Leopard at the Door

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Leopard at the Door Page 30

by Jennifer McVeigh


  Two white soldiers are sitting some way off from the blackened walls of the house. They are fiddling with the wireless, cigarettes hanging from their mouths, the smoke almost invisible in the heat of the day. It is the same two soldiers I saw at Bowker’s house. One of them sees me and kicks the other with his boot. They straighten their backs and stare as I approach, and I glance down at myself—arms black with soot, my mother’s green dress hanging in tatters from my body.

  My legs are unsteady. Kahiki is dragging a table from the ashes of the house. He looks up as I approach and his eyes fix on mine, and I realize he had not expected to see me alive. He runs forward and puts a hand on my shoulder and I feel the strength of his fingers, locking onto me.

  “We thought you were dead, Memsaab.”

  “Not dead,” I say. Then—“Where is my father?”

  “He has gone to hospital.”

  “He’s hurt?”

  “He was shot. Just before dawn.” He puts a hand low on his stomach, just above his groin.

  I swallow, my eyes fixed on his. “Will he be all right?”

  “I do not know, Memsaab.” His eyes are heavy with truth.

  “Will he be all right?” I ask again, my voice rising.

  “There is nothing you can do. The memsaab has gone with him. We will have news later.”

  “Sara? She is alive?” I take a breath in and feel relief flood through me.

  “Yes, Memsaab. She was burned in the fire, but she is all right.”

  She escaped after all. But my father—what if he doesn’t survive? What if I lose him?

  “Did they raid the barns?”

  “Yes.” His eyes shift away from me.

  “Juno—where is she?”

  He shakes his head, and I see this is what he is hiding.

  “The puppies. Were they in the stables last night?”

  “You do not want to see,” he says. But I want to see.

  “Where?” I look back at the house. There is something hanging from the veranda. I hadn’t noticed it before. Swinging. Three bodies on ropes.

  “Can you cut them down? Why has no one cut them down?” I scream.

  “The District Officer asked for them to be left as they are,” one of the soldiers calls out, nonchalantly. “For photographs.”

  “Cut them down for me,” I say to Kahiki, my eyes bleeding tears. He reaches up with a knife—wincing from the wall of heat—and cuts the ropes. The bodies are charred, blackened, but held together still by sinew. He lays them out on the ground. Were they dead before they were strung up here? Or were they strung up here alive? Three bodies. The one that is Juno, larger than the others. My heart catches. I did not think there would be more pain. I do not see Pirate’s body, the short legs. “Where is the other puppy?”

  “There is nothing at the barns. They have burned them down.”

  I walk down the track to the yard, to the blackened barns, the burned-out stables. I shout for Pirate, moving through layer on layer of heat. No sound comes back. Is it possible that he escaped? I do not think so. I fight back dizziness and walk back to the house. There are no cars here; there is no way of leaving the farm. There is nothing I can do but wait. I should have come down sooner. I should have had the courage to face Steven. But what might he have done to me here, in the ashes of the fire?

  I walk over to the soldiers. “Can you radio out?”

  They look at me with curiosity. I wonder what they have been told. “We have already radioed through to the Home Guard post. They know you have been found.”

  I stand under the glare of the sun, heat radiating from the walls, until Kahiki puts a hand on my arm and leads me away from the soldiers. Someone has dragged my father’s armchair outside, where it blisters in the sun. Kahiki pulls it under the shade of an acacia. It is blackened on one side, but the floral pattern is still visible. I sink into it. He brings me a bowl of cold posho. A glass of water. I thank him and eat, pushing the meal into my mouth with my hand, forcing myself to swallow.

  Ash falls like snow over the ground. The heat radiating from the walls is on one side of me, and the air in front of the house shimmers as if it is melting in the heat.

  “We are pumping more water up from the dam,” Kahiki says. “It will take time. We need men but we do not have them.”

  I nod, but cannot speak. There is nothing to say.

  Then out of the stillness of the day, the clear chiming of church bells rings out. I look up in alarm. It takes me a moment to see that the soldiers have got the wireless working. It is the very sound of England, of empire, and my throat catches.

  The bells fade, and a voice speaks in hushed tones; his words, each one still and slow. This sceptered isle; this earth of majesty; this fortress built by nature against the hand of war; this happy breed of men; this little world; this realm; this England.

  Trumpets sound, setting off a troop of vervet monkeys, in the trees beyond the fire.

  The Coronation ceremony, reported from London. I remember the party. It was to be today. That is why I am wearing my mother’s dress. It all seems a long time ago. A different life. I see now the triangles of bunting which lie trodden into the earth. Three trestle tables stand naked in a clearing on the blackened stretch of lawn.

  She comes to us in the sorrow of her father’s passing . . . her sovereign lord King George the VI, who lived through dangerous years in the lives of his people.

  And I think of the war, so recently ended; of Michael in Burma; of him hiding now in the forest. The guns, the killing.

  Then “Jerusalem” is playing. The swelling of men’s voices, resounding off the ancient walls of Westminster Abbey, feeling out the high stone arches, the marble tombstones, the hidden chapels. Summoning history. Year upon year of tradition. The idyll in the midst of horror. The beauty and the tragedy.

