Everfair (34 page)

 

Dar-es-Salaam, East German Africa, October 1915

“Don't say you're doing this to be helpful.” Lisette hated lies. Though her own weeping was almost as regrettable as Rima's dishonesty. She wiped her eyes angrily with her last linen handkerchief. Why was she crying? Nothing was any use. Rima's luggage was packed. It had never been fully unpacked. Which truthfully had been part of the girl's attraction.

“But I
can
help. They gonna listen to me. I gotta go.” Whirling suddenly to face her, a wild hope in her eyes, Rima begged again. “Ain't you wanna go too? Aww, honey, you know you do! We be livin the
high
life in New York…” The words trailed off.

Lisette shook her head. “You will be living the high life without me.” Fwendi needed her—she had been ill for a month. Lisette looked anxiously up at the house as if she'd see her patient emerging from it into the courtyard.

This was certainly not the “high life.” Though they'd fled Mombasa hurriedly to avoid arrest, Matty could have bought a mansion on their arrival here, in the well-to-do neighborhood of Oyster Bay. Instead, he'd purchased a merely adequate new construction in this concrete subdivision, one of the few places Africans could live. Had he done so because of Fwendi? Probably. Though he couldn't have anticipated her sudden incapacity. A more modern dwelling would have hygienic conveniences to make her care easier.

The only running water available was cold, and it arrived in the courtyard, not the house proper, via an unsightly pipe. Walking deliberately around Rima, Lisette filled her basin and set it on the worktable, determined to accomplish something with her time other than an argument. A pointless argument. She took up the paring knife and began peeling and deveining prawns. The rich reek of their iodine filled the warm, still air. Lately, all Fwendi ate was seafood. Fortunate that here it was cheap and abundant. But what of Matty's plan to return to the interior?

“Lookit you! Ain't you tired a workin so hard?” Accusation underlaid Rima's solicitous words. “I'll hire servants to do all that shit! Secretary for your book writin. Dresses made special for you by Paris designers—you know that's what you deserve steada this!”

“If I wanted those things, be assured they would be mine!” Really, the child assumed too much.

“But I'm gonna be rich!”

As if that were guaranteed. As if it would make any sort of difference.

Then someone did come out from the house. Not Fwendi, of course—she spent most of the day abed. It was Matty. In his arms he held one of Lisette's other patients, whom she had named Bijou. Her crown creased by a long, shallow wound—a glancing encounter with a bullet, Lisette believed—the tortoiseshell cat had been unconscious when they'd found her dumped on the refuse behind the building housing Mombasa's government offices. Along with the third patient, Minuit, also a cat.

Matty transferred Bijou into Lisette's arms. “Will you sit with her for a while?” No need to specify whom he meant by “her.” Not either cat. “After you've said your goodbyes to Miss Bailey, of course.”

The high, impatient horn of a taxi sounded from the house's front. Holding the cat gave Lisette an excuse to refrain from embracing Rima. “Goodbye.” As coldly as possible, she kissed her lover's cheek. Her ex-lover. But she couldn't help crying one or two more tears. How Lisette would miss this gallant child whose usual sturdy forthrightness contrasted so well to her involved complications.

“You sure?” The girl stood unusually still.

“Of course I am sure!”

The horn blared again. And again. “Yeah. Okay. I'll write you plenty letters.”

“Their contents should be such as to interest Queen Josina when I send them on to her.”

Matty, three quarters Rima's height, offered to help carry out her trunks and cases. She loitered behind him on the steps and looked back over her shoulder at Lisette, eyes bright with sadness, but chin held high. “Lemme know when you change your mind.”

The taxi engine's appealingly deep growl dwindled away. Lisette waited some minutes to be sure the girl had finally gone. She offered Bijou an empty prawn shell. Predictably, the animal refused it.

Lisette ascended into the house. Fwendi occupied the larger of two rooms shaded by the palms on the house's north side. It was dark and cool and quiet here. The bed filled most of the floor. On its yellow covering, Fwendi lay face up, Minuit stretched at her feet. The black cat's splints and bandages had come off last market day. She, in contrast to Fwendi, was healing well.

