Something to Hide

Tears spring to my eyes. I’d forgotten about it, all these years. It must be in one of the parcels, waiting to be unwrapped for our life together.

  ‘There! That did the trick.’ Bev looks at me as I wipe my eyes. ‘So stop sticking up for Clarence. Anyway, he was a rubbish cook.’

  Oddly enough, Bev seems relieved by Clarence’s departure. Throughout her life abroad she’s had servants of one sort or another, and says she’s never got used to being constantly observed.

  ‘It was like having a third person in our marriage,’ she says. ‘We couldn’t quarrel until we were alone in the bedroom.’

  ‘Like Jane Austen characters.’

  ‘You and I don’t need anyone anyway. Soon we’ll be packed up and gone.’

  I still don’t know how long this will take, or if she wants me to stay here until her departure. The thought of going back to a life without Jeremy, of being single all over again, fills me with such desolation I want to die. I feel close to him here, in his familiar surroundings and in the company of somebody who talks about him all the time, painful though this is. Once I leave he’ll be finally gone; I’ll have nothing left of him except four parcels.

  Parcels which Clarence is accused of stealing.

  ‘Where does he live?’ I ask. We’re sitting on the veranda eating fried chicken.

  ‘Somewhere in town. He pointed it out to me once. If you’re thinking of getting the stuff back, forget it. He’ll have got rid of it by now.’

  I tell her I’m just curious. She shrugs, and says his house is behind a hairdressing shop in Mera Market. She’s not interested in my questions because she’s returning to a subject that has been upsetting her more than the theft: what to do about her dogs.

  ‘How can I find them homes when nobody wanted them in the first place?’ She stabs at a scrawny chicken thigh.

  ‘You’ll just have to let them loose to fend for themselves.’

  ‘I can’t! They’ll never forgive me. And Sally-Ann’s going to have puppies.’

  There are seven of them at the moment. Bev has talked me through their personalities but I haven’t matched these to their names. Some are balder than others but they’re all both cringing and snappy. No doubt this is a result of abuse but it doesn’t make them any more attractive.

  Bev slaps at a mosquito. Though we’re caged in by a screen there’s always one that gets through. Bev has given me pills but I imagine dying of malaria and returning to England in an urn, like my lover. United in death. I imagine Bev carrying us through customs in our plastic bags, her face streaming with tears.

  Bev’s fork clatters onto her plate and she starts crying. ‘They’ll starve,’ she sobs.

  I put my arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m so sorry, Bev. If only there was an RSPCA.’

  ‘I am the RSPCA.’

  Suddenly we start giggling. We collapse against each other, half-sobbing, half-laughing. About the dogs; about the whole hideousness of it all. She’s wearing a pink top, sewn with flowers, like a little girl. She’s so tiny. Jeremy said to me, It’s so strange, putting my arms around a tall woman.

  Bev nestles against me, snuffling. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ she whispers. A breeze blows through the wind chimes. They tinkle, chattering amongst themselves outside her goblin house.

  The next morning I go into town to shop for food. That’s the excuse I give Bev. Now Clarence has gone, we have to look after ourselves.

  This is my first proper expedition; I’ve walked the dogs around the block a few times but Bev’s neighbourhood seems more Home Counties than Africa, being various gated bungalows inhabited, apparently, by NGO staff and middle-class Ngotis.

  The real Africa starts a ten-minute walk away, across the main road and down a lane behind the Anglican mission. It’s only nine o’clock but already hot; I’m damp with sweat when I arrive at Mera Market.

  So this is it, I say to Jeremy. This is what you loved. I’m suddenly in a great theatre of humanity. Buses, belching with exhaust fumes, disgorge passengers. The air smells of petrol and frying and drains. The place is milling with people – women with babies in slings, women with children, skinny men, hawkers. I see a woman with a beauty parlour on her head – a glass-fronted box filled with plastic bottles and hair decorations. She walks slowly through the crowd, as if in a dream. Stalls are heaped with spices and fruit. Blankets are piled with second-hand clothes.

