The Other Language (36 page)

Mrs. D’Costa inspected every picture with great care. She was looking forward to meeting the boys when they would come to
visit their parents. It would be so refreshing to have some young people around.

Her own children all lived too far away. For them to fly with wives and children just to see her was too expensive. The oldest was a schoolteacher in Brisbane, the other a chiropractor in a small town in northern England, and her daughter was a full-time mother of three in Durban. They all struggled to make ends meet at the end of the month, and though they always promised a visit, they kept postponing the trip and now it’d been close to three years since she had seen them. They often wrote letters (Mrs. D’Costa had firmly refused to learn how to use a computer and to write e-mails) and they called her once every two or three weeks, but she wished she could see the grandchildren more. These days children grew up so fast, one had a hard time recognizing them after only six months.

Looking at these festive family photographs she couldn’t help but admit that her own children had had a very different life than that of the Dobsons. Not so much access to adventure. Well, and very different looking, for sure.

In early December the short rains ended and the weather finally changed. Every morning now the skies were clear, no more rumbling in the distance announcing another downpour. The nights were warmer, the fishermen went out in the evenings in their slim
ingalawas
, dotting the horizon with flickering lights.

But it turned out that, unlike Lionel and Prudence, the Dobsons hardly ever invited her over, and Mrs. D’Costa’s gin rummy nights with Hamisi continued. One week shortly after they’d settled in she’d asked the Dobsons over to Sunday lunch and had extended the invitation also to her old friend Ada, an ex-nurse who still lived in Mombasa, whom she’d met through the East African Women’s Society. Ada arrived almost an hour late, so that by the time they heard her battered car sputtering and clanking
along the driveway, everyone was starved and jittery. They heard the car door slam, then Pickle’s and Chutney’s furious barking over Ada’s high-pitched voice.

“So sorry! I had a bloody puncture and nobody stopped to give me a hand! Off you go! Off! You wretched creatures!”

Ada appeared on the veranda panting and puffing in faded baggy trousers and a strange shirt with a ruffled collar that didn’t make any sense. White roots were showing under a faded hair dye.

They sat down to lunch at last and Hamisi brought his legendary curry to the table. Even before Ada had arrived, Mrs. D’Costa could tell that Keith found the company dull, as he didn’t make any effort to participate in conversation and now ate his food in rapid, greedy gulps, shaking his leg under the table in a nervous tic. Ada began a meandering tale about how she’d just won the yearly contest of the society with her tomato preserves, and how the previous year the first prize had gone, of all people, to Mrs. D’Costa for a multicolored crocheted blanket. Margie half listened while sending quick, concerned glances across the table to her husband, probably gauging his tolerance level, which was clearly dropping by the minute. None of this escaped Mrs. D’Costa, who felt sorry both for Keith, who had to listen to all this nonsense, and for Ada, who was making a fool of herself. She was relieved when Keith suddenly stood up and declared it was time for his nap.

After this experiment Mrs. D’Costa had enough good sense not to ask them again. She thought it wiser to sit and wait for the Dobsons to return the invitation. It never came. If by chance she’d cross their car on the dirt road, the Dobsons would limit themselves to waving a hand and keep driving on.

Often in the evening the breeze would carry the sound of Margie playing the piano, or sometimes she’d hear Keith’s voice calling for Justin, the houseboy they’d taken with them from their previous home, or laughing out loud about something. It was like receiving snippets of a parallel life she had no access to.

“Oh well,” she said out loud to her face in the bathroom mirror. “If they want to keep their privacy, just let them be.” But she knew better.

As the holidays neared, Margie showed up a couple of times by the cottage on her way to the junction. Sometimes she would just honk at the end of the driveway without even getting out of the car, with the engine running. The last few times Margie apologized for being always in such a hurry—she told Mrs. D’Costa that she was terribly busy getting everything ready for Christmas. Their two sons were coming with their wives and children, and there was so much to do. Where should she get the turkey for Christmas dinner? Was it necessary to book one? Would Anne know a good, reasonably priced
fundi
for repairing the thatch roof of the garage?

Mrs. D’Costa had prepared for Christmas well in advance, as she always did. Early in November she had mailed handmade cards to her children and nephews; with Hamisi she had collected doum palm fruits and all sorts of pods in the garden to make their own Christmas decorations. They’d painted them in silver and gold and scattered them around the house. They’d painted a few shells too, which they hung on the branches of the trees, and they looked really pretty. On Christmas Eve she’d attended the usual tea party at the East African Women’s Society (she was a senior member) and the next day she had Christmas lunch with Ada, as they’d done for years.

Finally, early in the morning on Boxing Day, Justin, the Dobsons’ houseboy, showed up at the cottage with a note. Margie was asking her for supper that evening so she could meet Tim and Mark, their wives and the children.

