Something to Hide (19 page)

‘But … I thought you were going to let them loose.'

‘Quicker this way, sugar plum.'

‘You've had them put down?'

‘Uh-huh.'

I'm astonished. She's actually humming under her breath. She catches my eye in the mirror and gives me a wink.

‘Shame they haven't got tusks,' she says. ‘We could've made a fortune.'

She sits there, shaking with giggles. I back away from her and busy myself with the kettle. Has she gone completely mad? This is almost worse than last night, if such a thing were possible, because now I'm actually alarmed.

Bev's chair scrapes as she gets up. When I turn round she's shaking out the towel in the sink.

‘How do I look?' She twirls round. ‘Smart enough for a city gal?'

She wears a yellow trousersuit I've never seen before. The shorter hair suits her, though it makes her grey roots more visible.

‘Don't worry, I'm getting my highlights done when I'm there,' she says, mind-reading again. ‘Sure you'll be all right in this place alone? You don't want to come?'

I shake my head. She's catching the noon flight to Assenonga and then flying on to Cape Town. She'll be away for two days; then we're booked to fly home to London.

I can't wait for her to go. For three weeks we've been closeted together and the old irritations have surfaced, irritations from the long-ago days in our Pimlico basement. That glinty-eyed cloyingness, those fluffy endearments. That, of course, is the least of it. What's much, much worse is the strain of holding her together when I'm unravelling. It's becoming impossible to bear, and after last night's horrors I'm even more desperate to be alone. Only then, in an empty house, will I be able to think.

‘I'll be fine,' I say, fetching a teabag. ‘I know my way around now. I need to buy some presents for people, knick-knacks, stuff like that, to take back home.'

‘What we asked people to bring were PG Tips. The tea's so disgusting here, isn't it? Jeremy said it tastes like cats' piss. He said that was his only reason for visiting London.' She flicks the hairs off the front of her jacket. ‘
I go all that way
, he said,
just for a decent cuppa.
'

Bev's gone, and my head's cleared. Now I know what I'm going to do. It was brewing while we talked about tea.
Brewing
. Ha ha! Jeremy's booming laugh.
Sorry it's been such a strain
…
Geddit
?

This time, however, his laughter rings hollow and I don't respond. Jeremy's not funny any more and our jokes have turned to ashes in my mouth.

My mind's made up and I'm seized with a mad recklessness. Bev's flight has departed and I've found Clarence. That's easy. He's sitting on a stool in Mera Market, smoking a cigarette and watching the world go by. His tro-tro is parked nearby. Like all the tro-tros it's a people-carrier, painted cream with a turquoise stripe along the side. It's not like the others, however; it's bought Clarence's silence. This gives me a strange, one-way intimacy with it.

I ask Clarence how long it would take to drive to Manak. This is the village out in the bush where the Kikanda live, and where Jeremy's charity is based. I try to sound casual but my heart's pounding. ‘I'd like to see the work he was doing before I go back to England,' I say. ‘Could you take me?'

Clarence doesn't look surprised, but then nothing seems to surprise him. He says it will take at least half a day, depending on the state of the roads. He names a price and we shake hands, our old complicity restored. Or maybe I'm just a client. I have no idea what he's thinking, nor how much he knows about Jeremy's death. I won't ask him. I suspect he was deeply loyal to Jeremy – they were in cahoots over me, for a start. God knows what other secrets they shared. He liked Jeremy a lot more than Bev, and I don't want to disabuse him of this.

On the other hand, he might know the whole story – who killed him and why. This is something I don't want to discuss. I need to find it out for myself.

I know this is dangerous but I don't care. Maybe I, too, am marginally deranged. But I can't just sit in that suffocating, dusty house for two days, surrounded by packing cases; I'd go stir-crazy. Besides, I don't even need to look after the dogs. They're dead.

And in a strange way I feel I owe it to Jeremy. Maybe I'll find out he was innocent and that Bev got it wrong – after all, she said the country's riddled with corruption. Maybe it's Zonac that's behind it all. Maybe they've paid somebody to fabricate a story to explain his death, which they themselves have caused. I feel a stir of resentment against Bev, that she hasn't investigated as thoroughly as I'm planning to do – at some risk, too. She hasn't bothered to make the trip; she's just presumed the worst. And she's his wife.