  And did the countenance divine

  Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

  And was Jerusalem builded here

  Among those dark satanic mills?

  The whole abbey is singing. The choir, their voices rising in passion upon passion. What do the words mean? They are important in the way that a knife is important. I feel them cutting into me—I feel the pain they bring—but I do not know their purpose. And what does it mean that the music swells inside me, that I feel myself lifting with it, that I hate this England so many thousands of miles away? What do the tears mean that are running down my cheeks? How can I be one thing, and also another?

  All the force of England, all its formality, all its contained emotion, its quest for conquest, is here.

  Bring me my arrows of desire!

  Bring me my spear: o clouds unfold!

  Bring me my chariots of fire!

  I will not cease from mental fight;

  Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

  Till we have built Jerusalem

  In England’s green and pleasant land.

  I am sobbing, mouth open, pain pouring out of me. The music fades. Throats are cleared, the sound echoing in the quiet of the abbey. Silence—the wireless crackling. Then Richard Dimbleby’s voice again, its soft formal intonations, as familiar as a father, summoning England from four thousand miles away. Here are the Banners of Chivalry, gold and crimson, green and blue . . . The Golden Lion of England . . . the black eagle with its wings outstretched . . .

  I stand up and begin to pick over the ruins of the house which have been dragged out from under the burning roof. The Queen takes the five swords of state, the two swords of justice, and the sword of mercy with the blunted point.

  Soot drifts over the ground, mingling with the dust. Small flames show white in the heat. Books are littered across the ground. A page sifts loose, carried across the earth by the heat of the fire. I kneel down. It is from the Swahili grammar book I found all those months ago on the boat to Mombasa: a paragraph of
sentences to translate, for a settler to use with his houseboy. Why is the cork lost? Clean my boots at once! You must fasten every button. A hippopotamus has destroyed our hut. My head is hurting me very much. Undo this lid with a knife, then bring the matches. Boy! I have lost my pipe. I see it, master, on the piano. If you listen hard you will be able to hear the rhinoceros making a noise. Clean these shoes again with black polish. That man is a witch doctor, see the frog in his pocket. The latrine is full of fleas.

  The phrases turn over and over in my head, senseless but compelling, until they are indistinguishable from the sound of the Coronation.

  I find a photograph of my mother—from where? It lies blackening on the ground, its edges curled. I pick it up and dust off the soot. She is standing with Kahiki, smiling broadly, holding up a piece of broken pottery which she has dug from the earth; I can see the soil clinging to its edges. I do not remember this moment, and I choke back a cry; I scarcely knew her at all.

  The Queen risen from prayer is disrobed of her crimson robe . . . It is the moment of the anointing, hallowing, a moment so old history can scarcely go deep enough to contain it . . . the Queen is clothed in white, and in cloth of gold with the golden girdle . . . she receives the jeweled sword and takes it and offers it at the altar . . .

  So many articles of superstition. Such an elaborate swearing in. What of the oath Michael has taken? Is it any more primitive, any more drenched in superstition, than this one? She puts on the imperial cloak. “The lord cloak you with the robe of righteousness.”

  I turn over the photo. My father’s writing, faded in the heat but still visible. I do not stand at your grave and weep; you are not there, you do not sleep. I feel the force of my father’s desolation, left here without her. I picture her tombstone in the small graveyard on the outskirts of Hull, the stone marbled green with the mold which threatens each winter to overwhelm it.

  Long live the Queen! Long live the Queen! Long live the Queen!

  A car is driving toward the house. The soldiers switch off the wireless. We watch.

  My uncle opens the door and steps out.

  “Rachel. What the devil?” He comes toward me. “We thought you had run away.”

  I stand up. My head feels too heavy. “My father—is he all right?”

  He walks closer, shakes his head. I think of the irony, that he was the one to tell me about my mother. “He lost a lot of blood. Sara is with him now.”

  “How did she escape?”

  He looks at me, head slightly cocked, as though the question proves something. I am uneasy. “Lockhart walked in with some men. Jumped the Micks and they fled. Managed to pull her out in time.”

  He puts a hand on my arm. “Move away from the house. You’ll get hurt. Christ, look at you. Your feet.” I glance down. They are covered in blood. There is blood on my hand. I feel myself crumbling in exhaustion. I have held myself together for so long, and now someone is here to help me.

  He leads me toward the car. I slide into the front seat. It has been baking in the sun, and the canvas is hot under my legs. There is a foul smell.

  “The damn pig—” he says. He goes to the boot and drags out a piglet, pink skin. Its back legs bounce along the ground. He swings it into the bush on the side of the track. “It’s been in there all morning.” He gives me a quick, hard smile. I remember the telegram. The way he looked at me then. It is the same now. He is uneasy with too much emotion. I scare him.

  “I’ve been out searching for hours. I promised Lockhart I would bring you back. Though God knows where I thought I’d find you. As far as I knew the boy might have thrown you into a ravine.” He starts the engine. “How long have you been here?”

  I lick my lips. My mouth is dry. It is strange to be sitting here. He is talking very fast.

  “I came down this morning.”

