‘Oh?’
‘Joy,’ Grace said. ‘Isn’t it lovely?’
‘Fine,’ Ian said and stopped listening.
Grace was gone for a month and a half. She wrote to Ian, reporting progress. She spent most of every day at the Braithewaites, learning from the ayah how to take care of little Joy. She had seen a lawyer. She was getting adoption papers and arranging to have Joy put on her passport. She had shipped baby furniture to Karula station. She was so sorry Ian couldn’t leave the farm to come to the christening party. All too soon, the blue Volkswagen appeared on the long driveway with a baby in a carry-cot lashed to the front seat. Grace unpacked, while bossing Beda on furniture placement. ‘The baby’s bed there, can’t you see?’ She had prettied Joy in a ruffly little dress and was ready with the child in her arms, making an adorable picture, when Ian came back for lunch.
‘Give Daddy a kiss, darling,’ Grace said.
The baby recoiled from the strange man and began to cry.
‘There, there, my angel,’ Grace said. ‘It’s your farm smell, Ian. I should have waited until you’ve had a shower.’
Ian had long since realized that Grace was lazy. She worked in short bursts of frenzy on anything that concerned her, house furnishing, farm accounts, but otherwise passed her days with novels, cosmetics, the radio, solitaire, embroidery, if possible reclining. Now her working day began at six in the morning and ended twelve hours later, though Ian often heard the baby wail and Grace moving around her room in the night. She and Joy had breakfasted before Ian returned from his early morning chores. While he ate alone on the verandah, Grace washed and dressed the baby and herself, a slow process which sounded cheerful enough judging by Grace’s crooning and baby gabble and laughter. At lunch, Joy was fed in a high chair alongside Grace. Grace talked only to the baby.
‘Just another spoonful for Mummy, darling. There’s my good little girl.’
The baby moved her head aside, spat out food, and cried. Grace seemed intent on stuffing the child until she choked.
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to eat so much, Grace, maybe she doesn’t need all that.’
‘Since when have you become an authority on the care and feeding of infants?’ Grace said, with fury.
Soon Grace announced that one thirty was too late for Joy’s lunch; she ought to eat at noon.
‘Fine,’ Ian said.
‘I haven’t time to arrange two luncheons.’
‘You and Joy eat when you want to. Mwangi will warm something up for me. I can’t change the hours of the farm work.’
Ian was very quiet when he came home for his lunchtime shower and his warmed-over meal; Grace and Joy were asleep. In the evenings for an hour Grace described every detail of Joy’s day and went to bed at eight thirty. Ian didn’t believe Grace could keep it up; he waited for torrents of regret and blame. Grace was haggard, thin as a stick, but never complained or never of Joy. Though Ian steadfastly unheard her conversation, words sifted past his defences. Joy had picked a flower and given it to her, wasn’t that adorable … Joy tipped her plate on the floor at lunch and really and truly said ‘bad’, wasn’t it divine … The basic words were divine and adorable.
The divine adorable baby, however, did not look well; she was pale and puffed, simply too fat, and given to colds. If Joy sneezed, Grace foresaw bronchial pneumonia. If Joy threw up, Grace imagined cholera or appendicitis. If Joy slept restlessly sweatily, Grace knew it was the onset of polio. Grace sent Beda on his bicycle to tell Ian that Dr Parkinson must come at once.
After the third of these visits, Dr Parkinson drove to the farm office, closed the door behind him and said, ‘Ian, I want to talk to you.’
‘Right.’
‘I have many patients and some of them are actually quite ill. It’s a forty-six-mile round trip for me, to visit a child who is not ill. She is kept out of the sun because your wife has some mad idea that her skin will be ruined for life. She is overfed, and bundled up like an Eskimo. There is nothing the matter with Joy except her mother. I find it difficult to talk to your wife. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman like her. You’d imagine that Joy was the first baby on earth. But I will not come here again unless you send the driver with a note of your own; then I’ll know it’s serious. Meantime, here’s a book to give to your wife. Tell her to read it, believe it and obey it.’
He handed Ian a paperback with a coloured picture of a bonny babe on the cover.
‘By a fella named Spock,’ Dr Parkinson said. ‘American but sound. I hope he can persuade your wife to be sensible, I certainly can’t.’
