Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller Page B

was no sign of the holiday resort now, but there was a hot little shack on the edge of a littered beach to which we all repaired. There was a smell of sewage and rotting fish. An unfinished concrete building sprouted rusting rebar. “Now,” Mum said, half closing her eyes, “this was where we spent our glorious holidays.”
    By some miracle, Mr. Faraji managed to procure some cold beers for all of us, so we sat in the tin shack while Mum repainted the dreary beach as it had been in her glorious childhood. Another round of cold beer arrived on the heels of the last and the sun began its slow descent over the land so that the sea became a tranquil sheet of gold. As Mum remembered it, the holiday camp at Mombasa was almost unmitigated bliss—watching the huge ships pull into the harbor, diving for shells, exploring empty beaches, swimming in the shark fence (which may explain why Mum always swims with her head well above water, as if scanning the horizon for fins). The only drawback to these holidays seemed to have been the ablution block. “It was very off-putting. There was one large building for men and one large building for women, and in the women’s bathroom, there were eight holes all lined up next to one another without any divisions over one huge pit.” Mum shook her head at the memory. “ Very hard to relax.”

    OUR DAYS TOOK ON A predictable rhythm resolving into a pleasant routine. In the morning, we were awakened by the rhythmic scraping of the gardener’s broom against the sandy walkways and the shouting mynah birds. Afternoons brought camels strolling up the beach and heat-stunned siestas under the umbrellas around the pool. In the evenings, stars appeared slowly over the Indian Ocean, the Guiana chestnut slapped against the windows in the breeze, and a dense peace settled against the hotel. The heavy air was thick with frangipani, tropical lilies and gardenia. “Everything’s changed everywhere,” Mum said. “But some things here feel very familiar. Wonderful people, gorgeous gardens, exciting markets, delicious spices and so much more ancient feeling than anywhere else I’ve been in Africa, such culture , such diversity. Oh, I shall always be a child of Kenya, always.”
    After supper, Mum, Dad, Auntie Glug and Uncle Sandy created a dance floor in the hotel restaurant. By ten or eleven most evenings, we seemed to be the only people awake on the whole beach and we trailed our small party out onto the sand. Then, dancing together in the moonlight, Mum and Dad appeared as they must have in their twenties: beautiful, optimistic and aware of being the most exciting couple anyone had ever met.
    The barman put on Doris Day and Mum moved into Dad’s arms. “Gonna take a sentimental journey,” Mum and Doris sang together. “Gonna set my heart at ease.” Then my parents danced close to the bar and I could smell her perfume, his pipe tobacco. “Gonna make a sentimental journey, to renew old memories.” Mum sank back against Dad’s shoulder briefly before spinning back out into the shadows. Even in the near dark I could see a crescent of tears brimming in Mum’s eyes. “Got my bag, got my reservations,” she sang along. “Spent each dime I could afford.... Gotta take that sentimental journey, sentimental journey home.”
    I turned back to the bar and sighed. “Go on, Niece-Weevil,” Auntie Glug said, pushing a sticky drink toward me. “One of these can’t hurt.”

Nicola Huntingford, the Afrikaner and the Perfect Horse
    Circa 1957

    Mum and Violet. Kenya, circa 1958.
     
    S ometimes memory does a trick of packaging events together so that they are conveniently conflated and easier to retrieve. In this way, Mum remembers nothing of the circus that came through Eldoret in the mid-1950s except that Nane left with it. “I suppose my mother must have thought that he had knocked me out one too many times,” she says, “so off he went to feed the lions.” Mum gives a little gulp. “And I don’t