Soul Sisters Read online

  He looked back down at the ground. What were they doing in the mealie stalks at dusk? He struggled to recall the Shona word. ‘Home,’ he said finally, pointing to the watch he carried on a chain. Would they understand what he meant?

  ‘We went to fetch water, bwana,’ the darker one piped up suddenly in clear, if accented English.

  His head flew up, astonished. Where had she learned English? Chief Lobengula had flatly refused to allow the girls in the village to attend the mission school alongside the few boys he’d managed to spare. ‘School is no place for women,’ Reverend Grove had informed him haughtily when he first arrived. ‘That’s Lobengula’s view, anyway. No use trying to persuade him otherwise, trust me.’

  ‘You speak English?’ he stammered incredulously.

  She nodded. She was a bright-looking scrap of a thing, dark as you please, with skin the colour of a burned nut, or peat . . . he struggled to find the right words. Not for the first time, he wondered why the Chief was so against sending the girls to the one-room mission school. If this one was anything to go by, they were as bright – if not brighter and a darn sight more pleasant to look at – than any of the boys.

  ‘Yes, bwana. I speak English.’ Her voice was calm, unlike his, which had come out in a high-pitched squeal.

  ‘How?’

  ‘My brothers taught me.’ She lifted her chin, a touch defiantly, he thought to himself. She was not like the other girls, shy, timid little things whose gaze fell away the moment his landed.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Well, that’s . . . that’s a good thing,’ he said finally. Guid. He hated the way it came out, the long ‘uuu’, like those insufferable Dutchmen to the south. He caught the look of stifled laughter that passed between them and felt the heat rise in his neck. The truth was, he’d had very little to do with women, African or otherwise. It embarrassed him now to recall the conversation with Bellingham of a few evenings ago.

  ‘So, anyone special left behind?’ Bellingham had asked, his lean frame sprawled out on the wicker chair in front of him. Unlike both George and Reverend Grove, who wore shirts and uncomfortably heavy trousers at all times, no matter how hot it was, Bellingham wore shorts. The first time George had seen him striding towards him in the mirage of heat and dust, he’d been scandalized. Those thick, muscular knees and finely turned calves . . . disappearing into leather sandals? He’d blushed to his scalp, as if a naked woman had suddenly appeared in front of him. Even Reverend Grove, usually the first and quickest to defend Bellingham, had felt compelled to give a small sermon. ‘Bellingham, it is not only that the requirement of modesty necessitates the provision of some sort of clothing, however simple, but Christian morality—’

  ‘Sir, I’m afraid it’s too hot,’ Bellingham cut him short, smiling broadly. ‘And whatever I’m wearing, it’s a darn sight more than they’ve got on.’ It was hard to argue with that.

  Looking now at the scantily clad teenagers in front of him, George was forced to agree. He looked away, aware of his reddening face and neck. Dammit, he thought to himself, no Scotsman is made for these parts.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he demanded suddenly.

  ‘I am Nozipho.’

  ‘Nozipho.’ He pronounced it slowly. It was a pretty name.

  ‘It means “gift”,’ she added. The other girl said something sharply to her, most likely admonishing her for volunteering information. All three stared at each other for a few seconds, then, without saying a word, the two girls suddenly turned and ran, their buttocks jiggling provocatively beneath the scrap of leather and beads they wore in place – and mockery – of a skirt. He forced himself to look away. The view it gave him of himself was disturbing. He was a sober man of impeccable moral truth. He didn’t like the way the girl – Nozipho – looked at him. As if there were something in him that justified – or even encouraged – her scrutiny. As if he were other than what he appeared.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Bellingham looked up as he entered the room. It annoyed him, that lingering emphasis on the ‘you’. As if he were incapable of going anywhere on his own.

  ‘Nowhere,’ he replied shortly. ‘A walk.’

  ‘A walk?’ Bellingham’s voice carried with it his amused disbelief. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ George repeated. He sat down on the edge of his narrow bed and began to unlace his boots. He didn’t like to reveal his bare calves and feet in front of Bellingham but there was little choice. Until the new mission was completed, he was stuck there in the small, airless room with him and there was no escape. Bellingham’s flesh had none of the dead marble whiteness of his own; it was burnished to a deep gold by the sun, as if polished to reveal the vitality within. He thrust his thin white toes away from view, sitting awkwardly on his hands, wishing he were anywhere but there.

