"I'M TELLING YOU, Treverton, London has got to be made to listen!" Brigadier Norich-Hastings put down his glass and strode to the lead-paned window that gave onto a spectacular view of Mount Kenya. "We need to have one of us go and present our case in person to His Majesty's government."
"Hugh is right," said Hardy Acres from the deep comfort of a wing chair.
Valentine was sitting behind his desk, chair rocked back and feet propped up. He swirled his glass and watched the whiskey go 'round and 'round.
A fourth man in Valentine's study, Malcolm Jennings, was a rancher from the Rift Valley who owned more than a hundred thousand choice acres in the Central Province and who therefore had a personal interest in the colony's politics. He hadn't spoken yet, but he did now. "South Africa's got the right idea. We should follow its example and form a white union. Say, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika. Maybe even Northern Rhodesia. We need to reinforce the policy of white domination in East Africa, remind the wogs who really rule here."
"I'm bloody sorry this was printed," said Acres, flinging a Kenya newspaper to the floor. His friends knew what he was referring to: the white paper published recently in London by Lord Passfield, the new colonial secretary. In it he withdrew his support of the white settler demands in Kenya and stated that "the British objective in the Colony was a ministry representing an electorate in which every section of the population finds an effective and adequate vote," adding that this was very nearly impossible to achieve in a country where less than one percent of the population had the vote!
"If the wogs read this," said Acres, "it'll start trouble."
"Trouble's already started," said the brigadier grimly. "Passfield's forbidden the governor to restrict meetings of the Kikuyu Central Association. He's bloody well inviting them to start a revolution! Now they're asking for land grants in the Highlands. Before you know it, the wogs will get permission to grow coffee!"
The three men looked expectantly at their host. Valentine appeared not even to be listening to them. His dark eyes were staring moodily at a photograph in a silver frame on his desk.
He was thinking of Arthur. He shouldn't have hit him so hard, but the boy did infuriate him at times. Where had the child gotten such peculiar notions? Here it was May, and Arthur hadn't even touched the Christmas presents his father had given him: the set of toy soldiers with miniature cannon; the rifle; the hunting knife.
He picked up the photograph and looked hard at it. His heart broke at the sight of Arthur's innocent, cherubic face, the sweet little smile, the khaki shorts he never seemed to keep buttoned. My son, cried Valentine's tormented mind. You are what I live for, what I built this house for. I never want to hurt you. I just want you to grow up to be a man.
"Treverton?" said Hardy Acres.
I'll make it up to you, my son. I'm sorry I hit you. I promise you I won't do it again....
"Valentine?" said Malcolm Jennings. "Are you with us?"
He looked up. "I beg your pardon?" He put the picture down and got up to go to the whiskey cart. "I'm not worried about an uprising. All my chaps ever want to do is sit under a tree and drink beer."
"Then you're blind, Treverton," said Jennings.
Valentine ignored the effrontery. His thoughts were still upon Arthur, wondering if maybe it was time to take the boy on his first hunting safari.
"We came here for your opinion in this matter," said Brigadier Norich-Hastings. "Talk to us, Valentine."
"My chaps have never had it so good," he said distractedly. "I give them all the americani and bicycles they want. They're as docile as sheep. And they'll stay that way as long as I continue to treat them right."
The three men exchanged a look. The brigadier said, "Valentine, open your eyes! Some of these wogs are starting to grouse that the Highlands are rightfully theirs and that they never voluntarily gave them up!"
Valentine refilled his glass, stared at it thoughtfully, then took a drink and turned to his companions. "Who were you thinking of sending to London?"
"We thought you would be good, Valentine."
"Me!"
"After all, you hold a seat in the House of Lords. Your name isn't without certain influence. And you're a good speaker. They'll listen to you.
Valentine rubbed his chin. The thought of returning to England did not appeal in the least. The last time he had been there was at an exhibition in 1924, when he had represented Nairobi coffee, now called Kenya coffee. And in Rose's one letter from Suffolk she had described England as being just as cold and damp and unwelcoming as ever.
