Girl with the Golden Voice

by Carl Hancock

  There was a long pause, punctuated by the rise and fall of long, heavy breaths. The boys sat eyes closed and heads bowed. Alex locked his gaze with his wife’s. His eyes had a glazed look until his face lit up in a warm smile. He reached out to touch both his sons on the shoulder.

  ‘Boys, I’ve just made a discovery. It’s a sort of revelation. How many times have you heard me say: love, that’s not practical? Well, the old scales have fallen away. Your mother’s the practical one in this family and I thank God for you, love.’

  Tom and Rollo exchanged bemused glances and smiled.

  ‘Do you trust me?’ Her tone was anxious. When three heads nodded their readiness, she shifted in her chair and began. ‘Remember what I said just now, that we are in our essence sparks of divine light. Now all you have to do is concentrate and follow what I say and focus on Eddie, Eddie, Eddie!’

  Her passion carried them through. At first Rollo was embarrassed at his own mother going at them like some preacher, but soon he became lost in the journey she led them on. She drew them down pathways where they began to experience emotions that they thought were new. They were old emotions made to feel new and pure by the scenes and pictures she created for them. The final destination was a place of light, an uncountable number of pinpricks. ‘We have come beyond. Different laws apply here. Miracles are expected. If we focus hard we see that this is where David Daniels and Edward McCall can come together.’

  The time passed quickly and when she saw that David would be with them soon, she brought them gently out of their inner world. They returned to find their bodies heavy with a pleasant sense of lethargy. Rollo was first to stir. ‘We have to …’

  Tom took over. ‘You know there’s no choice, Dad?’

  Alex’s contribution was a nod, a shrug, a smile and a few tears.

  Maura was pleased but asked one final question. ‘Even if things don’t turn out the way we want?’

  There was no response.

  Midnight came and went. The minutes dragged wearily by. Tom faced the discomfort of random thought selection by a brain that was in freefall. At ten Alex took Rollo back to the club to check on how it was with Bertie and the others but more to give his son something to do. Back in Eddie’s room Maura moved to the chair next to Tom.

  ‘What’s this I hear about Rebecca going off with the Wajiru family?’

  ‘And where did that come from?’

  ‘Oh, Angela and I have our little chats.’

  ‘Yeah, well it’s the old black and white stuff again. Why is it that most of the world doesn’t seem to be bothered about it, but out here …?’

  ‘Tell me about you and Rebecca.’

  ‘Ma, you know all about that.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Problem solved. It’s all over. I ballsed it up. But I think it will be better for her this way. You should have seen her face when she came back to the farm with David Wajiru.’

  ‘Radiant? Of course she was. She’d just been singing, hadn’t she? That always makes her face positively glow. And she wanted to come back, didn’t she? I tell you, Thomas, you sometimes have the old Celtic gloom about you, just like your dad. Angela tells me that you helped to persuade her to go to America.’ She looked up. ‘I can hear Rollo and your father coming. Listen. Rafaella and I have known about this for years. We can talk more later, but I’m sure of one thing. That beautiful girl loves … Mister Thomas McCall of Londiani. Believe me. Ask your grandmother.’

  ‘I will.’ He paused. ‘All of a sudden I feel guilty. Me, the selfish prat. You give me hope and there’s Eddie up there and God knows what’s happening to him.’

  ‘Don’t be so dramatic. You’ve got a life and you being a gloomy guts doesn’t help him one bit. Life’s exciting, even the horrible bits. Quiet! They’re here. And don’t forget, I’m a witch.’

  David Daniels, still wearing his green operating robe, was first through the door, followed by Rollo and Alex. He took a chair and waited until the family sat down and composed themselves. He rose briefly to place a small shiny piece of metal on the small table between Alex and Maura. ‘This belongs to the family.’ He leaned forward and watched for a reaction.

  The smile dawned on each face almost simultaneously. The surgeon’s tone was businesslike.

