The Weather in Africa

by Martha Gellhorn

  The house had to be disinfected before he brought Zena to live with him. ‘For the last time,’ Ian said as Beda and Mwangi unloaded Luke’s old furnishings. The two farm lorries were filled with all Grace’s stuff and sent to the Nairobi saleroom. He might have kept the red nursery for Zena but it was Grace’s doing and he wanted Grace expunged. Ian drove to Nairobi and ambled about like a helpless country bumpkin until he found a furniture shop. The Asian proprietor assured him that these pale blue things were ‘a very fine suite for a young little lady’.

  ‘I don’t like the bunnies.’

  The bunnies could be painted out, immediately, and where was the Bwana buying curtains and bedspread. The Asian’s son led Ian to the Asian’s cousin’s shop where Ian was astounded by the quantity and variety of repellent material on sale and presumably bought. He was ready to give up when he saw a bolt of cloth, more or less the same colour as the new furniture. It was patterned with small pink rosebuds. He showed the Asian the size of the windows as he remembered them; curtains and bedspread would be made at once by a glum African at a pedal sewing machine, and shipped with the very fine suite to Karula the next day.

  Ian was too preoccupied to listen. He had suddenly thought of clothes. Since his first Nakuru effort, he had bought no clothing for Zena. But the child wasn’t naked, how did she live? Clean little dresses, which he had taken for granted. From where? Joy’s cast-offs, it had to be. He wanted to weep, thinking of Zena patiently accepting whatever Joy discarded all these years. He had much to learn and he must teach Zena to remind him, to ask; he couldn’t bear the idea of her humility. But he also couldn’t quite, as yet, bear the idea of a female clothing store. When Zena came with him, it would be different. Staring into shop windows, brooding on his carelessness, he saw a display of small shorts and striped T-shirts. Much better for the farm anyway. Zena would look enchanting, dressed like a little boy. He figured she was about the size of a seven-year-old male, and returned cheerfully to Karula with a stack of shorts and T-shirts.

  He and Beda were behaving like a pair of old hens and enjoying it. Zena’s room was ready, with bunches of flowers on the desk and bedside table, and the new boy’s outfits in the bureau drawers. He felt a joyful elation he had markedly failed to feel long ago upon bringing Grace here. He went behind the cypress hedge, to bear the glad tidings.

  ‘Zena, love, you’re coming to live with me in the big house.’

  Zena gave him a look of terror, wrenched away her hand and fled into the bush. He thrashed after her but she was well hidden. He found her sobbing in a sort of burrow behind a leleshwa bush. She must have made this hole herself and she certainly knew her way to it.

  Ian carried the child in his arms to the swing under the Cape Chestnut tree and held her on his lap, soothing her while she cried as he had never seen her cry. He kept saying, ‘Tell Baba, darling, tell Baba.’ When she could speak, Zena said, ‘No, Baba, please. The Memsaab’s toto is bad to me, I don’t want to live with her, please, Baba.’

  So Ian learned at last the cause of Zena’s unexplained sickness. If he had known, he wouldn’t have let them go so easily; he would have driven them out with whips and thongs, the words springing into his mind; beaten them down the driveway, sent them bleeding and penniless from this place where the poisoned child of the poisonous woman had tormented his gentle timid little girl. How could anyone be so wicked, it was like trapping and baiting a young gazelle.

  ‘Baba?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your face. Baba, your face is ugly.’

  Hate was an ugly emotion. And now a useless one. Grace and Joy were beyond his reach, no doubt airborne. Grace had settled her business in Nairobi at speed. A letter from her solicitor demanded 60 per cent of the net profits of Fairview and he had agreed light-heartedly, with relief, by return of post. The only way he could punish Grace was by making Fairview fail. Hate was entirely useless, and a sort of victory for Grace.

  He took a deep breath and let it out noisily. ‘Better now? I blew the ugliness away.’

  Zena nodded but she was still tense, like a little animal curled against danger

  ‘Listen to me, Zena. They are gone. The Memsaab and her toto. They are gone forever, they will never come back. Never, you understand that, don’t you? We don’t have to think about them, we will forget they were ever here. There’s only us, together on our farm, for the rest of our lives. Now come home with me.’

