The Present Moment Read online

  Wairimu did not really think so, but as she had learned it at an earlier age and had a more sensible mother-tongue to start with she did not press the point. Luo people generally did not tell the difference between one and many till they got to the end of a word, and could therefore be very careless about the vital first syllables in Swahili. Rahel, admittedly, was better than most. Whatever you learned in the army you were likely to learn well.

  ‘But it didn’t work out like that, did it?’ asked Wairimu. There was no need for tactful silences between them. The boundary of talk was where the lack of words or experience drew the line. ‘I mean about investing in the family. Or else you wouldn’t be here, would you?’

  Rahel sighed.

  ‘Whether that old lady really left us alone or tried to work witchcraft on us I couldn’t say. Or whether the evil that my husband had seen during the war preyed upon him and upon us after he died. He just collapsed and died, you know, in 1952. Same time as the old king. He would have liked that. Great ones for kings and generals the army people used to be. Of course, we hadn’t started thinking about Uhuru then.’

  ‘I had,’ insisted Wairimu.

  ‘Well, I suppose you had, and our top people had; but I hadn’t. That’s all.’

  Rahel held her peace. Since 1947 she had dealt with these Kikuyu people, their history of loss and assimilation, their long, hidden malice, their quick calculations and the terrible bent backs of their burdened women. She wanted to shout at them to hold their heads up. Was that only because she was a soldier’s wife or because she had grown up to a graceful carriage and a steadily balanced water-pot? Was it because her ancestral land had been protected by the mosquito and the tsetse fly or because plain speaking, back in her father’s time, had matched the British in their own stiff-necked way?

  She subsided back into sleep, dreaming of grainy millet porridge with bitter greens (for in recent years she had quite gone off fish heads), of the cool earthy corner of the house where the filled water-pots were stored according to their use, of drums in different rhythms and starched uniforms with gleaming buttons. When the Community Nurses came they were astonished at the improvement, but let her rest.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mary was taking Wairimu’s pulse and the old lady was looking at her attentively. She knew that she must be quiet till the count was finished.

  ‘You’re Mary, aren’t you?’ said Wairimu. ‘You looked after me before.’

  ‘That’s right. It’s clever of you to remember.’

  ‘I remember because I used to be like you once, though you may not believe it. Only more flighty, perhaps.’

  The girl smiled, and the old lady was gratified to see her that much better.

  ‘There’s something the matter, though, isn’t there? You don’t look well to me. Are you – overdue – is that it?’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘Sorry, you think me rude. It is only that when you get old you can tell: perhaps that only means you have nothing to do except minding other people’s business. I think I would be a nurse if I were young now. But in my day there were only two choices, picking coffee or looking after men.’

  ‘And which did you do?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘And I bet you didn’t miss out on a good time either.’

  ‘You can say that again. And you?’

  The weariness came back into Mary’s face.

  ‘I guess if I’d been young then I’d have done both too. I’m still a student and – don’t tell anyone, now – last month I did think I was pregnant. Thank God I’m not. But what I do know is that I wouldn’t have had any help if I had been. He didn’t even answer my letter. Well, I suppose it’s better to find out too soon than too late, but it depresses you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘The old, old story,’ said Wairimu softly. ‘You don’t imagine there would have been such punishments for getting into trouble in our old laws, do you, if it hadn’t happened pretty often? Is he a student too?’

  ‘A student doctor. Nurses are just there to be trodden under their feet, I guess. My big brother warned me already. He helped to educate me and he would be just furious if he knew. He’s engaged to my friend Gertrude, the tall one over there, and I’m certain he’ll treat her right.’

  ‘Yes, I had an elder brother too,’ smiled Wairimu. ‘He died long ago, of course. He was the first one to tell me about Nairobi and I’m sure afterwards he wished he hadn’t. But cheer up. They say what can’t be cured must be endured, and old age is one of those things you can’t cure.’

  Wairimu thought the young man would take her to Nairobi. Years afterwards she saw how foolish that had been, but when a fairy-tale figure appears in your life, do you not expect the surroundings also to burst into a fairy-tale? It was many years later that she saw children creating a fantastic world of drama in their playground and acting up to it. Then she realised how it had been with her in those few passionate days. Or like the film of Adam and Eve which she had seen in some outdoor church arena, with the serpent wriggling up all over again and someone in a seat behind her shouting out loud, ‘You fool, don’t eat it – don’t EAT it!’ and subsiding with a hiss of despair as the sempiternal wrong was enacted once more.

  She knew him, of course. He was Waitito the son of Njuguna. Nobody came as close to home as that without your knowing his name. He had probably come to visit his friend and age-mate, Nyambura’s brother. But again it was days before she began seriously to wonder why Nyambura had not accompanied her to the river that morning, and she never put the question afterwards; what would be the good? As though there were not more serpents than one wriggling through the dirt, and how would Eve know – Eve who was older, after all, than Mumbi, if she remembered it right, though what she had learned afterwards never seemed so clear in her head as what had actually happened in those far-off days – how could she know that the serpent was not one of the good gifts she was surrounded with? It was something that had worried her once upon a time when she was having church lessons, time hanging heavy those days on her hands and limbs, how did those first people find out that they must fear a caterpillar but crunch up a locust, that a goat was good to eat but not a dog, that nettles could be tamed by water and fire but bright berries might kill. Perhaps the first Eve found these things only when she was put outside the garden, but Mumbi had the whole mountain.

