by Karen Perry
This from her neighbour – a fellow passenger she’d never met before. She’d glared at him, aghast and furious, but he had stared past her, his deadened gaze fixed on the land below.
Sally’s is a familiar face in this part of the slum, having been a fixture there for the best part of a year. She is well practised now in suppressing any feelings of revulsion that rise to greet the monstrous filth of the place. Sometimes it seems to her that she is more at home among the alleyways of red-brown mud than she is in the lush and verdant setting of Lavington – all those sanitised homes on the hill with their intruder alarms and their guards, perimeter walls crowned with shards of glass.
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she murmurs, pushing down on the uncertainty that keeps surfacing insistently.
Outside, Luke is kicking a plastic bottle around with two local boys, who wear shoes that seem huge, their narrow stick legs emerging from them and rising to swollen dark knees. Sally doesn’t know why he has chosen to come with her today, instead of staying behind with the others. She suspects it has something to do with the friendship that has sprung up between his younger brother, Nick, and Helen’s daughter, Katie. Their alliance seems to have thrown off-balance the bond that previously existed between her two sons. Sally feels ambivalent towards the quiet, mousy girl. But to watch her beloved Nicky become bewitched in his own quiet tender-hearted way has made her feel a kind of sadness that she cannot account for, as if his growing affection for the girl is somehow diminishing the love between mother and son.
Silly, she tells herself, as she watches Luke duck beneath the arm of his opponent, eyes fixed on the makeshift ball. Ten years old and already his body is becoming lean and rangy. Square shoulders, all the puppy fat fallen away now, and in the past month she has noticed, with a degree of alarm, the changes in her elder son’s face – a strengthening in his jaw, the lengthening of his features – so that she can glimpse the adult face waiting for him. She does not want this boy to grow up – not yet. She is not ready to let go. And yet what worries her most, what keeps her awake and staring at the ceiling some nights, is the look that she has found him giving her lately when he thinks she can’t see – a cold glance with a question in it, as if she’s on the cusp of failing him and he is waiting expectantly for her to fall. Even now, this trip to Kianda and Luke’s decision to accompany her, she cannot help but feel that he is doing so not because he is bored, or because he feels estranged from the others, no: he is there to keep an eye on her. For all his affected nonchalance, his refusal to look her in the eye, still he won’t let her out of his sight.
‘You’re quiet today,’ Jim remarks.
‘Am I?’
‘Unusually pensive.’
He is seated at his desk, his wide shoulders stooped forward. A big man, in the small, cramped office he appears awkward, a kind of balled-up energy rolling around inside him seeking an outlet. He doesn’t look like a priest: a wooden cross on a thin leather strap around his neck is the only visible sign of his vocation. She cannot imagine him bent in silent prayer. What was it she had said to him once? That he bore hardly any resemblance to a man of the cloth, unless you were to count John the Baptist.
‘It’s this trip to the Masai Mara,’ she tells him. ‘I feel uneasy about it.’
‘How come?’
‘I don’t know, really. I suppose because I feel like I’m being forced into it.’
‘By whom?’
‘Ken.’
He keeps his gaze fixed on her, waiting. His eyes are bright blue, disarming sometimes in the way they seem to convey a troubled history. And yet Sally knows there are deep wells of goodness within the man.
‘We had a row last night,’ she admits, turning towards the wall as if to examine the notice-board behind him. ‘He says that Helen and Katie have stayed too long. He thinks that Helen is running away.’
‘What do you think?’
She shrugs, surprised by the sudden tears that spring to her eyes. Blinking them away, she swallows hard and thinks of all the hours she has spent with her friend, the two of them poring over the hole at the centre of Helen and Michael’s marriage, re-examining the details of every harsh word spoken, every bitter little dispute, the various slights and dismissals. She can feel Jim watching her, sitting back in his chair, thumbs ruminatively circling each other.
‘He accused me of meddling in their marriage,’ she says softly.
