Something to Hide (6 page)

It's been known, however, that the men chew on a plant called kar to suppress their appetite on these hunting trips. It's a succulent, only found in their area, and rich in vitamins and minerals. Apparently it mimics the effect that glucose has on the brain cells, telling people their stomachs are full. ‘It has a compound in it called P57,' Jeremy says. ‘It acts on the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that influences appetite.'

There's a grove of silver birches between us and the river. Through the trees we can hear faint music from the buskers. Jeremy says: ‘So somebody at Zonac hears about this plant and five years ago they slapped a licence on it and got a patent to flog it in America.'

‘Why?'

‘As an appetite suppressant. Get the irony! All those fat people, all those waddling barrage balloons – they're addicted to eating. Junk food's got stuff in it that makes them want more and more. And suddenly, along comes a solution, a hunger-busting quick fix. A couple of capsules a day … the miracle cure. Just imagine how it sold! Zonac's share price went through the roof.' With his fork, he offers me the last mouthful of cake. I shake my head and he pops it in his mouth. ‘It was only then that the Kikanda got wind of what was happening. They challenged Zonac, who said sorry, we thought you were extinct. The Kikanda replied that they weren't extinct, they were very much alive. They said that kar grows on their ancestral land, it belongs to them, and they were going to hire a shit-hot lawyer from Johannesburg to sue Zonac to kingdom come for bio-piracy. And that's where I came in.'

‘You acted for Zonac.'

Jeremy nods.

‘Against vulnerable, poverty-stricken, unique, endangered people who had absolutely nothing.'

‘Yep.'

He dabs at the crumbs on the plate. I glare at him as he sucks his finger.

‘You're such a shit.' My face heats up. I feel strangely, exhilaratingly intimate with him. ‘Talk about David and bloody Goliath. I always suspected you did something like that but hoped I was wrong. Go on, tell me you were just doing your job.'

‘Progress always has casualties,' Jeremy says blandly, leaning back in his chair. ‘From lab rats upwards. Saving lives means losing lives.'

‘That's bollocks. You're not saving lives, you're peddling stuff to stupid people who eat too much.'

‘Thing is, Petra my love, the Kikanda are doomed anyway. Their way of life's doomed.' He lights a cigarette. ‘If it's not one thing it's another. The Chinese are swarming over the place plundering the minerals, the poachers are slaughtering the wildlife, the Arab sheikhs are setting fire to the migration routes and nicking the land for hunting, everyone's bribing everyone, the government's riddled with corruption, the whole bloody area's up for grabs.'

Somewhere, through the trees, drummers start tum-tum-tumming with a jungle beat. I feel profoundly depressed. ‘That doesn't excuse you.'

‘No, it doesn't. That's why I left my job.'

‘What?'

So he tells me.

It wasn't a Road to Damascus moment. ‘It happened when I was shaving,' Jeremy says. ‘Just a normal morning, couldn't be more normal.' He raises his eyebrows. ‘But don't you find that huge things can happen in the most humdrum moment?'

I nod. The wind stirs my paper napkin.

‘By the time I'd finished shaving the lawyer in me had vanished, just like that,' he says.

‘So what did you do?'

‘Didn't go into work. Told them to go to hell.'

I stare at him.

‘I had some money saved up – quite a lot, over the years, we'd never bought a house or anything sensible like that, and I'd been paid pretty well – so I started a small NGO, to help the Kikanda. Roped in some other people, did some fundraising. We're building a small settlement with a clinic and a school. We've got a grant to buy a couple of tractors, so they can clear the land and sow their own crops.' His voice rises in excitement. ‘It's the end of a way of life, I know that, but they have to adapt, it's the only way they can survive. And they're working with us, telling us what they want and learning new skills.' He laughs. ‘Talk about poacher turned gamekeeper, eh?'

He's changing before my eyes. A moment ago I was snapping at him and now I'm speechless with admiration. After this emotional buffeting I want to hug him. It's like on a plane, being tossed about by a patch of turbulence; afterwards one feels closer to the stranger in the next seat.

Not that Jeremy's a stranger, of course. Far from it. But I've hardly ever been alone with him till now. It's Bev who's my oldest friend; I know her through and through, but I've only known Jeremy in the peripheral role of her husband.

