My Driver E-Book

Maggie Gee

• Herausgeber: Telegram Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Vanessa Henman, a plucky but accident-prone white writer, flies from London to Uganda for an African writers' conference. She also means to visit her former cleaner, Ugandan Mary Tendo, now the successful Executive Housekeeper of Kampala's up-market Sheraton Hotel. But Mary has her own agenda: her son Jamil is missing, and she has secretly summoned Vanessa's beloved ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, to her home village to build a new well. Vanessa sets off alone on safari to distant Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. But she quarrels with her driver and a bloody war closes in on Bwindi from Congo. Can anyone save her? Will Mary Tendo find her son? One of her strongest novels to date…fast-moving, energetic, constantly surprising' Hilary Mantel Maggie Gee has never written better' Rose Tremain A tour de force - brilliantly structured, surprising, humane, and suspenseful' Elaine Showalter Brilliant…just brilliant…this book deserves to be published in every language' Hillary Jordan 'Executed with a lovely, light touch ... an immensely enjoyable novel.' Lionel Shriver, Daily Telegraph 'Worldy, witty, enjoyable, impressive' Doris Lessing 'Sparky, funny and terrifically entertaining' Guardian

Leseprobe

Maggie Gee

MY DRIVER

TELEGRAM

For my mother Aileen Mary Gee, née Church, whose spirit and flight bag came with me to Uganda.

First published in hardback in 2009 by Telegram First paperback edition published 2010 This Ebook edition published 2012

eISBN: 978-1-84659-133-4

Copyright © Maggie Gee, 2009 and 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

TELEGRAM 26 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5RH, UKwww.telegrambooks.com

PART 1

In-Flight Entertainment

1

The sun is rising on Uganda. Light streams across Africa as the rim of the earth turns slowly towards it. It gilds the mountains, it floods the plains.

In London, people are still asleep, though Vanessa Henman hasn’t slept a wink. (This evening, she will be flying to Kampala, and of course, she will have to get to the airport. She’s tried to contact her ex-husband, who is obviously the right person to drive her. But he has been mysteriously hard to get hold of, and recently Soraya, his new girlfriend, is less friendly. So naturally, her son will drive her. But still she is nervous. Africa!)

She looks at her watch: it’s 5 AM. She tries to visualise how it will be. She imagines the sun, rising on Uganda. Noise, colour. A river of black faces. River not sea, there’s no sea in Uganda. Which sits right on the equator, in the middle of Africa. What does she remember? Loud, honking taxis on Kampala’s main street, white Toyota vans spilling fumes and people. But the details ... no, it’s still out of focus.

In Bwindi, western Uganda, near Congo and Rwanda, countless columns of soldier ants pour through the jungle, moving fast and low, layers upon layers, running over each other’s backs and onwards, glossy, unstoppable, rivers of treacle, some smaller, reddish, others larger and blacker. Anything in their path, they eat (except the gorillas, who sometimes eat the ants, scooping them into their mouths in handfuls, until the stings are beyond bearing). It’s cool and damp here, up in the hills.

The apes are just waking in their nests, great trampled baskets of wet green tree-ferns. They live in cloud – white nets and shrouds. Webs of pale rain blow across like curtains, veiling Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. A large grey furry hand extends, slowly, and plucks some breakfast. Its owner has a name, Ruhondeza, given him by humans, but he only knows he is the chief, the silverback, that he has been chief for years and years, though the family is getting smaller. He is staring at a tiny baby gorilla, skinny, little spider-legs and a great quiff of hair, sleeping curled up against the dugs of his mother. Ruhondeza frowns; something very important. He is the chief, but is he the father?

Not far away, there are human soldiers, bearing a confusing variety of initials: the UPDF, the ADF, the PRA, the FDLR, the FNL, Laurent Nkunda’s rebel army, and remnants of the LRA, the Lord’s Resistance Army, driven down south from Sudan. Too many names, too hard to remember. Many of the soldiers do not know what they are called. Most of them long to give it up and come home. But have they done things for which they can never be forgiven? Who is to decide what can be pardoned? The peace talks at Juba have been quiet for a while, and in the long nights it is hard to be hopeful. This soldier wears only rags of uniform, dead men’s trousers, a dented cap, though he is a sergeant in the LRA. The gentle rain soaks through his clothes. Is he a boy or a man? A short-range radio crackles into life and his cortisol levels jag and peak with the daylight. A new day, another day to kill or be killed, though the newspapers talk about pacts, amnesties.

In Kampala, the capital, an eleven-hour drive north-east, cloud streams up, grey and thick, but moving swiftly: soon it will be hot. A marabou stork – a karoli – struts magisterially on the pavement, tall as the humans, who don’t appear to like him, his long hairy pink gizzard swinging in the light like a warm, greedy chain of office. He cocks his head, and looks wise and cynical. A tourist behind glass in a jeep is thrilled, and takes a photograph. Smartly-dressed people are walking to work, in immaculate shirts and liquorice-shiny shoes, though the pavements are broken, red and dusty. The traffic is thickening: the taxis start hooting. They hold fourteen people, assorted bags of millet and potatoes, and crucifixes meant to keep the drivers safe from other drivers. Men ride boda-boda bikes crowned with thick hooked stems of green bananas, or with wives, in brilliant pink or turquoise, perched side-saddle behind them. Everyone drives more or less in the middle of the road, which seems to offer the best chance of getting where you’re going. But mostly, Kampala seems peaceful, and organised.

