Yellow Room

by Shelan Rodger

  Still Denise said nothing and Chala continued. ‘Was it the letter? Did it stir things up for you too much?’ She was using Paul’s vocabulary.

  ‘Oh Chala,’ said Denise at last. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about that email—’

  ‘No, don’t say sorry.’ Paul’s vocabulary again. ‘I really appreciate what you said. It’s ju… I’m a bit worried about you.’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly, I … But yes, you’re right. It was the lett…’

  ‘What?’ Chala began into the silence, but Denise cut her short.

  ‘No, we can’t do this on the phone. It won’t be long before you get back. We’ll meet then, when we can talk properly. Is that OK? And Chala,’ she hesitated, ‘how are you and Paul?’

  ‘I don’t know is the honest answer, but I think we’ll be OK, I hope we’ll be OK.’ She dried up, wondering what was happening in Paul’s head, sick of the inside of her own.

  ‘Well, hope is a good thing anyway. You keep hold of that and take care.’

  When she put the phone down, Chala breathed deeply. What could possibly be in the letter that had shaken Denise so badly?

  CHAPTER 24

  There was some kind of traffic jam in the dusty centre of Naivasha. Chala edged to the middle of the road on her moped, wary of the narrow space between the vehicles and the risk of less cautious drivers behind her. She heard the reason before she saw it. The sound of drums and horns grew louder as the procession made its way along the main street, a loudspeaker booming to the people to let work continue, to vote for Kibaki. She glimpsed a wave of people, mostly men, brandishing flags and almost dancing along to the drums. People leant out of cars and trucks, whistling or making thumbs-up signs to show their approval. The atmosphere was almost one of carnival. Chala watched the procession pass and marvelled at it. We in the West, she thought, have forgotten to be passionate about our right to vote.

  The elections were only a day away now. Winnie had warned that she should keep her head down – a certain amount of violence was always to be expected – and Femke had suggested that she stay with her over the weekend until the results were announced.

  As the tail end of the procession straggled past and the sound of drums faded, vehicles pitched impatiently into motion through the dust. Chala had pulled her moped over to the side of the road and, as it spluttered finally into gear, she caught sight of someone in the corner of her eye, someone running who looked like Kamau, one of the oldest boys at the shelter. He’d been there four years now and there was still a shyness about him, a tendency to avoid eye contact. The long scar down the back of his head convinced her that it was him. The scar was a parting gift from his drunken father, a blow that had nearly killed him and forced him, at the age of eight, to take to the street.

  ‘Kamau!’ she shouted out as he ran ahead of her along the broken pavement. Other people turned their heads and looked at her, but he ran faster now. ‘Kamau,’ she shouted again, sure now that something was wrong. He wasn’t far ahead, but the traffic was thick in front of her and she couldn’t catch him up.

  He turned his head and gave her a momentary look, frozen in time, before veering to the left and disappearing down an alley between two buildings. What she registered in the intense frown and sweat on his face was a look of pure anguish. She stopped the moped and looked down the alley he had fled into, but there was no sign of him.

  When she finally arrived at the shelter, the tension reminded her of the time they had been broken into by a gang of thugs. Mwangi, Fred, Joshua and Simon were huddled in the staff room with Winnie, who was wringing her hands.

  ‘Chala, come in, come in.’ Chala had hesitated, feeling she was intruding. ‘It’s OK, you are one of us, sit down.’ Winnie’s voice was soft and strained. ‘Tell her, Mwangi.’

  Mwangi looked up at her with the face of an old man and then averted his eyes as he began to speak. ‘Something happened with Julius and Kamau—’

  ‘I just saw Kamau in Naivasha. I tried to stop him, but he just kept running.’ She saw Mwangi tense. Her interruption hadn’t made it any easier for him. ‘Sorry, go on. What happened?’

  ‘It was lunchtime and everyone was in the hall and then Fred saw that Kamau and Julius were not there. He went to look for them and found that one of the toilets was unlocked.’

