Girl with the Golden Voice (38 page)

In ten days they had prepared and recorded half the sixteen songs Toni wanted on the new disc. Mary told Rebecca that she had never seen her father so excited about a musical work. Later that same day, as they were in the dressing rooms waiting to go on for their first number in a concert, Mary brought some more news.

‘Darling, I have to tell you. Julius Rubai is in the audience tonight.'

She looked in the mirror to see if there was a reaction from Rebecca. The eyes looked down and she reached out across the table for a comb, unnecessarily as Mary thought.

As she stepped out onto the stage, she was more nervous than usual, dreading that first eye contact. When it came she defended herself by launching her performance into a higher level of commitment and passion. On returning to the dressing room she vomited into the sink.

On the evening of the next concert, the first bunch of flowers was delivered to her backstage. The third night there were two bunches, one with a note attached, asking if he could come ‘round to see her after the show, ‘for old times sake'.

She waited for Mary to come around to wait for the first call to go out to join the band on stage. Alone, she was defenceless against another visit of the memory of his damp body pressing down on her. She sat rooted to her chair, eyes shut tight and praying hard. She talked with Mary, fighting to hold on to her self-control. Reluctantly and against Mary's advice she decided to let him come ‘round.

‘I know, I know, Mary, but perhaps, if I let it happen, he'll leave me alone. As long as you are with me, I think I can cope.'

‘Nothing could get me to leave this room while that hyena is here.'

‘Good evening, Kenya ladies!' Mary's stomach was already beginning to churn. ‘Great concert. Thought I'd drop in, say hello. I'm over on a business visit. Family stuff. Doing a bit of reading and studying as well. I'm going into politics.' He paused, waiting for effect. ‘Now that's a surprise …?'

Mary countered sharply. ‘Julius, you could go into deep-sea diving under the Arctic for all we care.'

‘Ah, but when I'm MP for Nakuru South, you'll see things differently. Nakuru South, that's your constituency, Rebecca. Can I count on your vote?'

The girls exchanged glances. Rebecca hoped she was not giving a hint of her surprise. She could not believe that Tom knew anything of Julius's plans. She would tell him later. But perhaps Julius was lying. He had discovered Tom's connection with Serena and wanted to upset, to be awkward in his usual way. Mary covered for her.

‘Don't let us keep you. You must have a lot to do.'

‘How would you know that?'

‘Well, if you've got to try to persuade someone to actually vote for you.'

‘I can't lose.'

‘Papa's money!'

Julius was not so successful at hiding his rush of anger. ‘What do runaways like you know about our country anymore?'

‘Have the people of Nakuru South turned into idiots and no one bothered to tell us runaways?'

‘Shut up!'

Mary tutted and shook her head mockingly. ‘A politician losing his temper when a runaway, and a woman at that, tries to tell him the truth. Fancy that!'

Julius's eyes blazed. He turned to leave but needed to have the last word. ‘It's a dangerous game you are playing. Rebecca, one day, and I think it will be quite soon now, you will realise that you must be more careful about the company you keep.'

Mary waited until he was stepping outside into the normal buzz of excitement that follows a performance before delivering, in a stage whisper, her final word. ‘Rebecca, do we have any air freshener around here?'

Julius's hesitation was slight but noticeable. He resisted the urge to turn and was gone.

It was a relief that Julius was not at the Flamingo the following night. Rebecca was not so lucky the next day. She was in a bookshop. She was caught up in her reading and, coming to the end of a row, bumped into another customer, a smiling Julius. He tried to pay for her book, as a ‘peace offering'. She refused but could not hold back his charm offensive. It continued on the pavement outside. He suggested that they take a drive somewhere.

‘Oh, yes, my car is parked around the corner. I know this town pretty well. We could go over to Liberty Island, see the lady with the lamp. Or Long Island. I have friends over there.'

Her reply was to hold out her left hand and flash her engagement ring at him. ‘I thought you knew. Well, you do now!'

‘Oh, yes, I'd heard. Sorry I can't congratulate you. You know in your heart that it's a mistake.'

