Shape-Shifter (15 page)

‘What are you wearing?’ I asked. ‘It looks wonderful.’

Under the bright kitchen lights, she held up her arms to show off the outfit. Shocking pink cotton cloth with great, batwing sleeves hung down to her mid-calves. Printed in black on the cloth were African heads and the occasional brilliant green banana tree set against a hot orange sun. Her hat was pill-box shaped, the same bright pink, edged with black and with two stiffened, black, batwing shapes on either side.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said. ‘I tell you, girl, when I step out on that stage tonight, these clothes uplifted my spirit. My songs just took off like a flight of birds. You must check out this band. You will love their music. I know it.’

We took the drinks back into the front room. It was darker in there, lit only by a table-lamp. The men were seated in a corner, talking quietly. The woman stood in the centre of the room.

‘This is Maisie.’ Zephra introduced her.

‘I am pleased to meet you.’ The voice was low and sweet as an underground river. She was a broad but lean-faced African woman with thin lips, her complexion charcoal black with patches of bronze on the cheekbones. I guessed she was about forty, tall and rangy. The light raincoat she held bunched round her was the colour of earth but in no way drab. Round her head, she had twisted, carelessly but with immense style, a rough piece of maroon cloth patterned with a diagram of white drumsticks.

Zephra plumped herself down on the sofa, took a packet of ganga from her bag and began to build a spliff. Maisie sat down in the armchair next to the four foot-high weeping-fig plant. I sat on the floor.

‘Are you all from Soweto?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ the man with the pork-pie hat and fat, brown eyelids replied. ‘We are from the Naledi township.’ The men exchanged words in their own language and laughed.

‘They are telling you that I am from the Rockville area. One of the electrified areas,’ said Maisie.

‘It was Maisie who made me these clothes,’ chimed in Zephra. ‘I needed something for the gig tonight and she ran this up for me in an hour!’

‘That is what I do.’ Maisie spoke with soft intimacy. ‘I am a designer of clothes. I make the clothes for the band. In Africa I make clothes for many artists. Musicians come from far seeking my clothes. They like to be photographed in them for the front of their albums. They know my clothes can make them successful. They can make people into stars. They can make people live long. My clothes can kill people. My clothes can heal people. I tell you, the truth is in the clothes.’

She leaned towards me. Her eyes were a lighter brown than most African eyes. The ear-rings dangling from her ears were long, silver ones with tiny chains hanging from the bottom:

‘When I make clothes for performing artists,’ she continued, ‘other artists become jealous. Competitive. They consult a witch-doctor for potions and herbs to take away the magic from my clothes. Powerful African mixtures,’ she muttered as though I would not understand. ‘When performers do that – try to bewitch another performer who is wearing my clothes – then I get sick, because they are trying to kill me at home. Twice I have been in the hospital vomiting blood. I carry on because I am guided. I see something about the person and I am guided to make the clothes. Are you a journalist?’ she asked, unexpectedly. She must have seen the typewriter and clutter of papers on the table. ‘I want you to write something about me.’

‘I don’t write that sort of thing. I write stories,’ I apologised. ‘I might write a story about you, about someone who makes clothes that can kill or heal people. That would make a good story.’

‘You must do that,’ she said.

Zephra rifled through the cassette tapes. She dug out some Cuban salsa music and slapped it in the machine. Then she began to dance. The men talked between themselves in location language.

‘I like you,’ said Maisie. ‘I will make something for you. A beautiful jacket.’ I was flattered as if someone had offered to paint my portrait. Immediately, I wanted that jacket more than anything in the world.

‘I will pay you, of course,’ I said. Payment did not seem enough. ‘But I will also write the story about you. I will make a story for you in exchange for the jacket.’

The light from the table-lamp shone up through the weeping-fig and threw dappled shadows of leaves onto the ceiling over her head. Suddenly, I saw her quite clearly sitting on a wooden bench in Africa. She was leaning forward under the shade of a great, spreading tree. Behind her, on the other side of a chicken-wire fence, sprawled an estate of yellow, matchbox housing. I smelled a burning smell. Creosote or burning rubber. In her left hand she held a piece of corn. Fine, silky brown hair sprouted from the top. Maisie. The name itself reminded me of corn and fertility; roots growing in the earth that can be ground and made into nourishment. Maisie. A fermenting, bubbling name, golden like mead. Mealie meal. Finely ground maize. Maisie.

