Blood Ties

by A. J. Quinnell

  Jaran sighed and drained his glass.

  Cady threw a lever and the rotary table ground to a halt, leaving an eerie silence. He glanced up at the monkey boards,’ then grinned at the derrick man and said: “Get your ass up the stick, Cam. I want to pull it before the end of the shift.”

  Cam started for the ladder but the dog house door opened and the tool pusher’s voice shouted “Cady! What in hell’s going on?”

  “I’m gonna pull the bit – she’s done sixty hours.”

  The tool pusher sighed histrionically. “Come in here,” he said and turned back into the dog house. Cady followed him in.

  “Shut the door.”

  Cady shut the door, feeling the sudden cold of the air conditioning on his sweaty, half-naked body. The tool pusher sat down behind the chart-covered steel desk. There was a shelf of geological books behind him.

  “What’s my name, Cady?’’

  “Ben Calder.”

  “Right on. What’s my job?”

  “You’re the push.”

  “Right again. What does that make me?”

  “My boss.”

  “Brilliant! Fucking brilliant.” Calder sneered as he looked up at the towering Canadian. “You’re so smart, but you don’t know that I decide when to pull the bit?”

  “But hell, push. She’s done sixty hours with seventy thou’ weight. It’s standard procedure to pull the bit.”

  Calder sighed. “Cady, you wanna go on workin’ for this company?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then don’t start talkin’ to me like some fuckin’ college educated geologist.”

  Cady drew a deep breath. “So what do you want?”

  Calder sat back in his chair, a squat man with a squat face and no hair.

  “I wanna hit the basement by the end of the month.” He looked at one of the charts on the desk. “Keep pulling the bit at sixty hours and we’ll never do it. So we run at seventy hours. And put a bit more weight on it.”

  “How much?”

  Calder shrugged. “Five . . . ten thou’. Make it ten.”

  Cady’s face was expressionless, “’kay, it’s your decision.”

  He turned away, hearing Calder behind him say: “Damn right!”

  Two hours later Cady sat on the platform with Cam, the derrick man, watching the roughnecks hose down after a connection. The sun had gone down, bringing darkness with dramatic suddenness, but the rig itself was brightly illuminated by arc lights on the derrick. Calder had gone off to his caravan and, in spite of the constant grind of machinery, there was a peacefulness on the mass of metal.

  Cady had an affinity with Cam. They shared a caravan on site and many of their thoughts. Although both hard, tough young men with limited educations, they were intelligent and perceptive. Unlike most oilmen they did not blow all their high salaries on booze, expensive cars or expensive women. Both took their extended holidays in Cyprus, where Cam lived with a girlfriend and Cady rented a little farmhouse in the Troodos Mountains where he soaked in the greenery and coolness after the brown desert.

  Cam was saving up to buy a house and marry his girlfriend, while Cady was planning to take a couple of months’ holiday and head south to see East Africa and maybe climb Mount Kilimanjaro and do a little hunting.

  Recently he had been reading various books about East Africa, including novels by Hemingway and Rourke. He always interchanged books with Cam and, as they sat on the edge of the platform, they debated the relative merits of the two writers. Cam was strongly in favour of Hemingway but Cady preferred the less glamorous Rourke and thought that he would be a more pleasant guy to know.

  “Who cares what he’s like,” Cam said. “It’s what he writes that matters.”

  Cady was about to reply when the tone of the drive engine changed, followed by a squeal of tortured steel. He leaped forward with a scream at the motorman. A few seconds later, with the bit off bottom and circulating, the entire crew was around the kelly in a mournful headshaking group. It was the disaster feared by all drillers. A cone on the drill bit had cocked up and broken off, causing 8,000 feet of pipe to torque up. The pipe would have to be tripped and the cone fished out. A process that could take days or even weeks.

  The off-duty crew started to crowd on to the platform and then Calder was pushing through.

  “What in hell happened?”

  Cady turned to face him. “We lost a cone down there.”

