by Maggie Gee
Mary: Vanessa.
Vanessa: Mary.
Then she hugs Charles. And then Trevor.
People stare and linger as they pass by. It is some time before the little group of people in strange, dramatic attitudes out in the road are composed enough to go inside. They keep shouting and sobbing, laughing and hugging. It must be the new American evangelism, a Muslim in a flat round embroidered hat decides, nearly falling off his bicycle, staring. But at least they look happy. He does not want trouble. And trouble, it seems, has backed away from Uganda: war has not broken out with Congo. They have a miracle: the ordinary. To look forward to the next ordinary day. A day of peace, with its ordinary struggles, and for this little group of actors, happiness. He keeps on riding down the sunset road.
46
After the feast, there is a long reckoning.
Jamil has done things that can never be forgiven. We have all done things that might never be forgiven: but people forgive us, or fail to forgive us, and everyone grows older, and we stumble on. But when soldiers steal children (for Jamil was a child: a boy of nineteen is still half a child) they are forced to do things so horrible that those who love them might never forgive them. So the stolen ones are marked with sin. But Jamil, by a miracle, has come home. The prodigal son is home, is home.
And Mary makes Jamil sit in the kitchen, though he finds it hard to sit down for long, while she reads him the end of the story from the Bible.
‘While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” But the father said to his servants, “Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” So they began to celebrate.’
And yet, it is painful to be celebrated; and Jamil feels he has lost his father.
There are things he will have to confess to his mother, things he can only confess to his father, when finally he manages to go and see him, and Omar will go pale under his tan. There are things Jamil can never confess to anyone, things he is doomed to relive for ever in bloody dreams in the middle of the night, anxious, endless fleeing and killing. But Mary will be forced to receive it all: she will hear him shouting at 3 AM, will come out half-dressed to find him bolt upright, sitting rigid on the mattress with his eyes closed; sweat-drenched, muttering, moaning, dribbling, thin limbs twitching as he stabs or is stabbed, sleep talking all the terrible detail she hoped never to discover.
There are times when she will wish that he had never come home. Times when she will say, though only to Charles, that it might have been easier to go on without him, to have kept the absence, her old lost son, the kind, loving, innocent one she could grieve. Not the new, real man, scarred and muscled, this man who she cannot approach without warning or else he will grab her by the throat and half- strangle her before he remembers, the one who makes her shudder with horror and snatch up her daughter, his sister, in fear.
And then love creeps back. Like air, like water. Little Theodora has started to talk, a few words here, a few words there: she is awed but impressed by her new brother. And her mother, her mother who had silently loved her, secretly afraid of losing her – Mary Tendo is talking to Dora, singing and chatting as she gets ready for the office, just as long ago she talked to Jamil, when he was a baby, helpless, tender.
Mary finds Jamil out in the yard one Saturday, and Charles is letting him play with his sister, and the terrible one is a child again. For the first time he sits and eats with the family, instead of standing in the kitchen, ravenously gnawing, tearing at the flesh, always ready to go on the run. One day, Jamil will pick up a kitten and say to his mother, who is watching him closely, ‘I have been looking on the internet. There is a Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, at Makerere University. Do you think it is too late? Could I, could I ... Could I go back to what I wanted to be?’ And she will embrace him, but take away the kitten. Start softly; start slowly.
Somehow they will learn to live with the past. The people of Uganda must live with their past, like the people of every flawed, sinful nation. They are tired but still hopeful. They will try for forgiveness.
But the day after the feast, nothing is simple. Their cat has had kittens: four, two grey-and-white, one grey, one white; they’re tiny, and sweet, and pee on the floor. ‘I cannot have Vanessa staying here,’ says Mary to Charles, in a loud stage whisper. Last night they had given the bazungu their bedroom, and stayed up most of the night with Jamil. ‘I will always be grateful to them, it is true. In a way, from now on she will be like my sister –’
‘Yes, like a sister,’ enthuses Charles. ‘And it is nice that she admires your husband, also, because she remembers how bravely I saved her, when the thief attacked her near the bakery.’ (In fact, though he recognised Vanessa, she had not remembered him without his striped suit, but once she was reminded, she was very grateful, and Charles had repeated the story several times.) Charles sees something less friendly in Mary’s eyes, also.
