by John Harris
The mob had passed now and only the stragglers were left, jumping in and out of ditches in their excitement, turning somersaults, fighting, scuffling as they went.
One of the last of them, his face grimy, his clothes filthy and torn, a stave in his fist, approached the house and Momo gripped his machete tighter.
“Oh, my God,” Stella said, hiding her face in her father’s shirt, and her mother, upright as a grenadier, glared at her as she spoke.
The man approaching the house stopped as he saw Momo, then he grinned.
“Hold it, Alf. It’s me.”
“Boss Jimmy!”
Momo lowered the machete and dragged Jimmy inside quickly and pushed him to the back of the hut.
“Alf,” Jimmy demanded immediately. “The Swannacks? I’ve been looking for them everywhere.”
He had got no farther when Stella, bursting through the black people between them, flung herself into his arms, sobbing.
“Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy! You came to look for me. I knew you would.”
His cheek close to hers, Jimmy was speechless with relief for a time. His arms holding her tight, he took in everything around him, the dark native house with its solitary lamp, the black faces and white eyes, the mammy consoling a whimpering infant at the breast, and in the background Swannack, grimy, older suddenly and tired-looking, and Mrs Swannack, hard as nails, straight-backed and fierce of eye.
For a minute, he held Stella silently, his mind flooded with relief.
“Jimmy,” she whispered. “What’s happening?”
“Oh, nothing,” he reassured her lightly. “The boys are having a bit of a tea-party.”
“Jimmy, I knew you’d come. I knew you were out there somewhere. I was worried stiff about you.”
“Honest, Stella?” Jimmy’s grimy face lit up. “Honest, darling?”
“Jimmy, I thought you were one of the mob at first. I thought it was the end. I thought I was going to die without ever seeing you again. That was the horrible part.”
“Stella” – there was a lump in Jimmy’s throat. He had to stop speaking and Stella looked up quickly at him.
“I feel like having a good old cry,” he said quickly. “Silly, isn’t it?”
Stella’s fingers were tenderly feeling his muddy face and he managed to smile. “It’s all there,” he said.
There were tears in Stella’s eyes. “Oh, Jimmy, you’ve grown up suddenly.”
“Well, that’s what you always wanted, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but I mean, I – I guess – oh, Jimmy, your funny old face’s gone–”
Jimmy allowed himself only another moment of pleasure, then he turned to Momo.
“Alf,” he said. “Can we all get to Old Doc’s? I think we’ll be safe there.”
“Safe here, Boss Jimmy.”
“Not Mr and Mrs Swannack. I think I’d better take them.”
Momo nodded. “OK, Boss. I come also. I know quick way through bush. My sons guard this home.” He indicated three strapping young men in shorts.
“Fair enough, Alf. As soon as possible then. I suggest we black our faces.”
Jimmy turned to Stella. “Stella, we’re going to Old Doc’s. You’ll be safer there. Alf will show us the way. He can find you something to wrap round you and something for a headcloth. Make you look like a mammy. Think you can make it?”
Stella nodded speechlessly but she was suddenly cheerful again, her mud-streaked face and untidy hair the banners of her courage.
Jimmy patted her shoulder and went to the doorway to scoop up a handful of wet earth. “OK,” he said. “Hold up your face, darling. You’re going to have a mud-pack.”
They reached Romney’s house almost without incident, to find it more crowded than ever with black people. Romney looked tired and Jimmy noticed there were more stains of blood on his trousers. There was hardly any room in the house now. Every available chair was taken and there were people sitting on the floor.
Someone rose to let the newcomers sit down, and Swannack flopped into a space but Mrs Swannack remained standing as though it were an act of defiance.
“Where’s the crowd now, Jimmy?” Romney asked.
“Coming this way. I think they’re on the way to the mine again. Think I ought to go there?”
Stella’s frightened eyes swung in his direction, and Romney shook his head. “I think not,” he said. “There’s plenty to do here. Perhaps Mrs Swannack and Stella will give me a hand in the surgery?”
