Page 24

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again.

His father’s voice would always deepen at the phrase blue remembered hills, and when they left his room, and for the weeks afterward when they would be away, he would look out of his window and watch the far-off hills take on a blue tinge.

Richard was bewildered by Kainene’s busy life. Seeing her in Lagos, in brief meetings at the hotel, he had not realized that hers was a life that ran fully and would run fully even if he was not in it. It was strangely disturbing to think that he was not the only occupant of her world, but stranger still was how her routines were already in place, after only a few weeks in Port Harcourt. Her work came first; she was determined to make her father’s factories grow, to do better than he had done. In the evenings, visitors—company people negotiating deals, government people negotiating bribes, factory people negotiating jobs—dropped by, parking their cars near the entrance to the orchard. Kainene always made sure they didn’t stay long, and she didn’t ask him to meet them because she said they would bore him, so he stayed upstairs reading or scribbling until they left. Often, he would try to keep his mind from worrying about failing Kainene that night; his body was still so unreliable and he had discovered that thinking about failure made it more likely to happen.

It was during his third visit to Port Harcourt that the steward knocked on the bedroom door to announce, “Major Madu came, madam,” and Kainene asked if Richard would please come down with her.

“Madu is an old friend and I’d like you to meet him. He’s just come back from an army training course in Pakistan,” she said.

Richard smelled the guest’s cologne from the hallway, a cloying, brawny scent. The man wearing it was striking in a way that Richard immediately thought was primordial: a wide mahogany-colored face, wide lips, a wide nose. When he stood to shake hands, Richard nearly stepped back. The man was huge. Richard was used to being the tallest man in a room, the one who was looked up to, but here was a man who was at least three inches taller than he was, and with a width to his shoulders and a firm bulk to his body that made him seem taller, hulking.

“Richard, this is Major Madu Madu,” Kainene said.

“Hello,” Major Madu said. “Kainene has told me about you.”

“Hello,” Richard said. It was too intimate, to hear this mammoth man with the slightly condescending smile on his face say Kainene’s name like that, as if he knew Kainene very well, as if he knew something that Richard did not know, as if whatever Kainene had told him about Richard had been whispered in his ear, amid the silly giggles born of physical intimacy. And what sort of name was Madu Madu anyway? Richard sat on a sofa and refused Kainene’s offer of a drink. He felt pale. He wished Kainene had said, This is my lover Richard.

“So you and Kainene met in Lagos?” Major Madu asked.

“Yes,” Richard said.

“She first told me about you when I called her from Pakistan about a month ago.”

Richard could not think of what to say. He did not know Kainene had talked to him from Pakistan and did not remember her ever mentioning a friendship with an army officer whose first name and surname were the same. “And how long have you known each other?” Richard asked, and immediately wondered if he sounded suspicious.

“My family’s compound in Umunnachi is right next to the Ozobias’.” Major Madu turned to Kainene. “Aren’t our forefathers said to be related? Only that your people stole our land and we cast you out?”

“It was your people who stole the land,” Kainene said, and laughed. Richard was surprised to hear the husky tone of her laughter. He was even more surprised at how familiarly Major Madu behaved, the way he sank into the sofa, got up to flip the album in the stereo, joked with the stewards serving dinner. Richard felt left out of things. He wished Kainene had told him that Major Madu would be staying for dinner. He wished she would drink gin and tonic like him rather than whisky with water like Major Madu. He wished the man would not keep asking him questions, as if to engage him, as if the man were the host and Richard the visitor. How are you enjoying Nigeria? Isn’t the rice delicious? How is your book going? Do you like Nsukka?

Richard resented the questions and the man’s perfect table manners.

“I trained at Sandhurst,” Major Madu said, “and what I hated most was the cold. Not least because they made us run every morning in the bloody cold with only a thin shirt and shorts on.”

“I can see why you’d find it cold,” Richard said.

“Oh, yes. To each his own. I’m sure you’ll soon get very homesick here,” he said.

“I don’t think so at all,” Richard said.

“Well, the British have just decided to control immigration from the Commonwealth, haven’t they? They want people to stay in their own countries. The irony, of course, is that we in the Commonwealth can’t control the British moving to our countries.”

He chewed his rice slowly and examined the bottle of water for a moment, as if it were wine whose vintage he wanted to know.

“Right after I came back from England, I was part of the Fourth Battalion that went to the Congo, under the United Nations. Our battalion wasn’t well run at all, but despite that I preferred Congo to the relative safety of England. Just because of the weather.” Major Madu paused. “We weren’t run well at all in the Congo. We were under the command of a British colonel.” He glanced at Richard and continued to chew.

Richard bristled; his fingers felt stiff and he feared his fork would slip from his grasp and this insufferable man would know how he felt.

The doorbell rang just after dinner while they sat on the moonlit veranda, drinking, listening to High Life music.

“That must be Udodi, I told him to meet me here,” Major Madu said.

Richard slapped at an irritating mosquito near his ear. Kainene’s house seemed to have become a meeting place for the man and his friends.

Udodi was a smallish ordinary-looking man with nothing of the knowing charm or subtle arrogance of Major Madu. He seemed drunk, almost manic, in the way he shook Richard’s hand, pumping up and down. “Are you Kainene’s business associate? Are you in oil?” he asked.

“I didn’t do the introductions, did I?” Kainene said. “Richard, Major Udodi Ekechi is a friend of Madu’s. Udodi, this is Richard Churchill.”