"Well? What do you say?"
"Perhaps . . ." He could take Arthur with him. Get the boy away from Rose's and Grace's feminizing influence.
"We haven't much time. The situation is getting more and more serious every day. If we're going to hang on to our land, we'll need the support of His Majesty's government."
"I say," said Hardy Acres, coming to his feet, "isn't that your car? The one you sent to the train station?"
Valentine went to the window and looked out. The Cadillac was pulling up the drive, empty but for the African chauffeur.
He walked out onto the veranda and shielded his eyes from the sun. A stiff breeze swept across the five thousand acres of lush coffee bushes and stirred his hair. This was the very spot he had stood upon ten years before, describing his dream to Rose and Grace. The scene which stretched away before him now was the very vision he had had in his mind on that long-ago day. "Where is the memsaab?" he asked the driver.
"She has gone with Memsaab Daktari, bwana," the man said, pointing to the ridge.
"HELLO THERE! WELCOME home!" he called, taking off his hat and waving it at Rose and Grace.
Rose waved back, then said to her sister-in-law, "That silly Harold. The notions he gets into his head!"
"What do you mean?"
"Look at Bellatu! Of course, we have money!"
Puzzled, Grace watched Rose pick her way delicately down the path to where Valentine greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. "I missed you," they said together.
Then a miniature person came running, down below them, from the doorway of the maternity hut. "Mama!" called Arthur, his chubby little legs pumping.
Valentine looked down. "What are you doing in there!" he shouted, his voice ringing across the river. "I've told you not to go in there anymore!"
Arthur stopped short and stared as his father flew down the hill. "You deliberately defied me!" Valentine said when he reached him. He took Arthur by the collar and shook him.
Up on the ridge Grace and James watched. When she saw Arthur suddenly collapse to the ground, kicking and writhing, Grace gave out a cry and ran down the path.
By the time James and Rose joined them, Grace had managed to wedge a stick between Arthur's clenched teeth. He was twisting and turning in the dirt, eyes rolled back in his head, strange sounds coming from his throat. The adults stared down in horror; Mona came up silently.
It ended as quickly as it had begun. Grace started to lift the unconscious boy into her arms, but Valentine stepped in. Cradling him against his chest, he followed his sister into the clinic hut, where Grace did a thorough examination of Arthur.
Finally she said, "Epilepsy," and Valentine shouted, "No!"
"I've told you before to get the boy to a specialist," said Grace. "Now you'll have to do something!"
"There is nothing wrong with my son!"
"Damn it, Valentine, there is! And if you don't take him, then I will!"
He glared at his sister, matched her stubborn will heartbeat for heartbeat; then his shoulders slumped slightly.
"There are specialists in Europe," Grace said more gently, "men who are doing research on this condition."
"On insanity, you mean."
"Epilepsy has nothing to do with insanity. It has nothing to do with mental faculties at all. And epilepsy is nothing to be ashamed of. Julius Caesar had it. So did Alexander the Great."
Valentine turned a malevolent look upon Rose. "This comes
from your side of the family," he said in a tone that shocked them all. Then he gathered the limp body of his son into his arms and drew it tightly to him. He pressed his mouth to the mop of grapefruit-colored hair that was damp with perspiration. Arthur seemed so small, so fragile. My son. The only son I will ever have. When Rose reached out to the boy, Valentine stepped back and said, "Don't touch him."
To Grace he said, "I will take him to England. I'll take him to every specialist in London. I'll go to the Continent if I have to. I'll spend every penny—" His voice broke.
They watched him go down the veranda steps and up the path toward the house, Arthur's doll-like arms and legs flopping. Rose took a different path, the one that led through the forest to her eucalyptus glade; she went so quickly that she looked like a woman in flight. Little Njeri trotted behind like a puppy, while Mona hovered in the shadow of the veranda, uncertain of what to do. Then she, too, headed off in the direction her mother had taken.
