The Memory of Love (37 page)

The lilies were splendid. Dozens of them, deepest crimson, their great funnel-shaped heads turned towards me. Can a flower adopt an expression? I ask because I know you will think me fanciful if I say so, or thought so then. Standing there, it was as though I had opened a door upon a roomful of silent children: watchful, listening, waiting. I knew I had found what I’d been looking for. I turned to go.

The fish mammy was there on her verandah when I left. I felt her eyes upon my back as I walked down the street. For once she was silent.

And in her silence she was more eloquent than in anything her barbed tongue could produce.

In the final weeks of 1972, our daughter was born. I told myself I had given Saffia the one thing Julius had not. It made no difference. Saffia remained as remote as ever. A stillness came over her. It was as if she had realised her error in marrying me, but now it was too late. So, as many women do, she swallowed the bitterness of her regret and submitted. The stillness was what was left.

The aunt came back from the village and Saffia relinquished most of the responsibility of the child to her. In our gratitude we named the child for the old lady. Not the little girl’s real name, for that had already been chosen, but her house name, the name we called her by.

As for me, I loved the child from the start. And she loved me in return. I have no doubt this is the experience of all men, or at the very least a great many. Perhaps even to talk of an infant’s love is a foolishness, for doesn’t a child love selfishly, like a puppy, whoever will take care of them? But for once in my life I never had to ask what somebody saw in me, or question why she might wish to spend her time with me, wonder at her motives. She was my daughter. I, her father. The first love I had ever been able to take for granted.

Even Babagaleh came under the child’s spell. She taught him his letters, you know. I would find him sitting among her dolls and teddy bears in front of a toy blackboard. She liked to play teacher. Later he sat with her while she did her homework. He’d copy out the same sums and sentences alongside her. In this way he learned to read, and he reads perfectly well, though he is careful to maintain otherwise. He would take her to the mosque with him on Fridays and show her off … pretend … his own daughter …

Wheezing. A flailing arm. A shaking hand. The old man’s body convulses upon the bed. His mouth opens and closes. Adrian jumps up, puts his arms under the old man’s armpits and pulls him up. He runs to the door and calls a nurse. He waits in the corridor while the nurse attends to her patient.

All around him is silence, save for the hollow scrape of a bucket being pushed along the floor of the corridor, the slosh of water. The sound of the hospital gates opening and a vehicle entering.

Adrian thinks about the last part of Elias Cole’s story. The child, of course, was Mamakay.

CHAPTER 36

In a bar, Pedro’s, where Adrian has been with Kai. Adrian has left Mamakay at the table while he goes to fetch drinks.

‘One beer, one rum and Coke,’ he says to the barman, holding up a finger against the din. The bar area is crowded. With difficulty Adrian turns himself around and leans against the bar so he can see Mamakay.

‘Great place!’ says the man next to him.

Adrian turns and nods. The other man is young, younger than Adrian at any rate, dressed in chinos and a polo shirt, the modern uniform of the European in the tropics; his skin is sweating and yellowish. He sits with his back to the bar, his thumbs hooked into his pockets, fingers framing his crotch. On the other side of him a sullen-faced woman leans curled into his body. Her left hand slips up and down the inside of the man’s thigh. Adrian nods at her and as he does so recognises her as the girl in the purple top he’d seen here once before.

The man is still speaking. ‘My base is upcountry. I’m in town for a meeting with our funders. Have to take them round a few of our projects, reassure them we’re putting their money to excellent use, let them have their picture taken with a disabled kid, or better still a former child-soldier. That’s the sort of thing makes them cream.’

‘Is that right?’ says Adrian. He looks around for the barman.

‘Well, keep your fingers crossed for me. Because I like this place and I plan to stay.’ The man next to him is still talking. ‘The women,’ and here he whistles, leans over and whispers, ‘buy them a couple of Cokes and they’ll let you fuck them all night.’

At that moment the barman arrives with the drinks. Relieved, Adrian prepares to move on. As he makes to leave the man says, ‘I’m Robert. Hey, bring your girl over. Make an evening of it.’

‘No thanks,’ says Adrian.

At the table Mamakay watches him as he sets down the drinks. ‘Do you know that man?’

‘No,’ says Adrian quickly. ‘God, no.’

‘What were you talking about?’

