The Weather in Africa

by Martha Gellhorn

  ‘I play with Bobby and Betty,’ Zena said.

  Ian loathed Bobby and Betty, golden-haired twins, hero figures of the first book Zena had read to herself. In his opinion, a more miserable pair of anaemic prigs had never existed but they were engraved on Zena’s heart, her imaginary friends. She spent her days with them, she talked to them and about them; Ian was kept abreast of their activities and had to admit that they became less dismal as they developed in Zena’s imagination. With love and the best intentions, he had put his child into a sort of prison. He seemed to have a special talent for prisons. Zena’s extended back from the cypress hedge through a long stretch of leleshwa and lion grass to the fence at the public road. He made it as amusing as he could, with a swing and a pet lamb, which Zena named Mary, and toys and books, but he raged that he could only take Zena out on parole, by Grace’s tacit permission.

  When Grace began one of her devious conversations, Ian realized she was about to do him a tremendous favour. Living at this altitude all year round was bad for a child, Grace said, Joy ought to go to the coast for her health. Ian gave his usual falsely grudging consent. That was the first of the journeys to Malindi and lasted two weeks but, as Grace pointed out, she couldn’t break her permanent promise of a week in Nairobi. Malindi, Nyali, Bamburi; all for Joy’s health. Soon Grace said that Joy ought to see the sights of East Africa as part of her education; it was absurd for the child to miss Kilimanjaro which was world famous, a splendidly long holiday at Travellers’ Rest, and Mount Kenya, another long holiday in Nyeri with Miss Ball who was interested in the tree ferns, and Treetops, once visited by the Queen. Cannily, Ian said that Joy looked much healthier after the trips to the coast, having judged that this was what Grace and Joy liked best. By skilful manoeuvring, he could get them off the farm for two sure months in the winter and for joint vacations with the Dorset clique and the guaranteed week in Nairobi at the least.

  Ian left supervision of the late milking to Simuni, giving himself afternoon hours with Zena as well as the morning Landrover rides. Always proficient in the use of catalogues, Ian had found a correspondence school course for home teaching by parents stranded in outposts of civilization. They studied together. Unless he was making a muck of the grading system Zena was far ahead of her years. Since Grace did after all come home as a shackle on his freedom, Zena learned to prepare her lessons alone because Baba could not always spend so much time helping her. She didn’t mind solitary homework, having Bobby and Betty for fellow pupils. Ian wished he had never given Zena that book, she should have started by reading the adventures of young devils instead of the mealy-mouthed inanities of the bloodless twins. He was stuck with Bobby and Betty and it would be cruel to criticize the child’s only friends. But his little girl was too gentle, too docile, too quiet; she needed real lively children. In the back of his mind lay the dread that he was turning Zena into a misfit like himself, unable through lack of experience to join in the normal life of ordinary people.

  When Grace and Joy were taking their long holiday at the coast, he could have brought Zena to live with him in the house. Ian thought of this with a yearning like hunger pains but decided that shuffling Zena back and forth from a European house to an African rondavel would badly dislocate the child. And besides, no: except for his old chair, the house was Grace’s, tasteless and tainted by Grace. Considering the impression made on Zena by gruesome Bobby and Betty, it would be a major mistake if she got the notion that this house was the way a house should look. Everything on his farm was right and good for nourishing Zena’s mind, but not Grace’s house.

  He was forced to deny himself a real life with Zena while Grace and Joy lived as they chose, returning to Fairview only because Daddy meant money and keeping up the pretence of a happy home. He was paying with pain for the inconceivable error of his marriage but Zena was paying too, unfairly, wickedly, though the child didn’t yet know it. He would never be free of Grace and Joy for the simple reason that no one else would ever want them. Zena was the loser which he could not bear. He got drunk one night, mixing bitterness with whisky, and flailed around Grace’s sitting room, kicking twee tables and hurling fringed sofa cushions at china ornaments, shouting ‘Till death us do part’, and ended the night in tears to wake with a gruelling hangover and Zena still alone behind the cypress hedge.

