The second attempt was even worse, since both now knew what indignities to expect. Ian rose in the dark room from the disordered bed. He wanted a bath and a strong drink, he wanted to be a hundred miles from here. But more than anything else he wanted never to go through this again as long as he lived. He didn’t care what Grace felt.
‘I’m sorry, Grace, There’s been a bad misunderstanding and it’s my fault. I should have said something before. But this isn’t on, I’m very sorry. You are of course free to get a divorce. I only wish I’d had better sense sooner and I apologize.’
Grace, though numb with disgust over the proceedings, was galvanized by the word ‘divorce’. She sat up in bed, collecting her wits quickly, and said, ‘Oh Ian dear, what a stupid muddle. I thought you wanted it. I’m so sorry, do forgive me. You know what I love is living here and being with you and working with you. I don’t want anything else ever. Divorce, my goodness what an idea. We’re going to be happy exactly the way we were before.’
So that took care of that, except for hidden and confused emotions. Grace hoarded her contempt for Ian, he wasn’t a real man; a real man would have known how to take her in his arms and teach her love. Deep beneath this righteous sense of being cheated lay doubt too painful for words. No man had wanted her; perhaps another woman would have known how to teach Ian. Ian was relieved by the way Grace ignored what had happened. But he felt a lingering sadness: if he had grown up normally, slowly – he knew he was slow – learning about girls through Lucy’s friends, he might have met the beautiful Aylesbury girl, at the right age, and loved her entirely as a man loved a woman.
Now that this sordid mess was disposed of, Grace got down to the real business of life.
‘Ian, I’ll have to do the house over from top to bottom.’
Ian was drinking beer in one of the old comfortable chairs on the verandah, waiting for lunch. The glass wobbled in his hand.
‘But Grace, you said …’ He remembered all she had said, she never stopped saying it’s such a homey house, it’s so right for this country, it’s so welcoming, so lived-in, it has such character.
‘Oh of course, Ian, it was fine for a man living alone. But not for a married couple. You don’t suppose Mrs Gordon or Mrs Farrell live in such a primitive place. I assure you they have civilized houses like a country house in England.’
He didn’t want an English country house and he was shattered. But the house was the Memsaab’s province and he couldn’t deprive Grace of any more rights.
‘I’ll need money,’ Grace said. She meant to sound casual and sounded mistreated. This was a test point.
‘That’s all right, I’ll fix it at the bank, a joint account. You know as much about the farm finances as I do. You know what the farm needs. Otherwise you can do what you like.’
Grace was his wife and he wanted her to be happy. Grace was now free to shop in Nakuru and Nairobi, hire workmen, boss and buy. Unfortunately she seemed more exhausted and outdone than happy.
‘My God, how can they be such fools!’ Grace cried, showing Ian a chest of drawers that was painted shut. ‘You have to stand over them every second and even so they can’t do anything properly.’
‘Look at these curtains!’ Grace cried, showing Ian curtains that hung eight inches from the floor. ‘The Asians are as hopeless as the Africans. I told Patel the exact measurements six times if I told him once.’
‘You won’t believe it!’ Grace cried, ‘I’ve been to Karula again to that idiot carpenter. Never ready, never ready. The idiot just smiles and says “bado”. I could choke him.’
‘I will not accept these sofa covers!’ Grace cried. ‘Lalji will have to do them again, that’s all.’
‘It’s enough to drive you crazy!’ Grace cried. ‘No one in this country can get anything right.’
Ian said mildly, ‘I think everything looks fine, Grace,’ and she flew at him.
‘It does not. It’s disgraceful. You’re far too soft. I will not pay for such shoddy work.’
Grace’s trials and tribulations were the stuff of all conversation. Ian began to cringe from her voice, the drilling quality of the whine. The poor girl was strained of course; she wasn’t used to Africa; she wanted everything to be like England which was impossible. She’d learn to make-do as everyone did and stop fussing. Beda looked hunted, cleaning up after the untidy workmen with the Memsaab snapping at his heels. Ian prayed the house would soon be finished to Grace’s satisfaction.
