‘She said the man had just come to offer her a job. He was from the airline. I told her that there was no way she was going back to work. I said her
job
was raising her beautiful young sons. She told me she didn’t feel like the children were hers any more, that the nanny was doing a better job than she ever could. In that, Bilal, she was right.’
Hassan thought about what his father had said. It was true: the only motherly figure he had ever known was Aisha, his nanny and Juma’s mother.
‘It is late, and I should let you get back to your business, Bilal,’ Hassan senior said wearily.
‘Tell me how it ended.’
He shrugged and stubbed out his cigarette on the hotel steps. ‘Simple. She left. No note, for me or the boys. One day we woke up and she was gone. Back to England, I presumed, and the bloody village of Oving in Buckinghamshire where she came from.’
He sought her out, against his father and brother’s strongest wishes, when he started university. All he had to go on was the name of the tiny village, Oving, where her family was from.
Outside the train cold rain pelted the windows of the British Rail service from Marylebone. Inside it was stiflingly hot. The countryside was still alien to him. More a universe than a world away from the cluttered bustle of Stone Town or the palm-fringed white beaches of the coast.
The town of Aylesbury was the end of the line. An overweight lady with a turned-down mouth directed him to the bus terminal. It was the middle of a work day and the bus was empty, save for an elderly couple who ignored him. He was beginning to think the English a cold race. Perhaps some of the bitterness his father felt towards his estranged wife was not totally without merit after all.
Aylesbury’s suburbs of crammed council houses soon gave way to verdant pastures and tiny villages of whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs. A ruddy-faced woman in a green waterproof jacket and Wellington boots walked a pair of beagles in the drizzle, her breath a white mist. Hassan wondered how his mother could have forsaken Zanzibar’s weather, let alone her twin toddler sons.
In Oving, Hassan walked along the grassed verge of a narrow two-lane road and came to the high brick walls of a country manor house. He stopped and stood on tiptoe. Over the wall he could make out manicured lawns and hedges, and a gravel path fringed with lichen-covered statues. The great home seemed to have a frontage as big as the House of Wonders, the sultan’s palace in Stone Town.
There was money here. His father was wealthy – he had to be to send two sons out of Tanzania to study: three hotels now, two on Zanzibar and another in Dar on the mainland – but this was a different class of wealth.
‘Quite a pile, isn’t it?’
Hassan turned and saw a thin-faced man with curly grey hair. He guessed him to be in his early fifties. He wore faded grey overalls and carried a pair of garden shears.
‘You look too smartly dressed to be a thief casing the place, but I’ve not seen you around the village before.’ The accent was soft, with a slightly rolling lilt.
‘I’m looking for someone, a distant relative,’ Hassan replied.
‘That so? I’m Ernie. I do most of the gardens around here. Lived in the village all me life.’
‘Do you know the Wilks?’
‘Mrs Wilks passed away just last year. But you’d know that if you were related, surely?’ the gardener said, raising an eyebrow.
Hassan saw the suspicion in the man’s eyes. ‘I’m from abroad. Tracing the family tree, so I’m not close. Mrs Wilks, you said? That must be …’ he stopped himself from saying ‘my grandmother’ as he didn’t want news of his arrival all over the village, in case it embarrassed his mother, ‘Margaret’s mother?’
‘Yes, yes. That’s right. She’s living in the big house, next to her mum’s old place.’
‘Could you give me some directions to her house, please?’
Ernie looked him up and down, unashamedly assessing him. ‘I’m heading that way right now.
Doing the hedges at the house two up from Margaret’s. I’ll take you there.’
Hassan had to stretch his legs to keep up with the older man as he turned down a narrow lane that led to the heart of the tiny village. At the end of the street he saw a quaint pub, called the Black Boy, and an old stone church. Ernie stopped outside a thatched cottage with a bed of red roses out the front.
‘This is it,’ he said.
Hassan opened the wooden gate. He looked back and saw Ernie waiting. Probably wanted to make sure everything was OK, Hassan thought. He was suddenly very much
not
OK. His heart thudded. His mouth was dry. He wiped his hands on his jeans. There was a heavy brass knocker on the wooden door. He knocked and a few moments later the door opened.
It was her. He had sneaked a peek at the photograph in his father’s desk drawer whenever he could, until he had been caught. His father had said nothing, simply taken the picture from him and torn it into tiny pieces. She was still beautiful, though there was something not quite right about her.
