Last Orders at Harrods Read online

  She had also been resourceful in her choice of materials. A steel container, once used on freight ships between Africa and Europe, served as the kitchen, where Charity did the cooking on gas stoves and charcoal braziers. It also housed the all-important fridge, run off an extended electricity cable, which was plugged in at cousin Mercy’s clinic. A second container, attached to the first to form the letter L, was the indoor eating area, popular on cold days, and where smoking was banned, a decision that had created a stir among the regulars. The area between the arms of the L had been covered in concrete, finished off with a red polish, and shaded by a striped blue and red canvas awning, courtesy of an international soft drinks company. Under the awning were a couple of dozen wooden tables and chairs, and a wooden trellis, covered with purple bougainvillea, which provided additional shade.

  It was not long before the bar became renowned for its ice cold Tusker beer, freshly prepared passion fruit juice and mango juice, cashew nuts fried in chicken fat, salted peanuts, baked in their shells, and crunchy roasted potato peelings. This enticing array of “bitings” was but the start. On a blackboard outside the bar, written in chalk and changed each day, was a nourishing menu, tailor-made for the pockets as well as the palates of a varied clientele.

  For those with a little extra cash, there were pigs’ trotters, sometimes boiled but more often baked, giving them a crisp outer skin, encasing tender meat. For patrons on a tight budget, Charity’s spicy chicken necks, the cheapest in town, were a bargain. Cobs of tender green maize, the ears turning yellow-brown after a few minutes on the brazier, under the watchful eyes of one of the township gang called Mboya Boys, and tangy avocado soup with a hint of lemon, were popular seasonal dishes. A year-round staple was the tasty maize and pumpkin soup, made to a recipe provided by the late Bishop Mupanga himself, and which had been passed on to him by his mother. And for those with only a few ngwee to spare, there was always maize-meal and groundnut relish, rather like thick gravy, mopped up with hunks of cornbread.

  Across the top of one of the containers, in one-foot-high letters, in the olive green Charity had insisted on, a local sign-writer had emblazoned the words “Harrods International Bar”. Unfortunately he had miscalculated the space available, and after getting as far as “International”, had to continue around the corner. It had been the sign-writers idea to fill the extra room by adding the last two words, “and Nightspot”, and putting them within brackets. And while it seemed a trifle odd to new patrons, habitués accepted the display without a second glance.

  Charity was pleased with her work. Every time she looked at the sign, she was reminded of her father, and felt proud. Since the letters from London had begun arriving, she also felt anger and defiance.

  She could not remember just how old she had been when she first heard how her father got what he called his “European name”. His telling of the story had become a family tradition, recounting it every Christmas, when they gave thanks for their good fortune.

  After lunch, when all were replete with sweet potatoes and goat meat, one of the children would pipe up: “Tell us the story . . .”

  The request was taken up like a refrain: “Yes, tell us the story . . .”

  Her father would call for silence, and to the accompaniment of good-humoured heckling he would begin:

  “I have been asked to tell you the story of how I got my European name . . .”

  Those in the audience who had heard it before would sit back, and make themselves comfortable. Each year however, there were at least a couple of youngsters to whom the story was new and exciting, and they fastened on every word.

  Telling the story could take nearly an hour, for there were many diversions from the main theme. But in its shortest form, it went something like this:

  “I was a young and arrogant man, new to the city and its ways, when I applied for the job of gardener at the Residence of the British High Commissioner.”

  This was the signal for audience participation, taking the forms of “oohs” and “aahs” of mock wonderment, and paving the way for a single interjection which always raised a laugh:

  “British” – though it sounded more like “Breeteeshi” – was delivered amidst much shaking of heads and in a tone that combined resignation and irritation and affection, like a reference to a favourite uncle who has eloped with a notorious bar girl.

  “At the time, my wise kinsman, who is no longer with us, was the night askari at the Residence. I was nervous, so I arrived early for the job interview, which was to be with the wife of the high commissioner.

