by D. D. Mayers
Well, to be fair, it wasn’t entirely wasted as far as I, personally, was concerned. The family who owned the school, had a stable of beautiful horses, so riding was part of the curriculum. If you had experience, which I did as we rode a lot at home all over the farm in amongst the herds of game, you’d be given a horse of your own, and a syce (groom).
My horse was called Thistle, he was a gelding, shining pitch-black, his neck was too long and low to make him a beautiful horse, but we took to each other straight away. He had a fluid trot and a long, languid canter, and when he galloped you felt you were flying. I loved him. Although he had bit and curb, I never had to touch the rains or pull him up, he had the softest mouth I’ve ever known. I asked Mrs. Foster, the owner of everything, even the Headmaster, who didn’t count for much as he didn’t ride, if I could at least take away the chain. She wished I could, but it was safety rules. ‘Health and safety,’ even then.
She was an incredible woman. I never saw her out of her jodhpurs, whatever the time of day. Hers was the beautiful Grey, an Arab Stallion. They were as one when she was in the saddle. No one else ever rode him. On one occasion when on a ride with her, we had to follow her in single file.There were about eight of us, along the side of the main road, an appalling, dusty road, but the main road to Eldoret. Suddenly a bus appeared behind us driving far too fast. She waved to the driver to slow down, but he took no notice. We were engulfed in a thick cloud of dust and the horses pranced all over the place, it was lucky no one fell off. She was furious, instantly in a rage, she and her stallion turned on the bus. I’d never seen a horse move so fast. They caught the bus up; she started to whip the side of the bus, she reached the driver’s window, it was open, she whipped the driver himself, yelling at him to stop. Amazingly he did. She ordered him out, he got out, he stood in front of her and her stallion, who was now breathing very heavily, wide nostrils, sitting back, pounding his front hooves. The driver was cowed by this force he was facing, he just looked at her astounded, mouth hanging open, then weakly said ‘I’m sorry Madam.’ She was now in control of her rage, she said forcefully, ‘always slow down when you pass children on horses.’ I’d temporarily forgotten I was a child. She never treated anyone who could handle a horse, as a child, you simply understood horses, as she did and that was that. The driver said, ‘Yes Madam, I’m sorry Madam.’ He climbed back into his bus and slowly drove away.
At the end of one term my mother and father came to collect me. I was usually put on the train and was met at Longanot station. But this term my father had some business in Eldoret. I was so excited I forgot to say goodbye to Thistle and Mrs. Foster. The holidays were so full of doing such exciting things; driving about the ranch with my father, going out at night in an open-top Land Rover with a spotlight to shoot Thompson’s gazelle. There was riding, playing about in the garden with my sister, swimming and fooling about in the pool for hour upon hour. The idea of school was way away in the back of my mind. Then quite suddenly, that dreaded time that dreaded train was the day after tomorrow, that awful hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach, all enjoyment gone.
The only thing I could latch on to was riding with Thistle. As soon as there was a gap from unpacking the trunk and pushing the tuck box under the bed, fighting, showing off feats of strength; which all boys seem to have to do while growing up. Then we dashed up to the stables to greet our horses. Thistle wasn’t in his usual box. I heard Mrs. Foster coming into the yard. I ran up to her to say hello. I was surprised how pleased I was to see her. I said, ‘Where’s Thistle, he’s not in his box?’ Quite suddenly her eyes filled with water, overflowing, dribbling down her cheeks and falling on to her shirt, I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I didn’t know ‘grown-ups’ actually cried, especially Mrs. Foster. She said, ‘He had to go to the army.’ He had to go to the army? What on earth was she talking about, ‘He and a few of the other horses had to take the soldiers into the forest,’ she hesitated interminably, ‘and Thistle was killed.’ I stood and stared, jaw hanging, Thistle was killed, Thistle was killed, why was he killed, how was he killed. We just stood and stared at each other, I couldn’t hug her, she couldn’t hug me, tears were still pouring down her face.
