‘There weren’t any other cars, ahead of me or behind.’
‘I know, that’s what makes it so stupid. The boy only had to wait a second and you’d have passed and the road was clear. But evidently he heard his sisters and just jumped up and ran without looking.’
I cannot endure it. I cannot. It’s as if there was some crazy cruel plan, tied to one second in time, for no reason, for nothing. It could just as easily not have happened. But it did, that will never change. It did.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Jamieson?’
‘The sisters, where are they?’
‘At home, I suppose. The police said they deserved a good beating. They were older, they didn’t have to be so stupid.’
I hope they’re not old enough to understand. I hope they can forget. Because if they were somewhere in the ditch, they’d have seen what I didn’t, the instant when the boy and the car, and they’d have heard that sound. I don’t know how long I was unconscious so I don’t know how long that sound went on. I heard it twice. Or three times? I’ll never be able to forget it. But no one was there, no one on the road. Then they were hiding. Afraid. Afraid of death that came when they were only playing.
‘Mrs Jamieson, here, have a drink of water, please. I shouldn’t have told you all this. You look terribly pale. My dear, it’s been a dreadful shock for you but it’s different for these people. They have so many children, one a year, they die as easily as they’re born and the women just go on making more. They don’t feel about life the way we do.’
They’re trying to tell me a black woman doesn’t love her children. A woman loves her child, I know, I’m the one who knows. Nobody understands anything except that black woman, that mother, and me. We’re the only ones who know.
‘If the police want to arrest me, I’ll stay here.’
‘Mrs Jamieson! Don’t say such a thing! There’s no question of arrest, merely delay. And you’d be much happier with someone to keep you company. Your husband perhaps?’
‘I haven’t got a husband.’ She looks scandalized, poor plain Miss Grant, I want to laugh. I shouldn’t laugh, there’s nothing to laugh about but I can’t help it. Now she looks frightened. Why? Does she think Richard’s dead too and I’m laughing? Oh God what a mess, I’ll have to explain, more talk, I’m too tired to talk.
‘It’s all right, Miss Grant, really, he’s not dead. He’s fine, really. He’s married again to a much younger woman and she’s pregnant so he’ll have another son. People thought I was upset about the divorce but I wasn’t. Honestly. There wasn’t anything left to be married for.’
Why on earth is she patting my hand and saying, ‘There, there.’ I’ve got hiccups from laughing. Her face was so funny at first but it isn’t now. I don’t want to be a nuisance, she’s an overworked middle-aged woman and it’s night and she ought to be in her own room with her shoes off.
‘Miss Grant, you’ve been working all day. You needn’t stay here. You must be tired.’
‘No dear, I’d rather stay with you a while. Could you eat something?’
‘No thank you.’
‘How about ice cream? And a pitcher of fruit juice? They make a very nice mixture of fresh pineapple and lime and a little mango.’
‘That sounds lovely. And then you can go, I’ll be all right.’
Dial 4 for room service. Miss Grant speaks Swahili and her voice is brisk and stern, talking to Africans.
‘Now then, Mrs Jamieson, let’s see who could come out and be with you. Perhaps your mother?’
‘My mother is dead. Is your mother alive?’
‘No.’
She doesn’t know about being a mother, but she knows about being without a mother. It’s natural, it’s inevitable, parents die before their children, it happens to everyone. If something happens to everyone it’s not special and you mustn’t show what you feel because you embarrass others, you’re a grown woman, not a defenceless child. Long ago, people wore mourning for a year. They were allowed a year at least. But we go faster, we have no time to mourn, mourning is shameful.
All your life there is someone to talk to and be heard. One person is never indifferent; one person is always there and looks at you as no one else ever can; you are not alone. Richard said we were unusually close, my mother and I, but Diana you knew it had to happen one day. Oh yes I knew, it was the only thing I feared, I feared it from childhood. Knowing something will happen does not prepare you for how it is when it actually happens.
