“Oh right, it must be me then, don’t worry.” But Fifi feels less joyful, and less abundant. All afternoon, she reflects on her life.
Before supper, she phones Vanessa again. “It’s true, Vanessa, I’ve neglected my family. Mimi, as you know, is like my child, Mimi is warmer than the average Siamese, but there’s still a strain of selfishness. The truth is, anyone could fill her bowl. I do have a family, aunts and uncles and things, but I never see them, since my parents died. Of course they’re mostly in France, my lot. As a matter of fact, I have a living grandma. But I should go and see them — I’m going to go and see them. And I wanted to ask — will you come with me?”
Vanessa feels flattered to be needed — her own house seems to do quite well without her — and says, rather grandly, “Delighted to help. Why not a little holiday in France?”
But Fifi presses on, disconcertingly, “I started thinking about you and Justin. You’re really in just the same boat as me.”
Vanessa is speechless for a second. She prefers to feel compassion for Fifi. “Justin is not a Siamese.”
“You don’t see your family either, do you? And of course, Justin is all on his own.”
“Nonsense, Fifi, he has always been sociable.”
(Yet now he lies in a room alone. She doesn’t admit it, but Vanessa feels vulnerable. She has no siblings, and she never sees her cousins. Who is there to hold her to the ground? Sometimes, when she lies there in the middle of the night, she feels she and Justin could be lost in the darkness, two atoms of dust, empty, meaningless. Perhaps she and Fifi could help each other. She decides she will confide in her.)
“As a matter of fact, just a month or so ago, I had a birthday card from my cousin in Sussex, who I haven’t seen since I was a schoolgirl. It started me thinking, and I wrote to Lucy. And I really have been hoping she’ll get back to me. Not that I myself feel lonely, of course. I don’t know, I thought it might somehow help Justin. To have more of a family than just me. In any case, Lucy hasn’t written back.” The truth is, Vanessa is still hoping.
“Let’s go to Paris!” Fifi says again, laughing. “My grandma still has a house in Paris.”
“Why not?” says Vanessa, only half meaning it.
But as the evening draws on, she thinks about Paris: a little rosy gleam on the horizon. She’s in need of a gleam. She’s done eight hours of marking. She is still wading through the new intake class. It annoys her that Beardy, the silly old man (who, to make matters worse, is younger than she is) is arguably better than her favourite, Derrick. But Beardy has a tendency to cheap satire. After all the effort Vanessa puts in! It’s that little grin she keeps seeing on his face, twitching away under the white fungus…
But perhaps she is becoming paranoid. She turns with relief to her own writing.
And sits on for hours, in her autumn study, where unread books use up the air. She stares at the unforgiving slopes of her laptop, wondering if the book of her dreams, which would sketch out the truth of her life like a theorem, a silver vapour-trail behind her plane, might rise into being, clear and entire, but the screen shows only burnt droppings of phrases.
She finds herself wondering what Mary is up to. She heard her come in, around five pm, and then the usual hammerings and slashings and thumpings that meant she was putting the dinner on. The smell of cooking floats through from the kitchen, but Mary herself has disappeared.
Abandoning her struggle with the dreck on her screen, Vanessa creeps upstairs, and stands listening on the landing. Not a sound emerges from Justin’s room. She feels relieved, somehow, that Mary isn’t there. Nobody in the loo or the bathroom. She pauses by Mary’s bedroom door.
There is a curious, repetitive noise. A kind of quiet thumping that reminds her of something. But her brain won’t process it. And then she remembers. It sounds like the noise Mary made in the kitchen one night, grinding nuts in a mortar and pestle. Perhaps she is preparing food in her room.
It must be some Ugandan habit.
27
Mary Tendo
All I can do is write about Jamie. On and on, about the thing that happened. Because I talked about him, to Juanita. My heart is stirred up. I am not myself.
But I am not ready. I cannot do it. I wipe it away: delete, delete. I have to get up and look out of the window until my mind is blank as the sky.
And now I am back at my dressing-table, in this nice room, and everything is fine. On the whole, when I see my friends, I feel better. I compare our lives, and am not unhappy. I am not living in a small shared room for which I have to pay eighty pounds per week, doing night-work in a factory, without the right visa. I have not fallen into the clutches of Nigerians who sell other Africans for a percentage. I am back in London, but I am not a cleaner. I have certainly done better than Juanita.
And yet my heart pains me, because of Jamey.
I will not cry. I smile in the mirror. It makes me feel better to see myself, sitting very straight in the new yellow sweater I bought quite cheaply at Dalston Market. No, I am not going to think about Jamey. Instead I must sort out my thoughts about Justin. This is my job. I have not been lazy.
I have found out several things about Justin.
Firstly, a woman has broken his heart. This is why Justin has given up hope. This is why Justin needs me so.
It was morning. He sat beside me on the bed.
“I wanted her to marry me,” he said, like a child.
“But Justin, you are not ready to marry.”
(But then I remembered what I felt for Omar. I was not much older than Justin is. I was alone, and lonely, in London. The money for my grant had not arrived. Every day I phoned my aunt in Kampala. But her husband was no longer the President’s friend. Each time I phoned she became less friendly. In the end I knew the money was finished. But once I met Omar, nothing mattered. I knew we would be in love for ever. I still see his eyes, dark like pools in the forest. And his skin, which was like golden sand, so to me at first he looked like a muzungu. I will never forget his eyes, and his hands. Both of us were lonely, and far from home. In Uganda, Christians marry Muslims. We live together in the same village, so we marry each other because we are neighbours, and the families do not mind. It is ordinary. I did not understand things were different in Libya.
But Omar wasn’t racist. His heart was good. Yali mussajja mulungi nyo. He found me beautiful. He made me laugh. My life became sunlight, until the storms came. I have never lost my love for Omar. Perhaps things will work out like that for Justin.)
“Is she a nice girl?” I asked him, very quietly, so that I would not sound like the Henman, always asking things, and interfering. I stroke his soft blonde hair with my hand, so he knows I am not his enemy.
“She was perfect,” he said, “until she broke my heart.” And then he told me all about her. He met her at university. She is doing the famous MBA, which everyone knows is the way to get rich. “She will soon be an international businesswoman. She won’t want anything to do with me. Because I just lie here uselessly.”
I said to him, “You are not useless. You have been ill. I love you, Justin.”
“It wasn’t true,” he mumbled, at his chest.
“What was not true?” I asked him, very soft.
“She said I had another girlfriend.”
“She thinks you have another girlfriend?”
“It wasn’t true. It was my mother.”
“It is Miss Henman? I don’t understand.” But I began to understand.
“I always had to meet my mother.”