What stories lie behind A DISTANT VOICE IN THE DARKNESS?

Over fifty years ago I set off with a great deal of hope to spend a year in Nigeria, where Robin was to lecture at what was then called the University of Ife. Our two oldest children were just three, our little blonde daughter, and two, our half-African son. I had just learnt to drive, which was essential for getting around the campus, or going to market in the old town of Ile-Ife, visiting old friends in Ibadan fifty miles away, and later on holiday trips to Togo, Dahomey, Ghana and exploring the north of Nigeria. We bought a brand-new white VW Beetle and stored our luggage in the front; the back seat was just big enough for the kids to stretch out and sleep on long journeys.

It never occurred to me to employ anyone to look after the children, but a wonderful Black American friend of mine called Connie – whose grandmother had missed the Titanic – told me we ought to have a cook steward because the local population depended on work on campus. So we took on the redoubtable Mbibi, a short stocky Ibo from Biafra, the losing side in the recent civil war, who was supporting a large family back at home. He was older than me and I was in awe of him – it seemed such a cheek to ask him to do anything for me, but he was extremely kind and loyal. He loved our children – he scrubbed the walls if they had wickedly scribbled on them when I was asleep, and once when our little girl nearly died from a high fever, he hovered in the background in great distress, murmuring her name as we trained the fan over her to no apparent effect.

Mbibi was a great cook, and it was particularly useful to me that he was prepared to go over to the affluent house next door whenever we were due to have friends in for dinner, because the professor’s wife there, Mrs Adejuyigbe, bred chickens. I couldn’t bear the thought that if I chose a particular bird that was squawking its way happily through the morning with its mates, it would have to have its neck rung if I picked it out to buy – but Mbibi did all that for me.

All this and much more proved useful when I sent the two main characters in A DISTANT VOICE IN THE DARKNESS on holiday to Nigeria to visit Alec’s uncle and his wife who lived with their children in a flat on the university campus. I used the university staff club with its kidney-shaped swimming pool, which had hundreds of frogs croaking loudly under the rim of the pool. The chapter finishes with Alec buying a wooden carving of a boy climbing up a tree to pick coconuts – and of course we still have the carving!