The Old Drift Page 13

  Ronald turned onto a bumpy road and a new scent came through the car window. It was medicinal and pure, singing out from the other smells like an oboe in an orchestra.

  ‘What is that smell?’ she asked.

  Ronald sniffed. ‘Eucalyptus! We are almost home.’

  The borrowed Fiat stumbled along, navigating roots rather than potholes now, the air growing cooler as the trees stretched taller around them. Ronald began to narrate their surroundings to her. There was the lake, flashing in the distance. Here was the old bulky Fowler steam engine, which the children called Chitukukututuku. And now the workers’ buildings. Children running and waving. A woman sitting on the stoop, grinding millet.

  ‘And here is the gatehouse to the estate of Shiwa Ng’andu!’

  Agnes sniffed. ‘What is that smell?’

  ‘The cypress trees,’ he said as the car began to ascend a slope, ‘they are imported from Italy.’

  ‘No, not cypress. Something unnatural…’

  ‘And there is Peacock Hill!’ he said. ‘Just to the side of the house, we can see it now.’

  ‘Oh, are there peacocks here?’ Agnes brightened. She had an affection for their eye-riddled train of feathers.

  ‘There used to be,’ he said. ‘But this hill is named for a man, Mr Peacock, who died here in a car accident. He was pinned upside down in a ditch, with his head in a puddle of water – just a few inches, but enough to drown. He was buried on that hill.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Agnes shivered. ‘The place is overrun with graves.’

  Ronald began describing the manor, his excitement chopping the images to fragments: red bricks – arched windows – iron lattice – vines on the walls – orange and pink flowers – a big wooden door – the Union Jack. Where on earth am I? Agnes suddenly wondered. Northern Rhodesia. A storybook land. Named after the great Cecil Rhodes. They may as well have called it Northern Cecilia, she thought hysterically. What was the name of that poem again? The title bit the bait, but she could not reel it in. It thrashed under the surface of her mind.

  Ronald opened her door. Agnes stepped out, grass tickling her sandalled foot, and the next thing she knew, she was immersed in a hot pool of sunlight, swamped in that strange smell.

  ‘Lady Agnes,’ a voice intoned, thunderously British. ‘Welcome to Shiwa Ng’andu.’

  She reached out her hand to shake and flinched when a kiss squelched on it instead.

  ‘Stewart Gore-Browne,’ boomed the British voice again. ‘Very pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Ba Golo,’ Ronald said shakily, ‘I mean, Sir Stewart. We are so honoured to be home.’

  * * *

  Apart from Agnes and Ronald, Sir Stewart and his butler Henry Mulenga, there were a Lord and Lady Vyvant, and someone’s niece, a Miss Higgins, here for dinner. This small party was immediately subjected to a tour. Every room of the manor was a new world of sounds and smells. The entrance hall: mouldy carpet dust, the slight spice of old wood. The sitting room: burnt stone, the animal scent of leather, oil-paint resin, the brush of velvet against glass windows. The kitchen: an oniony halo, the funk of dried meats, the tang of cooking oil. The chapel felt the most familiar, the most English: shoes slapping the flagstones, a floral scent from the hymnals, the creak of the pews.

  The upstairs library felt the most alive. A gramophone was playing opera. A fire was licking its chops in the hearth, giving off a woodsy perfume. Agnes tracked it by its heat and ran her fingers over the engraving in the mantel, reading the misspelt, ungrammatical Latin: Ille Terrarum Mihi Super Omnes Angulet Ridet. Could she read it because of her brief Braille training, or because Ronald had described it to her so often? She turned around, seeking his voice. It seemed everyone was out on the library terrace now, murmurous with pleasure that the tour was over and dinner about to begin.

  She stepped outside and Ronald was beside her, his hand on her elbow. She heard percussive insects, the sliding whistles of the birds, an occasional howl that she could not identify. She sensed more bodies out here. Ah, the servants. A cocktail glass was pressed into her hand. She whispered thanks to the air as a slinky coolness slipped over the rim and ran down her wrist. Sir Stewart began a long toast – this was apparently his favourite drink, the Montmartre. Agnes sipped it. It stung her tongue with citrus. Ronald’s hand stiffened on her arm. His return to Shiwa had not been mentioned in the toast, and neither had their imminent nuptials.

