1
For the beginning of 1978 they had a New Year’s Eve party. Paulina had come to think of parties in the house as always something to do with business. They occurred when somebody was coming into office or somebody going abroad, they sometimes ended with a little group talking, talking, talking in Mr M.’s study, or with plans for some enormous self-help collection or occasionally with a sense of disappointment if some important person had failed to turn up.
But New Year’s Eve was going to be different. Mr M. had just been seeing a delegation of squatters asking for someone to take a case about their land rights.
‘What’s the use? They can never get anything out of it,’ exclaimed Mr M. looking weary. He ordered a big meal to be served to the old men but hurried off in the car before they tackled it. ‘This is a day for us to remember,’ said the leader of the delegation courteously, as Paulina served them under a tree (Juma took a poor view of feeding people who were ‘not proper visitors’), but what else was there for them except a sympathetic memory? Mrs M. had just succeeded in getting homes for two orphaned babies, but for dozens of others there had been no success. There seemed no end to it. Paulina herself was putting aside secondary school fees for her elder sister’s child, should she get a form one place, as the father was out of work, and wondering how she would manage if the rest of the family were also going to demand help. Okeyo would have been going into the examination class - well, no good going back over it.
‘Danm it all,’ said Mrs M. ‘Let’s have the party and hope for better things. I’m having a new dress in any case. Let’s drown our sorrows. The little that we might save would not put anything to rights.’
‘Little by little fills the measure,’ quoted Paulina soberly, but she also shared their mood. ‘No aprons today,’ said Mrs M. ‘This time it
isn’t to impress anybody. Bring Martin over too.’
So Martin put on his best suit and sat steadily drinking beer and getting more and more depressed. They sang. Some of them danced to the gramophone. They listened to the peal of midnight. They lay long awake, seeking comfort for a restlessness they could not explain. And the first newspaper to come out after the holiday weekend told them that Ngugi had been arrested. They all - hosts, guests and neighbours - told one another that they couldn’t have known, that New Year was a holiday and one couldn’t keep wondering and anticipating. But they all knew that there was nothing to celebrate, and kept telling one another what a good party it had been. None of them were great readers, but everybody knew about Ngugi: after all, if his books were set in school you could be sure they were good.
For eleven days they waited, and there was silence in Nairobi behind the clamour of voices, the feeling partly of expectation, partly of fear, as when a vehicle is overdue. On the eleventh day news of the detention order was released. At least you knew where you were.
Paulina supposed at first that it was the January heat and the general tension that made her feel specially tired and irritable. Martin came home at the end of the month with a copy of Ngugi’s Petals of Blood - he who had almost stopped buying books and was sceptical even of newspapers - and sat down solidly to read it, so there were long evenings with hardly a word spoken.
Paulina had spent years enough alone not to be worried by silence. She hugged her thoughts to herself. She was at home now. And at home, though news comes to you of meetings and proclamations, of trials and conflict and achievement, home does not change for that, Nairobi does not change for that, whisper, whisper, whisper, the hum of traffic and the undertones of bargaining, the quick breath of pushing carts and the slow breath of sleep, the unbroken round of terms, of seasons, of fashions, of celebrations. There is always something to do, always something to talk about, if you gave yourself time to learn, always something to depend on too and to live by.
It was in March that Paulina met Amina. She had gone to town to get the electric iron repaired and to match some curtain material for the children’s room. She found herself fingering the nursery designs, peering into cots. This would not do. She must not yet again set her
heart on it. And she had not even spoken to Martin, dared not face him with it. Leaving the shop she found Amina staring intently into the window, obviously figuring in her head. The two women greeted one another warmly.
‘Are you buying the shop up?’ asked Paulina cheerfully. ‘Doing up your apartment house?’
4
‘Not only that,’ Amina confided proudly, ‘I’m going into partnership in a small private nursing home. Maternity and all that, you know. Lady staff. Not all those men poking the women about.’
Paulina nodded, amused at Amina’s contempt for male skills. Still, she knew it would help to get her clients.
‘So we have to furnish the wards. Everything nice, you know, pretty. Nice for the mothers, nice for people to work in, nice they will pay for it too. But it has to be good stuff. All that washing - my, have you any idea of the washing?’ Paulina was seized with a vision of Pumwani, Amina’s motto-ed wrapper and embroidered tablecloths hung out on a string, her own constant battle with white crocheted chair backs.
