Something to Hide (16 page)

‘Really?'

‘Well, I thought he was.' I'm blushing. ‘From what I knew of him.'

She turns away and starts bundling shirts into a bag. ‘You're just saying that, Petra. You know perfectly well what happened, you don't have to make up excuses.'

I can't speak. I sit there on the floor, surrounded by rolled-up balls of socks. Sweat trickles down my back.

‘Quite honestly, sweetie, I feel sick,' she says. ‘It's the betrayal that's the worst thing. The horrible, horrible betrayal.'

From the kitchen comes a faint clatter of pans and the smell of frying. I can feel Bev looking at me.

She sighs. ‘It's so sad, when we go back such a long way.'

She gets up abruptly and leaves the room.

I sit there, paralyzed. She's right, of course. It is, indeed, the ultimate betrayal. I feel desperately sorry for her but I remain in the bedroom because what can I say? That I'm so sad that she's lost both her husband and her best friend, it was insane of me to come, and that I'll move into a hotel until I can get a flight home?

So it's happened. It was bound to. In a strange way I feel relieved that she's found out. When did she know? When did she start to have her suspicions, and why did she keep it a secret until now? For a fleeting moment I wonder if Jeremy told her about us, and she's been pretending all this time. She's an expert liar, I know that, and likes manipulating people. She always has.

I feel a nasty little wave of self-pity – hasn't she, in a way, been betraying me? I'm disgusted with myself for even considering this, but I'm in such turmoil I can't think straight.

Outside, the dogs start barking. Raised voices are coming from the kitchen, where Bev is shouting at Clarence.

‘How could you do it?' she yells. ‘How could you?'

Of course. It's Clarence she suspects.

I hear his mumbling voice. She sounds tearful now, and very angry. Even the dogs are joining in.

I get to my feet. My limbs feel like lead. When I walk into the kitchen I see Clarence standing at the oven, spatula in hand. Smoke issues from the frying pan. He's tall, and dwarfs Bev. His face, as always, is devoid of expression.

‘Clarence didn't do it,' I say.

Bev swings round. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean, it could have been an intruder. You said there's a lot of crime about.'

‘What do
you
know about it?' Beverley glares at me and turns back to Clarence. ‘I'm not going to call the police. I just want you out of here. Now.
Now
!'

Clarence pulls off his apron. He doesn't look surprised. She's a white woman and therefore unfathomable; his normal lassitude is undisturbed. He turns off the gas, lays his apron on the table and leaves the room at his usual dignified pace. I watch his grey, cracked heels.

Bev stands there, breathing heavily. Her face is flushed as pink as her T-shirt. ‘Fucking Africans,' she says. ‘Stealing from a dead man. What a fucking, fucking country. The sooner I get out of here the better.'

I make another effort on Clarence's behalf. ‘It couldn't be him because such odd things have gone. They weren't all valuable.'

‘What, a silver cup? A silver frame?'

‘I mean books and things. And shoes.'

‘You don't understand, sweetie. Real leather shoes are like gold dust here.' She glares at me. ‘Anyway, whose side are you on? He even took that birthday card you made.'

‘What birthday card?'

‘That one you made for Jem, that collage, when he was thirty. He had it framed, it was one of his favourite things.'

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 them, 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.