Eighty Not Out (26 page)

San, now suffering from arthritis, came to visit us, and I took the children to visit her and Murray in the subsiding little house at Neill's Hill my mother had been instrumental in their buying some years before. Murray looked unwell and his skin was a sinister waxy yellow, but he brightened instantly on meeting Michael, pronouncing him ‘a fine little fella'. Michael was well behaved, pottering around and making friends with their tabby cat: it was a concession to age that they no longer had a dog. Our visit had been a surprise one to preclude San making a special effort, but she insisted that we have some of her featherweight scones spread thickly with butter and her own raspberry jam. A slender silver fluted vase of the sweet pea that Murray continued to grow stood in the middle of the table. Two months later, when we were back in Mwanza, I got a letter from San with the news that they had been allocated a flat in a new housing development at Dundonald, but that Murray had been admitted to the new hospital in the same area. The flat allocation, which may have resulted from my having drawn their case to the attention of the Down County Welfare Committee, came too late for Murray, who died of prostate cancer at the end of November. We implored San not to allow grief to scupper the plan to move, so she accepted the offer of the newly built first-floor flat in Dundonald with a resident warden early in 1971. It was in a quiet neighbourhood devoid of street violence and graffiti, unlike some of the offers they had rejected, which had caused Murray to complain: ‘They just don't listen to us when we say we want to remain in the neighbourhood we have known for fifty years.'

She adjusted slowly and her sister Molly continued to make the effort to come from Carrickfergus, sometimes staying overnight, her compulsion to dispense advice and criticism in no way lessened by the passage of time. These purgatorial visits gave San something with which to entertain loyal friends from Knock and Holywood Arches, most of whom had been victims of Molly's criticism in the past. My mother, whose sight problems had yet to force her off the road, had an Austin A40 and came regularly to take San either to Craigavad or Holywood, or shopping in Bangor and Newtownards. Sometimes they would tour the Ards peninsula, visiting Portaferry and Donaghadee, of which San spoke sourly, having lived there in a caravan for a while when Murray's garage in York Street failed, and he had been forced to sell their house on the Gilnahirk Road. Auntie Dodi (the name the children affectionately gave Dorothy), who had trained as a social worker after her divorce, now worked from an office in Bangor, and kept an unofficial eye on how things were.

In September Fergus walked to the departure lounge at Belfast airport holding Katharine, in a too-long navy-blue raincoat, by her left hand; with the other she clutched her tiger bought in Boston. When they turned to wave before disappearing, I felt for the first time the enormity of the decision we had made to send her to school in Kenya: more than a lump rose in my throat, and I was thankful that Mary, Michael and my mother had said their goodbyes at home. San had held her counsel, but I knew quite well what she thought.

Six weeks later we were reunited for Katharine's half-term holiday. We stayed in a lodge at Soy near Eldoret, where a tame crowned crane patrolled the garden, and herds of giraffe and baboons thronged the surrounding countryside. We joined the Eldoret Club on a daily basis so that the children could use their clean, little-used pool. A girl from Katharine's dormitory joined us, having been left out of an invitation her elder sister had to join a family living nearby; possibly they did not know of her existence, but we felt the school should have intervened, particularly as it was the child's first term. When the holiday ended, we took them back to school and Katharine left us without a tear, preoccupied by the fact that
The Sound of Music
was to be shown that night. Afterwards we battered, in rapidly fading light, the considerable distance to Kericho Tea Hotel, where Michael cracked up, saying he hated us all, the food, his bed, the hotel, and wished we were dead. However, next morning he had recovered enough to horse around with Mary and enjoy the beautifully maintained aviary and pond, which teemed with giant goldfish and tadpoles. Then the relentless pounding back to Mwanza, broken only by a short picnic and customs stop, plus our customary puncture near the exit from Serengeti. The tyre was quite new, having been bought in Nairobi, but Fergus found the inner tube unfamiliar, having been patched many times – it had been substituted by some unknown mechanic. In future we marked all inner tubes with nail varnish. Mary and Michael were incredibly good, showing signs of extreme fatigue only as we neared Mwanza and clanked over the noisy planked bridge, through the wide gaps of which one could see a rushing torrent: Michael's timely comment was: ‘Say the bridge falls in?' Within days our Irish holiday was a distant memory, referred to only when my skills with Lego were compared unfavourably to those of Grannie, and the reproach added that, anyway, I was always busy doing something else.

