‘Like what?’
‘Respect, social mobility, knowing people look up to you. Our old maid Maureen could have stayed a serving girl in Mayo all her life or married a farm labourer with a damp cabin. Instead she took the chance to make a new life for herself in Boston. Her life is ten times better than that of the tuppence ha’penny snobs who looked down on her in Mayo because they owned a few boggy acres and had a priest a distant relative in the family. Ask anyone in Turlough about Maureen and they won’t say she’s happy – because who knows who is happy – but they’ll say she made a good life for herself in America. But what can they say about you? You clean kitchens for people with only half your breeding. Last summer you went back to being a chambermaid on some dreary Channel island. What sort of life is that?’
Hazel drummed her fingers on the wheel, her tell-tale sign of agitation, which had been absent so far on Eva’s visit.
‘I met the most interesting people when working on Sark.’
‘Old dowagers saying “You may make up my room now”? Hotel guests barely notice chambermaids let alone talk to them.’
‘I wasn’t referring to the guests. I’m referring to the young people I worked with: girls who could quote whole pages from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, long-haired boys who wrote poetry…’
‘You always had a thing for young poets,’ Hazel snapped. ‘You never did get over Max, did you?’
‘That’s unfair,’ Eva replied, hurt. ‘There was nothing between Max and me to get over.’
Both went silent as they drove on, conscious of a familiar gulf between them. There was a deep love in their relationship, but, as Hazel once said, they rubbed each other up the wrong way. In recent years their letters had seemed to bring them closer, allowing them to rediscover some common ground – not least a sense of humour. Hazel’s letters always made Eva laugh, but perhaps this was because she had heard Hazel’s old voice when reading them, not this new accent which seemed modulated to blend in among the English accents at the club.
It was Hazel who broke the silence. ‘That remark was unfair of me. Poor Max. Who’d have thought that he would enlist in the marines and get himself killed in Korea?’
I think he was trying to please his parents or prove something to them,’ Eva said quietly. ‘He could never have expected life to work out the way it did, but my own life hasn’t worked out like I might have wanted either. Still, maybe that’s what I find exciting: how – unlike poor Max – my life is still finding its own pattern. I’m almost sixty and have virtually no income. But I’m happy to take any job I can find if it allows me to continue to live my life on my own terms.’
‘I know.’ Hazel slowed to allow Eva view a herd of wildebeest who began to run at the sight of the dust cloud around the car. ‘You can only be yourself. That’s why I want you to stay here in Kenya and live with us and have enough space to be just that.’
‘Live with you and Geoffrey?’
‘Live as our neighbour, on our land. In a few years’ time you’ll be an old age pensioner. Ever since you left Daddy it’s like you’ve been needing to make up for lost time, with your teaching and writing and bits and bobs. Maybe it’s time to simply enjoy the years you have left. Why not live them in comfort in Kenya? I know the natives are declaring independence, but even if they run amuck outside our gates, inside our plantation we’ll still have a good life because if the whites don’t stay then who else will employ them? You need your own space but we can build you that space. A small house among the trees near the lake. Big windows to let in light if you want to try your hand at painting again. You keep saying that in the London winters your arthritis gets so bad you are barely able to hold a pencil. The sun would be good for you. You’d feel ten years younger. We’d build the house close enough that it would only be a ten-minute walk to dine with us whenever you like. And you would finally be somebody.’
‘Who?’
‘My mother. Alex’s grandmother. Geoffrey’s mother-in-law. People would treat you with respect. That’s the thing with Africa, you can reinvent yourself as the person you always wanted to be. Francis can have your books shipped over from London. You’d be free to write your stories and meditate and study any half-baked philosopher you like. We have enough servants to look after you and the people at the club like you. They say you add a touch of spice. You’d shake us all up with your daft ideas. Evenings at the Colonial Club can be a laugh when you get to know people and you always loved a good laugh.’ Hazel glanced back at Alex absorbed in examining the birdwatching book. ‘And Alex would get to know you properly. If you leave in two weeks like planned, God knows what age Alex will be when you next see her. If you stay you would be good for her and Alex would be good for you.’
