Then I see an old bloke sitting in a wooden booth, its shutters open. He’s laboriously writing in a ledger. The sign says Super Telecom: Internet, STD, Phone Charging. A collection of mobile phones are laid out on the counter, attached to a tangle of flexes and power points. Jeremy told me about these guys, the phone-chargers. I ask the man if I can take his photo and he nods.
He settles into position on his bench. When I’ve photographed him he reaches for my mobile so I give it to him. It’s a new iPhone. He turns it over in his hand, inspecting it like an expert. He is an expert.
‘This is an app for a London taxicab,’ he says.
‘Not so useful here.’
‘London taxicabs are very expensive?’
‘Very.’
For some reason he giggles at this – a shrill, girlish shriek. Behind him, a donkey starts braying.
‘You have a very nice shop,’ I say, patronizingly.
‘Very nice,’ he agrees.
He looks at his portrait and then starts scrolling down the other photos. I don’t mind his nosiness; at least he’s friendly.
‘Your babies?’ he asks.
‘Crikey, no!’ I lean over to look at the photo. ‘That’s my grandchildren – Gus and Ellie. They live in America.’
‘America is very nice. It has African President.’ He scrolls down and stops. It’s a photo of Jeremy. He’s smiling at me as he holds an ice lolly; it was the day we went to Hampstead Heath . ‘You know this man?’
I nod. ‘It’s Mr Payne, he lived here.’
The mobile man makes a tsk sound in his throat. ‘You must delete it.’
‘Why?’
‘It will cause the evil spirits.’
Evil? What’s he talking about? For a mad moment I think he knows about our affair. After all, Clarence did. Perhaps it’s the talk of the town and only Bev is ignorant.
This is stupid, I’m being paranoid.
‘Why would it cause evil spirits?’
The man rolls his eyes, oo-er, like Frankie Howard. ‘Because he was killed.’
I shake my head. ‘He died of an illness.’
‘Dear lady.’ He wipes his nose with the back of his hand. ‘The Englishman was murdered.’
There’s a long silence. The blood drains from my body.
‘What did you say?’
‘He was murdered.’
‘Of course he wasn’t!’
He shrugs, suddenly losing interest.
‘How do you know?’ I ask.
His eyes flicker to the mobiles lying in front of him. Then he looks at me with his bloodshot eyes. ‘My mouth is shut.’
I walk through the market on weightless legs. Of course the man’s lying. Or he’s made up a story. It must be boring, sitting in that booth all day. He wanted to see my reaction, to have power over a white woman.
Clarence is crouched down, polishing the hubcap of his taxi. There’s a dark oval of sweat on the back of his shirt. When he sees me he stands up and wipes his hands on his trousers.
‘I have to talk to you,’ I say.
There’s nobody nearby except a couple of women. They’re sitting on vast bags of belongings, waiting for the bus, and appear to be dozing.
‘That guy over there, in the phone booth, told me something about Mr Payne.’ I shrug my shoulders, casually. ‘He said he was murdered.’
The word sets my heart hammering. I watch Clarence’s face as I wait for him to deny it.
A shutter has come down; I haven’t seen those hooded eyes before. Our old complicity has vanished.
He hawks, and spits into the dust. Then he says something that chills me to the bone: ‘You are going to call the police?’
I can’t go back and face Bev, not yet. My head is spinning and I need to think. But there’s nowhere to go to think – no Caffè Nero, no public park. I’m in the middle of an African town where nobody can be alone. There’s nowhere even to sit unless I pretend I’m waiting for a bus. Besides, men watch me, children pester me, I’m an object of curiosity. Few white people come to this market; this is not a tourist town, nobody comes to photograph the local people.
And look what happens when they do.
I’m feeling increasingly uneasy. Not frightened, just uneasy. I can’t believe what I’ve heard, it’s surely not possible. Yet now the word has been suggested, I sense a low thrum of tension in the air. The crime rate’s terrifying, said Bev. That’s why I need the dogs, when I’m alone. Crime against foreigners is particularly high, that’s why they have guards and complex security systems.
