The Cellar (17 page)

This time Muna decided ignorance would serve her better. I don’t know, Master. I only saw her buy things with her mobile … the way she always did.

Ebuka pressed a thumb and finger to the bridge of his nose. The Inspector thinks she drew the money in cash and paid it into another bank. Do you understand what that means?

Not really, Master.

It means she may have a card I don’t know about. Did you ever notice her tap a different number into the screen?

Muna was tempted to say yes. He would surely believe then that Princess had stolen his money in order to leave him. But she saw how intently he was watching her. The witchy-white had praised her cleverness too well. He would ask Muna next to show him the order Yetunde’s fingers had touched the squares.

No, Master. If I had, I’d have remembered it.

Disappointment made him irritable. He smacked his palms against his legs and spoke in English. ‘You see and hear everything that happens in this house,’ he cried angrily. ‘How can you be ignorant of Yetunde stealing from me?’

Perhaps Ebuka was right to distrust women. Neither white took kindly to him raising his voice to Muna. Mrs Hughes leaned forward to protect her while Inspector Jordan warned Ebuka she would have to take action if she had cause to believe he was visiting his frustration against his wife on his daughter. In legislation here, the welfare of the child took priority.

She turned to Muna. ‘Do you understand what that means, Muna?’

‘I think so, lady. I think you’re saying that Dada isn’t allowed to hurt me.’

‘Does he?’

Muna smiled into her knowing blue eyes. ‘Of course not, lady. Dada loves me very much. If he was unkind to me, I would have told my friend Mrs Hughes. She has asked me many times if there are things she can do to help me.’

Muna couldn’t tell if it was her words or Ebuka’s sudden rush of tears that persuaded the Inspector and Mrs Hughes to leave. Both women looked uncomfortable as he lowered his head to his hands and sobbed uncontrollably. In the hall, they advised Muna to call his doctor, expressing concern for his depressed and troubled state of mind.

She asked timidly how medicine could help pay the rent since his greatest anxiety was about losing the house. ‘When everything’s gone and strangers are living here, Mamma and Olubayo won’t be able to find us,’ she explained. ‘That’s what’s making Dada sad. He doesn’t know what to do or who to ask for help. It shames and frightens him to have no money.’

The Inspector looked thoughtful. ‘That would certainly explain why he’s upset with your mother. Did she know she was putting the house at risk?’

Muna shook her head, recalling words she’d said to Mrs Hughes. ‘Mamma doesn’t think when she’s angry, lady. Her only desire is to show Dada how distressed she is.’

‘But what caused this anger? Your father never really explained.’

‘Everything, lady. Olubayo’s epilepsy … Dada’s accident … but mostly Abiola’s loss.’ Muna tried a phrase she’d learned from the television talk shows she now watched every afternoon: ‘Dada wanted her to stop blaming herself and move on, but that just made her think he didn’t care about Abiola as much as she did.’

‘And she resented him for it?’

‘I’m not sure, lady. I don’t know what “resented” means.’

‘Disliked him … held a grudge … believed he wasn’t interested in how she felt.’

Mrs Hughes shook her head. ‘I imagine her greatest resentment is directed against the police,’ she murmured. ‘Abiola was abducted off our streets, yet the family’s had no justice … no funeral … no closure. I’m not surprised Mrs Songoli’s emotions are in turmoil. Her husband’s also.’

A faint flush stained the Inspector’s cheeks. ‘Tell your father I’ll put in a request for the rent to be paid,’ she told Muna gruffly, turning the handle of the front door. ‘It’s in no one’s interests to have you evicted while your brother’s case remains open.’

Muna ducked her head in gratitude, and received a reluctant smile in return. It never ceased to amaze her how easily whites were embarrassed into doing what she wanted. She watched from inside the hall as the women walked away, and from the bowels of the cellar she heard the Devil laugh. The sound was tiny – a breath fluttering through the floor – but she felt its tremors run joyously through her body.

Spring

Twenty

Muna squatted in the dust of the chamber and touched her finger to Yetunde’s left cheek. She hadn’t visited since joining Olubayo to his family, and she felt a terrible disappointment to find Yetunde so shrunken and shrivelled. For a time, after Muna had peeled the parcel tape from her mouth, Yetunde had been pleasing to look at, but now her lips were drawn back from her teeth in an ugly grimace and her lids lay flat across her sockets as if her eyes had retracted inside her head.

