Legacy of War

by Wilbur Smith

  He got down on his haunches and shouted over the noise of the storm, ‘Zander, climb on my back!’

  The little boy did as he was told, clinging on with all his might as Gerhard picked up Kika and ran across the slippery lawn towards the house. Several times Gerhard nearly lost his footing, wincing with pain as Zander pulled at the hair he was holding as tightly as his pony’s reins. They reached the steps that led up to the terrace.

  Gerhard crossed the paving stones to the side of the house and hammered on the frame of the French windows. The moment he did it, he realised his effort was futile. No one inside could possibly hear him over the din of the wind and rain.

  He crouched again, a few feet from the windows, and placed Kika on the ground. Zander scrambled from his back.

  Gerhard told the children, ‘Don’t move. Zander, look after your sister. Hold her tight and stay where you are.’

  He examined the windows, considered the damage he was about to do to the building’s defences and concluded he had no alternative. He gave a hefty kick with his boot at the line where the two sets of doors met. The wood gave but the lock held. Gerhard kicked harder, again, and again. Finally, the door frames buckled inwards. He shoulder-barged his way through, then turned to his children.

  ‘Come inside! Quick, quick! Follow me!’

  They ran through the garden room and into the main hall. Gerhard heard Leon’s voice coming from the dining room, followed by the sound of laughter. He and Harriet had guests.

  Gerhard charged into the dining room, soaked, wild-eyed and followed by two bedraggled children. Ignoring the expressions on the servants’ faces, the cries of alarm and shouts of protest, he slammed his fist down on the mahogany table.

  ‘Listen to me!’ he shouted, silencing the room. ‘Leon, tell your boys to go to the gunroom and fetch every gun you’ve got, and every round of ammunition.’

  He looked around the table at the six guests, wondering which of these middle-aged men and women in their dinner jackets and silk dresses would be up to the fight that was heading their way.

  Gerhard lowered his voice. There was no need to turn alarm into panic. What he was about to say was enough.

  ‘The Mau Mau are coming. There isn’t a second to lose.’

  Leon Courtney took command because it was his house and his land. He did so with the controlled urgency that came from beginning his working life as a professional soldier and serving as an officer in the First World War. He was sixty-five years old, but exuded the energy of a man twenty years his junior.

  ‘How many of them are there?’ Leon asked.

  ‘Three trucks,’ Gerhard replied. ‘I couldn’t tell how many men were in them. But one of them fired at me with a sub-machine gun.’

  ‘So at least thirty men, possibly more than forty, all armed. How soon will they be here?’

  ‘Depending on the surface conditions and visibility, I’d say somewhere between three to five minutes.’

  ‘Call it three.’ Leon allowed himself a few seconds’ thought, then turned to Ali Mashraf, one of the two servants who had been waiting on the table. ‘Ali, go to Mpishi. Tell him to assemble his staff in the kitchen, immediately.’

  Leon focused on his guests. ‘We’re in this together, and ladies, that includes you.’

  ‘You can count on us,’ said Harriet, before any of the other wives had the chance to even hint otherwise. Her words also served to make it impossible for any of the men to back down. Dorian was the first of them to speak.

  ‘I’m right behind you, old man. Brothers in arms, eh?’

  Leon nodded at Dorian. ‘Thanks, Dor,’ he said quietly. ‘Means a lot.’ Then he turned his eyes back to the rest of his guests. ‘Any who feel confident in your shooting skills are welcome to join us at the barricades. Any who don’t can serve as loaders. I advise you to take off any jewellery that might attract a Mau Mau’s attention, and shoes or garments that impede your ease of movement. Gentlemen, come with me.’

  Leon looked at the second servant, whose name was Johnson Kiprop, and added, ‘You too.’

  Gerhard had kept one eye on the second hand of his watch. Leon had assessed the situation and made his first dispositions in under a minute. Harriet was already organising the ladies with a similar degree of efficiency. It was no less than he had expected, but he felt the reassurance that comes from knowing that the people managing a crisis know what they’re doing.

