Mission

by Philip Spires

  It had been so different in London. There he had been the stranger. It had been her responsibility, initially, to make allowances for him, but then he had found it so easy to adjust. After all, it was much easier there, where no one ever made any demands. Kenya, however, had been different from the start. What would never have been an easy adjustment for her to make was rendered nigh impossible by John’s uncompromising attitudes, by his determination to fulfil his ambitions, by the ease with which he adopted a lifestyle and its assumptions which she had been led to believe he had never really known. He changed so quickly that his preoccupations had blinded him to her own obvious difficulties. He had expected her to adapt to their new life as quickly as he had done and, because he could not comprehend her fears, he could do nothing to allay them.

  And then there were the other demands, those that others placed squarely upon their lives. She had soon realised that her husband’s position and past experience would make them both effectively public figures. At first she had rather enjoyed all the attention they received when they moved to Mwingi. Later, though, she had grown to hate the almost constant knocks on the door, regarding visitors and their demands on her husband’s time as intrusions on their privacy. Everyone here seemed to live everyone else’s life, not just gossip about it.

  More directly, and now it seemed with justification, she had feared John’s father. John had spoken very little of his own family while they lived in London and, when they arrived in Kenya, the old man seemed to have re-entered John’s life like a skeleton from some half-forgotten cupboard, raising old arguments which John had clearly thought he had long buried. Time and again he had tried to force John to submit to his wishes, presumably, she thought, to reassert an authority that had once been flouted, but nothing seemed to satisfy the man. As John became more and more preoccupied with his own thoughts, his ideals, his ambitions, his father, it seemed that he had progressively less and less time for her, simply assuming that in the meantime she would occupy herself with their home and their daughter. All their friends were John’s friends. He invited them round to their house. Lesley never had any independent contact with them and anyway did not enjoy their company. All conversations seemed planned. Every one of their acquaintances served a purpose, either for information or for influence, and whenever John spoke, he seemed to be arranging things, planning events or seeking support for his projects or ideas. They had no friends, only contacts.

  Lesley, of course, had nothing to say to any of these people. There was no common ground and everything was conducted only on John’s terms. She knew there was a widening gulf between them, but could not identify what it was that was forcing them apart. Was it that John was changing and leaving her behind? Or was it that her lack of sympathy for his current priorities was causing her to withdraw from him personally in the same way that she found herself doing socially?

  And then one day it all seemed clear. John’s father suggested, nay demanded, that their daughter should be initiated into her adult future in the manner which was traditional for his people. It would be a gesture, he said, which would prove his son’s commitment to rediscover his true family identity and to heal the personal rift between them which had only widened for over twenty years. Initially Lesley listened to the proposition with a sympathetic ear, since it sounded capable of bringing about at least some degree of reconciliation between John and his father. When the details were explained to her, however, she was immediately horrified and angered that John had even thought it might be possible.

  Becoming a woman in the traditional manner sounded a worthwhile thing to do. It was a little bit like confirmation, where you publicly expressed your loyalty to an ideal. But when Lesley was told that the girl would be circumcised in the process, it was not a feeling of disgust that caused her to reject the idea, but simply a profound disbelief. At first, she seriously thought that her husband was joking. And then, quite slowly, it began to dawn on her that he was serious. It became clear that by this act, not only did he want to seek a reconciliation between himself and his father, but also he wanted to place on public record his desire to rekindle memories of those traditional values, which his generation had largely rejected.

  Here her private thoughts were interrupted by the sound of another car pulling into her drive. In response, she simply sped to the window to confirm her hope that it was the white Mercedes-Benz she had been expecting. It was. Thank goodness for that. At last she could talk to someone. An hour before she had been horrified when Father Michael and Janet Rowlandson had arrived unexpectedly. She was grateful for their obvious concern for her well-being and was nothing less than deeply touched that they had driven all the way from Migwani to tell her the news, that John had been murdered by his father, beaten about the head with an axe at the back of a bar in Migwani. But it was essential that they should go before this particular invited guest arrived, because they would surely recognise him and, putting two and two together, they would understand what had become of her marriage to John. Lesley had been grateful when they had accepted her only partially expressed wish to be alone and had left, for now she could really be herself.

  ***

  Alone in a crowded room, Lesley stood apart from the rest. Who were these people? Why were they here? Was it because, like herself, they had nothing better to do? Why was it that their mouths seemed to be full of words whereas she felt forever dumb? Why had she spent an hour doing her hair, making up and deciding what to wear to stand like this, detached and unnoticed, outside the party?

  The Nairobi social scene was never extensive enough to render her a complete stranger here, of course, despite perceiving herself as one. For the middle classes, Nairobi is a deceptively small city, offering not only just a small number of inhabitable places, but also only a limited number of fellow travellers. So inevitably there were faces here she knew, or rather faces she recalled. She could not even claim recognition of these people, all of whom, if they ever went out of their way to address her, only ever asked about her husband. Never about herself.

