Whitethorn (86 page)

Mike called a greeting from the car and each woman, smiling, lifted a hand to acknowledge our arrival. An African appeared from the side of the house and came towards the Land Rover. ‘Leave your gear, Tom, Githuku will take it to your room,' Mike instructed.

‘
Jambo, Bwana
Mike,' Githuku said, smiling broadly as he approached us.

‘
Ku salamu
, Githuku,' Mike replied, returning the greeting and the smile. ‘
Habari yako? Jamaa endelaya mzuri?
I hope you and your family are well?'

‘
Ndio
,' the servant replied, smiling shyly.

Walking towards the two women, Mike called out, ‘Not playing tennis I see, Mother?'

‘Knocked out in the semifinals by Gladys the Man-eater,' Mrs Finger replied, laughing.

We climbed the terrace steps and Mike introduced me. ‘May I introduce Tom Fitzsaxby,' he said in a surprisingly formal way. ‘Tom, this is my mother and, of course, you'll have guessed, this is my little sister, Sam.' He suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Sam in a bear hug and kissed her while she squealed in delighted protest, then he turned and more formally did the same to his mother.

Hug completed, Mrs Finger smiled as I accepted her hand. ‘You're to call me Bobby, Tom,' she said firmly. ‘Welcome to Makindi.' She released my hand. ‘Lunch is almost ready and the cook's baked an apple pie and there's fresh cream.'

‘Sounds great,' I said, and then added for want of anything else to say, ‘it's some time since I've had a home-baked apple pie.' Although, thinking about it, I don't suppose I ever had.

‘Oh, don't expect too much, the apples are out of a tin from the south,' Bobby laughed, no doubt meaning tinned fruit from South Africa.

I turned to acknowledge Sam.

‘You're supposed to be much bigger!' she exclaimed, looking me up and down. ‘Six foot, at least.'

‘You're supposed to be much smaller, Midget the Digit,' I replied, laughing.

‘Watch out, Sam, Tom's a sharp-tongued lawyer,' Mike warned, grinning.

Sam flicked back an errant strand of blonde hair that was flopping over her right eye. ‘The way Mike described you, with a Rhodes scholarship and all, I thought you'd be, well, tall and imposing, a bit frightening,' she said, laughing.

‘I'm very unimposing, I'm afraid. There was a definite shortage of imposing, tall, frightening candidates when I applied for Oxford and I was very much the “next best” one,' I said, dusting off my Pirrou-taught manners. Then, bowing slightly, I smiled and extended my hand. ‘By the way, how do you do, Miss Finger?'

Sam Finger ignored my outstretched hand and took a step forward and planted a soft kiss on my cheek. ‘Lovely,' she said, ‘at least I don't have to stand on a chair to kiss you, Tom Fitzsaxby.'

If I wasn't already in love with Mike's little sister, then I was well on the way to becoming so.

We turned to enter the house, led by Mike's mother. She stopped suddenly and turned back to face her son. ‘I've spoken to your father and there's to be no discussing the war this weekend!' she said sharply. I was beginning to sense she wore the pants around the place. I would soon learn that she wasn't the only strong woman in the family.

Mike reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder, then bent down and kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘Sure, Mum, I promise.' Then he said, ‘That's if Dad doesn't start up, you know how he is after a few Scotches.'

‘Your father has promised to behave,' Bobby said firmly, brooking no further comment.

I saw the momentary expression on Sam's face as Mike made this remark about his father and told myself that Jock Finger might have a drinking problem.

‘Oh, good!' Sam said quickly. ‘That means we don't have to go into town to meet him for drinks, there's bound to be some nasty drunk at the club who wants to start a fight with Mike over the beastly war.'

‘Does that also mean no dinner guests tonight?' Mike asked hopefully.

‘Just the family, I've told your father no strays from the club, we want the two of you all to ourselves,' Bobby said without smiling. ‘Drinks on the terrace as usual at sunset.'

‘What? Doors not locked and bolted after dark?' Mike asked.

‘We've decided we can't live like that,' Bobby said crisply. ‘Besides, the dogs will warn us in plenty of time.'

