by PJ Skinner
‘Here in Mondongo, you do not go to the shops. The shops come to you,’ said the driver, gesturing at the women sitting on the sidewalks selling individual cigarettes from open packets. ‘They give you your change in sweets or bubble gum because there are not enough coins circulating anymore.’
‘What happened to the coins?’
‘I suspect that they have been melted down.’
The only real shop Sam had seen in Mondongo was on a corner in the same office building that housed Gemsite’s offices. It was filled with expensive vases and glassware. Its windows were protected by a heavy iron grating. Sam watched people stand for ages outside this shop, staring longingly in the window. All of the women stopped and pointed out their favourite items, objects of intense desire. Objects they would never be able to afford.
These women had superb figures and were shaped not unlike some of the vases. They were very slender with long slim legs that an average British woman would die for. They had very pretty faces and neat features. Scatters of beautiful children in their smart clothes accompanied them. Even the poorer women stood out in their tight wraparound skirts.
The men were also slim and quite striking. There were a lot of very protruding bottoms, which looked like ripe fruits in their tight trousers with their belts pulled tight to emphasise their figures.
After scouring the wares of practically every street seller in the whole of the commercial district, Sam found eight identical slightly out-of-focus postcards in a little booth on the side of the road. They were left over from pre-independence days and featured the fortress on the mainland side of the bridge to the island in Mondongo Bay. The fortress overlooked the bay toward the National Bank of Tamazia. It had once been used to protect the bay, but it had since been used to store confiscated MARFO weapons.
The postcards cost the equivalent of one dollar each, despite their advanced state of decay. The driver told Sam that she was being robbed but she did not care. She imagined how reassuring it would be for her parents to receive a postcard from Tamazia. She wrote the postcards and gave them to the secretary at the Gemsite office so she could put Tamazian stamps on them. She wondered if they would ever arrive in England.
Next she was driven to Villa Alice to wait for her flight back to Kardo. She looked forward to seeing Sky News and catching up on the world outside. They only had radios in Kardo, and the BBC World Service only reached them for a few hours a day.
However, the airwaves were full of interminable drivel about Princess Diana. It was the fifth anniversary of her death in a car crash and the media were making the most of it. Sam fell asleep on the sofa and was only woken when the power cut out late that night. She realised that the flight must have been cancelled again and she wandered into an empty bedroom and fell into the soft bed with a sigh of relief to have a night away from Kardo.
After a particularly unappetising breakfast the next morning, Sam decided to make use of her time in Mondongo to explore the geological office above the garages in the compound, where she would be working after her training period at Kardo. She went to the Gemsite office to ask Bill Collier for the keys.
‘Ah, the geology office, the holy of holies,’ said Bill. ‘You need to unlock three doors to get into the office, and you’re supposed to lock yourself in while you’re there. No one is allowed into the office without a permit except Black himself.’
‘That sounds a bit lonely,’ said Sam, although she also thought that perhaps being away from most of the people she had met so far was not too tragic.
‘Anyway, here are the keys. Give them back to me when you are finished.’
Sam walked over to the compound and went up the metal steps to the door of the technical office. She forced the keys into the seldom-used locks and opened the door. The room was gloomy and covered in spiders’ webs. It was filled with dated computers, printers and a scanner. She wondered if anyone had passwords for the computer files. She sorted though some old maps and papers which were scattered on the floor and the desks. Underneath one of the piles she discovered a telephone. She picked it up. It had a dial tone. She dialled her parents’ number and was amazed when she heard ringing at the other end.
Her mother picked it up.
‘Hi, Mummy.’
‘Darling, how are you? Are you in London? The line is so clear.’
‘No, I’m still in Tamazia, in the office in Mondongo actually. How are you and Daddy?’
‘We are both fine, dear. How is the job? Have you met anyone at the tennis club yet?'
‘The job’s okay. I’ve not had a chance to go to the club yet. We’ve been pretty busy.’ She winced at the lie but she could not tell her mother that the club had probably been closed after independence.
‘Now don’t work too hard, dear. You need to have a social life, too. Are there any nice people there?’
‘I’m sure there are, Mummy. Just haven’t met them yet.’
‘Are you okay, darling, really?’
‘Still in one piece, I promise. I can’t chat now. I just called so you would know that I got here safely. Give Daddy a hug from me, will you?’
‘Okay, darling. Look after yourself.’
Sam hung up the phone. She was economical with the truth at the best of times when it came to her parents. There was no point in telling them things that might upset them, like where she was really working and why. She had not felt in any real danger yet.
There were disadvantages to her new office besides having to be locked in all day. It did not take long for her to realise that there was no toilet. She had to leave the office, lock all the doors, walk to the transit trailers and find an open one so that she could use the toilet in the trailer. She prayed never to get diarrhoea whilst in Mondongo.
At lunchtime, she went to a spare trailer, where her precious boxes of belongings had been stored after they had been rescued from customs, to fish out a tampon from her supplies. At that moment, Pedro turned up unannounced and wanted to drag her off to lunch. There was an awkward moment when he offered her his hand to shake and she had to kiss him because she had a tampon in her right hand and did not want to give him a heart attack.
