by John Harris
Twigg seemed dazed and took no part in the efforts of his assistants to organise some sort of relief, to salvage what they could. Instead, he wandered about the mine, a lost expression on his face, as though someone had cheated and he had been the victim.
“God, they’d only got to tell me,” he kept saying to his surveyor. “I could have shifted him. They’d only got to say.”
Earnshaw had stoutly refused transportation. It was his intention to stay in Amama, an intention that was fortified by the knowledge that he had been right all the time. His smirk as the police interviewed him was smug and self-righteous and there was no trace of sympathy in him when he heard of Gotto’s death. “That’s stopped his laughing in church,” was his only comment.
His bungalow had been wrecked but not burned and he and his boat crews were collecting everything into untidy piles, and he had already organised a building party to erect him a new house. Zaidee’s fate seemed to have left him unmoved and he had already been seen with a bright-eyed fuzzy-headed child whose lappa he had replaced with a hideous jumper and skirt.
Jimmy reappeared at midday when the heat of the sun made sleep restless. He was gaunt with the smoke that had scarred his eyes, and haggard still with weariness. Everywhere he went, whether it was answering the persistent police or the odd few officials who had appeared with a sudden new interest in the place – the worried District Commissioner, the Church workers, the men from the Government departments on the coast – or trying to help Twigg at the mine, he was accompanied by Stella. Indifferent to the heat, she followed him everywhere, still in her scorched and torn clothes, indignant as his tormentors nagged him with inquiries.
Twigg’s questions to him were fretful and irritated, sour with a sense of injustice.
“Why didn’t someone tell me?” he kept saying. “I’ll be held responsible for this lot. I mean to say, all the Euclids gone, the diggers smashed, the buildings burned. It’s going to cost thousands and London will want to know what’s been happening. Why didn’t the District Commissioner find out what was going on?”
Because, Jimmy thought, like a lot of damned fools we were all doing our best to stop him.
“It’s a damn’ poor show,” Twigg went on. ‘And I don’t think anyone could blame me if I told the truth about it. I’ll have to make out a report, y’know.”
You do, Jimmy thought bitterly. And stress your own part in it.
He stared at Twigg, feeling a great deal older than his superior. He was weary with a weariness that dragged at his limbs, but he was also uplifted by the knowledge that he no longer need feel uncertainty about Stella. He had no job – at least, his job had disappeared – and he would without doubt have to leave Amama because there was no longer any reason for him to be there. It was most unlikely after this affair that the directors safely back in England would permit Twigg to continue with his experiment. At least, however, Jimmy thought with mixed feelings, there was no longer Indian Joe to take over and carry on where they had left off.
Finally, he grew tired of listening to Twigg’s complaints and, taking Stella’s hand, he drifted back to Romney’s house where the indefatigable Mrs Swannack had started something akin to a soup kitchen for the homeless and a crèche for lost babies.
“There’s one thing, Stella,” he said to her as they approached the hospital. “We can start making plans for the future. I suppose I shall be going home. I have a suspicion that, things being as they are in Africa and as I was mixed up in this blasted affair last night, they’ll be only too glad to get rid of me.”
Stella said nothing, waiting for him to continue, and he shook his head, a little bewildered. “I’m sorry you’re going to marry a man without prospects,” he said.
She smiled and held his hand tighter. “Not for long, Jimmy dear.”
“It’s a pity I’ve got to leave,” he went on sadly. “I quite liked Amama. I got so I was attached to the place. I liked the people and old Amadu, the house-boy. Apart from Gotto, I don’t think I was ever happier. Still” – he shrugged – “it wouldn’t be the same again. Perhaps it’s as well!’
He was feeling, like Romney, an uncomfortable sense of guilt.
“They’ll never let me stay here now. I was in charge with him. I’m associated with failure, with Gotto, with murder even.”
“Oh, Jimmy!” There were tears in Stella’s eyes as she sensed his unhappiness. “It wasn’t your responsibility. You’re not to blame.”
