Mountains of the Moon (34 page)

I got it now, road sign says this way Heathrow. The road is terrible, high up and bright with barriers and middle night lorries passing bedtime winders and I best had get off it. Then I’m running on a thin grass slope around the side of a concrete lake, surprises me, airport sheeps. They panic where to go with just the lake or the fence, next thing I’ve got a mile of sheeps all running long in front of me.

I got it now, all the airplanes circling around waiting for their turn to come down. Int easy to hide, with the road and the fence and full moon on the Serengeti. Every time a lorry comes I drop down flat on the grass, or blows up gainst the fence, tends I is a bit of red plastic. Gone. I has to get over the other side, can see the shapes of airplanes coming in. The fence is five times bigger than me with barb wire rolled on the top. Int easy cos it wobbles. Three lorries go past one behind the other while I wobbles about in their headlights fixed up on the barb wire. I fall down long on the other side, got holes in the middle of both hands. Hurts bad. Way from the road the world is darker. I lie down, watch for the next airplane coming. Sure thing over roofs, I jump up and head straight for
it. It comes thousand miles fast, screaming down with engines and wheels, I roar and shake my spear at the driver and the wings slice over my head. Ba-boom the wheels hit the ground and I bounces up in the air. Makes me laugh. Makes me laugh so rude. Then I see all the headlights coming, fast, making stars and bouncing over the grass. Got me every way. Total blinded cept for ring-a-ring-a engines running and fumes and the big N’s of trouble knocking.

He opens the door of the jeep and I get up in the passenger seat. All the others circle around us and turn way, headlights racing outward. Man does his walkie-talkie.

“Ground Control to Air Control. All
bzzz
. Receiving?”

“What the
bzzz
is it?” walkie-talkie wants to know.

“A small African
bzzz
, sir, shall I take
bzzz
to the
bzzz
?”

“Take him back to fucking Africa for all I care, just get the
bzzz
off the runway.”

“Right.” My man turns the walkie-talkie off, shakes his head. “I’d better take you home,” he says and puts my spear careful nice tween the seats. “You’re ever so brown, been on your holidays? Somewhere hot?”

I nod my head.

“Well, you look very fetching in red; I like your beads, very nice.”

Jeep is nice, warm yellow moonshine and winders open. Stinks of gasoline and burned chocolate. Got twelve cigarettes left. I light one and blow the smoke out the winder. Cold comes out of me sudden, teefs and knees start going same as the jeep’s tappets.

“Give us one of those,” he says. Then steers the jeep with one elbow so he can scrape the match.

“Power-sisted?” I arsts.

“Light as a feather.” He does a shape of eight to prove it. Then he drives us cross and cross and cross bouncing headlights on the grass, sees a leopard’s spots. Tired, closes my eyes, turns spots into marigolds. Could lay my head down now and go to sleep behind the seat. Driving in circles, I reckon.

“There they are,” he says last, “somebody keeps moving them.”

I look at the airplane-sized gates while he gets out to open one. He has got a key for the padlock. Then he drives us out and closes it gain.

“Where are we going, where’s home?” he says.

I suck on the holes in my hands.

“Nestles Avenue,” I says.

“Just around the corner. I want you to listen carefully though.” He changes gear. “It’s not safe, running around alone at night, I wish it was but it isn’t. It’s not safe. The little girl on the telly is still missing, little Ellie Smithers. And that other older girl, what was her name, the one they didn’t have a picture of? I wouldn’t want that to happen to you. What if you disappeared? Your family would be devastated; they’d never get over it. Down here, is it?”

“Uh-huh.”

Nestles playing fields is blue-green from the yellow moon; vultures still sleep up on the rugby posts. Factory lights in stripes and lorries loading chocolate up and chimneys smoking clouds of black. Tastes same. Trees is still London plane, army bark, lighted up by lorries coming out of Nestles’ gates.

“Here,” I say.

He stops the jeep outside the Pennywells’. Houses is fast sleep and curtains closed.

“Can you get in?” he says.

I nod my head.

“Can go around the back.”

“Back to bed?”

“Uh-huh,” I says.

He passes my spear.

“Remember, serious trouble if you’re found again in the airport grounds. It’s a criminal offense.”

