One day the Henman will lose her demons.
36
Vanessa Henman
She will have to go. It is insupportable. My house, my son are no longer my own. Even my ex-husband is behaving strangely. And now she has started this weird juju. I almost feel afraid of her, although that, of course, is ridiculous. She is just a simple African woman.
But sometimes she does not seem so simple.
Item one: the blue nightdress in Justin’s bedroom. Anya left a pile of his things on the landing. Why was Mary’s hideous nightdress among them? I asked her about it, but she only smiled, and said, ‘Vanessa, it is an error’, which could have meant anything, and told me nothing. But I thought of the noises in the middle of the night, and the strange thumping I hear in her bedroom.
I must not think like this. It is disgusting. Perhaps it is me who has the problem. I am open-minded, I try to be fair. I know about Oedipus, and Jocasta.
All the same, the thought makes me want to slap her.
Item two: she makes Justin set his sights low. This wretched idea of him helping his father. Of course it will do for a week or two, as a way of getting him back to normal, but in the long run, it is just a nightmare, the thought of my brilliant, gifted son, dragging around as an odd-job man. (Though Trevor got terribly cross with me and forbade me to say any more to Justin. “Leave well alone, I’m telling you, Ness, or I won’t be responsible. He’s very fragile, still, our son. Don’t you dare make him think you despise him. You might hide your feelings about me, as well. Or you can start cleaning out your own gutters.” Those eyes of his were simply flashing fire! For a moment he looked almost handsome.)
So I have decided to say nothing for a bit. But I’m biding my time. And I do blame Mary.
Item three: the African herbs in the kitchen. The food was one thing, but now she is bringing in strange little packets of dried root and powder, glass vials of seed-heads like shrunken pupils, wizened black plant-stuff from another world. I asked her, quite nicely, “Are these herbs for cooking?” But she said, “No, it is medicine for Justin. I have told him to stop taking his Prozac,” and I said, “But Mary, that could be dangerous!” And she said, “Vanessa, Prozac is dangerous. Especially now Justin is working with Trevor. What if he is painting up a ladder? I am sure that Prozac will make him sleepy.”
I really couldn’t argue with that. I have always thought that drugs were dangerous. But obviously I have forbidden her to give him any of her coal-black rubbish. The Health Food shop is one thing: we all use that, herbs and homeopathy in proper labelled bottles. I am open-minded on alternative health. But African witch-doctors are something else.
I wonder if Mary will take any notice. It seems to me she does whatever she wants to.
Item four: she encourages Tigger to smoke. It isn’t good for him. He has a weak chest. He looks terribly robust, but he does get the sniffles, and of course he often works in the open air. No one can say I don’t care about him. He’s the kind of man who needs the odd reminder. I mean, he hardly ever used to change his socks. But Mary has always been soft on men. Why else does Omar have custody of their son? And Mary has always admired Tigger. Now she is around, he is much more — uppity. It isn’t a change that I enjoy.
Then yesterday I smelled smoke in the kitchen, as clear as day, by the door to the garden, when Tigger had popped in after a day with Justin. They were all round the table, talking very loudly. I was in my study, as usual, working, and when I came through, the room went quiet, and I could smell cigarettes quite strongly. “Who’s been smoking?” I demanded, of course. All of them know there is to be no smoking. And then, to my surprise, Justin started laughing, and then they were all giggling like children, and Tigger said, “I’d better own up, it’s me,” and then they all laughed even harder. And I said to Mary, “It is bad for Tigger,” and she said, “Miss Henman, he is not a baby.”
And then perhaps I raised my voice a little, and said to her, “Don’t tell me about my husband!” Which is embarrassing, in retrospect.
Because Trevor turned on me. Men do. They feel no loyalty to women. He said, in that quiet voice he uses when he’s cross, “I have not been your husband for twenty years. And Mary has a point, actually.”
So then I felt entirely alone. It was weak of me, but I wanted to cry, because they had all behaved so badly, but instead I closed the kitchen door rather firmly and went into my study to work.
I sat for two hours, staring at my laptop. This is my house, but I felt like a prisoner, afraid to set foot outside this room in case they were lurking there, smoking and laughing.
It is Mary’s fault. She has been here too long. And I am paying her a fortune. I have been too soft, she is taking advantage.
At first I went back to my novel again. It seemed so feeble, untrue and unhelpful. I did not feel it was connected to me.
Then something odd happened, one of those weird glitches the brain comes up with when one’s over-stressed.
My novel had a heroine called Emily who was leaving home to go to university. Somehow I slipped into the first person, and I found I was writing about the village. The things I was writing were all about me. The fear and the excitement, the loneliness of leaving (I suppose all these quarrels must have left me feeling lonely).
And so I slipped back, for a moment, into childhood. The sounds I remember from the village. The wind in the cornfields. The tractor straining. The ominous bees by the buddleia. The chickens’ fretful squawks from the hen-house. My mother’s sheets snapping on the line, when she wasn’t ill, when I was little. My mother calling me in from the garden. And I forgot about Emily; and for a moment, I was perfectly happy, even though, when I had finished, my mind circled back to Mary.
37
Mary Tendo
£1,270. I am ahead of schedule, because of my new wages, which I negotiated, like a lawyer (and to be fair, Miss Henman tried to be generous). There are still many weeks left before Christmas, so I could go back with three thousand pounds! Which is nine million Ugandan shillings.
And yet, this morning, I just feel afraid. I have not seen Miss Henman since she was so angry. I think she is jealous that Justin likes me. She shouted from the window as if she was drunk.
I find myself thinking, buy presents for Jamil. And I tell myself, do not do this again, but I find I am going out of the house, with all my clothes on, and my thin orange coat, and seventy pounds tucked in my purse, and I try to stop myself, but I cannot. It always happens when I am not happy. I must not let myself be unhappy. Compared to the great unhappiness, nothing matters, everything is light. Yet the small unhappinesses scratch at my soul.
I do not like these arguments. In Kampala, I never argue, or only with my friend the accountant, and then we kiss and make up straight away. And twice with Omar, on the phone. For Omar does not like to phone me, and phoning from Libya is sometimes hard. It was nearly two weeks before he phoned to tell me the bad news about Jamie. Why didn’t Omar ring when Jamie first ran away? I cursed my husband, and then I was sorry. And yet I still blame him. I cannot help it. My son has become a stone in my heart.
Every day of my life, I think about Jamie.
Kampala is a place of many rumours. Perhaps the pain is too great, and you speak. A small whisper, a hiss of hurt. A week later, the rumour returns, like a wreath of snakes around your shoulders.