Mountains of the Moon, page 24
“Thanks, one for now and one for later,” I says. “Beautiful moon, int it?”
The white rabbit strikes a match for me to puff the ciggi light.
“Minds me of a vamp,” I says.
They both look sactly same, total stonished.
“Vamp?” they says together.
I hold the ciggi with long stiff fingers and get balanced careful on the slope.
“Now you,” I says to the white rabbit. “You has to say: puff-puff-puff, only when I nod my head.”
“Puff. Puff. Puff?”
“No. Quicker—puff-puff-puff.”
“Puff-puff-puff.”
“Uh-huh. And you,” I says to the man with the top hat. “You has to say: smoke-smoke-smoke.”
“Smoke-smoke-smoke.”
“Puff-puff-puff.”
“Now I’m a girl with a heart of gold and the ways of a lady so I been told, the kind of a gal,” I says, “that wouldn’t even harm a flea.”
They is stonished. Stonishes me.
“But just you wait til I get the guy who vented the cigarette, I’ll shoot that son of a hick—believe you me.”
They believe me. I nods my head.
“Puff-puff-puff.”
“Smoke-smoke-smoke.”
“It int that I don’t smoke my self, I don’t reckon they harm your health—I’ve smoked all my life and I int dead, yet.” I does one cough for the song, lucky, gets three real ones added on. Whoops.
“Puff-puff-puff.”
“Smoke-smoke-smoke.”
Feels sudden ever so tired. Tile skids out from under my foot, skids down the roof, goes flying off the edge. We listens. Waits. Waits long time. Then hear it smash on the terrace below.
“Shush!” we all says.
“Sorry,” I says. “The velvit gentleman has done me, wobbly.”
“I’m Fiddler,” the top hat says. “This is Mick.”
“Nice to meet you,” I says. “Had best get going. Bye.”
“Don’t forget your cigarette, for later.”
“Have the packet, love,” Mick says.
“And the box of matches.”
“Thanks,” I says. “Whoops. Careful.”
I waves them from the edge with my spear. Tzzzz. Disappears down the side of the chimney.
The moon is perfect round and drumming blue, sees easy down the fire scape. I run long the black edges, East Wing and West Wing, then climb a tree, get up on the terrible palice wall. The green lamp on the velvit gentleman’s desk is shining behind the marigold glass. Hick. I drop from the palice wall and down onto the railway line. The silver tracks shine and disappear in the tunnel’s black. Listens. Booming. Around me bats is ducking and diving, I shake my spear at them and get on my toes, warms up the warrior song til good and proper int scared of nothing. Then I scream down the tunnel same as a train, running my spear long on the rail, that’s how come I know where I is but it knocks and bounces.
Flewed out of my hand.
I has to stop and get down, read with my fingers the railway stones, fat concrete slabs and the cold smooth rail. Light at the end of the tunnel is blue with the moon. Same size both ways. Has to close my eyes to listen. Ticking clock. Water dripping and trickle. Int sure now, case I turned around, don’t know which way I come in. Booming. I hear it coming, trotting light. Listens, sorts out boom from blackness and sweetness, breath warm as hay. I blow back soft and kind as can.
“Hello.” I sees tiny horseshoe shapes, trot way silver in the dark. “Don’t go.”
Listens booming. I find the knot in my red cloth and the cigarettes and matchbox. Careful, don’t drop all the matches, tries to light both ends of a dead one. Next one works. The rails curve off to a smaller tunnel blocked up with bars. Good place for staying live if a train was going to kill you. Match burns my fingers so I drop it. Light another one to find my spear, then I run on gain trusting the dark and the rail to take me out. Nobody in the station cept a lady fox, standing on the platform looks like waiting for a train.
“Toot-toot,” I says.
She’s so surprised she don’t do nothing, just watches me run past. I drum long the tracks. Then off up through a night-time woods. Owl’s woo shivers with the moon. The drumming comes so loud and so clear. I sees the signs and the tracks of heavy plants been crossing.
