Last Orders at Harrods

by Michael Holman

  She was already helping to keep his weight in check by limiting the number of Tuskers he was allowed to drink at Harrods. She had her suspicions: could he be a compulsive drinker, for whom alcohol was an essential daily drug? It was also true that he was sometimes morose, and sometimes irascible, yet his sharp tongue was used with equal effect on black and white alike, and only the young and the very old were exempt.

  After a slow start, his Swahili had become rather good. And he loved the Kuwisha countryside. The two of them had, over the past few months, taken to chaste expeditions to Charity’s modest shamba, setting off on Sundays at dawn, attending the early morning church service on arrival, and returning late the same day.

  On her one-hectare holding, in the sprawling green hills that were famous for some of Kuwisha’s best coffee, Furniver would join her uncle Casper and her numerous nephews, and toil away in the fields, weeding, hoeing and picking the green coffee berries. But before he set to work he insisted on making what he called a “decent” cup of coffee.

  The white man would roast in a thick-bottomed steel pan a handful of beans, picked on the shamba, cleaned and dried the season before. Then he would use what looked like a large pepper grinder to reduce the beans to a consistency that was somewhere between sugar and caster sugar, and tip the dark, aromatic grounds into a glass jug, called a cafetière, which he insisted was essential to “decent” coffee and which he insisted on bringing with him. The final step was to pour in the water, drawn that morning from the shamba’s borehole, the very second it started to boil on the old-fashioned but reliable primus stove. There was a slight hiss as the water met the coffee and bubbled to the top of the jug, before Furniver pushed down the plunger which filtered the dark liquid.

  He had shocked Charity when he told her how much a cup of coffee would cost in one of the cafes that had become so fashionable in North America and Europe. At first she thought he was joking, but he insisted that it was true: a single cup of coffee bought at one of the popular London cafés cost more than the growers in Kuwisha were paid for a kilo of their best quality beans.

  During the Sundays that Furniver worked on the shamba, neighbours from miles around would find reason to drop by and watch him at work, stripped to the waist, wearing plimsolls and shorts. It was not a pretty sight, as his pink and perspiring body started to turn lobster-red in the Kuwisha sun. But the spectacle of a sweating white man, getting the rich soil under his fingernails, doing his share of the backbreaking work, was a rare, almost unheard of, event in Kuwisha. It was as remarkable, the neighbours agreed, as the sight of the late Bishop, God rest his soul, doing much the same thing when he had been alive. But a capacity for hard work on the shamba, admirable though it was, Charity reflected, was well short of evidence that Furniver could cope with the latest challenge from London . . .

  Charity looked around. Where was that Mboya Boy? She was about to whistle again when he returned, and was ordered to wash his hands before helping her shell the peas.

  Perhaps she was wrong: perhaps it was not fair to make a final judgment of the man based on his ability to deal with London lawyers. Instead should he be judged by his work on the shamba, and his plan to connect its borehole by a pipe to the two-room house? Or his enthusiasm for solar panels, and for wind power; and his support for a co-op that would buy the best beans:

  “We could market them abroad, as organic coffee beans from Kuwisha,” he proposed enthusiastically.

  Charity was unsure about the organic business.

  “No insecticide, none at all?”

  Furniver nodded in confirmation.

  She had shaken her head doubtfully.

  “I do not like goggas (insects). I don’t like flies, I don’t like mosquitoes. I believe plants don’t like flies; coffee bushes don’t like flies.”

  She looked at him suspiciously, waiting for his response, but he had learnt it was sometimes best to keep his powder dry. He didn’t fool Charity.

  “I see you, Furniver,” she said, as her friend’s jaw tightened, and his lower lip jutted out.

  “I see you and your cheeky lip . . .”

  They had both laughed.

  The more she thought about it, the less doubt she had. As a matter of principle, she should fight her corner.

  It was not right, not fair, that a London duka, however big, should be able to claim exclusive use to the name Harrods, even if this far-away company was the first to use it. Those lawyers were clever – a word she pronounced “clay-vah”, in tones rich with contempt. To be called clever was not a compliment. Or at best, it was a backhanded one. The President of Kuwisha was “clever”, meaning full of guile and cunning; and the London lawyers were “clever”, as well as pompous and arrogant. Nellson Githongo was very clever, and also very cheeky. Charity, on the other hand, was too honest and too decent to be called “clever”.

  She had left school at eleven. In a country dominated by men, Charity had been fortunate to have enjoyed five years of primary education. She was determined that Kuwisha’s up-and-coming generation of young women would have better opportunities. She urged them to vote for Anna Nugilu, the only politician who made sense to her, in the coming presidential election.

  So while Charity Mupanga had none of the learning that came with the university education Furniver had enjoyed, she knew what was fair, what was truthful and what was decent.

  Deep in her heart, however, the letters from London frightened her. She could deal with most things, but London lawyers were beyond her ken.

  “What is the matter with these people?” Charity muttered. Perhaps she should not have encouraged Furniver in his provocative and disrespectful response. Was it possible that between them, she and Furniver had provoked this latest threatening letter?

  Chicken necks!

