‘Ian!’
He was absorbed in Emma. Grace snatched the book from his hands.
‘Ian, how dare you treat me like this?’
‘What?’
‘Oh nothing. You pay more attention to your sheep. Or the watu. Much more attention to the damned watu when you know they hate us.’
‘Sorry, did you say something?’
‘Yes, I did. I said my good things are completely ruined. I’ll have to start again from scratch.’
‘All right. You can do what you like except I won’t have any new servants. Beda and Mwangi were fine through the Emergency and I don’t want uproar in the house. And you are not to touch the garden. I’ve made it the way I like and I will look after it. And my chair stays here. Otherwise, go ahead. May I have my book, please?’
Grace, dazed by receiving instead of giving orders, changed her tactics.
‘I’ll need to go to Nairobi a lot, to find the right things. I hope you won’t mind.’
‘Not a bit. Why don’t you go every week? You might keep your room at the Dorset.’
‘Oh no, that won’t be necessary.’ She had prepared for an argument; his swift agreement alarmed her.
Ian thought this an unexpected piece of luck. Perhaps she would be away several days a week, perhaps more. And when here, he calculated that out of sixteen waking hours he only had to see Grace for two hours and see was not the same as hear. When you got down to it, he didn’t actually have to see her; she would be around, that was all, not much more of a nuisance than the tasteless rubbish she’d buy.
Though Ian had been inattentive and boring enough before she went away, Grace found Ian changed and worse. He wasn’t surly as he had been after the ridiculous fuss about the roses, nor nasty as he was when they quarrelled over the Mau Mau. He wasn’t anything; that was the point. He behaved as if she weren’t there. She would be making conversation at dinner like a civilized human being and Ian would finish his meal, leave the table, go to his chair and start reading. She bought a new radio in Nairobi and played it loudly in the evenings, read the novels she brought back from the lending library, stitched at needlepoint and lived for her frequent trips to the Dorset and the lovely chats and shopping and the pictures and bridge with her darling friends.
She knew she was a good wife, a real helpmate, Ian had absolutely no cause for complaint, he ought to be wildly grateful for all her work on his accounts and letters and bills and statements, she took an enormous burden from him. And she always asked if there was anything he wanted from Nairobi and searched for hardware and spare parts in the ugly remote industrial section, tiring herself to death for him. She tended his clothes, she kept his house pretty, she couldn’t think of a woman who did more for a man. But she was anxious.
Something strange had happened to Ian; he was too happy, happier than she’d ever seen him. And he was always so encouraging about her departures. Yes indeed, what a good idea to go off to Malindi when her friend Miss Ball had a holiday. If Miss Greene wouldn’t go alone but was dying to drive to Tanganyika and stay in that famous hotel on the side of Kilimanjaro, of course Grace must keep her company. It’s called Travellers’ Rest, she’d said, and I’m afraid it’s frightfully expensive. Not to worry, and since it was such a long journey why didn’t she stay ten days or a fortnight. All Grace’s trips to Nairobi were welcomed. Ian never asked how long she would be away. Grace took with her uneasily the memory of Ian’s smile when he said goodbye.
Though Mrs Milbank was her dearest friend and an older woman, Grace could not ask advice. She longed to fling herself on Mrs Milbank’s motherly bosom and weep out her grievances and her confusion. He has never given me a present, never remembered my birthday or our wedding day, never taken me for an outing not even to the cinema in Nakuru, never paid me a compliment not even now when everyone says I look so pretty and attractive, never thanked me for all I do to manage our finances, he isn’t human that’s all. He doesn’t see me or hear me or talk to me and he goes around as if he hadn’t a care in the world and he was perfectly happy and I could drop dead right in front of him and he wouldn’t notice enough to get me buried. No, no, she could not breathe a word of her trouble to anyone. She had a special standing at the Dorset as a woman loved, and loved by quite a wealthy man. She wasn’t going to endanger her one happiness, her position at the Dorset.
