Leopard at the Door

by Jennifer McVeigh

  There is a small silence when he has finished speaking, and the click of the radio as Gerald turns it off.

  I am stunned. A State of Emergency sounds like a declaration of war; official recognition that the situation has slipped out of control.

  “The beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?” Gerald asks, softly, into the quiet. The moment is charged with pathos. The colony, with all its history, comes within the scope of his question. No one speaks for a long time.

  Nate shifts in his seat. “India has gone. Surely it’s just a matter of time.”

  “What is a matter of time?” I ask, the wine making me brave.

  “Independence,” Nate says, looking at me, and I feel a prickle of shock. As though I have known the word all my life, and yet I have not known it at all. It has always gone unspoken, and now that it has been said out loud, I do not think I will ever be able to put it out of my mind.

  Gerald is breathing into the knuckles on his right hand, and I think—What place will there be in an independent Kenya for him, for my father, even for me?

  He says, finally, “I don’t think the kind of violence we have seen is the way forward. They need to find a peaceful way of bringing their case.”

  “The Kikuyu have tried for years to peacefully address the British government. Look at Kenyatta—raised in a missionary school, university in England, married a white woman, for Christ’s sake. A Kikuyu who understands perfectly the problems of land restitution. Have they listened to him? What promises have they made? How much closer do the Kikuyu in this country really feel to independence?”

  “I don’t disagree,” Gerald says, wearily. “But I remain hopeful that this State of Emergency might protect the Kikuyu.”

  “Protect them against what? Against those who believe they have the right to govern themselves?”

  “Against this violence, Nate. God knows I have seen my fair share in two wars. I choose to believe that the British government is doing this for the right reasons.”

  Nate breathes out heavily and says in a voice touched with despair, “And when all the whitewash has been scraped off—will you still think so?” He pauses. One of the logs on the fire cracks, throwing out sparks. “The last time we saw a State of Emergency was under Hitler—and look where that ended up. Detention camps. Repression of the press. The whole damned Holocaust.”

  “The District Officer—” Harold says, and I see in his face the courage it takes him to speak up and ask a question. “He said that Kikuyu society has developed too fast. That Mau Mau is a backlash against civilization.”

  “Of course he did,” Nate says, laughing. “It wouldn’t suit him for a minute to admit that it might be a political movement, the inevitable economic hangover of British rule in Kenya, land hunger, a rootless proletariat, and a government built on discrimination. We have seen these things the world over and there are still men who look at the fight against injustice and call it savagery.

  “Ah—” he says, catching my eye and smiling. “Are you shocked, Rachel?” He knocks back the last of his glass of whiskey. “And I promised you I wouldn’t talk about politics.”

  “Did you indeed, Nate Logan? Well, that was awfully dishonest of you,” Lillian says, smiling. “I have never known a man more compelled to talk about politics.”

  We fall into silence again; each of us drawn close by the warmth of the fire at our backs, the astonishing beauty of the night, the words that have bound us together. The moon—heavy and golden—rises overhead, casting its trembling silver light over the black waters of the dam. There is a splash in the water—something swimming in the depths. Far off—a leopard makes his hoarse, sawing bark. My head swims with everything Nate has said, the State of Emergency, Gerald’s words: This country will be unrecognizable in ten years. I was wrong to think that the unrest would be easily put down—whatever is happening in Kenya is only just beginning.

  Harold drives out with Nate the following morning, fifty miles north into the bush. They will walk the last stretch, with their tents on their backs. It is Samburu country, and Nate says they will not be in any danger from the Kikuyu. Nate is tracking rhino, and they will have a chance to photograph the Samburu. Harold writes a note to Sara and gives it to me, saying, “I’ll be back in a couple of weeks—I might not get this chance again.” His eyes are shining, and I feel his excitement, and the guilt that taints it. We wave them off. After lunch, Lillian takes me home. “Your father will want you back now,” she says. “He’ll be worried, with everything that has happened.”

  We are quiet for most of the journey, after the excitement of the night before. I doze in and out of sleep, my head rattling on the rough roads, until at last we are driving up the track to the house. I hug Lillian in the car and climb down. She raises a hand to Sara, declining the offer to stay for tea, saying she has to get back to Gerald, that he will worry if she stays away too long. When I am nearly out of reach, she grasps my hand and squeezes it. “Everything will be all right, Rachel. You’ll see.” I do not trust myself to turn around.

  “And Harold?” Sara says, when we are standing alone below the steps of the veranda.

  I gaze at her, feeling the weight of her emptiness, and hand her the note that he has written.

  —

  EARLY EVENING. Sara’s voice carrying from the other side of the house, strident in accusation. You should not have let him go. The house feels empty without Harold. He was a deflection, and now it is just the three of us. It must have been like this for him, before I came.

  I run a bath, change and go through to the sitting room. My father is sitting alone with a rifle across his lap. Sara is not there. I have only been away for five days but it feels as though everything has changed.

  “Are you happy to use a gun?” He is cradling a small revolver in one hand, and he holds it up when he sees me.

