Now she swings her great suitcase off the carousel, rejoicing in the strength of her arms, and pushes her trolley gaily through Customs. ‘Nothing to declare’, naturally, though she has brought all sorts of presents for Justin, knives and barbed arrows, since he always loved weapons, which the two of them will hide from his non-violent mother; to give to his girlfriends, bead necklaces (which are Kenyan, she knows, but he will not, and she bought them from a seller near the National Theatre, so in a way they are Ugandan), a smooth goat-skin quiver trimmed with soft fur, two African shirts with sunburst patterns. At the last moment she’d remembered Miss Henman, and snatched up a woven raffia basket in vivid shades of yellow and green. It is tied to the side of her trunk with string. She regrets it, briefly. It makes her look too like the humbler people in that long pleading queue.
But nothing matters now except seeing Justin. She is hurrying towards the crowded barrier where hands and heads twitch and wave, three deep. She smiles at them all, indiscriminately hopeful. The flickering screen of faces is scanning her, but only one, suddenly, reacts. It is the small bony face of an elderly lady, and two stick-thin arms have shot up in the air, waving a sign that says, ‘WELCOME MARY’.
My God, she realises, it is the Henman. In eleven years, she has become this mask, topped with flat yellow hair that makes the skin look whiter. But the face is smiling, and Mary smiles back.
Only seconds later, the two women have met. Close up, she can see it is really Miss Henman, just eleven years older, thinner and tighter, her mouth showing large new youthful teeth which smile and smile in her direction. Miss Henman puts down her bag and her coat and Mary realises that she means to kiss her, but Mary decides to hang on to her case, which she drags behind her like an alibi, and her other hand clutches flightbags and passports and the free Daily Mail she picked up on the plane, which is full of stories about a new wave of illegal immigrants, this time arriving from China and Russia.
And then something happens against her will. Mary finds she is letting everything go. She has laid her great suitcase down on its back, and dropped the small bags in a pile on the floor, and the passport and paper go fluttering after. Despite her best plans, she and Henman are hugging, the thin arms turn out to be surprisingly strong, the narrow lips peck at her cheeks like a bird, and her own lips kiss back, and she even feels tears — a warm soft stinging in her dry tired eyes — to be welcomed like this by the woman she has hated.
“Miss Henman,” she sighs, and the woman says, “Vanessa. We must be Mary and Vanessa, please.”
12
Vanessa leads Mary away to a taxi. She has taken Mary’s lightest bag, leaving Mary pulling her life on wheels, the shoes, the coffee, the arrows, the Bible, the photograph book of Omar and Jamie, her Songs of Praise, her two new gomesis which she means to wear when she goes to church.
As they fly along the motorway, the trees amaze Mary, so thin, so golden, so perfectly matched, so lacking in birds and fruit and flowers, so often solitary, without brothers. A few are scarlet as tulip trees, and Mary remembers that this is autumn. She had almost forgotten the crisp English seasons: at home all the seasons run together. But the trees are beautiful, and she is content, marvelling anew at this effortless journey, the way the taxi has all its parts working, no corrugated cardboard, no broken windows, the fact that they did not go at once to buy fuel, the rows of identical red brick houses, the organised Englishness of it all, this smooth chill world she had almost forgotten.
The house is the same, but surely bigger, greyer. Mary’s heart beats hard as she walks up the path and sees the same clouds of dried lavender heads, the same red rambling roses, grown enormous, bending over the porch and encircling the window, and the hedge now almost as tall as she is.
When she was here before, her Jamie was little. She was still breastfeeding him at night. The rosebushes were small. She had loved their scent. Her own little boy. Her precious darling. How can he have gone so far away?
Mary makes herself think about Justin instead.
As they walk up the path, she says to Vanessa, “I am excited. I am longing to see him. I think he is tall. Tall like his father.”
Vanessa’s face clouds, and Mary remembers she never thought Justin at all like his father, although the two had the same nose, the same smile. How much about this family has Mary forgotten? Yet now she has thrown in her fate with them.
“I’m afraid his father is still rather hopeless.”
“Mr Trevor? I hope he is well.”
“Tigger, I’m afraid, is a typical man. He has just got himself a teenage girlfriend. A foreigner. She speaks no English. One really can’t see the point of it.”
Mary swallows hard and thinks of the money. She will make sure she gets it as soon as she can. She will keep a record of everything she earns, and add to the sum every day, every week, until she has enough to go home again, to meet her kabito, to go to her village.
In the meanwhile, though, she is here on her own. Where the late sun has left it, the house looks dark, and she cannot see inside the windows.
Suddenly Mary is a little afraid. These English houses are like lost worlds, detached from each other, buried in trees, overgrown with plants and strangled with secrets. Whereas life in Kampala is lived outside. The houses there have thin walls and big windows, and quarrels and weddings are all in the open, though sometimes people are beaten in secret. But here in London, everything is secret.
Vahessa is ringing hard on the door. “Justin promised to get up for us,” she says under her breath, half to herself. “I left a chicken in the oven for you, Mary.”
Mary is pleased: she smiles at Vanessa.
“Yes, as I mentioned, I have been to Uganda, so I know you cook chicken for honoured guests.”
Mary’s heart lifts. Henman has killed a chicken! And then she reflects, she would not have to kill it, she simply had to buy it from the supermarket. But all the same, they are cooking a chicken.
After three more rings, Vanessa hunts for her key and lets them in. The house smells warm, of chicken. It is silent, except for a faint sound of sizzling. Vanessa cocks her ear towards the stairs. She shakes her head, with a small frown of disappointment. “I’m afraid he’s asleep. I will show you where you’re sleeping. You could wash your hands, and then we will eat.”
Mary thinks, I have never slept here before. What will my dreams be like in England?
The house feels enormous. There are five bedrooms. She only knows the bedrooms because she had to clean them. She does not remember which is which. The house seems older than before. At any rate, it is safe and dry.
Mary tells herself she is not too impressed. She tells herself she will find it old·fashioned now that she has her own flat in Kampala, so bright and modern, with wipe-clean surfaces and everything within reach of her hand.