“Sorry,” I says.

He waits til I’m in the gate and it makes an agony squeak. I wave my spear and he drives way.

Scared, case I’m a burglar at Nanny and Grandad’s. I tiptoe the front
path. Planes has blasted all the petals off all the newborn roses. I slow crunch the gravel down the alley, dragging fingers long on the pebble-dash. The side gate latch is high, Grandad done a shoelace to pull it, but it snaps cos now it’s glued with rust. Snaps til there int none left. I get my toe up in a knot-hole and climb quiet over the gate. Weeds has growed up wild through the cracks in the path. Back bedroom curtains is closed. I stand underneath. Listens if I can hear them snoring, hog-chewing. Got nerves. I light a ciggi and walk down the back path, duck under a pair of Nanny’s bloomers hanging on the line. Grass is always high and wild; Grandad int got the back to mow it. Daffodils all the way long the margins of the garden. We went to Woolworths on the bike and come back fast to plant them. Then Grandad got a good idea and we planted mirrors side the wall to get us a thousand at a glance. The daffodils is shriveled up and dried like tissue paper, under growing love-in-a-mist. Got sick feeling, sudden, case Grandad don’t know me, case he knows and don’t want me. I look at the back door. Airplane goes over the roof and I duck. I keep looking at the back door, and upstairs at the bedroom winder. Got sick sides citement, case Nanny phones the police. The back door was never good at locking. Don’t know if to go in the house, could wake them up, say “member me.” Can’t case they get scared and drop down dead with burglar fright. Magines in a minute,
ting-a-ling-a-ling
, Teasmade waking them up and newspapers dropping on the mat. Could wait til Grandad comes downstairs and opens the back door for light so he can shave. Stand on the path so he sees me like a morning surprise when he opens the curtains up. Might fall downstairs, if he comes too fast. I best had get a great big breath, case he squeezes it all out of me. Maybe just knock on the front door. Polite. Wishes I could run and jump and get up in the bed with them. Can’t case Nanny does a steric. Tired, does a yawn so big it nearly swallows me. Cold. I move the wheelbarrow into the first sunlight on the path, sit in it and smoke another cigarette.

Blue greenhouse looks littler, the wooden door is stiff when I pull it. Int proper. Seeds that me and Pip sowed died flowering cross the greenhouse
roof. Tall coleus bent over double, dead. My writing is on the lolly sticks done with permnant ink. Everything dead. Sensitive plant turns to dust when I kiss it. Everything is dead, cept cactus. The watering can is full and the water butt outside. I has to water them careful nice, one by one from tops and saucers

“Come on,” I whispers, “come on.”

In my body everything shifts, to make room for a big new feeling, I spects I just died standing up.

“Lay down,” my grandad says, “lay down, pet.”

But my grandad, he int here. He int here. The plants gasp all at once, then an airplane comes over the house and we has to lay down case we break.

They int got bobboldy glass, don’t know if someone is coming or not. They got gnomes on their doorstep.
No place like gnome.

“Hello, trouble,” Mr. Pennywell says. “Vi!” He yells up the stairs. “It’s the girl from next door.”

“Who is it?” she says. “Hold on, I’m in the airing cupboard.”

“We haven’t seen you for a while.” Mr. Pennywell says. “See you’re still doing your African thing.”

Vi has got high-heeled slippers with pink fluff and looks at me like trouble on foot. They stand in the doorway looking at me. They int sure what I want them to do case it’s complicated. They look at each other. At me. I has to make it easy for them.

“Is my grandad dead?” I arsts.

“He went with your Auntie Valerie, dear; she came and took him away after the funeral.”

“Still got her white Triumph Herald,” Mr. Pennywell says.

“We wouldn’t know, dear,” Vi says. “Bill went with Valerie.”

“I remember you,” Mr. Pennywell says, “under the bonnet, fixing it once.”

It int true, never done a Triumph Herald in my life.

“Valerie took Bill.”

“After Rose’s funeral.”

“Oh,” I says. “Thank you, I’m sorry to bother you.”

“No bother,” Mr. Pennywell says.

“Where’s your mother?” Vi says.

