Uncle Taiwo locked the car and came after her. She wiggled her hips as befitted a woman walking side by side with the Party Secretary of OP2. That pleased the boys and they yelled: ‘Jagwa! …’ more loudly than before. Uncle Taiwo said something to them under his breath and waved them off, but Jagua guessed he was flattered. Jagua no longer thought of her ability to tense her hips independently as she walked. High heels and tight skirts tended to emphasise her efforts, but even when she was wearing Accra – that is the cloth tied sarong-wise – men would feel the woman inside as she walked past.
This occasion, she felt, was not the right one for hooking men. Freddie was leaving for U.K. and the airport was humming and her ears were full of aeroplane sounds and goodbye chatter. She walked towards the passengers with Uncle Taiwo beside her. Names were being announced on the microphone all the time, but none of them seemed to concern Freddie Namme.
Then she saw him, already dressed in an English wool suit. He had become an ‘Englander’. At the Tropicana they had warned Jagua: ‘You takin’ big risk by lettin’ Freddie go. He goin’ to U.K. to forget you. Soon as he reach Englan’ he goin’ to see all de white gals, and he’ll hook dem and come home wit’ one. So what you goin’ to do? Eh, Jagua? When Freddie go an’ return wit’ one of dem white women, what you goin’ to do? I think you jus’ wastin’ de money you kin put in trading business, Jag!’
She could not be sure now that Freddie would want to speak to her after their violent quarrel and his flight; but she walked up to him where he stood, coat in hand.
She said to him, ‘Freddie, kin I speak wit’ you?’
He came away with her to a part of the lounge while Uncle Taiwo and his friends walked towards the freight forwarding shed.
‘Freddie, why you eye look so distant from me? Because you goin’ now on scholarship?’
‘Who tell you dat?’
‘I hear say you win scholarship, and—’
‘Nonsense!’ His eyes flashed. ‘Dese Lagos people!’
Freddie told her how he had managed to recover his passport after endless visits to the Immigration, and how his father had sent him a small sum – barely enough to pay his passage and to look after him for a few weeks. His father was in the middle of a Chieftaincy dispute and he was surprised that he had been able to do so much. Freddie said he was not going to England to live like an aristocrat. He was going with a purpose: to suffer and to achieve, to grow into a man.
There was no time to ask him now how he finally managed to obtain his passport, and what would become of all the money she had advanced him. At that particular moment the subject appeared to her out of place. Uncle Taiwo came up then, flamboyant in his velvet fez, jingling the keys of his Pontiac. Freddie smiled at him and he smiled back.
‘You got fine weather for flyin’,’ he said.
‘Yes, the weather’s fine. Not too hot, not too cool. Is always good to cross the Sahara in the night. No bumpin’.’
‘How long you goin’ to be?’
‘’Bout’ two years,’ Freddie said. ‘I’m goin’ to study law. I suppose Jagua already tol’ you. I already done the Intermediate.’
Uncle Taiwo’s eyes twinkled. ‘An’ you leavin’ dis beautiful lady behind?’ He glanced at Jagua and roared with laughter.
Jagua cut in: ‘Uncle Taiwo, he not leavin’ me behin’. You and de odders will take care of me. Not so? You approve, Freddie?’
‘How do you ’xpect him to approve?’ Uncle Taiwo roared with highly infectious laughter. ‘If is me, you tink I’ll approve. Anyway, Mr Freddie, you got nothin’ to fear from me. My three wives will look after me – and your Jagwa!’ He held his sides again.
Jagua said, ‘Freddie ’ll soon return. Him brain open. Is a clever young man who know de books.’
‘Ah wish you luck, young man.’
‘If de gals allow him,’ Jagua added. She remembered Nancy. ‘Freddie, where Nancy? Or she already come and gone?’
A ghost voice interrupted before Freddie could answer. ‘Passengers for flight 23416B Nigerian Airways … Please collect your hand-luggage and proceed to the aircraft …’
She glanced at Freddie’s face. It still wore the stern look which told her he had not yet forgiven her.