  Joy was equally isolated though neither she nor Grace noticed this. They lived in flawless harmony based on Joy getting what she wanted and Grace’s adoring subservience. While Zena learned how to manage a farm, Joy learned how to manage hotels and the adults in them. Ian thought Joy was a hellish child, Grace’s perfect product, but there was hope in the future because Grace would send Joy to boarding school, driven by snobbery to copy the local ladies. The girls at boarding school would either whip Joy into shape or murder her. For Zena there was no future like that, nothing to save her from an unnatural childhood.

  Obviously, Joy and Zena should have been playing with each other since infancy, the reasonable solution for both children. He didn’t see how he could have engineered it, knowing Grace’s sentiments about all skin that wasn’t one hundred per cent white. Grace might have softened after eleven years in Kenya, might even be secretly concerned over Joy’s loneliness and surely Joy, born here, couldn’t be a confirmed racist by the age of seven. More and more troubled by Zena’s solitude, Ian invented and discarded and invented fresh schemes for bringing the little girls together. Away from Grace, Joy must have some human childish instincts, he couldn’t utterly condemn a seven-year-old, and Zena would improve her.

  This wavering idea was killed dead by Joy, lately returned from a grand hotel near Mombasa and accustomed to grand hotel service. Joy’s presence at the dinner table was a recent hardship, a wretched half hour when Joy showed off her clothes and her grown-up manners. Beda was by no means the sort of servant Grace and Joy approved, but it was not his fault that Joy suddenly flung out her arm, to exhibit new silver bangles, and knocked a bowl of fruit salad from his hands. The bowl crashed to the table, spilling half its juicy contents on Joy’s lap. She sprang up, shaking her dress, shouting, ‘Look what you’ve done, you stupid black baboon!’

  Beda stood as though frozen. Grace made angry clucking sounds and hurried to wipe Joy’s dress.

  Ian said, ‘Apologize to Beda, Joy.’

  Grace and Joy stopped their annoyed cleaning operation and stared at Ian.

  ‘You heard me, Joy. Apologize to Beda.’

  ‘Mummy!’ Joy wailed; tears spurted from her eyes. Grace put a protective arm around her angel.

  ‘How dare you, Ian? How dare you speak to the child like that? Of course she won’t apologize. It’s one of her best dresses.’

  ‘Joy,’ Ian said, his voice even and icy. ‘Apologize to Beda.’

  Joy was now wailing loudly, her face hidden against Grace’s skirt.

  ‘Ian! I will not tolerate such behaviour. You apologize to Joy!’

  ‘She will either apologize to Beda or go to her room and stay there until she does so,’ Ian said, his voice unchanged.

  ‘Darling, go to your room now, you wouldn’t want to stay with your dress all wet and sticky. Mummy will be along in a minute.’

  ‘Beda,’ Ian said. ‘I apologize for Joy and Joy will apologize later. We won’t need anything more.’

  Beda, still frozen, closed the kitchen door carefully behind him.

  ‘Now Ian,’ Grace began, her eyes fiery, her voice a drilling whine.

  Ian got up from the table.

  ‘You are never to speak to the child like that, do you hear me Ian? And she’s certainly not going to apologize to a clumsy stupid servant.’

  ‘Joy will not leave her room until she can lower herself to an apology. Otherwise you can both leave the house. You’re perfectly free to go at any time.’

  He sat in his chair by the fire, seemingly undisturbed, seemingly deep in The French Revolution, and mocked himself for a fool, a real fool, a dangerous fool. In his idiot folly, he might have sugges
ted that Zena play with that sickening child. There was no hope for Joy, deformed for good, and he didn’t care. No doubt she and Grace would find plenty of company to their taste. But there was also no hope for Zena; she’d have to go on playing happily with Bobby and Betty, the little ghosts who proved that his child belonged nowhere.

  ‘It’s the Socialists!’ Grace cried. ‘Naturally they don’t mind what happens to people like us! The Africans will take their pangas and murder us all!’

  Grace had returned from Nairobi, hysterical with Dorset prophecies. The British Government had promised Kenya Independence next year. Whites would be ruled by blacks, as if blacks could manage the water works, the post, the trains, the electricity; name anything you could think of and imagine the hopeless botch they’d make. Quite aside from killing whites whenever they liked, and whites having to call them Bwana.

