9

Mildred Kigali put down the cloth she was using to wipe the early morning dew off the table-tops at Harrods, and pulled up her long green skirt a couple of discreet inches, revealing smart white tennis shoes at the end of lean, muscled legs. She flexed her knees, and did a couple of tentative dance steps, shifting and swaying from foot to foot.

For a few glorious moments last night she had felt like a teenager again. Not that she would like to be a teenager in this day and age. But as she had led the assembled ladies in an impromptu conga, weaving its way through the bar, knitting needle in each hand, their sharp tips covered with two small pawpaws, the impulse of youth had coursed through her veins.

Indeed, such had been the impact of her performance, she had been asked to repeat it at the next meeting . . . well, not asked exactly, but when she had suggested she might do it again, no-one had objected.

Her moves became more confident and she drifted into nostalgia, remembering the first time she had spotted Didymus Kigali, the handsome young man who was to become her husband. She began to sing – or at least, she made a sound that was mainly a low pitched hum, with the occasional word emerging.

Like Charity, Mildred Kigali had risen especially early, for there was much work to do. Usually the clearing up after the monthly meeting of the Christian Ladies’ Sewing Circle was done by a handful of volunteers at the end of the meeting itself. But the appearance of the tokolosh had meant that the session had ended in disarray and the ladies who usually lent a hand had scattered.

Perhaps her young friend Charity, so sceptical about the existence of a creature that could assume whatever shape that their need required, though more often than not they took the form of a goat or a donkey, would now think again. After all, it had been spotted by Edward Furniver, a European!

Mildred continued to shuffle and sing. Soon she was back at her childhood home, in the village where she had been born, soon after the great floods of 1925. One memory stood out above all others. On a sultry hot morning, soon after the start of World War Two, she had seen her father for the last time.

She would never forget the day the men of her village, volunteers all, had gathered to board the trucks that would take them to the training depots, where they would prepare to fight for Britain.

Her father had led them, led a singing column that waved goodbye to wives and children left behind. Amongst those children was a boy who looked straight ahead, and saluted the departing men, holding his hand in place until the trucks had moved out of sight, down the track that led to the tarred road and the city that lay beyond.

Mildred had moved closer to the boy, and he had been surprised by this forward behaviour.

Mildred, still in her teens, plucked up her courage.

“What is your name?”

“Didymus Kigali.”

It had been a long time ago.

So long ago that the wild animals had roamed free. Today her home village was a town, and the animals had all but disappeared, hunted for their flesh, for their tusks, or for sport. Mildred seldom visited her birthplace. The hut in which she had been brought up had gone, along with the village mango trees, and she found that going back was painful and disturbing.

But she had never forgotten the song of the villagers on that day, the song she sang at Harrods that morning, as the sun’s early rays began to take the chill off the morning air.

Mildred Kigali started her chores.

She began, as always, by wiping away the chalked contents of the blackboard menu, propped up on an easel, which was also used during the weekly literacy classes. A list of wholesome dishes had been set out below the hand-painted sign at the top: “Good Food, Best Prices!”

The menu had started with pumpkin and corn soup, then there were “bitings” of thick potato skins, fried in chicken fat and lightly salted; and goat stew and cabbage; also the ever popular ugali and beans (“groundnut relish, or gravy, extra”); and the bill of fare ended with Charity’s famous dough balls (“sugar extra”) and “frut juice” – mango, passion fruit or orange.

For a few seconds Mildred Kigali was confused. Something was amiss. Was it spelled frute juce? Or frut juice? Neither seemed quite right. Those Mboya Boys! They were in charge of chalking up the menu each day. Despite Charity’s efforts to teach the street children the three Rs, there was at least one spelling mistake in the menu each day. “Frut juice” indeed. Sometimes she suspected that the spelling mistake was not a mistake at all, but a deliberate error, just to get a rise out of an old lady.

Mildred grunted. Someone had scrawled “Nduka is a thief” at the bottom of the board, and because she shared the sentiments about President Josiah Nduka, it was the last of the marks she rubbed off. But it was not proper, a president should be respected . . . even if you did not agree with all the things he did.

“Eh-heh,” said a voice in her head: “What if he has lost the right to your respect because he chops, because he is corrupt?”

Mildred Kigali had reached an age when certain things distressed her. In particular, people no longer understood the difference between right and wrong. Her old friend Charity should be tougher and stricter with the Mboya Boys. Instead she spoilt them.

“It is a slipping slope,” Mildred had warned, more than once.

Mildred also felt duty bound to keep a close eye on Charity Mupanga’s relationship with the English man in charge of Kireba’s community bank. She did not disapprove of the budding friendship between the two. But it was well known that all men were driven by base needs, interested only in what Mildred called “steamies”, the invariable outcome of “hanky-hanky”.

If only Charity and Furniver would acknowledge their share of the sins of mankind and seek redemption through the Church of the Blessed Lamb. As for Charity’s late husband, the Anglican bishop of Central Kuwisha, surely he should have an influence that extended beyond the grave?

Not that being an Anglican bishop meant anything these days. She had followed the debate about homosexual marriages on the BBC World Service, broadcast in FM from the radio that sat on the top shelf, behind the bar. She shook her head indignantly. Marrying one man to another man! Whatever next? Man and goat? It was, she felt, the sort of moral aberration that had confirmed the decision of Didymus Kigali to leave the Anglican Church several years earlier. The couple now sought everlasting life in the capacious but stern bosom of the Church of the Blessed Lamb, Kuwisha’s fastest growing sect, which defended old values and warned of the eternal damnation that awaited those who denied the Light of the Lord.

“Mildred!”

There was a tone of urgency in the call that came from Charity, who had arrived a few minutes earlier, still rubbing her eyes and yawning.

“Mildred!”

“Coming, coming . . .”