Out in the sunlight again, pushing hair from her face and taking in a deep breath, Grace looked around the little cluster of thatch buildings that was her mission. James came to stand at her side. "Are you going to be all right?" he asked.
"Yes."
He took her hand and held it tightly between his. "I'll stay awhile, Grace. Until Valentine leaves for England with the boy."
But she turned to him and said, "No, James. You don't belong here anymore. Your life lies far to the west, where Lucille and your children are waiting for you. They need you more than we do."
"I want you always to remember, Grace," he said quietly, "that if you ever do need me, all you have to do is send word and I will come. Will you promise me that?"
She faced the setting sun and nodded. "Let's say good-bye now, James. You must get started on your journey. It's a long way to Uganda."
24
A
LL THIS LAND, MY SON, THAT YOU SEE AROUND YOU AND even beyond, belongs to the Children of Mumbi and to no one else."
David sat and listened to his mother as she talked while preparing their supper. Two plump sweet potatoes wrapped in banana leaves were growing soft over steam; millet grains burst in boiling water and thickened into porridge. Although many of the women in the village across the river were adopting the European custom of eating three meals a day, Wachera still practiced the old tradition of sitting down to one huge dinner in the late afternoon.
"The Children of Mumbi were tricked by the wazungu," she said, "into giving up their land. The white man didn't understand our ways. He saw forest where there were no huts, and so he took it because he said there was no one living there. He did not know that the ancestors lived there or that the forest would one day be cleared for the huts of our children's children. The white man does not think of the past or of the future; he sees only what is today."
David gazed worshipfully at his mother. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Now that he was approaching the threshold of manhood and would soon undergo the circumcision initiation, he was becoming aware of the way men looked at her; and women, too. The former was a hungry look; David knew that his mother was desired by men and often received offers of marriage. The latter was a look of envy—from women who secretly admired Wachera's life of freedom, with no man as her master. And everyone regarded the medicine woman with awe and respect.
Although she had no husband and only one child—under other circumstances, reasons to pity her—Wachera was a revered woman among the clan because she was the keeper of the old ways. David had seen important people come to this hut over the years; his childhood was one long chronicle of chiefs and elders visiting and taking counsel with his mother, of women bringing their secrets and paying for charms and potions, of men offering their manhood. The little hut Wachera and David shared had heard the woes and joys of the Children of Mumbi, spoken through many mouths under many full moons. David was proud of his mother; he would die for her.
But there was so much he did not yet understand. He was eleven years old and anxious for manhood and the wisdom it seemed to bring. He wanted her to speak faster, to tell more, to shine light on the dark mysteries that plagued his young soul.
David sat on a troubled brink. Much of him was still child, so little yet man. But the child part longed for manhood and feared it might never come. There was another part of him, too, the Kikuyu part that looked enviously and longingly upon the white man's riches—his bicycles; his telegraph; his gun. David Kabiru Mathenge yearned to own such things, to possess such power, to be accepted into that elite corps. Long ago his father had had him baptized. Now David belonged to Lord Jesu, or so the wazungu said. Yet he was not the true brother they had promised he would be; he was not their equal. And so he resented them.
"Do not love the wazungu, "his mother often told him. "Do not give them respect. Do not recognize their laws. But also, my son, do not take them lightly, but always remember the proverb that says a wise man faces a buffalo with caution."
"We will eat now," Wachera said at last, scooping millet stew onto banana leaves. "You will recite for me the list of ancestors back to the First Parents. Then we will go into the forest, where a secret meeting is to take place. A great man is coming to speak to the Children of Mumbi. You will listen, David Kabiru, and memorize his words, as you have memorized the list of ancestors."
WANJIRU HAD STAYED late at the school hut to help Memsaab Pammi, the teacher. This was not done out of love for the memsaab or out of a sense of duty to the school; the nine-year-old girl always looked for excuses to avoid the boys who walked the same path to her village and who teased her mercilessly along the way.