“That’s just it. I am. I should have stopped it. It was everybody’s responsibility. Not just Gotto’s. We hadn’t the guts to do anything about it. Earnshaw was right all the time. Dead right. We should have had him out.” He paused, wondering at the alchemy that had made the uneducated Earnshaw so right when he and Romney, with their superior advantages of intellect and learning, had been so wrong. He put it down to the fact that Earnshaw hadn’t been blinded by sympathy and his reactions had been instinctive. It was a triumph for instinct over intellect, he decided bitterly.
“Poor old Gotto,” he said aloud. “I reckon we didn’t help him much, poor devil.”
The police remained, but Twigg’s lorries left late in the afternoon. They were packed with the few things the Swannacks had been able to salvage and what little of Jimmy’s gear had escaped the burning of the bungalow. The Swannacks left in the first lorry, Mrs Swannack tight-lipped and dictatorial and firmly convinced that the riot was caused by inefficiency in high places, Swannack arguing and flapping ineffectually as usual. It was their intention to reach the coast and get in touch with the Evangelist Missionary Society to replace their belongings before returning to Amama – an event to which Mrs Swannack at least was looking forward with a burning zeal.
Jimmy and Stella left in the second lorry. With the Swannacks’ consent they were going to Ma-Imi for the time being. From there, Stella was going to rejoin her parents until Jimmy discovered where his future lay. After that, wherever he went, she was intending to follow him.
They said good-bye shyly to Earnshaw and Romney and Alf Momo. Suri and Amadu, in the background, were weeping openly, either with misery that Jimmy was going, or with the flooding sentimentality of the African at the thought that he and Stella were going to be married.
“You’ll not be stuck fast for long, old lad,” Earnshaw said, and he had obviously dismissed Gotto from his mind already as good riddance to bad rubbish. “’Ave a nice wedding. My brother was a fireman and he had an archway of fire ’ydrants. It look ever so nice. I shouldn’t rely on Twiggy for a job. I think you’ve had it there. He wouldn’t touch you with a barge pole now. Riots ain’t popular in Africa these days and Twigg’s scared to death of being dragged in. You mark my words, he’ll dodge any blame what’s coming.”
“It won’t be Twigg who’ll get the blame if there’s an inquiry,” Jimmy said, thinking of Gotto.
“I think you’ll be right, Jimmy,” Romney said heavily. He sighed, thinking of the conscience he had to live with for the rest of his life. “But they’ll all be wrong.”
The sun was already low, and the vultures high in the sky were picking up glints of it on their dusty undersides when Jimmy helped Stella into the back of the lorry and climbed in after her.
The engine roared noisily and the driver let in the clutch with a crash of gears. The noise seemed to Jimmy typical of everything in Africa – not quite correct but workable; raw but promising.
The familiar smell of charcoal, that smell Jimmy would remember to the end of his days, was more than ever strong as they moved away. After the rain which had washed away the soot, the foliage seemed greener than ever and it seemed to Jimmy that Romney had got his wish – Amama hadn’t really been damaged, and the mine, its only flaw, had disappeared and would go back to the lizard and the mosquito and the prowling bush cat.
The place seemed more lush than ever, and the red earth richer with its false promise. The trampled grass would grow again, thick and lush and beautiful. Even the broken plantain tree outside what had been
his window would recover and grow over the ruins. The advancing green of the bush would tramp over the burned houses and Amama would be the same as before, everlastingly Africa.
The sun was shining on Romney and Earnshaw and the little group of black people who clustered near the hospital as the lorry drew away. Jimmy sighed. What was left in Amama was now solely Twigg’s worry – as it always should have been. Only Gotto and Clerk Smith and the others who had died were lost and none of them mattered or would be missed. Amama itself would be there when he himself was an old man, whether more mines came or not; still Amama, still with the never-ending hills and its cathedral groves of trees.
He turned to Stella who was watching him silently. On either side of them the palms raised their crests into the air above them, always moving, always graceful. The deep red road ran on endlessly, towards the coast, striped with shadows and dotted here and there with a solitary walking figure, the symbol of Africa.
They raised their arms in a final wave towards Earnshaw and Romney and the others as the road curved and they reappeared briefly in an opening in the bush, then they were lost to sight, and Amama was gone.