‘Why didn't Bev mention this in her emails?' I ask.

‘Things've been a bit iffy with Zonac – breach of contract and so on, writs flying around. And there are some powerful interests out there who'd like to see the Kikanda driven out for good – real
Heart of Darkness
stuff. If the world knew what was happening in Africa …' He shrugs. ‘The last thing those guys want is to see some local tribe get educated and learn their rights. So we're keeping a low profile for the time being.'

In the distance St Paul's glows in the sinking sun. We seem to have been sitting here for hours. At the other tables people have come and gone; beyond the birch trees the drumming has stopped.

‘You are a one,' I say, and we both burst out laughing at the inanity of this remark.

Neither of us has plans for the evening so Jeremy suggests we get something to eat. When I ask what sort of restaurant he replies: ‘Moribund. I don't want any of this gastro bollocks. I want somewhere with tired old waiters with stains on their jackets, and tinned grapefruit for starters—'

‘Don't be ridiculous, nobody has tinned grapefruit anymore—'

‘—and melba toast.'

‘The last place to serve melba toast was Beotys, in St Martin's Lane, and that closed about eight hundred years ago.'

‘We're going to find one, I know we are.' We're walking across Waterloo Bridge. ‘Let's make a bet.'

‘Two pounds.'

‘Done.'

We stop and shake on it. He says he's homesick for his youth, that's why he wants somewhere dated. Living abroad disconnects you from the normal process of maturing, that's his view of himself and indeed my view too. You're caught in a time warp. He's all adrift when he comes back to England, and clings to the solidity of the past. In his case, the very far past. Our
childhood
.

‘It's pathetic,' I say.

‘I know, but you've got to humour me because I'm a visitor.'

We're in Covent Garden now. It's a magic, balmy evening, so rare this early in the year.

‘Aah,' sighs Jeremy. ‘As Homer put it,
the limb-loosening desire of the ambrosial night
.'

‘Did he?'

‘No, but he might have.'

Jeremy, of course, is used to the heat. In Africa, however, it's a humid, stifling heat that soaks a chap with sweat day and night. That's what he tells me. Here in good old London, despite the traffic fumes, the air is fresh and invigorating for a refugee from the tropics. He breathes in great lungfuls of it, as if storing up the oxygen for his future disappearance.

The whole world seems out on the streets. I glimpse ageing couples arm-in-arm, the sort of couples who used to make me ache with loneliness. Just tonight, we're one of them. We saunter past restaurants, pausing to inspect the menus. Orso's:
walnut gnocchi, caponata with grilled radicchio.
‘Wankers,' Jeremy groans. We walk further and stop at a place called La Cocotte.
Seared tuna with sorrel veloute and heritage morels
.

‘It's hopeless,' I say. ‘They're all like this. Better give me that two pounds now.'

Jeremy shakes his head and stubbornly walks on. We turn up a side street and suddenly we find it – a restaurant called Frederico's. Flickering neon sign, grimy gingham curtains and a menu unchanged for decades:
spaghetti bolognese, spaghetti carbonara, spaghetti vongole
. We peer through the window. A dishevelled waiter stands in the shadows like a waxwork. Unsurprisingly, the place is empty.

Jeremy takes my arm. ‘On with the nosebags.' He triumphantly ushers me in.

The waiter jerks to attention. He flourishes napkins into our laps and gives us the menus. They have cracked, plastic covers. When he has hobbled off I rummage in my purse and give Jeremy two pounds. He looks around with satisfaction. ‘Scores pretty high on the moribundometer, wouldn't you agree?'

‘Off the scale.'

So we sit in this time warp, eating spaghetti lightly dandruffed with Parmesan, that dry stuff from a tub. No melba toast, but the prehistoric bread sticks will have to do. We're seized with high spirits; something about this awful place gives us the giggles. We compare youthful dates in restaurants like this one, served perhaps by the very same waiter.

‘Those were the days,' says Jeremy. ‘You could have a slap-up dinner for five bob.'

‘Huh! Forget that. You could get a bottle of Mateus Rosé, an abortion and a house in Scunthorpe and still have change from a hundred quid.'

