by Isobel Chace
I was unaccustomed to awakening to a grey dawn. It had rained all night long and was still dripping through the trees and off the thatched coverings to the tents. Perhaps it would rain all day? I thought with an unaccountable feeling of depression. I hated it to rain in the daytime. My clothes felt damp to my touch as I pulled them on and there was a grey haze hanging over the whole camp which the sun was unlikely to dispel before lunchtime.
Hans Doffnang was already seated at the table when I went across to eat my breakfast. He smiled at me politely, half rising to his feet as I came in.
“You were right about the road,” he said heavily. “I have been to look at it this morning. It will have to be re-made before we can use it further.”
He looked about as gloomy as I felt.
“Oh well, if it had to happen, it’s better right at the beginning than at some other, more important stage,” I answered with resignation.
“It should never have happened at all!”
I felt sorry for him. ‘You weren’t to know,” I consoled him. “Building projects inevitably get held up in the rains here.”
“But not my projects!” he responded gently. “I should have been told of the dangers.”
I gave him a quizzical look. “They probably didn’t think the short rains would amount to much,” I told him. “Often they don’t. Only the long rains failed this year and so the ground is drier than ever. The top soil falls away under the weight of the water all too easily when it is a little more than dust. Then too the water sluices down underneath it and it falls away in great chunks. We often have landslides during the rains.”
“We’ve got one now,” he said gloomily.
“Oh well,” I comforted him, “when the rain stops, we’ll go and have a look. I daresay we can think of something to give it a firm surface. A few culverts will probably do the trick.”
He smiled at me a little more cheerfully. “How glad I am to have you here with me! You understand it all, my invaluable Miss deJong!”
“I try to,” I said. “But the sooner you learn a few words of English the better!” I added bitterly.
His bright blue eyes filled with laughter. “Why?” he asked.
I blushed. “Because you need to say some things yourself—”
“I am intrigued!” he teased me.
“Yes,” I said, “I daresay. Well, I have work to do even if you haven’t!”
I finished my breakfast in a hurry. The rain, dripping off the roof, had dug a trench in the dust around the boma where we were eating. I looked at it with acute displeasure, swinging my raincoat over my shoulders.
“Where will I find you?” Mr. Doffnang called after me.
“Down by the river,” I answered him. “I promised Katundi that I’d scrub the water filters for him.”
The Dutchman grinned. “Mind the crocodiles!” he warned me.
I made a face at him. “I will,” I assured him.
Cleaning the filters was a daily task that was necessary to keep the camp going. The waters of the river were never very clean and so every drop that we drank, and most of the water that we had to use for other purposes, had to be purified and stored. The filters did this job economically and highly effectively. They were dropped into the water and sucked it up, cleaning it on the way before it dripped out of the length of tubes at the other end into the waiting tank. The dirt that the filters kept out clung to the outside of the filters and had to be scrubbed off to allow the water to pass more quickly. It was a
dirty job and not one which I enjoyed very much.
Katundi had already pulled the filters out of the water when I joined him. Together, we dropped them into a number of handy buckets, watching the green algae spread out round them. I picked up one of the scrubbing brushes and set to with a will to restore the filters to their former pristine state.
Katundi gave me a sly smile. “Now you have seen the house of Bwana Canning? It would be easy to live happily in such a house! ”
It would indeed! I allowed myself to think about it for a moment before replying. “When the hotel is finished it will be even finer,” I said.
Katundi was not bluffed. “It is not good for a man to live for ever without a woman,” he stated, apparently to himself.
“There is always Janice,” I said dryly. “Memsahib Kemp.”
Katundi shook his head, grinning. “Many white people come to Africa, but Africa only accepts some of them. You will see! Memsahib Kemp thinks always of her English home!” He looked at me curiously. “But you think only of Africa, mama. Why is that?”
“I was born here,” I answered, laughing. “I have no other home to go to even if I wanted to.”
