Whitethorn

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Next to the waterfall,’ I said softly. Taking her hand I led her back to the misty spray where the rainbow colours danced. We undressed and there, on the moss-covered bank of the pool where the white water crashed, Sam Finger and Tom Fitzsaxby made love.

  I’m not much good at writing about such things. The words used to describe the loving of two people always seem so weary from overuse, so worn-out. I suppose I was an experienced lover and Sam, as she later confessed, a first-timer, but while making love may be a process that improves with practice, loving is not like that, it doesn’t need a descriptive narrative punctuated with random adjectives. It becomes time suspended, a void into which you both plunge and where you hope you will remain blissfully together, forever. It is simply every meaning of the words loveliness and togetherness. Every gasp, every moan, every wonderful movement of Sam’s gorgeous body . . . See what happens when you try to use words!

  Pirrou taught me that most women don’t experience orgasm during the process of making conventional love. And so I suppose I had been pretty well tutored to do what was required by a sexually demanding and sophisticated woman. Of course, I was an eager pupil and I guess I must have become a reasonably practised lover. Pirrou and, in particular, La Piroutte, always gave a commanding performance and expected nothing less from her partner. ‘No came, no gain!’ she’d sometimes laughingly quip.

  However, nothing of the sort happened when Sam and I made love that first time. I know she climaxed twice, but it wasn’t because I was the so-called ‘practised lover performing my masculine magic on her tender young virgin body’, nothing could have been further from the truth. I suppose we could have made love in the weeks before the waterfall. I certainly wanted to and constantly dreamed about doing so. I felt sure Sam would have agreed if I’d asked her, but here again the words of the ever clear-eyed Pirrou returned to me. ‘Tom, the first time a virgin makes love to a man she is almost always disappointed. This is mostly because he has been pestering her for weeks, the bulge in his trousers dictating his every waking thought. In the end she usually relents, afraid that she may lose him if she doesn’t. The first time for a woman should always be because she is truly in love and can think of nothing except wanting to release the bulge and possess and ravish her lover.’

  Pirrou, as she usually was in matters amorous, proved correct. I don’t believe I brought very much skill or experience with me into the act of loving Sam that first time. I just needed and wanted her so very much, and she me, that the loving took care of itself, a wholly overwhelming and wonderful thing, climaxing simultaneously. Afterwards we were entwined around each other, lying in the sun with our clothes spread out on a rock to dry. I couldn’t take my eyes off her happy face. Every part of her neat body felt so very beautiful. ‘Will you marry me, darling?’ I asked.

  She didn’t answer at first. Slowly unclasping herself, then rolling a foot or so away, she raised herself onto her elbow, her head resting on her hand. ‘Yes, but only after I’ve completed my horticulture degree. Then you’ll have to buy a farm where I can grow Brassica oleracea and Passiflora edulis and we’ll breed thoroughbred horses.’

  ‘Cabbages and passionfruit, you and me, Fitzcabbage and Passionfinger,’ I said. Then, trying to be too clever by half, I added, ‘I guess you’ll be the nag and I’ll be the stud.’

  ‘Passionfinger! Why, that’s very rude, Tom!’ she scolded, her eyes laughing. The warm afternoon sun and her gorgeous body stretched out in front of me did the rest. ‘Hmm, I see!’ she exclaimed, her blue eyes growing wide in a pretence of shock. ‘Onto your back at once, Fitzsaxby,’ she commanded.

  I rolled onto my back and Sam mounted me. ‘I assume you’re a novice at all this?’ I said happily.

  Guiding me gently, Sam grinned. ‘I’ll have you know I’ve been riding since I was five.’ She gave an ecstatic little shake of her pretty shoulders as all of me entered her. ‘But you’re my very first thoroughbred, darling,’ she gasped, then lifting and lowering, she looked down at me. ‘Beautiful saddle!’ she said, settling into a perfect trotting rhythm.

  So much for all my careful training! Though, I must say, I think both Pirrou and La Pirouette would have approved of Sam’s riding technique and the commanding performance that followed.

