Burning Embers Read online

  “That’s just where you’re mistaken. Slave trafficking has not been completely eradicated from some parts of the Middle East, you know.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind when on my next expedition,” she retorted. The idea seemed rather far-fetched, but she decided to keep the peace and change the subject. She listened with only half an ear to Robin lecturing her about life in Kenya. She found him boring and patronizing. Pity, since he was so good-looking. What a waste! Unconsciously, she compared him to her elusive stranger, wishing she was having lunch with Sir Lancelot, as she had named him.

  She concentrated on the exotic surroundings. In the midst of the clamorous hum of the crowd, she could single out the monotonous tapping of a craftsman’s hammer. From time to time, it was covered by the full-throated cry of a seller, the lamenting wail of a beggar, the repeated trill of a bicycle bell, and very occasionally, by the panic-stricken horn of an automobile.

  They turned onto a dark street bordered with small houses of coral rag. The space was so narrow that in some places the upstairs balconies touched those on the opposite side. She had read somewhere that a few of these tiny streets had been built only wide enough for a camel to pass, and that the houses owed their curious color to the large bricks carved out of soft coral which had been allowed to dry to a hard consistency before being used. She thought they probably looked much the same as they had in the early sixteenth century.

  “We’ve arrived,” announced Robin as the Mombasa Shooting Club came into view. It was very much what Coral had expected it to be: a little bit of England transplanted into Africa. They climbed a flight of marble stairs and found themselves in a wide hall with a floor of polished teak. A portrait of the queen had prominent place over the fireplace and regally dominated the room. The furniture was European and so were the pictures and carpets. The smell of beeswax lingered everywhere, reminding her of home, and the restaurant resounded with English voices.

  They sat next to a window overlooking a sun-flooded garden and the sparkling sea beyond. “I’m afraid only sensible English cooking is served here,” Robin told her. “You would need to try one of the local restaurants for anything more adventurous.”

  “The sole recollection I have of Kenyan food is ugali,” she said with a little laugh. “It was a main part of my childhood. Aluna, my yaha, used to insist on serving me a bowl every morning. Actually, I quite liked it. It’s very similar to porridge. By the way, how is old Aluna? I assume she still lives at Mpingo? After Mummy and I left, she didn’t stay in touch, even though I wrote many letters to her, especially at the beginning.”

  “Aluna is still there,” he said in an even tone of voice. He paused shortly, then added, rather guardedly perhaps, “She has been very affected by Mr. Sinclair’s death, and — ”

  “And?” prompted Coral, sensing the young man’s reluctance to continue.

  The manager fidgeted in his seat. Uncomfortable seconds elapsed during which he seemed to be considering his thoughts and carefully picking his words before answering. “Since your father’s death, poor Aluna hasn’t been quite herself,” he said finally. “During the two first weeks that followed his demise, she neither spoke nor ate. The news of your imminent arrival, though, has seemed to revive her. It’s as if she’s been given something new to live for. However, she’s still silent for long periods, and when she does talk, she tells strange stories that come from old superstitions and her own hallucinations.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me that Aluna has been so deeply affected. She’s been with the family since the early years. She was in her twenties when she came to Mpingo. She was there when the new house was being built. Daddy taught her English.”

  She smiled ruefully. Looking back, she had mixed feelings about those times. As she recalled, Walter Sinclair and Aluna used to stay for hours in her father’s study, a detached outbuilding at the bottom of the garden, while he taught her Shakespeare’s language. She remembered her mother’s resentment and understood it better now. Aluna was a handsome woman, in her prime in those days, and Coral now knew that Walter was known to have a roving eye. He had found in Aluna an intelligent pupil. He had given her classic books to read and even introduced her to opera, which she took to quite seriously, to the extent of wandering around the house warbling arias from La Traviata while getting on with her daily chores. He used to say that if she had been born in a different society, she would have gone far. “She has the brain of a scholar. Pity there’s so much mumbo jumbo still lingering in there — a strange mixture,” he had declared on one occasion. Coral wondered now if there had been an untoward relationship between her father and her yaha. That would explain why Angela Sinclair had decided so suddenly to leave Africa for good, taking her daughter with her.

