The rifle lined up on its target exactly twenty-five meters away. Governor Agathe W. Denham-Moore of Kenya stared back unflinching. A breath, a moment, a tightened finger. There was a sharp retort as the .30–calibre bullet sped on its way. A perfect hole appeared exactly where the governor's mouth had been, before the old battered picture fluttered like orphaned pieces of tissue to the floor.
"Damn, that feels good."
"Damn, you're an idiot." Charles accepted the bolt-action rifle from Mary and adjusted the leather wrist sling.
"They don't make pictures like they used to."
"They make governors." He said, in lighter mood and easy company. Charles still tried, now and again, to spark a real smile in his wife. And Mary still tried to answer.
They both tried to pretend the years hadn't changed them.
It was morning. The rains of yesterday had made way for a sky of careful blue, although on the horizon, heavy rain clouds were amassing once again.
Mary regarded Charles. Their eyes met over the gun. They made a strange picture and the rueful twist to Charles's mouth seemed to admit as much. The man still looked relieved at seeing her and it softened his features.
Mary wished she did not notice things like that.
There were fishing boats on the lake and the summit of the waves reflected the sun. She saw dhows pass the banks and fishermen toiling on their way to the market. Cowpeas and processed amaranth — or Kunde and Mchicha as they were called — were being transported by animal carts. And beyond, the grass of the great plains scattered around the crooked trunks of bare, old thorn-trees. The grass was spiced like thyme and bog-myrtle, and this morning the scent was so strong, that it smarted in her nostrils.
Mary cleared her throat. "I'm going for a walk."
"Where to?"
"Anywhere."
All the flowers that one found on the plains, or upon the creepers and liana in the native forest, were diminutive like flowers of the downs, — only now, in April, just during the onset of the long rains, a number of big, massive heavy-scented lilies sprang out and scattered throughout the landscape.
Here in Loiyangalani, where the mountains and the mines were a far-off shadow on the horizon, the views were immensely wide. The chief feature of the view, was the air. On a morning as today, the sky was rarely more than a pale blue and violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it. They had a vigour to them, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of the hills and the woods a fresh deep blue.
The clouds, which were travelling with the wind, struck the side of the hill Mary Graves was climbing, and hung round it. Soon they would be caught on the summit and break into rain.
Mary reached the top.
There, in the shadow of a ceiba tree, with its straight, largely branchless trunk, sat Dr Shani Hadebe. She was silent, with closed eyes that would ever so often open to regard the view before her, and onto who's form there clutched an atmosphere so very dignified and weary, that she resembled an elder of the village. Her breaths were deep, and long. And onto her face was a strange melee of contentment and weary consideration.
Mary Graves, unwilling to disturb the woman's reflections, made to leave, when they locked eyes.
Shani Hadebe and Mary Graves both froze and regarded each other across the waving grass and the buzzing insects inhabiting the sun laden hill. Two women who could be no more different and were still startling alike. Both pulled into and moved in life by external agents and principles and a self-destructive sense of duty. It was disconcerting. It was comforting. It was a sentiment they recognised in each other but were unable to voice; or decide whether the sentiment was a good one.
"I see you at least discovered the beauty of the country." Hadebe remarked. She returned to the view, a silent, open permission for Mary to join her.
The hillsides, as they gazed at them, were a thin silver line drawn all along the silhouette of the mountains. The peaks seemed to be flattened and smoothened out, as if the mountains were stretching and expanding themselves, and between them spread a mosaic of little square maize-fields, banana-groves and grass-land.
"Did you know, there used to be a curfew?" Hadebe spoke. "Half past eight in the evening. And I would slip out at five in the morning to see the sun rise and watch the light come up over the hills."
"Do you believe it will be so again?"
Hadebe rubbed her leg. A distant, unconscious motion made conform by habit. "You tell me." She spoke. "You were with Denhan-Moore the day before yesterday."
"I am not her confidant."
"You are much the same."
"We are not."
Hadebe's hand stilled. And Mary felt her looking. "I know your story, Graves. And while it is the fondness of your husband that allows me to open my home to you both, I would not have otherwise."
"I understand."
They were silent for a while. It was cursory, abrupt; the pace set by Hadebe's apparent disinterest in conversation. And it reminded Mary of Henderson, whenever the man was in a melancholy mood.
Having being led along the slipstream of her own thoughts, Mary Graves startled once Hadebe spoke up again: "you are from London, are you not."
Mary regarded her. The words had been structured as a question but the sentiment not so much. Mary relayed an affirmation.
"I've been to most of your urban capitals," Hadebe continued, "Birmingham, Cambridge, Bristol… London."
"You really got around."
"And I came back. For whatever little that's worth."
"Well. Obviously a great deal to a good many people."
"Some other age will have to know that. I don't."
"Why not?"
"Graves, there is a hospital for Europeans only seventy-five miles from here. Entirely modern. Here things are lashed together with vines from the jungle. Surely you must have wondered why."
"I assumed I knew why— that it was obvious…"
"Is it? Electric lines between here and Meru could be laid within weeks, an asphalted road in six months. The money exists. All over the world people donate to places like this. It is not obvious, not obvious at all."
"But I thought the local population wouldn't come if it were different. They told me—"
"They would be frightened and call the lightbulb witchcraft, Graves?"
"That was not my meaning."
"A lot of your people have different meanings." Hadebe said. "People die here on account of such meanings."