She pulled herself together, embarrassed, ‘Let me introduce you to someone else.’ I followed her numbly to another stable. Inside was a little black horse with flecks of grey shining through her dense blackness. She was very pretty with a long black mane, a short, curved, high neck, but nervous and wide-eyed. She stood at the back of the stable not looking out over the yard as the others did. Her name was Mazy, she wasn’t a horse she was a pony. Mrs. Foster said, ‘I’d like you to calm her down, she’s too nervy for the small children, stay with her, see how you get on.’ She turned and left us together. It was too soon really after hearing of Thistle’s death, perhaps she sensed a reticence but we got on quite well. She let me softly stroke her neck, hold her head, blow on her lovely soft nose; I stayed with her, talking to her, telling her I’d be riding her from now on. Her eyes stopped staring. She seemed to relax a bit. I left her box, walked sadly across the yard to go back to the school. I looked round; she was at the front of her box with her neck in the V of the stable door, taking an interest. Perhaps we would get on.
The whole school was surrounded by a tall Cypress hedge, grown in a large square, enclosing about five or six acres. It seemed then as though it were about twenty feet high, but as we were all so small, it might well have been half that height. Whatever the height, it served various important functions. The whole area was on a slight slope with the school buildings more or less in the middle. The boy’s dormitories, the sanatorium and the dining room, were at the top of the square and the girl’s dormitories on the left looking down. I’m being precise for a very good reason, so please bear with me. At the bottom of the square, in the middle of the hedge, there was a small U-shaped gap, about five foot high and about two foot wide. And it was through this hole, all the boys, during daylight hours, turned left, to empty their bowels while sitting on a plank. This had some holes cut in it, over a deep hole dug down through the red earth, about fifteen feet or so. Turning right through the hedge they’d empty their bladders directly into the African bush. The girls were wimps, so they were allowed back into their own house for their ablutions during the day.
So the perimeter hedge was a useful tool to keep us all in, and the rest of Africa out. But a crucial factor as far as us boys were concerned, we could disappear, into the hedge, melt away. A signal given by a chosen spotter for the day, whenever a teacher unexpectedly appeared, a full playground of children would melt away, with no sign of being there at all. Another thing we could do was climb up through the hedge and pop out at the top of the hedge. It must have been quite comical to see a line of small boys, sitting, arms folded looking out at the scene all around. One day, on the outside of the right of the square, quite a big bush fire had started in the parched dry scrub beyond the hedge. A group of us, the riders, the top dogs, climbed up through the hedge, popping up at the top, to see how close it was getting. We were completely unaware of the danger in which we were putting ourselves. One spark would have sent the hedge up like a tinderbox, that was the reason all the farm workers were gathered doing their utmost to beat it out.
Mrs Foster had a daughter. Oh my goodness me, did Mrs Foster have a daughter. She wasn’t an ordinary girl like our sisters or all these girls in the school, she had come from somewhere else, she was from another planet. She was eighteen and she’d just left her secondary school. She was tall and slender with short blonde cropped wavy hair; she could ride, she could play polo and she could run. She ran properly, like an athlete, not prissy, pussyfooting, with bent arms at the elbows and limp wrists.
After lunch, the whole school would retire to their dormitories, and lie on our beds, completely quiet, for an hour’s rest. We’d lie flat out on top of the blanket, arms folded across our chests, and quietly talk about Mrs Foster’s daught
er. Not in any lascivious way, but how beautiful she was, how different she was, we were so proud she was part of our school. She was our Princess Leia, from Star Wars, not that we knew anything about Star Wars then. But what she was about to do with the fire, would elevate her from ‘Princess’ status to ‘Angelic’ status.
The African workers seemed to be losing the battle against the oncoming flames. It didn’t seem to occur to us, perhaps we should climb down out of the hedge, we didn’t realise the main reason everyone was fighting the flames was to save the hedge. We just thought, ‘Goodness, this is exciting, the fire is getting closer.’ Out of the corner of our eyes, we spotted her, running like the wind, she was running so fast her feet weren’t touching the ground. She ran towards us, over the burning cinders, and through the advancing wall of flames; she was there, with the African beaters, beating with them. It seemed to us, watching from our perch on top of the hedge, they only started to make progress once she’d got there. Someone said ‘She’s an angel.’ We all agreed, ‘Yes, she is, she’s an angel.’ Once she was there they quickly got control of the flames, or maybe the breeze turned, but in our minds ‘she’ was the one who’d done it. We slowly clambered down through the hedge to the ground, shaking our heads in wonderment.
