Girl with the Golden Voice

by Carl Hancock

  ‘Okay, Okay, that’s enough!’ Luka, an African dreamer, could not take the discomfort of having his fantasies, however crazy, chilled by doses of cold reality.

  People were beginning to gather on the patch of well-loved ground. They were a small community who treasured this place and protected it. Some brought out chairs and a table in the evening. Most used the sitting places made over the years, slices of tree trunk, stones, turf, all cut and shaped for comfort. Children played their games here. It was a place for Bible reading, parties, quiet, late evening conversations around the dying embers, formal meetings and for settling disputes. It was the comfortable heartland of the African part of Londiani.

  Stephen and Angela Kamau appeared along the path from Crescent Island. They were deep in conversation. If Angela was Maura McCall’s treasure, Stephen had become something very special to Alex. He was the boss’s right-hand man, even though his title described him only as senior foreman on a farm that employed five hundred workers, most of them in the flower fields and tents.

  They were both refugees from the east of the country. Angela Ngoro was a lithe, handsome Somali, neat, always immaculately turned out in bright, flowing clothes. She had run away from the family farm near Auliban. She had gathered her few belongings into a bundle and took a night matatu to Nairobi. She’d rather take her chances on the streets of the big city than become the fourth wife of Ahmed, the richest man in the district. She had two pieces of luck. The Shahs of Langata wanted a good Muslim woman to work in their mansion. She had met them on her first visit to the mosque.

  Six months later she changed her faith, seduced by the Presbyterian street preaching of a Mijikanda man from the coast. He, too, had broken away from his family, too many of whom were steeped in witchcraft and superstition.

  Stephen Kamau was a giant who turned eyes wherever he went. He had a gentle nature and loved nothing better than dancing or singing in his fine baritone. Watching him perform a story or a sermon was to experience total theatre.

  The gathering on the patch was a buzzing, squeaking, squealing crowd waiting for a story from their headman and friend. Stephen was late coming out. He had been praying. Angela at last had unburdened herself completely about Rebecca. His first thoughts had been for his wife and for the pain she had carried alone for so long.

  ‘It’s my turn now, Angela. The Lord will show us the way. I only wish I was a little faster in understanding what He is trying to tell us. We got to trust a little harder just now.’

  Stephen Kamau’s ways were always gentle, always respecting the decisions of everyone, even the youngest, even when he thought a mistake was being made.

  For now he must be with all the Londiani people. It was good to feel the cool evening air on his face.

  ‘Joshua, how old are you?’

  ‘Eight, Bwana Kamau.’

  ‘Ah, just right. You choose the story tonight.’

  Joshua swelled with pride and self-importance that it was his turn to get big Stephen to do his bidding. He closed his eyes and wiggled his tongue to show that he was in deep thought and taking the job seriously.

  ‘Bwana, I would like the story of Babu.’

  A murmur of approval. Stephen was always ready to spin a brand new story, but usually his audience called for one of its old favourites. The tale itself was only part of the pleasure. After all, they were listening to one of the finest speaking voices in the country, even if they didn’t know it. Then there was the singing, the miming, the dancing and the audience involvement. Total theatre.

  ‘Babu, the youngest son of a fisherman of Malindi, leaves home in search of the end of the rainbow. He journeys across deserts, across rivers alive with snapping crocodiles, plains where he is chased by lions and cornered by a maverick buffalo. Always the close calls, the near misses. He meets a talkative but forgetful woodpecker who accidentally leads Babu into the den of the wicked witchdoctor of the north. Always there is the breathless climb of Ol Doinyo, always the fall from the snow-capped peak into the swirling lake, always the struggle between the Spirit of Good and the Spirit of Evil, fighting over his soul. The climax of the storm roars until Babu wakes to find that he has found the very root of the rainbow in a corner of his father’s shamba.’

