Local Customs

by Audrey Thomas

  Letty: I had begun by writing from memory, but then dear Mr. Swanzy offered me a complete set that he had in his library. Who would have expected that from a hardened old merchant like himself? The bindings were falling apart and the pages were musty, but that didn’t matter; the words were as fresh and beautiful as when I had encountered them for the first time

  Brodie: “It is so good to hear the sound of an Englishwoman’s voice.”

  Letty: Surely you would prefer a woman from your own country?

  Brodie: I thought of Morag. Would I have wished Morag there, at that moment, in this charming sitting-room, on the coast of Western Africa? No — because if she were, then I would not be lying on Letty’s settee. Morag was sensible and dear and I seriously thought about marrying her when I was home. But Letty … when Letty brings a cool cloth to place on my aching head it is like a blessing.

  Brodie: I don’t think George cares for me very much; our interviews are very short.

  Letty: Don’t be silly; weren’t you boyhood friends? He is so behind in his work he is abrupt with everyone, even me.

  Brodie: I was closer to his brother Hugh, who is more outgoing. George was quite a solitary boy and he roomed with one of the masters; he rarely joined us day boys in our romps.

  Letty: It is strange that you both ended up on the Coast.

  Brodie: Not so strange, really. The world is peppered with transplanted Scotsmen. I think there is something restless built into our bones.”

  Brodie: The louvres were partially closed against the heat, but the sunlight still came in and lay thin bands of brightness across the room. I could hear the crashing of the sea down below.

  Letty smiled and closed her writing folio. “That’s enough of Jeanie Deans for today.”

  “I think these essays are turning out to be some of your best work so far.”

  “I think so, too. It’s strange: I get so involved in the stories that I am truly transported to Scotland, or to Walter Scott’s Scotland, for the truth is, I have never been north of my uncle’s home in Yorkshire, that when I come out of this writing trance and look around me I’m not quite sure where I am. Perhaps someday I shall write about this Castle, and the sea, and that long line of coconut palms stretching all the way to Elmina — they look so much like tall, one-legged birds with all their feathers at the top. One night some sort of custom was going on, so I went outside and looked down at all those leaping and dancing and yelling figures, lit up by torchlight, and truly felt a thrill of the exotic, truly felt that I was in Africa. Most of the time, shut up here in the Castle, I don’t feel that.”

  “Would you like to attend an Outdooring?”

  “I might, if I knew what it was.”

  “When a child is born out here, it is kept inside for eight days and is not named during that time. This is because each living child has a ghost mother on the other side, who is calling for it to come back. After a week the ghost mother is presumed to have given up; the child is brought outside by the father and with a lot of ceremony the baby is given its name.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. You can come back and tell me all about it.”

  “That won’t be the same as seeing it first-hand. Are you thinking you’ll feel out of place?”

  “It’s partly that, yes.”

  “But I have been invited — I know the family quite well — and you will go as my guest. Would you like me to ask George if you can accompany me?”

  “I’m quite free to come and go as I please.” (Not quite the case, but this annoyed me, the idea that we would have to get George’s permission.)

  “Well then, bring your parasol and I will bring a canteen of fresh water and off we’ll go. It’s high time you saw some of the local customs.”

  Letty: I could think of no way to get out of this short of outright refusal, and so I went.

  Letty

  IT WAS A COLOURFUL SCENE; the paramount chief was there, in his splendid toga-like cloth made of bands of blue and orange interwoven with gold, sitting on a carved chair under a huge red silk umbrella with gold tassels hanging down, rather like a gigantic jellyfish. The chief wore a wreath of gold on his head and an awe-inspiring amount of gold bracelets, rings, and anklets adorned his person. Brodie said his feet are never allowed to touch the ground and so he is carried everywhere in a litter (I pitied the carriers; the old man must have weighed over twenty stone) and when he sits, his feet rest upon a little footstool. The family must be people of consequence, I thought, even though they appeared to live in one of those conical huts thatched with palm leaves that I had first thought were hayricks. Maybe this was just a ceremonial hut and they had a larger establishment elsewhere. The women wore sarongs of Manchester cloth in colours and patterns that dazzled the eye — red with green, yellow with blue, orange with blue; they seemed to have no colour sense whatsoever. The clothes of the men, woven in four-inch strips and in more subdued colours, were more to my taste. There was much talk and laughter and a real sense of anticipation as the gathering waited for the baby to appear. Brodie seemed to know a great many people and I was introduced to the most prominent of the old men, who smiled and nodded their woolly heads. He was just as fluent in the Fantee language as George.

  Soon the door of the hut opened and we all grew silent, forming a kind of horseshoe on either side of the opening. Out came the father carrying the baby, naked except for a string of beads. One of the elders stepped forward, drank something from a calabash (I later learned it was rum) and spit directly into the child’s mouth! I gasped, but no one else seemed to think this was disgusting. The baby was named by the father — Kudjoe something something — and then he was paraded around so we could all take a good look at him. A long table had been set up, with bottles of whiskey and clay pots of palm wine at one end, various delicacies in the middle, and a carved wooden bowl for presents of money at the other. Brodie gave a sovereign, I gave a bottle of whiskey on behalf of the Castle, and ten shillings on behalf of myself.