  Leon led the way to the gunroom, followed by his three guests, Kiprop and Gerhard, who was wiping the rainwater from his face and hair with a napkin he’d picked up from the table. As he walked along the hall to the stairs that led into the cellars, Gerhard considered the men who would be his comrades-in-arms tonight. Directly behind Leon came his youngest brother Dorian. He was smaller and more slightly built than Leon, and was the artist of the family, taking after their mother. His temperament was much more light-hearted than Leon’s, less burdened by the responsibilities that came with being the eldest son, and he had not served in either World War. But Dorian was a Courtney nonetheless, and the way that he had reacted to Leon’s announcement that the Mau Mau were heading in their direction left Gerhard in no doubt that when the time came, he would stand his ground and fight.

  The other two men were somewhat younger: in their mid-forties, Gerhard guessed. He recognised their faces and knew their names, Bill Finney and Tommy Sharpe, but he had never said more than a passing word to either man. But he reassured himself with the thought that Leon Courtney did not invite men to dinner at Lusima unless he not only liked but also respected them. And that respect was not lightly won.

  ‘Gentlemen, most of you have been to war, and you’ve all shot game. I don’t need to tell you how to handle a gun,’ Leon said, taking weapons down from the racks and handing them out to his guests. ‘I suggest you fight alongside your memsahibs. Take one rifle and one shotgun per couple. The rifle will drop a man at longer range, but you can’t beat a shotgun for close combat.’

  As Leon dealt with the guns, Gerhard went to the cabinet where the ammunition was stored and began distributing 12-bore cartridges for the shotguns, with belts in which to place them, and three-round clips for the rifles.

  ‘There’s not as much ammo as I’d like,’ Leon said. ‘Put an order into Holland & Holland a couple of weeks ago, hasn’t arrived yet. We’ll just have to make the best of what we’ve got.’

  ‘Have no fear,’ Finney assured him. ‘We’ll make every round count.’ He grinned. ‘Be like Rorke’s Drift all over again.’

  ‘Good man, Bill,’ Leon said. ‘Listen, you and Muriel take the dining room to the left of the front door. Tommy and Jane, take the drawing room to the right. That way, any frontal assault will have to face two lines of fire. Dorian, I want you and Sophie in the garden room, covering any attack across the terrace.

  ‘I advise you all to draw the curtains across any windows to reduce the risk of flying glass. Leave enough to shoot and see through, like the arrow-slit in a castle wall.

  ‘Gerhard, you’ll be up on the first floor. You should get a decent field of fire from the master bedroom. But keep your wits about you. There’s a bathroom window to the side on the first floor. We can’t have anyone getting in there.

  ‘I will position myself in the hall, which is the easiest place from which to issue orders, and also to reinforce any room that is under particular pressure. Kiprop, you take the remaining guns and a carton of ammunition. Mpishi and his people will need them.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise, old boy?’ Tommy Sharpe asked. ‘I should have thought that the fewer black men with guns, the better.’

  ‘I think I know my people,’ Leon replied, strapping his old Webley service revolver around his waist. ‘But we’ll soon find out.’

  Leon had reserved one other weapon for his own use – the Holland & Holland 470 Royal Nitro Express rifle that he’d been given in 1906.

  ‘One last hunt, eh, old friend?’ he murmured. ‘Let’s make it a good one.’

/>   There was a sad smile on Leon’s face as he picked up the final weapon in the defenders’ arsenal, Eva’s customised Webley, with its ivory-handled grip. Then he bucked himself up, said, ‘Let’s get on with it,’ and led his men to the ground floor as fast as they could go.

  Bill, Tommy and Dorian quickly explained Leon’s plan to their wives. Gerhard found his children with Harriet. Leon joined them, loaded Eva’s pistol and gave it to Harriet along with six spare rounds. She still had her evening bag in her hand. Without a thought she opened the bag, held it upside down and let its contents fall on the floor: her lipstick, compact, handkerchief and a cigarette lighter she kept in case a guest should ever need a light. Then she poured the spare ammunition into her bag.

  ‘Right,’ she said, ‘I’m ready. What do you need me to do?’