On top of the hill I can see it. I stalks to the edge, then sit down and look at the sky. Listens. Everything held still by the moon. I hear it first and then see it. Red light, green light, white light winking. It slopes down cross the moon. Uh-huh. I run at the fence, climb over the Keep Out sign and then skid down and down. I stop at the bottom. Look left and right and back up where I come. Listens. Long and wide and deep. I know it, I sniffs it, every stir of wind and air and sand settling down. Every hair stands up to feel in the air. Ears listen for something to get hold of. I has to stay up wind, I pick up dust and trickle it, has to know where he is. Eyes int the best thing for shadows running wild in moonlight. His feeling starts to burn on my skin and membered ice.
“Go on then,” I whisper.
No. The air is dry and warm, and the dirt, daytime sun still laid on the ground. The Sandwich Man, he int here. I shake his feeling off me, sets off running left, through sand rolled out smooth, leaves strides short but sure behind me. Sees the moon is running with me up onto purple stones, rolled out more wider than a road. Got agony from my bit-off toe, members it and starts to cry but we has to grit over it and run on with staggering stitches. I hang on to the sky, sees three stars go out and the moon turning to burn yellow. Sees the ground black and silky smooth come racing up under my feets, steaming, burning hot, leaves tracks behind in the soft tarmac. Joins up the white dotted line, pulls into the fast lane, past giraffes with wires dangling down and signs covered in plastic. I look around and up at the sky. Can hear one. Uh-huh. Comes over my head, winking, I hammer left up a slope. Airplanes is showing me the way and that’s how come I track them.
I got it now, road sign says this way Heathrow. The road is terrible, high up and bright with barriers and middle night lorries passing bedtime winders and I best had get off it. Then I’m running on a thin grass slope around the side of a concrete lake, surprises me, airport sheeps. They panic where to go with just the lake or the fence, next thing I’ve got a mile of sheeps all running long in front of me.
I got it now, all the airplanes circling around waiting for their turn to come down. Int easy to hide, with the road and the fence and full moon on the Serengeti. Every time a lorry comes I drop down flat on the grass, or blows up gainst the fence, tends I is a bit of red plastic. Gone. I has to get over the other side, can see the shapes of airplanes coming in. The fence is five times bigger than me with barb wire rolled on the top. Int easy cos it wobbles. Three lorries go past one behind the other while I wobbles about in their headlights fixed up on the barb wire. I fall down long on the other side, got holes in the middle of both hands. Hurts bad. Way from the road the world is darker. I lie down, watch for the next airplane coming. Sure thing over roofs, I jump up and head straight for it. It comes thousand miles fast, screaming down with engines and wheels, I roar and shake my spear at the driver and the wings slice over my head. Ba-boom the wheels hit the ground and I bounces up in the air. Makes me laugh. Makes me laugh so rude. Then I see all the headlights coming, fast, making stars and bouncing over the grass. Got me every way. Total blinded cept for ring-a-ring-a engines running and fumes and the big N’s of trouble knocking.
He opens the door of the jeep and I get up in the passenger seat. All the others circle around us and turn way, headlights racing outward. Man does his walkie-talkie.
“Ground Control to Air Control. All bzzz. Receiving?”
“What the bzzz is it?” walkie-talkie wants to know.
“A small African bzzz, sir, shall I take bzzz to the bzzz?”
“Take him back to fucking Africa for all I care, just get the bzzz off the runway.”
“Right.” My man turns the walkie-talkie off, shakes his head. “I’d better take you home,” he says and puts my spear careful nice tween the seats. “You’re ever so brown, been on your holidays? Somewhere hot?”
I nod my head.
“Well, you look very fetching in red; I like your beads, very nice.”
Jeep is nice, warm yellow moonshine and winders open. Stinks of gasoline and burned chocolate. Got twelve cigarettes left. I light one and blow the smoke out the winder. Cold comes out of me sudden, teefs and knees start going same as the jeep’s tappets.
“Give us one of those,” he says. Then steers the jeep with one elbow so he can scrape the match.
“Power-sisted?” I arsts.
“Light as a feather.” He does a shape of eight to prove it. Then he drives us cross and cross and cross bouncing headlights on the grass, sees a leopard’s spots. Tired, closes my eyes, turns spots into marigolds. Could lay my head down now and go to sleep behind the seat. Driving in circles, I reckon.
“There they are,” he says last, “somebody keeps moving them.”
I look at the airplane-sized gates while he gets out to open one. He has got a key for the padlock. Then he drives us out and closes it gain.