  Despite the crowd there’s something listless about the place. Everywhere I look, people are sitting, staring into space. Rows of men lean against a wall, smoking. They look as if they’ve been there since the beginning of time and will remain there long after I’ve gone. They are alive and you are dead. Yet they are so motionless that I have a strange, airy sensation, as if I’m walking through the afterlife in the company of gaudy ghosts. Some of the women wear stovepipe hats and Edwardian gowns, as if they’ve stepped across from another century. Why are they wearing those dresses, is it a tribal thing or did missionaries make them? Jeremy would know. Look! There’s a tweed jacket just like yours. It’s not Jeremy’s of course, though it’s given me a jolt.

  There’s a parade of shops on the far side of the market, concrete booths selling meat and foodstuffs. One of them has a piece of sacking across the door and a sign above saying Coiffure de Luxe.

  He lives behind a hairdresser’s.

  This must be it. I walk down an alleyway heaped with rubbish. A gutter runs down the middle, filled with blue-grey sewage and buzzing with flies.

  Round the back I find a row of houses built of breeze-blocks. There’s chickens and kids and washing hanging up. And there’s Clarence, sitting in the sunshine, fiddling with a dismembered radio.

  It takes me a moment to recognize him. Now he’s no longer a servant he looks different, like a teacher out of school. He seems more substantial somehow, a man at ease in his own home. Servitude drains a person’s sexuality and now he’s been restored to what must be his normal self. More handsome, younger.

  I greet him and he nods, without surprise. Nothing seems to have ever surprised him.

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ I say. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  He gets up. Pushing aside a plastic sheet, he disappears through a doorway. I hear the murmur of a woman’s voice. Then he reappears with a chair for me and I sit down.

  ‘I just came to apologize,’ I say. ‘I know you didn’t steal those things.’

  Clarence takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He shakes one out with the insouciance of Humphrey Bogart and offers it to me. Startled, I take it, even though I haven’t smoked for years. He lights his, and mine.

  ‘I’m not a thief, madam.’ Children’s faces appear in the doorway.

  ‘I know that.’ I take a drag and feel nauseous. ‘You shouldn’t have been sacked.’

  The children jostle each other and start giggling. How do these lively kids turn into such impassive adults?

  Clarence, in a cloud of smoke, gazes at his dismembered radio. I can’t tell if he’s listening to me, and plough on.

  ‘Mrs Payne doesn’t know I’m here so it’s just between ourselves. Can I make it up to you in some way? Maybe I could pay you a month’s wages?’

  Cigarette between his lips, Clarence inspects his radio. He pushes in a wire and clips the case shut. Suddenly, music blares out. It’s Rick Astley, singing ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. I’ve always been fond of this song and used to bellow along to it when I was young.

  ‘Mrs Payne is not a nice lady,’ he says. At least, that’s what I think he says.

  ‘What?’ I shout.

  He turns the volume down. ‘That’s why Mr Payne wanted a nicer lady like you.’

  My head swims. I’m still dizzy from the cigarette. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Mr Payne was a very good man. He gave me a big tip when I carried his parcels to the post office.’ He grins, showing his stained teeth. ‘That’s because it was a big secret.’

  So Clarence knew. My heart lurches. I picture the two of th
em, furtively preparing for Jeremy’s flight. Rerunning this scenario gives it a shocking immediacy; I picture master and servant in cahoots, whispering behind closed doors like characters in a Mozart opera. I wonder how much detail the chronically indiscreet Jeremy gave his trusty houseboy. If, indeed, his trusty houseboy is to be trusted. I drop my disgusting cigarette onto the ground and grind it with my foot.

  Clarence says: ‘In his heart, Mr Payne is a Ngoti.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He wants a new wife.’

  ‘He’s not a Ngoti! And it wasn’t like that, at all.’

  Clarence is unperturbed. ‘I have a new wife. Would you like to meet her? She’s young and beautiful and has given me three healthy sons.’ He looks me up and down. ‘My first wife was wrinkled and old.’

  I let this pass. In the alley, a cock crows.

  I hate Clarence knowing about my love affair, but it also makes us intimate. I reappraise him. At work he wore a khaki outfit, but now he’s in mufti and wearing grimy trousers and a jungle-patterned shirt, like Jeremy’s. But it’s not Jeremy’s; Clarence is not a thief.

