‘I don’t know, maybe he’s a magic lion.’
‘I’ve decided to call him Lucky, because that’s what I am!’ she giggled, reaching up to hug Cecily, who hugged her back very tightly.
‘Ow, Kuyia! You’re squashing me!’ Stella looked up at Cecily. ‘Why are you crying? Are you sad?’
‘I’m fine, honey. I’m just going to call your Uncle Bill now to wish him a merry Christmas – I miss him and our home.’
‘I do too but I like it here very much as well,’ said Stella, who then turned her attention to Lucky.
Still in her robe and suddenly feeling desperate to speak to her husband about Kiki, Cecily went downstairs to her father’s study to use the telephone and was put through to Muthaiga Club, where Ali picked up the phone. Cecily smiled as she heard his familiar deep voice.
‘Hello, Ali, it’s Mrs Forsythe here. Is Mr Forsythe there?’
‘Happy Christmas, Mrs Forsythe,’ said Ali, ‘although I must offer you my condolences. We have had word here of Mrs Preston’s death.’
‘Thank you, Ali,’ said Cecily. She was shocked that the news had travelled so quickly. ‘I need to speak to Mr Forsythe. Could you fetch him for me, please?’
‘I am afraid I cannot; Mr Forsythe went out on a game shoot a few hours ago.’
Cecily’s heart plummeted. ‘Well, when he gets back can you please tell him that his wife called and that she really needs to speak to him. He has my telephone number in New York. Thank you, Ali, and merry Christmas.’
She hung up the receiver and sat down in her father’s leather chair, trying to collect herself. Once again, when she truly needed her husband, he was nowhere to be found.
At noon, just before her sisters arrived, Cecily took Stella into the kitchen where the servants were busy preparing Christmas lunch.
‘Oh, lookie here! Ain’t you a picture, baby girl?’ said Essie, the cook, who had taken a huge shine to Stella. ‘Now you come and help your Auntie Essie wiv dem pies.’
Stella, who was dressed very inappropriately for the kitchen in her orange tulle dress, happily went to assist Essie.
‘Merry Christmas, everyone,’ Cecily said. ‘Can someone take some broth up to my maid? She’s finally professed herself hungry today.’
‘No problem,’ Essie nodded. ‘And don’t you be worryin’, Miss Cecily, we’ll feed her baby girl along with us right here, won’t we, Stella?’
‘I do hope so, Essie,’ Stella replied.
‘Gracious me! You don’t gone and talk like you’re as white as they are!’ Essie laughed.
Despite Cecily’s call to her mother to celebrate rather than mourn, Christmas Day was a muted affair. Mamie and Priscilla came over with their families to exchange presents and have lunch, all three sisters doing their best to cheer up a heartbroken Dorothea.
After lunch, Dorothea retired to her room.
‘Mama absolutely is devastated,’ said Mamie to Cecily.
‘Kiki was her oldest friend, it’s only natural.’
‘That’s as may be, but she saw her no more than every few years. You lived with her when you were first in Africa, and saw her the night she died. Are you okay?’
‘Obviously I’m real sad, Mamie, but, well . . . I just think that Kiki had run out of hope. And when hope is gone . . .’
‘I know,’ said Mamie. ‘There’s nothing left. Well now, time for us to be off and get these little horrors into bed.’
Once Cecily had said goodbye to her sisters and their families, and Walter had retreated to his study for a nap, Cecily wandered back into the drawing room. She looked up at the enormous Christmas tree, decorated with so many baubles that there was barely any green to be seen.
She thought of Bill somewhere out on the African plains, the image of him there so at odds with this beautiful Manhattan drawing room.
Is this my home, she wondered, or do I belong back in Kenya with Bill? The truth was that Cecily just didn’t know.
The day after Christmas, with Dorothea locked upstairs in her bedroom, too distressed to venture out, Cecily decided to take Stella on a tour of New York.
Their first stop was Central Park, where Cecily bought Stella a bag of roasted chestnuts and taught her how to peel and eat the piping hot morsels. At the Central Park zoo, Stella waved at the lion in its enclosure, speaking to it in Maa – ‘It is his language, after all,’ she said as Cecily suppressed a chuckle.
