The Weather in Africa

by Martha Gellhorn

  She had met Mr Billingsley some months ago when she went in to price a little table. Mr Billingsley was a widower, childless, somewhat older than herself, with a very good position and lovely taste and manners, and she was no longer going to reject his attentions. She knew Mr Billingsley wanted to marry her and she warned Jim that she intended immediately to consult a solicitor about the divorce laws. As for Billy and Mike, Mr Billingsley had a beautiful home and naturally cared a great deal for furniture and was unused to children, and Jim would absolutely have to take his share of responsibility, she could not be expected to assume the entire burden of bringing up the boys.

  Dr Withers kissed this letter reverently, and treated himself to another whisky. Damn the expense. Life was a bowl of cherries. The future shone with a rosy sunrise glow. And Dr Harvey was a dear man not a pompous bore, who said he fully agreed with Dr Withers’ assessment of the importance of the Kilimanjaro rain forest, and had written the Murchison people for an appointment and would urge the extension of the grant next week in London. Dr Withers kissed that letter too. What the hell, kissing letters might turn out to be some sort of juju, bringing massive good luck to the kisser.

  Mary Ann felt a rush of tenderness for this tall gawky man, with the flop of blondish hair on his forehead and the peeling nose. He had put a jam jar full of wild orchids on the table beside a candle in a beer bottle. He pushed in her camp stool as if he were a footman in a palace, and would tell her nothing until after the first glass of somewhat vinegary wine. Then he talked a blue streak, laughing so much with happiness that Mary Ann hardly took it in. Jim began again, and she understood: he had managed life, he had planned and taken steps and succeeded; he might be inexperienced but this showed he was far from incompetent. ‘Crafty,’ he kept saying. ‘You’ll have to watch me carefully, I may turn into a prize crook.’

  He came to kneel by her stool, with his arms around her. ‘Darling Mary Ann, if all goes well and believe me I’ll help it along with both hands, we ought to be free to marry in a very few months. And I feel in my bones that old Harvey will nag the Murchison people into another year. You’ll love Billy and Mike, I promise you, and think what it will mean for them to camp on this mountain. We’ll have a little village of our own, our tent and theirs and a work tent and an eating tent, oh God in heaven I can hardly wait.’

  To his dismay, Mary Ann burst into tears. He couldn’t believe it, he could hardly breathe. Not a bowl of cherries, no sunrise rosy future? He was speechless before these incredible daunting tears.

  ‘It won’t be soon enough,’ Mary Ann said, wiping her cheeks with a paper napkin.

  ‘What?’

  So Mary Ann explained that, perhaps not in the eyes of God or man but for practical purposes anyway, they were married already and though she hadn’t seen a doctor she calculated she was about three months pregnant.

  ‘My love,’ Dr Withers said. ‘And you never told me, you carried all that worry around alone? Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘I didn’t want to make you unhappy.’

  ‘You mean, just be unhappy by yourself? Mary Ann, you’re going to have to stop being heroic and looking after everybody else. Darling, don’t you want the baby?’

  ‘I want it more than anything in the world.’

  ‘Oh thank God for that. Now everything’s fine, no problems, joy on all sides. We’ll have another tent, a tiny baby-size tent. It’s really too good to be true. How do you feel?’

  ‘Sick mostly. But I think a bit better now and pretty much all right by evening.’

  ‘Oh my angel, angel, how could you not have told me?’

  ‘Jim, there are problems. Even if we could get married tomorrow which we can’t. I don’t know how to keep it from my parents; I mean, that we didn’t wait.’

  ‘My knees hurt,’ Dr Withers said, ‘and I still haven’t got that sofa. You’ll have to stand up.’

  He took her in his arms lovingly, and said to the top of her brown head, ‘Mary Ann, couldn’t we tell them the truth? It’s not such a terrible thing, the truth. We love each other and we’ll love the baby and there’s nothing ugly about how nature works and this is late in the twetnieth century and people don’t fall over dead from shock any more when men and women make love without benefit of clergy.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mary Ann murmured against his khaki shirt.

  ‘I do. Leave it to me. You’re not to worry about a thing. We’ll have a whale of a time on this mountain, and you’ll have a perfect baby with two ready-made older brothers and we’ll all live happily under canvas forever after or anyhow quite a while. You’ll see. I’ll manage. Crafty Jim.’

