The Claws of Mercy

by John Harris

  “What about Gotto? What’s he been doing?”

  “Reporting some poor little nig to Sargy Asimani for pinching. He’s got me chokker. He’s got me two blocks. He has really. He found one of the shovel boys had swiped a bit of electric cable to hang a curtain on at home and he nearly had kittens. He had Asimani down on him like a ton of bricks. It’s been like that ever since you went – the biggest old tear-up you ever see in all your puff.”

  Jimmy wiped the perspiration from his face. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Case comes up tomorrow. I’m going down this time to stick up for the nig. I’ll be in there, boy, I will, large as life and twice as nasty. I’ll fix him. It’ll be something nice to take ’ome with him when he goes on leave.”

  “Is he one of your boys?”

  “Nah. I’m just sick of Master-Mind chucking his weight about. He’s enough to put half-inch hairs on me.”

  “Oh, God!” Jimmy sighed. “I’ve not been back five minutes.”

  “You know who’s running this place?”

  “What do you mean? – running it? Who?”

  “His bloody personal clurk, Smith. That’s who. And a fine old caper it is, too. Master-Mind spends most of his time working himself skinny to nobble some poor little nig. He signs everything Smith puts in front of him. Alf Momo’s going hairless.”

  “Oh, God,” Jimmy said for the second time.

  “Talking about Smith” – Earnshaw seemed to be wallowing in his gloom – “you ’andle much petty cash up ’ere?”

  “At the mine? No. Why?”

  Earnshaw shrugged. “Just wondered if our little playmate’s been putting his fingers into it. That’s all. That blackfaced bastard, Clurk Smith, arrived at my place a few days ago, giving hisself a rare old treat with a fistful of notes. He offered me ten quid for that there gramophone of mine. He’s a right boy, he is. I thought perhaps Gotto had been lending it to him and wondered where it came from.”

  “If Gotto’s been lending that fool money he’s sunk. I wonder where the hell he got it.”

  “Well, he had it, any road up,” Earnshaw said. “So I ’ad to let him have the gramophone. I always said I would, if he could scrape up the dough. It wasn’t worth a quid, anyway. I’d a given it to anybody but ’im.”

  He paused and spat his cigarette end into the water. “It might interest you, by the way, to learn rice is short again – as if you didn’t know. I ’ad to go up-river and fetch some for my boys. Indian Joe’s sitting on it and the nigs is creating. There was a fight outside the store last night. Samuel Assissay, was there, o’ course, blaming it all on the mine. You’ve got your ’ands full, son. You have, honest. The canoes is in the creek every night and Master-Mind gets raided regular. He’s got Asimani out at night now. The poor old bloke don’t know whether he’s coming or going. Somebody’s going to get his throat cut one of these nights. It’s a proper game, played slow.”

  “Oh, God,” Jimmy said for the third time. “You don’t have to be away long, do you? Is it as bad as that?”

  “It’s worse. Don’t you ever go and change rooms with him, son, in case they nobble you by mistake. Like to borrow a gun?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to hit anything.”

  “That doesn’t matter much. Just pull the trigger and you’re on the ball. It scares ’em if nothing else.”

  “Has Gotto got one?”

  “Not likely. He been up after one again, but I’m not giving him one of mine. What’ll scare in your ’ands’ll rouse ’em to bloody murder in his, and then we won’t half cop it. They hate him enough already. They thought he’d got a gun, he’d be a goner. I wish the flamin’ rains’d come. Then he might die of malaria.”

  Gotto was out when Jimmy reached the bungalow. There were cigarette ends everywhere, the symbols of Gotto’s loneliness, and in his room every drawer and cupboard had been fitted with a lock and hasp. By the bed with its rolled-up mosquito net was a heavy stick and torch.

  The room made Jimmy feel depressed and just then he felt he couldn’t stand Gotto’s bitterness. He hurriedly changed into clean clothes and drove up to Amama Town.

  Stella’s greeting was passionate and reassuring but, for Jimmy, tinged with a little unhappiness at the certain knowledge that she had by no means changed her mind. Swannack’s face was grave as he came out on to the veranda to meet him.

  “What are you going to do about your Mr Gotto?” were his first words after their greeting.

