Chapter 17
Choice
Being alone, Ruth discovered, was a skill. Like planing, it was mostly a matter of not forcing it.
The first week she did it badly. She cleaned the flat from top to bottom at midnight. She rang her mother twice a day and said nothing in particular. She drove past the turning to Entebbe on the Kampala road, three times, with her hands tight on the wheel, and each time carried on. She woke at four with her heart pounding, certain she had left a candle burning, and lay staring at the ceiling until the muezzin at the mosque across the street began to call.
The second week she bought a plant. It was a small ugly fern in a plastic pot, from a woman at the roadside, and she set it on the sill and watered it conscientiously and it died within nine days. She bought another. This one lived.
By the third week she had begun to notice small things. That she liked her coffee black. That she hummed when she drew. That the flat, with nobody in it but herself, had a particular quality of light in the late afternoon, a thick gold slant across the floorboards, which she had never once seen in the years she had been waiting for the phone to ring. She sat in it, with a pencil and a pad, and drew nothing at all, and was almost content.
She did not call Daniel. He did not call her. Once a week a short message arrived at nine in the evening, always the same length, always the same: Mama is walking. She cursed the physiotherapist. All well here. Once: The fascia is finished. I put a pencil mark on the back. It says R. Once, only, late in November, a photograph with no words: the Nambi on the lake in the early light, her sail slack, a figure at the stern with one hand raised.
She looked at it for a long time. Then she put the phone face down on the table and made herself eat her rice.
Rob Mugisha asked her to lunch on the first Tuesday of December.
He chose the Serena, of course. He chose the terrace, where the lanterns were lit even at noon and the lawn ran away below them in clipped green stripes. He rose when she came, in a pale suit, with his gold watch and his boundless benevolent smile, and held her chair. He ordered for both of them. He talked about the weather, and the new highway, and his daughter's wedding in Mbarara, until the soup was gone and the waiter had retreated. Then he folded his hands on the cloth and looked at her with an expression of tender concern.
"My dear Ruth," he said. "I'll be frank. I always am."
"Please."
"There has been, as I'm sure you know, a good deal of talk." He lowered his voice, not much. "I don't enquire into private matters. A man has a right to a private life. And a woman. If an engagement ends, then it ends, these things happen, it is nobody's affair. But I understand that Timothy has been to see an advocate."
"I wouldn't know."
"And that he has been to Katabi, more than once. And that he has asked, at the bank, for a leave of absence." Rob's smile did not alter. "I think you know a great deal, my dear. I think you know more than any of us. And I think you are a sensible person."
She said nothing.
"What I wish to say," said Rob, "is that there are people who would like this matter to remain within the family. Who feel that an old private sorrow, a tragic but long-settled accident, does no one any good to disturb. Who would be, shall we say, extremely grateful to those who helped it rest." He lifted his glass. "I speak of the Ministry. Of the party. Of certain friends at the museum."
"The museum."
"Whose shortlist is being reconsidered. Naturally. Naturally, I have no power over a museum committee. But I could mention, over a cup of tea, that Nakitende Heritage Works is a firm of unusual merit. And the Entebbe Hospital extension. And the Jinja Town Hall." He smiled with infinite sweetness. "It is a very large amount of work for a young woman. I think the right person could even, with a little help, find the Kasozi funds released."
The terrace was very quiet. Somewhere below, a gardener was whispering through a lawn with a rake.
She looked at him for a long time. She thought of the figures she had added on her drawing board, in the small hours. She thought of Brian's blotched face, and of the two juniors in the Nakasero office who had followed her out of a bigger firm on the strength of her promises. She thought of a framed degree certificate in her mother's sitting room, and the tilted pride in her mother's face when she hung it. It would have been so easy. It would have been, she saw, an act of the purest prudence: five words, a signature, a quiet word in Timothy's ear. Wait. Think of the family.
It is the same thing, she thought. The shirt in the basin. The curtain at the window. One more person standing still.
"Mr. Mugisha," she said, "do you know what my profession is?"
"You are an architect."
"I look at old buildings and tell people where they are going to fall down." She laid down her spoon. "It's usually where somebody painted over a crack. I've seen it in churches. I've seen it in a palace. The worst collapse I ever surveyed was in a bank, in 2019. They'd put a very handsome plaster over a very large fracture, and then they hung a portrait of the founder on it. It held for eleven years." She folded her napkin. "I'm afraid I don't paint."
