New life
Man of business
Zenga Longmore
Uncle Bisi has not exactly been in my good books of late. For example, look at the way he commandeered Olumba to package up sacks of groundnuts, rice and other foodstuffs just as the latter was about to join me on the boat train to Ireland. Consequently, Olumba spent his holiday working in the Import and Export Trade ('West African Food a Speciality') while Omalara and I ventured forth into the Republic on our own.
All the same, I wouldn't want anything to happen to the Uncle. On one fateful day last week, I was as concerned as Olumba when Uncle Bisi's Cash and Carry Ware- house and Shop, SW9, failed to open.
'Let me phone-o,' wailed Olumba. 'Cus- tomers vex pass-all when they come to buy chop and shop go shut. Every phone box from there to here was either dead or card- carrying.'
No one answered at Uncle Bisi's house for some minutes. Finally I took the receiv- er from Olumba's trembling hands just as it croaked into life. 'Where is my nephew? I am sick, powerful sick, maybe for the last time on the earth's hemisphere,' a barely audible voice spoke. 'Inform relatives in Bendal State.'
More toing and froing of this kind pro- vided the information that Uncle Bisi was ill. Omalara brightened up as we set off to visit the ailing Uncle. She had managed to make sense of the song `Camptown Races' by subtly altering the words. 'Council ladies sing this song,' she trilled.
This was apt enough. Uncle Bisi lives on a rundown south London estate of 1930ish council houses. Although reasonably well off, he chooses, for some reason, to dwell in dark dilapidation, his home furnished with empty groundnut crates. Uncle Bisi's private life has always been a mystery to me, but Olumba now shed some light on the subject. 'Uncle's sickness truly shocking!' he lamented. 'Last night he phone-o from the Lounge Lizard, shouting strong-strong above the high life music.'
'Lounge Lizard?'
'Eh-heh, the club in north London. Uncle spends much time in the Lounge Lizard.' It appeared that Uncle Bisi had been celebrating the successful outcome of a law suit he had been involved in, con- cerning land he owned in Onitsha. Appar- ently, Ngozi, a newly arrived girl cousin, had helped him to celebrate. Although a distant cousin, she and Uncle Bisi had become quite close. In fact, during dances, he had been known to stick ten-pound notes between her shoulder blades as a mark of appreciation. `Hmmph!' I thought to myself, 'Uncle Bisi has a hangover.'
However, the shrunken, dressing-gowned figure who shakingly admitted us into his semi-ruinous home caused me to revise this notion. Anxiously we followed him into his bedroom, where he crawled between sheet- less blankets once more and sipped wanly on a glass of gin, muttering, 'Hair of the dog, my dears'. Then, with a sort of gar- gling noise, he threw his head on the pillow and fixed the ceiling with a glassy gaze. `Chai,' cried Olumba. 'That was the hair of' the dog that broke the camel's back.' At this point the phone rang. 'Who is it?' Uncle Bisi's voice rose querulously. `Ngozi? Ah!' And to my sur- prise, his voice swelled into booming Ibo, interspersed with what I can only describe as hearty bursts of laughter. Within half an hour, Uncle Bisi was up and dressed in his crispest and finest. A heavy aroma of 'Machismo for Men' filled the air.
'You young people still here?' he grum- bled. 'Go home now and rest. I am a man of business and must insist on a little more privacy.'
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