Chasing Freedom Home (Malinding)

by Ireland, Tom

  ‘I’ll be in the car, sir’

  ‘No, dammit. Listen. Go up the back stairs, through that door. Turn left at the top and you’ll find a flat over the garage. Self contained, right. Do you and Miss Theresa come as an item? There’s just the one bed, but it’s a double. My daughter used to use it …’

  ‘Sir, Grant and I are not an item, sir. Not at all. I’ll need a room of my own, sir. I’m told you have six bedrooms here? The smallest one will do, please.’

  ‘Keep your, oh suit yourself. When we had an au pair she used the last room on the right. It’s got a shower cubicle and a lavatory. Make yourself at home there when you’ve finished your chores. Remember, no cheese.’ He collected his brief case and coat and walked out to the car. Grant held the door for him and they set off for HQ.

  After the meeting he reflected on the day. Most satisfactory, most satisfactory. His appointment as a Senior Watchman was confirmed. His suggestion that the Party avoid the opprobrium of the Nazi Death camps by utilising much smaller regional centres such as old schools and disused churches was immediately accepted. He was now fourth in line to leadership of the party, and he intended to reap the rewards. Theresa came instantly to mind.

  She had certainly worked hard during his absence. The parquet floor of the hall glowed; the cobweb in the corner by the cloakroom was banished; the house smelled of polish and the brasses shone brightly. He set his brief case down on the hall table and went upstairs. He opened the door to his study and glanced in; all seemed to be in order. He dropped his clothes off at the foot of his bed and walked naked into the shower room. It would be nice to share a shower with a nubile young woman he thought, but the nubile young woman must have been busy elsewhere. He showered and dried himself and padded back into the bedroom. He looked at the untidy heap if clothes on the floor and stooped to pick them up. No sense in tiring the hired help, she'll need all her energy later he thought. As he straightened up he noticed the picture on the wall behind the bed was slightly askew. He went to straighten it then stopped. It was a scene of a riverboat, a Mersey flat, being towed upriver against the tide and in the top right-hand corner of the frame there was a minute hole, and gleaming in the hole was a camera lens.

  'The little bitch' he murmured to himself, and then smiled. The evening was going to be more amusing than he had supposed. He dressed casually and went downstairs for his supper.

  'Good evening, sir. I've set supper in the dining room. Grant has taken his to the flat. I hope everything is to your liking, sir?.

  'Everything. Perhaps you would like to join me for supper? We can discuss your tasks for tomorrow?'

  They sat at opposite ends of the long table. There was a warming vegetable soup, thick enough to stand a spoon in. Under a silver cover beef sandwiches waited to be anointed with horseradish or mustard. An opened bottle of Merlot stood, with two glasses, on the sideboard.

  Why the hell couldn't his wife have served him half so well? In the candlelight Theresa smiled at him.

  'Perhaps' he said, 'perhaps we could take the wine upstairs? The tidying-up can wait till morning. You've been busy enough for one day, my dear.' He picked up the bottle and left the room. Halfway up the stairs he saw that she was following him, and smiled.

  He opened the door to his bedroom and walked in. He stopped at the foot of the bed and turned to her.

  'No, this is wrong. This is my wife's bed. This is her room. I cannot do this, I'm so sorry.'

  He ushered her out of the room and closed the door behind them.

  'But I'm more than willing to fuck you in your own room, my lovely. It'll be like a christening for that bed of yours. Come on. I'll drink the first glass as you strip for me. Get to it, girl.' He seized her by the arm and dragged her along the corridor. He searched for signs of a camera and was delighted to find nothing. He poured a couple of glasses of wine and drank his as Theresa undressed. She had kept smiling, moving with grace as she stepped out of her clothing. She stood naked before him, covering herself modestly with her hands.

  'Are you sure about this, sir? I'm sorry if I've offended you.' He handed her a glass of wine and poured himself another.

