by Wilbur Smith
Sir Percival frowned as he listened, then murmured, ‘You’re quite sure about this?’
The maître d’ nodded.
‘Then I think we should deal with the matter immediately. Get everything ready and we’ll be with you in a few minutes.’
The maître d’ nodded and walked away.
‘What was that about?’ Leon asked.
‘One of the boys was caught trying to steal food from the kitchen. Cheeky little bugger had been going through the dirty plates and picking off bits of uneaten meat.’
Stannard looked aghast. ‘But . . .’
Sir Percival patted him on the shoulder. ‘Sorry, my boy, must dash. If you want to watch the action, Leon, we’ll be in the yard behind the kitchens. I’m going to round up a few of the other chaps. Best be discreet, though. Don’t want to worry the memsahibs.’
The Wanjo chairman disappeared into the crowd of guests. Stannard watched him sidling up to another group of male guests for a brief, conspiratorial conversation and then saw the looks of excitement on their faces as Sir Percival walked away.
‘What’s going on?’ Stannard asked Leon.
‘How long have you been out here?’ Leon replied.
‘Almost three months.’
‘Huh . . . Time you saw the real Kenya. Follow me.’
Stannard was standing with Leon Courtney and another twenty or so party guests, formed up on one side of a courtyard where delivery vans unloaded foodstuffs and other goods for the Wanjohi Country Club’s kitchen, dining room and bar. Lamps mounted on the walls and headlights from cars that had been drawn up across the open end of the yard illuminated the scene. The gentlemen members smoked cigars, cradled freshly poured drinks and chatted among themselves. Their faces bore the flushed, sweaty look of white men, wearing formal attire in hot climates, who have eaten and drunk a great deal. The conversation was good-humoured, even joshing, like spectators waiting for a rugby match to begin.
Across the far side of the wall, facing Stannard and the others, a similar number of Wanjo staff members were assembled. They were mostly black, with a scattering of Indians, all in their various uniforms: chefs and their minions, waiters and waitresses, barmen and scullery maids. The Indians were talking to one another, but the Africans looked on in silence, their faces sullen, devoid of animation. They were waiting and watching while their masters gave their little display.
A wooden dining chair, like the one on which Stannard had sat for dinner, had been placed in the centre of the yard, with its back facing towards the kitchen. The maître d’ stood beside it, next to a young man, barely more than a boy, who wore the blue trousers and white top of a junior cook. This, Stannard realised, was the alleged food thief.
Stannard found he could not take his eyes off the boy. His face seemed as blank as all the others, but the longer Stannard looked, the more he detected the sign of the boy’s fear: the widened eyes, the chewed lip, the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
Stannard found his stomach tightening anxiously.
‘What’s going to happen to him?’ he asked Leon.
‘Wait, watch . . . and keep your thoughts to yourself.’
‘But . . .’
Leon Courtney was forty years older that Ronald Stannard, but he was taller, broader in the shoulder and imbued with the kind of authority a man acquires after a lifetime of leadership. He looked at Stannard with stern eyes.
‘Not a word, do you hear? For your own good.’
‘Yes, sir.’
A gentle ripple of applause broke out, reminding Stannard of the sound that had greeted him as he walked to the batting crease that afternoon. Sir Percival had emerged through the kitchen door and was striding across the yard, holding a horsewhip.
‘Oh, dear God . . .’ Stannard gasped and fell silent as he sensed Leon’s disapproval.
Sir Percival looked at the maître d’ and said, ‘If you’d be so good . . .’
‘Yes sir,’ the maître d’ replied.
He ordered the boy to take off his shirt and undo his belt. Stannard could see that the uniform trousers were too big for the boy’s skinny waist, so he now had to hold them up with one hand.
The maître d’ moved the boy so that he was standing with his back towards Sir Percival.
‘Hands here,’ the maître d’ said, tapping the top of the dinner chair.
The boy gripped the chair. His trousers fell down. The white men cheered.
