My Driver

by Maggie Gee

  Mary Tendo is running down William Street with a stately, pounding rhythm. She is slightly annoyed; she does not like to run, and her shoes do not lend themselves to running, but her lunch break is only half an hour long, and she knows that in two minutes the skies will open, and she has to meet Charles at Owino Market. Because, very soon, Trevor will arrive, and she cannot put him in a room without curtains. He will be sleeping in the maid’s room, which is a cosy side-part to the kitchen, and Mercy will sleep in the lean-to at the back. So Mary’s friend Mirembe (who has a stall in the market) has been told to look out for some English curtains. ‘I would like velvet, that soft warm stuff,’ Mary Tendo has instructed, because Vanessa’s house had red velvet curtains, so Trevor will feel at home with them. Mercy will remake them to fit the window, using Mary’s sewing-machine.

  Owino Market, below Kampala Road, near the taxi-park, where tourists are advised not to go. It’s the largest market in Uganda, with the most people thronging to buy, hundreds of thousands of them every day, though the paths between the stalls are only two or three feet wide, and this lunch-time, mixed heaps of garbage are getting pounded by the rain, glistening fruit skins, fish-heads, bones, and the lanes are rapidly becoming near-impassable as buyers crowd to shelter under broken bits of roof, but Mary is made of sterner stuff, and presses on past them, uttering threats at a scoundrel trying to sell her a broken umbrella.

  The umbrella man wonders, is she a demon? Flashes of lightning make her eyes gleam yellow and her hair almost electric, oily bright. Her limbs move like pistons, unstoppable. The rain gets heavier, and sheltering people are curious to see her press onwards, onwards down the dirty furrow. What is she looking for, peering out under the black imitation-leather Sheraton folder she is now using as a rain-hat?

  ‘Mama wange jangu wano ogule ebyabazungu. Anti bafa dda! Hey, Mama. Buy very nice dead woman’s dress!’ Mary ignores the impudent woman. Being called ‘Mama’ hurts her heart. What good is a Mama without a son? Then the woman recognises Mary’s uniform. ‘Ey-ey, Sheraton! Millionaire-y!’

  It is true, getting spotted and darkened by the rain are dead people’s clothes, and unwanted clothes, and worn-out clothes, as well as very smart, nearly-new clothes with British charity shop price-tags still on them (Mary thinks, I will pick some gifts for the village). Here there are shoes in every condition, men’s and women’s, children’s and babies’, all of them shaped by the bones of distant feet, and now slicked and polished with rainwater; suit jackets without trousers, suit trousers without jackets, a thousand garments that have lost their owners, party dresses from long-finished parties. Most of it is western, not African. They have been cast off, perhaps by several owners, and shipped from richer countries in 40-foot containers, then fought over in Customs where the best has been stolen. The remnants are now scattered across tiny stalls not much bigger than an English dressing-table. The African clothes are the most expensive, in larger, superior stalls of their own. ‘Encore Fashions’, ‘De Luxe Shopping Mall’. Mary, however, thinks their prices a racket, and kisses her teeth at some brand-new gomesis which are selling for over 100,000 Ugandan shillings.

  Charles, her kabite, is very generous (though sometimes he has made small mistakes with money). Last month he had offered to buy Mary a beautiful gomesi for a marriage introduction they were attending, but Mary is cynical about ‘customary’ marriage, which makes the young men spend far too much money, and does not see the point of traditional dress, and does not want Charles to get in trouble with his bank.

  ‘Charles!’ She has spotted him. His dear narrow shoulders, his handsome curved nose, his big healthy smile, with straight milk-white teeth. OK he is not quite so tall as she is, but he is smart, very smart, in his pin-stripe suit, with perfectly matched trousers and jacket. He is chatting politely to her friend Mirembe, pressed close to her under the corrugated roof, but his face lights up when he hears her voice, and he comes across at once and takes Mary’s hand.

  ‘Hallo, honey,’ he says. ‘Did you get wet? Mirembe has got very nice curtains for us.’

  Mary looks judicious, and refrains from smiling, partly because Charles was talking to a woman, but also withholding the balm of her approval until she has seen the merchandise. Mirembe pushes it forwards, a pile of soft orange, the colour of sunlight at the end of the day. ‘Ey,’ says Mary, non-committal, but it is hard to stop herself smiling a little. She likes them better than Vanessa’s red curtains. ‘Very nice,’ she says, ‘but they are worn, here. And here. Look. They are a little old.’

