him the perfect houseboy.
Richard envisaged somebody young and alert like their houseboy, Ugwu, but Harrison turned out to be a small, stooped stick of a man, middle-aged, wearing an oversized white shirt that stopped below his knees. He bowed extravagantly at the beginning of each conversation. He told Richard with unconcealed pride that he had formerly worked for the Irish priest Father Bernard and the American professor Land. ‘I am making very good beet salad,’ he said that first day, and later Richard realized that he was proud not only of his salad but also of cooking with beets, which he had to buy in the ‘specialty vegetable’ stall because most Nigerians did not eat them. The first dinner Harrison cooked was a savoury fish, with the beet salad as a starter. A crimson beet stew appeared next to his rice the following evening. ‘It is from an American recipe for potato stew that I am making this one,’ Harrison said, as he watched Richard eat. The next day, there was a beet salad, and the next another beet stew, now frighteningly red, next to the chicken.
‘No more, please, Harrison,’ Richard said, raising his hand. ‘No more beets.’
Harrison looked disappointed, and then his face brightened. ‘But, sah, I am cooking the food of your country; all the food you are eating as children I cook. In fact, I’m not cooking Nigerian foods, only foreign recipe.’
‘Nigerian food is quite all right, Harrison,’ Richard said. If only Harrison knew how much he had disliked the food of his childhood, the sharp-tasting kippers full of bones, the porridge with the appalling thick skin on top like a waterproof lining, the overcooked roast beef with fat around the edges drenched in gravy.
‘Okay, sah.’ Harrison looked morose.
‘By the way, Harrison, do you happen to know of any herbs for men?’ Richard asked, hoping he sounded casual.
‘Sah?’
‘Herbs.’ Richard gestured vaguely.
‘Vegetables, sah? Oh, I make any of the salad of your country very good, sah. For Professor Land, I am making many different-different salad.’
‘Yes, but I mean vegetables for sickness.’
‘Sickness? You see doctor in Medical Centre.’
‘I am interested in African herbs, Harrison.’
‘But sah, they are bad, from the witch doctor. They are devilish.’
‘Of course.’ Richard gave up. He should have known that Harrison, with his excessive love for all things non-Nigerian, was not the right person to ask. He would ask Jomo instead.
Richard waited until Jomo arrived and then stood at the window watching him water the newly planted lilies. Jomo placed the watering can aside and began to pick the umbrella tree fruit; they had fallen during the previous night and lay, oval and pale yellow, on the lawn. Richard often smelt the over-sweetness of their rotting, a scent he knew he would always associate with living in Nsukka. Jomo held a raffia bag full of fruit when Richard came up to him.
‘Oh. Good morning, Mr Richard, sah,’ he said, in his solemn manner. ‘I want take the fruit to Harrison in case you want, sah. I no take them for myself.’ Jomo placed the bag down and picked up his watering can.
‘It’s all right, Jomo. I don’t want any of the fruit,’ Richard said. ‘By the way, would you know of any herbs for men? For men who have problems with … with being with a woman?’
‘Yes, sah.’ Jomo kept watering as if this was a question he heard every day.
‘You know of some herbs for men?’
‘Yes, sah.’
Richard felt a triumphant leap in his stomach. ‘I should like to see them, Jomo.’
‘My brother get problem before because the first wife is not pregnant and the second wife is not pregnant. There is one leaf that the dibia give him and he begin to chew. Now he has pregnant the wives.’
‘Oh. Very good. Could you get me this herb, Jomo?’
Jomo stopped and looked at him, his wise, wizened face full of fond pity. ‘It no work for white man, sah.’
‘Oh, no. I want to write about it.’
Jomo shook his head. ‘You go to dibia and you chew it there in front of him. Not for writing, sah.’ Jomo turned back to his watering, humming tunelessly.
‘I see,’ Richard said, and as he went back indoors he made sure not to let his dejection show; he walked straight and reminded himself that he was, after all, the master.
Harrison was standing outside the front door, pretending to polish the glass. ‘Is there something that Jomo is not doing well, sah?’ he asked hopefully.
‘I was just asking Jomo some questions.’
Harrison looked disappointed. It was clear from the beginning that he and Jomo would not get along, the cook and the gardener, each thinking himself better than the other. Once, Richard heard Harrison tell Jomo not to water the plants outside the study window because ‘the sound of water is disturbing Sah writing.’ Harrison wanted Richard to hear it, too, the way he spoke loudly, standing just outside the study window. Harrison’s obsequiousness amused Richard, as did Harrison’s reverence for his writing; Harrison had taken to dusting the typewriter every day, even though it was never dusty, and was reluctant to throw away manuscript pages he saw in the dustbin. ‘You are not using this again, sah? You are sure?’ Harrison would ask, holding the crumpled pages, and Richard would say that, yes, he was sure. Sometimes he wondered what Harrison would say if he told him that he wasn’t even sure what he was writing about, that he had written a sketch about an archaeologist and then discarded it, written a love story between an Englishman and an African woman and discarded it, and had started writing about life in a small Nigerian town. Most of his material for his latest effort came from the evenings he spent with Odenigbo and Olanna and their friends. They were casually accepting of him, did not pay him any particular attention, and perhaps because of that, he felt comfortable sitting on a sofa in the living room and listening.
When Olanna first introduced him to Odenigbo, saying, ‘This is Kainene’s friend that I told you about, Richard Churchill,’ Odenigbo shook his hand warmly and said, “‘I have not become the king’s first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”’
It took Richard a moment to understand before he laughed at the poor imitation of Sir Winston Churchill. Later, he watched Odenigbo wave around a copy of the Daily Times, shouting, ‘It is now that we have to begin to decolonize our education! Not tomorrow, now! Teach them our history!’ and thought to himself that here was a man who trusted the eccentricity that was his personality, a man who was not particularly attractive but who would draw the most attention in a room full of attractive men. Richard watched Olanna as well, and each time he glanced at her he felt renewed, as if she had become more beautiful in the preceding minutes. He felt an unpleasant emotion, though, seeing Odenigbo’s hand placed on her shoulder and, later, imagining them together in bed. He and Olanna said little to each other, outside of the general conversation, but a day before he left to visit Kainene in Port Harcourt, Olanna said, ‘Richard, please greet Kainene.’
‘I will,’ he said; it was the first time she had mentioned Kainene.
Kainene picked him up at the train station in her Peugeot 404 and drove away from the centre of Port Harcourt towards the ocean, to an isolated three-storey house with verandas wreathed in creeping bougainvillea of the palest shade of violet. Richard smelt the saltiness of the air as Kainene led him through wide rooms with tastefully mismatched furniture, wood carvings, muted paintings of landscapes, rounded sculptures. The polished floors had a woody scent.
‘I did wish it was closer to the sea, so we could have a better view. But I changed Daddy’s décor and it’s not too nouveau riche, I pray?’ Kainene asked.
Richard laughed. Not just because she was mocking Susan – he had told her what Susan had said about Chief Ozobia – but because she