  'It's fine here. Sit beside me. Here.' He patted the bed close to him and eyed her as she sat. 'Drink your wine, take your time. Then get a shower. Give yourself a good scrub behind and below. Then come back to me and I'll dry you off. Then you can lie back and I'll do the work.' She emptied the glass and set it down on the bedside table.

  She looked back at him as she stepped into the shower. He checked the room again for any signs of bugging, then undressed quickly. She handed him her towel and he patted her dry with surprising gentleness. She smiled at him and the remnant of the smile lingered for a moment as he threw her onto the bed and anally raped her. She tried to scream loudly enough for the microphone in the master bedroom to pick up the sound but he gagged her with the bath towel and continued to assault her. He stayed all night with her, repeating the atrocity several times. As day dawned he carried her into the shower and tenderly washed away the stains of his crimes. Again he dried her, murmuring sweetnesses into her ears.

  'See, my lovely girl, how gentle I can be. But you should not have done what you did. You do so many things so well, but why did you spy on me? Now, you've had your punishment and your lovely sweet arse will be sore for long enough to remind you of it. Tonight will be much nicer, I promise you. Come on, girl, kiss me then get dressed. It's time for work again. She stared at him, then complied. She walked slowly downstairs to the kitchen and began her work.

  13

  Andrew stared at his wife. How could she keep so calm? Rachel was somewhere at sea, possibly doing a spot of fishing to justify her trip. She could be arrested and shot at any time. Lizzy turned a page.

  'This new editor couldn't set a decent cross-word to save his life. Poor old Auracaria, I miss him. This puzzle's all about the bloody P.P.P. Oh, look, he's managed to fit in an eight letter word. Security. Why do people talk about security when they really mean "insecurity"?'

  'Lizzy, I'm worried about Rachel. She should be home by now.'

  'That's the sort of remark most fathers make when their daughter's late home from a date. She'll be fine.'

  'I wish she would go on dates. That would be normal at her age. But no, she's running an escape route to free so called 'illegals'. Look at us. Anyone peering in through the window would suppose we're two normal people running a boarding house for commercial travellers in a suburb of one of the ugliest towns in England.'

  'That's what we were; a hard-working family, just as described in Government propaganda. A son who did well at Uni and is a medic, and a not so bright girl who's a bit of a tomboy. We know this house isn't bugged because our guests would find it highly inconvenient. The last thing a Watchman wants is to be watched or listened to. In their eyes we're almost too insignificant to be bothered with. We grumble about the weather, praise the Party and we serve a bloody good English breakfast that will, in the course of time, clog their arteries and kill them. We also play at trains. Underground trains. And I think that it's about time we considered when we should take a trip on that train.'

  'You too? I've been thinking that. We've had a good run; we were warned that sooner of later we'd have to bail out, remember? It can't last for ever. Just walk away. I've been thinking about the African people in the days when they tried to come to England. They would walk away from the home they knew, away from the people who loved them, carrying next to nothing, and head out across the desert or round the coast, just to risk crossing the Mediterranean in a leaky boat. Most of them died, but others would follow. Most of the survivors were arrested, detained and shipped back. Most of them would try again. Such brave desperation. I don't think I'm that brave, love.'

  'I'd like to see Henry again. Before it's too late.'

  14

  Ed-Lamin Ceesay walked down the gangplank onto his native Gambian soil: should he drop to his knees and kiss the ground? He kept going. He had his discharg
e note as identification and nothing else. Two uniformed policemen stood chatting at the dockyard gate. Who else might be watching, he wondered. Watchers were everywhere; trust nobody. The guard simply waved him through. It must be a trick. He forced himself not to run; the last time he thought he was escaping a priest was killed alongside him. No shot came. He was jostled by the crowd pushing and shoving their way off the Barra ferry. People with handcarts, donkey carts, bicycles laden with bulging sacks, boys carrying crates of live chickens, women with bales of cloth on their heads; all rushing about their business. He stood aside to let them pass. He had become invisible; he blended into the scenery; it was a good feeling. Ed-Lamin had come home.

