African Nights Page 13

  We discovered a large twisted acacia on the side of the hill, growing alone and wise, barely out of the reach of the winds. And in turns we carried down to it what we had brought: mattresses and mats, jerrycans of drinking water, a cool-box full of food and a basket with the birthday cake – a chocolate heart that Sveva’s ayah, Wanjiru, had packed lovingly, and to which Simon had added ten blue candles, and a handful of pink bougainvilleas, for maridadi, for beauty.

  We set our belongings below the thorn tree, closely observed all the time by a couple of fantail ravens, whose territory we were clearly invading. Yet they did not seem to mind, and in fact eyed our food with eager fixity and undisguised anticipation. It was clear that they would become our constant companions, and to captivate them from the beginning, and show them we did not mind, I threw them some bread. Unwanted ravens and crows, I knew from experience, could become persistent pests, creeping about and spying for any chance to land and steal morsels of unguarded food.

  We went for a swim in the warm soda water, down the sands of grey lava which held the sun’s warmth long after it had set, walking into the lake awkwardly on slimy stones, always looking out for crocodiles. From the top of a rock we watched a large Nile perch darting around in her underwater territory. We rested on the hot sand and found crystals hidden in it like lost jewels.

  At night we lit a fire of twigs which sparkled in distracted bursts with the wind blasts. We sat, with our back to a fallen branch of the acacia that was large enough to create a special protected corner for the three of us, cosy with pillows and straw mats. We opened a bottle of champagne and ate cold pasta; and, while a leg of lamb skewered with rosemary and wrapped in foil roasted on the fire, we told each other stories of the past.

  Finally, with difficulty, we managed to light the ten large blue candles. The wax fizzed, melting quickly in the great heat. Sveva blew them out faster than the wind, and we all kissed each other, while our friends the ravens sang their raucous approval, guarding with tilted heads our celebration from the tallest branch.

  No other little girl, we knew, was spending her birthday in such an improbable way, with only the wind and a lake for company. And the gods were smiling.

  We spent two nights under that old acacia and shared the same blanket. Aidan climbed the parched hills looking for rare plants. We found bleached fish bones and brought them back to Simon, whose ancestors once used to live in Turkana.

  Someone recently told me that they went to South Island and found some blue wax stuck to a branch of a solitary acacia tree. They could not work out what it was.

  21

  The Magic Cove

  And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand

  They danced by the light of the moon.

  Edward Lear,

  ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’

  The breeze from the ocean moved the palm leaves, and the hair on his high pure forehead. Straight and slim in the ceremonial starched white uniform of the Royal Navy stood Charlie on the beach at Takaungu, on the afternoon of his wedding.

  I had arrived breathless after a long flight from Nairobi with Sveva, a short pause for lunch in Watamu, and an unending sweaty queue on the jetty at Kilifi, plagued by cashew-nut peddlers.

  The smell of seaweed, the steamy heat which lifted from the creek, the colourful crowd waiting for the ferry-boat – fishermen, children and the bare-breasted, wide-hipped Giriama women wrapped in bright kangas, balancing baskets on their heads – were characteristic of Kilifi. The strong aromas of mango, dried fish, coconut oil, ripe banana, perspiration, smoke, jasmine and sandalwood blended in a heady scent. I inhaled deeply; despite the heat, I always enjoyed being there.

  The afternoon had gone by fast, almost without us noticing. In the end, short of time, and continually overtaken by cars loaded with people dressed for a party and clearly going to the same wedding, we had chosen to change in the bush, below a clump of palm trees, amid much giggling. We stopped the small hired car at the side of the road, so that Sveva could slide into her beautiful dress of cream satin and pink summer roses.

  It was hot that day of December, and sticky as could be. The guests had already taken their place down on the beach, in the sheltered corner of coral rocks and fine white sand that Charlie and Emanuele had long ago called ‘the secret garden’. I surveyed the audience.