Project data had accumulated during my absence, Fergus's quarterly report was due, and graphs of infection rates in all ages of the population in the suburbs of Mwanza had to be photographed. Many guests, including a consultant who had been booked into an awful hotel in the town, came to us for an evening meal – Dr Eyakuze, as usual, not having offered any hospitality. Meat, no longer in plentiful supply, was now expensive when obtainable. Our Somali butcher opened twice a week only because the government had idealistically fixed prices so low that many farmers were not sending cattle for slaughter. Despite visits to Nairobi, our clothing continually needed replacement or repair and the Christmas holidays were approaching. Katharine would be back in no time at all, from December 6 to January 10, and travel arrangements had yet to be decided.

On 25 November, our tenth wedding anniversary, a letter came from Brazzaville saying that the director general had approved Fergus for a career service appointment, first put forward four years previously, but turned down each time because of the ‘nationality quota' rule. He decided to accept it, because it would end the uncertainty of limping along from one two-year contract to the next; it did, however, limit his work to the African region, and anywhere therein they might choose to send him. The greatest plus was that it would remove the very real fear of being out of work, something that was happening to many well-qualified scientists at that time.

When Katharine arrived by steamer, she was accompanied by two Norwegian girls, Anna and Edit, from school. Their father, Paul Jenset, was one of the ship's engineers, whose wife was said to have committed suicide by wading far out into Lake Victoria, leaving Anna, Edit, and their brother, Peder, without a mother. She had indeed attempted suicide, but the Norwegian embassy took over, and she was sent back to Norway, where care services took over her case. All that the children were told, when they got back from school one day, was: ‘Your mother has gone away.' She later divorced Paul and remarried. The children were undemanding, and surprisingly happy, and we were grateful to their father for having added Katharine to his responsibility list while she was aboard the
Victoria
. On Christmas Eve we gave a party for twelve children, with Fergus in the role of Santa, wearing a red candlewick bedspread and white cotton-wool beard, its Sellotape fixing provoking derisive mirth from all present. I opted out of full-scale catering for adults, and let it be known that the house would be open for drinks and nibbles for anyone inclined to drop in. Our own feast was planned for Boxing Day, when I could expect little help from Stephano, whose reactions would be slow after over-indulgence in pombe on Christmas Day.

15

Turning Point

E
arly in January 1971, I dropped my art deco hand-mirror on the concrete floor of our bedroom. I was not superstitious, but the thought that this might presage seven years' bad luck crossed my mind. On the same day I found cockroaches scuttling around the drawer where I kept make-up, and moth holes in a Liberty woollen suit, which had – or so I thought – been protected in an air-tight bag, and it was obvious that I was going prematurely grey.

Once, during an alcohol-fuelled confessional, I confided to the Poet that life had yet to deal me a crippling blow. His unhelpful response was to liken me to a chocolate-coated marshmallow – ‘hard and brittle on the outside, but mush within'. Odd how such trivial remarks endure. My mother's ‘He's far too good for you', apropos Fergus.

What lay in store was insidious, progressive, terrifying and potentially terminal. It would dominate my life for the next sixteen years.

Fergus transferred Katharine into the care of her form mistress on the Nairobi–Eldoret train. She was relieved not to see, as she had feared, the sadistic swimming teacher who ‘keeps us in the water for ages when it is cold, never comes in herself unless the sun is shining, and she is
fat
'.

Fortuitously Fergus had decided to postpone his trip to Uganda for the conference of the East African Medical Association until the second day, as he was not programmed to speak until the third, thereby missing the turmoil that accompanied Idi Amin's well-calculated assumption of power during Milton Obote's absence at a conference of Commonwealth ministers in Singapore. Other delegates who had travelled by boat and road during the previous week had found themselves confined to halls of residence or hotels in Kampala. The conference venue was the Parliament Building, at the hub of activities, where seven people were reported to have been killed. A curfew was in force from seven in the evening until six thirty in the morning, and a bomb had been pitched into the main entrance to Entebbe airport, which was closed. Telephone lines were more chaotic than usual, and Dr Ansari was a prisoner in the Apollo Hotel in Kampala. To cap all this, Fergus got a wire from London asking him to attend an interview for the post of assistant director of the Commonwealth Bureau of Helminthology – a job he had applied for so long ago that he had forgotten about it;
BOAC
had been paid for his return fare. Meanwhile an indefinite postal strike was in operation throughout Tanzania.

Information gleaned from an ex-colleague, who was likely to be on the interviewing committee, revealed that the post was blighted by the incumbent female director, who had seen two assistant directors off the scene in the last decade. The advertisement had sought someone to ‘bring the Institute into the twentieth century computerized age', but the director, a notorious technophobe, did not want to be brung, so the job could be deemed a nonstarter. Fergus had ethical reservations about using the air ticket, but it would allow him to visit headquarters on his return flight and continue discussions with Dr Ansari about his future in the tropical diseases division of
WHO
.

