He turned away so I would not see his face.
“Have you any idea what it is like,” he cried, “to need someone to talk to, and not to have even one person?”
“Yes,” I said. “I have a thorough knowledge of that.”
He looked at me in surprise, and when he saw that I did know, he seemed oddly relieved, as though, having exchanged vulnerabilities, we were neither of us endangered. My ebony cane slipped to the ground just then, and Dr. Quansah stooped and picked it up, automatically and casually, hardly noticing it, and I was startled at myself, for I had felt no awkwardness in the moment either.
“When she became ill,” he went on, “I do not think she really cared whether she lived or not. And now, Ruth–you know, when she was born, my wife called her by an African name which means ‘child of the rain’. My wife missed the sun so very much. The rain, too, may have stood for her own tears. She had not wanted to bear her child so far from home.”
Unexpectedly, he smiled, the dark features of his face relaxing, becoming less blunt and plain.
“Why did you leave your country and come here, Miss Nedden? For the church? Or for the sake of the Africans?”
I leaned back in my mock throne and re-arranged, a shade ironically, the folds of my lilac smock.
“I thought so, once,” I replied. “But now I don’t know. I think I may have come here mainly for myself, after all, hoping to find a place where my light could shine forth. Not a very palatable admission, perhaps.”
“At least you did not take others along on your pilgrimage.”
“No. I took no one. No one at all.”
We sat without speaking, then, until the tea grew cold and the dusk gathered.
It was through me that Ruth met David Mackie. He was an intent, lemon-haired boy of fifteen. He had been ill and was therefore out from England, staying with his mother while he recuperated. Mrs. Mackie was a widow. Her husband had managed an oil palm plantation for an African owner, and when he died Clare Mackie had stayed on and managed the place herself. I am sure she made a better job of it than her husband had, for she was one of those frighteningly efficient women, under whose piercing eye, one felt, even the oil palms would not dare to slacken their efforts. She was slender and quick, and she contrived to look dashing and yet not unfeminine in her corded jodhpurs and open-necked shirt, which she wore with a silk paisley scarf at the throat. David was more like his father, thoughtful and rather withdrawn, and maybe that is why I had agreed to help him occasionally with his studies, which he was then taking by correspondence.
The Mackies’ big whitewashed bungalow, perched on its cement pillars and fringed around with languid casuarina trees, was only a short distance from the school, on the opposite side of the hill to the village. Ruth came to my bungalow one Sunday afternoon, when I had promised to go to the Mackies’, and as she appeared bored and despondent, I suggested she come along with me.
After I had finished the lesson, Ruth and David talked together amicably enough while Mrs. Mackie complained about the inadequacies of local labour and I sat fanning myself with a palm leaf and feeling grateful that fate had not made me one of Clare Mackie’s employees.
“Would you like to see my animals?” I heard David ask Ruth, his voice still rather formal and yet pleased, too, to have a potential admirer for his treasures.
“Oh yes.” She was eager; she understood people who collected animals. “What have you got?”
“A baby crocodile,” he said proudly, “and a cutting-grass–that’s a bush rat, you know, and several snakes, non-poisonous ones, and a lot of assorted toads. I shan’t be able to keep the croc long, of course. They’re too tricky to deal with. I had a duiker, too, but it died.”
Off they went, and Mrs. Mackie shrugged.
“He’s mad about animals. I think they’re disgusting. But he’s got to have something to occupy his time, poor dear.”
When the two returned from their inspection of David’s private zoo, we drove back to the school in the Mackies’ bone-shaking jeep. I thought no more about the visit until late the next week, when I realized that I had not seen Ruth after classes for some days. I asked her, and she looked at me guilelessly, certain I would be as pleased as she was herself.
“I’ve been helping David with his animals,” she explained enthusiastically. “You know, Miss Nedden, he wants to be an animal collector when he’s through school. Not a hobby–he wants to work at it always. To collect live specimens, you see, for places like Whipsnade and Regent’s Park Zoo. He’s lent me a whole lot of books about it. It’s awfully interesting, really it is.”