“Where are we going, where’s home?” he says.
I suck on the holes in my hands.
“Nestles Avenue,” I says.
“Just around the corner. I want you to listen carefully though.” He changes gear. “It’s not safe, running around alone at night, I wish it was but it isn’t. It’s not safe. The little girl on the telly is still missing, little Ellie Smithers. And that other older girl, what was her name, the one they didn’t have a picture of? I wouldn’t want that to happen to you. What if you disappeared? Your family would be devastated; they’d never get over it. Down here, is it?”
“Uh-huh.”
Nestles playing fields is blue-green from the yellow moon; vultures still sleep up on the rugby posts. Factory lights in stripes and lorries loading chocolate up and chimneys smoking clouds of black. Tastes same. Trees is still London plane, army bark, lighted up by lorries coming out of Nestles’ gates.
“Here,” I say.
He stops the jeep outside the Pennywells’. Houses is fast sleep and curtains closed.
“Can you get in?” he says.
I nod my head.
“Can go around the back.”
“Back to bed?”
“Uh-huh,” I says.
He passes my spear.
“Remember, serious trouble if you’re found again in the airport grounds. It’s a criminal offense.”
“Sorry,” I says.
He waits til I’m in the gate and it makes an agony squeak. I wave my spear and he drives way.
Scared, case I’m a burglar at Nanny and Grandad’s. I tiptoe the front path. Planes has blasted all the petals off all the newborn roses. I slow crunch the gravel down the alley, dragging fingers long on the pebble-dash. The side gate latch is high, Grandad done a shoelace to pull it, but it snaps cos now it’s glued with rust. Snaps til there int none left. I get my toe up in a knot-hole and climb quiet over the gate. Weeds has growed up wild through the cracks in the path. Back bedroom curtains is closed. I stand underneath. Listens if I can hear them snoring, hog-chewing. Got nerves. I light a ciggi and walk down the back path, duck under a pair of Nanny’s bloomers hanging on the line. Grass is always high and wild; Grandad int got the back to mow it. Daffodils all the way long the margins of the garden. We went to Woolworths on the bike and come back fast to plant them. Then Grandad got a good idea and we planted mirrors side the wall to get us a thousand at a glance. The daffodils is shriveled up and dried like tissue paper, under growing love-in-a-mist. Got sick feeling, sudden, case Grandad don’t know me, case he knows and don’t want me. I look at the back door. Airplane goes over the roof and I duck. I keep looking at the back door, and upstairs at the bedroom winder. Got sick sides citement, case Nanny phones the police. The back door was never good at locking. Don’t know if to go in the house, could wake them up, say “member me.” Can’t case they get scared and drop down dead with burglar fright. Magines in a minute, ting-a-ling-a-ling, Teasmade waking them up and newspapers dropping on the mat. Could wait til Grandad comes downstairs and opens the back door for light so he can shave. Stand on the path so he sees me like a morning surprise when he opens the curtains up. Might fall downstairs, if he comes too fast. I best had get a great big breath, case he squeezes it all out of me. Maybe just knock on the front door. Polite. Wishes I could run and jump and get up in the bed with them. Can’t case Nanny does a steric. Tired, does a yawn so big it nearly swallows me. Cold. I move the wheelbarrow into the first sunlight on the path, sit in it and smoke another cigarette.
Blue greenhouse looks littler, the wooden door is stiff when I pull it. Int proper. Seeds that me and Pip sowed died flowering cross the greenhouse roof. Tall coleus bent over double, dead. My writing is on the lolly sticks done with permnant ink. Everything dead. Sensitive plant turns to dust when I kiss it. Everything is dead, cept cactus. The watering can is full and the water butt outside. I has to water them careful nice, one by one from tops and saucers
“Come on,” I whispers, “come on.”
In my body everything shifts, to make room for a big new feeling, I spects I just died standing up.
“Lay down,” my grandad says, “lay down, pet.”
But my grandad, he int here. He int here. The plants gasp all at once, then an airplane comes over the house and we has to lay down case we break.
They int got bobboldy glass, don’t know if someone is coming or not. They got gnomes on their doorstep. No place like gnome.
