For once Joy couldn’t run to Mummy to get what she wanted. She dared not brave snakes and wild animals and dared not shout to Zena in case Mummy heard and found her in this forbidden territory. Zena was a pig and a black baboon and she would really punish her, not play punish, when she caught her. She couldn’t think of any way to reach Zena until Sita came yawning from her hut.
From Beda and Mwangi, Sita knew how the Memsaab ruled the house and spoiled her toto and how the Bwana allowed this as if afraid of the Memsaab. She didn’t want a dispute with the Memsaab and the chance of losing the best rondavel on the farm. Though the white toto broke or stole all Zena’s toys she didn’t actually injure Zena and Zena would have to get used to this sooner or later; Europeans were the masters. Sita never emerged from her hut until sure that the Memsaab’s toto had left them in peace. Today she was fooled by the quiet; instead of stamping around and muttering threats, Joy stood glaring at the wilderness that hid Zena.
Joy was well aware of her power. Sita, being African, had to obey her. She ordered Sita to fetch Zena and Sita walked slowly into the bush, looking for the unhappy child. Joy slapped Zena hard for her attempts at escape.
‘You do what I tell you or my Mummy will send you away from here,’ Joy said.
That would be worse than all Joy’s torments; she would never see Baba again.
Grace lay on her bed in the afternoons, trying to distract herself with novels and calm herself with aspirin, while her nerves felt like taut wires and she was eaten by fears of the future. Ian’s selfishness was monstrous, criminal. On her worst days, she imagined Joy stripped and flung about like a rag doll by brutal laughing Africans. After Independence, no British soldiers would protect them against the murderous Africans. Her only comfort was Joy who was so gay and bright and such a darling considerate child, unlike Ian who had no consideration for anyone. To shame Ian by showing him this difference, she said, ‘I’m always astonished by Joy’s thoughtfulness. A little girl of eight but she worries about me. Today she said, “You need your afternoon nap, Mummy, you work so hard.” I wish you had a tenth of her concern. But oh no, you don’t care, you’ll let us stay here to be attacked …’ Before Ian stopped listening, he wondered vaguely what tricks Joy was up to now.
Sita, wanting no trouble, tacked an old piece of cloth over the bare toy shelves. After Joy’s first looting visit, Zena hid her books under her bed so that as usual Baba and she spent their evening hour studying and reading together. Ian saw nothing strange but something was very wrong. Instead of running to meet him with laughter and kisses, Zena cowered in a corner of the hut and waited for him to hold out his arms. Zena stopped working by herself in the afternoons, she had no samples of writing and finished arithmetic lessons to show him. When he asked for her notebooks, she shook her head and would not look at him. She read in a whisper, stumbling over words she had read easily before, close to tears. He was alarmed by this change and bewildered. What had happened? The child seemed afraid. He held her on his lap, reading to her, and her slender little body was stiff as if he had become a stranger.
Ian called Sita out of the rondavel and said, ‘What have you been doing to Zena? She was never like this before. Have you been beating her? Tell me the truth.’
Sita said stonily, ‘Not me.’
‘Ndola?’
‘Not Ndola.’
Ian found a moment to question Beda and Mwangi. ‘Not me,’ Beda said. ‘Not me,’ Mwangi said. ‘Then who?’ Ian asked. ‘Don’t lie to me. I know someone is frightening Zena.’ He was up against the wooden faces of Africans who are unwilling to speak. They shrugged, all of them. When he asked Zena gently, rocking her in his arms, she buried her face against his chest and wept. The child only became almost her normal happy self during their week’s holiday, when Grace and Joy were in Nairobi.
Ian took Zena to Dr Parkinson, having decided Zena must be ill, parasites maybe, one of the invisible African wasting diseases. Dr Parkinson reported bruises and scratches, nothing special. Zena could have got those playing in the bush. Yes, he agreed the child seemed different, nervous, perhaps the Africans were filling her with stories of evil spirits and black magic, upsetting her that way. Ian tried a new line of questioning and again Sita, Ndola, Beda and Mwangi said ‘not me’ and looked at him with the same wooden faces.
