Seline shook her head, smiled. ‘No. Not really. Of course I do, sometimes. Not now.’ She took Rita’s hand, placed it in her lap. ‘Now I’m thinking that I enjoy living too, sitting here with you, by this river.’
She hesitated, then whispered, ‘You don’t want to get married, chechi?’
‘I’m not the marrying type,’ Seline smiled.
It was a common enough phrase, but she had heard it before, and the image of the speaker flashed before her: the room they were sitting in, the sight of him breaking pieces off the stick of bread for her. For a moment she felt her head spin; for a moment she could not discern if she were remembering Ben or his brother, and she had to place her hands face down on the rock beside her so that she could feel something solid – hard, cool – beneath her fingers and remind herself where she was.
Her cousin was continuing: ‘And I don’t think my mother was either. That was part of her problem.’ She turned now and held Rita’s eyes. ‘She lived a life that was not of her choosing. My father will never admit that.’
She returned Seline’s gaze, taking the moment to regard her cousin: the sweep of hair from her forehead into the single plait, the angles of her face.
‘And is this life the one you have chosen?’ she asked quietly, unable to prevent the tears that filled her eyes as she said the words: she was so full of love for her cousin.
‘Actually, yes, Reetiekutty.’ Seline smiled, squeezed her hand. ‘I get ill sometimes; it might happen again. But, yes, this is the life I have chosen.’
Later, as they climbed down the rocks and walked on the track back to where their driver was waiting for them, another name chimed like a bell in her head – not ghostly this time but sonorous, like a symphony – a name which stroked her with his gentleness, his tenderness. She had avoided thinking of him, even as she had submerged herself in revisiting her entanglement with Ben. She had not returned her thoughts to those interim weeks, to all that had happened before her return to the crumbling house, her uncle and her cousin.
The rains arrived: the afternoons were spent with the thundering sound of the monsoon on the rooftops. After, her parents arrived for Christmas. Her mother’s chest heaved with emotion on seeing her, as she held her in a long embrace; her father kissed her forehead, patting her shoulder awkwardly. Good to see you, mol. If she felt she was in exile, she realised her parents felt the same, in exile in London. Mira had sent a stack of pictures for her Reetieaunty, brightly coloured crayoned rainbows which sang out from the paper: Joy and family would be visiting next spring.
By the time her brother and family arrived, Onachen and Seline had started overseeing the renovations to the old house, and Rita had been given more responsibility over the caretaking of the antique shop, with Latha commenting on how efficiently she had adapted to her new circumstances. It was after her brother and family had been and gone, after another season of rains, that her mother broached the subject on the phone one evening: do you want us to try and arrange something?
She understood their line of thinking: she needed to be protected, and Onachen could not be her guardian for ever. Perhaps, too, they felt she could not be entrusted with her own safety: she had proved herself an unreliable self-adjudicator. Yes, she had now a history which would complicate matters, but she had youth, good looks and a British passport to redress the balance. There was, her mother continued, a pharmacist, from Kottayam, who was interested. His parents had both passed away: this fact given with the implicit coda that it would immediately smooth the way for a marriage to a fallen woman such as Rita. Perhaps next year? She did not reply immediately. She had completed the courses Latha had enrolled her on; and she had also registered to complete a distance degree with a college in Surrey. Whether she engaged with her studies from Tooting or from the house in Mattancherry now did not matter. She felt, just as she had always done, that the space around her was irrelevant; she was a person who dwelled in her thoughts.
But did she want to return? And as a wife? If she had learned anything else of herself it was this: she was only in India because she herself felt that was where she needed to be. Her family had not forced her into anything, just as Ben had never forced her into anything. She could now offer them a neat ending to the whole episode. The obstacle: her insides were steeped with memories of what had happened, which clung to her muscles, her tendons, her nerves. How could she grow if she could not remove them from her body, to a place outside her? And if she did, would she then be able to return herself to the living world?
That evening, she told her mother in answer to her question: she did not want to go back to London, not yet; she would finish her degree. And as for the other matter: she would think about it. And then, alone in her room later, she extracted her notebook and stared at it, an idea forming inside her, inside her body, it seemed, as if a small heartbeat had begun.