Mary Tendo’s in Kampala, getting ready for a trip. She checks her glossy helmet of hair in the mirror and smiles at herself: red plump lips. She is not too slim, which is excellent, for she wants to look good to go to the village. It’s her last week at work before the journey, and she has to make sure all the right checks have been done. The first hour of the day, between seven and eight, is always her favourite, with the Executive Housekeeper’s Office to herself, her computer screen glowing blue and orderly. Time to get a grasp on what there is to be done on this particular morning at the Sheraton.

It’s the whitest, straightest hotel in Kampala, and the most modern, until a few years ago. Now it still stands tall on its flowering green hill in Nakasero, where the rich people live, but it seems to be straining up on tip toe, anxious. The truth is the Sheraton suddenly has rivals – the boutique Emin Pasha, the enormous new Serena, whose rooms are rumoured to be best of all. The Sheraton staff, too, are slightly nervous; everyone must be on top of their game. Someone important is coming to Kampala.

But outside the banks, down on the teeming main road, the navy-clad, rifle-toting guards can risk feeling sleepy as the sun gets hotter. Their rifles droop towards the ground. No-one is going to challenge them. It’s a safe city, with a disciplined army. President Museveni’s on top of things. (He’s been on top of things for rather too long. Rather too much on top of things. He is rumoured to be going for a fourth term of office, and the First Family is getting richer. But give him his due, he has disciplined the army, at least when they are close to home.)

A lot of building work is in progress. Round the Parliament building, and near the Serena, pavements are being mended, with pick-axes and new white paving-stones, ready for the next torrential rains, which will wash the red mud underneath away, and spread new red diasporas of earth across the whiteness.

Hotels are going up: more slowly, they’re falling down again. A skyscraper that rose up five years ago, right at the centre of the city, on Kampala Road, made of shiny pink stone, pointing boldly at the future, is peeling in the tropical heat and rain; long shreds of pink skin wave from head to foot, blowing in the wind, flapping hard against its body, and under the torn scraps of rosy veneer are grey panels of what appears to be cardboard. It will have to be mended, like everything else.

Mary Tendo frowns and smiles as she peers at her screen. She refuses to wear her glasses at work. Glasses are ageing; she is strong, and young. Hotel occupancy’s 67 per cent, at the moment, not bad in view of all the renovations being done. For CHOGM is approaching, pronounced ‘chogamu’, though British people call it ‘choggum’: two months away, less than two months, the Commonwealth Heads of Government will be meeting in Kampala. And the Queen, the Queen will be coming to Uganda.

Though not to stay at the Sheraton. The Queen will be staying at the Serena, or so it is rumoured. Mary tuts, softly. That ugly, dirt-red, overpriced hotel. With its terrible history, which we will not speak about (though the Sheraton has its own history, which Mary Tendo is used to denying. People whisper that, under Idi Amin, in the bad old days of Big Daddy, they used to hear screams in the middle of the night. But it’s all so long ago it must be forgotten, or else Uganda cannot move into the future. Ugandans have become good at forgetting; and many of them are forgiving, also.) Mary is sure that the Queen did not choose to go to the Serena instead of the Sheraton. Ebimu bya kwesonyiwa. Even a Queen can be badly advised.

But the Business Forum is also important, Mary tells herself. CHOGM Business Forum is coming to the Sheraton. And delegations from Commonwealth countries. These prestigious guests will be coming to the Sheraton, where Mary is Executive Housekeeper. It is a big job. She was recently promoted. She is still enjoying her new, larger office, with its glass door and strategically-placed mirror so that she can keep an eye on what’s going on even when she has her back to the door. Through the glass, now, she sees her right arm has arrived, Pretty the Desk Clerk, who channels all the messages from the floor Supervisors, the Linen Supervisor, F & B, and Ken Fixit.

It’s not quite a normal day, today. Not just because Mary’s getting ready for her trip, but because of the memo from the Director of Training and Standards, who is one of the two people still above her (for she has risen, through her skill and hard work. Mary Tendo can work harder than anyone.)

She came to the Sheraton two years ago as the Linen Room Supervisor, a job she previously held at the Nile Imperial Hotel. From the Linen Room she was promoted to Assistant Housekeeper. Now she is Executive Housekeeper (she likes the neat clicks of the syllables, like a key turning in bright new locks). The hotel is a theatre: she sees it like that. She is the stage manager, one of the few who make sure back of house runs like clockwork. The guests only see the well-lit stage, their gleaming glasses and enormous beds, the ironed linen white as the snow in London which Mary so loved when she first saw it, the soft light in the Piano Bar, the line of gold-uniformed receptionists standing behind the long desk in the enormous foyer, smiling like statues. But Mary knows the truth is all sweat and muscles. Beneath the desk, the legs of the receptionists are aching, because they are never allowed to sit down. Under the surface, the stately Sheraton swan is paddling, paddling, furiously. At the back of house, behind a slender partition, the washing machines are roaring, the huge ironing machines are creaking round, the men are standing ironing the details by hand, the linen-room maids are doing stain removal: pre-wash stain removal, post-wash stain removal. At the front of house, when the guests aren’t looking, the maids are dusting and polishing the bedrooms, hoovering and smoothing, spraying and wiping, then hastily filling in their Room Reports.

But none of this must happen in front of the guests. The essential illusion: here is ease, and calm. Kiringa kizinga: it’s the Sheraton, and the Sheraton is an oasis. Today the Director of Training and Standards has decreed that the maids need a training session. It’s an update, really, on the Sheraton Brand. Mary sees the need: it is too easy to forget. Even she sometimes forgets to smile at the guests, which is the first essential at the Sheraton. (Of course, many of the guests are fat and rude and lazy, and when they complain, it is unjustified, and their only motive is to get a rebate, so Mary Tendo would like to go and kick them on the buttocks, and she could, because her legs and feet are well-developed. Besides, they have no right to be richer than her, just because they are American or European. But instead, she smiles. She’s professional.)