I did not know what to say. I could not summon up the sternness to deny her the first friendship she had made here. But of course it was not “here”, really. She was drawn to David because he spoke in the ways she knew, and of things which made sense to her. So she continued to see him. She borrowed several of my books to lend to him. They were both fond of poetry. I worried, of course, but not for what might be thought the obvious reasons. Both Ruth and David needed companionship, but neither was ready for anything more. I did not have the fears Miss Povey would have harboured if she had known. I was anxious for another reason. Ruth’s friendship with David isolated her more than ever from the other girls. She made even less effort to get along with them now, for David was sufficient company.
Only once was I alarmed about her actual safety, the time when Ruth told me she and David had found an old fishing pirogue and had gone on the river in it.
“The river–” I was appalled. “Ruth, don’t you know there are crocodiles there?”
“Of course.” She had no awareness of having done anything dangerous. “That’s why we went. We hoped to catch another baby croc, you see. But we had no luck.”
“You had phenomenal luck,” I snapped. “Don’t you ever do that again. Not ever.”
“Well, all right,” she said regretfully. “But it was great fun.”
The sense of adventure had returned to her, and all at once I realized why. David was showing Africa to her as she wanted to be shown it–from the outside.
I felt I should tell Dr. Quansah, but when I finally did he was so upset that I was sorry I had mentioned it.
“It is not a good thing,” he kept saying. “The fact that this is a boy does not concern me half so much, to be frank with you, as the fact that he is a European.”
“I would not have expected such illogicalities from you, Dr. Quansah.” I was annoyed, and perhaps guilty as well, for I had permitted the situation.
Dr. Quansah looked thoughtfully at me.
“I do not think it is that. Yes–maybe you are right. I don’t know. But I do not want my daughter to be hurt by any–stupidity. I know that.”
“David’s mother is employed as manager by an African owner.”
“Yes,” Dr. Quansah said, and his voice contained a bitterness I had not heard in it before, “but what does she say about him, in private?”
I had no reply to that, for what he implied was perfectly true. He saw from my face that he had not been mistaken.
“I have been away a long time, Miss Nedden,” he said, “but not long enough to forget some of the things that were said to me by Europeans when I was young.”
I should not have blurted out my immediate thought, but I did.
“You have been able to talk to me–”
“Yes.” He smiled self-mockingly. “I wonder if you know how much that has surprised me?”
Why should I have found it difficult then, to look at him, at the face whose composure I knew concealed such aloneness? I took refuge, as so often, in the adoption of an abrupt tone.
“Why should it be surprising? You liked people in England. You had friends there.”
“I am not consistent, I know. But the English at home are not the same as the English abroad–you must have realized that. You are not typical, Miss Nedden. I still find most Europeans here as difficult to deal with as I ever did. And yet–I seem to have lost tou
ch with my own people, too. The young laboratory technicians at the station–they do not trust me, and I find myself getting so very impatient with them, losing my temper because they have not comprehended what I wanted them to do, and–”
He broke off. “I really should not bother you with all this.”
“Oh, but you’re not.” The words came out with an unthinking swiftness which mortified me later when I recalled it. “I haven’t so many people I can talk with, either, you know.”
“You told me as much, once,” Dr. Quansah said gently. “I had not forgotten.”
Pride has so often been my demon, the tempting conviction that one is able to see the straight path and to point it out to others. I was proud of my cleverness when I persuaded Kwaale to begin teaching Ruth Quansah the language of her people. Each afternoon they had lessons, and I assisted only when necessary to clarify some point of grammar. Ruth, once she started, became quite interested. Despite what she had said, she was curious to know what the other girls talked about together. As for Kwaale, it soothed her rancour to be asked to instruct, and it gave her an opportunity to learn something about Ruth, to see her as she was and not as Kwaale’s imagination had distorted her. Gradually the two became, if not friends, at least reasonably peaceful acquaintances. Ruth continued to see David, but as her afternoons were absorbed by the language lessons, she no longer went to the Mackies’ house quite so often.