‘Julius Rubai …'

‘That's much better. Lovely to hear my name on your lips.'

‘You're a bully and, worse still, a bore!'

‘Nothing you say can hurt my feelings.'

‘You disgust me. The first thing I'm going to do when I get back to the hotel is to get into a bath and wash off your foul stink …'

Too late to pull the words back.

‘Now that's a picture. I mean to spend some time thinking about!'

She was making the situation worse. Holding down her fury and her frustration demanded a special effort, but she managed to say nothing more. She raised her arm and a taxi pulled in to whisk her off.

Safe inside the car, she let the tears flow. A strong and mounting terror seized her. This snake, this pig of a man might just succeed in blighting her life in a big way. Brazen in this foreign country, how much more ruthless could he be back home? She thought of Tom's kidnapping two months before. Had Tom been allowed to escape then as a kind of warning? How easy for them to make sure next time, if that was what they wanted. Mysterious disappearances were no rare event in Kenya. Ordinary citizens had so little protection against well-paid, ruthless thugs. What a godless world where life was not sacred but cheap.

With her mind in freefall, she shocked herself with violent fantasies of her own. She pictured herself wildly stabbing the hateful mass of flesh, pulling a trigger and watching the ugly, leering grin changed to grovelling, pleading fear. These images were swept away abruptly when a very different thought flashed into her mind.

I cannot be Thomas's wife. I must not!

Rebecca half stifled a scream, but she could not hold back the stream of sobs which caused her whole body to tremble.

With mounting alarm the driver watched the emotional breakdown taking place in his mirror. His golden rule was never to interfere in what happened in the business end of his cab, except in extreme circumstances. He blessed himself that in his twenty years behind the wheel, he had never been confronted by such a situation. In his agitation he was struggling to keep concentrated on the driving.

‘Oh God, have mercy! Show me some other way! Please, I beg you! Tell me what I must do!'

Then it got worse.
To save Thomas … you must marry Julius!

‘Oh, Jesus, Lord, I would rather die.'

Total silence now in the back of the cab. No words, no trembling. Rebecca sat with her head bowed, rigid as a corpse.

Angelo Gomez broke his golden rule. He pulled into a parking space close to the gates of a public garden.

‘Lady, you want me to take you some place else? A hospital maybe? I got daughters your age.'

‘No! No! I have friends back at the hotel. I didn't mean to upset you, embarrass you.'

Angelo was startled at the girl's lightning return to polite composure.

‘I couldn't help hearing. You were praying. I thought that if we stopped … and said something together. It might help.'

She said nothing but shook her head gently. There were the beginnings of a smile on her face.

He took this to be a consent. After a few seconds silence, he began to sing. His light baritone whispered a melody that was slow and, in that moment, full of poignancy for her. Halfway through the second verse, Rebecca was singing the melody without the words that were in Spanish.

When the song was finished, more silence broken by a question. ‘Please, do I know you from somewhere? It's like I've seen you … not in the cab. Say, was you in a show on television or something? Hey!' he clapped his hands, ‘the concert from the Flamingo. My girl Maria, she's crazy for your voice. Am I correct?'

‘Yes. My name is Rebecca. I sing with Toni Wajiru.'

‘Say, would you sign your name on my
Post
?

‘If you want..'

‘Fantastico! Maybe Maria will believe that you were riding in my cab. And now, I gotta get you back. Ten minutes. I know a short cut.'

He pulled up outside the Flamingo at the promised time. Before she stepped down she reached out her hand.

‘Thank you so much. God did not forget me. That's why He sent you along at the right moment. But I'm keeping you. How much must I pay?'

‘I've enjoyed your company. I should be paying you! Lady, Rebecca, I'm on my way home now. We'll light a candle for you in Saint Patrick's tonight.'

‘Perhaps Maria would like to come to a concert, all the family.'

‘Rebecca, you fooling me?'

‘Call the ticket office. Tell them Rebecca Kamau wants to pay off a debt. Any trouble, tell them to talk to me.'