For Katharine's half-term holiday, I took the
Victoria
to Kisumu, accompanied by Mary and Michael. When the boat docked early in the morning, neither passengers nor crew were allowed ashore until they had been searched for Tanzanian paper money. There had been an Ealing comedy-style robbery earlier in the week, when three million
EA
shillings had disappeared from the hold, but cold feet and incompetence ensured most of it was soon recovered, leaving half a million untraced. According to the previous timetable, the boat would have docked a day earlier, which had been ideal for the half-term, but after the coup in Uganda, the sailing was changed to include an extra stop at Bukoba. Rumour was that the boilers of another ship belonging to East African Railways and Harbours, the
Usoga
, were no longer safe, dating as they did from 1912. The vessel, now in dry dock, looked just like the Bogart/Hepburn steamer in the
The African Queen
, so it was probably true.

Katharine and the Jenset children, Anna, Edit and Peder, had been escorted from the school by a pleasant Asian girl who was sister-in-charge of a health centre near Kaptagat. But the whole exercise had been so fraught with uncertainties and abortive telephone calls, it was not until we actually went ashore that I knew the children were there. We all stayed at the Jensets' house, and I had the task of feeding eight at each sitting during the weekend. There was a cook/steward in residence, but he was not in the same league as Stephano. We took the children to swim at the Kisumu Club, and for a picnic in the Nandi Hills, indulging them with a continuous supply of ice cream, which was unobtainable in Mwanza.

Quite often interesting items appeared in the main market in Mwanza: Chinese influence brought cheap blue and white chinaware in the form of teapots, rice bowls and soup plates, some of which were hand painted with remarkable fluidity in a fish design: although mass produced they were very attractive – only three have survived the years. Sometimes little woven baskets, finer than those locally produced, could be found, some originating from as far afield as Malawi, or the Congo, judging by their purple interwoven designs. Cages of noisy black-faced lovebirds from the plains around Tabora were often on display. I tried to ignore them, knowing the occupants were doomed, and to buy them would encourage the trade. In the wild these busy little birds fly fast and low in large flocks like budgerigars. However, while Fergus was away, I weakened and bought six, which were temporarily confined in an old parrot's cage wrapped in mosquito netting, on which they exercised their hard little beaks. An aviary, the cost of which was escalating by the hour, was being built in a semi-shaded area at the rear of the house.

Early in March of that year the nightmare began. It was Sunday morning and Fergus and I were taking the children to the club for an early swim; Mary and Michael were in the back of the car and I was driving. Just past Bismarck Rock, where we had seen a large Nile monitor lizard cross the road, Fergus said he thought he was going to faint, turned very red in the face, then pallid and cold before breaking into a heavy sweat, and losing consciousness. He had told me that as a child he had fainted several times, and twice as an adult, but nothing had prepared me for this. I put his seat into the reclining position, and drove as quickly as possible up the hill to the hospital, holding his right hand with my left when not changing gear, at the same time assuring the children that Daddy was just in a faint, that it had happened before, and there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately our friend Donald was on duty and admitted him immediately to the so-called Grade I inpatients ward; his blood pressure was very low, his heartbeat barely perceptible, but he had regained consciousness. Donald suspected a mild coronary, which was soon confirmed by a physician from one of the mission hospitals. Fergus was, and remained, in total denial – protesting that it had merely been another fainting incident. The cardiologist who flew in from Nairobi was impressed that all the right procedures had been followed, and the medical team was united in prescribing a three-week period in bed under mild sedation, followed by return home to a quiet atmosphere, before resuming mild activity. He was put on phenobarbitone, but was highly resistant, needing three times the prescribed dose, so the cardiologist advised a switch to Valium, which he hated, arguing it made him slow-witted, and could be addictive.

This incident came as no surprise to me, as it was a matter of days since his return from a three-day visit to Dar to a mountain of project-related work; he was anxious about our future, and maintaining good relations with his national counterpart was an ongoing exercise in self-control. Dr Eyakuze was prone to second laboratory and field assistants, as well as project transport, without prior discussion as to whether or not this would fit in with Fergus's work schedule. I lent an ear to many explosive outbursts, and unprintable epithets about this arbitrary behaviour during our lunch-time breaks.

