Finally, I removed the itchy and repulsive dreadlocked wig and shoved it under an overhanging rock, then rested for a few minutes before setting off. I had to get to the waiting truck before dark, at around half past six, which was a steady enough march. As I set off the feeling of relief at leaving the forest was palpable. In the open, with the afternoon sunlight drying my clothes, I felt a lightness of spirit and even a sense of optimism. I’d persisted, survived and come out of the other side intact and the adorable Sam would be waiting for me at Makindi. I would be given three days’ leave, and I smiled to myself as I imagined our reunion. I glanced back one last time at the monstrously magnificent mountain with its summit shrouded in roiling cumulus cloud. I have come back from the mountain, I said to myself. We have been through a mighty smiting of love and hate and this land cannot defeat us, our loving will prevail. I was sounding like the Dominee, but for once the biblical phrasing didn’t sound pretentious to my ear.
I had been walking for half an hour or so and, as if as a reward, I came to a stream where a small rivulet from the great mountain flowed clean and pure. On either side of what appeared to be a crossing, bulrushes grew, the stream flowed free for thirty or so feet and then disappeared into them again. I couldn’t see the customary pebbles and rocks redolent of any mountain stream, so I surmised the crossing to be quite deep. I didn’t hesitate and waded in the gloriously cleansing water that quickly rose to my knees and then to my waist and continued to the start of my chest before I finally reached what seemed like the deepest part. I took a deep breath and sank down until the water covered my head, allowing the coolness to soak my clothes and cover my entire body, then rising slowly I brushed the sudden cleanness from my face and hair and began to wade out of the stream.
Then, to my complete shock, from the bulrushes emerged a Mau Mau terrorist screaming at me, a panga raised above his head. His knees kicked high as he splashed through the water. He kept coming towards me, and then I noticed her breasts, it was a woman terrorist coming to kill me. I had nowhere to retreat, the water was well above my waist with the deeper water behind me. I saw the great blade coming down towards my head, when her head simply exploded – blood, bone and brains splattering my face and shoulders as the force of the bullet from my revolver fired at point-blank range knocked her backwards into the stream, which had suddenly turned crimson around me. I looked in astonishment at the weapon I held in my hand. To my dying day I shall never know how it got there. I must have reached into the water, unclipped the holster flap and pulled my service revolver from it, then fired it inches from her face, no more than a couple of seconds before the panga would have removed my own head.
I stood alternatively howling and gasping for breath, unable to move, mesmerised by the blood in the water. Then, bug-eyed and semiparalysed, I watched as it dissipated, ribbons of scarlet curling among the green stems of the rushes, the water beginning, miraculously, to clear directly above where the woman lay. After a while, quite how long I can’t say, perhaps five or six minutes, I began to move out of the stream, wading slightly upstream to avoid the headless body lying in some four feet of clear, clean water.
As I emerged from the shallows, my conscious mind seemed to return. I still held the revolver and I now returned it slowly to the wet leather holster. For a moment I contemplated pulling the Mau Mau woman’s body from the stream, then realised if I did so the hyenas would devour her long before morning’s light. Perhaps her comrades would find her and remove her body and bury it under one of the sacred wild fig trees that grew on the slopes of the great mountain, where the Kikuyu would sometimes go to pray to their true and great god, Ngai.
No, that’s not entirely true, this somewhat poetic thought only just occurred to me. My immediate instinct was to get away from the crossing as quickly as my shaking knees could carry me in the event other Mau Mau were in the vicinity. The dead woman had obviously hidden in the rushes as my gang had passed through the stream and finally, thinking it safe, emerged just as I’d entered the stream. Seeing my blond hair and possibly my blue eyes she’d attacked, thinking I was helpless. Before leaving I returned briefly to the water, now clear and clean, and hurriedly splashed the gore from my face and hair, although the front of my shirt and even my shorts remained stained with blood.
I simply don’t remember arriving at the rendezvous point or much about the trip home. Upon arriving back at the barracks, Sergeant Pike was waiting for me. He returned my salute. ‘Jesus! What happened to you?’ he exclaimed, looking at my bloodstained clothes.
