Girl with the Golden Voice (2 page)

‘Boring will do fine. I don't want to bring back the presents in pieces.'

‘Half nine do? We could have lunch at the club.' His mind shifted back to Tom and his morning journey. ‘Mmn, I'd forgotten. It'll be good to have a new, white female around. Watch out, Tom, the cowboys will soon get wind of her.' Bertie chuckled in that gravelly way of his. He rose from his armchair to put on another log. Everything about him was neat and precise. He was slim and his black hair was brushed back and cropped severely. Every night he turned out for supper dressed for a night out in a London club. He took time to select his log and placed it just so, for a long slow burn. He turned and smiled at Tom. Rafaella noticed for the umpteenth time that the sadness never completely left those friendly blue eyes.

‘Bertie, you make Lucy sound like a warthog. And why do you people keep on implying there's something between us? Look, we were on the same courses at Reading. I haven't seen her for going on three years. She's gone a bit nuts on anthropology lately and remembered her little Kenyan pal. That's all there is to it.'

‘How old were you, Alex'?

‘What do you mean?'

‘When you and Maura, you know, got married?'

‘Bertie, you were best man!'

‘Oh yes. Sorry, Maura. That was the year the lake flooded up to the railway station. I was twenty-five. And you're twenty-three, Tom.'

‘Twenty-four. Look, shut it, Bertie.'

‘Good-looking girl. Saw her picture somewhere.'

‘I showed you. It was in an English magazine. Her father was receiving an award. Doctor.'

‘Anthropology, eh? Bright as well. Coming to the right place. We must make her comfortable. Make sure she wants to come and live here.'

Outside on the bench Luka was silently mouthing a single word to his brother, slowly and with an exaggerated movement of his mouth.

‘Rebecca!'

These two shrewd students of the peculiar ways of white people had also heard about this Miss Lucy. There wasn't much they didn't know about what went on in the big houses along their stretch of the lake, even down to the number of pairs of shoes each member of a family had in their wardrobes. Just now, they could foresee big problems ahead for Bwana Tom and plenty of fun to help them pass the long hours of work.

Angela had passed them on her way home. She had given them an angry look as she went by. Yes, she was right. It was time to go for a stroll to check that everything around the place was in good order.

Back inside, Tom had given up the struggle with Bertie. But it wasn't even easy to lose a battle with Bertie in his terrier mood. And Bertie had switched fronts. He was about to catch Tom off guard, baffle his best friend and intrigue the two women.

‘Hear about those two silly buggers in Karen last week? Oh, done it again. Sorry, Raf. Anyway, about your age, Tom. Won't work. Never does.'

Tom tried to regroup his thoughts furiously. He soon decided that silence would be the best defence.

‘Going native the old man called it. Course, nowadays a lot of the city girls have a decent education. Jobs and all that. Good lookers. Daddy's got money. We all know where that came from. Well, these two Karen lads have been speared good and proper. Hitched. In The Nation. Surprised you didn't see it. I expect you did, Tom.'

Bertie chuckled and winked in Tom's direction. Alex, happy to be quite lost, took another sip of his whisky and stared into the embers. Maura reached across to touch her husband's arm. Rafaella shifted in her chair, wondering how far Bertie would continue with this line. Disapproval was in the air, but Bertie could not resist.

‘Well, you know, I was just wondering if we are going to get more of this kind of palaver. We've both seen it, Alex. And it was going on long before our time. Bit more understandable in those days. A settler on his own, up country. Out all day. Bags of trouble on the farm. Perhaps there was a good-looking house girl around. Perhaps that was all right. I don't know. No question of marriage then. Nowadays, well … We've still got to stick together out here. We all know that, even if we're too liberal to admit it.'

Twenty minutes later the companions of the evening, seen and unseen, were together on the white gravel area in front of the house. Erik was vigorously polishing the red and silver parts of the Harley while Luka stood close by, on an edge of readiness to leap forward to render any assistance that might be required.