His smile stayed where it was, for a moment, as though forgotten. Then it thinned, very slightly, at the edges.
"That's a pity," said Rob Mugisha.
"I expect so."
"You'll find the work hard to come by."
"I expect that, too." She stood. "Thank you for the soup."
She walked out through the lantern-lit terrace, past the clipped lawn and the rake, and down the long marble steps into the afternoon. Her legs were trembling. Halfway to her car she began to laugh, quietly, helplessly, to herself, with her hand pressed over her mouth. I've just thrown away the museum, she thought. And the hospital. And the town hall. And I haven't felt so clean since March.
"You are the most irritating client I've ever had," said Esther.
It was a Friday morning, and the board room of Nalubega, Kizza & Associates, on the eighth floor of a tower in Kampala Road, was full of dry cold light and the smell of toner. A long table of polished wood ran the length of it. On one side sat Timothy, in a plain navy suit, with a legal pad and a pen; on the other, Daniel, in his father's grey one, with his hands flat on his knees. Between them, at the head, Esther in a black blazer had laid out three folders and a small brass bell which she did not ring.
Ruth sat at the foot. She had been asked to come as a witness, and a friend, and because Timothy had said, in a voice like a held breath, I'd rather you heard what it costs.
"I'll say it once," said Esther, "and then I'll say it again, slower. Mr. Kasozi." She meant Timothy. "If you go to the police, you will be charged with causing grievous harm by dangerous driving, and with failing to report an accident, and with a range of ancillary offences of which I will spare you the list. You will plead guilty. The court will take into account the passage of time, your voluntary disclosure, and the fact that a man has already served a sentence for your crime. That last part is not a defence. It is, I think, a mitigating factor. I would expect a custodial sentence."
"How long?" said Timothy.
"Two years. Perhaps three. Perhaps less, with a very good plea in mitigation and a very forgiving complainant." She glanced at the folder. "Mr. Okello has said he is willing to speak. That helps."
He wrote it down. His pen did not shake.
"Mr. Kasozi." She turned. Daniel looked up. "The other one. You are in a more awkward position. You gave a false statement to the police eight years ago. You pleaded guilty to an offence you didn't commit. In strict law, that is perverting the course of justice." She held up a hand. "I don't think anyone will prosecute you. I'd put it at ninety per cent. The DPP has discretion, and no sane prosecutor wants a headline that says Man Jailed for Brother's Crime Charged for Saying So. But I can't promise. If you sign an affidavit, as you must if your conviction is to be set aside, you will be admitting it on paper."
"I'll sign."
"I haven't finished."
"I know. I'll sign anyway."
"Daniel—" said Timothy.
"No." Daniel's voice was mild. "Don't argue with me, Tim. I'm tired of arguing. I want it done. I want my name back, yes, though I've lived without it long enough that I'm not certain what I'd do with one. But mostly I want you to be able to look in the mirror and not see a slip of paper." His mouth twisted. "I'd like to be the one thing in your bathroom that's finished."
Timothy bent his head. A small sound escaped him, which he converted at once into a cough.
"Then there's Mrs. Kasozi," said Esther, more gently. "Your mother. The shirt. That is the destruction of evidence, and an accessory after the fact. She's sixty-eight. She has a heart condition. I would expect the DPP to decline. But it's on the record, and she'll have to be told."
"She knows," said Daniel. "She told us herself."
"Then she's braver than all of you." Esther closed the folder. She sat back and looked round the table at the three of them with a long, level, weary look. "I'll add one thing, which is not law. In ten years of family practice I have sat across from a great many people who have wrecked each other's lives. I have never seen a family try so hard to be punished." A dry smile. "I'm going to ask you to consider that it might be allowed to be over."
Nobody said anything.
"When?" said Esther. "The statement. I'd like it prepared properly. The affidavits, the character evidence, the mitigation. It will take a few weeks. Say January."
"No," said Timothy.
The room turned.
He had put down his pen. He sat very upright, with his hands on the table, and his face had that stripped steadiness she had seen in the kitchen. "I'd like to do it before Christmas. I'd like to do it on the thirteenth. Of December."
