She has also mentioned going to America, but I am afraid I’m not keen on that either. America is so far from Nigeria. She speaks of doing something in the arts — setting up an African art gallery or some such thing. Do you think there are prospects for this in the UK? She complains of racism in England, but surely America is worse? I tried to bring Kemi up to be her own person, to be an independent young woman. I didn’t want to raise her the way I was raised, but maybe in the process I failed to give her enough direction. I’m sorry Vanessa. I don’t mean to complain. I think of you so often and wonder how you are. I miss you.
Yours lovingly,
Tayo
Chapter 30
Vanessa stared at her computer thinking of Tayo’s most recent letters. She had remembered something that her mother once told her about love, and she tried to remember when the conversation had taken place, deciding that it must have been late in the summer of 1967. They’d been sitting in the garden, she with a book on her lap and Mother doing cross-stitch. It was one of those rare warm English summers. Mother could have been telling any story, the mere cadence of her voice was enough to soothe, but it wasn’t just any old story. In retrospect, Vanessa wished she’d asked more questions, but at the time she could only think of how things related to her and Tayo. Now she wondered what the story might have meant to Mother, and who might have told Mother this story.
Her mother had told her that there was a saying among the Hausa that a person never married their first love. A person always married someone else, but later in life that person would be reunited with their first love. The Hausa apparently even had a phrase for it: they called it the pick-up-your-stick-and-sandals marriage, which referred to the way that an old man would go and visit his childhood sweetheart later in life. The woman cooked, the man brought presents, and then they shared companionship. Pick-up-your-stick-and-sandals, Vanessa repeated to herself, hitting the space key to banish the silly animated fish that floated across her screen every time she stopped working. In large letters at the top of the page popped the title: Shona Art - Stunning Sculpture from Zimbabwe Takes Art World by Storm.
Her fingers lingered on the keys. If Father was indeed Mother’s first love, what did the Hausa say for those who married first loves only to be disappointed later in life? And what did other African cultures have to say about romantic love? She hit the space key again. The article was due the next day and she’d been wasting time. She would begin with a brief history of Frank McEwan at the National Gallery of Rhodesia and his role in encouraging art in the 1950s. Then she would describe Tom Blomefield and the establishment of the Tengenenge Community in the 1960s, paying special attention to Agnes Nyanhongo and Colleen Madamombe. More on women sculptors, she made a mental note. She shook her hair out of its loose ponytail, rolled her chair closer to the desk and placed her fingers back on the keys.
At a time when reports from Africa are dominated by famine, starvation, and AIDS, Shona art holds the promise of…
She didn’t want to start like this, but it seemed the only way to move the reader on from the pervasive images of naked, skeletal Africans with flies buzzing round their faces. Or was it? This dilemma always presented itself. Was she in fact perpetuating stereotypes by mentioning them, or was she helping readers to see past the clichés? And who was her audience these days? British lefties? Immigrants? African students? Or all three? She stared absently at the screen wondering if she should abandon the whole thing.
Eventually she stood up and went to the kitchen. There she poured herself some wine and, as she drank, she peered into the cupboards thinking she should eat, not just drink. She found tins of baked beans, high fibre soups, packets of pasta and dried mushrooms that Edward always kept on hand. On another shelf were his box of bran flakes and her Swiss muesli. Nothing caught her fancy, so she wandered into the lounge, leaving her glass behind.
The balloons from Saturday’s party were still stuck to the ceiling. One popped as she opened the French windows to catch some fresh air — the room smelt of old wine and cigarettes. Outside it was still drizzling.
She poured another drink, holding the bottle with one hand and tapping its skinny neck with her wedding band. This was the real English summer, grey and rainy. What a dismal country! She turned back to the room and saw that the wind had blown off most of the cards from the bookshelves and mantelpiece.