It was a great relief when Donald agreed to discharge Fergus from the hospital, which dated from the early days of German rule. Working in the small kitchen where family members could prepare food for relatives, one day I found an uncovered stool sample on the draining board beside the sink; the place swarmed with flies and there was no mosquito proofing. Without the support of Donald, who would be the next one to collapse if he continued to work such gruelling hours, I do not know how I could have endured those weeks, and am eternally grateful. His advice as we parted on the day it happened was: ‘If ye think ye cannae sleep the night, take a guid stiff whisky before ye go to bed.' I believe it was at that precise point that my relationship with alcohol changed to addictive dependence, though, because of genetic predisposition, inevitably it was going to claim me in the end. Not long after, I who had never used booze as a tranquilliser was taking a good stiff something or other to deal with any sort of stress, real or imagined. A tumbler always sat beside the typewriter in the corner of our bedroom, which passed as my office, while I typed project-related letters and reports. Often I had to hammer these out against time so that Fergus could collect them at lunch time. If I asked him to join me for an aperitif before our meal, he would decline, saying it would make him drowsy: so innocent are most of our nearest and dearest. In hindsight, I had a typical alcoholic personality, reinforced by a degree of tolerance not commonly found in females. The disease is, as the literature says, cunning, baffling and powerful – its progress relentless.

On the night that Fergus came home from hospital an attempt was made to break into our house through one of the kitchen windows. I heard the ping as the hinge was forced. However, when I went around flashing a torch, I neither saw nor heard anything. The next day we noticed one of the veranda chairs overturned and a window catch distorted. The police, full of swarming inefficiency, deemed the thieves sophisticated, as they had been ‘very clever and worn gloves'.

The children accepted the need for quiet when visiting the sickroom – bouncing and horsing around on the bed being temporarily prohibited – and settled to their usual pursuits. Fergus slowly improved, and in fact looked so well that I was sorely tempted to let him get up. However, medical opinion was unanimous – he was to stay put, resting and heavily tranquillised, if he was not to become argumentative and stressed. But ultimately Fergus began agitating for a return to office routine, and took to wandering, secateurs in hand, around the garden, determined to work on a half-day basis the following week. In such extreme heat we both knew a return to the lab after lunch would be unwise: sometimes I found myself near collapse, while the children often dozed off during an enforced rest. Roger Lyonnet, now based in Dar with the smallpox eradication programme, was very concerned about Fergus, telephoning me almost every night about his progress. When he came to Mwanza at the end of the month, we had a dinner party for him and his assistant, as well as Donald and his wife, Jean.

If the results of medical tests at Nairobi were positive, we hoped to have a better idea about the future, and possibly a recommendation for a transfer to Kenya. Fergus thought he could finish work at Misungwi, and produce a full report on the project by the time Katharine's summer holidays began in mid-July. I therefore wrote to my mother somewhat flippantly: ‘We might come home to
NI
for a bit of bombing and rioting.'

The check-up two months after the heart attack was satisfactory, although one quirk remained on the
ECG
; the cardiologist said that Fergus should not remain at any station devoid of advanced medical facilities, but the final decision would rest with the chief medical officer in Geneva. Meanwhile, Fergus was back at the wheel again, so we went up to Eldoret to be with Katharine over the exeat break. The climate was deliciously cool, the mornings a delight, when heavy dewdrops shone like diamonds in the sun, and a fresh smell of eucalyptus made a pleasant change from the heavy pall that often lingered at lake level. Our return journey was uneventful and Mary and Michael had a wonderful time being taken down to the engine room of the
Victoria
, and up on the bridge to watch the radar screen.

Katharine, whose reports were glowing, had been moved to Form 3. Mary's progress in writing was slow, though she drew very well. (Remarkably Mary survived this and now writes a beautiful italic script.) Michael could recognise a few letters, but was definite about not learning to read ‘until I'm ready'; he did, however, pore over books with an intensity that augured well. At the nursery school he stayed with a group of nonconformists who joined ‘activities' only after close scrutiny to see if they were likely to be fun. They had my sympathy, as much time, paint, paper and Plasticine was spent making useless ‘toe covers' to be borne home for the admiration of apathetic parents. His behaviour vacillated between charming spontaneous displays of affection and brainstorms over trivia; but compared with the repulsive behaviour of some of their peer group, our offspring were mature and well-adjusted.

San wrote that she was depressed, and that the social workers from the ‘Welfare' were constantly on her back. No doubt there were many difficult, demanding pensioners on their list, but I sensed a failure to separate the dishonest or vicious, from those who were merely inept, or a bit senile. Many elderly people were terrified to leave their houses because of escalating street violence and gangs of youths wandering around the estates. Friends from home made me aware that events in Northern Ireland were more serious than what was described on the
BBC
World Service. One spoke of his sister who no longer went into central Belfast, having been badly cut by flying glass after an explosion in a pub in which several people had been killed and many injured.