As they turned away from the tail of the lorry, the sun disappeared behind the hills and the first of the bull frogs began its croak, the first of the crickets, and the red and gold of the day became blue and the brilliant sky became a jade green flecked with salmon-pink clouds in a fan of light.
Before they had gone another mile the sudden dusk had descended and the palms, the bush, the everlasting hills faded into a misty greyness that was anonymous and the interior of the lorry was dark.
Synopses of John Harris Titles
Published by House of Stratus
Army of Shadows
It is the winter of 1944. France is under the iron fist of the Nazis. But liberation is just around the corner and a crew from a Lancaster bomber is part of the fight for Freedom. As they fly towards their European target, a Messerschmitt blazes through the sky in a fiery attack and of the nine-man crew aboard the bomber, only two men survive to parachute into Occupied France. They join an ever-growing army of shadows (the men and women of the French Resistance), to play a lethal game of cat and mouse.
China Seas
In this action-packed adventure, Willie Sarth becomes a survivor. Forced to fight pirates on the East China Seas, wrestle for his life on the South China Seas and cross the Sea of Japan ravaged by typhus, Sarth is determined to come out alive. Dealing with human tragedy, war and revolution, Harris presents a novel which packs an awesome punch.
The Claws of Mercy
In Sierra Leone, a remote bush community crackles with racial tensions. Few white people live amongst the natives of Freetown and Authority seems distant. Everyday life in Freetown revolves around an opencast iron mine, and the man in charge dictates peace and prosperity for everyone. But, for the white population, his leadership is a matter of life or death where every decision is like being snatched by the claws of mercy.
Corporal Cotton’s Little War
Storming through Europe, the Nazis are sure to conquer Greece but for one man, Michael Anthony Cotton, a heroic marine who smuggles weapons of war and money to the Greek Resistance. Born Mihale Andoni Cotonou, Cotton gets mixed up in a lethal mission involving guns and high-speed chases. John Harris produces an unforgettable champion, persuasive and striking with a touch of mastery in this action-packed thriller set against the dazzle of the Aegean.
The Cross of Lazzaro
The Cross of Lazzaro is a gripping story filled with mystery and fraught with personal battles. This tense, unusual novel begins with the seemingly divine reappearance of a wooden cross once belonging to a sixth-century bishop. The vision emerges from the depths of an Italian lake, and a menacing local antagonism is subsequently stirred. But what can the cross mean?
Flawed Banner
John Harris’ spine-tingling adventure inhabits the shadowy world of cunning and espionage. As the Nazi hordes of Germany overrun France, devouring the free world with fascist fervour, a young intelligence officer, James Woodyatt, is shipped across the Channel to find a First World War hero…an old man who may have been a spy…who may be in possession of Nazi secrets.
The Fox From His Lair
A brilliant German agent lies in wait for the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. While the Allies prepare a vast armed camp, no one is aware of the enemy within, and when a sudden, deadly E-boat attacks, the Fox strikes, stealing secret invasion plans in the ensuing panic. What follows is a deadly pursuit as the Fox tries to get the plans to Germany in time, hotly pursued by two officers with orders to stop him at all costs.
A Funny Place to Hold a War
Ginger Donnelly is on the trail of Nazi saboteurs in Sierra Leone. Whilst taking a midnight paddle with a willing woman in a canoe cajoled from a local fisherman, Donnelly sees an enormous seaplane thunder across the sky only to crash in a ball of brilliant flame. It seems like an accident…at least until a second plane explodes in a blistering shower along the same flight path.
Getaway
An Italian fisherman and his wife, Rosa, live in Sydney. Hard times are ahead. Their mortgaged boat may be lost and with it, their livelihood. But Rosa has a plan to reach the coast of America from the islands of the Pacific, sailing on a beleaguered little houseboat. The plan seems almost perfect, especially when Willie appears and has his own reasons for taking a long holiday to the land of opportunity.
