"Mona?" he said, coming in. "What are you doing?"
She held a shaky flashlight, while with her other hand she madly went through lace and silk and satin.
Squatting next to her, Tim said quietly, "Mona? What are you doing?"
"I can't find it," she said.
"Can't find what?"
"I—I don't know." Negligees flew out of the drawer, dainty rose-pink nightgowns, and lingerie as delicate as spider webs. "But it must be here."
He looked around. Mona had gone through all the drawers in the room. Things were strewn on the floor—clothing, papers, photographs. He remembered with a chill that this had been Lady Rose's bedroom, closed up years ago. And then he recalled the night of the earl's murder, the desperate bicycle ride.
"Mona," he said gently, "what is it you're looking for?"
"I don't know. But it must be here. It was here once...." She started to cry.
Tim put his arm around her and tried to comfort her. Mona turned into his embrace and wept against his chest. He brought her up to her feet and held her tightly, while she sobbed and cried out all her grief and anguish.
"I feel such pain! Oh Tim, the pain!"
He didn't know what to say. But he understood what she was feeling because he had felt it once long ago, when he had come to in the alley and had been told that Arthur had died trying to save his life.
"Tim! Tim!" she sobbed into his neck. "Hold me! Please hold me! Don't let me go!"
He tightened his embrace. She clung to him. Tears rose in his eyes, with memories, with sympathy.
"I feel such pain," she whispered. "I can't bear it."
Her mouth came up to his. He let her kiss him.
"Don't leave me," she said. "I can't bear it."
He cried with her, feeling the old pain all over again and the empty, loveless years that had followed Arthur's death. When she leaned against him, as if no longer able to stand, he guided her to the dusty bed that had made the long journey from Bella Hill in 1919.
He laid her down and held her, tried to soothe her. She cried in his arms. She clung to him. She kissed his face. She said things he didn't want to hear. And she whispered, "The pain, Tim. Make the pain go away. I can't bear it...."
And so Tim Hopkins, who had never loved a woman, thinking now of Mona's brother, the only person he had ever loved, and knowing from her hands what she wanted from him, comforted her in his own clumsy, anguished way.
PART SEVEN
1963
53
I
T FASCINATED DEBORAH THE WAY THE SUNLIGHT DAPPLED the water. Like amber on diamonds, she thought. She knelt on the riverbank, enveloped in a shaft of golden sunlight, a barefoot little girl whose long black hair had escaped its ponytail and now hung half down her back, half over her shoulder. She was motionless and looked as if she had sprung from the clay, like the bamboo and ferns and river grass that surrounded her. Her white cotton dress caught the morning sun and softened it; the myriad greens of the lush foliage around her cast gentle hues over her nut brown limbs. There was a woodlike aura about her, as though she were a forestland nymph.
Deborah remained so still because she was watching a pair of otters cavort in a pool among the riverine boulders. Their red-brown bodies were sleek in the sun; their little round heads with short ears bobbed in and out of the water, their whiskers twitching. They seemed to be aware of the little girl as they played; Deborah was certain they performed especially for her.
As the warmth of the sun penetrated the fabric of her dress, the eightyear-old was lulled into a drowsy complacency. Her large black eyes contemplated the rippling water, became hypnotized at the yellow, brown, and gray pebbles shining on the river's bottom, like the eggs of lazy birds, she thought, or the castoff jewels from some old king's treasure. She dipped her hand in. The water was icy. That was because it came from the tops of the mountains, Deborah knew, from a place her governess had said was called the Aberdares. This water had traveled all the way down from misty, moorland peaks, through forests so deep no human had ever gone inside, along secret streams, and over waterfalls to splash finally down this ravine that was called the Chania River.
Deborah loved the river. It was the only world she knew.
Overhead chatter startled her out of her dreamy state. Shading her eyes, she looked up to see a family of colobus monkeys making its way among the Cape chestnuts. Deborah laughed. She called out to them. They looked like beautiful adornments on the lichen-covered trees, their long white mantles and bushy tails draping the branches like pale moss. They whistled to one another and regarded the little girl with elders' eyes. They were used to her; she was always here at the river.
