My Driver

by Maggie Gee

  There’s a slightly awkward moment at the end when one of the Kampalans, a delightful young woman with very short hair and a lot to say, turns to Vanessa and remarks, ‘I have not brought my money. Is it OK? I think the British Council is paying.’

  ‘Really?’ says Vanessa. ‘Good. No-one told me.’

  There’s a puzzled pause, and a tiny frown. ‘Veronique sayed that you work for the Council.’

  ‘Oh no, no!’ Vanessa laughs, ‘Not at all. I am just a penniless writer, like you!’

  And then the young woman looks rather hurt, and says, ‘No, I am not penniless. It is only that I did not pick my handbag from the house.’

  In the end they all split the bill between them. So what if Vanessa pays slightly more? When she works it out in English money, it costs less than a couple of lattes in London. Perhaps the beer has made her more relaxed, for she never, never drinks at lunch-time.

  Indeed she is feeling so effervescent that after all the writers troop, shrieking and laughing (and her as loud as anyone! Vanessa knows how to have a good time), back in the heat along the rough red road to the Sheraton, she takes herself out again to Kampala Road (the others are all too tired to go with her), spots a little Indian clothes shop, and (encouraged by a small crowd of onlookers as she hauls herself into and out of dresses, only partly screened by a torn curtain) buys a very pretty, youthful, top, all handkerchief points and patchwork flowers and a rather daring plunge at the front.

  She means to wear it to the Welcome Ceremony, where it should look nice in the photographs. It’s not the kind of thing she usually wears, but then, she isn’t usually in Uganda, and off-duty, after all these years, from her son, and for once representing herself as a writer, the part of herself she loves the most. ‘Vanessa Henman, Novelist’. (Not what she sees on notice-boards and memos at her university: ‘Course Leader, Vanessa Henman’, or ‘Dr V. Henman, Senior Lecturer’. Impossible now to remember how she once waited and longed for that ‘Senior’. As she treks through her decades, she is irritated that they haven’t yet made her a Reader, or Professor. But today she is not going to brood on these things, when she is so far away, and so happy! Today all annoyances seem petty.)

  The mirror in the lift as she swoops down to dinner from the 20th floor of the Sheraton is not as encouraging as she hoped, but she smiles back at herself, undaunted. Fluorescent light is always grim ... her hair is certainly not thinning, and her teeth are obviously a strong point, and so they should be, given what she’d spent on them, but this evening they look too big for her face, as if she is growing smaller, more bony, which makes the young, flowery top look ... stop. She suppresses the fear that she looks ... grotesque.

  Vanessa has noted the distortions of fluorescent as she’s grown older, and now she discounts it, straight away. She knows she’s attractive, she isn’t one of those whining women, like Fifi, her friend, always doubting herself and hating herself, then trying to meditate herself happy. (Yet daylight, these days, has the same effect. Indeed light, in general, is becoming a problem.)

  And then she thinks: global warming. There’s probably just more light about. It is not a thought to pursue in detail, because, in broad outline, it makes her feel better.

  Deciding the fault is in her stars, Vanessa shakes out her hair, and shimmies forward, all hope, all happiness, as the doors open, into her wonderful African evening. It’s my Indian summer, she tells herself. If that makes any sense in Uganda.

  10

  Mary Tendo has just arrived home from work. The traffic was, if possible, worse than usual, and the taxi more crowded, and dirtier. She is a mature woman, with an excellent job. She is not a schoolgirl, or a peasant! And yet, she must travel by public taxi, like any maid or garden shamba.

  ‘I need a car, Charles,’ she says, determinedly. ‘Why should I travel in these dirty taxis? There were fifteen people, or maybe twenty, all sneezing, and one doing something worse.’

