Afterwards

by Rachel Seiffert

  – It was not far from the library, a studio in the centre of Nairobi. I’d just proposed, and I think she went there that afternoon. I did the same, a few days later. Same place too. It was a bit silly really, but we wanted to surprise each other.

  Alice had always found her grandparents’ story romantic. When she was a child, she’d often asked her gran to tell it to her, because it was so different to their suburban reality, and she was fascinated by the idea of their other life elsewhere. It was only later, when she got into her teens, that she began to put their story into context, prompted largely by the realisation that her grandparents’ time in Africa made her mother so uncomfortable. It was her mum who told her that Gran had worked in the European hospital in Nairobi.

  – White, that meant. Africans and Asians were treated elsewhere.

  Alice remembered this information came unbidden. She’d wanted to hear some detail about how her grandparents got to know each other, and her mum had been quite impatient, as though she realised Alice wouldn’t put the backgound together without a bit of prodding. She remembered how it had smarted too, her mother’s tone. Later, they talked more about it, all three of them together. Gran said she’d got to know a few older nurses while she was training in Dundee. They’d worked abroad, in Italy and North Africa:

  – The war had taken them there, of course, but they opened my eyes to the idea.

  Alice could remember asking what her grandmother had thought about the segregation in Kenya:

  – I suppose I didn’t think about it enough.

  Her answer had been brief, matter of fact, but it came after a pause, and Alice knew she’d put her grandmother on the spot. She could remember her gran telling them about the general strike, called by African workers on the day King George deemed Nairobi a city, and they spoke about the White Highlands too, on a number of occasions: the Kikuyu farmers who worked for the settlers out there, north of the capital. Gran said the farmers’ homelands were taken over by European migrants and they’d had little choice but to become squatters. They resented that. Of course they did. That’s understandable. Alice remembered her grandmother’s hesitant explanation and that it had surprised her when her gran embarked upon the topic: cautious, but it had been of her own accord, because Alice hadn’t known enough then to put such questions together. She’d wanted her granddaughter to know about the Kenya she’d lived in, that much was clear, because she initiated discussions like this one more often as Alice grew older. It was Gran who told her about the detention camps, set up during the Emergency. The Pipeline, a whole system. And that their reputation for brutality preceded them. She said fear of imprisonment turned people against one another, destroyed communities, as did the torture meted out by the security forces. Alice’s mother told her about how confessions were forced: ropes and rifle butts, wet sheets and electric currents, long-necked bottles filled with scalding water. Gran never went into detail, but she said the methods were crude, and that many of those arrested were innocent of involvement with the Mau Mau. The police would promise anonymity to informers, and people learned to dread being lined up in front of a hooded figure: a neighbour or friend or cousin who might try to save themselves further pain and point their finger.

  At some stage during these conversations, Gran would always stop and remind Alice that she hadn’t learnt about much of this until after it was over. She remembered the strike, of course: transport was at a standstill in some parts of the city, and she’d read about battles between strikers and police in the next day’s papers. But Gran said she didn’t realise until later that so many of the strikers lost their jobs, even though the numbers ran into the thousands. Alice could see it embarrassed her, this admission. How could you have lived somewhere like that, at such a time, and not have been aware what was happening? For all that she was fascinated, Alice was always relieved for her grandmother when their conversation returned to the safer ground of first meeting, courtship, proposal. It sometimes felt there was enough complication there to be getting on with.

  As a child, Alice had been intrigued by the idea that her grandmother was a few years older and already married when she met her grandfather.

  – In the process of getting divorced.

  Gran always stressed this, and it made Alice smile, the insistence on propriety. Her grandmother caught her smiling once, and was unusually stern:

  – It was the fifties. Such things mattered.

  Besides, there were only five years between them, which was hardly an age gap. While they still lived together, these stories were told over their kitchen table meals; later they were saved for birthdays and anniversaries, family occasions. Christmases usually involved long walks together, through winter-quiet streets and parks. The three of them, Alice, her mum and Gran, talking talking, among the sodden suburban trees and grass. Catching up with the current events of their various lives, rehearsing memories, wrapped in their coats, breath coming in clouds. Alice liked hearing about her grandmother’s childhood in Fife, and what she called the beginning of her Real Life, when she moved to Dundee to train as a nurse. Everything got repeated over the years, but it didn’t matter to Alice that she already knew her grandparents got engaged only a few weeks after meeting. Her gran enjoyed the telling, and that was part of the appeal, hearing again how reckless it felt, and how her grandmother had never been so certain of anyone. Gran liked to make fun of them both, the portrait she’d had taken, Grandad too.

  – Scrubbed up and posing like matinee idols.

  She laughed about his deliberately thoughtful expression, and the way his ears curled over at the tops. And she said her cheeks had always been too soft, her chin as well: more suited to a grandmother’s face than a starlet’s.

