Last Orders at Harrods

by Michael Holman

  “Who is there?” Furniver called out.

  “It is me, sir.” There was a pause, as the caller realised that this in itself might not be sufficient identification.

  “It is Nellson Githongo, sir.”

  Furniver unlocked the steel-frame door, followed by the grill that had been installed at the insistence of the insurance company. About time he shopped around for another company, thought Furniver, for the premiums were huge, and most of the conditions unnecessary.

  Nellson Githongo stood on the threshold, a battered brown trilby in one hand, the other clutching 100 ngwee, plus 20 ngwee penalty. Although he had surrendered his bike just a day earlier, it seemed to Furniver as if it had been long ago, in another era.

  The sound of what seemed to be a gunshot made them both jump, although it could have been a car backfiring.

  “I would like my bicycle, sir. It is safe now. Otherwise I cannot travel.”

  Furniver was about to question him, and then thought the better of it. He went into the stock room, where the bicycle was stored, along with an old radio, a black and white television set, a couple of sewing machines, and a steam iron. He wheeled the bike out and handed it over.

  “I will repay the rest of the loan.”

  “I don’t think it matters, Nellson.”

  Nellson cocked his head, unable to conceal his dismay. He looked speculatively at the sweating white man in front of him.

  “But it is not all finished, sir . . .”

  Suddenly Furniver felt himself surrendering to his low spirits, trapped in an Africa crippled by debt, disease and disaster. Nellson Githongo was looking at him with concern.

  “Do not worry, Mr Edward.”

  Here it comes, thought Furniver, here it comes. Another bloody incomprehensible Kuwisha proverb.

  “Your people in England say, sir, that the darkest time is just before the dawn.”

  And with that Githongo tipped his hat, attached the two sacks of oranges he was carrying to the handlebars, adjusted the aerial of the mock radio that adorned the bicycle, and tweaked the bell.

  “Thank you for looking after it, sir.”

  Sacks swaying, he wheeled it carefully through the doorway, across the muddy surrounds and towards the track that would take him past the clinic and on to paved roads.

  Furniver watched as Nellson wobbled on his way. The defaulter did not look round. Yet just as he was turning the bend that would take him out of sight, he raised his right hand in farewell.

  Furniver waved back, and returned wearily to his office, and sat at his desk. Earlier he had finished recording the story for his granddaughter, but it was too late and too dangerous to go to the central post office.

  The stand-by generator had cut in automatically. He marginally adjusted the framed photos of Dorian and Dorcas – “my ex-children,” he called them. He then propped up a photograph of Charity taken during one of the visits to her shamba.

  Nothing that had happened over the past twenty-four hours had surprised him, least of all the rebellion, or insurrection, or coup – whatever it was called.

  For a while he managed to resist the temptation of succumbing to the panacea that lay in his desk drawer. Then his resolution broke. Furniver opened the drawer, and reached for oblivion . . .

  27

  “If the goat roars and the lion bleats, bring out your spears”

  Titus Ntoto and Cyrus Rutere lay in the sun outside Harrods, having undertaken the messy task of clearing up around the bar, which had yet to be reopened for business.

  They had told Charity the story of how they had met and deceived the lawyer from London, and had considered themselves fortunate to have been let off with a lecture about the obligation to be helpful and hospitable to strangers.

  “It could have been no dough balls for a week,” said Rutere.

  Ntoto agreed:

  “We were lucky.”

  The skies were clear for the first time in weeks, their stomachs were replete, their glue bottles were full, and Harrods was safe. The world was as good for them as it was ever likely to get.

  Rutere, however, still needed one or two questions answered before he could relax.

  “Who but mungiki would do this thing?” gesturing at the smoke-blackened containers that made up the bar. “Why make a fire?”

  Ntoto nodded. “You are right. Mungiki are here!”

  Rutere looked up, startled. If mungiki had the cheek to intrude into the heartland of the Mboya Boys, things had come to a pretty pass.