  “Do you need me to?” I ask, sitting down.

  “There’s Sara and I—but it would be helpful,” he says, frankly, “to have another person in the house. Just in case.”

  He puts the revolver on the table in front of me, along with a small cardboard box of cartridges, and says, “You might find you feel safer if you have it with you.”

  I pick it up. It is black, the metal cold and heavy in my hand. I used my father’s old .22 rifle as a child—shooting spring hares at night—but this is different. This gun speaks violence. It makes my hand shake and my head whirl. “Do you think there might be an attack? Here at Kisima?”

  He runs a hand over his jaw, where his beard might have been, and looks at me. “I think we have to be careful. This is only the beginning.”

  I open the box and slide the heavy brass-cased bullets onto the table. “It takes six cartridges,” he says. They clink against each other as they come to rest. He watches me, then comes round the table and shows me how to load the cylinder and rotate it. How to lift the gun and fire. “It has a good firing range—about forty-five meters, though you’re best waiting until you’re closer than that. It’s easier than you might think to miss.”

  “What does it feel like?” I ask. “To pull the trigger. Does it hurt?”

  My father looks up. Sara is standing in the doorway.

  “Oh good,” she says, walking into the room. “Your father thought you might be too young to handle a gun, but I said that was nonsense. You were brought up here after all. You know better than anyone what kind of violence these people are capable of.”

  “I haven’t decided whether I’m going to take it,” I say.

  “Why ever not?” she asks, stopping to look at me, genuinely surprised. “When I was your age I would have been thrilled if my father had given me that kind of responsibility.”

  I don’t know how to reply. I’m not sure she will understand my reticence, and I’m not sure I completely understand it myself. Something is taking shape in my mind. “I’m not sure I b
elieve in violence,” I say.

  “How perfectly adorable,” she says, giving a small, shrill laugh as she pours herself a gin from the bar. “Try telling that to the terrorists who slip into your bedroom in the middle of the night.”

  “Sara—” my father says.

  I slide the gun back onto the table, unsure what to do with it.

  “Your uncle Eliot—” My father sits down on the sofa and picks up a letter from the table, waving it in my direction; a change of subject. “They’re having trouble again at Uplands.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I ask.

  “Oh, a few of the men distributing political pamphlets, workers walking out on their shift, that sort of thing.”

  “Will they strike?”

  “No—they couldn’t do that. Not in the current climate.” He looks at me more closely. “Of course—you were there during the strike in ’46—”

  “What strike?” Sara asks.

  He glances at her. “The whole factory went on strike. Not a single African turned up to work for three days. But the thing that bothered my brother was the engine room. Someone had gone completely to town on it.”

  I stare at him. I have an image, suddenly, of Michael standing outside the engine room at Uplands with grease on his palm. “What do you mean—‘gone to town on it’?”

  “Dismantled the whole engine. Took some parts that had to be ordered in from Europe. Must have known what he was doing.” He takes a sip of his whiskey. “They never did find the man who did it.”

  I think of the promise Michael exacted from me—Are you going to tell your uncle that you saw me? The light on in the engine room, the tools in his hand. I had seen the sweat beading on his forehead; his fist slamming the wall in anger. It was Michael. He had sabotaged the engine. I look at my father and think that I should tell him, but before I can speak someone knocks on the door, three times. “Twice if there’s danger,” my father says, as Mungai comes in carrying a tureen of soup, and the moment for me to speak has passed. I will tell him later, when we are alone.

  —

  “GOING TO PUT HER OUT?” my father says after dinner, nodding his head at Juno who is stretched out by the fire.

  We stand at the open door, a pool of light at our feet, and watch Juno disappear across the dark stretch of lawn. My father has his revolver in his hand. I am about to tell him what I saw at the strike, when something holds me back. I remember the taste of fear in my mouth that day. The anger and frustration written into Michael’s face. In the clarity of the moment in which we had looked at each other, he and I, it had felt as though we were on the same side. How can I betray him all these years later, without talking to him first?

  “You won’t be able to wander off on your own,” my father says. “Not anymore. I’ll want to know where you are.”

  “All right,” I say, seeing Juno reappear, tail wagging. My father bolts the door after her and kisses me good night. “If you hear anything strange, or you think there might be something wrong, ring the bell in your room. I don’t think it’ll happen tonight, or anytime soon. We’ll have some warning before an attack. But still—we should all be careful.”

  My room is cold, and the night outside is quiet and seemingly empty, except for the wild animals and the men who are bedded down in the forest, stockpiling weapons and hatred. A small steel bell sits on my bedside table. How could so much have changed? Or had it always been like this, but I was a child, oblivious to the lines of political tension that connected the adults who protected me? I remember the morning after the strike, walking down the steps of my uncle’s house at Uplands and seeing the ball of paper Steven Lockhart had thrown across the veranda. The same paper the lead striker had tucked into his shirt pocket, the same papers I had seen in Michael’s hand. I opened it up. The words come back to me now in pieces, words that made no sense at the time. African Workers’ Union . . . Complaints . . . Indifference toward paying Africans equally . . . Partiality and disrespect shown to African workers . . . Deliberate devices to keep the African poor that he may keep at his work . . . Had Michael believed in all of this? Did he believe in it now?

