Ancestor Stones (30 page)

Four days later one of the students appeared in the common room with a newspaper. On an inside page was a short article, just a paragraph, and a photograph above. The picture was of a crowd gathered outside the closed doors of our own national bank building. Even given the bad quality of the picture, you could just make out the angry expressions on the faces of the waiting people, the blank looks of the security guards and, at a window of one of the upper floors, the managers looking out.

I had given up my postgraduate course once Junior was born. Now I went to work at the Lyons Coffee Shop, in order that Ambrose could finish his own studies. It was mindless work. But once I had worked out how to fill the teapots with hot water from the spout of the machine that hissed and spat without scalding myself, it suited me. I liked the drift of people, the banter among the other girls, the paper bags of teacakes we were given at the end of the day and ate for breakfast in the morning.

There was a game they played among themselves, surreptitiously, mindful of the manager who would have sacked them if he had overheard. A man would come in and they would award him points out of ten. Whoever had the highest score won a date with him. Not really, of course. But they would go on to describe the evening, where they might go, what they would wear, imagine what this man they didn't even know was like. These were their dreams. To ride with a man in a car. To be taken up town to the theatre. I thought their dreams very small indeed. To the customers I might seem the same as these girls but I told myself my destiny was far greater. I thought I was better than them.

As a rule I was not included in this game.

‘What about him, then?' Jeanette said to me once, picking at a lipstick-stained strip of skin on her lower lip. But before I could reply Shona gave her a nudge:

‘She can't …' she hissed.

‘Why ever not?' Jeanette frowned.

‘Well …' Shona pulled a face and stretched her eyes wide, looking at Jeanette all the time. Jeanette gazed back blankly. Shona wavered, only for a moment. ‘She's married!' She sounded relieved when she said that. But of course I knew this wasn't the reason. Grace played, she was married.

Shona was a stupid girl, too stupid to worry about. Another day she tried to make amends, pointing to a man on the far side of the room: ‘Look, love. There's one for you.' The man, a black man, was sitting at a table in a windowless corner of the room. He was alone. On the table in front of him lay a pair of gloves and a folded newspaper. He was writing, scribbling furiously, in a notepad. I was
silent, not speaking for a long time. Beside me Shona shuffled, a tickle of discomfort. ‘I don't mean just because …'

Still I didn't answer her. I was staring at that man, feeling everything around me, the lights, the noise, grow faint. Even the sound of Shona's voice. I stepped out from behind the counter and walked across the room, without bothering to pick up a pad or collect a menu. I stood in front of the table where he was sitting, my hands by my sides, until he looked up at me.

‘Hello,' I said softly. At that he stood up suddenly, pushing back his chair so that it fell over. I didn't try to catch it and neither did he. Instead we took a step towards each other.

‘Hello,' said Janneh.

So that was how we found one another again. Seventeen years had passed. Janneh walked me home at the end of the shift. Night-time was coming, bringing with it the cold. I pushed my hands into the pockets of my thin coat. In England my hands and feet were always, always cold. Even in what passed for summer. Without a word Janneh removed his gloves and handed them to me, and I slipped my fingers into the warm place inside.

Janneh was working as a journalist. He was in England for a short time only, looking for a second-hand Linotype printing press. He planned to set up an independent newspaper: ‘A free press, you know. One the Government can't control.' I smiled, even though what he was saying was serious. I remembered that about him, the way he punctuated his conversation with certain phrases. ‘You know,' was one of them.

At home I invited Janneh to stay and eat with us. Ambrose would be back soon. So Janneh accepted and squeezed in next to me in the tiny kitchen, peeling onions while I squeezed lemons for chicken
yassa
. When he asked me my news, I told it to him, including how I came to be working at the Lyons Coffee Shop. Ambrose joined us, we fitted the extra leaf in the table in the sitting room and sat down, and for the first time I heard about the things that were happening back home.