  “It also gave me time to talk with my kinsman. We shared a Star cigarette while we discussed the health of the cattle back at home, the state of the rains, the beauty of our young women, and the merits of the men who sought their favours. And we also spoke about the job, and what allowances it offered.

  “It was when we were discussing the latest outbreak of fever among the cattle, and the wisdom of treating them with the healing green water from Crater Lake, as it is now called,” said her father, “that my kinsman asked a very strange question. He asked me: ‘What is your name?’

  “I was shocked. Was he losing his memory? Did he not know me? Had he not fed me my first cob of roasted corn? Had he really forgotten my name? Nothing that had been said during our talk suggested that my kinsman’s memory was uncertain.

  “So I told him what I thought he knew well: some friends call me Muputukwana, and my nickname at mission school was Ndabaningi, but mostly people call me plain old Mwai Gichuru Tangwenya.

  “Then my kinsman really worried me, for he said: ‘Don’t be a fool, boy. How long have you been in the city?’

  “I had been warned by my grandfather that living in big towns turned even good people a bit mad, so I was not unprepared for this rudeness.

  “ ‘Nearly a week,’ I said.

  “ ‘Have you worked for a white man before?’

  “ ‘Never,’ I replied.

  “My kinsman’s voice got softer. ‘Let me tell you something that you might find very strange, young Mwai Gichuru Tangwenya.’

  “I realised that his memory was as good as ever. Then he said to me: ‘What I now tell you is even stranger than the fact that the Mopani people are not circumcised.’ ”

  Hoots of laughter followed.

  “ ‘Some white men are good, some are bad. But I must tell you that nearly every white man, good or bad, has a problem with our languages, and with our names.’ ”

  The audience nodded in agreement. It was sad, but true.

  “My kinsman, who was wrapped in a blanket that smelled of wood fire, just like the smoke from our village, and whose carved pipe was from Arusha, in Tanzania, shook his head.

  “ ‘They just cannot speak our languages, not even one. And they cannot pronounce our proper names. Many, many of our young men fail their job interview for this reason.’

  “I had to ask him to explain.

  “ ‘It is very simple,’ he replied. ‘When the Europeans have to choose between a man with a name they cannot pronounce, that is, an African name, and a man with a name that is familiar to them, that is, a European name such as Sixpence or Shilling, who do you think they choose?’

  “Phauw! I was very, very worried. My interview was due soon. Finding a new name, even a European name, is no small matter. One can easily look foolish. It should not be rushed.”

  Solemn nods of agreement from the audience followed. Even in modern Kuwisha this held true.

  “My main rival for the job was a young man from my district – a loafer, but clever. He called himself Willard, like the potato crisps made here, in Kuwisha. It was a good name, easy for white people to remember, easy to say. A very good name. My heart fell.

  “My kinsman saw that I was troubled, and asked me to help him with sweeping. In return he said he would give me a shilling, which in those days was enough for the bus fare home. So I picked up a broom, and sang the song about leaving the village where I was born.

&n
bsp; “And although I thought about it, still I had no European name.”

  “Shame! Shame!” responded the audience.

  “Then, just before the interview, a wonderful thing happened. I was about to empty the leaves into a bin outside the kitchen door. I first looked inside the bin, checking for snakes. And then I saw it.”

  Youngsters in the audience took this as an opportunity to hiss, and frighten the toddlers.

  “No, it was not a snake. I saw a plastic bag, that was green, a very good, strong bag which I have always wished I had taken. On that bag was written the name: ‘Harrods of London’. In big gold letters! I learnt later that the bag had been brought back to Kuwisha, after home leave in England, by the high commissioner’s wife.

  “I knew then what my European name would be. I took the name Harrods. Even Willard agreed that it was a fine name. And the wife of the high commissioner – who was a very good madam – awarded me the job. That is the story of how I got my name, and a very good name it has proved to be. It has served me well,” concluded Mwai Gichuru Tangwenya, otherwise known as Harrods.

