Mrs. D’Costa had prepared for Christmas well in advance, as she always did. Early in November she had mailed handmade cards to her children and nephews; with Hamisi she had collected doum palm fruits and all sorts of pods in the garden to make their own Christmas decorations. They’d painted them in silver and gold and scattered them around the house. They’d painted a few shells too, which they hung on the branches of the trees, and they looked really pretty. On Christmas Eve she’d attended the usual tea party at the East African Women’s Society (she was a senior member) and the next day she had Christmas lunch with Ada, as they’d done for years.
Finally, early in the morning on Boxing Day, Justin, the Dobsons’ houseboy, showed up at the cottage with a note. Margie was asking her for supper that evening so she could meet Tim and Mark, their wives and the children.
It was an extremely cheerful evening. Mrs. D’Costa found the boys as handsome as their photographs. The wives, Tara and Ruth, were charming and the children adorable. Mark, the older son, was a lawyer in London; Tim a cook in New York.
“A chef,” Margie made sure to make the distinction. “It’s much more than just a cook over there, of course. Tim was on Zagat’s ten best chefs list last year.”
Tim gave her a look, trying to silence her, but she ignored him.
“There was even a profile written on him in one of the papers, I think it was The New York Times, isn’t that right, darling?”
Before leaving, slightly tipsy from the wine, Mrs. D’Costa kissed everyone except for the children, who wouldn’t let her, invited them all to pay her a visit (you can come anytime, you’re always welcome! Just walk up the stone steps from the beach), but they smiled and thanked her, without making a specific plan.
Before New Year’s, the whole crew of youngsters had gone to the island of Lamu to meet other friends, Margie told her. They’d met by chance at the big Nakumatt supermarket by the Likoni Ferry.
“They fly to Nairobi on Sunday and then straight back home from there,” Margaret said, pushing her cart along the aisle.
“That’s too bad. I was hoping to see them again,” Mrs. D’Costa said.
Margie sighed.
“I feel we’ve had such a little time with them, I’ve hardly realized they were here. I’m afraid that after a few days they get bored with us. Especially Tara and Ruth.”
“Nonsense! They had a marvelous time on the beach. I could see them from my veranda playing and snorkeling. They loved it here. Who wouldn’t? We live in paradise.”
Margie nodded, only half listening, and kept searching the aisle. She examined the label of a pricey French coffee and waved the package in front of Anne’s nose.
“Any idea what this is like? Ever tried it?”
“Heavens, no. I only take Nescafé.”
“Oh well, I’ll give it a try. Keith loves his morning coffee. Perhaps it will remind him of Paris.”
She gave Mrs. D’Costa a faint smile and dumped the French roast in the basket full of imported groceries. Margie didn’t wait for her at the checkout, and Anne saw her Range Rover pull away.
Three weeks later, at two in the morning, Justin knocked frantically at the door of the cottage. He was shaking and tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“Bwana Kee amekufa. Kugia nyumbani tafadhali, Mama naogopa sana.”
Mrs. D’Costa sprang into instant action mode; she knew she was at her best when it came to emergencies. She put on some clothes, woke up Hamisi, asked him to get in the passenger seat of the car and drove to the Dobsons’ at full speed on the bumpy dirt road.
Margie was in hysterics. Keith lay in his bed in his boxer shorts and an old T-shirt. He was dead. Heart failure, most probably. Mrs. D’Costa administered a Valium to Margie, gave orders to the house staff to make chamomile tea, sent for Dr. Singh and asked for Tim’s and Mark’s phone numbers. As it often happened, there was no signal at the house and the landline was down. Margie kept shaking her head between sobs, unable to offer a solution, so Mrs. D’Costa drove straight back to her own house and called from there. She found herself calling England and the United States, having to explain a couple of times who she was to the person on the other end of the line as they had no immediate recollection of her name. She then proceeded to explain in a steady tone that their father was dead, thank God he hadn’t suffered, that she was terribly sorry but they needed to book the first flight out if they wanted to make it to the funeral. Then she added in her matter-of-fact way:
“With this heat we can’t wait around too long, you see. As you know, refrigeration is a big problem here.”
Part of her coveted moments like this. She had always maintained that, living in Africa, one always had to be prepared for anything to happen. And though perhaps it was wrong to feel this way in light of what had happened, she was now secretly enjoying the fact that she’d stopped being invisible to them, and that, even for a short interlude, she was needed again.
Two days later, the whole Christmas crew reappeared at their parents’ home, their faces bloated from too many hours of travel, still faintly tanned from the holiday they’d spent there only a few weeks earlier. Mark and Tim cried, in a manly way—silent, with a few sniffs—holding their mother in turns. She was sent to bed with another pill, as she was completely helpless, given the state she was in. Ruth and Tara were disoriented and jet-lagged, the children seemed frightened by the eerie atmosphere. The two brothers wandered aimlessly around the house—a house that was foreign to them, of which they held no memories—as if searching for an answer to what had happened so unexpectedly and so unfairly. They seemed resentful, as though their father had played a trick on them. Mrs. D’Costa watched them with sympathy. She knew well how one could get angry when an unexpected death occurred.