  ‘Ever been tempted?’ Bellingham spoke up suddenly, not bothering to lower his book. An Outcast of the Islands. George noted the title immediately. He had no idea how Bellingham did it . . . managing to keep up with the latest titles and trends from Britain, which might as well have been the moon for all their contact with the outside world.

  ‘Tempted?’ George was momentarily confused. Tempted by what?

  ‘By them.’ Bellingham answered his unasked question, lowering the book. He winked conspiratorially at George. ‘I don’t mind telling you,’ he said chummily, ‘I’ve been more than tempted. Held myself back, of course. Well, you have to, don’t you? No knowing what the consequences might be. And they’d be pretty damn difficult to hide,’ he chuckled.

  George stared at him, aghast. ‘Wh-what are you talking about?’ he stammered.

  ‘Oh, come on. I’ve seen your face when you think no one’s looking. She’s got a fine pair on her; I’ll tell you that for free.’

  ‘Who?’ George felt hot and clammy, suddenly dizzy.

  ‘Old Lobengula’s daughter. The young one. I think they call her Nophizo, something like that.’

  ‘Nozipho,’ George corrected him automatically. ‘It means “gift”.’

  ‘There you go.’ Bellingham let out a lewd guffaw. ‘You have noticed, you sly old dog.’

  George shook his head firmly, although his face was on fire. ‘She’s the Chief’s daughter,’ he said sourly.

  ‘All the more likely to comply,’ Bellingham commented mildly. ‘They’d sell their mothers if they thought it would gain them an advantage.’

  George said nothing, too shocked to protest. Bellingham’s tone was decidedly un-Christian. He stood up suddenly. The room was too airless to contemplate staying indoors and despite the mosquitoes, he wanted to be outside, away from Bellingham’s prying eyes. He opened the door and breathed a sigh of relief. It was nearly dark and all around him, the land ran away to the horizon. There was nothing to be seen, only the appearance of the darkening sky. The bits of space between the smooth round mud huts came together in the darkness, ballooning out until he was lost in it. A few minutes later the village was gone, swallowed up entirely. Somewhere off in the distance he heard the cattle bellowing softly. The crickets had begun their night song. The land never slept. He ached for the silence of winter, the crying of birds as they migrated from place to place, season to season, the gentleness of it all. He sat down heavily on the edge of the step, forgetting for a moment that his feet were bare and that all it would take was one little sting, one little nip from an insect he could barely see, let alone name . . . and God only knew what might happen. That was the worst thing about being here. God only knew what might happen.

  PART ONE

  1949

  Twenty-eight years later

  • • •

  Confession is good for the soul even after the soul has been claimed.

  MONA RODRIGUEZ

  1

  Robert McFadden, aged thirteen, pressed his ear flat against the wooden panelling and strained to hear the conversation taking place on the other side of the wall. ‘You cannot be serious,’ his mother said, her voice tight with outrage. ‘Where is sh
e?’

  There was a moment’s silence, then his father’s voice came through the wall. Weak and placating. ‘Well, that’s just the thing . . . she’s, er, here.’