Then came the Odwira. Ruth asked if she might go down to the village with Kwaale, and as most of the girls would be going, I agreed. Miss Povey would have liked to keep the girls away from the local festivals, which she regarded as dangerously heathen, but this quarantine had never proved practicable. At the time of the Odwira the girls simply disappeared, permission or not, like migrating birds.
Late that afternoon I saw the school lorry setting off for Eburaso, so I decided to go along. We swerved perilously down the mountain road, and reached the village just in time to see the end of the procession, as the chief, carried in palanquin under his saffron umbrella, returned from the river after the rituals there. The palm-wine libations had been poured, the souls of the populace cleansed. Now the Eburasahene would offer the new yams to the ancestors, and then the celebrations would begin. Drumming and dancing would go on all night, and the next morning Miss Povey, if she were wise, would not ask too many questions.
The mud and thatch shanties of the village were empty of inhabitants and the one street was full. Shouting, singing, wildly excited, they sweated and thronged. Everyone who owned a good cloth was wearing it, and the women fortunate enough to possess gold earrings or bangles were flaunting them before the covetous eyes of those whose bracelets and beads were only coloured glass. For safety I remained in the parked lorry, fearing my unsteady leg in such a mob.
I spotted Kwaale and Ruth. Kwaale’s usual air of tranquillity had vanished. She was all sun-coloured cloth and whirling brown arms. I had never seen anyone with such a violence of beauty as she possessed, like surf or volcano, a spendthrift splendour. Then, out of the street’s turbulence of voices I heard the low shout of a young man near her.
“Fire a gun at me.”
I knew what was about to happen, for the custom was a very old one. Kwaale threw back her head and laughed. Her hands flicked at her cloth and for an instant she stood there naked except for the white beads around her hips, and her amoanse, the red cloth between her legs. Still laughing, she knotted her cloth back on again, and the young man put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close to him.
Ruth, tidy and separate in her frock with its pastel flowers, stared as though unable to believe what she had seen. Slowly she turned and it was then that she saw me. She began to force her way through the crowd of villagers. Instantly Kwaale dropped the young man’s hand and went after her. Ruth stood beside the lorry, her eyes appealing to me.
“You saw–you saw what she–”
Kwaale’s hand was clawing at her shoulder then, spinning her around roughly.
“What are you telling her? It is not for you to say!”
Kwaale thought I would be bound to disapprove. I could have explained the custom to Ruth, as it had been explained to me many years ago by Kwaale’s father. I could have told her it used to be “Shoot an arrow”, for Mother Nyame created the sun with fire, and arrows of the same fire were shot into the veins of mankind and became lifeblood. I could have said that the custom was a reminder that women are the source of life. But I did not, for I was by no means sure that either Kwaale or the young man knew the roots of the tradition or that they cared. Something was permitted at festival time–why should they care about anything other than the beat of their own blood?
“Wait, Ruth, you don’t understand–”
“I understand what she is,” Ruth said distinctly. “She’s nothing but a–”
Kwaale turned upon her viciously.
“Talk, you! Talk and talk. What else could you do? No man here would want you as his wife–you’re too ugly.”
Ruth drew away, shocked and uncertain. But Kwaale had not finished.
“Why don’t you go? Take all your money and go! Why don’t you?”
I should have spoken then, tried to explain one to the other. I think I did, after a paralysed moment, but it was too late. Ruth, twisting away, struggled around the clusters of people and disappeared among the trees on the path that led back to the mountain top.
