A Fool's Knot (13 page)

 

 

 

November 1965

 

John looked out onto the street before proceeding. London was a dark and dreary place where people walked ant-like in columns, dwarfed by their surroundings, but what surroundings they were! Outside in the drizzle an orderly line of people edged towards a 68 bus, which had just stopped at the kerbside. There was a rush, but it was a controlled expectancy, measured by an unwritten and unstated but shared knowledge that people must coexist. There was no argument, only shrugs of acceptance with the odd word of dissent when the conductor barred the entrance and shouted, “Full up now!” and rang the bell with two sharp tugs of the cord above his head to tell the driver to move off. Those left waiting simply found another, shorter queue. Taxis raced along the street, their engines knocking loudly as their drivers changed gear to slow down for the traffic lights. Above all, the buzz of movement filled the air, other sounds becoming mere interruptions in the general hubbub.

But John hated the rush hour. After more than three years of living in this city, he had still not become accustomed to its demands. After four years in Nairobi, even that city, with its wide streets and lack of traffic, had still seemed as strange and alien a place on the day he left as it did on the day he arrived, a new graduate of Kitui School, ready to enter higher education. In his eyes it remained the capital of European Africa before the capital of Kenya. But compared to London it was little more than an overgrown village. The fine buildings, the cathedral included, were mere chicken huts compared to the stature of London's pride. Everything here felt like it had meaning, purpose above function. Institutions were respected not because they were powerful, but because they provided a service that people desired and occasionally even respected. In his eyes, universities in Kenya were showpieces, serving no more use to the nation as a whole than the statue of an old queen in the street. Here the university seemed to be part of life, its graduates were in demand and its work bore fruits. For John, London had become a symbol of wealth, of rationality, modernity and cooperation, a model worthy even of copy. From this perspective, Kenya seemed distant not just by miles, but by centuries, a trivial wilderness blinded by petty divisions amongst its people and an over-inflated self-image. If only everyone in Kenya could come here, he had said many times, to see for themselves that there are other ways of living, ways that don't involve scratching at the soil with a hoe. Only then, he thought, would Kenyans see the minuteness of their world, the smallness of their lives and the potential to which they ought to aspire.

As John stepped outside into the rain, as ever he was amazed. Drizzle created mirrors on the road. A line of traffic, waiting to crawl westbound down the Strand reflected its lights in the shining black below, giving reds, whites and yellows alongside the streetlights. The red buses, with their strange cutaway fronts and backs, like boxes with bites missing, clanked their gears and growled. The sight of hundreds, probably thousands of people going about their daily lives with apparent independence, as if pursuing some known and long-held goal, filled him with wonder. If only his countrymen might live their lives this way, instead of clinging to the myths and pagan rituals of a bygone age. Then and only then might they share the same riches, the same prosperity, the same freedom as the people of this city.

The night was cold, windy and wet, but John felt warm. He had long ago grown used to the English climate with its unpredictable vagaries and surreal transformations, grown used to preparing for its demands and whims. Walking across Waterloo Bridge as just one element of the evening procession, he believed he looked and felt like everyone else, an illusion shared by few of his fellow travellers. Sheltered from the rain by a black umbrella, he wore a thick woollen coat over his suit. In his other hand he carried the now inevitable briefcase, packed tightly with papers he would study over the weekend in what he still called his ‘free time'. Unlike most others, he looked around, rather than blankly following the flow. As ever, he found the view from the bridge breathtaking, no matter how many times above the usual twice a day he saw it. He had seen it hundreds, perhaps thousands of times, but it still enthralled him and prompted him to think of the others who had passed through the streets or along the river during London's twenty centuries. Turning full circle as he continued his walk, he scanned the panorama of the floodlit buildings and their rippled reflections in the muddy, tidal, wind-rippled water. To the left, St Paul's Cathedral symbolised a past glory, now superseded in importance and power by the tall obelisks of the business world, the cathedrals of the world's new, all-encompassing religion. Surely it should be to these altars of power that modern Kenyans should offer their worship, not to the Stone Age ritual of the tribe or the outdated cross of the white man's church.

To his right was the seat of power, resplendently Gothic by the banks of the Thames. But its art was artifice, its identity imitation. He remembered studying the ‘Mother of Parliaments' in his history lessons at school, just as he had learned to locate Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London on a map in the tattered nineteen thirties textbooks they used in Kitui School. As a schoolboy, not for a moment had he imagined that he would one day be close enough to touch these hallowed institutions and never once did he imagine that this proximity would question the respect for them he had been required to learn. Here in London, as a part of the city and a participant in its life, the celebrity of these places was in question, but strangely this only added to his perception of their power. Architecturally, the ‘Mother of Parliaments' might be an impostor, but its power was real and its influence wide, aspects that the dog-eared textbook could never communicate to a naïve and trusting boy in a Kenyan school.

But this was not Kenya. John now felt further from home, further from his former self than ever before. He felt accepted here, as much, that is, as a black man could possibly feel in this place. His home village, his father's
shamba
, seemed mere blurs of memory now. Memories of the deep valleys of Kamandiu felt as real as fiction when juxtaposed with the sight before him. It was a lost memory, a scene from a dream that London had revealed as a nightmare. For John, life must never again become a battle against the insuperable odds of famine, disease and bigotry. The future must hold something better than that, at least for himself.

