A Charmed Life: Growing Up in Macbeth's Castle

by Liza Campbell

  We landed at the village of Shela and followed Desmond up and down narrow sandy alleys until, with a cry of triumph, he banged on the heavy, studded door of a house sandwiched between a madrasah (school) and the village mosque. He turned the big ring handle and pushed the door ajar. ‘Wilbur!’ he called, and then louder, ‘Wilbur! WILLIE!’ We walked into a small courtyard with a well in the corner and jasmine growing up the walls. There was no response, nothing moved, and then there was an imperceptible noise. ‘Shh!’ said Desmond sharply, and we all stood still. There it was again: a small groan. We followed Desmond’s pointing finger to the first-floor veranda, where there was a writing desk with a mess of books, papers, ink bottles and paintbrush jars, and among it all the top half of a naked man, sound asleep. A powerful pair of freckled shoulders heaved gently up and down and a great tangle of curly blond hair hid the face.

  Willie woke with a start. ‘Desmond!’ he croaked. ‘How lovely.’ He got up from the desk, tightened his sarong around him and came rushing down the steps to greet us.

  ‘Sorry we disturbed your siesta, Wilbur,’ said Desmond.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Willie replied, ‘I was meditating. Now, tea. I’ll ask Wilson to make us a pot. Wilson! We have visitors; can you bring chai, please? And Wilson, bring some gentian violet too. They’re covered in jetty wounds.’

  A young man in royal blue shirt and matching shorts came skipping into the room waving a bottle of gentian violet and beaming ecstatically. He took each of our hands in turn and shook them ardently before skipping off again, singing. ‘Wilson is terminally sunny,’ Willie said as he swept a tangle of fishing paraphernalia off the table and into a basket. ‘Now, come and sit.’

  The beauty of the country, the excitement of having reached the coast, the heat, this house, this sleeping lionman – and three days later Willie happened to mention that his lucky number, like mine, was twenty-four. On such diaphanous threads, I fell head over heels. If he had been left-handed, it probably would not have taken so long. After a fortnight Desmond returned to England. I stayed on. Five months later, I was still there. I knew Emma would pass messages on, but it took me a month to get in touch with my mother because the situation centred on a man, and these sorts of conversations were always very tricky to have with her. After two months I thought I owed Hugh an explanation too, but I was not sure what to say. In the end I just sent him a postcard saying, ‘With love from the Bolter x’.

  * * *

  Was I running away? Sure was. There was no crisis, but I felt uncertain as to where my life in England was headed. It sure made it easier to jump when home life was stifling; malignant. Without warning, I had been shown a totally different world, and it felt like something worth grabbing on to.

  I had spent two months travelling around Egypt and got all the aggravation of being a Western woman in an Islamic culture, so living in a Muslim enclave was not on any of my wish lists. But now I was wedged between a madrasah, where children chanted the Koran by rote all day, and the village’s main minaret, where the loudspeaker was cranked so high that we could hear the imam’s wristwatch ticking before he began to call the faithful to prayer every dawn in a husky vibrato. Moreover, having been perfectly satisfied that the first fish I had caught with Hugh on the Findhorn would also be the last, I suddenly found myself living with a fisherman.

  Kenya had the same degree of enchantment for both of us; the only difference was that for Willie, the beautiful part was the bit covered in water. My first love had been addicted to heroin, and now my second was addicted to fishing. It might not be what I had predicted for my love life, but it definitely seemed like an improvement. Everything revolved around fish. Nils, a tall Dane with permanently bloodshot eyes from the glare of the sun off the waves, was one of the most fanatical. He spoke of feeling physically different when the plankton count intensified. ‘That’s not so surprising, considering you’re half-man half-fish,’ I said, teasing. He gave me an intent look, as if I had accidentally penetrated the very essence of his being, and after a long time he nodded slowly and muttered, ‘I like to think so.’