Lisette sat on the edge of the bed nearest the door. Bijou stirred against her chest and she set her free. With great dignity, the queen stalked to the bed's head, as far as possible from its fellow cat. Fwendi followed its progress with her eyes.

“How strange that this one limps too,” Lisette said, as if continuing a conversation instead of starting one. “You would think she had suffered a broken leg as well as her sister. But all your pet strays have been just the same, have they not?”

Silence. Not even a look.

She didn't believe in lies. Only honesty made things right.

“Rima's gone back to America—without me. She wanted me to go with her, but I wouldn't—I couldn't! Yes, in part because there remains in me some hope of redeeming my love of Daisy. But there is also you, your so-mysterious illness, which I believe I understand.”

No reply. A wrinkling of the forehead, though.

“Why won't you talk? Are you keeping a secret? Do you think I don't know?” The wrinkles deepened. The eyes turned toward her, full of worry. “After living with you all those years?” She forced herself to use a soft tone to continue.

“Fwendi. My dear. You don't need to tell me anything. I'm your friend, as always. I believe you are sure of that much?”

On the bed, the invalid opened her mouth. Lisette waited. Nothing came out. Then Minuit rose and Bijou returned to Lisette's side. Together they put their forefeet in her lap. They blinked in tandem: Once. Twice.

Delicately, Lisette stroked the cut velvet of their supple throats. With time, perhaps, she could hope for some more definite form of communication. This was enough for now.

Through the room's entrance she heard the back door open and close as Matty came in. “Thank you for the reasonable excuse to cut short my adieux,” she said. She had always disliked dragging out the inevitable.

His moustache twitched in a quick smile. “I was glad to be of service to you.” It seemed likely that he really was glad; Fwendi's poor health had eased their enmity. His face grew grave as he approached the bed. “She's getting better, isn't she?”

“Of course.”

Matty nodded, satisfied, and leaned over to address Fwendi. “Do you need anything?” In reply, the patient raised one hand half the way to his rolled sleeve. He reached for it and took it in a hesitant grasp.

Frowning with embarrassment, Lisette stood up from the bed. “I must visit the market before it closes.” Work made a sovereign remedy for the inconvenient aching of a newly deprived heart.

Matty took her seat without appearing to notice what he did. “Yes. The Sekhons will be expecting you, won't they?” he said, his tone absent. How far he'd come in accepting that Lisette's skills were being used against his former home.

Armed with a parasol and a shopping bag of woven straw, Lisette walked the five blocks to the market, wishing for her dear steam bicycle. When returning home, she would indulge in a taxi, though the air would be cooler by then.

Under the dark green awnings of the vegetable sellers she found peppers; ground nuts; okra pods like short, fat cigars; and the leaves of mustard plants, which she knew from experience tasted very much like cress. The top of her bag she filled with a bouquet of cheap flowers. Then she was ready for business.

The Sekhons kept a spicery in a modest building tucked between a newsagent's and a purveyor of “fine textiles.” The disguise seemed flimsy. Lisette shut the shop's door behind her and set its brass bells ringing, summoning Madam Sekhon from the establishment's depths.

Inhaling the dry, astringently sweet air, Lisette moved forward to the counter separating them. Should she buy something? This was her second visit to Sekhon and Sons. Previously, she'd requested a blend to use in cooking curries. It had taken Madam Sekhon quite fifteen minutes to prepare, and in consultation with her husband, at that. Really, anyone knowing anything about India—Bharati, as Everfair's allies called their country—would see even without the display of such failings that the spicery was no more than a sham. With complexions as light as Lisette's own, the Sekhons were obviously of the wrong caste to be engaged in such an enterprise.

“May I help you?”

Lisette gazed at the tall, stout woman in astonishment. Did she not recognize her? They'd exchanged identifying phrases at their first meeting. Lisette had made her request for intelligence on the British Army's movements with not the slightest ambiguity.

The moment's passing must have brought clarity. “Are you back for more of that curry mixture? Or is there something else you'd like to try?”

“No—nothing else.” All she needed was information on troop assignments for the upcoming campaign. Why would the woman not speak plainly?