Getting hotter now. Mid-morning. Overhead, the thunderclouds are building up, great bellying, Victorian, story-book clouds. The rains are early this year, and heavy, though the real rainy season has not yet come. But now there’s a different smell in the air. Not rain, burning. An acrid smell. And the air is thickening with smoke, on Kyaggwe Road, in Old Kampala. The Kisekka market traders have sold spare parts for motors here for years and years, but now the government, which likes progress, has leased their market to Rhino Investments, who people say have links with the First Family. Does the government care about the little people? Perhaps it thinks they belong to the past, and Uganda must move into the future.

But Uganda contains both the past and the future. People hike into the city, out of the past, from the distant villages, which fear they are forgotten. They are hoping to see the President.

Outside Parliament House, on Parliament Avenue, a patient group of women, dressed in their best clothes, in bright clean gomesis, with a few men, not young, wearing jackets in the heat, are waiting, oddly still, sitting on the grass by the side of the road or standing proudly in the heat by the wall. They are waiting to see the President. They come from Mbale, in the east of Uganda, and President Museveni has promised he will see them. They are bringing him documents on many subjects. Their roads are flooded; many homes are cut off, and people have drowned; the water’s still rising. And then, there are many problems with rubbish. Once Mbale was the cleanest town in Uganda, but now there is no money to collect the rubbish, and rubbish plus water could mean disease.

But there is something more important, too. They have something to say about forgiveness. They know that the government’s consulting its people about what should be done to the LRA, whether Kony and his generals should be tried in the courts, whether peace can happen without punishment. And the people of the east have their own view on this, because they remember what the government did, which the western media don’t talk about, to the Itesot people, just north of them, how the people were loaded in a train wagon at Mukura, and then something else, which must not be spoken, to teach them manners, and the air smelled of burning.

Yet the people of Mbale do not want vengeance. They simply want everything to be remembered, and then everything can perhaps be forgotten. Because maybe Kony is not a devil, or no more a devil than the government devils, and maybe the only way to stop all the evil is to set it aside and begin again. Most have a soldier somewhere in their family.

Maybe all the devils are only human: when things have been remembered, could they be absolved? For then they could sort out the roads, and the rubbish, and all the problems that have been deferred. When you live so far away, people don’t remember you, so they have travelled to see the President, but they won’t make trouble. They have good manners. If you show good manners, you deserve good treatment. They came the day before, but they are still waiting. Perhaps the President will see them today. They notice how bitter is the air in the city. It must be the cars, pouring past in the heat. But there’s something extra: something smoky, stinging, which makes them uneasy as they stand by the roadside. The people of Mbale miss the air of the country.

In fact, the traders of Kisekka Market, angry in the heat, are making things hotter by burning tyres, blocking the road from the city, and lighting bonfires in the narrow alleys, while others are running to lock up their stores.

But this is Uganda. You aren’t allowed to riot. Protest must be made by peaceful means. Police Acting Director of Operations, Grace Turyagamanawe, will decide to normalise the situation and make things more peaceful by using tear-gas. Soon everything will be quiet again, though a smell of burning hangs in the air until, at 3 PM exactly, the dark clouds burst, and rain drives down in straight sheets of water, as heavy as lead, seemingly from every direction, from left and right and even almost horizontal, and in minutes yards and pavements lie inches deep in water, and a beggar stands spellbound, not trying to shelter, feet wound in dark rags like bandages that slowly blacken, while busy Kampalans, smartly dressed but coatless, walk swiftly through the deluge under small makeshift roofs of briefcases, folders, newspapers, which are staunch for a few seconds, then bend and crumple darkly. Only a few have coloured golf umbrellas.

The people of Mbale have no umbrellas. They huddle together, chattering softly like wet birds, their garments less bright, their faces less happy. They will not look smart to meet the President. But it’s only a shower: this isn’t the country, and by four-thirty, the sun is shining again, and they move apart, and stand there, steaming. They will still be standing there as night falls, though one of them, smiling, tells an anxious white tourist who noticed them yesterday and also that morning, who stops, rather shyly, to ask them how they are, ‘Don’t worry, Mzee, we will see the President. And when it is night, they will put us somewhere.’

Yet three days later, without seeing their president, the people of Mbale go back to their district, or as near as the bus can take them to their district which is cut off by the floods that have swallowed the roads. There’s a Ministry of Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, after all. But a lower-ranking member of the government has met them to explain: the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness was unfortunately not prepared for disaster.

Quite often, the President does see his people. He believes in meeting the unhappy and disgruntled, and he invites the newspaper, New Vision, to take photographs of these occasions. He is warm and charming, brisk and acute, with a youthful manner, although he’s in his sixties. He has a big smile and a cute baby nose. Those who like him call him ‘M’ or ‘Mzee’ or another, clever nickname: M7, short for MuSEVENi! He is the father of the modern nation! After the other fathers – Obote, Amin – who slaughtered thousands of their children, the international community is keen on Museveni, if a little less keen than they were at the beginning. And Ugandans, also, are distinctly less keen, though he tells those he meets that he will fix their problems. After all, he is the President; he just needs to make a phone call. They go away feeling honoured: all will be well. Over the months that follow, the warm feeling goes away. Of course, he is too busy to help them all. He is busy making sure that Uganda moves forward. He is leading Uganda into the future.