I fling an arm down the road, close their gate gain behind me. Left or right don’t matter cos there int nowhere to go. I get a good idea; Grandad might be at Cranford Park, still being a park keeper.

I seen every tree, seen park men marking a cricket pitch with a white-line machine, but my grandad, he int here. I get up on the roof of the public toilets and cries to sleep. When I wake up I sees a mum with kids and bikes and ice-cream cones come into the park. Little boy drops his ice cream on the path and she drags him way to leave it; when they gone I get down and eat it. I watch going-home-time traffic and night coming.

Wonder what I has to do. Could go the police station and say boo—here I is. Could go to Powys, try find Pip, but I don’t spect there’s anything to eat in Wales. Cept coal. I think about that velvit gentleman, in his marigold room. I squeeze my eyes tight closed, if I can think it hard enough can make his rocking chair rock by itself. The velvit gentleman turns around from his desk and magines me still sitting in it, rocking soft on the rug.

T
here’s a dawn hush and a stirring. These people wear green and have soft edges, step in and out of the bamboos, whispering. Fifteen, twenty guides and porters have arrived, sitting around the office steps with bare feet and woolly hats and sweaters, in various states of unravel. The village is waking, rug-slapping sounds, a cockerel crows; a bell dings on a Brahmin cow. The men and boys must come here every day, hoping for climbers, hoping for work.

But it looks like it’s just me.

They’ve got some chai on the go. Soft blur of words and laughter. Ah—now that is nice. One lad is bringing the kettle over, held in the bunched-up sleeve of his cardigan.

“Mzuri.” I hold out my enamel mug. “Habari?”

He’s happy, fine; he fills the mug for me.

“You are wellacome,” he says. “Wellacome to Uganda. Wellacome to the Ruwenzoris. Wellacome to the Mountains of the Moon.”

An ancient Greek said he’d seen ice, miles high up in the sky. High as the moon. Mad as ice, thrust up from the hot jungle heart of Africa. I can’t see anything, just the yellow dawn cast like a spell and shapes of sheds in cobwebs of mist. The chai is hot, milky and sweet, very, very wellacome.

The Bajonko call the mountains the Ruwenzoris, the Rainmakers. Main reception is a shed with steps up and a boot-worn path to the counter. I pat and stroke the timber. There’s something reassuring about forest people, they build things to last. I expect the trees have taught them to take a long-term view. It’s the same man with a blue woolly hat and soft whorls of chinny beard.

“Your night in the tent, it was wet or dry?”

“It was half and half,” I say.

“Ruwenzori tsk,” he says. “Today, you are ready to climb; you are ready?”

“Yes,” I say, “I am ready.”

I pay the fees for entry to the National Park and fees for a guide and two porters. He gives me a receipt and a disclaimer to sign. Then he slides a large book across the counter.

Mountain Climbers Log.

Makes me smile.

Nationality
: British.

Next of kin
: I write Danny Fish and make up a phone number.

Duration
:

In the logbook the prewritten dates have dashes beside them, where nobody has gone up for weeks, except: Robertson, UK, who went up three days ago. I see what they mean by duration, intended days in the mountains. Three. He takes my surplus stuff to the storeroom and comes back.

“That is everything. Come with me, we will get your guide and porters organized.”

Outside, I look around at the sky, all around, try to detect some high land mass distant in the mist.

“Where are the mountains?” I say to the chinny man. “Which way?”

He points, up, directly up above our heads. The enormity of my mistake—the image is so overbearing, so foreshortened—I actually recoil from the punch of two black fists.

“Wha!” I say. But the image has vanished, like something imagined.

“It is the Portal Peaks,” he says. “The gateway.”

The boys, the porters, are shy, smiling. One carries a black plastic sack tied with sisal rope on his back: firewood. The other carries my pack. I feel a bit naff but it seems like no burden to him; it is probably much lighter than most and will get lighter as the food is eaten. Once loaded,
the porters disappear, going on ahead to the first camp. This leaves me with my guide, Emmanuel; he’s wearing a trilby and a brown pinstriped suit. A tall knobbly staff of a stick is planted beside his bare feet. He looks at my bare feet. I reach and shake his official slip of hand.