“Then I'll go fetch it for you.” She disappeared back into the building's inmost recesses.

A sudden feeling of being watched came over Lisette. Swiveling around, she saw the reason for Madam's reticence: on a stool by the door, which had hidden him as it opened, sat a small blond man. He had dressed far too formally for the climate, in a pale grey suit complete with vest.

“Splendid place, isn't it? Glad to meet another Englishman.”

“But I am not—”

“Hah! English
woman,
should have said.”

“No—I mean that I am French.” By birth, at least, so that was in a way true.

The man grinned and nodded in a show of appreciation. “Should have guessed, you looking so elegant and all. Allow me to introduce myself: Christopher Thornhill. And you are—”

“Mademoiselle Toutournier. But is not your country at war with these German barbarians?”

Thornhill cocked an eyebrow. “Was about to ask you the same, Mam'zelle.”

Madam Sekhon's reappearance saved Lisette from having to formulate a reply. The soi-disant shopkeeper carried in both hands a wide, flat, paper-wrapped bundle. It looked much too large to hold what it was supposed to. Lisette accepted the parcel without questioning its contents and left as swiftly as possible. Thornhill bowed and held the door for her. He followed her out, making an attempt at conversation, but fortunately the taxi parked at the next corner proved unoccupied.

Firmly closing the vehicle's weighty, well-hung door between them, she sank against the hide-covered seat back and gave the driver Matty's address. There was the tiniest of contretemps; the man—also Bharatese, but nothing like either of the Sekhons—didn't care to venture into that neighborhood. A handful of rupees settled the matter.

Surreptitiously, Lisette removed the “spices” from her bag and slipped her fingers underneath the parcel's wrappings. What she felt could be a stack of documents. But perhaps the pages were blank? Drawing forth a single sheet, she saw dark markings. Satisfactory. She would examine and copy them. One more trip to return to her source what she'd been given, and there'd be no bar to going home to Everfair. Where Fwendi would heal faster, Lisette was sure, nursed by her great-uncle Mr. Mkoi. And where Daisy waited, to hurt her again. But only if she let her.

 

Kisangani, Everfair, November 1915

Matty grimaced up at the rapidly clearing sky. He hated so to leave Fwendi's side. She might start talking again at any moment; there should always be someone present to hear her. That was why he'd first tolerated, then come to rely upon, Mademoiselle Toutournier. During that short but excruciating voyage south from Mombasa, the Frenchwoman had proven indispensable. In Dar-es-Salaam, while they waited for his dear to recover enough that they could continue traveling, she'd sat with Fwendi on her own, and often with him as well; her arguments had finally convinced him to accept somewhat the necessity of spying against Britain for Everfair. On the long train ride to Kigoma, and on
Okondo,
which still flew in civilian service, she'd spelled him as often as necessary.

Now it was necessary again. Though he supposed he could have asked Mademoiselle or another to meet Great-Uncle Mkoi and escort him from the airfield, Matty was schooling himself these days to show proper respect for blacks. Fwendi had never said as much, but he knew she'd found him lacking in some way he had yet to understand.

There must be nothing to divide them. They must be united. He would be brave and ignore the nightmares; he would ask her to marry him as soon as she could answer. Before then, even.

And of course he would have to find the courage to ask Great-Uncle Mkoi also. Constant proximity might help. Another reason for Matty's presence on the airfield.

At least the rain had stopped. Kisangani's annual December respite seemed to have begun early. Banks of clouds stained purple by the sun's descent were dissolving like dreams. A deep, calm blue showed behind them. A few drops of water wetted Matty's face, falling from the oil palms under which he and Clapham stood.

He shook his head at the butler's silent offer. He didn't want Clapham to open his umbrella; he defied the weather. Surely the drums had spoken the truth and the aircanoe would arrive soon?

At long last, like a bright wisp of misplaced sunset,
Okondo
appeared in the east. Nearer and lower she came, her engine's distant hum becoming a bass rumble. Ground crew atop the designated tethers secured her. Altogether a much smoother operation than the pioneering efforts of eighteen years ago. There were even stairs being rolled out for use by her passengers.