“You’ve been very kind. Ym may have saved his life.” His gesture said it was nothing.
When I returned from the hospital with David, Mrs F was commanding her bar. She was the only one allowed to stand. If all the seats were taken, she refused new customers. She was always finding reasons to refuse customers; acceptance by her was highly valued.
“This is David.” I led him to her. “He’s the one who took Geoffrey to the hospital.”
She gave him an unsmiling look. “How is The English Boy?”
“I think he’ll live. You must be the famous Mrs Fernandez. I’m very happy to meet you.”
She gave him a second hard look. David was impressively poised, tall, smiling, soft-spoken, an African who was not in the least intimidated. Even though he had untucked his shirt to cover the blood on his trousers, it was clear that his clothes were expensive, probably foreign. He moved easily. He was fit. “You’re visiting us on business?” she asked.
“Oh yes. Official business. Another boring bureaucrat, I’m afraid.” He turned away from her to look around the room. “But your bar is too popular. There’s no room for us.”
Mrs F turned her look from him to me, found no answers in my face and shifted her attention to two young Africans with empty bottles between them. In Swahili she told them briskly that it was time for them to leave, and they meekly got up to go as if they had been waiting for the order all along.
“No,” said David in mild protest, “that is unfair.”
“Sit down.” She ignored his politeness. “Marcella, I don’t need to serve you. You know where the beers are.” When I sat down to talk to David, I talked too much. He was so calm, his eyes so willing to receive and I was, I suppose, in shock. He nodded sympathetically; his shoulders were broad. I told him what I knew of Geoffrey, omitting the fact of our brief affair, though not, I suppose, the hint of it. I told him about the life in Dar I’d lost and my hopes. I told him about Omar Khatib at the passport office, my weekly meetings, how he flirted with me but did not deliver my passport.
“Have you tried paying him something?”
I gave him a quick look but there seemed to be no guile in the question. The truth was I had given Omar some money only the previous week. I had put it in a file marked “Application Fee” which at first he refused. Then he changed his mind and allowed that the payment of fees might help with his superiors in Dar.
“I gave him something.”
“Enough?”
“Five thousand shillings.”
“Well, that should be enough.”
Mrs F was unexpectedly at our side, drawn there by whatever sixth sense for peril she possessed. She addressed David: “We’re having a Christmas party next week. A carol party. Just for the Christian community of course, if you are interested. Will you still be here? Marcella, your mouth is open.”
“Unfortunately, I think not. If I am, I will certainly come. It’s a generous invitation. "You are quite correct that I’m a Christian.”
She left us as decisively as she arrived. David smiled at me and raised his eyebrows. I said, “’You’ve been honoured. Usually she only invites Europeans. Goans, and Europeans if she can get them. She must think you’re important. Of course we don’t have a lot of Christians here.” “Then I should try to come. But I think now I should leave, don’t you?”
The next morning I took Geoffrey breakfast. Rice, chicken and tea. There was no food at the hospital. He was awake and looked at me through lazy eyes.
“Where am I?”
“'You can’t remember? Zanzibar. You’re in hospital in Zanzibar.”
“Car crash?”
“No. Someone hit you. Can’t you remember anything?”
He was silent for a few seconds while thoughts passed slowly and painfully across his face. “Who am I?”
“You’re Geoffrey, Geoffrey Sutton. Geoffrey, you really don’t remember?”
He nodded. “I’m not sure. It’s like ... I’m a stranger. Are you a nurse?”
“No, a friend.” I took his hand and held it.
“A friend.” He slipped back into sleep without having eaten any breakfast.
I spent the next hour or so holding Geoffrey’s hand, looking at Geoffrey’s face. He was so pale. It was a peculiar intimacy, holding the hand of a man whose identity had passed into my sole possession, who might, for all I knew, have a blood clot on his brain and be about to die in this empty hospital. A little like motherhood, perhaps, enough to let you believe you might be in love.
When he woke, there was more life in his eyes. He tried to push himself up in bed and he reached to the chair next to him to find his glasses.
He looked at me. “What’s your name?”
“Marcella.”
“You’re my friend? Girlfriend?”
“Not really. Well, sort of. We only met a few days ago.” It occurred to me that I might be in a position to perma- nendy erase our evening on the beach from his memory, and that it might be prudent to do so.
“I hope you are my girlfriend.” He managed a wan, gallant smile. Brain damaged, he was better at compliments than he had been undamaged.
“I brought you some breakfast. You should try to eat something.”
He waved it away as if the sight made him nauseous. “I’m Geoffrey Sutton.”
“Yes.”
“I’m in Zanzibar?”
“Yes.”
“I came here by plane from Dar-es-Salaam?”
“Yes.”
“And I arrived in Dar-es-Salaam from London?”
“I think so.”
“Yes, I think I did. And I arrived at London Airport by bus from... Reading. My home is in Reading. I work at the university there. I’m here doing research. A consultancy. Evaluating development projects. For the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. I’m staying at a hotel.”
“Africa House. That’s where you were hit.”
He closed his eyes and slid down in the bed. “I want