  Charity suddenly remembered. Chicken necks! She had to check that the promised chicken necks were on their way. But chicken necks were not the problem. It was the Worcestershire sauce she needed, essential to the recipe. The dish was Furniver’s favourite, and she had promised him that it would be on the menu today. But she was running out of the recipe’s vital ingredient, originally recommended by her husband. David had developed a taste for the sauce during his time at the seminary in Leeds, and on his return to Kuwisha would scour city shops for bottles of the spicy brown liquid, and build up a stockpile.

  The sauce was also needed for the famous avocado soup, already chalked on the Harrods blackboard as the ‘special’ for the day. She might have to change her suppliers. Despite all her efforts to explain her special needs, the avocados were coming in too ripe, far too ripe. Charity had long ago discovered that if one wanted the nutty flavour of avocado in the soup, half of them had to be slightly under-ripe when they were sieved. It made for a more laborious task, but it was one happily performed by a team of volunteer urchins, led by Titus Ntoto, their hands thoroughly washed and fingernails clipped under Charity’s strict supervision. In return they got a square meal and – should they wish – a place to sleep at night, without fear of molestation.

  Where, she fretted, was that Rutere? It was his turn to sweep the bar, and to clean the tables and the chairs, and to light the charcoal oven which cooked the corn bread.

  The sky crackled with lightning and thunder rolled. Plump drops of rain started to fall. Furniver might not be able to get back to Harrods before the storm broke. Still, tomorrow would do. And anyway, she needed more time to think about the next step in the effort to protect and preserve her father’s name.

  9

  “Marula fruit always tastes sweet to the elephant”

  It was at times like this, Furniver thought to himself, that he missed Davina. Not that he regretted their divorce. But the swelling, concealed deep in the cleft of his posterior, was not the sort of thing one could ask anyone who was not an intimate to investigate. It certainly did not seem a suitable subject to raise with Charity.

  The rain, still pelting down, had made it all but impossible for Furniver to dro
p round to Harrods. Getting back to his office after the shareholders’ meeting had been difficult enough, and he had spent the rest of the working day catching up on administration. It was far too early for bed, and apart from wanting to go through the Harrods file kept in the office, he had to finish recording the children’s story he had written for his granddaughter.

  Putting on his dressing gown over his cotton shirt and khaki slacks, Furniver went into the modest office that adjoined the bedroom, and sat at his untidy desk. For the next ten minutes he made notes on a typewritten sheaf of papers before him. Then he cleared his throat, and began reading aloud into the tiny tape recorder that he carried with him, usually in his briefcase:

  “. . . ‘My government has watched with growing concern the increase in cat-chasing incidents at post boxes. We are determined to stamp it out . . . two slots in every box will soon be mandatory. One low slot for our feline friends, one higher slot for us. Let me make this solemn promise: the cats of Britain are safe in this government’s hands.’

  Backbenchers cheered. It really was a splendid speech.

  The picture of the Prime Minister shaking Stripey’s paw was on the front page of Cat News the next day, with the caption that said it all:

  “Thanks a Slot, Tony!”

  The last few lines of the penultimate chapter safely on tape, Furniver felt this was as good a place as any to pause for the night. Furniver pressed the Stop button on his recorder, and dropped the machine into his briefcase. There were still a few pages of his story left, but they would have to be dictated later in the next day. His granddaughter’s birthday was two weeks away. Provided Ntoto took the cassette to the city’s central post office in the next twenty-four hours, it should reach her in plenty of time. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  He got up and went to the office filing cabinet a few feet away, and extracted a folder marked “Harrods”, scratching and probing, his shoulders moving this way and that as he manoeuvred for position.

  This bloody business with the London lawyers! Fond as he was of Charity, he now bitterly regretted getting involved. That was not quite true: what he regretted was the advice he had given to her.

  Furniver succumbed to the temptation to have a further scratch. He leafed through the file, and wished he had taken Rupert Fanshawe’s original complaint more seriously. From the very start, he now realised, he should have advised Charity to settle, however painful it would be. Instead he had relished the idea that a law firm in London was spending costly time pursuing a shanty bar in an African slum, presumably misled about its status by the imposing address to which they had written – Uhuru Avenue.

  In a dry, pro forma text, the first letter had ordered that the bar should “forthwith” cease trading as Harrods, on the grounds that name had long been registered for the exclusive use of Harrods of Knightsbridge, London.

  The second letter in the file had come a fortnight later, and this time the peremptory tone irritated and provoked Furniver. The deliberately pompous response, sent on behalf of Charity but in his name, on notepaper headed Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot), easily run off on the printer attached to his office computer, had now backfired.

  Far from treating the exchange as a joke, Charity had taken it increasingly seriously, insisting that she would not settle, not on any terms. He continued to flick impatiently through the Harrods file, shivering slightly in the cool of the air-conditioner.

  “Got it,” exclaimed Furniver. It had seemed so clever at the time, and he postponed his evening bath for the few minutes it took to re-read it. It purported to have been sent by the local law firm of Furniver, Katanga, and Nkumbula, and was every bit as provocative as he remembered.

  Rupert Fanshawe

  Fanshawe and Fanshawe

  Turnagain Lane

  London EC 4

  Sir,

  I am in receipt of yours of the 18th inst.