Her hair was blonde, her eyes the same blue as his, but they were shadowed and recessed too far into their sockets. Her face was too thin. She wore a baggy red jumper over jeans that encased slender legs. In her high-heeled boots she was only an inch or two shorter than his six feet. She put a hand to her mouth.
‘Morning, Margaret,’ Ernie called from the gate. ‘This fellow says he’s family. I showed him the way here.’
She blinked. ‘Urn, yes. Thanks, Ernie. Good of you to help. I’ve been expecting him for some time.’
Ernie looked puzzled, but nodded and forced a smile. ‘I’ll be on my way, then. Just doing Joanne’s hedges.’
She waved, to show him she was all right.
‘I’m …’ Hassan began.
‘I know who you are.’
It hadn’t been anger in her voice, or surprise, or resentment. Certainly not love. More a tone of resignation, as though she had, indeed, been expecting him and now he had finally come.
‘You’d best come in, Hassan.’
He wiped his muddy feet on the doormat and had to duck a little to get through the door. It was warm inside. The furniture was modern, in contrast with the seventeenth-century exterior. The ceiling was not much higher than the doorframe and, though he could stand up straight, he felt very confined.
‘How did you know it was me, and not…’
‘Iqbal? You were the same when you were tiny. You were always hanging off my skirt, and Iqbal was always running after his father. I knew that it would be you if either of you ever came looking for me. Sit down, I’ve just boiled the kettle. Tea?’
He was suddenly very angry There was so much to talk about, so much for her to explain, and she wanted to make
tea
. He had expected an outpouring of emotion. ‘Coffee, if that’s OK.’
He took a seat on the white leather sofa and looked around the small living room.
‘Are you living in England or just visiting?’ she asked from the kitchen.
His eyes were drawn to a beechwood wall unit. Above the television was a family portrait. His mother, but not his family A man with red hair in a uniform of some kind, two girls, in their early teens by the look of it. Pretty, with Margaret’s eyes. His eyes. ‘Studying. I’m doing a degree in economics at Cambridge.’
She returned with two cups and took a seat in an armchair opposite him. ‘Good for you. I’m pleased you turned out smart. Pleased Hassan is making enough money to send you abroad to study And Ikkie?’
Hassan smiled. He knew how much his twin would hate that babyish nickname. ‘Arts, with a philosophy major, at Cape Town. He wasn’t interested in coming to England.’
She noticed him looking at the photo again. ‘I remarried. Soon after … soon after I returned home.’
‘The man in the photo, your husband. He is a pilot?’
‘Yes,’ she said guardedly, trying to guess how much he knew, how much he had been told.
‘You left my father, us, for him.’ He blurted it out.
She moved from the armchair to the sofa, sat down next to him, put a hand on his. Her touch was cold, her fingers bony. He looked into her eyes. No tears, only that same resignation he had seen earlier.
‘I’m not proud of what happened. Not pleased with myself, but not really ashamed either. What he wouldn’t have told you, Hassan, was that I
tried
. I tried damn hard to make a go of it. I was young, in trouble. I suppose you know you and your brother were conceived before we married?’
He nodded.
‘I loved Zanzibar. I think I loved your father, for a time. But that island paradise quickly became a prison for me. He wouldn’t let me work, wouldn’t let me travel, hardly let me out on the street, wanted me to become something I couldn’t.’
‘He is a good man,’ Hassan mumbled.
‘God, I know that. And I’m a
good
woman. Ask anyone in the village!’ She forced a smile, but he was unmoved. ‘The point is, Hassan, that I couldn’t live like that. When it was over, when I knew I had to leave, I wanted to take the two of you with me.’
‘You did?’ Surprise and disbelief permeated the two words.
‘Of course. Don’t you think I loved you? Your father called in the lawyers, made all kinds of threats.’
‘He said, once, that you did not want us once we were born, that you rejected us.’
‘He would, wouldn’t he? Postnatal depression, Hassan. Look it up in any medical book. I had it.
Boy oh boy, did I have it. Hardly surprising given that I was thousands of miles from home, imprisoned by a domineering husband and stuck in a stone house in one hundred and five degree heat!’
He shrugged.
‘I got over it, Hassan, and learned to love you both, but I still couldn’t change my world, my circumstances, for the better. Also, by then that bloody Aisha was virtually caring for you and Iqbal twenty-four hours a day. She hated me, and I her from the start. I’m surprised your father didn’t marry her.’
