Page 149 of The Sun Sister

‘Your hat,memsahib!’ Aleeki came running behind her with it. ‘Too hot for you outside.’

It was only a split-second glance down at her stomach as he spoke the words, but it was enough for Cecily to realise that he knew.

‘Thank you, Aleeki.’ She nodded at him and walked off across the lawns to sit on her favourite bench by the lake and try to get her head around everything that had happened in such a few short hours.

Of course she could not, so she simply sat there, watching the hippos slowly rouse themselves from their sunbathing and slip into the water for their sunset dip. The fact that they did the very same thing every day and at such a leisurely pace was hypnotic and calmed Cecily’s frazzled senses. Never had she thought she’d sit wishing to be a hippopotamus – quite the ugliest of animals on God’s great earth – yet here she was.

Eventually, she gave up trying to make sense of everything and wandered back inside the house. Upstairs, Muratha prepared her a bath and she lay in it, wondering whether the tiny bump she saw in her stomach was real or imagined...

‘Madame asking if you take dinner downstairs with her?’ Muratha appeared in her room.

‘Not tonight, no. Please send my apologies, but I’ll take a tray up here instead,’ Cecily said firmly, feeling guilty for avoiding Kiki after the kindness she’d shown her, but not able to face the almost jovial way in which Kiki was treating the situation. Like Hitler annexing Czechoslovakia, she too had been annexed by a tiny human being, and the situation was grave, very grave indeed.

Having managed to drain the soup Muratha had brought her, Cecily found herself reaching for the Bible that her mother had given her on her departure.

She had never questioned the faith that she had been brought up in – up to now, it had simply meant an outing to church, dressed in her best on Sundays. But as she skimmed through the pages, she began to.

Did Christians dispose of their babies as if they were a mere inconvenience? Cecily thought of her sister Mamie: a self-confessed non-maternal type, who by all accounts had taken to motherhood like a duck to water.

‘How will I feel after carrying you for the next seven months?’ Cecily whispered to her stomach. ‘I mean, Mary got pregnant by God before she and Joseph had even been married...holy moly! That means the whole New Testament is based on a woman who had been unfaithful to her husband-to-be!’

It was such a huge thought that Cecily had to lie back on her pillows, only wishing she’d paid more attention to the sermons of the preacher at her local church.

Later, when she finally turned out the light and settled herself for what she hoped would be a few hours of respite from her scrambled brain, she knew she didn’t have any answers, but equally that she must find the right one for herself.

Even though she’d slept, Cecily woke feeling wearier than when she’d gone to bed. As a wave of nausea swept over her, she ran to the bathroom and vomited nothing more than bile into the lavatory.

‘Bwanasick again?’ Muratha led Cecily back to bed and helped her onto it. Again, Cecily noticed the glance at her stomach and when Muratha had left her alone, she rolled onto her side and groaned. It was patently obvious that the entire household staff was aware of her condition.

Kiki’s right, I just need to do what she says before everyone else around here finds out too,she thought.

With effort, Cecily dressed and went down for breakfast. Ginger tea rather than coffee was put in front of her and she did her best to pick miserably at the copious food spread out on the table.

‘Good morning, honey. How did you sleep?’

‘Okay, thank you.’ Cecily was surprised to see Kiki up so early, clad in a magenta robe.

‘Good. I’m going for a swim – it’s too darned hot to sleep,’ she said as she walked towards the lake. ‘You should come in with me, the mud in the water does wonders for one’s complexion.’

For want of anything better to do, Cecily followed her godmother down to the water’s edge and watched as Kiki stripped off her robe to reveal a striped bathing suit. For an older woman who’d had children, Kiki had a fabulous figure. As Cecily sat down on the bench, she only hoped her own would survive the travails of childbirth as well...

Kiki splashed around for a while, then took the towel Aleeki handed her as she stepped out of the water.

‘I’ll stay down here with Cecily and dry off in the sun,’ she said to Aleeki, who nodded, handed Kiki her cigarette holder and left the two women alone.

‘Any more thoughts?’ Kiki asked as she dragged on her cigarette, the plumes of smoke making Cecily feel nauseous again.

‘Only that you’re right. I can’t see any alternative, even though I can hardly bear to think of my baby being adopted. I’ll have to live a lie to everyone around me for the rest of my life.’

‘I know, honey. But you have to remember that you’re doing it for the baby as well; as an unmarried mother, you would both be social outcasts. Not to mention the disgrace it would bring on your family. You’ll have other kids, I swear you will. When you’ve found the right man this will just be a horrible dream you can put behind you. Now, I need some coffee after all that exertion. Join me?’

‘I’ll just sit here a while longer, thank you.’

Cecily watched Kiki don her robe then wander off back up to the house. She then stood up and walked along the shoreline of the lake until Mundui House was out of sight. Looking down at the lapping water in front of her, a part of her was tempted to grab a bottle of Kiki’s bourbon, down it, then walk into the still waters and just keep on walking until she and the terrible mess she had made of her life no longer existed.

‘Oh Mama, if only I could talk to you, but I can’t, I can’t.’

Cecily put her head in her hands as her shoulders began to shake and her body slid down the trunk of an acacia tree behind her. She was so busy crying, she didn’t notice the footsteps approaching until they were almost upon her.