Dream of Darkness, page 6
‘That’s what I’m trying to do,’ said Vita. ‘All I want to know is the kind of thing Sairey may have picked up about her mother’s death.’
‘Picked up? You don’t imagine we ever talked about such things in front of the child …’
‘Adults talk in front of children far more often than they suppose,’ said Vita. ‘Children have the gift of invisibility when they want it. Friends, relatives, priests, the press, they all required information, both in Uganda and when you got home. It’s incredible what babies can pick up and retain. And Sairey was no baby. Also, like many children she was, and probably still is, an instinctive eavesdropper.’
Celia glanced in alarm at the door. Vita said, ‘It’s all right. I gave her a pill. So you brought her back to England and set up as a surrogate mother for the second time.’
‘Second?’
‘You brought up Nigel, didn’t you?’
‘What are you saying? That I did things wrong?’ demanded Celia.
‘Far from it. It’s quite clear that living with you at Dunelands was probably the best thing that could have happened to Sairey. Your love, the steady pattern of your life, the dogs, the sea, these were, and still are, of the greatest importance to her. If she could have stayed on here …’
‘Nigel came back from Africa. He had remarried, could offer a proper home. He was her father, he loved her, of course she had to go to him,’ cried Celia.
‘Of course she did,’ said Vita. ‘But look at it from Sairey’s viewpoint. Age nine, and her world is turned upside down again. She has to return to Masham Square which she’d only ever known when her mother was alive. But now, instead of her mother there was her father, whom she most closely associated with her mother’s death, and this new woman, who was usurping her mother’s place and function. That’s when these mental and emotional disturbances started, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, but they were just nightmares. Children do have them, you know. John Varley didn’t think there was anything to worry about. He prescribed a tonic, said she’d grow out of them. And she did,’ said Celia accusingly.
‘It was John Varley who prescribed me this time,’ Vita reminded her. ‘Did she ever talk to you about her dreams, in detail I mean?’
‘No, never.’
‘In the principal one, Nigel is holding her over her mother’s coffin to see Sarah’s face. Then he hands her to you. Celia, are you all right?’
The older woman had gone quite grey, and rocked forward in her chair as though she might slide off.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, recovering a little. ‘It’s just that earlier, a few days ago, she asked me whether she ever saw her mother in her coffin and I was quite sharp with her. Poor child. Is this what she’s been dreaming? But why?’
‘The simple answer is fear,’ said Vita Gray.
‘Fear?’ exclaimed Celia. ‘What of, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Of ending up like her mother, perhaps. No, hear me out. Remember what happened last time she changed her environment. She met her father, and her mother died. Now, after several stable years, she returns to the house where she was born and has to start life again with her father and a mother substitute. Her head is stuffed with nightmarish fragments of knowledge of how Sarah died. She has probably been told a thousand times how like her mother she looks – she wore her hair very long, very blonde, as a child, didn’t she? In her mind, she begins to confuse herself with her mother, so the dreams start. That’s what I mean by fear.’
Celia reached forward to poke the fire.
‘How you psychiatrists love to complicate things,’ she said. ‘I’m almost afraid to speak to you for fear of what you’ll read into it. But I daresay you’d make even more of my silence. You’re wrong about one thing. Sairey didn’t think of herself as resembling her mother in any way. Just recently she talked of Sarah as being tall and willowy!’
‘And you corrected her?’
‘Of course. Shouldn’t I have?’
‘I really can’t say,’ said Vita. ‘But it was as Sairey got older and started her physical development that the dreams began to fade, wasn’t it? A good bust, wide hips, these set her so far from her mental picture of Sarah that she began to feel safe. And how old was she when she chopped her hair off? Twelve? Thirteen? The last physical link. She was herself, and safe at last.’
‘So what started it all again, in that case?’ said Celia, with undisguised scepticism.
‘Cambridge was part of it,’ said Vita. ‘The same university, the same college, the same subject, perhaps even the same room, as Sarah. How often do you imagine this was pointed out to her? But perhaps it didn’t become a reality till she came back from Spain. And there was Nigel, too, talking about his memoirs. She felt huge pressures in both directions – back towards that traumatic loss, and forward in her mother’s footsteps towards a nightmare end she could only dream of.’