Jim sighs, then says, his voice low and soft with understanding, ‘You’re a good person, Sally. You care about your friend. Whatever you may have done, your intentions were good.’
She thinks about this, briefly contemplating that word ‘good’. It is a word more easily associated with him, she thinks, than with her. His goodness seems to have been fostered not within the cool, lofty spaces of churches but to have grown from the rich, loamy earth of his people – generations that have farmed the land of County Antrim stretching back as far as the Elizabethan plantations – as if the richness of the soil that bred him has nurtured within him a great desire to draw life from the arid lands of this blighted place.
‘She’s running away,’ Ken had said the night before. It was not the first time they had discussed it.
In a whisper that carried across the darkness of their bedroom, he had urged her yet again to send Helen home.
‘This can’t go on,’ he had told her, a rare snap of anger in his voice as she’d held her body tightly away from him, feeling the unwelcome heat of his breath. The anger was brought about not by Helen’s continued presence, but by Sally’s refusal. Moments before, he had reached across the crumpled sheets of their bed and, instinctively, she had drawn away.
‘Christ almighty, Sally!’ he had hissed. ‘How long is this going to go on?’
‘It’s not a good time –’
‘It’s never a bloody good time. Not since she arrived.’
Slamming his head back into the pillow, she had felt his fury rising and whipping around the room in faster revolutions than the lazy whirr of the ceiling fan above them.
‘Since they came into this house, we haven’t made love once. Not once! It’s like you don’t want me to touch you –’
‘That’s not true.’
‘Like she’s infected you with the poison seeping from the unhappiness of her own marriage.’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘Then what is it? Please, tell me.’
‘I’m tired, that’s all. Entertaining the boys and Katie, talking things over with Helen, listening to what she’s been through …’
‘What she’s been through,’ he repeated scornfully. ‘She’s a spoiled brat, throwing a tantrum.’
‘That’s not true! She’s been so miserable, so depressed. You’ve no idea –’
‘She’s acting like a bloody adolescent!’
‘She’ll hear you!’
‘I don’t bloody care! This is my house.’
But the warning seemed to calm him, or quieten him anyway. For a while neither of them spoke.
Then, before he turned away from her in the darkness, he said: ‘Michael’s not a bad man, Sally. He’s just dull, and she knew that when she married him. Enough is enough. They need to go home.’
The lingering ghost of that conversation stays with her now as she examines the noticeboard in front of her, feels the sweat on her back, the heat beating down through the flimsy roof. She feels fragile after the row, shaky inside – all of it is happening too fast. And then the phone call from Ken at the office this morning, telling her he had rung the airline, everything was arranged …
Jim is on his feet now, standing beside her, his hands in his pockets, and she can feel him looking at her.
‘What is it, Sal?’ he asks carefully. ‘You seem troubled.’
She holds herself still, keeping her eyes on the wall.
‘Ken says this trip to the Masai Mara is our goodbye to them. He booked the flights – they leave the day after we come back.’
‘Ah.’ For a m
oment he says nothing, and she can feel him watching her. Something is rising inside her.
His voice, soft in a way that goes right to the sore spot, says: ‘They were never going to stay here for ever, Sally. And surely you wouldn’t want them to.’
‘It’s the way he did it!’ she blurts out, suddenly upset. ‘Making the decision with absolutely no regard for what I want, let alone what Helen wants! Do you know he rang Michael this morning? Told him we’re sending his wife back to him. Those were the exact words he used! Like Helen was lost property – a piece of baggage! And dragging me into it. He hasn’t a clue, not a bloody clue!’
Her voice breaks, emotion lodged in her throat, tears clawing around her eyes.
He doesn’t say anything, but she feels his arm going around her back, the firmness of his hand on her shoulder holding her against him, holding her firm and still, as they wait for this wave to pass.
‘Foolish,’ she says, admonishing herself, a furious shake of her head.
‘Ah, now …’
Then, in a softer voice, she says, ‘He’s made up his mind, Jim – about his contract. He’s going to turn down their offer. He wants us to go back to Ireland.’
