by John Harris
The line of men moving through the bush was only thirty yards from him when his limbs suddenly found their life again and he leapt up and began to crash through the foliage towards the road. Fortunately, there was so much noise of trampled undergrowth no one noticed him until he left the darkness of the bush and ran for the hidden car.
A yell went up as the engine started and he was recognised immediately, and the crowd streamed after him. Frantically, he took off the brake and let in the clutch. The rear wheels spun in the mud as he accelerated violently and for a moment he thought the car would never move away, then it jerked forward, almost throwing his hands from the wheel.
Jimmy was watching from the fringes of the hullabaloo, always keeping in the shadows, armed with a stave as much for disguise as for his own safety, making as much noise as the others and taking refuge in anonymity in the hope of finding Gotto before the rest of them did. He saw the angular form leap from the darkness, and, with his heart in his mouth, watched the car jerk away out of the shadows and roll violently on to the road. He was in the tail of the crowd as they set of, yelling and shrieking abuse with the best of them as they streamed after it.
A hundred yards along the road, they began to turn off through the bush, and he realised they were taking a short cut to Amama Town. Panting and exhausted, having to stop every now and then to apply more of the mud that his own perspiration threatened to remove, he struggled along with them, weary, horrified, sickened by the noise, the violence and the destruction. He had watched his own bungalow go up in flames together with all the lorries and all the equipment. He had watched the destruction of the explosives store and the wreckage of all the other hutments and shelters they had built so painstakingly, but the thing that moved him most was the trampling of the flower beds he had built and the plantain tree growing outside his window, and the knowledge that, fried in the burning bungalow, were the dozen bananas that Amadu had brought him as a gift.
Fortunately for Gotto in his headlong, panic-stricken flight which was without conscious direction of reasoning, the mob was mostly behind him when he set off. Only isolated groups of angry men and women were along the road and none of these, momentarily petrified by the headlights, attempted to stop the car as it thundered down on them, and he was able to make the town with safety.
Amama was silent by this time, the mob, its violence there expended, having moved to the mine. A few flames still licked at the ruins, and in the light of blazing torches, a few scantily clad figures were trying to salvage their belongings from the wreckage of their homes. Once he saw a woman crouched by the sprawling figure of a man, beating her breast and tearing her hair as she wailed her misery, and that panicking drumming of fright that threatened to take away the power of movement came round again.
He fought it down, however, as the need to find Zaidee in this hell of burning buildings and mad shouts became a thunder in his mind.
Even through his panic, he was shocked by the sight of the Swannack’s ruined home, and the burned-out shell of the schoolroom. There were still a few looters picking through the remains of Indian Joe’s store and bar but most of what was valuable there had been removed in the first assault.
Gotto drove past desperately, not quite seeing where he was going, knowing only that he must find Zaidee and escape with her along the bush road away from Amama until the riot subsided. He knew that what he was doing was dangerous but the importance of finding Zaidee had suddenly become an obsession.
As he reached her house on the outskirts of Amama Town, he stopped the car violently, skidding on the muddy road, convinced in his stubborn, unthinking way that she who had advised him once could save him now.
There was no sign of life but the house’s distance from the centre of the town had saved it and the mob had not been near it. He ran through the rooms, flashing his torch, shouting Zaidee’s name, sobbing and bewildered and lost as a small boy when he was not answered.
It had started raining again in heavy hot drops when he eventually found her in a hut in the garden, where she was crouching with her maid. They were in total darkness huddled together, Zaidee wearing only a native lappa in the hope of being mistaken for a village woman.
Suddenly, she looked more African than Syrian with the naked fear showing in her face, as though she had renounced all her white blood and was just a scared black woman with rolling eyes.
“Zaidee,” he croaked. “I’ve come. They’re after me.”
Zaidee glared at him, her eyes baleful through her terror. She had not seen Indian Joe’s store wrecked and fired but she had been well informed and she knew quite well what would happen to her if the mob found her.
