Leopard at the Door

by Jennifer McVeigh

  The bush seems to hold the heat, as though it is a living, breathing thing, and as I push up the steep hill I glance behind me, but all I can see is the patchwork of green and yellow branches.

  There is a noise on the track up ahead. The tread of feet walking quickly toward me. I freeze. Someone is coming down. Terror grips me so that I almost do not move in time. At the last minute I dart into the bush and crouch down. An African emerges from the track ahead. At first all I see are his legs. Shorts. Sandals. His swift, loose gait. My fear quickens. I do not want to be caught here, alone with a Kikuyu. Then I see that it is Michael. The familiar jolt of pleasure, that it is him. I am about to stand up and call to him, when something stops me. He is walking fast and with purpose. His forehead is creased and his jaw is set. He is thinking about something, something that has just happened. There is no humor in his face. He is wearing thin black shorts, his chest bare. He looks less like the man I know and more of a stranger. I stay where I am, breathing softly in the trees, until he has passed.

  I do not want to follow him down, in case he should see me, and I am almost at the top—so I keep pushing upward, cautiously, half-expecting to see someone ahead of me—until I see the track level off, emerging into a clearing, partly covered by a rush canopy. I am on top of the mountain, on a scree of rock. My heart is beating in my ears. It is all I can hear. The view is bright—too bright, after the dark of the trees. I feel giddy, as though I might fall.

  Something is wrong. It smells of urine under the canopy, and there is an animal odor like the smell of unwashed men. There are peanut shells on the dirt floor, the tread of boots in the dust. I look around—expecting eyes in the bush, watching me. My blood quickens. I feel like I might not be alone. Terrified, I go backward, tripping on the roots of a tree, scrambling down the track, not stopping until I am at the bottom and emerge into the open by the dam.

  —

  AT HOME, the Standard has been delivered. The front page shows a picture of the Ruck family. There is more detail here than was given on the radio. They were in the middle of dinner when their groom—a Kikuyu—hammered on the door. The groom had been with them for ten years—he was teaching the boy to ride his pony. He was unarmed, and Roger Ruck followed him gun in hand to the workshop where a gang was waiting for him. They hacked him to death. His screams set off the cattle and the dogs barking. Esme ran out with her shotgun. They found her body a few yards from the house, as badly cut up as her husband. The boy was upstairs in his room. There is a photo of his bedroom. I have to steel myself to look at it. Amidst the toys and the patchwork blanket is the small bed pushed against the wall, the bedcovers thrown back, the white mattress scored across the middle by three long slashes, exposing the dark horsehair stuffing. Somewhere near the top of the mattress is a black puddle of blood. On the floor by the bed is a clockwork train set. The settlers, the white farmers, have marched in protest on Government House—they do not feel the Governor is doing enough to tackle Mau Mau.

  I carry the newspaper down to the stables with me.

  “Did you hear about the Ruck murder?”

  He looks up at me. “Yes.”

  “On the radio?” I ask, uncomfortable with the idea of him using it, even though I was the one who brought it down here.

  “Yes,” he says, holding my gaze, “on the radio.”

  I imagine him turning it on in the dark, his fingers moving over the dials. I go closer to him, testing him, put the newspaper down on his workbench. I want to ask him what he was doing this morning, at the eyrie, and who the men are who have been using it, but something holds me back. Instead I say what is true, “Michael—I am scared.”

  “I know,” he says, looking at me.

  I swallow heavily, steel my courage. “Are you connected to the men fighting in the forest? To Mau Mau?”

  He draws his long forearm across his face, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “We are all connected.”

  “Your brothers?”

  “Samuel is in Yatta.”

  “But the others?”

  He hesitates for only a second. “Kabutha—the youngest—is somewhere in the mountains. The other two went back to the reserves.”

  I want to ask him more, but I do not know how. Perhaps I do not want to hear what he might tell me.

