With the tickets in their possession, their next priority was to get aboard the train. They had to be strictly disciplined about this, for their bodies were making increasingly urgent demands upon them. For drink, food, relief and rest. But as all travellers who do not hold specific reservations know, mistaken priorities at this stage could all too easily lead to a complete journey standing wedged in a corridor. They passed through the barrier at once, had their tickets inspected and clipped punctiliously by a Kyoga in a heavy serge uniform, and crossed through a seemingly undiminished throng to platform one.
It was already almost impossible to see the sides or roofs of the carriages because so many people were hanging or sitting on the outside of each one. Up and down the platform itself surged a river of people calling up to the passengers, offering as wide a selection of items for sale as had been offered in the main station itself — by the shops and by the boys. Robert shouldered his way through all of this, followed by Ann who was perforce content to use his physical strength as a kind of shield. They crossed slowly to the nearest carriage and climbed up into it. It was packed, a long, noisy, glass-sided tunnel full of people — mostly women — children, chickens, goats, vegetables, fruit, anything which could be bred, reared, grown, made, found, collected, created, and sold. ‘Market day special,’ bellowed Robert wryly, and plunged into the throng.
Two carriages down, they got a seat courtesy of a huge woman who chucked two sulky boys off a broken-sprung bench by the door and gestured at them to sit, beaming cheerfully. They sank gratefully onto the lumpy, uncomfortable seat, but no sooner had they done so than Ann said, ‘How long do we have?’
‘Half an hour.’
‘I’ve got to find the john, Robert. Guard the seat, will you?’
‘OK. I think I saw a Ladies at the back of the platform. Cut straight across from here. And hurry, would you?’
She opened the door and fought her way down onto the platform again. After pummelling her way through the throng for about five metres, she turned and looked back so that she would recognise the door again. Robert, at the window, smiled and waved. She turned and plunged on. Without the camera case she found she could move much more quickly, and as soon as she saw the door with the female figurine upon it, she had surprisingly little trouble in crossing to it. Civilisation at last, she thought, and pushed the door. She stepped through it and stopped dead. She looked around. She looked back at the slowly closing door. She began to laugh, hysterically, tipped over the edge at last.
There was nothing there. No room, no cubicles, no basins, no marble floor or roof. No roof at all, in fact. There was a wall behind her and a door closing in it. Before her was a small field with a low mud wall across it; a wooden walkway made out of planks led across the sopping, stinking, fly-crawling earth to the mud wall. Beyond the wall she could see a row of heads where women were squatting. From the smell pervading the stagnant air, it was obvious that they were squatting over an open latrine. Ann stopped laughing and took a deep breath to steady herself, which was a bad mistake. She looked around desperately but there was no help for it. This was the Ladies. She should use it or go on her way.
At least the plank led right round the wall and was firmly bedded in the mud beyond. And it was quite clean, a fact which was of great benefit to Ann’s shorts as she gathered them round her ankles. Burning with embarrassment, she blinkered her mind during the next few minutes, refusing to admit to herself the comings and goings of the other women around her, even though she could sense them pointing at her and giggling.
It was only when, at last, she felt fully relieved that the unkindest blow of all occurred. In her confusion, disorientation and simple ungovernable need, it hadn’t occurred to her that she would eventually require toilet paper of some kind. In a panic she looked around, wondering what on earth she was going to do. And the woman beside her swam into view. She was a young N’Kuru woman, thin as a wraith, who had settled herself wearily into place, half supporting herself on a great hand of green plantains which she was obviously taking somewhere to market. She saw the look on Ann’s face and understood it all too clearly. Shyly, as though fearing that an offer of help would insult this strange white skin beside her, she reached towards the plantains and tore off a handful of green leaves — and gave Ann the most welcome present she had ever received in her life.
‘My turn,’ said Robert cheerfully as she pulled herself back aboard. He heaved himself out of his seat. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘Fine.’ Ann meant it. She was feeling much refreshed. She paused beside her seat which was now piled with newspaper and food, looking down with wonder.
‘I got some food while you were away,’ he said. ‘The oranges and bananas are particularly good. There’s some bread and cold roast goat. Leave some for me. Oh, and the beer is mine; don’t you dare touch it. I got the Coke for you.’ Then he was gone.
She quickly arranged the food so that she could sit down and then she put the flat-topped camera case on her lap so that she could use it as a table. Her hands shaking with anticipation, she began to arrange the food in piles: meat and fruit; main course and pudding; his and hers. She glanced up at the woman opposite, gave and received a massive smile. She picked up the first piece of roast goat and brought it slowly, ecstatically to her lips. Her eyes closed and tears squeezed out of their corners at the ecstasy of that first bite. When she opened them, she found she was looking, not at the woman opposite, but at the crotch of a pair of trousers.
When she looked up, she found herself staring at a suave young man in his early twenties. His skin was dark but his face was long and handsome — a mixture of tribal blood. To go with his blue cotton slacks he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt in bright ochres, browns and greens. It was open and there were gold chains lying like oil on his dark skin to match the bright rings on his long fingers. His hair was cut Western style and parted on the right. He gave her a grin which did not reach his eyes and slowly reached for the waistband of his trousers. Languidly, with all the confidence of a practised gigolo, he pulled the trousers tight enough to show how well equipped he was, then, in a flash, he was sitting beside her, filling Robert’s seat. ‘That seat is taken!’ Ann said, feeling at a terrible disadvantage, under far more threat, suddenly, than from the boys in the station with their wares.
He eased forward until his trousers were tight across his powerful thighs. Ann looked up at the woman opposite, desperate for help. The woman was looking out of the window.
The young man’s hand brushed the bare skin of her forearm. She flinched. Turned towards him. ‘Get away from me!’ she spat. Spat, literally, for her mouth was still full of saliva summoned by the succulent roast goat.
He flinched and his face darkened with rage, losing all of its confident good looks in a moment. His nostrils flared and he swung round to face her. Shocked by what she had done, she stared at him and when he reached into his pocket she numbly assumed he must be reaching for a handkerchief. He pulled out something made of black wood and silver. She looked at it uncomprehendingly and it was only when he pushed the button and razor steel flashed out of it that she realised it was the largest flick knife she had ever seen.
The abject horror on her face triggered a new expression in his. He sat back a little, fitting his shoulders into the corner of the seat, and leered at her, stroking the white steel and the black wood slowly and suggestively.
Wildly, Ann looked around the carriage, but nobody seemed to notice that anything unusual was going on at all. The woman opposite stared steadfastly out of the window and her sulky children teased a piglet on the floor. Everyone else was fully occupied with loud, amusing conversation. The man waited, caressing his flick knife arrogantly, knowing that her eyes would inevitably be drawn back to him again. As indeed they were. First to the knife, held so suggestively in his tight, bulging crotch, then to the supercilious, sadistic gaze.