Archer then drove them through the busy city streets, and Stella gasped at the bright lights of Times Square, then listened with rapt attention as Cecily pointed out the architecture of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building. As dusk fell they indulged in hot chocolates with whipped cream, before Cecily took Stella onto the ice rink at the Rockefeller Center. Clutching each other for support, they slipped and skidded and giggled their way through the crowds.
Through Stella, Cecily began to see her city anew; she fell in love with it and its magical atmosphere all over again. Perhaps it was because she knew they’d be leaving at the end of January that she felt determined to take in as much of it as possible.
Starved of culture as she had been at Paradise Farm, she and her sisters went out to see the latest Broadway shows. She also enjoyed replenishing her wardrobe and actually wearing it out. Her sisters told her that she had ‘grown into her looks’, and after a haircut with Mamie’s stylist, even Cecily began to feel that she wasn’t quite the ugly duckling she’d once considered herself.
‘You’re a head-turner these days,’ Priscilla said with just a hint of envy in her voice as a group of good-looking men on Madison Avenue gave Cecily ‘the eye’, as Priscilla called it. After her long years tucked away in Africa, Cecily felt like a lion released from captivity.
The only sad note in a very jolly post-Christmas week was Kiki’s funeral. The numbers attending were small – many of the New York elite were out of town for the holidays, and besides, Kiki’s life had been lived abroad for years. Cecily helped her father support Dorothea out of the church and on to the wake afterwards, where her mother proceeded to get noticeably tipsy. Cecily could not help but feel that Kiki’s death was the end of an era – not just for her mother, but for her too.
Cecily returned home one afternoon from a trip to the milliner to replace some of her outdated hats to hear a high-pitched giggle coming from her father’s study. Knocking on the door, she found her father with Stella on his lap.
‘Good afternoon, Cecily,’ said Walter. ‘Stella and I were taking a look at the map of the world in my atlas. I was doing my best lion roar, but then she asked me for the sound a zebra made, so I gave what I thought was a good impression of one, but obviously, you didn’t think so, eh, little miss?’ Walter smiled at Stella as she slid off his knee and ran towards Cecily.
‘You haven’t been bothering Mr Huntley-Morgan, have you, Stella?’
‘Not at all,’ Walter said. ‘I found her in here looking at the books on the shelves, and we’ve been having a fine old time. And I’ve told her to call me Walter, by the way, haven’t I?’
Stella nodded shyly.
‘She’s a bright little kid, Cecily. Will her mother be sending her to school back in Kenya?’
‘There aren’t any schools there for a child like Stella, but I’ve been doing my best to teach her to read and write.’
‘She teaches me sums,’ Stella added, her little face serious.
‘All right then, let’s play the game I used to play with Cecily, shall we? What are two and two?’
‘Four.’
‘Three and four?’
‘Seven.’
‘Eight and five.’
‘Thirteen,’ Stella answered without hesitation.
‘I’m impressed,’ Walter smiled. ‘I think I’ll have to make those questions harder, won’t I?’
Twenty minutes later, Walter raised his hands as Stella begged him to test her further.
‘I’m all out of questions, honey, but you’re real good at answering them. Exceptionally
good,’ he said, casting a glance at Cecily. ‘Now then, both of you run along. I’m expecting a visitor any second.’
‘I like Walter,’ said Stella as they walked towards the kitchen to find Lankenua, who was huddled by the stove. ‘At least I like him better than Mrs Huntley-Morgan,’ Stella shrugged as she eyed the chocolate cake sitting on the kitchen table. ‘But I like that best,’ she giggled, pointing to it.
‘How are you feeling, Lankenua?’
‘Okay,’ Lankenua nodded. ‘When we go home, Missus Cecily?’
‘In a few weeks,’ Cecily replied as she turned to Mary. ‘Do you think you could bring some coffee up to my room? I’m out again at five and I should change.’
‘Of course, Miss Cecily.’
Up in her room, Cecily stood in front of the mirror, trying to decide what she should wear for the Vassar reunion. She remembered Rosalind had never been one for fashion, so Cecily decided on a plain black cocktail dress. Draining her coffee, she asked Mary to call for Archer to bring the car out front. During the drive there, Cecily felt nervous; she still had no idea why Rosalind would think to invite her. She lived in Brooklyn – an address that she’d learnt from Priscilla was recently becoming popular with the younger set. Dorothea had commented that it was full of Irish, their families still there after building the Brooklyn Bridge.