  Each year he sat down to whistles of approval from the youngsters, mature applause from the adults, and a loving hug from Charity.

  No-one in Kireba had been surprised when Charity honoured her father by naming her establishment after him. Indeed, any other name was unthinkable. Many residents still remembered the gentle and distinguished old man who had been the proud but shy guest of honour at the opening ceremony. Just weeks later he had died in his sleep, on the family shamba; and while Charity grieved, she took comfort in the fact that his life had been good and his end had been dignified and painless.

  Acting on her instruction, Furniver had passed on a summary of this story to the London lawyers.

  Surely, Charity had argued, even these London people would understand why she could not change the name of Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot)? Perhaps the registered letter awaiting collection was a formal acknowledgement of their mistake? Somehow Charity doubted this . . . and she braced herself for bad news.

  3

  “Beware the leopard that limps when the lion roars”

  The special time of day was ending, and the working day was beginning.

  Charity yawned once more, rubbed her eyes, and scratched her arm vigorously. Those high-pitched curses of the night that made sleep well nigh impossible, malaria-carrying mosquitoes had retreated after their assaults on her body. Their daytime counterparts, noisome flies, were taking their place.

  A few hundred yards away, a pair of skinny teenage boys peeked out cautiously from the abandoned water pipe that had become their home, and surveyed the sodden landscape of mud, debris and plastic-sheeted huts before emerging. Like rats out of a drain, thought Charity affectionately, two little rats called Titus Ntoto and Cyrus Rutere.

  “Too late for breakfast,” she teasingly called out as they got nearer, and the boys broke into a trot.

  Somewhere about their persons would be a tube or bottle of glue. Charity did not need to see the glue to know that it was being used – the evidence was in the enlarged pupils of their eyes, in their runny noses, and in their twitchy movements.

  She waved at a fellow worker, a charcoal burner, who returned the greeting, and whistled at his thin brown mongrel, ribs protruding, ordering it to heel.

  “You look like a chicken that has been caught in the rain,” said Charity, and they both laughed.

  Suddenly she was distracted by an outraged cackle from an angry cockerel, which was being stalked by Ntoto and Rutere. They had just missed capturing it, and the bird scuttled away, crowing in triumph and relief.

  “Good morning, Mama,” said Ntoto and Rutere in unison, as they approached.

  “Any breakfast” – it was pronounced as two words, “break fast”, and as they said it, their right hands conveyed invisible food to their mouths – “Any break fast for us this morning?” asked Rutere.

  “Break fast, mama,” echoed Ntoto.

  The two fourteen-year-olds had an unusual friendship, one which triumphed over the fact that they came from different parts of Kuwisha. Ntoto, tall for his age and painfully skinny, was a member of the country’s largest tribe. Rutere, the runt in the family litter, was from a small clan, part of an alliance of minorities that had been led by President Josiah Nduka since before the boys were born. Decades after independence, where you came from, your first language, whether you were circumcised, these still were the factors that dominated relationships and allegiances. But for Ntoto and Rutere, their friendship transcended differences of tongue and the politics of the foreskin: it was a bond that had been forged in adversity, and tested by hunger and deprivation.

  Charity looked sternly at the grubby pair. The arrangement was that the boys would carry out various chores, ranging from washing dishes at Harrods to collecting mail, in return for meals, and generous doses of affection and discipline.

  “Wash first,” said Charity. “Food is in the kitchen. When you have finished, you must go to the post with this piece of paper, for something very important.”

  Since the post office in the city centre was not due to open for an hour, there was time for the boys to linger over their plates of maize meal, and scraps of meat, left over from the night before, and covered with peanut gravy. They accompanied the meal with mugs of hot, sweet cocoa, giving small sounds of satisfaction, eating with the single-minded concentration of those who knew what it was like to go hungry, and not talking until they had cleared every morsel.

