Authors: Isobel Chace
The boy shook his head and burst into a flood of Swahili.
‘
Wachwa
,’
he repeated over and over again.
Sara handed him the dictionary, but he waved it away with fine scorn.
‘
Wachwa
!’
he insisted, and then hopefully in the singular: ‘
Mchwa
?’
Sara looked helplessly at his black, shiny and grinning face.
‘My name Joseph,’ he said sadly.
‘And mine is Sara,’ she replied, defeated.
Behind her there was a shout of laughter and she turned quickly to see Matt leaning on the wall of the verandah watching the impasse beneath him.
‘It’s all very well for you to laugh!’ she said indignantly, her heart turning right over within her at his unexpected appearance.
Matt grinned. ‘He’s telling you that nothing will grow there because of the white ants.’
Sara looked down cautiously at the ground at her feet. There was nothing to see but a dry, red dust.
‘I don’t see any,’ she objected.
‘I don’t suppose there are any left. But you’ll never grow anything on soil that they have inhabited. They kill it. Slowly they’re killing Africa, turning it into one enormous wasteland.’
It was difficult to believe that all the barren hillocks she had seen
li
ttered all over the countryside had been caused by nothing bigger than a white ant!
‘But surely something can be done? The house cries out for a few flowers. It would make it so much more — more personal!’
Matt strolled down the steps and came and stood beside her.
‘
You could cart all this stuff away and put other soil in its place,’ he suggested. ‘But I don’t know if it would be worth all the labour.’
‘Of course it would be!’ Her eyes shone with excitement. ‘Oh, Matt, do you think it would work?’
His face creased with amusement. ‘Haven’t you got enough to do already?’ he teased her.
‘Haven’t you heard?’ she asked. ‘There’s a conspiracy to prevent me from doing anything! Dr. Cengupta refuses to have me for at least three more days!’
‘Quite right too!’
They laughed at each other and Joseph giggled too in sympathy, the fantastic gaps in his teeth making his face look like a Hallowe’en mask.
‘He won’t be able to do it all on his own,’ Sara said suddenly. ‘He seems awfully small to be earning his own living at all!’
‘I’ll send you some boys across from the estate,’ Matt promised, ‘if you’re quite sure you want to tackle such an undertaking. You’re not to knock yourself up again.’
‘I won’t,’ she assured him. ‘I won’t get the opportunity. John Halliday watches over me as though he had nothing else do to
—
and Aunt Laura watches him!’
She expected Matt to laugh with her, but he didn’t. Instead he turned away to go back to the house.
‘
You’d probably do better to ask him about the soil too,’ he suggested. ‘John’s a much better gardener than I’m ever likely to be. I believe he holds some sort of horticultural degree.’
His voice was too normal to allow Sara to hope that he was making anything but the most ordinary observation and she immediately wondered whether he would rather that she did as he suggested.
‘I
—
I rather wanted to keep the garden as a Kwaheri matter,’ she stammered out. ‘But I’ll ask him if you want me to.’
‘No, we’ll keep it between the two of us, shall we?’
She flushed a little and nodded.
‘I should like that,’ she said, and watched as he sauntered into the house, sketching her only the vaguest of salutes as he went.
To Sara’s joy the soil arrived that afternoon. Teams of Africans dug into the hillock, carrying off the dead soil in wheelbarrows, while still others replaced it with fresh earth, which, while not being the luxuriant brown soil that Sara was accustomed to, did show some signs of being able to nurture the plants that she wanted to grow.
Mrs. Wayne, prevented from having her usual rest, came out on to the shaded verandah to watch the proceedings.
‘Matt seemed pretty keen on the idea,’ she said tentatively.
‘Was he?’ Sara glanced up at the pretty picture her aunt presented, brushing the hair out of her eyes as she did so. ‘I thought he liked the idea of a garden, but I do hope it’s not being an awful nuisance to him!’
‘Why should it be? He’ll only be losing half a day’s work.’
‘Oh,’ Sara paused unhappily.
‘
Do you think I shouldn’t have asked him?’
‘Certainly not.’ Mrs. Wayne was quite positive. ‘Men like to be asked to do things within their power. Very sound tactics, my dear!’
‘Oh, Aunt!’ Sara stamped her foot in mock fury.
‘
There is
nothing
—
repeat nothing!
—
between Matt and myself.’
‘No, dear, I didn’t say there was.’ She composed herself a little more comfortably, languidly waving a grass fan in an effort to keep cool. ‘I notice that Felicity hasn’t done much to help. Where is she?’
‘With James,’ Sara replied calmly.
Her aunt’s eyes twinkled. ‘You have more courage than the two of them put together,’ she said rather surprisingly. ‘I shall miss you when you go back to work.’
But it was with a sense of relief that Sara reported for duty at the hospital a day or so later. The landscaping of her garden was almost completed and she was already beginning to plan what flowers she would attempt to plant and where. Matt had come over and cast a hasty glance over it, but he had been wanted somewhere else on the estate and she had not seen him since.
The fame of the garden had reached the hospital before her, it seemed. Nurse Lucy greeted her with a wide smile and a few rather sick-looking sweet potato plants that she had dug up from her parents’ garden herself.
‘You eat,’ she explained, prodding the few minute potatoes that hung tenuously to the greenery. ‘We prefer them to English kind.’
Because she had once been told that it was a sweet potato that Sir Walter Raleigh had originally brought to England, Sara carefully stowed the potato away in her cupboard, determined to make it grow so that she could taste this familiar and yet quite different vegetable.
‘Any more patients since my last visit?’ she asked.
Nurse Lucy nodded vigorously. ‘Two from Bwana Halliday. They eat something bad. Very sick!’