In fact, I'm starting to feel a bizarre sense of ownership. This is something only I'm prepared to do, for Jeremy's sake. Indeed, I'm starting to feel distinctly proprietorial about him. I'm not bailing out.

Then I think, as I throw clothes into my suitcase: maybe I'm doing this simply to prove that Jeremy was a cunt. I'm travelling all that way for the grim confirmation that, when it comes to men, I've fucked up yet again, big time. There's a perverse satisfaction in this. My therapist would understand; she knows my disastrous history. In fact I'm looking forward to telling her all about it, when I get back to London.

Clarence and I are leaving this afternoon. We'll have to if I'm to get back before Bev returns. Who knows? Maybe I can share some good news with her. Jeremy's innocent! After all, the money transfer had an entirely different explanation, if only Bev knew the truth – which thank God she doesn't. Maybe she's simply been mistaken about the whole thing. Jeremy can be restored to us both, in our separate hearts. And she'll never know why I've gone to all this trouble.

I zip up my suitcase. Clarence says there's a hotel not too far from the village, a base for safari tours and visiting businessmen. We can spend the night there. Out in the road he's already honking his horn. There's a swagger to him now he's no longer a servant; I like him being the boss, rather than the other way round. In fact I'm looking forward to what I'm now calling a jaunt. I'm going on an adventure, deep into tribal country, with a bona fide African.

I'm bolstering myself up to believe this, so I don't feel so terrified of what I'll find.

I remember my safari holiday. Driving through the Masai Mara was like arriving in the Garden of Eden. Elephants, antelopes, giraffes, zebras … I remember vast herds of them, moving peacefully across the plains. Lions slumbered in the shade; hippos, groaning and braying, emerged from a river streaming with water and reeking of halitosis. The birds were dazzling. I remember yelping with joy, the kids piled on my lap like puppies, Paul's camera clicking. At night we ate steaming platters of imported food and, drunk with Cape wine, slept in tents with ensuite bathrooms, listening to the symphony of animal calls.

I realized at the time that it was a kind of theme park. A vast and beautiful one, but still a theme park. The real Africa lay beyond it, and I only glimpsed it from our tourist bus as we sped through the slums of Nairobi.

Well, now I'm in the real Africa and the only animals I've seen so far are donkeys and dogs, all malnourished, and crows tearing at heaps of rubbish. I'm sitting next to Clarence – this seems more friendly than sitting in the back – and he's telling me about his beautiful young wife. She's apparently an improvement on the old one in every respect. She doesn't overcook his dinner or nag him when he comes home drunk. She's obedient and fertile, what more does a man want? Clarence is the only African I know and I'm eager to like him, we're going to spend a lot of time in each other's company, but this bragging is something I never glimpsed when he was a servant. He drives exuberantly, honking the horn as he veers past trucks, slamming on the brakes as we arrive at a crossroads where a policeman semaphores the choking queues of buses. People crowd the windows when we stop – boys holding up sachets of water, women pressing bibles against the glass. Cripples scrabble towards us on their trollies but then we're off in a cloud of exhaust, driving past thorn scrub hung with plastic bags and rows of shacks where men sit watching the traffic. Despite the frenzied driving I sense this vast inertia. The countryside is dusty and featureless with not a zebra in sight.

We jolt along, my back sticking to the plastic seat. As the miles pass, I try to destroy my love for Jeremy.
Want to know the truth?
I tell him.
You laughed too loudly at your own jokes. You had a big belly and repulsive toenails like shards of nicotine-stained rock. Your face went crimson when you drank. You wore yellow socks. You thought you were a bit of a rogue but you were too old for that, there was something seedy about you. Yes, seedy. You groaned like a warthog when you came and slumped asleep on top of me. Sometimes you couldn't get it up at all. You called your cock the Major – the Major! You made offensive remarks about lesbians.

There's a sick comfort in reciting this litany of defects. Maybe I sensed them at the time but I never put them into words. Now that I suspect he's a cunt, however, I'm hauling them out and examining them in the pitiless light of day. This happens at the end of every relationship, I've found, but in this particular case I have an even more urgent need to destroy my lover's loveableness, bit by bit, until it's entirely gone.