  People sat on neatly arranged rows of wooden planks set on white stones. A barefoot Mirella stood on one side, clad in purple and crowned with a garland of frangipani like an ageing nymph, taking photographs and looking out at the choppy sea. The altar was just two large candles and a handful of shells and white flowers scattered on a large trunk of sea-bleached driftwood. In front of it was the couple.

  A knot of emotion rose in my throat, as there, next to his lovely bride, stood my Charlie, clothed in so many memories, handsome and lean like a young Mountbatten, romantic in his white uniform with golden epaulettes, the familiar young boy’s smile brightening the unchanged charming face below the lock of hair. Emanuele’s best friend.

  I could well imagine the shadow of an adult Emanuele, as his tall, good-looking best man, standing right behind him.

  That evening we went to the wedding party, and the baobab that we had once called bewitched, was silver in the moonlight. The place was the house on the cliff next to the one that we had regarded as ours. It had once belonged to a strange lady who lived alone with many cats and loved plants and growing things, but was devoured by a silent unhappiness, which she tried to tame with pills. One night she could bear it no longer, and she had swallowed them all. The house was then abandoned, for a time, to the sea swallows and the salty winds, and strange tales about it were whispered by the Giriama house-boys, and by the fishermen who came along at low tide to sell their catch of lobsters and coral fish.

  Eventually the house was reopened and inhabited again, new tenants lent it their fresh auras, and the shadows receded. Tonight the place was animated, garlands of coloured lights were strung from palm to palm to fight the black of the night. Music drifted high with the sea-breeze. The air, balmy with nocturnal jasmine, carried the voices of the festive crowd, and everyone was merry.

  There were people I had not seen for years, the Kilifi crowd who used to come to our parties, the men who used to speak with Paolo of fishing, and even Mohammed, the retired old barman of the Mnarani Club, who for two generations had reigned behind his counter, knew all our children by name and, despite being a Muslim, remembered everyone’s favourite drink. They were the times of the Lady Delamere Cup, when the boats assembled at sunrise to depart for the high seas, following a dream of marlin or sailfish, shark or tuna – or, at least, a great barracuda – and came back at late noon with red, blue and yellow flags flying in the wind, which we all tried to interpret through our binoculars to see who had caught most.

  Then, Pimm’s after wave of Pimm’s, came the weighing and the marking on the old school blackboard. The winners were handed out prizes by a regal and cool Diana Delamere. Everyone clapped and talked about it for weeks. They had been other days, now gone forever, I could well see that. Then Diana had died, and an era with her.

  The Mnarani had been sold to the tourist industry, and the old charm of days gone had vanished in the anonymous crowd which changed weekly. Paolo had died and, a few years after, Emanuele too. Charlie, the companion of Emanuele’s school days, had been at the time still at military school in England. Soon afterwards, like his father before him, he had joined the Royal Navy. He had kept in touch, and when he was in Nairobi his tall lanky figure never failed to appear on our doorstep. I cared for him.

  Dressed now in immaculate light white linen, his trim waist circled by a bottle-green cummerbund embroidered with a golden dragon, Charlie sat me at his right side, like the mother he had lost, and, like the son I had lost, I doted on him. His brown eyes, gentle twinkling eyes, brimmed with tears of remembrance and happy days.

  ‘Remember when you told us about the baobab which moved in the full moon, and we beli
eved you?’

  ‘Remember when we celebrated Iain’s birthday at the end of Ramadan down at the Mnarani, and Oria asked all the village women to cook ceremonial food and to lend their buibuis?’

  ‘Remember when we found that gigantic puff-adder across the track below the Fielden house, blocking the way, and Emanuele refused to drive over it because we would have killed it, and we had to wait until he had coaxed it to move away slowly?’

  ‘Remember when you gave a surprise party for Paolo’s birthday and mine in the cove in the Kilifi Plantations? You had the cove lit with hundreds of candles, and you marked the line of the high tide with rows of lanterns, and you invited all Kilifi, and they all came!’

