flame turned a holiday that she thought would be hum—drummed into a
never-to-be-forgotten adventure. Her story:
“I would never have imagined that the next time I ran into Bolaji, it
would be on a plane en-route good old Britain. The last time I saw him
was over 15 years ago. We’d dated briefly after he’d relentlessly come
after me—with the whole works. Dinner, fancy presents and just sitting
down for stretches of amusing natters. In the end, we became lovers.
Love
I’d left my husband then and was grappling with a broken relationship.
Caleb, my lover of seven years, had just put up an appearance too, after
a period of wondering where he was. Simply put, life couldn’t be
better. Then, one fateful day, Bolaji was having a drink in my flat when
Caleb came. I was amused to see Bolaji sit up like a ramrod.
Caleb made his usual polite conversation, but it was obvious Bolaji
wouldn’t be hanging around for anything more friendly and was out of my
flat as soon as he decently could, telling me firmly not to bother to
see him off. I wondered if Caleb knew him but he obviously didn’t as he
asked if Bolaji wasn’t one of my colleagues as his face looked familiar.
I quickly agreed that he was. I didn’t hear from Bolaji for a long time.
Months after Bolaji had dropped me like a hot potato, I ran into him at
a filling station. It was on a Sunday and he drove himself. He’d got
out of the car looking good to eat in Barmuda shots. I was angry with
him, if anything, he owed me an explanation for his disappearing act and
I got out of my car to confront him.
“He didn’t look guilty. He looked as if I was a total stranger he was
trying to place.” ‘What happened to you?” I asked him. “How could you
have disappeared without a word?” “What do you mean?” he wanted to know.
“Did you think I could come to your place after running into my
chairman in your house?” he asked. His chairman? It was then he
explained that Caleb was the chairman of a political party’s committee
of which he was a member. “He was also one of our financial supporters.”
“He went on: ‘and I was just co-opted as a member of his committee when I
ran into him at your place of all places. Didn’t he recognise me? I
thought he would have told you who I was. I didn’t want any trouble, so I
stayed away. The way he looked at me, he was sizing-me up to see if I
would be a serious adversary. I just left and that was it.” That was the
last I saw of him until I saw him a few weeks ago ambling his way to
his seat on the plane en-route Britain.
I’d sat with a stuffy man in a suit who’d come with a bunch of national
dailies and had buried his head into one as soon as he settled in his
seats Bolaji, who now looked a bit rosy-checked and well, was pleased to
see me. “Travelling time flies if you’ve got a lively chatter-box to
keep you company. By the time we arrived Heathrow, he’d told me his
first grandchild would be christened the next day. Could I make it? What
about his wife? “I had this child before I got married,” he explained.
“I’ve booked myself into a service flat.” After, exchanging phone
numbers, we left. First thing the next day, he was on the phone giving
me directions on how to get to the venue of the naming ceremony—and he
insisted on my taking a cab. As I arrived the place, he came out to pay
the cab driver. By the end of the day I was at his service flat, feeling
as if we were on a first date all over again.
The friend I stayed with scarcely saw me as I was always with him
closing the I5-year gap between our first relationship. I was a bit
amused when he offered to come with me for a weekend with a friend that
stayed outside London. He would book himself into a bed and breakfast so
I needn’t worry about accommodation for him. My friend’s eyes nearly
popped out of their sockets when she saw him.
Thank goodness her husband is not a Nigerian or he would have wondered
at the number of ‘cousins’ I kept showing up with. Thanks to Bolaji, I
scarcely touched the holiday allowance I had with me as he happily
picked up most of my tabs. He even took my friend’s family to an
expensive restaurant on our last evening. When we left for London, I
simply moved in with him and by the time he left a week later, I’d had a
most mind-blowing holiday. He’d discreetly asked if I was still seeing
Caleb and I said yes. His eyes clouded a bit, but he shrugged.
“He made it clear he would never want to cross Caleb and I understood.
Why wouldn’t I? Apart from Caleb, my hands are definitely full. Where on
earth would I fix Bolaji when we got back to Lagos?
Giving him my little-girl-lost look, I told him I understood. He might
be alright in no-man’s-land, Britain; but I knew as a fact that he too
had a very ‘busy’ social life in Lagos. The phone never stopped ringing
in the flat when I was with him and there were times he’d promised
callers he would call them back. For now to him, I was a
‘matter-of-the-moment’ who needed all his attention.
By the time he left, the flat was still full of foodstuff brought in by
his daughter who seemed happy to be ‘friends’ with me. I bet it was to
get back at her step-mother whom she said she didn’t like. There were a
few days left until he handed over the keys to the flat to its owners so
I agreed to stay in the flat until his short lease ran out.
My friends were definitely happy to help me clear up the left-over grub
and booze in those few days! The rest of the holiday flew past with
trickles of news filtering in from time to time—news that were more
interesting than the one NTA dishes out every evening. Not surprising is
the fact that Nigerian parties were not as elaborate and adventurous as
they once were.
Did I go to the wrong ones? Was it to do with the now over-used economic
melt down? Or, more realistically, was the proverbial age catching up
with all of us? As I got ready to team up with Maggie,an old Irish
classmate and a few others, to visit a few ‘scenes of the crime,’ I
wondered if we still had it in us to shake things up as we once did!”
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