‘I’d better make a report,’ I said, the full horror of what had happened suddenly returning to me.
‘The commanding officer is waiting for you, Sir. I’ll see you get a stiff brandy. Follow me, please.’
‘I need to clean up first,’ I said, looking down at my chest where the blood had dried and stiffened the material.
‘I’m afraid that will have to wait, Sir. The colonel is most anxious to see you immediately.’ I followed Pike to the CO’s office. It was just after eight-thirty at night and I was almost too tired to stand. In my ragged, bloodstained clothes, no socks and battered boots, I must have made a strange sight as I came somewhat to attention and gave Peterson a weary salute. He didn’t seem to notice either my salute or my bloodstained clothes. ‘Ah, Tom!’ he called, and jumping up from his desk walked towards me, taking me by the elbow. ‘Sit, Tom,’ he said in a surprisingly kind voice, steering me towards one of the wicker chairs.
‘Thank you, Sir,’ I replied, somewhat bemused, not understanding his sudden concern for my welfare. I reasoned that no message could possibly have been sent through to Embu base camp, as the truck in which we’d just returned hadn’t carried a radio. Besides, a single Mau Mau kill was hardly worth a handshake from the CO. What then, I asked myself, was all the fuss about? All I could think about was making a phone call to Sam, though how I would manage to do this without breaking up hadn’t yet occurred to me.
I sat waiting wearily as Peterson returned to his desk. There was a moment’s hesitation and then he said, ‘Tom, I have very sad news for you. Last night Mau Mau attacked Makindi and Sam and Bobby Finger have been murdered, together with all their Kikuyu servants and the dogs. Sam died clutching a shotgun. She’d killed five terrorists, three lay in the room beside her, one of them was their old cook who, it would appear, poisoned the dogs and let the Mau Mau into the homestead.’ He glanced up at me. ‘Christ! What happened to you?’ he asked in alarm. Just then Sergeant Pike arrived with a tray upon which rested two brandy balloons.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Love is a Lonely Hunter
THE TWO YEARS AT Oxford passed somehow, mostly spent in the Bodleian Law Library and the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House where I buried my grief in law books. I felt sure I would never recover from losing Sam. I spent the university vacations alone, walking through various parts of Europe, and made very few friends at Oxford where I was seen as a loner, always polite but seldom engaged in any activity or discussion other than those involving my studies. Towards the end of my second year I collapsed from malnutrition and was taken to hospital where, on the third morning with a drip in my arm, I finally came to my senses, although I was still so exhausted the doctor insisted I spend two weeks in hospital. Tom Fitzsaxby was beginning to recover from a devastating virus, a heartsickness named grief, I had been powerless to control.
Up to the time of Sam’s death, while life had held moments of anxiety for me, I had never completely despaired. After Sam’s murder, a terrible darkness descended upon my soul, one that I was unable to eclipse. This might have been because of some emotional weakness in me, but it possessed me so completely that on more than one occasion, just to stop the constant nightmares, I considered ending my life. Hardly a week went by when I didn’t wake up screaming from a recurring dream. The Mau Mau woman was coming towards me, knees pumping, splashing through the stream. I stood, helpless in the chest-high water as the panga held
above her head started to slice through the air, catching the late afternoon sun, about to split my skull open. Then, as I pulled the revolver trigger, the black woman’s snarling face changed into Sam’s and exploded, splattering me with her blood and brains.
There simply seemed to be no reason to continue except for a single word that always managed to wriggle through the darkness: ‘Mattress’. I grew to hate its appearance and tried everything I knew to scrub it from my psyche. I told myself a thousand times that one murder on a dark night in Africa counted for nothing after what I’d witnessed in Kenya. I tried to convince myself that a single African’s life was a mere drop in the ocean. So many had died and would continue to die on the Dark Continent that attempting to gain justice for a dead pig boy with platform feet was pointless.