I understood I should not speak of this and besides the one person I could tell was her, and she was dead. The roof and the walls and the warmth inside are gone. It’s up to you, there’s no one between you and all the space, all the space of the world. A husband is a man of your own age, he has his own fears and needs and loneliness, and he can’t hear everything, even when you don’t speak. Richard disliked his mother and his father died when he was a boy. Richard tried not to be impatient with me but he wanted me to hurry and get used to the fact that I would never see her again. Not even in dreams. My dreams are filled with strangers.
But Andy was there, my son Andrew, six years old and discovering each day as if it were a new country. I knew that though I had lost my safety I must provide the same safety for him. That’s the order of life, obviously. You don’t tell a child that you are homesick and heartsick and weak, you tell a child comforting lies for both of you, and you try to become yourself the necessary roof and walls. I am glad my mother did not see Andy die.
‘Did you love your mother, Miss Grant?’
‘Yes.’
For a moment, we look at each other, not like a responsible housekeeper and a problem tourist, but like two extra women. Someone banged on the door.
Miss Grant says crossly, ‘That idiot, Juma.’ The moment is over. I want Miss Grant to go, I can’t talk any longer. The same young waiter comes in but his face is different, not lit up by the wide grin that I remember, and he seems even more awkward with the tray. Miss Grant snaps at him in Swahili and he shuffles to the dressing table stool and brings it, with the tray, to my bed. Miss Grant must have put the used tray outside. More Swahili and he is gone, letting the door slam. Miss Grant makes a little annoyed click and shakes her head.
‘Juma? Is that his name? He was here before. He seems very friendly and obliging.’
‘He’s not bright but he’s a nice enough boy, though he was better when he began here, last year. Now he keeps bad company, one of the handymen, a coast Arab, a real trouble-maker, but the union loves trouble-makers so we daren’t sack him. Oh well, anyway I’m pleased that Juma’s been giving you decent service. They’ve sent three kinds of ice cream. I recommend the coffee, if you like that flavour.’
I mean to eat so she will be reassured and leave me. I pull myself up to a sitting position and let out a snivelly moan before I can stop it. Moving my head suddenly tightened that clamp arrangement.
Miss Grant cries, ‘You’re in pain. It’s too miserable for you.’
And I say angrily, ‘I am not. Nothing has happened to me. Can’t you see? No bones broken, no vital organs crushed, nothing, nothing, nothing.’
In silence, but hurt, Miss Grant hands me a glass bowl of coffee ice cream. She only intends to be kind and has again thought of the helpful gesture. The ice cream is cold in my mouth, cold going down my throat, the coldness soothes my damned head. I am ashamed to feel pain, I have no right. I eat ice cream and try to think of a way to apologize to Miss Grant but I can’t concentrate and find the words.
‘All I ever wanted was what the African women have, a baby every year. That’s all I ever really wanted.’ I don’t know whether I was thinking that or saying it out loud. Either Dr Burke’s pills or the bang on my head are making me worse, more confused. I must have been thinking it because Miss Grant says nothing, though she observes me warily, but perhaps that is due to my rudeness. Rudeness is a great offence to the English, another point in their favour.
‘This is delicious, Miss Grant. I’ll finish
it slowly and drink the fruit juice but please don’t wait. You’ve done everything for me. I’m very grateful and you must go now, you need your rest too.’
‘Are you sure, dear?’
‘Quite sure.’ Poor creature, what a burden I’ve been. Why did she come in the first place when I told her I was all right yesterday, no, today, but hours and hours and hours ago. She has left a glass filled with fruit juice and ice cubes so I won’t have to lift the pitcher. Considerate Miss Grant. The stuff is too sweet, I’ll suck the ice cubes and plod on with the ice cream and then I’ll go to the bathroom and brush my teeth and swallow these new red and green capsules and get rid of this horrible day.
It’s true about only always wanting what African women have, a baby each year. Through my whole childhood, I told myself a long continuous story about Diana and her six babies. I invented those six when I was practically a baby myself. An only child is supposed to crave brothers and sisters, but not me, I was perfectly happy having my parents to myself and my own six babies, three boys and three girls, roly-poly butter balls all the same age, dressed alike in bright coloured caps and mittens and zip-up woolly suits. I played with them, gave them baths, fed them and instructed them in good behaviour. Since I didn’t know how babies were made, there was no provision for a Daddy. Besides I had the best Daddy in the world already, he served for my babies too.