“Hello, trouble,” Mr. Pennywell says. “Vi!” He yells up the stairs. “It’s the girl from next door.”
“Who is it?” she says. “Hold on, I’m in the airing cupboard.”
“We haven’t seen you for a while.” Mr. Pennywell says. “See you’re still doing your African thing.”
Vi has got high-heeled slippers with pink fluff and looks at me like trouble on foot. They stand in the doorway looking at me. They int sure what I want them to do case it’s complicated. They look at each other. At me. I has to make it easy for them.
“Is my grandad dead?” I arsts.
“He went with your Auntie Valerie, dear; she came and took him away after the funeral.”
“Still got her white Triumph Herald,” Mr. Pennywell says.
“We wouldn’t know, dear,” Vi says. “Bill went with Valerie.”
“I remember you,” Mr. Pennywell says, “under the bonnet, fixing it once.”
It int true, never done a Triumph Herald in my life.
“Valerie took Bill.”
“After Rose’s funeral.”
“Oh,” I says. “Thank you, I’m sorry to bother you.”
“No bother,” Mr. Pennywell says.
“Where’s your mother?” Vi says.
I fling an arm down the road, close their gate gain behind me. Left or right don’t matter cos there int nowhere to go. I get a good idea; Grandad might be at Cranford Park, still being a park keeper.
I seen every tree, seen park men marking a cricket pitch with a white-line machine, but my grandad, he int here. I get up on the roof of the public toilets and cries to sleep. When I wake up I sees a mum with kids and bikes and ice-cream cones come into the park. Little boy drops his ice cream on the path and she drags him way to leave it; when they gone I get down and eat it. I watch going-home-time traffic and night coming.
Wonder what I has to do. Could go the police station and say boo—here I is. Could go to Powys, try find Pip, but I don’t spect there’s anything to eat in Wales. Cept coal. I think about that velvit gentleman, in his marigold room. I squeeze my eyes tight closed, if I can think it hard enough can make his rocking chair rock by itself. The velvit gentleman turns around from his desk and magines me still sitting in it, rocking soft on the rug.
Act Three
There’s a dawn hush and a stirring. These people wear green and have soft edges, step in and out of the bamboos, whispering. Fifteen, twenty guides and porters have arrived, sitting around the office steps with bare feet and woolly hats and sweaters, in various states of unravel. The village is waking, rug-slapping sounds, a cockerel crows; a bell dings on a Brahmin cow. The men and boys must come here every day, hoping for climbers, hoping for work.
But it looks like it’s just me.
They’ve got some chai on the go. Soft blur of words and laughter. Ah—now that is nice. One lad is bringing the kettle over, held in the bunched-up sleeve of his cardigan.
“Mzuri.” I hold out my enamel mug. “Habari?”
He’s happy, fine; he fills the mug for me.
“You are wellacome,” he says. “Wellacome to Uganda. Wellacome to the Ruwenzoris. Wellacome to the Mountains of the Moon.”
An ancient Greek said he’d seen ice, miles high up in the sky. High as the moon. Mad as ice, thrust up from the hot jungle heart of Africa. I can’t see anything, just the yellow dawn cast like a spell and shapes of sheds in cobwebs of mist. The chai is hot, milky and sweet, very, very wellacome.
The Bajonko call the mountains the Ruwenzoris, the Rainmakers. Main reception is a shed with steps up and a boot-worn path to the counter. I pat and stroke the timber. There’s something reassuring about forest people, they build things to last. I expect the trees have taught them to take a long-term view. It’s the same man with a blue woolly hat and soft whorls of chinny beard.
“Your night in the tent, it was wet or dry?”
“It was half and half,” I say.
“Ruwenzori tsk,” he says. “Today, you are ready to climb; you are ready?”
“Yes,” I say, “I am ready.”
I pay the fees for entry to the National Park and fees for a guide and two porters. He gives me a receipt and a disclaimer to sign. Then he slides a large book across the counter.
Mountain Climbers Log.
Makes me smile.
Nationality: British.
Next of kin: I write Danny Fish and make up a phone number.
Duration:
In the logbook the prewritten dates have dashes beside them, where nobody has gone up for weeks, except: Robertson, UK, who went up three days ago. I see what they mean by duration, intended days in the mountains. Three. He takes my surplus stuff to the storeroom and comes back.
