1/ The Magic Mountain

          The peach wasn’t ripe but that didn’t matter. The African sun was cooling and a soft breeze brought the smell of wood smoke from a nearby village fire. Below and before me the Phalombe Plain stretched towards the Mozambique mountains which were blue and mysterious in the lengthening shadows of the day. Our colonial-style house, rambling and white-washed, stood before this great painting, framed by a huge mahogany tree at the foot of our garden. Behind me the rocky face of Zomba Mountain brooded in an almost disapproving way. It was a strong African belief that mountains were places where the sprits lived. As I stared up at those rocky peaks glowing golden in sunset light it wasn’t hard to imagine that somehow it was a magical place between this world and the next.
         
          I would often sit in that tree to spend time on my own, wrapped in my thoughts. On many afternoons I’d climb and sit among the branches and try to make sense of a world which had chosen to embrace me. As well as reading there I would write poetry and stories and try to imagine what the future had waiting for me. Behind me, and always reassuringly, I could see my father’s study window. Sitting at his desk in the late afternoon sun he would be reading and writing and I wondered what poets and thoughts filled his head. Sometimes, lost in my own thoughts, I would come up with ideas for stories or have insights into life and people. If I felt I had a flash of genius I would rush to tell him to see what he thought. One afternoon an idea struck me and I went to tell him. ‘Daddy,’ I said, as he looked up from his writing and saw me coming through the door, ‘do you think it true that there are many intelligent people in the world but not many wise people?’ He agreed with this notion with a smile. ‘You certainly have profound thoughts for a person of your age,’ he said with a laugh.
         
          He had described the day I was born in detail. It was July, a cool month in Central Africa, and fires had to be lit at night to keep our old house warm. Mornings brought a damp chill which fortunately was quickly burnt off by the mid-morning sun. He said my new born pink lips had first taken in the crisp mountain air while dew still sparkled on the grass and the sun began to shyly show its face on this little corner of the world. African nurses rushed about the veranda of the small old colonial hospital in their white uniforms, while monkeys watched them high up in the trees. Observing the monkeys, even higher, circled an eagle who’d flown down from the mountain rocks above and was riding the chilly morning air currents towards the lower plains. His regal brown headdress, which normally stood proud when still, was flattened with the rushing winds. And so a new life had begun.
         
          I heard a gentle noise above me and looked up to see what it was. I then spotted a bird on an upper branch and it seemed to be watching me with as much interest as I was watching him. Gradually, realizing it was a swallow, I was struck with awe. This tiny creature had probably travelled all the way from those English lanes where my mother had peddled me on the back of my grandfather’s bicycle during our summer holidays. Perhaps it was the same bird we’d seen together one afternoon by an old barn in Cheshire. What a journey it must have made! How could such a tiny animal fly thousands of miles across all those mountains, seas, rivers and lakes? As I watched him cleaning his wings and hopping along the upper branches, I tried to imagine what it must have seen soaring high over the plains of Africa in the hot sun, a minute speck in the sky. Did he rest on his journey or could he sleep on the wing while he flew, his little head buried in his feathers and white clouds and winds making a soft bed for his dreams? Why had he chosen to visit this little corner of Africa all on his own, I wondered. Was our house and beautiful garden more attractive than anywhere else?
         
          I’d been dreaming of England’s green fields in hazy summertime while reading the poetry book. Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth had taken my mind thousands of miles back to summer holidays and a little red chair clipped onto the back of my grandfather’s green bicycle. My mother would peddle me through narrow English country lanes and point out the flowers and trees we passed – foxgloves and buttercups, oaks and willows. One day, resting by an old barn and picking blackberries, she pointed up to a nest cradled beneath the eaves. A bird fluttered out and danced this way and that. ‘There’s a swallow,’ she said. ‘It will be flying all the way back to Africa when the winter comes.’
          ‘Do you think it will fly past our home?’ I asked her. ‘If so, why don’t we take it back with us? We could save it the journey. I could put it in a box with food and carry it on the aeroplane.’
          ‘I think it can find its own way back,’ my mother replied laughing.
         
          I tried to imagine the first breath of an English winter gently ruffling the feathers of the sleeping swallow. The tiny bird would open his eyes and know that the sun was reminding him that it was time to leave that part of the world and that a long journey lay ahead. It would have been a hot summer and in the heat haze of late afternoons the bird would find insects dancing along the river near his rickety home in a green Cheshire valley. But autumn now stood waiting in the long shadows of dusk, ready to wrap his gold brown coat around this land, providing a bare world for his icy friend who followed closely behind.
         
          I pictured the bird arriving over Africa after crossing Europe and feeling the hot desert winds for the first time. Flying on into the night, fires of nomadic people would flicker below. Stories told by the elders about ancient times and peoples, mixing with flames and their words would drift up into the night air – gentle chatter about human suffering and joys gently carried on the breeze and taken into eternity.
         