Mary Tendo belongs to Uganda’s future. She believes in it: she is making it happen. She has made the great move from the village to the town, from the unwritten past into the urban future. She is educated; she does not make errors. (If she makes an error, she straightaway corrects it.) She knows there are dangers in making errors, and dangers in going back to the village, even though she will only be away for ten days. There is a chance for her rivals to make trouble for her, as used to happen at the Nile Imperial, when Sarah Tindyebwa thought Mary too ambitious. Now many people might like to have her job, and the Assistant Housekeeper, Rachel, is very capable, and although young, perhaps too capable ... Mary must leave all the paperwork in order, but then, her paperwork is always in order. She knows she is clever and organised. She remembers, with a smile touched with both scorn and pity, the collapsing towers of paper in Vanessa Henman’s study, in faraway North London, where Mary once lived.

Vanessa. The Henman. Who once loomed so large, but now Mary thinks of her as small, and old. Poor Vanessa did not know how to manage paper: Touch Document One-Time only, Deal With, File, or Forward to Disposal Channel (though it is true that there are always some things Pending). Instead Vanessa hid things and let things slide. Long ago, in London in the distant past, when Mary Tendo was working as Vanessa’s cleaner, to pay her bills while she finished her MA, Mary tried to sort Vanessa’s desk out, and throw most of the messy paper away. But Vanessa had shrieked, and started waving her hands, though later she apologised. Mary went back to London quite recently, when Vanessa begged her to, and this time things were different, because Mary, of course, was a mature woman, and already successful in Uganda, and she was no longer a cleaner or a nanny, but advising Vanessa in her hour of need, because life had grown sadder for Vanessa. Little Justin was adult now, and in bed with depression, and asking for Mary Tendo, not his own mother. Of course, Mary flew over and sorted everything out (once Vanessa had agreed to reward her properly) and by the time she left, Justin was married with a baby.

But the paper situation had become a disgrace! Piles loomed like mountains on every side of Vanessa’s expensive laptop computer, crumbling piles of old paper like great dead termite hills. Vanessa’s whole life seemed to have slipped into Pending. But it doesn’t matter. It’s Vanessa’s problem. Mary has her own life to live in Uganda. She looks around her office. Everything’s in order.

And yet she feels a slight unease about Vanessa, because Mary is borrowing Vanessa’s ex-husband.

Mary Tendo has invited Trevor to help her to mend the well in her village, and she has asked Trevor not to let Vanessa know, because otherwise Vanessa might want to come with him, since Vanessa seems to think they are still married, though she also likes to tell the story of the divorce, which she demanded bravely, as a feminist. However, Trevor’s still allowed to do jobs around the house, and he has the right to be blamed for things – their son’s depression, the loss of small objects, the occasional failure of his attempts to mend things. If Vanessa were to come to Uganda, Mary knows there would be stress for the whole of Uganda. And so she has sworn Trevor to secrecy.

Trevor is a plumber, and a very good one, but when Mary rang him in London and invited him to come and mend the well, he just laughed and said, ‘Mary, I am only a plumber. There are experts at this sort of thing, you know.’

‘Yes, there are consultants, they are very expensive. But Trevor, I think you will help me for free. We talked about it when I was in London.’

‘But Mary, that was years ago. You can’t just ring up out of the blue –’

‘You are a practical man. You like to be helpful.’

Trevor had whistled, quite loudly, and started laughing. ‘Mary Tendo, you’ve got the cheek of the devil.’

‘Trevor, I think you know I am a Christian.’

‘Oops. Sorry. It’s just an expression ... I do know something about wells, it’s true. I did some work on boreholes when I was in the Territorial Army. Royal Engineers.’

‘You were the Queen’s engineer?’

‘It’s just a name, Mary. Sort of weekend volunteer. But maybe your village doesn’t have a borehole.’

‘Trevor, a well is a well,’ Mary had informed him, with more confidence than she in fact possessed, but Trevor had to be made to agree. ‘I knew you would be pleased to be reminded. I remember how you wanted to visit me here, and I remember how you liked that book by Winston Churchill, My African Journey.’

‘Yes, I gave you my copy.’

‘Thank you, Trevor.’

‘But did you read it?’

‘Yes, I did not like it. He was always talking about “The Black Man” and “The Asian”, but the only ones with brains were “The Asian” and “The White Man”. I think you know that Ugandans have brains.’

‘Mary, you’re cleverer than I am,’ sighed Trevor. ‘You’re wrong about Winston Churchill, though. Wonderful writer, Winston Churchill –’

‘So that is settled,’ Mary cut in. ‘Will you come to my village, as my guest, Trevor? Charles and I will drive and pick you from Entebbe.’

There was a long, rustling silence before Trevor said, ‘Yes.’

So now Trevor is coming to Uganda. And so will the Queen, a little later. And Kampala is digging everything up, and replacing it, painted and patched and riveted, buffed and re-routed and disinfected.

(And others are coming, far away to the west, on their long, long pilgrimage back into Uganda. Soldiers are stumbling and falling through the trees, half-asleep on their feet, with a wave of stink from their stiffened uniform, blood, sweat, old dysentery. They no longer smell it, but nocturnal animals, just waking up as the red sun plummets, pause, stilled by fear, warm flanks quivering. Sniffing the air. The badness is coming. And in a nearby village, an old woman shivers, who once lost her daughter, and listens, frowns. Something is near. Hope, fear. Somewhere in the shadows, life or death walking. A soldier, so lame he must be ancient, a commander, pushes the scarecrow ahead of him painfully onwards, poking and prodding with a darkly stained stick. Looking up, he suddenly sees between leaves a small silver sickle, a thin new moon, very bright in the heavenly glow after sunset, which reminds him, reminds him, but he will not remember. Is it a message? It stares straight at him. He shudders, terrified God has seen him.)