It was an extremely cheerful evening. Mrs. D’Costa found the boys as handsome as their photographs. The wives, Tara and Ruth, were charming and the children adorable. Mark, the older son, was a lawyer in London; Tim a cook in New York.

“A chef,” Margie made sure to make the distinction. “It’s much more than just a cook over there, of course. Tim was on Zagat’s ten best chefs list last year.”

Tim gave her a look, trying to silence her, but she ignored him.

“There was even a profile written on him in one of the papers, I think it was
The New York Times
, isn’t that right, darling?”

Before leaving, slightly tipsy from the wine, Mrs. D’Costa kissed everyone except for the children, who wouldn’t let her, invited them all to pay her a visit (you can come anytime, you’re always welcome! Just walk up the stone steps from the beach), but they smiled and thanked her, without making a specific plan.

Before New Year’s, the whole crew of youngsters had gone to the island of Lamu to meet other friends, Margie told her. They’d met by chance at the big Nakumatt supermarket by the Likoni Ferry.

“They fly to Nairobi on Sunday and then straight back home from there,” Margaret said, pushing her cart along the aisle.

“That’s too bad. I was hoping to see them again,” Mrs. D’Costa said.

Margie sighed.

“I feel we’ve had such a little time with them, I’ve hardly realized they were here. I’m afraid that after a few days they get bored with us. Especially Tara and Ruth.”

“Nonsense! They had a marvelous time on the beach. I could see them from my veranda playing and snorkeling. They loved it here. Who wouldn’t? We live in paradise.”

Margie nodded, only half listening, and kept searching the aisle. She examined the label of a pricey French coffee and waved the package in front of Anne’s nose.

“Any idea what this is like? Ever tried it?”

“Heavens, no. I only take Nescafé.”

“Oh well, I’ll give it a try. Keith loves his morning coffee. Perhaps it will remind him of Paris.”

She gave Mrs. D’Costa a faint smile and dumped the French
roast in the basket full of imported groceries. Margie didn’t wait for her at the checkout, and Anne saw her Range Rover pull away.

Three weeks later, at two in the morning, Justin knocked frantically at the door of the cottage. He was shaking and tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“
Bwana Kee amekufa. Kugia nyumbani tafadhali, Mama naogopa sana.
”

Mrs. D’Costa sprang into instant action mode; she knew she was at her best when it came to emergencies. She put on some clothes, woke up Hamisi, asked him to get in the passenger seat of the car and drove to the Dobsons’ at full speed on the bumpy dirt road.

Margie was in hysterics. Keith lay in his bed in his boxer shorts and an old T-shirt. He was dead. Heart failure, most probably. Mrs. D’Costa administered a Valium to Margie, gave orders to the house staff to make chamomile tea, sent for Dr. Singh and asked for Tim’s and Mark’s phone numbers. As it often happened, there was no signal at the house and the landline was down. Margie kept shaking her head between sobs, unable to offer a solution, so Mrs. D’Costa drove straight back to her own house and called from there. She found herself calling England and the United States, having to explain a couple of times who she was to the person on the other end of the line as they had no immediate recollection of her name. She then proceeded to explain in a steady tone that their father was dead, thank God he hadn’t suffered, that she was terribly sorry but they needed to book the first flight out if they wanted to make it to the funeral. Then she added in her matter-of-fact way:

“With this heat we can’t wait around too long, you see. As you know, refrigeration is a big problem here.”

Part of her coveted moments like this. She had always maintained that, living in Africa, one always had to be prepared for
anything to happen. And though perhaps it was wrong to feel this way in light of what had happened, she was now secretly enjoying the fact that she’d stopped being invisible to them, and that, even for a short interlude, she was needed again.

Two days later, the whole Christmas crew reappeared at their parents’ home, their faces bloated from too many hours of travel, still faintly tanned from the holiday they’d spent there only a few weeks earlier. Mark and Tim cried, in a manly way—silent, with a few sniffs—holding their mother in turns. She was sent to bed with another pill, as she was completely helpless, given the state she was in. Ruth and Tara were disoriented and jet-lagged, the children seemed frightened by the eerie atmosphere. The two brothers wandered aimlessly around the house—a house that was foreign to them, of which they held no memories—as if searching for an answer to what had happened so unexpectedly and so unfairly. They seemed resentful, as though their father had played a trick on them. Mrs. D’Costa watched them with sympathy. She knew well how one could get angry when an unexpected death occurred.

“There was nothing wrong with his heart. He was in perfect form for seventy-two. Absolutely nothing wrong,” Mark kept saying, his voice raging with hostility toward anybody who rang to offer condolences.

Tim sat in the kitchen fiddling with his laptop while Mrs. D’Costa put the kettle on and spooned the expensive French roast into the pot. Once again she’d been the one to take care of the logistics: dealing with the British High Commission, getting the death certificate from Dr. Singh, straightening things up with the police and looking into the laborious paperwork needed to return Keith’s body to Sussex.