  ‘My love, I will drive you whenever I can,’ says Charles, who is home from the office early. ‘You are right, you are the Sheraton Housekeeper, you should not have to go by taxi. In fact, they should send a car for you! Or maybe ....’ He looks down, cunningly, for he wants to please Mary Tendo even more than usual, he definitely hopes she will be kind to him again before this Trevor arrives to spoil things, lying in the house awake at night and listening for noises, making her shy. ‘Maybe they could give you a car to use. A company car. It is normal in America. Nga Mu America kiri normal. Teli kubusabusa!’

  Charles has one advantage over Mary; he has been to America, she has not. He attended business school for a year, not quite such a good one as she imagines, but he likes to refer to American knowledge, not all of it entirely well-founded.

  Now she rewards him with a gratified smile that is guarded by a hint of suspicion. ‘And yet, they have not offered me one. They do not know how well I drive.’ She looks at him, smooth round eyebrows lifted, waiting for confirmation.

  ‘Ah yes, you are a very fine driver!’ They nod and smile at each other, complacent. But then a little devil awakes in Charles, because, even with the most loving lovers, there must be small wars, and competitions. ‘Although there was the slight problem with my car ...’ She had crashed his car, disastrously, last year, crumpling the bonnet and smashing the windscreen. She paid the repair bills without complaining, but the car is not quite the car it was.

  ‘The problem with your car was because of many factors.’

  ‘Yes. But you crashed into the back of the car in front of you, just before the roundabout on Jinja Road. It crashed because of what?’ Now Charles is laughing, patting his thighs in their smart black business trousers and looking at Mary teasingly. ‘It crashed because you could not see it, Mary. It crashed because you did not wear your glasses.’

  ‘No, Charles!’ Mary Tendo looks especially forbidding, and her nostrils flare slightly, in a way that makes him nervous. ‘The car in front was very badly maintained. You remember, the door was made of cardboard.’

  ‘There was only one door left, after you crashed into it.’

  This time she ignores the provocation. ‘I am almost certain the brakes were defective. It braked too quickly. It may have been backing ...’ But as she makes this claim, Charles snorts with laughter, his shoulders heave, and he looks straight at her, so she cannot keep it up; he is her kabite, and her mask of indignation cracks into smiles.

  ‘Mary Tendo, you should be in State House! Nawe oli nga Muzeveni atakola nsobi. Like Mr Museveni, you never make errors.’

  Mary Tendo goes over and sits on Charles’s knee. She enjoys his teasing, up to a point. At work people fear her, but not at home. She is glad that Charles can be frank with her (although she will not let him go too far). ‘No, it is true, I did not wear my glasses. When I wear my glasses, I have eyes like an eagle. And so, perhaps I did not see the vehicle was backing –’

  ‘Mary Tendo!’ It is an effort to laugh, with Mary perched so firmly upon his knee. She is slightly taller and heavier than him. Of course he is not afraid of her.

  ‘Yes, Charles, the vehicle was backing.’ And now she is stroking him, and holding his hot head between her big hands, and he is too busy to keep contradicting. There is a short interval of sweet, warm kissing, before she breaks off, and looks deep into his eyes.

  ‘And so, my darling, as you were saying, I am a good driver, and I should have a car.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Mary, but must we discuss this now?’ Charles is eager to go on with what they are doing. The maid has taken Dora to buy some groundnuts.

  ‘No, Charles, we need not discuss this now. Although if I think I will never get a car, I will become less happy, dear.’ And she stops kissing him, and sits upright, so her full weight falls on Charles’s left thigh, which makes him yelp, suddenly, in pain. ‘Ah, sorry. Because maybe the Sheraton will never buy me one.’

  ‘That is true. One must not count one’s chickens.’

  ‘You remember my friend Jackee, from Church.�
�

  ‘Of course.’ Charles shifts, in agony. How come that Mary sometimes feels so light, yet today she is so painfully heavy?

  ‘Did you know that Jackee’s husband has bought her a car?’

  ‘No, I did not know. Mary, I want to kiss you.’

  ‘So husbands should do what?’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Charles, I think you are a very clever man.’ Mary Tendo makes as if to get off his lap. The effort increases the stress on his thigh bone, yet Charles still tries to pull her back towards him.