‘How absurdly you perceive life, Vita. But if there is any truth in what you say, the solution is simple. Cancel Cambridge and cancel Nigel’s memoirs!’
Vita said, ‘I must leave you to deal with your brother, but Cambridge, by being postponed, has already receded as a threat. This latest attack has clearly been stimulated by something new. This is the trouble. It is no use simply trying to isolate Sairey from danger like isolating a haemophiliac from cutting edges. What is troubling Sairey’s unconscious is more like the first stirrings of a cancer cell. Leave it untreated now, and in a few years it could destroy her.’
She spoke with a quiet vehemence that was more persuasive than rational argument. Celia sighed deeply and shook her head, not in denial but at some inner tribulation.
‘What will you do?’ she asked quietly.
‘I’ll take her with me. To Britt House, my place in Essex. No, before you say it, it wouldn’t do for her to stay on here. I need to be able to be in charge of her environment. Don’t worry. She’ll still be getting plenty of good fresh air. We’ll make an early start, so I think I’ll say goodnight.’
Vita rose as she spoke, and headed for the door.
‘And love?’ said Celia.
‘Love?’
‘You said she’d still get plenty of good fresh air. I wondered if she’d get plenty of love, too.’
Vita considered this, then nodded.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I love her for her mother’s sake. Just as you love her for her father’s.’
‘I love her for her own sake,’ said Celia angrily.
‘That, too,’ said Vita Gray.
After the younger woman had left, Celia sat still for several minutes staring into space. Then she rose, went to the old oak bureau which was the one piece of furniture to survive the burning of her father’s farm, took out a pad of paper and began to write.
OP ANTENOR CO-OP 17/33/7 RESTRIC (NON-ATT)
DOC 28 MEDPSY
ORIG letter f. sarah ellis to vita gray nov 1971 (PHOTOC)
Dear Vita,
So what do I think of life out here, now that I’m an old Africa hand of more than six months’ standing? It took three of those for me to leave the bungalow by myself, and not just from fear of wild animals or cannibal natives. No, it was mainly simple dread of driving! As you know, I’ve never been a keen driver, but out here the combination of terrible roads in the sticks and even terribler drivers in the town looked set to keep me stuck on my verandah looking across the Great Rift Valley (which is just that, by the way, a bloody great rift), until Nigel came home to rescue me. And as he has to spend so much time away just now, that meant a hell of a lot of rift! So, finally, I took my life, and the wheel of the Land Rover, in both hands, and now the twenty miles to Nairobi is as nothing and even matatu drivers keep out of my way (matatus are communal taxis which use the pavement as an extra highway). Thank God, I can now subject Sairey to a bit of urban antidote to all those ghastly rural impulses which drove poor Wordsworth dotty!
Not that Nairobi is entirely on the side of sanity, though, in fact, it would be quite pleasant if it weren’t for the tourists, the beggars and the old ex-pats, not necessarily in that order. It’s incredible how quickly you become possessive enough about a place to object to tourists, isn’t it? But the very sight of a new safari outfit or a tee shirt with an elephant on it or a fleet of those awful striped buses they chase the poor animals in, sets my teeth on edge. The beggars, I suppose, are worse, because you feel guilty about being revolted by them. From time to time they are cleared away, but they always come back. Where else have they got to go? As well as the usual disabilities and deformities, there are some which are uniquely African, like a living government health warning to keep taking the tablets and never drink the water. I saw a man the other day with his head twisted round by what looked like a monstrous carbuncle on his neck, so that he was permanently regarding his left shoulder. Easily put right at the hospital, I was assured, but why give up your meal ticket? I said I just couldn’t believe this, and I got the usual pitying laugh and assurance that once I’d been here long enough to really understand the African mentality, I’d believe anything! I thought of you, Vita, and wondered what you’d make – will make – of all this when you come.