Hassan was taken off guard by her comment. Although when he thought about it, the idea of his father having some sort of romantic involvement with his nanny didn’t seem so strange. She was still an attractive woman, full-breasted with a sensual mouth and dark, inviting eyes.
‘I don’t suppose he told you I tried to come back, to visit you both?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I did. Two years after I left. I was back at work with the airline. Three separate times I tried. He wouldn’t let me past the door of the cafe. On my last visit I tracked down the school you were both attending. I stood at the fence, picked you two out immediately I wanted to come inside, to hold you, to tell you I loved you.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘God, the teachers would have had a fit. A strange, blubbering white woman barging in to molest two little boys.’
He didn’t smile at her levity, just wondered what else had kept her at the fence. He finished his coffee. Suddenly he wanted out of this poky little cottage. He understood her reasons for leaving, even guessed that his father’s cloying love might be misconstrued as dominance, but he doubted he could ever really forgive her. ‘I’m sorry for taking so much of your time.’
‘You’re leaving already?’
No hug, no invitation to stay, to meet his stepsisters. Not that he expected or wanted either.
‘There’s another bus soon. Forgive me for saying so, but you look a little tired, like you need a rest.’
She shrugged as they stood. ‘Need more than a rest. Radiotherapy takes it out of you.’
‘You’re ill?’
‘Breast cancer, Hassan. The doctors aren’t hopeful… But please, if you want to visit again …’
‘I hope your treatment goes well. And thank you, but I doubt I’ll be back.’
‘Don’t leave angry.’
They were at the door now. It was a day of shocks and now he simply felt numb. The news the mother he’d never known was dying was just one more revelation. He found it hard to arrange his thoughts. He needed fresh air. ‘I’m not angry.’
‘I can’t do the tearful reunion, Hassan. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I’ve got a new family now and I’m faced with the problem of how to say goodbye to them.’
The door was open now and she wrapped her bony arms around herself to ward off the chill and, he thought, to avoid any public display of emotion. She smiled. ‘Bet you have to fight the girls off?’
He shrugged, embarrassed by the question. How could he tell her his first sexual experience had been with a blonde English girl, a backpacker staying at his father’s Stone Town hotel? His subsequent conquests had all been western girls as well, Dutch, German, Swiss and two more Britons. What would she make of that? ‘Better run if I’m going to catch the bus.’
‘Stay well, Hassan. If you do want to come again, do me a favour and call first. Will you tell your brother you saw me?’
He thought for a moment. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Probably best. It’ll be enough for me, as things draw to a close, to know that you realised that I did try.’
‘I understand. Goodbye then.’ No contact. No kiss, no hug, not even a handshake. All so damnably British.
He never saw her again, didn’t know whether she had fought off the cancer or died in pain. It wasn’t hatred he felt, or bitterness. Just resignation. He had
tried
, as she had. About as hard as she had, he reckoned.
His university days were enjoyable. He spent his free time like any other student did, partying, drinking and doing his best to have sex with as many members of the opposite gender as he could. In the last endeavour his good looks and exotic background gave him an edge over most of his fellow students. He preferred blondes with blue eyes, and there was no shortage of them in the university and the bars of Cambridgeshire.
The girls he’d met invariably asked him how often he’d gone on safari and what he knew of Africa’s big game. The first few times he’d been embarrassed to admit he knew little of the continent of his birth beyond Zanzibar’s white sand shores. He’d seen his first rhinoceros at a wildlife park in Bedfordshire, of all places. He’d started reading up on African wildlife in his spare time. What began as another way to impress girls turned into an interest, and, after a couple of visits to Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park during college vacations, something of a passion.
Having fulfilled his father’s wish for him to take a business qualification, he returned to Zanzibar after graduation and threw himself into more study, this time a subject of his own choosing – zoology By day he worked for his father in the Stone Town hotel. After a year he took over the family’s shabbiest hotel, in Dar es Salaam, and turned it from a run-down dive frequented by sailors, truck drivers and whores into a trendy, vibrant backpackers’ lodge. The hotel’s rooftop bar with its eclectic mix of carved African curios, Persian rugs and western music drew overland tour groups and independent travellers from other hotels in the port city. Most travellers through the region stopped over in Dar on their way across to Zanzibar. Sometimes a pretty girl – or two – usually fair-haired, would stay over a few extra nights, at no extra cost. The cash he generated from the fleapit-turnedhotspot helped him finance his first solo commercial purchase, the luxury bush lodge on the Zambezi River, in the wilds of Zambia.