As the hours pass I notice more traffic on the road – executive cars, huge construction trucks, shiny new buses rather than the ramshackle public transport used by the locals. Vast modern buildings appear, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. They're surrounded by high walls, with sentries at the gates. As the sun sinks, arc lights illuminate mysterious dual carriageways that seem to lead nowhere.

Clarence tells me that this region is rich in minerals and other natural resources; the foreigners have moved in and house their workers in compounds, patrolled by security guards and cut off from the local population. Most supplies are flown in.

There's no hint of criticism in his voice; in fact he sounds proud that his country is modernizing at such a pace. No doubt he believes that these riches will trickle down to benefit the ordinary African like himself. When I mention that most of these profits seem to end up in the Swiss bank accounts of the President and his cronies Clarence replies that the President is a great man and has helped to free his country from the yoke of colonial repression. He doesn't use those words but that's the gist of it. I start to tell him that it's those very foreign powers that are plundering his country for their own gain but my words peter out. He's not interested and I'm in no position to argue. What do I know? As Bev pointed out, I'm just a namby-pamby
Guardian
reader.

Darkness falls swiftly in Africa. So does the temperature. I glimpse ghostly dogs and the occasional shack where men sit hunched in blankets under a bare lightbulb. We drive for miles along roads that degenerate into potholes and which, just as mysteriously, mutate into freeways. Lorries loom up, headlights dazzling, and veer around us with their horns blaring. A voice crackles on the radio and Clarence carries on a long and animated conversation in his incomprehensible language.

After a while I become uneasy. Does he know where we're going? I have no fear of him; I'm too drained of emotion and have sunk into a sort of fatalistic trance. So I die – so what? Nothing could be worse than what's happened. But I'm tired and hungry and increasingly irritated by Clarence's boasts about his sons – he never mentions his daughters or indeed his earlier offspring who seem to be breezily forgotten, along with their redundant, wrinkled crone of a mother.

It's eight o'clock when we finally arrive at the Hibiscus Hotel. We've been driving for miles in the darkness, with no signs of human habitation. The building rears up, a concrete monstrosity in the middle of nowhere, bathed in a sodium glare like something on the Watford bypass. Why is it here? What is its purpose? And will Clarence expect to eat dinner with me?

The lobby is marble; our footsteps echo as we cross the floor. The lights are pitilessly bright but the place is as empty as a mausoleum; it reminds me of that hotel by the airport. There's even the same Nigerian soap playing on the TV; this time it's two men shouting silently at each other. Their story has been carrying on all this time while my life has descended into chaos. I envy them, that they're actors and can shed their melodrama and go back to their families. In fact I envy everybody, even the beggars in their little carts. I know this is sick but fuck it.

There's a row of little shops but they're all shut – a nail parlour; Mr Khan's Oriental Emporium; Ngoti Cottage Industries. Behind the glass I glimpse items from the Baboon Sanctuary. I look at the napkin rings and suddenly Jeremy's back with me, the old Jeremy, popping open the Champagne and sniffing dinner. The Jeremy I loved before I knew I loved him, sunlight shafting into the kitchen.

These chaps are eaten as bushmeat, actually. Very tasty, apparently. A bit like grouse.

‘Are you all right, madam? Shall I fetch you a chair?'

Clarence is looking at me. I shake my head and blow my nose. A sulky Russian girl appears behind the reception desk. I check in and Clarence disappears, presumably to the inferior quarters where servants spend the night. The size of this place has dwindled him and he's reverted to his former self.

A man takes my suitcase and I follow him down an interminable corridor, past the Club Remix where music pounds out in an empty room, past countless closed doors. Surely nobody else is staying here? So why is my own room so far away, where's the logic in that?

I've known loneliness, howling loneliness, but it's nothing compared to this. I suddenly long to see my children. I long to hold Sasha in my arms and stroke her greying (greying!) hair. I want to hear what she's done today. I want Jack to tell me a tasteless joke. I want to pick up my grandchildren, their legs kicking like pistons, and plonk them into my lap. I want to breathe in the scent of their hair. I want us all to be together in this arid hotel room, raiding the minibar and never talking about Jeremy at all.