The following day, as it happened, she was in charge of our ride for the morning. None of us could speak, we just looked at her in awe. She became infuriated, she said crossly, ‘What’s the matter with you all, you’re normally so chatty.’ We couldn’t say anything. We just looked at her, coming to terms with our beautiful Princess now being ‘Angelic’. It was some time before we could banter with her again. I wonder if she ever knew the high regard in which we held her. I wonder what happened to her and Mrs Foster, and her beautiful stallion. I was at that school for two years, only two years, of my seventy years. And yet, I remember all I’ve just described, as crisply and clearly as though it were a film played back again. Nowadays, in the present, I can watch a film on television, and a week later have little recollection of ever having seen it. Nothing has the impact it did then. Having said that, there are significant gaps in my memory when all I can remember is unhappiness. What was to come, of course, would be far worse than anything I had ever endured then.
Kidnapped
The rest of schooling, the primary reason I was there, as far as my parents were concerned, was a haze. I always put myself at the back of the class, looked at the teacher so they thought I was listening, and put my mind far away to my beautiful home. I could be driving around the ranch in the open-topped Land Rover among all the cattle and game with my father. In a funny sort of way I quite enjoyed having the time to picture all the wonderful things, I did in the rest of my life. All the teachers, in all my schools, just burbled on, about what, I have no idea. Eventually, however, I was brought back home, and a tutor called Veronica came from England. In one attentive year she taught me everything I needed to know to pass an exam called ‘The Common Entrance’. If I’d thought this out properly I should have failed this exam, but I didn’t. I passed the bloody thing, which opened the door to another wasted four years in an English school. Yet more tightly packed beds in dormitory after dormitory.
The aeroplane landed at London airport after two days flying from Nairobi. We stopped the night at a little place called Wadi Halfa on the banks of the river Nile in Southern Egypt. It’s no longer there, well it might be, but it’s been swallowed up by the advent of the gigantic Aswan Dam. I was going to be looked after, when I wasn’t at school, by my grandmother, who lived in Tunbridge Wells in Kent. My mother had organised for me to be met by a ‘Universal Aunt’ to take me across London and put me on a train at Charing Cross, to be met by my grandmother at Tunbridge Wells. I wasn’t too keen on the idea of being looked after by my grandmother, I’d met her once before, years ago, and I knew she didn’t really like me. The feeling was mutual. So when in Wadi Halfa I bought her an ivory paperknife, carved as a crocodile, to try to placate her. The plan didn’t work.
After passing through customs, dragging my vast suitcase, and trolling along the queue of people waiting for other passengers, I spotted a man holding up a card with my name on it. This wasn’t the plan, surely a ‘Universal Aunt’ was a woman. But I went up to him and said, ‘Are you waiting for me?’ He looked down at me, I was very small, especially standing next to my vast suitcase. He said, ‘I’ve been sent by your Aunt, Mrs. Edwards, to take you back to her house in Hampstead.’ This wasn’t the plan at all. But I knew I had an Aunt Sheila, and she was Mrs Edwards.
I’d only ever heard of her described as odd. Her husband worked in the merchant navy as a stoker, whatever that was, and one day went to sea and never returned, never heard of again. But it did sort of make sense I was being taken, by this nice chap, to what turned out to be a tiny house in Hampstead. It wasn’t a house as far as I was concerned. It had a door, one of a row of doors, which opened on to a tiny bit of grass and then a gate opening on to the pavement. Anyway, she greeted me very warmly and seemed genuinely pleased to see me, which was more than I was expecting from my grandmother. She made me a cup of tea and we talked about this and that. I noticed she didn’t ask after any of the family, particularly her sister, my mother. It was getting latish so she said she’d make us some supper, sausage and beans on toast and a glass of milk. I noticed there was some sort of nervous excitement about her. When we’d finished and the plates taken and washed, she quickly sat down in front of me, leaned forward, her elbows on the table. She said, almost in a whisper, conspiratorially, ‘Now, I’ll tell you why you’re here, it’s very exciting.’ I didn’t say anything, she went on, ‘I thought your father was a good man but he’s turned out to be as bad as the rest of them,’ she paused once more. I said nothing, I’d no idea what she was talking about. ‘From now on, I’m taking you over and I’ve found a wonderful school for you.’ I was beginning to be worried, ‘I’ve been to see it and I’ve told the Headmaster all about you, he’s longing to see you.’ I still had nothing to say, ‘You don’t have to go to that awful place your parents are sending you.’