‘I want to make a film.’ She was back sitting in the chair. ‘Can you help me to do that?’ she asked, abruptly.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Where? Here or in Africa?’

‘Anywhere. I travel extensively.’ She paused, then added, ‘The United States.’

‘I’ll try and think of someone who could help you. How are things in Soweto?’ I enquired, respectfully sympathetic.

‘I am not an oppressed woman,’ she snapped. ‘And my people are not oppressed.’

Conversation in the room had ceased. The Cubans shouted gaily from the machine. My little black cat, Basil, strolled in, tail on high and rubbed himself around her legs.

Zephra switched off the cassette player:

‘We have to go now,’ she announced. ‘Some people are expecting us.’

I knew if I lost track of them I would lose my jacket:

‘Where can I find you all?’

‘I’ve got to go to Manchester tomorrow,’ said Zephra. ‘The band will be playing at the Club Sozo in the Seven Sisters Road. Go down there tomorrow night.’

‘Will you be there?’ I asked Maisie.

‘Yes. I will be there,’ she said.

We said our goodbyes. I showed them to the door.

Next evening I squeezed into the back of the Club Sozo. It was packed. Squinting in the dark, I tried reading the promo leaflet: ‘Kalimbo style – spirit of ancestors. Benda region. Benda people. Used by many tribes. Crossing of traditional with popular music of townships.’

One of the men on stage had not been at my flat the night before, a thin man. The skin head of his drum was anchored by strings to the pegs round the outside. The rhythms vibrated through the crowd. But it was not his playing that attracted my attention. It was what he wore. He wore a most extraordinary suit, the shape of Africa. The suit was made of dark green cotton with fiery orange and yellow markings. The pants were baggy. The right sleeve made up the enormous bulge of the West Coast. The left sleeve cut away sharply, following the outline of the coast of Ethiopia, dipping up to Somaliland and the Horn of Africa. Stitched onto the front was a pocket, also shaped like Africa, in black with the same hectic markings. The southern part of the continent fell just below his knees. As he slapped the drum, fire crackled all over the cloth. I looked for Maisie in the audience. There was no sign of her.

The cramped dressing-room smelled of stale beer. Some kind of ruck was going on. The promoter, a thin-faced Englishman, was angry. The night before, the drummer had been drunk, too paralytic to perform. Now the promoter would not give them their full fee. Maisie sat sulking in a corner. The men were arguing but I could see they were subdued, depressed. The guitarist smiled a hello at me with sad eyes:

‘We are homesick,’ he said. ‘The tour has been a long one.’

I went over and crouched at Maisie’s feet in the small space:

‘When can I come and see you about my jacket?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, then changed her mind. ‘Tomorrow. Give me a pen and paper. I will write down the address where I will be in the morning.’ She wrote down an address somewhere in Camberwell.

The address was difficult to find, nowhere near an underground station. The August morning was dull and overcast. I had to walk up the drives of several of the large Victorian houses because the numbers were either missing or not clear. When finally I found it, the front door was open. I walked in. The house was in the process of being renovated into flats, floor-boards bare, wires sticking out from wall sockets. I called her name:

‘Maisie.’ There was no reply. I walked up the stairs.

She was already at work on the third floor. The room stank of hot wax and vegetable oil. A welter of mainly brownish cloth festooned the place, draped over sofa, floor and chairs. Patches of the green cloth worn by the drummer lay here and there, jumbled with other fragments and scraps of material. Strung across the windows were swatches of cloth, the colour of caramel rivers. Beside an ancient, two-ring burner stood Maisie, stirring vigorously the wax in a rusty tin can. She wore a shift of the softest brushed cotton thinly striped in grey and pink, Arab style, and a head-wrap of the same stuff.

‘Come in and sit down.’

I found a stool and squatted on it. She worked as she talked.

‘You see how fast I work? When I was in America I made one thousand tie and dye pieces in five days, each one a different colour, a different design. They refused to believe I had done it.’ She sounded bitter. ‘They tried to cheat me. They said I only made seven hundred. I refused the money they were offering because it was less than what I had been promised. I do not make the clothes for money. Money is drawn to me but I do not make the clothes because of money. God speaks to me. I am guided by him. I follow whatever he says. In America they said I was a witch.’