  At the dinner that followed, under a tinkly chandelier, Ronald’s sense of neglect seemed to deepen, his mood darkening – a gloomy cloud to her left – as the meal progressed. Agnes kept still, listening intently to the server’s whispers in her ear – what on earth was guinea fowl soufflé? – and calibrating her movements with the sounds on her right, where Miss Higgins was sitting: the clink of a ring against the glass, the plop of jelly as it slid off a spoon, the scrape of fork tines against the plate. The conversation pinged around like a game of billiards, repartees bouncing off each other on purpose, or unexpectedly, abruptly sending someone into a pocket of silence. Sir Stewart held the cue for much of the time, telling them the history of the estate.

  ‘Imagine! A seventy-mile march across the Congo. My boys winding through the swamp, carrying an English country estate on their heads. Trunks full of china, crystal, curtains, cushions, paintings, guns, a telescope. This very chandelier. I’ve always maintained that if one is going to do it, one ought to do it properly. The moment one gives up the niceties is the moment one stops being an Englishman.’

  ‘And do not forget the Union Jack!’ This was Henry Mulenga, the butler.

  ‘I was received by the Bemba chief, Mukwikile.’ Sir Stewart said the name with the lilt of a native speaker. ‘A wise man, that one. Incredibly old and benign, like a creature from an ancient world or a black-faced drawing of God in a children’s book. His people…your people, Ronald’ – Agnes felt Ronald soften at the notice – ‘welcomed us with a great show. Drumming and ululation, girls dancing bare-breasted’ – his voice vibrated over the taboo – ‘though of course there’s nothing like that nowadays.’

  ‘Do you get the Daily Mail out here?’ asked Mrs Vyvant. ‘It seems so terribly isolated.’

  ‘Yes, it was very lonely,’ Sir Stewart mused. ‘Absolutely no one to talk to. Two men came out early on – men I’d met in the war, you see. One was the son of a draper, the other a farm boy, no-nonsense men – I detest insincerity above all else – but they were not quite what one would have chosen for companions. One used to taunt me mercilessly about the servants’ white gloves and so on. He kept going on about that damned Coleridge poem. Eventually…’

  ‘Christ,’ came a whisper to Agnes’s ear. ‘At least someone noticed.’

  ‘Noticed what?’ Agnes whispered back to Miss Higgins.

  ‘Madamu,’ the server said in Agnes’s other ear. ‘Saddo of Hearty Beast.’

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ she said. She had not quite finished her soufflé, which tasted like a gamier sort of pâté, but she let him replace her plate. She tapped the new dish with her knife, wishing she could use her fingers. She sliced into whatever it was – the heart of a beast? – and put a forkful in her mouth. It was gamey, too, but the sauce – a sour sweetness, cherry? – was divine.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Agnes swallowed and turned back to Miss Higgins. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree,”’ whispered Miss Higgins.

  ‘“Kubla Khan”!’ Agnes exclaimed. The fish tugging at her memory was finally caught – she had learned that Coleridge poem in primary school. She mouthed the lines to herself: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, / Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; / And here were forests ancient as the hills…

  ‘…utterly withered away,’ Sir Stewart raised his voice imperiously. ‘Choked with weeds. Neglect, plain and simple. And beastly stories to cover it up! The Bem
ba are not lazy—’

  ‘Isn’t that precisely what they are?’ Lord Vyvant expostulated. ‘Present company excluded, of course.’

  ‘But no, you are correct, us Bemba, we are lazy, good sirs,’ said Henry Mulenga cheerily. Agnes kept imagining the native butler as a kind of doll, so silly and mechanical was his chatter. ‘You must teach us, please. You must…Iwe!’ he erupted at a server. ‘Are you blind like a bat? You are spilling on my cravat!’

  ‘Yes,’ Sir Stewart was saying. ‘I suppose the Bemba are like children, easy to please and so open with their emotions. I have always loved to hear them singing as they work. A harmony that matches La Bohème in sophistication. They just need to get beyond this mud-hut mentality.’

  ‘The native will never change his spots,’ said Lord Vyvant.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ muttered Lady Vyvant across the table.

