—
“RACHEL—” Sara’s voice calls to me from her room, as I walk down the hall.
The door is slightly ajar, and I hover outside, as I had the night before.
“Come in,” she says, and I push the door open. She is sitting at my mother’s dressing table, rubbing a thick white cream into her face. She is undressed. Her bra—the color of skin—is barely visible across her narrow back. The cool line of her leg strikes out from the small blue pattern of the chair.
“Sit down,” she says, picking up a bone-handled brush and running it over her short hair in brisk strokes. It was my mother’s. She would sit cross-legged on the bed, and I would brush out her hair. The sun streams through the window. I sit now on the edge of the bed, feeling hot and awkward in my pullover and trousers. The bed has been made, but I can smell my father in the room. The same bed I used to crawl into as a child, in the dark, hiding in the thick warmth of my parents’ arms.
“Your father wanted me to talk to you.” She turns the brush over and picks the dark hairs from the bristles, then drops them into the bin, and I see them fall weightlessly through the air like a spider.
“Did he?” I am reluctant. Any conversation that my father cannot bring himself to have with me himself is bound to be unpleasant. And I am uneasy with the intimacy of her near nakedness. I feel as though she might use it against me.
“I think he felt there are things you might tell me that you wouldn’t want to tell him.”
She uncrosses her white legs and stands up, and I see the edge of her briefs against the tops of her thighs, also the color of skin.
Had they heard me outside their door, listening? I can feel myself reddening, and she says, “You mustn’t be embarrassed, Rachel.”
She comes over to the bed, and I am caught between watching her—wondering what she is going to do—and not wanting to look at her body. She puts a hand to my head. I feel her fingernails against my scalp. She is unwrapping the elastic that holds up my hair.
I move my head away slightly, but her hand doesn’t leave off its work—untying the knot with her fingers. It is a long time since someone has touched me. I feel the close warmth and elasticity of her body. Remember the warmth of my mother that was softer than this. I think about my grandmother. A woman with her books, her newspapers, her pens and paper. She had no tangible physical presence. England desaturated; my grandmother desaturated. No bodily smell. No warmth. No inhalation.
She unwinds my hair, slowly. “How old were you when your mother died?”
“Twelve,” I say in a quiet, choked voice.
“Did your grandmother tell you anything about men? About what they want? What they like?”
My face floods with fire, and my neck prickles with heat.
She lifts the winding coil of my hair, working her fingers into it, then shakes it out against my shoulders.
“There—” she says, stepping back and looking at me. “I was worried you might be a boy, but there is a girl under there after all.”
I cannot meet her eye. If I do—I might begin to cry.
“There must have been boys in England,” she says. “Someone you were particularly fond of?”
I shake my head.
“I rather feel you’re my responsibility now. I want you to know that if there’s anything you want to talk about, then I’m here.” She lays the back of a cool hand against my cheek. “He wants us to get along.” And I know what she says is true, but I don’t like her any more than I did before, and when I am out of the room I wind up my hair into a coil and twist the elastic around it so tightly that I can feel it drawing back the skin on my face.
XX
Sara is alone at the breakfast table when I step out onto the veranda.
“Now—no running off—” she says, patting the chair beside her. “I want to talk to you about an idea I’ve had. Something the two of us could do together.” She smiles at me. “What do you say to us organizing a party?”
“What sort of party?” I ask, sitting down, surprised.
“For the Coronation. A show of support,” Sara says, pointing to the Standard, folded in front of her. There is a picture of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip on the front page, holding hands, with the little Prince in the background.
“Do you really think the Queen cares about Kenya?” I ask.
“Why on earth wouldn’t she?”
“Another troublesome colony airing its dirty linen in public?”
“Oh, don’t be absurd! Of course she cares. She was in Kenya when she found out that she would be Queen.”
“When she found out that her father had died,” I say.
Sara looks at me queerly, as though it hasn’t occurred to her. “She’ll have put that aside now. He was sick for a long time before, don’t forget. And she has a special place in her heart for Kenya.”
My father walks into breakfast, looking tired, his face unshaven, his head hanging. “The dip is a bloody mess—I can’t get the labor I need to finish it, and the cattle are riddled with ticks.”
He sits down, pouring out coffee.
“We’re plotting,” Sara says, smiling at him, “Rachel and I.” She runs a hand over my hair and I involuntarily shiver.
“What’s this?” my father asks in mock concern, looking pleased that we are getting along, and I wonder at how easily people believe the things they want to believe.
“A party!”
“A party?” my father asks, looking a bit thrown.
“The Coronation. Rachel and I are going to organize the whole thing. She’s my accomplice, aren’t you, darling?”
I smile at her weakly.
“She’ll be Queen of Kenya after all,” Sara says, peeling an apple with a small knife, so that the skin separates in one long curl.
My father stirs sugar into his coffee. I cannot tell if he is listening.
“Who will come?” I ask, wondering about the Emergency.
“Oh, I think people will pull together when they see what a fuss we’re making. There’ll be your father and I. Robert—you can invite some of your old friends?”
My father nods, but I see the tension in his face; that she might be setting herself up for disappointment.