Grace’s uncertainty grew, month by month, though she could find no reason for this sensation of doubt. She began to study Ian for a clue which would explain his calm separate happiness. She had wondered if he met another woman at cattle sales but gave up that suspicion because of timing; he went and he came back. He was gone on Friday mornings in Karula just as long as it took to drive to and fro and stop at the bank and post office. Though she really dreaded it, she made a few sorties around the farm, to see whether he might have left Fairview without her knowing; but Ian was always to be found in some revolting place among cows or pigs or Africans. Thinking it over she decided she’d become a ninny from nerves; the very idea of Ian and a woman was ludicrous as who should know better.
One Friday she happened to be standing by the kitchen window when Ian came home for lunch. The rear seat of the Landrover was loaded with parcels and bundles but Ian never bought anything for himself, his clothes were embarrassing, as if he hadn’t a penny to his name.
She called, ‘Ian, I do hope you’ve got yourself some new clothes.’
Ian was surprised to see her there; normally Grace summoned Mwangi to her presence. The period of baking goodies was long past.
‘No. Presents for totos.’
‘Oh, Ian really, don’t you spoil them enough, what a way to waste money.’
‘The totos are my greatest pleasure,’ Ian said flatly. ‘And what I spend on them is none of your business.’
Thank God he’d had the instinct not to speak of Zena. All day, when he was at work, Zena would have been at the mercy of that voice and those prying eyes and the meanness of Grace’s nature. He had no talent for lying and was proud that he had instantly said ‘totos’. Grace knew he had always been fond of the totos, plural, though he felt a bit guilty now because he was merely a walking toffee shop for the totos and the presents went to Zena at dusk. He couldn’t be fair and equitable, he’d never counted the totos, they seemed to be born in litters. The truth was simply that his own child came first.
Grace puzzled over those presents for the totos. No gifts for her of course but anything to please the totos. She could picture Ian playing Santa Claus with the screeching, runny-nosed, smelly African brats clambering over him. But it seemed an implausible clue. For two weeks, she spied on Ian’s Friday return from Karula, peering out of his back bedroom window. The Landrover was regularly loaded. After lunch, Ian drove towards the African lines.
‘Beda,’ Grace said. ‘How long has the Bwana been taking presents to the totos?’
Blank-faced, Beda said, ‘I do not know, Memsaab.’
That was a mistake, one should never question servants. Grace checked a month of Fridays and concluded this must be it. Though grotesque for anyone else, it would be typical of Ian, the man disgusted by women, to have a passion for children. She gnawed at this thought. She remembered her first and only visit to the African lines when she had seen Ian covered with totos, while she did her best to keep clear of those grubby grabbing hands. She hadn’t considered it, she had forgotten.
‘The totos are my greatest pleasure.’ My God. The man couldn’t start a child but craved children. What difference did it make? Let him be a joke Daddy to a hundred black totos. He couldn’t divorce her because she was childless, she hadn’t refused his conjugal rights, he was unable to consummate their union. This was ridiculous, there was nothing Ian could do against her. She would ignore his abominable manners, she didn’t intend to lose the advantages of marriage. He wouldn’t dare go into a divorce court and say … oh no, she was getting sick from imaginings. Anxiety festered and finally led to a cautious talk with Mrs Milbank.
&
nbsp; ‘If only we had children,’ Grace sighed. ‘We never mention it but I sense that Ian would love a son to leave the farm to.’
Mrs Milbank offered a plate of small sandwiches provided by the hotel at tea-time and filled Grace’s cup. They were having a private tea and chat in Mrs Milbank’s room at the Dorset, sitting on the two stiff pink brocaded chairs on either side of the little tea table. Mrs Milbank thought of Grace’s flat lean body, but her own was everywhere plump, with a large bosom, large hips, and just as barren.
‘My dear, I know exactly how you feel,’ Mrs Milbank said. ‘It was our one sorrow. Of course when I was young like you, times were different.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, in those days, no one adopted children, it wasn’t done. But now everyone seems to be doing it. My niece Marjorie, the one in Wiltshire, has three sweet adopted kiddies. It’s quite usual, I understand many people adopt children even when they have their own.’
Grace looked thoughtful.