My ‘expert’ was of course an ex-pat, perhaps the worst group of the lot because at least you can recognize tourists and beggars by their cameras or their sores. Colonial nostalgia and racist paternalism don’t manifest themselves till you’ve been lured into a drink or a meal. The few diplomatic types I’ve met seem almost as bad. I’d imagined our social life out here would be one long round of garden parties and receptions, but happily, Nigel doesn’t seem to get involved very much in that kind of thing. The only Establishment figure we’ve seen much of is his immediate boss, and that was a pleasure I could have done without. There was a singer once, Rudi Vallee, I think, they used to call the man with a cock in his voice. Well, Archie Archbell has got his in his eyes. It’s like a couple of cannon running at you out of the ports of a warship! To give the man his due, he can be very entertaining in a brutal kind of way, but the constant threat of ocular orgasm is very disconcerting!
Now to my big news. I’ve got another child. No, not a miracle, and certainly nothing to do with optical interference! It came to pass like this. You remember I mentioned the Brights in my last letter (months ago: sorry!). He’s an old chum of Nigel’s, and they sent Sairey a really lovely present on her birthday, with apologies for not being able to come to the party, which, as they live God knows how far away in Uganda, was hardly surprising. Well, they did turn up for a visit rather unexpectedly as it happened, but they’re as nice as Nigel promised, fortunately. He looks type-cast for the role of Old Africa Hand, but beneath the bush-hat he’s sensitive and civilized. She’s black and bonny, a touch serious perhaps, but then she trained as a teacher. They have a boy, Allan, five or six, gorgeous looking, but a handful. Introducing him to Sairey, Apiyo, his mum, said, ‘Here’s a little sister for you to be lapidi to.’ (In her tribe, a lapidi is a kind of juvenile nurse, a child who carries a baby around so that Mum can get on with her work.) Young Allan was greatly offended and ran off yelling, ‘I don’t want to be lapidi. Lapidi’s for girls. I want to be a soldier like Uncle Ocen.’ I could see this upset Api but thought it was just good manners, or perhaps gender stereotyping, that was bothering her.
A couple of days later, however, it all came out and I realized that, to some extent, they’d been summing me up before speaking. Also, they were probably waiting to catch Nigel who, as usual, was running around like a scalded cat, never sitting in one place for half an hour at once.
It was at dinner. Bill said abruptly, ‘We wondered, would you two mind looking after Allan for a while?’
I was taken aback. I liked them well enough, but after a couple of days hardly felt I was on child-minding terms.
Nigel said, ‘What’s up?’ He’s like you, V, when he wants to be, straight to the point.
‘They’ve arrested Ocen,’ said Apiyo.
Ocen, her twin, is a captain in the Ugandan army.
‘Good Lord,’ said Nigel. ‘Why?’
‘Because he is Acholi. Because Amin and his Nubis are persecuting anyone they think may be loyal to Obote.’
Nubis or Nubians is the general name given to southern Sudanese settlers in Uganda, who traditionally provided the army’s other rank cannon fodder. The upper reaches were predominantly Acholi and Langi (Obote’s tribe), both from the East Nile. Amin is a Kakwa from the West Nile, a backward superstitious people rated not much higher than Nubis when they join the army. I got this historical background by dint of frequent interruption, which irritated the others, but I wasn’t going to sit quiet and uncomprehending like some of those old Cambridge farts wanted us to in their so-called classes!
‘Amin has always made allies with the Nubis,’ said Api. ‘Now he is putting them in all the top jobs.’
‘But what else do you expect?’ said Nigel. ‘If Ocen, say, had led a coup, wouldn’t you have expected to see his fellow Acholi shooting up the ladder with him?’
‘Please do not try to be reasonable with me, Nigel,’ said Apiyo. ‘This has already gone far beyond reason. In barracks, many Acholi and Langi soldiers have been beaten, even killed. And now there are Nubi regiments in our tribal areas massacring our menfolk indiscriminately.’
Very reasonably, I thought, Nigel asked if there was any proof of this.
There are strong rumours,’ said Bill Bright unhappily.