27
BY late March he had a canvas ready for the Hearts of Darkness exhibition, which needed to be shipped to London in time for the opening. The weather was warm and dry; he kept the French doors in his flat open. Lucie had left a month earlier, and this was the time of year when he planned his travels: once he had flown out to Cape Verde and then São Tomé; one year he had set off with Lucie for the south of the country, driving across the border to the Andalusian coast. Most years he had gone to London on his own and from there elsewhere. This year, he would be doing the same: staying with his parents for two weeks while the exhibition ran, after which he would accompany Patricia, her sister Tsitsi and her two daughters to Zimbabwe. Neither parent had wanted to join him on this return to his birthplace; both had quietened, exhausted by the events of the last months.
The morning after Rita left, that morning back in January, the rain had arrived. The streets were slick with water, the cobbles slippery, the alleys dank and damp. He remembered thinking: she never saw it like this. She would carry a halcyon view of life in Lisbon: a city of sunshine, cafés and parties. His mother had been quiet when he had phoned her that same morning, asking only one question, what’s that noise? To which he had replied that it was the rain on the skylights in his flat. He had told her that the girl must have taken a taxi to the airport, boarded one of the many flights that left for London. He told his mother that he had sent messages and that when he had not heard back, he had called; her phone was turned off, and he had not received a reply to that or any of his subsequent calls.
Within a day, his parents had more to worry about. The Armstrong family were insisting that the university investigate whether Ben Martin had had a recent affair with an undergraduate student in his department. They also asked the question: had there been others? Surely this possibility – that Ben had preyed on young female students in what would be a clear abuse of office – must be investigated before an award in his name was to be set up? The following weeks were spent on tenterhooks. His parents were on the phone to him nearly every day with updates. The university was taking the allegations seriously. Colleagues had identified a student who had not returned and whom many suspected had engaged in a relationship with Ben; contact had been made. Days passed during which the student was given an opportunity to lodge a formal complaint, be offered extenuating circumstances, and be granted any assistance for a deferral. While the Armstrong family pressed for details, the university insisted that they had a duty of care to protect the identity of the student and had instructed all members of staff to respect such a duty. A few days later, his parents learned, the student had sent a formal response to the Dean of Student Services: no complaint would be lodged. Further investigations had not revealed any other cases that needed to be reviewed concerning Ben Martin. The university’s sigh of relief was audible even from hundreds of miles away. But the misconduct committee had requested in the same breath, his mother told him, that while they wished that the award be upheld, under the circumstances and out of respect for the Armstrongs, that the family consider renaming it. The wrangling had blown a frost between the families, and a
tacit understanding was reached: ties would not be maintained.
It was at the start of the most fraught few weeks his parents had ever endured, when the memory of their son was to be sullied, that his father had phoned Francois: if anyone needs to know what we know, about Ben and Rita, it’s Patricia. He offered to fly into London, but his parents dissuaded him; he suspected that they wanted him to maintain as great a distance for as long as possible from Rita. His mother was firm: she would talk to Patricia in the first instance. Patricia phoned a few hours after his mother had left her.
‘You know what, Francois?’ she said, and he clutched at the familiar tones of her accent, just as he clutched at the phone. ‘You know I’m jealous of that girl, that she could make him so crazy to risk everything.’
He had remained quiet, and she had grunted. ‘Jealous, you know?’
He spoke: ‘Patricia, he really valued you. That’s clear from all his work . . .’
‘Sometimes, though, Francois. I just wonder . . .’
Why was he reassuring a married woman over his brother’s infatuation with a young student? It seemed that everyone had their own reaction to the news. It was only to Gildo that he said, when he had gone over the following weekend, when they were alone, Jacinta out of earshot: deixou-me. She left me. And as he had always known he would, Gildo had not made a barbed comment or even chided him, but simply held his arm tightly. Coragem.
Patricia rang back a few days later; her voice was more measured. She had talked to Michael, she said, and she had already told his parents their decision. The award was not dependent on Ben Martin’s canonisation; his good work and his friendship had not changed with the revelation of the affair. The award could be named after her project, Manyame, but his parents could still be involved in the selection process, and to all intents it would remain a memorial to Ben. That was when she had extended her invitation: come with me, Francois. We can walk down memory lane. After he had agreed, she had said, before ending the call, but remember, you don’t have to be your brother.