‘If I weren’t so old,’ Mrs Milbank said, ‘I’d really consider adopting a little girl now. Our Vicar has been trying to place the most adorable baby. I told him he’d have no trouble at home but out here people seem so selfish. It’s quite a problem because dear Mr Braithewaite is getting on and his wife’s not strong. A darling blue-eyed baby girl with blonde curls. The child was simply chucked on the Braithewaites, I don’t know how, the Vicar would never betray a confidence. I imagine it’s the baby of a British soldier and one of the European typist girls. We saw enough of them billing and cooing together.’
Mrs Milbank glanced at Grace who looked more thoughtful.
‘It would be wonderful if you took the baby, dear. I mean you have everything, a devoted husband, a beautiful home, plenty of money. And I feel it would make all the difference to you because you must be a bit lonely out there on the farm. If you don’t mind my saying so, I think it might help your husband, bring him out of himself more, give him a new interest in life. And of course a child does bind people even closer together. Besides, I know how kind-hearted you are and it would be an act of real Christian charity.’
Grace was shaken by the suddenness of this idea. Her brain clicked like an adding machine. If she had guessed right, and she knew she was right, Ian was queer about children and using the totos as an outlet for his paternal feelings. Everyone said men always preferred their daughters; she could see Ian wouldn’t want a boy from nowhere to carry his name but a girl was another matter. Instead of rushing off to spoil a horde of dirty African kids, he could pet and cuddle a clean pretty little white girl at home. He’d have to stop acting like a deaf-mute; the house wouldn’t be ominously silent with a child in it. And as angelic Mrs Milbank said, a child binds people together; Ian couldn’t work up some furtive scheme to get rid of her if they were parents. This might be a heaven-sent answer, startling though it first seemed. At any rate, she had nothing to lose by taking a look.
So Mrs Milbank, who had introduced Grace to a beauty salon, now introduced Grace to motherhood. She arranged a visit to the Vicar’s house and Grace was enraptured by the pretty baby. Grace had never liked the children she once taught but this was different. A cuddly sweet baby of her own, a lovely child to dress up and show off; she imagined the picture and the words: young Mrs Paynter and her beautiful little girl. The least Ian could do was agree; it was entirely his fault that she hadn’t become pregnant.
Ndola’s daughter, the wayward sixteen-year-old, had coupled with her Asian employer or the employer’s son or any stray Asian, for Zena was half-breed. Her hair was soft brown fluff, her skin copper-coloured, her large eyes almond-shaped, not African round, her nose and lips finely formed. As a cattle breeder, Ian thought it a pity that Africans and Asians were not more warmly disposed to each other. Mixing the races produced a fabulous child.
Zena was now at the golden age of two. She called her grandparents Ndola and Sita having heard no other names. She called Ian Baba. Ndola and Sita, old and tired, not unkind but not interested, did not trouble to explain that Ian was Bwana the master, not Baba the father. Zena obeyed her grandparents without question, as caretakers. They had little to say to each other, less to her; she grew up in quietness, knowing she must not get under foot and must play by herself except for the few romping morning minutes and the evening hour with Ian. She ran on fat little legs to Ian’s outstretched arms, while Ndola grunted distaste for this daily foolishness of pats and kisses.
‘You’re a beauty, that’s what you are,’ Ian said.
‘Bootee?’
‘Yes, Baba’s beauty.’
‘Baba’s bootee.’
He had carried her away from the rondavels to watch the fading sunset colours. They had a pattern for their hour.
‘Now tell me what you see in the sky.’
‘Red, awringe, grin, blue, peenk!’
‘Very good. Shall we read our book?’
A devotee of farm catalogues, Ian had guessed there must be catalogues for everything and became a collector of toy catalogues. Aside from the teddy bear and rag doll, the big rubber ball and train to pull on a string, bucket and spade for her small sandbox, the plastic fish and frog to join her bath, Ian gave Zena alphabet blocks, chunky wood puzzles requiring her to fit pieces to form straight lines of colour, round pegs for round holes, square pegs for square holes, a big abacus with coloured beads and piles of picture books. They read these together, she poring over the pictures and watching words. She knew the stories by heart as he did with less enthusiasm. He was sure Zena would have learned to read to herself by the time she was four.