The Rhino Pub, at the Sheraton, is closed this week for refurbishment, and so drinks are served outside, by the swimming pool, as the sun grows pink, and the shadows lengthen, and sleeping mosquitoes near still stretches of water start to twitch, minutely, with faint signals of hunger (though there is no malaria in Kampala: at least that is what people tell the tourists, and the tourists nod and smile but keep taking their pills, and spraying themselves nervously with DEET, and they are quite right, because of course it is a lie, there is malaria in many places in Kampala, in the slum districts where no tourists go, in Kamwokya, on the way to Bukoto, and around Nateete Market, and although the haunts of the rich are mostly free of the disease, mosquitoes sometimes make mistakes and cross borders, and find the blood of the wealthy equally delicious).

So that few are swimming in the turquoise pool at the Sheraton as the sun dips down, as the date-palms grow dramatic upon the pink sky, as the flood-lights come on and pick out the ridges on the tallest palm-tree in stark black and white, and the birds – white egrets, white and black crows – all darken to cut-out colourless bird-shapes that fall or whirl up and drop down again in resistless spirals of sleepiness to their evening roost in the leafy branches. The sky’s almost empty as its red starts to fade, then deepens to faintly starred indigo. The last bird to go is a lone planing stork making one last pass above the poolside drinkers, listening, perhaps; there are always listeners; so in Uganda, people are both brave and cautious. The dark is total, now. The stars steady.

A new moon rises: something in the offing.

2

And two hours later, since England is further from the equator, the same sun is sliding down over London, roosting in the blackening skyscrapers. Early September: summer is over.

The airport. Heathrow, Terminal 4. In here, there is no weather, no rain, no sunlight.

A giant ant-hill poked with a stick. The ants run everywhere, surely without purpose. Tiny limbs hurrying, dragging great parcels of earth or food almost bigger than they are. Great white birds swoop down on them, one after another – but then more ants stream out of their bellies.

No trees, no grass, nothing. Come down closer and the ants become people, but still nothing grows. Everything here was made by machines. Metal and plastic, silicon and paper.

The humans, though, are very alive, giving off waves of sweat and terror, adrenalin, joy and sorrow, as they say goodbye, or greet other humans.

Here’s Vanessa Henman. Ah, Vanessa ... Vanessa, accompanied by her driver, long-suffering Justin, who has driven all wrong, so Vanessa has told him.

How small she looks, how agitated. Like grass in the wind; dry grass; straw. A chemical yellow, half a lifetime too late for the blonde of childhood, and her teeth are too white. Her little pale face is tense with excitement, her red lips pursed to say goodbye to her son, who has wheeled her luggage trolley through to Fast Bag Drop, offloading her enormous blue case, a sort of wardrobe on wheels that feels freighted with stones.

She might be in her forties, or fifties, or sixties. Nights of not sleeping, getting ready for her journey, have left her older. She clutches at Justin. The point of her life, but has she been a bad mother? He’s a big handsome animal, lazily clever, with lips that curve in a deep cupid’s bow and natural blond curls Vanessa envies. ‘Justin,’ she says, ‘kiss Abdul Trevor for me.’ She’s a good grandmother, if rather anxious, and her little grandson is not quite well. She cries for a moment, then lets Justin go, and begins to heft her over-large flight bag into the lonely maze of roped-off gangways, endlessly doubling back on themselves, down which all travellers must go. Like a determined snail, with her house on her back. Surely it won’t fit in the overhead lockers?

Be obedient, Vanessa: follow the path. If you go off the path, who knows what may happen?

Vanessa’s on her way to Kampala, Uganda. She’s going to a British Council Conference, where everything is organised. She has several memos with all her arrangements. There are Conference Programmes of enormous size, in multiple versions, clogging up her computer, as speakers drop in, or venues drop out. The unifying theme is ‘The Outsider’. Some of the titles are long or repellent, but she’s used to the longwindedness of academics. ‘Dis-covering the Outsider in Heart of Darkness: Marlow or the Cannibals?’ ‘Orature: Can it be Spoken?’ ‘Exile and the Dis-grace of Coetzee: Solitude, Slow Man and the Lonely Modernist.’ On the other hand, some events are very, well, up tempo. There are dub poets, beat boxers, a rap poet. She has printed all the versions, indiscriminately, and stuffed all the paper in the lid of her suitcase. (Vanessa has a small problem with objects: paper, photographs, books, bills. She loses them, or accidentally stockpiles them. She brings the wrong ones, and they make her anxious. She strains to be organised, and fails. Then every few months, she goes on the war-path, desperate to re-impose order on life. Woe betide anyone who gets in the way.)

But later, she’s off to see the gorillas. The rare mountain gorillas of western Uganda. Near DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, where few tourists go. She’s not entirely sure it’s such a good idea, now the reality is coming closer. Yet she had boasted to Justin and his wife, Zakira, ‘Real gorillas. In the jungle. Not a zoo. I’m going to – actually – spend time with them.’

They hadn’t looked as impressed as she’d expected. (Of course they were young and ignorant, especially Zakira, who could be snooty. ‘Upper-class Moroccans,’ as she said to her friend Fifi. ‘No-one is as haughty as upper-class Moroccans, and my son has to go and marry one.’ In fact, she is immensely proud of Zakira. Justin, having been useless for years, has suddenly married a rather remarkable woman, a Moroccan with an MBA, and they’ve got a baby, poor little Abdul Trevor, a sweet child despite his ridiculous name. And Justin’s doing an evening course in journalism. How clever of him to find a wife with prospects, a wife who will certainly be rich one day, for an MBA is the royal road to money.)