She lowers her head, feels the flutter of panic. She could explain it to Jim and he would understand, but not Ken. He would react with disbelief if she told him that the woman he lived with, the wife who could throw a perfect dinner party, who could be serene in the face of her children’s tantrums, who could be warm and welcoming to her husband when he came home from work in the evening, was a fake – a hollow vessel. That it was all exterior, for show, and underneath there was nothing, only a wisp of uncertainty floating in an empty space. How when she had come to Kenya, she had felt something change inside her, felt her senses respond in a different way: smells became more intense, colours were deeper and more vibrant, her sense of taste became heightened. And these were not the only senses to awaken.
‘Sometimes I feel like I can’t stay with him another minute …’
She takes a breath, the emotion brought under control, feels his arm fall away from her and, half turning towards him, she sees her son standing in the doorway. He is holding her bag and staring at her, his face a blank in the shadows, eyes wide with shock and hurt, as if he’s been slapped.
‘Luke,’ she says, but he is already turning away, letting her bag drop to the ground.
She thinks of what she said – words spoken against his father – and is filled with remorse.
Jim says something now but she doesn’t hear it, doesn’t respond. She watches her son walk swiftly across to the other boys, hunkering down on the stoop next to them, his expression furious and deeply private, and thinks of what she will say to him, how best to explain it.
As the evening shadows come on, the air clogs with cooking smells. Back in Lavington, the lawn-sprinkler will be turned off now. Jamil will be going through the house switching on the lights, Nick and Katie grumbling about dinner. She feels flattened beneath the weight of her responsibilities and the evening ahead.
‘I’d better go,’ she tells Jim, and stops to smile briefly, before stepping out to tell Luke it’s time to head back.
Their journey home is subdued, neither of them wanting to talk. Climbing the steps to the house, Sally hears the twittering of a pair of starlings. Their cage hangs from the beam that runs between the carved posts of the veranda. She listens to them absently, her gaze unseeing. Cloaked in grime, the dirt of the slums clinging to her, the need to cleanse outweighs her desire to greet her younger son, so she hurries upstairs, the cooking smells from the kitchen already filling the house, anticipating the jets of hot water with a kind of hunger. After her shower, when she comes back into the bedroom to dress, she is surprised to find her husband waiting for her. Sitting back on the bed, legs crossed at the ankles, he sips his drink, then draws her attention to the glass he has brought for her and left on the dresser.
‘You’re home early,’ Sally remarks, as she takes her gin and tonic, and picks out clothes to wear for dinner.
‘The office is quiet at the moment,’ Ken says.
‘That’s good, I suppose.’
‘Yes. A welcome respite.’
She doesn’t look at him but can tell from his pensiveness, his very presence in this room as she dresses instead of reading the paper downstairs or playing table-tennis with the boys, that there is something on his mind; that his early appearance has little to do with a lull at the office and is about something else entirely. The silence sits between them, like a scab begging to be picked. She dresses quickly, furtively almost, self-conscious in front of her husband.
‘Did you talk to Helen?’
His tone is measured and she can tell he has chosen his words carefully.
‘Not yet,’ she says, conscious of the tension that has sprung up between them. The low hum of unease from their row the night before seems amplified and very present within the room.
‘Look, I’m sorry about last night,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper like that.’
‘Me too.’
‘I just want things to get back to normal around here,’ he continues.
She turns back to the dresser and fumbles in her jewellery box for a necklace to wear. ‘I just feel sorry for Helen, that’s all. It’ll be hard on her, going back.’
He looks at her, saying nothing and waits.
‘I’m sorry, Ken. I know you think it’s best, but I just can’t help feeling awful at the thought of her returning to that stifling life in a small town, trapped within a dying marriage.’
‘What’s the alternative, Sally?’
‘She could get a job.’
He’s thrown by this. ‘A job? What do you mean a job?’
‘So that she can pay her way.’
