by Fiona Shaw
‘Enough,’ she said. ‘Maybe later,’ and she rang the bell. ‘Please tell Sita that we’ll start Henry on some ground rice,’ she said when Yusuf came in.
‘That’s only baby food,’ Will said.
‘And Henry is only a baby. But he’ll be eating his breakfast faster than you very quickly, and then who will get more stories?’
She pulled Will’s chair out from the table and tipped it forward so that he slid, giggling, to the floor.
‘Can’t you even sit on a chair yet?’ she said, giving him her hands and jumping him to his feet. ‘I am going to look at my diary now and you are going with Yusuf to find Sita and get dressed.’
‘Don’t want to get dressed,’ Will said, crossing his arms in defiance.
She couldn’t resist a last touch, putting her hands around his middle, slipping them under his pyjama jacket to feel his warm skin.
‘Go on,’ she said, pushing him gently, and he went, only just remembering to throw his mother a sulky look as he left the room.
Although the house was still cool, outside the sun shone with the ferocity Meg knew now to come before the rains. Everything was coloured in ochres – reds and oranges and browns – everything drawn in, sucked dry, waiting for the rains to start.
Meg sat on at the table, the diary open. Like all the rooms in the house, the dining room still felt like someone else’s: the ghosts of the departed Germans still sat in the chairs, still looked out from the windows. But despite them, Meg liked this room best in the house. There was room to breathe here and she felt nearly at ease. Or as at ease as she would anywhere, in a country, amongst a people, mixing in a class not her own, and married to a man she was grateful to, but didn’t love.
On the mahogany sideboard she set fresh flowers daily, a great, untidy vase full, cut from the garden she had made, and the rich, dark wood took in and gave back their colours in its shiny surface. Broad windows and French doors opened out onto the veranda, and beyond she could see the hills, with clouds above like false promises. The sun never shone in directly but the room seemed to gather up the light even so. Sometimes she set the ceiling fan turning, not so much because it was too warm, because in that room it was rarely too warm, but because it seemed exotic, and because she found the slow, steady turn of the blades restful, and she would sit, with her elbows on the starched white cloth, and let her eyes close.
Soon she would go down into the town and do her errands, then an engagement for lunch. In the afternoon she had promised herself an hour in her garden while the children rested. The evening Meg had to herself and she held the time in mind like a gift to be opened later. It should be a nice day.
Over the last four years Meg had learned well how to be as a member of the British middle class and as a colonial wife, and on a number of occasions the second task had worked as a convenient mask for her mistakes with the first. Other wives understood her confusion over how to order groceries because they’d all had to learn how to treat the watu.
‘Speak clearly to them and remember they’re not so much devious as simple,’ Mrs Bromley had advised.
And when the soup spoons were in the wrong position, her guests laughed at the crude ways of the Somali houseboy, who probably ate with his fingers at home so couldn’t be expected to know any better; and Meg, to her shame, because it was she who had placed the spoons, laughed with them.
In the kitchen Meg spoke with Kibaki and wrote out the list into her notebook. George had showed her how to set it out in their first month of marriage and there was a line of notebooks in his desk, every penny Meg had spent in the last five years listed and totalled. He liked to have control of things – she’d learned that very well – and he didn’t like surprises.
That’s why he’d still been waiting for her ship to come in, as if he could compel it, and her, to do the proper thing, the expected thing, just by not believing otherwise. Afterwards, when he told the story to somebody, he told it as though it were somehow her fault that he had to wait so long and it was so dusty and hot and he couldn’t take a bath.
‘It is Mr Garrowby’s last night away, and we’ll all have boiled eggs tonight,’ Meg said to Kibaki, ‘and I’ll cook them. Yusuf is back then, so you may go home at five.’
She turned to go out and then remembered.
‘How is your daughter?’
Kibaki nodded.