  “Perhaps they helped Mrs Charity,” Ntoto added.

  Rutere could hardly believe his ears. Surely Ntoto was not suggesting that Mrs Charity had any sympathy for mungiki.

  “Ntoto, if you think that Mrs Charity would help these mungiki in any way, then you must be, you must be . . .”

  He paused as he searched for the word that would do justice to Ntoto’s fantastical allegation.

  “You must be stupid.”

  So cross was Rutere he could hardly contain himself, and Ntoto realised he had gone too far in teasing his friend.

  “You are stupid yourself, Rutere. I was joking about mungiki – but telling the truth about Mrs Charity,” and Ntoto went on to explain that Charity had indeed lit the fire herself:

  “Just to fool any tstotsis. When they saw smoke, they would think that Harrods had already been looted.”

  Rutere was lost in admiration for the sheer cunning, the deviousness, of this ploy, and once again had to search for a word that would do its perpetrator justice.

  It did not take him long:

  “Clever! Mrs Charity is very clever.”

  Rutere belched, but cupped his hand over his mouth, as he had been taught by Charity:

  “Excuse,” he said, and winked at Ntoto.

  “I excuse,” said Ntoto languidly, doing his best to imitate Fanshawe’s plummy English voice.

  “I say, have you seen my wallet?”

  Ntoto reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a leather wallet with the initials R and F embossed on it.

  “For God’s sake!” Titus drawled, “take your filthy fingers off me, boy!”

  Rutere clapped his hands, and a beatific smile slowly spread over his face. Then he frowned.

  “I thought it was wrong to pickpocket, Ntoto. You yourself said so. How can you take this lawyer’s wallet?”

  Ntoto shrugged. “He is a rich man . . .”

  His voice trailed off.

  Rutere did not argue.

  “I have one last question, Ntoto. Why are you sure that the traffic lights are not being broken by mungiki?”

  “You have mungiki on your brain, Rutere. Always it is mungiki, and always you are looking for muti.”

  Rutere ignored the provocation. He was too comfortable to quarrel.

  “Tell me,” demanded Rutere. “Who is breaking the traffic lights?”

  “The cripples. With catapults.”

  Rutere was astonished.

  “How is that?”

  “You cannot beg from cars when they are passing you very fast. So cripples break the lights, using their catapult to make a traffic jam. But only green lights. They use the pieces of glass from broken lights to make emeralds to sell to tourists.”

  Rutere saw the logic, but wasn’t convinced.

  “I still think it is mungiki.”

  Ntoto’s chin dropped on to his chest as he began to doze, and Rutere soon joined him, snoring gently.

  Charity emerged from the interior of Harrods where she had been taking stock, and looked on tenderly.

  Her two little rats. They looked as dangerous as dormice. And yet her dream told her otherwise. There were many, many mice in Kuwisha’s store of corn, eating, eating, always eating.

  A time of reckoning was surely coming. She felt sure of that. For Titus Ntoto and Cyrus Rutere and the other members of the Mboya Boys United Football Club, the events of the past couple of days had been no more than a brief respite from their daily grind. The same ancie
nt hunger that so distracted the pilot of the ageing Dakoto was stirring in the skinny loins of the two boys and all their friends. It would not be denied. They were about to enter life’s great gamble, and the prospects of them surviving the draw were as slim as their chances of winning Kuwisha’s weekly lottery.

  But these were thoughts that smacked of despair, and she tried to put them out of her head. Kireba was recovering rapidly. It was time to decide. Mildred Kigali was right. It was indeed time to decide.

  First, there was a legal matter to attend to . . .

  Thanks to Ntoto and Rutere, she had survived the first round in the battle over Harrods, but Charity had little doubt that more fighting would surely come. If she continued to trade as Harrods, it was surely just a matter of time before the London lawyers found out that they had been tricked. They would be back.

  What would her dear father, Mwai Gichuru Tangwenya, would have wanted? What would he have advised?

