I thanked him for taking the time to talk to me, and walked back to the entrance of Alpha Bar, thinking about everything he had said. There was so much to think about ' mainly the fact that Cee and Peto had so obviously got together somewhere else before they got to Alpha ' the story that they had been drawn together by the fight was not holding water any more in the way that I had been told it, though of course it was probably the fight that was the catalyst for turning an evening out together back into a full relationship. I knew that they were probably worried about me ' if they were thinking about me at all ' I had been outside talking to Mwale for over an hour, but I wanted some time to think, so I leant against the railings and thought about what he had told me. The girl ' he called her a working girl, but that is just a euphemism, and quite a nice one ' the prostitute, Gertrude ' I thought then that she was the one I had to talk to. If Mwale was right and Peto, the Rastaman, and the English guy were all her regular clients, and they were all there, in the club, on the night of the fight, then that would have been a potential spark, something that could have kicked the whole thing off. And then there was Peto arriving with Celianne, and Gertrude already there, waiting inside the club: another flashpoint, another reason for there being trouble. In trying to work out what had happened that night and where the tension and trouble started, who started the fight, I realised as I finished my cigarette, I would have to first understand the country and the culture. I mean: for a start, this girl Gertrude ' if that really was her name ' I mean, what was Peto doing with her? Why does she do what she does? What was she doing with the Rastaman and the English guy? And after he had been with her, did Cellianne, my Cee from so long ago, really want to be with him? But then ' and this was a difficult question, a question that had started nagging at me while I listened to Mwale, and was becoming more insistent as I smoked ' did I really know Cee? Did I know or even start to understand her ' or anyone in this country ' after all this time?