  Upon my return to Embu Barracks late on Sunday evening there was a message from Colonel Peterson for me to report to him at eleven hundred hours the following morning. We’d met on several occasions in the officers’ mess, but always as commanding officer and junior subaltern, a nod of the head or a crisp greeting was the extent of the contact. I’d once shared his mess table, a common formality, though one where the junior officer was expected to answer when questioned, otherwise remaining silent. On that occasion, other than enquiring whether I was enjoying my secondment to the Kenya Regiment, no other direct conversation transpired between us and I ate my dinner in silence, grateful that I wasn’t required to make any contribution to the conversation. Although I was good at conjuring up reasonably perspicacious questions and at fudging interest, with Mike’s background brief, I might have found speaking to Peterson an awkward process. I should add that Peterson was a popular commanding officer and the other officers, mostly Kenyan-born or postwar settlers, seemed to enjoy and respect his company greatly.

  At eleven hundred hours exactly Colonel Peterson’s desk sergeant ushered me into his office. Upon entry I saluted and removed my cap.

  ‘Sit, Fitzsaxby,’ Peterson commanded, not looking up from the paperwork on his desk or returning my salute, indicating to me that our meeting was to be relatively informal.

  I sat on one of the two bamboo wicker chairs in front of his desk and placed my cap on my lap and crossed my legs in an attempt to appear at ease. After signing the bottom of the typed page he’d been reading he put down his fountain pen and looked up at me. ‘Good morning, Fitzsaxby, glad you could come,’ he said, smiling briefly.

  ‘Good morning, Sir.’

  ‘I’m afraid that I haven’t had time to review the progress of your secondment, but Captain Miles says you’re making a good fist of it. I see you’re a lawyer and have a Rhodes scholarship. Good for you, Rhodesian-born?’ All of this was said in a peremptory manner. Peterson was obviously a man who cut to the thrust.

  ‘No, Sir, South African.’

  ‘Good. Then I’ll get on with the reason why you’re here. We want you to command a pseudo gang, a week’s patrol on Mount Kenya; I believe you’ve already received instruction on harassment techniques. The Kikuyu in your gang are highly experienced and reliable, they’re originally from the Aberdares, so they don’t owe their loyalty to the Mount Kenya terrorists. They’ve been out on the mountain on two separate occasions so you’ll be quite safe, though it’s always a good idea to be on your guard.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll enjoy the exercise much. That’s all, do you have any questions?’

  ‘Yes, Sir, when will this be?’

  ‘Well, right away, you leave at fifteen hundred hours. I know it’s short notice but Lieutenant Barnett has come down with glandular fever and his patrol is already scheduled for this afternoon. It will mess things up if you’re not in your precise location by nightfall. You’ll be briefed on your coordinates immediately when you leave my office. See Sergeant Pike as you leave.’ I rose and replaced my cap, came to attention, saluted and turned towards the door. ‘Oh, Fitzsaxby, by the way, this is a covert operation, no phone calls. I’m told you spend some time with Mike Finger’s family at Makindi?’

  ‘Yes, Sir, Mike Finger and I are friends. May I make a phone call to Makindi without mentioning the patrol?’ I asked, then added, ‘I customarily do so every night. It would be a concern for the party at the other end if I missed calling for a week.’

  Chris Peterson smiled briefly. ‘Certainly, you’re a lucky man, Fitzsaxby, Sam Finger is an absolute cracker.’

  I could feel myself blushing. ‘Thank you, Sir, I consider myself most fortunate.’

  I dialled Sam’s number and
Wanjohi the cook answered and explained that Miss Sam wasn’t home and Memsahib Bobby was at tennis.

  ‘Will you tell Miss Sam I will call in one week, Wanjohi?’ I told him.

  There was a moment’s hesitation. ‘You not call every night, Bwana Tom?’ he asked, sounding confused.

  I had forgotten that the Finger servants, in fact most Kenyan household servants, were proverbial stickybeaks and knew most of their white family’s business, or so Sam assured me. My nightly calls would be a feature of gossip between their two African maids, Christine and Wanjika, and no doubt among the males as well. ‘No, Wanjohi, not this week, I will call Miss Sam in one week, do you understand?’

