Black Mischief (16 page)

‘So you have the power to heal?'

‘No! But I can help if the desire is real. And, you, too, have this gift.'

Rebecca's reply was to narrow her eyes and draw in her breath. ‘But how can you say such a thing?'

‘Because you have healed me. When you sang that night at the Bomas, the power of the emotion, Rebecca, electricity, it is the source of creation.'

‘Please, Maria, don't misunderstand me, but you are a policeman's wife from Kericho, and you are also an angel!'

Maria clapped her hands in glee and her laughter sang around the whitewashed walls.

‘Did you hear that, Simon? Rebecca, it is true that you are in the presence of an angel. I expect that he is smiling, too!'

‘Well, I must look for Thomas and the boys.'

‘Yes, and keep looking out for angels. One last word. You and I will have work to share, quite soon.' Maria reached across to embrace her companion. ‘You will understand when the time comes. Kwaheri!'

rom high above, the township of Kibera looked a giant, multicoloured tortoise. An intelligent eagle riding a thermal would have wondered how those humans who swarmed everywhere beneath his gaze managed to move about in these narrow places. But there were streets, narrow and dusty, houses and dukas that clung together in a cosy intimacy. Life was not easy in this city within a city and there were few who would have turned down a swap for an acre of land by the side of a healthy stream somewhere up-country. Slum was not a word that Kibera people enjoyed as a description for their home.

Sonya and Rhys made a brief visit to the ward in Nairobi hospital where ‘Welshman' Daniels was waiting for the results of X-rays to his shoulders and back. He had read the news of the discovery of Simon's body in The Nation and he was sitting on the side of his bed, downcast and close to tears.

Talkative, exuberant Llewellyn was finding words hard to come by.

‘Sonya, I let you down.'

‘Llewellyn, I didn't have to be there to know that …'

‘Since I came ‘round, it's been there all the time. Why didn't they take me? I haven't got any kids.'

‘It doesn't work like that, love.'

‘No, I know that. But I didn't do anything, except get myself bashed on my stupid head.'

Rhys had never seen his brother so agitated. ‘Look, Bro, those guys were pros.'

‘Yeah, but three of them, Rhys! I've worked out half a dozen things I could have done.'

‘Upset them and the guns would have been out.'

A radiologist appeared at the door with a folder and some news. ‘Come and have a look. Some nasty bruises but no sign of a break. You can phone your wife. Or, perhaps …'

‘No, these two have to be gone.'

News that Sonya was on her way to the clinic brought out the crowds. Rhys turned off the city road onto the narrow dirt track that was the quickest way in. Sonya was amazed to see the silent mass waiting for them outside the surgery compound. Her initial reaction was a sense of embarrassment. Feeling so many eyes all fixed intently on her was a new and humbling experience. How to deal with it presented a problem. What would Simon have wanted from her? Did she give a simple wave, hurry into the clinic and get on with the day? She visualised her husband frowning and fluttering his eyelids in disapproval.

Unknown to her, there was help close by. So many shocked township dwellers wanted to be involved, partly to work out their anger, their grief, but more to express a deep, loving gratitude to a family who had sacrificed so much for them.

Twenty young men had set up a group that they named the Hospital Askaris. Their job was straightforward. On a morning when emotions would run high, they would make sure that the intensity of the passion would be kept within the bounds of dignity and respect. After craftsmen had repaired the damage from the night attack, mothers and daughters moved in to finish the job with their scrubbing and polishing.

Simon and Sonya Mboya had set up their clinic on the edge of this neglected part of the capital where everyone was welcome to receive first-class treatment free of charge. Nairobi City Council declared the project to be a dangerous hazard, on health grounds, and only bad publicity from
The Nation
and
The Standard
forced them to grant a licence for it to open for two days a week. Now thousands of poor people were grieving. A strong man who was willing to risk his life for them had paid the price. He had offended once too often. He had died because of his love for them. This was too much, but they would get used to even this painful loss. That was too often the way for the poor people of Africa.

The wildfire spread of the amazing news that there was to be a clinic that very day had come early. There was a crazy rumour that the widow herself was coming. But there she was, unmistakable with the untidy mass of wavy hair in that very strange colour. She and Welshman's brother were already wearing their white coats. The young askaris had sorted the watchers from the patients. But she was coming and her husband was not yet even laid in the good red earth of Kenya!

The respectful silence changed quickly to an excited hubbub of chattering voices and, as emotions rose to bursting point, they found their expression in the special African way. One voice began it, calling out above all other sounds: ‘Simon Mboya, waahhh!' In seconds it was the only sound, a rhythmic chant from a crowd of swaying, smiling, colourful dwellers of that deprived township, pouring out their love and thanks. On and on they sang as Sonya moved to stand close to them at the entrance to the compound. Her tears lifted the passions higher. Wailing and loud shouts, many of pain, some of anger, mingled with the chant until a single scream of unbearable pain ended it all.

In the silence, Sonya raised her arms and looked around. At that moment her wish would have been to be able to withdraw to some lonely, silent place, a garden where she could sit in peace and lose herself in the turmoil of her many confusions. But there was work to be done, and with Rhys's arm across her shoulders, she turned back towards the surgery that she and Simon had planned and paid for.

At the foot of the steps to the door of the clinic stood two old men. Both were dressed in dark suits and trilby hats and each leaned heavily on a gnarled walking stick.

‘Memsahib, Bwana, our hearts are so heavy and yet there is joy that you have come to us.'

‘I am Isaac and this is my brother, Gideon. We are from Western.'

‘We were elders in a village on the shores of the big lake. We were fishermen.'