‘If they're not poisoned,' Mike said, almost to himself. ‘Mother, please be careful, it's not the end yet by any means.'

‘Perhaps if it's a nice day tomorrow, a picnic?' his mother suggested brightly, ignoring his remark. ‘We'll see if the two of you feel up to it. Now come along, lunch is ready and you know how Wanjohi sulks when he thinks his soup is getting cold.'

‘The cook,' Sam explained, taking my hand.

The rules for the weekend having been established, Bobby Finger entered the house.

After a lunch of vegetable soup, salad and cold roast beef, followed by a splendid apple pie and fresh cream, Sam showed me the garden, which was largely of her making. ‘Mum plays a lot of tennis and so the garden has always been mine, though heaven knows who'll keep an eye on it when I go to horticultural college next year.'

My heart skipped a beat; Mike had told me about Sam going over to England to study horticulture. It was too early to process the thought of meeting her over there. ‘I know a bit about vegetables and fruit, though not much about flowers,' I ventured instead.

She looked surprised. ‘Were you a farmer once? Most men know nothing about the things they eat,' she observed.

I laughed. ‘Well, a farmer in a manner of speaking, I suppose.' I pointed to the flame trees; sunbirds of every description, like bright jewels in the marvellous Kenyan sunlight, were flocking to the crimson blossoms for their nectar. Beyond the trees the peaks of Mount Kenya could be seen in the faraway distance. ‘Sunbirds, how lovely they look,' I remarked.

‘Tom Fitzsaxby, you haven't answered my question,' Sam said in a firm voice.

I turned to look at her. She stood, shapely legs slightly apart, her hands on her hips with a questioning look on her pretty face.

‘What question?' I said, pretending not to remember.

‘The farmer-in-a-manner-of-speaking question,' she replied.

‘Oh, that, yes, well, when I was a little brat we worked in the vegetable gardens and orchards.'

We'd reached a wooden garden seat under an arbour covered with a vine of big hanging violet trusses that looked quite magnificent. ‘Sit!' Sam commanded sternly, pointing to the seat. I did as I was told. Standing over me with her hands still on her hips, she sighed. ‘Tom Fitzsaxby, if we are going to get to know each other properly then you have to answer my questions. I'm a naturally curious person and, besides, avoiding questions is being mysterious and means you'll be forcing me to jump to conclusions, which may not be fair to you!' She paused, looking serious. ‘And that's not fair to me! You're hiding something, I just know it.'

I sniffed. ‘Not much perfume, what's the name of the vine?' I pointed above my head.

‘
Petrea
,' she said, then waited for my reply to her previous statement.

‘Don't you think some things are best left unexplained?'

I replied. ‘I thought it was everyone's prerogative to hide the parts we don't like about our past.'

‘No, you're not allowed to!' she said emphatically. ‘That's why Kenya is in such a mess! I mean the whites. Everyone is hiding something. You know what they call Kenya?'

‘They?'

‘Outsiders, people from other places.'

‘No, I don't believe I do. Is it something unpleasant?'

‘A place in the sun for shady people!' Sam didn't laugh or even smile, as I expected she might.

I clucked my tongue. ‘Sam, your brother is perhaps the least shady person I've ever met. Your mother doesn't exactly beat about the bush or appear to be remotely duplicitous. If talking about the war this weekend is forbidden, it would seem your father is a pretty forthright type as well. As for Miss Sam Finger . . . well, just observe her interrogating me, demanding the unvarnished truth or else misconstruction may ensue and future relationships may be adversely affected!' I was finding her directness both disarming and slightly alarming and was using my ‘among clever people' Johannesburg-taught conversational language in an effort to keep Sam's forthright manner at arm's length.

‘You're right, I'm being a stickybeak,' she apologised. ‘It's just . . . well, Tom,' she seemed to think for a moment, as if she couldn't find the word she needed, then she shrugged and added ingenuously, ‘talking over lunch and here, you seem different and I'm, well . . . curious.'

‘I take it a stickybeak is someone who is overcurious to the point of being rude?' A hurt expression crossed her face and so I immediately added, ‘Well, you're not being rude, Sam, but you're correct, I don't much like talking about my past.'