  When the baby and his father had made the rounds, there was a call for silence and the chief’s linguist stepped forward to announce the gift of two goats and five ounces of gold. (The chief never speaks to the people directly, but always through his linguist.) After that he was heaved into his litter and his retinue bore him away.

  It is so hard to describe the effect of such a scene on a foreign witness. The red earth, the colourful garments — as though a child had gone mad with his paint box — the chattering monkeys high up in the trees, the heat — I must not forget the heat! — the pride on the face of the new parents (for the mother now had charge of the baby once his official promenade was over), the dignity of the old men. It was like an illustration in a book come to life.

  We didn’t stay long. Brodie drank some whiskey and munched on something that looked like dried grasshoppers; I drank from his flask and nibbled on some fresh coconut and then we left.

  “Well?” said Brodie, as he escorted me back along the avenue to the Castle. “How did you like it?”

  “I enjoyed everything about it but the spitting; I thought that was disgusting.”

  “It’s necessary. Something to do with the child’s kra or soul.”

  “I’m surprised he isn’t dead the next day.”

  “A little drop of rum isn’t going to hurt him.”

  “It’s the way the rum was administered.”

  “One gets used to such things. It would be a terrible thing if that part of the ceremony were left out. These people have an elaborate belief system; it just doesn’t happen to be ours. We take a baby to church, where some holy water is splashed on its head, at which point he or she is given a name. It’s not so very different, is it?”

  “The priest doesn’t spit the holy water into the baby’s mouth!”

  “There is that. The Baptists go in for total immersion when a person is baptized, a complete dunking. That has always seemed quite extraordinary to me. I suppose it’s following the tradition of John the Baptist.”
r />   George

  ONE AFTERNOON, WHEN CRUICKSHANK was once again in Cape Coast, I heard him call her “Letty” as he was taking his leave. I wanted to shout down to him, “She’s Mrs. Maclean to you, old chap,” but of course I didn’t.

  I spoke to Letty about it instead.

  “I heard Cruickshank call you ‘Letty’ this afternoon.”

  “That’s my name.”

  “Did you tell him to do this?”

  “Well, of course. He’s become one of my best friends. Maybe my only friend.”

  “I think he should call you ‘Mrs. Maclean,’ like everybody else.”

  “Oh, pooh!”

  “I think I shall have to speak to him.”

  “What are you going on about?”

  “People talk.”

  “What people? What people are there to talk? Mr. Topp? Mr. Freeman? Mr. Swanzy? Mr. Hutton? Ibrahim?

  “My reputation is important to me. This isn’t London. I know you were used to having ‘best friends’ of the opposite sex back home, but it won’t do here.”

  “What do you mean by that remark?”

  “I simply mean that you should be less informal.”

  “Are you saying he shouldn’t call on me when he comes to Cape Coast?”

  “I’m saying he should call you ‘Mrs. Maclean’ and perhaps he shouldn’t call on you quite so often.”

  Letty

  I PUT DOWN MY KNIFE AND FORK and pushed my plate away.

  “I do my domestic chores every morning: so much flour, so much sugar, so much tea. I plan the menu for the day and direct which rooms are to be cleaned. Then I retire to my own rooms to write. I work very hard, as I want to send some, if not all, of the Scott essays home with the October ship. It is solitary work and it occupies me fully in the mornings. I don’t mind; I like it; it’s what I do. And I don’t mind eating my noon-day meal alone, as I am still thinking about my writing. But after that hours and hours go by before I see you at dinnertime. Even a siesta can only take up an hour or so. Mr. Cruickshank’s visits have filled a void. He’s very well-informed about the natives on this coast and I am learning about all sorts of things. Did you know that the women here give birth sitting on a special stool? That they are never to cry out, for that would be shameful.”

  “You talk about such things with Brodie Cruickshank?”

  “He talks about such things; I listen.”

  “This is not proper!”

  “I’m amazed; I truly am amazed. I am not in a position to sally forth and ask questions myself; that would be improper. But I am fascinated by the local customs and am taking notes with an eye to writing an article or two for the journals back home.”

  “On birthing stools.”

  “Perhaps not on birthing stools, but there are lots of other interesting things I could write about.”

  “Well I don’t like it.”

  “Well I don’t care whether you like it or not.”

  With that I rose from my chair and flounced out. “Proper/improper”: my God! What a prig George was. Should I flounce back in and quiz him about his country wife, his “wench” — disgusting term. That’s one of the “local customs,” too. Proper for out here, of course, and anyway, he’s a man. “Smacks of the barnyard, it does,” pronounced Mrs. Bailey one day, when she was discussing this quaint custom.

  “My sentiments exactly,” I replied.

  However, a half-hour’s reflection made me realize I had handled this all wrong. What if he forbade Brodie to come again? I was so used, now, to our tête-à-têtes about anything and everything that I would be positively bereft without them. It was bad enough that he would be away for months and months, but I was steeling myself for that, and George had promised, as well, a visit to Accra over the Christmas holidays. (Little did he know I had a wonderful fruitcake from Fortnum and Mason’s, all wrapped up in rum-soaked cheesecloth and hidden in a tin. I intended to hold a little soirée on Christmas Eve.)