  He begins putting away his tools. “I’m going down to the dam to swim,” he says, glancing at me. He steps out of his overalls. Underneath, he is wearing the same black shorts that I saw him wearing on the track up to the eyrie. I am not sure if what he has said is an invitation or a dismissal, and I hover uncertainly. He picks up the broom which is leaning against the wall of the garage and sweeps the earth in steady, rhythmic strokes, and I watch, caught up in the movement, its constant, knowing pattern, the simplicity of it, the slowness. This is something he has done a thousand times, but there is no haste.

  I turn to walk out of the yard, and he says softly, “You’re not going to come?” There is no doubt in his voice. He knows I will come.

  “Yes—if you want me to—” I say, stopping, the color rushing to my cheeks.

  “Yes—I want you to,” he says, still sweeping.

  After a moment, he stops. A small pile of wood shavings, green leaves and jacaranda blossom, lies at his feet.

  “The dustpan is under the bench,” he says, looking at me, not moving.

  I wonder for a moment what he means, but he says nothing. I go into the garage, bend down, see the metal tray, the wooden handle. I fish it out then kneel, close to his feet, and sweep up the small pile of shavings, steel nails, green leaves and blossom.

  I stand up with it. For some reason I am coloring again and I am not sure why.

  “Where does it go?” I ask, feeling awkward.

  He is looking at me as though he has not heard me speak. We are standing very close. His jaw is set and I wonder what he is feeling. I cannot read him easily. I do not know if it is desire or anger.

  “There is a bin in the corner,” he says. I turn, and out of the corner of my eye I see him move, loosening whatever it was that gripped him for a moment. When I turn around, he has leaned the broom against the wall and he is smiling at me.

  We walk down to the dam. It is humid and close, my shirt is sticky against my back, and—a rare thing in Kenya—there are no shadows. The clouds are darkening overhead and it feels almost as though night is drawing in.

  When we cut off the main track down to the dam, he puts out a hand and lets it settle against the back of my neck. There is no conversation, but I feel now the current of his desire, and it slips like fire through my groin.

  We cut around the dam, through the bush, to the place where the water curves out of sight. This is where I saw him swimming. His desire to be alone with me is still enough to set my blood beating in my ears. I feel very light, almost giddy, as though my whole self is gathered up into my fingertips, and I cannot feel the earth beneath my feet.

  As we emerge from the trees onto the shoreline I see the surface of the water trembling under the pressure of the first scattering of raindrops. I turn my face up to the sky and feel the clean wetness against my skin, the cold taste of rain on my tongue.

  Michael is stripping off his clothes. Wading out into the water. I watch him sink into the depths. He ducks his head under and is gone a long time, then emerges, drawing his hands over his face.

  “Rachel,” he calls softly, his voice traveling across the surface of the water. It is a beckoning, a tightening of the cord that binds me to him, and I shift uncomfortably on the shoreline. I know I cannot refuse it.

  “I haven’t anything with me,” I say, opening up my arms, hoping it will be enough. The rain is falling more heavily now, and my shirt sticks wetly to my arms.

  “The water is good,” he says. His face—far off—is blurred by the falling rain.

  I peel off my clothes, push down my trousers and wade out.
My vest sticks wet and pink to my skin. It is cold but I am wet anyway. I duck underneath and feel the water seal itself against me like a second skin, covering every particle of my surface. When I open my eyes I see a thousand grains against a golden, dull, gleaming light, like insects caught in amber. I think for a moment that I can see something dark—a billowing fabric—turning beneath me.

  When I come up for air Michael is there. A few feet from me. It is no longer just raining. Water is pouring in sheets from the sky, beating down on us. We are both laughing, suddenly, stunned by the power of it, the sky opening on us. The drumming of water on water is in my ears, and the screech of birds flying overhead, leaving the surface of the water for cover. And all around us is the thick, impenetrable bush, and we are just specks in the wide expanse of the dam, treading out the cold beneath us.