  ‘Why wasn’t it locked? You know you need to keep them locked at all times, you know that.’ Winnie waved her anger around the room in desperation and the men looked into their laps like schoolchildren.

  Fred, the teacher-cum-matron, the one who bore the greatest responsibility for the boys’ welfare, spoke into the silence. ‘Mama, it was a mistake. You know it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she softened. ‘You are right. These things happen. How do we tell this story on your website?’ She looked at Chala and there was a bitterness there that surprised her.

  ‘What story? I still don’t know what happened.’

  ‘He was sodomised.’

  Chala looked away as she processed the word. She fumbled for a response, still unbelieving. ‘Julius? Little Julius? By Kamau? But—’

  ‘But what? These are street kids, Chala. I told you to remember that.’

  ‘But,’ Chala could not let go of the ‘but’ – there had to be a ‘but’. She thought of Kamau’s face, the anguish in his eyes. Her mouth started to form words that didn’t even begin to break the surface of the reality of what had happened. ‘But Kamau has been here so long. He was doing so well. How could he do that? He looked so upset when I saw him.’

  ‘That’s because he knows he can never come back. He has written his life.’ It was Fred speaking now. Mwangi had sat back into his chair, tight-faced and powerless. Winnie was holding both hands together as if to force them to be still.

  ‘But why did he do it?’ Chala felt her own hands trembling. Why did people do such awful things to each other? Julius was their mascot, their little brother. They all loved and protected him. How could a boy who has suffered so much himself inflict such pain on someone he loves? How could a four-year-old kill her baby sister? She sensed Fred talking again.

  ‘It surely happened to him when he was a little boy. It is the way of the street gangs. It happens to you when you join and later you will do it to other new boys. They carry these habits of the street inside them. Sometimes it is not easy to let them go.’

  ‘It only needs one moment without God, one opportunity to tempt.’ Mwangi was speaking again, all of them looking at Chala as if it was important she understood.

  Chala nodded slowly. ‘And Julius?’ Her stomach was tight.

  ‘He’ll be OK. He is young and strong and he has food and love here. He’ll be OK.’ Winnie spoke for all of them, her back straight in her seat, quietly authoritative again.

  Chala ached at the thought of the scars he would have to live with for the rest of his life. ‘And what happens now?’

  ‘You mean with Kamau?’ Winnie asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We talked about whether to call the police.’

  ‘The police?’ Chala felt stupid and helpless at once. She hadn’t even thought of this in terms of a crime.

  ‘But that would be the end of him,’ Winnie continued. ‘He would spend the rest of his life in a prison, being abused for what he has done. God can decide what will happen to him now. We will not say anything. We have agreed.’

  ‘But we are consigning him to the street for ever.’ That ‘but’ again.

  Winnie’s eyes flashed at Chala, harder now. ‘He has consigned himself to the street. He can’t come back here now, can he? What would you do?’

  Chala registered the anger in Winnie’s voice, but assumed the question was rhetorical. No one spoke. Then Chala realised they were all looking at her, expecting an answer. For a moment, she was back in the playground, a forgotten skipping rope around her ankles.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said slowly. ‘What else is there to do?’

  When she got back to her room, she sat on the edge o
f the bed and pulled the small wooden box out of the bedside drawer. She placed it on the top of the table, hugged her knees and stared at it. She stared through memory after memory and rocked gently backwards and forwards.

  Poor Kamau. His Sliding Doors moment. Would it always have ended the same way?

  CHAPTER 25

  Chala was sick after breakfast. Whether it was the effect of the incident the day before, or nerves around what she was about to do, or just the oil the mandazis had been cooked in, she didn’t stop to question. She brushed her teeth, took three deep breaths in front of the broken mirror and tucked the wooden box into her rucksack with a bottle of water. The bottom of the rucksack was already packed tight with clothes and a wash bag for her stay with Femke. But first she stopped by the Internet café. Yes, there was one unread email – from Paul. She checked that the rucksack was safe between her legs and waited for his words to open in front of her:

  Hello Che.

