Where Bones Dance: An English Girlhood, An African War

Wake

Wake I went to the wake today.” “Oh yes?” says my father, wiping cream from his chin. “It was hot and dark and smelly. The women sat there and wailed. Katie sat wrapped in blue traditional dress and wailed with the best of them. She looked exhausted. It goes on for days and days. I’d never have guessed she would go back to the old ways. She looked like any other Yoruba village mammy. Carol said the same thing. She said it’s especially hard for them not having found the body because the Yoruba believe the spirit can’t rest till the body is properly buried. But really it was so odd to come out of that room into the light and see Sam sitting there in his dark suit reading the newspaper. In a way though I think Katie will get over it quicker. Carol said when John’s mother died he went back to the village. Left her in the city with three young children . But when he came back he was over it. I don’t think it’s been easy for Carol. A little red headed lass from Birmingham married to a strapping black man. She says her mother almost died.” “Why?” I ask. 133 134 My mother rings the bell for Gabriel to clear the plates. “Why did she?” “Well, can you imagine?” My mother is waiting for Gabriel to go back in the kitchen. “I don’t suppose I would be thrilled if you married a Nigerian.” “Why not?” “It’s not the color of their skin, that’s not it, it’s the cultural difference . I just don’t think it works very often. You don’t expect the same things. Anymore than if you married a Yorkshire miner.” “I’m not going to get married anyway.” “Don’t be daft. You’ll grow up and marry a rich man and keep your mother in her old age, won’t you darling?” Gabriel brings in the coffee and the cream and the sugar. “I won’t get married.” “You wait and see. You’ll fall in love with someone just like Dad fell in love with me.” My father takes the Times out of his briefcase. The paper is thin and crispy. It is the kind they send by airplane. On the page facing me, in small black letters, it says: Starvation in Biafra. Christine is in Biafra. He puts the paper down and lights a cigarette . When he picks it up again he folds it in half. I can’t see the article. I can’t see him, only his hands and the smoke coming out of the top of the paper. I know my mother is going to tell the story again but I always listen. There is something I keep missing. “Before I ever met Dad I was one of the entertainment secretaries at the Foreign Office. It was our job to organize parties as well as doing ordinary secretarial work. They gave us a hundred pounds extra a year for clothes and expenses. That was a lot of money in those days. Brigitte did it too. We shared a little cottage right by Hyde Park where the Horse Guards exercised their horses in the morning. It happened that I had to give a party for Princess C y c l e 2 Christina of Sweden. I was at my wits’ end. She was six feet tall and all my boyfriends were in the Horse Guards, little chaps. Then Brigitte said, ‘What about that tall young man who tips his bowler to you in the tube?’” “That’s Dad,” says Bill. “‘He works in the Foreign Office, doesn’t he? Ask him.’ So I invited him and the party was a great success. The only thing was they danced for hours and I ran out of Pimms but I thought, God, they’re all so drunk they’ll never notice if I give them cold tea instead. So there I was in the kitchen brewing up gallons of black tea when who should walk in but Dad. That’s when he decided this is the wife for me, isn’t it darling?” “Yes,” says my father. He gets up. He puts his hand on her shoulder and squeezes it. Then he goes over to the radio. The bells of Big Ben sound. Seventeen hours...