‘Where I work now we have a washing machine,’ she offered.
‘Of course, of course. But the material has to be strong to stand all those detergents.’ And bars of soap they used to stack in the cupboards to get hard so that there would be less waste when you scrubbed with them.
‘I haven’t seen Joyce for a long time. How is she getting on?’
‘No, I guess you haven’t seen her since that long-faced boss of yours let her down. But she’s getting on fine. Got established as secretary grade two now. American boy wants to marry her. I don’t mind as long as she doesn’t go so far away. He wants to find his roots, she says. Well enough, I told her, let’s see what roots he’s got six months from now. What he’s found so far is a fancy hairstyle and a temporary job. Still, better than the old ones promising and promising and never getting around to anything. Besides, she’s a Christian: she’s not supposed to be going for a second wife. It’s not the same as it would be for me. And that madam you work for wouldn’t be welcoming her either.’
‘Indeed not. I didn’t know there was ever . . .’
‘Well, least said soonest mended. You and I know not to judge an old lion by the loudness of his roar,’ she added companionably, ‘and
we’ve made our way in spite of that.’
Paulina knew she was being offered a compliment but she dared not confess her hopes of a quite other congratulation.
‘We have learned to take what comes and make the best of it,’ she said.
‘To make what comes and to take the best of it,’ answered Amina firmly. ‘But there’s my bus coming: I must go. Greet the big man for me and tell your friends to come to my nursing home.’
‘Goodbye. Give my love to Joyce.’ But underneath Paulina was saying, ‘No, not a nice little nursing home but the big hospital, the biggest, where everything can be taken care of. And the next thing is to put it in words and see if it will still be there.’
She was free that evening after the children’s supper, and when she had set Martin’s food out and prepared tea for herself she began cautiously:
‘I met Amina today.’
‘Amina? My goodness, she must be feeling her age a bit by now. What’s she up to these days?’
‘She’s opening a maternity home.’
‘Well, good luck to her.’
‘An all-female one.’
‘Well, I suppose the other half has already discharged its duty. Let the women care for the women. She has gone up in the world, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes, indeed. Do you remember when we stayed in her house in Pumwani? She was good to me then.’
‘She was, and fair as landladies go. And do you want to tell me that no one else was ever good to you? Because I thought we’d decided to leave all that crap behind.’
‘Yes, I thought so too. It wasn’t that. I wasn’t throwing anything up at you. Only I couldn’t help remembering, the first day I came to that house. It was all so strange to me, and I told you I was three months on and you didn’t believe me.’
‘Well, you were and then you weren’t. There’s no use bringing that up again.’
‘But I found it hard to tell you then, Martin, when we had been so little together. And if I were to tell you now again, Martin, that it was
the third month, would you believe me this time?’
‘Believe you - woman, what are you saying? It’s impossible. We are getting old. It is more than twenty years . . .’
‘My husband, I am younger than your mother was when your last two sisters were bom. I am the same age as my brother’s wife, who is still bearing children. I would be old to have a first child, but you know it is not a first child. And though I hardly dare to hope, I must give you also this hope, after giving you disappointments so many years. Or do you no longer care?’
Martin was beside himself, half embracing her, half standing back to look at her.
‘I have no reason not to be happy. All has not been well with us. You know it. I know it. There were women, and none of them gave me a child. You had another man and his child was lost to us. I thought you were only eager now to become a new woman - perhaps to go into Parliament.’ They both burst out laughing. ‘Or to get your photograph in the paper again waiting at one of Mrs M.’s parties.’ He swallowed. ‘Do I understand what you are telling me, or have I got it wrong?’
‘You understand it, Martin. This is your baby. Since I came to Nairobi - in fact since I was carrying Okeyo -- there has been no possibility of its not being yours, and I hope you will help me to take good care, so that even if one of your safari wives gives you a dozen children still you need not be ashamed of your home in Gem.’
‘And you want to go off to Amina’s litde two-bit nursing home without a proper man doctor in the place. Is that it?’
‘That is not it. I want to be near the biggest hospital so that everything can be done. Even if they cut me up I don’t care so long as it is all right.’
‘I’ll sell the shop if necessary. I’ll tell my people to take me off safari work. Anything. Do you want to move away from here?’
‘No. No. Now you are getting excited. I keep house here as though it were my own house. The work is not too hard. The family is always here - the car, the telephone. If you are away I can’t get sick without anyone knowing.’
