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“But I haven’t said I …”
“Oh, don’t waste my time. I have other things to do. I haven’t got my steward yet, and I haven’t bought my pots and pans.”
“Yes, of course, it is tomorrow you are moving into your flat. I’m almost forgetting.”
They went in the car and made for the jeweler’s shop in Kingsway and bought a twenty-pound ring. Obi’s heavy wad of sixty pounds was now very much reduced. Thirty something pounds. Nearly forty.
“What about a Bible?” Clara asked.
“What Bible?”
“To go with the ring. Don’t you know that?”
Obi didn’t know that. They went over to the C.M.S. Bookshop and paid for a handsome little Bible with a zip.
“Everything has a zip these days,” said Obi, looking instinctively at his trouser front to make sure he had not forgotten to do the zip up, as had happened on one or two occasions.
They spent the whole afternoon shopping. At first Obi was as interested as Clara in the different utensils she was buying for him. But after an hour in which only one little saucepan had been bagged he lost any semblance of interest in the proceedings and simply trudged behind Clara like an obedient dog. She would reject an aluminum pot in one shop, and walk the whole length of Broad Street to another to buy the very same thing at the very same price.
“What is the difference between this one and the one we saw at U.T.C.?”
“Men are blind,” she said.
When Obi got back to Joseph’s room it was nearly eleven o’clock. Joseph was still up. In fact he had been waiting all the afternoon to complete the discussion they had suspended last night.
“How is Clara?” he asked. He succeeded in making it sound casual and unrehearsed. Obi was not prepared to plunge headlong into it. He wanted to begin at the fringes as he used to do many years ago when he was confronted with a morning bath in the cold harmattan season. Of all the parts of his body, his back liked cold water the least. He would stand before the bucket of water thinking how best to tackle it. His mother would call: “Obi, haven’t you finished? You will be late for school and they will flog you.” He would then stir the water with one finger. After that he would wash his feet, then his legs up to the knees, then the arm up to the elbow, then the rest of his arms and legs, the face and head, the belly, and finally, accompanied by a leap into the air, his back. He wanted to adopt the same method now.
“She is fine,” he said. “Your Nigerian police are very cheeky, you know.”
“They are useless,” said Joseph, not wanting to discuss the police.
“I asked the driver to take us to the Victoria Beach Road. When we got there it was so cold that Clara refused to leave her seat. So we stayed at the back of the car, talking.”
“Where was the driver?” asked Joseph.
“He walked a little distance
away to gaze at the light-house. Anyway, we were not there ten minutes before a police car drew up beside us and one of them flashed his torch. He said: ‘Good evening, sir.’ I said: ‘Good evening.’ Then he said: ‘Is she your wife?’ I remained very cool and said: ‘No.’ Then he said: ‘Where you pick am?’ I couldn’t stand that, so I blew up. Clara told me in Ibo to call the driver and go away. The policeman immediately changed. He was Ibo, you see. He said he didn’t know we were Ibos. He said many people these days were fond of taking other men’s wives to the beach. Just think of that. ‘Where you pick am?’ ”
“What did you do after that?”
“We came away. We couldn’t possibly stay after that. By the way, we are now engaged. I gave her a ring this afternoon.”
“Very good,” said Joseph bitterly. He thought for a while and then asked: “Are you going to marry the English way or are you going to ask your people to approach her people according to custom?”
“I don’t know yet. It depends on what my father says.”
“Did you tell him about it during your visit?”
“No, because I hadn’t decided then.”
“He will not agree to it,” said Joseph. “Tell anyone that I said so.”
“I can handle them,” said Obi, “especially my mother.”
“Look at me, Obi.” Joseph invariably asked people to look at him. “What you are going to do concerns not only yourself but your whole family and future generations. If one finger brings oil it soils the others. In future, when we are all civilized, anybody may marry anybody. But that time has not come. We of this generation are only pioneers.”
“What is a pioneer? Someone who shows the way. That is what I am doing. Anyway, it is too late to change now.”