So much of her flesh had withered that the rings on her fingers and the chains about her neck seemed out of proportion; as did the blue silk kaba that hung in bulky folds where the bulbous breasts and monstrous stomach had dried to nothing. It was hard to recognise Yetunde in this little grey corpse.

Abiola and Olubayo were the same. They lay in the dust – Abiola curled on his side and Olubayo flat on his back – with hollowed eyes and teeth protruding from their mouths. Muna doubted even Ebuka would find a likeness to his sons in their emaciated faces and taut, unfriendly sneers. She regretted the sense of revulsion she felt. Her pleasure at being able to love and caress them had been very brief.

She tried to lift Yetunde’s hand but the desiccated skin was set hard, holding the woman rigid. Princess would sit for ever with her head tilted back against the cellar wall unless Muna removed her. Such an idea had seemed impossible when Ebuka had first mentioned leaving, but Muna had learned from Mrs Hughes how easy it was to transport the contents of one house to another.

Ebuka would organise a lorry, and Muna would pack loose items into boxes and trunks before sealing them with parcel tape to prevent the contents spilling out. Since only she would know what was inside, she must mark the outsides with something that told the carriers where to leave the boxes at the other end. Mrs Hughes knew from experience how tedious and tiring it was to find kitchen crockery in upstairs rooms.

This knowledge had dissipated Muna’s fears of moving, a subject that had been mentioned frequently since counsellors, occupational therapists and social workers began to take an interest in her and Ebuka. All were agreed that a house with three storeys, a gravel drive and inadequate bathing facilities downstairs was unsuitable for a man in a wheelchair. It seemed it wasn’t possible to have the rent paid without accepting help and advice on everything else.

Most of the advice was beneficial to Ebuka. Once his right to receive assistance was confirmed, there was talk of supplying him with a modified car, offers of training to re-enter the workplace and intercession with his employer to keep his job open for another six months. More importantly, constant visitors – often unscheduled – meant Muna could no longer punish him through neglect.

She regretted this less than she thought she would since the most regular visitor was for her: a handsome young black man who came every afternoon to teach her reading, writing and arithmetic. Muna never tired of learning with him. He taught her in English and her heart fluttered joyfully each time he praised her quickness of understanding.

Ebuka wouldn’t allow them to be alone. He attended every lesson, frowning ferociously when the tutor’s approval elicited a smile. Muna could have told Ebuka it was the praise she liked and not the person – she had no feelings for people – but his irritation persuaded her to smile more. Jealousy, however misguided, was as good a punishment as neglect.

There was no predicting Ebuka’s emotions. Some days he paid Muna as little notice as when she’d been a slave; other days when she wore dresses that Yetunde had bought for herself when she was younger and slimmer – stored in the trunks in the cellar – his hot eyes never left her. He was at his most irritable on the occasions when Mrs Hughes complimented Muna on how pretty she was becoming and told her it wouldn’t be long before she had boyfriends.

Each time, he warned the girl strongly to forget any ideas of marriage. She was an illegal immigrant in a foreign land and could do nothing without papers. But Muna’s new ability to read allowed her to search for the documents that Yetunde had used to steal her from the orphanage and bring her to England, and these included a birth certificate and a passport in the name of Muna Songoli, and a second birth certificate, faded and torn, in the name of Muna Lawal.

She showed them to Ebuka and asked why he’d lied to her. When he didn’t answer, she set fire to everything relating to Muna Lawal, saying she didn’t choose to have an unknown man for a father or a prostitute for a mother. Her life would be better now that she could prove she was Ebuka Songoli’s daughter and had the same rights as he had.

His eyes filled with tears and she asked him why. Was his life not improved by her burning the evidence that a slave had lived in his house? Ebuka should be pleased. He need never fear discovery again. How often had he wished Muna gone in order to bring an end to her punishments?

But he wept and said his heart would break if she left him. He was more attached to his little slave than he’d ever been to his family, and longed for her company even when she treated him harshly. She’d been right to tell Inspector Jordan that he loved her. No other face pleased him so deeply. He couldn’t bear to lose her, and wished he’d destroyed all the papers so that her only choice was to stay.