  The young man kept the golden haze about him even when he drew her out of the path into the chilly shade of the trees, and if he could put a spell on her so far outside custom (for even when custom was customarily broken there was a time and place for it, a known penalty and a known outcome), must he not also draw her into that world where custom did not rule?

  She asked a lot of questions, those three days, about Nairobi, but he said it was not easy to get a place to build there and on the fourth day he vanished and there was no one she dared ask. Later she heard that he had come to arrange his marriage and he bought the girl, Miriam, a white cloth dress and had a service for her in the mission church, but before that happened Wairimu was away in the coffee.

  She used to wander away from the other girls and sit thinking. Her mother was worried and asked if she was ill. What, otherwise, was there to think about? If she feared her daughter was pregnant, there was soon clear evidence that she was not. They even asked if she was displeased with the marriage they were arranging. It was not that either. He was healthy and good-looking enough and as yet unmarried. It was not even that she would not pass the test of virginity, though that too was frightening. It was more that she had touched a magic world and been left behind.

  To go to the coffee was also a new thing. It was one way of choosing for yourself. Otherwise for girls there was almost no choice. Boys might choose school or be marshalled into school, and as a consequence they might be chosen for one kind of work or another – in the time of the Great War, recently ended, many boys and men had been forced to go either to work or to fight – but for girls there were very few school places an
d as yet little choice: when you came home again there was still the marriage to be arranged. It was rumoured that the Sisters might try to keep the girls with them, but in fact the novitiate was not started till later when converts showed they really wanted it: the girl had no alternative to marriage until the coffee came.

  You had to walk for about three hours – one of the other girls had pointed out the way. So, since it was not safe to go before light, you had better make an excuse for fetching water early in the morning – perhaps spilling a load the evening before and blaming it on a baby or a calf – so that it would be an hour before you were missed. Then you had to present yourself at the gate of the European farm and ask if they wanted workers. Usually they did. If they didn’t, she supposed you would have to trail home again and face a beating. But once you were taken on, given a place to sleep in the long, low buildings, a blanket and some staple food and taught which berries to pick and where to put them, they would not let you out even if your parents came to cry and shout for you. At the end of the month you got some money, and so you were like a man and could do a lot of choosing for yourself.

  One or two girls may have gone there because they were pregnant. But more often it was because they felt overworked at home or harassed by an unkind stepmother. They might go planning for a certain object, like Lois, who went with Wairimu and had been baptised as a baby far down the mountain where her father was working at the time. She was engaged to a Christian and was determined to buy herself a white dress and a pair of shoes to be married in. Even those who did not specially mean to save, she told Wairimu, would buy themselves a yellow cloth to replace the leathers they walked in, and new ornaments. So they slipped away one misty morning, leaving the water-skins by the path, and before midday they were written on for the coffee.

  Nobody thought of going for good. If you came home with your money and your experience it would be as a chooser and a doer, able to send your younger sisters to the river and have food brought from the kitchen. But in fact not many went home. When Wairimu left Lois there she had still not got her white dress and they heard that the fiancé was not pleased with her running away. There was more to being a Christian wife, he said, than dresses and shoes.

  Wairimu was a strong girl, though not tall, and used to working hard. She was not shy – ever since that morning on the river path she had known that she could not go back to childish behaviour again – so she got along with people, sang about her work, joined in the evening dances, held her own against the men’s demands. The golden haze had never come back. None of them could put a spell on her and she always said no.

  She had got her yellow cloth and an extra wrapper for cold days and a few more bangles, but she also kept some of her rupees. For the coffee had not brought her what she wanted, except just for avoiding the wedding day. She would have to go to Nairobi.

  One day the young master was walking round inspecting the berries. The old master did not often do that: he left it to his foremen. The young man sometimes came for a couple of months. They said he was still at school in England, though he looked grown-up and dressed like a man.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ he asked in good Kikuyu, looking into her basket.

  ‘I want to go to Nairobi,’ she answered, taking the chance.

  ‘It’s a long way to Nairobi,’ he laughed.

  ‘But I want to go there. There is something I can do for you if you take me.’

  She looked hopefully into his face and danced a few steps.

  His colour changed as she did not know white people’s colour could change. He became red like the pinky-red in the ear-coils. Then he slapped her hard.

  ‘Keep your place,’ he shouted, and hurried away.

  Well, she had made a mistake. Fortunately no one had seen it. But the next time she saw a rainbow pointing outwards and downwards she knew she must go.

  You could walk it easily in three days – to Mbiri one day, Mbiri to Thika the second, Thika to Nairobi the third. But people did not walk alone. Besides, you were not supposed to leave your work without being signed off. You could be brought back, and that would be worse than a slap. She began to lay her plans.