‘Freddie, no time to fight now. Forgive me, I beg. Forgive everythin’. You goin’ on long journey; is better you go with clean min’. Den God will look after you. I wish you well; you will come back safe and meet we all in dis Lagos.’
His sigh hurt her deep. She saw the wrinkles on the side of his face and the fine gleam of his teeth, like a man who has been struck a wicked blow. She loved Freddie’s good looks. When she looked at his face, something turned in her womb and she was hot inside, because she wanted to give him babies. They had tried for eighteen months and failed. He blamed it on her lapses with other men with whom she went but she must go with those men. That was the law of her survival. After all, Freddie was only a teacher in the National College. His salary was not sufficient to buy her one good cocktail dress. He had no money and he knew it. He was living in one room with his houseboy Sam before he packed away. How could she reserve her body for him alone? In Lagos it was not possible. She had tried to be discreet, but instead of letting her alone, Freddie had allowed the busybodies to lure him to her ‘beat’. And he had not been able to stand the shock.
She took his topcoat and held it close to her. His brows were knitted firmly together again as if he did not want to be near her.
‘When you reach Englan’, Freddie … try hard!’
‘I goin’ to try, Jagua. I not goin’ dere to joke. Is a land of tradition and culture and I goin’ to see if I kin bring back de Golden Fleece.’
‘Pass all de exam quick quick, and come back as lawyer, so we kin enjoy our life. I gettin’ old, Freddie.’
He sucked in his breath. ‘Lord, you come wit’ dat kin’ talk. I already tell you, you still Jagwa!’
When Freddie said that, it was something. She longed for him to embrace her. But she knew he was much too reserved for that kind of display. He took his coat away from her and moved off. The lights had been put on now all over the airport and when he broke away he waved at her from beyond the hibiscus fence and walked among the petrol boys with their yellow caps, and the passengers holding their coats, mostly Englishmen.
She saw him climb the stairs into the plane, pausing to look blindly back. Then they removed the stairway and there was a moment of quite unbearable suspense. A man stood before the big plane and pointed one by one at the engines till they all started, to his satisfaction. It was a ceremony Jagua had seen often but every Sunday she came again to see it afresh. The big plane crawled away, swaying as it went.
She watched that plane. She fixed her eyes on the nose as if it would kill her not to look. And all the while the tears were running down her cheeks and into her lips so she tasted them. The plane lumbered to a standstill about one mile away among the palm trees by the yellow mansion. The belt of blue smoke had reached there now and she could not see the plane very clearly. The air seemed to explode when the engines began to summon forth all the power they required to hurl the monster 4000 miles in ten hours. Jagua was terrified for Freddie.
She remembered the disaster at Kano Airport when so many Nigerians and Europeans had died in an exploded aircraft, meeting their end within walking distance of the airport. She never imagined that a man so dear to her would have to travel in a jet. She’d been at the airport once when the plane brought Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, looking majestic in the sun, and again when a jazzman Wilbur de Paris stepped down in a panama hat, holding a bright trombone. It was true no disaster befell those VIPs but there was no predicting Fate.
Freddie was in one of those windows, perhaps staring and waving at her. But which one? He had become like a prisoner, shut away from all who knew and loved him. He could not wave, and thought it looked stupid, she was waving at him – and crying. Then the plane began to move, heaving itself clumsily at first like some Nightmare C
reature from the depths of the jungle, like some mermaid from the River Niger; on – along the tar strip – gathering power, groaning faster and faster till – in one wink – she saw the wheels tucking themselves into the belly of the plane. She sighed. The boys were chattering all about her.
‘Goodbye-O! … Goodbye! …’
‘Tomorrow morning, they’ll be in London!’
‘White man power; nex’ to God power.’
‘Tomorrow morn’, before you wash de sleep from you eye, dem done reach London, shaking from de col’ …’
Her eyes had not left the sky. The stars were out but the plane seemed to be carrying its own stars. They winked – in colour too – from wingtip and nose and tail, as the plane pointed its nose at Kano, 800 miles away and even hotter but much less humid than Lagos.