  ‘That is nice of you, Mary. You are clever, also. I was wondering ...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Perhaps ... perhaps I could buy you a car for your birthday.’

  ‘Charles, that is wonderful! Yes, I agree.’

  ‘Then that is settled,’ Charles says, a little hastily, and starts caressing Mary’s stupendous breasts. ‘A car will be yours. Do not worry, Mary. And now, I think we need a little lie down – ’

  But the door bangs, suddenly, making them freeze, and then they both hear the voice of the maid, rather shrill and grating, and slightly out of breath from the long walk home, carrying the heavy child in her arms as well as two plastic packs of groundnuts. ‘Aunty, are you there? We are back. I must show you the curtains for the muzungu.’

  ‘Ah. Trevor’s curtains. I am sorry, Charles. I must go and see what the maid has done,’ sighs Mary Tendo, and slips from his lap. Yet as she goes into the kitchen, she is smiling.

  Charles sits for a moment, not smiling, reflecting. He rubs his sore thigh, and sighs in the heat, in the sitting-room that has got so much smaller since Mary Tendo moved in with him, and gave up the white flat where he could visit her, where she was never busy with the maid or the baby. He looks back on those days as paradise. No cat-hairs on the sofa, no baby crying, hours when he could watch TV or read the paper. Yet he had begged Mary to marry him, after she went to UK and discovered she was pregnant.

  Does she still love him? He is not sure. She works too hard at the Sheraton. And sometimes she comes home and works hard all evening, and too often she makes him and Mercy work hard, also. She often asks questions, such as ‘Charles, I was wondering. Have you sorted out the problem with the man in Jinja who says you owe him money?’ She will not let him rest until the letter is written (she does not understand the role of borrowing in business). No, he is not sure that Mary loves him. And a man has needs. A man must have love.

  Then her strong, low voice calls through from the kitchen. ‘My darling, perhaps you would like your beer?’

  And at once his heart lightens. Of course she loves him. ‘Yes, Mary Tendo. I will have my beer.’ And he reaches for the radio, and loosens his collar, and puts his feet up on the window sill, though when he hears her coming, he will take them down, or she will say, with her nostrils flaring, ‘Charles, my kabite, what are you doing?’ A man should not always have to answer questions.

  ‘I’m off to build a well, as a matter of fact,’ says Trevor, at Heathrow, to the steward who is trying to sort out his online check-in. He’s a kindly man not much younger than Trevor, who shares Trevor’s disdain for the virtual.

  ‘No trace of it, Sir, I’m really sorry.’ He stares with disbelief at the screen. ‘Computer system was down this morning.’

  ‘I thought the idea was to save us from queueing?’

  ‘In theory, yes. It’s a lot of nonsense. Not that I am supposed to say so. Did you say you were going to build a well? The Chinese are doing a lot out there. I’m glad some British companies still get a look-in.’

  ‘I’m not doing it, really, as a job,’ says Trevor. ‘I’ve got a friend out there, from a village in the sticks. I’m doing it, like, as a volunteer.’

  ‘Good for you Sir,’ says the man. ‘Sorry to be messing you about.’ Something seems to strike him, as they stand there in limbo, two human beings in the maw of a machine. Now he’s bending over his screen, eyes narrowed, then looking up at Trevor, making some calculation, lightly tapping his keyboard. Now his brow is no longer furrowed.

  ‘OK, that’s done. I think you’ll be all right. Have a very good flight,’ he says to Trevor. The smile seems genuinely warm. Trevor moves on, happy to get rid of his case with its rapidly thrown-in clothes and presents, but his tools, the precious tools of his trade, what he always thinks of as his right arm, are hard for him to entrust to the conveyor belt. He turns back, briefly, to watch them glide away. Then he tells himself: Still, they’re only things, and he carries on walking, light, sturdy, happy as he wanders through the riches of the airport, pleasantly off-duty, just for the moment, yet not at a loose end, for he’s a man with a mission. Off to Uganda: a first for him.