‘We are Luo. There is much honour for us to be with you today.'

‘Ah, thank you.' Sonya understood why the men had made the effort to be there to greet her and Rhys. Two Luo men wanted to give thanks for one of their own in the traditional way.

Sonya only partially understood.

‘We want you to let us look after Doctor Simon.'

Sonya heard the words. Her senses had never been sharper, but she could not grasp a clear meaning. Did they want to stand guard over Simon while they waited for the funeral? Were they asking to look after the burial in the Luo tradition?

‘There has been much thinking and talking. Even Sister Dorcas and her nurses want to help.'

‘You mean that he should rest here? But how could …?'

‘See, just below us here, the field. The soil is good. We could plant trees and flowers. We have the people who could do this, craftsmen.'

She hid her eyes behind her hand. For the second time loving friends were upsetting the balance of the resolve that had brought her to the clinic determined to be with Simon's special people on this day of endless sadness.

‘The land can be ours if you give your blessing.'

Sonya turned to Rhys for a reaction and received as a response a smile and the open palmed gesture that suggested that he could not help her beyond a single thought.

‘What would Simon want?'

The two Luo elders were scrutinising her intently, sensitive to every movement and gesture. Yet they seemed unaware of the extra turmoil they were creating in her mind. They were afraid that her long silence meant that she was rejecting them but finding it difficult to tell them.

‘Please, do not be offended, Doctor Sonya. Perhaps there are plans and we are too late. You know our custom of taking our loved ones back to the farms.'

‘Isaac, Gideon, there are no plans but very soon … Look, Doctor Rhys and I will see our patients and, if you are willing, we can talk again after that.'

‘We will wait on this bench. Gideon likes his small sleep in the morning.'

There were many patients to see. While she was taking care of her pregnant women, Rhys was kept alert by a bigger range of medical problems than he was used to treating in his city surgery. He was well-known for his sense of fun even in the most difficult situations. His funny stories and his humorous comments were the best dawa he had to offer.

Three hilarious hours of surgery passed quickly and when the last of her ladies left, Sonya, emotionally spent, lit a cigarette.

‘Sonya, what an example to your patients!' Rhys grinned impishly. ‘Never seen you with a fag in your hand. Where'd you get it from?'

She puffed out the smoke, slowly through pursed lips. ‘Mmn, I did enjoy that!' She stubbed the cigarette on the packet and put it back with its nineteen unused brothers.

‘Know something? I bought that packet on the day Simon and I met again in London. He took me to a cafe near the hospital. He bought the coffee and I pulled out the pack. The look on his face! “What are you going to do with those? You're going to be a doctor. And one day you will have children.” And I'm going to hell and I won't collect the two hundred pounds when I pass go!

‘That was the first time I heard him laugh. Heads turned and he waved amiably. I gave up the weed that afternoon. I kept the pack, always carried it in my bag.'

She closed her eyes and a contented smile played on her lips for several seconds. She wondered if Isaac and Gideon would be waiting outside.

They rose stiffly to their feet when they saw Sonya at the door. This time they had company, two men and a woman all much younger than themselves. Isaac struggled forward on his stick and reached out to grasp Sonya's hands. His broad smile revealed an uneven set of teeth more brown than white.

‘We knew that you would let him come to this place.'

Her reply was a tearful nod and a happy shrug. ‘I decided nothing. The choice was made somewhere else. I am just the messenger. But introduce me.'

The slim woman, fashionably dressed, was Gideon's grand-daughter, Rachel. She had a suggestion.

‘We have a small table and some chairs. You must be ready for some refreshment. We have coffee, sodas, some samosas.'

One of the two men was a lawyer, the other a stonemason. All three were originally from the north-west.

‘The murder of Tom Mboya was before our time and now they have taken another of our great men. Simon's uncle is buried on Rusinga Island. You know that.'

The young lawyer's cultured voice reminded Sonya of someone. He noticed her puzzled look.

‘Miller. Perhaps you have met my uncle, another denizen of the courts, Paul.'

‘The politician.'

‘I'm yet another Tom. Dozens of them in our part of the world.'

Isaac was becoming impatient. ‘Doctor Sonya, we must make plans. Rachel, you are forgetting.'

‘No, Mzee, we are forgetting nothing, not the pain, not the courage of these two special people. But Bwana Simon is going to have the best. There is little time. We will waste none of it, I promise.'

* * *

The engine of a Land Cruiser was switched off. It was parked in a dusty hollow in the middle of Nairobi Park. Its five occupants had company. There must have been upwards of thirty buffalo encircling them, the furthest just twenty metres away. They, too, were not moving.

Tom was remembering the maverick that had confronted him as he cleared the last of the vertical bog on his climb up the Great Mountain in a different age just months before. He had seen that individual off without much trouble. Then there was that time up in the Aberdares when, as a boy, he had stood in amazement watching a particularly stubborn one in a stand-off with a lion. The handsome cat had the high ground and he looked down on his opponent with a fierce glare and whipped his tail in a slow, rhythmic threat. Those jaws were ready to inflict some serious damage. Tom expected Buff to drop his head and slink off into the cover of the bush. Instead he raised his low-slung head to offer Mister Leo a good view of a broad ridge of craggy horn for his consideration. He was going nowhere. In the staring match the dour, heavy black mass of hard flesh outstayed the sleek, athletic fighting machine. Perhaps the lion did not feel lucky. Perhaps he could sniff something upwind. His tail slowed to a halt and a single sideways glance announced the end of the contest. He turned and marched stiffly away, his confidence undiminished.