Tefuga

by Peter Dickinson

  “Are you sure?”

  “There’s no way of knowing. Assuming the diary to be veridical within the limits of my mother’s perceptions, we know what happened up to and including the Tefuga Incident. At that point she says she is going to give it to Elongo to bury in the bush, and we know that that did not happen. That is all we know until my father’s death. You might almost say I brought us all here in an attempt to fill that gap. If so, I am none the wiser. Did Elongo give it to him after she’d gone? Did she leave it for my father to find? Did he purloin it from her cases as a keepsake?”

  “Why don’t you ask the Sarkin?”

  “I’ve tried more than once. He changes the subject.”

  “You don’t say anything about it in the script, Nigel.”

  “Failure of nerve. As you say, it changes everything. Suppose she left it behind as a way of telling him …”

  “I’m not going to think about it. I’m going to forget you told me; I don’t want to know any of that till we’ve got this thing finished. It’s not in the script, that’s all that matters. Talk about something else, Nigel.”

  “I was reading, if you remember.”

  “Be like that.”

  But as Jackland searched for his place there was a rattle of the door-knob. Miss Tressider flipped a sheet over her body. Jackland rose and tied the belt of his robe before crossing to unbolt the door. These were perfunctory proprieties. The rest of the unit were of course aware of the affair, perhaps rather more interested in it than usual because of the gossip value of anything to do with Miss Tressider, slightly inquisitive too because of the disparity in ages, while those in the men’s quarters welcomed the extra sleeping space. The sheet enhanced, if anything, the Baudelarian lassitude of Miss Tressider’s pose.

  The visitor was Trevor Fish. Though the door, in its brief opening and closing, had revealed a dawn well short of the full mid-morning swelter, he leaned his back against it and gasped exaggeratedly. Part of his stock-in-trade was such pantomime gestures.

  “Sorry to intrude,” he said. “Malc says could you come and reason with your military pal, Nigel.”

  “What’s up?”

  “It’s Fred’s fault. He slipped the guards on the launch a bottle of vodka. He thought if he got them insensible he and the boys could shift the launch in the small hours and we could shoot the departure as planned. Nice try, except that they found they couldn’t shift the launch. Now Major Kadu’s rolled up and found his men tiddly. He’s a follower of the dear old Koran, himself, of course, so his reaction is not one of pleasure. He’s refusing to let anyone near the landing-stage and he wants to commandeer a truck to take him in to Kiti. Malc thought he could smooth it all over with the naira treatment.”

  “Dear God in heaven!” said Jackland.

  “Bribed him?” said Miss Tressider.

  “The one obvious sea-green incorruptible in the landscape,” said Jackland. “Typical Malcolm. What happened?”

  Fish put a hand to his forehead, closed his eyes and shuddered. The shudder prolonged itself beyond the needs of drama.

  “Are you all right, Trevor?” said Miss Tressider.

  “Death scene just coming up. May I die in your arms, Mary? I’ve got a lovely aria ready.”

  Jackland, who had been moving towards the chair on which his clothes lay, turned and came back. He laid a hand on Fish’s forehead.

  “Come and sit down,” he said.

  “It’s just something I’ve eaten.”

  “Let’s hope not. That could be a sight worse. Come and sit down.”

  Fish was obviously about to refuse when his body decided otherwise. Jackland helped him to the chair, took a clinical thermometer from a shelf, dipped it into a bottle and slid it into Fish’s mouth. Fish grimaced at the taste of disinfectant. Jackland started to dress, talking as he did so.

  “There’s always at least one who thinks he can skip the chloroquin,” he said. “It seems to be a law of nature. It’s in all their contracts.”

  Fish mumbled round the thermometer. Jackland ignored him.

  “There’s some point if you’re a cameraman and the pills give you teleopsia, I suppose, but then you shouldn’t take on jobs like this. Feeling sick isn’t enough. Let’s have a look … A hundred and two. Straight malaria, I should think.”

  He fetched a glass of water and counted pills into his palm.

  “Knock them back,” he said. “Lie on my roll while I go and talk to the Major. Do you mind, Mary? Then, far as you can when we’re shooting, try and stay in the shade.”

  “He can’t possibly work today,” said Miss Tressider.

