The Weather in Africa Page 2

  Jane believed that Luigi had not offered her marriage because he was poor; she understood all the aspects of pride. He had explained that he was learning the business from the bottom; his uncle planned to set him up in a shop of his own. When Luigi had his shop, Jane knew he would speak. Her relentless endurance and ambition seemed absurd now, except as a means to this end. Her career had been a trick of destiny to lead her to Rome and Luigi. What was the lonely dream of fame compared to the joy of being Luigi’s wife? It was only a matter of time, a little waiting, but enchanted waiting, until Luigi’s male pride was soothed by the possession of his own shop. They had invented the name together: Palm Beach. Jane wondered whether she could work with him, be near him by day as well as night, or would a woman’s presence lower the tone of the most elegant men’s boutique in Rome? She would learn to cook and to sew; she meant to serve Luigi tenderly, ardently, in every way, with her whole heart.

  Jane’s arm moved by itself. She hit Luigi hard, swinging her handbag like a club. He clutched his cheek, glared at her with fury, and ran from her dressing room. Jane locked the door and wept, for the first time, until she felt cold, faint, blinded and choked by tears, too weak to move. A broken heart was a real thing, a knife pain in the chest. And in the mind, black despair. There was no one in the world to turn to; she was alone with this anguish, she was freezing to death from loneliness.

  But no one must ever know, no one, ever. She could not live if people mocked her, laughing behind her back, the proud English Janina fooled by the first Italian who laid her. She would wait here until everyone had gone so that no one should see her ravaged face. A terrible word hovered, pushing itself forward to be heard. Failure. There were no tears left, only this sensation of creeping cold, in the airless dressing room on a summer night. Wait, Jane told herself, wait, wait. The couch with the bumpy springs smelled of mildew, the worn green damask was greasy from many other heads.

  Later, singing those ritual words – ‘Doan evah leave me … why ya treat me so mean … youah mah man, I need ya honey, I need ya lovah …’ – there was meaning and emotion in her voice. But now she hated Rome too, hated every beautiful young man with tight black curls, and the streets were full of them. She welcomed a stout middle-aged English gent who said he was in Rome on holiday, the manager of the Savoy, in Harrogate, and a lovely English girl like her didn’t belong here with all these slimy Wops, she ought to come home, his clientele wasn’t an ogling bunch of lechers, they were good solid English people.

  Mary Ann had less to remember and no special reason to forget. There had been eight years of work in the hotel, lifting some of the burden from her parents’ shoulders. When she felt she could steal time for herself, she was off up the mountain, passing the Chagga village where she chatted with old friends, into the damp jungly world of the rain forest. She had learned little at school but Miss Peabody, beloved maths teacher, happened to be an amateur botanist and Mary Ann had acquired curiosity and excitement from her. Before that, Mary Ann treated the natural world as Africans usually do: fauna were a nuisance or a menace or something to eat; flora were uninteresting unless edible or saleable. Bob called this botanizing Mary Ann’s hobby and was glad the child had an amusement. Mary Ann became extraordinarily knowledgeable, an untutored scientist.

  Mary Ann was too busy to think about men and, considering herself plain as a plate, she did not imagine that men would ever think about her. Sometimes, playing with African babies, she was shaken by the lack of her own; but then the hotel wrapped her in its coiling demands, and time passed. Until Mr and Mrs Niedermeyer arrived as guests and took a tremendous shine to her and finally proposed that Mary Ann return with them to Cleveland.

  ‘It’s perfectly lovely here,’ Mrs Niedermeyer said to Dorothy, ‘I can’t imagine a lovelier place to live. But don’t you think the child should see more of the world and meet more people? I won’t make her work too hard, I promise; she’ll have plenty of time for parties and fun and young men.’ Mrs Niedermeyer had in mind her favourite nephew, thirty-one and single, and though the comparison was disloyal she found Mary Ann sweeter and gentler than the girls she knew around Cleveland; and romantic too, with that little brown face and funny accent and demure manner. If only Jack fell in love with her, everyone would be settled and happy.