Saturday had been another of Edward’s surprises. He was good at this, but she didn’t like the unexpected any more, especially not when it involved lots of people. She’d secretly hoped that he might surprise her differently. He might have cooked, or taken her for a ride in the country, just the two of them. Of course she had smiled all evening, suffering and smiling. She played the required role, saying how blessed she felt, how wonderful it was to turn fifty (what nonsense!), but all the time she was wishing she could disappear.
Edward had bought her several CDs, picking the music he thought she liked: The Best of Sarah Vaughan, The Best of Miles Davis. She hated ‘best ofs’. Suleiman had asked her what she wanted for her birthday and had taken her at her word when she said nothing, presenting her with a token bunch of wilting flowers, still wrapped in crinkly Tesco paper marked, ‘Summer Special £4.99.’ He might as well just have picked something from the garden. At least that would have shown originality. And then they’d parted so badly when she’d driven him to the airport. ‘Well you drive then!’ she’d finally shouted after Suleiman kept complaining about her driving.
‘I should have never let you take me anyway,’ he grumbled. ‘I was perfectly happy catching the Tube.’
And it was true; he had not wanted her to drive him to Heathrow, but she felt that as a mother she ought to. He was going to Senegal for an indefinite period of time. Of course she should take him.
‘You’ve never wanted me to do this trip anyway.’
‘I’m happy you’re going, Suleiman, but it’s just the timing. You haven’t finished university and what happens when you return?’
‘Who said I’m coming back?’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous.’
‘Ahh, fuck you, Mum!’
‘What?’ She slammed her foot against the brakes, skidding onto the hard shoulder. ‘How dare you speak to your mother like that?’
‘Mother? What mother? Did you think you were doing some nice charity work for Africa when you decided to adopt me?’
She set off again, speeding this time. If that was how he felt, then fuck him too. She would drop him and leave.
‘You just thought you’d take me out of Africa, didn’t you, and turn me into some middle-class bourgeois project? You thought you could send me to Oxford or Cambridge, and I’d come out looking like you or dad, collecting nice art from Africa, writing nice stories about Africa. Well that’s fucked up. I’m going back to learn about where I came from and to mix with my Muslim brothers and sisters. A place where Islam is respected and revered and not mocked like it is in this fucking place.’
‘Go then,’ she shouted, ‘but remember I adopted you because I love you, because your mum was my best friend and I promised Salamatou to take care of you. Call us your bourgeois parents, if that makes you feel better, but I’ve never, ever tried to mold you into anything.’
And then it was silence all the way until just before he went through security. With tears in her eyes she watched him disappear, her tall, handsome son, and all the phases of his life flashed by. The day that Salamatou died and the years that followed in Dakar: them making toys together out of cardboard boxes and empty Fairy Liquid bottles; swimming in the sea; nursing him back to health after his fevers; leaving for England to see Grandma before she died when Suleiman had been ecstatic to travel for the first time on an aeroplane. He had loved England then: the changing seasons, fish and chips, Cadbury’s chocolates and his new school. Even the teenage years hadn’t been difficult, but then came university.
She worried constantly about him, especially now that he was so far away. What were Tayo’s w
ords? ‘It is a stage he is going through, and it will pass. You will see.’ She longed for Tayo now. She stood up, closed the back door, and stared for a moment at the wine bottle on the shelf. She left it where it stood, empty between the fallen cards. She’d received two letters from Tayo yesterday. In one, he’d asked about her faith. ‘Tell you about my faith?’ she mumbled to herself. ‘How can I speak of it when I’m like this?’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘Look at me now — just look at me.’ But in his letter he’d also mentioned the possibility of a visit and with that thought, she lifted her hands from her face, flicked away the tears and began to write.
My dear Tayo,
If only you knew what happens when your letters arrive. If only you knew. There was the letter you wrote to me in 1967, the letter we both avoided talking about when we saw each other last. Have you ever imagined the pain it caused me? Had it not been for Mother … but I will tell you one day. And now you have written again and I am filled with despair, depression perhaps, although I hate the word ‘depression’ — so gloomy and self-indulgent. I’m sure I never once heard the word used in Africa. There was no time to be depressed. Of course people had their anxieties, but it wasn’t spoken of as it is here in Europe. Perhaps when depression is discussed, scrutinised, it leads to more of it.
