Sandwich, Kent

The world had become dim but life has many excellent turns. In my case I had two cataract operations, a great success and my physical sight is restored to better than my vision fifty years hence, before all these adventures. All of this was offered and received for free on the NHS, the health service of my one country. It is a marvelous result for me. I emerge, a little.

Other characters have come again in this time of memoir.  These lost, in my travel and sadness, reappeared their own late life. We talk, by Facebook and email, such things, we might meet, perhaps for lunch. My memory is stimulated, desire remembered. There may be some stories left to tell.

The Racer

I remember at a young age reading a book that  may have been called the Racer. The subject was the world of professional car racing but I can't remember the plot probably because at eight years old the events  were not relevant. I have always remembered one motif: when cars go wrong it is always the electrics. At the end of the book as the protagonist drives his sports into the world beyond the book he notices that the dashboard reading light has failed, he muses : It is always the electrics that go wrong.

The eye infection which had threatened my sight in the last days I spent in Zanzibar was the prelude to a decline in sight which four years later has made the outside world become opaque, with ghosted images. These are the normal processes of ageing and I am sixty now.

I had expected in all the years I spent in Tanzania to return to my discreet flat in Wandsworth, London. I did not do that for financial circumstance and other sadness.  I went instead to live in Sandwich, Kent.

The Bell Hotel, Sandwich

English spies in my time, beyond and before, have been broadly in two groups, the Arabist’s, the traditional branch and those who made their career and reputation in Ireland. In the 1970’s through the next decade, the trouble Belfast way was of more importance, latterly, our last decade this wheel has turned again. The novels and the popular films have preferred to make a plot from Russians but this enemy has been more of a concern to the Great Power. We like spying with Russians, it is a British game, not a great game but one with rules we both accept and get pensioned from. The perceived threats of the last decade plus a year have not been accessible to the old or young white men, to get that tradable stuff you need a Jasmin.

R when last we had dinner in Town had in a rare direct statement has said, dry lipped sheen over the edge of a wine glass, "Need to know in most cases means knows nothing at all. That is especially true of street men who have a tendency to drink more than recommended."  I smiled, very pleased that we had slept together many years ago. I certainly would be nervous now, R is now the type to have never been twenty four.

She mailed to say I will phone you at six. I sat there looking at the phone which duly blinked. "Hows the cash flow?" Not enough. "Here is one for you, you can sit in the pub all day"  I do not sit in the pub all day "Excellent, glad to hear it. This is the evening,  a Saturday evening and you have taken to liking the Owen."

I was a thrown a bit, looked around since I was taking the phone call in the Owen. But an  evening in the festival sitting in the pub I could do. "Love to" I said, "Jolly good" said R.

The Owen is a good place to watch the entrance to the Bell Hotel since the view out is direct and the view in  obscure. It was more difficult to make the beer last longer than usual and easy to believe that my ability would not be much affected by just one more. The job sounded easy too, so much so that I already doubted it was the real matter. "Try to drop one chip inside the car, the other in her handbag- but if it is too difficult or you think you have been spotted withdraw. Don't bother with a second attempt"

The Owen stayed full all afternoon and evening because of the festival. I was properly anonymous, a big bellied old English man is a very common species. It was dark, some rain in the summer air, when they arrived at the Bell Hotlel. R had predicted the event with great accuracy:

"German car, sports, BMW like mine but a bigger version, left hand drive. They will most likely drive up to the door, stop there, right on the yellow lines. The man will be driving, I expect she, the mark, will go first to check the reservation- especially if they are late. Late is after dark"

 And so it exactly it was. I was concentrating  hard when the car pulled up, though I was still a little startled and left too abruptly the conversation.

She walked quickly to reception, tight quick steps through the swing doors. There was a crowd on the pavement, the swing doors revolved. The man looked alert and anxious, looking all around, fixing on individuals in the crowd, assessing and moving to the next. I went through the door and across the inconvenient emptiness of the foyer. She stood at reception, talking quickly, her hand bag was open, she fiddled with her purse, there would be a moment, whilst they checked her credit card. But when I got close it was too risky and worse when a vice behind said "Can I help you Sir", "Gosh, well, I was looking for the public bar. Must have got the wrong space."  Born yesterday the concierge said with a glance. The woman turned and looked, I waved my arms and made big eyes, ah yes, its over there through that door. Too risky now, I left to try the car drop.

