Love Patterns

by Michael B. Malone

  “I’ll be back in a week or two.” Kathleen nodded. I left two days later.

  I opened the door to Jerie’s apartment with some trepidation as if her ghost might still be there, but there was a stillness as if the house was dead. I sat on the bed and let my thoughts drift, then decided to clear the apartment. I stored some of Jerie’s clothes and effects, and her diaries in a crate and had it sent back to Scotland.

  The next day I donated the rest of Jerie’s clothes, her bicycle and many of her possessions to a native charity but left the furniture in the apartment. I found the life stone where I’d left it and as I touched it I imagined I felt her essence. I slept that night holding it and had strange dreams. I was walking past witchdoctors and wise men and women in a line stretching far into the distance and as I passed them they were all trying to tell me something. I woke to the feeling of Jerie in my arms, my left hand stroking the round smoothness of her bottom but when I opened my eyes I was alone. I started at the memory of a vision. I’d been living in a native village. I remembered the smell of wood smoke, cattle on a plain and in the distance Mount Kenya. I remembered a forest on a hill. I knew I had to find this place.

  I phoned Kathleen and when she asked me how long I meant to stay I told her I was going to wander around Kenya for a while. She was quiet for a moment then said, “Come back to me safe William.”

  “Am I going mad?” I muttered.

  I had breakfast then sat on the edge of the bed considering. I remembered when I’d looked for a house in Kenya and had been irresistibly drawn to the advert for the house where Kabero was houseboy and through him had met Jerie.

  “I’m being guided?” I decided.

  I remembered when I’d taken Jerie on an aeroplane flight round Mount Kenya. I contacted the outfit, found it was still in existence and booked a flight for the next day, puzzling at all the coincidences that were woven into my life. I didn’t want to appear eccentric, so I told the pilot that I wanted to find a place I had seen in a photograph and described it to him.

  “A plain right up to the slopes of Mount Kenya”? He thought for a while. “It will be between the south and east, probably nearer the east.”

  I took the seat beside him and we took off. He flew towards Mount Kenya until I told him he was at about the right distance, then he circled north east. I found the forest on the hill after nearly two hours of flying, south of the small town of Meru. After we returned I hired a Land Rover, bought supplies for the journey and stocked up with petrol cans and water. I stayed the night in a flea-bitten hotel in Meru, left the Land Rover in the charge of the garage owner and set out on foot. I found the forested hill and toiled up the slope. Sweating, I set down my rucksack and sat for a rest in the shade of a tree, my back against its trunk. My eyes closed.

  I came out of my doze to see a wizened old man in a leopard skin cloak, leaning on a carved wooden staff staring intently at me. I suppressed my shock and examined the man’s pattern. There were swirls of colours I couldn’t interpret but I could detect no danger. I studied the man’s ebony face. It was wrinkled like the sun-baked bed of a dried-up watering hole. His wide mouth smiled and there was understanding and wisdom in his eyes.

  The witchdoctor’s necklace of monkey skulls clattered as he moved.

  “You’re late!” he reproved in a dry whispery voice. “Come with me.”

  Without question I followed the man as he climbed the hill, then descended a slope to a village on the other side. Tribespeople emerged from their huts to stare silently at us as we passed. I was led to a hut a short distance from the village. The man squatted on the bare earth. I did the same. He held out his hand and without a thought I handed over the Life stone. His eyes gazed into the distance. Time passed, it began to grow dark. I felt a tingle and I knew that the man was examining my pattern.

  “You are the last carrier,” he said and gave me back the stone.

  “What do you mean?” I spoke for the first time.

  The whisper came to me in the darkness. “This stone has been passed through countless generations, adding to its power from carrier to carrier. You are the last carrier. You have to give it to someone.”

  “But what is it?”

  “In your language it might be called a catalyst.”

  “Who do I have to give it to?”

  The man gazed into the distance. “I don’t know but you will know.” A light suddenly flared, and an oil lamp was lit. “Eat and drink now,” I was told, “and sleep.”