When I got the hang of things, my six babies changed into the most ordinary female dream. I would grow up and marry a gentle good man and have four children, one each year, and live happily ever after. My friends at school weren’t interested in babies and in college everyone was thinking of some sort of career, thinking and worrying. I had no worries, I knew exactly what I wanted and never doubted I would get it; I never really abandoned my childhood fantasy.
In due course, as expected, with no effort on my part, the gentle good man appeared and we fell in love and married. All I had to do was wait for the tumbling laughing babies. Instead of them, I had miscarriages. Three. They would have broken my heart except for my mother. I couldn’t have survived without her. The great hope and then the failure and hope lost in a hospital bed, sick in my body and my mind, and all the doctors I consulted and the waiting to try again and fail again. She knew I had to have a child, she gave me courage, telling me it had been just as difficult for her, she promised I would succeed with patience. How I needed her and how I leaned on her. And on the loving steadiness of my father. He understood too. Poor Richard. But Richard had his work, he had a meaning for his life and for me there was only one.
With patience for seven years, and seven months in bed and a Caesarian, I got Andy. My first born and my last, the doctors said, and I didn’t mind at all. Thirty-two isn’t exactly a young mother but I felt something I’d never known in my life before. I think it was joy, I didn’t know anyone could feel such rejoicing. From the moment I saw my son. He was beautiful and perfect, he was everything I wanted. I couldn’t have loved another child as much, it was right to have only Andy. And I thought now it’s come true at last and we’ll live happily ever after.
Why not? Why shouldn’t we? What did I know of unhappiness except for three miscarriages? I didn’t spend all the time between those failures in abject gloom. In between times, Richard and I enjoyed ourselves like any lucky young married couple. Christmas and summer at Derry Bridge with my father and mother were always heaven. Why not expect to live happily ever after if you’ve been as happy as a cabbage all your life aside from three temporary setbacks. And I was happy when I had my son in a way I can no longer believe or remember. I’ve often wondered if I am being punished because I had too much, when life is so terrible for millions upon millions of people. But punished by whom? And is happiness a sin?
October is a beautiful month, the red and yellow leaves and the special clean blue of the sky, but it’s sad too, the beautiful ending of the year. I’ve always wanted to hold the days back in October, make them stretch, before November and winter set in. November is an ugly month. Ugly, ugly, hated. On weekends that October, Andy and I used to play explorers in the woods at Derry Bridge, or on our bikes on the dirt back roads, meeting imaginary animals, climbing trees to spy out unknown territory, but Andy tired quickly which he’d never done. I worried and he loathed being worried over and anyway I had trained myself since his infancy not to be a smothering Mum. He’d become a great reader and I thought perhaps he was in one of the many mysterious phases of growing, and books seemed more manly than make-believe games with Mummy.
Then one morning in New York my little boy crept into my bed and said he felt sick, he had a sore throat, it hurt to swallow. I took his temperature, 103, and called the doctor in panic. The doctor came within an hour and didn’t do much that I could see. He checked Andy’s temperature, gently poked places below his waist, studied his skin and inside his mouth, and telephoned for an ambulance. They knew right away, though they made all the tests before they told me. My brain froze. I heard but could not believe or accept the words. Acute leukaemia on a fulminating course. Those words. From nowhere, from nothing, for no reason.
I had a bed in Andy’s hospital room, I never left him, I sat beside him and watched while he shook with chills and poured sweat as the fever rose and dropped and always rose again. I could never take him in my arms, that was my torment, I felt him so alone, I wanted desperately to hold him so he would know I was close, but the pain in his bones had started and the slightest pressure on his chest and ribs caused him anguish. I could only hold his hand, kiss his hands, kiss his forehead lightly lightly, I felt everything in him was breaking. Needles in his arms, transfusions, antibiotics; he cried from all the different pains, he vomited and cried. He cried weakly, hopelessly. He couldn’t understand what had happened to him of course. He must have thought no one heard his weeping because no one came to save him.