  Working as Mrs Niedermeyer’s secretary was a rest cure after the hotel. Mary Ann had plenty of time and money. She had refused to accept any allowance from her parents, but Mrs Niedermeyer paid her well. With the aid of her new enthusiastic Cleveland girl-friends, she bought clothes and tried out hairdressers. Jack taught her to play bridge and dance. She was surrounded by talkative cordial girls and by Jack, teacher, guide, protector. He was a cautious young stockbroker and took a year to decide he was in love with Mary Ann and was dumbfounded when she thanked him and said No, with a look in her eyes like one who has accidentally hurt an animal, like knocking over a dog in the road. Jack then knew he was passionately in love with Mary Ann. Mrs Niedermeyer had kept her Fred waiting too; she realized Mary Ann was not playing with Jack, the child was truly uncertain.

  Jack offered Mary Ann everything and more to come. How could she explain that she didn’t want everything; she didn’t know that she wanted anything. It seemed to her that she already had too much; why did she need eight lipsticks for instance? Principally, she could not say to Jack or any of these generous American friends that Cleveland and surroundings produced something like a stone in her stomach, a solid heaviness of depression. She never woke with a singing heart because she knew what lay around her, a vast lake full of filth, an ugly sprawling city, a slum for both rich and poor, a flat weak countryside with spindly trees. She hungered for the air and silence and space of Africa and the great untamed mountain. At first snow had fascinated her; then she watched it turn to yellow slush and she thought it was hell. She had a fur coat, a present from Mrs Niedermeyer, and was cold all winter and in the summer felt she would suffocate. Air-conditioning stopped up her nose. Jack persisted with patience and unflagging will. Competition, Mrs Niedermeyer thought, the breath of life to all of them, even if the competition is only a girl saying no.

  Mary Ann reasoned with herself. Who did she think she was, a beauty like Jane, with a queue of suitors to pick and choose from? Jack was the first man to want her and would certainly be the last. He was kindness itself and good-looking though she could never exactly remember his face when she was alone. But marriage was long, look at Daddy and Mummy, forever long, sleeping in the same room. When Jack kissed her she felt embarrassed; he talked a lot and laughed a lot and that was nice but she could not keep her mind on what he said. Perhaps if you weren’t attractive to men, it worked the other way too, so you weren’t very attracted to them.

  Finally, because everyone seemed to accuse her, silently and sadly and somehow justly, of meanness, Mary Ann agreed to be engaged, but a long engagement; she had saved money to see the Far West, already glimpsed in the Moshi cinema, and she also wanted to visit her parents. Jack kissed her with unusual force and gave her a handsome diamond ring which she did not wear unless she was with him, for fear of losing it. Her innocence was her armour. Jack would have been more assertive sexually with a more experienced American girl. He was a bit frustrated but also pleased, as if he’d netted a rare bird of an almost extinct species. Mary Ann set off on bus and train to see America.

  She kept thinking it was awfully small. Perhaps it wasn’t but the cars and buses and trains and planes and roads made it feel crowded or used up; and there were signs of people everywhere, interminable muck, though when she reached the west and the mountains, it felt better, if not as splendid as in the films. She thought the California desert was like parts of Africa she didn’t know, for she hardly knew Africa either, like the country around Lake Rudolf. She went walking, she was always searching for a chance to walk where there were no cars. The desert grew a rich crop of empty beer cans and bottles, and sometimes great mounds of used tyres, and dirty papers and plastic contain
ers blew in the hot wind. She dared not tell Jack that she couldn’t face it, so said she was now going home to visit her parents and wrote to him, sick with guilt, on the aeroplane, explaining that she could never make him happy and would he please forgive and forget. He would find his ring in the top right-hand drawer of the desk in Mrs Niedermeyer’s guest room.

  Her parents misunderstood Mary Ann’s misery when she first returned, guessing at blighted love. They were glad when she revived which she did within four months upon receiving a letter, at once perky and hostile, from Mrs Niedermeyer announcing Jack’s marriage to a girl born in Cleveland, someone he’d always known, a fine old family. Now, at thirty, Mary Ann knew that she would never marry. But the mountain was there, a gold mine for a botanist except that she never had a minute to herself.