  “Yes he can. In my father’s time at any given moment one fifth of the political officers had malaria, a tenth had something else and another tenth were drunk or going insane. Forty per cent at a rough estimate. You just stuffed yourself with quinine and carried on. If Trevor doesn’t show up and Malcolm learns why he’ll insist on fining him. That’ll mean a fight with the unions. I’ve got a whole eight-part series to put together when this lot’s over, remember.”

  “I don’t think I feel like doing the departure today,” said Miss Tressider.

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I want to do it last of all. I’ve just realized. Don’t let’s have a row, Nigel. I would like to do that scene last, really. It’s just a feeling I have. But if you force me I’ll show just why I’m going to make such a terrific Bernhardt one day. Go and tell Malcolm I’m being unreasonable. I’ve been as sweet as pie so far, haven’t I? That’s because I rather fancied you. But has anyone ever told you what I did when they were shooting Jade Lilies? Remind Malcolm about that. Oh, I know what. Tell him I don’t feel I can do the departure scene till I’ve been and seen Tefuga. I do want to go. That’s honest. You can think of a reason for him to leave Trevor behind. Malcolm will have a lovely time switching his schedules round.”

  “He’ll want Trevor for that.”

  “I need Trevor to play piquet with. Don’t be obstinate, Nigel. I’m going to get my way, can’t you see? Malcolm will love it, really. You aren’t a real director till you’ve got your very own Tressider story to tell people.”

  “You would seriously prefer to shoot the departure scene last of all?”

  “I insist on shooting the departure scene last of all because I shall do it best. That’s true, Nigel. And it’s true it would help to have gone to Tefuga. Give my love to Major Kadu.”

  “I forgot,” muttered Fish. “He wants to nick one of the trucks.”

  Miss Tressider raised her eyebrows.

  “The card-play is going to be of less than Olympic standard,” said Jackland. “I’ll tell Malcolm he’s got a touch of sunstroke, whatever that may mean.”

  Miss Tressider lifted her hand towards him. He touched it with his fingertips as he went past the bed. When he had gone she lay for a while, relaxed beyond languor. Only her face occasionally changed, as if in response to attitudes she was experimenting with in front of some inward mirror. At length she reached to the shelf beside the bed and took from a shallow metal case a volume like a school exercise book, but thicker and better bound. It was composed of sheets of sketch-paper interleaved with ruled pages. Both kinds were covered with large, slanting handwriting in pencil. Miss Tressider closed her eyes and slid a finger at random between two pages. The action was clearly a deliberate ritual. Keeping her finger in the place she put on a pair of large-lensed spectacles, then opened the book and began to read.

  Four

  Thurs Jan 3, 1924

  I’ve had my first fever. Only six days but it seemed weeks. I missed Christmas completely! You get hot and then you get cold and that feels like a day and a night, you see. And the room’s dark, of course. It wasn’t too bad, actually, rather like flu, only now I’m quivering all through like a gong someone’s just finished hitting—that’s the quinine, Ted says.


  He was terribly worried, poor man. He can’t help thinking women are feebler than men but he didn’t really want to get the doctor all the way from Birnin Soko, ’cos that would let Mr de Lancey tell Kaduna I was being a nuisance. I told him he was better than a doctor—not just to please him—I really don’t want another white man here. Ted slept in his dressing-room and Elongo had a mattress in the dining-room in case I needed anything. They were both marvellous. Too tired to write any more.

  Oh, before I stop. KB must have heard somehow. He sent me a present. It was a fever fetish! A thin bone—part of a monkey, Ted thinks—with green feathers tied round one end and stained with something, blood, I think. Rather horrible. Ted says he’s going to keep it in his office for next time he has to work through a fever.

  Fri Jan 11

  We’ve started our language lessons. Ted says it’s a rotten idea me learning Kiti. He thinks I’d do much better learning Arabic, which a few educated people can speak all over the north, but no one talks Kiti except here. I don’t care. I’m a terribly ordinary person, I told Ted, but if I become the only woman in the world who speaks Kiti—the only white woman, I mean!—then that’ll be something a bit extraordinary about me. Ted just said I was the only woman in the world who’d thought fit to get married to him and that was quite enough extraordinariness to be getting on with. That’s his idea of a compliment! Isn’t he funny!