  It was good to get your email. Not much to report here really. Yoga on a beautiful lake in the middle of nowhere takes a lot to be… Summer came and went last week. Finished my hall of mirrors painting and may even have a buyer for it. Apart from that, the highlight of my week was a stunning cricket catch – so stunning in fact that I ended up in hospital in Brighton! Just a bit of embarrassing groin damage, nothing terminal!

  Well, I thought it might be easier to write than talk on the phone, but I’m not sure it …

  Paul

  Chala sighed into the screen. ‘Paul’. Just ‘Paul’. Her fingers tapped their own words:

  Really happy to get your email. Going to be out of email contact over the next couple of days as I’ll be staying at Femke’s house – just a precaution in case there’s any trouble around elections. Great news about the painting and hope you’re fully recovered from your mishap!

  She stopped, feeling as if she were writing on a Facebook wall, and reached for an attempt at meaning.

  Paul, I know this is hard and I really really appreciate you giving me this space. I long to know how you really are and talk about how I feel, but I know it’s not fair to do that. But I do miss you, a lot. Most of this is about Philip. I hope you know that. About just not knowing how to come to terms with him being gone and all the questions that I couldn’t get out of my head. About needing to find a way to get beyond ‘who I am’, if that makes any sense. What I’m trying to say is that I think that what was happening between us was the price of all this, not the cause. But enough. I just hope that this ‘space’ is doing you some kind of good, too. Am off now to the lake with Philip’s ashes. Another milestone. I will say goodbye again from you as well.

  She stopped again. The words ‘I love you’ ached at the tips of her fingers, but a judge inside hovered over them with a guillotine. ‘Love, Che’, she wrote.

  She drove beyond Lake Naivasha and alongside the little lake that had been part of the main lake when water levels were higher. She left the tarmac behind and passed another tiny village with fruit stalls brimming with colour, goats and chickens in the middle of the road, and a pub called the Dusty Bum. Then the dirt road forked to the right, through the wide shade of sycamore trees, to the edge of the lake. This was common land, and the Maasai brought their cattle to drink here. At the other end of the green shore she could just make out a splash of red blankets and a group of dark, thin figures holding their sticks upright beside them as they sat and watched their cows drink.

  She stopped her moped and sat on the rough grass, just a couple of feet in front of the water, with her rucksack beside her. Closing her eyes, she savoured the morning on her face, already warm. Quickly, and still aware of a mild nausea, she took out the box and cradled it in her hands. She heard Philip’s quiet voice inside her head, gently mocking her.

  ‘Come on, Chala, I’m already gone, you know that. Just open the box and get rid of those bloody ashes. You’re an incurable romantic, just like your mother. I always told you that.’

  Chala had pondered the idea of a pilgrimage to Mount Kenya to leave the ashes there, but Philip’s sister’s reticence to return to places of significance had held her back. It would have felt like an intrusion. When she came to Kenya she had assumed that she would visit the mountain and yet she’d done nothing to make it happen. Bizarrely, since her visit to Lake Baringo, it no longer felt necessary. And somehow, after all, it really did just feel right to cast Philip’s ashes into an expanse of water, as he had – perhaps – cast himself out into the sea.

  ‘Phiwip, I miss you,’ she said out loud in the little girl’s voice that had once been hers.

  But Philip was gone, so what difference did it make where she left his ashes? Was it like praying – you did it just in case? But she didn’t do that, Philip didn’t do that, and yet all those years ago he had never scolded her for her superstitious terror of Rosie, her childhood doll, which had existed for her in a way that was more lifelike and terrifying than the memory of Emma.

  ‘Chala, my sweet, let go. There is no world out here. Just stay with your own world and be present in it. Hold on to what you’ve got.’

  ‘Why do you all keep saying that?’

  Chala opened the box and concentrated on the ashes inside. ‘But what if—’

  ‘What if what?’

