As she approached the roundabout she prayed that a white man should stop his car and hail her. She would not hesitate to enter the very first car that whistled at her. She walked, dancing her hips, flexing her breasts. And whenever she heard an engine sound and saw the approaching beams of light, she deliberately crossed the road, turning her smile into the headlights and crying: ‘Leeft!’ The exercise liberated something in her. The blue mood lifted. She thought of Freddie at the airport on his way to England. How revealing it would be if she went there – uninvited – and found Nancy Oll in tears, and Mama Nancy, and Freddie’s ‘good friend’ who had planned the trick of catching her on the ‘beat’.
She would go; and she would go, dressed to kill. Another car was approaching. She crossed the road, smiling and crying: ‘Leeft! …’ But the car accelerated, and Jag
ua melted back into the hedgerow.
10
Jagua had been standing at the bus stop for over thirty minutes, and no bus passed her way. She saw a lone man snorting along in a Pontiac and waved. The big red lights glowed in the tail. At the wheel was a man whom she had often seen at the Tropicana. She knew he was some kind of Party Agent, but little else.
‘You wan’ leeft?’
‘I goin’ to de airport. Ah don’ know whedder you kin—’
He held the door open for her. ‘I know you’re Jagwa. You may not know me, I’m Taiwo, Secretary of OP 2. But they use’ to call me Uncle Taiwo.’ He roared with laughter and said, ‘Jump in!’
‘Tenk you, sah.’ The seat enveloped her in comfort.
He drove very fast because the night was coming and the airport was some twenty miles off. By the time they got there a belt of blue smoke was creeping down from the mountains. Jagua knew that soon it would smother up the planes and darken the faces of the petrol boys.
Uncle Taiwo parked the Pontiac under the mango trees. There were already over three hundred cars parked in rows, from little two-seaters to the eight-seater limousines used by Party People like Uncle Taiwo.
Jagua was wearing a very tight skirt and when she got out a group of jobless boys whistled. Some shouted, ‘Jagwa! …’
She pretended not to notice, though inwardly she felt pleased. She knew there was nothing very Jagwa about her bright printed cotton blouse, although her breasts were almost half exposed. She was very conscious of them. She always wore blouses which showed the skin above her breasts and on her arms and shoulders because she knew her best points. Her skirt was split half way up the left thigh, so that when she walked, much of her leg showed. She had taken care to sweep back her hair and knot it at the nape of the neck. This ‘hair’ cost her 30s. at the Department Store.
Uncle Taiwo locked the car and came after her. She wiggled her hips as befitted a woman walking side by side with the Party Secretary of OP2. That pleased the boys and they yelled: ‘Jagwa! …’ more loudly than before. Uncle Taiwo said something to them under his breath and waved them off, but Jagua guessed he was flattered. Jagua no longer thought of her ability to tense her hips independently as she walked. High heels and tight skirts tended to emphasise her efforts, but even when she was wearing Accra – that is the cloth tied sarong-wise – men would feel the woman inside as she walked past.
This occasion, she felt, was not the right one for hooking men. Freddie was leaving for U.K. and the airport was humming and her ears were full of aeroplane sounds and goodbye chatter. She walked towards the passengers with Uncle Taiwo beside her. Names were being announced on the microphone all the time, but none of them seemed to concern Freddie Namme.
Then she saw him, already dressed in an English wool suit. He had become an ‘Englander’. At the Tropicana they had warned Jagua: ‘You takin’ big risk by lettin’ Freddie go. He goin’ to U.K. to forget you. Soon as he reach Englan’ he goin’ to see all de white gals, and he’ll hook dem and come home wit’ one. So what you goin’ to do? Eh, Jagua? When Freddie go an’ return wit’ one of dem white women, what you goin’ to do? I think you jus’ wastin’ de money you kin put in trading business, Jag!’
She could not be sure now that Freddie would want to speak to her after their violent quarrel and his flight; but she walked up to him where he stood, coat in hand.
She said to him, ‘Freddie, kin I speak wit’ you?’
He came away with her to a part of the lounge while Uncle Taiwo and his friends walked towards the freight forwarding shed.
‘Freddie, why you eye look so distant from me? Because you goin’ now on scholarship?’
‘Who tell you dat?’
‘I hear say you win scholarship, and—’
‘Nonsense!’ His eyes flashed. ‘Dese Lagos people!’
Freddie told her how he had managed to recover his passport after endless visits to the Immigration, and how his father had sent him a small sum – barely enough to pay his passage and to look after him for a few weeks. His father was in the middle of a Chieftaincy dispute and he was surprised that he had been able to do so much. Freddie said he was not going to England to live like an aristocrat. He was going with a purpose: to suffer and to achieve, to grow into a man.
There was no time to ask him now how he finally managed to obtain his passport, and what would become of all the money she had advanced him. At that particular moment the subject appeared to her out of place. Uncle Taiwo came up then, flamboyant in his velvet fez, jingling the keys of his Pontiac. Freddie smiled at him and he smiled back.
‘You got fine weather for flyin’,’ he said.
‘Yes, the weather’s fine. Not too hot, not too cool. Is always good to cross the Sahara in the night. No bumpin’.’
‘How long you goin’ to be?’
‘’Bout’ two years,’ Freddie said. ‘I’m goin’ to study law. I suppose Jagua already tol’ you. I already done the Intermediate.’
Uncle Taiwo’s eyes twinkled. ‘An’ you leavin’ dis beautiful lady behind?’ He glanced at Jagua and roared with laughter.