“There was nothing wrong with his heart. He was in perfect form for seventy-two. Absolutely nothing wrong,” Mark kept saying, his voice raging with hostility toward anybody who rang to offer condolences.
Tim sat in the kitchen fiddling with his laptop while Mrs. D’Costa put the kettle on and spooned the expensive French roast into the pot. Once again she’d been the one to take care of the logistics: dealing with the British High Commission, getting the death certificate from Dr. Singh, straightening things up with the police and looking into the laborious paperwork needed to return Keith’s body to Sussex.
“Are you sure you want to take him to England?” she asked Tim in a soft voice. “Your father lived in Kenya most of his life, why not put him under that beautiful baobab at the end of the property?”
“Because Mummy cannot possibly live here all by herself, so we’ll have to sell this house,” he answered bluntly, without lifting his eyes from the screen.
“Will you? I’m so sorry to hear that.”
There was a moment of silence, but for the sound of Tim tapping on the keyboard. She waited till he was done.
“And where will your mother go from here?”
Tim rubbed his eyes. He looked exhausted.
“We’ll have to see. Probably with my brother in the U.K. for the moment? I don’t know, Mrs. D’Costa. We haven’t had the time to think about it, to be honest with you.”
The kettle started its furious whistling. Mrs. D’Costa took it off the stove, then she put both her fists on her hips and turned to Tim again. She wanted to sound determined in what she was going to say.
“Tim, I want you to know that I’m perfectly happy to look after Margie if you are concerned about her being alone. I could even move in here for a while if you think that would help. At least in the beginning. What will she do in England now? She doesn’t know anybody there other than your brother.”
“That’s out of the question. My mother won’t survive here on her own. She’s never lived alone a day in her life. Mark and I were always against buying this house anyway. We knew it was a mistake.”
“But I could—”
“It’s spooky,” he went on, without listening. “Someone told us there’s a spell on the coco
nut plantation at the back. The coconut trees keep dying no matter how many times they get replanted. This whole place is jinxed.”
Mrs. D’Costa stopped pouring hot water into the French press and put the kettle down.
“Where did you hear that?” she cried.
“One of the men at the gas station down the road. He worked as the watchman for some of the neighbors who left. He said that’s the reason nobody has bought property around here in all these years. All those abandoned houses along the beach? Owners were either broken into or got into accidents. I hate the energy of this house. My brother felt it, too, the minute he set foot here.”
Anne wouldn’t have it. She pushed her shoulders back and replied, with as much resolve as she could summon, “What utter foolishness! That’s a piece of ridiculous superstition! I’m surprised you took that seriously.”
Tim ignored her and grabbed the kettle, taking over the coffee making. Next door a child was crying and they could hear Ruth soothing him. Tim poured himself a cup, stirred in an artificial sweetener and prepared another mug.
“The Wiltons first. Then Dad. It’s enough deaths, as far as I’m concerned. Please excuse me, Anne, I have to take this to my wife. She needs a shot of caffeine, it’s been a very hard day for her as well.”
Tara and Ruth wanted to get the children out of the house. Too much talk of death upset them, so that evening Ruth asked Mrs. D’Costa if she might take all of them over to her place the next day, while the grown-ups dealt with more phone calls and paperwork.
“I’ll bring some food, you don’t have to worry about anything,” she offered.
Ruth was a good-looking girl of about thirty, with strong muscular legs, a smooth complexion and long hair of an astonishing strawberry-blond color that fell in thick ringlets on her shoulders.
“Nonsense! I’ll make some sandwiches, and we’ll have a picnic on the beach,” Mrs. D’Costa said. “Hamisi and I will get everything ready, please don’t you worry.”
She got up early and prepared cheese, tomato and avocado sandwiches, then pulled some chicken out of the refrigerator, which Hamisi fried till it was golden and crispy. She sent him to the little duka on the main road to buy Fantas and Coca-Colas. She had been so looking forward to having some guests around, especially the young ones.
Mrs. D’Costa was sitting on a mat in the shade of a doum palm, next to Ruth, who’d brought a fat paperback. For the occasion (she hardly ever went down to the beach anymore), she’d put on a large straw hat that flopped slightly on one side and a wildly colored sundress that she hadn’t worn since the seventies; she also wore a pair of very dark sunglasses, so heavily covered in a film of dust that she saw everything in a blur. She looked like a blind woman. The children had once more been slightly intimidated by her strangeness and were splashing in the water at a safe distance while the dogs ran, barking madly after the herons.
Ruth lifted her eyes from her book. “Where are you originally from, Mrs. D’Costa?” She had a soft, rounded American accent; something about her had seemed more relaxed and easier than all the others.
“A little town near Glasgow, a mining town. That’s so long ago, I nearly forget what it looked like.”
“My grandparents came from the bogs of Scotland too. I’ve never been there. I’d like to go one day.”
“It shows in your coloring that you have Scottish blood. Such beautiful hair you have.”
“Thank you. And what is D’Costa? An Italian name?”
“Oh no, dear, that’s Portuguese. My husband’s family came from Goa.”
Ruth closed the book, suddenly interested.
“Goa, you mean in India? How interesting. What did your husband do?”