  ‘Here? Where’s here? Here? Here in Edinburgh?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Robert frowned. It had been a strange week. His father, who had been away in Africa for most of Robert’s life, was finally back. For good. But Mother seemed about as pleased to see him as she was to see the gardener. Or the coalman. Or the old hunchback who delivered vegetables once a week. Not pleased, in other words. Knowing Margaret McFadden, it wasn’t altogether surprising. Robert’s quiet, stern character, somewhat disconcerting in a child of thirteen, came almost exclusively from his mother, or so everyone said. She’d married ‘down’ – that was the word everyone used. For a time, Robert thought it meant ‘Africa’; ‘down there’, as the servants kept referring to it. After a while, however, he grasped the true meaning of the word. It had to do with money, of which his mother had plenty and his father absolutely none. No one seemed to understand how or why they’d married in the first place and, since he was an only child, there was no one to ask, no one with whom he could speculate. All he knew was what Mrs Guthrie, the housekeeper, had told him in those odd moments when she’d relaxed sufficiently to pour herself a wee dram and ease off her shoes. His mother was the daughter of a Rhodesian landowner, originally from Scotland, who’d been travelling with his wife and two young daughters from Salisbury to Johannesburg when their train derailed and they were stuck for a week in Marula, a tiny mission station just south of Bulawayo where his father was stationed. He loved hearing the words. Bulawayo. Marula. Gweru. In Mrs Guthrie’s mouth they took on an even more exotic ring. ‘Bool-ay-waay-oh.’ He’d looked it up on the map. He found it impossible to imagine his mother in anything other than the high-necked, stern dresses with full skirts, stockings, boots and sometimes even a tie that she wore year-round, even on the odd day when the sun shone brightly in Edinburgh and the air turned misty with heat and haze. Whatever had transpired in that week in the middle of darkest Africa, Margaret Strachan returned to Scotland betrothed. He was aware too that the word ‘return’ had a certain ironic ring to it. Before she’d set foot in the house in Abercromby Place, purchased for her and her new husband by an overly grateful father, she’d only once been to Scotland. She’d grown up on a sprawling estate in Rhodesia, had been home-schooled by her mother, an Englishwoman of her time and class, and as a result, sounded about as Scottish as the Queen, whom she adored. Unlike her husband, whose Glaswegian accent was as irrevocably wedded to his vocal cords as his tweed suits were to his frame, there appeared to be little of Scotland in the woman, and vice versa. Every chance she could, she boarded the steam train for London, taking Robert with her. When Robert was nine, she’d outraged everyone by declining to send him to Fettes College or George Heriot’s, which was where his cousins had been sent. Instead, she sent him to Eton. When he first heard the news, he was secretly relieved. Neither school inspired anything more than outright dread. Fettes with its gloomy Gothic spires and George Heriot’s with its turrets and cold, stone facade seemed more like prisons than schools. He much preferred Eton. The endless playing fields, the smiling house matron, and the fact that he was four-hundred-odd miles away from the frosty atmosphere of 3 Abercromby Place was enough to assuage any homesickness he might otherwise have felt. By the age of thirteen, he sounded for all the world exactly like all the other English boys in his year . . . there was nothing Scottish about him, which pleased Margaret no end but seemed to upset and astonish his father. In truth, it mattered little. He so seldom saw or heard from his father that by the time George McFadden returned to Edinburgh, Robert, who was on holiday from school, hardly recognized him.

  ‘And what’m I to do with her?’ he heard his mother ask frostily. He pressed his ear even harder against the wall.

  ‘I . . . well, perhaps we could find some . . . employment . . .?’

  ‘Employment?’ His father might as well have blasphemed. ‘What sort of employment?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘Well, she could join the other servants . . . in the house?’

  ‘The house?’ His mother’s voice rose. ‘In our house? Whatever will people say? A Negro serving girl in this house?’

  ‘She’s not . . . well, I mean, clearly . . . yes, of course, she’s a . . . a . . . well, I mean, the thing is . . . I can hardly send her back, can I?’ His father appeared to be pleading.

  ‘Robert McFadden! What in heaven’s name are ye doing?’ He jumped guiltily. It was Mrs Guthrie, on her way to light the drawing room fire.

  ‘I . . . I was just . . .’

  ‘Eavesdropping, that’s wha’ ye’re doin’! Runaway wi’ ye, afore I tell yer mither.’ Mrs Guthrie glowered down at him. Robert needed no second warning. He fled. His mother would take an extremely dim view of his eavesdropping. As he galloped up the stairs to his room on the third floor, two at a time, he wondered who they’d been talking about. A Negro. A servant girl, too, by the sound of it. Who was she and how had she come to be in Edinburgh, in his home?