He considered that. “The Kikuyu have a custom called kuheera. This would give you a home—”
I stood up abruptly, throwing my scrubbing brush on to the ground. “I think we’ve finished, more or less,” I said with finality.
Katundi turned away. “Ndiyo, memsahib,” he said sourly. There was no familiar mama now. I was afraid that I had hurt his feelings, but I didn’t know what to say to make things better. The trouble was that I had heard of the Kikuyu custom and I knew exactly what he meant. In the old days any single woman who was left on the shelf could look about her for a suitable married man and offer herself to him. If she were accepted, the man was obliged to make her his legal wife, giving her a respected position in his tribe.
“I couldn’t!” I blurted out frankly.
Katundi nodded sagely. “I understand,” he assured me solemnly. Which was a great deal more than I did! “It is shauri Mungu, the affair of God.”
“Something like that,” I agreed. “I hardly know Bwana
Canning at all!” I added fiercely.
“No, but you have looked at him.”
He had been squatting all this time while he worked, but he rose now and began to put the clean filters back into the river, magnificently unconcerned about anything else. Considering what a hare he had started within my own emotions, I was resentful that he should shrug off the whole conversation so easily. Did he think that I didn’t know that ‘looking’ was a typical African euphemism for ‘loving’?
If it had been a less dreary morning I might have found something to laugh at in my own state of bereft annoyance, but my sense of humour had departed with the sun. The non-stop, dripping rain expressed my feelings all too well. What was needed, I thought, was action, and that meant work and lots of it. So, with a touch of grimness, I pulled my raincoat more closely about me and set off for the site and the damaged road to the top to see what I could do about it.
The gangs of men were sheltering under the trees. Like cats, they treated rain with fastidious displeasure, shaking the water off their clothes only to watch it gathering again in unwelcome rivulets. The only happy creature was a weaver bird, chortling with song, as it carried out some rapid repairs to its perfectly woven pendulous nest that hung from a nearby acacia tree. The flash of yellow coming and going did much to restore my failing spirits. We needed the rain. Especially did the animals need the rain and a break in the drought that had gone on without a break for more than a year. From where I stood I could see the elephants below, crossing the river on their way to the plateau and the new feed that would now spring out of the ground, now that the rain had finally come.
I was surprised to find Hans Doffnang there before me. He was standing with an air of solid dejection, looking at the precipitous naked rock that was all that remained of the road.
“Well?” I greeted him.
“It is not well!” he snapped back. “Not well at all! We shall have to dynamite our way into the rock to provide a proper foundation.”
I grimaced. “Let’s do it, then.” I said.
“No dynamite!” he said flatly.
We stood in the rain and considered the situation. Finally it was decided that Mr. Doffnang would go back to the camp and arrange for Johnny to fly to Nairobi to pick up some dynamite and some other supplies that we neede
d, while I would get the men to clear the mess of earth and roots and small rocks that had descended to the foot of the rocky table where the hotel was to be built.
The men worked in teams. Some of the teams were formed by men of the same tribe working together, but others were mixed, so there was no rule about it. Their foremen took their job very seriously indeed and there was a great feeling of rivalry between one team and another as to who could do the most work and therefore earn the highest rates of pay. They were reluctant now to come out from under the trees into the full force of the rain.
“It is dangerous,” one of the foremen told me. “Perhaps there is more to fall down on top of us!”
We looked at the newly revealed naked rock in silence. “Meanwhile,” I said, “nothing can go up or come down.”
The men nodded silently. They were mostly dressed in cotton drill shorts and torn white vests, stained rust-coloured by the red earth. Some of them had ancient well-worn felt hats, but most of them did not even have that between themselves and the pelting rain.
“It would be good to collect the good soil for the garden,” they said. They selected a place where the mounds of earth could be moved to and stored, all of which involved endless conversation, argument and good advice. Then, at last, they picked up their hoes and, standing in lines and chanting as they went, they attacked the fallen earth, dumping it into enormous plaited baskets, while yet others carried it away from the bottom of the would-be service road.
