But paying for it was an issue in the meantime. The price tag was so great, in fact, that the Foreign Office begrudgingly decided they’d have to encourage Britons to come over as settlers to work the land. That hadn’t been the original plan, but without a base of commercial farmers paying to send their product out to market and have other goods freighted in, there’d be no way to make the line profitable. The mzungus came pouring in, forcing Africans off their land and turning it into tea and coffee plantations, or growing sisal and other commercial crops. Meanwhile, a fair number of Indians exercised their right to stay and work in the protectorate once the railway was completed, inviting family to come and join them. Descendants of that early diaspora make up much of the thriving Indian community in Kenya today.
That crazy railway, more than anything else, is what set the course for the country’s modern era. Or as the Commissioner and Consul General for the British East Africa Protectorate, Sir Charles Norton Edgecumbe Eliot, put it: ‘It is not uncommon for a country to create a railway, but it is uncommon for a railway to create a country.’
The railway didn’t ‘create’ the country though; European powers did, scratching out its borders on a map during the late nineteenth century’s Scramble for Africa. Those arbitrary lines encompass a region home to over forty different ethnic groups, each with its own language, beliefs and customs. They placed Kenya in the embrace of Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania, splitting centuries-old ethnic alliances apart in some instances and grouping eternally warring tribes together in others, all under the banner of modern ‘nationhood’. I’m reminded that when those of us in the West lament ‘troubles’ in Africa, it’s worth bearing this history in mind.
Marguerite and Magda decide to head down to the Club – there’s a special ladies’ lunch on, with a matinee screening of the opera Carmen in the garden room. Walt says he’d prefer to stay here for a peaceful afternoon at home – he doesn’t want to be ‘wailed at’ by a ‘woman in too much make-up’. We sit reading together, chatting, quietly enjoying the day go by.
One of the more extraordinary stories I read about the country’s pre-colonial history is that of a live giraffe making it all the way from Kenya to medieval China via Bengal – it was a gift for Zhu Di, the Yongle Emperor. The giraffe arrived in the early fifteenth century, after explorer Zheng He led a 30,000-man voyage that would dwarf any of Christopher Columbus’s later undertakings – the Chinese fleet included over sixty enormous junks, each of which was large enough to hold all three of Columbus’s ships on its decks.
‘Hey, Walt,’ I say, as he folds over the newspaper he’s just finished reading for the third time that day and shifts in his chair, looking for something to do. ‘You wanna hear a poem the Chinese wrote about a giraffe back in the 1400s?’
‘Why not?’ he replies, so I begin.
In the corner of the western seas, in the stagnant waters of a great morass
Truly was produced a qilin , whose shape was as high as fifteen feet
‘A what?’ Walt asks.
‘A qilin. They’d never seen a giraffe before and thought it was a type of unicorn.’
‘Bloody fools.’ Walt chuckles. (He shouldn’t be so smug – when the Romans first saw a giraffe they thought it was part-camel part-leopard, and literally called it a ‘camelopard’.)
I continue.
With the body of a deer and the tail of an ox, and a fleshy, boneless horn,
With luminous spots like a red cloud or purple mist
‘Sorry – purple, did you say?’ Walt cuts in. ‘A purple giraffe?’
‘Yeah look, I can’t explain that,’ I say. ‘Maybe the poet was colour-blind.’
‘Artistic licence, perhaps?’ Walt offers.
Its hoofs do not tread on living beings and in its wanderings it carefully selects its ground
It walks in stately fashion and in its every motion it observes a rhythm,
Its harmonious voice sounds like a bell or a musical tube.
‘Well now, that truly is hogwash,’ Walt says. ‘Giraffes make no noise whatsoever!’
‘Ha! You’re right,’ I say. Giraffes are notoriously mute.
‘Who did you say wrote this?’
‘A Chinese guy, hundreds of years ago.’