‘So it’s not true about their cocks!’ one hooted. ‘Thieving bastard’s got a tiddler!’
Stannard knew what it felt like to be jeered at, to be helpless and humiliated. He was ashamed to be part of the same race as these crowing loudmouths, and he could not bear to see what was about to happen. Suddenly he felt an iron grip around his bicep.
‘Don’t make an exhibition of yourself,’ Leon hissed at him. ‘Stand up straight. Eyes front.’
Stannard forced himself to obey. He saw the boy’s hands clenched round the wooden chair-back. He saw his head bowed in shame and knees quivering with fear. He heard Sir Percival announce, ‘The penalty for theft, as laid down in club rules, is fifteen strokes of the whip.’
‘Hear! Hear!’ one of the men in the dinner jackets said.
Sir Percival raised his right arm and pulled it back, holding the horsewhip diagonally behind him. He took a sight on the accused boy’s buttocks, then swung his arm and brought the thick whip down to strike a wicked blow that made its victim wince in pain as a welt began to form across the top of his thighs.
The maître d’ pulled the food thief up straight and put him back in position for the second blow.
One after the other, the strokes rained down upon the boy’s naked body, criss-crossing his thighs, buttocks and back in a pattern of raised skin, bruised flesh and the occasional glint of blood where more than one strike had hit the same spot.
The boy cried out on the third stroke as the pain became more than he could bear in silence. By the sixth he had started to cry. Sir Percival, meanwhile, was scarlet-faced, his chest heaving with exertion, for he was well into his late sixties, overweight and unfit.
As the chairman paused to mop his face, the black servants looked on impassively. Stannard felt their silent rage at the cruelty and injustice they were witnessing.
The boy had been accused of stealing food that had been discarded by the men and women for whom it had been cooked. It was obvious the lad was in need of a decent meal, and Stannard was willing to bet he had parents and siblings who were equally malnourished. What possible harm had he done?
The longer it continued, the stronger Stannard’s feelings of physical nausea. The boy’s humiliation disturbed him the most. The physical wounds would heal, but the mental ones would fester for years. Stannard understood why Courtney was convinced that an accommodation had to be made with Kenya’s native people. The pent-up rage emanating from the onlooking staff was almost tangible, yet the whites who were egging Sir Percival on seemed oblivious to the troubles they were storing up for themselves.
By the tenth stroke, Sir Percival appeared to be struggling.
‘I say,’ someone declared, ‘poor old Percy’s in danger of a heart attack. Anyone else want a go?’
‘I’ll do it,’ another replied.
‘Attaboy, Quentin!’ came the shout as a man emerged from the scrum and marched towards Sir Percival.
He was old enough to be Stannard’s father and considerably fatter than the man he was taking over from – indeed, he was obese. He carried his weight like a weapon with which to bully anyone smaller or weaker than himself.
Something made Stannard glance at Leon Courtney. He had his eyes fixed on Quentin and his face bore an expression of loathing that seemed out of keeping with the self-confident, generous nature Courtney had demonstrated earlier.
‘Let me help you with that, old boy,’ Quentin said.
‘Much obliged,’ Sir Percival wheezed, handing over the whip.
Quentin smacked it gently against his palm a couple of times, then went to the boy and said something to him. The words were too quiet for anyone else to hear, but Stannard could see the boy’s eyes widen. Whatever Quentin had said had made him frightened.
With good reason. The last five strokes were delivered with a brutal fury. Each one drew blood; the beaten boy howled and brought a deeper look of savage satisfaction to Quentin’s face.
When it was over, the boy let go his grip on the chair and collapsed to the ground. Quentin stood over him for a moment, like a hunter over his dead prey, then walked to the other club staff and strolled past them, smacking the whip against his palm.
The message was clear. Quentin would do the same to any black Kenyan who broke the rules. Stannard was overcome with disgust at this vile sadist and the supposed gentlemen who were encouraging him on. He felt his stomach heave, his throat gag, and he bent over and was violently sick.