The white rabbit strikes a match for me to puff the ciggi light.
“Minds me of a vamp,” I says.
They both look sactly same, total stonished.
“Vamp?” they says together.
I hold the ciggi with long stiff fingers and get balanced careful on the slope.
“Now you,” I says to the white rabbit. “You has to say: puff-puff-puff, only when I nod my head.”
“Puff. Puff. Puff?”
“No. Quicker—puff-puff-puff.”
“Puff-puff-puff.”
“Uh-huh. And you,” I says to the man with the top hat. “You has to say: smoke-smoke-smoke.”
“Smoke-smoke-smoke.”
“Puff-puff-puff.”
“Now I’m a girl with a heart of gold and the ways of a lady so I been told, the kind of a gal,” I says, “that wouldn’t even harm a flea.”
They is stonished. Stonishes me.
“But just you wait til I get the guy who vented the cigarette, I’ll shoot that son of a hick—believe you me.”
They believe me. I nods my head.
“Puff-puff-puff.”
“Smoke-smoke-smoke.”
“It int that I don’t smoke my self, I don’t reckon they harm your health—I’ve smoked all my life and I int dead, yet.” I does one cough for the song, lucky, gets three real ones added on. Whoops.
“Puff-puff-puff.”
“Smoke-smoke-smoke.”
Feels sudden ever so tired. Tile skids out from under my foot, skids down the roof, goes flying off the edge. We listens. Waits. Waits long time. Then hear it smash on the terrace below.
“Shush!” we all says.
“Sorry,” I says. “The velvit gentleman has done me, wobbly.”
“I’m Fiddler,” the top hat says. “This is Mick.”
“Nice to meet you,” I says. “Had best get going. Bye.”
“Don’t forget your cigarette, for later.”
“Have the packet, love,” Mick says.
“And the box of matches.”
“Thanks,” I says. “Whoops. Careful.”
I waves them from the edge with my spear. Tzzzz. Disappears down the side of the chimney.
The moon is perfect round and drumming blue, sees easy down the fire scape. I run long the black edges, East Wing and West Wing, then climb a tree, get up on the terrible palice wall. The green lamp on the velvit gentleman’s desk is shining behind the marigold glass. Hick. I drop from the palice wall and down onto the railway line. The silver tracks shine and disappear in the tunnel’s black. Listens. Booming. Around me bats is ducking and diving, I shake my spear at them and get on my toes, warms up the warrior song til good and proper int scared of nothing. Then I scream down the tunnel same as a train, running my spear long on the rail, that’s how come I know where I is but it knocks and bounces.
Flewed out of my hand.
I has to stop and get down, read with my fingers the railway stones, fat concrete slabs and the cold smooth rail. Light at the end of the tunnel is blue with the moon. Same size both ways. Has to close my eyes to listen. Ticking clock. Water dripping and trickle. Int sure now, case I turned around, don’t know which way I come in. Booming. I hear it coming, trotting light. Listens, sorts out boom from blackness and sweetness, breath warm as hay. I blow back soft and kind as can.
“Hello.” I sees tiny horseshoe shapes, trot way silver in the dark. “Don’t go.”
Listens booming. I find the knot in my red cloth and the cigarettes and matchbox. Careful, don’t drop all the matches, tries to light both ends of a dead one. Next one works. The rails curve off to a smaller tunnel blocked up with bars. Good place for staying live if a train was going to kill you. Match burns my fingers so I drop it. Light another one to find my spear, then I run on gain trusting the dark and the rail to take me out. Nobody in the station cept a lady fox, standing on the platform looks like waiting for a train.
“Toot-toot,” I says.
She’s so surprised she don’t do nothing, just watches me run past. I drum long the tracks. Then off up through a night-time woods. Owl’s woo shivers with the moon. The drumming comes so loud and so clear. I sees the signs and the tracks of heavy plants been crossing.