  In the glaze of the lights Calder’s face literally paled. Cady leaned towards him and, with each word carefully enunciated, said:

  “I told you the fucking bit had too many hours on it.”

  The rest of the crew were watching the two men with close interest. Calder recovered his composure, glanced around him at the ring of silent men, then asked Cady, “How much weight you had on it?”

  “Eighty thou’.”

  “Eighty thou’!” Calder swept an amazed look around him, “You’ re s’posed to be drillin’ with seventy.”

  “You told me to put more weight on it “

  “Bullshit!”

  Cady was stunned into silence. Calder looked around him again and asked loudly: “Anyone hear me tell this crap heap to put more weight on?”

  “In there!” Cady rasped out, pointing at the dog house. “You told me to load another ten thou’.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Cady took a step closer and asked almost casually, “You callin’ me a liar?”

  “Damn right!”

  Cady hit him. One stabbing right to the jaw. Calder had started to jerk his head back but Cady’s speed and immense reach ensured a sledgehammer connection. The crowd behind Calder parted as his body arched backwards and slammed on to the metal platform, his skidlid hitting with a clang. The momentum carried him on to his side and he lay still at the feet of a roughneck.

  Total silence, then the roughneck lifted a steel-capped toe and rolled him onto his back, squinted down and said: “Fuck me! Cold as Kelly’s beer and a busted jaw!” Everyone started talking and some laughing – Calder was not a popular man. A few cast appreciative but sympathetic glances at Cady. He turned to Cam and grinned ruefully. “I guess I get to climb that goddam mountain early.”

  Cam nodded sorrowfully. “I’ll miss you, you fuckin’ ape . . . an’ I decided not to kiss your ass.”

  Chapter 5

  Mount Kilimanjaro is just over 19,000 feet high and Kirsty Haywood looked down on it from 15,000 feet higher. She had a window seat on the BOAC Comet, and the sight of the soaring, snow-capped mountain revived her numbed senses. She had left New York almost twenty-four hours earlier on a night flight to London and, after a two-hour layover, caught this flight for Dar es Salaam via Rome, Cairo and Nairobi.

  She had flown once before in her life but that had only been to Florida. The immense distance of this journey was now just sinking in. She had been in the air for a total of eighteen hours and it was beginning to feel like eighteen days. She had declined to stop over at any of the cities en route, both out of impatience and a desire to save money. So far she had glimpsed three cultures only through the amorphous images of airports and fellow passengers. New York to London she had sat next to an old English lady who had been visiting her daughter, married to a US Air Force pilot and now living in Tennessee. The old lady had enjoyed her visit but strongly disapproved of the way her daughter and son-in-law were bringing up their three children. She talked at length about the need for discipline and diet and Kirsty got the message that her grandchildren were overweight and less than respectful of antiquity.

  At Heathrow Airport she sat in the transit lounge and tried to stay awake. It was early morning and snowing outside, and the passengers looked pale and as insipid as the coffee she drank.

  On the sector to Rome she was wedged between a plump Italian and a thin Arab. The Italian constantly tried to rub his shoulder against her and stroke her knee while he talked.

  At Rome the Italian left the flight and in the transit lounge the Arab suddenly spok
e to her in impeccable English, offering her a coffee. As she gratefully drank the frothy cappuccino he explained that he was an official of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and was returning from a fruitless mission to London where he had been trying to persuade the British Museum to return at least some of the priceless treasures that, under British rule, had been expropriated from the Pharaohs’ tombs. They rejoined the plane and, for the next two hours, he talked of the history and culture of his country. It came as a shock, therefore, when she encountered the sleazy and smelly Cairo airport.

  Flying south from Cairo the plane had been half empty and she dozed fitfully for several hours. The brief stop-over at Nairobi airport had given her a first taste of East Africa: the vibrant odour in the clean air, even in the airport the aroma of flowers and the earth itself. More than being on a different continent, she had felt she was on another planet.