But today your letter has lifted my spirits and as I think of you I try to imagine what life would be like with you. Do you sometimes think the same? I tell myself that you do, but then I fear that this is just what married people use as an escape. Perhaps we all cling to fantasies of some other person that allow us to keep going with our day-to-day lives. I wonder if this is what my parents did. Father always working; Mother drinking. There must have been something else in their lives, some hope. And now, when I look at myself … it’s not that anything is terribly wrong, but I long to be in love again. I want passion. To be with you.
I wonder if you have ever come across the saying: ‘a pick-up-your-stick-and-sandals marriage’. This was what Mother called it. I don’t know where she heard it, or whether it even exists, but she said it was a Hausa belief that in later age one is reunited with one’s first love. Perhaps it was just a story to console the lovelorn. I know that everything would not be pure bliss between us, no marriage ever is, but I like to dream, and when have I not? I was born with a restlessness in my soul, the restlessness of an artist who is never fully satisfied. One moment I long to be surrounded by friends, and in another I am wishing to be alone, far away from anyone I know. Is this me being selfish or is it simply a function of growing old? I certainly don’t recall feeling this way in my 20s or 30s. So you see, when you ask me about faith, I’m hardly the person to talk. My faith is weak. I strive to be closer to God, to release myself from self-centredness, but with little success. The issue of suffering that you raised in your last letter has always bothered me, always.
Vanessa stopped and highlighted the text. She paused, then pressed delete.
Chapter 31
Rain fell lightly from all directions like fine sifted flour being shaken from the heavens. This was England, Sussex to be precise, in the middle of summer. Joy, the Zimbabwean care worker, opened the front door and nodded without speaking as she let Vanessa in. Not for the first time did Vanessa wonder how a person so dour-looking could be so named. The lack of communication with joyless Joy bothered Vanessa. Usually others warmed to her, and especially Africans who were always delighted by the mere fact that she knew so much about their continent. But perhaps it was not fair to blame Joy. Working in such a place was bound to squeeze out every last bit of joy from a person.
The Carrington Home for the Elderly had a steamed-up feel — warm and stuffy, like a second-hand clothing shop with the added lingering smells of Sunday roast, disinfectant and urine. When Vanessa arrived, three people sat in the lounge: Father; Mrs. Halliday slouched in her chair, fast asleep; and dear old Nancy Murdoch, who had moved to the home at the same time as Father. Nancy followed Father everywhere with her zimmer frame, even though most of the time she didn’t remember who he was. Father had long since stopped paying attention to her, but she never noticed, always mumbling to herself regardless. Father was the only one active at that moment, bent over his armchair and rummaging through his briefcase. The case would be empty, but he would still be searching for something — a handkerchief, pencil, fountain pen, or some other item that he would soon ask Vanessa to find.
‘Hello, Daddy.’
‘Fancy that,’ Nancy muttered.
‘Is that you, darling?’ Father looked up briefly to squint in her direction. ‘I can’t find my pen, darling. Have you brought me some more?’
‘No, Daddy, but I’m sure we’ll find you one in your bedroom.’
It still shocked Vanessa to see her father like this, with his collar uneven and bits of breakfast lodged between his teeth. She sat down at the edge of a chair that stank of urine and used her fingertips to remove a wad of pink toilet paper from Father’s hand. There was something horrible stuck to the paper that she dared not inspect. This was an expensive residential home yet sometimes one had to wonder where all the money went.
‘Daddy, have you got your hearing aid in?’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Nancy replied for him.
‘Thank you, Nancy,’ Vanessa nodded, as she would to a child who’d given the right answer. Perhaps not as demented as we all think, she thought to herself as she went to her father’s room and found his hearing aid under the bed.