‘I’m going to spend time with them on equal terms,’ Vanessa had insisted, getting pink in the face.

‘She’s going to wear a gorilla suit,’ said Justin to Zakira, and they both burst out laughing.

Vanessa remembers this with pain. In fact Justin had got extremely silly and doubled up, breathless, crying with laughter and repeating, every so often, through his tears, ‘Mum in a gorilla suit! Mum in a gorilla suit!’

Little Abdul Trevor had been more sensitive, although he was only three. Disturbed by laughter he did not understand, he had crept up beside his grandma and put his arm around her, staring at her earnestly. ‘Is it funny, Ganma?’ he asked.

‘Not very, darling,’ she had said, with dignity.

‘Not be a grilla, Ganma,’ he urged her.

‘Er – no, I won’t be a gorilla, I promise.’

As she hauls herself along, out of the comfort zone, growing smaller, now, in the enormous ant-hill, crawling deeper into the nervous land of checking and re-checking money, passport, ticket, glasses, she remembers the kindness of Abdul Trevor. The little boy loves her, and she is grateful. She knows she isn’t an easy person.

But as soon as she thinks that, she justifies it; she has high standards, she cares about things.

Justin watches his mother toiling away, with her hump of possessions, photographs, documents. He has brought her this far and can go no further. How slight she looks. Almost fragile, though people don’t tend to see her as fragile. She turns and waves a gallant, abortive little wave and then pushes on determinedly towards the checkpoint. By now she has traversed a hundred metres of gangway, though she’s only six metres away from him. To go as the crow flies is forbidden. Just before Justin turns and leaves, he sees Vanessa talking to the passport official. Oh dear, what is his mother doing? Screwing up his eyes, he lip-reads, incredulous.

She’s saying, ‘An upgrade ... if you could do anything ... well-known writer ... British Council ...’ A flood of words. The man looks puzzled. Oh God, now she’s showing him her latest book, and he is scratching his head and looking at her closely. Probably wondering if she’s sane enough to travel. She’s asking an immigration officer for an upgrade. Now, tiring of her, the man waves her on. His mother disappears into Departures, forgetting to look round at him. Justin fears she will try for an upgrade again.

He picks his way back through the halls of displaced people, dodging the trail of enormous possessions to which fretting owners are paying obeisance, labelling, locking and unlocking, worrying. Now he thinks of his mother with sorrow and affection. It’s always such a relief when she goes, which is sad for her, he does see that. Even for a moment, even after lunch, when she goes for a rest to quell acid indigestion. Rooms are calmer and easier without his mother in them, tidying, improving, asking questions. She is always buzzing with ideas and plans, most of them involving work for other people. She lives other lives as well as her own. In the end the only way he could escape her was by giving up completely: work, social life, getting up in the morning. Justin had gone to bed for six months. Perhaps she’d got the message. Only Mary Tendo could cheer him up. And then he had got back together with Zakira.

Good-looking young women glance up as Justin passes, the harsh light of the airport halo-ing his curls, but there’s something a little unfinished about him, as if he doesn’t quite know where he’s going, and long before he’s out of sight, they lose interest.

Justin is focused on his mother. Why is she always searching for something? As if life itself owes her an upgrade. To be fair, how far she has climbed already, through her own efforts, from the dump where she grew up, in a tiny Sussex village, with a farm labourer and a depressive! Grandma was in and out of loony bins, she’d recently told him. Poor Mum! And like him, she was an only child, so all the loony-ness hit her undiluted. Yet she’s become a published novelist and a lecturer in creative writing. And she can’t be as bad at writing novels as Justin fears (he can’t bring himself to read them, in case he’s in them), if the British Council’s chosen her as a delegate to an international conference. He supposes his grandparents must have been proud. Vanessa was her mad mother’s wunderkind. (‘I was fearsomely bright. I was two years ahead!’) And she’d tried to impose the same role on him.

So I was always at classes, Justin reflects, Junior Einstein Fun with Numbers!!, Dolphin Swim League, Teen Trapeze ... No wonder I got tired. Whereas Mum is fucking tireless.

How would he have survived without Mary Tendo? Mary had never tried to improve him. Just played with him, cuddled him, and fed him normal food, things like chips and baked beans which his mother had forbidden. Mary. Where is she? He misses her. He knows she would adore Abdul Trevor.

He has come to an unfamiliar part of the short-stay car-park. Harassed people are unloading, with sharp cries of effort, their rucksacks and cases and cellos from car-boots, trying not to quarrel when they’re just about to part. He peers short-sightedly around for his jeep, which he’s thinking of swapping for a second-hand Smart Car. There’s a certain social pressure, now, against jeeps. And Justin is certainly as green as the next man. Ah yes, he’s spotted it. He switches off his phone, so his mother cannot ring him, and revs up his engine, which needs a service: clouds of grey smoke. He loves driving, now, though he isn’t wholly confident. When he was depressed, he had to give up driving, and was driven everywhere, like a baby. Mary Tendo helped him to grow up again.

Hunched in Departures with a skinny decaff latte, stopping every so often to pat the rucksack pocket from which her passport and boarding card might be stolen, Vanessa is already texting her son. Goodbye Justin, lots of love, goodbye. Thanks for driving me, good boy. Hide a key for my cleaner pls under the dustbin? Take care darling, you are always my baby, kiss Abdul T for me, Mum.