‘It won’t do any good but I’ll try.’
‘How’s Zena?’
‘Fine, better every day.’
‘Quite a contrast, isn’t it?’
‘You bet,’ Ian said fervently. They smiled at each other.
Ian hesitated for three nights. Yes, he was sorry for poor snivelling Joy but scenes with Grace were such a terrible bore. As he knew, Grace took any suggestion as an insult to her mothercraft and snarled into the attack like a she-wolf. He didn’t think Grace could actually kill the child with over-care, but he ought to make an effort to get Grace off old Parkinson’s back. Braced for rage, he said, ‘Grace, I couldn’t have learned farming without books; raising children must be something on that order. Dr Parkinson left this for you. He said it was a sort of guide book.’
Grace did not hurl the book in the fire, abuse him for interfering and flounce from the room. Perhaps she was too exhausted. What would be the end of it? Grace in the Nairobi hospital with a nervous breakdown and the baby back at the Braithewaites with an ayah? Ian resigned himself to some kind of howling crisis but instead Grace grew almost rational. Either Dr Spock or experience had convinced her that the baby was not in imminent peril of death. The playpen was moved from the sitting room to the lawn. At least Joy would be exposed to a few hours of the morning sun.
Grace lived in terror that she would mishandle the helpless beautiful baby whose existence depended on her alone. If only dearest Joy could say what she wanted and how she felt. Grace hovered over the child as always but began to trust her ability to protect the little angel. Whenever the baby said Mama, and waved her fat arms as Grace drowned her in kisses, Grace’s heart turned over. That breathless melting exalted sensation was her first experience of love.
Once, mistakenly, she believed that a wedding ring would secure happiness. Again, mistakenly, she believed that the delightful Dorset was everything she craved. She might have lived and died without knowing herself defrauded of love. Through loving this tiny person she had at last found true happiness. She lost the hunger of needing for herself; she wanted whatever her child needed. She no longer suffered from the monotony and isolation of Fairview and the presence of a dull withdrawn abnormal man. Fairview was a good healthy place for her baby.
This new emotion was of a power Grace could hardly understand. At night in her room, she stood over the baby’s crib with tears of gratitude running down her cheeks. She kneeled by her child and prayed God to keep Joy always safe and well.
Since her return from glamorous Nairobi after the Emergency, Grace had abandoned housekeeping. She saw no point in a futile effort to order and plan interesting meals. Mwangi was a mule and Ian did not care what he ate. The house ran itself. Presumably Mwangi told the lorry driver what to collect for the kitchen. If she had to live at the back of beyond, at least she would spare herself annoying tasks. The drive to Karula was uncomfortable and she had no desire to meet the other farm wives.
But Joy loved outings and Grace loved to show off her bewitching two-year-old daughter. The farm mechanic rigged up a sort of seat belt and several mornings each week Grace drove the child to the Karula general store to buy sweets and toys and be seen. The other farm wives, shopping list in hand, were besieged by Grace and her conversation. Yes, Joy’s very advanced for her age. Yes, isn’t it a pretty frock, friends in Nairobi get them for me. Yes, everyone says her eyes are exceptionally beautiful.
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The wives thought Grace was batty. What did Mrs Paynter mean, appearing in Karula dressed as for a garden party with her infant done up like a chocolate box, bows all over. And how frightfully bad for the child to be stuffed with toffees and put through tricks like a poodle. ‘Kiss the nice lady darling.’
Rose Farrell and Helen Gordon fled together from one of these visitations.
‘Walk with me, Helen. I have to buy plimsolls for Jenny. God knows what she does with them, she can’t eat them. I think there must be a huge plimsoll racket going on at Tanamuru Girls School.’
‘How’s Jenny liking it?’
‘Fine. Not that she’ll ever be a shining light of intellect but her manners are improved. Speaking of manners, I thought our Grace had hit rock bottom at those grisly Sunday lunches but she’s surpassing herself with that unfortunate child.’
‘She’s hard to take all right. Still, she can’t help being so stupid. And I really believe she adores the baby. It’s something in her favour. I’m positive she never gave a hoot in hell for poor Ian.’