‘– And I will like her more than my sister in the village, whose daughters behave like prostitutes. And I forgive her for how she was in London, when I was her cleaner. But she cannot stay here. She asked me this morning if I have a space she can exercise in. Then she said, “If not, it does not matter, I can do my sit-ups in the kitchen.’’ How can I cope with her and the kittens, and persuade Jamil that the shower will not kill him?’ Mary is indignant, but Charles is laughing. Mary tuts at him, and carries on. ‘I will arrange a special bargain at the Sheraton, for my friend the General Manager owes me a favour, and Vanessa can use the Sheraton gym, and exhaust herself and Trevor with endless yoga.’
‘It is a good idea, my love,’ says Charles. ‘But I think I heard a little something last night, and it was not yoga she and Trevor were doing. Though he did look a little exhausted this morning.’
And he sees something pass over Mary’s face, a hint of an expression he cannot fathom, but perhaps it is jealousy, which makes him, in turn, jealous, and he turns away, but she puts her arms around him, two round strong arms, and smiles into his eyes, and says, as she strokes him, ‘Charles, my kabite, you are never tired.’
Trevor and Vanessa are together again. Too late for the storks to bring them babies. But young Abdul Trevor is out of hospital: they get bulletins about him every day. He and Dubois, his friend, Davey Lucas’s son, are both in love with the same little girl, whose name is Taleisha, a bright spark with red lips and a sweet shiny head of ribboned braids. She has explained she can only have one boyfriend, and at this stage, Abdul Trevor is ahead, because she likes it when he pulls up his shirt so she can look at the measles scabs on his tummy. Delorice and Davey Lucas are pregnant once more, so Dubois will soon have a little brother, which will make Abdul Trevor demand one too. It sounds good to Justin, though Zakira will take some persuading: there’s cause for even more persuasion later, when the baby is a girl, and they have to choose a name, and Justin loves his mother, so they compromise on Amina Vanessa, which means ‘Peaceful butterfly’ (‘Not like your mother’). And the Bwindi gorillas have produced three babies, for this planet is not only for humans ...
‘So many of them,’ says Vanessa to Trevor, pointing to a line of storks along the rooftops. They are wandering together through the streets around the Sheraton, as night sinks down, as the stars come up. ‘What do you think they think about us, darling?’
‘Fair point,’ says Trevor, and he stares at the storks, their long tapering beaks piercing the blue sky, elegantly dark as warm night sinks down. ‘They’re like chorus girls, getting ready to dance. I saw some once, at the Lido, in Paris. Weren’t there storks on the cover of that book you gave Dora?’
‘Not that Dora seemed interested.’
‘Never mind, the maid loved it. I showed her the pictures of the Little Mermaid.’
He kisses her, lightly. She’d been sweet with Mercy, making an effort in sign language and sending Mercy into peals of giggles, but both of them seemed happy enough.
‘What do you think the gorillas thought of us?’ Vanessa asks Trevor, stroking his hand, his dear old hand, strong, familiar. ‘The leader of the troupe, out in the road, the last morning. He seemed to be staring straight at you.’
‘I felt the old bugger liked me,’ says Trevor. ‘I think we liked each other, yes. I wanted to think they all liked us.’
‘But then, they didn’t know us for long,’ says Vanessa thoughtfully, staring at the hills, the seven low green hills of Kampala. ‘I think they liked you more than me. Everyone likes you more than me.’
‘It is pretty universal, to be fair,’ says Trevor, and laughs, and Vanessa does too, though she knows it is true, and it hurts, a little, and then, above them, a magnificent colony of black and white crested crows start to echo their laughter in a harsh cackle which rings round the roof-tops, and they both feel small.
The birds look down on the tiny humans. Something’s going to happen. A beginning, or an ending. Maybe love, maybe war. Something that has happened many times before. But the humans always think they are unique, the one-and-only. Fixed on the shining edge of the moment, already regretting they must slip into the past –
and in that millisecond, they slipped into the past.
‘We’re not – very much, in the end, are we?’ said Vanessa. The night felt cooler, suddenly, the sun sliding gently behind one of the hills and the clouds in an instant turning grey, then black. They stood like actors on a darkening stage.
‘It doesn’t matter, Vanessa, love. We won’t be here for ever. And I’m here for you.’
‘You always were.’
‘I always was.’
They were silent for a moment, but the birds were not: they seemed to be laughing more than ever.
‘And you don’t like Mary more than me?’
‘Ah, like’, said Trevor, stroking her hair.
‘You do like Mary more than me.’ In Vanessa’s voice was proud despair.
‘Mary is a cracker. A force of nature. Though she seemed a lot crosser than she was in England. But it’s you I love. Now shut up for a moment. I want to kiss you.’
‘But –’
‘We’re here, now. It’s got to be enough.’