Mrs Swannack headed for the door immediately, rolling up her sleeves, looking as though she were going to give battle instead of succour to the injured.
“And perhaps you, Swannack, will get this lot singing or something. Get a prayer going. Anything to take their minds off what’s going on.”
Swannack rose quickly to his feet, and Romney turned again to Jimmy.
“I’ve got a fractured skull and one or two broken bones. And one man with his wrist slashed with a knife. Nasty job. Cut the tendons. I’ve had to stitch it up. That’s the worst though, thank God. See if you can find anyone among the crowd with any knowledge of first aid. We may need them.”
He was directing operations like a general and as he and Jimmy moved towards the surgery they heard Swannack reciting a psalm in the other room.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death–”
Below his tired voice they could hear the murmuring of the others, then the psalm became a prayer and eventually a hymn, sung hesitantly, wavering for once without Mrs Swannack’s brassy confidence to give it strength.
“Doc,” Jimmy said. “Where’s Archie?”
“He’s trying to get downstream to Ma-Imi.”
“Good enough.” Jimmy paused for a second before continuing. “Doc, I’m going to look for Gotto.”
“Jimmy, no!” Stella’s words burst out of her involuntarily and Jimmy took her hands gently, his eyes still on Romney.
“You don’t have to, son,” Romney said soberly. “It’s Tom Tiddler’s ground up there.”
“I know. I saw it. But the idiot will only get himself into worse trouble.”
“It’s his fault, Jimmy,” Stella begged. “It was always his fault.”
“I know, Stella, my darling, but that’s no excuse for not going. I shan’t be long. I’ll have a scout round. I might find him.”
“But, Jimmy, the mob–”
“Don’t worry, Stella” – Jimmy’s voice had taken on a possessive note now as he spoke to her, a confident note that indicated he was sure of her at last – “I’ve got the hang of this game now. They won’t get me.”
He kissed her cheek. “Give the doc a hand,” he said. “It’ll take your mind off things a bit.”
Before she could say any more he had slipped out of the door.
By the time Jimmy came up with the mob again, it was sweeping back towards the mine. They were still carrying Clerk Smith’s body on its litter, jolting it about in the pushing and shoving, sometimes almost upsetting it in the excitement. The skinny Smith had never commanded such attention in his life as he did in death.
The crowd was moving much faster this time than before. Though there were more of them, they were more drunk, more angry, after their success against Indian Joe’s store, and Melikuri Tom and a gang of ex-soldiers had joined in now, bolder than the rest with their wartime experiences. Samuel Assissay was almost forgotten in the noise he had stirred up, and his city friends, sensing that things had gone too far, had slipped away silently.
The mob swept round Romney’s house and hospital, singing ribald songs and shouting catcalls.
Romney appeared on the veranda, while everyone inside held their breath, and found himself face to face with Assissay, whose fanatic eyes were blazing with excitement.
“Hallo, Samuel,” he said. “So you managed to get it going then?”
Assissay stared back with an earnest conviction that was impressive. “I de leader for de Lord. I lead de black men, de mammies and de
piccaninnies, back to de new Jerusalem. De Lord say so. De Lord protect de black men from evil.”
“The Lord’s not a police force,” Romney said slowly.
“De Lord punish de wicked. De Lord say all men equal.”
“You seem to have rather a monopoly on the Lord.”
“Black man rise at last against white man.”
Romney lifted his eyebrows. ‘Well, tell ’em not to do any damage round here, Samuel, or there’ll be trouble. Headman and chiefs put ju-ju on this place. Just you clear ’em out. Savvy?”
Assissay glared at him for a moment, baffled by his matter-of-factness, then he turned to the crowd, holding up his hands. “Any you niggers go catch anything belong Ole Doc, I fix ’um. Savvy?”
The crowd parted for him to make his way to the road, and started to disperse in silence until they reached the highway when the shouting commenced again.
As Romney watched them go, he heard Swannack behind him.