‘The child’s pretty anyway.’
‘You know who’s lucky?’
‘Who?’
‘The ugly baby of her own that Grace didn’t have. She’d have been a fiend to it.’
At the age of three, Joy had already learned how to control her mother. She could always get what she wanted. She had only to cry or feign sickness or snuggle and kiss and say, ‘Mummy, Mummy I love you best,’ words she had picked up from Grace. Joy did not try to conquer Daddy. She scarcely saw Ian except on Sunday afternoons when he might be reading on the verandah. Daddy was no use to her.
Daddy observed Joy’s slyness with pity and irritation. Poor beast, he thought, spoiled rotten, trained from the cradle to be a pain in the arse that everyone’s going to hate. Joy inherited from her unknown parents her large blue eyes, her golden curls and her neat short nose, but had acquired Grace’s whining voice. Having been assured that she was delicate, Joy also acquired the habit of complaint and a petulant expression. She could not amuse herself for a minute and demanded constant attention. She was quickly bored. ‘I’m tired of that game, Mummy, play a new game.’ On Sunday afternoons when he might have been with his lovely unspoilt clever little girl, he had to sit around and listen to Joy, who drove him up the wall, until the late milking made an excuse to sneak behind the cypress hedge.
Karula soon palled. ‘I’m tired of that old place, Mummy. I want to go to Nairobi. Please Mummy, please Mummy.’ Joy knew all about Nairobi; it was full of shops with pretty dresses for pretty little girls and toys for good little girls. Grace longed to show Joy to her Dorset friends; they were the ones who would truly appreciate her treasure.
At dinner, Grace said, ‘I wonder if the drive to Nairobi would be too much for Joy, too tiring?’
‘I don’t see why.’ By some mysterious inner antenna, Ian heard Grace when she said something to benefit him.
‘My dentist ought to look at her teeth.’
‘Grace, you deserve a holiday, you really do. You haven’t left Fairview for what? Nearly two years?’ It seemed forever.
‘Twenty-three months,’ Grace said. ‘I measure time by Joy’s growing.’
‘Why don’t you take Joy to Nairobi for a few weeks? There must be a garden at the hotel where she could play. Other children too. And you’d have your friends in the evening.’
In Nairobi, Grace felt that her life had reached a state of ultimate perfection, happiness piled on happiness. Mrs Milbank and Miss Greene and Miss Ball and the Braithewaites were dazzled by Joy’s charm and beauty. They hadn’t words enough to praise Grace’s gift for motherhood. And Joy adored Nairobi. Grace had taught her to fear everything on the farm, from the Africans who were dirty and smelly and nasty to the land which was full of bad things like insects and snakes and wild animals and not a nice place for a little girl to wander. Joy was not the least frightened of traffic in Nairobi, nor of strange people in the hotel. She ran about the Dorset being pretty and petted. She loved window shopping with Mummy and the session at the beauty salon, where her curls were cut and fancily arranged. But Joy did not take to the few other children who happened to be staying at the Dorset. They were rude; they said ‘shut up’ when she told them how to play.
‘Go out in the garden with those nice children, dear.’
‘No Mummy, no, I want to play with you.’
Grace thought this divine; in any case, Joy always did what she wanted. On the way home, Grace promised that they would have a holiday in Nairobi every month. Ian dimly heard how strangers had stopped in the street to admire Joy, how the whole Dorset was enslaved by Joy, and more of the same, but came alert when Grace said, ‘I very foolishly promised I’d take Joy back every month because she was so happy at the Dorset, but now I’ve said it I’ll have to do it, won’t I, Ian? One must never break a promise to a child. I’ve made arrangements with the hotel for a special rate; it really won’t be expensive.’
‘As long as you don’t eat into what I need for the farm.’ Anything that got Grace and Joy away from Fairview was cheap at the price, but he thought it a wise tactic to seem somewhat grudging about money. If Grace knew how he blessed her absence she might not leave so readily.