  If the decision had been left to her, she probably would not have come here this evening. On balance, this ‘social’ on behalf of some company or other, held in a hotel lounge, was perhaps marginally more interesting than an evening alone with a magazine (except for certain pages, which she always enjoyed!). John, of course and as usual, was away in Kitui, and still trying to do twenty things at once, no doubt. He had been adamant that she should still come along here, not because she herself had said anything about wanting to, but because the company was one that maintained a long-term and lucrative contract with his firm, and it would be politic to be represented.

  Cocooned in her unhappiness, Lesley watched the throng as a spectator, but at the same time thought only of herself. Not for a second did she try to admit the possibility that there might be others who, like herself, had come here out of duty. Everyone, except herself, seemed to be talking, laughing or drinking, apparently absorbed in worlds they had created to share. Lesley, on the other hand, was alone, totally alone. She was alone all day, because John was usually at work, and she was alone most evenings because that was the time he used for his other interests and now increasingly at weekends, she was alone because he would use the time to travel out of town to question witnesses on whatever case he was currently preparing. And then there was always Kitui to check out.

  Initially she had been overjoyed at the prospect of moving to Nairobi when John changed jobs. Surely there they would have more time together, since they would not be living next door to work. In Mwingi they had lived literally next door to the office. Effectively John had been on call there for twenty-four hours a day. Everyone knew where to find him and thought nothing of bringing their business to the house after office hours. It seemed that her husband’s permission and planning were needed before anyone could sneeze in Mwingi. Living in Nairobi was going to change all that. They would live out of town and he would leave his work in
the office. Their daughter, Anna, would no longer board at school and Lesley could once more become her mother. It was never meant to be like this, with husband at work all day, sharing his evenings with his ‘contacts’ and associates and then rushing off to supervise the building of their second home in Kitui at weekends. He had become more of a stranger to her than he had ever been in Mwingi. She was bored. She had no real friends and was a total stranger in the city, a fact that John, it seemed, never understood. And, on top of everything else, John had insisted that Anna should stay in boarding school after all, so that they could be free to travel out of the city at weekends whenever they wished. He had simply refused to listen to any other opinion on the matter.

  “Hello, Mrs Mwangangi.” James Mulonzya almost sang the greeting. He walked quickly toward her offering his hand. His son followed, taking sips from his brimful glass as he moved. They had obviously just arrived.

  With an obvious lack of enthusiasm, she shook his hand and then his son’s to return their greeting.

  “Is your husband here?” Mulonzya swivelled on the spot like a manic machine to glance around at the other guests.

  “No,” she said. “He’s gone out to Kitui.” Had her impatience with the fact shown through? She hoped not.

  “Ah yes,” said Charles. He sounded suddenly very interested, as if someone had just switched him on. “I hear that you have bought some land. Is that so? I hear that you have several hundred acres and a bore hole?”

  Lesley shrugged her shoulders. “I have no idea. John’s been handling all the business. I don’t even know where it is. I don’t think I’ll ever make a farmer’s wife anyway.” She offered a dismissive giggle at this point, but at the same time she could not hide the obvious core of conviction in her words.

  James Mulonzya, however, was not listening. “I must ask you to excuse me, Mrs Mwangangi. I have an important matter to discuss with a person I have just seen over there.” With that he made off in the direction in which he had been looking. Lesley watched him go and, it seemed, she was immediately returned to her own private, silent and empty world. She had not really wanted to talk to him anyway. Her heart had sunk when he appeared in the first place, but still, as he disappeared to the far side of the room, she almost regretted his departure. He could have protected her from herself, provided a barrier, if only an illusory one, between herself and her loneliness. But then there was still Charles. Perhaps that was the problem.

  “So you stayed in Nairobi this weekend?”

  Charles’s voice, though expected, almost startled her. She was thus dragged, kicking and screaming in silence, back to the present. “Yes,” she replied. “I’ve seen enough of Kitui to last me a long time.” Offering a curt smile, she momentarily turned to face him, but the pressure of his penetrating eyes immediately caused her to look away again. Why was it that she never seemed to have the confidence to look people directly in the eye?

  Charles laughed. “Same here. As far as I’m concerned, if you’ve seen one piece of bush, you’ve seen it all.” A sip of his drink marked the full stop.

  Again turning towards him and again immediately away, Lesley added her agreement. She was surprised and sounded it. “That’s exactly what I think. I can’t understand what everyone sees in the place. It’s a desert and that’s that. The water’s dirty. There are too many flies, scorpions, snakes, mosquitoes...” She gave a public shudder here. “Name anything nasty and Kitui’s got it like a plague. I’m glad to be out of it.”

  “I’m surprised you say you hear a lot about it. I can go for weeks without even hearing the place mentioned - and after all, I’m a Mwingi man myself.”

  “Oh, it’s just that John has been very keen to keep up his contacts with his home area. We tend to see a lot of people from Migwani, Kitui and Mwingi - and what’s more he goes there quite often to see how his land is coming along.”