  ‘Look after the little ones,’ Leon replied. ‘Take them down to the wine cellar, lock the door, barricade it as best you can. I pray to God you never have to fire this gun, but if you do, I beg you, keep three rounds in reserve.’ For a moment, his air of assurance wavered. ‘If the Mau Mau . . .’

  ‘It’s all right, my darling. I understand,’ Harriet said, resting her hand on his arm. She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Go and do your duty, and I will do mine.’

  Harriet addressed Zander and Kika. ‘Children?’

  ‘Yes, Grandma.’

  Zander’s voice was uncertain. He had heard enough to understand that the Mau Mau were coming and there was going to be a fight. He looked on his father and grandfather as his greatest heroes, so he assumed that they would win the fight. And he knew that he, as a boy, had a duty to be strong and not cry. But even so, he was very frightened.

  Kika, for her part, was standing with her eyes wide and her thumb in her mouth, understanding nothing of what was happening, but feeling the tension and anxiety in the air.

  ‘Kika?’ Harriet said.

  ‘Say, “Yes, Grandma”,’ Zander said, glad of the chance to seem grown up.

  ‘Yes, Grandma,’ Kika said, very softly, her lips beginning to tremble around her thumb.

  ‘Come with me.’

  The children said nothing, but turned their eyes towards Gerhard, wanting his reassurance. He crouched, embraced them both, kissed the tops of their heads and said, ‘It’s all right. Everything is going to be fine. Do what Grandma tells you.’

  Zander and Kika nodded solemnly and followed Harriet to the cellar.

  Gerhard watched them go. Then he raced upstairs, opened the curtains and looked into the night.

  The storm was abating. The speed with which African weather changed was unlike the slow, gradual shifts of European weather. Within no time it would cease completely.

  It took a few seconds for Gerhard’s night vision to start coming back and then he saw them, away to the distance: three pairs of lights.

  He ran out of the bedroom, onto the first-floor landing and shouted to the ground floor.

  ‘I can see headlights, no more than a kilometre . . .’ He corrected himself. ‘Half a mile off. They’re almost here!’

  *

  As Kiprop placed the large carton of ammunition on the kitchen table, then unhooked the five rifles he had slung around his shoulders and laid them beside the ammo, Leon looked around the room. It struck him how unfamiliar he was with it. This was Harriet’s kingdom. With help from Mpishi and the housekeeper, Tabitha, she ran the household with impeccable efficiency and made it gently, but firmly clear she could manage without interference from her husband. His energies were best directed at the farms, tourist income and overseas businesses that paid the bills.

  It was with the dispassionate eye of a soldier sizing up a defensive position that he considered the kitchen’s layout. To his left, two dressers, laden with crockery and serving vessels flanked the door that led into the larder and storeroom, which he knew was windowless. To his right, the wood-fired range cooker occupied the centre of the room, with low wooden cupboards and shelves to either side, topped by stone worktops. The only windows were at the end of the room, opposite the door: one above the double-sink and another in the door that led out to a small yard dividing the main house from the separate servants’ quarters.

  For an instant, Leon wondered whether they should abandon the house and make their stand in the servants’ block, which was smaller and more defensible. But pride prevented him taking that option: I’m damned if I’ll be driven from my own home without a fight.

  But would the staff join him in that fight? They were lined up on the far side of the kitchen table: five men and three women in various states of dress and wakefulness.

  ‘The Mau Mau are coming,’ Leon told them. ‘Soon they will be here and we will have to fight them. You know that if they are victorious, they will show no mercy to any black man or woman who has fought against them. I give you the choice. You may leave now. Or you can stand by me and we will battle them together. What do you say?’

  Silence fell upon the room. For a moment Leon thought he might have misjudged the loyalty of his people. Perhaps, in the end, the primal, atavistic bonds of tribe and race counted for more than those of a family and a household. But Mpishi stepped forward.

  The Sudanese cook had served the Courtney family for more than thirty years. His ebony skin was criss-crossed with the lines of age and the few tufts of hair on his head were all silver. He squared his shoulders, looked Leon in the eye and said, ‘Courtney, Bwana, the men will stand and fight.’