  He found a cafe in a quieter side street and sat at a table shaded by a fine mango tree. He fumbled with the money the crew had collected for him as a farewell gift. The waitress smiled;

  'Hello, sailor. You want a drink? Malta, makes a man strong? I can change money for you. Good rate, fifty to the pound, OK?' He nodded. She took the money, returned with his drink and disappeared with the twenty-pound note. He looked anxiously after her.

  'No worry, sailor; she's my sister, a good girl. Her other brother is an exchange man. He give her good rate. Here she comes.' She deposited a heap of Dalasi notes on the table beside his drink.

  'Count it; one thousand Dalasi. You owe me fifty for the drink. Count it, don't be shy!' He counted the notes, some dirty, almost unrecognisable, some fresh as paint. They smelled of dust and sweat and threatened to blow away in the breeze. He handed the girl a fifty and added three well-worn five Dalasi notes as a tip.

  'Thank you brother; they pay for my taxi home tonight.' He sipped his drink from the bottle and tried to plan his journey home to Malinding. Banjul to Serrekunda; Serrekunda to Lamin; Lamin to Mandinari, Mandinari to Malinding. Four bush taxis. The last time he had travelled by bush taxi - ten, twelve years ago - each trip had cost five Dalasi; it must be double that now. Say fifty for the whole journey. Less than a pound. Time for something to eat; he called to the girl and asked for a bread roll filled with fried onion. He was pleased that she answered him in their tribal language, Mandinka. He smiled, another step in the homecoming. The waitress smiled back. He leaned back in his cheap plastic chair and became part of the picture.

  It was as if he had never been away. He finished his meal, paid, tipped the waitress again and thanked her for her help, and stepped out into the street. He hesitated, asked directions to the nearest taxi garage and found a seat in a waiting mini-bus. He had been attracted by the sign-written slogan on its side - 'God helps the poor struggler!' - and thought it appropriate. The seats gradually filled. Chattering schoolboys, stately matrons with mountains of baggage, smartly suited office girls all packed together to fill the twelve seats with fifteen or twenty passengers. Each in turn greeted the rest with wishes that there would be peace and received reassurance that there was indeed peace.

  That bus took him to Serrekunda, the next to Lamin taxi centre where there was a long wait till the bus for Mandinari filled and overfilled. Now people were returning from market and the bus stopped repeatedly at small hamlets, isolated compounds and at junctions where narrow sandy tracks led to homes invisible in the scrub. The last taxi dropped him off near the market place in Malinding. Home. Home at last.

  He stepped out of the bush-taxi, and stood, trying to recall the last time he had been here. Ten, twelve years ago? The road had been surfaced recently. Electric cables slung between concrete posts branched off into some of the compounds. That building was surely the school, smart in white paint, a new corrugated iron roof gleaming. Just beyond the school the village clinic was surrounded by a mud brick fence. Money had arrived in Malinding during his absence. The afternoon was baking hot and he walked from shade to shade, occasionally tripping in the deep sand. A bicycle bell warned him of danger and he stepped aside as a teenaged girl rode past him and turned her head to smile at the stranger. Ed stopped at the gate of a compound he recognised. He walked slowly towards the place where he had spent his childhood, and pushed open the iron gate, still painted black. His father had once painted these gates, messily. The mechanical girl had taken over the task and done a much better job. How many times had they been re-painted since then? He called a greeting and waited. A woman's voice answered him. He expected to see his mother but saw a stranger. The woman looked at him, smiled. She bobbed a curtsy.

  'Welcome home, Ed-Lamin. Do you not recognise me?' He looked again, stared for a moment. It was Binta, his father's second wife, his mother's co-wife. He laughed aloud and embraced her.

  'Ed-Lamin, you are welcome. I am sorry for your troubles, and your losses. But come and meet your mother. She is there, in her new husband's house; you remember Ebou?' Stepmother and stepson walked hand in hand across the road; Sirra was waiting at the gate to her new home.