‘This neighbourhood’s gotta lot of beautiful old brownstones,’ Archer said as they drove through the streets. ‘It’s been run-down for a while, but people like your friend are movin’ here ’cos they get a lotta house for their dollar. New York’s always changing, ain’t it, Miss Cecily?’
The car pulled up in front of a neat brownstone set in a row of far shabbier houses and Cecily stepped out.
‘I shouldn’t be much longer than an hour,’ she said to Archer, then walked up the steps to the front door.
‘Cecily! How wonderful you could make it.’ Rosalind, whose dark hair was cut in a sleek bob similar to Mamie’s, smiled at her as she led her into a pleasant sitting room filled with young women, many of them wearing pants. Cecily felt hideously old-fashioned and overdressed.
‘Beer or sherry?’ Rosalind asked as she steered her over to a drinks cart.
‘Oh, sherry, please. Will I know anybody here?’
‘Of course you will. Apart from the odd exception, they were all in our year at Vassar. So, the New York gossip machine tells me you’ve been living in Africa?’ Rosalind said. ‘We can’t wait to hear all about it, can we, Beatrix?’
A Negro woman with a pair of wide, warm eyes appraised Cecily.
‘No, we can’t, given that’s where our forefathers were from, Rosalind.’
Cecily looked at the two women in confusion.
‘Don’t worry, Cecily,’ Rosalind chuckled. ‘Most people don’t recognise me for the Negro I really am. There was obviously a rogue white man way back when, but my heart is as black as Beatrix’s. Vassar didn’t know until after I’d received my degree – you know what they’re like there, Cecily. If they had their way, we’d be sweeping the floors, not sitting in lecture halls with folks like you. It’s changing slowly, mind you. They were embarrassed into taking Beatrix in 1940, as other colleges had a far bigger coloured quota. So say hello to our first official Negro Vassar graduate.’
‘And I hope that I will be the first of many,’ Beatrix smiled. ‘I’m at Yale Medical School right now, and the challenge there isn’t just the colour of my skin, but the fact that I’m a woman. Double whammy, eh, Rosalind?’
‘You bet,’ said Rosalind, indicating a quieter corner at the back of the room. ‘Now, Cecily, come and tell us all about Africa. It’s Kenya you live in, isn’t it?’
At first, Cecily performed her usual party piece about safaris, lions and deadly snakes, but Rosalind soon stopped her.
‘Tell me, in a colonial country, do the Negroes have rights? Are there activist parties?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘So even though Kenya is a predominately black society, Negroes – in their own country – are still ruled by a few white men in uniform?’ asked Beatrix.
‘Yes, that’s how it is, I’m afraid. Although I know that since the war, when many of them signed up to fight for king and country—’
‘Their country, but not their king,’ Beatrix interrupted.
‘Yes, of course,’ Cecily agreed hastily, ‘they were fed the line that life would improve for them if they did fight. Then they returned and nothing had changed. In fact, my husband said recently that it’s gotten worse.’
‘Would you say that tension is building there?’ Rosalind asked.
‘Yes,’ Cecily replied, thinking back to her conversations with Bill over recent months. ‘The Kikuyu – that’s the largest tribe in Kenya – are no longer simply accepting the appalling conditions and slave labour demanded by their white masters. There is zero healthcare for any of them – I can only think of one hospital for coloureds nearby and that’s funded by a charity. And as for education . . .’
‘Tell me about it,’ Rosalind rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not much better for our kids here in the US either, although at least there is education available for both white and black, and unlike in the South, it isn’t segregated. But the white kids outnumber ours and there’s still underlying prejudice, especially from the teaching staff themselves. I know, because I was one of the minority at high school.’
‘I’ve done my best to teach my housekeeper’s child mathematics and to read and write . . . she’s the brightest of buttons.’
‘Well, well.’ Rosalind raised an eyebrow at Beatrix then turned back to Cecily. ‘I have a five-year-old girl and I just don’t want her to have to face what I went through to complete my education. I want her to learn in a safe and supportive environment where she feels valued and isn’t dealing with taunts and jibes from her classmates or being unfairly singled out by her teachers. So . . . I’m in the process of setting up a little school right here in my house. Beatrix and I have chosen a number of bright Negro kids we know who we’re planning to educate, with a view to them eventually getting into Ivy League colleges.’