Then I think: don’t be stupid. Of course Jeremy wasn’t knifed or bludgeoned, his body was untouched. It would have been something subtler than that, something that leaves no trace.
How can I even think like this? How can I apply any of this to Jeremy? Darling, dead Jeremy? Nausea rises in my throat and I try to swallow it down as I linger at the stalls, pretending to inspect the vegetables. I feel the volatility of the crowd, of people’s eyes upon me. Did somebody really want to do him harm? I need to get out of here.
I run across the main road, the meat banging against my leg. A limo passes, hooting its horn. Chinese faces turn to gaze at me as it speeds away.
Back home, Bev is hauling rubbish bags into the backyard. The dogs are out of their pen, whining and tripping her up.
‘They can sense the thunder,’ Bev says, wiping her forehead. She’s wearing the latex gloves that nurses use for vaginal examinations. She pulls them off with a snap and indicates the clear blue sky. ‘They can tell, long before us. It’s spoo-ooky.’
She’s in a strange mood today. Her eyes are glittering and she’s shiny with sweat. Snaky tendrils have escaped from the rag she’s tied round her head and are plastered to her face. She’s a wild woman, demob happy. Maybe the dogs have sensed this, rather than thunder, and are wimpering about their imminent expulsion. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with Bev, she’s out of my reach. What goes on in her head has become increasingly mysterious.
The yard smells of urine. The place has become a slum, an English rather than African one and therefore less excusable. I dump the shopping on the kitchen table, raising a cloud of sawdust. The termites are eating this house; soon there’ll be nothing left. When I opened a book last night it disintegrated in my hands.
Bev comes in and slumps down in a chair. ‘What’s for supper?’
‘I need a drink.’
I pour us two tumblers of gin and tonic. Bev’s telling me that she’s booked a flight to Cape Town, just for a couple of nights, so she can visit her friend Maxie before we finally leave Ngotoland. Apparently Maxie has Crohn’s disease and an errant husband.
‘Next month she’s having another section cut out of her gut,’ says Bev. ‘That’s three and counting, poor poppet. Adrian’s been no bloody support at all. She thinks he’s still carrying on with his little black friend. Can you believe that? Honestly, the woman’s got a colostomy bag.’
The words echo, far away. I drain my glass, trying to summon up the courage to speak. The gin has gone straight to my head. ‘Bev, I’ve got something to tell you. Something I heard in the market today, about Jeremy’s death.’
Bev puts her glass carefully on the table. ‘What about it?’
‘It’s just – I know it sounds ridiculous – but there’s this guy who charges up mobile phones and Clarence says he reads people’s text messages—’
‘Clarence? What’s he got to do with it?’
‘Well, Clarence thinks so too.’
‘Thinks what, sweetie?’
‘That Jeremy – that there was some plot. I’ve been thinking about it, you see – I mean, Zonac had it in for him and they’re a pharmaceutical company, after all, they know about poisons and stuff—’
‘Poisons?’
Bev stares at me. Suddenly she looks like the schoolgirl I once knew. We’re cooking up a plot against the teachers, we’re childish conspirators in this dark room with its prison windows.
I take a br
eath. ‘He might not have died of natural causes.’ Now I’m onstage, in a creaky old drama by Agatha Christie. ‘He might have been murdered.’
The word hangs in the room. Bev doesn’t reply; she’s looking at a Cabbage Patch doll lying on the floor. It’s one of the dogs’ toys, and its stomach has burst open.
I labour on. ‘I was just thinking that, well, maybe we should get in touch with the police—’
‘The police?’ Her head rears up.
‘Or the British Consul in Assenonga, the chap who came to the funeral.’
‘Don’t do that!’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t you dare!’ She glares at me. Suddenly she’s the girl with the slugs. Her ferocity takes me aback.
‘Shouldn’t we – well, just make some enquiries? I mean, I know you’re a nurse and everything, but nobody seems to know the cause of his death. Maybe he was poisoned, maybe Clarence was in on it, don’t we owe it to Jeremy to find out?’
‘No!’
‘Why not?’