  “Christ. I didn’t think I would want you like this,” he says, swimming close. “Not like this.” His hands reach out for my body, bring it in under the power of him, and all my strength is gone.

  As we emerge from the dam, shaking off water, the rain stops. The clouds move off and the sun settles its mantle of heat on the wet earth. The birds break the silence, tentatively at first, with their chattering. Michael pulls on his shorts and sits on a flat rock, and I spread out my clothes on the acacia bushes and lie naked, front down, on the warm, wet earth. Soon the sun’s heat will have drained all the moisture from the ground so that nothing but rivulets will remain, and I will be able to dust the earth from my body.

  He has a bit of wood in his hand, and he is cutting at it with a knife. The sun spreads its gradual warmth, heating my body, each moment deeper and warmer than the last, and I feel a deep, saturated contentment spreading through me, a softening of my limbs.

  A line of black ants are sorting through the wet earth, wrestling small mounds and piling them in a heap.

  “Have you always swum here?” I ask.

  “No. I couldn’t swim as a child.”

  “Where did you learn?”

  “On the Red Sea. Two officers had a bet on whether an African could be taught to swim in an afternoon.”

  I prop myself on my elbows and look at him. “And you agreed?”

  He is looking intently at his carving. “It took the whole afternoon. But I could swim at the end of it.”

  A small airplane drones in the distance. They must be searching for Mau Mau. They will not see us so close to the cover of the trees, not unless they fly low over the dam.

  “What are you making?” I ask, but he does not reply.

  I draw a stick through the earth in front of the ants, creating a canyon in their path. They flow over the surface of the walls, down into the canyon and up over the walls on the other side.

  I give in to the heat and shut my eyes. When I wake Michael is standing over me. He has brought my clothes. They are so crisp and dry they would stand on the earth without support. My legs and chest are brown from the earth. I pull my shirt over my head, stand up, pull on my trousers. I feel a sadness suddenly, tugging at me. I don’t want to leave. I think that this afternoon, with its rain and golden light, has been stolen from a place of darkness.

  He walks ahead of me. He has pulled on his overalls but his back is bare. I reach out and touch the scar and he stops, but doesn’t turn around.

  “How did it happen?” I ask, feeling the ridged surface with my fingers. His back shudders and I pull my hand away.

  “I was trapped in a fire. It was a tin hut. They pulled me out.”

  “It must have hurt.”

  He turns to look at me. He is breathing heavily. I see the quickening of his chest as it rises and falls. “I was lucky. Four men were killed.” But he isn’t talking to me. I feel the force of him, without him touching me. As though I have held a match to kindling. The same look he gave me in the garage when I stood in front of him with the dustpan full of leaves. And I know now that it is something close to desire. I feel the force of it, as steady and hot as anger, and it deafens me, my ears ring with it; I cannot breathe. We stare at each other. He doesn’t touch me. He speaks, as if he is using all of his strength to control what is igniting inside him. “Careful, Rachel.” He swallows, his throat sliding up and down. His tongue passes over his lips. “I cannot be responsible for you.”

  XXIV

  A few days after the Ruck murder Steven Lockhart pulls up outside the house. Sara is in her room and I am sitting on the veranda alone, sewing.

  I look up when I hear the jeep and wonder if I have time to escape, but his voice calls up soft and persistent, over the hum of the engine. “Rachel, I can see you. Don’t run away.” I stand, frozen to the spot.

  “Sara is sleeping,” I call down.

  “It’s not Sara I came to see.” There is a pause. “Come down here. I have something I want to show you.”

  I watch the car, sun glinting off metal. The engine sputters and dies and there is silence. He pushes open the front door of the jeep—the one nearest me—and ducks his head so he can see me.

  “What are you thinking about up there?” he calls out, and when I don’t reply, “I’ve just been down to the garage. Had a chat with Michael. I thought you might want to know what we talked about.”