  “Mr Swannack,” Jimmy said, “everybody asks me that. But he’s not my affair. If he was I’d have him out. I’m sorry for him, but he’s trouble, bad trouble. As it happens though, he’s supposed to be my boss.”

  “He’s dangerous, Jimmy.” Swannack stroked at the tufts of black hair on his cheeks. “Samuel Assissay’s thoroughly enjoying all this and your Mr Gotto’s entirely responsible. There’ll be trouble.”

  Stella’s eyes were frightened as she glanced at Jimmy.

  “Amama’s no longer the happy place it used to be,” Swannack went on. “I’ve spent years making this a happy church. Now I’m losing my congregation again and I can’t stop the rush. What are we going to do?”

  “Honestly, Mr Swannack,” Jimmy said, “I don’t know. What would you do?”

  Faced with a direct question, Swannack hummed and hawed. “I guess I’d wait a bit,” he said unhappily, “and see what happens.”

  “That’s what everyone says in the end,” Jimmy pointed out. “Including me.”

  Six

  The weather had been growing hotter for some time and Amama became more stifling as the first clouds of the coming rains marched over the mountains that evening and hung on the tops of the cotton trees. Towards midnight came the first of the electrical storms of the season, violent forks of purple lightning that slashed across the sky, and sudden squalls of wind that heralded the rain as they set the palm tops thrashing.

  Jimmy was saying good night to Stella when the first heavy drops fell, spattering the dusty road, then the rain came in a heavy downpour that drowned their whispers.

  It was only a short shower but it turned the roadway into a river and filled the drainage ditches with a boiling torrent. Although the sun had long been set, steam rose from the sun-soaked earth in a sticky breath-catching heat, and the dust, lashed into mud, drank in the water greedily.

  An hour later, as Jimmy drove towards the mine in the thin light of a moon hidden by encroaching clouds, he saw the lamps were still burning in Romney’s surgery and he stopped the station wagon and went inside. Romney, his face glistening with perspiration, was dabbing iodine on a cut in the woolly head of Amadu, the house-boy.

  The black man’s eyes rolled round in Jimmy’s direction, and Romney looked up, his expression angry.

  “What happened to you, Amadu?” Jimmy asked uneasily.

  “Boss” – the house-boy was almost in tears of rage and indignation – “black men wait for me. Dey say I no work for Boss Gotto. I say I work for Boss Jimmy. Dey say again I no work for Boss Gotto. Boss–”

  “Don’t tell me,” Jimmy said wearily. “They took it out of you.”

  “Yassah, Boss.”

  “Go on, Doc,” Jimmy said. “Ask me what I’m going to do.”

  “No, Jimmy.” Romney fastened a strip of sticking plaster across the wound in Amadu’s head. “I know.”

  “Well, what?”

  Romney patted Amadu’s shoulder. “Wait outside, Amadu. Boss Jimmy take you home in wagon.”

  Amadu nodded gratefully and disappeared.

  “Well,” Jimmy repeated doggedly. “What?”

  “Nothing, Jimmy.” Romney mopped his face and began to stuff his old-fashioned curved pipe with tobacco. “You’ll go on doing nothing. You’ll go on hoping he’ll solve the problem himself somehow–”

  “How?”

  Romney shrugged and poured drinks for them both. “His ticket home,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s due any day now. Malaria. Overwork. I don’t know. But you won
’t do anything. You’ll wait and let him do it. You’ll hang on till he goes.”

  “I’m damned if I will,” Jimmy burst out. “Ever since I came here we’ve been singing that song, ‘He’s going home soon. We’ve only to wait. Everything will be all right.’ Well, I’m sick of it. We can wait until the crack of doom until that fool goes. How do we know that something isn’t holding his ticket up? He’ll never go.”

  “He will, Jimmy. And you won’t do anything because of that.”

  “Won’t I, by God? I’ve told Twigg already.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Jimmy was deflated. “The same as he said to Archie: ‘It’ll be all right.’ That’s all. Then he asked me if I wanted a game of cricket.”

  Romney smiled faintly, but his eyes remained troubled. “I’m sorry all this has happened, Jimmy,” he said. “Purely selfish, I suppose, but I like Amama. We’re very close to God here.”