  It is a myth that the English have a monopoly on discussing the weather. The rain was ignored, but Shela residents talked endlessly about the winds. There was Kusi, a south-eastern wind; Kaskazi, a north-eastern wind; Matalai, a gentle sea breeze; Omandi, a gentle land breeze; and Marhibu, its stormy form. And finally, there was Haiwa, a heavenly zephyr that put all the sailors into such a good mood that they shouted ‘Haiwaaaa!’ at each other as their dhows passed. Those who weren’t fishermen were engineers – the equivalent of vets for the fishermen’s boats. They congregated every day on the local hotel balcony to squint into the horizon and discuss the arcane minutiae of boron-coated spigots, buckler plates and Bimini knots. I realized it helped to be deeply in love to tolerate such relentless, lone-themed conversations.

  * * *

  After seven months I flew home, tied up all the loose ends of my life, and returned to Lamu. I saw Hugh twice. The first time we met at a Japanese restaurant. ‘How tanned you are,’ Angelika said, and disappeared behind her menu. I started off excitedly describing my new life. ‘Honestly, Pa, there is one boat captain who is the exact spit of the mine boss in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I met his wife so now we know what sweet Betsy from Pike looks like…’ I wanted to tell them more, but as my father’s eyes glazed over with boredom I faltered, slowed down and eventually stopped talking altogether. I sat through the rest of lunch watching Angelika pop pieces of sushi into Hugh’s mouth and listening to them bicker about what dates would be the least inconvenient for their chef’s summer holidays.

  The second time I saw Hugh was just before I flew back out to Kenya. He rang and we arranged to meet at the Royal Academy. When I arrived, I was amazed to find him on his own. Angelika had gone to visit her mother in Munich. I asked him what had brought him down to London this time. ‘We’ve just been visiting Angelika’s sister in Kent,’ he replied. Angelika had a sister? Living in my least favourite county? We had known her for nearly ten years and she had never once mentioned to me that she had a sister, let alone one living in the same country. I asked him what she was like. ‘Ten years older, married to a farmer, provincial, not nearly as good-looking as Angelika. Her name is Mechtilde’ – he said this exaggeratedly, gurgling spit in his throat – ‘which speaks volumes.’

  After a pause he went on, ‘But her daughter … now she … was … a different matter.’

  ‘Sorry, Pa, I was miles away. Whose daughter?’

  ‘Mechtilde’s daughter. Much more like Angelika; amazingly sexy girl. Really stunning.’

  As he talked, he looked flushed and agitated. My stomach gave a little heave.

  ‘How old is she, Pa?’

  ‘Dunno. Late teens.’

  ‘She’s your niece, you know.’

  ‘She’s my niece that I don’t know, actually,’ he threw back sharply, and then said, ‘I’ve had quite enough of French Impressionists for one day; let’s have lunch.’ And we walked round the corner to his favourite oyster bar.

  We were a little early and the place was busy, so we sat in an alcove by the bar until our table was ready. I was quietly thrilled by the idea of having my father to myself for an entire meal, but the conversation about Mechtilde’s daughter had got my hackles up, and when a woman dressed in tight trousers and a chunky belt asked if she could squeeze in beside us, it was a relief. My father ordered a bottle of champagne, and as we made our way through it Hugh invited her to join us for lunch. She said she was from Jersey; I don’t remember her name. As they shared a menu, Hugh and the woman were flirting with each other so much I suddenly began to wonder whether her arrival at our table had been contrived. Certainly the friends she said she was meeting never showed up and never got another mention. Even if her arrival was spontaneous, she was mutating into another Olga Nethersole with astounding speed.

  Once we had eaten, I had had enough and hoped that she would leave. Jersey Olga had differen
t plans and insisted we go on to a drinking club she knew about. My father agreed immediately and they walked off down Piccadilly and into Shepherd’s Market with me traipsing behind feeling like a gooseberry. Jersey Olga pressed a bell on an unmarked door. While we waited to be let in, she took a cigarette off my father. He held out his lighter and I watched as the flame circled the tip of her cigarette in wobbly ellipses. Eventually Jersey Olga took his hand in both of hers and steadied it long enough to achieve their shared objective.