By the time the lazy throb of Bertie's motor had faded into silence, the beige dust of his trail had settled. Erik and Luka were ambling home for their break and had almost reached the circle of rondavels. Their eyes were drawn to the red glow of the dying fire so that they did not notice another tall, slender shape pressed against the trunk of a jacaranda to their right. As they slid down on to the flat stones close to the warmth, that shape glided off in the direction of Big House.

Behind the house, the ground sloped gradually up to a low ridge. Take one of the half dozen paths to the top and be prepared to catch your breath. The eye and the imagination leap out into the dramatically vast, open panorama. Rebecca stood under one of the line of flat-topped acacia and looked out over the dark waters of the lake. She had been the first to arrive. On other nights when she had been waiting alone, the lap of the tiny waves on the margin twenty feet below had been pleasant company. The outline of the distant western wall of the Great Rift and all the hills between, the scattered diamond dust of countless stars against their dark violet setting, she had known and loved them all for as long as she could remember. Tonight they brought her no comfort. They did not help her to make sense of things. Tonight she was afraid, fighting off an attack of panic.

In twelve hours that woman would be here in Londiani. This Lucy's arrival threatened to turn her own world upside down. She and Tom had been meeting for a year and more, mostly after dark. Their love had grown in secret. They had been happy enough just to talk, make plans and promises for the time when they could come out into the open. Out of fear they had played for safety. But now Rebecca felt a mounting terror that she was about to lose him. It had been comfortable to wait, to put off the day of reckoning, to hide from the hostility that would hit them from all sides. She was about to pay for her lack of courage. She knew it. In her fevered state, by a cruel alchemy, every positive was turning to a dark negative.

Why isn't he here?
She needed to be told that it was possible for a rich white farmer's son to marry a black house girl, that this mzungo woman was just another guest who would visit the parks and do the other tourist things and then return home. But she and Tom had been friends for years. Why was she coming out just at this moment? Tom would be her host. During the little time he had away from work on the farm he would have to look after this blonde thing from the north. Oh, yes, she had seen the picture in the English magazine that Mrs McCall had given her mother to look at.

At last, there was the sound of footsteps coming up the path from the laundry garden. Rebecca swung ‘round to face him. When they were close, they stood off for a moment searching for each other's eyes. Their embrace was fierce to the point of pain. Muscles and sinews strained. Hands and arms moved fast to pull tighter and tighter. Buttocks and shoulders were caressed with frantic passion. There was no climax where flesh entered flesh. That restraint was well understood between them.

They slid to the ground. It was cold, dusty but dry. They sat facing each other, hip to hip. She did not hesitate.

‘Is this to be the last time, Thomas?'

”Becca, don't be so dramatic, for goodness sake!'

‘But she'll be here tomorrow. You won't have the freedom.'

‘I'm not a prisoner. And Lucy's just a friend. Hardly even that now, perhaps.'

‘Lucy! I don't like to hear that word.'

‘What are you afraid of?'

‘You'll be together so much. You'll get used to each other!'

Tom closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘You don't trust me!'

‘I do! I do!' She struck him on the chest to make him see. ‘Thomas, Thomas, you'll start to look at things the way the others do.'

‘What others? Nobody can make —'

‘Don't laugh at me. Don't pretend.'

‘Pretend?'

She rose to a kneeling position and pushed him onto his back. Looking down into his face, she began again. The passion was gone for a moment.

‘The easy part is over. Mama suspects. You should see the look she gives me sometimes, mostly on our way home from Big House. The girls giggle a lot. Papa, he knows nothing. Please God, not yet!'

Tom stared up into the sky, tight-lipped. He was not enjoying this. Rebecca knew it, but she went on.

‘The dangerous people are going to have to know soon. You will have to be braver than me.'

‘God, Rebecca, you're so beautiful …'

‘No, Tom, not now. I'm the poor girl. I'm the black servant. A lot of cruel things will be said. Perhaps these strong people will dismiss me, send me down to the family at the coast.'

‘But you're not a prisoner either.'

‘No.'

