The Weather in Africa Page 4

  She took his hand, a big freckled hand with good Kilimanjaro earth under the finger nails. Heavy and sad for him too.

  ‘We have a year,’ Mary Ann said. ‘No, but more than ten months.’

  ‘It’s not enough. I want to spend the rest of my life with you in Africa. Adele is brainless, that’s not a crime, maybe not even a handicap. It’s her emotions I can’t stand. They’re all small and competitive and ungenerous. If I walk out, she’d get the boys and I couldn’t leave them to be brought up by her; it would be like crippling them. What can I do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Mary Ann said, and felt deep lines forming on her face: old age and loneliness.

  ‘Mary Ann darling, I never stopped to ask if you care at all for me.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know it until now. I thought it was only botany.’

  He laughed and leaned awkwardly across from his camp stool and awkwardly kissed her.

  ‘Oh hell, I must get a sofa up here so at least I can put my arms around you. You darling delicious little brown girl, to think I’ve made you unhappy too.’

  ‘But will you come for the weekend?’

  ‘Yes. We mustn’t waste a minute. And who knows, I might get a brainwave and figure out how to manage life. I can’t say I’ve ever managed anything to date except plant life. Would you mind standing up and then I’ll bend down and kiss you without falling off my stool.’

  Even that was awkward, due to his extreme height and her lack of it, but gentle and tender and satisfactory to them both.

  Paul Nbaigu made no plans but felt himself guided: the words and the acts came of themselves. He was in fact possessed. Cruelty, the power to inflict pain, possessed his mind. Jane’s crime – contempt, insult – merged with all the other white man’s crimes. She was linked to the outrage of South Africa and Rhodesia and Mozambique; to every offence he had endured before Independence when he was a native in a British colony; to the sneering European professors who sent him away from Makerere after only one year. He hated Jane’s white skin for he knew he longed to be white like her, European, rich and travelled and well-dressed and arrogant like her. Insanely, he was revenging all his people by scourging one white woman. He was reckless now, he could not resist the joy of his power. Each humiliation that Jane accepted inspired him with a wild urge to impose worse humiliations. He forgot his precautions about his job. He came to Travellers’ Rest every weekend, leaving his work unfinished elsewhere to get the time, turning in hastily invented reports and forged forms to hide dereliction of duty. His salary would not cover this weekly extravagance. It was a special pleasure that Jane had to pay for the room where he made her suffer.

  He was not waiting when Jane came to his room now; he was reading.

  ‘Hungry, pretty Jane?’ he whispered, since he still had some caution left, enough to know that Mr Jenkins would bar him from the hotel forever if Jane’s visits were heard. Jane dreaded that whispering taunting voice, and every word it spoke. She dared not answer back, if she could have imagined any answer, because she knew the certain punishment; Paul would withhold what she craved.

  ‘Take your clothes off,’ he whispered, ‘and wait until I’m ready.’

  And she did, again, as often before, numb with shame, silent, tears sliding down her cheeks. It excited him unbearably to find her aching and arched to his touch, her face wet with this proof of her servitude. He resented his own need, as avid as hers though different. He would only be master when he could play with her and use her and feel nothing.

  ‘What a bore,’ he whispered, ‘I think I’ll take a rest,’ knowing he had left her at the peak of that slow undulating yearning climb.

  ‘Paul, Paul, please, please, please.’

  ‘No.’ He removed her desperate hands and felt her by his side, shivering like a dog.

  ‘Stop crying,’ he whispered. ‘You’re losing your looks. You go on like this and you’ll be so ugly even a white man won’t have you. All right. Come here.’

  The sob of relief, of gratitude, was delicious but never enough for he wanted her too; he had not entirely won yet.

  He invented games. ‘We’re going to be two nice simple Africans, pretty Jane. You’re a Chagga woman with a big round ass and a bundle of kuni on your head and I’m a big sweaty fellow in from the fields, just passing by and thinking what a nice quick fuck you’d make.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ he whispered, mocking.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  Her mind was empty except for a ceaseless incantation: come to me, come to me, come to me. By the end of each Sunday they were exhausted from cruelty given and received and from the gluttony of their bodies.