  ‘Very good curtains, extra quality.’ Mirembe is used to Mary’s bargaining. ‘If you do not like them, I will keep them for myself. But your sweetheart will be sorry.’ In less than two minutes, they agree a price, and both of the women feel they have won. The drumming of rain on the tin roof is getting less.

  On her headlong dash back to William Street, Mary buys six second-hand men’s shirts, four pairs of trousers, two pairs of men’s shoes (one black, one brown), a selection of t-shirts, and a nearly-new grey nylon zipped jacket for her uncle, and piles them all neatly on top of the curtains, so Charles can carry it all to his car. The rain has stopped, but the street runs red water. Charles says goodbye to her and picks his way delicately down the crowded pavement, manoeuvring a pile almost as large as he is, anxious not to drop anything. Their shopping trip has been faster than expected, and Mary’s not quite late for the hotel, so she watches him fondly till he’s almost out of sight, and the sun comes out and lights up the fat bundle of orange velvet protruding on both sides of his slim striped back. He is a very sweet man, she thinks, good at fetching and carrying despite his small size. But somehow she must stop him being jealous of Trevor. Jealousy in a sweetheart is a very bad trait. She must also stop him talking to other women.

  The man Charles is not to be jealous of, Trevor, is talking to his on-off Iranian girlfriend in London. She is off, really. They both know it. They have tried to love each other, given up. His reading, when she wants them to go out, annoys her: ‘What is point, Trevor? Always reading books.’

  Soraya’s charming, fractured English no longer charms him. Nor her youth, which merely makes him feel old: besides, at 32, she’s aware of time passing. She’s accusing him of being ‘unvailable’, a word she picked up from an American TV talk show about Men Who Cannot Love. ‘Unveilable?’ he asks her, puzzled. ‘You came here to get away from the veil.’

  ‘You make always stupid joke, Trevor.’

  ‘No, really – oh, I see! UNAVAILABLE.’

  ‘You correct always my English, Trevor!’ And with that she bursts into tears again, and says, between sobs, ‘You never, never marry me, either. I am not joke. I am art teacher. AN art teacher. I am good at job – good at MY job. Do not correct. I come here four years ago and learn everything, English from start-up. And make myself something. But to you I am nothing.’

  ‘Remember I’ve done this marrying lark before. I was hopeless at it, so Vanessa tells me. And how many times have you called me hopeless? I’m not rich enough. Nor young enough. Look, I’m boring, to you, But I like being boring. You need a nice, rich young genius. Someone like Damien Hirst, Soraya. And he could give you that skull full of jewels.’

  Resignedly, she nods, and cries again. ‘But is not genius, Damien Hirst. Only genius at making money. You are nice man, Trevor. Nice man. Sorry.’

  He knows she needs British citizenship, but even when they were first together – he likes to please, but he can’t go that far. ‘You’re a lovely girl, Soraya. Someone will marry you.’

  ‘Yes. Is obvious.’ He’s hurt her pride. ‘Now you must leave, Trevor, I am busy. Go please, now. I must prepare my class.’

  So he leaves in a hurry, and forgets, in the bedroom, a postcard to Vanessa, in an envelope he has addressed, but not stamped, telling her that he is off to Uganda. Mary had instructed him to keep it a secret, so he’s compromised by letting Vanessa know too late for her to ask to join him.

  ‘SURPRISE!’
is how the postcard begins. Justin, who is looking after the house, would have found it on the mat and let his mother know, only Trevor’s ex-girlfriend will never post it, because she is too miffed to pay for the stamp. She nearly does it: Trevor nearly loved her: she nearly loved him; in the end, she doesn’t. A door slams hard. Tears must fall. But for Trevor, as he packs for his trip to Kampala, another door opens, and after the storm, the air is fresh, washed bright by the rain, and the road stretches away into the past and the future.

  All over Kampala, water is singing as it finds its way down the seven green hills. Vanessa has enjoyed her bird’s eye view, from Nando’s high windows, of the rainstorm, and the river of taxis, choked, stalled. So fortunate she didn’t get caught in it. She feels this trip is going to be lucky. She wanders out into the street, nearly falling head first over the slender rope that divides Nando’s forecourt from the world outside. The sun in her eyes is dazzling. A host of motorbike men descend on her. ‘Boda-boda?’ ‘Cheap, English!’ ‘How are you?’ ‘Taxi?’ She walks determinedly away, but not before she’s noticed that Kampalan men spend a lot of time picking and pulling at their noses, and shifting their genitals in the heat; all sticky body-parts need unsticking.

