Epilogue
Epilogue
The thirteenth of December fell on a Sunday that year, and the sky, for once, did exactly as it was told.
Ruth stood in the doorway of the guest room, the pale green one with the iron bed and the window that looked on the lake, and listened to the house. It was a different sound from the one she had learned a year and nine months ago. The old creatures of the timbers had settled. The mvule floors, relaid and waxed, gave out their honest bell-notes under a hundred feet. Somewhere below, Mzee Kibuuka was arguing with a caterer about the position of a table. A child was laughing in the passage. The kettle was on. The smell of frying onions and cut flowers and warm iron came up the stairwell like a rumour of a good day.
"You're not even dressed," said her mother.
"I am dressed."
"You're in a slip."
"I'm in the process of being dressed." She turned from the window. "Mama, I was looking at the lake."
"The lake will be there when you've put on your shoes." Joyce Nakitende stood in the door in a new navy hat with a small feather in it, an object of such frank splendour that Ruth had at first been unable to look at it. She was carrying the dress in both arms, with Mrs. Patel behind her, an Indian lady in a tape-measure necklace, clutching a pincushion and an expression of grim dedication. "Now. Arms up. We are not having a repeat of the last time."
"The last time was perfectly beautiful."
"It was perfectly beautiful," agreed her mother, "and entirely wrong."
It was the same dress. That had been Ruth's idea, and Mrs. Patel's horror, and Joyce's long, slow, silent approval. The ivory silk, plain and heavy, with the boat neck and the narrow sleeves. It had hung for a year in a cupboard in Nakasero, folded in tissue. When she had taken it out in October, and held it against herself in front of the mirror, she had felt nothing but a mild affection for the woman who had chosen it. She had told Esther: There's nothing wrong with the dress. It was the girl in it who wasn't ready.
It slid over her head now like water. Mrs. Patel fussed at the waist. "It is looser," she said, in reproach. "You have eaten."
"I've been eating a great deal. I'm told it's a Mombasa habit."
"Fish," said Joyce, with distaste.
"Fish."
"Hold still," said Mrs. Patel, around a pin.
In the glass, a woman in ivory silk looked back at her. She was thirty-five. She had colour in her face, and a faint line between the brows that she had stopped minding, and she looked, Ruth thought, very much like herself. Not like the three pale women in Kamwokya. Not like someone holding up a roof. Just a woman in a good dress in a green room with the sun on her shoulders and a silver thing at her throat, a tiny shutter on a fine chain, which she had put on that morning without deciding to.
She had thought she would take it off. She had stood with her fingers on the clasp for a long time. Then she had understood that it was not the gift she resented. It was the lie, and the lie was gone. What was left was a small silver window that opened, made by a frightened, generous man who had wanted her to be able to look out and check. It seemed a pity to waste it.
"Is it on straight?" she said.
"It is on perfectly," said her mother. And then, in a different voice, quite low: "My darling. You look like someone who is standing on solid ground."
Ruth turned.
Joyce had not moved. She stood in the middle of the room in her feathered hat, with her handbag held in both hands. Her face was dry and straight and stern, as it had been at Masaka, at the kitchen table, in the hospital. But her chin was trembling.
"I stood at a window for a year," she said, "so that you would never have to."
"Mama—"
"I did not do it for a reason. I want you to know that. I was only a woman who did not know what else to do. But I have thought, lately, that if I did it for anything, it was for this." She nodded at the dress, the room, the sunlight. "To see you walk out of a door."
Ruth crossed the floor, in her stockinged feet, and put her arms round the small stiff body and held on. Her mother smelled of lavender water and starch and passion fruit. She stood perfectly rigid for the count of three, and then she gave, and rocked, a little, and made a small dry noise.
"You'll crush the feather," she said.
"I don't care about the feather."
"I do. It was very expensive." She drew back, sniffing, and straightened her hat. "Shoes. Come. They'll be waiting."
They were waiting on the veranda.
She came out of the front door on her mother's arm, at four o'clock in the afternoon, into a flood of light, and stopped on the threshold, because she had not expected it to be so many.
There were perhaps eighty. They sat on white chairs along the lawn, in the shade of the mango tree and in the open, and they rose when she appeared, all together, with a soft scrape and rustle like a flock of birds. Esther was in the front row, in a hat of unparalleled size, with Moses and the twins, who had been given a basket of petals and had already, in the course of the morning, eaten most of them. Brian stood at the back in his partner's suit, weeping with great abandon into a handkerchief. Lillian and Hassan sat with the Okellos: Francis in his Sunday suit, upright as a post, Brenda in a nurse's cape that she had refused to take off, because she had qualified in November and wished the whole of Uganda to know. Dr. Ssali from the hospital. Gordon Ssebaggala, to Ruth's astonishment, in a cream suit and a tie that rather defied description; he had written to her in March to say that the board had re-examined its position, and she had written back to say that she was glad to hear it, and that her fees had gone up.
Along the rail, the forty-two shutters stood open, every one, dark green, glowing in the sun. The swing seat swayed. The brass plaque on its granite block had been moved, at Grace's insistence, to the foot of the steps, so that everyone who came to the house would walk over it. For all who return.