  ‘I’m sorry Mrs Payne thinks you stole those things.’ I give him a tight smile. ‘You’re not going to tell her, are you? About Mr Payne and me? She’d be terribly upset. I’m her best friend, you see.’

  ‘Mrs Payne was not kind to me. She made me look after her filthy dogs.’

  ‘But you’re not going to tell her, are you?’

  Clarence shouts something and his wife emerges from the hut, carrying two bottles of Sprite. She is indeed beautiful, ravishingly so. Her hair is tied in a turban and she wears shorts and a Boston Red Sox T-shirt. I had expected someone tribal, but what do I know?

  She gives me a wide, conspiratorial grin. Is she in on the secret too, or is this just a fellow-female thing?

  When she’s left Clarence takes a swig of his Sprite, puts down the bottle and says: ‘I want a taxi.’

  ‘What, now?’ I ask, surprised. ‘Where do you want to go?’

  He throws back his head and laughs. It’s a huge laugh, exposing his pink gums and the stained stubs of his teeth. His children, startled by this, edge nearer.

  When he’s recovered he says: ‘No, dear madam, I want to buy a taxi.’

  He starts to explain. His cousin, who owns a taxi, is dying from AIDS. Clarence has always wanted to be a taxi-driver; it’s a well-paid job with plenty of independence, and a big improvement on shovelling dog shit. As Clarence is family, his cousin will sell him the taxi for a very reasonable price.

  As Clarence speaks, I understand what he’s saying. It’s simple. I buy him the taxi and he keeps his mouth shut.

  Clarence is bland and friendly; this is purely a business proposition. Strangely enough I feel no resentment. Fair do’s. There’s something endearingly straightforward about his attitude; he’d feel no malice if I refused. And wouldn’t it, in some obscure way, help lessen my guilt?

  I’m sure the price is outrageous but I don’t care; compared to Clarence I’m rich. Strangely exhilarated by our bargain, I shake his thin, dry hand. I’ve made a connection with an African. An hour ago we had nothing in common, but now we’re bound together by the powerful intimacy of money. And I feel close to him because of Jeremy. For the first time I’ve been able to speak openly about my lover, and this dusty yard is suddenly dear to me.

  So now I have another secret to keep from Bev. On the airport road, amongst the glassy new office blocks, there’s a branch of Barclays Bank. Next day I take a taxi there to withdraw the cash for Clarence’s cab. Apparently they’re called tro-tros.

  I feel more confident in my surroundings now, more at ease in this town. Bev is busy sorting out some paperwork so I’ve told her I’m going sightseeing. I’ve been so useless, she said, are you sure you’ll be all right on your own? There’s not much to see but you ought to get a little taste of Africa. Remember to keep your bag zipped.

  This is a different world to Clarence’s. The wide road is bordered with lawns, the sprinklers sparkling in the sun. Blossoming trees line the central strip. Jeremy said they were originally planted upside down, their roots in the air, until someone pointed out the mistake. He said, who couldn’t love a country like that?

  Apparently donkey carts and bicyclists are forbidden – anyway, why would they come here? It’s all SUVs and executive limos cruising along the road. Behind high walls loom the corporate headquarters – Zonac, Vodacom, Caledonia Mining, the China State Construction Company. I suddenly miss Jeremy so sharply it punches me in the ribs. This was his territory but he never fitted in; how courageous he was, to turn it upside down, like those trees, and help those very people whose livelihood was being destroyed! Deep down, he was always a rebel.

  When I get home I find Bev slumped in a chair. She looks exhausted. Her hair, damp in the heat, hangs frizzily around her face. It reminds me of the old days, when she came home from the surgery, shattered from a day of smear tests.

  ‘I’ve decided about the dogs,’ she says. ‘When we leave, I’m just going to open the gates and let them go. We’re going to drive away and I won’t look back.’

  She’s beyond tears. Her grief for her pox-ridden mongrels seems as deep as the grief for her husband.

  ‘Easy come, easy go,’ I say, heartlessly.

  She gives me a withering look. ‘Thanks a bunch.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. You know I love dogs. Actually, I was thinking of getting one myself.’ I nearly add until your husband came along. I’m high from buying a cab.

