The Flame Trees of Thika (28 page)

‘How wonderfully lucky you are’, Lettice added, ‘to be glad of that, and not sorry!’

‘Children are always being told they are lucky to have things they hate,’ said Robin, ‘like plenty of time ahead of them, and expensive educations, and healthy food, and considerate parents. It must be very annoying.’

‘Perhaps it’s as bad to feel one isn’t getting old fast enough, as to know that one is getting old too fast,’ Lettice agreed. ‘We are always trying to make time go at a different pace, as if it were an obstinate pony. Perhaps we should do better to let it amble along as it wishes, without taking much notice of it.’

‘That is what the natives do,’ Tilly said.

‘And perhaps that is why they seem happier. Perhaps it is all a mistake, our trying to change them, and introduce new worries, like Time’s wingéd chariot hurrying near. And yet, those awful sores, and bloated spleens…. It will be a nice change to get away from them into the wilds, like a visit to the Garden of Eden before Adam’s tiresome curiosity started all our trouble. And here is Ian, managing to look urbane in spite of his bushman’s outfit; and I hope he has ordered a good breakfast, the last we shall have in civilization (if the Blue Posts is that) for I wonder how long?’

They were to travel first across the plains below the Kikuyu highlands, alive with game and infested with ticks, to Meru on the northern slopes of Mount Kenya, the last place where they could buy food. From Meru they were to head northwards, beyond the Guaso Nyiro river, to Archers’ Post, where the shooting was excellent and water plentiful. After that, they would see. To the north lay four hundred miles of desert and then the Abyssinian mountains; to the west, more desert, great ranges of kudu-sheltering hills, and that strange, remote, enormous lake, set in a waste of sand and lava, discovered only some twenty years before by the German von Höhnel and called after Prince Rudolph of Austria; to the east, more desert still, and then the death of the Guaso Nyiro in the marshes of the Lorian swamp. All around them would lie mystery and harshness, where nature was filed down to the bone, where every drop of water was hoarded by some animal or plant, and birds managed with a mist of dew that only sometimes brushed the wiry grasses which crept in ropes along the ground to search for nourishment; where beasts grew elongated necks to pluck shoots from tree-tops, and spiky thorns gave birth to flowers or leaves at different seasons, not both at once, and for half the year looked as black and dead as old iron.

It was as well that Ian knew this country, for it had no tracks or settlements, and if you ran out of water you would die within a few days. Ian had been across it several times to Abyssinia on the business of the Boma Trading Company, which had been started by three or four enthusiastic young men with a thousand pounds between them, a charter from the Emperor Menelik and the blessings of the Foreign Office, to open up a trade between
the Ethiopians and the Protectorate. So far the trade had consisted mainly of tough little Somali ponies which the Ethiopians were reluctant to part with, and the superior cattle of the Boran.

The moving spirit was Jack Riddell, a friend of Ian’s, a young soldier who had quitted the Army to seek adventure in Africa. Where he could not find adventure, he created it; in Nairobi he would ride his pony into the bar of the Norfolk hotel or shoot out the street lamps along Government Road; in Abyssinia he would gallop his ponies across the terrain of a hostile baron pursued by swordsmen, drink
taj
and boast of his prowess with more friendly rulers all night, and he was reputed to conduct a flourishing illicit trade in ivory. There was a story that the Governor, having vowed to catch him, and mounted a guard over every water-hole on the route from the frontier, was prophesying, at a garden party, that this time the villain would be laid by the heels, when Jack Riddell walked up, bowed respectfully, and shook hands.

At the Blue Posts we ate a large breakfast, and sat on the veranda while Hereward busied himself checking girths and bridles, and once more examining the armoury, helped with an air of lofty disdain by Ahmed, clad now in a khaki suit but with a green shawl loosely wrapped round a proud, small head held on a slender neck as erect as a tulip – a little like the gerenuks and giraffe soon to be his companions. Ahmed was headed for his own land, his own people, and there was a suggestion of eagerness and tension in his bearing.