‘Well, if anyone could make a giraffe scream it’d be an Oriental,’ Walt says. ‘They were probably trying to eat it!’
‘And isn’t that a better reason to kill something than just to keep it as a trophy?’ I say, unable to resist the urge to challenge him.
‘Depends on how nice the trophy is,’ he replies, with a smirk. I can tell he’s winding me up, now. I know he disapproves of hunting for the hell of it – the lion on the wall was a case of self-defence.
‘Gentle is this animal, that has in antiquity been seen but once,
The manifestation of its divine spirit rises up to heaven’s abode.’
‘Clearly,’ Walt says, ‘they’ve never seen two male giraffes going at it. “Gentle”, I can assure you, is not the word.’ Then he picks up the newspaper he’d only just set down and starts reading it over again from the front page, as I watch clips of giraffes violently thumping each other with their necks on YouTube.
A year after the Chinese emperor received his first Kenyan giraffe, another was sent from Malindi, along with a zebra and an oryx. A subsequent Chinese expedition delivered their new African friends a boatload of silks and porcelain, and returned with an ‘arkful of African animals’, including leopards, lions, ostriches, rhinos – and more giraffes. We can only assume this motley crew of expats saw their lives out in the Imperial Gardens; not long after Yongle’s death, China returned to a policy of isolationism, shutting itself off from the world and putting its budding relationship with Africa on ice for the next six hundred years.
By 2010, though, the freeze has thawed. The newspaper Walt’s reading for the third time this morning has stories all the way through it of the Chinese investment boom sweeping Africa, especially Kenya. Photo after photo shows Kenyan politicians shaking hands with Chinese businessmen, announcing new developments, partnerships, roads and train tracks – including an ambitious plan to replace the now-decrepit Lunatic Express with a new standard gauge railway.
(Seven years later, this new line would be complete. The official opening ceremony would take place on Madaraka Day – marking the day Kenya first gained self-rule – with a Kenyan orchestra playing patriotic Chinese songs under a bronze statue of Zheng He – the admiral who’d first visited all those centuries before, and gone home with a purple giraffe.)
All that talk of trains has stuck. Later that afternoon, I find Walt sitting on the end of his bed, reading a newspaper and glancing at his watch.
‘Oh, hello there,’ he says when he sees me. ‘Are you seated in this carriage too?’ He shuffles over on the bed, so that I can sit beside him. ‘Don’t you have a bag to stow?’ Walt points to show me his is stacked on top of the wardrobe.
This is a new development: he’s having a full-blown hallucination. I decide to roll with it and see where things go.
‘Oh – no, thank you,’ I reply, settling in. ‘I’m travelling light.’
I play along for a bit, but Walt soon grows impatient at the lack of motion. He huffs and sighs, pacing the room. ‘When on earth are we going to get going? We’ve been sitting here for bloody hours!’
I figure it isn’t wise to continue the charade, so I draw the curtains to point out his beautiful Kenyan garden and bring him back to reality. Walt sees not flowers but a station platform, bustling with people and luggage and announcements. ‘Hurry up, would you!’ he yells at James as he passes by with a wheelbarrow full of topsoil, only accepting we are finally on our way when I stand behind the door and make the sound of a departure whistle.
We ride the train mostly in silence for about fifteen minutes. Then Walt starts patting down his pockets and looking around the room. ‘I’m terribly sorry – I must be going completely mad,’ he says. ‘I’ve for
gotten completely where it is we’re going. And I can’t find my ticket!’
I tell him we’re on our way to Dover and that I am a nurse, returning to visit my family after a stint in London. I prompt him to tell me again about his mother – isn’t he on his way to visit her? When Alice walks past, I call her in to play the role of the steward; she asks if we are enjoying our journey, and takes orders for a tray of tea and scones.
It’s only when Walt needs the loo that I’m able to break the spell. I use the toilet flush as a punctuation mark, then come barrelling into the ensuite with the dogs, saying it’s time we go for a walk down at the Club.