  The magic cove. How could I ever forget? I fixed my eyes on the champagne glass I was holding, and through its golden bubbles, as in a yellow crystal ball, the memories swept back, of happy days.

  When the ocean was green, with white rims to its waves, and the trade winds blew in Kilifi, Emanuele went sailing with his friend Charlie. I watched from the shore for their frail craft to pass, sitting under a giant baobab tree in our garden. This was a vast tree with a grey trunk spun with silver which seemed to absorb the heat of the sun like a human body, and it was my favourite refuge at the coast in the long afternoons.

  They lifted their arms when they saw me, and the slimness of their young figures was emphasized by the swollen sail and the immensity of the ocean. Their boat cut away fast, bobbing on the waves in white sprays of foam, and disappeared behind the coral cliffs, leaving only an empty reef, and the colour of my wonder.

  ‘I have discovered a fantastic place, Pep,’ Emanuele told me one afternoon on his return, while still drying his damp blond fringe off his forehead. A glint of enthusiasm lit his dark eyes. ‘A small cove, off the Kilifi Plantations. Charlie and I think you must come and see it. It would be great for a party.’

  Next afternoon, we drove there together. It was not easy to find it from the jagged shore, as the terrain was covered with spiky sisal, taller than a man, and tangles of grassy twine. We located it finally, at the end of an inconspicuous trail. The boys helped me to climb down to it through rough old coral rocks hung with sea grapes, and we were there.

  It was a semicircular cove of perfect proportions, surrounded by rugged grottoes at many levels, where one could instantly imagine hiding bright candles.

  The tide was coming back, beating the shore of untarnished white sand, and decorating it with rows of seaweeds and coconut shells in lacy patterns. Seagulls flew low, with still wings and high calls piercing the evening. There was a rare, ageless purity about that place which enchanted me, and I could see that it would indeed be ideal for a special celebration.

  It was the beginning of December 1979. Charlie’s birthday had just been, Emanuele’s would be in January, but Paolo’s birthday was due in ten days or so, just before Christmas. There and then, we decided to give him a surprise party in the magic cove.

  There began days of excitement and secret preparation. I drove to the bazaars at the market in Mombasa, and bought mats of woven palm leaves to scatter on the sand, and bright cotton kangas and kapok to be sown into large cushions. From the workshop of the Kilifi Plantations, through which we had access to the cove, we borrowed steel drums and wire mesh for the barbecues, long low tables of driftwood, and planks of sawn timber to use as an improvised ladder to get down to the beach.

  Early in the morning, when Paolo was out fishing, or in the late afternoons, we sneaked away to prepare the feast, to which we had invited, sworn to secrecy, everybody in Kilifi. We cleared the beach of debris deposited by generations of waves, swept the rocks of dried weeds and sand and finally started bringing down the assorted paraphernalia that we needed.

  Then the day came, and I told Paolo that we had been asked to a special party on the beach. Puzzled and curious, he accepted happily.

  We had worked since early morning carrying and decorating. Now the place was transformed, bright with candles, twinkling from the shelves of stones as in a fairy land. Paper lanterns marked the line of the high tide, and mats, covered in cushions of bright blues and turquoise, were strewn on the damp sand in a large circle round a roaring fire. Hurricane lamps and bunches of frangipani hung from stumps of driftwood. A music played with the sound of the wind.

  A vast barbecue glowed in the largest cave, where meats were being roasted by my cook Gathimu. Large platters of pizzas and samosas, oysters and kebabs, garlic breads and cheeses, mangoes, papaya and pineapple were set out on a long table covered in banana leaves. Wine and champagne bottles stood in a wooden basin filled with ice, and a spicy punch of rum was served in half coconuts garnished with red hibiscus from a bowl with floating flowers. Up above, millions of stars glinted in the equatorial sky. Large stars, exotic, yellow, alive like campfires at night.

  As hosts, we were the first to arrive. Realizing what the plot was Paolo exclaimed in surprise and swept me up in a big hug, laughing. The guests started coming in groups. In all their faces we read the same wonder.