It was good to be back, Sara thought, as she hurried down the wards and later when she worked with Dr. Cengupta in the out-patients’ department. Already this was the nursing that seemed most familiar to her. The earthy smell of the African children and the quite different smell of some of their elders. The stoicism of the men who had no idea what the doctor was doing to them; the gentle trust of the young expectant mothers, and even the occasional one who defied them to make him, or her, feel any better.
With her work and the garden she had very little time for anything else. Occasionally John Halliday insisted on giving her a driving lesson, but he didn’t give her the same confidence as she felt when Matt was beside her, so she was inclined to put him off. She was rapidly becoming quite proficient as a driver anyway, and suspected that he was using it as an excuse to see more of her, an ambition she did not at that moment want to encourage.
Sometimes James was delegated to take her out in the jeep. She enjoyed travelling round the estate with him, for he was silent for the most part, only speaking when it was necessary to correct something that she was doing wrong, or because there was some process of the sisal which should not escape her attention.
With Felicity, they went to the drying sheds and watched the long leaves being dried and pulped until only the long stringy bits were left
—
the bits that would eventually be twisted into rope or string.
The estate was a town on its own. There was everything at hand. Besides the hospital, there was a cinema for the native workers, shops, a small railway for transporting the sisal to the nearest railway station and numerous other facilities that had grown up over the years. It was only from these trips that Sara was able to realize something of the responsibilities that Matt was shouldering.
She wasn’t really surprised, after so much practice at the wheel, when an African came down to the hospital telling her that Matt had arranged for her to take her test that afternoon.
‘Bwana James take the memsahib,
’
the messenger told her. ‘Bwana Matt taking Memsahib Davids to Tanga.’
Sara thanked him. It would make a pleasant change to go down to the local township and, though she tried to hide the fact even from herself, she was overjoyed that Julia was at last leaving. Too many people had casually referred to her as Matt’s girl, even though Matt had insisted that she was nothing more than a second cousin.
Her first thought was to confirm with Dr. Cengupta that she could go, and she hurried down the corridor to his office, almost colliding with him in the doorway.
‘Did you want me, nurse?’ he asked.
‘If you can spare a moment, doctor,’ she replied formally. Briefly she told him that Matt wanted her to go down to the town to pass her driving test.
‘This afternoon?’ he asked a little wearily.
‘Yes, doctor.’
‘Then I suppose you will have to go. But it is not very convenient. Are you sure he meant you to go today?’
‘Yes,’ she said simply. There had been no doubt at all in the African’s message.
‘Very well. It is a nuisance, though. I wanted you to help with the babies’ clinic. Mrs. Halifax particularly asked that you should go and explain what we are trying to do. You’d better ring her up and explain what has happened.’
‘
Yes, doctor.’
She stood aside for him to pass her, thinking as she did so how tired he was looking. John Halliday had sent down several more patients, all with the same symptoms, and it had made a lot of extra work for them all. He ought to be made to contribute to the expenses of the hospital, she thought, not for the first time. There should have been at least two doctors working on Kwaheri, without all the extra patients that John’s place could produce. It was cutting into the amount of preventive medicine that they could do and that was, after all, really why the hospital had been started.
She was ready sharp at two o’clock, standing on the steps of the hospital. She had not bothered to change out of her uniform as there was so much that would be waiting to be done when she got back, but even so she was looking forward to the afternoon almost too much. It was the first time for a fortnight that she had been off the estate.
Felicity was with James when he drew up in the Jaguar.
‘Hope you don’t mind,’ she greeted Sara casually, ‘but it was too good an opportunity to miss.’ Her voice took on a note of excitement. ‘We’re going to buy
the
ring while you’re with the police.’
‘Stage one towards telling Laura,’ James added wryly.
Sara climbed into the back seat and leaned forward to check in the mirror that her cap was on straight.
‘Did Matt ask you personally to take me?’ she asked.
James met her eyes in the glass and smiled.
‘Good lord, no! Matt
always has given his orders through little notes, or messages. You only approach the presence when you’ve done something wrong!’
Felicity giggled. ‘Didn’t Cengupta want to let you go?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Sara admitted. ‘Mrs. Halifax had asked for me to go to the clinic this afternoon.’
‘Well, she’ll understand,’ James said easily. ‘She isn’t the kind to carp, so don’t worry about it.’
Sara was only too glad to take his word for it. She sat back in her more than comfortable seat and daydreamed happily as they rushed through the dry, dusty territory towards the town.
James delivered her at the police station door and parked the car outside for her.
‘They’ll take you through that gate to their own happy little playing ground behind,’ he told her. ‘If you drive straight, you should miss the posts and that will give a good impression!’
Sara wrinkled her nose at him.
‘Don’t you think I look nervous enough?’ she demanded.
He laughed. ‘Maybe,’ he admitted. ‘Meet us at the Copper Kettle when you’ve done and we shall be all ready, to console you. I’ll even lend you my shoulder to weep on,’ he offered handsomely.
‘You won’t!’ Felicity put in a little sharply. ‘Anyway, it
w
on’t be necessary. Sara will pass on her head. She’s very efficient about things like that.’
It was deliciously cool inside the police station. An African
askari
looked up as she entered,
hastily
stuffing the newspaper he was reading under his navy blue jersey. Nobody ever came to the station at such an hour! He looked at the young memsahib with curiosity not unmixed with concern. He was very proud of his position and of his extremely smart uniform. It would be a dreadful day for him if she were to tell his superiors that he had been reading something so low as a newspaper when she had come in.
To Sara, unaware of all this, he seemed to be the quintessence of African efficiency as he took her name and address.
‘I believe Mr. Halifax arranged for me to take my driving test this afternoon,’ she said pleasantly.
The African nodded solemnly, hiding his patent disbelief.
‘Bwana Cooper will see the memsahib,’ he suggested.
Sara nodded and thanked him.