  ‘Ah, good. You all understand we’ve come to the end of stage one. The really big one is behind us, but we are far from finished. Now, listen. I want you people out of here for a while. Give Carmen some space. She’s a great girl. Trust her and get off and have something to eat. Eddie’ll be sedated today and tomorrow. In the morning go into the park. Take a camera. I learn a lot in there. But you’re farmers. You understand about animals.’

  ‘Can we see him?’

  ‘Rollo.’ David Daniels closed his eyes and seemed about to nod off. A quick shake of the head and he was with them again. ‘Yes, you can, but for your sakes and not for his. The girls will bring him down in twenty minutes. I’ll push off to have some supper, breakfast with my wife. If something … happens we haven’t planned for I’ll be here in ten minutes.’

  He was gone.

  While they waited for Eddie to be brought down, a minor argument broke out. Rollo stubbornly refused to leave the hospital even after they had seen him.

  ‘I’m his twin brother. I’ve got a duty. We came into this world together.’

  ‘I’m quite aware of that, darling. I was there at that moment, too, and as a mum I think I’ve learned that sometimes it’s best to let go, to trust other people.’

  They never did get to resolve the difference of opinion.

  A face appeared at the porthole window of the ward door; two faces, Abel Rubai and his son and heir. Abel strode in and moved towards the little family group. He nodded a greeting in the direction of Maura and the boys and, putting his left arm around Alex’s shoulder, took his right hand in a firm, friendly grasp. Julius leaned against the door, arms crossed and barely suppressing an unfriendly grin as he watched his father go into action.

  ‘We were all shaken when we heard the terrible news. We checked with the hospital in Mombasa and they put us onto this place. Tell me, how is the boy? I have friends here. If there is something you need …’

  Tom took it upon himself to be the McCall spokesman.

  ‘Our brother has just come out of a long operation. They’re bringing him down soon.’

  Abel stepped back a pace. ‘I’m so sorry to have come at the wrong time. Julius, go and tell your mother not to come up.’

  Tom carried on as if he had not heard the father’s words nor seen the son saunter through the ward door. ‘The news is hopeful, but it’s still early days.’ He paused to look across at his parents. ‘My mother and father know nothing about what you and your men did for us down in … the villa and so on.’ He kept up a cold, formal tone.

  Alex could see that underneath Tom’s temper was rising at a dangerous speed. He broke in.

  ‘Yes, Abel, it looks like we owe you a lot. Um, thanks. Things, well we’re hoping. We, well, that’s it really …’

  Abel Rubai read situations and sensibilities quicker than most. His life and prosperity often depended on this skill. ‘I understand your feeling completely. And I’m fully aware of what you people really think of me.’ He smiled earnestly as if pleading for justice for the Rubai cause. ‘But you do not know the real me.’

  ‘Thank God!’

  ‘Thomas, that’s enough!’ His father’s reprimand was quietly delivered.

  ‘Thank you, Alex, but I don’t need protecting. Now then, young man, I can see that you are in a bit of a state. I guess that I’m the cause so, please, spit it out. Just remember that anything I have done here has been as a parent. I feel for people who have kids. In this I’m not Abel the Fixer, or whatever name The Nation will have for me in today’s morning edition.’

  Tom could hold back no longer. ‘Did you get to see those poor bastards in that shack down on the coast?’

  ‘My boys told me all about it.’ Abe
l fixed a level, unemotional gaze on the eldest McCall son. He was struggling to keep hidden a deep revulsion that, if unguarded, might easily develop into a full-blown rage. He was being uncharacteristically patient. He must be so until this kid had poured it all out.

  ‘They were beaten to a pulp. You must be an Old Testament man. An eye for an eye, even if the eye wasn’t yours in the first place. Justice … with a big stick!’ He turned aside, emotionally drained.

  In the ensuing silence all eyes but Tom’s were turned towards Abel. He in turn looked at Tom with a gaze that was serene and without a trace of compassion. The meeting was being conducted on his terms and this pleased him.

  ‘I’m happy to hear that your boy is out of danger.’ He turned to go, but as he reached the door he looked back. ‘By the way, some news. It’s not really mine to give, but I can’t resist. Had a call from Bertie Briggs. He’s changed his mind.’