  I’m not surprised no one else talks Kiti—it’s a pig! To begin with, you have to sing it, almost, ’cos the same word means different things according to how you pitch it, tiny changes I could hardly hear at first, high to low or low to high, or with a dip in the middle, and so on. And most of the words have strong and weak forms, and you say things quite differently if you’re talking to a friend or a stranger—oh, lots more than just words and grammar to learn. Hausa’s child’s play compared.

  For instance, counting. First you go to twenty on your fingers and toes. They all have different names, no pattern at all. The first twenty are man numbers, and the next twenty are baboon numbers, and then fox numbers, then spider numbers, then snake numbers—tho’ spiders have eight legs and no fingers or toes and snakes don’t have anything at all! But at least you’ve got to a hundred, so you put a stick on the ground and stand on it to remind yourself and start again! Even Elongo agrees it’s funny.

  He’s a dear. So intelligent and thoughtful. He quite understands that if I teach him English he mustn’t put on side about it, specially in front of Ted. If there’s one thing Ted hates it’s the educated native coming up from Lagos in a suit and a loud tie and talking law-court English and pretending he knows anything about how the real Africans think and feel! I’m teaching Elongo A1 English. No slang. I read ten pages of Esmond before lessons to get me in the mood. (Good for me, too!)

  Been up a week now, but hardly done any painting. Something called the harmattan started while I was ill—you look out in the morning and you think “Oh, fog!” but it isn’t. It’s dust, blowing all the way down from the desert. Cold like fog, tho’, specially after malaria. Couple of days back there was a fishing family down on our bank so I went down to do a picture and got them to pose for me. They were v. nice and smiling about it but after they’d been standing still twenty minutes their poor teeth were chattering and they were pale grey all down one side! It made them look like photographic negatives! N.g. for painting. Anyway I’m taking things easy ’cos I’ve got to get myself properly well ’cos next week we’re going on tour!

  It’s a bit tricky—me going, I mean. There’s absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t, Ted says, but he ought to inform Mr de Lancey at Birnin Soko only he doesn’t want to. You see, ’cos of de L. and Ted being on opposite sides about KB and things he’s bound to try and do Ted down over anything Ted wants. He did his d—est to stop me coming at all, for a start, and now he just might try and think of some reason why I shouldn’t go on tour. Ted can’t go straight to Kaduna over de L.’s head, either. He has to be terribly careful about that. Even if it was something important, they’d come down on him like a ton of bricks. He told me an awful story about an A.D.O. over in Gombe who discovered there was trouble coming and told his D.O. but the D.O. was lazy and didn’t do anything so the A.D.O. wrote to the Resident. The Resident agreed with the A.D.O. and when he reported to Kaduna all they were interested in was the A.D.O. breaking the rules. They reprimanded the Resident and they posted the A.D.O. to the worst station they could think of, and then when the trouble broke out and quite a lot of people were murdered and it became obvious the D.O. hadn’t been doing his job properly they stuck by him because otherwise it would have shown the Resident and the A.D.O. had been in the right!

  I’m glad I’m going. I don’t want to stay here alone. It would be horribly easy to work myself into the dumps. Just now, while I was writing, a shower of fine fawn dust floated down onto the page. It came through a place where the ceiling-cloth doesn’t quite fit. Some kind of borer is up there, chewing its way through Ted’s lovely new timber. Africa’s like that. Terribly soon there’ll be dust dribbling down everywhere. If I sit very still I think I can hear them, wriggling and munching into our thatch and beams, like the little nasties wriggling around inside me when I had the malaria. We can’t give the poor house quinine!

  Cheer up, Bets! No use brooding. If only the harmattan would let up—it does, some days—I could ride over to Kiti and do a few pictures. Start outside then ask if I can come in—just getting KB used to the idea. I’m not going to do anything about Elongo’s sister for the mo. (It’s funny, he doesn’t want to talk about her now. Almost as tho’ he wishes he’d never said anything. Perhaps when I know a bit more Kiti.) Ted says he doesn’t think KB will mind me sketching inside the walls, ’cos he’s not a thoroughgoing Mohammedan. When the Fulani emirs further north pay visits to their Residents the Residents’ wives and dogs have to be put somewhere out of sight. The dogs are unclean and the women almost as bad!