“Harold should be able to get a few days off. And Steven can bring a couple of the boys from the Home Guard post. We’ll ask the Markhams and a few of my friends from Nairobi. And Eliot will come up from the factory . . .” I haven’t seen my uncle since I have been home.
“It’ll be a good chance to get the new setup at the shamba off on the right foot. We’ll put on a tea for the mtotos,” she says, thinking about the Kikuyu children.
She is gathering momentum, talking the idea into reality. “We’ll all dress up, of course. Your father, Steven—they’ll be in uniform.” She looks at my father. “Well, Robert—what do you think?”
“About what?” my father says, looking up slightly startled from his coffee.
“The Coronation party—” Her voice is clipped. “What do you think I’ve been talking about all this time?”
He looks at her blankly for a second, and I wonder if she is going to slap him. Then his eyes focus, and I can see he has dragged himself back from his morning on the farm.
“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” he asks. “You don’t think in the circumstances it might be a little inappropriate? A rifle in one hand and a piece of cake in the other?”
“But that’s just the attitude we need to guard against. If we give in to their savagery and forget ourselves and what we stand for, then they’ll have won. This is the perfect opportunity to show the natives a little of the old spirit. Remind them what we’re about.” She smiles at us, and I can see she is excited. She is still working the little knife. There is something unlikable in her determination to peel the whole apple without breaking the curling strip of shiny
green skin. “Harold will take some photographs for us. I might even be able to get my friend Linda, in Nairobi, to have a go at approaching The Times. She writes all their features, you know. Maybe they’ll run a few pictures. ‘Africa Remembers Her Queen’ and ‘The Spirit Lives on in the Colonies’—that sort of thing.”
My father’s face relaxes, as he gives in to the idea. “Well, why not?” he says. “We’ll be giving the labor a day off to mark the occasion.” It seems to me that he has given in not so much because he believes it is a good idea—with everything that is going on across the farm, a Coronation party will be an unwanted distraction—but because he feels responsible for Sara’s discontent and he wants to make amends for her unhappiness.
Sara looks up suddenly, struck with some new idea. “Robert—do you think we can get them to dance for us?” My father glances up from his eggs.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. There’s no harm in a bit of dancing. They love to dance, don’t they? If you handpicked just a few?”
“Is that really necessary?” my father asks.
“Well, I should think so. It wouldn’t be Africa if we didn’t involve the natives. The photographs would look a little drab if it was just us lot standing around drinking tea. There’ll be the children, of course, but we need some of the boys. An old-fashioned ngoma with those drums of theirs and dancing. We want it to feel like their day. It needs to be a collaboration. The new face of Kenya.”
And I see my father isn’t going to fight the idea—although in the circumstances asking the Kikuyu to hold an ngoma feels anything but appropriate.
“Rachel—you can help me with Jim—we’ll get him to organize a grand tea. Constance Spry has a recipe for chicken in curry sauce which they’ll be serving at the Queen’s lunch. I have a copy of it in one of my magazines. We’ll see if he can have a go at making it. And we’ll have sandwiches, cakes, jellies.”
I nod my assent—supporting her because my father has asked me to—but the truth is I don’t want anything to do with this party. The event itself doesn’t mean much to me, and she seems to be using it as an excuse to rewrite the lines of the community here on the farm. It seems not just simpleminded but possibly dangerous—inciting the very hatred that we are trying to protect ourselves against.
—
“COME IN, COME IN,” my father says, waving Michael in through the door out of old habit. “I’ll be just a second.” He goes out of the room to retrieve some papers—drawings of the dip—and Michael is left standing in the entrance to the sitting room.
My father is struggling on the farm. He has got rid of so many of his laborers and now—to make matters worse—a herd of zebra, two thousand strong, have descended on the grazing fields, bringing with them a plague of ticks.
It is cold and overcast today—the long rains have come. I am sitting in the corner of the sofa reading a book. Sara has called me from my bedroom where I have been hiding since Steven’s jeep pulled up after breakfast.
Steven and Sara do not lift their eyes to Michael—perhaps they do not know he is there, or perhaps they simply do not care. He stands in the doorway, taking in the room. I wonder what he sees—in Sara, in Steven, in me; if he can sense the tensions that bind us. His eyes settle on mine—he has seen me watching him—and I look away, embarrassed, remembering our last conversation; the sudden closeness of it; the control he held over me.
Steven is sitting in my father’s wicker chair, legs sprawled out on the floorboards in front of him, drinking a beer. He has a newspaper folded in one hand, and he is doing the crossword.
“Millions read this novel,” he mutters. He has been working on it for nearly an hour.
“Don’t ask me—” Sara says, flicking through her magazine. There is a picture of the Princess Elizabeth on the front cover. “I’m no good at that sort of thing.”
“Millions read this novel—” Steven exclaims. “Is it a bestseller?”
“What’s so terrible about the zebra, anyway?” Sara asks. “I think it’s rather charming to see so many of them so close to the farm.”