On top of the hill I can see it. I stalks to the edge, then sit down and look at the sky. Listens. Everything held still by the moon. I hear it first and then see it. Red light, green light, white light winking. It slopes down cross the moon. Uh-huh. I run at the fence, climb over the Keep Out sign and then skid down and down. I stop at the bottom. Look left and right and back up where I come. Listens. Long and wide and deep. I know it, I sniffs it, every stir of wind and air and sand settling down. Every hair stands up to feel in the air. Ears listen for something to get hold of. I has to stay up wind, I pick up dust and trickle it, has to know where he is. Eyes int the best thing for shadows running wild in moonlight. His feeling starts to burn on my skin and membered ice.
“Go on then,” I whisper.
No. The air is dry and warm, and the dirt, daytime sun still laid on the ground. The Sandwich Man, he int here. I shake his feeling off me, sets off running left, through sand rolled out smooth, leaves strides short but sure behind me. Sees the moon is running with me up onto purple stones, rolled out more wider than a road. Got agony from my bit-off toe, members it and starts to cry but we has to grit over it and run on with staggering stitches. I hang on to the sky, sees three stars go out and the moon turning to burn yellow. Sees the ground black and silky smooth come racing up under my feets, steaming, burning hot, leaves tracks behind in the soft tarmac. Joins up the white dotted line, pulls into the fast lane, past giraffes with wires dangling down and signs covered in plastic. I look around and up at the sky. Can hear one. Uh-huh. Comes over my head, winking, I hammer left up a slope. Airplanes is showing me the way and that’s how come I track them.
I got it now, road sign says this way Heathrow. The road is terrible, high up and bright with barriers and middle night lorries passing bedtime winders and I best had get off it. Then I’m running on a thin grass slope around the side of a concrete lake, surprises me, airport sheeps. They panic where to go with just the lake or the fence, next thing I’ve got a mile of sheeps all running long in front of me.
I got it now, all the airplanes circling around waiting for their turn to come down. Int easy to hide, with the road and the fence and full moon on the Serengeti. Every time a lorry comes I drop down flat on the grass, or blows up gainst the fence, tends I is a bit of red plastic. Gone. I has to get over the other side, can see the shapes of airplanes coming in. The fence is five times bigger than me with barb wire rolled on the top. Int easy cos it wobbles. Three lorries go past one behind the other while I wobbles about in their headlights fixed up on the barb wire. I fall down long on the other side, got holes in the middle of both hands. Hurts bad. Way from the road the world is darker. I lie down, watch for the next airplane coming. Sure thing over roofs, I jump up and head straight for it. It comes thousand miles fast, screaming down with engines and wheels, I roar and shake my spear at the driver and the wings slice over my head. Ba-boom the wheels hit the ground and I bounces up in the air. Makes me laugh. Makes me laugh so rude. Then I see all the headlights coming, fast, making stars and bouncing over the grass. Got me every way. Total blinded cept for ring-a-ring-a engines running and fumes and the big N’s of trouble knocking.
He opens the door of the jeep and I get up in the passenger seat. All the others circle around us and turn way, headlights racing outward. Man does his walkie-talkie.
“Ground Control to Air Control. All bzzz. Receiving?”
“What the bzzz is it?” walkie-talkie wants to know.
“A small African bzzz, sir, shall I take bzzz to the bzzz?”
“Take him back to fucking Africa for all I care, just get the bzzz off the runway.”
“Right.” My man turns the walkie-talkie off, shakes his head. “I’d better take you home,” he says and puts my spear careful nice tween the seats. “You’re ever so brown, been on your holidays? Somewhere hot?”
I nod my head.
“Well, you look very fetching in red; I like your beads, very nice.”
Jeep is nice, warm yellow moonshine and winders open. Stinks of gasoline and burned chocolate. Got twelve cigarettes left. I light one and blow the smoke out the winder. Cold comes out of me sudden, teefs and knees start going same as the jeep’s tappets.
“Give us one of those,” he says. Then steers the jeep with one elbow so he can scrape the match.
“Power-sisted?” I arsts.
“Light as a feather.” He does a shape of eight to prove it. Then he drives us cross and cross and cross bouncing headlights on the grass, sees a leopard’s spots. Tired, closes my eyes, turns spots into marigolds. Could lay my head down now and go to sleep behind the seat. Driving in circles, I reckon.
“There they are,” he says last, “somebody keeps moving them.”
I look at the airplane-sized gates while he gets out to open one. He has got a key for the padlock. Then he drives us out and closes it gain.
