Someone Wishes to Speak to You (7 page)

After a dish of lake fish and greasy fries, accompanied by some agreeable glasses of South African Sauvignon, Lucienne had suggested that they should take the opportunity to dance to the intoxicating music. Although Mathew had warned her that he was unable to jive and could only do ballroom dancing, he had taken her hand and led her onto the crowded dance floor. Thanks to not being able to follow the example of the other dancers, he had placed his arm around Lucienne’s waist and, as their dancing progressed, he had held her body close to him. As they swayed to and fro to the beat of the drums, she had rested her head on his shoulder so that some of her long, soft hair draped loosely over it. He gently ran his fingers through the silky curls.

As they returned to their table, a wine glass reflected the flickering of the candle that danced on Lucienne’s left cheek. Mathew could just detect a few small dew-drops of tears gathering beneath her now rather soulful-looking dark brown eyes. At the same time, he found himself experiencing some pangs of breathlessness and emptiness of spirit. However, after holding hands across the table, and being both aware of their respective emotional dilemmas, they soon pulled themselves out of despondency and happily danced with each other into the early hours of the morning.

‘As tomorrow is my last day here,’ ventured Mathew as
they were leaving, ‘I was wondering if you would like to come on a picnic with me? Maybe somewhere on the shore of Lake Kivu . . . Somewhere quiet and beautiful.’

‘What a lovely idea!’ smiled Lucienne. ‘I know just the place, a little bay on the south-east coast. Why don’t I pick you up just after 12?’

After they had made arrangements, Mathew found a taxi to take Lucienne back to her flat and, after an emotional embrace during which he managed to maintain his customary disciplined ‘mind over matter’, he dutifully returned to his room at the Hotel Metropole.

By Sunday morning, Mathew had completed the majority of his packing and had made sure that all of his valuable field notes and photographic records had been securely placed into his hand luggage, ready for the following day’s early morning flight to Lubumbashi and onwards to Kinshasa. Lucienne had arrived at the hotel in her open jeep just after midday, and appeared to be in the highest of spirits. She was determined not to put any damper on the last afternoon that they would be together for so many months.

As they drove along the lakeside they passed a number of well-manicured tea gardens, within which the bushes were gently shaded from the strong rays of the sun by slender groves of tall trees. As Lucienne turned up a narrow track towards a small, isolated beach, they reminisced about the wonderful times they had shared together in Bukavu and at Kahuzi-Biega.

‘Mathew, I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed your company here . . . It’s been a very special time and one I will remember for the rest of my life. But it may be six months until we see each other again and when we do, we’ll be in Atlanta – it will be completely different from our lives here. What I want to say is . . . well . . . let’s enjoy this afternoon for what it is, and face the future when it comes to us . . . Let’s not spend today worrying about what lies ahead.’

Mathew sighed. ‘You’re quite right, as usual. I don’t want anything to spoil this afternoon. Oh Lucienne, you’ve chosen the perfect spot – just look at that! And not another person in sight. I have you completely to myself.’

After admiring the view, they selected the top of a large, smooth boulder on which to spread their picnic rug, with the deep waters of the lake lapping gently at its base. The coastline was edged by a mixed woodland habitat with an assortment of dense evergreen vegetation and thick undergrowth, overshadowed by some tall trees whose canopies touched at mid-level to afford some welcome shade. A pair of shy, bespectacled weaver birds had flown noisily above the rock as if in protest for having been disturbed and the ubiquitous colourful butterflies fluttered to and fro, without a care in the world. An African fish eagle, with its white head which contrasted magnificently with its chestnut belly and shoulders and black wings, was perched nearby at the top of a sizeable dead tree with a commanding view over the lake. Seemingly aware of the occasion, it bid Mathew an African farewell by throwing its head back to utter its far-carrying gull-like call, which so well represented the characteristic and evocative ‘Cry of Africa’.