Deborah threw herself onto her back and looked up at the sky through the branches. It was a never-ending blue. No sign yet of the rains her mother was hoping for.
Closing her eyes, she inhaled the heady perfumes of the river's edge: the moist earth; the grass and trees and flowers; the crystalline mountain air that swept down from the Aberdares. She felt a pulse beneath her hands; she heard the wind breathe. Africa was alive.
Deborah opened her eyes with a start.
There was a boy, standing a few feet away, watching her.
Deborah got to her feet and said, "Hello. Who are you?"
He didn't answer.
She studied him. She had never seen him here before; she wondered where he had come from. "Do you speak English?" she asked.
He stared at her, warily. Deborah thought he looked ready to turn and run. So she asked in Swahili, "Do you speak English?"
He shook his head no.
"Swahili?"
He nodded slowly.
"Good! I speak Swahili, too! What's your name?"
He hesitated, and when he spoke, his voice was soft, shy, "Christopher Mathenge."
"I'm Deborah Treverton, and I live in that big house up there."
She pointed to the top of the grassy ridge. Christopher turned and looked up. The house couldn't be seen from down here by the river—just rows of dead coffee trees. "Where are you from?" Deborah asked.
"Nairobi."
"Oh, Nairobi! I've never been there! It must be very big and wonderful! How I envy you!" She reached into her pocket and then held out her hand. "Would you like a sweetie?"
The boy looked at the candy in her palm. He seemed uncertain. He was so serious, Deborah thought.
When Christopher finally took one, she said, "Take two; they're awfully good!"
They ate the candy together, and by the time all the pieces were gone, Christopher was starting to smile.
"That's better!" Deborah said. "You're new here. Where do you live?"
He pointed to the mud huts clustered at the edge of the abandoned polo field. "Oh!" said Deborah, feeling a delicious thrill. "You live with the medicine woman! That must be terribly exciting!"
Christopher didn't look too sure about that. "She's my grandmother."
"I don't have a grandmother. But I do have an aunt. She owns that mission over there. Do you have a father?"
He shook his head.
"Neither do I. My father died before I was born. I live all alone with my mother."
They looked at each other in the diffuse, tree-broken sunlight. It suddenly seemed very significant to Deborah that this boy also had no father, and she sensed something sad about him. He was older than she was—he looked as if he was around eleven or twelve—but they had something important in common.
"Would you like to be my best friend?" she asked.
He frowned, not understanding.
"Or do you already have a best friend?"
Christopher thought of the boys he had only barely known in Nairobi. Because his mother moved so often and they had lived in so many places since their release from the detention camp, Christopher and his little sister, Sarah, had never been able to make permanent friends. "No," he said quietly.
"Don't you have any friends?"
He looked down and dug his bare toes into the ea
rth. "No."
"Neither do I! We shall be best friends! Would you like that?"
He nodded.
"Very well then! I'm going to show you my special place. Are you afraid of ghosts?"
He gave her a suspicious look.
"My special place is supposed to be haunted. But I don't think it is! Come with me, Christopher."
They followed the river while Deborah kept up constant chatter. "I'm supposed to be doing my lessons, but Mrs. Waddell is taking a nap. She's my governess, and she isn't very good. I was going to the white school in Nyeri town, but they closed it because so many white people are leaving Kenya that there weren't enough pupils anymore to keep the school open. Why do you suppose that is? Why are all the white people leaving Kenya?"
Christopher wasn't sure, but he knew it had something to do with a man named Jomo Kenyatta. Christopher's mother had told him all about Jomo, who had spent as much time in jail as she had and who had been released at the same time, two years ago. The whites were afraid of Jomo, Christopher had heard. They thought he was going to take revenge on them for having kept him in prison for so many years.
