Black Mischief (2 page)

The long silence outside was finally broken. There were voices in the car park. He hurried to the door and looked out. He was stunned by what he saw. Rebecca Kamau was unmistakable, but why was her dress torn? Why was she crying? One other member of her family he recognised for sure. Her father was moving with slow, powerful strides following lawyer Coulson to the bwana's car. In his arms he carried the limp shape of a man's body. Simon bit his clenched fist and let the tears flow. In his cowardice he had allowed the good young farmer of Londiani to lose his life.

wo mothers were united in grief. Two eldest sons had been in mortal danger. Twice in four months Tom McCall had come close to death. Julius Rubai lost his life to a bullet from his own gun on what should have been the happiest day of his life. On the evening of May twenty-fifth on the fourth green of the Muthaiga Golf Club two shots rang out. Guests at the engagement party in the dining room rushed out to find two young men lying on the clipped, damp grass. Tom was bleeding from a wound in his thigh. Julius was dying after an attempt by a bodyguard of Julius's father to seize the gun had gone badly wrong.

The young men had been boys together at Pembroke House, a boarding prep school in up-country Gilgil, and had never got on. Julius, son of a rich and powerful father, was used to getting his way and hated the farmer's son's popularity. Fair-haired Tom had an easy charm and was happy with his life. Julius was never really at ease with the very English ways of the school. He could not understand why no one made a fuss of him or saw him as something special.

One evening towards the end of Julius's last term there had been a clash over house rules in the shower queue. Julius tried to show Tom up in front of the boys standing in line with their towels draped around their naked bodies. When Tom refused to cooperate, Julius tried to grab his shoulder but only managed to scratch the flesh and draw blood. The fight was short but vicious. Ben Boyd, the duty master, had managed to pull them apart and gave them a severe warning. Within two hours the anger and hate bubbled over again and, while the rest of the senior school were working quietly at their prep, they were tearing into each other under cover of darkness down on the playing fields.

Twelve years later, their two lives slammed into each other on a deadly collision course. Traditional Kenyan wisdom would have described what happened as a fate sent by the gods. Rebecca and Tom were deeply in love and over all prejudices and objections, save one. Five years before, Julius had chanced to see Rebecca performing at a concert at the Bomas Centre and lusted after her ever since. In a fury of frustration that he could not persuade her out of this stupid infatuation for the arrogant, little white bwana, he made barely veiled threats about the consequences of what she was getting herself into. Rebecca, terrified and unable to share her fears, realised that to save Tom she must sacrifice herself. It was a secret she must keep to herself. Her desperate action would be misunderstood by those whom she loved most. She would not be able to tell them the truth and she would hurt them. But as long as Tom was safe, she would be content and there would be a kind of peace. She was ready to become the wife of Julius. The shedding of Rubai blood did not bring closure.

Two mothers were united in grief, but the pain was not equally shared. Both struggled to stay afloat in a whirlpool of emotions. Maura McCall could not hide her joy that her son had survived, nor could she shake off a sense of guilt for this blessing. For Sally Rubai the passing of the days did not bring healing for her loss. She simply became more used to the merciless reality.

It was five months later when Maura finally persuaded Sally to leave her Karen home to travel to take tea on the veranda of Londiani. The two women had not been out of contact in the time since that fateful May night. There had been letters, mostly from Maura's side, but it was in the telephone calls where the bond began to grow strong. At first, the conversations were punctuated by long silences and focused on the May night, but gradually they were able to talk about other things. The silences became shorter and the range of topics wider. There was more and more of what Alex, Maura's husband, described as ‘woman talk' and moments of uninhibited hilarity when Sally's gravelly, sexy chuckle rang down the line and brought tears to Maura's eyes.

It was a balmy afternoon when Sally's chauffeur-driven Mercedes pulled up on the driveway close to the three steps leading up to the veranda of Londiani. Soon four women were sitting around the table spread with a blue cloth laden with silver and the Royal Worcester tea set. There was a fifth woman present who should have been seated, too, but Angela Kamau could not yet bring herself to accept that she was more than an ordinary servant in the McCall household. Rebecca had managed to talk her mother into swapping her Big House clothes for a pair of pink slacks and a close fitting white blouse. As Maura watched Angela returning to the kitchen after delivering milk and sugar to the table, she remembered for the umpteenth time the words of their neighbour, Bertie Briggs, about the smart sexiness of Somali women, ‘the best lookers in Africa'. It was obvious from where Rebecca inherited her looks, the tall, full figure, the well-sculpted almost oriental facial features and one song from her father, Stephen, would have told anyone that his rich bass-baritone voice was special and that his genes would have had a big part in creating the extraordinary soprano sound of his firstborn.

The coming together of these women had been an awkward one. The scars of violence ensured that this would be so, in spite of the warmth they all felt for each other. It had been the men in the Rubai family who had brought Tom McCall close to death twice, but it was Julius, Sally's firstborn, her special boy, who had lost his life on that May evening.

Rafaella, the good-looking, Italian born matriarch of the McCalls of Londiani, had also been plunged down into the depths of grief of loss two years before when her husband, Don, had died not a hundred metres from that veranda when his small white aircraft had been forced just the smallest fraction too far right as it came in to land on the slippery dirt runway on Crescent Island. On the eve of Christmas, joy turned to despair in a single moment. The wildebeest that had forced Don off course then skipped away to nibble at a patch of grass under a nearby acacia tree.