  There was only one thing to do. Charity summoned Philimon Limuru, the sign-writer, who lived nearby.

  The negotiations were less complicated than she had feared. The man had a sweet tooth, and they soon settled on a price of two dough balls a letter, and two Tuskers as a bonus if he did a really good job. He started right away, and as she watched the man and his brush go to work, any doubts she may have had soon disappeared.

  Half an hour later it was done, the letters alternating in brilliant blue, the colour of Kuwisha’s sky, a rich ochre, the colour of the soil, and the green of the country’s tea and coffee bushes:

  Tangwenya’s International Bar (and Nightspot)

  Charity felt nothing but pride. It would be a while, she suspected, before people got used to calling it Tangwenya’s. For some of the older folk, it would always be Harrods. That was as it should be. She would neither encourage nor discourage the use of one name or the other.

  She had made the right decision. The bar was now ready to be reopened, and it deserved to be celebrated.

  Charity chalked a piece of good news on the menu blackboard.

  “Today Only: Tusker 20 % off”

  “Last orders,” Charity announced to the small crowd that had been patiently awaiting the reopening of the bar.

  “Last orders at Harrods.”

  A loud cheer went up from the excited customers, led by Ntoto and Rutere.

  “New orders tomorrow, at Tangwenya’s International Bar (and Nightspot)”, and the cheers were even louder.

  Charity gazed around for the umpteenth time. One could not be too careful. The strangers who had been hanging around Kireba had left, and the slum was quiet. It seemed safe enough – certainly safe enough for Furniver to emerge from his confinement.

  Now for a truly momentous decision, as momentous as any she had taken since the day she had accepted David’s proposal of marriage. It seemed only right to her that she should in some way consult him. Perhaps there was a message to be found in the words of his last sermon, reprinted in a leading Kuwisha newspaper on the day of his funeral. Charity had cut it out, and kept it in her purse. As she read it, David came alive . . .

  Bishop Mupanga seldom delivered a conventional sermon. Rather he conducted a benign exchange with the congregation, this time packed into the cathedral behind the city’s Intercontinental Hotel. Both arms resting on the pulpit, like a man assuming a raconteur’s position in his favourite bar, the Bishop had begun on a typically informal note:

  “They say there are no atheists in the trenches of war.”

  “Perhaps that is why we so often thank God in Africa. Whether we live here, or whether we are regular visitors, we thank God, or Allah, for our many deliverances, with fervour and humility.”

  The congregation murmured its understanding and muttered their agreement. The sound was like the first breeze of the day, as it drifted through the clump of tall eucalyptus trees near her bar . . . Charity shut her eyes, and imagined herself back among the cathedral congregation, listening to the rest of the sermon, delivered in David’s confident, deep voice:

  “We thank God when we arrive safely at our destination, whether by car or train, or ferry or aircraft. We thank God that the car’s brakes did not fail during long journeys on Africa’s potholed roads; we are grateful that the driver spotted the lorry ahead travelling without taillights; and give thanks that the overloaded ferry did not sink.”

  As the congregation picked up the rhythm and cadence, they echoed his opening phrase, producing a growing rumble of assent and endorsement.

  “Thank God!”

  This time, however, it was not so much a gentle morning breeze as a powerful wind that precedes an African storm.

  If David Mupanga had been receiving death threats, as was widely rumoured, he gave no sign of stress or tension as he delivered his sermon that Sunday, just three days before his fatal crash on the road from the capital to the small town of Nongo.

  “We give especially heartfelt thanks when we arrive safely at our destination after travelling at night, unmolested by the armed robbers that make their living along the highway, who so often seem to be dressed in uniforms stolen from the army or the police force.”

  “Thank God,” answered the congregation with especial enthusiasm.

  A baby started crying, but was soon hushed back to sleep by its young mother. Nearby worshippers looked on sympathetically and indulgently.