  ‘Ndio, Bwana, you will call one week. I myself will tell Miss Sam.’ He hung up abruptly.

  I knew that Sam would phone Mike and want to know what was going on and why I couldn’t call for a week. Mike was in Nyeri on army business and I didn’t know how to get hold of him, but I guessed he’d be able to work out what might have happened and put Sam’s mind at rest. ‘He has to attend a special course’ is what he would in all likelihood say to reassure her.

  The briefing was simple enough. I was given the coordinates for the week and my entry and exit point. We would need to cover five miles a day no matter what, a big ask. Five miles through the bamboo and undergrowth was no simple achievement. The point being that several gangs were operating within the mountainside forest, if we should fail to maintain our coordinates we might well find ourselves within the sweep of another pseudo gang. In the semi-dark of the undergrowth, the mist and rain, this might result in each of us mounting an attack on the other.

  ‘You may come across rhino or even buffalo, and sometimes they’ll charge, but do not under any circumstances give away your position by firing at them,’ said the briefing officer, Captain Broon, looking directly at me. Of course I’d fire if my life was at risk, what was really being said was that if one of my pseudo gang was endangered he would have to take his chances with the rhino or enraged buffalo with only his panga to protect him. In other words, I was not to interfere.

  I indicated the Patchett submachine gun I was expected to carry. ‘May I leave my revolver behind?’ I asked Broon. ‘This and my pack are pretty heavy, I’d rather not carry the extra weight.’

  ‘Sorry, old chap, tradition. A British army officer is never without his revolver while on active duty. When you come out of the forest you’ll have a ten-mile walk to the rendezvous point where the truck will be waiting. You have permission, once you’re clear of the forest, to smash your Patchett, but if you arrive back without your revolver, mark my words, you’ll be in serious trouble. Righto, time to grease up,’ Broon instructed, ‘you’re pulling out in an hour.’

  What greasing up involved was taking a shower without soap so your skin and hair contained no residue of artificial perfume. In addition your mouth had to be thoroughly rinsed to remove any smell of toothpaste and you had to chew an aromatic twig that was readily found on the slopes of Mount Kenya. After this my arms, face and legs were blackened and my entire body was smeared with the same repulsive-smelling animal fat used by the pseudo gangs. Living in the forests the Mau Mau had developed an acute sense of smell and they could sniff the whereabouts of a European long before they sighted him. I wouldn’t wash again until I returned to barracks in seven days and, meanwhile, I would brush my teeth by chewing the end of a green twig and using it as a toothbrush. After greasing and blacking up I was given a filthy shirt and a pair of shorts in disrepair and a repulsive dreadlocked wig to wear. After all this there was still no chance of my ever being mistaken for a terrorist; from my blackened face framed by the absurd wig peered a set of decidedly blue eyes.

  The next seven days were not going to be easy, I spoke only a few basic words of Swahili and my so-called pseudo-terrorist gang spoke no English. My most efficient form of instruction was my submachine gun. Quite frankly, I was shitting myself. It was Voetsek back at The Boys Farm calculating the daily odds of staying alive and not liking my chances one little bit.

  I’d long since learned that it was pointless to feel sorry for yourself, but I couldn’t help wondering what I might have done to deserve this. I even speculated that it was Colonel Peterson’s way of getting at Mike through me. There was certainly no love lost between the two of them. He knew, I reasoned, that I’d been visiting Makindi and why. In Bobby’s tennis terms, it was game, set and match to the Colonel.

  But there you go. This sort of speculation usually gets one nowhere. Commonsense and any sense of fairness told me that I’d replaced Barnett at the last minute, which hardly seemed like a premeditated action on the commanding officer’s part. Besides, I’d trained as a pseudo gangster so why wouldn’t I be chosen to lead a gang? Anyway, I would never know and there was nothing I could do about it. Hatching a conspiracy theory wasn’t going to help.