Billy Atkinson saw Stannard bent double, puking his guts out on the tarmac.
‘Aye, like I said, soft,’ he crowed.
His teammates, who had spent the afternoon running across the outfield fetching the balls that Stannard had hit to all corners, took delight in seeing their sporting tormentor humbled.
Stannard went out onto the lawn outside the clubhouse to get some fresh air. He was still there, trying to clean the mess off his clothes and shoes, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see his captain, Arthur Henderson, who said, ‘A word with you, young man.’
Stannard followed him to one side of the path.
‘That was a damn poor show, making an exhibition of yourself. I take it you had too much to drink.’
‘No sir, I would never do that,’ Stannard replied. ‘I’m teetotal.’
Henderson looked appalled. ‘Good grief!’ he gasped. ‘What was it then, touch of the dicky tummy?’
‘No, sir, it was . . .’ Stannard had suppressed his feelings once, when Leon was there to restrain him. But this time he could not stop himself. ‘I just couldn’t bear it, sir.’
‘Bear what?’
‘Seeing a native worker being beaten, sir. It was . . . completely unforgivable.’
Henderson’s eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, sir, if Britain stands for anything, it’s the rule of law. Surely that’s what we’re supposed to be spreading throughout the Empire. Seeing a native being beaten like that, without any chance to put his case . . . It was barbaric, sir, and . . . well . . . it made me sick to see British men behaving that way and no one lifting a finger.’
‘I never heard anything so pathetic in all my days,’ Henderson said. ‘Let me tell you why we’re here. Forget all that white man’s burden nonsense about giving the lesser races the benefits of our civilisation. The only thing that matters is keeping Kenya in the Empire. We’ve lost India. We’re losing Malaya. It’s a matter of time before the West African colonies and the Caribbean islands go too. But Kenya is the one jewel left in the imperial crown and we are not letting it out of our hands, d’you hear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘As for tonight’s show of discipline being barbaric, well, it probably was. But do you think any African would treat a thief any better? The Kikuyu beat their miscreants with a club called a kiboko. Believe me, young man, that boy thought he’d got off lightly just getting a few strokes of a whip.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But nothing. I spent five years in Somaliland. They believe in Muslim law there. That boy wouldn’t have been given a whipping, they’d have chopped his bloody hand off.’ Henderson paused. ‘Listen, Stannard, if I’d not seen you play cricket I’d have had you marked down as a lily-livered bleeding heart, and had you shipped back to England on the next boat out of Mombasa. But no one can face fast bowling the way you do without a bit of backbone, so I’ll tell it to you straight.
‘Those chaps you saw cheering their heads off because a young black man was being whipped are scared witless. They know that they, and their wives and children, are outnumbered a hundred to one by the natives. They live in dread of the day when the masses rise up against them. The only way we can keep a grip on the place is to make the blacks more scared of us than we are of them. The moment they scent weakness, or loss of conviction in the white population, the game’s up.’
‘Then surely it would be wise to come to some kind of peaceful settlement, sir.’
‘And what do you suppose the Kenyan nationalists would think if they heard we wanted to parley? They’d know at once that it was a sign of weakness, proof that we’d lost faith in our ability to hold on. We have to keep grinding their noses into the dirt. We can’t let up for a second. Believe me, Stannard, it’s them or us.’
Quentin De Lancey had greatly impressed the gentlemen of the Wanjohi Country Club by stepping in and giving a misbehaving servant the thrashing he deserved. He was leaning against the bar, accepting free drinks while he gave his admirers the benefits of his wisdom.
‘I’ve been out here thirty years, give or take, and my views remain what they have always been. The black man is nothing but vermin. Oh, I know there are some who like to dress up in fancy suits and play at being civilised, but mark my words, they’re savages under the skin.’
‘And they breed like rabbits, particularly the damn Kukes,’ said another Wanjo man, using the term by which the colonists referred to the Kikuyu. ‘We’re going to be swamped soon, if we’re not careful.’