At the careless implication, Mary felt the familiar twinge of frustration shooting through her shoulders and back, but did not show it. "I just feel like talking, Hadebe. Not to fight."
"No— you leave that to others. You are not one to do it yourself."
Mary turned away. The precipice of full-blown anger creeped into her shoulders and neck: "Why should it be so difficult for us to talk? For Christ's sake, Hadebe— all I want to do is talk!"
"And why should we be able to talk so easily? I know who you are. I know what you've done. What is this marvellous nonsense with you English? For a handshake, a shared sense of appreciation, and five minutes of conversation, you want three hundred years to disappear? Do you really believe that the rape of a continent dissolves in the morning sunshine?"
"That, I had no hand in. Don't make it out to be my personal responsibility."
"It isn't. Nobody wants to. And that's exactly why I will be done with this." And Mary had the illusion Hadebe was not talking of their conversation, or the view, or Trujillo, but of things and memories long buried and unspoken, but Mary, who did not know the substance of it, — and, with her anger, had lost any sense for good-will or interest — remained silent and left.
The clinic lay peaceful when she returned to it. And she recognised the boy that came running from the clinic.
"Ma'am! Ma'am!" Daudi was grinning in that boyish way children do when they can't hide their excitement for a joke or prank well-played. "Wale watu wa liwali wala wali wa liwali." He spoke.
"Pardon?"
"Try it, Ma'am" and here he laughed in such a way that Mary's hearth softened.
"Wale watu wa—"
"Now say it three times quickly." The boy's eyes shone.
"Did you teach Charles that as well?"
The boy grinned that hellion grin.
"Where is he, now?"
Daudi pointed at the clinic.
"Wale watu wa liwa—" she said, "something, something."
Daudi's bright laugher followed her into the house.
❧
The steps creaked as Charles climbed the patio and soon Charles was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe. His top button was undone, his sleeves rolled up, and hair slightly dishevelled as if Charles had been running his hands through his hair while he worked.
There was a quiet vitality to his bearing and manner which could not be discounted. Mary had come to appreciate his simple dignity and gentle strength, particularly when she recalled the livelier manners and charismatic impulsivity when he had been younger.
Mary checked the kettle with the back of her hand and went through the familiar motion of making tea.
She handed the second cup to Charles.
"Do you play that piano in the drawing room?" She asked.
Charles looked at her over his shoulder as he lowered the cup. Surprised, going by the lack of expression on his face. "At times. It needs to be tuned."
"But you do."
"I do, yes."
"Would you play for me some time?"
"Any time you wish." And he smiled from where he had sat down, something warm and fond in his eyes that she could not quite place. The cup rested on the table beside his hand.
"I will be leaving soon." And here she picked up her coat.
"I know."
"Did you have a talk with Silva? Where to buy the Mchicha?" She heard him rise from his chair behind her.
"I did."
His hands rested for a second longer on Mary's shoulders after helping her into her coat. Mary Graves did not know what it meant or why she remarked on it, now.
"Safe journey." He spoke.
Charles followed her outside, just to the patio, and remained there, resting his forearms on the railing. She felt him watching her when she left, the space between her shoulder blades tingling. And Mary, in a state of mind that was not quite vexation but bordered on a bold curiosity that her volatile nature could not quite quell, turned back mid-step, and demanded:
"Why nearly?"
Charles's forearms rose from the railing and his mouth opened halfway. "I'm sorry?"
"You said: nearly. Why nearly? Why not just—not at all?"
Charles looked away, eyes landing somewhere over her shoulder. "You do not want me to forgive you?"
"I'd understand it."
"And not empathy?" That made him lock eyes again.
"Empathy is for children."
Charles made a mocking sound. "I'd think less of you if I believed you actually believe that." Holding with one hand onto the railing post, he turned round the post and came halfway down the steps.
Mary, willing herself not to step back at his advance, conceded: "you know I don't content myself with that."
"Alright." And she remarked how his eyes were gleaming, teasing, shining with mirth.
"What are we doing, Charles?"
"You want to find out why I nearly forgave you and I'm trying to find out why you want to find out."
Feeling cornered, and self-conscious, and unsure why she remarked on it as she did today, Mary dismissed the conversation briskly: "Well, we can go on forever," she turned away and made to traverse the courtyard, "It'll give us something to talk about next time we meet."
At her advance, the sound of Silva starting the Minerva's engine resounded through the air. Mary could feel Charles a few scant paces behind her as she crossed the courtyard. His pace was slower, idler, surer, compared to her brisk retreat.
"Among other things." Charles got out the morphine, wrapped up and indiscriminate in brown paper. "Twice a day. Keep him away from spirits."
Mary turned by the open door as he approached and held out her hand for the package. Charles gave it to her, but didn't let go of it.
She locked eyes with him.
Slowly, he bend to her— Mary instinctively leant back against the Minerva, her lips parted, her eyes soft. She put her hand on his cheek. To halt him; to arrest him; to hamper this damn thing she did not understand. He was close enough that she could feel the heat seeping through from Charles's torso and arms. His breath warm upon her inner wrist, and he was looking at Mary in an unrecognisable way. Mary breathed deeply.
"I like the beard." Mary said, softly.
She then turned in his arms, neither slowly nor fast, away from him, put the package bellow the seat and pulled herself up on the door and into the truck. Charles only stepped back to allow the door to close.