The driver had trouble in moving the lorry through the jammed streets. By the time we got onto the hill road Ruth was not there. When we reached the school I got out and limped over to the Primary girls who were playing outside the main building. I asked if they had seen her, and they twirled and fluttered around me like green and brown leaves, each trying to outdo the others in impressing me with their display of English.
“Miss Neddeen, I seein’ she. Wit’ my eye I seein’ she. She going deah–”
The way they pointed was the road to the Mackies’ house.
I did not especially want the lorry to go roaring into the Mackies’ compound as though the errand were urgent or critical, so when we sighted the casuarina trees I had the driver stop. I walked slowly past David’s menagerie, where the cutting-grass scratched in its cage and the snakes lay in bright apathetic coils. Some sense of propriety made me hesitate before I had quite reached the house. Ruth and David were on the verandah, and I could hear their voices. I suppose it was shameful of me to listen, but it would have been worse to appear at that moment.
“If it was up to me–” David’s voice was strained and tight with embarrassment. “But you know what she’s like.”
“What did she say, David? What did she say?” Ruth’s voice, desperate with her need to know, her fear of knowing.
“Oh, well–nothing much.”
“Tell me!”
Then David, faltering, ashamed, tactless.
“Only that African girls mature awfully young, and she somehow got the daft notion that–look here, Ruth, I’m sorry, but when she gets an idea there’s nothing anyone can do. I know it’s a lot of rot. I know you’re not the ordinary kind of African. You’re almost–almost like a–like us.”
It was his best, I suppose. It was not his fault that it was not good enough. She cried out, then, and although the casuarina boughs hid the two from my sight, I could imagine their faces well enough, and David’s astounded look at the hurt in her eyes.
“Almost–” she said. Then, with a fury I would not have believed possible, “No, I’m not! I’m not like you at all. I won’t be!”
“Listen, Ruth–”
But she had thrust off his hand and had gone. She passed close to the place where I stood but she did not see me. Once again I watched her running. Running and running, into the forest where I could not follow.
I was frantic lest Miss Povey should find out and notify Dr. Quansah before we could find Ruth. I had Ayesha go all through the school and grounds, for she could move more rapidly and unobtrusively than I. I waited, stumping up and d
own my garden, finally forcing myself to sit down and assume at least the appearance of calm. At last Ayesha returned. Only tiredness showed in her face, and my heart contracted.
“You did not find her, little one?”
She shook her head. “She is not here. She is gone.”
Gone. Had she remained in the forest, then, with its thorns and strangular vines, its ferned depths that could hide death, its green silences? Or had she run as far as the river, dark and smooth as oil, deceptively smooth, with its saurian kings who fed of whatever flesh they could find? I dared not think.
I did something then that I had never before permitted myself to do. I picked up Ayesha and held the child tightly, not for her consoling but for my own. She reached out and touched a finger to my face.
“You are crying. For her?”
Then Ayesha sighed a little, resignedly.
“Come then,” she said. “I will show you where she is.”
Had I known her so slightly all along, my small Ayesha whose childhood lay beaten and lost somewhere in the shanties and brothels of Takoradi or Kumasi, the airless upper rooms of palm-wine bars in Lagos or Kaduna? Without a word I rose and followed her.
We did not have far to go. The gardeners’ quarters were at the back of the school grounds, surrounded by niim trees and a few banana palms. In the last hut of the row, Yindo sat cross-legged on the packed-earth floor. Beside him on a dirty and torn grass mat Ruth Quansah lay, face down, her head buried in her arms.
Ayesha pointed. Why had she wanted to conceal it? To this day I do not really know, nor what the hut recalled to her, nor what she felt, for her face bore no more expression than a pencilled stick-child’s, and her eyes were as dull as they had been when she first came to us here.
Ruth heard my cane and my dragged foot. I know she did. But she did not stir.
“Madam–” Yindo’s voice was nearly incoherent with terror. “I beg you. You no give me sack. I Dagomba man, madam. No got bruddah dis place. I beg you, mek I no go lose dis job–”
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