Though Adrian does not particularly wish to repeat Robert’s remark he does.

Mamakay sits in silence, not looking at him or apparently listening any longer, but staring at Robert, who in turn appears oblivious, his attention occupied by the girl who has now moved to stand in front of him, her legs straddling his knee, rotating her hips in time to the music. Mamakay jumps up and heads to the bathroom. Adrian sits and waits, drinks his beer, wonders how to bring back her mood. He spots her coming back from the bathroom. She smiles softly at him as she takes her seat. He is about to ask her if she is all right, when a disturbance at the bar draws his attention away. It is Robert, he appears to be involved in an argument. Adrian sees the girl who’d been stroking his thigh snatch up her handbag and stalk away. Mamakay is watching, too. When it is quiet again, she picks up her drink and takes a sip.

‘What was all that about?’ says Adrian.

‘While we were in the Ladies I told her what he’d said to you.’

It takes a moment for Adrian to absorb this. He looks sideways at Robert, but the aid worker has his back turned to them.

‘I see,’ says Adrian eventually.

Mamakay speaks again, more quietly this time.

‘I beg your pardon.’ Adrian bends in to hear her.

‘She was my classmate. We were at school together. Her name is Josephine.’

A residual memory of his thoughts when he first saw the girl in the purple top flushes Adrian with shame. When he looks at the bar, Robert is gone.

He did not come here expecting to find happiness.

In the evenings they go out, sometimes to old places, sometimes to new ones. He wants to know this city of hers, he wants to share her world. They eat together, at Mary’s or else buy food from the women who sell to working men from roadside stalls. Less often she cooks. She eats with her hands and laughs at his jokes; she can sometimes be outrageous and flamboyant in his company, as he, Adrian, is in hers. He barely recognises this part of himself, though it is not new, just forgotten. They make love often. Adrian does not know how he is capable, but he is, and still achieves new pleasure. It amazes him that she feels cold at night. She falls asleep, once during an embrace, her thighs either side of him, her upper body curled on his chest. He lies there for an hour, scarcely breathing, to allow her to sleep on. He looks at her, from this awkward angle, too close. Yet manages to memorise the configuration of every hair on her head. Once he dares to lift his hand and touch her hair. There are questions he wants to ask. How many lovers has she known? Who are they and what are their names? Who was the first and who the latest? Did she love any of them? He wants to ask, but he does not dare because he is afraid of what would happen once he began, because he knows he would never be able to stop.

An evening they are sitting up on the balcony upstairs. The occupant of the flat is away for a few days. They carry their beers up the outside stairs. ‘For a change of scenery,’ she says. ‘I’m tired of looking at concrete.’ There is a view of the roof of the house in front, of clusters of huts,
panbodies
as Adrian now knows them to be called.

A group of ragged children march across an open space, pushing one of their number ahead of them like a prisoner. One of them smacks the boy in front in the back and he staggers.

‘Hey!’ Mamakay is on her feet and shouting at the children, who stop and look up. One by one they drop their gaze and shuffle off.

‘You couldn’t do that in Britain.’

She sits down opposite him. ‘Is that so?’ She seems amused.

‘Yes,’ says Adrian. And then, ‘Did you have brothers and sisters?’

‘No,’ says Mamakay.

‘That’s unusual, isn’t it?’

She nods. ‘I don’t know why. I wanted a little brother, you know, like little girls do. I used to ask my mother. She never said no, and she never said yes. After a while I stopped. I must have changed my mind. So, no. No brothers or sisters.’

Adrian has yet to tell Mamakay about his relationship with her father. There is no genuine conflict of interest, he tells himself. Elias Cole is his patient, not Mamakay. And Elias Cole is not really a patient, not as such. It requires handling, though. In Britain his relationship with her would undoubtedly be viewed as problematic from a professional standpoint. This, though, is not Britain.

Something flies out of the darkness and drops into a pawpaw tree, the sound of its wings like a mainsheet loosed against the wind. The tree is the height of the balcony, the leaves almost within reach. Mamakay shines a torch into its recesses and they see a fruit bat. Adrian can hear the sucking sound as it eats the fruit, apparently undisturbed by their proximity. A second bat arrives and nestles into the same crevice. Adrian is unprepared for how black they are, an unreal blackness: wings, snouts, claws, as though all the darkness had gathered in this one living creature. He would like to draw them, but they only come after dark, says Mamakay. She fetches an oil lamp and sets it on the table between them. She sits with her heels resting on the lip of her chair, her arms across her knees, one hand holding her beer bottle. The light illuminates the planes of her face, the edges of her lips, the reflection of her eyes. He discovers she studied history at university, like her father.