          Many nights later, to the east and against a full moon, the snowy summit of Kilimanjaro would stand silhouetted against a starry sky. The swallow would know now that he was almost home. On into the night he’d fly until the sun decided to return, having promised his little friend light for the final stretch of the journey. Dawn’s orange rays would glimmer, promising a new day and new life. A hot day would follow and in the midday heat the animals of the Rift Valley hundreds of meters below, like specks in the distance, would be lazing under trees. Giraffes would be standing still to keep cool and flicking flies from their hides. Elephants would be ambling slowly through wooded glades and crocodiles floating in the cooler parts of the rivers and lakes. Then, in the distance, the bird would spot the last of the great lakes he must cross. Hazy in the late afternoon sun, it would sit cradled in the long arms of the Rift Valley, an enormous stretch of blue. Fish eagles would circle above him, their eyes fixed on the waters below, their cries echoing across the lake.
         
          The bird would feel he was nearing his destination and then, suddenly, spotting his journey’s end, he would feel his heart leap with joy. The familiar mountain range would loom pale blue as if calling all creation to its feet. The swallow would start descending and as he did so the fragrances of life would start to rise. Smoke from early evening fires would fill the air, while insects gathered ready for the onset of night. He would beat his wings excitedly as he lowered his tiny body towards a pine forests kissing a mountain ridge. Cool air from moss, lichen and mountain streams would mix with hot air rising from the plains below. He would dance among the butterflies and flowers of the forest and then gently skim across the mountain’s rocky peaks. Lower and lower he’d fly until the green roof-tops of white-walled houses appeared through tangled trees beneath him. Further and further down he’d drop until he’d spot a fruit tree where he’d decide to rest his weary wings.
         
          He’d fly one more circle and finally settle on a branch right at the top of the tree. He’d feel the cooling breeze of early evening embrace his tired wings. Then, peeping between the leaves, he’d see a little blonde European girl sitting on a lower branch, dangling her legs and bare feet in a carefree way and eating a peach. She was also holding a book which she studied with a look of rapt concentration. When she turned her eyes skyward and glimpsed the swallow a look of faraway curiosity crossed her face.
         
          It was a late Friday afternoon and the floral print on my school uniform reflected the darkening blue sky above me. This was the beginning of the summer holidays and inside the house my family and visitors from England were preparing for a weekend trip. Chaos always reigned in our house - and not only before trips. It continually looked as if we were packing or unpacking for something. I climbed down the tree, carefully avoiding a shy chameleon hesitantly taking his next step and hoping his tree-grey camouflage would hide him. He looked at me with one scared eye, while the other, as locals believed, peered into eternity. They said chameleon was the cause of all disease and eternal death, having accidently trodden in a gift of pure animal fat sent to God from man. Terrible to spend your life in fear and regret like that, I thought, as I jumped onto the lawn. Curious to see what was going on in the house, I made my way along the garden’s upper terraces, skipping between clicking grass-hoppers.
         
          My mother stood on the driveway standing over our Topper sailing boat. She looked puzzled because she was trying to untangle the ropes and sail which had been lying for months among spiders and lizards in an outhouse. She began by brushing cobwebs from the folded sail, whose bright red canopy complemented the purple and pink bougainvillea bordering our drive. I walked away hoping she wouldn’t ask me to help. Her style was to say, cheerfully, ‘Now this is a wonderful opportunity for you to learn about sailing and how to rig a boat,’ as if I held a life-long ambition to become a sailor and she was doing me a favour. The truth, however, was that, unlike her, I wasn’t, and never would be, interested in sailing. Too much like hard work for very little return, I thought.
          I crept onto the veranda weaving through rows of clay pot plants my mother had collected over the years and then hid beneath a table. I would often cover this table with sheets and old curtains and make palaces inside for my dolls. I’d create a grand ballroom and dress my little plastic friends up in their finery. Who would have guessed that such an exciting world could be shaped beneath such an ordinary looking table? Hearing a rattling sound, I peeped out behind the table legs and saw our wooden tea trolley appearing. Behind the trolley, pushing it with a look of satisfaction, walked Nelson. And sitting proudly on the trolley was a large chocolate cake balanced on a white plate. Nelson never gave up on that old trolley, his closest companion. It would creak and groan its way round the house, its wheels sounding as if they were giving up on life. I’d then later find Nelson in the kitchen hammering away at fixing his old wooden friend. He was determined not to give up on it. I squeezed myself from under the table and Nelson looked surprised to see me. When he saw me eyeing the cake a smile crossed his face. He only made cakes when we had special guests and so he knew how rare a treat this was. ‘Hello there, little miss,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the others before you can have a piece.’ In my mind, Nelson was Central Africa’s leading hot chocolate maker. To satisfy my longing for this special beverage he would use cocoa and milk and lots of sugar. I would tell him how much chocolate cost in English shops and describe all the different flavours: white chocolate, mint chocolate, nutty chocolate, orange chocolate. His eyes would roll in amazement. But my fondness for Nelson’s hot chocolate had produced a little pot belly so my mother had banned me from drinking any more of it and had given Nelson strict instructions along these lines. Secretly though he carried on supplying me with this banned substance and it was our little source of shared amusement.
         