  After eating the maize porridge and sipping the water, I was directed to a straw pallet with a blanket spread over it. I took off my clothes, slipped under the blanket and fell asleep immediately.

  Over the next two months I was assimilated into the everyday life of the tribe. I helped tend the cattle, following the herd and protecting it from predators. I became used to the strong smell of the beasts and learned their ways and how to doctor minor injuries. I found the herding deeply satisfying as if some ancient tribal memory was stirring.

  The tribe lived to the rhythm of the seasons. I wondered what my friends would think if they could see me now, living in a mud hut, squatting over an open fire with the sharp tang of wood smoke in my nostrils as I cooked my meals, performing my toilet among the trees and walked after a slow-moving herd of cattle. Yet I felt entirely at home waking up in the morning to the chirp of birds, watching the sun rise and the world waking up, with no electricity, telephone, television or tapped water. I breathed deeply. I stank, my clothes stank, but it was the pleasant sweet smell of cattle and earthy things.

  In the evenings I sat at the witchdoctor, Yepo’s feet, and listened to his low hypnotic voice instructing me in the psychic and spiritual ways of the world. I was taken to the woods and plains and the slopes of Mount Kenya, where Yepo attracted a great variety of beasts and birds and taught me how to communicate feelings by aligning my pattern with theirs. I found that the animals had the same kind of pattern as my own, not so complicated, but similar, and began to share Yepo’s reverence for all living things. With an effort I could even glimpse the countless millions of tiny sparks that were insects and bugs just under the ground. I became able to see the Earth’s primitive but powerful pattern and interpret it.

  I learned that anyone I’d met and interacted with was connected to me and learned how to follow the psychic trail to them, even if they were on the other side of the world. I found Kathleen’s pattern and examined it. For a long time, I’d been aware of a dark area in her pattern and worried about it but now I was puzzled to find it gone. With Yepo’s guidance I began to see deeper, larger patterns and how individual patterns were connected to it.

  One day after returning from herding the cattle, I found Yepo waiting for me. “You have learned all you need to know now. Return home tomorrow,” he said. With that he stalked off, leaving me stunned.

  I rose early the next morning and left quietly before anyone in the village stirred. There was no sign of Yepo. I reclaimed the Land Rover and set out on the long trip back to Nairobi. The next day I arrived at the apartment. I phoned Kathleen to say I’d be back in two or three days and when I told her I’d been living with a witchdoctor in some tribal village and herding cattle for the last two months, she sounded amazed.

  I arranged for the apartment to be sold and the proceeds given to native charities and had the contents of Jerie’s bank account sent to Kaninu. I returned the Land Rover, packed my case and looked around the apartment, trying to remember, but it was like trying to peer through a fog. I hired a taxi to the airport and while waiting in the departure lounge at Nairobi airport I met David Balfour. We sat beside each other in the plane and I learned he’d finished his tour of duty in Kenya and was taking up a post in Edinburgh to specialise in gynaecology.

  “You couldn’t imagine the state of some of the women I’ve had to treat,” he told me. “Female circumcision is rife, usually performed by an older woman with a dirty piece of glass, some of the results are horrific.”

 
; “Are you planning to come back to Kenya?” I asked.

  “I’m hoping to come back to help,” he replied. “What they need is education. Nature has designed women’s bodies this way. There are enough problems without interference causing infections and problems during childbirth. I’ve been lobbying the health department to get a specialist wing set up.”

  “Any success?” I asked.

  David just grimaced. When we reached Edinburgh, we decided to keep in touch.

  I phoned Kathleen to tell her my time of arrival in Dundee. She promised to meet me. When I got off the train, she rushed towards me and threw herself at me before I had time to drop my luggage.

  “I’ve really, really missed you William,” she cried, pushing her body close to me and kissing me passionately.

