Reading the Ceiling (5 page)

‘Try to get to the boat,' instructs Yuan.

I see the long shape of the boat's bottom alongside me. Relief swamps the fear. The boatman, who was also flung into the river, appears next to me. My legs start to kick the water and my arms find a stroke. The jetty comes closer.

They help me out – Yuan and Amina each claiming an arm while the boatman tries to boost my feet with his hands.

I sit in a pair of borrowed
malans
 all afternoon, one tied round my waist as a skirt, the other in a halter top. My clothes, which Remi wrings out, are lying on a nearby bush, drying in the sun.

Mangrove roots in the river can feel like the skin of crocodiles.

We stay in our tight little group, lounging in the shade. Mrs Foon waves a hand. Reuben walks by several times on his own, making a track to and from the jetty. Kojo eventually arrives in his father's old snub-nosed Peugeot 504, his exhaust giving a little fart when he turns off the engine. He walks towards us.

‘Here he is,' Remi announces, ‘our ride home.'

Yuan greets him with, ‘Hey man, you've missed all the action.'

‘What action? Tell me more, but first get me something to drink. That road's a killer.'

Moira says, ‘Ayodele got soaked.' Everyone piles in to elaborate.

Yuan concludes, ‘She looks calm, don't you think, for someone recently rescued from being crocodile food.' Their heads all swivel round to look at me.

The barbeque tin drum is now hissing with mounds of oysters piled on the ash-rimmed coals. I stand up to make a pretend curtsey. ‘I'll get us some river food to celebrate my watery resurrection.'

Armed with a tin enamelled bowl piled with a mountain of barbequed oysters, I make my way back to the group, only to find they are still discussing the intricacies of how I lost my balance – how I looked flailing about in the water, my swimming technique, and my final last lunge towards the jetty. Fuelled by the empty green bottles beside them, Amina and Yuan are miming my actions, as if scripted.

‘Why don't you talk about something else for a while? How come Amina knows someone who works with the president, for example?'

‘That's not half as interesting as falling into a river when there's a perfectly good jetty to get off onto,' protests Amina.

‘Good point, Ayodele,' says Yuan. He shakes his index finger at Amina. ‘Girls like you should leave men like that alone.'

‘Why?'

‘Go on, someone, fill me in,' says Kojo.

With relief, I summarise. ‘On the way here, an outrider ordered us off the road. As he drove off, Amina asked about the whereabouts of a certain Mr Bojang. Then she told us that she'd met him at some club. Which is worse? That or swimming with crocodiles?'

‘Some of the men in this government are absolute bastards,' Kojo says.

Amina tries to clear her name. ‘Hey, I only tried to pass on a hello to someone who would not remember me. It was a joke.'

‘Do you know there's rumours of a Mr Bojang who tells doctors what to put on death certificates?'

We all freeze, as in how we used to when small and playing musical chairs.

Amina breaks into the disquiet. ‘Like I said, I've only met him the once. Don't take me too seriously. It was only a joke.'

Kojo has the last word. ‘Men like that cannot be joked around with.'

The early bus is ready to leave. I notice Reuben shuffling near the door, looking around with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. When I think he might notice me looking at him, I turn away and reach for my bottle of beer.

The moon settles into the night. What breeze there is is muddied by the large mango trees standing in its way. We are leaving later with Kojo. Amina is given the chore of explaining our plans to the teachers supervising the tidy-up in preparation for the second departure. We help to spill hot coals and scatter them onto sun-hardened laterite. Empty bottles clink together as they are put back into the crates and loaded onto the bus. We commandeer a few bottles from the vats of cold water before the dustbins are emptied and the plastic bags of our litter loaded in. When all is done, the last bus starts up. We allow the quiet to hang over the trundle of the engine as it turns out of the gate.

The noises change. The bird sounds are fewer, longer, lower.

‘What about snakes?' says Amina, her voice tangled and squeaky.

We burst into delighted laughter. And the laughter and lightness carry the rest of the evening.

Eventually I say, ‘Should we go now?'

Yuan replies, ‘Don't want to.'

‘Should we stay till morning then?'

