His heart sank. ‘Er . . . Lajide sacked me . . . er —’
‘Said he doesn’t want thieves and jailbirds, like me – eh? Don’t deny, I know!’
He swallowed. She had got him wrong, but why reveal to her his present address?
‘Well, I’m a thief! I’ve been to jail, and I’ll still come to Twenty Molomo Street, and I shall visit you! Nobody can stop me, not even Lajide!’
Sango looked round nervously. ‘People are listening, Aina —’
‘I don’t care!’ The waiter was standing behind her. Sango ordered chicken stew with rice.
There could be no guarantee that it did her any good, because throughout the meal she kept stabbing at him with her bitter explosions. It is said that a pleasant and cheerful disposition aids digestion. Aina apparently had not heard of this.
‘I tried to bail you,’ Sango said. ‘Really, I did, Aina.’
‘Marry me, now, Sango. Don’t you know I love you very much? Sango, I’ll die for you.’
He heard that warning again. The warning voice of his mother, about the women of the city. Letters from her were usually written by a half-literate scribe, but that warning was never in doubt.
‘Aina, but—’
‘You are very wicked, Amusa.’ She was smiling, and that made matters worse, because her smile always melted his heart. ‘If someone had told me that you would do this to me, after that night on Molomo Street and the way you said you loved me —’
‘We’re still friends, Aina.’
She was still smiling. He tried to make it easy for her. But how could he make her see that their paths diverged from the very beginning?
‘I want to ask you a favour,’ she said, as the waiter cleared the table.
Sango lit her cigarette and after she had inhaled deeply, she said: ‘I want new clothes: the native Accra dress . . . really special. The clothes I had before I went to jail, they’re no use to me now. From now on I want to be wearing glamour specs. Nor for my eyes – my eyes are okay – but for fancy. And a gold watch. I have suffered for three months hard labour. Now I must enjoy all I dreamed of at night in my cell.’
‘But Aina, you know how broke I am, always!’ He took out his wallet and found some pound notes which he offered her.
She took them from him without one word of thanks. Nor did she smile. It was then he knew that nothing could alter the bitterness she felt towards him.
•
Aina regretted not having gone with Sango. She watched his taxi swing into the traffic till it was hidden away by a mammy-wagon. Soon he would be at Lugard Square to see the soap-box orators. Aina looked at her clothes and decided that election time was fashion time, and one way to make certain she would be noticed was to get herself something smart. With only five pounds in the folds of her dress, she had a problem.
On High Street she noticed the sign SALE in large letters on every window of Zamil’s shop. Zamil himself was standing knee-deep among the rayons and organdies, the printed cottons and velvets – just the very materials Aina would have loved. He was overwhelmed by customers and so was his sister at the other end of the counter. Dark-haired and pretty in a dark way, she had a large pair of scissors beside her on the counter.
‘Suad! Mind the money!’ shouted Zamil and fired away the rest of the sentence in rapid Arabic. Without looking up, Suad continued to zip out the cloth by the yard. There was no one else in this shop but Zamil, his sister, and the customers. It was a family business in which little outside help was employed. Aina glanced round and saw bargains by the dozen. One caught her fancy – a rich plum velvet. She imagined herself wearing a dress of this material, cut by a dressmaker along Jide Street, frilled with lace at the bust-line, around the sleeves . . . the sleeves must be very short, to show off the roundness of her arms. Aina was overcome. It dawned on her that no one was watching.
‘Steal it, Aina!’ came that irresistible urge. ‘They’re all looking away!’
She propped herself against the wall. If she took it, she could
conceal it in the folds of her dress, sneak out quickly. The customers would still be yelling as they were doing now, Zamil and his sister would still be cutting cloth and piling the pound notes on the counter. Ten yards of material – no more; light enough. . . . Quickly now, before someone comes to buy it! No, they would be too frightened of the price.
Aina moved forward. She stopped. A silence reigned in the shop. She looked up and saw that a man in blue robes with a light blue gilt-edged cap had arrived. Lajide.
‘Any more velvet cloth? I want twenty, thirty, forty yards; no fifty yards. Let me see . . . eight wives each one six yards, tha’s forty-eight . . . give me fifty yards.’
Everyone in the shop had stopped bargain-hunting. There was a gap of silence, which Zamil immediately tried to fill. ‘My sister Suad – she will open a new bale for you. Suad!’ And he rattled off in rapid Arabic. Suad left her own customers and came across, smoothing back her rich black hair.
Zamil took a ready reckoner and thumbed through it short-sightedly. ‘Twenty-three . . . pounds . . . two an’ six, that’s the cost of fifty yards.’
‘Twenty poun’,’ said Lajide with confidence, but Zamil would not give in. The haggling began. The crowd piled nearer the two men.