From Africa, Chapter One
Northern Africa, circa 1949
‘Olu makes the coffee too strong…’
‘Well, if you’d been up earlier, you could have made it yourself, Love.’
I trudged into the kitchen, half-awake, trying to block the bright sun from my eyes. My father sat at the large wooden table, engaged in his customary morning ritual: reading newspapers from London, New York, Paris, and Berlin, while sipping on a small cup of potent coffee. He usually did this while frowning at me, for my habit of pouring a full cup for myself, then only drinking half of it.
‘Liv, here,’ he looked up from his paper. ‘Take some of this, instead of pouring yourself a fresh cup. Coffee’s expensive these days.’
‘You can afford it,’ I sipped from his cup.
‘We have a dwindling supply; we’ll run out soon.’
‘Oh, Dad, you say that about everything.’
‘So, you’ll join Olu after you’ve dressed and practiced, right?’
I frowned.
‘I thought you said I could have a day off?’
‘Yes. Sunday.’
‘I wanted to pick the day…’
‘Sunday’s a natural choice, isn’t it?’
I rolled my eyes.
‘Don’t do that. One day, they’ll stick, then you’ll be an ugly girl, instead of my lovely Olive Branch.’
‘Dad…’ I blushed, uncomfortable hearing my father’s old pet name for me.
‘I’ve told Olu to give you an abbreviated lesson today, because Anna needs you for the wedding preparations…’
I frowned again, leaning back in my chair so that my burnished brown hair could drape the floor.
‘Are you a contortionist, now?’
‘I wish. At least that would be interesting.’
‘What could be more interesting than playing piano as well as you do? You’re the best I know, Love.’
‘I’m the only one you know…’ I answered drolly.
‘After you’ve finished with Olu and Anna, we’ll have tea with Stanley…’
‘He’s not bringing Chadwicke, is he?’
‘Probably, why?’
‘Chadwicke’s annoying.’
‘He’s only fourteen. He’ll grow out of it.’
‘Why am I always saddled with entertaining him?’
‘…Because you’re close in age.’
‘I’m eighteen, now.’
‘You don’t act like it half the time… Sit up. All the blood will be rushing to your head, shortly.’
I waited until my nose started to tingle, defying my father in a playful way. We spent each morning like this, with him talking to me over the top of his newspaper while I picked over breakfast, or just sipped coffee. I hated the food; we had a limited menu, composed of a few bland choices. There were so many things that I missed: ice cream, shellfish, cheese, soda, and countless others. I’d missed Dad while I was still in the States, with my stern governess, Miss Peake, but now that I was spending the summer with him in Africa, I was beginning to miss the simplest perks of modern life. I thought I was losing my mind, because I was so homesick after the first two weeks that I even started to pine for Miss Peake.
I was visiting this summer, because my older sister, Anna, was to be married to a South African whom she’d met in Paris while attending the Sorbonne. The betrothed couple had spent the spring with my father, and Anna planned out a simple wedding, to be held at the ranch where Dad lived outside of Lagos. Anna would be moving to Johannesburg with her fiance, Mark, after the wedding.
I lay across the chair upside down, sighing at the thought of getting fitted for a new dress that afternoon with my demanding sister, when I saw a pair of long legs enter the room, clad in a familiar pair of khaki trousers. I sat up too fast, making myself dizzy, blinking my eyes at Olu’s dark, spinning form.
‘Have they brought the samples back, yet, Olu?’ Dad asked his young African assistant.
‘No, Dr. Blythe. William will bring them tomorrow.’
‘I guess I’ll have to find something else to work on today then, eh? All right. Liv, why don’t you spend the morning with Olu, to get some extra time in?’
‘Extra time?’ Olivia complained.
‘You’ll want to be prepared for the time that you start touring.’
‘I’m not good enough to tour, yet.’
‘Don’t try to start an argument with me now to stall things. I’m wise to your tricks… Olu, she’s all yours.’
‘I have to get dressed first…’ I stood, straightening my wrinkled cotton gown, walking slowly so that I could prolong the inevitable.
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‘You’re supposed to be answering me in French, not English,’ Olu touched his hand to his head, as if he was fighting off a headache.
‘Why do I have to learn so much?’ I asked stubbornly. ‘Anna can interpret for me.’
‘Anna will be married. She’ll have her own life. You need to learn how to speak for yourself.’
‘You sound like Dad… next I guess you’ll be telling me that I’ve lived in America for too long.’
Olu gave me a blank stare before he continued with the lesson.
‘Now, answer the next question, in French.’
‘You could be my interpreter, Olu. I’m sure Dad would allow it. He could just train William to take your place…’
‘Are you going to waste the whole day speaking gibberish?’
‘No… just half the day… How many languages do you speak?’
‘Don’t try to side track the lesson. I want you to answer the question on the page.’
‘It’s so hot… Can we take a break?’ I whined.
‘All right,’ Olu huffed. ‘Twenty minutes. No more.’
‘How many?’
‘Twenty,’ he sounded annoyed.
‘No, I meant, how many different languages do you speak now?’