By lunchtime we had cleared about half of the fallen earth. Little streams of water gushed down the rocks, ruining our efforts by washing the finer soil down into the river. Fallen trees added to the task, for some of them were extremely heavy. In the end I organised a special team of men to cut up these trees into manageable pieces, some of which could be burned in the kitchen, and some of which were stacked into neat piles for later use.
Mr. Doffnang was pleased with our efforts.
“We have only to blast our way into that rock and we’ll have a road for all seasons!” he exclaimed, beaming at the progress the
men had made.
“I hope so,” I said.
He gave me a solicitous look. “You must come back to camp,” he fussed over me. ‘You need dry clothes and—” he smiled as he caught sight of my face “—a good wash also! There is no need for you to wait here longer!”
I went back with him willingly enough. It had been quite a day.
“What are the others doing?” I asked him.
“Playing poker in the bar,” he answered, his voice harsh with disapproval. “How can a young girl do such a thing?”
I chuckled. “Why not? I expect she’s rather good at it. She doesn’t give much away, does she?”
He seemed to resent any criticism of Janice as much as he resented her playing cards for money.
“You must tell her!” he insisted. ‘You must tell her that it is bad for her to do such a thing!”
I shook the rain off my eyelashes, laughing at him. “You must learn some English and then you’d be able to tell her yourself!” I told him.
“It is shameful!” he said with dignity.
I licked my lips, wondering how best to take his mind off the matter. “Perhaps she doesn’t agree with you,” I suggested diffidently. “It doesn’t seem very serious to me.”
He gave me a long, hard look. “No,” he agreed slowly. “Not serious for you perhaps, but for her, with no aim in life for her energies, it is a bad thing!”
I raised my eyebrows. It seemed to me that Janice knew exactly where she was going. “Why don’t you tell her that? I’ll help you, if you like?”
He shook his head with a deep sigh of regret. “It would be no good,” he admitted. “But to see a fine woman, so fragile, so beautiful, and not to want her to be perfect, is very hard! Why is she here? Why is she not in a good home, the wife of a good man?”
“I think she likes what she’s doing,” I observed dryly. There was really very little difference between Katundi’s and Hans Doffnang’s view of the proper place of women, I thought.
Mr. Doffnang squeezed my arm and smiled deep into my eyes. “I think she will like to be a married woman better!” he insisted confidently. His smugness was almost unbearable!
“Why don’t you ask her?” I suggested crossly.
He fingered his smooth, round face thoughtfully. “When I am ready I will tell her what I think,” he announced, well pleased with his own private thoughts. “And she will listen then,” he said.
I had my own doubts about that, but something warned me that this was not the moment to voice them. Thank goodness, I thought, that the next day was Sunday. Sunday had a calm, confident quality that was not to be found on other days of the week. And besides, I was going to see Hugo Canning. It was a little unnerving to discover how much that meant to me, but then, with the rain still sluicing down, nothing was unmixed joy.
It wasn’t to be expected!
CHAPTER FIVE
SUNDAY was different. The sun shone bright and clear over a land that was suddenly green and fruitful. The trees had come into flower and the birds were in a fever of activity, taking advantage of the thousands of insects that had apparently come to life during the night. It is impossible to describe the change that had taken place in just a few hours. What had been dry sticks a couple of days before were now leafy, flowering bushes and trees, each one incredibly beautiful. The gnidia trees and bushes had broken out into bright yellow flowers that would later fade to brown; fire bushes, originally from Colombia, were living up to their name; Australian flame trees were covered with masses of small scarlet blooms, which the indigenous Nandi flame trees did their best to compete with, merging into the lovely rosy red of the red flowering gum trees. Even the baobab trees had produced their white, hanging flowers that would lead to its equally odd oblong, woody fruits filled with pulp which, together with its leaves, are edible.