I waited in the streets it was easier to be lost. The woman came back through the doors, gestured to the man  that all was fine, he got out and moved towards the open boot to help with the luggage. I got up to the open window, the chip was in my fingers when he turned, his crowd scan fixed on me, our eyes met, the woman followed his gaze and clocked me as well. I was spotted for sure. I turned the three quarter view and went back to the Owen, it was best to be a bit drunk looking now, then to disappear before they came a looking again. Andy said "Where did you go, what was that about?" I needed air.

That was a real mess up I thought, R wont think much of that! But then she would be used to my blundering so not to worry the new glass of wine said to me. Then, (afterwards I said I always knew it)  I saw the Jasmin, pass by the window of the Owen- and it was for me to spot else she would not have come that way-  I watched her but briefly pass over the old toll bridge to where I surmised her driver would be waiting. "

"Michael you were just a big lumbering fat bear of a decoy"

The money came through though: BACs transfer from Living Learning English, based in Bristol.

Potoa

Life comes to a time when memories are more relevant than the pleasant present, when the better part is done, there being but at best a tuneful coda ahead.

Potoa to Mkokotoni is a morning walk we made to offer guests who asked for some local life. At Potoa,  a village,  the paved road from Nungwi moves away from the shore line thus between there and Mkokotoni Harbour the trodden paths remain.

We, the author and I, scoped the route I walked thirty one times between 2006 and my last solitary visit, a reprise, in June 2010. The walk starts through the the village houses, clay built, some made of concrete blocks, most with coral walls, through the shamba, cassava planted hopefully, some banana, the mango trees and tall coconut palms. Potoa to the coast has some earth and the sweet water is close enough to be welled. The coves have rocky beaches, more silt than sand, the hotels had not yet come this far. At the shore line the trading boats anchor. A captain looking quizzical and suspicious when first we walked there, perhaps quizzical and amused. I asked if it was his boat, it is my room, "chumba yangu", he replied. I asked what it was he plied between Poto and Tanga, "things" said he, for that is a question too far.

Then along the shoreline to the fish market, the dagaa, landing. The first visit was by chance the ideal time; all love affairs are that. The whitebait are gathered most plentiful in the full wane of the moon when the lamps deceive the shoals. In the full moon, the lamps are outshone. And then the tide must be slack enough to leave enough depth for the landing in the half hour after sunrise. On those occasions the landing there, if it happens still, is a busy beautiful foreground to the rising sun, a memory, her smile of love, that stays a beaming as today I write and remember "Hey Basset, how did you know about this place"

From the fish market across the rice fields, a crop dependent on a very capricious rain, across the creek accessible when the tide is slack and half, as am I, following the speed walking women pots on head trotting their ways to the better fields deep East of Mkokotoni Harbour. The mangrove is farmed a bit, for use by the makuti teams, a traditional use, the red mangrove crabs are plentiful still. Only take the males in the days before the full moon for only then are they full of flesh. The spring moon mating leaves them devoid of meat, as barren and limp as I in the evening.

Beyond the creek, along the beach past the ship yard of grand dhows, new boats big enough to go to Dubai to buy, others ruined now, their planks to be reused. There was always the signs of work there, wood carved to shape or in progress, twice in those thirty one weeks a boat was gone hauled away on the full spring but I never saw the shipwrights only the women rope makers. They laughed and asked many a question when we came a walking by their shop. On the beach I could show the guests the sweet water bubbling from the sand.  If you take from the spring the water is always sweet, if you dig a well and pump your source will soon be bracken.

Up away from the shore then, skirting close by the house where TISS operate: Tanzania Internal Security Serve. A good long name and a good short acronym. They are in my experience good at their job and use their information sparingly.

The Government building is very British. There is a lively school there and a court where matters of stolen cow and traffic offenses not resolved by street side bribes are heard. Then open air market where ornate flimsy beds are sold. We stop at the Mkokotoni fish slabs where the residue fish are sold. In that market there as all markets, mitumba, second hand clothes are offered. Later there will be an auction to work the crowd. On the low tide the Tumbatu passengers wade to and from the boats that ply that route.

This walk ends at the tea shop where just in the entrance there is a swing serving as a seat. My love sat on the swing and I ordered cakes for her.  He blond hair swung. Three years later, in London, long gone from me she said "There was a swing in the tea shop in Mkokotoni."  This is the nature of memory and loss.








.

