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He knew he was running away from a house that had pictures of long-dead people on the walls breathing down on him. But he didn’t know what he was running towards. Did children ever think about that?
‘Maybe I was running to Molly. I don’t know.’
‘I knew what I wanted to run to. But it didn’t exist, so I didn’t leave,’ Kainene said, leaning back on her seat.
‘How so?’
She lit a cigarette, as if she had not heard his question. Her silences left him feeling helpless and eager to win back her attention. He wanted to tell her about the roped pot. He was not sure where he first read about Igbo-Ukwu art, about the native man who was digging a well and discovered the bronze castings that may well be the first in Africa, dating back to the ninth century. But it was in Colonies Magazine that he saw the photos. The roped pot stood out immediately; he ran a finger over the picture and ached to touch the delicately cast metal itself. He wanted to try explaining how deeply stirred he had been by the pot but decided not to. He would give it time. He felt strangely comforted by this thought because he realized that what he wanted most of all, with her, was time.
‘Did you come to Nigeria to run away from something?’ she asked finally.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve always been a loner and I’ve always wanted to see Africa, so I took leave from my humble newspaper job and a generous loan from my aunt and here I am.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought you to be a loner.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re handsome. Beautiful people are not usually loners.’ She said it flatly, as if it were not a compliment, and so he hoped she did not notice that he blushed.
‘Well, I am,’ he said; he could think of nothing else to say. ‘I’ve always been.’
‘A loner and a modern-day explorer of the Dark Continent,’ she said dryly.
He laughed. The sound spilt out of him, uncontrolled, and he looked down at the clear, blue pool and thought, blithely, that perhaps that shade of blue was also the colour of hope.
They met the next day for lunch, and the day after. Each time, she led the way to the suite and they sat on the terrace and ate rice and drank cold beer. She touched her glass rim with the tip of her tongue before she sipped. It aroused him, that brief glimpse of pink tongue, more so because she didn’t seem conscious of it. Her silences were brooding, insular, and yet he felt a connection to her. Perhaps it was because she was distant and withdrawn. He found himself talking in a way he usually didn’t, and when their time ended and she got up, often to join her father at a meeting, he felt his feet thicken with curdled blood. He did not want to leave, could not bear the thought of going back to sit in Susan’s study and type and wait for Susan’s subdued knocks. He did not understand why Susan suspected nothing, why she could not simply look at him and tell how different he felt, why she did not even notice that he splashed on more aftershave now. He had not been unfaithful to her, of course, but fidelity could not just be about sex. His laughing with Kainene, telling Kainene about Aunt Elizabeth, watching Kainene smoke, surely had to be infidelities; they felt so. His quickened heartbeat when Kainene kissed him goodbye was an infidelity. Her hand clasped in his on the table was an infidelity. And so the day Kainene did not give him the usual goodbye kiss and instead pressed her mouth to his, lips parted, he was surprised. He had not permitted himself to hope for too much. Perhaps it was why an erection eluded him: the gelding mix of surprise and desire. They undressed quickly. His naked body was pressed to hers and yet he was limp. He explored the angles of her collarbones and her hips, all the time willing his body and his mind to work better together, willing his desire to bypass his anxiety. But he did not become hard. He could feel the flaccid weight between his legs.
She sat up in bed and lit a cigarette.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and when she shrugged and said nothing, he wished he had not apologized. There was something dismal in the luxurious overfurnished suite, as he pulled on trousers that might just as well have stayed on and she hooked her bra. He wished she would say something.
‘Shall we meet tomorrow?’ he asked.
She blew the smoke through her nose and, watching it disappear in the air, asked, ‘This is crude, isn’t it?’
‘Shall we meet tomorrow?’ he asked again.
‘I’m going to Port Harcourt with my father to meet some oil people,’ she said. ‘But I’ll be back after noon on Wednesday. We could have a late lunch.’
‘Yes, let’s,’ Richard said, and until she met him in the hotel lobby, days later, he worried that she would not come. They had lunch and watched the swimmers below.
She was a little more animated, smoked more, spoke more. She told him about the people she had met since she began to work with her father, how they were all the same. ‘The new Nigerian upper class is a collection of illiterates who read nothing and eat food they dislike at overpriced Lebanese restaurants and have social conversations around one subject: ‘How’s the new car behaving?” Once, she laughed. Once, she held his hand. But she did not ask him into the suite and he wondered if she wanted to give it time or if she had decided that it was not the sort of relationship she wanted with him after all.
He could not bring himself to act. Days passed before she finally asked if he wanted to go inside, and he felt like an understudy who hoped the actor would not show up and then, when the actor finally did fail to come, became crippled by awkwardness, not quite as ready as he had thought he was for the stage lights. She led the way inside. When he began to pull her dress up above her thighs, she pushed him away calmly, as if she knew his frenzy was simply armour for his fear. She hung her dress over the chair. He was so terrified of failing her again that seeing himself erect made him deliriously grateful, so grateful that he was only just inside her before he felt that involuntary tremble that he could not stop. They lay there, he on top of her, for a while, and then he rolled off. He wanted to tell her that this had never happened to him before. His sex life with Susan was satisfactory, though perfunctory.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
She lit a cigarette, watching him. ‘Would you like to come to dinner tonight? My parents have invited a few people.’
For a moment, he was taken aback. Then he said, ‘Yes, I’d love to.’ He hoped the invitation meant something, reflected a change in her perception of the relationship. But when he arrived at her parents’ house in Ikoyi, she introduced him by saying, ‘This is Richard Churchill,’ and then stopped with a pause that felt like a deliberate dare to her parents and the other guests to think what they would. Her father looked him over and asked what he did.
‘I’m a writer,’ he said.
‘A writer? I see,’ Chief Ozobia said.
Richard wished he hadn’t said he was a writer and so he added, as if to make up for saying he was a writer, ‘I’m fascinated by the discoveries at Igbo-Ukwu. The bronze castings.’
‘Hmm,’ Chief Ozobia murmured. ‘Do you have any family doing business in Nigeria?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
Chief Ozobia smiled and looked away. He didn’t say very much else to Richard for the rest of the evening. Neither did Mrs Ozobia, who followed her husband around, her manner regal, her beauty more intimidating close up. Olanna was different. Her smile was guarded when Kainene introduced them, but as they talked, she became warmer and he wondered if the flicker in her eyes was pity, if she could tell how keen he was to say the right things and yet didn’t know what those right things were. Her warmth flattered him.
He felt strangely bereft when she sat far from him at the table. The salad had just been served when she began to discuss politics with a guest. Richard knew it was about the need for Nigeria to become a republic and stop claiming Queen Elizabeth as head of state, but he did not pay close attention until she turned to him and asked, ‘Don’t you agree, Richard?’ as if his opinion mattered.
He