His eyes widen. ‘Here? She wants to get a job in Nairobi?’
‘Yes,’ she answers, a little cowed now by his reaction. Confronted by her husband’s evident shock, which suggests how ridiculous he thinks the suggestion is, a trickle of doubt assails her. She turns to clip on her earrings, hoping to mask the indecision that is visible on her face.
‘Sally, that’s ridiculous! You can’t seriously be suggesting that they continue to live with us?’
‘Why not?’ she asks, shrugging her shoulders in a show of nonchalance, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
‘For a whole host of reasons! For a start, she has a home of her own but, quite apart from that, I don’t want to share mine, my family – my wife – with that woman.’
‘You were the one who said she should come out here –’
‘No, no! Hang on a second! I said she could come out here, if that was what she needed to do. But I never said “should”. And I certainly never meant her to stay indefinitely. Two or three weeks, fine. But, Christ, they’ve been here over two months! Enough is enough, Sally!’
He gets to his feet as he says this, bringing his empty glass down firmly on the dresser, so firmly that she flinches. Hands on his hips, he assesses her and she can see the workings of his jaw beneath his cheek, the grinding of teeth a flag to his emotion, and knows she can’t push him too far.
‘Besides, she can’t stay here because we’ll be leaving ourselves soon enough. Won’t we, Sally?’
Something within her – the spark of recklessness that ignited her confession to Jim that afternoon – pushes her to say: ‘Are you giving me an ultimatum? Is that what you’re doing, Kenneth?’
The two of them, facing one another, the air between them charged with all the tension and fury that have built up over the weeks and months that preceded this hot summer.
‘She’s got to go home,’ he says quietly. ‘And if you won’t tell her, I will.’
With that, he pushes past her, out of the door, his feet descending the staircase heavy and ponderous.
Turning away, she finishes dressing, in her mind their argument running on, formulating phrases laden with self-righteous indignation that she flings at him in her
imagination. It continues in her head as she leaves the bedroom and shuts the door behind her. Downstairs she can hear Helen’s voice, a rising tinkle of laughter, and pictures the two of them standing there with pre-dinner drinks, Helen laughing at some joke Ken has made, no idea of the dark thoughts he is entertaining.
As she reaches the top of the staircase, something catches her eye – movement behind a half-closed door. She goes to it now, opening it wide to see Nicky and Katie hovering above the bathroom basin. Their faces when they turn to her seem furtive and closed in a way that makes her step into the room, her voice brisk and hard as she asks them: ‘What are you doing?’
Straight away, they pull their hands behind their backs, Nicky lowering his eyes, but Katie meets Sally’s full-on, her expression flat but there is daring in it too.
‘Hold out your hands,’ Sally tells them, a pinch of alarm coming on as she witnesses their hesitation, the slight inclination of Nicky’s head as he glances at the girl, seeking her permission. That look inflames Sally, so that she reaches behind his back and grabs hold of his arm, bringing it forward. Despite herself, she gives a small cry of shock.
His hand is full of blood. Beneath the wetness, she can see the gash – an ugly line amid the creases and folds of his palm.
She doesn’t ask how it happened, doesn’t say anything at all. Reaching for Katie’s hand, she tries to suppress her alarm at the matching wound, the trickle of blood running over the girl’s wrist. This child is a guest in my home, she thinks, feeling a stab of guilt.
Hunkering down in front of them, she feels her heart beating so hard it must be audible. She looks from one hand to the other and, from the corner of her eye, sees the open penknife balanced on the edge of the basin, a smear of blood on the ceramic.
‘Whose idea was this?’ she asks, her voice low and barely controlled. ‘Whose?’
The question is pointless. The pact they have formed – she can guess whose idea it was. The question she should be asking is: Why?
‘Mine,’ Nicky says quickly, the word coming out in a rush, and from the way Katie glances at him sharply, Sally knows it isn’t true. As she watches her younger son take the blame – volunteer for it – the small act of chivalry breaks her heart a little.