  A buzzer let us in and she led us up a narrow staircase to a musty second-floor room with drawn blinds, a small bar and velour banquettes. It was empty aside from a tired-looking barman with an extravagant comb-over and a pair of men sitting opposite each other at a table in the far corner who appeared to have fallen asleep. Either that or they were playing a very intense game of dominoes. My father sat drinking brandy. Jersey Olga ordered a foamy coconut and curaçao cocktail. When it arrived, my father grimaced and said it looked revolting. ‘Oooo nooo, it’s yummy,’ she said, putting on an ickle-wickle girl’s voice, popping a maraschino cherry between her lips and, with a pantomime wink, very slowly drawing it into her mouth. My father smiled as if it was Christmas, but from where I was sitting it looked like Halloween. Every time Jersey Olga threw back her head and laughed, her red-nailed hand went to his thigh and his hand kept it there. There was a moment when he asked me a question and touched my knee, and we sat there in a louche little daisy chain.

  During the course of this afternoon, two things became abundantly clear. First, Hugh was back to his philandering. The way he told it, any past cheating was all down to being unhappy in his first marriage. His interest in Jersey Olga certainly made it look as if he was returning to his wandering ways. Second, however squeamish I had felt about his infidelities as we grew up, I had been under the impression that he strayed with alluring, sophisticated or at least interesting women. Jersey Olga was none of those things; she was brassy and coarse and had a laugh like a peacock. His bragging about personal freedom that afternoon with Jersey Olga seemed less swaggering than sad and hollow. I had recently read an interview with the writer James Ellroy who said that the last intelligible words his father had spoken to him before dying were, ‘Try to pick up every waitress who serves you.’ If I had been a son, Hugh would have given me similar guidance.

  When Jersey Olga dipped her finger into her glass and pushed it into Hugh’s mouth, I said my goodbyes and left them to it.

  * * *

  We decided to buy the house on Lamu, which until then Willie had been renting. In a country that does not have a written history, folklore substitutes, and Shela House came with its own small saga. An old Kenya settler named Kay Wilson had bought three plots. On one, she built the house; on the second, she made a walled garden; and the third she left as open land, where she sank a well. Later, when she enlarged the house onto the third plot, she built a courtyard that enclosed the well. The villagers were furious. Fresh water is scarce on Lamu and there was an understanding that all wells were public property. A delegation of villagers pushed their way into her house to dispute her decision, but instead of engaging in any sort of dialogue, she stood on her veranda dressed in a nightdress and sang an endless medley of nursery rhymes, until the exasperated villagers left. When she died, Kay requested her ashes to be scattered under the lime tree she had planted in the garden. A group of mourners and curious villagers gathered around to witness the ceremony, and after a few thoughtful words, Kay’s urn was upended. As the ashes pattered on the ground, a dozen scruffy chickens dashed forward to peck at her earthly remains. The locals saw this as definitive proof that she was a mganga (witch), and long after she died it was rumoured that she had buried human bones inside a statue, a badly proportioned nymph in a toga that still stood in an alcove in the courtyard, as some sort of eerie sentinel to guard the well. It reminded me of the Fyvie curse:

  Ane in the ladie’s bower.

  This was an incredibly happy period of my life, even though it involved fishing almost every day. We had no telephone, or rather we did, but it had been stolen – not the handset; the actual number had been sold by a bent telephone engineer. Try as we might we could not get through the red tape to buy another, but it was no loss. It was good to be far away from home and communicating only by letter. Hugh did not write often, but when he did he did not sound happy. One postscript written with a ‘heavy duty’ hangover while Angelika was away complained, ‘I wish I weren’t so dependent on a lady,’ and expressed the wish that I didn’t live so far away. ‘Tonight I feel low,’ he wrote.

  One weekend, while Willie was away in a fishing competition, Wilson and I set to work on our back yard. We pruned the bougainvillea, whitewashed the walls, and Wilson dug in a new post to extend the washing line. When Willie came home, I showed him our handiwork.

  ‘Where did you get that line from?’ he said, grabbing our new washing line and having a careful look.