With Rita gone, he could regard himself with more censure: the circumstances of how they had met could not be changed and neither could the fact that he had fallen in love with her. But even as he wanted her, he knew that his position was tenuous. His brother had propelled the girl into a world which had overwhelmed her; he could not assume that he, Francois, was the right person to see her through to the next stages of her life. She had removed herself for a reason. Perhaps she had sensed his desire for her and this had concerned or even frightened her. This, he would have to accept. More difficult was to stem his concerns for her welfare, of how her family would react to her return. Arriving in London before he flew out with Patricia, after his commitments at the exhibition ended he excused himself from his parents, retraced his steps to the semi-detached house on the quiet road. As if he were reliving his first visit, her mother opened the door, again in a shapeless gown, but this time her eyes widened with recognition, and there was no invitation to enter. She stood in the doorway, uncertain, choosing her responses carefully. She made no mention of his last visit, nor any mention of the week that Rita had spent in Lisbon. She only said, in response to his question, she is not here. Might he know when she will be back? A long pause. She is not here; she is in India. He nodded, smiled. That’s nice, his skin tightening. What had she said? They’ve always been gentle. He could only hope that she knew her parents. He knew at least that Rita had indeed returned to her parents, not absconded somewhere else, disappeared, to struggle somewhere, alone and scared. Please, he said, when you speak to her next, please give her my best wishes. The next day he flew out with Patricia’s entourage.
At the airport, Patricia was asked, in Shona, but he just about understood: this is your husband? A friend of my husband, she had replied, her eyes cast down, her voice subdued, respectful. She was playing a role, to offset her obvious wealth, her two honey-coloured children, who were hanging off his arms, grinning, as if to deny what she had said. Patricia had commented: they like you, Francois; you have a way with children, don’t you? Did he? Gildo’s daughter was the only child he had really known, and even then, when she became a teenager she had drifted from his company. But he could see that Patricia’s daughters were taken with him, assuming a familiarity almost instantly. In transit, they had taken turns to ask him to draw something for them: their mother had revealed he was an artist. When they had exhausted subjects for his sketches, they took turns clambering onto his shoulders, patting his head and tugging at his hair as if he were their pet, while their mother and aunt remonstrated with them. He had waved away their worries. If the girls tired themselves, they might sleep on the plane, which they did, head to toe, using their mother and aunt as pillows; for this, they shunned Francois. The officer at the airport had stared wordlessly at Francois’s passport, turning page after page, his expression bored. Finally: and what do you do? I’m an artist, and then immediately the officer nodded, stamped their documents, waved them through, as if this were the exact profession that would be welcomed in the country, to solve its ills. For something had died, a spark had been lost, a joy. It was no longer, in this way, the country in which he had grown up.
His family had lived in a large bungalow in the suburb of Mount Pleasant; his father would cycle to the university. A sprawling house but not ostentatious. It was cold in the short bitter winters; they used the open fire in the living room. There were rugs on the parquet floors, faded furniture, books everywhere. They no longer owned the house, and he returned to stay in Patricia’s modern, elegant villa, which bore little resemblance to the old comfortable family home he had grown up in, in a different part of the city. When he went for a run in the area, he became breathless; he had forgotten that the city sat at a high altitude. There were groups of women sitting by the sides of the roads, with sacks of fruit, cigarettes and other items; street vending had been rarely seen in this part of the city when he was growing up. It was different, going back. What had Ben said? There’s a whole new quality to the light.
He could not be his brother, as he had agreed with Patricia, but he wanted to do something while he was in Harare. And it was Patricia’s idea that he bring his camera and take photographs of the children in the children’s village that Ben used to visit, so that they could each have a portrait of themselves and of their foster families. These children did not cherish their childhoods, Patricia had said. It was all about moving them on, onwards, into adulthoods where their lives would be no less precarious. An easy request for him to comply with; the reward was far greater for him. It was touching how long the girls especially, budding into adolescence, took over their toilette before appearing before him, completely unadorned, their hair cut in short burrs. He could have finished in a day, but he took more than a week, simply to extend the pleasure his project was clearly giving. And then he took more photographs of the centre and the staff, for a book that Patricia was editing.