Grace had given him one valuable idea which wasn’t an excess in six years of marriage: a seat belt for Zena. The farm mechanic fixed a device of canvas straps to cross Zena’s thighs and chest. For a week each month, Ian could safely take Zena with him in the Landrover on his long bumpy morning drives over the farm. He had daydreamed this endlessly but the daydream was set in future time, Zena older, and for some reason unexplained by the daydream, Grace removed from Fairview. He hadn’t hoped to have such joy so soon. Zena was speechless with excitement, her eyes enormous and her eyesight, Ian discovered, an African heritage. This was another of the many mysteries about Africans, they saw farther and faster than anyone when interested, saw nothing when bored.
‘Baba, look! Horses!’ Zena’s picture-book culture.
‘No, zebras. See the stripes?’ He had not seen them, a small herd grazing in the sun far away.
‘Where are they coming from?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know how long they’ll stay either or where they’re going. They’re wild animals, they’re free, they go where they want.’ Well, with limits, but ecological lore would have to wait.
‘Beauty?’
‘Yes indeed.’
The Landrover lurched and bounced on the farm roads; Zena gurgled with laughter. Worth it, to Ian, if she did nothing more than laugh. She had so little chance for laughter, growing up with the silent old people; that always worried him.
‘Baba look! What is it?’
‘Baboons. You see the baby baboons on the backs of their mothers?’
‘Wild animals?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nice. Funny. Not beauty?’
‘No, not beautiful but I love to see them. If we’re lucky we’ll see some wild animals every day. If there were no fences they’d be roaming all over the farm. I must have fences for the cattle though I wish I didn’t. But the whole farm isn’t fenced and anyway they get past the fences. This is what I love most, every day, if I can see wild animals here.’
‘I love most too.’
Zena saw them all, when they were there to see, and saw them first. Ostriches running like mad dowagers along the fences, eagles sitting on fence posts, tommy leaping away from the noise of the Landrover; distant giraffe. One morning she spotted elephants, the great travellers, moving slowly among the trees near Luke’s burial ground. He stopped the Landrover to gaze at those wonderful beasts.
‘They’re not afraid of anything,’ Ian said. ‘Except men. They are good and kind to each other and very clever.’
‘Why are they afraid of men?’
‘Because men shoot them. Can you see their heads?’ Maybe she could; he saw only their enormous grey shapes.
‘Yes, they have big teeth on the side.’
‘You, Baba?’ She was clearly distressed.
‘No, never.’ Not that the watu, who feared the tembo, didn’t beg him to call the game warden and have them shot. He’d let them knock down anything on the farm rather than harm them.
It’s a very fine day if we see elephants, Zena. It doesn’t happen often.’
The watu grew used to the small brown girl in the Landrover with the Bwana. Bwana Looki, in the old days, took his big brown dog everywhere with him. Zena was accompanying him in his work and Ian explained the work as they went. Baba, does the milking machine hurt the cows when it pulls? No, not at all. What is that man doing, Baba? That man is Alhamisi and he is a mechanic, he fixes machines when they break. He is fixing the pump and by God’s grace he will succeed or else I will have to get a fundi, a man who knows everything about pumps, to come from Nakuru. What does the pump do? It pushes water to many places on the farm so that we can all have water to drink, the people and the animals and the shambas. Nothing can live without water. Baba, does the big pig make all those toto pigs at the same time? Yes. How? A brief factual description of animal sex sufficed, neither of them being much interested.
The watu were not surprised to see Soft Voice stand by his Landrover, holding the child’s hand, while together they stared at Africa. Soft Voice was teaching Zena his religion but a new act of prayer had been added; Soft Voice lifted the child in his arms and pointed to the sky. Mungo, God, they told each other. Ian was showing Zena the clouds, cirrus and cumulus, sharing his wonder in the African sky. He was giving her all he had, his world, and knew it was a great deal for a four-year-old to understand, but month after month Zena learned with intelligence and love, as taught.
Zena had always been a smiling child and Ian could not doubt her happiness and still he worried. His little girl was growing up in isolation; children needed other children. Without much hope, he told Sita to walk the mile to the African lines where she could chatter with the other women and Zena play with the totos. Zena returned in tears, she didn’t understand the totos’ games, they pointed and stared and shouted at her. She was of course a foreigner, she wasn’t their colour, she lived a separate different life. Sita complained that her legs ached and it was bure anyway.
The Weather in Africa Page 20
