He turned away, and Daniel tried not to scowl and look abandoned as he went out to the Landrover in the carpark.
The government guest house was in darkness when he drove up and parked under the verandah. She might be in bed, already asleep with the light out. Despite his altered opinion of her, he felt a stab of disappointment when he switched on the bedroom light and saw that the servants had turned down the beds and rigged the mosquito nets. She had given him the excuse to end it, why was he not more pleased that it was over?
He had drunk just enough of the local gin to have a headache.
He picked up Bonny's bag from the foot of the bed and carried it through to the second bedroom. Then he went into the bathroom and swept her toiletries and cosmetics into her sponge bag and dumped them in the washbasin of the second bathroom down the passage. Then he held his head under the cold tap and took three Anadin tablets. He dropped his clothes on the floor and climbed naked under the mosquito net.
He woke with headlights sweeping the front of the guest house and shining through the curtains on to the wall above his bed. Tyres crunched on the gravel drive. There were voices, and then a car door slammed and the vehicle pulled away. He heard her come up the verandah steps and open the front door.
A minute later the bedroom door opened stealthily and she crept into the room.
He switched on the bedside light and she froze in the middle of the floor. She carried her shoes in one hand and her bag in the other.
Her hair was in a wild tangle, sparkling like copper wire in the light, and her lipstick was smeared over her chin.
She giggled and he realised she was drunk. Have you any idea of the risk you're taking, you silly bitch? he asked bitterly. This is Africa. What you'll get is a four-letter word and it's not the one you're thinking of, sweetheart. It's spell A I D S. Tud Tut! jealous, are we? How do you know what I've been doing, darling? It's no big secret.
Everybody at the party knew.
You've been doing what any good little whore does. She took a wild round-arm swing at his head. He ducked under the blow, and the momentum carried her on to the bed.
She pulled the mosquito net down on top of herself and fell in a tangle of long legs. The mini-skirt pulled up almost as high as her waist, her buttocks were bare and white as ostrich eggs. By the way, he said, you've left your knickers with Ephrem. She crawled up on to her knees and pulled down the green skirt. They are in my handbag, ducky. She got unsteadily to her feet. Where the hell are my things?
In your room, your new room across the passage. She flashed at him.
So that's the way you want it? You didn't really think I'd want to pick up Ephrem's leftovers, did you? Daniel tried to keep his tone reasonable.
Off you go, there's a good little harlot. She picked up her handbag and shoes and marched to the door. There she turned back to him, swaying with a drunkard's dignity. It's all true, what they say, she told him with vindictive relish. They are big. Bigger and better than you'll ever be! She slammed the door behind her.
Daniel was on his second cup of breakfast tea when Bonny came out on to the verandah and, without greeting him, took her place at the breakfast table opposite him.
She wore her usual working uniform of faded blue jeans and denim top, but her eyes were puffy and her expression disgruntled with hangover.
The guest house chef was an anachronism from the colonial era and he served a traditional English breakfast. Neither of them spoke while Bonny demolished her plateful of eggs and bacon. Then she looked up at him.
So what happens now? You make a film, he said. Just the way it's written in your contract. You still want me around? As a cameraman, yes. But from now on it's a business relationship. That suits me just fine, she agreed. It was getting to be a bit of a strain; I'm not good at faking it. Daniel stood up abruptly, and went to fetch his gear from the bedroom. He was still too angry-to risk getting into an argument with her.
Before he was ready, Captain Kajo arrived with three soldiers in the back of his Landrover. They helped carry out the heavy video equipment and load it into the back of the truck. Daniel let Bonny sit up in the cab beside Captain Kajo, while he rode in the back with the heavily armed Hita soldiers.
the town of Kahali was very much as he remembered it from his last visit.
The streets were wide and dusty where the potholes had eaten, cancerlike, through the tarmac. The buildings looked like those from the movie set of an old-fashioned Western.
The main difference that Daniel noticed was the mood of the people.
The Uhali women still wore their colourful ankle-length robes and turbans, the Moslem influence apparent in their demeanour, but the expressions on their faces were guarded and neutral. There were few smiles and no laughter in the open-air market where the women squatted in lines with their wares spread out on sheets of cloth in front of them. There were army patrols in the market-place and on the street corners.
The populace averted their eyes as the Landrover passed.
There were very few tourists, and these were dusty, unshaven and rumpled, probably members of an overland safari making their way down the length of the African continent in a huge communal truck. They were haggling for tomatoes and eggs in the market. Daniel grinned.
They were paying for a glimpse of purgatory. The overland safari meant amoebic dysentery and punctures, five thousand miles of potholes and army roadblocks, probably the only package holiday on the globe with no repeat customers. Once was enough to last a lifetime.
The gunboat was waiting for them at the wharf. Seamen in navy blue uniforms and bare feet carried the video equipment up the gangplank and the captain shook hands with Daniel as he came aboard. Peace be with you, he greeted him in Swahili. I have orders to take you where you want to go. They left the harbour and turned northwards, parallel to theLakeshore. Daniel stood out on the foredeck and his good spirits returned swiftly. The water was a dark and lovely blue, sparkling in the sunlight. There was a single cloud on the northern horizon, as white as a seagull and not much larger. It was the spray column- where the lake spilled over its rocky rim into a deep gorge and became the infant Nile.
The ultimate source of the White Nile had been debated for two thousand years and had still not been entirely agreed upon.
Was it those falls where the Victoria Nile out of Lake Victoria joined the Albert Nile in Lake Albert and spilled over at the beginning of the incredible journey down to Cairo and the Mediterranean Sea? Or was it higher still, as Herodotus had written long before the birth of Christ?
Did it spring from a bottomless lake lying between the two mountains Crophi and Mophi and fed by their eternal snows? With the lake-spray in his face, Daniel turned to look westward, trying to make out the loom of the romantic mountain peaks in the distance, but today, as on most days, it was a diffuse blue cloud mass, blending with the blue of the African sky.
Many of the earlier explorers had passed close by the Mountains of the Moon without ever dreaming of their existence.
Even Henry Morton Stanley, that ruthless, driven, Americanised Welsh bastard, had lived for months in their shadow before the perpetual clouds had opened and astonished him with a vista of snowy peaks and shining glaciers. It gave Daniel a mystic feeling to sail upon these waters that were the lifeblood pumped from the heart mountains of this savage continent.
He turned and glanced up at the open bridge of the gunboat.
Bonny Mahon was filming. She had the Sony camera balanced on her shoulder and pointed towards the shore. He grimaced with reluctant approval. Whatever their personal problems, she was a true professional. At the end she'd probably get a good shot of the devil on her way through hell, and the thought made him grin and took the edge off his antagonism towards her.