  They ate silently. “How did my father die?” she ventured eventually.

  “One day, his heart simply stopped beating,” Robin answered slowly.

  “He was such a healthy man.”

  “Your father was seventy when he died. He was not a young man anymore, and during the last couple of years, he had been through a great deal of physical and mental stress.”

  “Daddy was always energetic and fit,” Coral stated emphatically. “He never looked his age. I met someone a few years ago who had seen him and had been astonished to learn he was over sixty.” She paused. “Daddy loved Africa and his life. What possible stress could he have had? I was not aware that he was sick. Hasn’t the estate prospered?”

  She heard Robin suck in his breath, but he recovered his composure almost immediately. “Mr. Sinclair had developed a serious drinking problem. If his heart hadn’t given way, sclerosis of the liver would have definitely killed him within a few months. It grieves me to tell you this, Miss Sinclair, but most nights Aluna and Juma, the head servant, had to carry him up to his room in a stupor.”

  Her eyebrows knitted together in a puzzled frown. “Why was that? Did my father have problems? Was the estate not running properly? I wasn’t aware that he was in financial difficulty.”

  The manager looked offended. “The estate is running perfectly well, I can assure you. I manage it myself. You can have a look at the accounts and see for yourself this afternoon when we get back if you would like. Everything is in order.”

  Coral repressed an irritated gesture. This was not about the estate manager, but about her father. “This afternoon will be fine,” she said curtly. There was a lull in the conversation before she spoke again. “Did Daddy have a fall during one of his drunken sessions? Is that how he died?”

  “No. Mr. Sinclair died in his bed, in his sleep. Mrs. Sinclair discovered him in the morning. She called the family doctor who, after a thorough examination, said that he had died a natural and peaceful death. He went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”

  “Did you say Mrs. Sinclair?” Coral was taken aback. “I wasn’t aware that my father had ever remarried!”

  Robin Danvers coughed to clear his voice. He was obviously finding this conversation painful. “Your father remarried a few years ago to the present Mrs. Sinclair, Mrs. Cybil Sinclair.”

  “We knew nothing of this marriage. Surely Daddy would have written to us about it? Why would he keep this from us? Even after the divorce, my mother and father remained friends,” Coral protested. “True, he seldom wrote, but what I mean is, their divorce was not acrimonious.” A shadow passed over her eyes. “I suppose he felt really estranged from us after Mother’s marriage to Uncle Edward — like he had lost us forever. Every year at Christmas, I sent him a recent photograph of myself, telling him about anything important that had happened in my life; he never commented, though he sent me a Christmas card.” She remained thoughtful for a few seconds. “The lawyer’s letter never mentioned a wife. Does this mean that I’m not the sole heiress to my father’s property?” She disliked the way she sounded, grabbing and uncaring. Still, she sensed something was wrong, and she wanted to get to the bottom of it.

  “Tim Locklear, the lawyer who has been in charge of yo
ur father’s interests, is in a much better position than I am to explain to you the intricacies of it all. I’m sure he’ll answer all your questions.”

  It was clear that the estate manager was uncomfortable discussing such family concerns with her, and despite the fact that she did not care much for him, she was sensitive to other people’s feelings. “You’re right,” she agreed. “I quite understand your position. Please forgive me. I must sound terribly mercenary, but you’ve taken me by surprise. I shall do as you say and take the matter up with Mr. Locklear.”

  They talked about other things, but Coral was left puzzled and uneasy through the remainder of lunch. She would have a look at the accounts and would visit Mr. Locklear as soon as possible, she promised herself.

  After coffee was served, Robin cleared his throat. “Miss Sinclair, I don’t know if it is my place to give you this background, but now that you have returned to Kenya, you need to be aware of the general political situation here today.”

  Coral sat up straight. Knowing something of the political upheavals that had been going on in Kenya since independence in 1963, this was one issue she knew she had to come to terms with, but she had not realized that it would arise so soon after her arrival.