Was consciousness worse than delirium? How can I know? Burning with fever, my little boy raved in fear about animals which he’d always loved. He had a mission in life already; when he grew up he planned to take the animals in Central Park Zoo back to their homes where they belonged so they could be free and happy among their relatives. Delirious from fever, he saw his friends, the animals, as monsters threatening him. It was too cruel that he should lose his friends.
When his temperature dropped and his mind cleared, he would beg me to make this agony stop. His voice always fainter, Mummy make it stop. And then he gave up, I had failed him. His eyes were dark and despairing; I had failed him. I wanted him to die, to escape the murderous fever and pain in his child’s bones, I sat by him day and night, helpless, watching him die, in nineteen days, in November. His face wasn’t his face, wasted, old and lonely. Because I couldn’t make it stop, I couldn’t take the pain for myself, he suffered alone. There was nothing left of Andy that was like him except his shaggy yellow hair. I held his little wrecked body in my arms and died too. I went away into the darkness where Andy had gone.
Why did they give me shock treatment and force me to come back when there was nothing to come back to except the memory of his face, his eyes, begging me. It is useless to weep though it goes on all the time, like internal bleeding; she’ll learn that too, that other woman, that African mother. She’ll hate me as I hate the disease that took Andy from me and she’ll never know how gladly I’d have died instead.
The land was grey and flat and wide, nothing grew on the hard ash-coloured ground. The road was a lighter grey, narrow, cutting straight through the vast distance of the land to the horizon. The sky was grey too, paler than the road. There was no movement anywhere, the air silent. Far away at first, then nearer, she saw grey figures on the road. She did not move, nor did they, yet they grew in size so that she recognized them. Her throat ached with the need to cry out, she felt the tears on her cheeks, but she could not speak or move.
Her mother was bending over a little curled-up body on the grey road. The body looked shapeless, a small bundle of grey rags. Her mother’s face was gaunt, s
hrunken, not her face in life, her face in death. Her eyes, which had been a shining cornflower blue, were black and dull. She did not touch the child’s body. She was dressed in rags with her arms showing stick-thin through the dirty grey cloth. She was on her knees, staring dry-eyed at the bundle on the road.
The child’s face was hidden, the only colour in the greyness of the world was his shaggy yellow hair. Softly, from somewhere inside the little hump of rags, a sound came out, a single mewing sound like a sick kitten, a hurt kitten. It came again louder. Her mother did not touch the child, or hear, her mother’s face was unchanged, fixed in exhaustion and defeat. The sound came again and now louder and louder, a cry of fatal pain, an agonized cry for help.
She struggled to move, she had to run to them, she wrenched and tore against some unseen force that held her, she tried to scream to stop the sound, to scream for them to wait, stop, wait, Mother help him, I am coming, I am coming to you, only wait! Shouting, sobbing, but could not move …
‘Wake, Memsaab! You wake! No sleep!’ A hot damp hand pushed her shoulder. She looked up, through half closed eyes, stunned by the dream and barbiturates, dazzled by the lamplight, to see the face of the young waiter close to her. She smelled him, a foul heavy odour of sweat. She saw the road and her mother and the child, helpless, and understood the waiter was holding her so she could not run to them. She shrank away from him, from his red-veined eyes, and his black sweating face, she had to get away from him and run.
Ali thought of this. Ali was born in Mombasa, a sharp city boy, not an ignorant bush fellow. Ali made him say it four times so he would remember. Get the key from the night houseboy on the floor below. Tell him you have to pick up a tray. Not her tray, a tray. Tell the woman you are the cousin of the boy’s father. She killed the boy. She must give you one thousand shillings for the father. She is rich. But Ali did not say the woman would be twisting like a snake on her bed and crying strange words and that her eyes would look as if she was crazy from bhang.
The Weather in Africa Page 10