Harkaway’s Sixth Column
An explosive action-packed war drama: four British soldiers are cut off behind enemy lines in British Somaliland and when they decide to utilise a secret arms dump in the Bur Yi hills and fight a rearguard action, an unlikely alliance is sought between two local warring tribes. What follows is an amazing mission led by the brilliant, elusive Harkaway, whose heart is stolen by a missionary when she becomes mixed up in the unorthodox band of warriors.
A Kind of Courage
At the heart of this story of courage and might, is Major Billy Pentecost, commander of a remote desert outpost near Hahdhdhah, deep among the bleak hills of Khalit. His orders are to prepare to move out along with a handful of British soldiers. Impatient tribesmen gather outside the fort, eager to reclaim the land of their blood and commanded by Abd el Aziz el Beidawi, a feared Arab warrior lord. A friendship forms between the two very different commanders but when Pentecost’s orders are reversed, a nightmarish tragedy ensues.
Live Free or Die
Charles Walter Scully, cut off from his unit and running on empty, is trapped. It’s 1944 and though the Allied invasion of France has finally begun, for Scully the war isn’t going well. That is, until he meets a French boy trying to get home to Paris. What begins is a hair-raising journey into the heart of France, an involvement with the French Liberation Front and one of the most monumental events of the war. Harris vividly portrays wartime France in a panorama of scenes that enthral the reader.
The Lonely Voyage
The Lonely Voyage is John Harris’ first novel - a graphic, moving tale of the sea. It charts the story of one boy, Jess Ferigo, who winds up on a charge of poaching along with Pat Fee and Old Boxer, the men who sail with him on his journey into manhood. As Jess leaves his boyhood behind, bitter years are followed by the Second World War, where Old Boxer and Jess make a poignant rescue on the sand dunes of Dunkirk. Finally, Jess Ferigo’s lonely voyage is over.
The Mercenaries
Ira Penaluna, First World War pilot, sees his airline go bankrupt in Africa and grabs at the chance to instruct pilots in China. But Ira hasn’t reckoned on the beat-up, burnt-out wrecks he is expected to teach his students in, or on the fact that his pupils speak no English. Though aided and abetted by an enthusiastic assistant, an irresponsible Fagan and his brooding American girlfriend Ellie, Ira finds himself playing a deadly game, becoming embroiled in China’s civil war. The four are forced to flee but the only way out is in a struggling pile of junk flown precariously towards safety. Will they make it?
North Strike
It is 1939. The Royal Navy urgently needs information about German raiders. There is only one place to get it…the port of Narvik and only one man capable – Magnusson. A story of the daring, outrageous exploits of a spy rescuing British prisoners from the Altmark and swept up in to the German battle for Norway.
The Old Trade of Killing
Harris’ exciting adventure is set against the backdrop of the Western Desert and scene of the Eighth Army battles. The men who fought together in the Second World War return twenty years later in search of treasure. But twenty years can change a man. Young ideals have been replaced by greed. Comradeship has vanished along with innocence. And treachery and murder make for a breathtaking read.
Picture of Defeat
It is 1943 and Naples has been looted by the Allies and Axis powers alike, its priceless art treasures coveted by some of the most corrupt criminal minds in Europe. But under the orders of Field Security, Tom Pugh must save the paintings of Detto Banti, no matter what the cost. In this tantalising read, one man stands against a tide of wilful destruction and greed, trying to save a past for the people of Naples’ future.
The Quick Boat Men
Edward Dante Bourdillon is a man whose fate is linked to the oceans. His parents perished on the waves and, brought up by his uncle who owns a boatyard, Edward leads a life in love with the sea. That is, until he sinks his uncle’s yacht. Soon our hero is bound for Cape Town on an old tramp steamer. From earthquakes to shipwreck, it seems his fortune is turning sour until forgiveness and World War One looms on the horizon.
Ride Out the Storm
The Allies, faced with a shameful defeat, are trapped between the onslaught of the mighty German army and the tumult of the ocean waves. Those that do not die face capture and surrender to the Nazis. But only nine days later more than a quarter of a million men have been rescued and placed safely on the shores of England, saved by an amazing assorted flotilla of barges, tugs, rowing boats and dinghies. This is the incredible story of a mass exodus across the Channel. John Harris tells the miraculous story of Dunkirk.