  ‘I don’t know, what …’

  Chala stood up slowly, holding the box open in front of her, wishing for a second that Paul was beside her. She looked at the gentle water lapping at the caked mud at the edge of the lake, looked around to make sure that she was alone, and paced slowly and deliberately to the water. She tipped the contents of the box into her open palm and closed her eyes. Then she spoke in a voice that reached across the water.

  ‘Philip, I don’t know if you chose to die, but I do know how you chose to live, and that is what I will keep with me for ever. Goodbye from me, goodbye from Pa… Rest well, wherever you are.’

  And now she let the fine dust filter through her fingers. She watched it sprinkle onto the water and disappear. She bent over to scoop some of that water into her hands to rinse them, wiped them against her jeans and took one last long look across the Kenyan water, an image of Devon sea in her mind.

  CHAPTER 26

  Femke opened the garden gate and beckoned her through a small stone-walled courtyard into the house.

  ‘Where are the dogs?’ Chala asked, kissing her on the cheek three times, Dutch fashion. The only other time she had been to Femke’s house she had been jumped on by a gangly, chestnut-coloured whippet, with some kind of an Alsatian cross close behind.

  ‘Kennel training,’ Femke replied. ‘They can come out in five minutes. Tea, or gin and tonic?’

  ‘Actually, I think I’ll start with tea.’

  ‘Well, go and sit down on the veranda and I’ll be there with my dogs and teapot in one minute.’

  Chala sank into the sofa on the small area of decking that looked out over the garden. There were rock beds with cactus and papyrus and burning red flowers and swathes of orange nasturtiums along the edge of a thick green lawn.

  ‘Do you think there’ll be trouble tomorrow?’ Chala asked as Femke appeared at the door with a tray loaded with tea and carrot cake.

  ‘Mick says we just need to stay off the roads. If there’s trouble that’s always where it starts, but we’ll be fine here.’

  ‘Don’t you ever get nervous living here on your own?’ Chala admired Femke for the life she had built herself in Kenya.

  ‘I did at first, but then I got accustomed. Anyway, I’m not on my own, there’s the askari outside, and Esther and Joseph, my gardener and house girl, live in the staff quarters. And we’ve even got panic buttons now, with twenty-four hours armed response.’

  Chala laughed.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘I think you’ve been spending too much time with Mick. You’ve forgotten what that sounds like to people from Europe. I can’t think of many people back home who would be reassured by the notion of panic buttons!’
r />   ‘Oh, I forgot Tek Tek and Cheza!’ She disappeared and came back with a stern look on her face aimed at Cheza, muttering in Dutch. The overgrown puppy looked up at her with a crinkled forehead and pleading eyes, while Tek Tek was released to say his hellos to Chala. He was a gorgeous, thick-haired dog, almost golden, with stand-up ears and a face that seemed to smile. Chala ruffled the mane around his neck and thought fondly of her old dog Rusty.

  ‘So what’s wrong with you, then?’ Chala didn’t know whether it was something to do with being Dutch or being a vet, but she was learning that her new friend liked to get straight to the point.

  She told her about the awful incident at the shelter and about her private ritual by the lake. Femke’s face softened as she spoke of Philip, but her first words when Chala finished were nothing to do with Philip.

  ‘And you say you were sick this morning? Is that the first time?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. Just nerves, I think. I feel fine now. Just a bit tired.’

  ‘You know what I think?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. It would be immaculate conception!’ Chala tried quickly to calculate when she’d had her last period.

  ‘When was your last period?’

  ‘That’s just what I’m trying to work out. I’m not very regular at the best of times and I’ve been a bit all over the place lately, what with Philip a… everything.’

  ‘So how long ago did you have it?’

  Chala blushed, a wave of humiliation and fear sweeping up her throat. ‘Well, I haven’t had one since—’ She stopped short, realisation pounding inside her. ‘Not since before Philip died.’

  ‘So you must be very late!’ Femke looked triumphant and excited.

  ‘But,’ Chala began, echoing herself at the shelter the day before, ‘but I thought it was just the stress that made me miss a peri…’

  ‘Well, it’s time to find out!’ Femke jumped up and disappeared into the house.