Eva stared out the windscreen at the lush grasslands, nourished by waters from the vast lake near the crest of Wagagai. She had come on today’s trip to see dome-shaped nests of hamerkops and African jacanas. Hazel had promised a glimpse of orange-breasted sunbirds and, if they climbed high enough, the African fish eagle, whose piercing scream terrified the small creatures it hunted. Eva had hoped to find reedbuck and fleet-footed hartebeest and maybe warthogs and grivet monkeys, or even tortoises who were unlike their slow-witted Irish cousins because the sun gave them such ravenous sexual appetites that males could be heard grunting in the throes of passion a hundred yards away. In this sanctuary the animals were protected, but what Eva had not expected was an offer of sanctuary for herself, the chance to start a new life in daily contact with her granddaughter.
Had Hazel discussed this possibility with Geoffrey or was it a spur-of-the-moment suggestion? Perhaps Geoffrey’s absence was causing the malaise Eva felt she occasionally glimpsed behind Hazel’s resolute pluckiness, or did his absence reflect problems in their marriage? Eva liked Geoffrey, who seemed rooted in this red soil in a way that Hazel perhaps never could be. Geoffrey saw Kenya for what it was and not a chance to recreate a better version of a flawed childhood. But perhaps Hazel wasn’t trying to compensate for the early years of penury in Glanmire Wood; perhaps Eva’s déjà vu this morning stemmed from an old guilt at being unable to properly provide for her children back then.
‘What would Geoffrey say if I stayed?’ she asked.
‘Geoffrey likes you and he likes me to be happy. If it made me happy, he would be pleased.’
Eva glanced into the rear seat. Alex caught her eye and smiled. Slowly Eva stretched out a finger, hoping the child might clasp it, but Alex looked away shyly. How wonderful it would be to watch this child discover more of life every day. Eva’s renunciation of her class never contained the grandiose gestures of Art who had actually possessed wealth to turn his back on. Instead her life had been a gradual slippage into ever less gentile poverty. If she settled in Kenya the sun would slow the grip of arthritis that seemed to permanently distort her fingers. The only home awaiting her in London was a cramped attic flat which the landlord had promised to hold vacant for the two months she was away. If she returned it would be to counting pennies into gas metres, to smog in winter, frozen mornings when she would wake to see her breath turn to condensation in a freezing attic and nights when she would go to bed at seven o’clock to skimp on the need to heat the room. But amid that London greyness there was Francis and her instincts told her that one day soon Francis would need her. Her heart skipped a guilty beat at the thought of her son. Hazel swung down a dirt track hacked out through bushes and entered a small compound where Juma and the cook emerged from a wooden lodge to greet them. Juma smiled heartily as he held open the door for Eva.
‘Welcome, Mrs Fitzgerald.’
Eva smiled and thanked him. Of all the Kenyans she had met so far, Juma was her favourite. She loved the proud way he had held his son when Eva visited the hut where his family lived. His wooden house was the type of home she would like if she stayed here, circular and low roofed without any foundations so that it seemed to be part of the earth. But it could not be among the villagers who would feel inhibited by her
presence. She would need to be alone in the woods, midway between the villagers and Hazel’s stone house. Eva watched the cook carry their cases into the lodge as Juma swung Alex around in circles, happily laughing along with the child’s excited cries.
The sight of this black man and white child moving as one made Eva feel good, but then a memory returned of taking part in a tiny demonstration in Hyde Park to protest at the capture of the Black Pimpernel, the military commander of the Umkhonto we Sizwe, Nelson Mandela. It had rained hard that evening, the loudhailer so crackly that Eva could barely hear the speeches as some passers-by shouted that Mandela deserved all he was going to get for being a saboteur. She had closely followed his trial and the trial of other ANC leaders seized in Rivonia. But the Rivonia trial was one of numerous topics not discussed at the Colonial Club, with Hazel keen that Eva never mention her protest activities in London because she claimed that the drinkers would mock her lack of understanding of Africa.