  The servants knew. Jane had not realized at first what was happening. Imperious as always with them, she ordered Jagi, a houseboy, to empty ashtrays in the lounge, remarking that he was lazy and stupid not to do it without being told. Instead of mumbling some excuse, the man smiled broadly and picked up an ashtray with insolent languor. Jane went to Mary Ann demanding that Jagi be sacked for cheekiness and incompetence. Mary Ann, counting groceries in a storeroom, said wearily, ‘It’s not your job to supervise staff, Jane, I wish you wouldn’t meddle.’

  ‘Is it all right with you if the lounge looks like an African beer parlour?’

  It was too much trouble to explain to Jane the routine of the hotel; one houseboy was not detailed to lurk in wait for every stubbed cigarette end, there were regular hours when the waiters tidied up. This was not Jagi’s task and Jagi was a perfectly efficient room boy and perfectly polite. Mary Ann knew Jane’s manner to the staff and assumed Jagi had simply been fed up and showed it.

  ‘Jagi’s been here fourteen years,’ Mary Ann said. ‘You can’t just sack people offhand any more. They have rights based on years of employment. There’d be a huge to-do with the labour office, the whole staff might walk out, and even if we won, there’d be a mountain of bonus pay. For heaven’s sake, Jane, calm down and leave the Africans to me.’

  After that it was like a nightmare, when one dreamed of running into endless closed doors but now it was endless knowing smiles; every African on the place had that smile, only for her, and only when she was alone, whether she gave them an order or not. The smiles were an extension of Paul’s horrible whispers. Jane stayed in her room most of the day and surprised the family by saying that she could not stand the scruffy way Josphat cleaned the bungalow and the body odour he left behind him; she would look after her own room from now on. Since the parents and Mary Ann were seldom in their bungalow, they did not notice the obsessional way Jane took baths, four and five times a day, scrubbing herself with a loofah, muttering frantic promises: I won’t, I won’t, not ever again … Nor, of course, did they notice when she took to drink.

  The week, waiting for known misery, became unendurable. Jane could not free her mind of its sickening memories nor could she bear the shame of wanting Paul still. As she was safe from the Africans’ smiles with the guests around her, she began to sit at the bar, drinking with them before dinner. When one group left for the dining room, Jane joined another group and so became drunk for the first time in her life. Bob saw this at once and spoke to her gently.

  ‘Jane darling, at this altitude drink goes straight to the head and I think you’ve had a wee one too many. You don’t know about whisky, little girl. It’s nice of you to keep the guests company but you’ll be safer with tomato juice. I’m afraid you’re going to have a bad headache or tummy-ache tomorrow.’

  Jane realized that drink had blurred everything, the rooms around her and the people in them, and the agony in her mind and the burning in her body; all had become wavy and far off, not really attached to her; and sleep came as immediate merciful darkness. She had heard the guests talking about drink; Americans especially were partial to vodka.

  ‘Doesn’t smell on your breath,’ one said.

  ‘Doesn’t really taste on your tongue either,’ said another. ‘But it does the job
all right.’

  In the middle of the afternoon, in the deserted lounge, Jane risked the barman’s inevitable smile and sent him off with a load of soft drinks to the Jenkins bungalow. She then stole a bottle of vodka, slipping it into a large embroidery bag brought along for the purpose. She did not think of driving to Moshi to buy a supply, nor imagine any consequences. That afternoon, alone in her room, Jane drank vodka until the walls began to tilt; the bed swayed and circled when she reached it; she was asleep, dead drunk, when Dorothy came to call her for dinner. Dorothy ordered a tray with a thermos of soup and cold meat and salad to take back to the bungalow later.

  ‘I’m terribly worried about Jane,’ Dorothy said. She could talk freely because Mary Ann was dining at another table with her botanist, Dr Withers.

  ‘She looks so dragged down,’ Dorothy said. ‘It’s not fever, I don’t think, but something’s very wrong. Intestinal parasites maybe? Only I don’t see how, with the kitchen so clean; unless she picked up a bug in Dar or Nairobi or somewhere. She won’t listen to me. She won’t see Dr Ramtullah. I’m really terribly anxious, Bob.’