  Alice sat opposite her grandfather in the living room now, and watched him holding the picture of his wife. He used to come on their Christmas walks, but rarely joined in with their conversations. He never seemed offended or excluded, but Alice couldn’t believe he had nothing to tell: he’d fallen in love with a married woman at a time when divorce was still considered scandalous. His superiors admonished him, his friends in the air force advised him to end the affair. His parents refused to come to the wedding, and didn’t speak to him for years because he went ahead regardless. Gran said her in-laws never warmed to her, and even after contact was finally resumed, it was clear to everyone that this was primarily to see Sarah, Alice’s mum: she was their only grandchild. Alice had no idea how her grandad had felt then, if he’d been as certain as Gran, and wondered if he’d tell her. He was still looking at her grandmother, so Alice thought she would try.

  – Weren’t you ill when you met Gran?

  – Yes. Jaundice. After a bout of dysentery.

  – And you were staying in the same house?

  – Yes. They were friends of your grandmother’s. She’d got to know them early on during her time in Nairobi. She taught their oldest daughter while she was still living at home. Piano lessons, twice a week. Gran was just married then, and they were very good to her after that broke down.

  Gran had told Alice about her first husband. He was from Dundee, but they met in Nairobi, he’d been stationed there during the war and went back after he was demobbed. He was an engineer and liked it out in Kenya because there were plenty of opportunities for ex-servicemen there: more interesting work, and better paid than at home. When they married, Gran had presumed that, like her, he’d want to go back to Scotland in a year or two. Only the first of many mistakes. Gran kept in touch with one or two Kenyan friends after she left, and gleaned a few things from their letters over the years. He remarried twice, but never had children, and he went on to work for the new administration, after independence. He always was pragmatic: that was her grandmother’s verdict, and Alice thought it wasn’t entirely disapproving. She wondered if her grandfather might have met him, while they were in Nairobi, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask. She didn’t want to get into difficult territory, not so soon in any case. Her grandad had
been gazing down at his hands for a minute or so, and then he smiled:

  – I was still yellow all over. I remember it on my palms especially, my fingernails, even my eyes. A bilious sight in the shaving mirror every morning.

  He laughed a little. Alice knew he was on leave when he met her grandmother, convalescing, and that it was not unusual for better-off Nairobi families to open their houses to officers that way.

  – I’d been in hospital for two weeks and needed another six to recover. The facilities up at Eastleigh, at the airfield, they weren’t up to it, and many expats were keen to help. To show their gratitude, I suppose. The family was very welcoming, I can’t remember their name. It’ll come to me.

  Her grandfather said their hosts were a little older, their children grown up with families of their own. Their house was large but somehow always full of people. They all played instruments, used to hold informal recitals, out on their veranda. Mostly it was jazz standards, but they’d sometimes put together a string quartet. Guests would come for cocktails at sundown, violin cases tucked under their arms, and after the playing was over, they were usually persuaded to stay on for dinner. Mostly it was friends and colleagues or neighbours, and he and Gran were often the youngest at the table.

  – They’d sit us together. I don’t know that they were match-making exactly, but I remember being very aware of it. I wasn’t used to eating in female company. Or to good food, for that matter. I had my first curries there. It was corned beef in everything up at the airfield, condensed milk puddings in the mess hall. Isobel had been staying at the house a while, of course. But we were both fish out of water. I think we recognised that in one another.

  It was strange to hear him say her grandmother’s name. There was something intimate about it, a small shock to see her as the woman before she became her gran. Her grandfather was quiet for a while after that, but it wasn’t an expectant silence, as though he wanted Alice to respond. His eyes had turned inward. She waited for him to continue.

  – I’m sorry. We were halfway through the crossword, weren’t we?

  He put the picture down on the table next to him, smiled across at Alice. She still had the newspaper ready on her lap, but it took her a moment to catch up, find the clue they’d been working on: hadn’t thought he’d stop talking when he did. He didn’t offer any more that afternoon, but Alice was more pleased than disappointed. Such a brief conversation, but it felt like a start. She called Joseph to tell him about it when she got home. Said it had been the best visit since her gran died, and she almost felt like celebrating.

  – That sounds daft, doesn’t it? But it was so nice to hear him talking about her.

  – I’ll get a bottle of wine in for tomorrow, then. We can drink to David together when you come round.

  – Don’t make fun.

  – I’m not. I like your Grandad.

  – Do you?

  – Yeah.

  Alice called her mother after that, and she agreed that Grandad had seemed very well over the past week or two.

  – I thought he was very chipper on the phone. He must like having your Joseph around.

  – Did he say that?

  – Not in so many words.

  – I hope he didn’t think I was being nosy this afternoon.

  – Doesn’t sound like it to me.

  – I’ve never thought to ask him before, don’t know why. We never gave him the chance, did we? The three of us. Too busy talking to each other.

  – Alan says Grandad listens to us. He’s watched him, out on our Christmas walks.

  – I was wondering about that today. Made me want to ask him. Seemed alright at first but then he just stopped.

  – Don’t worry about him. He loves you.

  – Do you think he’d ever really talk to me about Kenya? I mean how he felt about what he was doing there.

  – I don’t know, love. Hard to say.

  – You think I shouldn’t try?

  – No. Just be careful about it, won’t you?