  If she’d known Jane was coming home, she might have stayed in Cleveland and married Jack. Daddy and Mummy were crackers; what did they mean dumping the whole hotel on her shoulders as if doing her a favour. Daddy and Mummy sat around boring the guests and making asses of themselves, boasting about Jane, you’d think Jane was Marlene Dietrich. Jane did nothing. She idled in her room with green cement on her face to ward off wrinkles and listened to her gramophone, wah-wah-wah bellowing about love like a sick cow. Or she floated among the guests being lordly or drove to Nairobi to chat up travel agents. What did Daddy and Mummy mean? Room boys, waiters, gardeners, kitchen staff, drivers, desk and office clerks, fifty-nine Africans and one Asian, and she alone was supposed to keep them all up to tourist standards. She was so tired and worried she felt sick. She was just about ready to give Jane a piece of her mind. High time someone took Jane down; she’d been conceited enough before she went to Europe and now she was worse. And Amir had gone on leave so there were the accounts as well; too much, too damn much, more than flesh and blood could stand.

  Mary Ann had never before given Jane a piece of her mind. Jane stamped into the office where Mary Ann was bowed over a ledger, saying, ‘There’s an African drinking at the bar.’

  Mary Ann went on, moving her lips, adding the long line of figures.

  ‘Since when,’ Jane said furiously, ‘do Africans drink at our bar?’

  ‘Since Independence,’ Mary Ann said, still adding.

  ‘It’s the limit. Why do we put up with it?’

  Mary Ann laid a ruler to mark her place and made a note. Then she turned to Jane. ‘He’s the M.P. for this district. A very nice man and an honest one. He even insists on paying for his beer. We’re lucky he likes to stop in here when he’s visiting his people.’

  ‘Lucky?’ Jane said with scorn. ‘We certainly don’t want African good will and a ghastly lot of African guests.’

  ‘You fool,’ Mary Ann said. ‘We want African good will like mad. Haven’t you heard about Independence? What do you keep under your peroxided hair? We’re visitors here. It’s not our colony, it’s their country. If we insult Africans, we’re out. Deported. They can do it and they do.’

  ‘I never heard such rot. I’d rather sell the hotel than crawl to Africans.’

  ‘Would you? Have you got a buyer? My God, how stupid can you be?’

  Jane was too stunned by this turning worm to answer properly. Instead she said, ‘I’m sure Daddy’s put money aside.’

  ‘Think again. They’ve ploughed the profits back so they could make a big fancy hotel for us, to keep us in our old age. Were you rude to him?’

  ‘He smiled at me,’ Jane said, furious again. ‘I didn’t say anything but I imagine he got the message.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake. Now I’ll have to go and try to make up for you. You tiresome dangerous half-wit.’

  Jane brooded and fumed and sulked and, for once, her parents backed Mary Ann.

  ‘We’ve had very few African guests,’ Bob said. ‘Mostly Ministers. Decent well-behaved chaps. Africans don’t really like it here and it’s quite expensive for them. But of course we do our best to make them happy if they come; we must, Jane. It’s different from when you were a child. They don’t want the hotel and they know we’re useful for the tourist trade. But believe me, if we offended them, they wouldn’t worry about anything practical, they’d kick us out.’

  From spite, to show up Mary Ann and her parents, Jane unleashed all her charms and wiles on the next African guest. He was the new African, a young bureaucrat in a grey flannel suit. He came from the coast; there were ancient mixtures of Arab in his blood; he had a sharp nose and carved lips and a beautifully muscled slender tall body. With white skin, he would have resembled a Greek god as portrayed in the statues in the Rome museums which Jane had never visited. His name was Paul Nbaigu, a Christian like the Jenkins. He had a bureaucrat’s job in the Ministry of Co-operatives and a European’s taste for bathrooms and respectfully served food. Instead of staying with the African manager of a Co-op, he chose to do his inspector’s round from Travellers’ Rest. At the bar, where he was quietly drinking whisky and soda, splurging his pay on European pleasures, Jane joined him, introduced herself and smiled her best, sad, alluring, professional singer’s smile. She might have been moaning more of the ritual blues’ words: why doan yah luv me like yah useta do.

  Jane suggested sharing his table at dinner, more spiteful bravado: let her family see what crawling to Africans looked like. Paul Nbaigu could not refuse but failed to appear honoured. Jane began to notice him.

  ‘Where did you learn English?’ Jane asked. ‘You speak it perfectly.’