“Ticks. They carry diseases,” Steven says, not looking up. “Rift Valley fever makes a cow run a temperature, and miscarry if she’s in calf. Then there’s Black Leg and Red Water—flesh decay, urinating blood. It’s a disaster for Robert if he can’t get the dip finished.”
It begins to rain outside, and I can smell the wet earth through the open door.
“I do feel a little safer now that most of them have gone back to the reserves,” Sara says, after a moment. “They say collective punishment is going to make a difference.”
“At least they have a license now to hang—ought to intimidate.” Steven is only half-focusing on the conversation.
“Is it true they’re leaving the bodies of Mau Mau out in the villages at night? That all sounds terribly medieval.” Sara shudders.
“I swear they’re getting more damned difficult every week.” Steven crosses and uncrosses his legs, cursing at the crossword. “Millions read this novel. What in hell’s name can it be?”
“I’m rather excited about our party,” Sara says, still flicking through the pages of her magazine. “Only six weeks to go. You will come, Steven—won’t you?”
“Of course,” he says, turning his pencil end over end.
“I want a real Coronation Cake like they’re making in England, and we’ll have to order in some new china. You know, Rachel—” She puts down her magazine suddenly and looks at me. “I don’t like the idea of you spending so much time on your own.”
“I’m not always on my own,” I say, reddening, conscious that Michael is standing in the doorway, listening to our conversation. He has not seen the way Sara is with me, and I would rather have kept it hidden from him.
“Well, those puppies are hardly civilized company. You’re idle most of the day—I feel you should be busy with something.”
“We’re eating your catch for lunch, I gather?” Steven says, looking up and smiling at me. “A bona fide fisherwoman.” His voice is teasing, flushed through with sarcasm, and I look away.
“I’m not sure that’s any good either,” Sara says. “Being down at the dam in the current circumstances. It’s hardly safe. No—I mean a job of sorts. Something that isn’t entirely for your own pleasure.” She smooths down her skirt. “What about contributing something to the party? Bunting perhaps. We’ll need a good deal of it to decorate the trees over the lawn. You’re good with a sewing machine—you could sew it for us.”
She looks at me with her head slightly cocked, as though I might refuse. “I’ll have a word with your father. It would be good for you to have a project.”
“Millions read this novel,” Steven says again, pronouncing each word very slowly. “Damn it, I don’t know,” and he throws the newspaper onto the coffee table.
“Hard Times,” Michael says, and we all look up as though stung. His voice generates an outward ripple of silence.
“Did you say something?” Steven asks after a moment.
“Hard Times,” Michael says again. “It’s an anagram.” Steven looks at him blankly. “Charles Dickens,” Michael says.
“I know it’s bloody Dickens,” Steven says, irritably. He picks up the paper and casts his eye over the crossword. I watch him, my heart knocking in my chest. I have seen what Michael has not—I know what it is to draw his attention.
“So it is,” Steven says, after a second or two. He looks up at Michael. “Well—aren’t you a bright button?”
Sara stands up. “What are you doing in here anyway, Michael?” she says. “Why don’t you go on and wait outside?”
She is shooing him out of the door, and he turns and leaves.
—
A SHOUT FROM the kitchen. My father and I leave our breakfast and run to see what is the matter. Sara is standing by the table—her face red. Jim is backed up in the
corner sweating. I see the silver Coronation spoons spread out on the table. The round heads that decorate the top of each spoon—printed with the face of the Queen, have been snapped off. A series of small decapitations.
“What were they doing in here?” my father asks.
“I gave them to him to polish.” Sara points at Jim.
“Bwana, it was not me,” Jim says, his feet shuffling. “I left them here last night to finish in the morning. I didn’t think. Someone must have been here—” He casts his eye around the kitchen.
We look at the bare earth walls, the blackened pots on the open range, the tins of food behind their wire enclosures.
“Is anything missing?”
“No, Bwana,” Jim says, shaking his head.
“What kind of a country is this?” Sara screams, sweeping the spoons off the table with her hand. They fall soundlessly onto the earth floor. “I won’t be made fun of, Robert. Not in my own house.” She brushes past me, out of the kitchen.
Jim stoops down and begins to pick the spoons up off the floor. My father watches him for a moment, then turns and walks after Sara.
“I’m sorry, Jim,” I say quietly, bending down to help him gather up the broken spoons. He does not answer.
My father questions the houseboys but comes up with no answers. There is talk of Jim being dismissed, but it comes to nothing.
—
THERE ARE NO FISH this afternoon, and I put down my rod and pick my way through the bush toward the back of the dam, which tucks behind the trees, out of sight. The expanse of the water is a basin for the sun, holding it gleaming on its surface, reflecting it back up at me. There is a hide up above here—the eagle’s nest—which looks out over the dam, and a small clearing in the forest where my mother put a salt lick for the elephant. We used to camp there on a full moon and watch leopard come down to the bank to drink. I am about to head up the track, when ahead I see a black body at the water’s edge. I stop and watch. The body is tall, graceful, male. He is naked. I see the firm buttocks, the long, curved legs, his feet arched against the ground. It is Michael. His overalls, shirt, sandals, lie in a small heap. Without them he is transformed into something timeless.
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