The rains put an end to Joy’s interesting afternoons. Mummy said she would catch cold and must stay indoors, not that she wanted to get soaked and dirtied by the mud in the servants’ quarters. She missed Zena, Zena was a good playmate who did as she was told. There was nothing to do in the long dull afternoons and Mummy went to their room with a book and left her alone to be bored. Grace was reading when Joy stood by the bedroom door and said, ‘I hate it here!’
‘Now, angel, we’ll be going to the coast soon.’
‘I hate it here. I don’t want to live here. I want children to play with.’
Grace felt this as a knife wound. She knew it had to come, but so soon, so soon? Already she was not everything to Joy as Joy was to her. Before the prospect of Independence drove out all other fears, Grace had blocked from her mind the torturing thought of boarding school and her loneliness, separated from Joy.
Joy pouted and scuffed her feet.
‘There’s a girl here to play with.’
‘Here? You mean an African? Oh darling, what a foolish idea, you wouldn’t want to play with an African.’
Joy pouted more, hung her head, twisted her body.
‘Where did you see her?’ Grace asked.
Joy had not expected questions. She had never been scolded but she sensed trouble.
‘In back,’ Joy said sullenly.
‘Beda’s child or Mwangi’s probably. Oh no, angel, they come from horrid dirty huts on a reservation somewhere.’
The wives of Beda and Mwangi, with assorted children, drifted in for visits when they saw fit and drifted off. Grace objected to this long ago. Ian said it was the custom, and he couldn’t change it, and Grace didn’t have to see the visitors. She would speak to Ian about this tonight, and sharply. Up to now during the day, on her specific orders, Beda and Mwangi kept their children in the African lines where they belonged.
‘Not Beda’s,’ Joy said.
‘Then Mwangi’s, darling; it’s the same thing.’
‘No!’ Joy shouted, furious with Mummy.
‘Well darling, nobody else lives out there. Now be Mummy’s good little girl and forget that silly idea. We’ll play a lovely game together.’
‘She’s Baba’s child,’ Joy said.
‘Who’s Baba?’
‘The Bwana.’
Joy had an active imagination and often made up stories, using words she did not understand. The child had no notion of what she’d said, of course.
‘Let’s play Snap,’ Grace suggested. ‘You find the cards and we’ll play right here, nice and snuggly on the bed.’
Joy liked Snap, which she always won, and forgot Zena.
If Joy’s story was true, Ian was giving in to the Africans even before Independence. Soon they would be all over the place, squatting and spitting in her garden. The blacks weren’t rulers yet and her authority must be enforced: African children were forbidden to wander near the house where they might spread their disgusting diseases to Joy. But Joy should not be brought into it. After the unforgettable and unforgivable incident with Beda, she could see Ian taking the Africans’ side, saying Joy had no business behind the house, blaming and upsetting Joy not the servants. She would find out for herself before Ian came home as if Joy had not alerted her. Grace quietly set her watch an hour ahead.
‘Heavens, look at the time, darling. It’s such a nasty wet night, wouldn’t you love a picnic in bed? With the radio and whipped cream on your cocoa and delicious lemon pie?’
Joy was devouring lemon pie, the radio at full blast, when Grace took a torch and walked through the drizzle to the cypress hedge. She saw a lighted rondavel and approached the open door. Ian was sitting on a low
stool, his back leaned comfortably against the wall. From beyond the doorway Grace smelled the African stench. Ian looked at home in this squalid place, smiling and easy. He held a small brown girl on his lap, stroking her hair while she read to him. When the child stopped, Ian lifted her up, hugged her close and kissed her cheek. ‘You’re Baba’s clever little one. That was very good. Better every day. Tomorrow I’m going to bring you special presents from Karula as a prize for working so well.’
Grace turned and walked silently back to the house. She stood inside the verandah door, with the torch in her hand, too shocked to think or move. Then the meaning of what she had seen poured over her; she felt as if she were on fire, burning with hate, choked, gasping for air, burning. She stumbled towards Ian’s room, the gunsafe, the shotgun, you don’t have to know, just raise it and pull the trigger, deadly at close range, dead, dead, before he could bring his filth into her house. The noise of the radio stopped her at Ian’s door. Joy terrified, Joy alone when they took her away. Oh God, no, I’m mad, I must think. Her legs were shaking, she leaned on chairs and tables, making her way back to the sofa by the fireplace.
