I lie soaking up warmth. Around me, steam rises like incense. I marvel like a savage at this jar of Royal Jelly and Pure Honey Moisture-Rich Cream Bath. What attracts me is the glittery swirls, as if the gunk inside were gold-dust bound with egg-yolk. As the list of ingredients doesn’t mention gold, the sparkle must derive from mica and silica. The magic remains as long as you leave it in the jar; disappears instantly when you pour it under the hot tap. Then, you get nothing but bubbles and a faint scent of jasmine.
It goes without saying that we like these toys, especially if they are expensive. (This one wasn’t, but since I’m a savage, comparisons mean little.) They were designed by someone with a Masters degree in What People Like. That they serve no real consumer need is not the point. They provide employment, the non-savage’s traditional way to distribute the “wealth” that we need for food, clothes and shelter.
They managed things rather better in the savage lands, where human dignity ranked higher than efficiency. My grandmother spent time in Kenya in the Fifties, her daughter and two of her grandchildren being there already. She thought it might help her rheumatoid arthritis to stay with them in the hot climate She observed that the natives liked to sit chattering most of the day in the shade under a tree, while the white people worked tirelessly to improve the country. As Noel Coward noted in a famous song, “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” She could not understand the natives’ ingratitude, for Mau-Mau insurgents (she called them terrorists) were demanding their own land back, when it was clear they had no idea how to cultivate it. The British declined their request, in the most gentlemanly way; and then these savages started an armed revolt, burning white men’s houses and, according to propaganda, doing unspeakably savage things.
It is difficult to recount the details of Mau-Mau without stumbling into debates about its nature, significance, and legacy. Nonetheless, the movement took place in Kenya between 1952 and 1960, and is generally understood to have had some (if not a crucial) impact on Kenya’s subsequent independence. The British first colonized in Kenya in 1885, and over the next six decades tension between the settlers and the indigenous population grew.3 Racial tensions, treatment of black Kenyans, and land disputes (among other colonial factors) all fuelled extreme discontent, particularly among the Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya
I wonder how much the Mau-Mau may have had to do with my aunt’s racial prejudice and consequent refusal to see me ever again when I married a Jamaican. It was only yesterday, two years after she passed away, that I met her two sons again. One of them is my cousin Mark. We met in 1946, on the day I arrived in England aged four. We are the same age—born a month apart. Next Thursday he’s going back to Africa, to Lesotho, to work on agriculture, on a project to introduce zero-tillage. This is a way to make the land fertile without ploughing. Perhaps one day the long history of soil erosion can be reversed.We who were once almost brothers, why have we been apart so much? Our encounters were always rare: he spent much of his childhood in Africa; I went to live in the Isle of Wight; he joined the army; I got married and moved away; he became a born-again Christian, a would-be missionary (following quite a tradition in the family); I joined a guru cult. We were playmates as children. Soon I hope to show some photos of that.
We exchanged reminiscences yesterday. We must have always measured ourselves against one another, been rivals, envied one another. Despite the years, we were instant companions again when we met yesterday. To know him is such a gift: why haven’t I made the effort to track him down before? I was first envious of him when he broke his arm aged five: envied his bravery, the attention he received. To this day I have never broken a bone; never been to Africa; never till recently been happily married. I was supposedly the intelligent one, who went to university and supposedly had a good career, whereas he could only find work as a lowly gardener. And in those years of no contact I felt sorry for him, from the standpoint of my false values and some factually false information.
The spores of melancholy are everywhere, but why has the fungus been growing on me, these last days? I know why now, after that visit yesterday. I’ve finally gained the courage and clear-sightedness to release something from a deeply-buried sealed jar: the genie of regret, which I have refused to acknowledge till now. I regret the turnings I took, the traps I got caught in, covering my entire life for forty years, 1963 to 2003. It is not pity for myself: there is space in the average lifespan for huge mistakes and slow painstaking corrections. But I see the effect on my children and grandchildren. There are years more to go before they can complete their own corrections.
I was born in a war, in the midst of the turmoil of the twentieth century. In my lifetime, atomic bombs were dropped on Japan (a jolly good thing, said my mother). Israel was created, in a grand gesture of compensation for the Holocaust. Germany was divided. In a continental divorce settlement, the Soviets were given half of Europe. The British divorced India from Pakistan and cleared out before it got embedded in similar struggles.
We never can be clear of consequences – something is always unfolding.
We lock up the genie of regret because we are afraid of him. But once released and fully honoured, his fearsomeness transmutes.
And if you had not taken those sad turnings, what story would you be telling us?
Kathleen
Introspection is a good thing if it leads to letting go of thoughts that hold you back. Once you let go of regret for the past, what future will you create?
Am I to let go of regret, Pauline? I ought to savour it first, release that genie and grant him full honours, as in the ceremonies to commemorate the dead of unnecessary wars (in the sense that all wars are unnecessary, if we only know how to obviate their necessity). Anyhow, when it hit, I was so full of painful regret that I suppressed the entire post: partly because I felt it was misleading. Ah, but that is the nature of all speech, all writing. Doesn't it become fiction as soon as expressed, to some degree?
Anyhow Kathleen, it gives no pleasure (to me or I suspect my readers) to dwell on sad things. There are enough stories to tell, whatever turning we take. But I know that isn't quite what you mean.