‘Six.’
‘Did you learn them all in school?’
‘If all you’re going to do for the next twenty minutes is sit here and ask me questions about my life, then there’s no reason that we can’t just continue on with the lesson.’
I rolled my eyes, moving over to the window. Our lessons were like this every day. Olu resented the fact that my father had saddled him with this new responsibility of trying to teach French to me. He’d tried to complain that it would be too much work for him to teach me and to keep up with his duties helping Dad with his anthropological studies. But my father came up with the idea of training the house servant, William, on some of the menial tasks that Olu usually performed.
Strictly speaking, Dad wasn’t really Olu’s boss; he was his benefactor. My father had practically raised Olu from the time that he was fourteen, sending him to school and paying for his university education, molding him to become the perfect assistant to help him with his studies in anthropology. Olu not only served as a work assistant; he was also my father’s translator, and his traveling companion, serving as an impromptu valet whenever he took his frequent trips abroad to lecture.
Dad had brought Olu home when he was a stray, waifish lad of thirteen. My mother (who passed away a few years ago) was not happy about Dad’s idea. She refused to allow Olu to live with us at first; I didn’t understand it at the time (I was only six), but I believed it had something to do with my sister, Anna, who was only two years younger than Olu. So, Olu would visit us for the holidays, captivating my father with his quiet ways, not quite realizing that he’d become the son that Dad had always wanted.
Anna had always been jealous of Olu. They never really got along with each other, and Anna made a habit of making exaggerated overtures toward our father in order to pull his attention away from Olu. This was why she, a refined lady betrothed to an educated, middle class gentleman, was having a wedding ceremony on her father’s defunct ranch in the middle of the African savanna. I almost felt bad for her, though, because, despite all of her planning and scheduling, Dad seemed to be more wrapped up in his work than ever.
Dad’s crush on Olu seemed to get even stronger as Olu grew into a man. Dad was elated when Olu finally finished college; he would have a constant companion, now, a kindred spirit, in the lonely world of scholastics and study. To outsiders like myself, it seemed that all they did was talk about ancient history and travel to the end of the earth to dig up old bones. Olu was the only one who could appreciate Dad’s dusty bone collections, and he was the only one who could stay up all night, pouring over the dry text in Dad’s academic papers. I’d tried it a few times, but it was all too boring to me.
I never had a problem with Olu being Dad’s favorite; maybe it was because I could tell that I was the next in line. He loved a person with a talent, Olu’s being languages, mine being music. When they discovered that I could play whole songs on the piano from what I’d heard from gramophone records, all at the age of three, my mother insisted that we move back to London so that I could get proper training. Dad refused, though, and suggested that we hire an instructor to come to Africa to train me. Mother didn’t think it would be possible to get any reputable music instructor to live so far from civilization for so long, so we ended up moving back to England, just Mother and Anna and I, leaving Dad in the bush.
By the time we came back from our first season in London, Dad had moved Olu into the house, and they’d bonded, almost like father and son. But Mother constantly reminded him, and the rest of us, that Olu was basically nothing more than a glorified servant, and that my father would soon get bored with his fascination with him.
We lived in London until the war started, moving to America right before the Blitz. Dad was still in Africa, oblivious to what was happening in the larger world, living only for his studies, sure that he was about to unearth some historic discovery. I spent the war in America, being educated by a private tutor, and spending most of my time learning music. Anna attended an elite boarding school, leaving me alone with my tutor and my piano teacher. I was never really close to my mother; Anna was her favorite. I often thought that she was afraid of me, because I had a superior talent whose origin was unexplainable.
Mother hired my governess, Miss Peake, when Anna turned fifteen. I was ten, living, breathing, and sleeping music and musical theory. I think that part of the reason that I acted so childishly whenever I was with my father was because I didn’t have much of a childhood when I was younger. Miss Peake tried to ensure that I learned a little bit about other things; she was one of the few constants of my life, while I was growing up. I went through many piano teachers; Mother wanted me to have nothing less than the best, and she was constantly searching for a new, more accomplished instructor for me.
When Mother passed away, we stayed in New York with Miss Peake, because the war made it too difficult to travel. This was the third summer I’d spent with my father in Africa, since Mother died, and it was the first that I’d spent with Olu here for the entire time. He’d been in school again, working on his post-graduate studies, when I’d made the first journey. Anna had been spending her summers with Dad as well, but she’d become a virtual stranger to me.
Now that we were all back together, the house was always full of tension. Anna was suspicious of Olu, I avoided Anna, and Olu was wary of us both. Dad, as usual, seemed to be oblivious to all of our melodrama, and I noticed that whenever Olu was with Dad, Anna would burst into the room, full of hustle and bustle, distracting them from whatever they were doing, always ending up annoying both of them. I’d decided to take a different tack to get Dad’s attention (outside of his admiration for my musical prowess), so I began trying to take an active interest in his work.
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‘I can’t believe that Dad’s invited her. He knows that I don’t want her here,’ Anna fumed as she inspected the delicate fabric that was to become my dress for her wedding.