  She pulled away from him and looked up that great distance into his face. ‘I’ll tell you one thing you’ll never manage,’ Mary Ann said earnestly. ‘If you want to marry someone else later on you’ll never manage to get my baby away from me.’

  By the light of the bonfire Koroga had made, by the light of the kerosene lamp hanging on a pole before the tent, Jim had a vision of how the little brown girl would look when she was old: a little brown woman, square in build, with a very firm chin and a warrior’s eyes if anything menaced her loved ones, a tough determined hard-working and fiercely protective little old lady.

  He laughed with delight and seized her and hugged her. ‘Nothing on earth would make me come between you and your baby. I’m not crazy. I know a lioness when I see one.’

  ‘Drive home with me,’ Mary Ann said. ‘And use Jane’s room tonight. You can manage Daddy and Mummy in the morning. I do leave it to you.’

  There was much talk when Jane and Mary Ann Jenkins left home on Mount Kilimanjaro. All the Europeans had something to say about the surprise departure of the Jenkins girls. In Moshi, they talked at the hotel bar, the post office, the best general store, the petrol station, the bank; up and down the mountain they talked in the farmers’ homes when the ladies had a bridge afternoon, at Sunday lunch parties, in matrimonial beds. The young bank manager wished to God these bloody farmers would stop using his bank as a club and stop being such bloody gossips. He was browned off with Africa and would willingly have exchanged his three servants and spacious bungalow for a dingy bed-sitter in Earls Court.

  Here they were, the regular gang, Henry McIntyre, Arthur Wells, Peter Kinlock, come to collect payday cash for their watu and, lucky for them, a farmer from Meru, Ralph Harrison, come to look enviously at McIntyre’s coffee beans and give them all a chance to chew over their bloody gossip again. You’d think this bloody mountain was the only inhabited place on earth and the Jenkins girls the only two living females.

  The man from Meru remarked, ‘I hear the Jenkins girls have flown the coop. Here today, gone tomorrow.’

  The young bank manager groaned silently and waited for the chorus.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Henry McIntyre said. ‘Jane’s gone back to England and good riddance if you ask me. I had a feeling that girl could cause old Bob trouble with the watu, she didn’t have the hang of Independence. But Mary Ann’s around, on safari somewhere on the other side of the mountain.’

  ‘According to the watu,’ said Arthur Wells, ‘Jane was whisked off because she’d been hitting the bottle. Houseboy to cook, they didn’t know I could hear them, that’s the way to pick up the straight gen.’

  ‘I heard worse than that,’ Peter Kinlock said. ‘Some sort of nasty little African sex deal on one of the Chagga Co-ops, an African got sacked for it, but it seems Jane knew about it for some reason. Tricky thing to be mixed up with. I bet Bob rushed her out for fear the D.C. would want to ask questions.’

  This was new news and Henry McIntyre disapproved of it. ‘You can’t believe everything the watu say. You know how they are, talk, talk, talk their silly heads off. Half the time they’re making it up.’

  ‘You know,’ Arthur Wells began, as if he hadn’t broached the subject often before. ‘I’m surprised Dorothy hasn’t raised a row about Mary Ann going off with that scientist fella. Dorothy’s so prissy you’d think she was r
unning a nunnery not a hotel.’

  ‘Well, for God’s sake, Mary Ann’s in her thirties. About time she went off with a man.’ For once the young bank manager thought Peter Kinlock normally intelligent. ‘I’ve met that scientist fella, can’t remember his name. Seemed a nice enough chap, not much to say for himself, but you’ve got to admit it takes some guts to camp for months on the mountain. He’s not like the tourists who have a heart attack if everything isn’t just so.’

  While the gentlemen were in Moshi attending to business, Mrs McIntyre was giving a bridge afternoon for Mrs Harrison from Meru.

  Mrs McIntyre said firmly, ‘I hope it’s so. Best thing that could happen to Mary Ann and best thing that could happen to Bob and Dorothy if they have any sense.’

  ‘But they’re not married, dear,’ Mrs Wells said.

  Mrs Kinlock said, ‘I heard he was getting a divorce, didn’t you?’