Government ministers who built houses high on the hill. Houses
with east and west wings, pillared porches and glass chandeliers. On the outside homeless people built their little
panbodies
against the high walls. The wives of these big men drove around in shining Mercedes, frequently flew out of the country with their husbands on official business, shopped and slept between Egyptian cotton sheets in smart hotels. Meanwhile the price of rice climbed higher every day. People went to withdraw their savings from the bank and found they were refused their own money. The poorest souls walked around with swollen stomachs and feverish eyes.

These were the things Janneh wrote about in his newspaper column. He discovered and published the official salaries of the Government ministers and demanded to know how they could afford to live so well. He worked late into the night, alone in his office, sometimes only returning home to change his clothes. Once he pushed open the door of his flat in the small hours to find men in safari suits and smooth-soled shoes searching through his belongings. Janneh waved his arms and shouted at them. They set upon him in a flurry of punches, winded him and broke one of his ribs. It still hurt him to breathe.

Some days later his editor had called him in. Janneh's boss was a good man, a widower with three daughters whom he loved. Janneh noticed his editor kept glancing at the framed photograph on his desk, how he never looked Janneh in the eye. He told Janneh he was working too hard, gave him a six-month sabbatical. Janneh cleared his desk, he knew he would never be able to go back.

‘Thank you, that was very good indeed.' Janneh lay down his knife and fork and smiled at me. ‘We need people, you know,' he continued, this time switching his gaze to Ambrose. ‘Educated people, but most of all good people.'

I carried the empty plates into the kitchen and set them in the sink. I heard Ambrose offer Janneh another beer. Janneh declined, he continued talking: ‘People who understand the world. People with experience. People who know what needs to be done.'

The pineapple I had bought two days before was ripe. I found a knife, sliced off the ends, then I cut diagonally into the skin. The
pineapples in England were so small, I often wondered where they came from. Ambrose still hadn't spoken.

‘Well, what do you say?' Janneh again, addressing him directly this time. I waited for Ambrose to say something. Something that would tell Janneh he was a person who knew how to do what was right.

‘So what are you saying? I mean how exactly do you plan to go about this? Are you going to take over the Government?' Ambrose was using questions to answer questions. It was something he did to avoid giving a reply, I knew. He did it whenever we had a disagreement, especially when he knew I was right. It was a lawyer's trick. Round and round, I scored deeply into the pineapple's flesh.

‘Of course not,' Janneh laughed lightly, grew serious again. ‘But we need to draw the people's attention to what is happening. These guys are lining their pockets, man. Grabbing what they can while they're in office. And it's our money. Yours. Mine. Everybody's.'

‘And you think they're just going to stop because you say so?' Ambrose was refusing to budge.

‘Not because
I
say so. Listen, we have to get out there and inform the people. Once they know what's going on, that their future is being stolen … The newspaper is just the beginning. We can't take this lying down.'

I glanced up, I could just see Ambrose leaning back in his chair, Janneh was hunched over the table. Ambrose had his hands clasped across his chest. Janneh seemed to be worrying at an imaginary spot on the table surface. Ambrose was shaking his head in mock weariness. Oh, how I wanted to run over and seize him by the shoulders. To yell at him, for God's sake! I raised the knife and cut the pineapple into slices.

‘Janneh, dear fellow, I don't want to disappoint you but the trouble with the black man is that he just isn't ready to govern himself yet. He hasn't learned how. And frankly, I'm not sure he's up to the job. The same thing is happening everywhere.'

‘Precisely!' said Janneh, pointing his finger in the air. ‘The very reason we must act now.'

Ambrose let his chair tip forward. ‘Open your eyes, my friend. Look around you!' he said. ‘Just name me one country, one country on that whole damned continent that has made a success of itself since the white man left and I'll join you tomorrow. But you can't, can you? And do you want me to tell you why? Because none of them have!'

And with that he leaned back again, as though the discussion was over.

All the time Ambrose was speaking I grew more and more ashamed. Dismissing Janneh as though he were a teenage hothead. I admit, I used to be impressed by his lawyerly language, the way he could handle anybody with his clever words. I carried through the pineapple, three plates and three forks. Ambrose was smiling, not showing his teeth but with the ends of his mouth turned up, still swollen with self-importance. Janneh had stopped fiddling and sat staring at his hands on the table in front of him. For a moment he looked defeated. Then he raised his head and faced Ambrose squarely. When he spoke his voice was low, the inflection contained in a single word.