It was Rafaella who had been first down the steps to embrace the portly Sally. The hug was long and the two became four, five even when Sally insisted that Angela, hovering in the background, come down the steps to join them. Before the women separated, Sally was into a burst of that throaty, chuckling laughter that made the little group rock gently.

‘Ladies, can you see that I have put on a little weight in the belly region?'

None of the four was willing to acknowledge what they had all noticed as soon as she stepped down from her car.

‘I have some news. A little one is on his way. Yes, I know that I am a bit older than usual for having a child. But it is a wonderful gift to us. I said to Abel that if God has granted us the ability to do this thing, then we should accept the chance. Glory be, Abel said that he totally agreed! I have to admit I enjoyed the process of, what shall we say, procreation! I feel like an eighteen year old again.' She rounded off her announcement with another sexy chuckle.

All awkwardness was gone. The exchanges were open and no subject was taboo. Maura was intrigued by one word of Sally's.

‘“His”, Sally. How do you know it will be a boy?'

‘Ah, yes, it's true. The wonders of science. One little scan and the mystery is gone. And I am not unhappy. For one thing I can talk to him. Yes, we have had many conversations. They are all a bit one-sided just now, of course. And our son-to-be has a name. It is Abel's choice.'

Rebecca looked across at her mother who was standing behind Maura's chair and winced briefly. Sally alone of the company did not notice the tiny gesture. Rebecca had guessed a name and it set off a stream of unpleasant memories.

‘The boy will be called Julius. I must tell you that this child is already bringing new life to this family in more ways than one!'

There was a brief silence. None of Sally's companions could think of anything to say to keep the flow of the conversation from breaking. Sally understood.

‘Julius, God bless his soul, brought bad things to this family. I know it. He brought many bad things to himself also. I failed him. I could not lead him out of his darkness. Perhaps no one can do that in somebody else's life. Rebecca, I had a big hope that with you he would find himself. God forgive me, on that day when you came to our house drenched in the rain and said that your engagement to Thomas was over, I pushed away the truth that was so clear. You gave me hope for the first time in years. I thought you could grow to love him, bring him back to us. After that terrible night, our lives fell apart for a time. It was hard for us all but especially for his father. His heart was broken. Maura, thank God for your letters! If only I could have persuaded Abel to read them, but so many things reminded him of his special boy. Glory be to God, every day I pray that a healing will begin for Abel. I think that this new child will help him.'

Rebecca reached across to take Sally's hand. ‘Sally, it's all right, Mama, I'm not being disrespectful.' Her tone was firmly controlled at first and the words came slowly as if they were being carved out of some hard substance. ‘Many things have happened to us all in this last year. There has been much danger. For me the biggest danger is that I have learned to deceive, sometimes by telling lies and sometimes by just not telling the truth. If I wanted to give an excuse for myself, I would say I did all this not for myself but to protect another person. I was afraid for Thomas. I became a clever liar and I became less tender for being so. Sally, I was not honest when I came to your home in Karen. Did my lies help to kill Julius? Yes, they did. When I started out on this dangerous path I thought I was being strong. Julius was too strong for me. I was weak and in a panic.'

‘Child, when you came to me, I saw these things and my weakness was that I was a deceiver too, hiding away from the truth. I hoped you would come to love Julius. Darling, these wounds will be with us to the end, but the blood has dried and we must wash it away, together. But, you know, part of the problem is that we are little people and we think that happiness is our birthright. On very good days I have a little chuckle about this. It's true! It always helps. One time I was alone in the bedroom and I took off all my clothes and stood in front of my long mirror. It still makes me smile when I remember it. I moved about a bit. In seconds I was laughing out loud and talking to that woman wobbling back at me. That's a pretty face, Sal, but with all that blubber, don't think of entering any races! Picture it!'

Without rising from her chair, she gently shook the upper part of her body. ‘Isn't it hilarious? Our dog can do it much better!'

The chuckle was back, and the broad smile. She kept the movement going, raised her bent arms and swayed sinuously as though she was dancing. A burst of coarse laughter was infectious and all her companions, almost in spite of themselves, were smiling, with Rebecca and even Angela bending over and happily losing control.

Sally stopped her moving and gradually the laughter subsided. The solemnity returned, at a deeper level than before the change of mood. There followed a long, relaxed silence broken by a subdued Sally.

‘I want to ask you a favour. Abel wants to visit.' Another silence with Maura and Rafaella, and Angela and Rebecca exchanging puzzled looks. ‘I can see you are shocked. He needs to talk with Alex and Thomas.'

‘But why, Sally? It's not six months ago that he wanted to kill Tom. If it's anything to do with that horrible night, why don't you include Stephen? He would have been the first to die if Abel had pulled the trigger.'

‘Maura, when I cooled his anger just enough to prevent him pulling the trigger, that was the greatest achievement of my life and I thank God for it every day. And I beg you to let him come.

Try to see him for what he is today. Rafaella, Angela, Rebecca and you, Maura, you are the dearest women in the world to me. You do not judge me. I am not the big man's wife here. Talk to your men. See what they say. Let me know.'

euben Rubai was the second son of Sally and Abel and quite different from his elder brother. While Julius was tall and muscular, Reuben was shorter and wiry. Julius was proud of his close crop of tight, curly hair. Reuben worked hard to look after his thick, flowing locks which his brother often told him was a sign that he was not a proper Rubai. ‘They make you look like a whitey with black skin. Get them shaved off. I'll do the job. No charge.'