“He was a pediatrician.”
“And how did you two meet?”
“In college, in Edinburgh. I never got my degree, but he did. He was an excellent doctor.”
“Did you have children?”
“Three, Dana, Philip and Ralph. They all got married and live abroad now.”
“And …” Ruth lingered, uncertain whether it might be rude to ask. “Do you think they feel more Indian or more Scottish?”
“Neither one nor the other, probably …” Anne thought for a moment. “They’ve never been to either place. We no longer have any family there, you see.”
Ruth nodded.
“They feel Kenyan, I suppose,” Mrs. D’Costa said, even though she wasn’t sure at this point what her children felt anymore.
“And have you known Margie and Keith a long time?”
“Yes, since the late fifties …”
She hesitated for a moment. Ruth kept looking at her, waiting for her to go on, as though she knew there was something else Mrs. D’Costa wanted to say.
“But we were never close friends. We belonged to very different worlds,” Mrs. D’Costa said, and, looking back into Ruth’s straightforward gaze, felt good saying it to her.
She felt strangely at ease with this young woman. Ruth seemed earnest, considerate. Mrs. D’Costa realized it had been a long time since anybody had showed interest in the story of her life. She looked out toward the water. It was lovely, the way the afternoon light skimmed the surface in shimmering sparks.
“In those days, if you were an expat, your life revolved pretty much around the Mombasa Club. That’s where everyone met,” she said. “Your whole social life took place there. Margie and Keith were a very popular couple, of course.”
“Yes, they took us all to lunch there when we came one Christmas,” Ruth said. “It still has that old colonial atmosphere. We had visions of people wearing white linen, drinking sundowners on the terrace under the fans.” She laughed, as if to let on she’d found the place ridiculous.
Mrs. D’Costa took off the dark glasses and slowly wiped the sheen of dirt off them with the hem of her dress. She cleared her throat.
“The thing was that before Independence, if you were married to an African, or an Indian … actually to anybody who wasn’t British, or white for that matter …”
She paused and then put the glasses back on.
“Yes?”
“Well, you couldn’t be a member of the club, you see. It was a very … separate society, in those days. Well, we couldn’t even go to the same restaurants,” she said hesitantly, as if it still shamed her to admit that such a thing had happened.
Ruth’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Of course, dear. If we were sick they wouldn’t take us at the Mombasa Hospital. We had to go to Coast General”—Mrs. D’Costa’s voice hardened—“which was hell on earth. Oh yes, that’s what it was like.”
She felt some of her old anger rise to her cheeks. It struck her how certain feelings, no matter how deeply buried, would still come up in a matter of seconds, as if woken by a siren.
“That is totally insane,” Ruth said.
Mrs. D’Costa tipped back the flopping side of the hat.
“Naturally everything changed after Independence. But by that point my husband couldn’t give a flying hoot about getting into the club.” She laughed. “We were never that kind of people, you know; I mean, having sundowners on the terrace under the fans, as you put it.”
She smiled at Ruth. “We drank cheap vodka on our own veranda!”
“Good for you.” Ruth shook her head in disbelief but didn’t laugh or even smile. “Wow. But I didn’t realize that even right before Independence it would be like that here. That in Kenya people in your situation would be so …” She paused, searching for the appropriate word. “Excluded.”
Mrs. D’Costa recoiled slightly at the word.
“We did have some perfectly nice white Kenyan friends, and English ones of course, like Prudence and Lionel Wilton, who were more progressive in that sense. But in general, I’d say that white people weren’t used to mixed couples, in those days.”
“It must have been very difficult for you.” Ruth spoke softly and turned to her with sympathy.
“Well, yes, but no. I had three
beautiful children, a lovely house. A loving husband. He came from a very good Goan family. My relatives were super people.”
“Of course, of course,” Ruth said, aware that her reaction may have embarrassed the older woman.
“And we had other friends, of course. Swahili, Somali, Omani. Mombasa was—and still is—a very cosmopolitan town, you know.” Anne paused for a moment, then added cheerfully, “We were constantly invited to their weddings. Fabulous parties, they lasted for days!”
Anne had learned back then, and had never forgotten, Victor’s rule number one: never hold a grudge. We have each other, he used to say to her, and that was what counted.
How difficult had it really been for her? Mrs. D’Costa thought for a moment. She could hardly remember, so much of that past had faded already, and besides, she’d learned to keep the bad, hurt feelings to herself. She had always avoided talking about them to her husband or her children. It would’ve been a burden on them. And at the time she had no close friends who were in her “situation,” as Ruth had put it. In fact, she hadn’t known anyone who was.
There were things Ruth didn’t understand about her British in-laws either, she was saying. All that talk about accents and public schools. She sometimes joked with Tim about how England to this day still had its own caste system.
“Scots versus Brits.” Mrs. D’Costa laughed. “Such an old story.”
“May I?” Ruth gently lifted the side of the hat, which kept falling over Mrs. D’Costa’s eye.
“Thank you, dear. It’s quite an old hat, I’m afraid.”
“It’s a sweet hat.” Ruth looked at her with a kind of tenderness. “Don’t you throw it out. It suits you, Anne.”
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