“Where are we going, where’s home?” he says.
I suck on the holes in my hands.
“Nestles Avenue,” I says.
“Just around the corner. I want you to listen carefully though.” He changes gear. “It’s not safe, running around alone at night, I wish it was but it isn’t. It’s not safe. The little girl on the telly is still missing, little Ellie Smithers. And that other older girl, what was her name, the one they didn’t have a picture of? I wouldn’t want that to happen to you. What if you disappeared? Your family would be devastated; they’d never get over it. Down here, is it?”
“Uh-huh.”
Nestles playing fields is blue-green from the yellow moon; vultures still sleep up on the rugby posts. Factory lights in stripes and lorries loading chocolate up and chimneys smoking clouds of black. Tastes same. Trees is still London plane, army bark, lighted up by lorries coming out of Nestles’ gates.
“Here,” I say.
He stops the jeep outside the Pennywells’. Houses is fast sleep and curtains closed.
“Can you get in?” he says.
I nod my head.
“Can go around the back.”
“Back to bed?”
“Uh-huh,” I says.
He passes my spear.
“Remember, serious trouble if you’re found again in the airport grounds. It’s a criminal offense.”
“Sorry,” I says.
He waits til I’m in the gate and it makes an agony squeak. I wave my spear and he drives way.
Scared, case I’m a burglar at Nanny and Grandad’s. I tiptoe the front path. Planes has blasted all the petals off all the newborn roses. I slow crunch the gravel down the alley, dragging fingers long on the pebble-dash. The side gate latch is high, Grandad done a shoelace to pull it, but it snaps cos now it’s glued with rust. Snaps til there int none left. I get my toe up in a knot-hole and climb quiet over the gate. Weeds has growed up wild through the cracks in the path. Back bedroom curtains is closed. I stand underneath. Listens if I can hear them snoring, hog-chewing. Got nerves. I light a ciggi and walk down the back path, duck under a pair of Nanny’s bloomers hanging on the line. Grass is always high and wild; Grandad int got the back to mow it. Daffodils all the way long the margins of the garden. We went to Woolworths on the bike and come back fast to plant them. Then Grandad got a good idea and we planted mirrors side the wall to get us a thousand at a glance. The daffodils is shriveled up and dried like tissue paper, under growing love-in-a-mist. Got sick feeling, sudden, case Grandad don’t know me, case he knows and don’t want me. I look at the back door. Airplane goes over the roof and I duck. I keep looking at the back door, and upstairs at the bedroom winder. Got sick sides citement, case Nanny phones the police. The back door was never good at locking. Don’t know if to go in the house, could wake them up, say “member me.” Can’t case they get scared and drop down dead with burglar fright. Magines in a minute, ting-a-ling-a-ling, Teasmade waking them up and newspapers dropping on the mat. Could wait til Grandad comes downstairs and opens the back door for light so he can shave. Stand on the path so he sees me like a morning surprise when he opens the curtains up. Might fall downstairs, if he comes too fast. I best had get a great big breath, case he squeezes it all out of me. Maybe just knock on the front door. Polite. Wishes I could run and jump and get up in the bed with them. Can’t case Nanny does a steric. Tired, does a yawn so big it nearly swallows me. Cold. I move the wheelbarrow into the first sunlight on the path, sit in it and smoke another cigarette.
Blue greenhouse looks littler, the wooden door is stiff when I pull it. Int proper. Seeds that me and Pip sowed died flowering cross the greenhouse roof. Tall coleus bent over double, dead. My writing is on the lolly sticks done with permnant ink. Everything dead. Sensitive plant turns to dust when I kiss it. Everything is dead, cept cactus. The watering can is full and the water butt outside. I has to water them careful nice, one by one from tops and saucers
“Come on,” I whispers, “come on.”
In my body everything shifts, to make room for a big new feeling, I spects I just died standing up.
“Lay down,” my grandad says, “lay down, pet.”
But my grandad, he int here. He int here. The plants gasp all at once, then an airplane comes over the house and we has to lay down case we break.
They int got bobboldy glass, don’t know if someone is coming or not. They got gnomes on their doorstep. No place like gnome.
“Hello, trouble,” Mr. Pennywell says. “Vi!” He yells up the stairs. “It’s the girl from next door.”