His child was beautiful and brilliant and healthy. Dr Parkinson kept saying, ‘Ian, you really needn’t bring her in for check-ups; she’s about the healthiest child I know.’ But Ian seized his chance every few months when Grace was away, to make sure. Any neighbours, seeing Ian and an old African woman and a toto on the road or at Dr Parkinson’s, would think nothing of it. They all chauffeured the watu on errands of charity, it was a permanent part of the job.
Zena’s delightful fingers had just pushed the last abacus bead for tonight’s lesson. ‘Twelf!’
‘You’re my clever girl too, you know that?’
‘Clevah gul?’
‘Yes, but I reckon we better not say that too much.’
‘Not too much,’ Zena said solemnly.
She could say anything she liked and as often as she liked, she couldn’t possibly talk too much for him. Her voice sounded like music: low, soft, loving.
The drought was the worst in years. Most of last night and most of today he had been at Dick Gale’s farm with a lorry-load of his watu, digging wide deep firebreaks against the fire that could be seen in the dark like a frightening long red snake sliding sideways down the mountains. He smelled smoke everywhere and dreaded just one African careless with a cigarette; the dry grass would practically explode. There was also a plague of cattle thieving on the farms in the neighbourhood and one of his herders had been rushed to Gilgil hospital with a spear wound in the stomach, delivered by a fellow Masai, those rotten morani, adolescent alleged warriors with ochre pigtails, bloody cattle thieves. His driver brought back from Karula rumours of an outbreak of foot and mouth disease around Thomson’s Falls. Trouble always came like this, in bunches, and would be survived, but he was tired and took a third drink when Grace offered it, without noticing.
Grace remembered how a third drink had served her long ago. She broached the subject timidly but warmed up as she went along. At first Ian did not listen. Then words percolated past his trained deafness: baby girl, adoption. He began to listen with care and astonishment. He thought he knew Grace through and through and knew her to be lazy, selfish, interested only in money and what it bought her, a small-minded egotist playing the role of lady of the manor. She certainly didn’t yearn for sex, she’d had plenty of time to hook on to a man if that was what she wanted. He had even hoped, when he saw how she dolled herself up and painted her face, that a man lurked in t
he offing and would carry her away with his blessing. Could this woman have one sincere and natural need? God, what a day. This on top of all else.
‘Well,’ Ian said.
‘She’s absolutely adorable, Ian, I know you’d love her.’
Grace waited in silence, remembering with anger bordering on hatred how she had waited before for this slow stupid man to take in an idea. Again her hands trembled and her head ached. She had lost the power to command Ian, she wanted to beat him but could do nothing except wait. Without his permission, young Mrs Paynter would not have her beautiful little daughter.
Ian thought about Zena. He had a child, he didn’t want another. Grace had nothing, no work, no love of the land, no company. He wondered whether being a mother would make her happier and nicer. Or would it make her more shrill and complaining? He had no right to refuse, because of Zena. Comical, he thought, Mr and Mrs Paynter with their brown and white daughters.
‘We haven’t much room,’ Ian said. Justice be damned if an adopted child meant sharing Grace’s room.
‘She’d sleep with me,’ Grace said eagerly. ‘But I don’t know where to put the ayah.’
‘What’s the use of an ayah? If you don’t mean to look after the child yourself, why adopt her?’
‘Yes of course, Ian, you’re quite right.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Fourteen months.’
‘Well, Grace, if you take this on, it will be your show entirely. I have more on my plate than I can manage. There’ll be legal things to attend to, there’ll be all kinds of things. If you’re sure you can cope by yourself, it’s okay with me.’
‘Oh Ian! I knew you’d agree. A baby will be such a lovely common interest for us.’
He also didn’t want a common interest. An interest for Grace would be quite enough. He foresaw pitfalls by the dozen but was too tired to think about it.
‘You know the funniest sweetest thing, Ian. Those dear old Braithewaites haven’t given the baby a name. They felt it was wrong; her new parents ought to choose. They just call her baby. She’s too young to notice naturally. I’ve thought of a divine name for her; Mr Braithewaite can christen her.’
The Weather in Africa Page 19