She hadn’t been able to escape herself, for Indian Joe’s car had been burned with the store and it had never occurred to the languid Zaidee, who had never used her feet in her life to walk, that she might make her way safely up the bush road on foot. Conscious that the plot she had worked out with her father for the destruction of the mine had recoiled on their own heads, she stared angrily at Gotto for a moment from her hiding place, feeling that he was to blame that it had gone awry, then she became aware of the white glare of headlights on the foliage round the house.
“The car?” she said. “Have you got the car?”
“Yes, it’s in the road.” Gotto never noticed that the concern in her voice was not for him.
“Outside, then! Quick! Quick!” Zaidee clutched the lappa high round her waist and scrambled to her feet, pushing him in front of her while the little black maid brought up the rear snivelling with fear. “Drive as fast as you can! Up-bush! Anywhere!”
Thankful to have found her, thankful to be told what to do and blind to the sharp opportunism in her voice, Gotto led the way back to the car. They ran through the silent house, clattering and crashing into the furniture in the darkened rooms, and out into the road. The doors slammed as they crammed inside and Gotto started the engine. The drops of rain were beginning to tap more quickly on the roof and Zaidee’s hair was limp and dank with it already.
Gotto’s mind was numbed with the impact of the evening’s events but suddenly through the beating fists of fear came a feeling of courage, of strength. He had found Zaidee and was rescuing her. He was suddenly carried away by a feeling of pride in himself.
He jammed his foot on the accelerator and swung the car confidently on to the road again, the rain like brass knives now as it slashed across the beam of the headlights. Even as he heaved on the wheel, however, the first of the crowd, broken and distorted by the water on the windscreen, burst out of the trees a hundred yards away, between them and the bush road.
“My God!” Gotto yelped. “They’ve cut us off!”
“Turn round,” Zaidee shrieked, pounding his shoulder with her fist. “The other way! Towards the coast!”
The mob had seen the car now and were streaming towards it. Even at that distance they could hear the yelling.
Backwards and forwards, Gotto reversed the car in the narrow road until he was facing the other way.
“Quickly! Quickly!” Zaidee shrieked. “They’re here!”
Gotto put his foot on the accelerator again and the wheels flung up mud as the car lurched forward. But the first of the crowd had caught up with him and a wet black hand came through the side window and wrenched at the wheel.
Fighting with his free hand against the African who was being dragged along with them at increasing speed, Gotto struggled to keep the car from being swung to the right side of the road. Almost before he knew what had happened, Zaidee leaned across him and, in a savage gesture that appalled him even then in his panic, she sank her teeth into the black hand that held the wheel. The African yelled with pain and, releasing his hold, went rolling into the ditch. Immediately, the steering wheel, freed of the tug towards the right, swung back in Gotto’s grasp to the left and the car leapt towards the opposite side of the road. There was a violent clang as the near-side tyres dropped into the drainage ditch and for a yard or two the car
scraped along on one wheel, with the water slashing up in a brown wave, until the nose slewed round and it rolled on its side, scoring a great wound on the muddy earth, and they were all flung to the left-hand side of the vehicle.
Zaidee and the maid were both kicking and screaming in terror at the bottom of the pile as Gotto pushed himself clear. His booted feet sank into soft flesh as he fought his way free, and as he fell on his hands and knees beside the car, the heavy rain chill on his face and arms, he saw the crowd still approaching. He yanked Zaidee half out of the car, lost his grip on her and fell into the shadows at the side of the road, wrenching his ankle. As the shouting swelled up, his fear caught him again, and instead of turning back to her he plunged into the wet foliage. He heard her shriek of terror as the mob surrounded the car and black hands started to grab at her. He halted for a moment and swung about, his hands against the bole of a palm tree, and in the instant, by the flames of the torches, he saw her half in and half out of the car fighting them off as they clutched at her. As he watched, one of the grabbing hands seized her clothes to pull her over, and like the peel from a banana the lappa came away and left her body shining in the glow of the torches. Then her feet slipped and she disappeared inside the car again and he heard the ‘woof’ as the petrol went up, and the bush in front of him was suddenly lit with the glare from the burning vehicle which flared up with orange flames touched with sooty black. As the crowd shrieked its delight, he flopped into the grass, weeping and muttering with anguish, beating his fists on the ground, horrified and sickened that Zaidee had not escaped and he was again bereft of help.