You couldn’t sit here or touch there and the rooms smelled of paint and were cluttered with the new bits and pieces Grace bought. He used to put his drink on the wide arm of a wooden chair or on the floor but those big chairs were gone and a spindly table stood by an upholstered settee and he’d been ticked off sharply after he knocked the table over twice. He had to think carefully and move carefully lest he damage Grace’s handiwork.
At last the house was done, not to Grace’s satisfaction, but near enough; or perhaps she was worn out and defeated. Ian said he thought the bright yellow brocade curtains in the sitting room were very pretty and so were the chintz slip covers of parakeets and hibiscus flowers. Grace was sweet to get the mail-order shower stall for him and the large cupboard for his bedroom. He did not say that the room looked absurd, like a nursery, with the old brown wood furniture painted red and curtains of gambolling red and white lambs. He didn’t care. He only wanted peace and an end to Grace’s nervy complaints.
‘Well, it’s a home,’ Grace said, surveying her achievement. ‘We don’t have to be ashamed of it at any rate.’
Ashamed? He felt as hurt as if Grace had insulted an old friend. Though Grace said this stuff was only fit to burn, he saved all Luke’s things in a partitioned section of the workshop out of respect for Luke and the past. You didn’t throw on the junk heap furniture that had served well for more than thirty years. Perhaps Luke’s house was unsuitable for a married couple but that was no reason to speak of it with contempt.
Grace quickly defined her share of the work. She was responsible for whatever concerned money and for the house. She attended diligently to bills, statements, and accounts ledgers in her bedroom at an ample new desk. Nothing would persuade her to work in the farm office, surrounded by Africans. Of necessity she had to deal with Mwangi and Beda, who at least understood English, but there she drew the line. Ian must absolutely forbid Africans to come to the back door when they wanted home doctoring; tell them to go to the office with their loathsome ailments. Healthy Africans smelled bad enough, sick Africans smelled to high heaven. Ian’s suggestion that she take over the inspection of the African lines was grotesque. Poke at their huts and latrines and garbage dumps, with African brats swarming over her? And she wasn’t going to let Ian bore her blind with tales of pregnant cows and the foibles of his generator. Farming was Ian’s job and deadly, except that it paid.
Grace was now ready to entertain.
‘I have so much hospitality to repay, Ian. I’ll invite people here on Sundays. They’ll love seeing my house.’
‘If that’s what you want, Grace, but I’m no use at parties.’
‘You just pass round the drinks. The women do the talking anyway.’
Grace did the talking. Ian hoped the Gordons and the Farrells were interested to hear the story of every nail, tin of paint, yard of cloth, for they were treated to a play by play account of Grace’s struggle against the stupidity and incompetence of Africans, not that Asians were a great deal better. The party broke up right after coffee, with Grace saying, ‘Surely you’re staying for tea?’ She had baked a special cake; when she was a teacher, lunching around the countryside, she always stayed for tea.
‘I have to keep an eye on the new gardener,’ Mrs Gordon murmured. ‘He drowns things.’
‘Trouble with the main pump,’ Mr Gordon said, backing her up. ‘You’re damned lucky with your spring, Ian. My boreholes are a curse.’
‘I must get home to Jenny,’ Mrs Farrell said, ‘I promised to give tea to a horde of her
chums.’
Mr Farrell was past speech. Grace and Ian waved goodbye and Grace led the way back to the verandah where she flopped into a new canvas chair, looking sulky.
‘That was very pleasant,’ Ian said tentatively. At least the ordeal was behind him.
‘I thought I’d die with shame over Beda.’
‘Why? What did he do?’
‘Didn’t you see the way he stacked plates, like in a cheap café? And the way he passed the pineapple flan on the wrong side to Mrs Gordon and Mrs Farrell?’
‘Did he?’
‘And he looks so disgusting. Mrs Gordon’s houseboy wears a hat, you know, one of those Arab things, and a white jacket. Beda looked as if he’d slept in his clothes, not even clean, and he keeps grinning at one’s guests as if they were his friends.’
The whine was razor sharp. Ian’s heart sank. Beda had worked here for almost fifteen years. Beda’s great quality was cheerfulness.
‘You could buy him a tarboosh and a jacket,’ Ian said.
‘He’ll never learn. He’s got bad habits, he’s sloppy and lazy and that grin is just plain cheeky.’