  ‘You must sell the farm!’ Grace shrilled. ‘Ian, you must. We have to get out while we can. The Ethridges are moving to South Africa, you know that, don’t you? I hear the Farrells are going back to England. People in Nairobi and Mombasa and everywhere upcountry are selling out while there’s still time. None of us will be safe. It’s too dangerous, it’s terrible, life won’t be possible here, I can’t risk Joy.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Ian said, turning a page of the Kenya Weekly News. The tone of Grace’s voice, her wild eyes reminded him of the maddening early days of the Mau Mau rebellion. He didn’t think he could bear this nagging idiocy a second time.

  ‘I insist,’ Grace said. ‘I absolutely insist.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn who rules this country, I don’t give a damn what happens to the water works or the mail or the trains or anything. Worst comes to the worst, Fairview can be self-sufficient. I’m staying here, this is my place. Besides which, I don’t believe for a minute that Africans will butcher whites. No reason for it, once they’ve got what they want. I don’t mind calling them Bwana. Why not?’

  ‘You don’t care what happens to Joy and me! And you haven’t any pride, you’d lick the Africans’ feet if that helped Fairview. You’ll get on all right, it won’t make any difference to you when we’re all insulted and pushed around and probably in jail if not dead. You’re a nigger lover!’

  Ian rose from his chair and stood tall above her, his face rigid with distaste.

  ‘That kind of gutter language may be acceptable among your friends, but don’t ever use those words in front of me again. Never, do you understand?’

  Ian stalked out to the verandah. Clean fresh air. How was he going to live with this odious woman under the new regime? She would whine about African outrages day and night, her usual contempt again turning into hate and fear. He found Grace huddled by the fire in tears.

  ‘I’m thinking of Joy,’ Grace said. ‘I’m afraid for Joy.’

  He always ended by being sorry for Grace. He didn’t forgive her, he pitied her. She was so unattractive and so wrong-headed; he always ended by thinking how awful it would be to be Grace.

  ‘Joy will be fine. Listen, Grace, talk to Helen Gordon not those scared Nairobi people. You’ll get a different angle. And the Farrells aren’t leaving because they’re spooked; they’re leaving because Simon inherited a house and stable from an uncle in Oxfordshire; they’re horse crazy, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh Helen Gordon,’ Grace said, sniffling. ‘Why does everybody act as if Helen Gordon was so special? She’s ridiculous. They could shoot her husband and burn down her house and she’d stay, just as long as she could keep her garden.’

  There was nothing to do about Grace except not listen. Grace now drove to Karula every afternoon, feeding her fears on rumours in the general store and at the Sports Club. At dinner, she repeated these rumours accusingly to Ian’s serene deafness.

  Joy was bored with her doll’s house under the jacaranda tree. Before that she had been bored with the beads she strung for necklaces and with her paint-box and colouring books. Mummy had stopped taking her to Karula, she said the daily drive was too tiring. Mummy said, ‘You’re my darling big girl now. Play by yourself for a little while. Mummy wants to rest.’ She considered waking Mummy from her nap but she was cross with Mummy.

  At morning lessons Mummy said sharply, ‘Pay attention, Joy, you’re not trying.’ Her feelings were hurt and she cried and Mummy comforted her but also said they would work again after tea. Joy hated morning lessons; they were a bore too; everything at Fairview was a bore. She had learned the word from Grace.

  Joy always obeyed Mummy about staying on the lawn to play; she had no desire to explore the hidden dangerous world of the Africans. But today, from spite and idleness, she decided to creep to the cypress hedge. She could run home to safety if there were snakes and nasty people. It was Mummy’s fault for leaving her alone with nothing to do. Joy tiptoed behind the house and across to the hedge. She peeked around the corner and saw a brown girl on a swing. As there were no visible snakes or horrid Africans, she came closer.

  ‘Who are you?’ Joy said.