And his own future was very much in the forefront of his thoughts these days. The first steps toward that new age had already been taken and he was happy with the direction his life had found. He had met Lesley in college more than a year ago. Their meeting had been by chance, a by-product of an administrative enquiry lodged by John in the office where Lesley worked as a clerk. The problem of John's grant for the new term had taken weeks to resolve. At first he visited the office once a week to check on possible progress, but later he went there every day during his lunchtime, when he would ask his questions, but then sit in conversation with Lesley over sandwiches and tea. And then he suggested that they meet one evening for a meal, and a few meetings later the venue was Lesley's flat in Lambeth, where privacy offered them an opportunity to get to know one another somewhat better.

Her job and its salary had been every bit of the liberation she hoped it would be. Her school years had been fraught with tension and disagreement at home. Her parents were not like her and she was utterly different from them. After years of consistent school reports, which had testified to her ability but condemned her disinterest, she emerged into the big wide world with modest qualifications, not enough to go to university, but sufficient to have opportunities. She did some training, took a secretarial and administration course at a technical college and found her current job immediately. Once employed, she blossomed into a responsible, dependable, trustworthy and conscientious worker. The initiative she lacked was never a requirement for her post, so she prospered. At last there seemed to be a reason for what she was asked to do and a real incentive for her to do it. She managed to save the deposit for a small flat off the Walworth Road, not the most upmarket area of London, but close enough to her parents if she needed some more of that comfort she had always taken for granted, and perfectly placed on the bus route to her job. And she could afford it, which was the main consideration. It wasn't very big, but she had modest tastes.

John took his seat on the bus. It was the same bus he could have caught outside college, but he liked to walk across the bridge, even in the rain, and he knew, after some years of making this trip, that there were always seats at the Waterloo Station bus stop, where half the occupants of the vehicle, packed at the end of the Strand, would alight to connect with their Southern Region for Surrey. From here the journey was short and at this hour not too uncomfortable. He could see no point in rushing and scrambling home at five when an hour later it was so much more comfortable. He used the time well, studying in the quiet of the library, an activity which often ran to two or three hours rather than the planned one. The more tedious of his papers, the ones that the others on the course often skipped or only half-completed, were the ones he chose for these hours of uninterrupted quiet work. Thus he had become a model student, who completed every task, sought perfection and, even in the assessment of his tutors, often came close to achieving it.

These days his extra hours of work provided Lesley with the time to prepare their evening meal. They had recently made the decision to live together, and every evening now they shared the meal that Lesley cooked. In the past they talked, sometimes they watched television, sometimes they made love before John left to make the short walk back to his own attic bedsit. But increasingly he no longer made the walk, Lesley's bed being more inviting, warmer, softer and more stimulating than his own. Their romance had an inevitability about it, a process that neither John nor Lesley felt they promoted, but one which they seemed unable to stop. They felt at times that their friendship, even relationship, as Lesley now called it, had a life of its own, a vitality that compelled both of them to strive for its preservation and growth. So what had started as a chance meeting had blossomed – as both of them were apt to describe it – and marriage seemed the next obvious and desired step. Unfortunately, Lesley's parents had other ideas.

They had repeatedly tried to persuade their daughter to end the relationship. She knew where the problem lay. John was an ‘African'. Her father repeatedly made fun of John's name, pronouncing it as if it was some Edwardian music hall joke. Lesley resented this, was embarrassed by it from the start, but could find no way of communicating her feelings to her father. But each time she sensed her parents' opposition grow stronger, almost to spite them, she had taken the next step to deepen the relationship. And so they had now reached the stage where John was ready to move in with her. They would save on rent, of course, but the decision was not pragmatic, it was committed on both sides. Lesley had embraced him and said that she agreed on one condition, which was that he should never move out. And this was what brought the disagreement with her parents to a head.

After just two months of living together with pleasurable ease, they found that they had learned to care for one another, to love and be loved, and crucially they were ever more happy that they had made the decision, despite it being against the wishes of Lesley's parents. Initially they had reacted badly, the father's opposition moving from ridicule to anger. They didn't answer letters. They wouldn't answer the door when she called round and, for the first time in her life, she found herself shunned when she attended the Sunday morning church service that she could not remember ever having missed. She continued to go, continued to dress up in the requisite frills and finery, the hats and patent shoes that her family tradition demanded for this most social of events. She continued to walk back to the family home afterwards, but found that her mother and father had rushed off quickly, so when she knocked on their door the centre peep hole would open and then snap shut, to be followed by the clank of the top bolt being made into its hasp. If her parents were trying to bring matters to a head, they failed, because it only strengthened Lesley's resolve, made her more determined to marry John Mwangangi and heighten her desire to be with him. He was a Roman Catholic, of course, and she was not. Perhaps that was why her parents were so opposed. But for her it didn't matter. For her there was a God; that was definite and was all that mattered.

After some weeks, her resolve began to strengthen. She wanted to bring matters to a head. If they could reject her, then she could reject them. She decided that she and John must confront them together, but she decided that this would happen after they were married. Then her parents would either have to accept the union, or reject her for good, because she knew that they would never countenance the idea of divorce, her parents viewing this as synonymous with damnation. John was close to completing the qualification that would take him to the next stage of his ambition, when he would become an employee with a salary to continue his legal training on the job. So it was a good time for them to act.

The wedding invitation had cleared the air. An apologetic letter from her parents arrived almost by return of post. There was an air of resigned acceptance about what they said, but clearly the main problem had been their daughter's living in sin, which was about to be rectified. Lesley just shook her head, asking why they had never just stated the problems outright, why they always forced her to read their minds to understand their position. But the letter had finished with a suggestion that they should all get together to discuss the future and the appointed time had arrived.