Later, sitting by the fire after dinner, I stand up to go through to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. As I reach for the door handle Walt shrieks at me from his armchair, his voice blazing with panic. ‘Stop! Christ, no! Dammit, girl – what do you think you’re doing? Are you mad? You’ll bloody well kill us all!’
I freeze, not sure what I’ve done wrong. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You open that cabin door and we’ll all of us fall to our deaths! You there …’ He points at Alice. This time she’s a flight attendant. ‘Come and sort out this silly woman at once.’
So she does – scolds me with a wagging finger as I sit back down and fasten my ‘seatbelt’, apologising for the disruption.
We fly for another ten minutes before landing safely in the living room, then give Walt a suitcase to wheel down the hallway to bed.
The night before Fiona is due back, Alice and I are sitting with Walt in the living room. She’s cross-legged on the floor by the fire, reading him Angela’s Ashes, I’m catching up on emails on my laptop. We’ve had a good day; he’s been happy. We took a walk around the garden this afternoon, visited the owls at the back fence with James, and practised putting golf balls into plastic cups on the lawn with Magda when she came around for afternoon tea.
Walt loves it when Alice reads him this book. The miserable prose seems to soothe him. After a few more pages on damp houses and hungry children, he shuts his eyes and lets his head rock back into the top of the armchair. He soon starts gently snoring – he’s asleep.
The first time I hear the tapping on the skylight, I dismiss it as a branch blowing against the glass. Alice doesn’t notice it, it must be my imagination. But it happens again. It’s insistent and steady, like someone knocking.
Rap-rap-rap … Rap-rap-rap.
I stop typing, look up. Alice hears it too this time. The tapping stops. There can’t be anyone up there on the roof. We must be going mad. I turn back to my laptop.
Rap-rap-rap …
Could it be a monkey? I know they’re cheeky shits, but could they be smart enough to mess with us like this? … It’s stopped again. It is a bit windy outside … It has to be a branch. Why have I never noticed how creepy this house is at night?
Rap-rap-rap … rap-rap-rap … rap-rap-rap …
Ok, we’re done with this. We wake Walt and take him through to bed, locking the hallway gate behind us.
But we’re scared. And when the storm hits, things only get worse.
Flashes of lightning illuminate the yard and cast violent shadows across the walls. Something metal rattles and clangs as it’s blown across the patio.
I get up to look out the window, and in the next blue flood of light I see a figure in the garden, walking towards the house.
Alice grabs a torch.
We’ve no idea what we should do. Is this when you hit the panic button? Is there any point in calling the police? Fuck, where are Walt’s guns when we need them?
An almighty crack of thunder shatters the air and rattles my bowels.
We go through to the spare room to wake Millicent – we need a local, someone who understands the place, who’ll know what to do. She opens her eyes the moment we creep into the sunroom, sits bolt upright and reaches for her glasses. ‘Yes, girls, what’s wrong?’
I’ve never been so grateful to have her around. ‘There’s a man out there,’ I whisper. ‘I saw him in the garden.’
She pulls her long hair up into a topknot bun, clasps it, and takes charge. ‘Okay. Are all the lights off?’
‘Yes.’
‘Check the security gate is locked.’
Alice pulls the padlock, shakes the iron bars. ‘Yeah, it’s locked tight.’
Millicent pulls her phone out and calls KK Security, telling them to send the patrol car around at once. For now, my life is in the hands of a woman in a Victorian nightgown.
We sit there, all three of us, huddled on Millicent’s bed, the storm raging outside. I check the monitor: Walt’s sound asleep, breathing steadily.
Alice and I see the man at the same moment. He’s coming towards us, down the path from the back of the garage. A tall, terrifying man in a trench coat and boots, holding a rifle under one arm.
Millicent grabs the torch. Fearlessly, she approaches the window just as he does – just as he raises the gun and points it at her face.
