can’t understand the Glaswegian accent,’ Deola says.
‘I couldn’t understand a word anyone said to me in Scotland,’ Anne says.
‘They probably wouldn’t understand a word we say over here,’ Linda says.
Deola notices leaflets on ‘commercial sex workers’ and is conscious of being between generations. Old enough to have witnessed some change in what is considered appropriate. Her colleagues walk her through their system and she reverts to her usual formality. They show her invoices, vouchers and printouts. It is not relevant that they are in the business of humanitarianism. There are debits and credits, checks and balances. Someone has to make sure they work and identify fraud risks, then make recommendations to the executive team.
As an audit trainee, she was indifferent to numbers, even after she followed their paper trails to assets and verified their existence. How connected could anyone be to bricks, sticks, vats and plastic parts? Her firm had a client who did PR for the Cannes Film Festival and it was the same experience working for them. With Africa Beat, the statistics on HIV ought to have an impact on her and they do, but only marginally. The numbers in the brochure are in decimals. They represent millions. The fractions are based on national populations. Deola knows the virus afflicts Africa more than any other continent, women more than men and the young more than the old. Her examination of the brochure is cursory. She has seen it before and it is the same whenever she watches the news. Expecting more would be like asking her to bury her head into a pile of dirt and willingly take a deep breath in.
Ali is a woman – or a Southern girl, as Anne refers to her. Her name is Alison. Deola doesn’t find out until later in the evening when Anne treats her to dinner at a Brazilian restaurant. Ali is from Biloxi, Mississippi, and she is a florist. Anne is from Buffalo, New York, and she used to be a teacher there. They don’t watch television.
‘We haven’t had one for … let’s see … five, six years now,’ Anne says. ‘We read the newspapers and listen to NPR to keep up with what’s going on.’
‘I watch too much television,’ Deola says.
She chides herself for finding belated clues in Anne’s stubby fingernails as Anne gesticulates, so she brings up the title of the Lifetime Movie Network film.
‘I thought, this has got be a joke. She woke up pregnant?’
‘The networks in general don’t credit women with any intelligence,’ Anne says. ‘Mothers especially.’
‘I can well imagine,’ Deola says.
Their table is under what looks like mosquito netting dotted with lights. Behind them is a fire with meat rotating on spits. The waiters wear red scarves around their necks and walk over once in a while with a leg of lamb, pork roast, filet mignon, scallops, shrimp and chicken wrapped in bacon. The bacon is more fatty than Deola is used to.
‘But we can’t decide who gets pregnant,’ Anne says. ‘So wouldn’t that be perfect if one of us wakes up and boom?’
Deola has finished eating her salad, but she picks at the remnants of her grilled peppers and mushrooms as the thought of artificial insemination diminishes her appetite. Or perhaps it is the realization that she might one day have to consider the procedure, if she remains single for much longer.
This is an unexpected connection to Anne, but she won’t talk about her own urge to nest, which has preoccupied her lately. Anne might regard what she has to say with anthropological curiosity: the African woman’s perspective.
‘There’s always adoption,’ she says, wondering if this is appropriate.
‘I did think of that,’ Anne says. ‘You get on a plane and go to a country that is war-torn or struggling with an epidemic and see so many orphans, so many of them. But at the end of the day, you have to have the humility to say to yourself, “Maybe I am not the person to raise this kid. Maybe America is not the place to raise him or her.” You have to ask yourself these questions.’
‘You must,’ Deola says, crossing her arms, as if to brace herself for more of Anne’s rectitude.
‘It’s that mindset,’ Anne says. ‘Our way is best, everyone else be damned, the world revolves around us. But I think when you travel widely enough, you quickly begin to realize it don’t, don’t you think?’
Deola reaches for her wine glass and almost says the word ‘actually’, but she stops herself this time. ‘Actually’, the tongue jolt. ‘Actually’, the herald of assertions. She could insist that America is torn apart by the war and she could easily challenge Anne’s assumption that the rest of the world is incapable of transgressions.
‘I expect people in England are more open-minded,’ Anne says.
‘England? I’m not so sure.’
‘I guess it would be more obvious to you living there. But that’s why we are in such a mess over here, and it’s a question of being able to reorient yourself. That’s all it takes.’
‘A little reorientation,’ Deola says, the rim of her glass between her lips.
‘You know?’ Anne says. ‘If there is one thing this job teaches you, it’s that. You can’t get caught up in your own … whatever it is. Not in a world where people starve.’
‘No,’ Deola murmurs.
It is just as well she hesitated. She finishes her wine; so does Anne. A waiter approaches their table with dessert menus. Anne says she really shouldn’t and opts for a black coffee. Deola has the passion fruit crème brûlée and asks for fresh raspberries on top.
An incident on her flight back to London reminds her of something that happened a month ago during her first trip for LINK.
She was in Delhi to audit a charity for children. She stayed at the Crowne Plaza hotel and had enough time on her last day to ride in a rickshaw and visit Janpath Market with the programme director, who later drove her to the airport. She had just joined the departure line when she saw an American ahead of her, who was wearing – of all garbs – a cream linen suit and a panama. The American grabbed an Indian man, who was edging his way to the line, by the shoulders and steered him away. ‘No-oo,’ he said, as if he were speaking to his son. The Indian man went to the back of the line without saying a word. A moment later, a couple of Americans walked up. One was complaining, loud enough for everyone to hear, that he was going to miss his flight, and the man in the panama stepped back so they could get ahead of him.
What happens on her way to London is that she is again standing in line, this time to board her plane out of Atlanta, when a man cuts ahead of her. He is tanned with grey sideburns and is dressed in a navy jacket and striped shirt – executive-looking and clutching a John Grisham novel. She is three passengers from the flight attendant, a black American woman, who is checking boarding passes. When it is her turn, the flight attendant looks at her, looks at the man, who is still not in line, and takes his boarding pass first.
She is tempted to snatch her stub from the flight attendant, but she doesn’t. She eyes the man once she gets on the plane, but he is too busy pushing his hand luggage into an overhead compartment to notice.