“Say, how do you do that?” the missionary asked bitterly.
Romney turned to look at him without speaking, his heart sick inside him.
The mob swept once more into the mine yard. The grudge they felt had become a personal one. Their rage had been worked off on Indian Joe and now they were looking for Gotto. Most of them had suffered in some small way, directly or indirectly, from his stupidity, yet none of them had previously dared to do anything on his own against authority. Now, however, now that hundreds of them were moving in unison, they found their courage. They all wanted to see the destruction of Gotto – yet none of them really expected to be the instrument of destruction. Every man there believed it would be the man next to him in the jostling crowd and not himself.
They approached the mine offices warily at the spot where Clerk Smith had been shot then, realising they were empty, surged forward, shouting, and proceeded to tear the place apart. Chairs, tables, filing cabinets, plans, maps, were all flung through the doors and piled on the fire that had been started, then someone flung a torch into the office and the whole building began to burn.
Eddies of the crowd ran to the mine workings and to the lorry park. A whole row of vehicles went up in flames as petrol was poured over them and ignited. There was a crash as the boom of one of the diggers collapsed and buckled, and a yell went up as someone set fire to the explosives store.
Meanwhile, leaving the offices burning behind them, the main bulk of the mob began to move again, on to the mine bungalow, still in the hope of finding Gotto. They poured through the building, shouting and slashing at everything within reach of their machetes, putting torches to the curtains and furniture.
Jimmy followed them, hanging about in the darkness on the fringe of the mob, not knowing quite what to do, hoping against hope that if Gotto made a dash for it, he would see him first.
Four
Earnshaw’s arrival at Ma-Imi caused an uproar. Twigg was having one of his periodical parties and Earnshaw’s appearance in the middle of it, weary, muddy and in a mountainous temper, provided quite an eruption.
He arrived just when the party was at its height, red-eyed with the smoke, his shirt scorched by flames, his hands bruised and his body aching with his efforts to launch an overweight Susu canoe.
He had struggled with Suri and two other boys in the swiftly ebbing tide to float the only boat he had salvaged from the wreckage of the jetty and had managed to pole it down-stream in the darkness to King Tim. There he had begged a native dugout, a cigar-slim affair half full of dirty water and fish guts, and he and Suri had pushed themselves off again.
Twigg’s amiable drunkenness disappeared as Earnshaw told his story, downing great gulps of whisky and soda while he talked.
“There they are,” he was saying, surrounded by wide-eyed men and women holding glasses, “burning and smashing everything they can lay their hands on. You’ve lost your mine office by this time, Henry Twigg, or my name’s not Archibald Earnshaw. You’ve lost your bungalow, too, I’ll bet. But that’s nothing. Indian Joe’s lost his life and so have one or two others. It’s a proper barney, believe me.”
“The swine,” someone said from the back of the crowd. “The treacherous swine.”
“Treacherous, my backside,” Earnshaw said hotly. “It was just the way it happened.”
“But, I mean, setting about everybody like that.”
“Listen, old lad,” Earnshaw said aggressively, “it ain’t the wogs what’s to blame, so don’t you make no mistake about it. If anybody’s to blame, it’s that flaming Gotto.”
“Gotto,” Twigg said in amazement. “What’s he done?”
“What hasn’t he done? I reckon he’s upset everybody in the whole of Amama.”
“How long has he been doing this?”
“Ever since he went up there.”
“Well, why didn’t someone tell me?” Twigg’s voice rose in a welter of indignation.
“Listen,” – Earnshaw half rose, his eyes angry – “somebody did tell you. I did. Young Jimmy did. If you’d taken some notice it wouldn’t have happened.”
“But I thought you were only acting the fool.”
“You know bloody well we wasn’t acting the fool. You didn’t want him down here. That’s the trouble.”
“I hope you realise what you’re accusing me of,” Twigg said with an intoxicated dignity.
“Not half I don’t. And if you don’t stop arguing about it and get on with something a bit sharpish, everybody up there’ll cop it. Young Jimmy. Swannack. Romney. The whole lot.”