‘I would entrust my life to him a dozen times over,’ Ian said, ‘but if an unarmed, harmless youth annoyed him, he’d be as likely to stick a knife into him as to hold my stirrup when I mount, and think no more of it either.’ And he told us more of Ahmed’s people: of the constant fights between the tribes, the deeds of bravery, the feats of endurance in this desert world so different from our own and existing side by side with ours, absorbed in its own life and struggles, and quite oblivious of us and of all our complications and intentions.

‘They wear white robes, and gaily coloured skirts, and turbans as bright as jewels,’ Ian said, ‘and shawls thrown over their shoulders, and swords at their belts, and they can ride any pony born, and walk for three days across the lava rock without water
or the camels’ milk they live on, which makes them lean and strong and gives a healthy bloom to their skins. When the time comes for them to move on, they strap their dismantled dwellings, made of sticks and mats, on to the backs of their camels, with the big leather water-bags and all their household goods, and trek away to other wells and pans that hold the water on which all life depends. They worship Allah, and think no man fit to take a wife who hasn’t killed an enemy; but they respect cunning, and if they can outwit you and take you unarmed, so much the better. They do not fear death as we do; it will come to all, and cannot be avoided, like storm or famine, so must be taken as it comes.’

The time came for their departure; I cried, and so did Tilly, when she said good-bye; and we watched them mount their mules and jog away along the dusty road, and turn to wave at the corner, and disappear round a bend of the road.

It was tame and sad to ride back to the farm, which seemed dead and empty in spite of its usual activities, and to go on with ordinary living. Robin had desired with all his heart to go with the others, but the still he was putting up to make essential oils had reached a critical condition, and someone had to look after the farms, both ours and Hereward’s. I was delivered like a parcel to Mrs Nimmo, together with instructions that I was to weave a receptacle for dead-heads (Tilly had taken up basket-work from a book), memorize the Kings of England and the
Lady of Shalott
, learn the multiplication tables (which had somehow got overlooked) and the life-cycle of the liver-fluke, and draw the signs of the Zodiac. I was to have an examination when they returned and if I was successful I would get another saddle for Moyale (his was almost in pieces), whereas if I failed I should have to go to bed early for a week.

Twinkle was the main reason why I did not want to go to Mrs Nimmo’s. Not only did I hate parting from her, but I was afraid that she would meet with some disaster. At night she was safe in her hut, but by day she wandered sometimes to the river and had been seen to drink from the pool beside our coffee nursery, just below the waterfall, where the python lived. In some ways he was a harmless reptile – he did not emerge from the pool to threaten people working in the nursery – but if anything was
rash enough to venture into the water, or to stand on its edge, he satisfied his hunger.

Robin had resolved to kill the python, but it was cunning and elusive; after swallowing its prey it disappeared, perhaps into a cave behind the waterfall, and he had never been able to get a shot at it. I had seen it once or twice – a glistening black and speckled coil on a black rock, its body thick as a man’s thigh, like a wicked elemental shape spewed up from the ocean’s caverns. I was haunted by the fear of Twinkle being sucked, still breathing, down the great black tunnel of its body, to be digested alive.

When I expressed these fears to Njombo he said, perhaps half mockingly:

‘Why do you not get a charm to protect her from the python?’

I asked him where one could be got.

‘From the
mundu-mugo
; he has charms for everything, and certainly one against a snake.’

Mundu-mugos
were the good witch-doctors, the anti-sorcerers, and it seemed that several lived close at hand, either on our farm or on those of our neighbours.

‘Would it be expensive?’ I inquired.

‘No, because you are a child. If you gave him one rupee…’

‘But I haven’t got a rupee.’

Njombo laughed to reassure me. ‘Perhaps he will do it just to help you. I will see.’

The
mundu-mugo
turned out to be a thin, light-coloured man with a narrow nose and sharp eyes who worked for Alec Wilson and belonged, in some complicated manner, to Kupanya’s family. Mrs Nimmo allowed me to ride over to tea with Robin several times a week, provided I was escorted by Njombo, who was by this time accepted as a trustworthy chaperon. So we left early, and Njombo took me to the
mundu-mugo’s
dwelling, which lay across a log bridge just above the waterfall, and we sat down in the shade of a tree. Njombo had told me to bring a few hairs from Twinkle’s coat; I had snipped them off and carried them in a match-box, and I also brought a pencil for a present, and a packet of needles.