‘Have you told Mrs M.?’
‘Not yet. She will be happy for us but she will pretend to be
disappointed because she likes to present me to her clubs and classes as the lone woman, independent of domestic ties.’
They laughed until they were tired and then were almost too tired to sleep, overcome with joy, surprise and an unexpected trust.
Mrs M. was indeed at first alarmed by this reactionary event, then moved by it, then actively excited.
T’ll use it as an illustration for my family talks. Do not rush to marry young. Satisfaction for the older couple. Happiness through persistence, mature maternity.’
‘Say what you like afterwards,’ laughed Paulina, ‘but just now let’s keep custom, eh? No boasting, no getting things in advance. Believe me. I’ve suffered enough disappointment not to want to shout too soon.’ And in her heart she thought, ‘perhaps then I could ring back the lady reporter after all.’
The clinic was enormous and part of a still vaster hospital complex. How much easier to lose her way now than all those years ago when she had lost her first baby there. True she had gained in confidence and the place had gained in skill and equipment, but, if one dared think about it, how much more she knew about the possibilities of loss and being lost. How confident girls still were in that simple alternative, blood or no blood, and how she would have trembled, that long-lost girl-like Paulina now sealed deep under layers of propriety and habit, at these formidable questionnaires, this gleaming array of diagnostic instruments. There were a few girl-brides scattered about the benches, but all better clothed, better informed, no doubt, than she had been, yet not better prepared for actively pressing towards motherhood. But many others were smart working ladies, secretaries perhaps, mindful of their figures as they swelled in discreet pleats behind their barrier desks, or teachers whose classes had been merged with others for the morning in the blur of noise. Some may have been simple housewives but experienced now, prompt with their little bottles, adept with numbered cards. The unpartnered had of necessity to deploy most skill, eager to return to work on time, to calculate correctly to define dates and claim for expenditure.
Paulina found it interesting. She was not sorry to be without the magazines or the knitting which (ahead of time and regardless of custom) occupied so many of these young women. She was not lost in
ecstasy - she had been already too scarred by hope for that - but keen to observe, as she had long missed observing in such a setting, those of her sisters, weary and sagging with protracted maternity, who had got so far ahead of her, those who might have been her daughters, firmbreasted, well-nourished, curiously shod, who were catching up. Not often here the thin limbs and tattered garments of the rural clinic, and not often here either the vociferous joys and woes of ‘home’. A tired lady in uniform, herself vastly protruding, gave out leaflets headed ‘Planned families are happy famihes’ and healthy faces beamed over them from calendars advertising every kind of baby food and appliance. On one of the doors hung a notice announcing ‘Breast is best’.
A pram, Paulina thought suddenly, would be a help. Baby out on the lawn while I am busy in the kitchen. Baby going out shopping with me, not left with a little nursemaid. In any case my employer doesn’t hold with little nursemaids and has quarrelled with some of the other big ladies about it in the name of education for girls. A pram or a pushchair with a canopy for sunny days; it was no longer just a daydream, and in any case she would no longer find it easy to carry the weight.
At last Paulina’s turn came to be interviewed at the table. She was questioned by a buxom woman of about thirty with dark shadows under her eyes and a telltale smear issuing from the left nipple under her white uniform.
‘Age?’
‘Thirty-eight.’
‘Number of children?’
‘None.’
‘A la! How many live births have you had?’
‘One.’
The woman looked at her strangely. ‘Year?’
‘Nineteen sixty-seven.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘He was shot.’ It did not now much disturb her to say it. The nurse swallowed her next question and looked down at the paper. There was a sudden silence among the women waiting their turn at the nearest bench. One muttered under her breath, ‘Holy Mother of God.’
‘Date?’ The woman was still not looking at her.
‘Nineteen sixty-nine.’
‘I am sorry,’ the woman whispered. ‘I know. I was a schoolgirl and we had to stand by the road. How long married?’ she suddenly shouted, making a mark in the colunrn ‘accidental death’.
‘Since 1956.’
‘How many other pregnancies?’
‘Four or five. I am not sure.’
‘But you must be sure. You know whether or not. . .’
‘People know what they wish and sometimes they come to believe what they wish.’
Again the nurse hung her head. ‘Any discomfort?’
‘Nothing special. But a very great hope.’
‘Take your card to door number three. She always does her best for people like you, people who have cherished their hope a long time. I hope for you too. . . . Next!’