An hour later, the passengers for Entebbe are in a queue for boarding. Vanessa, hardly able to stand upright with the weight of her flight bag dragging back her shoulders, is pleading with the British Airways steward, who is smiling automatically, consulting his list. ‘I am representing the British Council, and I will be writing about Uganda. I will definitely mention British Airways in my article, if you could offer me an upgrade.’ His face becomes frankly puzzled as she adds, pink-faced with the foretaste of failure, ‘I asked the gentleman in Departures. This is my novel. I’m Vanessa Henman.’ It’s hard to hold the book, her flight bag, her boarding-card and her litre of water. Why can’t they make things easy for her?

‘I’ve checked the list. You’re in World Traveller.’

‘Thank you.’ She smiles, ecstatic: she’s pulled it off. She’s been upgraded to World Traveller. And then she’s suspicious. A sinking of the heart.

‘Is that an upgrade?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

People are listening. She trudges forward.

Vanessa, oh, Vanessa. Travel safely.

3

In a street of new bungalows in a suburb of Kampala, Mary Tendo and Charles and their daughter Theodora and the maid, Mercy, are settled for the evening. Mercy is just finishing the washing up. Then she will lie down beside the baby, Theodora, who is humming wordlessly to herself. Mary is staring at the slightly clunky laptop that looked modern when Charles gave it her, four years ago.

She has come in here because she cannot be bothered to watch the shenanigans of Big Brother Africa, where people sit half-naked all day by the jacuzzi, and nobody talks in complete sentences, though of course she would like a Ugandan like Maureen to win it, and certainly not two-timing Bertha from Zimbabwe. Charles has fallen asleep as he watches on the sofa. So she’s come into the bedroom to write her Life of Mary Tendo, which she has been neglecting, now she is so busy, and many would say it was a waste of time. She’s enjoying re-reading all she has written. As she reads, she frowns, or laughs, or looks sad.

When she was in UK, it was shown to an agent, and for a while everybody got very excited, including a big British publisher. But they found Mary Tendo was no pushover. She would not rewrite her life to make it more thrilling. And particularly, they wanted to know more about the times when she shared a bed with Justin. (Because he was depressed, and she could cheer him.) And they wanted her to put in many details, of things which she never confirmed had happened. And they said ‘It’s normal, everyone does it, in the modern world there’s no distinction between fact and fiction. Modern readers are sophisticated, Mary. And if you beef it up, you will have big sales.’ As she thinks about this, she becomes indignant. Her strong, ridged fingers buzz over the keys like hornets hurrying to feed their brood. Because sometimes she can only talk to her journal. But after one paragraph, she feels discontented. She chooses a new, more assertive typeface, and as she does so she becomes aware that actually, she is holding off sadness.

I was right to refuse to add the passages they wanted. I am a Ugandan. And I am a Christian. We are not like the British, we are not immoral (though not all the British are immoral. Vanessa Henman was not immoral; no-one would care to be immoral with her. Though I sometimes suspected her of sleeping with Trevor. Since they were once married, it would not have been immoral. But I must have been wrong. He is a sensible man.)

The English publishers asked for a picture of me. I think they would have liked me to look slightly indecent. The photographer they sent, who was American, and sweaty, and smiled too much, with red eyes like a fish, could not remember my name for five minutes, and said, ‘Loosen up, Maria, it’s the 21st century!’ I preferred to retain my glasses and jacket. The photographer got cross and went away. And many small quarrels began with the publisher, because I did not like the promises in the contract, and the woman they called my editor was young and impertinent. She had crossed eyes and too few clothes. She also had a poor grasp of English, and was not happy when I tried to explain it. Her level of education was not high, though I was tactful and did not say so. Perhaps I hinted at it a little. Then, just because I had not signed the contract, they cancelled it in a letter from a lawyer that began ‘Without prejudice’. Without prejudice! Obviously the publishers were prejudiced against me.

I do not regret that I did not get published, though I felt a little cross when Vanessa, who was jealous, said, ‘I thought it wouldn’t come to anything, Mary.’ The UK publishers never offered her so much money. Perhaps because her novels did not tell a story, and had sentences which trailed on for ever. I suppose she would not have refused to take her clothes off. She often did situps in her pyjamas.

In fact, perhaps I do regret it, though it is not worth being sad about. Other things in life are more important, but Vanessa did not realise it.

And Mary re-reads what she has written, and thinks, I am not really happy with this typeface. For what I need to write, it is a little loud. She scrolls through the list: Consolas, Constantia, Futura, Lucida, Perpetua ... the best, the most serious is Times New Roman.

I feel strange when I think about going to the village. I have longed and planned to go back to Notoke, but now the day is almost upon me. Because of what? I must look in my heart.

Jamil, my son, my lovely boy. My son is an absence, always trying to grow bigger, but I dare not let it eat up my soul. Life is hard, and short, and we have to live it.

And my kabite, Charles, is also in my heart, but he never troubles me (except when he is lazy about doing the shopping and goes to Garden City and spends too much money, because he likes to drop into Aristoc bookshop, instead of buying cheaply, in the market). He is a good man, if a little skinny. And then there is our daughter, as he always reminds me. She has a beautiful name, Theodora. Perhaps I wanted her to be a boy, but she is my daughter and I will love her.

And my brother, my sisters, and aunties, and nieces and nephews are in my heart too, though they have grown distant. I sometimes sent them money when I was in London, though not every month, because London is expensive, and some of those girls are not well-behaved, though of course my sister gets cross and denies it, because a mother must defend her children, but I know they go too often to the beer-shop near Notoke, and what if people say they are prostitutes? Still I wish that, like her, I had many children.

Oh, I do not want to go home to the village with only one small daughter. Without my son, nga silina mutabani wange.

When I was in London, nearly twenty years ago, I thought with longing about Notoke. I lay awake listening to the beat of my heart. It was loud and lonely on my cold pillow. I thought about the sound of the women of my village pounding groundnuts in their wooden mortars, thud-ah, thud-ah like the blood in my body, which longed to be back in the place from which it came.