***
On reflection, this was the only sensible thing she said all evening, ‘I’ll be looking after you completely, so there’ll be no need for you to go back to Kenya.’ Again she paused, leaned back, long arms, hands still on the table, a look of glee on her face, ‘Now, what do you think of that?’ I looked at her, I tried to say something, I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. ‘I know you must be tired, so why don’t you go to bed and think about it, and tell me what you’ve decided in the morning.’ I stood up, I said weakly, ‘Thank you for supper.’ My legs were so heavy I didn’t think I’d make it upstairs.
My little bedroom was the smallest bedroom I’d ever seen in my life. The bed had a bare mattress, with three blankets folded on top of one another at the bottom of the bed, and a bare pillow at the top. I closed the door and just stood, looking at the bed. Quite suddenly, unexpectedly, a lump came to my throat. I started to cry, not just cry, I silently sobbed, tears gushing down my cheeks. I laid the three blankets out on the bed and got underneath the second, fully clothed. I don’t remember taking my shoes off. I was still sobbing when a blanket of merciful sleep smothered my terror and the next thing I knew, daylight had broken through my curtainless window. I sat up completely refreshed. I still had my shoes on. I’d never got up in the morning so easily.
I knew exactly what I had to do, in fact, I felt sorry for her. She’d planned everything in a state of madness, poor thing. I said, ‘I’m very sorry Sheila but I have to do exactly what my parents want me to do, so there’s nothing to discuss.’ She said, matter-of-factly, ‘Then you’ll have to leave right now, and I’ll have no more to do with you.’ I lifted my incredibly heavy suitcase and staggered out of the front door, and before I’d even got to the gate, she’d slammed it shut. I didn’t see her again for another twenty years. I didn’t even know in what direction I was going. It was a very ordinar
y car lined suburban street. Just by chance a taxi came into view, I tentatively put up my arm and he stopped. I said I wanted to go to Tunbridge Wells, but I didn’t know what station to go from. I couldn’t lift my case into the cab. He laughed, got out and put it in. He started to chat, I didn’t know they all do of course, so I followed suit and told him my present plight. He was astounded at my pathetic little tale. He couldn’t understand how I ever got into this position to begin with. We pulled up at Charing Cross. He hopped out and carried my case to gate number five, buying my ticket on the way. I fumbled about trying to pay him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He said goodbye and wished me the very best of luck. He chuckled and said, ‘I think you’re going to need it.’ I was a day late arriving, but my grandmother didn’t seem to be that surprised. I told her what had happened, she didn’t say anything, she just looked terribly sad, I thought she was going to cry. It was never spoken about again. Years later we invited Sheila to our wedding and she came with a strange man in toe, whom she introduced as Mr. Johnson. The story about her and Mr. Johnson is an extraordinary story in itself. I’ll have to expand on that as I go along.
***
Fast-forward thirty years or so. The telephone rang, I picked it up and a voice said, ‘This is the West Dulwich nursing home, Mrs Edwards has just died, you are named as her next of kin. Please tell us what you’d like done with her body?’ In a way, I wasn’t surprised! She’d have done this knowing it would catch me unawares. ‘And please can you clear her room as quickly as possible.’ We rang a local undertaker, they knew the Home well, it supplied regular custom. The following day we went to clear her room. Under her bed was quite enough money to cover her funeral costs. We only managed to muster about six people to the service .Ourselves, my little sister, and one reluctant member of staff from the home. A woman from social services came and an odd-looking man crept in and sat at the very back. This formed the entire congregation. Her two sisters, my mother and my Aunt, were both in their care homes, my Aunt with dementia and my mother with heart disease. I paid the undertakers cash, then and there, We followed them to the crematorium and bade farewell.