‘Goodbye, Freddie!’ She could only murmur the words. ‘Now, I goin’ to Bagana to see you people.’ She had lost him to the ether. The emptiness was coming to her now, and her spirit was hollow and thin.
Freddie had talked a good deal about his father and mother, about Bagana his hometown. She wanted to go there and know his people and his place. Her own hometown of Ogabu was not too far away, once she crossed the River Niger. She could also touch Ogabu and see her father and mother whom she left ten years ago.
How would Freddie’s father take it, when he learnt that she, Jagua Nana, a woman of forty-five, had fallen in love with his darling boy Freddie Namme? That she had spent her own pocket money freely so that Freddie would obtain a passport, and having obtained it, might then be able to go to England and study. The fact still remained that she had paid for Freddie’s dinners and his accommodation long before his father ever thought of contributing the passage money.
She heard the jingle of keys beside her. It was Uncle Taiwo. ‘Where you wan’ make I drop you, Jagua?’
She did not care where he dropped her. The jobless ones had gathered round the Pontiac, admiring the layout of the instruments. This time she remembered how very low the seats were and took care not to expose her slip beneath the too-tight skirt. Though the jobless ones fixed their eyes tightly between her knees, they saw nothing.
11
Jagua had to admit that at first Freddie’s letters came. She did not know then that the loneliness of cold England was at work. But it made her happy and she concluded that Freddie had forgiven her and renewed his love. After the first three months the letters began to trickle in, till she heard no more from him. She had always known Freddie to be studious, so she was not surprised. But during those first few months, Jagua was almost certain that he was thinking of her much of the time. He wrote to her again and again and at last she went to a letter-writer and paid him two and sixpence to write a reply.
This happened on the Marina just beside the bank, near the public lavatories. She sat on a bench and behind her the canoe boys peddled their ebony carvings to the men in the ocean-going liners anchored in the deeper reaches of the lagoon. In her elegant Accra-style blouse and lappa, Jagua sat on a packing case, crossed her dainty shoes and held a sparkling yellow-green sun umbrella above her head. She had been speaking to the rusty-haired old man for a while when he looked up and beamed through his glasses. He handled her words like a priest at the confessional, each one with a sense of the power to save or perish the soul, to shower with happiness or flood with sorrow. The letter-writer had developed the benign air of forgiveness for youthful intrepidity – a quality which attracted Jagua and made her confide intimate stories to him. At the end of the session, Jagua realised that she had told him nearly everything there was to know about Freddie. At the same time, a sharper definition of her relationship with Freddie emerged.
‘Gently, gently, I soon write dat one down.’ The old Letter-Writer dipped his pen in the ink-bottle, waved it about in the air, in diminishing circles till the point of the nib made contact with the paper. ‘Eheh? … Eheh? … And den … Go on!’
Jagua was short of ideas. ‘Read what you got down.’
She could not fully understand the whole of what he read, but she knew when a letter sounded right, and this one did. The beautiful words, she felt, fully conveyed her feelings and she loved the Letter-Writer for his cleverness. Before he read it out to her, he took off his glasses, polished them, and replaced them. He put the sheet of paper a good distance away and read:
‘My Darling Freddie,
I remembered the very day you left me for England, I was charmed by your beautiful face which took me to a land of dream at the very night; you know where hearts agree there joy will be, your love attracted me; my heart and soul were aflame, the love in you cannot be abolished by any human creature except God the Almighty. I last night dreamt of your beautiful and your smiling face which seems to me like vision.
Look, dear one, I am specially moved by feelings from heart to heart to love you always dearly and I hope you will have some love for me through your long stay in that cold firmament the United Kingdom.
I will be always loving you and adoring you with all my heart till you return. There’s nothing lives longer than love, which sends perfect happiness to the soul, therefore will you summon your beautiful strength and body to me as I am dreaming on my side. God’s ways are mysterious, nobody knows Him or His contemplation on the end. Therefore let us live lonely and happily as you know, you are a nobleman and charming among your fellows, don’t you see God creates you apart of them? And I am proud of you in all respect, for God knows the way we must treat, and could not hope for a finer example.