Ian surprised himself by a life-saving idea. ‘Why don’t you get another houseboy, for serving at table? With two of us and the house so new and everything, we really need an extra servant. Beda can go on with the cleaning and you find someone to train for parties.’
‘They’re backward apes, these upcountry natives. Perhaps I could find a boy in Nairobi.’
So Beda was safe and the first of a series of houseboys, with red tarboosh and white jacket, entered the Paynters’ lives. They came and went, not pleasing Grace, but changing the atmosphere of the home. They quarrelled with either Beda or Mwangi, they upset the fixed routine by which Africans do their work and which makes their work bearable. Beda’s grin disappeared.
All the Sunday luncheons were the same; Grace talked and everyone left promptly after coffee. In return for hospitality, they were asked to other people’s Sunday luncheons though these were smaller affairs, just themselves and their hosts, with the hostess saying she’d not been able to lay hands on a soul, people were at the coast or fretting over farm problems or playing polo or off on safari or ill. Gradually no one was free to come to Fairview Farm on Sundays; nor were there invitations to leave Fairview Farm.
Ian felt this creeping ostracism as an absence of pain. It was disloyal to be embarrassed by your wife. He was ashamed of Grace and for her, and ashamed to be ashamed. He couldn’t understand the change that had come over her, from the contented friend before marriage to this restless garrulous woman. Driving around the farm, Ian no longer stopped to look with a lifted heart at the shape and sweep of the land. He was curt with the watu, grown nervy from life with Grace and his failure to understand her. More and more, Ian remembered his mother and father, their smiling affection, their gaiety together, an unspoken tenderness that spread around them and made their home serene. His mother had been a beautiful Aylesbury girl.
Grace saw the melting away of invitations as proof of jealousy and her triumph. The Paynter farm was the most successful, the Paynter house the most elegant: the neighbours were green with envy. She didn’t like them anyway, she had only wanted to exhibit her surroundings and herself as Memsaab.
Grace now turned her attention to the garden. People talked about Helen Gordon’s garden as if gardening were some sort of art but Grace believed Helen Gordon had fooled them from pure vanity, it was her way of showing off. All you had to do was tell the gardener what you wanted. Grace set out to reform the borders around the house, the vines on the walls, and the pots and hanging baskets on the verandah. Ian left before Grace got up in the morning, returned for a quick breakfast and a quick lunch, came back at dark, and resolutely ignored signs of destruction. One day he arrived for lunch and saw the rose beds dug up. Sun poured down on the exposed roots. The roses looked like a massacre.
Holding himself very still, Ian said, ‘What are you doing, Grace?’
‘They’re too silly planted out like that,’ Grace said. ‘Like a public park. I’m going to move them into the borders.’
‘You should have asked me.’
‘Now Ian,’ Grace said, her voice raising to its steeliest whine. ‘I wish you wouldn’t interfere. I don’t tell you how to manage the cows.’
‘They will die,’ Ian said.
‘Nonsense.’
Ian did not wait to hear more. He drove the Landrover recklessly, jarring along the roads with dust like a comet’s tail behind. He had no idea where he was going, he wasn’t thinking, he saw nothing except the uprooted roses. He waked from this vision when he found he was in Nakuru, running out of petrol. With the tank filled, Ian sat in the car until the African attendant asked him to move, another Bwana was waiting. He didn’t know what he wanted, except to be away from Grace. South of Nakuru, the great lake offered sanctuary. He drove as far as the narrowing track allowed and left the Landrover. On foot, in silence, Africa was given back to him.
Through the fever trees, he saw grazing zebra and tommy. A tiny dikdik leapt away almost under his feet. Above him, a tribe of vervet monkeys rollicked. Walking carefully, he came to the lake edge but his presence disturbed a legion of flamingos who rose, like a pink scarf thrown against the sky, and settled to feed farther along the shore. He sat cross-legged and still, watching ibis and egret and heron and hearing the lovely babble of birds. Where the land curved into the flat water to the north, giraffes were nibbling at the tops of acacias.