  'God is good; he has returned you to me as I prayed. The entire village has been praying for this day.' She was determined not to weep. What reason could there be for tears? Mother and son embraced and their tears mingled and dried salty in the heat. Binta saw this and walked back to her own house. Sirra and the son she had supposed to be dead walked hand in hand to the shade of the veranda. They sat close together on the veranda, not speaking. He is so like his father, so like my father, she thought. Ed was trying to think when he last smiled. It was something that happened in a long ago time in a far away land. There had been a beautiful funny white girl who laughed and teased him and had rolled him into her bed and promised him her child. She was a girl who made him smile, who loved him as much as he loved her.

  They had joked about the baby she carried, until that day when the joke faded into darkness. His mother would never know the girl, or the baby.

  'Atayah, Ed-Lamin. Time for Atayah. Can you still cook it, do you think?' She brought him the tray with the small metal teapot, the glasses and the gunpowder tea and packet of sugar. The charcoal burner was already in position on the floor of the veranda. He closed his eyes for a moment, envisaging his father attending to the same task, then started to measure the water, tea and sugar into the pot before putting it onto the burner to cook. He sat back on his heels, watching as the steam started to rise.

  'Breathe, my son, breathe. Relax your shoulders, think only of the Atayah. What is past is gone, you cannot revisit it and change its pattern. It is not given you to punish the wrongdoers, it is for you to move into the future. The love that you gave still exists, it cannot be diminished. You can perhaps in time give it again to some one deserving but for now, you have need of it for yourself. Love will heal you. God gave you the gift of life and you did nothing to abuse that gift. We cannot see the future but there is hope that one day you may find happiness again. Work may help; it will show you that you have a purpose in life. The nursery school where your father taught is now used in the evenings as an adult education college. That was the work you hoped to do in England? So, you do it here in your homeland instead. No, say nothing yet. Do you think that I was calm when your father died? Do you think that I accepted the death of the one man who loved me, treasured me, fathered my children - do you think I calmly accepted his death as if it was of no consequence and that I went serenely on with life? No. And you have seen greater evil in one year than I have dreamed of in all my nightmares. Remember, before your father became your father he too lived through horror and despair. He too lost a wife he loved and a child. He told me that if it had not been for the words of a girl in a cafe and the kindness of a young family in a guesthouse he would never have arrived in this village and in my bed. God sends signs so tiny you may not even notice them at the time, but they are there. This is what I believe.'

  Her son sat silent. It was all very well for his mother to preach. She had a successful, respected, life.

  True, she had to bear the death of his father and there was no shred of doubt that she had loved him deeply. But she had found another love. He remembered Ebou, her new husband. Ebou had been a friend of his father, a ha
rd worker, a trustworthy though poor at the time, young man who had stepped into his mother's life when the moment was right. She might well see the hand of a compassionate god in her life. He could not. He had seen men die for no other reason than the god-given colour of their skin. He had been ripped from the side of the woman he loved, and did not know whether she lived or died. He had not held their child, had not seen its birth, heard its cry, nor watched it feed. He respected his mother, naturally; he could not contradict her or show her that he did not, could never, respect her beliefs and her god. He nodded, slowly.

  'Sirra, I hear your words. I am glad to be in my place at your side.' He attended to the ritual of pouring the brew from glass to glass till it had the required head of froth, and passed the first glass to his mother.

  He slept that night in a room in the house his mother shared with Ebou. There was an element of luxury; electricity powered the fans and lighting; there was running water and his room, the guest room, had an en suite shower and toilet. The tiled floor throughout the house was cool and even and unblemished. It could have had its place in any wealthy first world country. Ebou had greeted him respectfully, assured him he was welcome to stay under his roof for as long as he wished; Ed did not doubt his words or question his kindness. His mother had found a good man.

  Next morning he was up, showered and dressed early. He moved quietly, not wishing to disturb the other members of his family, and walked in the silence of the morning down to the river. The old wooden jetty had been replaced by a modern concrete and steel construction. He walked to the end and sat, dangling his feet over the water. Across the other side of the river, just visible in the morning mist, he could see a family of hippos, diving, remaining submerged for impossible lengths of time, surfacing, diving again. The most feared of the African creatures were at peace in their native habitat.