Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [102]
As a rule I was not included in this game.
‘What about him, then?’ Jeanette said to me once, picking at a lipstick-stained strip of skin on her lower lip. But before I could reply Shona gave her a nudge:
‘She can’t …’ she hissed.
‘Why ever not?’ Jeanette frowned.
‘Well …’ Shona pulled a face and stretched her eyes wide, looking at Jeanette all the time. Jeanette gazed back blankly. Shona wavered, only for a moment. ‘She’s married!’ She sounded relieved when she said that. But of course I knew this wasn’t the reason. Grace played, she was married.
Shona was a stupid girl, too stupid to worry about. Another day she tried to make amends, pointing to a man on the far side of the room: ‘Look, love. There’s one for you.’ The man, a black man, was sitting at a table in a windowless corner of the room. He was alone. On the table in front of him lay a pair of gloves and a folded newspaper. He was writing, scribbling furiously, in a notepad. I was silent, not speaking for a long time. Beside me Shona shuffled, a tickle of discomfort. ‘I don’t mean just because …’
Still I didn’t answer her. I was staring at that man, feeling everything around me, the lights, the noise, grow faint. Even the sound of Shona’s voice. I stepped out from behind the counter and walked across the room, without bothering to pick up a pad or collect a menu. I stood in front of the table where he was sitting, my hands by my sides, until he looked up at me.
‘Hello,’ I said softly. At that he stood up suddenly, pushing back his chair so that it fell over. I didn’t try to catch it and neither did he. Instead we took a step towards each other.
‘Hello,’ said Janneh.
So that was how we found one another again. Seventeen years had passed. Janneh walked me home at the end of the shift. Night-time was coming, bringing with it the cold. I pushed my hands into the pockets of my thin coat. In England my hands and feet were always, always cold. Even in what passed for summer. Without a word Janneh removed his gloves and handed them to me, and I slipped my fingers into the warm place inside.
Janneh was working as a journalist. He was in England for a short time only, looking for a second-hand Linotype printing press. He planned to set up an independent newspaper: ‘A free press, you know. One the Government can’t control.’ I smiled, even though what he was saying was serious. I remembered that about him, the way he punctuated his conversation with certain phrases. ‘You know,’ was one of them.
At home I invited Janneh to stay and eat with us. Ambrose would be back soon. So Janneh accepted and squeezed in next to me in the tiny kitchen, peeling onions while I squeezed lemons for chicken yassa. When he asked me my news, I told it to him, including how I came to be working at the Lyons Coffee Shop. Ambrose joined us, we fitted the extra leaf in the table in the sitting room and sat down, and for the first time I heard about the things that were happening back home.
Government ministers who built houses high on the hill. Houses with east and west wings, pillared porches and glass chandeliers. On the outside homeless people built their little panbodies against the high walls. The wives of these big men drove around in shining Mercedes, frequently flew out of the country with their husbands on official business, shopped and slept between Egyptian cotton sheets in smart hotels. Meanwhile the price of rice climbed higher every day. People went to withdraw their savings from the bank and found they were refused their own money. The poorest souls walked around with swollen stomachs and feverish eyes.
These were the things Janneh wrote about in his newspaper column. He discovered and published the official salaries of the Government ministers and demanded to know how they could afford to live so well. He worked late into the night, alone in his office, sometimes only returning home to change his clothes. Once he pushed open the