Sam was well aware that Latin men were not very good with that sort of thing. He’d probably never seen a tampon before.
Sam and Pedro went to a nice restaurant with an oval bar around which people ate and drank.
Pedro flirted with all his considerable charm.
‘I can’t wait for you to come to Mondongo to work. It’s going to be a lot of fun.’
‘I don’t think I’d call working in that isolated office fun,’ she said.
‘I’m talking about after work.’
‘Oh, and who are you going to have fun with?’
‘You, of course.’
‘Me? Oh, I don’t really like fun. I’m a very serious person.’
‘Not that sort of fun. You know what I mean?’
‘No, I don’t, would you like to spell it out?’
‘I love it when a woman plays hard to get.’
‘Impossible to get more like it.’
‘Don’t be mean, Sam. I know what I want.’
‘You know what you think you want. You don’t know me Pedro and I don’t know you.’
‘But we’re going to be so good together.’
Sam wondered if he thought that she fancied him after the kiss-to-hide-the-tampon incident. However, she had to admit that she enjoyed being the focus of his attention. It was fascinating to watch a man work that hard at seduction. She was not a prime catch. She was less plump now but not glamorous, as she was dressed in field gear ready for her flight. It was amazing what the laws of supply and demand could do for a woman’s sex appeal.
Pedro had the Latin man’s belief that no woman could resist him. He did not seem to realise that just because he fancied a woman, it did not mean that it was reciprocal. Sam was not immune to Pedro’s charms but she was not keen on the assumptions he was making about the ease of the conquest in her case.
She had no doubt that she could outlast his enthusiasm but it might be fun to play along until he got bored.
Later that afternoon, she did a round of polite handshakes in the office. Then she went to the trailers to get her boxes of goodies. Pedro dropped her at Villa Alice to sort through her things and select the stuff she needed for Kardo. Before he left for the office, he gave her a tour of the building site behind the house that would be her bedroom when it was finished. She was getting an ensuite bathroom, so at least she did not have to wait for all of them to shower in the morning before she got a look in. Sam was dismayed that the annex had no windows except for a tiny one about three metres up. It looked like a prison cell. In its favour, it gave her some privacy.
The bathroom in the main house at Villa Alice had a plain glass window without curtains which looked out over the sitting room. This meant that for now, she had to sit down in the shower to wash herself or else provide more interesting entertainment than the morning news. It looked as if they had simply tacked the sitting room onto the back of the original house when they needed to expand it and had not bothered to brick up the outside window of the bathroom.
The lack of privacy was embarrassing but Sam had been refused many jobs over her career due to ‘the lack of women’s facilities,’ so she was not about to start fussing now. She stuck a black plastic bag across the glass and solved the issue like a Tamazian.
Sam watched the news and sorted through her belongings. Most of them would stay in Mondongo. Her music CDs were the items she really wanted to take to Kardo this time, along with her books and supplies of tea and chocolate. She resealed the boxes and put them in the pantry that she found at the back of the kitchen. Then she radioed Pedro as arranged and asked him to get someone to pick her up and take her back to the transit trailers for her flight to Kardo.
Pedro came personally, which surprised her, and drove her to the airport. Sam was sure he had better things to do. On the way, he said he would miss her on his leave. So smooth she almost believed it. How could he miss her after one lunch and a cup of coffee?
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll get over it,’ she said.
Pedro was not put out.
‘Did you know that all the gossip about you is heating up the airwaves?’ he asked.
‘It can’t possibly compete with the stuff I’ve heard about you and your reputation,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps you should stay away from me if you don’t want to make it worse.’
Sam left a note in Pedro’s bedroom at the Villa Alice thanking him for lunch and the tapes, and wishing him a pleasant time on his leave. Bill Collier had told her to watch out for Pedro. She had considered the advice carefully. She would make her own mind up about him. And then there was the General. He was a complete surprise. Sam thought that she might have made a conquest. She decided not to tell Jim or the paranoid Black about her lunch. It was probably a one-off, after all.
The flight was uneventful. The hair-raising routine for landing the plane failed to arouse many emotions this time.
Sam found Jim at the airport waiting to drive her to the compound.
‘So, how’d the trip go then?’ he asked, ‘Any garimpeiro trouble?’
Sam mumbled something but he was not listening to her answer. He drove her back to her house and it was obvious that he had had a really bad day. She invited him in for a beer.
‘Jesus Sam, you have no idea how hard it is to work for Black. He is such a bastard. I don’t know how I put up with it. I work my hands to the bone here but all I get is grief. What does the man want?’
‘I can’t answer that question. I haven’t worked with him yet.’
‘With him. Ha! For him, you mean. He wouldn’t know how to work with someone. He's a tyrant. Fuck him.’
‘Well, he does seem to appreciate you. He has promoted you, after all.’
‘Only to annoy Pat Murphy. He never does anything for the right reasons.’
He ranted on for an hour or so in an unfocused sort of way. Sam was not sure what was expected of her, so she just listened and nodded.