  Tues Jan 15

  Goodness, what a day! Yesterday, I mean. Absolute, absolute luck, everything happening just how I could have prayed for, without me having to do anything to deserve it. And on top of that the three best sketches I’ll ever do in my life!

  Moment I woke up I felt the harmattan had stopped. Ran to the dining-room and looked down the river. Dawn. River mist. Pale, pearly sky. I could feel, tho’ it was nice and cool still, there was a scorcher coming! So I rang for Elongo and told him to stop everything and tell Mafote to get Salaki saddled and be ready himself to come with me. Twenty minutes later we were off. My idea was to get two good hours in and be back for breakfast.

  Soon as I’d set up outside the main gate of Kiti one of KB’s people came out to see what I was up to and I told him in my best Hausa and asked him to send a message to KB saying could I come and do some sketches inside the walls. (Of course I could, without asking, but I wanted to get the horrid old man used to the idea.) Then I started dabbing away. It was only eight o’clock but getting hot already. Fascinating trying to paint that light, so heavy and strong but somehow thick. If you get it right you find you’ve painted the heat as well.

  I’d almost finished the first sketch—quite nice—and Elongo was doing his best to keep the flies off me—and the little native children who were almost as bad!—when a squawky trumpet blew and KB and all his “court”—far more than last time—came out to see how I was getting on!

  KB was tickled pink by what I’d done so far but immediately said I’d got to paint him and his court. I did three quick brush sketches, Chinese style, one of the group, one of KB with his waziri, and one of a spearman on his horse. Terribly quick, like a pavement artist, but my hand seemed simply to be longing to paint after the gap and they came out alright. I managed to put enough Hausa together to tell KB they were a present for him, and he immediately sent a servant (a slave, I expect, but we aren’t supposed to know that) off to bring me a present in return. It was a live turkey!
>
  Then I pulled my Hausa together and asked KB if I could go and do another picture inside the walls. In fact, I took the bull by the horns and said I’d like to paint his house. He jumped at the idea (thinking about it now I think perhaps he’d already thought of it for himself). I wanted Elongo to come too but everyone was frightfully shocked, including E. Apparently Kitawa don’t go inside the walls. Another juju, I suppose, like KB never crossing the river. So I left him outside to look after Salaki and my poor turkey. One of KB’s people took my brolly and stool and another insisted on carrying my paints and off we traipsed. KB must be about seventy but he does a good steady waddle. The natives working in the “gardens” got down on their elbows and knees and put their heads on the ground as we passed.

  I was a bit disappointed as we got nearer the palace, ’cos I could see it was going to be a tricky subject. I know I wasn’t really there for that, but one doesn’t like to waste one’s efforts, specially on a day when one feels one’s on form, and really there wasn’t anything. It was only a wall, you see, cutting off the bottom corner of the space inside the main wall. No windows. Buttresses and a central gate with two towers. In front of the gate, looking quite out of place, a sort of big thatched porch. I could see the tops of buildings inside the wall, rabbit’s ears poking up and bits of parapet, and I realized they’d be gone if we got too close, so when we were still a sensible distance away I tried to stop, but KB, soon as he realized, turned round and waved quite angrily at me to come on. My heart jumped. He wanted me to paint the inside of his palace!

  Some of the courtiers left us at the entrance but four or five followed us in. The rooms were better than I’d expected, almost no furniture, flaky whitewash with coloured patterns round the doors, one or two rugs on the walls sometimes, but airy and cool—by African standards, anyway. KB didn’t give me much chance to look. We went out into the sun again. This was better—a sort of courtyard, with two shade-trees only one was half dead, some men under the other one watching a sort of nursery game they play here, moving pebbles around on a pattern in the dust—Ted says they’ll play it for hours, and gamble on it like billy-oh. Dark low doorways in the walls and tiny square windows. People going around doing things. KB was in a tearing hurry but I got a bit of a chance to look ’cos a man—some kind of court official, I think—came up to him and grovelled and started to tell him something in a wheedling voice but he’d hardly started when KB put his great foot on the poor man’s shoulder and pushed him right over! He roared with laughter, peering at me between his blubbery eyelids to make sure I was enjoying the fun, then waddled on to one of the dark little doors.