She looks at me, her eyebrows raised. Her rag scarf has slipped sideways, giving her a mad, jaunty air. She says: ‘Because it’s true.’
Oreya, West Africa
‘ACTUALLY, IT’S A relief that you know,’ Bev says. ‘I’ve hated keeping it a secret. After all, we’ve always told each other everything.’
My head’s spinning. I gape at her as she sits there. She looks quite calm.
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Sorry.’
‘But—’
‘You don’t want to know the reason,’ she says. ‘You so don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you were fond of Jeremy, and it’s best to keep it that way—’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just forget it, Petra!’
‘What do you mean? What has he done?’
Bev sighs, a sigh of profound weariness, and sinks her head in her hands. There’s something theatrical about this, something that I don’t understand. I feel sick. You don’t want to know the reason.
In the next room, the clock strikes the hour … I count the chimes, as if my life depends on it. My life and Jeremy’s, my past and my future.
‘You know nothing, pumpkin,’ says Bev. ‘Nothing about this rotten country, you with your Guardian and your nice London house. Why don’t you keep it that way? Monkey hear no evil, monkey speak no evil.’ She laughs shrilly, like Clarence. ‘All this little monkey wants to do, to be honest, is to get the hell out of here.’
White Springs, Texas
WHEN THE CONTRACTIONS start, Kelda is there for her – Kelda, her friend from across the street, and now her confidante. Lorrie has told her everything. Kelda can be trusted, having led a double life herself for years: she has a lover at the beefstock auction house who she visits when her daughter’s at dance class.
Lorrie told her about the slimming pills but Kelda says she wasn’t fooled. ‘I knew something was up, honey,’ she says. ‘I mean, there’s fat and there’s fat.’ Lorrie doesn’t understand what she means by this.
There’s nothing confusing about the contractions, however, and they’re bang on time. Todd is not due home for another two weeks and Lorrie feels a wave of gratitude towards the baby, who is co-operating so obediently with her plan. That’s the Chinese for you, she thinks. Sticklers for punctuality. She collapses into hysterical laughter which is stabbed by another cramp.
Lorrie can’t quite believe it’s happening, it still feels unreal – still, after all these months. She’s dreamed her way through this pregnancy, as she has with the previous ones … those months in limbo, time stretching out interminably, and then, at the end, suddenly sucked hissingly down a tunnel, as if it had never existed. Do all women feel like this? she wonders. Not like this, however – no crib waiting, no diapers stacked in readiness. The contractions jolt her into a panic. She must be crazy. Months ago she stumbled into this and now she’s terrified out of her wits. What happens if there are complications and she has to have a caesarian? Or the baby’s born deformed? Or Mr Wang Lei’s plane crashes and she’s left with some explaining to do? Todd’s been sending increasingly horny emails – I wanna kiss your hot sweet pussy. Thank God for Kelda, who takes her in hand and says it’s all going to be fine.
They have arranged that Kelda will take care of Lorrie’s children for the three days she’ll be away, supposedly visiting an old schoolfriend in another city. A cab has been booked to take Lorrie to the hospital, which is only ten blocks away. The kids are in school; the cab-driver is thankfully a stranger, an Indian guy who asks no questions and is engrossed by the game on the radio.
As the cab drives down the street Lorrie turns, with difficulty – she’s huge – and waves to the diminishing figure of Kelda, a sturdy figure in her pink sweats, who vigorously waves back. And then the cab turns the corner and she’s gone.
Tears prick Lorrie’s eyes. She’s alone, utterly alone. There’s no husband to hold her hand. There’s no future with the baby who’s beginning her turbulent descent into the world. That childhood, with its laughter and tears and bruised knees, will not belong to Lorrie. Nor will Lorrie be a mother in the years to come in that unknown place called China, a place that her daughter will call home. She’ll become a teenager in a strange land without Lorrie to give her advice about hairstyles and boyfriends. Their nine months together is over.