It was some time before he could drag himself to his feet. Sobbing with horror, he eventually found himself at the backs of the houses near the centre of Amama. Most of them were barricaded and barred, and occasionally between them there were the charred remains of a burned-out dwelling.
He stumbled along, numb to everything – to weariness and hunger and the pain in his ankle – to everything except the idiot knowledge that Zaidee, the one person he had felt he could trust, the one person who had been kind to him, was gone and he was friendless again. Then, through the haze of rain that filled his eyes, he recognised Alf Momo’s house and he crept whimpering to the door. His clothes drenched and torn, his eyes wild, his mouth hanging open, he stumbled forward, prepared to throw himself on the shift boss’ mercy.
Alf Momo had returned and was standing guard again in the entrance with a machete when Gotto appeared.
“Momo! Alf Momo,” Gotto begged in his cracked voice.
Momo’s head swung round but Gotto saw no sign of recognition in his face, and the machete came up in front of him at the ready.
“Momo! Let me in! You’ve got to save me!”
Momo still kept the machete in position, his eyes narrow and cold.
“It’s me! Gotto! I’m a white man! You’ve got to help me!”
He could hear the yells of the crowd in the distance once more. The burning of the car had held them up for a while but they had discovered he had escaped and they were still hot on his heels.
“Momo! For Christ’s sake, Momo,” he begged, his voice breaking.
“You cannot come in here,” Momo said at last. “Nobody can come in here tonight.”
The yells of the crowd sounded in Gotto’s ears like the baying of bloodhounds.
“Momo! Momo!” Gotto’s voice rose to a thin shriek but the shift boss suddenly turned his back on him.
Whether his action was caused by the desire to protect his own house, or because he deliberately refused to give him shelter, Gotto never found out. He could hear the mob not far away now and he swung round, desperate, frantic, blinded by the rain, and set off stumbling down the road again, his feet splashing in the puddles.
The mob saw him as he fled and the yells grew louder. Dodging, zigzagging, he staggered on, slipping in the mud, his breath scalding in his lungs as he struggled for air. Then he saw the path obstructed by half a dozen older men who had obviously not been able to keep up with the crowd in the short cut through the bush and had entered Amama from the other end.
Gotto halted. “No,” he shouted despairingly and swung off towards the black bush again. But, as he tried to turn, his weary ankle collapsed under him and he skidded on the wet road and fell into the ditch.
He had not even time to raise himself to his knees before the first of the mob was on him.
Huddled and drenched in the shadows at the other side of the road as the shrieking crowd swept round, his body trembling with exhaustion, Jimmy hid his face in the thick leaves of a banana tree and, overcome by weariness and revulsion, broke into a fit of sobbing.
“Oh, God,” he said out loud in an agony of pity. “Gotty. Poor Gotty.”
Five
The sun rose on a silent, deserted Amama. The rain, which had pounded down during the night, washing the charred embers of the burned-out houses into sooty puddles, had smothered the violence of the mob. It was as though the soaking they had received had brought them to their senses and they had quickly dispersed, suddenly aware of what they had done. The flames from burning cars and houses gradually died down in a sickening smell of charcoal and burnt foliage, and the smoke that had filled the town was sluiced away.
The following morning the climbing sun drew steam from the earth to mingle with the thin wisps of blue smoke that still curled lazily from the charred ruins. There was a strong smell of crushed grass and a spicy aroma of burned vegetation, and Africa looked all of its age in the fine antique air of the new day.
