With due respect they gave him a seat in an isolated corner, and as he sat down, Sango saw his face: ‘Grunnings!’
A steward came towards him and took his order. When he returned with the drinks and cigarettes, Grunnings pointed at the dance floor. The steward nodded; then went over to a tall girl in red jeans and scarlet lipstick that contrasted rudely with her chocolate skin. He whispered in her ear. Some moments later, she was sitting opposite Grunnings and smoking his cigarettes.
She was such a contrast to the elegant Beatrice the First that Sango could not disguise his shock. What had become of Grunnings’s taste? Had his desire for a bed-partner driven him to the lowest sex-market?
When Grunnings left, Sango learnt that he had come here in search of Beatrice the First. The girl in the red jeans said: ‘Why he come ask me? I be sister of the girl? Me don’ know where she stay!’
Sango was touched. Grunnings had actually loved Beatrice the First – more than she knew or cared. His playing acquired a plaintive note, and before dawn he was too exhausted to do more than drag himself into bed. Over and over again, he thanked his stars that in this city he had a friend like First Trumpet. But for him, life as it now was would have been unbearable.
15
The railway platform was crowded with Muslims in robes and turbans who had come to welcome a pilgrim from Mecca. Sango strolled among them, but soon found a remote seat and brought out the telegram. He read it again:
A RELAPSE: COMING TO CITY FOR OPERATION.
It was from his mother and he was afraid this time. When the train arrived, Sango was admitted into the special compartment where she lay. Blue-grey light filtered into the air-conditioned cell, and as the door shut behind him the yelling, chattering and sobbing from the platform was switched out with a click.
‘My son,’ she murmured.
She was very thin, but her skin was well preserved. In her face Sango could see a gentle rebuke in the helpless expression that suffering had given it. He was stimulated tenderly. He realized suddenly the deep bond that existed between him and her; and through her the customs that were of the older generation – like his having to marry Elina. All this flashed through his mind in one revealing moment as he gazed calmly on her face.
‘You are well and strong?’
‘Yes, mother.’
It was all that concerned her. So long as he was well and strong, there was hope. He felt that hope surged through him. His troubles paled before her presence.
‘Elina and her mother came with me. Have you seen them? They are in the third class.’
This was awkward. It meant that his mother was tired of talk and had brought the girl with her to make sure that her son was now safely out of danger from the women of the city.
The stretcher-bearers did not leave them much longer. With care they took her out of the carriage and into the ambulance that waited outside the station. Sango caught a bus to the General Hospital to make sure how she was looked after and how things were fixed for the next few days. A nurse told him he could not go in, but he was satisfied that she was in C.6 and that her bed was screened away from curious eyes.
In the corridor he bumped into a fair-skinned girl chaperoned by an elderly woman.
‘I’m Elina!’
‘You!’ She had grown from the
scraggy, timid girl he had seen in the Eastern Greens into a kind of ‘poster’ girl. No one advertising the Girl Guide Movement or the Women’s this or that service could afford to overlook her. She had an air of calm response and confidence that put one at ease.
Sango explained how it was that he could not take them to his home. They were not used to hotels and restaurants either, and were frightened of the idea of going to eat and talk in public. Finally Sango suggested a seat by the lagoon; they could at least watch the canoes and the ocean liners moving about. At least for people who had been inland all the time the sea had its fascination.
They sat long on those benches talking, and eventually someone mentioned the dreaded word ‘marriage’. Sango looked up sharply and said he was not planning to marry for the next ten years. There was something about Elina which made him feel she just did not ‘belong’.
‘Elina can go into the convent,’ Sango said. ‘The convent in this city is good enough and she’ll learn quite a bit.’
She shook her head. ‘Elina is going nowhere. She’ll look after me and that’s enough. I do not intend to let her out of my sight in this city!’
‘I could stay here for ever watching the lagoon!’ Elina said, and her mother looked at Sango triumphantly. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ her eyes seemed to say. ‘This city is no good for a girl so young – unless, of course, she has a husband!’
He saw them home. They had arranged to stay with a relation till Sango’s mother got well, and they would go back to the Eastern Greens. Their relation turned out to be a clerk in the Survey Department. With a wife and child he occupied two spacious rooms with a kitchen at the back. The quarters were clean and well planned for clerks in the civil service, but the occupants complained of being remote from the centre of things.
When Sango left them he went immediately to search for Beatrice the Second.
•
The junction of Jide and Molomo Streets was perhaps the most central spot in the whole city. Someone had once said that if you remained long enough in the barber’s shop, you were bound to see the people who mattered in the city. On this morning, Sango sat down and revolved the chair so that he had eyes on the street. It was a dull morning, threatening, but never seeming to rain. The sun was invisible, but the air was cool and crisp without being sticky.