  ‘Here and there. And at Makerere University.’

  She could hardly inquire where he’d learned his table manners which were faultless. He began to notice Jane too, in particular the way she treated the waiter, not seeing the man, giving orders contemptuously. A small flame started to burn in the mind of Mr Nbaigu, who did not love white people though he did not specially love black people either.

  ‘Where did you learn Swahili?’ he asked.

  ‘I was born here.’

  ‘Upcountry Swahili,’ Mr Nbaigu said mildly. ‘On the coast, we rather make fun of it.’

  He was not easy to talk to but Jane had never talked with an educated African before, nor talked with any of them since childhood when she ruled as queen of the infant population in the nearby Chagga village. And talk was not really the point. All during dinner – roast lamb, mint sauce, potatoes, cauliflower, treacle tart, good plain English cooking, Dorothy’s pride and specialty – Jane felt an alarming sensation, as if waves of electricity flowed from this handsome composed African and rippled over her body. She was babbling like a nervous girl by the time muddy coffee was served. Mr Nbaigu excused himself, saying he had work to do. Jane swaggered across the dining room to her family’s table.

  ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Making Africans happy, Daddy, buttering up our bosses.’

  Bob nodded and continued to chew treacle tart. Dorothy’s hands trembled but she said nothing.

  ‘He’s not one of our better bosses,’ Mary Ann remarked.

  ‘And how do you know?’ Jane asked.

  ‘I’ve friends, Chaggas. They don’t like the way he stays here and pops in on them, all neat and citified, and asks a few questions and gives a few orders, and hurries off. They think he cares about his job for himself, not for them.’

  ‘You’ve certainly got your finger on the pulse of the nation. Why don’t you become a Tanzanian citizen so you can really shove in and run things? Does he come often?’

  ‘Every few months,’ Bob said. ‘He’s got Meru district too, probably more. Mary Ann’s right; he’s not popular with the African farmers. A proper bureaucrat, same breed all over the world. Funny how quick the Africans have picked that up. They’ve taken to government paperwork like ducks to water.’

  Dorothy still did not speak; Mary Ann was too angry to look at her sister. Jane’s little exhibition had hurt the parents. They were incurably old colonialists, not the wicked ogres of propaganda either, kinder and more responsible employers than Africans were, ready to expend time and thought and money t
o help any Africans in their neighbourhood who needed help. Mary Ann knew of all the loans, all the transport to hospital, all the home doctoring, all the advising: calls for aid heeded by day and night over the years. Like good officers, they cared for and liked their troops. But there it was: Africans were Other Ranks. By law, Africans were now equal. Laws had not changed emotions. And the sight of a white woman with a black man roused emotions which Mary Ann did not understand, but knew her parents were feeling now.

  Clearly, Jane had been teaching the family a lesson: do not criticize Jane, however gently. They were helpless, and Mary Ann wished Jane would turn into Janina again and depart before boredom and frustration made her sharpen her claws on the old people.

  Jane dreamed of the black man several times and woke afraid. Erotic dreams, ugly dreams. She cursed Luigi and knew with fear that Luigi had left her with more than a broken heart and that she was starving and she was also getting older and perhaps she would starve to death, taking a long time over it, a long empty man-less time. She went to Nairobi more often; she sat at the pavement tables of the Thorn Tree café looking at men, to see if she could find someone she wanted. No one. East Africa appeared to be overrun by middle-aged tourists wearing paunches and peculiar clothes, rumpled garments from where they came or instant comical safari kit. Or there were very young men, young as puppies, with masses of hair and occasionally beards to make them sweat more, with shorts little better than fig leaves and strong brown hairy legs. She wanted someone as beautiful as Luigi and far more trustworthy; an Anglo-Saxon of thirty-odd, perfectly groomed, perfectly made, and single.

  Paul Nbaigu returned sooner than usual; something was wrong with the coffee plants on a co-operative farm, a bug, a fungus. The farmers were anxious, he had to report. Jane joined him again at the bar but now she was hesitant, not graciously condescending, and he was worried for he knew nothing about his job except how to fill and file all the mimeographed forms. They talked little, locked in their separate trouble, but the waves of electricity flowed even more strongly over Jane, concentrating, it seemed, where Luigi had most expertly caressed her body.