  She wouldn’t let go of my hand all the way to the car, and while driving home, she frequently touched my hand, giving me a quick smile. When we got home, as soon as I dropped my luggage, she suggested we go to bed, giggling at my amazement. I’d only half got my clothes off when she pushed me back on top of the bedclothes and mounted me, giving long throaty moans as she moved. Later she lay on top of me panting.

  “That was so good,” she sighed. I was gobsmacked.

  When we took all our clothes off and snuggled under the blankets I asked, “What happened to you Kathleen, you were …” I didn’t know how to continue.

  Kathleen giggled. “I just suddenly felt better.”

  I was amazed. Two months ago, I was nearly having a nervous breakdown, now I felt completely normal and Kathleen was back to her old self. We had a bath together, touching each other constantly, then I dressed in clean clothes. Over dinner and a bottle of wine I told her of my adventures in Kenya while she sat wide eyed, listening intently. While Kathleen was at school the next day, I found time to unpack my case.

  Chapter 23

  Kathleen and I settled down to normal married life. We were happy, Kathleen at school and myself doing occasional supply teaching, writing and charitable work in Kenya. We grew closer and closer, each other’s love supporting the other. Sex between us was often a spiritual experience. If I could make her fly, then together we could reach the still places that mystics sought. The little black girl we’d once known became just a faint memory.

  David Balfour married an Edinburgh woman and Kathleen and I were invited to the wedding. Soon afterwards David and his wife left to take up a post in Nairobi.

  I suspected that Heather, and James Gillespie were still grateful to me for bringing them together at school, as we were invited to their wedding. They occasionally visited us and brought along their first child, Claire who, when she was older, I used to call Miss Bossy-boots. Much later they had a second girl Kirsty, who was more introspective. I was saddened to hear a little later that James had been killed in a car accident and even more distressed to learn that Heather died about two years later, leaving, Claire to raise Kirsty. My far east investments were showing huge profits, so I sold up and after discussing my plans with David Balfour I had a gynaecology wing built at a Nairobi hospital with the proviso that David be the specialist in charge.

  Jomo Kenyatta became prime minister of Kenya and a year later Kenya became a republic, with Kenyatta as president. I met Jomo on a few occasions. He came to the opening ceremony of a girl’s school I had endowed and while chatting, after the ceremony, he opined that I might have been better endowing a boy’s school.

  From somewhere inside me the reply came. “If you educate boys you get educated men but if you educate girls you get educated women and families and soon an educated nation.”

  I saw his eyes look inwards as if he was considering, so I said nothing more, but let the idea germinate. Soon after, I heard his education minister use almost the same words and in the years after, statesmen of other African countries making the same point. Sometime after this I met the president at a function and invited him to inspect the hospital wing I had endowed. He agreed to visit.

  David Balfour told me about it afterwards. When Jomo visited, David had taken him to a Masai girl’s bed and got her permission to let President Kenyatta see her wounds. When he’d pulled back the blankets to let Jomo see what had been done to her, he said that the president turned a shade of dark green at the sight of all the outside genitals cut away and the pus and obvious infection in the wound. When David had repeated his conversation to me about nature making women a certain way to cut down on infection the president had stormed off, muttering about butchery and ignorance.

  Afterwards, and I like to think because of David, official tolerance of female circumcision lessened, and prosecutions were brought against the perpetrators when their operations resulted in infections or death. Kenyatta even took the lead in the government’s disapproval of the much less dramatic clitoral circumcision that he’d previously espoused among his own Kikuyu. David and his wife Isobel spent the next five years in Kenya and we visited them several times and Kathleen doted on their two children, Katie and Alan. David eventually accepted a consultant’s post in Edinburgh.

  Kenyatta died in 1978 and Kathleen and I were invited to the state funeral.

  Sadly, the country seemed to go downhill after his death.

  The years passed, and we became frail. I watched from my window, smiling at life going on. I watched the children heading for primary school past my house. First, five-year old girls holding each other’s hands, then it seemed no time at all before they were proudly pushing their budding breasts against the gates to womanhood, then holding their boyfriend’s hands, stopping for a kiss occasionally. Soon they were passing with attentive husbands, their belly’s swelling with pride. Life went on.