Amina echoes, ‘Don't want to.'

We knot ourselves into a drift of conversations, starting and ebbing. University crops up again. And what we intend to do with our lives. We talk about the moon, about whether mermaids will come this far up the river, about crocodiles and oysters. The night is stretching itself thin, with no one wanting to break up the easy company until the sky starts to lighten, and we agree that yes, indeed, it is morning after all.

Our Sunday evening descends into the bitter dark that comes with the clocks being turned back. Trails of summer had been left in the autumn days when leaves gusted off the trees. Now, even those occasional days have been shut away with cheap time wizardry. We have turned up the thermostat to compensate for the drizzle-drenched winds outside. Six months hasn't been long enough to get me used to the inconsistency of English weather. It's been long enough to help me shed the disappointment of Reuben – who I chose on a whim only to find myself in a muddy pool of self-pity. Sometimes, when I think of what he would have expected of me – I shudder. Me, to declare him as my boyfriend and allow him to claw my body. And to drift towards marriage with thorough approval from both families, having achieved the rare magic: ‘
Krio titi marraid Krio boy
.' Thank goodness I could leave.

My Uncle Sola is out. He's been gone since he set out earlyish this morning in search of the Sunday papers. We did not wait for him to come back and eat with us. Aunt Abi has kept a portion of his food warming in the oven on low.

There is a lingering smell of burnt oil and braised fish. Between us, a mound of fish
mbahal
 has disappeared along with eight cobs of maize and a bowl of salad doused in vinaigrette. My cousins Tunde, Ade and Olu have done their chores – the dishes are washed, wiped and put away. We have arranged ourselves in armchairs in the living room, ready for the next part of the evening. Aunt Abi, their mother, is in the kitchen, preparing a tray of tea.

Tunde flicks through the TV channels, and we pause on a football result. The commentator is interviewing a happy fan at the end of the most marvellous match of the season so far.

‘Grea' innit? They are goin' righ' up there. Top of the league maiy.'

Aunt Abi comes in with her flowery tea tray.

‘Just watch them talk. Who could guess they're speaking their mother tongue? They mangle the poor language every day.'

She sets the tea tray down on the low table in the middle of the room. The teapot is encased in a matching cosy.

Olu picks up his cue and goes on his knees in front of the table, ready to pour. Cups chink onto their saucers. Milk. Honey-coloured tea. Crystals of white rinsed sugar.

‘Why don't you try to find us something that we can all watch together, as a family?' Aunt Abi wants to know. We settle down to a comfortable television drama.

I often work this Sunday routine into the end of my week. It's like stepping into a cocoon of comfort, where the food, the talk and the sounds are familiar: the large quantities of everything piled on the table, the undertone of fieriness in every spoonful, the gentle ribaldry at the table, the easy company, the teasing exchange in a language we all understand. There's the familiarity of the home I was rushing to leave.

My father's younger brother, Uncle Sola, lives in Richmond. He left, as many people from home do, to go abroad and study. During his brief return home, he managed to cause enough hoo-haa to scandalise my mother and her entire generation. In his wake he left an unconfirmed number of women with child.

Eventually he settled down. He'd chosen a good Krio girl from a solid family, from home. Aunt Abi was petite, with her long hair relaxed and pulled back into a chignon to accompany her tidy dress sense. Settling down, on the surface, also meant for him a well-paying job with an international agency, three healthy children, and the large house. Success was stamped all over his life.

It's an utterly random happening when a new friend from my hall of residence, Rifat, says, We're going to see a good film tonight, would you like to come? Not wishing to turn down a social event, I say yes. We go to a crowded pub in Soho, picking our way through tight streets and shops with entrances coloured with green, or blue, or red light. Light that covers the faces of the people who want to welcome their customers in. A lady calls out to Rifat, who is striding away in front, Want to see what we've got, little boy? A couple of the lads snigger.

In the bar, cloudy with smoke and hot with the pressure of beer breaths and bodies, Rifat is carried away from me towards a plasticky-looking girl with tight patent boots and lots of big hair. I find a waist-high table to lean against, grasping my beer in one hand while others in our group are clustered close by. I listen in on a shouted conversation about the results of
the
football match of the season. Some guy who briefly introduced himself earlier is commanding the debate about team performances.