  ‘Yes, Dorry, I know. I’m worried about Mary Ann too. The child’s tired, that’s what. It’s too much for her; she’s practically running the hotel single-handed. Jane’s been wonderful with the travel agents but there’s nothing more for her to do, and jollying the guests isn’t a very interesting job. Probably poor Jane is bored sick, she’s used to a much gayer life than we have here. Sometimes I wish we didn’t have to charge so much, we’d get younger people; you know they’re mostly pretty well along, the ones who come here. Oh my, I’m afraid we retired a bit too soon, Dorry girl.’

  ‘What shall we do, Bob?’

  ‘Well, you’re so tactful, love, couldn’t you offer to take some of the staff work off Mary Ann; perhaps the kitchen department as a start? I’ll tell her I’m tired of sitting around and say I’d like to get back to the office, I think that would ease her quite a lot. And slowly we’ll nudge our way in again. But Jane, well, what can we do? You know it’s possible after all the time she’s been away that the altitude upsets her. Could we suggest she go to the coast for a long holiday? There’s that club at Kilifi, I heard it’s very attractive and all the smart people from Kenya go there and overseas visitors; it might cheer her up. Then we’ll have to see. If she wants to go back to Europe, Dorry, of course we’ll help her.’

  Dorothy smiled sadly. ‘It was lovely while it lasted,’ she said.

  ‘Children aren’t born to help parents, Dorry dear, we know that, it’s the other way around. One day the girls will have their own children to look after.’ But as he said it, he saw Dorry’s face and knew his own would have the same hurt look of revelation. He couldn’t believe it, Dorry couldn’t believe it: their babies, born on this mountain, the golden-haired little nymph and the funny little brown muffin, were women in their thirties. It was late, almost too late: no sign of husbands, no sign of grandchildren. Two grown women, their daughters, both looking ill, both stuck here with no future except more of the same, a future like their parents’ past.

  ‘I wish to God we’d never built this whacking place,’ Bob said with passion. ‘I wish we’d saved every penny of the profits and put it in a bank in Switzerland so we could get up and go, now, all of us, to where the girls have a better chance.’

  ‘No, my dear,’ Dorothy said and took his hand. ‘You mustn’t talk like that. We’ve had a wonderful life here and the girls have a fine business to inherit. You mustn’t forget how happy we all were when they were growing up. It’s just a bad piece of time now, troubled like, but it will pass, you’ll see. I won’t have you regretting what we’ve worked so hard for. It isn’t right. Now smile at me and tomorrow we’ll begin fixing everything just as you said.’

  Mary Ann found out about Jane’s drinking in an obvious way: there was a discrepancy in supplies, so much liquor accounted for and so much more gone. In the wine cellar, the vodka was fourteen bottles short. Mugo had been with them as long as Mary Ann could remember; he must have lost his mind to start pinching one kind of drink and in such quantity, and what on earth was he doing with it? He didn’t drink himself; Mary Ann could not imagine the mountain Chaggas paying large sums for foreign booze when they got tight as owls on their own homebrew; did he sell it in Moshi? She chose a time when no one was at the bar and, hating to, accused Mugo of theft. He looked shocked and said with dignity, in Swahili, ‘I thought you knew, Memsaab Mariani. Memsaab Janny took those bottles, all the time, she takes them to her room and drinks them. Ask Josphat how he finds them in the dustbin behind your house.’

  Mary Ann begged his pardon and asked him not to speak of this to anyone.

  ‘Everyone knows,’ Mugo said, ‘except your father and mother and the European guests.’

  Mary Ann felt her cheeks flaming, but managed to say quietly, ‘All right, Mugo, and so it must remain.’

  Now what? It was too much; it was more than she could take. She walked out into the garden, pretending to inspect the farthest wall where bougainvillaea splashed great sprays of scarlet and orange and yellow. She had problems of her own, secrets of her own, and felt like a trapped rat desperately trying to find a way out. She had sensed a peculiar atmosphere among the hotel Africans, something strange which she could not identify or understand, but clearly this was it.

  The eldest daughter of the house was a thief and a drunk. Mary Ann knew the Africans well, knew their laughter, their mockery, even the most loyal would be pleased to see the mighty wazungu fallen, silly sinners like themselves. Word would spread up and down the mountain. How could they hope to keep order in the hotel with the Africans privately laughing at this splendid joke? Especially as it was Jane, who treated them as if she were the Queen of Heaven and they were insects beneath her feet? We’ve come back to ruin our parents, Mary Ann thought with despair, ruin all their work and spoil their lives. In return for love and kindness, this was what their daughters were giving them: disgrace.