The
mundu-mugo
carried with him on his business two or three long gourds with stoppers made of cows’ tails, and some
smaller gourds, the size of snuff-bottles, containing all sorts of powders and medicines, hanging by fine chains from his neck. He scooped a little depression in the earth and laid in it a banana leaf, like a dish, and poured some brown liquid into it from an old whisky bottle. It was a great relief to me that we did not have to sacrifice a goat and use the undigested contents of its stomach, the basis of so many Kikuyu potions and magics. After he had added various powders from his gourds, Twinkle’s hairs, one or two feathers, and some ground chalk, and stirred it all into a paste, he built round it a little
boma
of twigs from a particular shrub, and uttered a number of incantations, at the same time smearing paste on his neck, wrists, and ankles. Then he wrapped the remaining paste neatly in a leaf and presented it to me with the air of a marshal proffering the crown on a velvet cushion.

‘You are to rub this on the head and legs of the animal,’ he told me, ‘and put a little on his tongue, and then he will be able to go to the river and the snake will leave him alone.’

I thanked the
mundu-mugo
warmly but he refused both my presents. ‘It is not because he does not like them,’ Njombo explained, ‘but he does not want to take anything, he will help you because he is your friend.’

I carried the folded leaf carefully home in my pocket, where it exuded a very peculiar odour, and managed to smear some of the paste on Twinkle’s head, but she evidently liked the smell no better than I did and bounded away whenever I advanced towards her. With Njombo and two helpers clinging on to her, I managed to rub it on to her legs, but her tongue seemed impossible, and she struggled so frantically that we let her go.

Resorting to guile, we fetched some rock-salt from the store and put it down in front of her. Like all antelopes, Twinkle relished salt, and soon she sniffed her way up to it and rasped her tongue along its glistening surface. I picked it up and proffered it in my hand. At first she shook her head with an impatient gesture, flicked her ears, minced away, and had a little frolic round, kicking up her heels; then she cautiously returned, sniffed gently at the rock-salt with her blue-black nose and gave it an exploratory lick. Reassured, she licked more vigorously while I scratched her neck behind the ears and, having lulled her,
basely held out a piece of salt with a little of the paste on it. She took one sniff and then recoiled, wrinkled her nose, and bounded off with her neck stretched out before her.

‘She did not eat it,’ I said.

‘If the medicine touched her tongue, that was sufficient. This it did: why else should she run away?’

I was not really satisfied; she might have been put off merely by the smell. However, Njombo was confident and he knew more than I did about charms and smells, so I hoped that Twinkle was now fully protected against the python. All the same, I thought, it would be better for the python to be shot. But Njombo said:

‘It would be very bad to shoot the python. Then we should not get any rain.’

‘What has the python to do with rain?’

‘Have you not seen the big snake of many colours that lies across the sky when the rain falls? That is the snake who lives in the waterfall. If you look down into the waterfall you can see him there sometimes. His colours are many, like the flowers your mother grows.’

‘But the python is black,’ I objected.

‘When he goes into the waterfall he puts on his bright clothes. They are so bright that they shine up into the sky. If you kill the snake there will be no colours and no rain.’

Robin, I recalled, had said that he would give the python’s skin to Tilly, and she could have shoes and bags made from it. I was glad that I would be able to warn him, as we needed rain for the young coffee, and if Tilly wore shoes made from such a magical creature she might disappear.

M
RS
N
IMMO
was much stricter about hours than Tilly. At half past eight she rang a hand-bell and I had to keep at my lessons until ten, when I had a break for cocoa; then lessons again until twelve. Mrs Nimmo herself presided over the multiplication tables and the Kings of England, and not only that but
she added the Kings of Scotland, who were most confusing, and far too numerous. And she added Bible readings too. On the other hand she made delicious cakes and scones, and read me ‘The Lady of the Lake’ and
Marmion
, and when I next rode over to see Robin the words, ‘Charge, Chester, charge: On, Stanley, on,’ were ringing in my head.

They were quenched by the news I had so long half-dreaded, and which now came down like a flood. Twinkle had gone. She had vanished the day before. That night her
boma
had been left open, but she had not returned. Because I had sometimes imagined this disaster, it was not any easier to bear.