In her heart Eva knew she did not belong among the privileged caste in that club and yet could never blend in among the black locals, who were courteous but perturbed by her attempts at solidarity. Perhaps she was destined to forever remain an outsider, no matter what class she mixed with. But at least amid London’s poverty and smog, fellow misfits existed who had slipped free of definitions. Francis had never visited Hazel, possibly because Kenya was too dangerous a place in which to be a homosexual. This was why Eva loved the melting pot of Tangiers: lonely old Englishmen openly falling in love with youths who indulged them while subtly bleeding them dry. It wasn’t always nice to see but at least what happened in Tangiers occurred in the open. Kenya was no such melting pot. People drank here to excess, gossiping about rumoured scandals to ward off boredom. But they clung to a rigid social order, an exaggerated version of the Britain they had left. If she stayed, Eva would want for nothing and grow to know her granddaughter, but she could never be happy. The cry of a wild beast startled her. Juma noticed this and laughed.
‘Wait till dark,’ he said. ‘The whole park is alive then. The big beasts even drown out the cicada.’
Hazel called her into the lodge where tea was being poured, laced with gin. Hazel took a sip, then added more alcohol.
‘What was that recipe for a balanced life you sent me in a letter last year?’
Eva tried to recall the exact words that had come to her upon waking one morning:
‘A little bit of kindness,
A little bit of gin,
A little bit of tolerance,
A little bit of sin.’
Hazel laughed. ‘The little bit of gin was what Esther O’Mahony’s tea up in the Wicklow Mountains always lacked.’
They drank in silence for a moment, watching Alex through the open doorway as she happily raced around in the dust. Then Eva spoke quietly.
‘I can’t stay here, Hazel. I’d never fit in.’
‘And you fit in in London, do you?’
‘London is different.’
‘Because Francis is there.’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘Don’t hide it, Mummy. He was always your favourite.’ Hazel’s unperturbed tone was matter of fact.
‘Maybe Francis needs me in ways you never will. And maybe something in me needs to be needed. I worry for the boy.’
‘Francis is no longer a boy, Mummy. He has his own life.’
‘Francis laughs a lot,’ Eva said. ‘But he hurts too easily and he’s so honest that he leaves himself open to being hurt. There’s no guile in him, no badness, no cynical protective coating.’
‘And where’s your protective coating?’ Hazel asked. ‘I worry for you, Mummy. What protection do you have from being hurt or going hungry or getting sick? Your situation is ten times more vulnerable than his.’
Eva nodded, unable to deny Hazel’s logic. ‘That’s true. I’m naïve and foolish in some ways and that means at times I get hurt. But it’s easier to be the one getting hurt than to see someone you love being hurt. Living hand to mouth these past few years has not been easy, but I only truly suffer when I watch Francis suffer. I need to give him space to make his own mistakes, but to also be there to pick the pieces up when it inevitably falls apart. Francis is wondrously happy, but he doesn’t always realise how he has such a thin grip on happiness that he’s only clinging to it by his fingertips.’
Hazel topped up their tea with more gin, then reached across to touch her mother’s hand.
‘You always worry too much about him, Mummy. His landscaping business is thriving and his lover is rich. Take it from me, there are no poor orthopaedic surgeons in Harley Street. If I’m honest I always found Francis’s special friends rather drippy, but Jonathan is quite the Bobby Dazzler. Francis and he are perfect together and they’re happy.’
Eva took a sip from her cup, feeling the additional alcohol go to her head. ‘Happiness is fragile when disgrace is always just a phone call to the police away. His friend Alan tells me things that Francis would never admit to. Francis’s workman Peter also drops hints. There are cracks in his relationship with Jonathan. Francis isn’t as young looking as he once was and patrician men like Jonathan go for youth. I didn’t like it when Jonathan persuaded Francis to give up his flat and move in with him, although officially Francis is just renting Jonathan’s basement, with Jonathan so frightened of scandal he even has a different number plate on the basement door. Jonathan shares the master bedroom with Francis, but I’ve slept over in that basement and heard them rowing at night.’