  Stephen Kamau was born for telling stories. He did not do it for acclaim. It was his gift of love to whoever wanted to listen. When he had finished this story, there was the euphoria, the warm feeling of goodwill towards him and his world. There were a hundred smiling faces calling out and whooping their delight. Rebecca, his eldest daughter, the one he often called Child or our Firstborn, was sitting close to him. He wept to see her smiling up at him. The thought came to him again that he and Angela had brought to earth a special child.

  And Rebecca would sing. In her days in Santa Maria her best friend was Mary Wajiru. Mary was in boarding school because her daddy was spending a lot of time in America with his African jazz combo. Toni Wajiru was a big man in the west coast music business. She and Mary had sung together so often. At night in their room they would listen to tapes of Toni and his boys. At concerts they would sing Toni’s songs. Mary had been with her father for three years now. Twice she had returned to Kenya and travelled to Naivasha to try to persuade Rebecca to join her and the band.

  ”Becca, come back with me. With your looks to go with that voice, you’d make heaps of money in no time.’

  * * *

  Lucy was on her third White-cap. ‘Tom, I can’t get her out of my mind. I’m scared of her, scared of what she could do to you. She gives me the shivers. She’s my idea of a witch.’

  ‘Funny you should say that. Stephen, her father, is a Majikinda. They’re from the coast. Supposed to be into witchcraft. But he’s a really great bloke, like everybody’s favourite uncle.’

  * * *

  No one moved while Rebecca sang. She had chosen a blues song, one she had written the words for. Even the youngest child sitting around that fire recognised that she was listening to the voice of a spirit breaking loose, unashamed to let anyone look upon the pain of her heart. She was desperate to be true to her deepest self whatever she found that self to be.

  As she sang, Angela grasped the hand of her husband very tight. Jane and Martha snuggled up to their parents. Their eyes were fixed on their big sister’s face. They enjoyed the beauty in the voice, but why did she seem so far away from everyone there? They knew something about Rebecca’s feelings for Tom and, young as they were, saw the foolishness of it. They were afraid that punishment was close by.

  The meeting around the fire was finished by nine o’clock and the rondavels were quiet by ten. Erik in his askari uniform returned every hour to put more wood on the fire.

  Sleep would not come to Rebecca. Just after midnight she was gliding along the smooth path towards Big House. She skirted the cei-apple hedge and stood for a time in the laundry garden. She had been trying for hours to become calm enough to visualise again the events of the day, her encounter with Signora Rafaella, the moments with the English woman in the garden and in the dining room. She was searching for some clue about how others were thinking. Were they laughing at her or, worse, feeling sorry for her?

  It was on to the acacia. There was stillness on the lake and silence in the mountains and she could not share them. She sat against the tree and looked back to Big House. She drew the thick woollen shawl around her shoulders. The frustration would not leave her. This white girl could fight in the open. She would have the community with her, even her own family. She, the one born here, was the stranger. And she herself was already getting used to having this Lucy around. How long before her stomach melted with hot pain to be hearing the announcement of Tom’s engagement? And she would get used to that too. That was so often the way of it for Africans.

  The face of Julius Rubai came into her mind. He wanted her. She knew it. Yes, to have around for a while until he became bored and ready for the next one. She feared this one. The family was powerful and rich. Perhaps Mama, no, no, Papa wo
uld always protect her. Please God, he knows nothing about this.

  ‘Oh, God, where am I taking myself?’

  She hid her face in her hands at the thought that at that very moment Tom was being drawn away from her. He was with his friends in the middle of their kind of fun, the noise and the frantic laughter. She had seen these things at parties at Londiani. She understood how comfortable it was for these white farmers and lawyers and the rest. And by his side the good-looking woman who fitted in. Tom had never taken her to any place where she was recognised as anything other than the house girl.

  She was beginning to convince herself that the dream was over. But she knew that her love was not over and never could be. Perhaps the nuns at Santa Maria would have her back.