  His listeners did not pick up the implication of his words immediately. ‘We won’t be neighbours, after all, not yet at least. But, as I told you, I’m a patient man. Goodnight to you.’

  Chapter Ten

  hree weeks on from the visit of the Rubai men to the special care unit of Nairobi Hospital, life on the farms around the lake had long returned to its familiar rhythm. In the early evening, the big refrigerated trucks set off on their journeys to Jomo Kenyatta bearing the loads of fresh produce which would help swell the coffers of those who held the pieces of paper that proved that they were the owners of the earth where the flowers grew. Next morning thousands of workers plunged their hands into the cool, brown soil to coax and nurture the growth of countless more splashes of scentless African colour for European tables.

  In Londiani there was still an air of grateful rejoicing. Eddie McCall was impatient with his life of idleness, divided between bedroom, sitting room and veranda. Five days of resting quietly, moving circumspectly were more than enough. From the safety of the shadows he looked out on the sunlit plains and hills where he wanted to be roaming.

  Stephen Kamau had developed a new habit. He went on long, solitary walks after his day’s work. He was troubled about his eldest child. Since Angela had last seen her in Malindi, there had been little news, none at all directly, from Rebecca. Twenty-two days had passed. His brother, Solomon, had written a letter to tell them that she had left the coast on a night train out of Mombasa, travelling with the Wajiru family. A few days later had come the card from Mary Wajiru, posted in Nairobi. It was annoyingly, probably deliberately, vague with no real news of his firstborn’s whereabouts or her plans.

  ‘Please do not worry about Rebecca. She loves you all so very much. You must try to be proud of her. The world will love her soon …’

  Stephen mused, ‘You must try to be proud of her.’ Try? Had she done something wrong, something shameful? No, no, it must mean something else. But a few lines would have made everything clear.

  But until then? Scores of possibilities had crossed his mind, but all he had to show for his weeks of worrying and puzzling was the belief that his daughter had gone to America with the Wajirus. Only a generation ago Grandfather Joshua would have talked of magic spells and witchcraft. Stephen suspected that modern witchcraft was as powerful as any of those out of the ancient days.

  During those three weeks Abel Rubai had not wandered far from his Karen home. It was the time of year when he paid special attention to money matters. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than sitting at his desk in the screen room enjoying the excitement of risk taking. His ancestors had hunted lion and leopard with their spears and bows and arrows, putting their lives in danger every day. The white man had come and had seen not nobility and courage but savagery and ignorance. Even today they liked to demonstrate their superiority. But Abel knew that he was as good as any white man in the game of making profitable deals, buying low and selling high. They would be astonished to discover how vast his fortune had become.

  While revelling in his computing and calculating, a gloomier theme was playing in the background of his thoughts. Julius, Julius, Julius, how many years had he been waiting for his son to come alongside him in his thinking and his ambition? He himself accepted much of the blame for the way that Julius looked at life and the wealth he and, at the start, Sally had created by discipline and hard work. He wasn’t the only father who had mistaken indulgence for love. In moments of deep introspection he confessed to himself that the beautiful child who had created such pleasure and pride with his birth had become first what he had heard an Englishman, talking of his own son, describe as a spoilt brat. Now the man he had become seemed bent on using the privilege and money he had fallen into to serve his whims and create for himself a round of endless ‘cool fun’, as he described it.

  For all that he still loved his firstborn and lived in hope for what he saw was the better. Abel tried not to believe that, seventeen years before, he had committed the key mistake when he decided to send Julius to board at Pembroke House prep school in Gilgil. That was where the white bwanas sent their sons. Pembroke was where they learned to play up and play the game. Pembroke was a little piece of England set in two hundred acres of Rift Valley paradise — common entrance, early morning runs and chapel on Sunday evenings.