  “Kenya is now set on a new course. The British are no longer in charge, and we have to recognize that we have a new government, hopefully a new démocratie. I am young, and so I can see that it is clearly the future.” Robin shrugged. “Certainly I can see no point in raving against it.”

  Coral stirred her coffee pensively. “It seems that much has changed here since I was a child.”

  “Yes and no. Kenyatta came up with a slogan, Harambee: ‘let’s all pull together,’ and in that spirit the government has tried to unite people. But one must also remember the old Swahili proverb: ‘When two elephants jostle, what gets hurt is the grass!’ With change comes conflict. Tribal unrest has begun to take its toll on communities. Added to that, many of the older white settlers are afraid of the new order, and certainly the assassination of the government minister Tom Mboya last July has made them feel insecure. Also, some Indian-owned small businesses have been under attack, with the owners leaving for Britain and the sub-continent.” Robin paused and seemed to choose his words carefully. “Let me say this, Miss Sinclair…I believe in a bright and exciting future here, but it is a future for younger and more flexible people who can adjust to the new Kenya. The old ways of treating people are gone, and there is no reason why Mpingo should not continue to prosper — but we must tread carefully.”

  Coral digested this and nodded. “I hear you. So, Robin, are you saying I should sell Mpingo? Because I can tell you now that is not why I came here. On the contrary, I want to make it my home again.”

  Robin smiled with relief. “I’m delighted to hear it. Let’s drink to that,” he said, raising his glass as they finished their lunch and paid the bill.

  Out in the sunshine, they had nearly reached the car when she collided with a man bursting out of a carpet shop. There had been no warning, no time to avoid him. The sensation that rushed through her body, sending tremors to every one of her limbs, should have warned her. She looked up and gave a start as her heart began to beat wildly. Subconsciously, he had occupied her thoughts all morning, and now he was here. A strange coincidence — or perhaps they were meant to meet again. Her lips parted to speak, but he brushed past without seeing her. Her head whirled madly. She stood there, paralyzed for a few seconds, her eyes following the lean, powerful silhouette that towered over the crowd, but he moved swiftly and in no time had merged with the ebb and flow of the human river.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The green Buick turned onto the estate’s drive through two great wrought iron gates. It glided slowly toward the house along the vaulted avenue of blossoming jacarandas. Here, patches of filtered sunshine and shifting violet-blue shadows mingled happily in the waning afternoon. And there, at the end of the bowered gallery, appearing in a luminous halo, stood Mpingo, the home of her childhood, set among vigorous and colorful vegetation. It looked romantically unreal, inviolate, as though set outside time and space.

  For the second time that day, Coral found herself fighting against the onslaught of emotions. How many times throughout the years had she imagined this homecoming? Yet the setting was even more beautiful than what she had pictured in her fondest memories.

  Her eyes fastened on Mpingo, Coral lay her slender hand on Moses’s shoulder. “Please, would you stop the car,” she said in a choked voice. “I shall walk up to the house.”

  She opened the car door. A vaguely familiar whiff of warm air, heavy with the fragrance of ripe fruit and sweet-smelling flowers, greeted her. Rising and standing there a moment more, Coral drank in the dazzling sight that met her eyes. A world of images, sensations, and conflicting feelings wrestled in her mind. Hesitantly at first, and then gradually quickening her steps, she went along the shaded alley toward Mpingo, a tiny figure among an ocean of flowers.

  Mpingo! Was it a residence or an edifice, a challenge, an act of folly, or a dream — the materialization of Walter Sinclair’s dream? Considered the black sheep of the family and rejected by his peers for refusing to conform to the rigid rules of a banking dynasty, Walter Sinclair had chosen to follow the example of so many European settlers in the thirties. After traveling around the world and accumulating a considerable personal fortune by trading in agricultural equipment and war surplus, he had elected to settle down in this far-off corner of the universe.