  Jimmy stared at him, impressed by the old man’s sincerity, and Romney went on. “Perhaps it’s because I’m a big fish in a little pond,” he said. “Perhaps it’s because I’m an old man and I don’t like change. You think I’m getting a little senile?”

  “No, Doc. You just like the place. You like black men, don’t you?”

  Romney nodded. “Yes – but then, I like white men as well. Perhaps that’s the root of Gotto’s trouble.”

  He stood by the window staring out at the damp night air and the wreaths of mist that rose from the warm earth.

  “These people who got Amadu,” he said. “They’re not Amama men. They’re some imported gentry from down by the port. Sabby boys. Wide boys, if you like. Ruffians. There’s more than just Samuel Assissay and Indian Joe in this now, Jimmy. A few of the political gentry are beginning to take advantage of it. There’s at least one ardent pleader for a republic in the town to my certain knowledge.”

  “A republic?”

  “Oh, there’s always a crackpot bunch in Sierra Leone, as there is everywhere, who think the place could exist without the rest of the world. Probably a part of the National Council – the anti-British, anti-everything crowd. And that chap Gotto slung out, Melikuri Tom – remember him?”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s an ex-soldier. He fought in Burma during the war with Wingate’s lot. He got a medal for something. Now, of course, the ex-soldiers – and there’s still a small drifting population of them – now they’re yelling that they’re not being treated fairly, that they’re being denied their rights.”

  “God, he does pick ’em, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, Jimmy, he does. But, unless you want him out, there’s not much you can do.”

  “Not much more than I have,” Jimmy said ruefully. “But Twigg just laughed. Can’t you certify him or something. If not insane, at least queer?”

  Romney shrugged.

  “Well, where do we go from here?” Jimmy asked desperately. ‘Hell, everybody’s blaming me for not slinging him out. It’s not my fault. Come to think of it,” he ended in bewilderment, “I suppose I ought to be thankful he hasn’t slung me out. He’s slung out damn’ near everyone else.”

  He was silent for a while before he spoke again. “Doc,” he said eventually, his smooth round face strained, “I’ve a feeling – something I can’t explain – it happened when I saw Amadu just now – just a feeling – that something’s going to happen. There’s been a horrible inevitability about it all up to now. If only it hadn’t been Twiggy who was in charge with his blasted trouble-dodging.”

  Romney took off his glasses and began to polish them hurriedly. “Or us with our wait-and-see,” he concluded.

  As the station wagon pulled to a stop in front of the mine bungalow, Jimmy saw someone slip down the front steps and disappear into the darkness.

  Gotto was sprawled in one of the basket chairs and his glance at Jimmy was lustreless, unenthusiastic and bitter.

  “Hallo,” Jimmy said flatly.

  “Thank God you’re back,” Gotto said fervently, and there was such a wealth of thankfulness in his words that Jimmy felt a twinge of sympathy beneath his anger. “They kept you long enough. Or didn’t you want to come back to this hole and Snotty Gotty?”

  “It was nothing to do with me.”

  “Might have thought about me all the same – stuck up here on my own. Every damned night. Nothing to do. Those blasted drums. Dark as a cat’s inside out there.” Gotto’s voice rose nervously.

  “Well, I’m back now,” Jimmy said wearily, trying to force a little reassurance into his voice.

  “Not before time. I notice you didn’t bother looking for me when you arrived. Went straight up to see your girl, I suppose.”

  Jimmy nodded, ignoring the sarcasm in Gotto’s tones. “Who was it I saw leaving as I arrived?” he asked.

  Gotto looked away quickly. “Smith,” he said. “Clerk Smith. That’s all.”

  “What’s he want?” The question came sharply, abruptly, and, as he spoke, Jimmy’s eyes fell on a couple of empty glasses on the table. “Have you been drinking with him?” he went on angrily.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” Gotto said defiantly. “At least, he doesn’t go hunting imaginary butterflies.”

  They glared at each other for a while, then Jimmy sighed, sick of Gotto, sick of Amama, sick of everything about him.

  “I brought some mail up from Ma-Imi for you,” he said. “Did you get it?”