At the end of the veranda, on the red cement floor, stood a man in a grey suit.
He was not his father's. It was a new one, cut in Kampala, and it fitted. He had had his hair cut, and let the grey show. He stood with his hands loosely at his sides and his face lifted, and when he saw her in the doorway his whole expression opened, so utterly and so simply, that she felt her knees go. There was nothing in it of fear. There was nothing of the braced, self-effacing, wary look she had met on a ladder on a March morning. It was only joy, large and plain and unmeasured, such as a child shows who has been promised a thing and been given it.
In daylight, she thought.
At his side, in a charcoal suit and a tie the colour of old wine, a second man stood very straight with a small silver box in his open hand. He was thinner than he had been. His hair had grown in, a close dark crop. The prison pallor had left his skin, and the scar on his thumb was a pale thread, and he held himself with a kind of careful lightness, like a man walking on a floor he has laid himself. He was looking at her with an expression she could not at first place. It was tender and a little shy and entirely without shadow.
He had been released on the thirteenth of October. He had walked out of the gates at Luzira with a single bag, past a sentry who shook his hand, to a battered pickup where his brother waited with a thermos of tea. He had gone straight to Katabi. He had sat in a yard for two hours without speaking. And the next day he had begun to make a table.
It was in the sitting room now, set with a bowl of lilies. It was a lovely table, and one leg was a quarter-inch short.
"You came," said Timothy, as she reached the top of the steps.
"I did."
"I was afraid you'd run."
"I was afraid I'd stand at the window."
"Well." His smile was slow and wide. "You've done neither."
He stepped forward and kissed her cheek. His lips were warm. He smelled of soap and linseed oil. And in the half-second that he held her by the shoulders, she felt his hands, which had once been so careful, quite steady and strong. "You look," he said, softly, "like someone whose house is finished."
"So do you."
"I'm only getting started." He lowered his voice. "I'm the best man. I've got the ring. I've got a speech, and I haven't lost it. I'd like it noted that I wrote it on one side of a single sheet of paper. In longhand." He winked, a boyish flash, and for a heartbeat she saw the face from the jetty at Ggaba, and it did not hurt. "Go on. He's been looking at you for four minutes. He's going to fall over."
She laughed. She turned. And Daniel, at the end of the long veranda, in a bar of gold light, put out his hand.
She walked the length of it. It took, she supposed, about twenty seconds. She was to remember it as long as she lived.
The floor was warm underfoot. The shutters threw their long even stripes across the red cement, light, shadow, light, shadow, like a ladder laid down, and she walked across them in her good shoes, one stripe after another, and not one board gave. She heard the chairs creak. She heard a child whisper. She heard, from the mango tree, a hornbill, croaking on, blissfully unaware that the day was a great occasion. She heard her own heart. And under it, like a floor under the floor, she heard a thing she had listened for in this house since the first morning: the long quiet note of a structure that was holding.
She reached the end. She took his hand.
It was warm and rough and utterly steady. He closed his fingers round hers. He did not say anything. He only looked at her, with his whole face, and she looked back, and the pastor with the magnificent baritone said Dearly beloved, and then they both began, very gently, to laugh.
They said the words. They were old ones, and plain. She would afterwards remember only that Daniel's voice shook on for better, and cleared on for worse, and that he said in sickness and in health with a look she understood completely. She said hers without hurry. When the moment came, and Timothy stepped forward with the little box, she felt his fingers tremble once, just once, before he put the ring in his brother's palm, and Daniel closed his hand around it, and for a moment the two of them stood nose to nose, a pair of tall men with the same brown eyes, and neither of them seemed able to speak.
"Go on," said Timothy, hoarsely.
"I'm going."
"You're taking your time."
"It's a good time to take."
And Daniel turned, and slid the ring onto her finger, and it was a plain narrow band of mvule wood, dark and polished, sealed with oil, on which someone had carved, in letters so fine they had to be read by the touch, D. and R. and a date. She stared at it. She looked up.
"I turned it on the lathe in Mombasa," he said, under his breath. "It's from the fascia. The rotten part. I couldn't throw it away. I've oiled it eleven times." His mouth twitched. "It'll outlive us all."
"It's mvule."
"Yes."
"You gave me a termite ring."
"I gave you," said Daniel, "something that was nearly lost and was saved." His eyes were wet and brilliant. "I thought you'd understand."
She did. She understood all of it. She put her hand against his face, in front of eighty people and a pastor and a hornbill, and kissed him, and the lawn rose up and cheered.
It was dusk when she slipped away.
The party had spread across the garden in long loose tides: laughter, music from Kibuuka's radio, the smell of charcoal and roast goat. Lanterns had been lit in the mango tree. Grace sat enthroned in a wicker chair in the midst of it, holding court in a lilac dress and a very small pearl hat, telling a story about the headmaster of a school in Kabale that had reduced Francis Okello to helpless wheezing. Esther was dancing with a twin on each foot. Lillian was being shown the boathouse by a delighted Brian. A young nurse in a cape was explaining something earnestly to Timothy, who nodded, and nodded, and glanced across the lawn, and caught Ruth's eye, and raised his glass an inch.