  I turn on the radio at ten o’clock and wish that Harold was here. This side of the house feels too quiet and empty, and the voice from England accentuates the silence that lies beyond its reach. The news brings reports of mass oathing ceremonies among the Kikuyu; there doesn’t seem to be a corner of the Highlands that hasn’t been infiltrated by Mau Mau.

  I reach over to turn down the lamp and lie there in the dark, listening to the small noises of the house; the flicker of a gecko through the thatch, the dripping of the bathroom tap. After a moment I put out my hand and feel for the gun on the table, but it is cold under my fingertips and offers little comfort.

  —

  AT BREAKFAST the following morning, Sara is not yet dressed, but she has made up her face, and the light catches the film of powder on her cheeks. She smiles at me and pats the chair beside her. “Come sit down, Rachel. Your father was up all night worrying about the Emergency. He’s had such a lot to think about and now this hoo-ha with the labor.”

  My father gulps back his coffee. He doesn’t look at me, and I realize he isn’t going to tell me what she means. I have the uneasy sense that Sara is orchestrating this conversation, but curiosity gets the better of me. “What’s happened?”

  “Five of the men are missing from the labor line this morning,” my father says. “They must have been oathing last night.” He breathes out heavily. “The police picked two of them up on the road to Nakuru this morning, but the rest will be in the damn forest somewhere. They were all good men, good workers.”

  “All the more reason to get this over with,” Sara says.

  “Get what over with?” I ask.

  My father looks at me then, and there is desolation in his glance, as though he has come to the end of something and—cornered—he has lost his courage.

  Sara answers for him, “Steven Lockhart is coming this evening. Tomorrow he and your father will oversee moving the Kikuyu out of the shambas.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask my father, hearing the shrill note in my voice. “Where are they going?”

  “Mostly back to the reserves,” my father says, running a hand over his jaw.

  “We are repatriating them.” Sara is filling in for him. Efficiently explaining what he is finding so difficult to articulate. “We can’t have so many Kikuyu here. It’s too risky.”

  “Repatriating? But they live here. Most of them were born here.” I look at my father. “What have they got to go back to?”

  My father breathes into the back of his hand. “Steven Lockhart spent some time here on our labor line. He didn’t feel it was safe having such large shambas so far from the house. They’re too vulnerable to infiltration; to militants who might come down from the forest and force them to take the oath. We’re setting up a shamba closer to the house for the Kikuyu who will stay. It will be safer for them, safer for us.”

  “How many are leaving?”

  “About a hundred and twenty.”

  “Over half!” A missionary priest on the ship had talked about conditions in the reserves. Overcrowded, he said, and the land had turned to dust from too much grazing. That they were teeming with men who were back from the war with new ambition, new skills, and no means to make a living.

  “Rachel—it was decided weeks ago. There’s nothing that can be done about it now, so you might as well accept your father’s decision with some grace.”

  “But how could you not have told me? After all the time I have spent there? How long have they known?”

  “We told them a few days ago.”

  “Are there jobs for them in the reserves?” I ask my father. “How will they survive?”

  “The Kikuyu have spent years living like Lords on your father’s land,” Sara says, “with as many goat
and cattle as they like, not to mention wives, and God only knows how many children. It’s time they understood that this land doesn’t belong to them.”

  I don’t say anything, conscious that I am on dangerous territory, but my silence isn’t enough. She takes it as insolence. She wants me to concur.

  “Rachel, your father fought tooth and nail to clear the land here.”

  “Well. If it’s a question of sweat, blood and tears, I’d say they paid their share.” My father worked hard here, I have no doubt, but so did the Kikuyu men and women who traveled here to work for him.

  My father doesn’t look at me, and neither of them say anything, so that my statement sits awkwardly between us, as some kind of demonstration of adolescent insolence perhaps.

  Mungai comes out to serve me coffee. He asks me how I would like my eggs, and I am conscious of him listening to our conversation.

  “What about Michael? And Jim?” I ask, when he is gone.

  “Michael is staying,” my father says. “And Jim of course.”

  “And his family?” I ask—thinking suddenly of Njeri.

  “They will have to leave. All except his first wife and her children.”

  I stare at him, shocked. The world I am familiar with is crumbling down around me. “But Njeri has a baby only a few weeks old.”

  “I cannot make exceptions. I have spoken to Jim. I gave him the choice to stay with us, or to leave with two months’ pay, and he has decided to stay. Njeri will be traveling with Mukami. There are his cousins who will be traveling with them, and he will of course send money home.”

  “It is better—” Sara says, “to have labor on the farm who are unattached.”

  “How could you agree to this?” I look at him, openmouthed.

  “Goddamn it, Rachel. What would you have me do?” my father stands up, thrusting the chair out behind him. “With Sara here? And now you? It isn’t safe. Something has to change.”