The land around the lake was not as beautiful as his land, too enclosed in rocky jagged hillsides. But it enclosed wonders, flashes of colour in the trees, tits and starlings and hoopoes and sunbirds, the pink fields of flamingos, a sudden glimpse of curved horns and the sheen of impala. He hadn’t lost the capacity for joy, because he felt it now as a sense of thanksgiving. If only he could stay forever, cross-legged and marvelling, at the edge of Lake Nakuru.
He hardly remembered his mother’s face; she had blue eyes and smooth hair, a gentle mirage, not a face. But he remembered her voice and it sounded like music in his mind, always low, soft, loving. His mother and roses. The roses he had planted and grown and cherished. His mother and his roses. After eight months of marriage, Ian knew he had made a fatal mistake and was imprisoned in it. Of his own accord, like a man doomed, he had destroyed his freedom and built his private Oflag. He thought of himself with despair. He was a misfit and a failure. But Fairview Farm was not a failure. He had a purpose in life, quite apart from the catastrophe of his marriage. For the sake of his farm, he would protect himself in the old known way. He would detach himself from Grace as he had learned to detach himself from Oflag XV B.
Grace was waiting, with anxiety under her anger.
‘What on earth is the matter with you, Ian?’ But already he had started to be deaf to that voice. ‘Behaving like a baby in a tantrum! I never heard of such nonsense! What do you suppose the servants think? The Bwana rushing out of the house without luncheon. Coming back late for dinner. All because of a few roses. I won’t stand for such behaviour!’
Ian ate without speaking. Grace’s complaints and arguments beat against his silence and ceased. She was afraid now though she could not name her fear. Divorce? On what grounds? Rose beds? It was laughable, it was ridiculous. If Ian wanted to sulk, she would show him who could sulk longer. Her mouth narrowed; she tossed her head; her spectacles flashed in the light of the pressure lamp hanging above the table. Ian ignored these signs of temper; he was thinking methodically of a better way to sterilize his ten gallon churns.
Grace soon decided the gardener was a moron. She told him what to do, using Beda as interpreter, and he made a complete mess. The wretched flowers wilted and died or looked even scruffier in their new arrangement. She lost interest before she had time to tamper with the vines on the house or the flowering shrubs or finish the borders. Half the borders remained as Ian had planted them; half, with bald patches, showed Grace’s intervention. The gardener went on w
ith the watering and mowed the grass. Whatever Grace had not killed survived as before. There were no more roses.
The Mau Mau Rebellion, the Emergency, which caused such horror throughout Kenya, proved a blessing to the Paynters.
Grace had never let a day pass without stating, in detail, how Africans got on her nerves. Now irritation turned into terror. The Africans were mad, were monsters, they were murdering Europeans like savages, cutting off heads, hands, one dared not think of it. She demanded police dogs to guard the house at night. Ian refused. Alsatians had patrolled the high barbed wire fences of Oflag XV B. Grace whined and whined, beside herself with fear. Ian was out of his mind, she kept saying, they could be killed in their beds; they must have bars on the windows. She could have bars on the windows of her room; Ian would not allow any other windows to be barred, none that he saw. And there were no weapons, Grace shrilled, did he want her to be hacked to pieces?
‘You can take the shotgun to your room at night.’
‘I don’t know how to use it,’ Grace wailed.
‘You don’t have to know. Just raise it and pull the trigger. Deadly at close range. Be careful you don’t fire it by mistake at Beda when he’s bringing your morning tea.’
Grace wept. She was supremely ugly when she wept.
Ian said, ‘Grace, go to Nairobi, for God’s sake. Stay in a hotel with a lot of other people. There’s no danger there, none here really, but you can’t go on like this. Stay in Nairobi until it quiets down.’
‘What about the book-keeping?’ Grace said.
Ian laughed then, merrily, showing all his false teeth.
Grace found a gem of a hotel, the Dorset, the nearest thing to a Bayswater Residential. Altogether charming, she wrote Ian, such an attractive room with ornamental iron grille work on the windows, and two comfy chairs and a small table if she wanted to take tea by herself, and a very pretty colour scheme, cherry pink and baby blue and a bit of mauve. The permanent guests were delightful, well bred, mostly retired or civil servants. They sat at their own tables in the spotless dining room and were served by trained respectful servants, but talked to each other cosily from table to table.
The Weather in Africa Page 17