Hazel shrugged. ‘Rows are part of marriage. You know that. I know it and so does Francis, even if what he has can hardly be called a marriage.’
‘That’s the problem,’ Eva said. ‘What security has he? If Jonathan was knocked down by a bus, would his family even welcome Francis to the funeral in Wales? With a married couple all the social pressure is on them to stay together. That’s why your father and I stuck it out so long. But with two men living together the social pressure is the opposite, because if the relationship breaks up life becomes safer, with less risk of exposure. Francis should never have given up his own flat. He’s left himself very vulnerable.’
Hazel studied her with a brutally frank gaze.
‘Maybe everything isn’t all sweetness and light between him and Jonathan,’ she said. ‘Few marriages stay sweetness and light forever. But be honest: if Francis weren’t in London, would you stay here?’
Eva gazed back at her and said quietly. ‘I’ve asked you before and I’ll ask you again: are you happy here?’
‘Don’t I look happy? I have everything I ever wanted.’
‘That’s not the same thing.’
Hazel looked away for a moment. ‘If you did stay, we’d fight all the time, wouldn’t we? Little differences would grow into big ones. I love you, Mummy, and I know you love me, but maybe we love each other best at a distance. But I’d have loved for Alex to get to know you. You would be good for her.’
Eva reached across to rest her fingers lightly on Hazel’s hand. ‘And I promise you I’ll be there for her if you ever decide to send her to boarding school in Dublin. I know it’s years away but I’ll move back to Ireland and find a flat near Park House School so that she’ll have family to visit. And Francis will be a short boat trip away in London. We’ll bring her down to camp out in Glanmire House and tell her ghost stories while baking potatoes in tinfoil in the fire. If you do decide to send her at any age then I promise I’ll be there.’
Hazel gripped her fingers momentarily. ‘I know you will. Tiny undauntable you. Last year Valerie O’Mahony wrote to say that she was visiting London when she met you by chance making your way home from a Ban the Bomb march. A counter protestor must have struck you with a flour bomb because you were coated in white from head to toe, leaving a trail of flour behind you as you walked. Valerie wrote that you were so excited to meet her and hear her news that you never once mentioned how you had obviously been flour bombed half an hour earlier, as if your appearance wasn�
�t worth commenting on because you were too caught up in being alive in that moment. Since then it’s how I see you in my mind: a tiny woman covered in flour who’d walk through flames for what you believe in.’
Eva smiled at the memory. ‘He was such a funny little man who threw it. Very respectable: a dentist or accountant by the look of his suit. I saw him step from the crowd watching the march and I badly wanted to shout a warning, but there wasn’t time. Not a warning to the marchers beside me but to the man himself, because I could tell he’d obviously never made a flour bomb before and hadn’t sealed the top of the package. The flour began to spill out as soon as he raised his hand over his head and by the time he threw it he’d poured more flour over himself than landed on me. I wasn’t hurt and all I could do was laugh at the abject terror on his face. He wasn’t scared of the marchers or the police, but he’d every tell-tale sign of being henpecked. I knew he was terrified of having to go home and face his wife in his ruined suit.’
Hazel laughed. ‘That’s you in a nutshell, more concerned for him than yourself. It would make a perfect story for BBC’s Woman’s Hour. I’ve kept all your letters, especially the ones from Morocco. You have a knack with words. Keep writing, Mummy, and success is bound to come.’
‘I doubt it somehow. All I have is a folder of rejection slips under my bed in London.’
‘Never say never. I have a little present, just to show you that it’s never too late to publish your first book.’ Hazel rose and called in Alex from outside. A delicious smell came from the kitchen, where Eva knew that the cook – convinced Eva would starve without meat – had gone to great lengths to find unusual fruits for her. Hazel whispered an instruction and the child rummaged in a suitcase to produce a small gift-wrapped present.
An Ark of Light Page 19