‘Did you ever think about getting a position at the university?’

She replies, ‘I never finished my studies.’

‘Because of the war?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’ She stands up, changing the subject. ‘Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I need to eat. Let’s go out.’ Suddenly she is no longer relaxed but restless.

‘Sure,’ says Adrian, who has yet to deny her anything.

When he is away from her, he tries to conjure up her face. He closes his eyes, but the magic eludes him. When they are together he watches, learning her features, her gestures. Still, afterwards, he cannot make it happen. It is as though when she goes she takes everything of herself with her.

He realises too that she asks him almost nothing about himself, not even when they will next meet. In those moments they are together, she gives him her attention entirely; by the same token he draws none of her curiosity. It bothers him. As he watches her lying with her back to him, a memory of the night at the bar: the girl with the purple top arrives, skewed and bent out of shape, moulded into something else. The paranoia of a man newly in love. She senses something because she rolls over to look at him, frowns slightly. ‘What is it?’

‘Have you done this many times before?’ he asks.

She raises herself up on one elbow and traces his Adam’s apple lightly with her forefinger. He is afraid to ask. She removes her finger and says, ‘What are you asking me?’

He can barely breathe: ‘Have you done this before?’

She is gazing at the ceiling, an arm extended, drawing circles with her index finger in the air. To Adrian there is something mesmeric about that finger, as it passes in and out of the shadows cast by the moon.

‘No,’ she replies.

The relief is so immense his bowels turn to water.

Still tracing patterns on the ceiling, she continues, ‘Have you?’

‘No,’ replies Adrian.

She says, ‘Fine, then.’ And rolls over with her back to him once more. His relief disappears.

‘You make me happy,’ he says to her back.

‘Good,’ she replies to the wall.

‘And it frightens me.’

She turns to face him. ‘You shouldn’t be frightened,’ she says, not whispering like him, but speaking in a normal voice.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it is pointless. Whatever happens will happen.’

Now he rolls over on to his back and watches the moon shadows on the ceiling. There is thunder in the distance. He rolls back to her, misjudges the distance between them and knocks his head hard against her face. The violence of the blow jars his teeth. He finds her mouth, kisses her and tastes blood, fetches a box of matches and strikes one against the dark.

‘I’ve hurt you,’ he says, peering at her lip. The match dies. He lies back down and places his arms around her. He can feel her shaking; a giggle escapes from the place between them. Suddenly they are both laughing.

In the morning, because he has already said things he did not intend to say and now is reckless, he asks, ‘Who have you loved the most?’

‘A man, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not a dog?’

‘No.’

‘Or a bat?’

‘Not a bat, either.’ He is happy to banter, but also insistent.

She is cleaning the kitchen, rubbing Vim on the surfaces. He likes that he is privy to her small domestic routines. She turns around to face him, her hands white with powder, a scouring sponge in one hand; milky water runs down her arm, drips off her elbow. Her face is smiling and yet serious. ‘You really want to know?’

‘Yes. Have you been in love before?’ He wants to know whether what is happening has happened before. As lovers always do. He feels like a cliché, it does not stop him.

‘Once.’ She holds up a whitened index finger. ‘Just once. We practically grew up together. We were together for ever, at least it felt like it.’

‘Would you have married him?’

‘Yes,’ she replies. There is no hesitation and it hurts him, a tiny thorn, though he had asked her to be honest. He is silent. She turns away to put the sponge in the sink and he comes up behind her, places his arms around her waist and rests his chin in the dip of her shoulder blade.

‘What happened?’

‘What usually happens. We grew in different directions. He was more ambitious than me. Eventually we’d grown so far apart we couldn’t touch each other any more. He changed, too.’ She shrugs.

Adrian stands still. She continues to rub at a stain on the counter. This game is too dangerous. He doesn’t want to ask any more questions. He stops speaking.

And Mamakay naturally asks him nothing at all.