The Other Language(67)
Oh well, we’re all outcasts here, after all. Which means we are all the same in the end, Mrs. D’Costa thought. The idea made her smile.
She left the paved road and turned left, on the winding dirt track that took her home through the coconut plantation. Every time she made that turn she was greeted by the sudden shift from the blinding light of the main road to the shady coolness of the bush. She loved the way the sun filtered through the branches of the mango trees lining the road, projecting dancing shadows on the red earth.
Thinking of what she’d said to Keith Dobson only a couple of days earlier, she nodded to herself: she was lucky to have found such a place to live.
As the Dobsons were finalizing the paperwork for the title deeds up in Mombasa, Anne was announcing to Kublai their imminent arrival, telling him that they’d probably need to do quite a lot of repair around the house, and would most certainly place a large order of materials with him. She was actually savoring the moment when she would take Keith to the store and show him not only how well regarded she was there, but also what lovely people the Khans were. Hopefully that would help to make him like the place more. But when the time came and she offered to make the introduction Keith simply said that he didn’t care to meet any shopkeeper from the village. He had already placed an order for everything he needed in Mombasa and it was due to be delivered any day.
“I hate that horrid little junction anyway,” he said in his disparaging tone. “The less I’ll have to go there, the happier I will be.”
Six weeks later, once the walls had been repainted, the bathrooms renovated and the kitchen redesigned, the Dobsons moved into the Wiltons’ old house, breathing new life into rooms that had been empty for more than two years. Mrs. D’Costa brought over a potted bougainvillea as a housewarming present and Margie showed her around the rooms. They were filled with sturdy furniture in blond wood, with bookcases for the large number of books that Keith meant to read, with a grand piano that Margie meant to play, with an astonishing variety of kitchen utensils, pots and pans, garden furniture and the usual array of paintings people collect during a lifetime in East Africa: there were buffaloes staring down from a ridge, Masai warriors on the hunt holding spears and blazing sunsets over the Indian Ocean. There were, of course, dozens of pictures of the Dobsons’ progeny scattered everywhere, either sailing a dhow off the island of Zanzibar, trekking Mount Kenya or driving open cars through the bush in muddy safari clothes with a beer can in hand. They were two incredibly good-looking boys, tanned, blond, healthy, carrying the great mix of their parents’ genes in their youthful bodies.
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.