Oh-So-Sensible Secretary

I’d sit there and savour the feeling of everything being in its place and under control, which lasted only until Phin appeared and stirred up the air and made the whole notion of control a distant memory.

‘It’s a rut,’ Phin had said when I told him about my routine.

‘You’re missing the point. I like my rut.’

‘Trust me, you’re going to like Africa, too.’

‘I’m not,’ I said sulkily. ‘I’m going to hate every minute of it.’

And at first I did.

We had to change planes, and after what seemed like hours hanging around in airports it was dark by the time we arrived at Douala. The airport there was everything I had feared. It was hot, crowded, shambolic. There seemed to be a lot of shouting.

I shrank into Phin as we pushed our way through the press of people and outside, to where a minibus was supposed to be waiting but wasn’t. The tropical heat was suffocating, and the smell of airport fuel mingled with sweat and unfinished concrete lodged somewhere at the back of my throat.

Through it all I was very aware of Phin, steady and good-humoured, bantering in French with the customs officials who wanted to open every single one of our bags. He was wearing jungle trousers and an olive-green shirt, and amazingly managed to look cool and unfazed-while my hair was sticking to my head and I could feel the perspiration trickling down my back.

There were twelve of us in our group. Hand-picked by Phin, together we represented a cross-section of the headquarters staff, from secretaries like me to security staff, executives to cleaners. I knew most of the others by sight, and Phin had assured us we would be a close-knit team by the time we returned ten days later. I could tell we were bonding already in mutual unease at the airport.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Phin said soothingly as we all fretted about the non-appearance of the mini-bus. ‘It’ll be here in a minute.’

The minute stretched to twenty, but eventually a rickety mini-bus did indeed turn up. It took us to a strange hotel where we slept four to a room under darned mosquito nets. There were tiny translucent geckos on the walls, and a rattling air-conditioning unit kept me awake all night. Oh, yes, and I found a cockroach in the shower.

‘Tell me again why I’m supposed to love all this,’ I grumbled to Phin the next morning. I was squeezed between him and the driver in the front of a Jeep that bounced over potholes and swerved around the dogs and goats that wandered along the road with a reckless disregard for my stomach, not to mention any oncoming traffic.

‘Look at the light,’ Phin answered. To my relief we had slowed to crawl through a crowded market. ‘Look at how vibrant the colours are. Look at that girl’s smile.’ He gestured at the stalls lining the road. ‘Look at those bananas, those tomatoes, those pineapples! Nothing’s wrapped in plastic, or flown thousands of miles so that it loses its taste.’

His arm lay behind my head along the back of the seat, and he turned to look down into my face. ‘Listen to the music coming out of the shops. Doesn’t it make you want to get out and dance? How can you not love it?’

‘It just comes naturally to me,’ I muttered.

‘And you’re with me,’ he pointed out, careless of our colleagues in the back seat.

I was very aware of them-although I couldn’t imagine they would be able to hear much over the sound of the engine, the music spilling out of the shacks on either side of the road and the children running after us shouting, ‘Happy! Happy! Happy!’

‘We’re together on an adventure,’ said Phin. ‘What more could you want?’

I sighed. ‘I don’t know where to begin answering that!’

‘Oh, come on, Summer. This is fun.’

‘You sound just like my mother,’ I said sourly. ‘This reminds me of the way Mum would drag me around the country, telling me how much I should be loving it, when all I wanted was to stay at home.’

‘Maybe she knew that you had the capacity to love it all if only you’d let yourself,’ said Phin. ‘Maybe she was like me and thought you were afraid of how much love and passion was locked up inside you.’

It certainly sounded like the kind of thing my mother would think.

‘Why do you care?’ Cross, I lowered my voice and looked straight ahead, just in case anyone behind was listening or had omitted to put lip-reading skills on their CV. ‘We don’t have a real relationship, and even if we did it would only be temporary. You can’t tell me you’d be hanging around long enough to care about my capacity for anything.’

There was a pause. ‘I hate waste,’ said Phin at last.

I had thought the road from Douala was bad, but I had no idea then of what lay ahead.

After that little town, the road deteriorated until there wasn’t even an attempt at tarmac, and a downpour didn’t exactly improve matters. Our little convoy of Jeeps lurched for hours over tracks through slippery red mud. We had to stop several times to push one or other of the vehicles out of deep ruts gouged out by trucks.

‘This is what it’s like trying to get you out of your rut,’ Phin said to me with a grin, as we put our shoulders to the back of our Jeep once more. His face was splattered with mud from the spinning tyres, and I didn’t want to think about what I looked like. I could feel the sprayed mud drying on my skin like a measles rash.

‘Of course it’s harder in your case,’ he went on. ‘Not so muddy, though.’

We were all filthy by the time we reached Aduaba-a village wedged between a broad brown river and the dark green press of the rainforest. There was a cluster of huts, with mud daub walls and roofs thatched with palm leaves, or occasionally a piece of corrugated iron, and what seemed like hundreds of children splashing in the water.

My relief at getting out of the Jeep soon turned to horror when I discovered that the huts represented luxury accommodation compared to what we were getting: a few pieces of tarpaulin thrown over a makeshift frame to provide shelter.

‘I’m so far out of my comfort zone I don’t know what to say,’ I told Phin.

‘Oh, come now-it’s not that bad,’ he said, but I could tell that he was enjoying my dismay. ‘It’s not as if it’s cold, and the tarpaulin will keep you dry.’

‘But where are we going to sleep?’

‘Why do you think I made you buy a sleeping mat?’

‘We’re sleeping on the ground?’

His smile was answer enough.

I looked at him suspiciously. ‘What about you?’

‘I’ll be right here with you-and everyone else, before you get in a panic.’

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. ‘Does Lex know the conditions here?’ I demanded. I couldn’t believe he would have put his staff through this if he’d had any idea of what it would be like.

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Phin cheerfully. ‘The conditions aren’t bad, Summer,’ he went on more seriously. ‘This isn’t meant to be a five star jolly. It’s meant to be challenging. It’s all about pushing you all out of your comfort zones and seeing what you’re made of. It’s about giving you a brief glimpse of another community and thinking about the ways staff and customers at Gibson & Grieve can make a connection with them.’

I set my jaw stubbornly, and he shook his head with a grin. ‘I bet,’ he said, ‘that you’ll end up enjoying this much more than going to some polo match, or having a corporate box at the races, or whatever Lex usually does to keep staff happy.’

‘A bet?’ I folded my arms. ‘How much?’

‘You want to take me on?’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘If I win, you have to…’

I tried to think about what would push Phin out of his comfort zone. I could hardly suggest he settled down and got married, but there was no reason he shouldn’t commit to something.

‘…you have to agree to get to work by nine every day for as long as we’re working together,’ I decided.

Phin whistled. ‘High stakes. And if I win?’

‘Well, I think that’s academic, but you choose.’

‘That’s very rash of you, cream puff! Now, let’s see…’He tapped his teeth, pretending to ponder a suitable stake. ‘Since I know I’m going to win, I’d be a fool not to indulge a little fantasy, wouldn’t I?’