She opened the door to her bedroom and looked over to the blue telephone, the good friend who was a lifeline between her and Tom. But it was past midnight in Naivasha, too late for a call home. In an hour Mary would be calling in. The concert coming up was a big one, being recorded by a company who wanted to see if there would be a market for a live performance where any errors, big or small, were not wiped off. Toni had called one of his silent rehearsals. These took the same time as a normal run-through but with hardly a note played or sung.

The warm, perfumed water of a bath soothed her body and relaxed her mind. She recalled every moment of the time since she bumped into Julius in the bookshop. The memory was vivid, but there was a quality of separation about it, as if the act of stepping into the taxi marked the start of a new phase in her life. She was amazed. Yes, the rational side of her brain caused her to groan. She could not marry Tom and she would have to submit herself to Julius. That was still the only way in which she could save Tom's life. She could not even be sure of this. She thought of Papa's words about the Rubais being driven by a need to avenge themselves, with interest, on those who offended them, caused them to lose face.

More amazing still to her was a spill-over from her emotional core. She could and would cope. Already there was an uncompromising sense of mission building up inside her. From now on into an unspecified hour in the future, her every thought, feeling and action would take place against this background of mission of protecting the person she loved above all people.

Mary arrived and found her friend sitting in an armchair, sipping bottled water with the favourite red silk dressing-gown draped tightly around her.

‘Why so many things red, ‘Becca?'

‘Oh, many reasons. But red is the colour of Africa, isn't it? And it reminds me of the sun rising over the lake. I think it's a good colour for me, too'

Almost straightaway Mary noticed a change in Rebecca. Cool, sophisticated, in control, reminding her of those Nairobi wives of bigwigs in the know and in the money, usually someone else's. And her sense of the absurd was back, just like in the old days in Santa Maria.

‘Mary, what do you say? We two pack a small case, leave this city and go to live in a convent. Perhaps one day we could become teachers at Santa Maria.' She was smiling mischievously.

‘Love it, but don't forget, no silk dressing-gowns in there, no hairdos and the rest of it.'

‘But we wouldn't be bothered by silly little things and certain people.'

‘Dongos like Julius, you mean? But there would be no Tom either. Something else. We would be bothered by silly little things, all the time!'

‘I'd love singing psalms all day long.'

‘Now I know you're losing it.'

Rebecca's expression became serious, almost haunted. ‘Do you really think so, Mary?'

‘Of course not, goose! Come on! Rehearsal is in five minutes.'

On the surface business took over Rebecca's life for the next few hours. Underneath, the reasoning, the questions, the constant return to the brick wall of reality of Tom and Julius continued, unsuspected by those around her who had business of their own to focus on. The inner affected the outer in an important way; her on stage performance moved to new levels. Every person in that spiritual space locked onto the something that was driving that beautiful African girl on the stage in front of them. The emotional charge she exuded was electric and palpable. Toni, Mary and the rest of the band responded and at the end of the evening they were drained by the effort that had been drawn out of them.

The recording team was ecstatic. There had been fifteen one-take winners.

Rebecca slept badly and in the morning it took a huge effort for her to make her daily call to Tom. She composed herself, hoping that he would detect no change in her. But he did detect a change and quickly. He showed it by the pauses to her news about the cold weather, the new book she had bought, the concert, the absence of enthusiastic chatter about preparations for the wedding. She visualised the thoughtful frown on his face when he was not happy about something. Did he suspect that she was not being completely open?

For the rest of the day she was in company. After the band lunch, Toni took them up to Yankee Stadium to watch a Major League baseball game between the home team and the Chicago White Sox. Rebecca enjoyed the change of watching while somebody else performed even though what was happening on the pitch was a mystery to her. Toni had told her that what they would see would be a sort of rounders for men. The hitting she recognised but little else. Sister Letitia who taught the game at Santa Maria as a recreation for young ladies would surely have enjoyed the speed and power of these athletic men. Rebecca loved the noise and the colour. She would write about it in her diary later that day in the privacy of her room.