‘Is something the matter, Jim? Can I help?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, woman. No one can play Black at his own game.’
‘Actually, I meant that you have been very pre-occupied lately, rude even. I hope it wasn’t something that I said.’
Jim looked embarrassed. ‘No, no please forget it. I was drunk. I don’t know what I was thinking. I felt rejected.’
‘Rejected? Oh, I had no idea you felt that way.’
‘I don’t. I mean I was drunk and afterwards I was embarrassed. You know how it is.’
Sam, who had never used alcohol as an excuse for anything, did not know, but she agreed anyway. There was a long silence broken by Jim who suddenly looked very sober.
‘Why did you take this job?’ he asked.
Sam was loath to tell Jim about her humiliating circumstances. Taking the job in Tamazia had been an act of desperation on her part. Despite being nearly forty, unemployment had forced her to move back in with her parents to protect her meagre savings.
‘I was swayed by the availability of cheap mangoes.’
‘You don’t get away that easily. Why Sam?’
‘I work for money Jim. The salary outweighed the danger. I’d rather die than sit at home on the dole.’
‘I can understand that.’
He left shortly afterwards, heading for the bar.
***
There was no water in her house the next day and the water pipe in the utility room was leaking again. The plumber arrived, this time with Bob, who ordered the pipe changed and a plate made for the pump. Bob could hardly look Sam in the eye. He was trying hard to find something to chat about. He appeared determined to bridge the gap that loomed between them since the incident in the bar but Sam was not in the mood.
Bob commented that the plumbing arrangements had been a bit Heath Robinson. He wasn’t kidding. One of the water tanks was stagnant and acted as a breeding ground for mosquitoes, so they let the water out to kill the larvae. No wonder the mosquitos came in squadrons every night; they had their own hatchery in the backyard to replace casualties. It was like the battle of Britain but with the Luftwaffe carrying a deadly cargo of malaria.
Dirk dropped by later for a drink and to collect some cigarettes that she had brought him from Mondongo. He had been hovering around her before she went to Mondongo, without being pushy like Pedro. They had established a great rapport and she felt very comfortable around him.
Sam suffered a lot due to her perceived position as Black’s spy. As predicted by the bar crowd, she needed someone to confide in. She would have liked to be physically close to someone to distract her from the fear she felt at night. She got the impression that Dirk might jump at the chance. After all, they were both single, as far as she knew, and they would not be hurting anyone. No one would be able to invent stories about her and Jim, or anyone else, if she was with Dirk, who made it obvious that he wanted to stay that night.
‘Come on, Sam,’ he pleaded. ‘What’s wrong with sex between two consenting adults?’
But Sam was not sure and for once she was glad that she had an excuse. For some strange reason she felt like she was being watched. She did not want the whole camp knowing about her business.
‘Not tonight, Dirk. I have my period. I need you to go home now,’ she said.
‘But we could just share your bed and hang out together. We don’t need to have sex, you know.’
‘I know but I'm several degrees hotter than usual due to my period and we'll be uncomfortable. I promise to let you know when I’m ready.’
‘You’re just mean. You know how much I want you.’
She turned him out into the dark. He protested bitterly.
VII
The rainy season had set in with a vengeance and the countryside was coated in thick red mud. The river banks were turning green where they were not churned up into an impassable mud bath. Even the stunted bushes had new leaves an
d shoots. At night, frogs croaked from every puddle and when combined with the chorus of crickets, rendered sleep almost impossible. The villagers gathered new palm leaves to roof their huts. Everywhere, the operators had stopped work because of the rain.
‘It’s fucking infuriating,’ said Jim. ‘Every man jack of them has been given a set of waterproofs for the rainy season and they have all sold them in town or swapped them for beer. And then they have the cheek to moan about getting wet and they stop work if not supervised.’
Sam had no rain gear, as she had been told by Mr Shah in London that she would not need any because it never really rained in Tamazia. The rainy season in Tamazia lasted for seven months. She found it hard to believe he did not know that. Perhaps he was too frazzled to remember anything.
The next morning, Jim appeared at the office looking sheepish. He came over to her for a chat.
‘Hi, what’s up?’ asked Sam
‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Which do you want to hear first?’
‘The bad news I guess.’
‘I wanted to tell you when you got back from Mondongo but I was too drunk and I thought I might change his mind. Black called me while you were away. He's changed his mind about you running the place while I'm away on leave. I’m sorry. I know it was important to you.’
‘Why, for fuck’s sake?’ She could not believe it. She had so been looking forward to taking on the production duties.
‘Don’t be too pissed off. He's famous for changing his mind. When he comes on a visit you can use your famous charm to change his mind back.’ Jim looked at her mischievously.
‘So who will run the operation, then?'
‘Ewen Mackenzie will take over as he usually does when I am away. He’s a man who hoards toilet rolls and who manages the Gali mine next door. You'll work with him.’
‘A man who what?’
‘He hoards toilet rolls. He has dozens of them.’
‘To be honest, I don’t think that’s at all odd considering the erratic supply. All the toilet roll, soap, toothpaste, coffee and tea are running out.’