A few shame-faced Africans were moving about but mostly they were keeping out of sight. The ringleaders of the rioting had disappeared into the bush and were doubtless already miles away. The fancy-suited gentlemen had vanished in the direction of Freetown, innocent of any outrage. The most that could be said of them was that they had jollied along the uproar when it had looked like stopping and most of them had been sufficiently adept at that to have done it unnoticed.
Only Samuel Assissay, dignified and unashamed, had been taken by the police who had arrived in two lorries and swooped among the native huts just as the sun climbed over the ridge of hills to cast the first brassy glare on the destruction. Sergeant Asimani, having sent one of his men off on a battered bicycle for help, had emerged as soon as the riot had quietened down and had successfully got Assissay into custody. By the time the first of the police had arrived, the riot was over. Only the charred poles which had supported the wrecked houses and the scorched palm trees gave any indication of the fury of the night before.
When noses were counted and the losses totted up, it was discovered that the noise had been greater than the violence. There were many injured but only six dead – Clerk Smith, Indian Joe, Zaidee Soloman and her maid, one unidentified African, probably a fisherman from King Tim, and Gotto. His body was found still huddled in the ditch where he had fallen near to Alf Momo’s, half-submerged by the water which it held back as a dam in the narrow gully.
Covered with a blanket, anonymous like the other blanketed figures, he now lay in the ruined police station guarded by a couple of court messengers. Only Jimmy had seen what had happened to him and, when it was all over, he had crawled wearily back to Romney’s, soaked and covered with mud, with eyes for only one person in the crowd of blacks and whites who waited there. He had collapsed beside Stella where she sat, still grimy and tired, on the floor of Romney’s living-room and, before they had even got any story out of him beyond that Gotto was dead, he had gone to sleep, dirty, exhausted, his clothes scorched, his muddy urchin face covered with great soot marks, and flattened against the boards. Stella had waited in silence alongside him until daylight, his hand in hers, and had fiercely kept away the police officers who had come to question him.
Amama was full of policemen now, and they had been questioning the crowd at Romney’s for the whole morning.
“I tell you it wasn’t a racial riot,” Romney had said a dozen times. “It was nothing like that.”
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br /> “Well, who started it?” The white police officer who was doing the questioning was very persistent and a little impatient.
“Nobody started it. It just happened.” Romney was obsessed with an oppressive sense of his own guilt that he had not prevented what he had known – what they had all known was inevitable, that none of them had had the courage to destroy Gotto and had therefore destroyed far more – and Gotto as well. He had drifted into it as he had drifted into everything else, to please people – medicine to please his mother, disaster to help a distraught woman, and now this mess to avoid hurting Gotto.
“Riots don’t just happen,” the policeman was saying coldly, convinced Romney was lying.
“No, I suppose they don’t.” Romney took his glasses off and began to polish them. “But it wasn’t racial. It wasn’t political. It started when someone got shot – accidentally, I believe.”
“Riots don’t start because someone is shot accidentally.”
“No, I don’t suppose they do.”
“Whose fault was it? Samuel Assissay’s?”
“Not really.”
“Gotto’s?”
“No.” Romney almost barked the word, wretchedly aware of how they had failed to help, of how they had vacillated and waited and relied on everything coming out all right – and it hadn’t – of how much it was their fault and especially his own because the advice they had acted on had been his and it had been wrong. “No, it wasn’t Gotto’s fault.”
“Well, whose fault was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know. Somebody must know.”
The policeman’s face was suspicious and distrusting.
Twigg and his officials were wandering round the mine premises, followed by one or two newspapermen who had arrived – the enthusiastic Creoles from the Colony press, and the hard-faced international man who had driven up an hour before. Twigg was trying to assess damage. One or two natives had been arrested for being in possession of such things as inkwells and rulers, possessions of the mine, or blankets from the bungalow, but everything else lay in sorry charred heaps in front of the ruined buildings, trampled into the mud.