‘You want sweets?’
He looked up at the man behind the counter, startled; reminded of his quest with the crystals in Mr Patel’s shop when he was a boy, although this duka was bright, modern and odourless, unlike the spicy, dark interior he remembered from his childhood.
‘I might. I enjoyed having jalabis when I was a child in Uganda.’
‘Uganda! You’re from Uganda? We’re from Uganda!’
The man was about his own age and had strongly drawn features: a triangular face with neatly trimmed hair, tidy eyebrows, glassy-black eyes and a sharp chin. A grown up pixie.
‘Was your family expelled in seventy-two?’
‘Oh yes, but bygones are bygones. We’ve made good business here.’
‘I imagine you came with nothing?’
The man chuckled. ‘Some of my compatriots had only the clothing they wore, but my family were able to cross the border with some possessions, some money. My father bribed the customs official with a diamond. Such a funny story.’
An elderly man came through to the shop. ‘Bandhu! Are you serving this gentleman or are you talking?’
Well, I’m damned, Michael thought. ‘You didn’t have a duka in Rusoro, did you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, a very fine store,’ Bandhu said.
‘Patel, Patel and Patel?’
‘Indeed! You know it?’ The old man was examining Michael intently through his round, metal-rimmed, National Health Service glasses. The skin around his eyes had the dark, almost purple, pigmentation of older Asian men, giving him the appearance of having had a particularly bad night.
‘I brought crystals to your shop with my friend,’ Michael said.
‘Wah! This is most fortunate. Reshma!’ he shouted, ‘it’s one of the small diamond boys! He’s come back to us.’
An elderly woman with a kind face emerged from the back. She took one look at Michael and cried, ‘My, my! One of our little diamond boys. Your diamond saved us.’
‘My diamond?’
‘The one that flew off into my wife’s sari,’ Mr Patel said.
Michael remembered that final blow of Mr Patel’s hammer. ‘How extraordinary.’
They stood beaming at each other, the Patels no doubt marvelling at the bestowals of Sukra – planet goddess of diamonds – at the meanings of circles that intersect, at the multiple-armed powers of the gods; and Michael at the coincidence of this meeting. Mrs Patel, who had become even more of a light spirit inside her sari, was grinning up at him with all her gold teeth. The family appeared to be unabashed at having kept the diamond.
It was churlish to tarnish the occasion but he broached the subject anyway, ‘Did you not want to return the diamond to us? I’m delighted, of course, that it was of use.’
Mr Patel laughed, and so did Bandhu and Mrs Patel. ‘That was no diamond – but the customs wallah didn’t know that. He was excited; so, so excited.’ The three Patels laughed again at the memory. ‘He let us go without searching us. That little stone was a diamond to us. It got us out with all that cash – in Reshma’s brassière and Bandhu’s panties.’ The Patels broke into laughter again, except Bandhu.
Mr Patel insisted Michael come through for Masala tea, ‘or perhaps you prefer lassi? With flavour. We have mango, papaya, guava, lemon, strawberry, coconut, savoury, or,’ he paused to smile, a twinkle in his eye, ‘you like bhang lassi? Make you very happy.’
Michael looked at his watch.
‘You’re a man now. You’ll not be in trouble if you’re late,’ Mr Patel said.
Michael followed Mr and Mrs Patel through to their living room.
‘No, Bandhu, you mind the shop,’ Mr Patel said, as Bandhu turned to come with them.
It was when he was opening the door to his house again that Michael was struck by the thought that talking to the Patels was the first time he had reminisced to others about his childhood since the incidents he wished to forget. The Patels had no connection to the baggage of his home background and had opened a window to a world that had run in parallel to his own but cared nothing for its preoccupations. Thankfully they had not asked him what had become of the other boy with him in the duka that day. Or about his parents – his mother had probably bought provisions from the Patels when she came into town.
The phone rang when he was hardly through the door. He strode quickly to pick it up on the outside chance that it was Felice, although she was probably miles from a phone.
‘Hello, darling. You OK?’ It was Naomi.
He gripped the receiver tightly in surprise. ‘Ah!’ he blurted.
She said, ‘I’ve been trying to get you.’ He detected an anxiety in her voice and could imagine her twisting the telephone cable with her long white fingers; her lips thinning out as she stretched them across her teeth, the way she did whenever she became pensive. The crease on her forehead would be visible. ‘Michael?’
‘Yes, sorry, I’ve been a little shaken up. The vehicle I was travelling in got shot at.’
‘Jeepers! You all right? You should’ve rung me as soon as you got back.’
‘Yes, I’m fine, but . . . the driver . . . got killed. Unfortunately.’
‘No! You don’t say. I’ll come around straight away.’
Killed! Stanley, why Stanley? Why not the game warden . . . or himself. Why did the good people always die?
‘Michael?’
‘Yes.’
‘You OK?’
‘I shouldn’t have gone back.’
‘Gone back? What happened, Michael?’
‘If I hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have happened.’
‘Why? What did you do? Where did it happen?’