  The property, called in those days Orchard Coast Estate, had belonged to an old English settler. In his late sixties, having neither heirs nor family, he had been happy to give his creation a new lease of life by selling it to the White Pirate and returning to England.

  The old house was a simple, functional dwelling of eight rooms and had nothing of note in the way of architecture. The selling point for Walter Sinclair had been a twenty-kilometer stretch of pristine beach on its boundary and five hundred acres of orchard, one hundred of which were planted with the African Blackwood, the rare and rapidly disappearing mpingo tree.

  With renovations planned and built with the help of an unknown architect, Walter Sinclair’s new Mpingo was to become the zenith of the pioneer’s ambitions. Not yet thirty, the young adventurer wanted solid foundations for establishing fresh roots and creating a legacy for future generations. All through the eight difficult years of the Mau Mau rebellion, those uncertain times that preceded Kenya’s independence in 1963, he had fought with courage and determination to safeguard the estate for a new dynasty of Sinclairs. It had not always been easy, especially with a wife who hated Africa and a young child.

  Built on a grand scale, the façade of the new building was of stone — a warm, rich color that evoked the coral reefs of the Indian Ocean, visible from each of the hand-blown, panoramic French windows on the north elevation of the house that gave the rooms a tinted, luminous air. All the windows had brown shutters that could be tightly closed during the monsoon months. The magnificent curved double staircase, the wall paneling, the large ceiling beams, and the floors had all been intricately crafted on site in imported cedar. Outside the rooms on the upper landing, a galleried veranda encircled the house, from where the extensive out-buildings could be seen. Coral remembered peeping through its lacy balustrade as a child of three to watch the gardeners at work, and later, spending lazy afternoons sipping cold lemonade there with her mother while listening to the birdsong and its accompaniment of rustling palms and whispering sea. Fond memories of playing hide and seek with her friends came rushing back, and she smiled in nostalgia. They could never find her, her favorite hiding place being the potting shed.

  As she emerged from the shadow of the drive, Coral thought that Mpingo reflected an extraordinary blend of fantasy and reality. Yet it had been built with a concern for the practicalities of life in this challenging environment. Still, as she looked at it with adult eyes, she realized it had also provided a pretentious backdrop for he
r father’s vanity.

  As she approached the double front doors, they swung open, and a figure emerged on the threshold. Even though she was still far removed, Coral thought she recognized it. She quickened her pace and stared wide-eyed. Aluna! It was her! Coral began to run.

  When they were only steps away from each other, the yaha smiled and stretched her arms out toward her former charge. Their hands joined in silence. The woman held Coral for a moment at arm’s length, as though to examine her better. Then, drawing her forward, she clasped Coral tightly, shaking suddenly with unrelenting sobs.

  “Oh, Missy Coral, dear Missy Coral,” she said in between two gasps. “Aluna thought she’d die without ever seeing her little malaika again. Let me look at you.” She stepped back and gazed at the young woman, her eyes filled with happy incredulity. “You left a child; you’ve come back a beautiful young lady.” Aluna’s voice resounded with infinite tenderness and pride.

  Coral responded with a light, crystal clear laugh. “It’s wonderful to be back. Just now, as I was coming up the drive, it was as though the years had stopped. Nothing seems to have changed.” No sooner had she spoken those words than her eyes clouded over and a lump formed in her throat. “Obviously, everything is changed since Daddy’s no longer here,” she managed to say in a broken voice and turned back into Aluna’s embrace.

  “Don’t cry, little one. You’re here now, and that is the most important thing.”

  Coral pulled herself together. Aluna was right: she was back at Mpingo and that was all that counted now. Stepping into the hall, her heels clicked loudly on the highly polished floor, filling the room with discordant echoes. She glanced upward, and her eyes fell on the huge crystal chandelier, another of Walter’s eccentric extravagances. She remembered fleetingly her childhood nightmare. It always ended in the same way: the diaphanous monster would come crashing down with such a resounding noise that she would always wake up with a start. The glass droplets moved slightly in the breeze from the open door and tinkled gently as though laughing at her disquieting thoughts.