With all my heart-soul love and hoping to hear from you again as early as possible.
With true love and affection wishing you happiness till once more I look into your heavenly eyes and hearing your sonorous voice …’
Hand on chin, Jagua listened, sighing, nodding.
‘Das all I got down.’ The old Letter-Writer looked up.
‘I got nothing more to say, sah. Tell him Cheerio. May God Bless am wherever he may go. Den I kin sign.’
She posted the letter herself and drifted into a trance about the streets for the writing had taken something out of her. A part of herself had gone into that envelope and was now on its way out to Freddie 4000 miles away. She felt exhausted and exposed to some remorse, some discontent she did not understand. It dogged her footsteps which now led her into the big Department Store. As she entered, noise reared itself and slapped her ears. She saw the girl in the photographic section leaning against an instrument – an enlarger, perhaps – smiling at her. Shop-girls must smile at total strangers, Jagua thought, passing on. She wandered past the Chemists, and was struck by the odd sight of a sunburnt white man, over fifty at least (he must have seen the tin-rush of World War I, a real veteran) parading a gorgeous Nigerian girl proudly along the shopping lanes. The Nigerian girl was so young and buxom with her turgid breasts bursting through the tight-black cotton-lace blouse, and her lips red, her black skin oily and alluring in the fluorescent lighting, that everyone turned to gaze at the strange pair though the hubbub still went on and the cash registers jangled their bells.
‘Jagua!’
She was passing by the outfitting department for ladies. They knew her here, for this was where she spent her money. But it was not the shop assistant who had hailed her, but Ma Nancy. She was dressed, Jagua noted, in an expensive off-the-peg dress with pleats. Nancy wore a Swiss blouse that revealed her dazzling smooth shoulders. The lappa which she folded around her waist was green with strange fascinating patterns and it came down to her manicured toes. She had thrown a sling bag carelessly over her left shoulder. This girl Nancy was charming and young and Jagua envied her, the way the Department Store lights loved her skin. Jagua wore a fixed smile.
‘Mama Nancy! … And Nancy too. What you buyin’?’
‘I tryin’ to buy Nancy some col’ clothing!’
Here in the Department Store, Mama Nancy could afford to sink her grievances, because on this occasion she happened to be doing the buying. It was all bluff, but
Jagua, out of curiosity, also pretended to have forgotten everything: the Tropicana fight, the smelly prison, the magistrate’s court.
‘Nancy goin’ anywhere?’
‘U.K.’ Ma Nancy spat out the words and looked aggressively round the section. Everyone knew it was something to be going to U.K. ‘But not yet, you see Jagua. De whole thin’ cost damn too much. We tryin’ to save de money …’
As she spoke a slow anger began to burn inside Jagua. It glowed and in the redness of the light she saw clearly where her own discontent lay. She was discontented with the Lagos atmosphere. She would welcome a change now. She too must travel.
‘Oh yes, Nancy travellin’ abroad. You hearin’ from Freddie Namme?’ Mama Nancy’s voice faded to her consciousness.
‘Jus’ now, I post a letter to Freddie.’
‘Das awright,’ Ma Nancy said. ‘By de way … dis two cardigan, which one better pass?’
Jagua could no longer escape. She helped them choose between the pink and the yellow cardigan and later on down the corridor some warm underwear and then told herself it was time to be getting out of that store and away from Nancy, Mama Nancy, the Tropicana and Lagos as a whole. This would be the right time to visit Bagana. The more she thought about going there, the more anxious she became. Suddenly a picture of her father flashed across her mind. It was the last Sunday she had spent at Ogabu before she ran away from home. Her father had just come out of church in his ill-fitting black suit, and the red edge of his bible glistened in the sun. Beside him stood her mother in a flowery gown, wide panama hat and thick-heeled shoes she reserved for Sunday wear. They were waiting for her to catch up with them and her brother Fonso in a white-cotton English suit was shouting at her: ‘Nana! … What you doin’, playin’ after church; don’t you know Papa’s waitin’ for you?’
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