On most days, Vanessa said little to her father. She cut his nails and listened patiently to his complaints. But today, when he suggested that Mary and all the other black care-givers be sent back to where they came from, she’d had enough.
‘Will you come back tomorrow to shave my whiskers?’ Father asked, as she stood up to leave.
‘No, Daddy. I’m going to the airport tomorrow.’
‘Not off to interview more coloured people, are you? They ought to ship them all back to where they came from. Pack them on the Windrush,’ he muttered, cradling his raised knee with both hands.
‘Oh dearie, dearie —’
‘Yes, we all know what you both think,’ said Vanessa, cutting Nancy off. ‘I’m going to meet my friend, Tayo. He’s coming to stay with us for a few days.’
‘Oh dearie, dearie me,’ Nancy shook her head.
‘What?’ Father exclaimed, ‘For God’s sake, not him! All he wants is your body, haven’t you worked that one out yet? That’s all the coloured men ever want.’
‘Well, I’d be jolly happy if he wanted my body now,’ Vanessa snapped.
‘I say!’ Nancy gasped. ‘Betty, did you hear that?’
‘All these years,’ Father shouted, ‘your mother and I tried protecting you, but still you want this wretched man! That black man used black magic to put a curse on you. I know he did!’
‘Will you shut up, Daddy!’
‘I say, Mrs. Halliday, did you hear that?’ Nancy continued to prod her neighbour. ‘That’s the father of ‘Nessa’s black child, you know.’
‘The child is adopted, you old cow,’ Father shouted.
‘Ssh!’ Joy pleaded, running in to see what the commotion was all about. ‘They do get into a state, don’t they?’ she muttered, looking to Vanessa for moral support.
Then Khalid, the cook, arrived to announce the day’s lunch—pork chop, cauliflower and raspberry jelly.
‘Did the Arab leave the fat on my pork chop?’
‘I’m sure he did, Mr. Richardson. I’m sure he did,’ Joy repeated, taking his arm, almost kindly, while Vanessa waved goodbye.
There were meetings Vanessa was expected to attend in London but she’d decided not to go. She called in sick and walked to the High Street where she intended to pamper herself — treatment for the stress of life. The Lewes shops were at least one consolation for coming all the way to Sussex to visit Father. As she thought of what to buy, she remembered last night’s dream. She was at Heathrow standing in line waiting for Tayo. Man
y people waited like her: his old friends from Oxford, various human rights personnel and some United Nations officials. Tayo was looking for her, she could tell. He kept peering down the line, but when he got to where she stood, he looked straight past her as though she were invisible, and then he turned around. Suddenly, she realised he was searching for her old self with the long hair and the short Oxford skirts. ‘Tayo, I’m here!’ she called, but he didn’t hear. He kept on walking back through Customs and away, and only she knew why. It was just a dream, but it was enough to make her want to leave her hair loose and buy something that might remind him of the way she used to look, just in case.
As she peered into the shop windows, she thought of how he’d held her the last time they met. Four years ago, she sighed, touching the spot on her neck where he might have kissed her. She was finding nothing in the Lewes shops. She looked in Monsoon but the colours were too gaudy and the fabrics too delicate. In Caprice, the styles were all wrong — a bizarre mix of skimpy and maternity, but just as she was leaving, something caught her eye. It was a dark brown linen skirt, long and hip hugging — the sort of thing that would go well with one of her cotton shirts worn open at the neck, so she bought it and now felt ready. She planned to arrive at Heathrow early in the morning, collect Tayo and bring him home. She felt certain it was going to be a wonderful first evening. She had pictured it all in her mind’s eye, except for Edward and Tayo together, which was a consideration she kept pushing aside. Edward knew nothing of her correspondence with Tayo, nothing, at least, of the intimate details and her rekindled feelings. What was she thinking?
In Dependence Page 20