It was not that she was afraid of them; Wanjiru was afraid of nothing except the chameleon, which all Kikuyu feared. It was that her mother worked so hard to be respectable, and Wanjiru's dresses, torn or muddied at the hands of the boys, caused great grief.
Her chores done, Wanjiru said kwa heri, good-bye, to the memsaab and left the thatch classroom. The sun was setting. She would have to hurry if she was going to be home before dark. When she passed through the gate where a sign read GRACE TREVERTON MISSION, Wanjiru hesitated. Before her spread a flat bed of lush grass that was perplexing in its uselessness. No animals grazed there; no crops were grown. Yet it was tended by gardeners and inspected by the bwana who carried a whip. Once Wanjiru had seen horses galloping up and down the field with white men on their backs swinging great sticks, while at the sides, under the shade of camphor and olive trees, memsaabs in white hats and frocks called out as if their men were warriors.
But it was not the polo field which Wanjiru now contemplated; it was the hut at the end where two people she could just see in the waning light were finishing their supper.
She knew who they were. Wanjiru's mother often went to the medicine woman when the children were sick. And once the widow of the legendary Chief Mathenge had come to Wanjiru's village to speak to the people of the ancestors, and the family had celebrated with a great beer drink. Wachera fascinated the little girl. Even though the wazungu had forbidden the medicine woman to practice her ancient arts, she defied them; her defiance made all the people of the clan in awe of her. The boy, who Wanjiru knew was named David Kabiru, had only recently begun attending Memsaab Daktari's school. His mother had sent him to learn the ways of the white man, he had boasted, in preparation for the day when the Children of Mumbi would claim Kikuyuland as theirs again.
Wanjiru found the mother and son preparing to go into the forest. She heard Wachera speak to David in a grave voice. The little girl sensed something important in what they were about to do; as her curiosity mounted, she decided to follow them.
The way was long and fraught with evil spirits and golden eyes blinking in the bush. Wanjiru followed close behind, undetected, her young mind knowing how worried her mother was going to be but unable to resist the lure of the mysterious mother and son.
Eventually the medicine woman brought the boy into a glade where, to Wanjiru's surprise, many men were sittin
g in silence. She recognized a few from her own village. Most were dressed in shukas and blankets and carried staffs in place of spears, but a few were in European clothes because they worked at one of the missions. The little girl watched them as she crouched in the bushes.
There were no women at the gathering, but none of the men seemed to mind the medicine woman's presence. Indeed, a place was cleared, and a gourd of beer was handed to her. As if she were a man! Wanjiru thought, her eyes growing big.
More men arrived, coming silently and materializing suddenly out of the night. No fire had been lit; the glade was washed in the light of the full moon, a time when important business was conducted. The men sat on the dirt, on boulders, on fallen logs; they shared sugarcane beer, a few chewed miraa leaf stems to keep alert, and some passed around a bottle of colobah. Wanjiru knew what this last drink was; it was highly prized among Kikuyu men because it was the white man's liquor and illegal for Africans to possess, and thus it was called "color bar."
Wanjiru watched as the men sat in typical African patience. No one carried a watch; none cared about the movement of time. What Wanjiru did not know was that they had come here out of curiosity; word that a man named Johnstone was coming here tonight had passed from mouth to mouth. He was going to speak about the Kikuyu Central Association. Because of this, there were men hidden in the trees as guards. And every man at this meeting had taken a sacred oath of secrecy in order to weed out possible government informers. What they all were gathered here for tonight was illegal.
Presently a strange sound disturbed the forest silence. It was like the rumble of an elephant's belly, distant at first and growing louder until a few men jumped to their feet, prepared to flee. But it was the man Johnstone, arriving on his English motorbike.
The few who had heard him speak before commanded the group to silence and introduced him as Johnstone Kamau. A tall, powerfully built Kikuyu with a strong voice and piercing gaze, who wore, everyone saw, a tribal ornamental belt called mucibi wa kinyata, he strode into the center of the circle.
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