  I fetch a couple of beers and give one to Bev. The room is emptier now, and filled with packing cases. Jeremy’s urn sits alone on the top shelf. I wish it wasn’t made of plastic, so cheap and ugly, so desolatingly disposable. My eyes flicker to it, to him, as I speak. So do Bev’s. His two women.

  I dream of Alan, my faithless builder. He has a huge black dog and beckons me to follow him into what looks like the African bush. It’s dusty and threatening and storm clouds are gathering. I’m afraid to go but he pulls me along, Come on, love, got the collywobbles? I stumble through thorn bushes and then his hand slips from mine and I’m alone. All I can hear is the howling of hyenas.

  It’s the dogs, of course. They realize that their days here are numbered, they can sense it like thunder. Plastic sacks are piling up in the garden, filled with the debris of Bev and Jeremy’s life. No doubt, once we’ve given them to the church mission, they will reappear in Mera Market and a beautiful black woman will step out of a hut wearing Bev’s halter-neck top which I remember from our Pimlico days. I can’t wear it now, God, look at my bingo wings! Life is a giant compost heap, with somebody turning the fork. Somebody who moves in fucking mysterious ways.

  Bev is desperate to get out of Ngotoland. It’s been her home, but without Jeremy it’s an alien country and she yearns for England, where she will see her mother and her long-lost friends and try to reassemble her life. As we sit amongst the packing cases she talks dreamily about red London buses and Carnaby Street, just as Jeremy did. I don’t want to disabuse her; I feel tenderly protective of her fantasy, just as I did with him.

  And she talks about the past, the long-ago past, when we were young, nicking condoms from her surgery, gatecrashing parties and staying out all night, having drunken sex with God knows who while music thudded from the next room, hitching a ride to Stonehenge to see the summer solstice, bellowing out Beatles songs while we biked through the rain in a London that was filled with possibilities.

  ‘We did have fun,’ she sighs, gazing at a roll of masking tape.

  She’s booked our flights for ten days’ time. I’ve lost all track of the days and my Pimlico life is a distant memory. I don’t know whether this is grief or the strange, soporific effect of Africa. Bev and I live in the no-man’s-land of loss. We suffer separately but in a weird way we’re supporting each other. She feels this, though she has no idea why this should be. Oh, I’m so glad you’re here, she says, as we sit on the veranda at night, watching th
e fireflies. The sculptures have gone; she’s given them to a Swedish anthropologist whose herniated disc she has massaged.

  Without Clarence we’re fending for ourselves, something she hasn’t had to do throughout her married life. Expats are both resourceful – coping with a foreign country – and yet helpless, because they’ve always had servants. Bev’s a lousy cook so I take charge of that.

  And now I’m in Mera Market, ambling along as slowly as an African. It’s fiercely hot. Neither Bev nor I are hungry but we have to eat, and I’ve bought some pork chops. The blood leaks through my shopping basket; everything is flimsy here, even the plastic bags. In London it’s mid-winter but London’s gone, evaporated. I haven’t the energy to be panicked by its disappearance. I haven’t the energy for anything, except to exist, in this moment of time, in this place, amongst these stalls which will display their wares patiently, year after year, the few tomatoes laid out on a sheet, the carnage of car parts which will never be used. I’m getting accustomed to this town; Jeremy’s Africa is gradually becoming my Africa, a place that’s starting to create its own identity quite apart from him. This is both alarming and reassuring; I can exist, just me with my shopping bag. I couldn’t imagine a life without him but I have to endure, because what’s the alternative?

  I look around the market, feeling my interest stirring after its long sleep. I want to record this place because soon I’ll be gone, so I start taking pictures on my mobile – the small, decrepit hut with Paramount Hotel written on the front; the wall-paintings of hairstyles, of Barack Obama, and the local football team holding flags. Children gather round me, jostling and giggling, and I take their pictures too and show them themselves.

  Beyond the bus-stand, Clarence polishes his taxi. He wears a clean white shirt and looks as proud as a boy with a new bike. Something shifts inside me. Our love affair has given him a cab, I tell Jeremy. Isn’t that the strangest thing?

  I photograph a spice stall, its baskets heaped with coloured cones of powder, Mother-in-Law Hellfire Chilly. I want to photograph the women dressed up like Edwardian dowagers but they look too forbidding to ask.