"Actually I do have a friend," Deborah said as they skirted the polo field. She swung her arms as she walked and kicked stones with her bare feet. "His name is Terry Donald, and he used to go to the white boys' school in Nyeri; but that was closed down, too. He has two brothers and two sisters, and they're all in boarding school in Nairobi. But Terry's too young to go there. He's only ten. He has a tutor to give him lessons. He lives in Nyeri town. His father used to own a big cattle ranch called Kilima Simba, but they sold it last year. Africans bought it. Can you imagine that? Terry comes and plays with me. He's going to be a hunter when he grows up, and he already has his own gun!"
They paused at the busy entrance to Grace Mission. A paved road passed under the impressive wrought-iron arch and widened into a treelined street that had a stop sign at the end and a policeman's kiosk. Large stone buildings stood among old Cape chestnuts; there were people everywhere. From one of the three school buildings came the voices of children singing.
"It's the biggest Christian mission in Kenya," Deborah said with pride. "And my aunt Grace built it many years ago. She's a doctor, you know. I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up. I'm going to be just like her."
Christopher tried not to stare at this strange, talkative white girl, but he was curious about her. And he envied her. She seemed so sure of herself and of the world around her; she knew what she wanted to be. For Christopher, such confidence was alien. Life in the detention camps had been unsure from one day to the next; he had grown up knowing only insecurity. People he knew and grew to love suddenly were gone the next morning. And there had been another little sister, a long time ago, who had died in his mother's arms. When they had finally been released from detention, when Christopher was nine and Sarah six, they had known only the nomadic, rootless existence of living here and there in Nairobi, of being watched by the police, of his mother's doing menial jobs for the few shillings that fed and clothed them.
But things were going to get better from now on, Christopher's mother had assured him. She had finally gotten a permanent job at a hospital in Nairobi, as an ayah, a "maid," even though she was a registered nurse. That was why he and Sarah had been brought here to live with their father's mother. Christopher's mother shared a flat with two other nurses; she couldn't afford to keep her children with her. But soon, she promised him and his sister, things were going to change. Now that Jomo was prime minister of Kenya, Africans were going to be the equals of whites; Christopher's mother was going to be called "sister" and receive the same pay as white nurses.
The two children went around the perimeter of the mission and came upon a flight of rickety wooden stairs. They climbed the ridge, and Christopher finally saw the big house.
"It's called Bellatu," Deborah said. "It's terribly big and lonely. My mother is almost never home. She works out in the fields. She says she is trying to save the farm."
The young African boy stared at the house, which reminded him of the wonderful places he had seen in Nairobi. This white girl must be terribly rich, he decided, his boy's eye not seeing the peeling paint, the unmended shutters, the dying flower garden, the dried-up fountains. Bellatu was only a ghost of its former glory, fading and sad, but to Christopher Mathenge it looked like a palace.
He followed the strange girl down a narrow forest path that plunged into trees and dense undergrowth. It was an old path, he could see, which had not been walked on in a long time. Presently they came upon a peculiar clearing in the middle of a ring of eucalyptus trees. In the center stood a rotting structure that had no walls; on the far edge was a small stone building with a glass roof. But directly across was a most remarkable sight. It reminded Christopher of the churches in Nairobi.
"There's an old caretaker," Deborah said in a lowered voice, "but he's deaf. Would you like to go inside?"
They slowly approached the stone facade, which had engraved writing neither child could read, and mounted the steps. Christopher had expected to find people inside, so he was surprised to discover that it was empty except for a big stone block in the center. Strangely a flame glowed at one end of it.
"Look here," Deborah whispered. She took Christopher's hand and led him to a wall. There they saw, in the dim light, an enormous tapestry hanging in a wooden frame.
Christopher was awed. He had no idea what it was. It looked like a picture, yet it wasn't. The trees and grass and sky looked so real. The golden eyes of the leopard peering through giant fronds made him quake. And there was Mount Kenya!