Ruth's heart gave a small hard knock.
"The thirteenth," said Esther.
"A Saturday. Police stations are open." He did not look at Ruth. "I had a day booked. For a wedding. I had the marquee, the caterers, a choir. The invitations were printed, and I hadn't the heart to throw out the box." He swallowed. "I thought I might spend the day usefully."
"That's very—"
"I'm not asking for permission. I only thought you should hear the date." A pause. "I want the night before at the house. With Mama. She's coming home from Mulago on Wednesday. I want to sit in my father's study for one more evening as the man I was meant to be. And then I'd like to go in the morning, in the suit, and give it all to a desk sergeant. It seems to me the right way round." His voice dropped. "Does that sound mad?"
"It sounds," said Esther slowly, "like a man who needs a ritual."
"Perhaps." He looked at last at Ruth, and for the first time in two months he smiled, a small, shaky, honest thing. "I wonder if you'd come. The night before. I'd like you to see it. The house. I won't ask anything else."
"Tim, I—"
"It's only dinner." His smile quavered. "I haven't, in my whole life, been able to host a decent dinner without Mama's help. I thought you might give me marks."
She looked at Daniel. He was gazing at the table, at his own scarred hands. He did not lift his eyes. He did not try to ask. And she understood that this, too, was a kind of gift: a door held open and left alone.
She thought of the figure on the lake, a small hand raised against the dawn.
"I'll come," said Ruth.
It was dusk when she reached the car park. The tower threw a long shadow across the tarmac, and the traffic on Kampala Road had thickened into a slow river of red lights. She was fumbling for her keys when a voice said, behind her, "Ruth."
She turned.
Daniel stood a few paces off, under the faded shade of a jacaranda, with his jacket over his arm. The last of the sun lay across his shoulders. He looked thinner. Beside his mouth, where there had been a split lip, was a tiny white scar.
"I wasn't going to speak to you," he said.
"I know. You've been very good."
"I've been terrible. I've written you eleven letters and burnt nine." He gave her a wry, drawn look. "Two I posted. You'll find them in a drawer, I imagine, unopened."
"I opened them."
"Did you?"
"The second one made me laugh." She hesitated. "The one about the colour of your underpants."
"That was a mistake."
"It was a delight." She leaned back against the car. They stood for a moment in silence, with the cold evening breeze lifting the jacaranda blossoms, mauve and loose, and sending them over the cement in a small purple drift. The trees had come into flower the week before. She had hardly noticed. "He's right, you know. About the dinner."
"I know."
"It's going to be hard."
"It is." He studied the pavement. "I wanted to say something, if you'll let me. I'm not asking for anything. It's only that on Friday I'll be in a house with the two people I love most in the world, and one of them is going to walk into a police station the next day, and I may not get another chance to say it clearly."
"Say it."
"I don't know what we are," said Daniel. "I don't know what you'll decide. I've been in the house for two months, mending a veranda, and every board I lay I think: this is for her to stand on or not. I've tried not to hope. It doesn't work. It's like trying not to breathe." He looked up. "But whatever happens on the thirteenth, I want you to know I am not going to Mombasa. Not for a while. I'm going to stay for the trial. I'm going to stand in a court and be cleared, or not, and I'm going to see my brother through. And after that I'm going to go back and finish the dhow. And then I don't know."
"And then?"
"And then I'll write you a twelfth letter," said Daniel, "and I'll let you not answer it."
She laughed. Her eyes were stinging. A purple flower came down between them and she caught it on her palm and held it, without knowing why.
"I'm not asking you to wait," he said.
"You're not."
"I'm only telling you I will."
"I know," said Ruth. "You told me. In the rain."
"I did." The crooked smile came and went. "I'm glad you remember."
She would have said more. She had something ready, a whole warm clumsy sentence, and she stood there with the flower in her hand, feeling it rise. But a taxi hooted behind them, long and furious, and the moment turned itself over like a leaf, and he lifted two fingers to his brow, and walked away down the line of cars toward the road.
She watched him go until the traffic closed over him.
Then she opened her palm. The petal had left a faint violet stain across the lines of her hand. She looked at it for a long time, standing in the cooling dusk, and could not have said whether she was looking at the end of something or the first plain beginning.