Zena’s sickness, whatever it was, had disappeared as inexplicably as it came. Perhaps she was quieter and less ready to laugh but she wasn’t a baby any more that he could tickle and bounce on his knees. He had been desperately worried, knowing his child was unhappy and unable to help because he didn’t understand. But it was all right now, the best sign being that Zena studied again in the afternoons and prepared her homework to show him and was eager to learn. And soon they would be alone, with Grace and Joy at the coast; he’d have the time he needed to play with her and cheer her up. Ian walked through the kitchen, whistling, and headed for his door not noticing Grace at the far end of the sitting room.
Whistling. He came here from that, whistling. The weakness left her, she sprang to her feet, powered by hate. She wanted to tear at his face with her nails, she wanted to scream at this monster, but was obliged to whisper. The radio still blared but Joy might not be asleep and voices carried, she could not risk Joy hearing.
‘You are unspeakable,’ Grace hissed. Ian turned to look at her with astonishment. ‘There aren’t any words for you, such filth, such vileness. That’s what you were doing during the Emergency. No wonder you wouldn’t leave here, you were sleeping with your African whore. And you keep your half-breed bastard right behind my house, where Joy could see her, where Joy did see her. How dare you live under the same roof with us? I wish I could kill you. You hear me? I wish I could kill you! You nigger-lover!’
Ian was transfixed. He stared at this familiar plain face, distorted by hate, he listened to the voice that he also knew too well, now whispering with a fury he had never heard anywhere, and he made no sense of it. It was too sudden. He opened his bedroom door and undressed and took his bath as usual. Lying in the hot water, he untangled what Grace had said, and understood what she meant, though he couldn’t imagine how she reached this crazy conclusion. He felt nothing at all; whatever Grace thought was a matter of indifference. He had actually heard Grace say that she wished she could kill him, and he believed her, and he felt nothing. She might have been complaining of the weather.
Ian returned to the sitting room in clean shirt and khakis and mixed a whisky and soda at the drinks tray. He saw no reason to discuss Grace’s lunatic accusation. Grace took this cool silence as the final outrage. The revolting beast expected her to accept what he had done?
‘You listen to me, Ian Paynter,’ Grace whispered. ‘I will get a divorce and I will take every penny you have. You can live with your whore then, like an African, just like them, in a dirty rondavel, that’s all you’re fit for.’
‘Divorce?’ Ian began, dimly, to see a miracle solution to his life. He had to speak with caution and prevent himself from smiling.
‘You heard me. Everyone in the country will know about you. You won’t have a shred of reputation, every decent person will despise you, you won’t be the big Bwana of Fairview, you’ll be an outcast, you and your black whore and your bastard.’
‘For a divorce,’ Ian said mildly, ‘You need proof. You’ll have to find the woman first and then you’ll have to find witnesses who have seen me with her. Just seeing isn’t enough. They have to prove I was in bed with her. Do you think you can swing that?’
‘Beda and Mwangi,’ Grace said with loathing. ‘They’ll have seen you.’
‘There’s no woman out there, and Beda and Mwangi have seen nothing.’
‘You mean you went away from the farm? Oh it’s too horrible and disgusting to talk about. I can’t bear to look at you. You make me sick. Being in the same room with you makes me feel dirty, covered with slime. Anyway there’s your bastard, she’s out there, I saw her.’
‘You have to prove she’s my child, don’t you? Your word against mine. You’ll never find any witnesses.’
Grace felt the sweat on her forehead, she was dizzy and shivering, she swallowed back a sudden rise of bile in her throat. She was torn apart, half mad with fury and a blood lust for revenge while Ian sat in his chair sipping his drink, calm, teasing her, mocking her, and winning. Witnesses would have to be Africans, Europeans wouldn’t know this abominable story; and the Africans would be on Ian’s side. She’d never get a word out of any of them. And if he said his whore was not there in the servants’ rondavels, then she wasn’t. How could she track down that woman; she might be anywhere in Kenya.
‘Besides,’ Ian went on. ‘A huge scandal wouldn’t be frightfully jolly for you and Joy. Would it? Scandal has a way of sticking to everyone. People might even laugh at you, you know, people do strange things.’