  Suddenly it all stopped — the fevered rising of distress, the wild imaginings, the despair. For the second time in the day she felt settling on her a cooling cloud of numbness, resignation, a kind of peace. She ceased to be a mental being. There would be no more judgements, just the acceptance of sitting on dusty ground, a cool breeze lifting off the lake and a Kenyan night enfolding her, protecting her under its cape of stars. She thought of her people sitting on this ground ten thousand years before, a million. All gone, all gathered in. Silence.

  Then from up towards South Lake Road headlights and soon the familiar powerful purr of the Land Cruiser. Minutes later an upstairs light was switched on in Big House, in the only room visible to her from the acacia. Rebecca knew that room well. She had swept and polished it often enough for guests of the family.

  A window was thrown open. There were voices. Tom was in her room. The laughter was hysterical. Rebecca, standing now, clutched her stomach. She wanted to be away. Tom had drunk too much. Would he take her? She considered screaming to make him know that she was close by. She was shocked to discover a longing rising in her loins. She envied this girl. She had always insisted that she would not play the whore, ever, ever. And now she would pay for her stupid, old-fashioned ideas of morality.

  She sped down the bank and across the wash garden. Before she could reach the hedge, the light was turned off and the house became silent.

  Chapter Four

  he Rubais were coming a-hunting. They had just spent four days up on their farm in the Nandi Hills. They were returning to their Karen mansion, moving south at a steady pace and timing their arrival at Londiani for midafternoon. Abel and Sally were riding in separate Mercedes, black and brand new. Each had the company of a driver and a heavily armed bodyguard. Many miles behind but rapidly catching up was a red BMW, Series 5. Julius, twenty-five year old son and heir, was at the wheel and alone. Father and son did not see eye to eye on the possibilities of kidnap on the open road in broad daylight. Abel and Julius were the hunters and the two very different objects of their pursuit were to be found at Londiani.

  Abel was the most powerful man in the country. In the congress of thieves that was also known as the government of Kenya he was the prince. Officially, he was one of the group of twelve who advised the president on every conceivable matter concerning the State. In practice, though he was still only forty-five, he had been the president’s confidant and conscience for almost a quarter of a century. He was also the only one of the twelve who had not been voted into office. Good luck, coincidence had played a significant part in his rise from relative poverty. At crucial moments he had been the right man in the right place.

  He and Sally had been born six months apart on adjacent holdings in the Nandi Hills. Abel’s father, Nathaniel, a shrewd, hardworking subsistence farmer, had seen the promise in his boy and managed to get him enrolled in the last British-run boarding school in the north-west. Kaptegat High was staffed by talented, mostly young English teachers, public school and university men, drawn to Kenya by the wide open spaces and the promise of adventure.

  A very old-fashioned maths teacher recognised a gift for figures in Abel. Even in the school holidays the boy was loaded down with work. During these so-called free weeks, Abel took on a teaching role of his own. Sally was a quick learner. They were seventeen when Mr Trewethic left the school to live with his daughter in South Africa. On this teacher’s advice Abel did not even apply for entry to university. The Englishman’s parting gift proved to be another turning point in their lives. They left home to take up humble positions in the biggest, most successful firm of accountants in the country, Neisland, Kapper and Reed of Nairobi.

  Their progress after this was quick. They rose like a pair of eagles who had chanced on the ultimate thermal. They married at eighteen and by the time Julius was born in the following year they had paid outright for a three-bedroomed house in Parklands.

  Even the death of the president worked to move their careers forward. His successor, Daniel Lagat, was a Kalenjin just like themselves. Years before Danny Lagat had finished his teaching career in Kaptagat and in their brief time of overlap at the school Abel had impressed the future president with his honesty, his energy and his sparky wit. So, at twenty, the bright, thrusting country boy took over the supervision of the president’s financial affairs. Daniel reckoned that an ambitious young man with no political allegiance would suit him well. Rubai would be his man with no divided loyalties.