‘None of us, Ambrose. None of
us.'

And I saw my husband shrivel up and shrink, right there before my eyes.

After Janneh had gone, Ambrose and I lay side by side on the divan, not touching, cold under the nylon quilt. Ambrose was still awake. I could tell by his breathing, and by the fact he was lying too still. That meant he was brooding.

‘You know, you ought to warn that friend of yours he'll end up behind bars,' Ambrose said eventually, speaking into the dark. ‘You mark my words. He's looking for trouble in the easiest place to find it. They'll lock him up and they'll throw away the key.'

And with those words he rolled away from me.

A friend of mine once was ill. I remember I went to visit her at a time when she must already have been sick. Her skin was luminous, her eyes shone, when she smiled she showed pink gums and white teeth, her hair was braided into thick plaits. In every way she
appeared as beautiful as before. But the disease was eating her from within. When she brushed her teeth her gums bled. Her teeth were loose. The plaits were all that held her hair close to her scalp and when she undid them, it fell out in great clumps. She told nobody how ill she was. Gradually those closest to her noticed the changes, but they said nothing. Her flesh wasted away, her teeth fell out and she tied a cloth round her balding head. Still she refused to admit to her illness or go to the doctor and though her family, her friends, even strangers saw that she was dying, nobody said out loud what had become evident to them all.

That was the way it was with this country. Those who noticed refused to speak of it, as though they feared that to do so would make it real. Others drank and danced, partied into the night as though tomorrow was a long way away. And so it seemed as if everything was fine.

When I first arrived back all I thought about was how much I had missed it. There's a beauty about this place, one that cannot even be imagined. How small a hummingbird truly is! I sat on the verandah of our new bungalow and watched a tiny, shimmering bird flit from flower to flower before coming to land on the stamen of a scarlet hibiscus, as though it were a tree branch. Under the bird's weight, the stalk merely bowed, the petals quivered as he disappeared into the hollow. A moment later I watched him fly away, a blur of beating wings. The giant fan palm in the garden, its leaves spread out like a peacock's tail. The lustrous evening light, the colour of mother-of-pearl. These were the things I saw.

I travelled upcountry to visit my home and left money with Ya Namina to pay the doctor's bills for my father. A month later Ya Memso came to stay, bringing with her all the contents of my marriage box. I saw how round her eyes grew to see the way Ambrose and I lived, with indoor toilets and hot water pouring straight into a tub and glass windows that closed out the rain and the dust, but allowed the sun inside. The manager at the coffee shop had given me a farewell gift, a bonus on my last day. I kept it until we were on our way home to tell Ambrose. How delighted
he was, hugging me and lifting me up off my feet to swing me around. He put it down as a deposit on a Volkswagen and promised he would teach me to drive.

Ambrose said there was no reason for me to work, and so I stayed at home with Junior and little Yaya, who was born soon after we returned. I enjoyed myself, why not? Though sometimes I wondered what the years of study had been for. Every morning I waved goodbye to Ambrose as he drove to his job in the Attorney-General's office where he was helping to draft new Acts of Parliament. I made friends among the wives of Ambrose's colleagues and spent my days visiting, going from house to house. I would sit in their parlours, being served cold drinks by the houseboy, eating honeyed sesame cakes and roasted groundnuts while our husbands worked late.

Hannah, my dear friend Hannah, had never married. She never did go to study in England, despite her father's connections which should have been enough to secure her a Government grant. Instead she had taken a shorthand and typing course at the Young Women's Christian Association and as it turned out was working as a legal secretary at the Attorney-General's office. In the evenings Hannah would come around and we would hide away in the bedroom I shared with Ambrose. She would try on my clothes and my shoes, which were far too big for her and afterwards we would lie on the bed giggling like schoolgirls again. ‘You have found a man who really knows how to look after you!' she teased me. ‘Why don't you find one for me?' And she wore my shoes to work with paper stuffed into the toes.