An intense wish to be in the hospital came over him: in theatre past the ‘No entry to unauthorised persons’ sign, masked, sewing loose ends of gut together in the hush.
‘What happened, Michael? Did you go to a dangerous area or something?’
He straightened himself. ‘Sorry, Naomi, it’s OK, just unexpected. The conference itself went like clockwork, just as you said it would. The students there are so keen I’d like to get some of them over here for more training.’
‘You’re not going to talk to me about it, are you?’
He squeezed the telephone cord between his fingers. ‘It’s complicated, Naomi, really complicated.’
‘For God’s sake, Michael, I’m a lawyer, complicated doesn’t bother me. And it’s normal to talk about these things.’ He could imagine her yanking the telephone cord tight, and that vein filling on the right side of her lean neck as she vented her frustration. ‘It’s not going to work, is it?’
He had arrived there again: hurting those he loved. He said, with resignation, ‘I just don’t know.’ He almost felt her releasing the cord. ‘Look, you’re smart, pretty, and deserve better.’
She sighed. ‘That’s some sort of compliment, I suppose.’ He waited. ‘There’s a lot you won’t talk about, Michael. Funny thing is there’s a lot I don’t tell you as well. Perhaps that’s why we hit it off, up to a point.’ He stayed silent. ‘We’ll meet up some other time then.’
He blurted, ‘Shall I give you a call . . . next week?’
She took a few seconds to answer. ‘I think you need to get yourself sorted first, Michael.’
She hung up. He stood for a long time, still holding the phone to his ear. Then he smacked it down. ‘Damn you, Felice, this is all your fault.’
He went straight to his desk and started another letter to her. The first of a weekly routine. His letters contained no overt declaration of his love, but he beseeched fate that their regularity and frequency would establish a growing bond. He wrote of the details of his life: his teaching commitments which he relished, a scientific paper he was working on, the tedious committees, which of his junior staff had potential, his expanding private practice – ‘Mr Magara will be impressed!’, the antics of Doug – his Australian anaesthetist friend, a practical joker who sent his new juniors to the theatre stores for an anaesthetic device ca
lled a ‘long weight’. Stores duly obliged. He imagined her smiling through her tears; he hoped he might be lightening her grief a little.
When he received no reply to his sixth letter it occurred to him that he was feeding her nothing but gossip about his work. It looked an unrounded life, one that she might feel would exclude her. So he wrote about plans for rearranging a skiing holiday with his acquaintances: ‘such wonderful friends to have fun with – only missing a companion for me’! That was as close as he came to hinting at what he hoped for the future. He asked if anyone had ever attempted to ski in the Rwenzori Mountains: ‘I can’t see Mr and Mrs Magara on skis.’
Still there was no reply. He rifled expectantly through his mail every evening, looking for a gaudy stamp that would tell him he had a letter from Uganda. Once, on the ward, he saw a black nurse facing away from him at the nursing desk. She held herself like Felice and it stopped him in his tracks. The nurse turned and saw him looking at her. Her skin darkened as she flushed. She turned quickly back to her charts.
As time passed Michael concluded that Felice must still be in a state of shock; in secluded mourning. Perhaps she had not even opened her post. He borrowed a book on bereavement from the psychology section of the medical school library (an aisle he had never entered before), to better understand the emotions Felice would be experiencing; to find the right words to comfort her.
First denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression – then acceptance.
What stage would she be at now? Maybe she was in a prolonged stage of anger. Possibly furious with God or, God forbid, resenting him, whose visit had been the trigger for Stanley’s death. Perhaps she was questioning his surgical skills. Perhaps Kabutiiti had already taken her to his home. He wondered if it were possible to aid her rapid passage through the stages of grief. Shortcut the tedious process. Give her some advice that would propel her straight through to ‘acceptance’. He wrote down some homilies, practising several turns of phrase on a scrap of paper.
‘. . . it’s not that you get over a loss like yours, but that the naked awfulness eventually moves out of the living room, into a cupboard . . .’
‘. . . Stanley would have wanted you to find happiness again . . .’
But the sentiments did not read as coming from himself; it was if he had lifted someone else’s words and copied them down, which was close to the truth. He made a ball of the paper and threw it, in one, into the bin on the other side of the room. He wished his ability to give counsel was as good as his co-ordination. For the first time in years he regretted his estrangement from his sister, Rachel. At a time like this a man needed family confidants, preferably female.
He restarted his letter and wrote:
I wonder if a break away from your own environment, with its reminders of what has happened, would be helpful. It would be a chance to relax. I know a charming hotel for you in Holland Park and would be very pleased to arrange everything – and some spending money for shopping in Knightsbridge nearby! I could take you to some London shows – show you the ‘real’ London, just as you wanted to show me the ‘real’ Africa – it might help a bit to laugh again. Of course, if you would prefer to be left completely on your own while you’re here that would be fine as well – whatever you want.