  The coffee was taken by bullock cart from various parts of the estate to the factory. There the first processing was done, but it had to be worked over again in Nairobi, so it was packed into enormous bags, twelve to a ton, and sent out by lorry to the railhead, near Fort Hall. She could not even lift one of the bags, a bitter humiliation, since she considered herself grown-up and as strong as her granny. Her mother, always fussing over babies, was not quite in the same class. The men would lift the bags, two working together, on to the lorry which would take them to Nyeri town, where a coffee transporter would combine the loads from the different estates and deliver them all to the railway. The little estate roads were not in good enough condition for the big lorry to collect direct. The foremen grumbled at the expense of all this changing over, and the better profit that could be made if you were near the railway.

  Wairimu made herself agreeable to the Kikuyu driver of a local lorry. She had once before got a lift of a few miles from him when she had taken a day off for shopping in Nyeri: that was her first experience of wheeled transport. He agreed, on certain conditions, to speaking for her to the long-distance transporters and telling her which day they would be travelling. She must go near the beginning of her ticket so as not to lose too much pay: if she asked to be signed off she would be questioned about her plans and perhaps laughed at again.

  She slipped out of the lines early one morning, wearing her yellow cloth and ornaments, a small kiondo slung on her back. She was almost as excited as she had been when leaving home that first time. The air was cool and crisp, the earth road still damp and chilly beneath her bare feet. She had decided not to go home first. They would only try to detain her. They knew where she was, for her brother had been to see her once on his way to look for casual work in Nyeri town, so the whisper must have spread. At that time her father was still trying to avoid having to return the first goats paid to him towards her dowry. But he would not so demean himself as to come and wrangle with her away from his own homestead.

  She waited by the roadside, out of sight, for the lorry to drive up to the estate, load and start its return journey. She climbed up among the huge sacks and enjoyed the jerky movement and the wind whistling by. In Nyeri town the driver introduced her to the turn-boy of the regular service, with whom he shared a room. She agreed to cook for them both that night, but the turn-boy had to negotiate with his Indian driver, so she had to part with one of her precious rupees as well. She had been paid three rupees for each thirty-day ticket. They rested on Sundays and could take other days off for sickness or visiting provided each ticket was completed within forty-two days. She had completed ten tickets in about a year and had managed to save about ten rupees – only now they were talking about changing the money.

  It was a big climb into the high lorry and she did not see much of the countryside because she was half-hidden among the bags, but she had the sensation of going down and down, and when she stood up at an occasional halt everything looked familiar. The roads looked wide and smooth to her, though not to the driver. These were the same, she realised, on which the women had been forced to work until Harry Thuku had got a telegram from London saying they must stop. She did not quite know what a telegram was, but all the women praised Thuku and they were already singing songs about him as the Chief of Girls.

  At Fort Hall there were a few stone buildings, a boma, donkey carts, a motor car or two. These must be what had made it Fort Hall instead of Mbiri. The driver told the turn-boy to put her off before they came to the railway, in case he were asked awkward questions, but the turn-boy had a better idea. He stopped another lorry just outside the town and consulted with his opposite number. Then he dragged Wairimu out of her hiding-place and over to the other vehicle.

  ‘You’ll have to put up a good story,’ he whispered to her, ‘but it will be bet
ter for you than waiting for the train.’

  She had to confront the Indian driver herself, but found he spoke excellent Kikuyu: his father had a shop in the small town and he had grown up there, only going to Nairobi for a few years of primary schooling. She told him that she had a sick brother working for the railway in Nairobi and her aged father was not able to travel that far so had sent her to look after him. The Indian looked sceptical but he told her to hop up so long as she agreed to take care of herself in Thika where she was going to change loads and spend the night. She joyfully agreed and made the most of the ride, seeing the country grow flatter and more fertile as they passed. At Thika the turn-boy took her to a tiny shack beside the market and brought her a bowl of maize and beans to eat.

  Next morning there were more wonders. Not only was the train to be seen near the road but you hardly passed five minutes – time to fill the water-skin, as she might have said then – without encountering traffic, people riding bicycles (some of whom were pointed out to her as European women), donkey carts piled with fruit, firewood or assorted bundles, motor cars (most of them the same Model T Ford as the master had at Nyeri, but she hardly knew that any were different), a few machines which were used, according to her companion, to till the fields, and occasionally huge carts pulled by teams of oxen which were heading for uncivilised areas where the roads were not properly made up. This one was swampy in places, and at Ruiru they passed strange machines where the river roared by, which could, he tried to make her believe, light huge lamps fifteen miles away. True, there were poles beside the road, too tall for any fence, and so they drove on, past tall houses and on to hard grey roads, and at last this was Nairobi, the other side of the river. They put her down at the corner of Government Road and Duke Street, on their way to the mills, gesturing towards the station in token reference to her story. There was an awe about everything then which had faded for her since. The sun was high: she sensed once more the golden haze. She had been right to follow her rainbow.