  Mrs McIntyre was senior lady on the mountain and talked when and as she chose. ‘Dorothy told me Jane had gone into partnership with a man in London, they’re setting up a boutique. Obviously Jane nicked them for the capital. Dorothy couldn’t have been more pleased. Really, she and Bob are ludicrous. You’d imagine Jane was about eighteen and Helen of Troy and all the men were panting after her. Dorothy practically said she felt Jane would be safer in a dress shop than on the stage.’

  ‘I didn’t notice any men swooning with love for Jane at the hotel,’ Mrs Kinlock said. ‘She’s as cold as an iceberg. Probably wouldn’t let a man get near her in case he mussed her hair.’

  Mrs Harrison of Meru had been excluded from this purely Kilimanjaro chat, but she had general ideas to contribute. ‘You can’t count on children for anything any more. I keep warning Ralph that young William will never come home from university and take over our farm. I tell you, we’re the last of the settlers.’

  ‘And no doubt one day we’ll all end up stabbed to death with pangas,’ Mrs McIntyre said.

  The ladies laughed merrily.

  Bob and Dorothy were happy to be back at work. They agreed that it wasn’t very interesting to live in a hotel unless you managed the place, and they had been silly to think they were getting old, people in their sixties weren’t old; they must have been suffering an attack of laziness. Again Dorothy raced around, peering, checking, instructing, and Bob returned to the office, the accounts, the bills, the correspondence, and all the new complicated paper work which the government piled on. They did not admit it to each other, but they felt that the hotel ran more smoothly under their supervision, they’d noticed odd looks and odd behaviour in the staff but everyone seemed settled down now, the way they’d always been.

  Dorothy was fondly re-reading a postcard, Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace on one side and Jane’s scrawl on the other. ‘Opening great success. Clothes much more fun than singing. Teddy’s so talented angelic like younger brother, Love J.’

  ‘More tea, Bob dear? Isn’t it wonderful how Jane’s fallen on her feet? She’s such a clever girl. I always knew she’d be all right. Never caused us a day’s trouble.’

  ‘Now, Dorry love.’

  ‘I hate to think anyone can talk about one of our daughters. Yes, I know Jim’s a good man and they’ll be married but even so, I hate to think what people are saying about Mary Ann.’

  ‘I don’t expect they’re saying much. People have plenty of worries of their own. And what we don’t hear can’t hurt us, can it, Dorry? Come on, cheer up, love. You know we’ve been hoping and longing for a grandchild. You know we have. Think how lucky we are, we’ve waited for years and now we only have to wait a few more months.’

  :II: BY THE SEA

  Begin at the beginning. I overheard people at the next table. Two couples, Australians or New Zealanders, I think, those accents. At breakfast in the dining room. The dining room is too big. They were talking about carmine bee-eaters. Swarms, thousands of tiny red birds, flying in to trees at the head of a creek. Making a tremendous row, thousands of them, settling for the night or squabbling over insects or whatever. Wasn’t it amazing, one woman said. And the creek looks so romantic, so African. The lunch at the something Club is much better than here, a man said. Oh the whole place is much better, the woman said, I mean it looks like real Africa, that palm thatch roof and the mud-brick bungalows, I wish we’d known about it before, instead of staying here. I don’t consider this place exactly hell, the man said, and they laughed. Why not hire a car again today, the other man said. One of those darling pink-and-white baby jeeps, the dark-haired woman said, probably his wife. I’ll never forget those tiny red birds, the first woman said, millions of them.

  I imagined a cloud of rosy hummingbirds moving over the sky, then breaking up, and the trees would seem to blossom with fluttering red flowers. It sounded lovely, like nothing I’d ever seen or could really imagine. They looked happy, the two couples, with their new sunburns, one of the big men had a peeling nose. They were enjoying themselves, having fun on their holiday. Everyone here in this luxury hotel is a tourist, it’s a holiday place but not all the faces look happy. Of course I haven’t spoken to anyone, I wouldn’t know how to start, but I watched the other guests, at the Olympic-size pool mainly. It’s rather like going to the movies alone.

  I was quite wrong to believe that flying off to Africa was extraordinary and a dashing thing to do. Every nationality is here, treating Africa as just another tourist resort, French people, Germans, Italians, some cruise ship Americans, all kinds of British Commonwealth, and three pairs of giggly Japanese. At the pool, the Japanese ladies wear big boudoir caps of lace and ribbons and mannish striped swim suits on their short mannish bodies.