She went down the slope in the cool of the evening, in her stockinged feet, with her shoes in her hand.
The lawn was damp. The frangipani gave out its sweet low scent. At the foot of the garden the lake lay wide and pale under the first stars, and the boathouse stood with its great doors open to the water. She stopped on the slip.
The Nambi lay at her mooring, newly painted. Daniel had spent the autumn on her, each evening and every weekend, with an unhurried care that bordered on devotion. She was the colour of tea, and honey, and cedar, with a name in fresh gold on her stern and a small flag at the masthead. In the dusk the water lapped softly at her sides. She rode so lightly she seemed to be thinking about flying.
She had been righted in the spring. It had taken Mzee Kibuuka and six men and an entire week. When she was refloated, Grace had come down to the slip in her gum boots and stood with her stick, and the old man had said gruffly, "She has a scar on the port strake, madam. From the storm. Shall I take it out?" And Grace had said, "No. Leave it. It is a good scar." And it had been left.
Footsteps came down the slope behind her. She didn't turn.
"I thought I'd find you here," said Daniel.
"I was looking at the lake."
"It'll be there in the morning."
"That's what Mama said." She smiled. "I think it's the only advice I've ever got that's been true both times."
He came to stand beside her. He had loosened his tie, and rolled his sleeves to the elbow, and there was a smear of someone's cake across his lapel. They stood together at the edge of the slip, side by side, with the water going quiet at their feet. A kite wheeled over the reeds. The first fisherman's lamp rocked out on the dark, small and golden.
"Do you remember," he said, "the night you came down here with your shoes in your hand?"
"I think about it nearly every day."
"Do you regret it?"
She considered. She thought of a pale linen shirt, and a ring she hadn't taken off, and a long damp lawn in the small hours. She thought of a woman in a hospital corridor, and a man in a yellow uniform, and an old man in a doctor's chair. She thought of everything it had cost, which was not small, and which she would carry, in a drawer, for the rest of her life. And she thought of the quiet note of a floor.
"I regret the lies," she said slowly. "I'll regret them until I die. I regret that it was done in the dark, and that someone got hurt who shouldn't have been. I would give a great deal to have done it differently." She turned and looked up at him. "But I don't regret you. I tried to. I'm not able. I suppose that's what I've learned. That I can be sorry for a thing, all the way down, and still be glad of what grew from it. They aren't enemies."
"No."
"A door can be the wrong door and still lead to the right room."
"That's rather good."
"I'm an architect."
"I know." He put his arm round her. "You asked me a question once. In the rain. You said, was it desire or something else."
"I never asked that."
"You did. You asked it with your face." His thumb moved on her shoulder. "I've been trying to answer it for two years. I think I've got there."
"Go on."
"It was desire," said Daniel. "I won't lie. It was desire first. It walked up a gravel drive in flat shoes and told me I couldn't touch a fascia, and I was lost. I'm not ashamed of that. It's what opened the door." He paused. "But desire is a very good guest, and a terrible host. It comes in, it fills the room with light, it's wonderful company. And then in the morning it wants to know what's for breakfast." He smiled. "What stays is the one who does the washing-up."
She started to laugh.
"I'm serious. I'm saying that it's easy to want a person on a night of rain. It's something else to want them on a Tuesday in a bad mood with a cold. And I find that I want you on the Tuesday." He looked down at her. "I've wanted you through a year of silence, and a prison, and a funeral of an engagement, and it hasn't once gone out. I've no word for it, but I know it isn't only the wanting. The wanting is how it got in. It isn't what lives here now."
"No."
"What lives here now," said Daniel, "is that I'd rather be in the kitchen with you, not talking, than anywhere in the world with anyone."
She leaned her head on his shoulder. Out on the water the fisherman's lamp had drawn a little closer, and a long way off, across the dark, the lights of the town were coming on one by one, small and yellow, like windows. Behind them the garden hummed. Someone had begun to sing. It was Mzee Kibuuka, in his cracked delighted tenor, an old song from the radio, and half the lawn had taken it up.
"Come on," said Ruth.
"Where?"
"Up. They'll be wanting to cut the cake." She slipped her shoes on and took his hand. "And I've been told that there's a very large marquee going spare."
He laughed. He kissed her, once, lightly, on the temple, and they turned together and began to climb the slope toward the house.
It stood above them in the dusk, long and low and glowing, every window lit. Forty-two of them, each with its green shutters thrown wide. From the veranda, music and laughter poured down the lawn, and the lamplight lay across the grass in gold bars. At the top of the steps, small and upright in her lilac gown, Grace Kasozi was watching them come, with one hand lifted against the glare.
She did not call out. She only stood, and waited, and held the door.
Ruth Nakitende, who always read the contract, had read this one to the very end. She knew its terms. They were harder than any she had signed before, and plainer, and longer, and she did not mean to break a line of them.
She climbed the first step, and the second.
The third held.