When he took the letter to post, late that night, he held it dangling in the mouth of the post-box, suddenly unsure whether his offer was propitious; perhaps he should have offered to pay for Beatrice to come as well, as a companion. He was beginning to worry that Felice saw him as highly intrusive, an embarrassing problem for her to cope with, in addition to her bereavement. But he concluded that he needed to act, and sprung his fingers open to release the letter. He could not afford to be timid; time was not on his side.
Still the weeks passed with no answer. He became irritable at work: he snapped at a perfectly sweet theatre nurse for not being quick enough to pass the instruments as he operated, told his house officer that she had it easy compared to his day, and left his registrar to see the post-operative cases so that he could get home early to check his post. After six months his petulance changed to despair. He convinced himself that Felice had forgotten him. Recklessness took over. He found himself flirting with his secretary, who appeared pleased: she started coming in with a denser shade of red lipstick. He rang up Naomi but a man answered the phone, so he excused himself as ringing a wrong number. He drove to the south coast on a free weekend and sailed a yacht with a colleague. He went to the boat show at Earls Court and bought yachting magazines, attempting to generate a lust for something sleek and expensive. It was all pointless but he had to occupy every waking minute.
When Felice’s air letter arrived – on a morning in April when the buds on the trees in his street were splitting their scales – he slit the letter open the wrong way in his haste, completely detaching its lower third, which fluttered to the floor. He retrieved it impatiently and read the letter, pacing up and down in the hallway. As he finished reading he shouted out, ‘For Pete’s sake!’
She was polite: thanking him for his correspondence, apologising for taking so long to reply, thanking him for doing all he could to save Stanley’s life and for his financial generosity. He was a ‘true friend’. She was unable to take up his kind offer of coming to London: ‘I need to be with my family and friends.’ The funeral had been ‘difficult but, nevertheless, a joyful occasion’. Over a thousand people had attended to give thanks for Stanley’s life. The archbishop had talked of ‘a vision brought to completion’, and said that Stanley had lived his life as if he knew it would not last long, that he had to achieve all he could in a short time. Then, at the end of the letter, ‘Please keep writing, Michael. Your letters have been welcome.’ She signed herself, ‘Affectionately, Felice’.
When he re-read it he wondered why his initial reaction had been negative – as if he had assumed she would be straining to get on the next plane out of Uganda. The letter was warm; as warm as could be expected of a recently bereaved woman. It was encouraging that she had not mentioned Kabutiiti.
A few days later he received another letter from Uganda. The address was written in a precise masculine hand. For a moment he feared it was from Kabutiiti, politely telling him of their engagement, but the address on the back was the McCrees’. James apologised for taking so very long to send his appreciation of Michael’s contribution to the conference, which all agreed was a success and had put Uganda back on the academic medical map after the destruction of the Amin years.
It went on:
I need to tell you that the accountant you met in Lwesala, Adoko Ojera, visited me in my office yesterday to ask me to pass on the bank account details (see below) of the charity you talked of setting up. You are certainly a man of action! Ojera seems a charming and reliable man – just the sort to administer the financial side of the charity. I note that you have changed the charity’s remit from what I recall of our original conversation, but I was impressed with your idea of getting in early with helping the families of victims of Slim. I can tell you that the numbers of new cases are multiplying dramatically and the international media are now swarming all over us for the big story. Difficult for us expatriates as we have to be careful what we say. There are political implications and cultural sensitivities to this disease. You might be interested to read the emerging literature, particularly from the US, on the new disease dubbed AIDS. There are strong similarities to Slim – I suspect that they are one and the same.
Mr Ojera says he will implement everything you had discussed, as soon as the first payment is made into the account. I hope you will accept my making the first donation.
Michael found himself cursing aloud. A jinx had followed him; he looked up, expecting to see a black cockerel feather on the window ledge. He pulled out his diary and found the McCrees’ phone number. As he waited, tapping his finger on the telephone table in impatience, he imagined Zachye at that very moment hunting Kabutiiti down. What if he had killed him already? But his heart jerked
in a conflicting current of emotion. He moved the phone a little away from his ear – on the cusp of putting it down. Had anyone seen him and Zachye together that night at the transport stop? What to do? Still the phone rang. He was about to conclude that the McCrees were out when Audrey answered the phone.
‘Yes?’ he heard her say flatly.
‘This is Michael here – Michael Lacey.’
‘Oh, Michael, how nice to hear you.’ She brightened. ‘We were thinking of you today: we met Stanley’s cousin Kabutiiti at the Uganda Bookshop having a coffee.’
‘You did? Thank God!
‘Sorry?’
‘Er – how was he?’
‘He looked well – he had a lady with him.’
‘His fiancée?’ His heart leapt.
‘He didn’t introduce her as his fiancée – just a friend. He’s going to New York tomorrow for a year. Some post at the UN. Seems pleased with himself.’
Michael released his breath. He had an urge to open a bottle of champagne and invite Doug round to share it. The villain had been neutralised without the maniac, Zachye, lifting a finger. A close call.
‘Did you ring for any particular reason?’ asked Audrey, sounding remote.
‘Did James mention a man who claimed to be operating an account for a charity? The charity I’m hoping to set up for the surgical training?’
The Ghosts of Eden Page 31