  ‘There were a couple of coils in the bottom of one of the dresser drawers. Why?’

  ‘It’s not washing line. It’s detonator cord left over from a salvage job I did on a reef wreck. I’m going to have to take it down. I’ll find some regular cord.’

  Half-man half-fish Nils had won the tournament, and that night all the fishermen piled into our house to celebrate. No sooner had the subject of the detcord come up than the men felt bound to put it to use, immediately. Kay Wilson’s old statue was the focus of their attentions. They clambered into the alcove, wrapped it in cord, lit the end and stood back. There was a polite but dissatisfying ‘pop’; the statue remained unscathed. Willie ran to the dresser drawer and found a second, longer coil. This time there was a deafening blast; bottles and glasses smashed, cushion feathers filled the air and a hail of plaster and masonry coated every surface. Wilson rushed into the room to see a bunch of swaying men ashen with dust. The clear-up job was complicated by extreme drunkenness. After ten minutes they gave up and headed out to play midnight golf in the dunes, with a set of ancient clubs left in a storeroom. There wasn’t a golf course within two hundred miles of Lamu, so the men invented a game in which each of them took a handful of balls, wrote the dates on them, climbed the highest dune and smacked them off into the distance. They then raced off in search of them, with minimum success; the real enjoyment of the game was coming upon a ball with a date from six months before. Anyone out on the dunes that night would have seen what looked like a quartet of renegade statues absconding from their plinths and cavorting in the moonlight.

  The next morning I came downstairs to find Wilson in the courtyard with a broom. He had filled a basket with some of the larger pieces of rubble. ‘Look,’ he said, and handed me what had been the upper arm of the statue. At the broken end, where it had been severed from the torso, was a large bone running down its centre. ‘There are more like it in the basket.’

  ‘That is quite horrible,’ I said, dropping it.

  ‘It’s a good thing the statue is destroyed. You must not be frightened; the spell was not for you. I shall get a mganga to come and clean the house of spirits. The coast is full of witchcraft and curses.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it’s just the same where I come from.’

  * * *

  A year later, Willie and I got married. My face was not my fortune. I had always pictured my wedding at Cawdor kirk, but we got married in Kenya for exactly the same reason as Emma had. Despite Cath’s willingness to meet them as a couple, Hugh would not budge to put the relationship on to a friendlier footing.

  In the months after our wedding we moved away from Shela House, not because we were spooked by the statue, but because we fell in love with Kiwaiyu, a remote island further up the archipelago, away from the constant fishing talk and the red-eyed mechanics washed up on the mahogany reef of the hotel’s bar. We built a long mangrove-pole jetty for the boats and dug out a staircase in the steep sandy cliff that led to a grove of thorn trees. Our living area was a clearing under the trees with some
Swahili furniture and a bed with a mosquito net. We went fishing almost every day to catch supper, kept a few chickens for their eggs and bought crabs and octopus off the local fishermen. From time to time a lion swam across the channel and culled the local goat population; but otherwise, there were no big predators there. We roamed the island without any of the watchfulness needed on the mainland. At the northern end there were rock pools, some caves lived in by porcupines, others by a large colony of bats. Our beach was five miles of pristine white sand stretching away into the shimmering distance to the southern tip, and a few hundred yards offshore was a beautiful coral garden. The centre of the island had rolling hills covered in seagrass and low succulents, just like a tropical version of the warren at Stackpole, but with smaller, wind-wizened trees. On the landward side, impenetrable mangrove swamps stretched for miles in every direction.

  Two wells sustained the tiny population with water that was brackish enough to give our morning coffee a salty tang. We fished to live, and Willie lived to fish. Every day we would be out at sea, hauling in tuna, travelly and, if we were unlucky, dorado, which Willie despised because its meat deteriorated so quickly in the heat. In the time it took us to get back to shore it had turned to oceanic kapok. There was no fridge, no generator, no electricity. When the sun went down, we lived by lanterns, and when we wanted a hot shower we lit a fire under a large Benghazi boiler and hoisted up a bucket with a showerhead welded to its bottom.