‘Our kids simply have to have role models they can aspire to. They have to believe they can do it, and it’s up to us to show them they can,’ Beatrix added, her eyes shining with fervour.
‘So you say you’ve been educating your housekeeper’s daughter?’ said Rosalind.
‘I have, yes. Stella – that’s her name – soaks up what I teach her like a sponge.’
‘Would you care to bring her here to meet us?’ asked Rosalind. ‘She might be a good candidate for our school. And if you were interested, I could use an extra pair of teaching hands. Beatrix will be far too busy with medicine at Yale, so I’m pretty much setting this up alone.’
‘That sounds incredible, Rosalind,’ breathed Cecily. ‘I’ve never thought such a thing might be possible for Stella.’
‘Well, we’d be mighty glad to have you too. You majored in History, didn’t you?’
‘I did, but my passion was really Economics, and even if I say so myself, I have a good head for figures.’
‘And Rosalind’s all about Humanities, so between the two of you, and with some help from me when I can spare the time, you could muddle through the sciences,’ Beatrix chuckled. ‘You just got to remember that everything’s possible in the land of the free – as long as we make it happen.’
‘So when should I bring Stella here to meet you?’
‘Just as soon as you like. The semester officially starts next week, so how about this Friday?’ Rosalind suggested.
‘Perfect.’
Beatrix and Rosalind accompanied her to the front door, and as the three of them said goodbye, Rosalind regarded her quizzically.
‘Say, Cecily, how would you feel about joining us at a protest?’
‘I . . . don’t know. What exactly are you protesting against?’
‘The housing situation in Harlem is abysmal. Negroes are ghettoised – there’s just awf
ul overcrowding, not to mention the excessive force used by the police to “keep things under control”. Mayor O’Dwyer has been a great friend to our community—’
‘Only so he can get our votes!’ Beatrix cut in.
‘That’s as may be, but he’s made certain promises, and we’re holding him to them. He’s due to speak at the Abyssinian Baptist Church next week and we’ll be there to remind him what’s at stake,’ Rosalind continued. ‘It would be great to have you there, Cecily, you’d be such an asset to our group.’
‘I . . . Let me think about it, okay?’
‘What’s there to think about?’ said Beatrix. ‘It’s a matter of right and wrong, life or death. You should know that better than anyone, having lived in Africa. Please stand with us, Cecily. We need the whites to support our cause too.’
‘All right,’ she agreed, ‘I’ll be there. And now I really must get home. Bye now.’
‘We’ll be in touch with where to meet!’ called Rosalind.
Archer opened the car door for her and she slid onto the back seat.
‘Sorry I took so long.’
‘No problem, Miss Cecily. How was your evening?’ he asked as they set off back for Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge.
‘It was . . . well, utterly amazing!’ Cecily breathed.
The following Wednesday, as directed, Cecily dressed in her plainest clothes. Leaving Stella in the care of Lankenua, who was now looking far healthier, she directed Archer to drive her to Harlem.
‘Excuse me, Miss Cecily?’ he said as he handed her into the rear seat of the Chrysler.
‘You heard me, Archer: Harlem, outside the Abyssinian Baptist Church, 132 West 138th Street,’ Cecily read the address from the note she had written down when on the telephone to Rosalind.
‘Do your parents know you’re going there?’ he said after a pause.
‘Of course,’ Cecily lied, feeling irritated that even as a married woman, Archer still treated her like a child.
‘As you wish, Miss Cecily.’
Cecily looked out of the window as they made their way uptown towards Harlem, where, despite her bravado when giving Archer the address, she had never been before. As the skyscrapers of Fifth and Madison receded and they drove slowly up Lenox Avenue, she noticed that the faces on the street were various shades of black and brown rather than white. She suddenly felt like a fish out of water in her own city. Black children sat on the stoops of derelict houses watching the Chrysler cruise past, the windows of many of the stores were boarded up, and rusting, overflowing trash cans were gathered on street corners. Despite the fact it was 1947, it felt like the Depression hadn’t even begun to end here just yet.
The Sun Sister Page 60