Lorrie, convulsed with another contraction, grips the door-handle as the cab speeds along the highway. She tries to fix on the place that’s always done the trick, the quarry she played in as a child just a few miles from here, the rope she swung on, the branches rushing past as her brother pushes her higher and higher. But her brother’s gone too, his laughter wiped out by heroin. They’ve all gone. She’s alone with her terror, and there’s nobody to help her. Only strangers await her, in hospital gowns, ready to deliver her baby into a foreigner’s hands.
Oreya, West Africa
BEV STANDS ON a chair, taking down the wind chimes. I’m watching her, not helping. She gets off the chair and dumps them in a box. They collapse together, tinkling and sighing.
‘You must tell me what Jeremy did.’
‘No.’
‘Please, Bev—’
‘No.’
‘You owe it to me.’
She swings round. ‘What do you mean, I owe it to you?’
‘I mean …’ I pause. ‘I mean, I’ve come all this way and …’
‘And what?’
‘Well, I just need to know what happened.’
Bev gets up again on the chair. She can barely reach the hook. I could do it easily but I don’t move. In the darkness, the tree frogs whirr.
Bev flicks the glass with her fingernail. ‘I bought this one in Singapore. Pretty, isn’t it?’
‘Listen, Bev, I don’t care how bad it is.’
‘Ha, you really think so?’
‘It’s worse for you to go through this alone. That’s why I’m here.’ I try to smile. ‘Blood-sisters and all that.’
Suddenly we’re illuminated. We both jump. It’s the intruder lights. The garden springs close.
‘It’s just something in the bushes,’ Bev says.
‘Something or someone?’
‘It’s nothing!’ she snaps. ‘It’s always happening. They can’t get in, whoever they are.’
I watch her in the harsh light. It’s like being under interrogation. She gets down and dumps the wind chime in the box. There’s the sound of glass breaking but she doesn’t seem to notice.
‘It just feels weird,’ I say, ‘that you’ve been keeping something from me.’
‘You mean I’ve been lying.’
‘No—’
‘You’re right, sweetie-pie. I have.’ She slumps down in the chair. ‘All these weeks I’ve been lying to you. I’ve felt really bad about it.’
In the glare her face is drained of colour. I can see the tiny lines around her mouth. We’re both old women.
‘Yo
u really want to know?’ she asks.
No, I don’t want to know. I want to stop this moment, now. I want to go back to England with Jeremy solid in my heart, unchanged. In my ignorance I can remain loving him for ever.
But surely it can’t be that bad? He’s just done something silly, something foolish that he never told her, and now she’s feeling bitter and betrayed. You don’t want to know. So she’s been lying to me? So what? She has her pride. The perfect marriage wasn’t so perfect after all.
I feel a surge of satisfaction. Bring it on!
‘OK then. You asked for it.’ She sighs. ‘Actually it’s a relief. I’ve been feeling such a fraud, you see. All these weeks, people saying how wonderful he was. And there’s me, smiling and nodding and accepting their condolences, me the biggest muggins of all.’ Her eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh God, Petra, it’s so awful. Because all this time it was him who was lying to me, the cunt.’
The word jolts me. She pushes back the chair, gets up and goes into the living room. I see her through the window, rummaging in a box. There’s a muffled curse, then she forages in another box, flinging out papers faster and faster, a blizzard of them. Finally she grabs something and brings it out to the veranda.
It’s a newspaper cutting. As she puts it into my hand the security lights go out. I peer at the page, dim in the lamplight.
It shows a photo of what look like boulders. Putting on my spectacles, I inspect them. No, it’s elephants. They’re lying on their sides. Their tusks and their faces have been hacked off.
‘That’s what he’s been doing,’ she says.
I can’t speak. I have the strangest sensation, as if I’m dissolving through my wicker chair.
‘Not personally, of course’, she says. ‘The Kikanda actually killed them. Jeremy just organized it.’
She’s making it up. It’s a sick joke. Deranged with grief, she’s punishing Jeremy for dying; I’ve heard about cases like this. Bereavement can drive people insane. I look at Bev, challenging me; her chin juts out and there’s a triumphant glitter in her eyes. She’s been behaving erratically recently; I must tread warily.