  Zena had her back turned but jumped from the swing to face a girl who looked exactly like Betty, a beautiful pink and white girl with a blue bow in her golden hair and a blue and white polka-dotted dress and white sandals. A real Betty had come to play with her. She was so excited she could only stare in admiration. Beda and Mwangi spoke of this toto, the Memsaab’s child, but Zena had never seen her. The cypress hedge was an impassable frontier. Sita said that the Memsaab lived on the other side and would beat Zena if she caught her.

  ‘Who are you? Can’t you talk English?’

  ‘Zena,’ with a warm smile.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I live here.’

  Joy was not smiling. Zena wore a faded, patched pink dress, too small for her, which Joy recognized.

  ‘Where did you get my dress?’

  ‘Beda gave it to me.’

  Grace had thrown it out. Beda brought everything Grace threw away to Zena. Fortunately Zena was the smaller child.

  ‘You can’t wear my dress.’

  Zena said nothing.

  ‘Where did you get that swing?’

  ‘Baba gave it to me.’

  ‘Who’s Baba?’

  Zena did not know how to answer. Why was the beautiful white girl looking at her with angry eyes and speaking in an angry voice?

  ‘You heard me,’ Joy said. ‘Answer when I talk to you. Who’s Baba?’

  ‘The Bwana,’ Zena said helplessly.

  Joy thought about this but couldn’t decide what it meant.

  ‘Show me your house,’ Joy said. Zena led her to a rondavel and Joy started to go in but drew back. Africans were smelly and dirty, as Mummy said. From the doorway, Joy saw rough wooden shelves with toys neatly arranged on them.

  ‘Show me your toys.’

  Obediently, Zena brought her toys from the rondavel and laid them on the table outside her grandparents’ hut. Inside, Sita woke and stayed silent, listening. Mwangi and Beda and Ndola had walked together to the Asian duka on the road, this was the afternoon free time.

  Joy studied the surprising collection of toys which were as good as her own. She knew it was not right for an African child to have anything like hers.

  ‘You stole them,’ Joy said.

  ‘No! Baba gave them to me.’ Tears began to leak from Zena’s large brown eyes.

  ‘Baba,’ Joy said mockingly. ‘You stole them. I’m going to show them to my Mummy.’

  Joy collected as many of the toys as she could carry, a large flaxen-haired doll, a bag of glass marbles, a big rubber ball, the prettiest things she saw, and marched off beyond the cypress hedge. She had no intention of showing them to Mummy. She hid the toys in the doll’s house, and was playing there peacefully when Mummy called her for tea.

  Zena sat on the ground and wept. She knew what stealing was; Sita had not neglected her basic education. The police came for totos who stole. Joy had taken her best belo
ved doll, Betty, who closed her eyes to sleep, and her jewels, and the ball she and Baba played with.

  Sita came out of the hut and said, ‘Stop crying.’

  ‘Why did she say I stole my toys and take them away?’

  ‘I don’t know. She can do anything she wants.’

  Joy had discovered a fascinating occupation for the empty afternoons. She waited impatiently for Mummy to finish lunch and lie down in their room. Zena wasn’t like the children she met in hotels who were rude and told her to go away and wouldn’t play as she wanted. Zena was better to play with than Mummy or Mummy’s friends, all kinds of new games she had never tried before. If Zena did not do what she ordered, quickly, she pinched Zena who cried and obeyed. Joy was specially fond of games in which she was the Queen, meting out punishment to Zena, the villain or slave. Zena did a lot of kneeling and begging for mercy as the Queen commanded, though her head was often cut off anyway.

  Zena cried at night and woke to fear the coming afternoon. Sita had no sympathy for these tears and warned Zena not to tell Baba because that would bring more trouble for everyone. Abandoned by the only people who could protect her, Zena took to hiding like a hunted animal. She crouched behind a leleshwa bush and fled into the tall grass as soon as Joy appeared. She expected Joy to run after her and waited shivering to be trapped. But Joy did not follow. Zena stayed silent and motionless in the thick scrub. It was hard to keep so still and she never knew when Joy might creep up and pounce on her. She didn’t feel safe until Sita called, ‘She’s gone. Come back now.’ But it would start again tomorrow, it would never end. She wept at night in despair; Baba didn’t love her. If he loved her, he would save her.