THE FIRST KISS... PART 3

THE FIRST KISS…

By Njonjo Mue

PART 3

The December holidays could not end soon enough once I managed to figure out who she was. It had happened in the most unexpected way.

A friend of my cousin's, who was in Form Two in Arthur House had also been at the BBQ during that magical night in late November. He was visiting us one day just before Christmas when he casually mentioned her name in conversation, asking me how she was doing.

"Who is that?" I asked, looking at him blankly.

"The chick I saw you with at the BBQ," he said. "Don't tell me that you've already forgotten her name."

"Of course not," I replied, recovering quickly. I did not want to disclose the nature of the curious challenge she had presented to me as a result of which I did not even know her name. But I was barely able to hide my excitement now that the code had been cracked.

I asked him how he knew her and he said that she had been one class ahead of him in primary school. When he came to Alliance, he had escorted her twice across the valley and had later tried to pursue her seriously but she had remained aloof and obviously considered herself beyond his reach, and so he had given up.

As the holidays drew to an end and we prepared to go back to school in January, I was so excited that I found it difficult to sleep through the night.

I imagined how it would be like having an acrossian girlfriend of my own. I no longer had to fear floating during joint events because she would be there for me, and when she happened not to be, there would be no pressure to socialise since everyone would know I was committed to this one person and would take my floating as a voluntary act of loyalty. Life would never be the same again.

January came soon enough and I went back to school to begin my Fourth Form.

I wondered about the best way to break the news that I had managed to find out her name so that we could get on with the business of discovering the ‘few more surprises’ that she had promised would be in store for me once I got over this hurdle.

Should I pay her a visit at Across during the first weekend? No, that would appear too desperate (though if truth be told, I was indeed desperate to see her again). Should I wait for the first joint function? That seemed too far since most clubs were still preparing their calendars for the term. Should I write her a letter? I was reluctant to do that based on my previous bad experience with letter writing.

In the end, it was not me who went looking for her, but she who came to me. I was sitting with some friends in the Dorm in the afternoon of the second Saturday after school opened sharing our various holiday escapades, some real but mostly imagined.

A Form 2 boy from Aggrey House walked in and announced that I had a visitor waiting to see me at the Parade Ground.

I was not used to receiving random visitors in school and so I wondered aloud who it could be as I started for the door.

“It’s an acrossian,” said the Form 2, his voice chiming with the exaggerated tone of the bearer of unexpected good tidings. My heart almost stopped.

I knew it could not be anyone else. I did not know any acrossian who would walk all the way unannounced across the valley to see me on a Saturday afternoon.

But I also doubted it was her. Wasn’t she supposed to wait until I found out who she was and sent word to her? But then I thought back to our first meeting at the BBQ in November and I remembered how she had come across as a woman who usually knew what she wanted and went for it. It had to be her.

I went back to my locker and quickly changed into more presentable clothes, applied a dab of cologne and dashed off towards the parade ground.

When I got there, I found her half-sitting, half leaning delicately back against the low stone platform on which the teachers usually stood as they addressed the school parade.

She looked composed and regal as if posing for a portrait, with her arms crossed over her chest, one leg bent at the knee and the foot resting gently against the wall.

The new school uniform she wore made her look somewhat smaller than I remembered her from our first meeting. It also made her look as sober and innocent now as the blue miniskirt had made her look sensual and provocative then.

“Hi, what a surprise!” I said, my voice sounding a pitch higher than usual in my own ear.

I was not sure how I should greet her. A mere handshake seemed too formal given how our last encounter had ended, and yet a hug in mid-afternoon in the middle of the parade ground might be interpreted as being a wee bit forward and invite trouble from some over-enthusiastic prefect.

I did neither, instead choosing to give her an endearing look that I hoped adequately communicated my dilemma.

“Well, I guessed that you’d failed the test and did not have the courage to admit it, so I thought I should come over and put you out of your misery,” she said, laughing gleefully with the confident manner of one accustomed to winning.

As she laughed, she tossed her head back in such a carefree way that I found myself instinctively joining in the laughter. But my excitement at seeing her made my own laughter go on a little too long.

“Ah, but you are wrong, my dear,” I said, regaining a measure of control. “Terribly wrong.”

I did not immediately tell her that I had already found out her name. It was my turn to play games now that she had brought herself willingly and unexpectedly to my territory.

“How much time do you have?” I asked. “Can we take a walk?” I was half-hoping to re-enact the memorable stroll we had taken at the BBQ, though of course, I knew that this time around we had to keep a respectable distance from each other.