  My favourites are gone now, they only stayed five days, I’m certain they weren’t tourists like the rest of us though it’s odd to think of any white people living in this part of the world. Really living not here on a trip. I watched them whenever I could: a sturdy sunbaked small woman and a tall thin man, tomato-coloured with a ferocious burn which didn’t seem to bother him, and two tow-headed lively boys, about eight and ten years old I’d guess, and a fearless brown baby in an infant’s lifejacket. They took turns teaching the baby to swim. It was their best game, obviously they all doted on the baby. The baby was wonderful, serene and confident, not the least disturbed by being hauled and pushed by so many hands. That family looked as if they were always happy. I hoped they’d speak to me but they didn’t, nor to anyone else, they were complete together.

  Perhaps I was beginning to get a bit sad from watching, the single person alone here, otherwise I might not have thought about the carmine bee-eaters, charmed by the name. I realized how dull I am, I never find anything special to do. There were only a few days left and I hadn’t budged from the hotel. Not that I hadn’t been content with the white sand beach to walk on, and the warm sea, and the splendid pool when the tide is out, and the colours and the soft air and the sky.

  After breakfast I went to the woman at the desk, the one who arranges things, car hires and visits to the game parks, and spoke of the carmine bee-eaters. She knew all about them. She suggested driving to the something Club for lunch and a swim and renting a boat to go up the creek at four in the afternoon. No, it wasn’t really a Club, that just meant they could keep Africans out, no problem for Europeans. It was the season for the birds, apparently they weren’t a year-long sight, only now for a month or so they came in hordes to this grove of trees. Did I have a driving licence? She could give me a nice small white Peugeot and if I started at eleven I’d be there by noon. You turn left when you leave the hotel grounds and go straight to the bridge and turn right until you see the Club sign on the right just before Kilifi creek. You can’t miss it, there’s only one road.

  I’ve never driven a Peugeot but it works like any other car. Alone on an African road, I felt different. For two weeks I’d felt that I was coming alive. What do I mean? Perhaps it’s very simple: physical well-being. I was at home in my body again. Glad to wake to the morning sun, golden warm but
not hot because a breeze blows steadily from the sea. The breeze is called the monsoon, I learned, surprised since I thought the monsoon was some ghastly wind that happened in India. My skin felt smooth and fresh as if I was breathing all over, taking in bright air through my whole body. I slept without dreams to remember and woke to look at this beautiful world. All I could see of it from my balcony or walking on the beach. Certainly not a varied view of Africa but enough; the dazzling blue and gold and the brilliant night sky. The colours change hour by hour.

  It wasn’t necessary to think or feel or plan. Planning to fill time is what I always have to do. In these weeks, there wasn’t any time, just the days with nothing to mark them, slow and easy and gone before I’d noticed. Time is terrible if you know there’s nothing ahead but more and more time. Perhaps that’s what I mean. I forgot time, I was free of it.

  On the road, away from the sea, hot wind blew through the car windows. I decided it smelled of Africa, not that I know how Africa smells. This wasn’t like the scented air around the hotel with its sloping gardens, the flowers, the flowering trees. Because of this new smell I felt daring, unlike myself who am not daring. All alone in darkest Africa, setting out on an adventure. There wasn’t much to see at first, or nothing you could call particularly African. The backs of hotels and a grimy grey factory with chimneys and a few petrol stations. The sense of Africa was emptiness, almost no cars and empty space between these uninteresting buildings. Then there was a toll bridge over a wide river or inlet and after that, idiotically, I began to think I was Livingstone and Stanley, driving along a good tarmac road at fifty miles an hour to lunch at a club for Europeans.

  The trees were strange, none recognizable, surely none planted by man. Wild trees. Despite the car noise and the wind noise, I felt the silence. A huge silence over a huge land. I couldn’t see any distance into the huge land, only feel it going on forever. I passed an African village by the roadside, mud huts with pebbles stuck in the mud (why? for ornament?) and thatched roofs. African women wearing printed cotton cloths wrapped around them, African men with white skull caps and gowns like nineteenth-century nightshirts, jolly naked children. It was very picturesque and very poor.