Lucienne had gone out of her way to provide a picnic to beat all the previous picnics that she had provided Mathew with during her almost weekly visits to his hut at Kahuzi-Biega. Slices of water melon, portions of smoked fish, legs of chicken, a salad with boiled eggs, tomatoes and spring onions, along with the added benefit of Lucienne’s special home-made garlic and olive oil dressing – her own carefully guarded recipe. This was followed by scoops of vanilla ice cream, skillfully wrapped to stop it from melting, each topped by a teaspoonful of Amarula cream liqueur. The drink is made from the small yellow fruit of the Marula tree, the berries of which are so much favoured by elephants that the trees are frequently referred to by locals as ‘elephant trees’.
In addition to this, Mathew had managed to secure a couple of bottles of Chablis, which he had carefully brought along in a freezer bag to serve perfectly chilled.

After they had both enjoyed the delights of the picnic, the agreeable relaxing and rather intoxicating effects of having consumed a bottle and a half of the Chablis Premier Cru and amply sampled the special blend of the Amarula liqueur, they had both gone to sleep under the shade of an acacia tree on the top of the rock, with Lucienne’s head gently resting on Mathew’s chest. Some time later, Mathew had suddenly been awoken by the shot of a gun which had appeared to have been quite close to them. His reaction had been to quickly jerk his body to a sitting position, which caused Lucienne’s head to slip off his chest and her slumbering body to slide down the boulder into the lake. As soon as she had been momentarily submerged, the coolness of the water was quick to bring her to her senses – she threw up her arms and cried out for help, and it was immediately obvious to Mathew that Lucienne was unable to swim and was well out of her depth.

‘Lucienne! Don’t worry. . . I’m coming . . .’ Mathew tore off his bush jacket and shoes as she thrashed helplessly around, gasping for breath and taking in mouthfuls of water. He slid down the rock and quickly swam to Lucienne’s sinking body, immediately putting into practice the life-saving exercise that he had learned from a St John Ambulance team that had once visited Wellington College.

‘Lucienne, stay calm, trust me . . .’ he shouted while swimming up to her, turning her struggling body onto its back and placing both hands on either side of her face. He turned onto his back and holding the now almost lifeless form of Lucienne above him, he swam to the nearby beach and managed to pull her on to its soft, warm sands. Then, to Mathew’s utter horror, he saw that her breathing had stopped.

‘Lucienne . . . come on, don’t do this to me . . . start breathing
. . . please . . .’ He knelt by her and swallowing back the lump in his throat, quickly applied compressions to her chest, desperately trying to remember what those St John Ambulance men had shown him all those years ago. After approximately thirty compressions he lifted her chin to open the airway, pinched her nose then blew a couple of times into her mouth and, after having repeated this procedure on two to three occasions, to his immense relief she started to breathe lightly. Mathew resumed the chest compressions in a more composed manner; alternating thirty pumps with two more ‘kisses of life’ before he was satisfied that Lucienne had started to breathe regularly.

After wrapping Lucienne’s body within the folds of the picnic rug, he took her cold hands in his and they soon responded to his touch as her body warmed up. As Lucienne regained consciousness, through spasms of delayed shock, she started to whimper slightly before her dark brown eyes began to focus more clearly on Mathew’s worried countenance. She smiled and on releasing his hand, flung her arms around him to take him into her full embrace. They lay together for quite some time, while Mathew gently stroked the back of her head and the long, curly hair that hung loosely over her neck and shoulders. And as the sun warmed and dried their damp bodies and clothes, they felt each other’s hearts almost beating in unison.

It was then, as if it was the most natural act of relief, compassion and friendship in the world, that they gently made love. Such a physical and romantic experience had been the first time either of them had experienced the ecstasy of intercourse, culminating as it had done with such a blissful integral union of their loving bodies.

