A Darkening Stain Read Online Free Page A

cool, wet hand through my hair and I nuzzled her breasts.
    â€˜Not yet,’ she said. ‘You haven’t told me yours.’
    â€˜You don’t want to know.’
    â€˜You’ve been doing well recently. All that work in the port.’
    â€˜Something’s just caught up with me and I have to jump.’
    â€˜Try saying no.’
    â€˜I did. It was rephrased in a way that begged the answer yes.’
    â€˜Couldn’t have been that bad if they were begging.’
    â€˜Sorry. Wrong word. These guys do
not
go around begging. They ask, then they lean and then...’
    â€˜I don’t know how you get involved.’
    â€˜They come into my office and involve themselves, Heike, for Christ’s sake. I don’t even have to be in.’
    â€˜So you knew them?’
    â€˜Yeah, well, something left over from that Selina Aguia business back in March.’
    â€˜Oh God, not her.’
    â€˜Not exactly, but someone we both got to know around that time.’
    â€˜We were going through one of our bad patches at the time, I seem to remember,’ she said.
    â€˜One of those momentary dark clouds that used to flit across the sunshine of our lives.’
    â€˜Flit? I don’t remember it being as quick as a flit.’
    â€˜Forget about all that,’ I said. ‘I want to think about something else. I want to think about going away.’
    â€˜Back to Europe?’
    â€˜I was just thinking about that first night in the desert. Our first time.’
    â€˜Oh, you mean the ground,’ she said.
    â€˜Yeah, the ground. You remember that ground.’
    â€˜Let’s do it,’ she said. ‘Let’s go up to Niger and lie on the ground.’
    â€˜We can do a bit more than just lie.’
    But she was off and thinking about it, planning it all in her head. I took my hands out from under her skirt and eased them up her T-shirt and cupped her breasts and she pressed her sex down on to my lap so I hardened. We kissed some more and I was all keen on doing some re-enactment, but Helen came in from the balcony, slapping her thigh with a wooden spoon, and asked us whether we wanted our yam boiled or fried.
    â€˜We could go up there when my mother comes out.’
    â€˜When your
mother
comes out?’ I asked. ‘Your mother’s coming out here to Cotonou?’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜
The
holiday destination on the mosquito coast apart from maybe Lagos,’ I said. ‘I noticed you didn’t say your father was coming.’
    â€˜No. He’s been before. Spent a couple of years in Ghana in the fifties. He says he doesn’t need to come again.’
    â€˜Well, that means he’s told her it’s not lion and hippo country out here.’
    â€˜She knows that already.’
    â€˜And she knows about the malaria, the heat, the sweat, the pollution...’
    â€˜Why
do
you live here, Bruce Medway?’
    â€˜I’m just saying it’s not Mombasa beach around here. It’s not jambo country.’
    â€˜I know. I just want you to tell me
why you
live here.’
    â€˜It’s not the climate. It’s not the cuisine.’
    â€˜Just tell me why.’
    â€˜I’m just saying that those two things are important holiday...’
    â€˜I don’t want to know about what’s important for holidays. I want you to tell me why you live here.’
    â€˜The people.’
    â€˜The people?’
    â€˜If I thought I wasn’t going to see Bagado or Moses or Helen again for the rest of my life, I’d feel...’
    â€˜Yes? What
would
you feel?’ she asked, teasing me a little, big Bruce Medway talking about his feelings.
    â€˜I’d feel impoverished.’
    She kissed me.
    â€˜You’re all right, really,’ she said, patting my face, running her hand through my hair again, stroking the old dog.
    â€˜Am I?’
    â€˜And anyway, Mum’s not coming for the climate or the cuisine or the