‘And this servant … that's just for … till we're … Look, you're the most beautiful woman in the world. You sing like an angel. No one's going to take you away from me.'

‘You mean it. Thomas? Sometimes I think it would have been better not to have gone to Santa Maria.'

‘Don't tell Rafaella that. It would break her heart.'

‘Thomas, your grandparents were so good to me. I'll never forget. Perhaps those five years in Nairobi made me believe I could be good enough.'

‘Good enough for what?'

‘Good enough for you, stupid. Good enough to be your wife.'

‘You mean that back then … good God!'

‘Since I was twelve. Didn't you notice? That's why I worked hard. It was my chance to show that I could be as good as any white girl. And they paid for my singing lessons.'

‘Singing lessons? Bloody hell, Rebecca. I feel such a … shit. You shouldn't have done all that.'

‘I enjoyed it, all of it. And that's how I got to meet Mary and her father. The concerts. We became famous for a day. That concert in State House.'

Those terrible days of two Decembers before came back vividly to Tom's mind. Anna's funeral on the seventeenth and his grandfather's, Don's, on Christmas Eve. Rebecca had sung some of Toni Wajiru's songs. Back then, the pain and longing in her voice had bewildered him. He was afraid of being moved like that again.

‘And that was why you didn't go to Australia?'

‘Oh, the scholarship …? No, that wouldn't have worked.'

She forced a smile and was silent. Then, in a single, graceful movement, she rose and turned to look out over the lake.

Tom was caught off guard. Rebecca's simple movement had unlocked uncomfortable thoughts. A deeper reality was breaking in on him. All those safe, secret meetings, the sweet intimacy, the long conversations, always bubbling with hope. These were the easy part. Rebecca was right about that. His natural apathy would not work for much longer. He was used to things turning out well with minimal effort on his part.

He could not contemplate life without her, but he knew that when they decided to come out into the open, there would be immediate and massive opposition. The fears and preju dices on both sides would surface in the advice, warnings and threats that would bombard them - all for their own good.

Only Rebecca could get him through all this stuff. She was the strong one, the clear-sighted one. In the few seconds it took him to roll over and rise to his feet, a chilling fear surged through him with electric speed. He would not be able to hack it. Somewhere down the line he would give in and settle for a life of grey mediocrity.

The starlight caught them in a solemn pose, looking out over the lake. They could have been standing in front of a priest exchanging their vows. She had her eyes lifted to a gleam of brightness on the distant escarpment. He was staring down into the water and drawing a deep breath. He touched her back lightly and they started down a steep diagonal path towards the lake.

Arms linked, they walked on the soft ground, inches from where the wavelets were slapping down on the black sand of the shoreline. Soon they were crossing the narrow neck of land that connected with Crescent Island, not a proper island but a broad peninsula which was the paradise home for hundreds of bush creatures large and small.

Tom was a full two centimetres taller than Rebecca. She knew that he was glad about that. She restrained her stride to match his shorter, muscular roll. Her arm could feel the hard flesh around his back and ribs. He let his arm rest in the curve between her breast and her hip, enjoying the rise and fall of her round, tight buttocks.

Words had become superfluous. The sharp awareness of the threat hanging over their happiness made the time extra precious.

They stumbled on a large family of zebra. The creatures rose as one and galloped off to safety along some well-worn trail. In their wake the air was heavy with the acrid scent and taste of yet more dust. Tom smiled after them.

‘They'd miss us.'

‘Why are Europeans so sentimental about animals?'

‘Except that we'd still be coming, only at normal hours. And we'll be bringing our kids to meet their kids.'

Not for the first time Rebecca fought down a delicious pull in her loins. She was allowing herself to think of the ecstasy there must be in the making of babies.

On the open plain they were able to see the animal shapes more easily and steer ‘round them. Soon they were standing on the southern tip of the island. On three sides of them the lake waters swelled, grey and mysterious. Peace, until Rebecca suddenly remembered.

‘Thomas, you need to be asleep. You must hurry!'

‘I don't feel tired.'