I could almost feel the eyes of curious onlookers on our backs as we casually strolled, deep in conversation, past the dining hall and the swimming pool towards the lower gate.

I had never enjoyed being the centre of attention so much before in my life. I was suddenly in very good spirits and had to resist the urge to stop and say hello to random boys we passed on our way to ensure that they took note of my exceedingly good fortune.

I had once wandered into the beautifully manicured lawn of the Church of the Torch where I had spent a lazy afternoon lying alone on the soft grass reading a book and enjoying the sights and sounds.

At the time, I had thought it such a waste not to have anyone to share all this serenity with. I had, therefore, subconsciously made a decision that one day I would bring my acrossian girlfriend, if I was ever privileged to have one, here to share this beauty.

And so, once outside the lower gate, we turned left towards the junction and then walked up the hill past Musa Gitau Primary School and onto Hospital Road, enjoying the perfect afternoon weather that was neither too hot nor too cold.

Once inside the church compound, we spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on how each of us had spent the Christmas holidays after we had taken leave of each other in November.

We admired the grand architecture of the old church before settling down to sit on the grass and enjoying the giddy feelings of young teenagers falling in love.

From then on this church lawn would become one of our favourite places to hang out on the weekends. I would often read poetry to my newfound love as the majestic cathedral stood in silent witness. The birds also seemed to cheer us on as she regaled me with stories of growing up in her family farm in Nakuru.

It was the start of a whirlwind romance. We couldn’t see enough of each other.

Being one class apart, we did not let the fact that we did not have many club functions in common deter us. Instead, I would usually make a point of waiting for her at the end of a club meeting and she would skip the refreshments to spend time with me before I walked her across the valley.

And then there were the charity films that neither of us missed and yet hardly really watched as the highlight for us was the opportunity to sit together, holding hands in the darkened hall whispering sweet nothings to each other and rekindling memories of the first night we met.

We also exchanged letters, sometimes as many as three a week, making full use of the unique mail service that delivered letters to and from across twice daily.

All the while, we eagerly looked forward to the weekend and the obligatory walk up the hill to our favourite spot on the green lawn of the Church of the Torch.

It was a romance made in heaven whose details we were just faithfully working out here on earth. Surely the gods were smiling down upon us.

Or so I thought.

For all too soon, our fairytale romance came to an end. Suddenly and unexpectedly.

We had a date to meet at Across one Thursday evening after a Debating Society meeting. Earlier during the day, I had gone to Nairobi for a dental appointment.

Unfortunately, I never made it back in time to join the team going Across as the Kenya Bus broke down at Dagoretti Corner on our way back. I, therefore, wrote to her that same night apologising for not showing up and explaining what had happened. I ended the letter by telling her how much I had missed her.

Her reply, when it came, was a thunderbolt that knocked the breath out of me:

“I did not miss you at all”, the words leaped from the page assaulting my unbelieving eyes. “In fact, I never want to see you again.”

I thought it must have been a joke. But when I wrote to her two more letters that went unanswered, and two weeks passed without hearing a word from her, it started to dawn on me that she may have been serious after all.

I went Across to see her the following Saturday afternoon hoping at least to get an explanation, but when I sent for her, she did not come. Instead, a friend of hers came and told me flatly that she did not want to see me. “Why?” She was not at liberty to say.

To this day, I have no idea why our budding friendship came to such an abrupt end. I had been the perfect gentleman during those six months, at least as perfect a gentleman as any sixteen-year-old boy could be. Nor was it, as far as I could tell, the fact that she’d met someone else, for after that, she avoided all social functions.

And so, as suddenly as she had come into my life, she had gone away, taking my heart with her. For a while, I did not know whether it would ever be returned to me.

But, eventually, it came back, in bits and pieces. As I wrote her long letters of lament which I never sent and took lonely walks up the hill to breathe the fresh air that we had shared at the Church of the Torch. As I silently re-read the poems that I had read to her in happier times and I remembered the moments that we had spent together during those magical months. All this, surely but agonizingly slowly, brought my tender, aching heart back to me and, eventually, released me to move on.

With the passage of time, I have often wondered whether what we had was true love or just a passing infatuation between two teenagers.

But whether the love was real or imagined, the memories of the moments we shared in school and on the hills and valleys around Kikuyu during the first two terms of 1984 remain some of the most defining features of my youth.

/The End/nm….