‘Rumours?’ exploded Api. ‘You can see the crocodiles in the Nile gorging on those rumours. And it’s no rumour about officers being arrested. Ask Ocen. If he is still alive to ask.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said. I think I was still hoping this was some kind of colonial, post-prandial game.
‘We heard that some senior officers were executed at Makindye,’ said Bill quietly. ‘And at Malire prison there was a large explosion. The authorities said it was just some faulty explosive being disposed of. My info is that several Acholi and Langi officers were put in a room and simply blown up.’
As you can imagine, by now I’d quite forgotten my hostessy duties and the food was congealing on our plates.
‘Surely you’re not suggesting that any of this, if true, is anything more than the excesses of a few wild men, temporarily let off the leash by the coup?’ said Nigel.
The coup’s been over for months,’ said Bill. ‘The UK has officially recognized the new regime, for God’s sake!’
‘This all starts from the top. Amin is a monster!’ cried Api.
‘Look, aren’t you looking at this a bit too, forgive me, tribally?’ said Nigel.
Before Apiyo could reply, her husband said, ‘If it’s tribal, it’s because the old colonial admin boys liked to keep things tribal. Divide and rule, soldiers from the north, civil service from the south, ne’er the twain shall meet. But forget tribes, Nigel. This Amin’s always been a mad bastard, you know that as well as anybody.’
‘Why should Nigel know so much about Amin?’ I interrupted.
‘Hasn’t he told you about his guilty past?’ said Bill. ‘We were both in the KAR at the time that Idi was making his way up through the ranks. There were plenty of active operations, Mau Mau here in Kenya, and later there was a lot of cattle-rustling going on up in Karamoja. Idi made quite a name for himself in the regiment. His favourite method of interrogation was to make suspects lay their dongs on a table while he stood by with a machete. If they didn’t answer …’
He brought the side of his hand down sharply on the table, making the plates jump.
‘Then in ’62, there was that Turkana massacre …’
‘Massacre?’ said Nigel. ‘Hardly. A dozen suspects died, resisting arrest.’
‘There was a court of enquiry,’ said Bill.
‘Which exonerated Amin.’
‘You do recall quite a lot about him, then?’ said Bill, with an edge to his voice.
‘Enough not to accept without query your allegations that he’s some kind of mass murderer,’ retorted Nigel.
I suddenly realized that instead of doing my duty and rechannelling the conversation to how warm it was for the time of year, I was sitting there like a spectator at a prize fight. I exchanged glances with Apiyo, but it wasn’t a meeting of minds. She was eager to get in there alongside her husband.
Bill took a deep breath and said, ‘Look, Nigel, we didn’t come here to ask you to send a gun boat or even a diplomatic note. We came to ask you a simple favour as a friend.’
Nigel was instantly, almost dramatically, stricken.
‘Oh, Christ. And here am I acting like a petty official. Forgive me, Bill. Api, too. Forgive me. What can we do for you? You’ve only got to ask.’
‘They’ve asked, dear,’ I pointed out. ‘They want us to look after Allan.’
‘It would mean so much to know he was safe,’ said Api, addressing me.
‘Safe from what?’ I said. I really didn’t know what to make of all this. ‘They surely wouldn’t harm children?’
‘Believe me, no Acholi male is safe, especially not if his uncle is an army officer.’
‘You, then, what about your own safety?’
‘I have to go back to see if I can help my brother,’ she said.
‘And it’s our home,’ said Bill. ‘But it would be a great comfort to know the boy was safe, in good hands.’
‘Then of course he shall stay. And I guarantee I’ll turn him into Sairey’s lapidi before you see him next,’ I said.
That was a good hostessy thing to say. The atmosphere lightened several watts, and we were able to proceed to our pudding in some kind of order.
There, don’t I lead the exciting life, then? Nigel assured me in bed that it was all much exaggerated and things would settle down in Uganda as soon as the teething troubles were past. In fact, he’s so certain of it that he’s talking about transferring us all to Kampala at some point. That’s where he was based for a time, and he talks almost nostalgically of the place.
