by Maggie Gee
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?