Dexter Petley - White Lies

It was dawn when Zanna suggested we went to bed, even if I wasn’t her type. Sex was silent, in the dark made by thick drapes and blankets tacked over the windows. Next day I found the set of clothes Austen kept for his annual week in London. Thornproof suit, impeccable Crombie, shiny brogues. I put them on and wore them for weeks, riding Zanna’s black wartime bicycle about town, getting oil on the turnups. I spent her money on an Aeroflot ticket to Nairobi, then thought about what I’d say when I walked into Amolem and asked for Joy.

All Aeroflot flights went to Moscow back in those days. We landed in minus sixteen, got shunted through a terminal behind glass walls and three hundred abandoned boarding gates. Six iron-curtain travellers huddled in the distance with their brown-paper baskets and stringbags. Every gate was blocked by ground staff with guns, boy recruits in military serge, the icy stare of cold raw shaves.

Our passports were taken and replaced by flimsy red cards. We wouldn’t be flying on to Nairobi that day and they didn’t know when. No plane, bad weather.

The clapped-out airport bus smoked like a burning tyre. It was a mobile coldstore and the driver wore white wellingtons. Hotel reception was like check-in at the morgue. We were all Nairobi bound, all frozen stiff and starting to notice each other for the first time, the pack shuffling into suits. The men had no hand luggage, just the clothes on their backs and the duty-free. The women were mostly mothers with babies, bundles of plastic bags and nappies. The husbands swapped business cards. They all had import/export shops but business was only so-so, which was why we were all flying the cheapest airline in the world.

—This is my Mombasa number …

—This is my Bombay address …

The English lads were bragging.

—Nah, bit of Swahili and they drop at your feet. All you have to say is hapana mzuri and you get the lot for nothing …

No one edged my way till I was at the desk. It was clear I had to share a room with the bloke behind me.

—I’m Frogget, he said.

—I don’t really want to share, I said.

—No trouble. Fuckin shoot through, I will.

He swung a key fob the size of a wooden tennis ball.

—Stops yer puttin it in yer fuckin mouth, dunnit.

He tried it in the lock, upside down. He reeked of Gatwick bars and two-dollar vodkas on the Tupolev over.

—I’ll kick the fuckin door in if this key don’t fit. It’s the way I like to do things, you know, no nonsense, drive it out. That’s me. Drive it right out I do.

He threw open the door and swung his plastic bag with the 200 Marlboro on to the first bed and walked straight back out to find the bar. The room was two beds wide, the big triple-glazed window was a glass sandwich and wouldn’t close. Net curtains swayed more from heavy filth than wind. Beyond the steps below, there was a perfect surface of untrodden snow. Pine trees lined the road a hundred yards away. Cement trucks and heavy tippers drove by in the dusk which fell like bonfire smoke. The air was pitted with diesel fume and sludge and the airport was lit up by yellow-fever floods. Against the snow a soldier, a gun and a dog.

I fell asleep and woke with a stiff neck from the sub-zero draft to find Frogget rummaging in his carrier bag.

—Run out of fags didn I. Aint you avin tea?

—Where?

—Downstairs, in that canteen.

Frogget tore the wrapping off his box and threw it on the bed, lit one up and left in a puff of smoke. I took the lift downstairs to the canteen and sat on my own in one corner, scratching my dry hair and smoking on a parched throat. A few curled slices of black bread see-sawed on the tablecloth if I touched it. The mothers crowded at the kitchen door for warm baby milk, the men laughed in the bar and the canteen was silent. A Russian waitress brought a plate to my table, picked up the bread, put it on the new plate and brushed crumbs on to the floor.

—Ticket, she said.

—What ticket?

—Meal ticket.

—I haven’t got one.

—Reception.

She took the bread away so I walked down the marble stairs to reception. A soldier opened the outer door and snow blew in. He brushed it off his greatcoat, stamped his boots and lit up a cigarette. I got the meal ticket and went back to the canteen and the waitress by the tea urn said:

—Sit over there, with your friends.

I joined the only two I recognised from the flight.

—You come for the shit sandwiches? I’m Ray, he’s Steve, pleased to meet you.

—Norman, I said.

—How far you going Norman?

—Nairobi.

—What takes you to Kenya then?

—Just a visit, I said. What takes you, Ray?

Frogget came out of the toilet and slammed his beer bottle down, spilling it on his fags and barging in on the conversation.

—Me? he said. You talking about me? I’ve bin out there a coupla times. Livin on the beaches with them lads that rip off tourists, you know, girls and all. I got a few down there, Malindi, Lamu. You just ask fer me in a bar. Say mzungu Frogget and make like you mean I drink a lot. I tell yer, when I’m down there I drink till I don’t know where the next one’s comin from. Couple o’months an I’ll be back ‘ome but not before I’ve whacked it in. Coke, smack, speed, White Cap, Tusker, anything yer like, me. Yeah, smack it up I do.

Ray leaned forward and said:

—You ever chewed that root?

— Mirrah , you mean?

—Yeah, that’s the stuff. Acid and mirrah . Couldn’ ‘andle that could they, them natives?

Frogget looked at Steve.

—Well Steve, he said. What you up to?

—Yeah Steve, Ray said. What turns you cuckoo?

Steve was still silent, turning a Rothman’s packet in his hands, lifting the flap, closing it, putting the packet down. He scratched his leg and sighed before biting his lip.

—Yeah, well, I dunno do I.

—Ah come on Steve, fuck me. You aint goin out there to Kenya to buy a fuckin ice cream, China, I know.

—Well, Steve said, to see what’s there I suppose. You know, this and that, here and there.

Ray slapped him on the back and said:

—Well that’s about all anyone can do isn’t it? That’s what I’m going for and I’ve seen it all before. He’ll get a girl. He’ll be alright.

I got up and walked off thinking what was so different about me? I was looking for a woman too wasn’t I?

Next day the bus took us out to the airport at twenty to midnight, bouncing across the frozen ruts. We were put back in the deserted glass corridors, let loose and ignored. Frogget and Ray were in a bar and Ray was beginning to stagger and sing Polish drinking songs, encouraged by the barmaids with their two-dollar vodkas. Steve was glassy-eyed and wanted to ask me something:

—D’yer reckon I could get to South Africa like, overland?

—Nah, Ray says. No one can. Not even him.

He pointed to an African at the other end of the bar then swayed towards him.

—You won’t even get out of Nairobi. Boukrah . That’s all they ever bleedin say there, boukrah . Tomorrow, always bleedin tomorrow. Isn’t that right friend?

Ray put his arm round the African’s neck and the African pushed it off.

—I’m not your friend. I don’t even know who you are.

—All Africans are my friends. You’re an African, all Africans are my friends, so you’re my friend because you need me.

—I don’t need you man.

—Yes you do, you need me to look after you. All Africans need me to look after them. I’m the white man and I say jambo bwana to the black man. I want you to love me.

He reeled against the wall, bounced off and fell against the African.

—I don’t want you to love me, white man. Get your hands off. Don’t touch me.