  It was a happy time, never to be forgotten.

  I did not know yet for sure, but perceived it from early signs, that deep inside me, in the secret oyster of my womb, a new life was forming, made of Paolo and of me to remind us for ever of our blending.

  In the grottoes, amongst orange crabs, curious and tentative, candles brightened the darkness; mermaids sang, hiding through the grey-green waves; nocturnal seagulls called, and in Paolo’s eyes I could imagine winds of unanswered questions.

  I did not know – how could I, I had still so much to learn? – that the luminous sadness in the visionary glimmer of his eyes was a premonition of a future which he would not see, and that this was to be his last party ever.

  It ended when the lorry did not stop and Paolo’s car did not brake in time, and his life was submerged and taken from his body, to fly to join the seagulls he loved, and the sky and the clouds and the hills of Laikipia.

  It ended when the night tide came in, flushing away in its gentle waves the red bougainvillea, and the candles in the lanterns died off one by one, taken by the ocean, until we knew it was time to move on.

  Next morning we went to look. Only some smouldering ashes were left, some dying frangipani still perched on the rocks with the seaweed, and an empty wine glass rolling quietly on the shore, miraculously intact.

  My eyes focused again on the chilled champagne glass on the white tablecloth. Charlie was looking expectantly at me. Across the table, radiant in cream silk and pink roses, Sveva, the living portrait of her father, watched me with her ocean-blue eyes.

  I shook my head and came back to the present. I smiled at him:

  ‘The party at the magic cove. Of course I remember. How could I ever forget?’

  Later in the evening, when the dancing began, Charlie asked Sveva, as he would have his sister, and they twirled around in a lively waltz, the child-woman in her glow of blonde hair and silks, stars in her eyes, and the tall youngster who could have been my son.

  On the beach below, the tide was again receding, and on the sand it left patterns of shells and fishbones, driftwood and tangled seaweeds, fragments of ocean stories to be interpreted.

  Like tides we come, we go, leaving the memory of our footprints on the hard shores of life. I watch their tracks in reverence, holding my daughter’s hand, and try to evoke for her, with care and tenderness, their frail loved figures, from the mist of time.

  Both loved stories,

  And when I tell mine, I hear their voices,

  Whispering from beyond the silenced storm.

  They are what links the survivor to their memory.

  Elie Wiesel, Souls on Fire

  Illustrations

  1. Emanuele and Kaa

  2. Paolo teaching Emanuele how to use a harpoon for fishing

  3. Emanuele riding a giant tortoise in the Seychelles

  4. Kilifi: Emanuele

  5. Shimoni: Paolo and Emanuele shared a deep passion for fishing


  6. Emanuele loved the sea and sailing

  7. An adventurous childhood: Charlie Mason and Emanuele riding bareback in Ngobithu’s dam

  8. Emanuele and Charlie playing with a young python

  9. Paolo spraying the roof infested by caterpillars

  10. Building a stone bed: Kuki with Lwokwolognei and Langat

  11. The house and garden at Kuti

  12. Kuki and Sveva

  13. Emanuele and a pet young agama

  14. Tigger

  15. Ol An Nyiro: cheetah at Nagiri dam

  16. The Pokot women come to Kuti

  17 & 18. A hoopoe flew on to Paolo’s head

  19. Ben, Paolo and the Bullshark of Vuma

  20. Sveva and Meave at Ol Ari Nyiro Springs

  21. Elephant seen from the treetop below Paolo’s dam

  22. Elephants drinking at a dam

  23. Ekiru Mirimuk guarding the hills

  24. Kuki and baby rhino

  25. Lake Turkana

  26. The pool at Maji ya Nyoka

  27. Kuki and camel

  28. Sveva riding camels in the Amaya Valley

  29. Osman with the female camel and baby

  30. Borau tells his adventure

  31. Emanuele in the snake pit at Kuti