Grace collapsed on the settee and covered her face. She couldn’t believe what was happening. Right and justice and honour and decency were on her side, and everything Ian said was true. Ian wouldn’t care about scandal, he didn’t care what anyone thought of him, but Grace could imagine the Memsaabs gossiping at the Karula Sports Club, poor Grace, she’s been living all those years with Ian’s black tart at her back door. Her friends at the Dorset would be horrified and sympathetic but all the same embarrassed, a sex scandal with an African wasn’t the sort of thing nice people got mixed up in. And if she couldn’t get a divorce, she couldn’t punish Ian, the only way to punish him was to drive him from Fairview.
‘If you think I’m going to live here, if you think I’m going to let you do this to me,’ Grace said, incoherent with despair and hatred.
‘No, I wouldn’t expect you to stay. I suggest a legal separation. Something quiet and discreet so you and Joy won’t have any unpleasantness and then you and Joy might move to England. You won’t like it here anyway when the Africans are in charge.’
‘That’s lovely for you, isn’t it?’ Grace sneered. ‘Get me and Joy out of the way and bring your whore here. Fill the house with kinky-haired bastards. I daresay you’d give us a measly allowance so we could live in a cheap boarding house.’
‘Why would I do that? You can have half the profits, a settlement properly drawn up. I imagine you two could live quite well on that, and I’ll be doing the work that keeps the profits coming in.’
Beda entered from the kitchen with a soup tureen. Ian waved him away, saying, ‘Bado, bado.’
Grace got up. ‘I shall never eat with you again nor spend another night under the same roof with you. I never want to see you or hear from you. You’ll get a letter from my solicitor. I mean to pack now and Joy and I will leave for Nairobi in the morning. I forbid you to see Joy. You’re not fit to breathe the same air. I will take only our clothes and whatever toys Joy chooses. I don’t want anything to remind me of this place and you ever. And I hope you suffer all your life as you’ve made me suffer.’
‘Well, Grace, the main thing is that Fairview shouldn’t suffer. Always remember the profits.’
Her beautiful angel was fast asleep. Grace began to pack, moving quietly. Her hands trembled so that it was difficult to fold Joy’s dresses. That slow stupi
d man, Ian Paynter, had defeated her; she couldn’t ruin him; she couldn’t make him pay.
Words blazed in her mind. No wonder he wouldn’t touch me, white women disgust him, the pervert, the liar, he only likes black flesh, no wonder he lived back of beyond and made no friends and kept white people away, no wonder, what did he do, go to the African lines and spend the afternoon in any hut with any fat stinking black woman he fancied, years of it, years, presents for the totos, lies, presents for his whores, married me as a smoke-screen, used me, made a fool of me, the best years, my youth, the horrible perverted sex monster, of course he let me adopt Joy, more smoke-screen while he kept his favourite bastard at hand for him, used Joy, used Joy, for years, all the time from the beginning, the sneaky cunning devil, no one knew, no one guessed, I’d have lived my whole life with this filth except for Joy, Joy saved me, Joy, Joy.
She had to sit down; she was exhausted by rage and bitterness. Never again sleep in that bed, I’d vomit if I thought of what had happened there, no, no, I must be calm and careful, Joy cannot know this not ever, it’s my sacred duty to protect her, she must never know anything, I’ll tell her we are leaving because an old friend is very ill in England, I’ll think of something, she’s so young, she won’t question me.
Grace pulled the chair alongside Joy’s bed where she could see that angelic face. Everything she loved, pure, unspoiled, and rescued thank God from this sewer of evil. Yes, rescued. Her hands had stopped trembling. She would be able to pack the last suitcases now. That was the main thing: Joy was rescued.
The ways of Providence were indeed mysterious and not painless at first sight. On second sight, the ways of Providence looked much more favourable. Joy would forget Daddy quickly; later she would tell Joy that Daddy was dead, as for any practical purpose he was. They would live in civilized England, instead of this backward country which anyway was on the verge of chaos, ruled by blacks. Bournemouth, Cheltenham? She needn’t decide in a hurry, Joy loved living in hotels. And Joy could go to day school, sparing her the dreaded separation of boarding school. They would be together, she and her beloved daughter, and comfortably off, and no depraved man and no filthy Africans to trouble them. Grace longed for daylight, longed to get away, knowing how thrilled Joy would be: Joy hated Fairview, as she did. And fifty per cent was not enough.
The Weather in Africa Page 22