  What I did know was that I was a man deeply in love, with everything I had ever wanted about to happen for me – a beautiful, generous-minded and loving woman who, miracles will never cease, loved me as much as I adored her. Now, out of the blue I’d been handed a gang of brainwashed terrorists wielding razor-sharp pangas and ordered to spend the next seven days and nights smelling like a badly neglected latrine, cutting my way through forest undergrowth and bamboo thickets on the slopes of Mount Kenya. I told myself that I was going to have to rely on a bunch of known killers while we hunted Mau Mau whom only weeks before they’d regarded as their comrades in arms. All the instant pardons and promises of land grants Colonel Peterson had made to them, as well as his assurances that my gang was completely reliable, counted for nothing in my febrile imagination. Tom Fitzsaxby, sitting on the passenger side in the front seat of a Bedford army truck heading for Mount Kenya, was a very reluctant and frightened pseudo-gang leader.

  Mike Finger had already explained the topography of the forest to me, but as we plunged into its mist-smudged darkness at first light, after camping on the outskirts the previous night, I wondered how I would possibly endure the conditions for the next seven days. The mist and the undergrowth restricted my vision to no more than 20 feet for most of the time. After an hour my ragged clothes were blackened with sweat and I was alternately hot and cold as freezing, intermittent rain soaked through to my skin.

  I confess to my misery, while better men than me might have embraced the primal magnificence of the ancient forest, all I could think was that in the stygian environment the old man’s beard hung from the branches of the taller trees like the tattered banners of doom. The very idea of being ambushed by Mau Mau or even charged by an angry rhino or errant buffalo filled me with the utmost dread. I knew I would be exhausted by the day’s end. How was I to sleep knowing that sprawled around me was a gang of cutthroats ready to deliver me to their terrorist brothers, my bloody corpse disembowelled and offered as a sacrifice to their true god Ngai before being eaten as muti to make them prevail? It was complete nonsense, of course, it was simply a part of the British propaganda that the Mau Mau were accused of being cannibals, but my imagination was nevertheless running the full gamut of possible primitive savage behaviour. It was during the course of that first day that I discovered the bravado so redolent among the men in the officers’ mess of the Kenya Regiment was entirely missing in my personality; I was, by nature, an abject coward.

  That night I decided I would sleep sitting with my back against a tree with the safety catch of my submachine gun on my lap released. I had made the members of my gang clear the ground for 20 feet in front of me. I then had them build a wall of twigs and leaves 6 feet from me, completely surrounding the tree and too wide for a man to step over. This was so that any member of the gang attempting to approach me during the night would cause me to wake with the single snap of a broken twig and I’d let him have a burst of machine-gun fire in the guts. I opened a box of dry rations from my pack and started to eat. I must have fallen asleep halfway through my dinner because the next thing I felt was a hand gently shaking me. In the daw
n light I opened my eyes to see a member of the gang standing over me and smiling. ‘Jambo, Bwana,’ he said politely as he handed me back my submachine gun.

  The six days that followed count among the more miserable of my life, although, apart from cutting through enough bamboo to build a Chinese village, we encountered no resistance or, for that matter, charging animals other than a troop of jabbering and indignant monkeys. Either the Mau Mau heard us coming and decided to move on or I was fortunate enough to enter a clean part of the forest. I was totally exhausted when we emerged just before four o’clock on the Tuesday, seven days after we’d entered.

  It was then, for the first time, that I realised the stress my gang had been under. They too had been afraid and now whooped for joy, slapping each other on the back and hugging, every bit as happy as I was to be clear of the dark and dangerous forest. One of them, who I’d discovered spoke a smidgin of English, indicated that they wanted to go ahead to the waiting truck six miles off. I agreed, marvelling that they still had the energy to run as they moved down the lower slopes of the mountain shouting joyfully, determined to get as far away from the dreaded mountain forest as quickly as possible. Chris Peterson had been correct, they wanted no more of life as a Mau Mau terrorist. Their conversion, whatever had brought it about, was complete.

  I destroyed my Patchett submachine gun, smashing it repeatedly against a large rock until it was beyond any thought of repair. If this seems like wanton destruction, let me add that I barely had the energy required to walk the two-and-a-bit hours to the rendezvous point; carrying it now I was free of the forest would have been quite beyond me.