  Pembroke had prepared Julius for his English school. But something had gone wrong in that place for his boy. It had taken Abel a long time to fix precisely on what had undermined his confidence. Thomas McCall, he had been the shadow that had fallen across Julius’s life. Thomas McCall, self-assured, clever, sporty, quick-witted, that name had figured in Julius’s letters home in his final two years and never in a pleasant way. Now it was McCall who stood between Julius and the woman he wanted as his wife. The house girl of Londiani had become infatuated with the spoilt little master. The situation cried out to Abel. He had trusted his intuition. Now he must be decisive.

  For that Thomas McCall not an hour of the day passed without him thinking of that house girl. Where was she exactly? Why wasn’t she making contact with Angela and Stephen? There must be some serious reason for this. Was David Wajiru the key to the mystery? It was at night when the images of her with David Wajiru in a hundred situations that the anguish and the guilt were most painful. He talked with no one about his fears. How was he to know that this handsome young Wajiru had not left the country when the band returned to America? The mask of normality that he wore deceived everyone except his mother, Rafaella and Angela. Each in her own way kept a quiet watch on him.

  The other female in the house was coming to the end of her holiday in Kenya. Lucy was secretly glad that the passionate house girl was not around. Tom did not seem to miss her, which was a surprise. Her parents were in the country, on safari with Somak Tours of Nairobi. With two couples from their social circle in deepest Surrey, they were doing the breathless round of the most famous of the breathtaking beauty spots of the beautiful country. While they enjoyed the fleeting glimpses, Lucy felt privileged to have a few deeper insights into the lives of the people who lived on the shores of the lake.

  In three days they would arrive at Londiani with their friends en route for a short stay in a magnificent private house on the far side of the lake, Karura Tu, a paradise within a paradise, a place for pampered living, for resting, reading and close enough to the water’s edge for them to have hippos for visitors after sundown. When Lucy tried to laugh off Tom’s ludicrous attempts to sell its attractions, he rushed her to the lakeside and pointed into the distance across the rippling waters.

  ‘You can’t see it, but I promise that it’s over there, just at the end of my fingertip. Tell you what. Tomorrow morning we’ll go on an inspection tour.’

  Returning from an evening stroll across the open meadow in front of the house, she chanced on the familiar sight of Bertie’s Harley Davidson parked between the farm trucks. Luka and Erik were polishing it, every shiny bit they could find. In the usual way of things in Londiani they knew exactly why the bike was there.

  ‘See, Memsahib, we are washing
the seats. You and Bwana will be able to sit down with confidence.’

  The twins laughed hugely. Lucy winced a smile. She did not trust these night askaris. Their gushing warmth rang false and carried in it a kind of aggression, a part of the menace that so often lay beneath the surface of the beaming smiles of the innocent native people.

  Breakfast over, Tom and Lucy lounged on the veranda. He was deep into reading the morning edition of The Nation while she watched Rollo take on Eddie in another of their chess test matches. Eddie was way ahead in the series, but he was not satisfied. He longed for physical competition.

  ‘When this is all over, Rolls, we’re going to have it out in some proper sports. I’ve got a list of five to start us off …’

  ‘Now hold it there, brother of mine,’ broke in Rollo. ‘Don’t be in too much of a hurry. If Ma sees you running about, she’ll be sending both of us back to school. Hockey on snowy afternoons. Frozen fingers. Have you forgotten?’

  Tom rose to answer the phone. He returned just as Rollo was winning a rare checkmate after a frenzied exchange of pieces.

  ‘Right, Luce, it’s lunch with the Crofts. Arrive as soon as we like. Let’s be off.’

  After their bout of fierce polishing, Erik and Luka had thrown a blanket over the Harley. Tom whipped it off with a flourish and cast it into the dust. Lucy picked it up, folded it and placed it neatly in the shade.

  They travelled slowly along the driveway and not a lot faster after turning right onto South Lake Road. Lucy had never been happier. The breeze ruffled her shirt and the sun warmed the bare flesh of her arms and legs. To her left and ahead the tops of the dark green hills formed the horizon. Looking right she caught glimpses of the lake through the thin margin of forest. In a week’s time she would be travelling to Waterloo and her job in the city.