‘Well, you know what they say,’ said De Lancey. ‘The only good Kuke is a dead Kuke. They’re no use as workers. Lazy buggers, never do what they’re told, always complaining.’
‘What do you make of this Mau Mau business? You’ve heard the stories, I’m sure. It’s time someone at Government House put a stop to it, I say.’
‘There’s only one way to put a stop to it,’ De Lancey replied. ‘Say what you like about old Adolf, but he had the right idea about dealing with people who are a threat to one’s race. We have to deal with the Kukes once and for all.’
‘The only good Kuke, and so forth.’
‘Correct. And we won’t be able to sleep easy in our beds until all the Kukes are good Kukes. Do I need to say more . . .?’
‘No, De Lancey, you don’t. I think we all take the point very clearly.’
There were about a dozen men clustered in a knot around the bar. Every one of them had understood what he was suggesting. And not one had disagreed.
The Schloss Meerbach had been built by an industrial emperor to match the country home of a king.
In the early 1850s, Maximilian II of Bavaria invited the steam engine magnate Gustav von Meerbach to stay at the royal residence of Hohenschwangau Castle. Gustav was impressed by this hilltop fortress that looked medieval yet was newly built, with all the creature comforts that the mid-nineteenth century had to offer. He purchased a swathe of land along the hills that rose from the shores of the Bodensee, the long, narrow lake that separated Bavaria from Switzerland. Having found the spot with the most picturesque views, he commissioned a residence of his own.
A gentleman might have ensured that his castle was smaller and less ostentatious in its decoration than his host’s pride and joy. But, like some of his descendants, Gustav was no gentleman. He built a monument to himself that matched his character. It was undeniably impressive, even magnificent. Yet it was monumental, almost bullying in its severity.
Gerhard and Saffron were staying at Schloss Meerbach while he saw to his family business. The first item on the agenda was a family meeting, held around a table in the library. Ceiling-high, black oak bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes, unopened for decades, ran along the two long walls of the rectangular room. At the far end, mullioned windows provided views across wooded hillsides to the lake, while the fourth wall was dominated by a massive stone fireplace, surrounded by the stuffed hunting trophies, displays of weaponry and armour, and portraits of stern, glowering von Meerbach men that were t
he typical ornaments throughout the castle.
As she looked around the table, Saffron paid little attention to these mementoes of the past. She was more interested in the men and women around her. To Saffron’s right sat Gerhard’s mother Alatha. She had been bullied and abused by both her husband Otto and her older son Konrad, but retained her dignity. She was over eighty, and the suffering she had endured could be seen on the lines traced across her graceful, fine-boned features. Yet she somehow possessed an air of serenity as if, after so many years of stormy weather, she had finally found safe harbour and calm waters.
The same could not be said of the woman seated opposite Alatha. Trudi von Meerbach, the first wife of Gerhard’s older brother Konrad, exuded bitterness and anger. It made her a difficult woman to be around, but Saffron could understand why Trudi was emotionally scarred. Barely a decade had passed since Konrad had told her that he was divorcing her on his terms and that if she resisted she would, in his words, ‘Spend the few remaining days of your life in a slave-labour camp.’
Saffron’s eyes came to rest on a tall, elegant, immaculately dressed man, seated opposite her, whose silver hair only added to his handsome dignity. He smiled at her and she was about to speak to him when Gerhard, seated at the head of the table, rose to his feet.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘As you know, I was for some time unable to contribute to the management of the Meerbach Motor Works. That is why, three years ago, before the Federal Republic of Germany came into being, I asked Isidore Solomons to become our Chief Executive Officer. For me, it was an easy decision. I trusted Isidore completely and I knew he had an unmatched understanding of our family’s portfolio. But for him, the situation was not so simple. Our family has, in the past, treated him appallingly, so he had every reason to refuse my invitation. But he did not and I am profoundly grateful to him for that. So now let me hand over to a man I am proud to call my friend – Isidore.’