  With the take-off from Nairobi and the coppery filtered air again in her nostrils she felt the anticipation of imminent arrival. The flight time was only one and a half hours and within minutes the captain had announced that they were over Tanzania and that Kilimanjaro could be seen out of the right-hand window.

  As she gazed down at the mountain she had a sudden feeling that this journey would have an ending but no return to the life she had known before. It was as though entering the plane in New York had been stepping from one life to another.

  It had taken her three weeks to wind up her affairs, including Larry.

  Over dinner one night she had looked at him spooning up chocolate ice cream and realised once again that theirs had been a relationship merely of convenience. It was as convenient for him to watch TV at her place as his – and she was a good cook. She had voiced her thoughts and they had a row. She was not surprised or disappointed when he failed to show up at the airport.

  There had been no one to see her off. Her few friends had uniformly adopted a cautious, watchful attitude. It was very much the nervous reaction of people on a bus or train who suddenly discover they have a mild lunatic among them. There is a general edging away – a studious averting of the eyes.

  Irving had been positively hostile. An attitude brought about by a mixture of practical no-nonsense thinking-and his imminent loss of an experienced and, above all, honest book-keeper.

  First he had tried to make her face up to the fact of Garret’s death. Then, seeing his arrows deflected by her shield of unshakeable belief, he brought up the practical problems. He reiterated all of Larry’s arguments and likewise refused to give financial aid to such a folly. Finally, with an edge of scorn to his voice, he reminded her of what she was. A naïve, unwordly woman. The furthest she had ever travelled was to Florida. Her life was cushioned by routine. She got up in the morning, put on her make-up, walked the few blocks to the office, worked among familiar faces. Her boyfriend was maybe not Rock Hudson but he was a good steady guy. Maybe one day he’d marry her. At nights they’d watch TV, a couple of times a week go out for a meal, or take in a movie and sometimes a show. She knew where she was and what she was. She had no idea what waited outside. Well Irving knew – had travelled a lot. There were sharks out there – in the water and out – mostly out. They’d see her coming and think it was Christmas. Some crazy woman looking for a dead son. They’d pluck from her everything she had. Africa! Hell! There were people there who still used mud for clothing. Never took a goddamned bath in their lives. She was a woman alone. Did she realise the dangers? She ought to stay home in the place she knew.

  She had been undeterred, pointing out that New York might not have forests but in its own way it was still a jungle.

  At that he had shrugged and given up.

  Then she went through the trauma of selling her apartment and furniture and the degrading haggle over her few pieces of jewellery. After paying off her mortgages and buying a round-trip ticket to Dar es Salaam and a Samsonite suitcase, she was left with exactly two thousand six hundred and three dollars – and thirty five cents.

  There had followed a frantic week of preparations, including injections and inoculations for smallpox, cholera and yellow fever. She had a bad reaction to the cholera shot and ran a fever for several days, but not once had her resolve been even dented.

  She had spoken to Howard Godfrey twice more on the telephone. He told her that the Jaloud had sailed for Mombasa, but was expected back in two or three weeks, which would coincide with her arrival. He had promised to give her any help he could but had also gently stressed the futility of her mission. She had listened patiently and then asked him to book her a cheap hotel.

  Below her the rolling grasslands had given way to dry ochre coloured scrub and bush, with occasional fingers of green indicating the course of a seasonal river bed. It seemed a vast, tractless, empty country; then she saw a sliver of brown road and the sun glinting on a cluster of metal roofs.

  Back in New York she had spent an afternoon in the library and read up on Tanzania. She knew it was a very poor country, only recently independent from British colonial rule. A few months before it had joined together with the island of Zanzibar following a revolution there in which the African majority had slaughtered many thousands of the Arabs who had controlled the wealth and commerce of that island for centuries. She knew that the President of Tanzania, a former school teacher, was a progressive reformer, trying to drag his backward and neglected country into the twentieth century. In the meantime, despite its nominal federation with the mainland, Zanzibar under a violent revolutionary council was pursuing its own radical course.