‘She is still not well, Memsaab,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Meg said, and she felt her old blush rise. She’d rarely been down to the African lines, although they were only just beyond the garden, and never into an African hut. So she didn’t know what kind of place Kibaki and his family lived in; though she knew, from other women, that the African hut was called a rondavel. She’d seen them from outside, of course: clusters of circular thatched huts with little squares of land attached dotted with colour, where they grew their food, and always crowds of little, naked totos running about. From a distance it all looked very lively and what Mrs Richardson had described once, telling Meg about Africa, as au naturel, which Meg had taken to understand as quite in the natural order of things. But she did wonder what kind of sanitation there was and whether the children went to school at all, and she couldn’t help noticing that the totos they passed in the motor car usually had big bellies and dirty faces.
And seen closer up, the little boys Will played with had crusty eyes and snotty noses, though she couldn’t be sure they were the same boys each time. She had wiped Will’s hands and face with a solution of TCP the first time, but after that she hadn’t worried so much. Though she hadn’t told George about these boys, and she had tried to impress on Will that it would be better to keep the game a secret.
‘The Africans don’t want to live like us,’ George reassured her. ‘God knows, we’ve asked them. Don’t trust our doctoring, don’t like our farming methods. So live and let live, I say.’
Meg knew there were other views about this; there were quite heated discussions amongst the wives sometimes when they met for coffee. But most of the people she had met, people George assured her were good types, thought as he did. And it was true, after all, that George himself spent much of his time helping Africans as best he could.
So Meg didn’t ask Kibaki any more about his daughter – such as what the matter was, or if she could help – because in an emergency she believed he would ask her for help, and otherwise she thought he would rather she kept out.
‘Will was very pleased with his star,’ she said. ‘He ate it nearly all up.’
‘Thank you, Memsaab.’
Again Kibaki gave his short bow – she often heard him teasing Will, but he was always serious with her – and she went to find Yusuf.
When Meg left the house, when she left the hills: those were the times that she felt as if she belonged in them, and this morning she’d have been more than happy to stay up there. But there was shopping to be done and she must go into the town. So Yusuf drove the Austin down towards Kandula, the small, mosquito-ridden town eight miles away, and Meg tried to put away her mood.
They drove in towards the main street – past the railway depot and the string of dukas and shanty beer parlours, then the Sports Club, where the Union Jack hung from its flag like old washing, and the Leicester Hotel. And though she didn’t remember much from her time living there now, the feeling that surfaced was an old familiar. It was like the chill in the stomach she got as a child when her mother found her out in a lie and it lay over her spirits, soft and penetrating, like the deep, red dust that lay over the streets before the rains turned it to mud.
In an effort to shake it, she asked Yusuf about his family: a sister married and gone to live in Nairobi, his widowed mother, his brother. She asked after each of his wives: ‘Is Amina well? And Faisa?’
And after each enquiry he bowed his head so that his turban brushed against the windscreen, and said: ‘She is, I thank you.’
Only about his brother would he say a little more: ‘He has travelled to Nakuru
with a herd of cattle because a man there has named a good price,’ he said.
‘Your brother is a good trader,’ Meg said.
‘He is a good Somali,’ Yusuf said. ‘You are accepting if I take my leave this afternoon?’
‘Yes,’ Meg said. ‘You’ll be back by five?’
He nodded, but offered no further conversational distraction and the two of them fell quickly into their habitual silence. Usually Meg liked this; there was something restful and companionable in it. But today she wished she had a European at the wheel who would gossip, and chat about the weather, and take her mind off things. If she could have thought of a reason, she’d have ordered Yusuf to turn around and drive back home.
The breeze that blew through the hills had given up before it reached the plain and the heat in the town was damp and oppressive. Meg left her grocery list with Mr Gupta and sent Yusuf to the African market to buy meat and cassava. George liked to see only English food on his table, but Sita had discovered that Will would eat cassava with some sugar added when he would eat nothing else. If Yusuf could find some mangoes, even better. She walked along the street, her mind still half caught in the past, still remembering the day she arrived in Africa and the truths she had told Will this morning, and the lies.