  His judgement brought immediate rewards. President Daniel had long ago mastered the art of the political game of two faces. In his early years he remained outgoing and popular and was often making speeches in public squares and sports fields. Being a sensible Kalenjin, he was fully aware of the power of money in protecting his future. He came to love the stuff above everything and Abel showed him how he could make sackfuls of it. His young assistant taught him that international donors were more than willing to direct funds towards Kenya as long the country was stable enough to allow their other investments to make profits.

  So the crazy rumour grew that Daniel Lagat, man of the people, was one of the ten richest men in the world. Danny became more choosy about when and where to appear in front of the wananchi. He began to suspect that enemies were lying in wait in all sorts of dark corners. He grew especially nervous when he had to move around the country on the roads. When the head man travelled, his escort, in a dozen more black Mercedes, cleared the way ahead by sweeping down the middle lanes at breakneck speeds while all other traffic waited respectfully still on the verges.

  Abel was careful to keep his own business interests as private as possible. He would not have liked his colleagues in the inner twelve to know that he was richer than the president. He and Sally kept producing children at regular intervals. Sally gave a sigh of relief two days after her fortieth birthday when little Esther appeared to become a companion to her six brothers. She had accomplished her duty on the parturation front.

  Money was fine and Abel had accounts in a dozen foreign capitals. Cash was interesting, liquid and useful, but land was better. In yet another underhanded deal he had acquired the three thousand acres of the last virgin forest left in the Nairobi district. For a minimum outlay he had thousands of tons of prime quality logs in his sheds ready for export. In the clearings he was setting up clusters of luxury homes to be let out on lease. He had created a money factory out of wood.

  For some time he had been eyeing the lucrative flower businesses around the lake with growing interest. All five big growers down there were ethnic Europeans. For all their Kenya passports, to Abel these people were foreigners. This meant to him, the African, that he must show what a morally upright businessman they would be dealing with. He must act with open-handed patience. He would focus on one farm at a time. In the end all the lakeside businesses would be his.

  The McCalls were to be the first. One night Sally and Julius were with Abel on the way to a concert in State House. The car had to wait at a roundabout for other traffic to pass. Two large refrigerated trucks went by on their way to the airport. On their sides in large blue letters were the words ‘Londiani of Naivasha’.

  Sally remarked casually, ‘Nice trucks. Hey, don’t we know that name from somewhere?’r />
  From the back seat Julius, their reluctant companion, had the answer. ‘The McCalls. Don’t remind me. They had a kid a year behind me at Pembroke. Londiani, that’s where they lived. You used to see them when you took me back.’

  Abel narrowed his brow. ‘Sure … Alex wasn’t it? The wife had a strange name. Quite friendly people. Didn’t they invite us to call?’

  Sally moved her head back to take a sidelong look at her smiling husband.

  ‘You know, Sally, I’m beginning to fancy myself as a flower power person!’

  ‘That’s San Francisco, Dad. There are still some of them at it over there.’

  ‘Londiani, I’ll remember that name.’

  Three hours later it was a much changed Julius who was smitten by the idea of the up-country, out of the way farmstead that was Londiani. He had fallen in love, again, unexpectedly, totally, happily for a sixteen year old who had sung at the concert with her friend, Mary … something. On the way home in the car he was his usual unashamedly open self, at least while he and his mother were waiting for Abel to join them.

  ‘That voice. And she’s so beautiful.’

  ‘Oh, Julius, boy, how many times …?

  ‘You and Dad knew each other all your lives, right? You think that’s the only way love can work.’

  ‘No, but, oh, here’s your daddy. Just be careful what you say now. He’s not so understanding as your Mama.’

  ‘Did you ever read Romeo and Juliet in school, Mama?’

  ‘Yes, I did. But did you ever read to the end of that story?’

  Abel sat down heavily and leaned forward to hand over a briefcase to his driver, Paul. The car moved off, but nothing could stem the flow of Julius’s excitement.

  ‘Ah, but this is different. For one thing I didn’t get a single word with her …’

  Abel frowned. ‘What’s going on?’