Maggie Gee: My Cleaner

The sun is shining on Uganda. Today is Mary Tendo’s birthday.

The sun is shining on fields of white sheets in the hotel linen-store Mary keeps. Soon she will walk to the Post Office and find a letter that will change her life.

“Isent a letter to my cleaner—”

In London, it is warm and grey, already warm at nine am, though tomorrow it will be cold again. Most of the summer has been rather chilly, which gives the British a lot to talk about. They creep closer to each other under veils of cloud.

It is three hours earlier than in Kampala. Vanessa Henman has been up for half an hour and is feeling brisk and pleased with herself. She is on the phone to her best friend, Fifi.

“—Oh, you’re just eating your breakfast, I see. As usual, I’ve been up for absolutely hours. So anyway, today I’m feeling more hopeful. Last week I sent a letter to my cleaner — you won’t remember her — my former cleaner — Yes, black. Yes, young. Well Justin adored her. She went back to Africa years ago. I’ve asked her to come back and help with him. No I didn’t see her when I went to Kampala, of course I didn’t, I was terribly busy, to be frank it was all rather high-powered, embassy parties and what-have-you. No, writing the letter was Justin’s idea. He says I never listen to him, so I thought if I wrote — Yes, exactly. But who knows if we’ll hear from her?”

A slight noise behind her makes Vanessa look up. She shrieks, loudly, and almost drops the phone. A tall young man is standing in the doorway, long and white and soft and naked, with a string of amber beads round his neck. As she screams, he covers his cock with his hand. “What’s the matter, Mother?” he asks, irritably.

In her ear, a tiny voice is worrying: “What on earth’s the matter? Are you all right, Ness?”

“It’s Justin. I didn’t expect to see him up. Justin, why are you up at this time? I’d better go. Kissy kissy, Fifi.”

She puts the phone down and glares at him accusingly. How long has her son been listening?

“You ought to be pleased that I am up.” His flesh has a greyish, unlit look. The lines of the muscles have lost definition, she thinks, anxiously assessing.

“I am pleased darling but you gave me a shock. I was just telling Fifi that I’d written to Mary.”

“It’s the fourth of July. It’s Mary’s birthday.” He suddenly smiles a radiant smile, and colour returns to his big, loose mouth, and his cheeks lift, and he is very handsome; but his pointless happiness enrages Vanessa.

“How can you possibly remember?” Suddenly he irritates her beyond bearing, his great pale nakedness, his soft sulky voice, his haywire corona of uncut yellow curls, the fact he is here in her study in the morning when normally he sleeps until four pm, his ridiculous pretence of remembering Mary’s birthday—

When only a few weeks ago, he forgot his mother’s.

She sits and stares at him, vibrating faintly, wondering if he is really her son.

He turns and leaves with a sudden turn of speed, his eyes on the floor, his arms clasping his torso, his cock swinging round and semi-unfurling like a big soft lily in a nest of golden filaments, then stubs his toe on a pile of books, and hops on, swearing as offensively as possible, the orange beads bouncing below his collar-bones, hard on the softness of his flesh.

His mother watches him go, despairing. He will not get up for the rest of the day.

Vanessa stares at her crowded desk. The in-tray is layered like puff-pastry, collapsing, sliding at both sides. An old·fashioned birthday card sits by the desklight, with sugary roses and a scattering of glitter. It gives her a strange feeling, this birthday card. It was sent from the village where she was born, which she’s hardly revisited since she left home. Vanessa is proud to be a Londoner, a sophisticate, a creature of the city. And yet her village is still out there, somewhere. Somewhere down motorways and dim summer lanes. The card makes her feel guilty, but also happy, because the link is not quite broken. But the card is hideously ugly. Vanessa sighs, and shoves it out of sight.

(But two days later, she will write a letter to the cousin she has not seen since girlhood.)

Outside her study window the sky is low and lidded. Vanessa Henman frowns at the clouds.

She thinks, I need light. I am a creature of light. The sun must be shining on Africa.

One year ago, I was in Kampala.

Mary Tendo

Today is my birthday. It is a great day. The sun is shining on Kampala.

Thank God for my birthday. “It’s Mary’s birthday.” Little Benedicta, the third room-maid, who wants to please me, told the porter, who helped me to the lift with my bag, which was heavy because it held the Memory Books I am printing out for my friend in NACWOLA. They will go up country, for the women with AIDS. The porter doesn’t realise that I’m used to carrying, because in England I worked like a dog. I have strong muscles underneath my pink blouse. But I smile sweetly and let him help me.

Here I am important, the Linen Store Keeper. It is a good job, only just below the House Keeper. Perhaps as a graduate I might have done better, but everything doesn’t go to plan. The years of wandering, years I lost, times that I don’t need to think about, for I have done well, I have found my place. I wear a smart suit, and the thin gold chain that Omar gave me when I was his wife.

It must have been a good day for my parents, thirty-eight years ago, back in our village. I wish they were here to be glad with me. Though we did not count the days, in the village. There were no dates, there was no diary. I was the child who came with the harvest. Later we had to fill in a form, and that was when they invented my birthday. In Britain, my birthday became real. My Omar gave me a birthday card. And every year Justin drew me a picture — Miss Henman’s boy, like my second son. That little, white-haired, white-skinned boy. And my real son, Jamie, covered me with kisses. My English birthdays made me happy.

In this country we have learned to be happy when we are not frightened of a revolution. Maybe people in the government are lining their pockets, but politicians always line their pockets. At least now the army is under control. Later this year there is another election and maybe we’ll have to be frightened again, and rush like crazies to hoard tins and packets, and wait for rumours, like we did the last time—

But everything is better than it was when I was little. The butchery and terror of Amin, Obote. So we live for today. Live in the day. There are things we have lost, things we have suffered, but now, today, there is a ring of sunlight. We’re a long time dead, so let us be happy!

In the village it seemed we were always happy, despite the gunfire we heard at night, despite the killings not far away. The laughter still flies like birds in my ribcage. My days, my days. They are all still with me. The riches that my birthday brings me.

Jamie, Jamil. My beloved son.

Today I received a letter from England. A letter from UK, and my heart started drumming. Maybe Jamie had managed to get to London.

I walked to the posta in my lunch break. Occasionally Omar still sends me letters, and other friends from other countries, and I tell them to write to my PO Box (although it is a nuisance when I forget my key) because in the hotel trade nothing is certain. I like to think I could resign tomorrow, then no one has any power over me. Sometimes I threaten to leave, and they raise my wages, though actually I like my job, and for the moment I mean to stay.