The Other Language(71)

She smiled at Ruth. “We drank cheap vodka on our own veranda!”

“Good for you.” Ruth shook her head in disbelief but didn’t laugh or even smile. “Wow. But I didn’t realize that even right before Independence it would be like that here. That in Kenya people in your situation would be so …” She paused, searching for the appropriate word. “Excluded.”

Mrs. D’Costa recoiled slightly at the word.

“We did have some perfectly nice white Kenyan friends, and English ones of course, like Prudence and Lionel Wilton, who were more progressive in that sense. But in general, I’d say that white people weren’t used to mixed couples, in those days.”

“It must have been very difficult for you.” Ruth spoke softly and turned to her with sympathy.

“Well, yes, but no. I had three beautiful children, a lovely house. A loving husband. He came from a very good Goan family. My relatives were super people.”

“Of course, of course,” Ruth said, aware that her reaction may have embarrassed the older woman.

“And we had other friends, of course. Swahili, Somali, Omani. Mombasa was—and still is—a very cosmopolitan town, you know.” Anne paused for a moment, then added cheerfully, “We were constantly invited to their weddings. Fabulous parties, they lasted for days!”

Anne had learned back then, and had never forgotten, Victor’s rule number one: never hold a grudge. We have each other, he used to say to her, and that was what counted.

How difficult had it really been for her? Mrs. D’Costa thought for a moment. She could hardly remember, so much of that past had faded already, and besides, she’d learned to keep the bad, hurt feelings to herself. She had always avoided talking about them to her husband or her children. It would’ve been a burden on them. And at the time she had no close friends who were in her “situation,” as Ruth had put it. In fact, she hadn’t known anyone who was.

There were things Ruth didn’t understand about her British in-laws either, she was saying. All that talk about accents and public schools. She sometimes joked with Tim about how England to this day still had its own caste system.

“Scots versus Brits.” Mrs. D’Costa laughed. “Such an old story.”

“May I?” Ruth gently lifted the side of the hat, which kept falling over Mrs. D’Costa’s eye.

“Thank you, dear. It’s quite an old hat, I’m afraid.”

“It’s a sweet hat.” Ruth looked at her with a kind of tenderness. “Don’t you throw it out. It suits you, Anne.”

There was a short silence. They both turned their eyes to the children, who were intent on digging a tunnel in the sand.

“I am so grateful that our kids are growing up in the twenty-first century in America,” Ruth said.

“Yes,” said Mrs. D’Costa, “it’s a great advantage, isn’t it?”

She often wondered about her own children. She and Victor had done everything they could to give them all they needed. And yet, she knew that their lives must have been more complicated than what she was ready to admit at the time. Maybe she had tried too hard to follow her husband’s rule, to stick to the bright side of things.

There were questions she hardly ever dared ask herself. Why had all of her children left Kenya and gone to live elsewhere? Perhaps they had had to bury their hurts and resentments, when they were small. Had she made a mistake by never encouraging them to talk about it?

Maybe some of what she’d then called optimism would today be called denial.



The Khans’ store was busy: right outside, a few African men in overalls were loading bags of cement in the back of a lorry. One young man was weighing a thick coil of rope on a scale next to where Mrs. D’Costa was standing.

She handed the note with the measurements to Kublai and his father. The three of them remained silent for a few seconds, their eyes fixed on the scrap of paper.

“It has to be zinc,” she said. “Sealed. That’s the procedure required to carry the body on a plane,” she said.

“No problem, Mrs. D’Costa. We’ll get it ready by tomorrow,” Kublai said, and scribbled something on a piece of paper.

She had offered to take care of this. It seemed a practical thing, something that she could handle easily, and she was happy to spare Mark and Tim the ride to the junction for such a gruesome task.

Mr. Khan leaned in over the counter and removed his reading glasses from the tip of his nose.

“Why not the Hindu crematorium in town? We could have helped them, we know the people who work there. Ashes would have been so much easier to carry. Once in England they could have whatever ceremony they wish.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more. But the family wants to bring the body back. To their home, and put it underground, in British soil. It’s their way.”

Later, as she was getting ready to reverse the car and head home, she saw Mr. Khan with his wobbly gait exiting the store.

“Mrs. D’Costa! Wait!”

She left the keys in the ignition and stepped out, her car idling under the midmorning sun.

“Yes, Mr. Khan?”

He held out his hand to show her the cluster of white flowers he was clutching between his fingers.

“In Gujarat we call them Barsoli flowers. My mother planted them in our garden when she got married to my father. She had the seeds sent here from India. Nobody else has a tree like this in all of Kenya. Smell.”