  Chapter 24

  The young girl tensed and turned to look downhill, senses questing for the source of the prescient tingle. A mist hovered over the lower ground, muting and distorting sounds. Ghostly figures moved towards her and she shivered apprehensively, her fingers tightening on her stick. The dim shapes transformed into mud caked older boys. Her heart and her breathing slowed. The whistle blew for the start of the second half. She turned away.

  Trudging back to their changing rooms, the rugby squad recognised their school colours and stopped to shout encouragement to the girls on the hockey pitch. Alan Balfour watched the girl, his gaze intent. He became aware of someone shaking his arm.

  “Is she not a bit young?” he was asked.

  He dragged his eyes away from the young girl to challenge the grins of his team mates. After they looked away he focused his eyes again on the little, red haired, girl darting among the bigger girls like a sparrow among crows. A strange tingle of excitement ran up and down his spine. He gasped as she was knocked flat on her back by the jostling heavier girls, but she sprang immediately to her feet and charged back into the fray, her matchstick legs a blur.

  The rest of the team left but Alan dallied, pushing his long fair hair away from his eyes to watch the girl break out from a melee with the ball and dodge nimbly past a number of opponents. She scored, and her team mates swarmed around her. Returning to her own half, she passed near Alan and flashed a smile to a woman in front of him who waved her arms and jumped up and down, her dark hair bobbing. The girl’s eyes swept past him then returned, touching him like a finger.

  Time seemed to slow. With a strangely enhanced vision he examined the small face, the luminous green eyes fixed on him, the faint flaring of the nostrils with her breath, the beads of perspiration and the damp hair clinging to her forehead, the pattern of freckles round her nose and the lips changing from the curve of a smile into the slight downturn of uncertainty. He felt close to her as if … as if … he dragged his soaring thoughts back to watch. Curiosity turned to puzzlement in her eyes before she turned away. He sighed, watched for a while longer then belatedly followed his teammates. He imagined he felt her gaze on his back and turned quickly to look but caught only a flash of green eyes, as she turned her head. Puzzled, he made his way to the changing room.

  Th
e referee whistled for the end of the game and the girls straggled off to change, chattering, while their parents gathered in small groups discussing the match, the Edinburgh weather and the frequency of trains back to Dundee.

  The little redhead came tearing out of her changing room, plaits flying, and calling behind her to one of her friends. She ran slap into Alan who was passing. She would have fallen had he not put his arm around her to gently steady her.

  “Are you, all right?” he asked.

  “Yes. Sorry,” she stuttered, glancing up at him.

  As their eyes met, it was as if something deep within each of them stirred and looked out. A strange feeling of elation moved him. His hand reached out without his volition to touch her cheek. The young girl’s eyes widened. She put her hand over his and moved her cheek slightly as if she liked his touch. Secrets whispered around them, tantalising, but just out of reach.

  The time was not yet ripe. The moment passed. With an embarrassed laugh he snatched back his hand. The girl smiled shyly and gazed up at him, her eyes questioning and innocent. He felt lost.

  He desperately wanted to prolong the encounter but was aware of the dark-haired woman approaching, he tore his gaze away and hurried after his team mates. He turned to look at her one last time, puzzled, as if some future memory stirred inside him, then he smiled at her and joined his friends.

  The dark-haired woman called, “Kirsty.” The call went unheeded. She followed her charge’s entranced gaze, and smiled.

  Chapter 25

  Kirsty Gillespie put down her pen as the invigilator signalled the end of the examination. She shuffled her answer papers into order and started to move and talk, relieved to ease the tension of the two hours of silent concentration. As she stood and stretched, smoothed the wrinkles in her skirt and arched her neck to ease the stiffness, the sun streaming through the window beside her was reflected in a coruscation of colours, from light gold to deep rust as she shook back her mane of red hair. Suddenly conscious of the male eyes on her, she left with a smile of amusement.