Le Beaujolais

Usually nothing happens. I prefer that, I preferred it more when employed by the Agents. I went across scathes of Africa to attend meetings and other events which did not occur. They paid me anyway, that type of employment still exists, but not for me, these days it is a contract that might fruit which is rare. The fee is good when something happens but most often nothing happens. When nothing happens the benefit of the contract is as the same as the cost of doing. “Modern life, Michael, you are an old man now”.  I am.

On the train to London I sent a check in text and R replied: “I am in the office. Enjoy Le Beaujolais.”  A wine bar, a successor says R to Solanges, in Litchfield St, up and right from Leicester Sq. You will like the place, she had said the day late last summer that she invited me to scope it. “We like it too” said R, “And I knew you would.  It is by the glass on a professional day, but this evening we can have a bottle.”

“It suits you: chance to be professional along with being drunk”.

The mark and his three associates were already at the table, the first bottle down, food ordered. A delay at the bar before the waitress took my order with a French eyebrow raise, “a glass, rouge reserve”. I thought, in words, she has a sea wave of hair and very Moulin lipstick. I went to the toilet, the way I have learnt to scope and when I get back, the table next the mark, three quarters to his vision, is vacated as R’s Jasmin, a trainee, leaves right on time, without a glance.  I said to myself, hopefully without blurting “this has been well set up, something might happen.”  It did.

 I plumped like Depardieu into the vacated seat. I slurped a quarter of the reserve rouge, set out my notebook, “I write stories for a hobby”, set the Blackberry, this weeks recording device, the Nokia being too obvious in England though it was not in Denmark. My right ear, the deafer one better thus for concentrating on one voice amongst many amidst the hubbub, cocked right into his sound. He could see should he be interested some of my pate and the right side of my jowly.

The customers there are largely these sets: clandestine couples, groups of lady peeler laughers in for lunch, groups of men, florid a bit, in tables of four talking about deals. The mark had a voice in the style of Alistair Campbell, or in my era Derek Moule. It is a voice, coarse, male, cigarette honed, that dominates a conversation which was helpful for my ear and the recorder.  He was lubricated, ready to talk. Better, his minder was also post prandial. He saw me but marked me as a shambler.

They noted me slump down, it is the habit, there was a cautionary silence. That silence can be long, they can leave, and on those occasions nothing happens. But on this occasion the mark was voluble. I heard about planes being bought and sold, third party financing, suggestions that it might be necessary “to tickle his tummy,” and so on.

Scrawling away since even now notes much enhance the recording I wondered who the ultimate client was. R, since she went freelance (believe, that not!), said “it’s all commercial now” could have the Agents, but HMRC, lots of obscures and I presume newspapers too amongst her contractors.  

“Stay one hour. Then whatever has happened leave”

On the third glass of rouge, I was inclined to stay but, fearing a lecture and a delay in a much needed fee, and, I realise, a long applied habit of doing what I am told where R is concerned, I paid, in cash, gathered up and strode into the confusing bustle that is London when emerging from a wine bar mid-afternoon. In the street air I felt the adrenalin provoked desire for a cigarette.

On the tube to Paddington I clutched the notebook and the Blackberry and checked them often since at this stage to lose either would be a great professional wine induced blunder. At Paddington I walked rather random, a very unnecessary precaution in my view, and found a giant empty venue on Little Venice just open for the day waiting for office closing and beyond. The barman, callow, disturbed from his preparations, served up a “large please” glass of white which I set down on the spacious empty table along with the equipment. I typed a bit, one fingered, listened to the recording, decided it would do, sent off both “straight away” as instructed. Done. Good. I left the large glass untouched, to make the barman think, and found, two minutes early the Paddington Hilton where Will was waiting for the cover meeting.

Will went to get his train, I, by now feeling slightly dishevelled, a bit wobbly, decided it was best to get close to home ground before I had another. On the train from St Pancras, before the first tunnel, a text: beep.