  Why has Steven been talking to Michael? I find myself drawn by a horrible curiosity, walking down the wooden steps in my bare feet, into the glare of the sun. He pats the seat beside him, and I slide obediently onto the hot green canvas.

  There is a hessian sack at my feet. The air inside the jeep smells sickly sweet. A smell I recognize but cannot place. Steven is breathing heavily. Fear oozes thickly in my blood. I tell myself that Sara is in her room—that she will come if I scream, that there is nothing this man can do to me, but I am not sure either of these things is true. He reaches across me—his chest damp against my dress—and pulls the door shut with a click, and my heart races. He stays facing me slightly in his seat, beads of sweat clustered in between his blond eyebrows, dripping down the layer of dirt that covers his face. He is filthy, in the way that men only get when they have been out in the bush for days. His eyes are staring. He has been on patrol, I realize. He looks as though he hasn’t slept in a long time.

  His breath, his very body exhales and it mingles with the smell in the car. “There I am out in the bush, hunting down Micks, and all the time I was thinking I’d come back and you’d be wearing something pretty,” he says, placing his hand just above my knee and sliding one finger up the inside of the hem on my shorts. I flinch, pulling my leg away, and he laughs, but doesn’t put his hand back. “Don’t mind me,” he says softly.

  I want to leave the car, but I also want to know what he was talking to Michael about.

  “He’s an interesting boy, Michael. Fixed up my jeep a treat.” He smiles at me. “Said he enjoyed teaching you as a child. You were an easy pupil, he said. Those were his words. I thought that was rather nice coming from a nigger.” His chest is going in and out, and he wipes the sweat from his forehead. The smell is more of a stench now. It is settling in the pit of my stomach, turning it to bile. “You two have been spending time together? Down in the yard?”

  My chest constricts. What does he know about Michael and me?

  I don’t answer.

  “Open it up,” he says, nodding at the sack which sits at my feet.

  “I don’t think I will,” I say, finding the courage to look him straight in the face.

  “Oh, I think you’ll want to see this,” he says. “It’s right up your street. Go on. Open it.” A piece of rough twine is tied around the neck of the sack, and with shaking fingers I manage to get it open. My heart is losing its rhythm and my tongue sticks in my mouth. I have a sense of what’s inside before I actually see it. Perhaps it is the smell—a concentrated sweetness, turning into something putrid, like an animal rotting in the bush.

  “Have a look,” he says. And despite myself I glance i
nside. Two hands, knobs of flesh, sticky brown fingernails like slivers of half moons.

  “What is it?” I ask in horror, pushing the bag away, panting for breath.

  “I think you know what they are. We cut them off a Mick last night. Out on patrol. Fifteen shillings for every Mick the boys kill.”

  “Why his hands?” I cannot let the image go—the awfulness of it.

  “It was too far to bring him in, and we needed to fingerprint him.”

  I put my hand on the door handle and wrench it open, but he reaches across me and holds it shut. The window is half open. I retch, swallowing down nausea, so as not to be sick here, in front of him.

  “What do you want?” I ask, not looking at him. He doesn’t let go of the door, and his weight rests hot and damp against me. He speaks quietly now, into my ear.

  “I’ve been talking to the Mick we picked up in Nakuru.”

  “What Mick?”

  “I think you know who I’m talking about.”

  I shake my head, but I do know. The sweep outside of town. Samuel. Michael’s brother. My lie.

  “You see he started talking yesterday, and he says he knew you. In fact, he says all sorts of things.”

  My heart beats rapidly in my chest.

  “Michael’s brother. I knew that you recognized him. So what I want to know is, why did you lie to me?”

  I do not reply.

  “Sara told me about the way you have been talking. About the Kikuyu. I wanted to have a little chat with you. I don’t think you’ve come to terms with being here. There is a war going on. Everyone must be careful. Very careful. I want to make sure all your hotheaded talk is just talk. That you don’t place your loyalties where they might get you into trouble.”

  “I’ll tell my father,” I say.