That night, the floods come to Uganda. Torrential rains hit in the east and the west: thirty inches of rain fall in an hour. Roads wash away. Bridges collapse. Only a few drops of rain fall in Kampala. But the rain pours down: the rain pours down; the rain pours down over most of Uganda. Museveni receives bad news, in the morning. The floodwaters are rising in many regions. In only two days, the UN will declare Uganda, yet again, a disaster zone.
Trevor sleeps like the dead until 4 AM. He wakes up to hear the rain thundering down like an endless landslide upon the roof: like the end of the world: like the end of this hut, for somewhere a soft pat-pat-pat is starting. Then a loud hissing voice is saying his name.
‘Trevor, let me in, it is me, Mary.’
In fact, she is in, she is tapping his leg, it is Mary, as well as the rain, pat-pat-patting.
‘Mary? What’s the matter? What’s going on?’
Wind whistles and screams through the straw of the thatch, and the rain pounds on, inexorable. It sounds like the headache he will have in the morning, although at the moment Trevor still feels drunk, blood roaring in his ears as he lurches upright. He can only see her in silhouette, blurred by his mosquito net. He wishes, deeply, he were still asleep.
‘I have come to see that you are all right.’ Her answer comes after a curious pause.
‘Why shouldn’t I be? What’s happening?’
‘I am very glad you are all right.’
There is another pause. Mary isn’t moving. ‘Mary, what is going on?’
‘There is nothing in your hut?’
‘Like what, Mary? Stop talking in riddles.’
‘Trevor, I will sleep on the floor of your hut.’
For one dim moment Trevor thinks, she likes me, but then common sense reasserts itself. ‘What will the village have to say about that?’
‘It is not a question of the village.’
Now she’s settled on the floor, with much sighing and wriggling as she wangles her way under his mosquito net. He hopes no mosquitoes will come in with her: he hopes the net is big enough for two. Mary Tendo is not a small woman. She’s very near him. She smells sweetly of sweat. She wriggles so much he starts wondering again. If she does like him, he’d better not ignore it. Maybe the feast in his honour has turned her head.
‘So what is it, Mary? Were you, uh, lonely?’ He gives her shoulder the lightest of squeezes.
She sits upright with furious energy, imperilling the net, but she doesn’t care. ‘Trevor, there must not be a misunderstanding!’
‘All right, Mary, relax, no problem.’
‘You remember that Vanessa used to keep frogs?’
‘I remember, Mary. You hated them.’
‘You remember when I saw them I chased them with a broom.’
‘Yes, and Vanessa was not very happy.’
‘In fact, I chased them because I did not like them.’ There is a pause, then she starts again. ‘Perhaps I was afraid of them, although in general, I fear nothing, Trevor.’
‘I believe you, Mary. Um, go on.’
‘Now the house where I was sleeping is full of big frogs. I woke up to find them chirruping like birds round my bed. I did not have anything to chase them with. They have come with the floods; Bibi nyo! They are filthy, disgusting ... Trevor, please save me from the frogs.’
She has never asked him to save her from anything since she was young and a stranger to London, nearly twenty years ago when she cared for Justin, and Vanessa couldn’t seem to stop criticising her. Poor kid. He had tried to stand up for her. The new Mary always seemed so strong, so confident ... In fact, in the past week he’d slightly gone off her. But now she needs him. Trevor is touched. Mary is a woman, and he is a man.
‘You have this mattress. I’ll get down on the floor.’ His brain knocks hard against his skull as he moves, but it still feels good to make a manly sacrifice while Mary compliantly takes the mattress.
‘Thank you, Trevor. You have excellent manners.’
They lie side by side while the storm rocks above them. Outside, a plague of fat bullfrogs passes by, chirruping loudly and insolently, a coarse, fat, farty, squelching sound. Mary prays quietly. They do not enter.
The roof starts collapsing twenty minutes later.
By 6 AM, when the sun comes up, Mary and Trevor are half-sitting, half-crouching in a corner where the mud and thatch still hold together. He has taken his possessions to the brick-built house, but Mary Tendo refused to go back, and he could not leave her there all on her own. They have their arms around each other. They fell asleep talking about lost sons. Before that, there were other, more intimate discussions, and a resolution in the tender dark. As they wake up to a riot of birdsong, first Mary and then Trevor smiles.