Maggie Gee - My Cleaner

And then I think about Trevor and Justin. “ Zakira , I can find someone to help you, who will mend your tap, and the pipe under your sink.”

“Thanks, but at the moment I can’t afford it. It is a hundred pounds to get a plumber.”

“These men are my friends. They will be your friends too.” I am so excited that I can’t wait to call them, and Trevor’s card is in my handbag.

But Trevor is booked for the next three months. “I’m a popular chap. You wouldn’t believe it. All over London, they’re crying out for me. No one can mend their own things any more.” But when I explain it is a friend of mine and Justin’s, he promises to try and do it sooner.

“And Mr Justin must come as well.”

“Well, maybe. He doesn’t help every day.”

“Because it is his friend, it will be good for him,” I say, as strictly as I can.

“If you say so, Mary. Catch you later.”

As I walk home, the sun comes out. Together, Zakira and I are stronger. Suddenly the bare trees are very pretty, like the fine black lace I saw in the market. We do not make lace in Africa. I don’t feel so cold with the sun shining.

I realise I have forgotten my shopping, but it doesn’t matter, it never matters, I will not think about it, not think. Because I must get on with my life.

And so I must make friends with the Henman. I do not mind if I have to say sorry. Pretend to be humble, as she would wish. The woman is wrong about everything, and yet it is true that smoking is not healthy. Perhaps that is why I am out of breath.

Still, I stop at the Henman’s newsagent — the owner, Dinesh, likes talking to me; he left Uganda when he was twelve, when Idi Amin sent the Asians away, and perhaps he misses Kampala, like me — and buy cigarettes with the Henman’s money.

Vanessa Henman

That African sweetness I had almost forgotten. Like the children who ran along the side of the road when we drove in our jeep towards the west of Uganda, yelling, “Good morning, tnuzungul How are you?”, and smiling, though I would never see them again, their voices like bells, and those huge white smiles, even when the driver was grumpy with them, pretending that they were after my money. I know that it was just their innate good nature. You would never see that with English children. Africans smile so much more than we do.

And Mary Tendo is pure African. I am ashamed of myself for forgetting, and getting such small things out of proportion.

She came to see me with her head bowed, looking not so very different from the shy young woman who answered my advert in the newsagent, sixteen or seventeen years ago, though this time she didn’t call me Madam! But she said ‘Miss Henman’, and was very polite.

She admitted she was in the wrong. She said she knew smoking was bad for her, and I said, “Of course everyone smokes in Uganda,” and she looked puzzled, but said, “Yes, I am sorry.”

“You see, I do worry about Tigger. He isn’t as young as he was, you know.”

“Yes, he is not as young as before. I am very sorry about Mr Trevor.” Her mouth was twitching, and just for a second I thought she was making fun of me, but then I realised she must be upset.

“Never mind, Mary. It is OK…and Justin is really too young to have started.”

“He is too young, and Mr Trevor too old. Yes, they should not smoke, it is true.”

I felt rather silly, when she put it like that, but Mary was a mother, she understood.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want Jamil to smoke. Honestly, Mary, it’s very dangerous.”

And then Mary nodded, submissively, and said, with passion, “They must not do it.”

And so I said, “Mary, let’s forget all about it.”

Because that is the only grown-up way, and someone in the house has to be a grown-up.

“Forget all about it, please, Miss Henman. I want us to be like a family.”

“Of course, Mary. We can be like sisters.”

Though obviously I would be the older sister. I felt more touched than I would have expected. I wondered if this was the moment to hug her.

“Vanessa,” she said, with that quick shift of attention that characterised Mary Tendo’s conversation, “what are those papers on the table?”

“Oh, just work from my Life Writing students,” I said. I did not imagine she’d be interested. She waited, and then said, “That is interesting.”

“I like to help our students get published. I am sending these extracts to an agent. Quite a famous one, in fact. One of the best. She will come to visit the class after Christmas.”

(Of course I did not tell her my little secret. I’ve decided to enclose a few pages of my own, from the thing I was writing about leaving my village. With a pseudonym, naturally, Emily Self. I thought the name was rather clever.)

“That is interesting. You are very helpful,” she said. Her eyes were very big and very bright.

“Oh well. I mean, it’s a lottery. I just have to pray that the good ones get noticed.” Emily Self, I thought, for instance.

“Next week let us all go to church together,” she volunteered, with her wonderful smile, her teeth like bright ivory, her gums deep pink. “Then we can pray together about the agent.”

She had said this before, and I’d turned her down, but now seemed exactly the moment for bonding. And, certainly, praying hard about the agent! After all, it was a very sweet offer. Although I am not formally religious, I do have a sense of spiritual beauty. And, though one feels shy of saying so, love. Even if one’s behaviour sometimes falls short. “Yes, Mary. Why not. You and I will go together.”

“And Justin as well. And Mr Trevor.”

“Oh well, I don’t know about them, Mary. But thank you very much for asking me.”

I wanted to reciprocate in some way. With her very recent raise, it couldn’t be money. So I found myself saying, “There’s something else. I would like to invite you to come with me to my village. I come from a village, you know, as you do.”

It is one of the things I know about Uganda. I talked to the people at the embassy, and they said, “Remember, when you meet Kampalans, the important thing for all of them is the village. Even though they are city-dwellers, they all belong, at heart, to a village.” I suppose it is where she spends her weekends, but I was too busy to go and see one. Perhaps one day I will go back to Uganda, and Mary will take me to her village.

“Yes, Miss Henman. We shall go to the village.” And that was the moment, and I gave her a hug. She was shy and hung back, quite stiff in my arms, but I hugged her harder to show that I meant it, and somehow we bumped our heads together. “Sorry, Mary.”

“OK, Henman,” I thought I heard, but then she added “ Vanessa ”. She did seem to smell very faintly of tobacco, but cigarettes cling through several washes.

Vanessa is putting things in her diary. It is covered all over with birds’ feet of writing, scratchy and criss-crossed, a busy woman’s diary. In fact, there is hardly any white space. The only blank page is in ‘Reading Week’, when the students at her college have a mid-term break to try and read around their subjects. Into that week she might fit some writing, but she quickly inks something over it. It coincides with the party in the village, when she wants to go and stay with her cousin: perfect. Her pen pecks hard at the empty space. If she goes for three days, there will be four days left. She rings up Fifi and agrees to go to Paris, and then she scratches over the last bit of whiteness, cross-hatching it with Eurostar times and places, and then she thinks briefly about her writing, and the pleasure in her busy-ness is tinged with guilt. Perhaps she will take her laptop to France.