‘Don’t shoot!’ I scream, as I close my eyes and hold my arms up in feeble terror.
But there’s no gunshot, just Millicent’s calm voice. ‘Oh hello, Frank, it’s just you,’ she says, then with a polite giggle, ‘ah, deary me, what a fright.’
I open my eyes to see Frank, the night askari, staring in at us earnestly. He’s wearing a raincoat and holding an umbrella – not a gun – now open above his head.
‘Madam, is everything okay?’ he asks, cupping his face against the glass.
‘The girls thought they saw someone in the garden. Have you seen anything?’
‘Were you around the other side of the house just now, Frank?’ I ask, realising my mistake.
‘Yes, madam – I was doing my patrol,’ he says. ‘Then KK radioed to say they had a report of a disturbance. They are on their way now.’
‘Yes, I called them,’ Millicent says. ‘Ask them to do a sweep of the property, will you?’
‘Yes, madam. I will.’
‘Thank you, Frank,’ she says. ‘Now you best get out of the rain – don’t go catching a cold.’
Alice goes through to the kitchen to make Frank a cup of hot tea, and I feel a mix of relief and embarrassment. ‘Shit, sorry about that, Millicent. We were really freaking out.’
‘Oh, not to worry. Just a little excitement for the evening!’ She chuckles, heading back to her bed.
I watch from the window as the KK guys take their dogs around the garden. And I realise, with some shame, that I’m a total wuss.
But it’s not just phantom intruders keeping me up at night – it’s also anxiety over how Fiona’s return will go down. We’ve just settled into a nice rhythm here. I know what I’m doing with Walt now, and how to deal with Marguerite, and I’m starting to balance an outside life with my duties in the house. For Fiona, though, I suspect nothing we’re doing will be quite up to scratch.
9
FIONA RETURNS
Fiona pulls up in a taxi just as we’re sitting down to breakfast, and within minutes of her arrival she’s making a show of resetting the standards.
She takes the seat closest to Walt at the head of the table, directly across from Marguerite, and sets about readjusting the world around him, correcting our mistakes. His pills aren’t in quite the right spot on the table. His chair hasn’t been pushed far enough in. There’s too much sugar in his coffee (‘Is it decaf? Are you sure it’s decaf?’) and it’s not hot enough, so she asks Esther to make a fresh brew.
Marguerite mongrels through her muesli with a brave face and breezy patter, trying to pretend this isn’t all an implicit rebuke of her spousal care.
Millicent – who is rostered on duty with Walt this morning – tries to help but is clearly expected to stand aside. Alice either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about Fiona’s pointed micromanaging. I do – but I try not to take it personally. I feel like we’ve been doing a pretty damn good job with Walt and it’s not being appreciated.
On the upside, Fiona is keen t
o spend some alone time with Walt, which means we all get a free pass to do as we please for most of the day. Alice and I borrow the Peugeot and head over to Sarah and Jack’s for a barbecue – as far away from the tension as we can get.
The security guards at the entrance to Sarah and Jack’s apartment complex eye us suspiciously when we pull up at the gates. They’re in paramilitary uniforms with guns slung over their shoulders. One circles the undercarriage of our car with a mirror as the other walks slowly over to my window.
‘Jambo,’ I say cheerfully. ‘Habari ako?’
He ignores my attempt at pleasantries. ‘Who are you here to see?’ he says, leaning closer and pulling his mirrored sunglasses down his nose to squint at me over the top of them.
‘Um, Sarah and Jack at number 23?’ I say, wondering if we’re at the right address. I was expecting security but this seems … unnecessarily hostile.
He glances at a clipboard.
‘We can call them if you like?’ Alice offers from the passenger seat, holding out her mobile phone.
He frowns at her.
The guy with the mirror finishes his lap of the car. They fist bump as he passes on his way back to the guard hut.
‘Sawa sawa,’ says Guard Number One.
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