A man with eyebrows that sprinkle hairs towards each other approaches. His smile lifts his eyes slightly at the corners.

‘Hello, all,' he says. ‘Where's Rifat?'

I nod over in Rifat's direction.

‘I see. He's busy then.'

I nod again, smiling back this time. ‘And you are?'

‘Kamal Bensouda. And you?'

‘Ayodele Roberts. Are you coming with us?'

‘Aren't you?'

‘Of course. I'm here to watch the film.'

With this ridiculous bit of non-conversation over, we stop, stare at each other, look away.

He smiles then, and his teeth are even, rectangular, ivory. ‘Conversations are so polite over here, aren't they?'

‘Well I'm not actually from here. West Africa.'

‘My great-aunt and uncle used to live in Sierra Leone.'

‘When did they leave?'

‘A few years after President Siaka Stevens was killed. They lost everything when the fighting broke out near the mines.'

‘Really? Where are they now?'

‘They run a Lebanese restaurant in London and still speak mostly Krio at home, between themselves.'

‘Do you speak any?'

‘I understand a bit. Not difficult is it, once you tune your ear in.

‘
Ow you do?
'

‘Fine, thanks, and how about you?'

We get round to talking about what we do.

Student. What subject? Development Studies.

Teacher. What do you teach? Econometrics.

Where? Same university.

The coincidences are no longer surprising. But of course. Rifat knows everyone.

We sit next to each other during the film. We find each other after the trip to the bathroom and before the final trek to another smoky and air-heavy pub.

My eyes ring with the indignation of the illegal occupation of Lebanon. My heart sings that he knows and feels injustice.

He says, ‘You know how the Irish feel about the British, too close across a tiny strip of water – well, we feel the Israelis are too close over a strip of desert.'

I watch his hands as he flings them about. I ask questions. He answers. Always with passion.

And that, essentially, is how I fall in love. Unexpectant. Side-swiped.

We drive up to Oxford. We stroll through the Pitt Rivers museum and gawp at shrunken heads. We find a pub by a tree that weeps into the river. We hire a punt at a ridiculous price and wobble onto it. The sun isn't out but our happiness, my happiness, is not created by yellowy warmth or especially green grass. I find it while inexpertly sticking our pole into the thin cover of silt at the bottom, and moving our way upstream.

Back in my flat, after a perfect day, it does not take much to find ourselves in my bed.

‘Hey, I didn't know that was your first time,' Kamal says.

‘It wasn't,' I reply, my voice shaded with certainty.

He stretches the quiet with his silence for a few moments. Then he surprises me by saying, ‘Are you sure?'

‘I went out one night intending to be sure.'

‘How long ago?'

‘A year ago. With a Reuben from the sixth form.'

‘Did it hurt? More or less than today?'

‘Actually, it didn't hurt at all. Just a bit sore, but not as sore as today.'

As I speak, I start to feel silly.

‘How many times?'

‘Just the once.'

‘What did he think?'

‘That I'd done it with him, too.'

Kamal laughs. I cringe inside.

Reuben still phones me. His voice shines with delight when I pick up the phone. He's studying engineering in Aberdeen and he talks about the cold and the wind. He must be lonely, to continue phoning when I give back so little.

Kamal and I try out Brighton on a Sunday morning. The dark-blue VW smells of him – the scent of his skin, fresh with citrus aftershave. It is the beginning of spring and the trees, though still empty, are bursting shoots of green. The radio is on. A raucous voice is singing rock with soul. I sing along. He seems happy to be with me.

We drive through a parade of trees, a line of plane on both sides of the road, their barks shivering. We round the bend, too fast despite the signs warning of a steep curve. In front of us, in the slow lane, is a three-wheeled beige car, putting along.

‘Fuck,' he says, as he swerves along to the other lane. The speed of the turn makes the back wheels skid. He tries to correct the skid the other way. We spin again, all the way round this time, and find ourselves in the fast lane, facing the wrong way.