  I am instructed by my client, Mrs Charity Mupanga to say that she does not recognise your client’s claim to enjoy exclusive world-wide use of the name Harrods; and she states her firm intention to continue trading as Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot).

  Attached is Mrs Mupanga’s personal account of how her father acquired the name Harrods.

  On her instructions I am writing to inform you that she proposes to lodge a counter claim for breach of trademark over the use of the name Harrods, which she understands to be a general store, otherwise known here in Kuwisha as a duka, and which trades in London.

  This counter claim will be heard in the high court of Kuwisha.

  Mrs Mupanga has, however, indicated that she would be prepared to pursue an out of court settlement if you indicate your reciprocal willingness in the seven days following your receipt of this letter.

  Mrs Mupanga regrets that she has to seek the protection of the high court of Kuwisha, but instructs me to tell you that she is determined that justice will prevail.

  I await confirmation of your acceptance.

  Yours faithfully,

  Edward Furniver

  Furniver cringed. He had been rather pleased with it at the time. Now the letter read as a pitiful challenge from an incompetent amateur. Those London lawyers meant business. Clearly they were determined to settle the matter on their terms. He and Charity were in a pickle, however you looked at it, and he, Edward Furniver, the trusted and respected banker to the people of Kireba, was to blame.

  There was a noise downstairs, at the front door. It was probably his steward, Didymus Kigali, arriving to prepare the evening meal.

  Furniver had initially been reluctant to accept Charity’s recommendation that he employ Mr Kigali – he could not bring himself to call him Didymus.

  “He’s almost twice my age, he insists on wearing a uniform that makes him look like an elderly cricketer, and now you tell me that he’s an elder in his church, and the husband of your best friend Mildred, who also happens to be a relative of yours.”

  “Yes?” said Charity, eyes narrowing, her hands on her hips.

  “And his duties include ironing my, er, smalls?”

  It had been far too early in their relationship for Furniver to refer to his underpants.

  “Smalls, I don’t care about. But underpants, yes, of course.”

  “It’s going to be like employing my dad,” said Furniver plaintively.

  “Good. Then there will be no panky. A lot of women will chase you. Kigali will watch for panky. And he will be grateful for what is a good job. And you must read his references,” said Charity. “He is very proud of them. Give him respect. Respect.” And she stalked off . . .

  It was indeed Mr Kigali on his doorstep, dressed as usual in spotless whites, his wrinkled brown knees peeping out between his long socks and his even longer shorts. The old man apologised profusely, and unnecessarily, for being late. It was remarkable, thought Furniver, that Mr Kigali had turned up at all, given the dreadful weather. All he fancied, he told his steward, was a soft-boiled egg, toast and Marmite, and a pot of tea.

  “After my bath, please” he added.

  He returned upstairs, and peeled off his dressing gown and the rest of his clothes as he made his way to the bathroom, exploring as he did so the inner sanctum of his cleft yet again, resentfully and fearfully.

  Not for the first time, Furniver wished he had met Charity’s late husband. By all accounts, his death had deprived Kuwisha of a talented son. What, he wondered, would Bishop David Mupanga have advised him to do? Two volumes of the bishop’s works, kept on Furniver’s bookshelves, were splendid repositories of good sense and wisdom. But neither God and Ethnicity: seeking unity in a plural society (Longfellow, East Africa, 1995), nor Free at Last: the collected sermons of David Mupanga (Longfellow, 1998) – both out of print, but circulated around Kuwisha in photo-copied editions – could be expected to offer insights into his predicament.

  Furniver yearned for a confidante with whom he could share his problem, and from whom he could seek counsel. It was conceivab
le, he mused, that Bishop Mupanga, who had been renowned for his pragmatism, might well have suggested that Charity’s reaction to such an intimate matter would be an excellent acid test of character. What tougher an examination of a prospective partner’s suitability could there be? He cautiously felt the swelling, and turned off the hot tap.

  Essentially a shy man, Furniver had not yet formally broached the possibility of lifelong partnership with Charity Mupanga. He found the prospect of a Christian wedding, which he was certain she would insist on, somewhat uncomfortable, for he was eclectic in his faiths. But when it came to courtship, he had certain inviolable standards. A request that she inspect his bottom at this stage in their relationship for what might at best be a boil seemed to him presumptuous, even in this liberated day and age. Call me old-fashioned, he thought, but such an experience was certainly no substitute for a proposal over a candle-lit dinner date. And a boil was bad enough. What if the swelling should turn out to be a far more distasteful ailment? The persistent itch made this increasingly likely, and the possibility that he was playing host to a truly horrid tropical affliction, one which he could not bring himself to name, was something that Furniver could barely contemplate.

  The discomfort was located in that part of the anatomy that his Maker had decided should be hard to inspect for oneself. Indeed, it would be impossible to see the swelling without a mirror – even if one’s body enjoyed the flexibility of youth. But if you were the wrong side of fifty, and your joints were far from supple, and if you were overweight, verging on tubby, an exploration was both difficult and dangerous, even with the help of a mirror. Goodness knows what would happen if you made a stretch too far.