At the wake held for Sam and Bobby Finger at the Thika Club, the worthlessness of an African’s life had been demonstrated once again, not by wilful slaughter, but by sheer indifference. While the eulogies from friends continued into the late afternoon, I never once heard the three faithful servants, Githuka, the garden and odd-job man, and the two happy, always giggling maids, Christine and Wanjika, mentioned. They would have been well known to all those present, but now simply ceased to exist. By contrast, a friend of the Finger family, Jack Devine, a pompous and somewhat inebriated Englishman, a local sisal grower, after paying a sloppy and over-sentimental homage to the memory of Bobby and Sam, turned to Jock Finger to bemoan the loss of his three dogs. ‘Such a terrible waste, hey, Jock? Excellent bitches, good ridgeback cross. You can replace a Kuke, but a good dog is hard to find. Wretched business all round, what.’
Jock Finger blamed himself for the death of his wife and daughter and had remained more or less drunk through the funeral service and the wake. Nothing Mike could do to comfort or sober him up helped. On the night of the murders Jock had been drinking at the club and towards midnight attempted to drive home. Three miles along the dirt road to Makindi he failed to navigate a sharpish bend and drove off the road and over a steep hump where the truck landed nose-first in a ditch on the other side. Too drunk to know if he was hurt, he fell asleep, waking in the early morning, bruised and battered, with a terrible hangover and a suspected broken arm. He managed to disentangle himself from the cabin of the truck and get back to the side of the road, where a lorry carrying road workers stopped and delivered him back into town, leaving him in the care of the cottage hospital. It was almost ten that morning when the first news of the murders reached him. Jock Finger had remained pretty well intoxicated ever since, so that an utterly distraught Mike, together with whatever help I could provide, tried to manage the tragedy and make the funeral arrangements. Devastated as I was at Sam’s death, I attempted to comfort Mike, knowing that not only had he lost his mother and beloved sister, but the split between his father and himself was now beyond repair.
Three weeks later Jock Finger, still wearing a plaster cast, took his shotgun, the same one that Sam had used in the attempt to defend her mother and servants, entered his workshop and sawed fifteen inches off both barrels. He then loaded it with buckshot and walked some distance from the homestead, where he removed his dentures and put them into his shirt pocket. Bracing the gun butt firmly into the fork of a young Cape chestnut tree he placed the shortened barrels against his open mouth and pulled both triggers. Africa, the remorseless killer, had struck again.
Mike buried his father beside Bobby and Sam, and we attended yet another wake at the Thika Club. This time the wake turned into a disaster when Mike, somewhat pissed but still appearing to be in control, stood on the bandstand and delivered a speech. He told his father’s assembled friends, among other gratuitous accusations, that it was they, the Kenyan whites and the iniquitous British administration headed up by ‘that perverted bastard, Sir Evelyn bloody Baring’, who were to blame for the Mau Mau uprising. The guests listened in astonishment for several minutes before Jack Devine, standing close to the bandstand, called out, ‘I say, that’s not cricket, old chap!’ The guests began to murmur and Gladys the Man-eater shouted angrily, ‘You’re a bloody Mau Mau!’ In a matter of moments the guests started chanting, ‘Mau Mau! Mau Mau! Mau Mau!’, pointing at Mike. With all pretension gone the rage and scorn they felt for him was apparent.
Gladys the Man-eater pushed her way through the crowd to reach the bandstand. She stepped up onto it, almost tripping in the process, although by some miracle not spilling the gin and tonic she held in her left hand. This she threw at Mike’s face and followed it with a perfect tennis forehand. The flat of her right hand against his wet cheek sent Mike staggering backwards into the upright piano. The chanting stopped abruptly as everyone watched, delighted at the scene unfolding. Now Gladys the Man-eater moved close up to a surprised Mike. She was a tall, tanned, scrawny bottle-blonde with hair that fell untidily down to her shoulders, the centre parting showing dark at the roots. Swaying drunkenly, she jabbed her forefinger into Mike’s chest. ‘Even as a child you were a right little bastard, always playing with the filthy little nigger boys!’ she shouted. Then she calmly placed the glass on top of the piano and turned to walk back to the cheering and clapping guests. Loving the sudden attention and with chin high, imperious over-powdered nose stuck in the air, she forgot the short step up to the bandstand. Stepping out into midair, arms flailing wildly, she plunged forward and crashed headfirst onto the corpulent Jack Devine, sending them both sprawling, spread-eagled on the dance floor.