Meg bought stamps in the post office, exchanging the necessary courtesies with Mrs Grant: ‘Thank you, yes, it’s very close; yes, let’s hope the rains come soon, yes.’
But she didn’t check for letters because she hadn’t yet replied to Alice’s and she’d only just had one from her mother. So she was on her way out, nearly gone, when Mrs Grant called to her.
‘Mrs Garrowby, you’ve got a letter.’
Meg stopped and turned to the wall of mailboxes. She had done this so often in the last years, hoping against hope. What if he had found out where she was? What if he wrote to her? It was only in the last year, since being pregnant with Henry, that she had let go, or nearly let go, of this hope and now here she was, heart racing, not knowing what to wish for.
She slipped her hand into the box: a single, flimsy airmail letter, and when she looked at the handwriting, she felt the disappointment, despite herself. There was her mother’s hand, the address looking a little scrawled, more carelessly written than usual, as if done in a hurry, though that might just be because Meg was looking at it more closely than usual. She turned the letter over, but there was nothing unusual to see. Why had she written again? Her mother was a creature of strict habits, obsessive even, and she wrote to Meg once a month, never more and never less, on the first day of the month. That letter had arrived less than a week ago.
‘Nothing you weren’t looking for?’ Mrs Grant said.
‘No,’ Meg said, but already something was rising in her that she needed to put away.
She left the post office and stood on the dusty street, the letter in her hand. Then, decided, she put it in her bag. She would open it later, not now. Later, when she was on her own and she had more time. Because after all she didn’t mind not knowing what it said, yet. Because after all she had spent a lifetime, nearly, not knowing things. It was a familiar feeling, and she didn’t need to rush away from it.
Mr Gupta had her groceries ready by the time she returned, and Yusuf was waiting too, holding two long sweet cassava roots for Will in one hand and in the other, the meat, wrapped up in newspaper and tied with a piece of string, held away from his body, away from his crisp overshirt and sarong. Blood was already soaking through the cricket news and the flies were thick. Meg thought of England and the butcher’s shop in the village with its cold, white tiles and scrubbed wooden benches. She thought of the small, tidy pieces of meat that were all she and her mother could afford.
‘Let’s go home,’ she said.
The drive to the house curved round past the Bromleys’ coffee sheds and up between two groves of eucalyptus that bowed, graceful as Masai, in the wind. There was no roasting going on now, but Meg could always smell, or fancied she could, the smoky, woody smell of the roasting beans. As ever, a cluster of children appeared on the verges and ran beside the motor car, some with a hand to its hot metal flank, some carrying a smaller child on their hip. Most were naked or wearing just a rough shirt, and all were barefoot. Anticipating Meg’s request, Yusuf brought the motor car to near walking pace and the car grumbled slowly up to the house.
Meg climbed out. Will would be here any second in his short trousers and buttoned shirt, and his sandals against the jiggas and broad-brimmed hat that George had given him so he could pretend to be on safari, running out to see what she’d brought, to see if there was anything exciting, Sita behind him, half-running to keep up.
Yusuf took the meat from the boot and Meg waited. She felt in her bag for the letter. A butterfly fluttered in her chest. Perhaps her mother had decided to visit, after all; or perhaps she had fallen ill, or come into something unexpected. Money, or love.
‘Did you see Will?’ Meg said when Yusuf returned for the groceries.
‘No, Memsaab.’
‘Or Sita?’
‘No, Memsaab. I am leaving now till teatime?’
‘Yes,’ she said, nodding absently. ‘Of course.’
Everything was quiet – no small boy sounds. She opened the front door. It was heavy, resistant, built by the Germans to withstand … She didn’t know what it was built to withstand. Masai spears, perhaps.
‘Will?’ she called. ‘Sita?’
She looked for him in the drawing room – behind the sofas, under the low table, behind the door, the curtains. There was some paper and colouring pencils on the table and a picture with green and red lines and a circle that might be a face. The lines were so definite, as if Will knew in his mind’s eye exactly what he wanted to set down. She loved to watch him drawing. There was no hesitation in it and he always knew when it was finished.
