I assumed my questioning of Lamin had got back to Aimee, because on the day of my departure from the Coco Ocean hotel the front desk called up to my room to tell me they had a message for me, and when I opened the white envelope I found this note: Jet unavailable. You’ll have to fly commercial. Save receipts. Judy.
I was being punished. At first I thought it was funny that Aimee’s idea of punishment was flying commercial, but when I got to the airport I was surprised by how much I had in fact forgotten: the waiting, the queuing, the submitting to irrational instructions. Every aspect of it, the presence of so many other people, the brusqueness of the staff, even the immutable flight time on the screens in the waiting room—it all felt like an affront. My seat was next to two truck drivers from Huddersfield, they were in their sixties and had traveled together. They loved it here, they’d come “every year, if they could afford it.” After lunch they started in on some little bottles of Baileys and compared notes on their “girls.” They both wore wedding rings, half embedded in their fat, hairy fingers. I had my earphones in by then: they probably thought I couldn’t hear them. “My one said to me she were twenty, but her cousin—he’s a waiter there, too—he told me she were seventeen. Wise beyond her years, though.” He had hardened egg yolk down his T-shirt. His friend had yellowed teeth and bloody gums. They had seven days of holiday in any calendar year. The man with the yellow teeth had worked double shifts for three months simply to afford this long weekend with his girl in Banjul. I had murderous fantasies—of taking my serrated plastic knife, drawing it across each of their throats—but the longer I listened, the sadder the whole thing seemed. “I said to her, don’t you want to come to England? And she basically says to me: ‘No fear, love.’ She wants us to build a house in Wassu, wherever the fuck that is. They’re no fools, these girls. Realistic. Pound goes a lot bloody further out there than it does back home. It’s like the missus moaning about she wants to go to Spain. I said to her, ‘You’re living in the past, love. You know how much Spain is these days?’” One kind of weakness feeding on another.
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A few days later I was back at work. I kept waiting for a formal meeting or a debrief but it was as if I hadn’t made the visit at all. Nobody mentioned my trip and in itself that was not so unusual, many other things were going on at the time—a new album, a new tour—but in the subtle way of the best bullies Judy and Aimee strove to freeze me out of all important decisions while simultaneously ensuring that nothing they said or did could be explicitly interpreted as punishment or retribution. We were preparing for our autumn transition to New York—a period in which Aimee and I were usually glued to each other—but now I hardly saw her, and for two weeks I was given the kind of grunt-work more appropriate to the housekeepers. I was on the phone to freight companies. I was cataloging shoes. I accompanied the children to their yoga class. I cornered Judy about it early one Saturday morning. Aimee was in the basement, working out, the children were watching their one hour of weekly television. I trawled the house and found Judy sitting in the library with her feet up on the baize desk, painting her toenails a terrible fuchsia, a white foam wedge stuck between each long toe. She didn’t look up until I’d finished speaking.
“Yeah, well, hate to break it to you, love, but Aimee doesn’t give a flying fuck what you think of her private life.”
“I’m trying to look out for her interests. That’s my job as a friend.”
“No, love, not accurate. Your job is: personal assistant.”
“I’ve been here nine years.”
“And I’ve been here twenty-nine.” She swung her feet round and placed them in a black box on the floor that glowed purple. “I’ve seen a lot of these assistants come and go. But Christ, none of them has been as delusional as you.”
“Isn’t it true? Isn’t she trying to get him a visa?”
“I’m not discussing that with you.”
“Judy, I spent today mainly working for the dog. I have a degree. Don’t tell me I’m not being punished.”
Judy pulled her fringe back with both hands.
“First of all, don’t be so bloody melodramatic. What you are doing is working. Whatever you may think, chook, your job is not and has never been ‘best mate.’ You’re her assistant. You always have been. But recently you seem to have forgotten that—and it’s about time you were reminded. So that’s our first issue. Number two: if she wants to bring him over here, if she wants to marry him, or dance with him on top of Big fucking Ben, that is no concern of yours. You’re very far out of your area.” Judy sighed and looked down at her toes. “And the funny part of it is, she’s not even pissed off with you about the boy. It’s not even about the bloody boy.”
“What, then?”
“You spoken to your mum recently?”
This question made me violently blush. How long had it been? A month? Two? Parliament was in session, she was busy, and if she wanted me she knew where I was. I was going through these justifications in my head for a long moment before it occurred to me to wonder why Judy was interested.
“Well, maybe you should. She’s making life difficult for us right now and I don’t really know why. Would help if you could find out.”
“My mother?”
“I mean, there’s a million issues in this little shithole of an island you call a country—literally a million. She wants to talk about ‘Dictatorships in West Africa’?” said Judy, using finger quotes. “British complicity with dictatorships in West Africa. She’s on the TV, she’s writing the op-eds, she’s standing up in bloody Prime Minister’s Question Tea Hour or whatever the fuck it is you people call it. She’s got a bee in her bonnet about it. Fine. Well, that’s not my problem—what DfID does, what the IMF does—that’s out of my area. Aimee, however, is my area—and yours. We’re in partnership with this crazy bloody President, and if you go and ask your beloved Fern he’ll tell you what a tightrope we’re walking right now. Believe me, love, if his Highness-for-life the all-mighty King of Kings doesn’t want us in his country? We are out of there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. The school gets fucked, everybody gets fucked. Now, I know you have a degree. You’ve told me, many, many times. Is it in International Development? No, I didn’t think so. And I’m sure your big-mouth mother out there on the back benches probably thinks she’s being helpful, too, God knows, but you know what she’s actually doing? Hurting the people she claims to want to help, and pissing on those of us who are trying to make some kind of difference out there. Biting the hand. Seems to run in the family.”
I sat down on the chaise longue.
“Jesus, don’t you ever read the papers?” asked Judy.
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Three days after that conversation we flew to New York. I left messages with my mother, texted her, e-mailed her, but she didn’t call me till the end of the following week, and with the extraordinary timing of mothers chose two thirty p.m. on a Sunday, just as Jay’s cake came out of the kitchens and streamers fell from the ceiling of the Rainbow Room, and two hundred guests sang “Happy Birthday,” accompanied by violinists from the string section of the New York Philharmonic.
“What’s all that noise? Where are you?”
I opened the sliding doors to the terrace and shut them behind me.
“It’s Jay’s birthday. He’s nine today. I’m at the top of the Rockefeller.”
“Look, I don’t want to have an argument with you on the phone,” said my mother, sounding very much like she wanted to have an argument on the phone. “I’ve read your e-mails, I understand your position. But I hope you understand that I don’t work for that woman—or for you, actually. I work for the British people, and if I’ve developed an interest in that region, if I’ve become increasingly concerned—”