  He reverses the car round and swings it in a circle, then we are driving away from the house. He glances at me. The curiosity of a man who has not had children. I look in the side mirror and see the blackened remains, the drifting trail of smoke, the soldiers eating their sandwiches.

  “Where are we going?”

  He gives me a quick sideways look. I see anxiety slide like liquid over his face, but perhaps I have imagined it. After a moment he says, “We’ll stop at the surgery. Then we’re going to Nairobi.” It is open-ended.

  “What is in Nairobi? Is my father being transferred there?”

  “He might well be, at a later date. For the moment it is the safest place for you.”

  I ask what I have been too scared to ask. “How badly is she hurt?”

  He doesn’t answer for a while. Then looks at me again. “She will be all right.”

  The surgery is at the Home Guard post. Corrugation shimmers in the steady, breathy heat. I try to walk but my legs buckle. My uncle has to support me. Under the shade of a tarpaulin, a nurse washes and bandages my feet, peels back shredded skin. The water is pain. They look at me strangely, talking quietly when my back is turned, as if they know something that I do not. My dress is in tatters. I should change into new clothes, but no one offers them to me. They give me an elastic to tie up my hair. I am relieved that Steven is not here.

  When we drive again, my uncle is quiet.

  “I tried to get her out,” I say. “She wouldn’t come.”

  He glances across at me. There is no conversation in his look. It is all observation. Is he interested? Afraid? What has Sara told him? I shift in my seat. Something is not right. I cannot put my finger on it. I am exhausted. I lean my head against the window. Sleep comes at me like a dark wave, tangible and frightening. I resist it for a moment, then let it suck me under.

  When I wake, my uncle is pulling off the main road. I see a sign: UPLANDS BACON FACTORY, EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  My mouth is dry and my head throbs. I sit up and rub sleep from my eyes.

  The white walls of the factory rise up in front of us.

  “I’ll be just a minute,” he says, when he sees me stirring. “Stay here.” He steps out of the car.

  I see him go through the main factory gates. The car makes a ticking sound as it settles in the heat. I can hear the grinding of the factory machines, the clunking of the chains as they move along the chute. After a moment, I open my door and step out.

  I walk through the pigpens. Animals behind bars. I breathe in the dense, meaty smell of them, so many crammed together. It is the same as it was all those years ago. Men in pinafores stained with blood are opening up the gates, siphoning each load into the factory like grain pouring through a funnel. They disappear faster than I can count them. I can hear the grunting, the squeals of panic, the clunking of the wheel and the terror—like the cries of the tortured—rising muffled, from behind the walls.

  In front of me is the door, and beyond it the corridor I ran down so many years ago. The thing I witnessed. Michael pulling me off the floor.

  “Rachel—”

  I turn around—it is my uncle, standing in the middle of the pens, watching me. He looks alarmed. Perhaps it is the pigs in the pens around us, but it is as though for a minute he is the captor and I am the hunted. He holds one hand out slightly as if he can get a grip on me, even though I stand at some distance. “I told you to stay in the car.”

  “Was it an order?” I ask.

  He doesn’t reply.

  “Do you remember the strike?” I call to him across the pens.

  “What of it?” he asks, weaving his way closer.

  “The man came with the telegram—”

  “Don’t think about it now, Rachel. You mustn’t think about it now.”

  “Why shouldn’t I think about it?” I step back a few paces, challenged. Something in his posture makes me want to run.

  “Sara—” He shakes his head. “She said you would want to discuss it. She said you would get upset.”

  �
�Am I upset now?”

  “You don’t look yourself.”

  “Steven Lockhart killed the African.”

  “What African?”

  “The leader of the strike. He killed him. I was hiding in the room on the first floor. I saw it happen.” I remember him lining up his boots, the head snapping back. The silence in the room as I sat there watching him, blood seeping noiselessly from under his head. It is a relief to say it.

  He puts a hand on my shoulder and I begin to cry. I am not going to run after all. “You have been through such a lot, Rachel. Now you need to stop. Give up fighting. It’s time for you to rest.”

  “I want to show you,” I say, turning to the door.

  “Not now, Rachel.” He is very close to me. “Perhaps another time.”

  “But it’s important—don’t you see? He killed a man—” He isn’t registering what I am saying. As though it does not matter. I want to go back there. With an adult. To show what I have carried so long unshown. I want him to see it. Perhaps then I can forget. But he is steering me away, and I am following. I am not certain any longer that I know what is best for me. He puts me into the car, closes the passenger door with a click.

  “Did you see the body?” I ask him, when he is sitting next to me.

  “I did.”

  “He kicked him in the head. Didn’t you see?”

  “Rachel—” He has his hand on the car key, is about to start the engine. He turns to me, shaking his head. “He threw himself off the factory wall. They found him on the concrete, outside. There are men who saw it happen.”

  “But it’s not true—” I look at him, desperate now. Will he not believe me? I have waited so long to tell someone. I feel unreal, as though I am disembodied. Like a dream when you hit out but make no impact, my words are unable to penetrate. “Steven Lockhart—I was hiding in the room—he kicked the man’s head right back. It snapped. The man was dead.”

 

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