  Mrs Farrell called to the barman, ‘Jambo Samuel, coca cola moja, baridi sana.’ She hurried across the tatty empty club room to Mrs Gordon who was reading her mail.

  ‘Helen, have you seen Ian Paynter?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘I saw him at the post office, our throbbing social centre. He had a ravishing little brown girl with him, but ravishing. If you can imagine Nefertiti as a child, wearing khaki shorts and a red and white striped T-shirt.’

  ‘Rose, dear, pull yourself together.’

  ‘Why not? The Nilo-Hamitic tribes are all beautiful. How do we know that isn’t what Nefertiti was? The ancient Egyptians …’

  ‘I’m not up to it.’

  ‘Neither am I, really. Anyway you sidetracked me. The point is, this beauty is obviously a half-breed. It’s too extraordinary. I’m all of a twitter. Instead of staring at his feet and mumbling, Ian looked me straight in the eye, smiling all over his face, and said, “Mrs Farrell, may I present my adopted daughter, Zena.” I didn’t know what to do. I tried to shake hands with the child but she hid behind his legs and Ian just laughed and patted her head and said benignly, “She’s a bit shy, she’ll get over it.” Coming from him, I ask you. And he looked radiant, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man look like that.’

  ‘That’s good news. Grace was not one to inspire radiance.’

  ‘But you know, it is rather weird. Grace and her film star kiddy vanishing without a word and a few months later, Ian appearing with this new child and she’s not, repeat not, full-blooded African. What can it mean?’

  ‘Not what you think.’

  ‘Oh, why?’

  ‘Not Ian, anyone but Ian. I’d bet my last shilling.’

  ‘Your opinions are universally respected, dear heart, but I’ll bet my last shilling they won’t be shared this time.’

  ‘Oh really, damn it to hell, I can see it starting all over again. Poor Ian, they’ll never let him alone. Why shouldn’t he adopt a little girl, any colour, even green, if he wants to? You don’t suppose he’s had a jolly good time with Grace and Shirley Temple, do you? I’ve always thought he was the loneliest man I ever knew. And if he’s happy now I wish to God people would just be nice for a change and let him be happy. I’m going to squash that rumour before it gets a good hold.’

  ‘May I ask how?’

  ‘I’ll simply say I know all about the child, I’ve discussed it at length with Ian, and any suggestion of hanky panky is rot. If you have a spark of human decency you’ll do the same. Your last good deed before you leave.’

  ‘Okay but what do we do when they ask where Zena came from and etcetera.’

  ‘We have the haughties, we say no one asks us about our children and it’s rudimentary manners not to pry. After all, how do we know that Jenny is actually Simon’s child, we take it for granted out of politeness.’

  ‘Oh Helen!’

  ‘Well, you get the general idea, don’t you? And I’m going to have him to lunch with his new daughter as soon as Charles goes off to kill some more harmless wild animals.’

  ‘That’s a joke. He’ll never come.’

  ‘Yes, he will. He likes my garden.’

  ‘How do you know, or has he been at your house secretly some time in the last ten years?’

  ‘No, but he liked the garden then. And he’ll need a woman friend for the girl. I’ll make him come. And I long to help him with his borders, they haunt me.’

  Zena had been chatting about school and gardening, for she was Helen Gordon’s disciple, but grew silent as they neared Fairview. H
elen Gordon could feel the child straining ahead towards home. She must have been wildly homesick this first term though Ian said her letters were cheerful. Helen Gordon felt a heavy responsibility; she had convinced Ian that Zena must go to school with other girls. She took it on herself to make the arrangements. Zena passed the scholastic tests with ease and after Independence no school could refuse a child because she had African blood. In fact, as Helen Gordon told Ian to calm him, Tanamuru Girls School accepted African students before Independence despite its reputation as the most stylish school for young ladies in East Africa.

  ‘You don’t want her to grow up knowing nobody except you and me, do you, Ian? No other children. She’ll be a misfit, she won’t know how to get along in the world.’