“Well done. Have a good evening. See you soon. Rx”

Bata (Kubwa) na Casa

Those two liked to joke about the animals that they watch intensely, staring hard and silently and then teasing each other giving characteristics taken from the creatures they study. Casa, a turtle, whose given name is Muhsin, is so called because of his very big feet and splayed way of walking made more because he chooses shoes that are much bigger than his very big feet. Bata, duck in Kiswahili, had a different provenance. Batash they told me was the family name of a famous trading clan who Batashi may have once worked for, had a connection with or been adopted by. Batash is a broker, his success then and now based on his reputation for being good with money. Everyone trusts Batash for money, a necessary and rare attribute for a Zanzibari trader. “You are a casa” said Batash to Muhsin, “you are a bata” said Muhsin to Batash. Bata a diminutive form of Batash. His given name is Mohamed, but there are many so called in Zanzibar so it is good thus to have a familiar name. They had a name for me too, Basset, but that came from another source. Basset, a breed of dog, “sad and rather disappointed” which is how I look because of my down turned mouth and jowly features, but I liked the name because on optimistic days that description fits with my view of my history. Cathryn AlKanaan, the Piss Chippers wife, said always that my glass was half full, another wag, more perceptive, reading from a birthday card bought in a Sandwich shop, said the glass is not big enough.




Batashi was once a driver and very good at that. He could and can run at speed a foot or so from a wobbling bicycle, break through the gears, never has road kill, not even a chicken. He told me he did not like to kill any animal and though he made little of it preferred fruits, berries and roots to any meat and is very much adverse to consuming refined sugar. He told me that he gained his insight into the human condition from a time of working on ships, a common escape for Zanzibari boys. A character I mused from the novels of Joseph Conrad, who wrote of ships and spies.



Muhsin had trained to be a cook and was then the assistant cook at AlKanaan's huts but was not of family. His English is good and self taught. Muhsin is very discreet, very knowledgeable about other peoples business but not at all inclined to opine, approve or disapprove. He grins the best enigmatic cheshire I have ever seen. Bata na Casa discuss matters often under the mango tree at Darijani and come to secret conclusions/



Bata left driving and owned busses which he employed people to drive. The key to any business, so obvious but lost, it to have customers. Without paying customers there is no trade, with customers any other matter can be solved. I cannot do anything at all only arrange for things to be done. Batash sold his bus, sold another, by and by bought and sold without ever owning the wheels at all. One rainy day I borrowed a car from Batash, since by then I had become mzungu mchovu and thus had no shillings of my own. In the three hours I drove on favour Batash changed the car three times, he had bought and sold them all.



The arrival of mobile phones was the event that moved Batash from doing rather well to becoming quite rich. There was no need to meet, no need to see a face, just a conversation since Batash is good for money. All can be done under the mango tree in Darajani. Those sullen layabouts, his school mates are not so lazy, Batash employs them all. I said “You sell on the left ear and buy on the right ear”. Batash like me is left handed and our bond was helped by the mutual recognition of a secret society. The society of Batash is a growing one for in Zanzibar even the most honest is by necessity corrupt, even the most discreet has a version of their business known. Batash can trade with everyone and for sure there will be no record of any conversation. Bata Kubwa, in the tinted car, on the back of a vespa or appearing from one of the many entrances to Darijani. Sometimes and certainly on Friday now that he is older Batash goes to pray in the mosque. 



Batash advised me to go home. Advice or not it was time to go home, to be broke in a country not your own is a sad state of affairs. It has taken over two years in my own country to become decently wealthy again. In this new business I too have not met my customers or my suppliers or anyone I do business with. I too do not exist.



On the park course my golfing partner drove the orb into the pond. Reload. I did the same. Come home, reload.

Gray Ladies

I drove to the quiet house in the village near Oxford up the hill from the Cowly car assembly plant. The village where the grey ladies live, where the bridge evenings are dry though they are always tempted but never succumb to drink.

The paintings that came from the art gallery in Barcelona at a cost of nine thousand pounds were still unframed lent against the dining room wall. The teak table for twelve was half set and much polished. I have known that room used only once. Susan hosted a bridge evening for the ladies and one man plus me.

“Have you got any fags?”
I have.
“Do you still smoke?”

“Only when I see you”

Susan said  “I have not had a fag since the last time you were here”

“I have some. Where shall we smoke? In the conservatory?

An equally expensive painting from the same art gallery is hanging on the conservatory wall.
It was the hot weather week of September 2011, so the conservatory in the cold house was just beyond pleasantly warm. Susan removed her long jumper, her trousers I could see filled her tightly and pleasantly. I am sure she noticed me looking

“Do you live here?”

“When I am England. Of course I do. It is my house. You know that.”

Susans accent had got a bit plumb.

How often are you in England.?  You see me on Skype.