  George was jealous; it was as simple as that. I hadn’t thought he loved me enough to be jealous, but he was — jealous and possessive — and I must make haste to placate him.

  The cover had been removed, but he was still sitting at the table, staring at his hands.

  “George,” I said, “I have come to apologize.”

  “And I must apologize to you. I never meant for you to spend so much time alone. My illness, the death of my secretary; I’m overwhelmed. Unfortunately I can’t do anything about it just now, but things will get better, I promise”

  “George, let’s not quarrel anymore; it upsets us both.” And I held out my hand. He rose from his chair, smiling.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Would you like to come up to the cockloft and look at the moon?”

  He touched the back of my neck as he steadied the telescope for me. And there was the moon, the same moon that shone down upon London earlier. Full of craters, not smooth as it appears to the ordinary eye.

  “This is magical,” I said. “Thank you for bringing me here.” And by here I meant not just to his sacred cockloft (he even dusted it himself), but here to Cape Coast.

  I think I was more in love with him that night, than I ever was before or since.

  George

  I TOUCHED THE BACK OF HER NECK; her hair was put up because of the heat. If what I felt that night wasn’t love, I don’t know what it was.

  “Let’s go downstairs,” I said. “Let us read together and then go to bed.”

  Brodie Cruickshank

  I KNEW THERE WAS A LOCAL WEDDING about to take place and I asked Letty if she’d like to go. She accepted and said Mrs. Bailey would be coming along as well as she’d set her heart on seeing a “darkie wedding.”

  So I called for them a few days later, a little put out that I wasn’t escorting Letty alone, but never mind, one can’t always have everything one wants. Mrs. Bailey had on her church-going outfit, complete with straw bonnet, while Letty was in a frock of palest green, with a deeper green turban on her head. They had both, in their own ways, paid careful attention to their toilette.

  Letty

  AFTER THAT OUTDOORING CEREMONY I wasn’t quite sure what to expect — would the groom spit in the bride’s mouth and declare her his? Would they consult the entrails of a chicken to see how many “pikkins” they were likely to have?

  I should not have been so cynical. Mr. Topp had offered us prime seats on his verandah, his wife not there because she was a female relation of the young girl and was busy dressing her for the occasion.

  The procession advanced along the avenue, preceded by gong-gongs and drummers and the obligatory firing of muskets and then there was the girl with her attendants. She wore a rich blue silk skirt from her waist to her ankles and over it was some sort of padded bustle, held on by a broad silk scarf of brilliant yellow. Above the waist she was naked, but had been painted all over with fine lines of white clay, almost as though she were wearing a fitted blouse of delicate lace. There were gold ornaments in her hair and gold at ears, wrists, and ankles. She passed quite close to us and as she did, she turned her head slightly and smiled. It was the smile of a princess, a future queen. Brodie said later that he was often reminded of a young fawn or a beautiful colt when he saw these young girls decked out in all their (sometimes borrowed) finery. I could not help thinking of my own dull wedding in my plain grey dress, with only two attendants to stand up for us. Here all of the women in the town seemed to be involved, not just relations or close friends, and there was to be a communal feast later in the evening.

  The girl could not have been more than fourteen, but they marry early here and are often betrothed long before they are of an age to marry.

  “And if they do not care for their betrothed?” I asked.

  “That presents complications and there are elaborate rules to cover such eventualities. People tend to think of the Africans as savages, and certainly there are cruel practices, and even cannibalism, among some tribes. But for the most part their lives are f
ull of rituals that must be adhered to. If someone disobeys, there are punishments.”

  I asked Mrs. Bailey how she had liked the wedding procession.

  “All right, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing.”

  “What sort of thing? Marriage?”

  “Parading around half-naked. Showing herself off like that. No civilized woman would do that.”

  “It is the custom here.”

  “Yes. Well.” (Sniff)

  Yet she got on famously with Ibrahim and Isaac, with the women in the market. And she was teaching the group of little pra-pra girls how to knit. I tried to imagine Mrs. Bailey “parading around” naked or even half-naked. She had stopped wearing her stays unless she were leaving the Castle for some reason; as a result she was shapeless from shoulder to (I guess) knee and went around in a large garment of market cloth — magenta with big green circles on it. She resembled some large, at present undiscovered, animal, colourful cousin to the grey hippopotamus.

  The drums go Dá Da Da/Dá Da Da/Dá Da Da/Dá Da Da/Dá Da Da; the sea flings itself against the shore; the hyrax screams in the coconut palms; the cockroaches fled to the corners when I retired to my room with a lamp. I hated the cockroaches; they were everywhere, even in my armoire. Sometimes they ran over my hands when I went to lift out a petticoat or a pair of stockings; I taught myself not to scream. I shook out my shoes every morning, in case of scorpions. When a sausage fly fell into the soup tureen, I watched as Isaac calmly fished it out with the ladle and threw it on the floor.

  “I think if we all disappeared from Africa overnight,” Brodie said, “the insects would take over.”

  One of the soldiers died from a snake bite; two more fishermen drowned.