Something to Hide (17 page)

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 the 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.

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.