  And then, there’s the relief of escaping women. The thing with Soraya had become a burden. And no Vanessa to fuss over him! He can imagine what she would have been like, if she’d known: she’d have made endless lists of things he ought to be taking. As it is he’s chucked stuff into his case at random. And he bets he’ll be none the worse for it. Still, dear old Ness. He hopes she is well. And at least when she nagged me I felt she loved me. He dismisses this thought. Great to be free.

  It is good to have a wife when she cares for you. Charles smiles as he watches Mary walking away, her fine strong hips and curving waist, and feels the cold curve of the glass in his hand. ‘Thank you, Mary. You are the perfect woman.’ Ah, to drink deep, for the day’s work is done, even if he has a few problems outstanding.

  Charles’s mood improves further when the radio comes on, because too often there is no power, and recently there was no power for three days, and they had to boil water for washing, et cetera. But this evening, he can find BBC World Service! It is not quite as good as it used to be, but it is still the best station for news in the world. And if he can sit, in his house in Kampala, the house he has been paying for for nearly seven years, the house which will soon be more his than the mortgage company’s (so long as, God willing, he can keep up the payments, which, with the new arrangement, should be possible; he has not told Mary about the new arrangement, she is a good woman, but not always understanding) – if he can sit here, in his house in Kampala, and there are no soldiers in the street outside, and no immediate threat of war (for the whole of his childhood was shadowed by war), with his beautiful wife and baby next door, with a beer in his hand from his own refrigerator, and listen to the news, like a man of the world, who is in touch with London, and Paris, and Beijing, then his life must be good: life is good.

  For a minute or two he drifts in and out of focus, letting the icy sweet-saltiness slip deliciously through his teeth to his tonsils and down his throat to the hot tightness of his stomach which savours the glorious shock of coolness. Cool, cool, shady and cool. He becomes his body; he stretches; relaxes. All the money worries fade, and he lives his moment.

  Then the voice of the newsreader starts to pierce, in meaningless fragments at first, his bliss.

  ‘Border incidents ... recent weeks ... Kinshasa ... denials ... DRC.’ It is those idiots in Democratic Republic of Congo again, he thinks, and feels happy to be Ugandan, not Congolese, for the Congo is hell: everyone knows it. There everyone is fighting, every country in the world, and Uganda was fighting there for years and years. Uganda became richer, during the war, and DRC poorer, and more bloody. Charles knows that money makes the world go round, for he needs money every day in business; and when there is no money, life breaks down (as he has found for himself, when his life went wrong) – and yet everyone says, unless they are in the army, that Uganda was stealing gold and diamonds. And everyone knows that Ugandans are still there, though now what they are doing is investing, or peace-keeping, or stopping atrocities, et cetera. But still people whisper it is all about money.

  Charles takes a deep draught of his perfectly cold beer, and argues with himself, as he half-listens to the voices. On the other hand, all the rich countries are enriching themselves by robbing Congo, although they are hiding behind private co
mpanies. And all of them are trying to steal what is hidden: gold, oil, diamonds, and that strange new substance that is so important for mobile phones, coltan. This thought makes Charles get a little fired up, and he drinks again, deeply, to cool himself, and remembers he is waiting for a message from work, from a man who he hopes will invest in a scheme, so he flicks on his phone, but it is blank: nothing, so he puts it away, with a short, deep frown that makes a river-bed furrow between his eyebrows, and blinks, once, twice, then returns to his reflections.

  And so, if all the rich countries are there in the Congo, why should the Ugandans not take a share? Why should only the rich countries get richer? He nods to himself, and sits up straighter. There may be investment opportunities, and he, Charles, knows many investors. It is only right that Uganda should be there, though in general, he does not trust Museveni.

  ‘Mary! I will have another cold beer.’ Conviction makes him sound peremptory.

  Mary Tendo is not pleased with the form of this request, but she thinks of her car, and comes through, smiling, with a beer and some groundnuts. ‘Another beer, my love. So are you now fine?’