Drums on the Night Air by Veronica Cecil

Author:Veronica Cecil [Veronica Cecil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849019378
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

15

DAVID AND I SETTLED down to what, in many ways, was a perfect life. Quite apart from the fact that we had Nicholas to make it so, the weather was warm, though never, in my memory, unbearably hot. Because we were relatively high up, there was always a breeze. David got up early and went to the office, coming back for breakfast and lunch. In the evenings, if we weren’t going out or entertaining, David and I would read aloud to one another. We had brought a whole lot of classics with us, including Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen and Tolstoy. At ten o’clock the lights would go out. This was because the station generator, which was old and not very reliable and frequently spluttered to a stop, was automatically turned off at night. After ten, we went to bed by candlelight. The rhythm suited both of us. Most days, Charles and I walked to the club for a swim, otherwise I’d sit on my veranda sewing baby clothes. The river, the slow-moving mass of water that flowed across half a continent, became my life.

The big event of the week was the arrival of the tiny aeroplane. Charles and I would run out into the garden to watch it as it circled once round the plantation, like a huge bird, before landing on the airstrip on the other side of the river. The plane brought the mail, and a boat would be sent over from Elizabetha to collect it. Even more exciting was the paddle steamer that came all the way up-river from Léopoldville. Long before it made an appearance, its arrival would be announced by the distant sound of drums coming from somewhere down-river. Then, from far away, we’d hear the chug of a paddle labouring its way against the current. As it got closer, crowds would gather down at the beach. We could hear the babble of voices, the mounting excitement. This was their one taste of the big city and a life so far away and so different as to be unimaginable. With the boat’s actual arrival, the volume increased. There was a mounting hubbub as people fought to sell or buy. Women screamed as they tottered up the gangplank, backs loaded with babies, heads toppling with pots, or huge hands of bananas, or bunches of manioc leaves. After a while, above the din, we’d hear the voice of the Belgian captain over the tannoy, ‘Attention! Attention!’ as he tried to prepare for departure. At last he would win, and the boat would get going. Once again there was that beat of the paddle, this time getting fainter and fainter until gradually it faded into silence. After this brief visit, it felt as if the world had, once more, departed.

Although we didn’t see a great deal of other people during the week, at weekends we went to the club, swam and played tennis. And, inevitably, in a small community like ours, we got to know most of the other whites very well.

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