On their last day, they were surprised with an afternoon tea and a large cake. The staff who worked in the centre seated themselves around a table in the hall; the children took the bottles of cola that Patricia had brought as a treat outside. A thick slice of cake was put on his plate, alongside a strong mug of tea. Aside from the older man who worked in the kitchen, he was the only adult male at the table, and as if in synchronisation with his thoughts, Patricia turned to him.
‘This lady, Agnes,’ she said, gesturing to the woman sitting on his other side, whom he recognised as one of the house-mothers, ‘she wants you to know that she is one of the women Ben wrote about in his second book.’
She was small and plump, mid-forties, he guessed, with shining eyes and teeth.
‘He called me Annabel,’ the woman said quietly, and then laughed, her bosom shaking. ‘I didn’t like the name.’
Annabel, Chapter 7, he thought as he held out his hand. He had not reached that far in Ben’s book, had returned it to the shelf without retrieving it again. Perhaps he was worried which othe
r messages, or even edicts, he would receive from his dead sibling. Agnes took his hand, and he found he did not want to let it go. Her lips were stretched wide, but her eyes were full of sympathy. She had watched him work, this last week, without revealing her presence in his brother’s publications, one of the daughters of Africa. Perhaps, just as Patricia had advised, she had wanted him, first, to carve his own role in the children’s village before reminding him of Ben’s. ‘We pray for you and your family,’ she said. Perhaps it was the generosity of the sentiment, when they were surrounded by children who had suffered more loss in their short lives than he ever had, or simply that he would have to get used to the sudden waves of grief that would swell and ebb unannounced all through the rest of his life, but his throat tightened as he held the woman’s hand, whose story Ben had listened to. The two women moved closer; Patricia squeezed his arm, and Agnes did not let go of his hand, while with her other she pushed his mug of tea closer. As the cake dwindled and the children ran in and out, he talked with the woman, a simple activity which gave him immense comfort. He could imagine Ben with his recorder, perhaps under that tree in the yard against which some of the smaller boys were kicking a makeshift football, sitting with Agnes. Now he, Francois, was listening to the same voice.
There were a few family friends – his parents’ friends – who still remained in the country and who wished to see him after such a long time; a few parties to which he took Patricia as his guest, where she demonstrated the panache with which she could comport herself. In each he introduced her: she was a good friend of Ben’s. The weeks passed quickly. He now had a visa and he would be travelling by bus to Mutare, then over the border to Mozambique; for his plan was to travel by land down to Maputo, where he knew, conversely, he would feel more at home than in the land of his birth. The week before he left, he took Patricia and the girls out for lunch at Da Guido’s: he remembered how she had enjoyed that first quasi-date with Ben. And while the setting was as pleasant as ever, the bushes surrounding the outdoor tables smelling of jasmine, when they parked, young boys appeared like wolves, offering to look after the car in exchange for a few dollars, something he could not remember happening in his childhood. And as they tried to order from the menu, the waiter kept apologising: sorry, sir, that is not available. Ingredients had become scarce. The two girls began to giggle at the charade, mimicking the hapless waiter behind their menu cards, while Patricia scolded them, vexed and embarrassed. Afterwards, he offered to drop Patricia back at the villa while he took the girls off her hands: the animal reserve on the other side of the city would still be open, wouldn’t it? The girls enjoyed the outing, bounding ahead up the viewing platform, shouting excitedly at the rather dry-looking elephants and giraffes that had come sauntering forwards to the watering hole. The trio attracted much attention; most would assume he was their father, and he did not disoblige. The reserve was slightly worse for wear, but it was still uplifting to be reminded where they were: under the roads and the houses was the savannah. The land that Ben had written about – fought over, cheated of, ravaged – was the land on which he and his brother had grown up. The sun was hot and the sky clear; when the girls clamoured for an ice-cream he agreed – he would square it with their mother. Did you say thank you to Francois? Patricia asked on their return, and then she laid her hand on his chest. She called back, Francois. Denise.
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