Impossible to describe too was the variety of greens that had replaced the sunbaked straw of the dry weather, or the carpets of wild flowers that splurged over the ground everywhere one looked. It is an odd quirk of nature that where her opportunities are few, she runs riot when she can, leaving memories of colour and abundance to last through the long, long time of drought.
We were all up early that Sunday. The brightness of the day brought us out of our beds, hungry and expectant, long before
our normal hour. When I came back from the shower I found Janice concentrating on a series of bird photographs that she was taking in her spare time, hoping to publish them in a book later on. She had just finished a whole lot of colour photographs of the southern carmine bee-eater that occasionally passed through the camp in a flash of bright pink. Now she was trying to capture the local members of the starling family. Most of the ones that fought for the crumbs from our table were the redbreasted superb starlings, though one or two of the even more spectacular splendid glossy starlings came and went at intervals. Much more magnificent than the starlings of Europe, these were colourful birds that were rewarding to photograph, though perhaps not quite as exciting as their even more magnificent oriental relations, the birds of paradise.
Janice looked up from her camera. “Hullo,” she drawled, and pushed her fair hair out of her eyes with one hand. “I hope you were properly flattered by Hugo’s invitation to tea?”
I laughed. “I was, as a matter of fact,” I said.
“But you enjoyed it?”
“I liked his animals,” I hedged.
Her eyes mocked me. “Is that all? Perhaps that is what Hugo meant—”
“Meant by what?” I asked indignantly.
She smiled and shrugged. “He’s the complete bachelor, isn’t he? You know, I wasn’t trying to mislead you by saying that he only allowed me to visit his animals. What I meant was that he feels safe with me. Evidently he feels safe with you too!”
“Safe?” I repeated.
“Why not?” she grunted. “You’re not hoping for a less platonic
relationship, are you?”
Her amusement made me blush. “No!” I said faintly.
She turned her attention to her camera. “I thought not,” she said, a thread of laughter running through her voice. “We’ll have to make do with competing for the attention of Hans Doffnang, where I have to admit you have a head start by being able to speak his language.”
“Er—yes,” I said, even more faintly.
“The idea doesn’t appeal to you?” she asked.
“N—no,” I admitted.
“Perhaps you prefer Johnny?”
I gathered together my scattered wits. “I don’t think I’m entering the lists at all,” I said.
She sighed, smiling with a total friendliness that was very appealing, even to me. “How dull! Never mind, I expect you know best what you’re about. Could you move a little? You’re frightening the birds.”
I hurried on to my tent and left her to it. I felt oddly deflated by her remarks. The truth was that Hugo Canning filled my horizons whenever I was near to him.
I could conjure up at will the line of his jaw and the way it sat on his strong, masculine neck. Or the slight flare of his nostrils when he was thinking. Or even the way his eyes crinkled when he looked into the sun. It wasn’t something I had wanted to happen! It even frightened me when I thought about it, how aware I was of every detail of the way he looked, when other, nicer men made little or no impression on me at all.
Did Janice know that he was a confirmed bachelor? She might have been only guessing, for I was pretty sure that Hugo knew exactly what effect he had on the females with whom he came in contact. And he was far too normal not to enjoy the flutter he caused in many a female breast. But it was disturbing all the same to feel myself plunging deeper and deeper into the mire of his attraction when all it could possibly bring me was heartache and regret. I was not such a fool as to think that Clare deJong was going to bowl him over as easily as he had her!
On the other hand, I was enough of a fool to dress with particular care for my Sunday treat. I had never seen Johnny’s aeroplane, so I had no idea how big it was, but I was reasonably sure that my tailored trousers and the neat cream shirt that went over them were both suitable and good to look at. I couldn’t see what I looked like very well in the one looking-glass that my tent boasted, but I felt comfortable and I kept telling myself that it didn’t really matter what Hugo thought anyway.