  Gotto sneered. “Yes, the usual. Two letters. Both one-sheet jobs. One from Mother, complaining this time about the rent man being rude to her. God, I don’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t yap-yapping at me about something. Nothing was ever right for her. The other was from Doris. She’s found out about that old fool, Romney.”

  “Has she?” Jimmy was beyond caring, beyond interest in Gotto’s trivial meannesses.

  “Run out of town for some business,” Gotto said gleefully. “Illegal operation or something.”

  “Well, that’s his affair.”

  “I reckon it’s mine as well. I’ve got to live here with him. Just let him say anything to me again. I’ll give him a mouthful.” He paused before continuing, the eagerness going out of his eyes. “Doris got engaged to that swine back in England,” he ended flatly.

  “Did she?” Jimmy couldn’t find it in him to be sympathetic.

  “Dirty swine! Waits till a chap goes abroad and then pinches his girl.”

  “Oh, hell, man,” Jimmy snorted, suddenly goaded beyond endurance by Gotto’s self-dramatisation. “You know damn’ well she was never your girl. Why don’t you stop behaving like an overgrown schoolboy about her? She’d never any intention of marrying you. You’ve been deluding yourself ever since you came here. Can’t you find someone else?”

  “As a matter of fact–” Gotto had calmed down quickly and he spoke casually, almost indifferently, “Smith’s offering to introduce me to Zaidee Soloman. That’s why he was here. She’s been asking about me.”

  “Asking about you?”

  Gotto looked indignant. “Why shouldn’t she ask about me? By God, it’d make Mr Bloody Earnshaw sit up if I pinched his girl.”

  Jimmy laughed. “Changed your tune a bit, haven’t you? Come to that, she’s changed hers.”

  Gotto stared at him angrily then he rose and disappeared into his bedroom, slamming the door after him.

  While Jimmy contemplated the closed door, it reopened and Gotto’s head appeared, nervously.

  “Better put a club or something near your bed,” he said. “We get regular raids now. That fool Asimani doesn’t seem to be able to do anything about them.”

  Seven

  They were troubled by nothing more that night, however, than the rain which came down in straight glassy splinters that shattered as they struck. It came in a devastating downpour that rattled on the tin roof with an unholy din that prevented sleep, and gurgled noisily in the ditches outside as it flooded away. The sound of it on the undergrowth was a steady roar threaded through b
y a hollow plop-plop-plop as it forced its way through the ceiling and fell to the floor in a monotonous drip. Although the place was panting in the torpid heat, Jimmy shivered as he climbed under his mosquito net.

  There was another downpour the following morning but it didn’t last long and even as the roar changed to the hurried patter of drips, the sun came out and the steam rose in twisting wraiths as the greedy heat sucked the moisture out of the earth. Already the dried grass seemed to be taking on new life and the withered plants began to throw out young shoots. A wild cucumber beneath the window of Jimmy’s room seemed to have grown fatter already and a small plantain tree had pushed itself up a couple of notches.

  In the living-room, Amadu had moved the table a little for breakfast. Where it had stood was a zinc pan into which a regular drop of water fell – zip plunk, zip plunk – all through the meal.

  Gotto showed no hurry to leave for work and Jimmy, still too angry with him to argue about it, set off for the mine ahead of him. The zigzag road to the shelfings of the diggings was slippery with mud after the rain and already the boles of the palm trees alongside it had had their coating of dust replaced – like raw wounds across the wood – by slashes of red mud flung up by the wheels of the Euclids.

  Nobody appeared to be working and the trucks and the diggers stood silent. Jimmy was puzzled until, at the rock face on the lowest level, he found the drivers and labourers all standing in a group. The station wagon skidded to a stop in the mud and he jumped out.

  “What’s all this?” he demanded of the foremen. “Come on, get the boys on the job.”

  The foremen looked sheepish as they began half-heartedly to push the men back to their work. There were a few mutterings and someone shouted “White man, t’ief man,” then Jimmy saw that in the centre of the group there was a black man in a white city suit, pith helmet and mackintosh. Beyond him was Samuel Assissay, his presence with his cranky doctrines symbolic of the bad feeling that had been growing. Although he was always making speeches, it was significant that until this point he had never made them on land belonging to the mine.