Sam looked relieved and moved suddenly to sit beside me. Quite unselfconsciously she reached out and took my hand in her own and brought it to her lips and kissed it. ‘I'm sorry, Tom, I'm being a nosey parker. You were an orphan, weren't you? Mike told me.' She released my hand and I must say I wish she hadn't, there was something about her touch that felt wonderfully inclusive.

‘
Ja
, a vegetable-growing orphan . . . also fruit, ask me anything you like about a cabbage, carrot, tomato, avocado pear, pawpaw, orange or granadilla!' I joked.

‘Granadilla?'

‘Passionfruit.'

She looked up at the arbour, thinking. ‘Okay then, what's the Latin name for cabbage?' she challenged, giving me a cheeky grin.

I was well past the Cs in Meneer Van Niekerk's ‘To thine own self be true'
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
. ‘
Brassica
oleracea
, but don't ask me about granadilla,' I laughed.

‘Smart-arse!' she exclaimed, punching me playfully in the chest. Suddenly she looked serious, her blue eyes fixed directly on me, head tilted slightly to one side. ‘Tom, the orphanage, it can't have been much fun, I know it's private, but will you —?'

‘It wasn't too bad, I had a little dog, a fox terrier named Tinker, and a friend, a big Zulu named Mattress,' I heard myself interrupting her. Then, in the nick of time I caught myself. She was getting much too close for comfort. I rose from the garden seat, anticipating that Sam's next question to me would be about Tinker and Mattress. She was so gorgeous, open, ingenuous and spontaneous that I felt suddenly overwhelmed and emotionally cornered. I'd spent my life avoiding direct questions about myself. I was a world expert at parrying and deflecting intrusions into my past life. These days I relied upon hiding behind clever words and my seemingly laconic humour. ‘Use words to defend yourself, Tom, clever, witty words, self-deprecating words, they are your new camouflage,' I said to myself. Sam simply ignored all the do-not-pass-beyond-this-point signs, oblivious of the minefields that might lie beyond. Now, suddenly no witty, parrying words would come, no clever jousting, only a clumsy and obvious scurrying for cover. ‘You know, I've never seen coffee growing, Sam. Do you think we could go for a walk?' I asked.

Sam rose and glanced at her wristwatch. ‘Sure, it's only three-thirty, I'll call the dogs and get a shotgun.' She saw my reaction. ‘Sometimes if we're lucky there are guinea fowl,' she explained, then added, ‘you have to hang them for four days until they're gamey, a bit whiffy. But then Wanjohi makes them into a wonderful casserole.'

But I knew that the prospect of finding guinea fowl scratching among the neat, weedless rows of coffee bushes wasn't why we were taking a shotgun along. I also knew that Sam Finger was someone I desperately wanted to get to know a whole heap better, even if I was finding her manner somewhat overpowering. Tom Fitzsaxby, the world-famous camouflage expert, was head over heels in love and taking a right belting from a slip of a girl who, seemingly, had never had anything in her life she wished to hide from the world.

‘I haven't forgotten about Tinker and Mattress – was that
really
your friend's name?' Sam said, clearly warning me that I hadn't won, that she hadn't forgotten what I'd revealed to her in an unguarded moment. Then, like a schoolgirl, she skipped away across the lawn towards the house to fetch the twin-barrel twelve-bore from the locked cabinet in her father's study.

In the weeks that followed I would use every leave pass I could cajole, beg or connive to obtain in order to get down to see Sam at Makindi. Being with Sam Finger was like waking up to a sun-splashed morning after a wild stormy night, which, I know, is a pretty corny analogy, but there you go . . . everything was suddenly washed clean. Happiness, when you achieve it, is not a complicated emotion. But, then again, keeping one's life simple seems to be about the hardest task there is for humans to achieve, and happiness has simplicity as a major ingredient. Sam had definitely perfected the art of simplicity and loving, a process that required a lot of spontaneous laughter without the need for her to forgo her natural curiosity, strength and intelligence. I can tell you one thing was for sure, I was a goner – hook, line and sinker, finish and
klaar.