  Reading about it in the hushed confines of the library and seeing the land unravel beneath her reinforced the abrupt contrast between her own existence three weeks before, and the unknown events about to come. Then she felt her stomach lift as the plane dipped its nose and started to descend. A few minutes later she was looking down at green, cultivated fields, more villages and, far away to the left, the vivid blue of the sea. The Captain came on the intercom to point out the smudge of green that was Zanzibar approaching on the left, then the plane was banking and she saw the flat roofed, sprawling city with its long creeks and ships alongside the docks, and traffic in the street.

  She remembered the translation of the Arabic Dar es Salaam . . . Haven of Peace.

  She came out through Customs confused, angry and bathed in sweat. She had never known such heat or humidity or arrogantly stupid officials. Even though she had a visa the immigration officer had questioned her at length. How long was she staying? She didn’t know. Why was she here? She had the sense not to tell the truth. She was on holiday, wanted to see the country. Where was she going in the country? The questions went on until she told him that she was visiting the US Consul.

  “Mr Godfrey?”

  “That’s right.”

  Her passport was stamped vigorously and she was waved through to Customs where she spent another twenty minutes watching the Customs officer mauling through her carefully packed suitcase, lingering over her underwear and asking exactly the same questions as the immigration officer.

  Finally, again after the mention of the US Consul, he crammed everything back in, snapped it shut and squiggled a piece of yellow chalk down the side. Immediately an African darted forward, grabbed the suitcase and pushed his way through the crowd towards the exit. Kirsty ran after him, trying to recognise his bobbing black head among all the others.

  The arrivals hall was a brightly coloured bedlam. Someone plucked at her sleeve, calling ‘‘Taxi Memsahib’, another pushed a card into her hand saying ‘Kibani Hotel Memsahib — very clean’.

  In a rising panic she brushed them away, searching frantically for the man with her suitcase. Then a voice called “Mrs Haywood?”

  She turned to find a smiling, plump blonde woman at her side.

  “Hi. I’m Harriet Godfrey, Howard’s wife. Don’t worry about your suitcase. Juma’s got it.”

  In a daze she asked “Juma?”

  “Sure, he’s our driver. The car’s outside. Come on.”


  She took Kirsty’s arm and guided her through the throng.

  “Howard had to go to some reception at the Indian High Commission, so I came to get you. I’m grateful, else I’d have to be there listening to the usual boring crap.”

  They emerged into the evening sunlight. There was a black Chevrolet at the kerb and the grinning African who had grabbed her suitcase was now holding open the rear door. Harriet ushered her in and she immediately felt the flow of chilled air washing over her. It was delicious.

  A minute later they were heading down a broad road passing dozens of bicycles, ramshackle trucks filled with people and the occasional car.

  “Welcome to Africa honey,” Harriet said. “Did they give you a hard time back there?”

  Kirsty collected herself and nodded.

  “It’s normal,” Harriet said. “They’re showing off their independence; but don’t be put off. In general they’re a friendly, happy and helpful people. You must be real tired?”

  “I am.” Kirsty answered. “And a bit confused. I never left the States before, it’s kind of different.”

  “And how!” Harriet burst out laughing and gestured at the rows of tin-roofed shacks and wooden vending stalls they were passing. “New York it ain’t,” she said in a mock Brooklyn accent. “But it grows on you and there are some beautiful parts of it. Maybe you’ll get to see them. Now, about your hotel . . .”

  Harriet Godfrey was roughly the same age as Kirsty. An energetic, cheerful woman who smiled a lot and had that firm confidence of someone who has travelled and seen plenty and remains sure of her own position in the order of things. She explained that there were very limited hotel facilities in Dar es Salaam. There were a couple of expensive ones but good. A couple expensive and bad, and several cheap and bad. In a tone friendly, but to brook no real argument, she suggested that Kirsty be their guest. They had plenty of room and she would be no trouble. Later, if Kirsty stayed on a while, she would help her find her own place.