“Who is it?” she says. “Hold on, I’m in the airing cupboard.”
“We haven’t seen you for a while.” Mr. Pennywell says. “See you’re still doing your African thing.”
Vi has got high-heeled slippers with pink fluff and looks at me like trouble on foot. They stand in the doorway looking at me. They int sure what I want them to do case it’s complicated. They look at each other. At me. I has to make it easy for them.
“Is my grandad dead?” I arsts.
“He went with your Auntie Valerie, dear; she came and took him away after the funeral.”
“Still got her white Triumph Herald,” Mr. Pennywell says.
“We wouldn’t know, dear,” Vi says. “Bill went with Valerie.”
“I remember you,” Mr. Pennywell says, “under the bonnet, fixing it once.”
It int true, never done a Triumph Herald in my life.
“Valerie took Bill.”
“After Rose’s funeral.”
“Oh,” I says. “Thank you, I’m sorry to bother you.”
“No bother,” Mr. Pennywell says.
“Where’s your mother?” Vi says.
I fling an arm down the road, close their gate gain behind me. Left or right don’t matter cos there int nowhere to go. I get a good idea; Grandad might be at Cranford Park, still being a park keeper.
I seen every tree, seen park men marking a cricket pitch with a white-line machine, but my grandad, he int here. I get up on the roof of the public toilets and cries to sleep. When I wake up I sees a mum with kids and bikes and ice-cream cones come into the park. Little boy drops his ice cream on the path and she drags him way to leave it; when they gone I get down and eat it. I watch going-home-time traffic and night coming.
Wonder what I has to do. Could go the police station and say boo—here I is. Could go to Powys, try find Pip, but I don’t spect there’s anything to eat in Wales. Cept coal. I think about that velvit gentleman, in his marigold room. I squeeze my eyes tight closed, if I can think it hard enough can make his rocking chair rock by itself. The velvit gentleman turns around from his desk and magines me still sitting in it, rocking soft on the rug.
Act Three
There’s a dawn hush and a stirring. These people wear green and have soft edges, step in and out of the bamboos, whispering. Fifteen, twenty guides and porters have arrived, sitting around the office steps with bare feet and woolly hats and sweaters, in various states of unravel. The village is waking, rug-slapping sounds, a cockerel crows; a bell dings on a Brahmin cow. The men and boys must come here every day, hoping for climbers, hoping for work.
But it looks like it’s just me.
They’ve got some chai on the go. Soft blur of words and laughter. Ah—now that is nice. One lad is bringing the kettle over, held in the bunched-up sleeve of his cardigan.
“Mzuri.” I hold out my enamel mug. “Habari?”
He’s happy, fine; he fills the mug for me.
“You are wellacome,” he says. “Wellacome to Uganda. Wellacome to the Ruwenzoris. Wellacome to the Mountains of the Moon.”
An ancient Greek said he’d seen ice, miles high up in the sky. High as the moon. Mad as ice, thrust up from the hot jungle heart of Africa. I can’t see anything, just the yellow dawn cast like a spell and shapes of sheds in cobwebs of mist. The chai is hot, milky and sweet, very, very wellacome.
The Bajonko call the mountains the Ruwenzoris, the Rainmakers. Main reception is a shed with steps up and a boot-worn path to the counter. I pat and stroke the timber. There’s something reassuring about forest people, they build things to last. I expect the trees have taught them to take a long-term view. It’s the same man with a blue woolly hat and soft whorls of chinny beard.
“Your night in the tent, it was wet or dry?”
“It was half and half,” I say.
“Ruwenzori tsk,” he says. “Today, you are ready to climb; you are ready?”
“Yes,” I say, “I am ready.”
I pay the fees for entry to the National Park and fees for a guide and two porters. He gives me a receipt and a disclaimer to sign. Then he slides a large book across the counter.
Mountain Climbers Log.
Makes me smile.
Nationality: British.
Next of kin: I write Danny Fish and make up a phone number.
Duration:
In the logbook the prewritten dates have dashes beside them, where nobody has gone up for weeks, except: Robertson, UK, who went up three days ago. I see what they mean by duration, intended days in the mountains. Three. He takes my surplus stuff to the storeroom and comes back.
