The Woman Next Door (9 page)

Hortensia shook her head.

The smells of Banga pervaded everything. Akara balls frying in oil, the air heavy with burnt residue; singed hair off a goat’s skin; wet chicken feathers. Nothing interested them, Peter and the woman, except each other and wherever it was they were bound for. They didn’t stop at any of the stalls, pressing on through the crowds. When the path narrowed, Peter, his spindly frame, walked behind the woman, his hand on the small of her back. Where the path opened up again they walked side by side and held hands. They turned a corner and the heavy base-notes of Banga receded; replaced by the innocuous scent of peeled oranges. The woman stopped to admire a tray of them, the fine-lined pattern left from the blade used to cut the skin away. Hortensia paused by the lady selling gari, rice and beans, two stalls away from the orange-seller.

‘Kí l
f
, Mà?’

Hortensia shook her head. They were close enough that she was worried that, if she spoke, Peter would hear, recognise her voice, turn around. She shook her head again at the trader’s furrowed brow, but stayed examining the dry goods.

‘Which one do you like?’ the trader pressed further, assuming the problem to be one of language.

‘No. Thank you,’ Hortensia blurted, panicked.

But Peter was distracted. Oranges forgotten, he was now bent forward, his ear near the woman’s mouth as she whispered something. His hand was on her neck, his thumb pressed just beneath where her earring dangled. He smoothed down her hair, which bounced and twirled along her back. Hortensia’s eyes stung, grew hot and cloudy, so she couldn’t see a passing trader proffering up her okros and freshly shelled kobiowus of egusi. Her knees were weak and to avoid falling down she leaned against one of the wooden poles supporting the stall.

‘
p
l
, Mummy. Are you okay?’

Hortensia blinked. Peter had said something funny. The woman stretched her head back and her mouth widened, her lips, the red of her tongue. He said something again and reached for her. She yelped, swung out of his grasp, upsetting a neat arrangement of plump tomatoes.

‘Ah-ah! Careful now,’ the trader said, then turned to mumblings in Yoruba to finish her insult. She bent to collect the muddied produce.

The admonition went unnoticed. The game of catch between the two continued, their tight little dance.

Hortensia moved to the side of the dirt road, watching. Two motorcycles went past. A man pulled a wheelbarrow stacked with white bottles and a gramophone on repeat, announcing the cures, the potions and miracles. Someone bumped Hortensia from behind, an old man on a bicycle with rubber piled up behind him.

‘
má bìnu.
p
l
.’

She was unhurt, assured him of this.

When Hortensia looked again, Peter had caught the woman. Their chests, their bodies heaved from the exertions. She caught her breath. He put the tips of his fingers on either side of her face, along the sharp line of her jaw, and he tilted her face upwards; she licked her lips and he used the back of his hands to tickle them. Hortensia wondered what it felt like, the hard metal on his ring-finger moving along the soft wet skin.

An old woman sat watching, a wrapper around her waist, her dry breasts hanging, weary from use. She took a rag to her neck, damp with sweat. Swatted a fly. Peter and the girl stood kissing, oblivious as only white lovers in Banga market could be. ‘A
wó!’ the old woman hissed. ‘Shio!’

In the weeks after Peter’s death, wondering about some child somewhere called Esme, Hortensia came to the realisation that the quality of her life would have benefited greatly from more anger and less resentment. Resentment was different from anger. Anger was like a dragon, burning other things. Resentment burned a hole in your stomach, burned your insides.

Peter and his lover had made a baby. How? Hortensia asked herself stupidly. When?

At night the house seemed to know there was one less person in it. Hortensia couldn’t sleep. Since Peter’s death she’d returned to their bed, which she’d vacated when his disease started taking up so much room. The sick and their medicines require surface area; when death rounded the corner, she demanded a lot of space. Being back in the bed was strange, back on her side of the bed, deferring now to a ghost. A ghost so real she was unable even to fling her leg across the middle of the bed, lie on his side. It didn’t feel right.

After turning several times to find an elusive comfortable position, Hortensia rose and attacked the pile of books by the bed. She’d moved the pile from the guest room and installed it back here, where she would sleep till she died. Towards the bottom of the pile were the design tomes. There was a stash of thick magazines, the page corners curling. Peter had once chided her for worshipping magazines with not one human on any page. Even the advertisements relied on images of things. Beautiful things, she’d retorted. And there was nothing wrong with that.