“What about Esmé?”
“What about Esmé?”
“How is she going to cope, growing up with no father?”
“She will have a father. She’ll see him all the time. In fact, she’s going to stay there this weekend. I wrote to him, and he has written back, confirming it.”
“You know the children of divorced parents get terribly teased at school. The Allsop girl is in an awful state.”
“We’re not getting divorced. None of her school friends need to know anything.”
Yvonne was still pulling determinedly at her cigarette.
Jennifer’s voice softened. “Please try to understand. There’s no reason why Laurence and I shouldn’t live apart. Society is changing. We don’t have to be trapped in something that . . . I’m sure Laurence will be far happier without me. And it doesn’t have to affect anything. Not really. You and I can stay the same. In fact, I was thinking perhaps we could get the children together this week. Perhaps take them to Madame Tussaud’s. I know Esmé’s desperate to see Dottie . . .”
“Madame Tussaud’s?”
“Or Kew Gardens. It’s just that the weather—”
“Stop.” Yvonne raised an elegant hand. “Just stop. I can’t listen to another word. My goodness. You really are the most extraordinarily selfish woman I’ve ever met.”
She stubbed out her cigarette, stood up, and reached for her coat. “What do you think life is, Jennifer? Some kind of fairy tale? You think we don’t all get fed up with our husbands? Why should you behave like that and expect us just to carry on around you while you gad about as if—as if you weren’t even married? If you want to live in a state of moral degeneracy, that’s fine. But you have a child. A husband and a child. And you can’t expect the rest of us to condone your behavior.”
Jennifer’s mouth opened.
Yvonne turned away, as if she couldn’t even look at her. “And I won’t be the only one who feels like this. I suggest you think very carefully about what you do next.” She tucked her coat over her arm and left.
Three hours later, Jennifer had made her decision.
At midday the Embakasi airport was a mêlée of activity. Having picked up her suitcase from the stuttering conveyor belt, Jennifer fought her way to the lavatory, splashed cold water over her face, and changed into a clean blouse. She pinned back her hair, the heat already moistening her neck. When she emerged, her blouse was stuck to her back within seconds.
The airport was teeming with people who stood in unruly queues or in groups, shouting at one another in place of conversation. She was briefly paralyzed, watching brightly clad African women jostle with suitcases and huge laundry bags, bound with rope, balanced on their heads. Nigerian businessmen smoked in the corners, their skin shining, while small children ran in and out of those seated on the floor. A woman with a small barrow pushed her way through, selling drinks. The departure boards revealed that several flights were delayed and gave no clue as to when that might be rectified.
In contrast to the noise in the airport building, it was peaceful outside. The last of the bad weather had cleared, the heat burning off any remaining damp so that Jennifer could see the purple mountains in the distance. The runway was empty, except for the plane she had arrived on; beneath it, a solitary man was sweeping meditatively. On the other side of the gleaming modernistic building somebody had built a small rock garden, dotted with cacti and succulents. She admired the carefully arranged boulders, and wondered that someone should have taken so much trouble in such a chaotic place.
The BOAC and East African Airways desks were shut, so she fought her way back through the crowd, ordered a cup of coffee at the bar, grabbed a table, and sat down, hemmed in by other people’s suitcases, woven baskets, and a baleful cockerel, its wings bound to its body with a school tie.
What would she say to him? She pictured him in some foreign correspondents’ club, perhaps miles from the real action, where journalists gathered to drink and discuss the day’s events. Would he be drinking? It was a tight little world, he had told her. Once she got to Stanleyville someone would know him. Someone would be able to tell her where he was. She pictured herself arriving, exhausted, at the club, a recurring image that had kept her going for the last few days. She could see him so clearly, standing under a whirring fan, perhaps chatting to a colleague, and then his amazement at the sight of her. She understood his expression: for the last forty-eight hours she had barely been able to recognize herself.
Nothing in her life had prepared her for what she had done; nothing had suggested she might even be capable of it. And yet, from the moment she had climbed aboard the aircraft, for all her fear, she had felt curiously elated, as if this might be it: this might be the business of living. And if only for that moment of intense feeling she felt a curious kinship with Anthony O’Hare.
She would find him. She had taken charge of events, rather than allowing herself to be buffeted along by them. She would decide her own future. She banished thoughts of Esmé, telling herself that this will have been worthwhile when she’d be able to introduce Anthony to her.
Eventually a young man in a smart burgundy uniform took a seat at the BOAC counter. She left her coffee where it was and half ran across the concourse to the counter.
“I need a ticket to Stanleyville,” she said, scrabbling in her handbag for money. “The next flight out. Do you need my passport?”
The young man stared at her. “No, madam,” he said, his head moving briskly from side to side. “No flying to Stanleyville.”
“But I was told you ran a direct route.”
“I’m very sorry. All flights to Stanleyville are suspended.”
She gazed at him in mute frustration until he repeated himself, then dragged her suitcase across to the EAA desk. The girl there had the same answer. “No, ma’am. There are no flights out because of the troubles.” She rolled every r. “Only flights coming in.”
“Well, when are they going to start up again? I need to get to Congo urgently.”
The two staff members exchanged a silent look. “No flights to Congo,” they repeated.
She hadn’t come this far for blank looks and refusals. I cannot give up on him now.
Outside, the man continued up and down the runway with his threadbare broom.
It was then that she saw a white man with the upright posture of the civil service walking briskly through the terminal, carrying a leather folder. Sweat had colored a deep triangle on the back of his cream linen jacket.