.’
But Vanessa is going to western Uganda. His face falls slightly, but then it brightens. ‘The road is very good. You will stay on the road.’
‘Actually I’m hoping to go in the jungle. To Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, in fact.’ She feels proud as she says it. Now he will admire her. He winces slightly at the word ‘jungle’.
‘You will have a good driver?’ the young man asks. ‘If you have a good driver, there will be no problems.’
‘I am going with Great Gorilla Safaris.’
‘Oh yes, they are fine,’ the young man says. ‘You are going with the other writers?’
‘I am going alone,’ Vanessa says. His face falls again. They are strange, these bazungu, travelling alone. Even living alone! For he has read that the new houses they are building in England are all for single people, mostly homosexuals. Why does England encourage them? But Vanessa’s wearing a wedding ring.
‘You should ask them to send a nice driver,’ he suggests. He is losing interest now, passing on, to another muzungu who will tell him his problems. He himself has never been to Bwindi, but the guests are always crazy to go there. Why drive on bad roads to see wild beasts? But the doings of the bazungu are a mystery.
‘That’s a very good idea. I will go to see them.’ And Vanessa tips him rather generously.
At 10 AM Vanessa is ringing on the door of Great Gorilla Safaris, the company who will be taking her to Bwindi. She has marched through the streets feeling brave and cheerful, dodging through the traffic, she thinks, like a Ugandan, managing not to trip over sudden shelves of red earth where the paving-stones have cracked and crumbled, negotiating the sullen groups of workmen sweating in the sun in their hot navy overalls, counting the storks gangling haughtily along the roof-ridges of government buildings like a line of lawyers proceeding to their chambers (she stops at thirty: it’s enough for one day), smiling at the sellers setting up on the pavements, though it’s notable that most of them don’t smile back. Probably they’re angry about CHOGM, which is giving the government an excuse to clear the streets. The skies are milky: milky white heat. Her money is hidden in a money belt that she wears under a long-sleeved shirt and trousers (because you shouldn’t tempt them, though Ugandans are honest), and the flesh of her stomach streams perspiration and chafes a little where the wad of cash presses. The sky is so white, so hot, so bright. Out here, she thinks, the world is more vivid.
Great Gorilla Safaris has a basement office. She blinks, blindly, as she peers through the glass. But as soon as she enters, more Ugandan sunshine. Five different employees come and shake her hand, and smile at her as if they really like her (they are ready to like her: she did not bargain, she has paid up front, she was not too afraid to come and meet them). Every question she asks receives a comforting answer.
There aren’t really any floods: it is ‘too early’. The road to Bwindi is ‘very good’. The trouble in Congo is ‘in another part’. There are no problems with security. They ‘update themselves every day on this aspect’ (which she briefly thinks shows a degree of concern, but their smiles continue jaunty, untroubled). Her driver? Ah, David! Her driver is a paragon. They all join in to praise him. ‘An excellent driver.’ He ‘speaks eight languages’. ‘He is a graduate of Makerere.’ The hotel where she’ll be staying, the Gorilla Forest Camp, is ‘the best in the area. Comfortable.’ ‘Has it been there long?’ she asks, and seems to see them look briefly across at Mr Ronald, the Manager, as if they are uneasy. ‘Long,’ says Mr Ronald, his brow slightly furrowed. Then his smile returns: ‘Very comfortable.’
They give her an itinerary to take away. First stop ‘The Equator’: she feels excited, though the treats promised sound prosaic: ‘Comfort Break, Coffee, Certificate, Visit to Traditional Shop’. But the equator ... the equator. The middle of the earth. She is piercing, now, to the heart of things, having bobbed all her life in the urban shallows. ‘Where is the equator, exactly?’ she asks. ‘You don’t have a map I could borrow, do you?’
But maps are rare, and expensive, in Africa. ‘Ah no, sorry. Try Aristoc bookshop.’
‘So Bwindi ... Bwindi is beyond the equator?’ That makes it sound quite a long way away.
Now Mr Ronald, the Manager, gives her the full benefit of his knowledge. ‘It is half-a-day’s drive beyond the equator, beyond Masaka, beyond Mbarara, near the borders with DRC Congo and Rwanda.’
So very far away. But he’s smiling at her. Rwanda. Hang on, that’s not good news. ‘I didn’t realise we were going near Rwanda. Isn’t that where, you know, there was civil war? Between –’ she searches. On the tip of her tongue. ‘Between the Tutus and the Hotsis?’
His smile broadens, then represses itself. ‘Between the Hutus and the Tutsis, Madam. It is over now. The country is peaceful.’
And yet, as she walks back to the Sheraton Hotel, her mind is still full of nightmarish phrases: war without end, child soldiers, massacres.
Is it a boy or a man? So thin, so a-quiver. Wet African morning. He comes on, drenched and shining, and the people waiting by the track watch him, not one of their own, not acknowledging them. The big boots make his legs look like twigs of black bone, until you look, and see they are corded with muscle, but drawn too tight, with no flesh on them. And the boots look new, but the boy-man walks strangely, in a limping, crab-wise half-shuffle, half-run. Is he running from something, or running to something? He’s alone in Congo: it’s best to run.
The villagers draw backwards from the dark, intense figure, limping, loping, leaning on a stick and hop-scurrying along. Yet one whispers ‘Muzungu’. The darkness they shrink from is not the colour of his skin, which, under the baked layers of dust and dirt is definitely lighter than theirs, it’s a cone of darkness which spins from his eyes, his taut mouth, his bones, from the stick he is leaning on, which is a gun.
Or from things he has seen, things he has done. They avert their faces. Best not to see him. They shiver, glad this one travels alone.