  ‘And the women, too,’ Tabitha added firmly.

  Leon smiled. ‘Good.’ He handed out the rifles to Mpishi, Ali Mashraf and the other three kitchen totos. ‘Ladies, find the sharpest knives and largest cleavers. There will be a lot of meat to butcher. And boil big pots of oil and water. The Mau Mau have had a long drive. They will need a nice hot bath when they arrive.’

  Leon heard Gerhard’s voice calling from the landing. He could tell by the looks on his servants’ faces that they had caught the warning message too.

  ‘Not long now,’ Leon said. ‘Our enemies will surely attack the rear of the house. They will try to come in through this kitchen. But you will stop them. I know you will.’

  Leon left the kitchen and made a quick tour of the other three rooms he had chosen as defensive positions. He wished all his husband-and-wife teams good luck, and gave them the same message he had been taught as a young subaltern in the King’s African Rifles, almost fifty years earlier: ‘Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.’

  Muriel Finney had never fired a gun in her life, though she had frequently loaded for her husband, who was a crack shot. They agreed to work on their usual basis, so that Bill would always have a loaded gun at his disposal. The other two women, however, were determined to do their bit on the front line.

  ‘Try to take turns to shoot,’ Leon advised them. ‘That way, if one of you has to reload, the other can still keep firing.’

  ‘I reckon I should be loading and leaving all the dirty work to Sophie,’ Dorian remarked blithely, as if this were a jolly after-dinner game, rather than a matter of life and death. ‘She grew up shooting duck on the Delta. Her aim is infinitely better than mine.’

  Sophie smiled sweetly. ‘If you want to serve me, darling, feel free.’

  Leon gave a dry chuckle. ‘If you two could make up your minds, I’d be much obliged. Meanwhile, let’s get something across those French windows.’

  There was a low wooden cabinet, about six feet long and made of heavy black wood, lined up against one wall. It was too heavy to lift, so Leon took one end and Dorian the other. They started manhandling it across the parquet floor towards the opening that Gerhard had made when he first entered.

  The sound of diesel engines rumbled across the lawn, compelling the two men to redouble their efforts.

  ‘Bloody hell, Leon, what do you keep in here? Cannonballs?’ Dorian grunted, straining to get the cumbersome brute in place.

  ‘Bits of crockery, I think,’ Leon replied. One of the cabinet�
�s doors popped open and a large china serving dish slipped out and crashed onto the floor. ‘And old copies of Punch.’

  ‘Splendid! If we get bored with fighting we can amuse ourselves with the cartoons.’

  ‘No chance of that,’ said Sophie. ‘They’re here.’

  The two Courtney brothers took their places beside Sophie, kneeling behind the cabinet, looking towards the garden. While the men were moving the furniture, Sophie had opened the cartons of rifle and shotgun ammunition that had been brought up from the gunroom. She placed them within easy reach.

  Three shots rang out, coming from inside the house, but above them.

  ‘Hold your damn fire, Meerbach,’ Leon muttered.

  The vehicle was now visible, barely thirty yards away with its lights off. But there was no sign of any men. They were still aboard.

  The truck reached the foot of the steps. The three defenders tensed, waiting for the first Mau Mau to get out and charge towards them.

  But no one dismounted. The truck kept moving. As the sound of the straining engine rose still higher, Leon shouted, ‘Christ! They’re driving right up the bloody steps!’

  He opened fire and the other two followed. At point-blank range, every round hit the truck, but it seemed as impenetrable as a great steel rhino as it climbed inexorably towards them.

  As Leon, Dorian and Sophie frantically reloaded, the truck reached the top of the steps. When all four of its wheels were securely on the terrace, the driver braked.

  The engine was cut and in the terrible stillness that followed, Leon said, ‘Easy does it. Wait till they’re out in the open, then pick your targets and—’

  Without warning, the truck’s headlamps were turned on. Two dazzling white beams shone into the garden room.

  ‘I can’t see!’ Dorian shouted, taking his left hand off his gun and holding it up to his eye. ‘I can’t bloody well see!’

  And that was when the Mau Mau climbed out of the truck and charged.