  Mrs Gordon was not sure where or how the beautiful child would fit in the Republic of Kenya but then she was not sure about herself either. And it never hurt anybody to go to the right school. She had made careful inquiries and learned that the African students at Tanamuru Girls School were the daughters of Top People so she assumed the Africans were not all that different from the English in some respects.

  Ian had forgotten his anxieties about Zena’s solitude since they were so happy together and so sufficient to each other. Zena was blithely gay, his constant companion. The years behind the cypress hedge were unreal, part of an unreal past. He could not imagine life without her and resisted the idea of separation. But the word ‘misfit’ frightened him. Helen Gordon was right and he knew it though he agonized lest Zena be snubbed by white girls or mistreated; there might be other monsters like Joy. He had written to Zena every day, in every letter he told her she could come home any time she was unhappy. He didn’t say that he missed her so much he felt sick, the house was a tomb, no matter how hard he worked he couldn’t work off his loneliness. He pulled the pages from the calendar in his office, waiting in desolation for the Christmas holidays. Helen Gordon was to call for Zena, as she would be in Nairobi that day. She took that on herself too, guessing Ian’s profound reluctance to appear at a girls’ school.

  Now Helen Gordon turned away and walked out of sight around the house. She couldn’t watch this silent rapturous reunion; Ian and Zena clinging together as if both had just escaped drowning. Perhaps she was wrong; she’d suffered untold misery when Charles shipped the boys to England but they were boys and there was no real choice and they had never been as close as a girl would be. Perhaps she had meddled, laid another paving stone on the road to hell. Perhaps they should be left alone to live their perfectly happy absorbed lives here; but what would Zena do when Ian died? If she had never known any place other than Fairview, made no friends, grown up a recluse like Ian? Ian was forty-four, Zena was twelve; Zena had a long piece of time to live without him.

  There were noises of African welcome and laughter inside the house and then they came across the lawn, the sweet funny pair, the small girl with her arm around the waist of the tall man, his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Your roses are doing beautifully, Ian. I’ve never seen a new rose garden look like this. Let me know when you feel like coming to lunch.’ She kissed them both and hurried off. Much as they liked her, she knew they didn’t want her there a minute longer.

  ‘Oh Baba,’ Zena sighed.

  ‘Yes.’

  He understood everything Zena meant: to be together, here where they belonged, looking at the same view.

  ‘I’ll get out of my uniform and then can we drive to Luke’s hill?’

  ‘I thought you’d want to,’ and had a picnic tea with thermos bottle ready in the Landrover.

  Zena came back in her farm uniform, khaki shorts and shirt, saying, ‘I’m only comfy like this.’

  They didn’t talk on the way. The afternoon was hot, cloudless and windless. Dust hung in a curtain behind them and dropped in the still air. Ian felt Zena’s joy when she saw a herd of grazing zebra. She was taking in the land through her eyes, regaining her home. Ian spread a plastic cloth on the grass at the edge of the ridge and Zena got the tea organized; this was one of their regular treats. After they had paid reverence to the view and their cups were filled, Ian said, ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You know our school uniform?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lucy had worn the same in a different colour. Apparently natural law decreed that English schoolgirls or girls at English schools must wear that felt pot hat, blazer, pleated skirt.

  ‘It was called nigger brown before Independence but now it’s called dark brown.’

  Ian took in his breath, all his worst fears were true; but Zena was having a simple schoolgirl’s fit of giggles.

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Betty.’

  Dear God, was Zena so lonely that she still depended on an imaginary friend?

  ‘She’s an African girl,’ Zena said. ‘She told me because it’s so funny.’

  ‘Is she a friend of yours?’

  ‘Oh yes, everyone’s my friend.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Ian said uncertainly. Zena munched cookies.

  ‘One day,’ Zena went on, ‘After sports, some of the older girls were talking and they asked me to come over. One of them, she’s very pretty, her name is Isabel, she asked me about my mother.’

  Ian had stopped breathing; he felt tears in his eyes. She would never go back to that rotten school, better grow up a misfit than grow up tormented.