As Earnshaw finished, Twigg was galvanised into life, hiding his confusion at knowing he was in the wrong by violent action.
He ran out of the room shouting for the house-boy and sent him in search of the native drivers. One of these he sent in a lorry for the police, others to load vehicles with supplies of all kinds, food, bandages, and tents.
Then, with his jeep full of people and the lorries behind crowded with more people, black and white alike, and followed by an odd procession of cars, they set off towards Amama, in a nightmare drive up and down the house-side hills and round the hairpin bends of the bush road.
The mob had split up a little now, beating at the undergrowth in the shadows round the mine bungalow. They were howling with rage, cheated of what they were seeking. All the hatreds and enmities that had been worked out during the night had crystallised now into the greater one – the mad desire to get their hands on Gotto. Everything was being laid at his door, even Indian Joe’s treachery and greed, even the Mende dislike of the Temne and the Temne hatred of the Mende, even the resentment of the ex-soldiers. Every little quarrel was being blamed on Gotto. Houses had been burned, people had been beaten up, and everyone seeking vengeance seemed to be seeking Gotto.
Their quarry, hiding in a drainage gully beneath the black base of a banana palm, watched them shouting and screaming through the burning bungalow with eyes that were shocked with fear, his own peculiar brand of obsessed fear of the darkness and black African faces. Most of the mob had clubs or staves or bottles, but he could also see the flash of machetes and even an occasional spear.
His face was stiff with horror and his muscles were frozen into immobility again. For the life of him just then he couldn’t have moved. He could hear his own name shouted over and over again with the lusty hatred of the half-crazed mob, washed backwards and forwards like driftwood on the tides of sound.
He had fled from the mine office after Smith’s death and had tried to get up to Romney’s but there were still sufficient stragglers from the mob in the roadway to prevent him passing. In a state of panic he had hidden in the bush and eventually had returned to the mine bungalow, hoping Jimmy and Earnshaw would find him there, but again he had waited too long in an agony of indecision, and when he had finally tried to creep away again he had been stopped once more by growing groups of whooping black men, the vanguard of the returning crowd. Several times since he had been almost trodden on as they dashed past him and now they seemed to be eve
rywhere, all round him as he lay beneath the banana plant, naked and vulnerable without the car and petrified by their violence.
Beyond the fear the noise engendered in his mind was only one emotion – resentment. There was no feeling of guilt, just the firm belief that this horror had been wished on him by the treachery of others – Jimmy, Earnshaw, Romney, Twigg, Alf Momo, even the people back in London who had tricked him into coming to Sierra Leone.
From the first day of setting his foot ashore in Freetown from the ship which had brought him from England, he had been fighting this mounting sense of indignation. The romantic Africa he had read about had not emerged – only a raw, ugly land of poverty-stricken dwellings and dirty villages, with the inevitable congregations of vultures and starving thin dogs that sickened him, and the hundreds of millions of insects, grossly huge or infinitesimally small, that had scraped at his nerves until they were paper-thin.
He had been unsettled from the start by the heat and the savage splendour which had given him too many impressions to cope with at once and, try as he might to see Amama as Jimmy saw it, the palm trees had remained just palm trees and the mountains had remained just mountains.
He lifted his head as the noise seemed to die down and for a moment he thought the crowd had dispersed. Then he realised they were systematically beating the bush around the bungalow for him, their silence an indication of their determination. They were moving slowly round the building, beating at the foliage and the grass with their machetes and staves, and he suddenly knew the feelings of a rabbit trapped in a dwindling field of corn as the reaper draws near.
Inside his brain was still the nagging feeling that he must reach Zaidee Soloman, that she would know what to do. That her advice up to now had been wrong never occurred to him. She had not criticised him. She had let him make his clumsy love to her, and that was sufficient. The bludgeoning of fright on his mind seemed to hammer that point further home as he thought of the crowds he must negotiate to get to her – all the black faces, more sinister with the darkness.