But the village will have changed, and so have I. Mary Tendo is what? Is she a woman from the village? Mary Tendo has become a woman of the world.

Yet I will never forget my childhood, the hours under the mango tree on Saturday after we children had swept the compound, and fetched water, and seen to the goats. We were never ill-mannered to our parents. We were happy so long as they did not beat us. We would tell each other stories. People liked mine best. And the English publishers liked them also, although they were arrogant, and wanted to ‘improve’ them.

Will there still be villages, in Uganda’s future? Perhaps they will all have electricity and running water (although this is hard for me to believe). The children will no longer be taking it in turns, at nightfall, to peer out from the branches of the jackfruit tree on the hill, as we did, towards the distant city lights like a net of stars. The villagers will have their own line of bright streetlights, and travel to the city in safe, airy buses, with uniformed drivers who know road safety. (They will have to sack all the old drivers, for no Ugandan bus driver can be trusted!)

I cannot believe these days will come. Our leaders let us down, and the foreign governments. They give us money, but later they steal from us. It is not so easy to reach the future. We seem to have been running towards it for years, and it always slips away beyond the horizon.

And my son is slipping away, like the future. I can no longer see him clearly, my first-born child, my most dear and beloved, the child of my heart, from my first love, Omar. The full curve of his mouth, his long curling lashes, his skin, which is darkest gold, not black like me. I am left with only photos, which I look at every night, so that Charles is sad for me, and strokes my hand, and brings me a cup of milky coffee. But Jamil cannot look like his photos any more, though they are all I have of him. He is five years older. If he survives. If my son survives, he is over 20. If my son lives, he has become a man. With a man’s jaw, and a man’s memories of the years he has lived away from home. Years of which I, Mary Tendo, know nothing.

And happiness is what? To see your son become a man. There are many who take this happiness for granted.

But Omar and I could not stay together, and I try not to blame him for leaving me. For he was a good man, and true to his religion, and he became more devout, with the years, and of course, as a Christian, I could not follow him. But I knew that every boy needs a father. And if I had known, I would have given anything, I would have sold my flat and my furniture, I would have forced Charles to sell his business, to pay for Jamil to fly safely home to Entebbe, but my son wanted to be independent, and not to bother either of his parents; and his father, of course, has a new Arab family, and perhaps his new wife is mean, or greedy, but I cannot blame Omar, for Jamil did not tell him, he just set off overland by bus, which might have brought him down through southern Sudan and the terrible northern lands of the Acholi, where there has been war for 20 years, and perhaps Museveni does not want to stop it, and for this, for this he will NEVER be forgiven, tasobola kusonyiyibwa, I could never forgive the death of my son –

But I must not think like this. Perhaps I have lost focus. I must be positive, and count my blessings.

My history is interesting: thank you, Jesus. I have travelled the world, with Omar, my husband, who worked for the Libyan Embassy, and my husband loved me, as I never forget, although later we quarrelled, and times grew hard, and our families were not there, and could not support us, and Omar changed, and I changed also. But because of Omar, I had my son.

I cannot say, I have my son.

I must not think about my son.

Because of Omar, I saw Leptis Magna, and we were young, and we walked, together, on the Roman stones of the road to Carthage. And we saw the forum, and the carved jars of wine, and we stood, hand in hand, in the white stone theatre, which curved like the moon, and was open to the sea, which stretched away for ever, like our future. But slowly it has dwindled, and turned into the past.

Most Ugandans have never been to Libya. And even the British have never been there. Vanessa was impressed, and a little jealous.

And now she has her son, and I do not. It is rare for the British to lose their children.

I don’t mind the British. Usually I like them, although they are ignorant of history. I grew quite fond of them when I was in London. They are like spoiled children, but some have good hearts. And when they come to Uganda, they become like babies, afraid of everything, so we have to help them. They fear the heat, and the mosquitoes, and the water, and snakes in the country, and robbers in the city, and go everywhere by special taxi, and waste their money, which they have too much of.

I am only writing this because my heart is aching. It is hard not to think about Jamil today. I am no longer able to be completely hopeful, which is a weakness, but my strong heart falters

so now I must get up, and go to the kitchen where Mercy is sleeping with little Theodora, and scoop her from under the mosquito-net, and hug her beautiful fat small body, and bury my face on her sweet hot neck, to remind myself that I am not barren, that I still have a child, thanks God, thanks Jesus, and then, when she begins to wriggle and mutter, I slip her back in beside Mercy, and then I feel stronger and can write again

I am better with this baby when she is asleep, for then she reminds me of my son

but when she cries, she cries differently, and my heart hardens, which is not her fault

and also, I fear losing her, I lost one child I could lose another

If Jamil came down through the north, on his own, he could have been captured, he could have been killed. Because the Lords’ Resistance Army replaces its soldiers with abducted children and young people. They make the children kill other children.

And yet I have become like a starving man who longs to gnaw shoes or string as food, because I would rather

I cannot write it, No, I will write it

Because I would rather Jamil was a killer, that my kind young son killed and tortured others, than that he is lost. Entirely lost. Perhaps my son is utterly lost. And now I will be lost, because I think these things.

Jesus forgive me for thinking these things

‘Honey it’s time to stop writing. You will hurt your eyes, and need stronger glasses. I am going to bring you a juice before bedtime.’ It is Charles, with his shirt-tails outside his trousers.

But in fact Mary is no longer writing, she is staring at the screen, because the pain has become too great to write down.

‘I will stop writing, though I am not tired.’

She will never rest until Jamil is found.