And so I understood the problem. This is what happens to the bazungu. When their children are little, they hardly see them. Later, when they grow, and are no longer any trouble, and the parents start to get old and weak, the parents want the children to love them. By then, the children do not know them. But the parents want to get to know them.
Then I thought about the evidence I had so far. I said to him, “Did this woman give you the necklace?”
He looked down at the ground, and shook his head, so my fingers, which were caught inside his curls, pained him, and he winced and frowned as if I had hit him. He looked as he did when he was a child and the Henman asked him too many questions.
This is when I showed my detective skills, for I have not read Agatha Christie for nothing. Sometimes Miss Marple could be very gentle. “Perhaps you borrowed it from her?”
He was quiet for a moment, but then he nodded.
And so I know this girl is important.
And I said to him, “You must visit her,” but he said, “She does not want to see me again.”
It does not matter, I am going to find her.
And here is the second thing I know about Justin. I know he was given the sack from his work. He did not steal things, or come late to the office, or tell lies about the other workers. He did not get drunk, as many young men do. He got the sack because he was not a woman.
He worked for an advertising agency, which paid him good money to invent advertisements. (Later I will ask him how much they paid. Probably he was paid more than me, although I am older and more experienced.) He told me the advertisements were all for women. They advertised perfume, and clothes, and cars, and cigarettes, and alcohol. And young women were their ‘target market’, because young women had all the money, so they wanted a young woman to write the advertisements. The reason why young women have all the money must be because they have all the jobs.
“I tell you, Mary, that’s the way things are. This city is made for young women. They don’t need men. We are obsolete. Just look in the papers. It’s the same there. All the columnists are young women. And they spend most of their time slagging off men. We’re all useless, and feeble, and wankers, apparently.”
I smiled and said to him, “Do not worry. Young women still need men for babies.”
But he looked sad and obstinate, like a goat, and he said, “You are wrong. They do not want babies. My ex said all men were wimps and liars.”
And this is the third thing, and the most important. I know the phone number and address of his girlfriend. I know this because I interviewed the cleaners, and had to listen to the phone messages. But one young woman did not want the job. One young woman had called for Justin.
She had a soft voice. She was called Zakira. She said she had called for him twice already. She did not leave her telephone number, but fortunately it was the last message, and I know how to find the last number.
I told Justin that the woman had called. At first he looked happy, but a minute later he turned over in bed, and groaned into the pillow. “It is all useless. Zakira hates me.”
“If she telephones you, perhaps she doesn’t hate you.”
“I know she hates me, because I am hateful. Because I am hopeless. Because I am disgusting.”
I said to him again, “You are not so bad. I think I should telephone Zakira. She has a nice voice. It is educated.”
But he groaned again and made me promise not to. Still I did not promise not to find her.
The next night, when he was fast asleep, I got up and put the bedside light on, then dug my way through the heaps of clothes that cover Justin’s bedside table. Then I started looking in his drawers. In my own bedside drawers I have pictures of Jamil, and the letters he sent me, and his school reports. They always say how hard he works. I must not start comparing Jamil and Justin.
Justin’s bedside drawers were like a litter bin. Old receipts, old tickets, old bills from restaurants. So once he went out like other young men. Once he bought music and expensive clothes. At last I found some letters in careful black writing, folded neatly together, unlike the rest. They were signed with a beautiful, flowing ‘Z’. Of course it was her, not Zadam, or Zargaret! But the first two letters had no address. I was very tired, and I might have given up, but God gave me patience to look at one more, and there was her address, at the top of the paper! 2 °Canaan Gardens. Or maybe 30. Or even 26. It was not written clearly. But all the same, I felt so happy. Yes, most things are going splendidly.
28
Mary and Trevor are smoking in the garden. Vanessa is at college all day on Friday, and Trevor has popped round to see how things are going. He finds Mary weeding, in her blue cotton nightgown, looking for all the world like a farmer. She smiles at him joyously. “I like this work. It reminds me of home, when I was a child, and watched my father. But the soil is so dry. In Uganda, we have real rain. Rain that can wash your house away.” She thinks, maybe this house should be washed away, and then all the people could escape, and Justin could swim up, with his curls in the sun.
“You’re not short of water, then,” says Trevor. He thinks of the Africa he sees on TV: flat yellow desert, with flyblown skeletons. But then he remembers one of the books he most enjoyed from his folding book chest. In fact, Trevor had enjoyed it so much that he did what he very occasionally does, which is to cheat on his usual system of passing books on as soon as he has read them, and deflected it to some bookshelves he’s put up in the garage, where he sometimes sits and reads and potters on Sundays: My African Journey, by the Rt Hon.
Winston Spencer Churchill M. P. The cover has a picture of a young Churchill in a solar topee, by a cross, dead rhinoceros. “Source of the Nile, Uganda, isn’t it? I know that from old Winston Churchill.”
“The villages are short of clean water,” says Mary. “People give them wells. But they forget to care for them. Maybe the problem is, they do not know how to. We do not look after things enough at home.”
“Well, Winston was impressed with the Uganda railway.”
“It is broken now,” says Mary. “Do you like his book?”
She makes Trevor strong tea, with milk and three sugars, and he offers her a fag, and they sit by the rose-bushes, which have grown too tall, for Mary has only snipped off the dead bits, by the little blocked fountain with its skin of black leaves, which English people have forgotten to look after. At the end, a stand of silver-green willows, just starting to ripple with gold, for autumn. Leggy pale yellow chrysanthemums. Honeysuckle that could do with pruning, but still bears twined crescents of pink and gold, as well as semi-transparent red berries. Not long ago, this was a beautiful garden, before Vanessa grew too busy to garden, before Justin was ill, when their world was lighter.
“I did like it,” says Trevor. “I really did. Dunno why, I just liked the cut of his jib.” Seeing her uncomprehending face, he says, “You know, I kind of took to him. He was an enthusiast, was Churchill. I’d like to go to Uganda,” he adds. “Didn’t Winston say it was the Pearl of Africa? I’m going to look that book out again.”
“Maybe I will borrow it,” says Mary. “I would like to see what he says about us. It is a famous book, but I have never seen it.”
“Done,” says Trevor. “I’ll bring it round…You know that Nessie went to Uganda.”
“She tried to tell me about it,” says Mary.
“I bet she did.” They both sit and laugh and blow out white smoke on the bright autumn air. Trevor notices the roses have got black spot. “You know you can never prune too hard, with roses. You want to have a real go at them. You have to be ruthless with a garden, Mary.”