‘Will we always be here?’
He didn’t let her finish, cramming his lips over her thin, hungry mouth. ‘I’ll be with you for ever. For ever, Vanessa.’
And the birds laughed louder, and the city honked and roared, and the storks clapped their bills together like a rattle, and Mary got into her nearly-new car which Charles had bought her when she was in the village, because she should not have to wait until her birthday, and drove home contentedly to Charles and her children, the rush-hour over, driving fast and well, past the half-completed buildings hung with visions of glory, all ready to welcome the Queen to Uganda even though she’ll only be with them for a day, a day of flags and promises and dancing: tooting on her horn as she sped into her future, because nothing mattered now the lost was found; and the sun slipped away from the green-red-yellow of the forest and farmland around Kampala, and in the far west, in the wild body of Congo, the light burned the golden silt in the river and darkened back into the safety of water; and Death did his swift, impartial collections, creeping closer, now, to Vanessa and Trevor, then turning away, they had a little time yet, and in England, thousands of miles distant, Abdul Trevor woke up with a start as Zakira was tiptoeing out of the room at the end of the story she was reading to him, in which all the animals slept, and dreamed, clutching her fairytale wedding ring for comfort because she is tired, they are all tired now ...
He waves his toy lions, a boy and a girl, and says, ‘Do you think Taleisha loves me?’, and the stars wheel up, and the galaxies shift – and all over Africa, all over the world, millions of animals sleep and dream, and Vanessa and Trevor lie down together. Lie down together. A night, a morning. Nights, mornings. Getting older, smaller. Neither wants to leave without the other ... Vanessa and Trevor are saying goodbye, for no-one can live on this earth for ever.
And finally even Abdul Trevor – little Abdul Trevor, which can’t be borne – finally even Abdul Trevor is silent. And the stars shine on. The stars shine on.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Cheltenham Festival for sending me to Kampala on the ‘Across Continents’ exchange with Ugandan writer Ayeta Anne Wangusa in 2003; and to Hannah Henderson at the British Council for inviting me to the 2005 International Writers’ Conference in Kampala, whose programme and personnel were not the same as the ones imagined in My Driver. Thanks above all to Nick McDowell and Arts Council England for the bursary that enabled me to spend a longer time in Uganda in 2007, where I wrote much of this book. Thanks to Sophie Kandaouroff and the Committee of the beautiful Chateau de Lavigny writers’ retreat near Lausanne (www.chateaudelavigny.ch) for their generous hospitality, which allowed me to finish my second draft three feet away from the room where my literary hero Vladimir Nabokov used to sleep. My warm thanks to Dr Declan Conway at UEA and Dr Marisa Goulden at UEA and in Uganda, who taught me a lot about water. Thank you to Dr Chris Kidd of Glasgow University for his great kindness in saving me from at least one mistake about the Batwa.
In Kampala, grateful thanks to three friends, Sandra Hook, formerly at the British Council, and writers Jackee Budesta Batanda and Hilda Twongyeirwe, whose combination of editorial judgement and local knowledge helped me to fine-tune My Driver and to avoid certain errors. Jackee Batanda is the author of The Blue Marble (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2006) and many prize-winning short stories, Hilda Twongyeirwe has published, inter alia, Fina the Dancer, (Longhorn Publishers, 2006, PO Box 18033-00500, Nairobi, Kenya). Julius Ocwinyo, who makes a brief imaginary walk-on appearance in My Driver, is the author of inter alia the impressive novel Footprints of the Outsider (Fountain Books, 2002). Other gripping, readable fiction by Ugandan writers including Jackee Batanda and Ayeta Anne Wangusa can be viewed on Femrite’s website (www.femriteug.org/publications.php/, [email protected]) and ordered from the African Books Collective (www.africanbookscollective.com) or directly from the Femrite Offices, Plot 147 Kira Road, Kamwokya, Kampala, Uganda. I would like to thank Geoffrey Baluku at African Pearl Safaris for all his help, and Ian Sendagala, the excellent Assistant Manager at the Gorilla Forest Camp.
In London, thanks to my friend and editor Anna Wilson for initiating my first visit to Uganda, and for her insights into this book. I am grateful to John Ryle, Chair of the Rift Valley Institute (www.riftvalley.net). Thanks always to Mai Ghoussoub and André Gaspard; to Lynn Gaspard for her design, and to Ana Mendes. Lastly, thanks to beloved Barbara Goodwin, Nicholas Rankin and Rosa Rankin-Gee for being my first readers as well as my family.
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