  And suddenly, Vanessa is stumped. She can’t remember how she came, and she can’t remember how to get back. Was it Kimathi Avenue? Colville Road? She doesn’t want to stand here, staring at her map, a target for every Ugandan robber (though of course, she reminds herself, with an effort, it’s safer than London, she always says so). And though her eyes have always been particularly good, at least when she has her lenses in, she cannot deny that in recent months the small print has started to swim out of focus.

  Find Kampala Road, she thinks, and I’ll be fine. It’s the biggest, busiest thoroughfare in Kampala, dividing the city roughly in two, with the rich above, and the poor below. I’ll go back to Kampala Road, no problem. She heads back to the heart of the roaring and hooting; finds the main road; and sets off once again. The amazing concertina of taxis starts up, blaring and squeezing, going nowhere. Most have flamboyant personalised banners above the windscreens, to shield the drivers’ eyes from the sun. ‘LIVERPOOL’, ‘MAN UNITED’.

  She is suddenly drenched up to her ankle as she plunges her boot into a pouring gutter. ‘PRAY JESUS’, a red metallic banner warns her. She doesn’t quite recall this stretch of the road, which is veering left, and surely sloping downwards, and there are fewer banks and insurance buildings, the structures becoming smaller and humbler. And what is this massive parking lot? Something whirring and dark darts across her face, making her start as it tickles her skin: an enormous dragonfly: she stops, shaken, and a well-dressed young man is at her side.

  ‘Hallo again, Madam. Good morning. You remember me? How are you today. Are you fine?’

  She looks at him blankly. His smile is heartwarming, meltingly sincere, beamed straight at her. Of course, it must be an African writer. Perhaps she met him last time she was here, or he has recognised her from her book-jacket. ‘I’m awfully sorry, I don’t remember –’

  His shirt is very white, his suit immaculate. ‘I am your friend, John. We were together only yesterday. I wonder if you can help me?’

  Vanessa’s mood changes. Not an African writer. She doesn’t know a Ugandan called John. Her bright pavilion crumbles away, recognition, fame, book-jacket photos. ‘Yesterday? No, I only just arrived ... I wasn’t here yesterday. I don’t know you.’

  His smile contracts, and with a little desperation he says, ‘But Madam,’ but she’s hurried past him, and he only follows her a few paces, then falls away.

  She is walking fast to leave the conman behind her, and she sees a roundabout ahead of her, and her heel is rubbing now, distinctly, sharply, and she hopes that there were no germs in the rainwater that drenched that boot, for the skin must be broken. And at that moment, with a lurch of her heart, she realises she’s walking in the wrong direction, she’s on Jinja Road now, heading out of the city, towards the slums and the charcoal smoke. She must have turned left down Kampala Road, when for the Sheraton, she should have turned right. Don’t panic, she tells herself. You haven’t gone far. But the sun beats down, and her foot is really hurting, and she finds, as she bends to loosen her boot, that she is a little dizzy, and sweating. It must be the malaria medication. She needs a drink of water. She wants to sit down.

  It doesn’t matter: get a private taxi back. But she hasn’t got enough for a private taxi. Ah well, it won’t kill her to catch a public one, which will only cost a few hundred shillings. She did it once or twice four years ago (though it was an ordeal. A man was coughing horribly – she did not want to catch TB in Kampala – and someone’s scurfy chicken had pecked her ankle. Still this is Africa, and Vanessa is game, and besides, she is already imagining the arrival of the other British writers, and how she will tell them, ‘Ah well, of course, I whip around the city by matatu. Though strictly speaking, only Kenyans call it that!’)

  She crosses the road, limping between onrushing vehicles, who honk furiously but veer to avoid her, and stops the first careering public taxi that rushes past in an uphill direction, with its conductor leaning out, touting for trade. ‘Sheraton?’ she asks, timidly, and he yanks her aboard, saying, ‘Hallo, English.’ A demure middle-aged woman in green traditional dress with a basket on her lap looks gravely at her and shifts across the seat, which yaws perilously from side to side, to let Vanessa sit next to her. The back seats of the van are full to bursting. No other white people, of course. At the next stop, three people push in beside Vanessa, who is now wedged solid, clutching her bag and constantly feeling, without success, for the reassuring shape of her mobile phone. Has she gone too far? Or not far enough? Her blistered foot has begun to throb. The dust blows in through the window, but she can’t move to find her sunglasses.