  “We live with risk,” said David Mupanga, “some more than others. But we all live with it, whether the risk of Aids, or the risk of a car accident because we lack spare parts, or the risk of malaria or even worse, catching malaria that has learnt to defy pills.”

  “We thank God” – “Thank God,” came the echo from the congregation – “when we have the energy to face the day, that we do not have bilharzia, or other intestinal worms and parasites that suck the vitality of their victims.

  “We thank God when a child enjoys a birthday, and we thank God if he or she survives the hazards of being young in Africa. We thank God if our children are lucky in Africa’s lottery. We thank God if they are not one of the three million children who die of preventable diseases before they reach five.

  “We thank God if they emerge numerate and literate. We are particularly thankful if it is a girl who survives, because for her the hazards of life are much greater.

  “We do not despair, because that is a cardinal sin, and we try not to succumb to fatalism. But instead, if one is a Christian, one soon learns from the wisdom of another faith and utters the precautionary word that reminds one of human frailty: Inshallah – God willing.

  “We thank God for a decent meal, because most of the 600 million souls who live on our continent go without adequate nourishment.

  “We thank God if we live in peace, because millions of us have lives made hell by war. We thank God if we have clean water to drink, because most of us do not, and we consider ourselves especially fortunate if we do not have to walk miles to fetch it.

  “We thank God if we are not a refugee, on a continent where so many millions have been forced to flee their homes, seeking sanctuary within or without the country that is home. So in Africa we thank God, or Allah, with unusual frequency. And we are especially thankful if we end the day alive and well, with a meal in our stomachs, with a bed to sleep in, and our loved ones safe.

  “No doubt this is because there are so few of us who are so fortunate. Above all, we thank God for our friends.”

  And as David Mupanga stepped down from the pulpit he embraced the ever-present plain-clothed security detail, one by one.

  “Amen,” said Charity.

  She had been deliberating for long enough.

  “Odhiambo!”

  Ntoto’s head jerked up, and he looked around. Suddenly he remembered. He was no longer Titus. He had chosen what he called his African name. He was now Odhiambo Ntoto.

  He trotted to her side. Charity cocked her head. Kireba was coming alive.

  “Listen, Odhiambo, listen. It is the sound of bees.”

/>   Ntoto shrugged. If there were bees, he could not hear them.

  A thirsty customer called out for another Tusker, and Charity summoned Rutere to lend a hand behind the bar.

  “Now go, Ntoto, and bring back Furniver,” said Charity. “First, give him this message.”

  She noticed that her customers were following the exchange with great interest, and lowered her voice. This is personal, she thought, not something for Kireba gossip.

  Charity whispered into the boy’s ear, and sent him off with a slap on the rump.

  “Now hurry, or the chicken necks will get cold.”

  28

  “The words of a fool sound loud when spoken through a trumpet”

  Ntoto hammered at the door, but there was no response. He let himself in with Charity’s key, and tiptoed upstairs, his heart in his mouth. The power supply was still off, but the stand-by generator was still chugging away. In the gloom, across the room, was an inert Furniver, slumped over the desk, head cradled in his arms.

  For a few seconds that seemed like hours, Ntoto feared that Furniver was dead. It would not have been the first corpse he had seen. But it was the first one he had cared about. He sat in the far corner, across from the body, knees pulled up to his chin, and for the third time that week, was about to howl in despair and misery.

  He dreaded breaking the news to Charity. Nor could he handle the tragedy on his own, and was about to leave the building in search of help, when he heard a groan from the recumbent figure, followed by a few slurred words.

  So overwhelming was his relief that he forgot himself.

  “What? What?”

  Then he remembered Charity’s stricture about politeness:

  “Beg pardon?”

  Emboldened by another incoherent rumble from the man he thought dead, Ntoto tiptoed across, and removed the empty gin bottle from Furniver’s limp hand. He then checked the half-open drawer.

  Thank goodness, the gun was there. Ntoto tucked it into his waistband, and pulled his jersey down.