  After Alice left home, her family started spending Sundays together, once a month or thereabouts, and usually at her grandparents’ house. Alice couldn’t say now who had initiated this, but supposed it must have been her gran: recalled her saying she’d miss them when Alice started college and her mum moved in with Alan. No longer three streets away, but scattered across the city. Those Sundays weren’t as frequent as her current visits, but somehow they seemed more of an effort. There were just so many other, better things she would rather have been doing at the time, and Alice sometimes wormed her way out of going, pleading too much study or a bar shift that clashed, but mostly she went: dutiful, reluctant to give her mum cause for a row. She could remember Alan felt the same way, especially after they’d moved up north, and the journey ate up most of his weekend. They often ended up doing the dishes together, in irritated sympathy, sneaking nips of sherry out of the bottle her grandmother kept in the kitchen. Alice said those Sundays were boring, he said they weren’t so bad, just a bit stilted, but they both agreed it was the having to be there they resented.

  It was usually all over within a couple of hours, a meal and then coffee, and coats and goodbyes. There was only one visit that ended more quickly, abruptly, the day gone badly wrong. It was before her mum and Alan got married, but just after they’d bought the house in York together, which Alice’s grandparents took to be the next best thing. Alan was due to take over from his retiring headmaster when the new term started, and Alice remembered her grandad greeting him at the door, saying how pleased he’d been to hear about his promotion. Everything was friendly until Alan asked David about his time in Kenya.

  – I just wanted a real conversation for a change.

  – Excellent choice of topic.

  That was in the car, on the way home, their visit cut short by the row. Her mother was furious and so was Alan, but he was shocked too: sitting quiet in the front seat while his partner drove and tried, unsuccessfully, to stop herself shouting. Alice sat in the back and kept out of it. She thought her mum was being unfair: the row had been just as much her grandad’s fault. He’d seemed amiable enough, answering questions about the RAF and his training, pleased maybe that Alan was interested. But then he reacted badly, rudely to Alan’s mention of Kenya.

  – Where is all of this leading?

  Alice had left the dining room by that stage, clearing the plates ready for the next course, but she could remember listening to them from the kitchen, hearing Alan faltering and then persisting:

  – I’m just interested. Because the way I’ve always understood it. The insurgency was about Kenyan independence, wasn’t it?

  Her mum sighed down the phone when Alice reminded her.

  – Oh dear.

  – It didn’t seem such an unreasonable question to me.

  – No, I know. I don’t think Dad was disputing that, actually. The point he was trying to make was more about hindsight. Independence was still over a decade away when the Emergency started. Oh God, he just kept on saying that, didn’t he? The Mau Mau were killing white settlers and Africans loyal to the state, the country was being terrorised by a minority, blah blah, and so British forces were called in.

  – I remember him saying terrorised. And Alan picking him up on it.

  – Me too, he shouldn’t have gone on the attack like that. But it was all degenerating by then, wasn’t it? Alan waiting and Dad refusing to look at him. I was sitting next to him at the table, and I couldn’t work out if he was going to say something important, or just hoping we’d disappear.

  Her mum was almost laughing, exasperated by the memory.

  – Dad was right in a way, though. I mean, most Africans probably wanted independence by then, but not through violence. African Christians were being killed, people were being coerced into taking Mau Mau oaths. I talked to Alan about it afterwards. I didn’t think terrorised was Dad’s word, maybe he was just explaining what they’d been told. It was a civil disturbance: that’s what they calle
d it, the authorities. Didn’t wash with Alan, he was still too wound up about it. Said he’d wanted to hear what Dad thought, and he didn’t give a shit about the official version. I’m not sure I blame him.

  – But you got so angry with him. I was glad to get out of the car.

  – I know. I’m sorry. They just pissed me off, the pair of them. Dad was being so pig-headed, and Alan kept backing him into a corner. Wasn’t going to get anywhere. If Dad agreed with him, it would mean he fought against people who had a legitimate cause. I wouldn’t want to give someone the satisfaction of pointing that out, would you?

  – How do you think Grandad felt at the time? Alice thought she heard her mum sigh again.

  – You’ll have to ask him that one.

  Joseph finished the bedroom and David invited him for dinner to say thank you. Alice laughed when he invited her too, said it was probably so she’d help him with the cooking, but Joseph could see she was pleased. Her bike was locked in front of the garage when he got there Thursday evening, and she opened the door for him. Her grandad was busy in the dining room, laying the table and opening the wine. When he saw Joseph through the hatch, he came into the kitchen, smiling, to shake his hand and apologise for not letting him in personally.

  – I didn’t realise you’d arrived.

  The talk over dinner was mainly about the redecorating: how pleased David was with it, and what Joseph would start on next. He was busy until the middle of September, but they’d agreed he would do the front room after that: it was only a few weeks away now, they were well into August already. There had been another run of hot days that week, but they all said it felt like the last of the summer. It was nice enough chatter, no big silences to fill or anything, but Joseph knew Alice was hoping to hear more about her gran, and when David met her in Africa. He could see she was waiting for the right moment, so he was happy for her when David started without her having to ask.