  ‘There is work to be done,’ Sir Stewart conceded. ‘There is much to teach the black man, beyond tossing him in the mines. I always thought it a good exchange: my knowledge for their labour, my protection for their loyalty. A very desirable sort of socialism. Young men like KK, whom I sponsored to study – just like Ronald here – they are ready to take the reins. But…’

  ‘Who is KK?’ Agnes asked quietly.

  ‘Kenneth Kaunda,’ Ronald said in one ear.

  ‘Kubla Khan,’ Miss Higgins whispered in the other.

  Agnes stuck her empty fork in her mouth to stifle her giggle. Miss Higgins’s jokes were not original but her tone was irresistible, teetering between irony and sincerity.

  ‘The enterprise often feels like heartbreak,’ said Sir Stewart. ‘My wife Lorna…’

  ‘Ah, the infamous Lorna!’ Agnes said under her breath to Miss Higgins, pleased to contribute something to their rebellious little complicity.

  ‘Which Lorna do you think he means?’ Miss Higgins replied in a droll tone.

  ‘…brought them lovely sweaters,’ Sir Stewart continued. ‘But the blacks used them as rugs! Lorna wept over that, the poor thing. I often thought about that, long after she was gone.’

  Oh! When had Lorna died? Ronald’s distinctive pronunciation of the woman’s name – like ‘loner’ – had made Agnes picture a thin, pale woman. Perhaps she’d fallen ill.

  ‘No, we have not got any nearer to the right solution of the racial problem. The blacks are still subjected to such indecency. Henry often has to sleep in the car when we travel to Lusaka.’

  ‘Indeedy!’ said Henry. ‘I have even had better treatment in Piccadirree than in Chinsali!’

  ‘Hrm yes, Piccadilly, I’m sure,’ Lord Vyvant sneered. ‘So, Sir Stewart, I hear you have been speaking publicly against the colour bar? Are you going native on us, old chap?’

  ‘No,’ Sir Stewart laughed. ‘I have resigned. I am resigned. I’m an old man now. I have grandchildren. What a joy it is to see them running around Shiwa! Natural hunters. The other day, our grandson Charles told us that he was going to kill all the lions in Africa!’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ Henry Mulenga gave a chuckle as flat as old tonic.

  ‘The grandchildren live in a post-racial paradise,’ said Sir Stewart. ‘They are fluent in Bemba. Lorna is so proud of them. She sends her apologies, by the way – she’s in the Copperbelt.’

  Agnes frowned and swallowed a lump of meat. ‘But I thought—’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Sir Stewart boomed. ‘Shall we retire to the library for port?’

  * * *

  The segregation of the sexes sent Agnes to the parlour with Miss Higgins and Lady Vyvant. Miss Higgins guided Agnes around the furniture to a sofa, warning her of the cobwebs. They sat down together, wiping the sticky strands from their cheeks, spitting softly. Lady Vyvant stood in the doorway, giving instructions to the server, and Miss Higgins took the opportunity to spill the beans.

  ‘There are two Lornas,’ she said. ‘Mother and daughter.’

  ‘Ah! That explains it. I was quite puzzled. And the mother is dead?’

  ‘Shhhh,’ said Miss Higgins. Lady Vyvant had approached. There was a rustling pause as she sat across from them. Agnes imagined that the other two women were also smiling blankly.

  ‘I believe you’ve left out a Lorna, Miss Higgins,’ said Lady Vyvant finally, her voice like fingers running through gravel. ‘There are three in total.’

  ‘Three?’ Agnes asked. She felt Miss Higgins wilt at her side, her gossip having been scooped.

  ‘When he was a young man,’ Lady Vyvant began slowly, ‘Sir Stewart fell in love with a woman named Lorna in England. But she married another man, a doctor, and they moved to South Africa. They both died of malaria. It broke Sir Stewart’s heart and he came to Africa—’

  The door opened. Agnes listened to the server’s footsteps, the knock of three glasses onto the table and the short rising notes of the liquor being poured. The footsteps receded, the door closed, and Lady Vyvant continued.

  ‘A few years later, Sir Stewart went to a funeral back in England and saw Lorna’s daughter there. And a week after that, he asked her hand in marriage.’

  ‘Mmhm,’ snarked Miss Higgins. ‘But this Lorna was twenty years younger than him.’

  ‘Yes, she was,’ said Lady Vyvant matter-of-factly. ‘She had grown up in South Africa with her parents, and desperately wanted to come back to the continent after they died. She essentially married Sir Stewart for homesickness.’