Muna watched without emotion as the tears spilled down his cheeks. Unable to feel love or affection herself, she thought Ebuka weak and foolish to say such things. Could he not see how powerful little Muna would become if all she had to do was threaten to leave? She would never put such a threat into action. Ebuka had no understanding of her if he imagined she could live with another man. Even the thought of being touched by her handsome young tutor made her sick.

The cellar felt cold suddenly and Muna drew her dressing gown more tightly about her as she leaned forward to stare into Yetunde’s sightless eyes. There was no joy to be had from this mummified body. Dead, Yetunde could never acknowledge Muna as her mistress, or feel anger that a piccaninny had taken possession of everything she’d once owned. Perhaps it was a form of love to hate a person so much that life seemed empty without them.

She took a pair of secateurs from her pocket and trapped Yetunde’s thumb between the blades.

The mind is a mysterious thing, Princess, she said. However hard I try, I can’t stop thinking about you. It may have something to do with forgiveness, which the counsellor says brings closure. I’m not sure what that means except the Master hasn’t thought about you at all since he forgave you for stealing his money. Perhaps I’d feel differently if you were alive and you could tell me you were sorry for taking me … but I don’t think so. I’d know you were lying. It pleased you too much to possess a life that didn’t belong to you.

She squeezed the blades, smiling when they crunched together. She’d watched the gardener use secateurs to snip dead wood from shrubs and it seemed parched skin and brittle bone were as easily severed. Poor Princess. Her thumb popped from her hand like a discarded twig, making a faint clink as it hit the stone floor. Dried of blood and moisture, it was as light as a feather and Muna examined it curiously before placing it carefully on Yetunde’s lap.

She turned to nudge Abiola’s knee and marvelled as the body shifted easily in the dust. There was no weight in any of them. Even Olubayo, the last to die, moved at her touch. Next time she would bring a saw in order to dismember her trophies as efficiently as the gardener had hewn dead limbs from trees. And when the day came to place the parts into the trunks and suitcases on the other side of the wall, she would cover them with duvets and pillows and ask Mrs Hughes to make a mark which said they must be left in Muna’s bedroom. Ebuka would never think to search for pillows, and Muna would keep the secret for ever that his wife and sons lay buried in linen beneath her bed.

She stroked Yetunde’s cheek again. There will be no tears for you and your sons, Princess. No one will find you. You are mine to do with as I like.

Her words echoed off the chamber walls –
you are mine … you are mine
– and she shivered violently as the cold became so intense that her breath, warmer than the air, drifted like smoke across Yetunde’s face. Muna felt the metal of the secateurs burn like ice against her fingers and dropped them into her pocket before staring into the darkness beyond the chamber door.

The fabric of the kaba lifted on Yetunde’s chest, and for a shocked moment Muna thought the corpse had taken a breath. Her heart thumped painfully until the air warmed and the scent of jasmine filled her nostrils, reminding her of the schoolyard where she’d been happy.

She put her mouth to Yetunde’s ear. The Devil is here, Princess, but not to give you justice. It’s Muna He protects. He was in this place when you brought me to it and He gave me strength. You were foolish to take a child you knew nothing about. I was never so abandoned and unloved that you could steal me without fear of being punished.

Muna paused on the cellar steps when the light from her torch showed her that the door at the top was ajar. The hall beyond was in darkness but she had little hope the latch had come undone of its own accord. As she raised the beam to the aperture, the gap widened, revealing Ebuka, hunched in pyjamas, in his wheelchair. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the brightness and then leaned inside the doorjamb to flick on the cellar light.

The rod was across his knees and his mobile was clasped in his right fist. When he saw Muna, he gestured to her to keep coming towards him. I thought you were a burglar, he growled, moving his chair backwards to let her out. It’s the middle of the night. What on earth are you doing?

Muna pushed the torch into her dressing-gown pocket to mask the shape of the secateurs. I come here often, Master, she answered calmly. Sometimes I find it easier to sleep on a hard stone floor than I do in a bed. It was my home for many years and not all memories of it are bad.