In the confusion that followed I forced my way through the guests and up onto the bandstand where I took Mike by the arm. ‘Ferchrissake, Mike! Come, let’s get out of here,’ I cried. ‘These people are about to lynch you, man!’
With the guests crowding around the prostrated forms of Gladys the Man-eater and fat Jack Devine, we managed to reached the door safely. ‘Quick, let’s go!’ I urged.
‘No, wait!’ Mike called. Turning to face the crowd, he yelled, ‘Fuck you all!’ Then he clenched his fist and raised his arm above his head and shouted, ‘Uhuru!’
Driving Mike back to Makindi, I started to laugh. ‘Jesus! For a moment there I thought I was presiding over the demise of the last of the Fingers!’
Mike too began to laugh, the first time we’d laughed together in three weeks and four days. ‘I guess my membership of the Thika Club is somewhat in jeopardy,’ he grinned, sounding surprisingly sober. Then suddenly serious, he added, ‘I grew up with those people, that sententious old fart Jake Devine is my godfather, ferchrissake. As for Gladys the Man-eater, she and Bobby were like sisters. Sam and I grew up thinking of her as some sort of surrogate aunt we were constantly forced to tolerate.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘She’d take off her tennis shoes in the lounge room and her feet always ponged to high heaven.’
‘How did she get her carnivorous nickname?’ I asked.
Mike laughed again. ‘Blow jobs! She’s famous in the district for them. Bobby gave it to her when some ten years ago she came across Gladys on her knees behind the tennis court pavilion pleasuring a standing Jock.’
‘And she forgave her?’ I asked, surprised.
Mike grinned. ‘Of course! They were at school together in England. Gym frock always beats cock! But as I recall she gave Jock hell for months afterwards. Conjugal rights withdrawn until further notice, separate beds, that sort of malarky. She finally relented when Sam suggested to Jock that the next time they went to Nairobi, he book the Royal Suite at the Stanley, take Bobby to dinner and present her with a string of South Sea pearls. Sam, as usual, solved the problem.’
At the mention of Sam’s name I started to choke up and drove on in silence for a while, trying to hold back my tears. Then, having regained my composure, I asked, ‘Mike, have you thought about what you’re going to do?’
Mike shook his head slowly. ‘After that fiery little speech this afternoon I can safely carve the name Captain Michael Finger, in anticipation, on my tombstone. The army won’t be giving me any further promotion and I’ll be damned lucky not to be drummed
out of the Kenya Regiment. Game, set and match to Chris Peterson.’
‘I thought you were pissed; now I can see you’re not. You gave that disastrous speech deliberately, didn’t you, Mike?’ I didn’t wait for him to reply. ‘I’ve bloody told you before, this is not a fight you can possibly win! It’s obvious you were not brought up in an orphanage where you learn to bide your time, pick your target, strike fast, cover your arse and have a plausible alibi. You don’t solve anything by making an appointment to see the bloody governor so you can give him a dressing-down. Or by accusing the white hierarchy in the district of being a bunch of lying, cheating, dishonest, exploiting, thieving, racist bastards. That, if I remember correctly, was only your opening sentence! Finishing off with “Uhuru!”, the cry for freedom, now that was a really classy touch – that is, if you plan to be totally ostracised by the white community and, as you said yourself, drummed out of your regiment.’
Mike turned to look at me. ‘Tom, I’m the last Finger. I don’t have to shut up any longer simply because my views embarrass and compromise my mother and father or make things difficult for Sam, who, as you know, shared my views. What I said this afternoon is the truth and sooner or later the whites in Kenya must face the truth. These people are either in denial or stupid or both! My family lost their lives because of the cheating and lying, the duplicity and the racial arrogance of white Kenya. Gladys the Man-eater is correct, as a child I did play with the “little nigger boys”. I regarded myself as one of them. I still do. I am not a white Kenyan, I am simply a Kenyan! I can’t stand by and see my country torn limb from limb because white is always right. It isn’t!’ He brought his clenched fist down hard against his knee. ‘It bloody isn’t!’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Oh God,’ he said softly, and then began to cry.
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