  ‘And did the young Lorna look anything like her mother?’ Agnes asked.

  ‘Quite.’ Lady Vyvant took Agnes’s hand and placed it on the stem of a glass.

  ‘Thank you.’ Agnes paused. ‘But did she know? That he had loved her mother?’

  ‘Some say that she didn’t. She was very young. Others say she went mad when she found out. She started playing a violin in the turret, taking to bed at all hours, having tantrums in public.’

  ‘She ought to have figured it out,’ said Miss Higgins. ‘There was a poem about it, for Christ’s sake. “The Two Lornas”. By Thomas blooming Hardy.’

  ‘Well, now there are three Lornas, as they named their daughter Lorna as well.’

  ‘The shadow of the dome of pleasure,’ Miss Higgins murmured.

  Agnes shook her head and sipped her drink – sherry. It seared her throat with bittersweet warmth.

  ‘So, Agnes,’ said Lady Vyvant. ‘Tell us about this charming protégé of yours. Ronald?’

  ‘Oh! You mean my fiancé,’ Agnes smiled.

  There was a pause. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been misled, dear child,’ said Lady Vyvant, her tone as cool as ever. ‘Marriage is not legal for Africans here in the Federation.’

  ‘Oops!’ said Miss Higgins and laughed.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, the conversation in the library was revolving around suitably male questions – the quality of the cigars, the prospects of hunting, and now, politics. Ever since Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland had been consolidated into the Federation, the educated black elite – the veterans and the trade unionists – had begun to agitate for independence from Britain.

  ‘The colour bar between whites and blacks has risen higher,’ said Sir Stewart. ‘Infuriating business. Herding blacks like cattle on trains, making them queue for hours to receive their goods through a hole in the wall. This “off the pavement, boy” business is simply uncouth.’

  ‘What choice do we have, old chap?’ said Lord Vyvant. ‘The natives cannot govern themselves.’ He muttered his caveat in Henry Mulenga’s direction: ‘Present company, et cetera.’

  ‘The problem,’ said Sir Stewart, ‘is that the natives were not even consulted about forming a Federation. At least one African should have been invited to the Victoria Falls Conference.’

  ‘Oh tosh,’ Lord Vyvant snorted. ‘Do you remember when they demonstrated against federation with those signs? “Down with Ventilation”? Preposterous
.’

  ‘Well, now they are nailing placards on trees here at Shiwa,’ Sir Stewart remarked, lowering himself into a leather armchair. ‘These ones simply say FREEDOM. They are not wrong.’

  The fire shuddered in its stone cave and the cigars puffed like chimneys and the glasses of cognac cast copper on the walls. Henry Mulenga spoke up from the sofa.

  ‘Ah, but it is not okay for them to result to violence, bwana.’

  Ronald clucked quietly at the man’s broken English. Why on earth was this muntu butler here? Henry was taking advantage of Sir Stewart’s generosity or perhaps his senility. But Ronald said nothing – to do so would beg the question of his own presence among the guests.

  ‘These Cha-Cha-Cha animals are holding the country hostage!’ Henry was expostulating now. ‘Even these Luwingu riots! Too much disrespecting!’

  ‘What happened in Luwingu?’ Ronald leaned up from the fireplace mantel with a frown.

  ‘That lunatic, Nkoloso!’ Henry laughed scornfully.

  ‘I was in London with Kenneth at the time,’ said Sir Stewart. ‘He shared the telegrams they sent from Luwingu with me and some lords in Parliament. The colonial officers tortured Eddie Nkoloso, nearly drowned the poor man. Kaunda made great use of it rhetorically, of course. He’s an articulate man, whatever you think of his politics. A true wordsmith.’

  ‘Words and sticks and stones!’ Vyvant spat. ‘Kaunda’s political party is out of control now that he is out of gaol. Bloody firebombs! They set a car on fire with a white woman and her children inside!’

  There was a silence as they stared at the fire, imagining a car with three bodies inside it.

  ‘At least the children survived,’ Ronald said softly. ‘And before she died, did she not ask that the European settlers seek peace rather than revenge?’

  ‘That utopian nonsense is what led to Mau Mau! Violence is in their blood,’ Vyvant growled then glanced around. ‘No offence meant to those present,’ he mumbled into his cognac.