Metal buckets of dye gleamed dully on the floor, indigo, dark green, vermilion. As she spoke she dipped cloth, intricately tied with string, into one or another bucket. The liquid never spilled. Then she started to paint the hot wax onto the cotton in strong, bold patterns. She would crack the wax on other pieces of cloth, where it had dried, re-dip the cloth and force the new colour into the fissures and creases she formed constantly with her hands.

‘How did you discover you had this gift?’ I was impressed.

‘Always, always I loved clothes. From when I was tiny. If my mother wanted to punish me she would forbid me to wear my favourite clothes. My mother was an Anglican. My father a Methodist. I ran from my mother and went to my father’s church. That is where I heard the story of the coat of many colours. I knew I could make one. Wherever I go I borrow the equipment I need to make clothes. I cannot stop.’

I watched her twist the cloth into special folds.

‘When I was little I would put pebbles and stones, even bricks, into the cloth to make the shapes I needed. I stitched with raffia. I had to use tamarind water and indigo for dye. Now I use cold water dyes, but I use them hot. I use caustic soda to fix the colours and sodium sulphate to make the white more brilliant. God has helped me. I have three factories where people sew for me. I have two shops, one in the airport at Bophutaswanaland. You must help me find an outlet in England.’

She strung up the cloth to dry. Curiously, no drips fell from it. She took up a length of material and began to cut. She cut boldly, sleeves and body of the wrap from a single piece of cloth. I tried to bring the conversation round to my jacket:

‘Do you need to take my measurements for the jacket?’

‘No. I have looked at you. That is enough.’

I tried to resist asking but couldn’t:

‘What will it be like?’

‘I shall make you a jacket of royal blue. I like working with royal blue. I shall line it with red. And there will be things on it. Things that are for you especially.’

Excitement ground the pit of my stomach. Something else I wanted to know:

‘How is it you say your clothes can kill people?’

‘Whatever is done in the clothes affects the man himself. That is not my responsibility. God tells me what to do. The clothes can kill. The clothes can heal. That is God’s will, not mine.’

In the corner on a table rested an old treadle sewing-machine. She seated herself at it:

‘One time when I could not find what it was I wanted to wear, I took down the curtains in my house and quickly made them into a new outfit.’ She laughed.

I took fifty pounds from my purse:

‘Is fifty pounds enough for the jacket?’

She answered through the whirr of the machine:

‘That is enough. Put it on the table. I do not pursue money but I do not like to be cheated. I do not make clothes for the money.’

I could hardly believe that. Three factories? Two shops? Business trips all over the world?

‘I am leaving for Zimbabwe the day after tomorrow,’ she said. ‘When I am gone I want you to go to Harrods and tell them about my clothes.’

‘I’ll try,’ I said, doubtfully. ‘Will you have time to make my jacket?’

‘Write your name and address down on a piece of paper and leave it with me. The jacket will come to you.’

I did as she asked.

‘Thank you very much, Maisie.’ I got up to leave. She got up too. ‘Will you be coming back to England?’

‘January. I will come back in January. Goodbye. Don’t forget you must write a nice story about me.’

I turned back in the doorway to wave goodbye. She stood facing me, her back to the window. Everywhere in the room the cloth had formed itself into a miniature landscape around her. A female Ozymandias, she bestrode the desert. Behind her were steep escarpments, grooved cliffs of brown sandstone. Tiny mountain ranges obscured her feet. In front of me stretched a panorama of dried-out river beds, dizzying whorls of sand, hillocks and dunes patched with green oases. All this I saw with the scale and clarity of detail as though from an ascending aeroplane. It lasted for a split second. Then the room returned to normal. I left, again the smell of burning rubber in my nostrils.

Four days later the jacket arrived, delivered by hand, in a brown paper parcel tied with string. I unpacked it. In length the garment was half way between a coat and a jacket, reaching to mid-thigh. It was cut, all in one, with wide sleeves like a kaftan. Outside, as she had promised, the colour was a magnificent royal blue. The lining was deep red. Round about the hem there alternated a golden bell and a pomegranate, the same around the hem of the sleeves. Strikingly printed all over the blue exterior and the red lining were black shapes. I examined them more closely. They were scarabs, the sacred beetle of ancient Egypt.