The next day we walked to Wheatley to buy food in the Coop supermarket there because she said there is none in the house. I bought two bottles of beer because there was none of that either. She bought some pasta:

“We can have pasta and cheese”

“It will be better with bacon”

We went to the aisles again.

“Have you wine?”
“Lots of wine”
“Good. I have not found it yet”
“I will put a bottle in the fridge”

On the way back a lorry, a crew and a land rover 110 were making a mess of moving a mobile home.

“There is a mobile home site down that track. My cleaning lady lives in a mobile home down there”
“You have a cleaning lady?
“She only comes when I am not in England”


The quiet house did look as if the cleaning lady had been yesterday, the washing up done but not put way.The crisp of the sheets, the make of my bed in the guest room looked like cleaning lady work.
  
“My cleaning lady and her husband once had a house but they sold it because they are spend thrifts and used up all their money”


Back at home Susan went to repose so as to fend off a migraine. I drank the two beers, smoked two cigarettes, poured with delighted defiance a good full glass of the wine now in the fridge. I was thus tongue loosened. The September sun, these clear blue skies, faded, the quiet house is soon cold.

Susan came, no glass, no water. I gave her a fag, she lit it with style, I took a draught. She had released, let loose, her hair, a mane of many blonds. I admired, I wondered, but she had told many times that she has had no lovers for many many years.

“There is quite a difference in what is on the audio and what you report that Lars said in the showers”

A touch lip puff. The as the smoke curled in the cooling air.

"So tell what Lars said in the bathroom."


I had reported it, written it verbatim as I remembered.

Susan is very professional, has been doing this stuff since she was twenty five, which, I distracted, note is twenty five years ago. It is what she does bored and fed up with it as she is. The Washerman has no pastimes either and in retirement is bored and lost.

“Golf is boring. I hate golf”

“I don’t find it boring- it is a pastime when there is a lot of time to pass”

I have had that conversation with both of them.  Golf has no meaningful result.

I told her what Lars said. Sarah kept my gaze, as far as I could see the only recording device was her own listening. This soft persistent interrogation is the English style. She kept her eyes steady at mine, lips pursed tight enough to whiten.

Then.

“You got back to Hamburg at six thirty five, you left just after ten. That was not the scheme. Your contract said you leave on arrival. You did not. What did you do?”
“I had never been to Hamburg before, the trip had gone well, so I went to a pub”
“Did you drink?”

It was a pub, they sell drinks, I had money, I bought their products.

“Who did you talk to?”

No one. It was Hamburg, I don’t speak the lingo

“You stayed three hours in a bar and spoke to no on

Exactly. I can do that in the English pub I visit every day.

Susan said “Men can do that. You are a man who can do that”

She said “One more time, it is my job, tell me again, word by word, what Lars said in the shower”

I am a bit drunk now. I can see that. It is not that she wants to catch me out in a lie, I am paid to lie, but she does want to confirm that I am consistent, cupped or not.

Not that drunk, we went to play bridge, three rubbers with the grey ladies. There was coffee, tea, pineapple cake. The sugar, the charm, the deprivation swayed them. The bridge session was divided into two tables which were not changed between rubbers. One of these ladies would be working with Susan but I could not tell which one. All of them could spot the inconsistencies and bullshit which I laded on.

The day before.

“I have booked us to go to a lecture, in Oxford, the afternoon, on climate change and economics. Would you like to go?”

I would. We did, the lecture very well attended presented by Professor Hendry was interesting, a huge canvas, a paper he said that had been fifteen years in the writing. Professor Hendry said that “if the distribution changes the mathematical models on which economics is based do not apply.” Gosh now there is a thing.


After the lecture she said we can go to the pub if you like. I did like. Susan is the only person I know that can order a pint of tap water in a pub with out showing any sign of embarrassment. I ordered two pints of beer and one pint of tap water, I am more easily embarrassed and can drink two pints if needs must.


We looked for a table outside so we could have another fag. We were invited to join a bench for four occupied by two students just, they declared, in their first week of a postgraduate in environmental something. Susan told them of her interest in natural bee keeping.

One said, the wit of youth.

“Is this new love or old love”

Answer that Susan

Her silent steel stare provoked a “whoops, wrong question.” Sarah asks she does not answer. A job to do. I am fed up with it, but it is what I do. And no hobby or good works has fired that barren.

“We seek to resolve conflicts. But more, to see the conflicts that are inherent in the contract, because, Michael, these contracts are complex. We seek to avoid litigation”

As one would.