Whoever Fears the Sea, Justin Fox [i love reading .TXT] 📗

that were his due and was staring down the barrel of a lonely dotage.

Which didn’t necessarily mean he’d given up on the hunt. Case in point: a pretty Indian woman across the hall whose eye he may have caught. She was flying to Mombasa too. Maybe he should try to chat to her in the queue, if and when it formed. Single again and the old reflex was still working, but with none of the pleasure. He got up and went to buy another beer.

It was already dark when they boarded the plane for the short flight to Mombasa. Paul had requested a window seat, but after the lights of Nairobi receded, everything beyond the wing was black. He stared at the darkness. He was good at torturing himself. A bruised heart was not something to take into Africa, he concluded, asking the air hostess for another drink. Yes, famously, there was catharsis in travel: turning a page, finding yourself and your destiny ‘out there’. As if the act of wandering were the greatest university on earth. It was hogwash: the traveller packs all his woes in his knapsack and carries them along on his back. He should be nursing himself at home, going on a few tentative dates with old, still-single friends. He needed to be building himself up, instead of being drop-kicked into a dark corner of Kenya.

After landing, he emerged with a headache into the Mombasa terminal parking lot. A taxi driver called Ray separated him from the tourist herd and promised the cheapest rates in town. Paul gave the name of a beach hotel and was ushered into the back seat of an ancient Toyota. Ray eased along in the fast lane, allowing his hooting competitors to speed by on the inside.

‘So, how’s the big man?’ he said, flashing a set of enormous teeth at Paul in the rear-view mirror.

‘The big man?’ Paul was reluctant to chat.

‘Yes, man, your big man, our big man.’

‘Mandela?’ Paul hazarded.

‘Of course!’

‘Oh, he’s fine, he’s great. Busy as always. This and that. Here, there, everywhere. Never stops.’

‘He needs to take a rest, you know. Slow down. Spend time with the sexy new Mozambican wife,’ he said, as though entrusting Paul with the task of speaking sternly to Mandela upon his return.

‘Tourism is very down nowadays,’ confided Ray. ‘This Osama business. Oowah, not good for business.’

‘What do you think will happen next?’ asked Paul.

‘America must be very careful. It must go for the terrorists, but not start a war. There’s too much talk of revenge. We had the same thing here after they bombed the American embassy in Nairobi. Revenge, revenge, revenge.’

Ray was weaving his way slowly down a shopping street thronged with pedestrians.

‘Are you from Mombasa?’ asked Paul.

‘No, I’m not from the coast. From inland, Lake Victoria. My father came here to work in the docks. How many big harbours you got in South Africa?’

‘Five,’ said Paul, doing some mental arithmetic and discounting, on consideration, Coega.

‘Yow, that’s a lot. We only got this one,’ he said, pointing at the orange dockland lights. ‘They want to build another one up near Lamu, but we will need lots of money for that.’ Ray made it sound as though he were passing round a hat, and would Paul consider chipping in for the deep-water terminal?

They turned left at an open-air church crammed with worshippers, despite the late hour. A jam of taxis and tuk-tuks filled the surrounding streets, ready to spirit the faithful home after the service. Ray crossed back to the mainland on the northern causeway. Here the suburbs were smarter, the walls higher.

The Reef Hotel offered standard beach-holiday package fare. There were low-rise white blocks set among palm trees, swimming pools, lawns and loungers. Frangipani trees poured their scent into the air. It was nice enough, in a bland, resorty sort of way. Paul dumped his bags in the room and found a stool at the poolside bar. He could smell the grassy aroma of the sea, sloshing away behind a line of nodding coconut palms. The BLT sandwich, when it came, was dreary, but the beer was cold. Tusker: makes us equal, has no equal, read a sign above the bar. Damn right.

A bosomy Dutchwoman sat at the far end of the counter with a muscular local. Paul watched how she ran her eyes over the man’s body. Nothing stealthy about her; she was a B-52 with bomb doors wide open. The pub began to fill up and it became apparent they were about to be treated to some sort of performance. A pair of Geordies from a village outside Newcastle took the stools beside him. They were forty-something women on their first trip to Africa. One was unmarried, the other divorced and ‘on me first holiday in ever so long’, having left the kids with the grandparents. Sharon, the prettier of the two, had been to London only once in her life. ‘A lovely trip. Four whole days, for me work. It was a course. I’m in customer services for a mobile-phone company. Buck House, Tower o’ London, ’Arrods — weren’t nearly so expensive as I thought. We’ve done Spain, a coopla times. Tory Molenos, Costadelsol. But Africa, gosh, it’s way different. We booked before 9/11, otherwise we’d never have come.’

They chatted aimlessly for a while — the usual exchange of tourist pleasantries. Paul was vaguely formulating the idea of pitching for a snog and tried to ignore the content of the conversation. ‘Sue’s feet blew up awful on the plane coming over,’ said Sharon, making it sound like a terrorist attack. ‘Had to soak ’em in cold water. I’ve always loved wild animals. Sue too. We love watching the BBC programmes; just love the hairies and furries. I thought I had to come see for meself, once in me lifetime.’

The next moment, five lithe young men