          Nelson was our cook and my reading friend. I would sit for hours in his ‘office’, as he called the outside kitchen, while he created all sorts of culinary delights. He was proud of his job and, dressed in his white uniform, worked with the seriousness of a chef at the Ritz. He’d asked my mother to buy him a proper uniform as this, he felt, was appropriate attire for a professional cook. The kitchen was an annex set back from the main house and housed an ancient wood-burning Dover Stove, ubiquitous throughout the colonial world, I heard, and imported from Birmingham. If the wood wasn’t dry, however, we would race outside gasping for air as it belched smoke. Nelson was also busy in his spare time translating the Bible into his home language, Yao, because in addition to being a cook he was also a leading preacher, indeed a bishop, in his local church. He was a wise and distinguished-looking man with a thick slowly-greying beard. I benefited greatly from his worldly advice on areas of my life which troubled me at such a young age.
         
         
          As Nelson’s face glowed from the hot embers of the oven fire, which he religiously kept burning throughout the day, we would discuss the books I read. Sitting on an old stool with the soles of his well-worn feet propped up near the oven, he would listen with rapt interest to stories about places in England described in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books or the mystical lands of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia Series. I would sit on a battered trunk by the kitchen’s dusty window for hours. One afternoon I read aloud the entire story of The Railway Children while Nelson illegally supplied me with repeated cups of hot chocolate. I imagined that the trunk was luggage belonging to one of the Railway children and, closing my eyes, saw myself dressed in Edwardian lace, sitting on a railway platform. It would be a sleepy summer’s day in a quiet English village and in the distance I’d hear the hoot of a steam train approaching. England of course was a far-off exotic place to Nelson. He kept asking me if elephants lived there because they were a problem near his village and I think he just couldn’t imagine a place without them. He didn’t once complain about being my audience, nor did I for being his. For, as well as commenting on the books I read, he would tell me about life in his rural village and relate to me African fables about the animal world. I learnt why the hippopotamus yawns so wide, and, while opening his mouth, bares all his teeth and tonsils to the sky. The reason is simple. God made him promise that he wouldn’t eat all the fish in his rivers. So, to keep in God’s good books, hippo regularly opens his mouth wide to show he’s only eating grass. I would also listen in wonder to Nelson’s stories about the ancestors and tales of old Nyasaland.
         
          Arriving in Africa in 1961, my parents were determined not to have people working in the house - a colonial hangover, they said, not to be encouraged after independence. But long queues of people at the door seeking work changed their minds. How best to help in these circumstances? To give money, food and clothes was a short-term measure and Africans took a dim view of Europeans who didn’t provide work for them when clearly they had the means to do so. Offering employment ensured a steady income and more often than not accommodation too, so that savings could be sent back to distant home villages. Nelson and our gardener Amachi, as I saw it, were part of the family and had been since before I was born. The wages they received supported their large extended families. Nelson just had one child called Johnny, a gifted musician, but Amachi had many children, in fact so many that I think he lost count himself, perhaps due to the fact that, as a Muslim, he could have several wives.
         
          Sometimes during the week, with my brother and sisters away at school in Blantyre, I would spend a little time in the silence of our house after arriving home with homework, but soon be tempted away by the chatter and laughter of Nelson’s and Amachi’s families in and around their little houses behind ours. I would help to pound maize in mortars or pick wings from flying ants, a delicacy during the rainy season. Nelson’s wife Joyce looked after me as a baby when my mother was working as a nurse tutor at the local hospital. Indeed in my earliest memories I’m propped up against her legs while she sat under our mango trees crocheting colourful ponchos and scarves. My new eyes were fascinated by her nimble fingers clicking wool backwards and forwards at great speed. Often I would be strapped to her back by a piece of patterned cloth, like all African babies, my fat white cheeks pressed against her smooth dark back while she went about her daily tasks. I would peer over her shoulder at cooking pots being washed and gaze in fascination as she swept her steps of dust which misted up into the orange light of a late afternoon, while chickens nearby pecked and clucked with approval. I would hear her calling to Nelson and Amachi in Chichewa, Malawi’s main language and part of the Bantu family which is spoken across eastern parts of the continent from Kenya all the way down to South Africa.
         
          ‘Where have you been hiding, my little one?’ Nelson asked as if disappointed that I’d chosen another place than the kitchen to read my books.
          ‘I’ve been reading in one of the fruit trees,’ I said. ‘The peaches are almost ripe now.’
         
          Nelson sometimes said I had a special affinity for the peach trees because, like them, I was brought in from a foreign land, a European import planted in African soil to grow in tropical heat, my fair skin to be blushed like the peaches in the sun. ‘Always reading, always writing, just like your father,’ he sighed as he turned and walked away, seeming to make mental notes, perhaps about planning jars of peach jam or special fruit cakes for our visitors. Meanwhile soft music began issuing from my brother’s stereo - guitars and voices competing with the rising sound of crickets and animals that take centre stage in an African night.

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