  They are turning off the main road, she realises, moving downhill, she knows not where. ‘Please,’ she says ‘excuse me,’ to her neighbour, who turns a kindly face upon her, ‘Sheraton? Sheraton Hotel?’

  The woman looks puzzled, and starts a lively conversation with the seat behind, who all stare at Vanessa. ‘Sheraton-y’ is the only word she understands. Then a young man in a jacket and tie says, ‘You shall go to the taxi-park, then you can find another taxi in Sheraton direction.’ General agreement, though Vanessa’s middle-aged neighbour seems to shake her head.

  Then Vanessa remembers. The taxi-park. Where tourists are told they must never go. Near the notorious Owino Market. Both of them haunts of conmen and robbers.

  Mary’s kabite, Charles, has locked all Mary’s purchases in the boot of his beloved red saloon, and then he has a nice idea. How busy Mary is, and how tired she sometimes looks. And soon she is going away to her village, with this English Trevor, who he has not met. Mary has explained (and Charles completely trusts her, and not only because once, when he became a little jealous, Mary poured away his beer, and went to sleep with the maid) that this Trevor is quite old, and not particularly handsome, and is just a friend who can do something for the village. But all the same, Charles remembers Mary telling him she always liked Trevor, even when she was very young, and worked in England as a cleaner.

  He has asked Mary about him, taking care to be subtle. ‘And so Trevor is no longer married to Vanessa?’

  ‘He has not been married to Vanessa for twenty years.’

  ‘Ah, that is good.’

  ‘Why is it good?’

  ‘Because she will not miss him while he is in Uganda.’

  ‘Actually I think perhaps she will miss him, because he does all the work in her house, even though he has a new, attractive girlfriend.’

  ‘He has an attractive girlfriend, even though he is ugly?’

  ‘I did not say that he is ugly. I only said that he is not very handsome. He is a nice man, and you need not be jealous.’ And Mary had come over and rubbed Charles’s neck, which she knows he likes, but sometimes forgets. ‘But I never understood why he married Vane
ssa.’

  ‘Perhaps you should have asked Vanessa to Uganda also.’

  Then Mary became a little impatient, because she wanted to read her Monitor newspaper, which tells the truth, unlike New Vision. ‘If she comes to Uganda, there will be nothing but problems. But Trevor is practical, and will mend the well. And you, dear, know nothing about Vanessa, because until now you have not met her, and if you had, you would not suggest it.’

  For a while, Charles had let her read in silence. But she looked so pretty, sitting under the electric light-bulb, with a lovely sheen on her oily skin and the light bouncing off her curving bosoms, that he said, once again, in a casual tone, ‘And yet, Mary, Vanessa is rich. Indeed I think she is richer than Trevor. It was Vanessa’s house that we stayed in, in London, at Christmas, when she was away in her English village, and we had a nice bed, and a large television, and we had French champagne, even if it was old. And perhaps Vanessa could bring money for your village.’

  ‘Vanessa would bring nothing but trouble for the village. And nothing but trouble for poor Trevor.’ And then Mary had shut her mouth very firmly, in a way that Charles knew meant ‘Discussion over’. And she had not talked to him until bedtime.

  Which is why, today, Charles had offered, in his lunch break from Miracle Micro-Finance, to meet Mary at Owino Market and help with the curtains. But still he is not quite sure she is happy. And so he decides to go to Eat It! Bakery, and buy her her favourite ginger cake.

  Vanessa swallows nervously: this is it. The taxi-park is a deep, noisy pit of metal. No-one can get in, no-one can get out. About a hundred identical dirty white Toyota vans are blocking the entrances and exits, and the drivers greet and insult each other at full volume through the open windows, and the fumes are thick and bitter, choking Vanessa, though none of the other passengers coughs and gasps. After hours of short, abortive, jolting manoeuvres, the taxi finally lurches to a halt, packed in side by side with its brother tin-cans. Vanessa’s hands tremble slightly as she clutches her possessions and slides along the seat, ready to get out. But the woman beside her in the green gomesi takes her arm – Vanessa jumps, and then feels ashamed, because of course she doesn’t distrust Ugandans – and says, in surprisingly good English, ‘You can wait at my side. I am going further, in this taxi, after half an hour. I will tell you when the right taxi is coming. This area is not good for you.’ She looks at her kindly, and then falls quiet, takes a Bible from her bag, and begins to read it. Vanessa settles back, grateful for the Bible. It’s nice to have Christians about when you need them! Though of course she takes pride in being an agnostic.