Deborah's captivation was with just one spot on the tapestry, off to the side and looking slightly out of place—as if it had been an afterthought.
It was the figure of a man. He stood shrouded in mountain mist, looking as if he was trying to hide behind the ropy vines and sweeping moss. He gazed out from his linen world with dark, solemn eyes. He was very handsome, Deborah thought, with his high forehead and large, straight nose. Like a prince, perhaps, out of a fairy tale. And he was dark-skinned, but not like the Africans. She had no idea who he was or what he was doing trapped in that jungle of yarns and threads.
She looked at the boy at her side. When she saw that he was impressed, that he was not afraid of her "ghosty" place, she was glad. "You're very brave," she whispered. "You must be a warrior!"
Christopher looked at her. Then he stuck out his chest a little and said, "I am."
They left the mausoleum, with its forbidding, silent block of stone and curious, faint rust stains on the floor, and went to the glass-roofed building. It was in shambles, with the glass all broken and nothing inside but dead plants. Deborah and Christopher did not go all the way in, but from the doorway they could see something that looked like a bed, all tattered and overgrown with weeds and vines.
"What would you like to do now?" Deborah asked when they were once again on the sunlit path. "Are you hungry?"
Christopher could not remember a time when he had not been hungry. So when Deborah suggested they go up to the big house and see what was in the kitchen, his mouth watered, and he was suddenly very glad he had gone to look at the white girl lying on the bank of the river.
They found treacle buns still warm from the oven and a pitcher of cold milk. They ate with their fingers and wiped their hands on their clothes. Then Deborah said, "Would you like to see my most favorite place of all? It's terribly secret. No one knows about it. Not even Terry Donald!"
"Yes," said Christopher, feeling important and full and enjoying his adventure with the white girl. He sensed the big house standing around and over him, and he wondered what it must be like to live in such a grand place, to have a kitchen that provided endless food.
So again Deborah took Christopher Mathenge's hand and led him through the unused dining room, through the living room, and up the stairs to the scary, thrilling locked rooms above.
MONA KNOCKED THE dust off her pants and removed her
straw sun hat. As she hung it on the peg inside the kitchen door, she saw that Solomon was not preparing lunch as he was supposed to be. In fact, there was no evidence, other than the tray of warm treacle buns, that the houseboy had attended to his usual morning chores. Mona was not surprised. Ever since the election of Jomo Kenyatta to the office of prime minister, back in June, old Solomon had become less and less faithful to his duties.
But it was not only Solomon, Mona knew. A rare disease had infected all of Kenya's native population; it was the illness of arrogance and greed.
As she looked through the morning post, which consisted of notices from creditors and banks and offers to purchase Bellatu, Mona reflected upon the unfortunate pass the colony had come to.
Although Mau Mau had been defeated back in 1956, and an end came at last to the hostilities, it was really just a Pyrrhic victory for the British. Mau Mau might have lost the battle, but it seemed now to Mona, on this terrifying eve of Kenyan independence, that they had won the war. In 1957 Africans voted for the first time and filled many seats in the legislature with their own people. Pressure then began for self-rule. Her Majesty's government drafted a plan granting a gradual turning over of the reins to the Africans, with a proposed date of final independence some twenty years down the line. But subsequent events conspired to force Whitehall into making an abrupt reversal of that decision, much to the shock and chagrin of the white settlers, who felt that they had been betrayed and "sold out."
First, a savage civil war in the Belgian Congo in 1960 had sent whites fleeing by car and train. Many had poured into Kenya, panicking the settlers with the prospect of such a rebellion spreading across Africa. It was then, three years ago, that the Kenya whites had begun their sad exodus.
Next had come Jomo Kenyatta's unexpected release from prison, an event which London had promised would never happen. But the problem was, hostilities were starting to break out in Kenya again, and there was a Mau Mau feeling in the air. Her Majesty's government regretfully informed the settlers that there would be no backup with British military forces a second time, that it was best just to let the colony go.
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