  “I can see that you feel the same way as I do. As you know our family has quite a few business interests in Kitui District, but I only go there when I have to. I’m glad I’m not some teacher or civil servant posted there permanently. I’d be bored out of my mind.”

  “And you find living in Nairobi different?”

  “Well, yes. Of course, don’t you?”

  Should she continue? She knew she was in danger of delivering a tirade of private disaffection. Should she reveal the depth of her unhappiness to this near stranger? She had met him once before and in this country where, it seemed, that a friend was any person who had shaken your hand at any time in the past, she began to look upon him almost as a confidante. After all, he was one of the few people she had met in Kenya who seemed not to misinterpret her words, who spoke English as well as herself, who would understand her predicament. “To tell you the truth, I’ve not even seen Nairobi yet. All I seem to have seen is our house and the rest of Lavington. I don’t like using the bus because I don’t feel safe and John takes the car to work, so I’m stuck there all day. Most evenings we stay in, either because Anna is at home from school or we have some of John’s friends for dinner, or perhaps he has to read papers or something for the following day.”

  “Don’t you go to the cinema?”

  “I’m not too keen on films. Even in London I hardly ever went to the cinema. And here you have to go all the way into town to go to the cinema. In London there are cinemas in the suburbs as well, but not here. And here, when you get to the city centre, there are all the beggars and gangs. I don’t like it. It frightens me.”

  “Well go out for dinner then. Go out to a restaurant or to a friend’s house, rather than having them round at your place every time.”

  Lesley grimaced. “Remember that all of our friends are Kitui people. They all seem to eat maize and only maize. We did go out once and we couldn’t find a restaurant where we could get both bush food and service. We finished up, as ever, eating in a tourist hotel where, at least, you can get a decent plate of oven-ready chips, even if you daren’t touch the hamburgers.”

  Charles laughed. “So you have not developed an African stomach? You cannot eat maize, but neither, it seems, can you eat hotel food.”

  “No fear,” said Lesley, her face contorting in an expression of imagined pain. “Honestly, I could still feel that stuff in my stomach a week later. It’s like lead.”

  Charles continued laughing. “It’s all right when there’s nothing else.”

  “But why do people still eat it,” continued Lesley at speed, “when they can get anything under the sun here in the city?”

  “When people have grown up with a choice between ugali or nothing, they learn to like it. Out in the bush - even in Kitui, as you yourself know - it is still a matter of eating ugali or nothing.”

  “I’d take nothing,” said Lesley, without much thought.

  The two continued to chat, their conversation always residing wholly in the mundane or trivial. Though she remained unwilling to allow this near stranger to draw her into more personal matters, Lesley’s single-minded and bleak self-obsession placed herself and her predicament as the subject of all she said. Inevitably, the careless slips of the tongue that punctuated the commonplace began to lodge in Charles’s mind. They gradually formed a pastiche of clues, which when rearranged just a little, created the pattern that was the substance of Lesley’s inner conflict. As each unconscious slip emerged like a blemish on Lesley’s social face, Charles mentally mapped every one and, though individually insignificant, they joined to form a portrait of disillusion and deep unhappiness that lay beneath her elegant and controlled exterior.

  Lesley never allowed herself to trust this man. Why should he want to talk to her? She could not accept his confession that he, like her, knew no one else in the room. No, that could never be true. If anything was clear, it was that he was an experienced socialite, quite used to the airs and graces of affluent Nairobi, which she herself was still trying to translate into her own actions. And
, if what he said was to be believed, frequent parties, dinner dates at the city’s gleaming modern hotels and nights out on the town in the clubs were no more than mundane and expected elements of his everyday life. In her own estimation, she ought not to be capable of maintaining the interest of this man who claimed and appeared to receive the freedom of his world. How could she trust him? Why should he be interested in her? He continued to display the same degree of interest in her whilst at the same time describing his private villa near Diyani Beach, Mombasa, and how he spent most of his week-ends there, and how he flew there every time, and how he would laze in the sun and occasionally swim like a member of the idle rich, with the emphasis on the rich. Why should the man who claimed he could have anything have the slightest interest in her? And why should he still be so interested in her husband? Now that they had moved away from Mwingi, John no longer had any direct contact with the Mulonzya family. Why should he be so concerned at John’s plans for his farm in Migwani? Time and time again she asked herself these questions but only ever answered them in the context of her own self-interest. Surely all he wanted was to conquer her and her alone, to add her to what was without doubt the long list of Nairobi socialites he had bedded. She bet he could look around the hotel lobby where they stood and tick off a fair percentage of the women present on that very list, and probably supply chapter and verse of where, when, how and how often in each case. He was that sort of man. Surely he asked after John to test the ground, to seek out her inner thoughts about her husband. Had she told him that John was away in Kitui? Had she given the impression that she was lonely? Had she led him to think that she was talking to him because she found him attractive?