  Then they again carefully washed their hands in one of the plastic bowls of water set out between the tables, dried them on the towel provided, and helped Charity with the first chores of the day.

  The first wave of customers called in for tea and hunks of bread, which they dunked in the same peanut relish enjoyed by the boys, but which had been warmed up on the gas stove. The tea came with two generous spoons of sugar; for those with a sweet tooth and prepared to part with a couple of extra ngwee, she would add a dollop of condensed milk.

  By the time the boys had finished sweeping the premises, washing dishes from the night before, and restocking the fridge with Tusker beer and soft drinks and fruit juices, it was well after seven.

  “Go! Even if it is early, you can be first in the queue. So go.”

  She flapped her apron at them as they trotted off. Charity looked at her watch and then at the sun, as if checking the timepiece’s accuracy against the more reliable indicator provided by Nature. It would soon be time to begin the preparations for lunch. First there were the table tops to be wiped clean, plastic chairs to be unstacked. Then she set to work in the kitchen, and soon the aroma of roasting groundnuts and corn ears drifted across from the oven.

  A busy day lay ahead.

  Edward Furniver, Charity’s neighbour, financial adviser and close friend who had helped her find the money to set up Harrods, was particularly fond of “bitings”. He now dropped in almost every day, much to her quiet pleasure, in what had become a gentle and genteel courtship.

  Less welcome were the foreign journalists and aid workers, who were also to be seen more and more frequently in Kireba. It had become fashionable to visit the slum. Charity had lost count of the number of visitors who ended their tour of Kireba with a drink at the bar. Their behaviour reminded her of the one and only time she had visited a game park in Kuwisha, and at sundown she had sat on a game-viewing platform, overlooking a watering hole.

  “These people who come to Kireba, they are like the tourists in the game parks,” she had told Furniver. “They sit in their buses, or on their verandas, safe, and watch the animals as they come to drink water. These people who come to Harrods, they are the same, looking, looking at the animals of Kireba.”

  She snorted derisively.

  “I hear them, Furniver. I hear them talking.”

  Charity was a fair mimic.

  “I say,” she said, in a passable English accent, “I’ve spotted a charcoal burner, just b
ehind that coffin maker. And look! Just over there! An Aids orphan, being looked after by a very kind nurse.”

  And then, amused by her own vivid image, she could not help laughing, and Furniver had joined in.

  The sun was beginning to creep over the horizon. It was getting late, by Charity’s standards. The next wave of customers would soon arrive. It was time she put on the water for tea. Every morning clean water was brought over from the clinic by the duty Mboya Boy, and it took ages to boil.

  She contemplated the blackboard menu. Her aid worker friend Lucy had told her that one of the biggest names in the aid business was due to visit Kireba the next day, and might drop in – Hardwick Hardwicke, president of the World Bank. Not that Charity cared very much about his rank or status. Her job was to feed people – good food at fair prices. What bothered her was the fact that nobody could say whether he would want a Tusker beer or a cola, or fresh mango or passion fruit juice. And what would this man like to eat? A bowl of avocado soup, sprinkled with fresh ground pepper, and a plate of fried chicken, rounded off with a couple of sugared dough balls, should be good enough for anyone. She would have to ask. Perhaps young Lucy would be able to tell her. One never knew these days. Europeans had so many strange diets.

  Charity ran a cloth over the chairs, wiping off the puddles of overnight rain. It was turning out to be one of those hot and sultry African days when time not so much as stood still, but slowed down. The hotter it got, the lazier the hours. They behaved like sleepy, underpaid Kuwisha secretaries, debilitated by bilharzia, exhausted by the long journey into work, and who moved with painful deliberation, conserving energy, going about their business as if they were walking under water.

  Impossible though it seemed, more rain was on its way. Any one could smell it coming, even Edward Furniver, with his beak of a nose that got so red when exposed to the sun. Charity chuckled, a rich, gurgling sound that began in her belly, as she recalled a sharp exchange with him. Perhaps she had been a bit harsh.