  2

  His first thought, upon seeing her for the first time, was that she resembled nothing so much as a deer; a doe-eyed, frightened-looking deer, caught in the cross-hairs of a gun. His second thought, coming close on its heels, was that there was something strangely familiar about her, as though he’d seen her before. The two thoughts jostled uneasily at the forefront of his consciousness as he stared at her. It was a cold grey morning and the air was like smoke. Through the large sash window that looked onto the gardens at the rear of the crescent, the soft, muffled sky moved slowly and ponderously. Beyond the sloping rooftops and chimneys that fell to the Firth of Forth, the waters of the estuary glinted like steel.

  She stood next to the large oak table, floury with the morning’s baking, her thin, dark fingers resting trembling on its edge, as though she might otherwise fall. She was slight – so slight! – dressed in a long, dark brown pinafore frock that was several sizes too big for her and only a shade or two darker than her skin. He had never seen a Negro before. Once, in London, sitting in the back of a taxi with his mother, he’d seen an Indian man in a resplendent turban and a long, flowing robe that looked more like a dress than anything a man might wear. He’d craned his neck for ages, trying to catch the last glimpse of his dark skin and flashing white eyes, but his mother had caught him out and reprimanded him for staring. Now, however, he couldn’t help himself. She was unlike anyone he’d ever encountered. Her hair, escaped from the funny cloth hat she wore, was thick and springy, a soft dark cloud that shaped her head like a halo.

  ‘Dinnae stand there gawpin’ at each other,’ Cook said briskly. ‘Here, start wi’ this, will ye?’ she said to the Negro girl, handing her a rolling pin. Her own thick, meaty arms were covered in flour, sleeves pushed up to her elbows. The girl stood there, dumbstruck, though whether with terror or incomprehension, Robert couldn’t tell. How old was she?

  ‘Does she speak English?’ Robert asked curiously.

  ‘Aye, or so yer father says,’ Cook said sniffily, as though the girl was invisible. ‘I’ve nivver heard her say a word, mind.’

  Suddenly the girl picked up the rolling pin and followed Cook’s lead, batting down the soft mass and separating it into thick balls, ready to be rolled. So, she did speak English after all. He smiled, pleased with the discovery. To his surprise, she smiled back, offering the full charm of her face to him, like a shy gift. It was a pleasant shock. There was something about her, he discovered, that made him fear a rebuff. He had no idea how to talk to her. In his confusion, he turned away and quickly left the kitchen.

  He climbed the stairs to his room on the third floor, just below the servants’ quarters. It was lonely at home in the holidays. He missed the rowdy, rough-and-tumble atmosphere of school. Home was boring in a way school never was, could never be. Sometimes his mother came upon him in the library or the drawing room, ‘
idling without purpose’, she called it. In Mother’s eyes there could be no greater sin.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to recall the girl’s face beyond the shock of the new. Her features were smudged, any attempt at a precise recollection blotted out by her darkness. Eyes? Black, he thought, like the springy soft mass of her hair. Nose and mouth? He saw her in his mind’s eye and frowned. There it was again, that strange sense of familiarity hovering on the edge of his consciousness. Was it possible he’d seen her likeness somewhere? A photograph, perhaps? It had been years since his father had opened any of the leather boxes that lay along the bottom shelf of the bookcase in his study. They contained a treasure of sepia-tinted photographs of Father’s ‘other’ life in Africa, that place Robert had never seen and could scarcely imagine.

  The clock on the landing suddenly struck eleven, the last chimes fading softly into the mid-morning gloom. On impulse, he stood up suddenly. Father had gone out earlier that morning and his mother was entertaining a circle of women from the church in the drawing room on the ground floor. He had a sudden longing to open those boxes and see for himself where the mysterious Negro girl had come from. He might even find a photograph that he’d once seen, long ago, that was now reasserting itself in his mind’s eye, explaining why it was that he felt he knew her, as impossible as it seemed.

  The dust motes spiralled slowly upwards as he pulled the first box towards him. It hadn’t been moved for months, perhaps even years. No one ever came into the study other than Father and the maids, who hurriedly dusted and restocked the copper bucket of coals every other week. Somewhere inside him, a momentary twinge of unease surfaced but he suppressed it quickly, a little quiver of excitement running through him as he lifted the lid. The musty smell of old paper and tobacco rushed upwards to meet him.