There was no one in the dining room, or in the kitchen, so she turned and walked along the corridor to the bedroom Will shared with Henry. She didn’t think he would be in here because he wasn’t allowed when Henry had his sleep, and Sita would have removed him. She thought that if Will was nowhere else, then he would be with Sita, surely. Quietly she opened the bedroom door. It was dark inside.
‘Will?’ she called softly.
In the half dark she saw a figure seated on the bed and when she came closer, she saw that it was Sita and that she had Henry on her lap.
‘What is it?’ Meg said quietly, putting a hand to Henry’s forehead. It was hot. He looked up at her with heavy eyes, with the weary, disinterested look of the feverish.
‘Soon after you left for Kandula,’ Sita said. ‘He is exhausted now, but at first I could not calm him.’
Sitting on the bed, Meg stroked his brow. His soft baby hair was plastered to his head.
‘Has he been sick?’
‘Only crying, and very hot.’
‘Not floppy, or jerky?’ She mimed what she meant, to be sure. ‘You’ve checked for a rash?’ she said, lifting Henry’s vest. Sita nodded.
‘And he’s happy being held?’
‘Yes. He has been calmer since I closed the curtains.’
‘Then for now we must just wait and see. I will send Yusuf for the doctor if he is no better by the evening. Where is Will?’
‘He is in the drawing room with his paper and his pencils.’
Meg shook her head.
‘He’s not.’
‘But I told him to stay there till you returned. A good boy,’ Sita said.
‘I don’t think he’s in the house, or the garden,’ Meg said.
‘I told him because Henry, he was not well and so Will must stay there.’
‘He would have come when he heard the motor car,’ Meg said. ‘He always comes running then, in case it is his father.’
‘He is perhaps hide and seeking?’ Sita said.
‘Yes,’ Meg said. ‘Yes. Perhaps that’s it. I’ll go and hunt for him; Kibaki is making a cake later, for Mr Garrowby’s return tomorrow. I’ll promise
him cake if he will come out. Kibaki can make him a cupcake for tea today. He always comes out for cake.’
So she called for him through the house and then through the garden, but there was no sign of him and no sound. He wasn’t there. Perhaps he had quite forgotten Sita’s instruction and run off to play. But he’d soon come back, not because he was hungry – he never seemed to be hungry – but because he had remembered that his mother was returning from the town, or because Kibaki had promised to let him whip the egg whites.
She was not out of breath but her heart was thumping in her chest and she felt a sweat break on her skin.
‘Will!’ she called out, the sound like a bell note in the sharpening air.
The valley and those beautiful hills were full of dangers, full of her fears, and they held no mercy for her little boy. The lions and snakes would be prowling and slithering. There were thorns and wild pig holes and all manner of things that could hurt him.
There was never any mercy for little boys, she thought.
She tried to think calmly. Tried to think what George would do. Perhaps she should go back to the house and up to George’s study. You could see further from up there; you could see things that were invisible from the lawn. Or should she walk down the drive, now, hunt for him? She’d take one of the sticks from the hall stand to beat things back with. Because Will might have gone that way; he might have gone further than he ought, looking out for her and Yusuf, or running after something, or someone. Perhaps he had fallen and hurt himself; or perhaps he was trapped …
She looked down beyond the lawn. Sita should go and look, not her. Sita was better at looking – it was her country, after all – and Meg should stay with Henry. It wasn’t meningitis, Meg was sure of that. Nor yellow fever. Mrs Pritchard’s girls had all got yellow fever in the last rains, but it hadn’t been too bad, she had said, not so different from the usual.
Meg knew what to do for Henry. These fevers that took the children: if it wasn’t malaria, then usually they ran their course quite quickly, and all you could do was keep the child cool, and give them water, and comfort them. Will had been ill a few times. So far none of them had caught malaria, but she supposed it would only be a matter of time, if they stayed in Africa, despite her efforts with the chloroquine.