“I’m just interested in what it was like to grow up here. Interested in you, I suppose.”
I relented. “It was nothing special. Just like anywhere. We played games, visited our aunts and uncles, went to school.” Then I found myself telling him all sorts of silly, petty things, and his promptings did not feel like research. They felt like attention. I told him that we played jumping games on the flagstones and skipped with a rope in our courtyard, that I was the naughty one and my sister the careful one. In those days Mummy helped look after a little cafe for Mrs F and we played there. Fun for me at nine was carefully carrying a brimming glass of fruit juice to a customer without spilling it. There was a family photo of me doing it: a face full of seriousness, a thin cotton dress that drooped at the back. I did my homework on a cafe table while the heat and humidity puffed up the pages of my exercise book. I told him of my drunken uncle John, who played jazz on the piano and whose bottles we sometimes hid. I told him silly things, like how my classmates were always asking the teacher to let me tell them stories and I would make up fantastic tales about trap doors and secret passages. Aided by the beer, I poured myself immoderately into the novelty of Geoffrey’s interest. “I stopped telling stories when I was about ten,” I concluded. “I became shy.”
“You’re not shy now. I’m shy.”
“You? The world traveler? Well, it’s true I’ve seen you blush. So what about your childhood?”
“The London suburbs. Very boring.”
“Not to me.”
“Were you always a dreamer, Marcella?”
“You see, you ask questions but don’t answer them.” “Because I’m shy. Well, were you?”
“I’m not a dreamer. I’ve done things. I had my taxis in Dar, my business here.”
“I didn’t mean it badly. It just sounded like your sister was the dull sensible one and you were the little girl with the ideas who dreamed of something wonderful.”
We didn’t do this, analysing childhood for clues to the adult life. Adult life was what was served to you, the boy you had always known, the family business. It was Geoffrey’s dizzy, topsy-turvy world again: adults made by children, not the other way around. I liked it. I said, “You think too much,” and I reached over to gently rap his forehead with my knuckles. Then I sat back and watched Geoffrey until I could no longer resist adding, “So, Mr Expert, am I going to get something wonderful?”
He took the question seriously, bless him. “You might. At least, something that you now believe would be wonderful.”
Which was good enough for me. I looked out to where the moon’s reflection on the sea had become sharper and brighter. The dining room was suddenly bleak. “Geoffrey, would you like to go for a drive?”
“Now? Where?”
“Maybe the coast road.”
“OK... Yes, all right.”
The self-consciousness that had left him during the conversation now returned like a tide and made me regret the impulse, so that I said, “Well, maybe not. It’s late and no one must see us.”
“No, no. I’d like to.”
I directed him out of the city, a short drive past the central playing fields and onto the road that ran close to the shore. There was no other traffic and we were both quiet. We were soon beyond the few street lights and we drove slowly, as befitted travelers without a destination or certain purpose, heading into the bush along a potholed road of crushed coral.
“Shall I turn around, or do you want to stop?” He put me in charge.
“Let’s stop for a moment, look at the sea. No, off the road. Go onto the beach behind the palms. "You never know who’s watching.”
We parked facing the beach, the moon, the sea. It was quiet, just the creaking of contracting metal and the lapping of small waves. Well, here I was. If he tried to kiss me, I would let him. He said, “Let’s stretch our legs.” We walked to the edge of the water. “Is fishing very important to Zanzibar?” he asked.
“I think so. For food.”
We turned to walk back. Well, it was all right. Maybe I really only wanted talk from this man. Then we bumped into each other and he leaned over to kiss me. At first he was off centre, then too hard on my lips, then, just as I was relaxing, he pulled away.
“Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t resist.”
“It’s all right.”
Which he took as permission to kiss me again, this time forcefully. When I responded, he surprised me. His hands were suddenly everywhere, my breasts, my bottom, between my legs, as if the first kiss had been so large an obstacle that once overcome he could not imagine any other impediment.
“Geoffrey, no!”
He immediately fell back and looked so mortified that I found myself adding, “It’s not safe here. Come over by the trees.”
We sat on the sand in the moonlight. We were still too exposed. I remembered that officially the penalty for adultery was death, but did not tell Geoffrey. I let him put his hand underneath my blouse, undo my jeans, while I strained my ears for sounds of movement in the bush. I tried to remember how far we were from a village, from an army camp, whether fishermen ever slept on this beach. I helped Geoffrey pull off my jeans, then put them under me in hope of keeping out the sand. I was exposed and he still had his trousers on, though now we were pushing them down to his knees. My mind was busy, divided. I was imagining Moslem zealots dragging me through the streets to my house—it would be me, not Geoffrey, I thought—when he caught me by surprise by pushing into me, no knocking at the door, abruptly