3

Conflicting Sentiments

On Mathew’s return to the UK from Kinshasa, prior to flying up to his home in Yorkshire, he had arranged to meet with some of his old Wellingtonian friends in London. While in the city he had stayed at the original Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street, where there had always been a room made available for a member of Sir Colin Duncan’s family. His grandfather, Sir Reginald Duncan, had been at the Cavendish soon after the famous Rosa Lewis, the ‘Duchess of Jermyn Street’, had taken over the lease of the hotel in 1902; he was purported to have participated in many of the discreet and colourful dinner parties that had taken place there during the years prior to the First World War. It was Edith Jeffrey (Rosa’s companion for over fifty years and a long-time friend of his parents) who was the first familiar face to welcome Mathew back to his homeland.

Rosa Lewis had initially worked at the end of the nineteenth century for Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill when she first met their young son, Winston – still a schoolboy at Harrow at that time. Rosa’s cuisine met with the royal approval of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, who was to summon her on numerous occasions to cook for him and his guests. Such was Rosa’s fame that on 25 February 1909, soon after she had acquired the lease of the Cavendish, the London
Daily Mail
carried the headline ‘England’s Greatest Woman Chef’. The framed cutting of the article could be seen hanging on the wall just outside Miss Edith’s small office. It read:

Miss Edith, even at this very much later date, was unlikely to accept people to stay at the Cavendish unless she knew their family or they were fortunate enough to have a personal letter of introduction.

It had been during Mathew’s few days of partying with his friends in London that he had begun to recognise how difficult it would be for a person of Lucienne’s ethnic and social background to fit easily into such an alien world. He was also conscious of the fact that growing up in the social milieu of the English upper class had left him vulnerable to a degree of snobbery – a subconscious attribute that he was now desperately attempting to shake off.

Mathew could not help being aware of some of the social ramifications if he were to bring Lucienne back to England. No doubt he could well be ostracised by the majority of his society friends, and perhaps even become alienated from a few of his very socially conscious family who in all probability had never met an indigenous African. The more Mathew dwelt upon the absurdity of such social dilemmas, the more illogical he considered the racial boundaries that were currently in place in England, although he had seen some integration of ethnic minorities in Bradford that was considerably more progressive than anything he had witnessed in America’s Deep South.

He had already started to miss Lucienne greatly, but recognised that on his return to Atlanta it was very important that he shouldn’t keep telling her how very much he had
missed her. Unless, by the time of their reunion, he wanted his love for her to progress into something more long term, perhaps even marriage. In the meantime, he knew that he would always have the memory of their last afternoon together on the shores of Lake Kivu; the drama of her having almost drowned, and the subsequent blissful fulfillment of their deep friendship and love for one another.

While Mathew had been trying to resolve some of his fears on how socially alienated he might be should he decide to take Lucienne as his bride, he knew only too well, as had always been the case since his school days at Wellington, how important it would be for him to make up his own mind. He must not in any way be influenced by the suspected racial bias of his family and friends and consequently abandon the very person he considered that he had fallen so much in love with.

‘Mathew! Oh! Let me look at you . . . I can’t believe you’re finally home!’ said his mother, Lady Sally Duncan, wrapping him in her arms on his arrival at Leeds/Bradford International Airport. She had not seen her younger son for over a year. Lady Sally bombarded Mathew with questions as she led him out of the airport to where Sid Stockdale, the family’s chauffeur-come-butler, was waiting to drive them home in Sir Colin’s highly polished new black Daimler 250 V8. As they drove through Otley and Burley on their way to Hartington Hall, to the south-east of Skipton in southern Wharfedale, Sally Duncan held tightly onto her son’s hand as if she never wanted to be parted from him again, at the same time continuing her interrogation. ‘Mathew, I want you to tell me absolutely everything. Did you meet interesting people and make some good friends while you were there? Do tell me you managed to avoid catching one of those awful tropical diseases . . . Oh . . . and how did the field studies go with those
dangerous gorillas? I hope you weren’t in any danger, one hears such terrible stories.’

‘No Mother, no danger whatsoever – not from the gorillas anyway.’

‘So how successful was your time in Bukavu overall? Was it worth going all that way?’