We muse nostalgically on the past, on avocado bathroom suites and other style icons of the period. ‘Where are they now, all those fondue sets and chicken bricks?' he asks.

‘Those orange enamel coffee pots that burnt your fingers.'

‘That bottle of Hirondelle, still being carried from party to party because it's too disgusting for anyone to drink.'

‘Your Triumph Stag.'

He groans. ‘Ah, my Triumph Stag.'

‘Mobile phones as big as bricks.'

‘Cliff Michelmore.'

He laughs his booming laugh. Then he looks at me, sighs, and says a lovely thing. ‘Know something? Men who run off with younger women are such nincompoops. They can't have conversations like this. Must be so bloody lonely.'

Needless to say, I agree. ‘They'd have to talk about bands they'd never heard of.'

‘And punk.'

‘That's so over. Like, decades ago.'

‘Exactly.' He sighs. ‘And the worst thing is, the bloke would have to pretend to be interested.'

‘Poor sod.'

‘Christ, yes. It's giving me a headache, just thinking about it.'

‘And they'd want babies.'

He nods. ‘And the poor bastard has to pretend that he does too.'

‘And lo and behold he's pushing a double buggy around Aldi with two squalling brats and his dodgy knee's playing up and he's thinking is it really worth it, just for a firm young body with firm young breasts.'

Jeremy tilts his head, considering this. ‘Put like that, it does sound rather appealing.'

‘Shut up.'

‘Anyway, what's Aldi?'

‘See? You won't get anywhere, you're hopelessly out of touch.'

Jeremy agrees with me as we shovel down our spaghetti in the sepulchral restaurant. He's tucked his napkin into his collar, like a bib – the way he eats, it's only too necessary. I tell him he looks like an elderly baby. This leads on to infantilism in general and from there, naturally, to gentlemen's clubs and the pleasures of nursery food. We have a disagreement about blancmange. Discussion of milky puddings leads on to cows in general and I tell him about the methane explosion in Lincolnshire, to which he gratifyingly reacts. This leads, somehow or other, to beards on men: for or against (both against) and from there, for some reason, to printers – why does the paper always get stuck? We then have a heated argument about large versus small dogs, with him sticking up for Jack Russells. We nearly come to blows over this one.

Jeremy refills my glass with Chianti from, believe it or not, one of those raffia-clad bottles that people used to make into lamps. And I'm thinking: here we are, eating arguably the worst meal in the West End, but I bet we're having the most fun.

That night I sleep deeply, the first time in months. When I wake the sun is glowing through the blinds. The grey-green walls, painted by my ex-husband, are stained in several places where the rain has leaked in. He painted them so long ago that our son's voice was still unbroken; I remember him calling to his dad who was up his customary ladder. Looking around the room, I realize that to an outsider this has become the shabby home of an old lady. I know I must do something with my life – redecorate the house, move to the country, move to Spain, move to Seattle and be an interfering grandmother. Cop off with the guy at the dry cleaner's and become a dutiful Muslim wife, that would give my friends something to talk about. I've been gripped, for too many years, by a fretful inertia.

This morning, however, I feel energized. I stretch my limbs under the duvet –
my long
,
slim thighs.
My whole body feels invigorated, oxygen coursing through my veins. My brain's buzzing. I remember a news story I read a few days ago. It was about greyhound racing. The London stadiums have been closing down – Catford, Wembley, Walthamstow. One of the reasons, apparently, is that distemper has been discovered in the dogs, so they can't be moved around the tracks for fear of contamination. This has resulted in the closure of the racetracks and their redevelopment as luxury flats.

The talk about the Kikanda and corruption has set me thinking. What if there's a crooked vet? They're in cahoots with the property developers so they misdiagnose the dogs and get a cut of the profits! I'll tell my theory to Jeremy and see his reaction. We're meeting this afternoon, to go shopping.

‘Do I really look like an arms dealer?'

I nod. ‘A dodgy Russian one, on holiday in the Black Sea.'

He's wearing another loud shirt, this time patterned with palm trees.

‘Bev did say it was a bit vulgar. I bought it in Penang, when we lived in KL.'