  It was a perfect April day, with huge white iceberg clouds floating over a bright blue sky. Pansies, calla lilies, lupins, roses, geraniums, larkspur, violets, in sun and shade flowers gleamed as if lacquered. The air was rackety with birdsong, and Mary Ann wished she were dead.

  She would have to take the only action she could think of. The parents were in Moshi, luckily, ordering supplies; Mary Ann had agreed to relinquish some of her duties, not saying it was about time, before she collapsed from running the hotel on her own. And Jane, of course, would be in her room where Mary Ann never went, and Jane was, listening to a successful rival on her gramophone, and drunk though not helplessly so, having learned the dosage of vodka required to dull life but not knock her off her feet. Jane made no attempt to hide the bottle.

  Mary Ann said, ‘You have to stop, Jane, or you have to go away. Better if you did both. The watu all know you’re stealing and drinking by yourself. It’s a matter of time before Daddy and Mummy find out, and they must not ever. Daddy wants you to take a holiday at the coast and God knows why you refused. We can’t run the hotel if the Africans laugh at us, you know that, you can’t have forgotten everything you knew before you went away.’

  ‘Finished?’ Jane said.

  ‘Yes.’ Mary Ann wanted to hit her; that maddening smile, that special Jane smile, condescending to lesser mortals.

  ‘You doan know the half of it, dearie.’

  Mary Ann shuddered with distaste.

  ‘I know enough. Jane, go to Kenya, the coast, I’ll see you get plenty of money. You can drink yourself blind, for all I care, just so you don’t do it here. Jane, please.’

  ‘Good lil Mary Ann, goody goody lil Mary Ann. Jane’s the baddy; Mary Ann’s the goody. I’m staying right here. Got my reasons. Got a reason.’

  ‘I’ll see you get no more drink, I’ll find a way, I promise you.’

  ‘Can’t stop me driving to Moshi. Buy a crate. Too lazy before but not much trouble.’

  ‘Jane, I beg you, think of Dadd
y and Mummy, don’t you care about anyone in the world but yourself?’

  ‘Yes!’ Jane shouted. ‘Now get out!’

  It was a dim last hope and Mary Ann controlled her voice.

  ‘Listen to me, Jane. You’re destroying your looks. I had no idea why and Mummy thinks you’re ill. Your face is puffy and the skin isn’t marvellous the way it was. Your eyes have veins in them. You can’t want to spoil all that, you must take care of yourself, you’re a great beauty. If you go on like this, you’ll be ugly.’

  ‘So I’ve been told,’ Jane said drearily. ‘Now get out, will you?’

  It was early to drive up the road through the powdery red dust, but Mary Ann decided she had to get away to the peace of Jim’s camp. Perhaps she had been right in the beginning when she said she thought she’d loved only botany; she loved this work and admired it, the slow and thorough completion of a task.

  She brooded vaguely on Koroga whose family she knew; they were ordinary mountain people and lived in the usual welter of babies, chickens, rags, pots, rubbish. Koroga was a nice boy, perhaps twenty years old, willing to work as a casual labourer on the coffee or pyrethrum farms if he got the chance and also willing to lounge around the village. Koroga was now changed beyond recognition. Had he been infected by Jim’s example? Or was it the way Jim treated Koroga, with courtesy and confidence, rather as if Koroga were a student, sharing this project, eager to learn skills and accept responsibility.

  Not knowing Africans, Jim found nothing remarkable in Koroga’s recent conversion to tidiness and reliability. Mary Ann had meant to warn Jim that the watu got uncontrollably bored from time to time and disappeared for a beer party and dance, or disappeared into their special dream state and forgot all duties. It could be disastrous with no evil intent; Koroga might let the plant presses burn from absent-mindedness, Koroga instead had become a devoted assistant. He only stopped work when Jim asked him to; then they drank beer and talked together companionably about the animals Jim had so far failed to meet in the forest. Koroga would be heartbroken when Jim left the mountain. Pure luck. Well, someone had to be lucky around here.