  ‘I said I didn’t know, I’d never seen her,’ Zena went on, still munching cookies. ‘Then she asked about my father and I said you. Another girl, I forget her name, said I must be illegitimate. I asked how to spell it, it’s got two l’s with e after. So I could look it up, you see. Anyway Isabel said it was very romantic, and then they all said it was romantic, and Isabel said either my father or my mother or both must be very beautiful and I said you were. I looked up illegitimate. It means a lot of things but mainly not born in lawful wedlock.’

  Ian didn’t know what to do; this matter-of-fact instructive conversation affected him like being kicked in the stomach.

  ‘Weren’t you in lawful wedlock with my mother?’ Zena asked.

  ‘No.’ That was God’s truth, but what went on in her head? Of course Zena must believe he was her real father, having known no other, and he had never said he was or wasn’t. He had never explained the circumstances of her birth for the idiot reason that he didn’t think it mattered.

  ‘Oh well, that’s why you adopted me,’ Zena said. ‘So I could be your lawful daughter, I wasn’t sure why. I wouldn’t like to have a mother. I remember about the Memsaab not really but sort of.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bewildered, lost; was she telling him something he didn’t hear?

  ‘I’m the smallest girl in school. I don’t mean the youngest, I mean the smallest. And I don’t look like anybody else, the African girls are black and the European girls are white and then there’s me. So everybody’s my friend and the older girls say I’m their pet.’

  ‘Zena, do you hate it there?’

  ‘Oh no, Baba, I don’t hate it. It’s a very nice school. Lots of big trees and grass and flowers but you can’t see anywhere, not like here, you can’t look out and see the land and of course there aren’t any wild animals. But if I can skip a form then it would only be five more years.’

  Ian reached over and lifted her and sat her on his lap, enfolding her in his arms. ‘You don’t have to go back, you don’t have to stay there five years, you can be here all the time right now.’

  ‘Baba?’ Zena said in a small voice.

  ‘Yes, my little one?’

  ‘Did you send me there because you were tired of me? Because you wanted to be alone on the farm?’

  ‘Zena, how could you think that? I want you here every minute. I counted the days until the end of term. I love you better than anything in the world, the farm is terribly lonely for me without you.’

  Zena snuggled closer and put her arms around his chest.

  ‘I don’t mind then.’

  ‘Were you having sad thoughts all this t
ime?’

  ‘Well, I thought we lived here together and did lessons together and then all of a sudden I had to go to school, so I thought maybe.’

  ‘No, dearest. No. Aunt Helen talked to me and said there were many things a girl needed to learn besides what she learns on a farm. I’ve lived here nearly twenty years now, and I don’t understand much outside of Fairview. I wanted you to have more chances, but I won’t keep you at that school if people hurt your feelings.’

  ‘Nobody hurts my feelings, Baba. I told you. I was scared at first and cried in bed but so did other girls and I guessed they were scared too so I didn’t feel so lonely. Then a girl called Joanna, she used to cry too, she said we’d be best friends and help each other. She lives on a farm near Thomson’s Falls, they raise beef cattle, she’s seen lions but she doesn’t like them, she’s afraid of them. Then we had parties in our dorm after lights out, you’re not allowed to, eating sweets and cake and fruit and things, Aunt Helen sends me boxes so I have plenty. And they tell me funny stories and we laugh a lot. If you laugh you forget about being homesick. Anyway now I know millions of girls and they’re all my friends.’

  Zena unpeeled a somewhat melted bar of Cadbury’s chocolate and began to lick it from the tinfoil. With chocolate on her nose, she giggled suddenly. ‘I’m like Mary.’

  ‘Mary?’

  ‘Baba! You haven’t forgotten Mary? My pet lamb?’

  ‘Zena, love, I’m a bit confused but I think you are saying politely that Tanamuru Girls School is hell.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Honestly. I think I’m saying that school’s kind of silly, not like Fairview.’ Zena licked her fingers and got up, tea and conversation finished, the sun magnificently sending afterbursts of light above the western mountains. Sounding very assured and brisk, she said, ‘It’s all right, Baba. Everybody has to go to school, all the girls know that. We better do what other people do. I don’t suppose five years is really very long.’