by R. A Humphry
“Manu, don’t forget the camera,” his father called as he strode into the house. Manu opened the glove compartment, grabbed the expensive camera and hooked the strap over his neck. He then slid down and out of the Landrover and leapt up the short stairs into the antechamber. Arap Milgo appeared and crooked his eyebrow at Manu, glancing down at the muddied, worn boots. Manu sighed and plonked on the floor and struggled with them, tearing them off and handing them over to the expressionless old man.
The antechamber was filled with his grandfather’s things. They were the decorations and symbols of a different time, his father had explained to him. It was Manu’s second favourite room, after the library. On every wall and in every corner was some other marvel. There was a stuffed and huge sea turtle, seeming to swim against the white sea of the wall. Opposite was the pelt of a cattle-killing leopard which had been shot, as everyone in the valley knew, by his father when aged just seventeen.
Other treasures presented themselves. The door to the balcony was made from an exotic dark wood and covered in elaborate carved figures and friezes. The story was that it was from Zanzibar and had been won in a game of cards. There were crossed muskets and the heads of antelope, buffalo and zebra. An umbrella stand was made from the wide grey foot of a bull elephant. Another foot supported a lamp carved into the likeness of a fishing golden crane.
Then there was the curved Arabian knife and scabbard, beautiful and decorated with the blade etched with Arabic script, its mysterious magical message indecipherable. It was his favourite prop, when he could sneak it off the wall in the rare moments when Arap Milgo was not watching.
He had a dim awareness that not everyone liked the antechamber. Some of the newer guests, especially the white people, seemed taken aback by the decorations. Their face screwed up and it always looked like they were on the verge of saying something rude or unpleasant, but kept quiet so as not to offend their host. Often they would ask why there were no Maori carvings or souvenirs and his father would shrug and tell them to ask his wife.
His boots off, Manu ran with bare feet across the antechamber and into the main living room which was, despite the lingering heat of the day, warmed by a gentle, crackling wood fire. As Manu crashed through the doors his mother turned and smiled at him then grabbed him in an embrace. She went up on her tip-toes to plant a kiss on his forehead and pinch his cheeks, which he hated. Her hair was long and glossy and tumbled down in waves past her shoulders and Manu saw genuine relief in her large, luminous brown eyes. Her skin was brown and unblemished and her nose was flatter and wider than Ms Borrowdales’ but Manu supposed that people called her pretty. She was pretty for a Maori, he thought, at least today when she was wearing her blue and white dress.
She let him go and he flopped into the cavernous leather bean-bag that was his favourite spot by the fire. He was in a good mood. The camping trip had been everything he hoped for and his mother had even kept her temper at their lateness. Moments later his father re-appeared, shirt-less, his scarred chest matted with streaks of greying hair. Manu groaned and complained as his father swept his wife off her feet with a growl and twirled her around the room to laughing protests. He spun and spun her then dipped her into a tender kiss, the long waves of her hair mere inch from the ground and shining in the fire-light. Arap Milgo ghosted into the room, ignoring the couple, and presented Manu with a tray of tea and home-made scones. Manu shuffled back in his beanbag and sighed in contentment. Life was perfect.
#
His mother ruined his good humour a short time later. It was her singing. He had been trying to read on the balcony as she tended to the plants in her little herb garden when she had started. She had a fine, high voice and even Dr. Cooper who ran the valley choir admitted that Aroha Wardgrave was the prize of the district. Manu looked up from his book and noticed that she had a peculiar expression on her face. It was a melancholy look that embraced loss and pride and other complex, bittersweet mixtures of emotion that were too difficult for him to understand. For some reason it made him uneasy and tense. Worse still, she started singing in her mother tongue, her words strange and alien in the African bush.
“Pö atarau,
E moea iho nei,
E haere ana,
Koe ki pämamao.”
“Mum, can’t you sing in English?” he complained unhappily, shutting his book. She just smiled up at him, not willing to start that argument again and continued, her voice high and light.
“Haere rä,
Ka hoki mai anö,
_ ii te tau,
E tangi atu nei”
“Oh, come on,” he protested, standing up. “We are back again! And besides, we didn’t even go that far.” His irritation got the better of him and he stomped back into the house like a small child in a sulk. He made his way to the library to avoid his mother’s retort or, worse, her explanation of the traditions of the song, his ancestors and why he should learn it. She was forever hounding him with chants and spells and incantations from his ‘motherland’. He stubbornly resisted where he could. Why couldn’t she see how stupid it all was? Magic and brown faced ancestors with not-at-all scary tattoos swirling around their faces. It was embarrassing. Just the mention of any of his mother’s traditional hocus-pocus was enough to send him red faced with mortification.
Such were his thoughts as he stomped into the rounded family library. The large leather bound editions, stacked and organised in the tall shelves, soothed him, as did the comfortable woollen carpet under his toes. He reached up and plucked a mammoth volume from the shelves and heaved it down with a grunt. It was his current favourite. He traced his fingers over the faded gold inlay, the beautiful calligraphy spelling out The Complete Works. He was working through the plays in a haphazard manner. There was something intoxicating about the words. There was a thrill gained from reading the greatest and most storied literary giant. He felt smarter and more civilised. He felt closer to his father and his Oxford roots than a half-savage living in an empty African back-water. He thumbed through the thin pages to where he had left off.
ACT V, SCENE I
Enter PROSPERO in his magic robes, and ARIEL
Manu was just starting to puzzle his way through the scene when he heard the pack barking excitedly outside. Curious, he stood and walked to the wide window and drew back the curtain to peer into the dark, inky night. He saw the bouncing headlights of an approaching car followed by the gentle roar of the engine as the driver picked his way down the difficult drive. Manu drew the curtain back and strode into the living room where his father was reclining in his rocking chair, leafing through a pile of papers. “Robert’s here,” Manu announced, pointing at the front door. His father looked up and nodded then moved into the antechamber. Manu followed.
Robert exited his car and was greeted by Arap Milgo and a host of snuffling noses and licking canine tongues. The two men exchanged a greeting in a tribal language that Manu didn’t understand. They embraced and Robert strode up the steps where his father shook his hand and took him through to the living room. Arap Milgo produced a drink for Robert and soon they were talking of small things, about his flight back to the lodge, what the herd had been doing as Robert saw them from the sky and the other small details of the valley that he had seen from the air. There was talk about the dried up rivers and the ravaged grasslands to the north. Both men complained about the goat herders who stripped the land of all living shoots and plants and shook their heads. Manu’s mother appeared and gestured for her son to join her on the couch. Feeling sleepy and a little ashamed at how cross he had been earlier, Manu agreed, laying his head down in her soft lap and enjoying the feel of her fingers running through his hair. Soon he was drifting off to sleep to the soft murmur of the men talking and the fire crackling. Occasionally he would wake and hear snatches of conversation.
“The Headmaster is here, the one you talked about. I met him at the lodge. He said he will be at the game on Jumamosi,” said Robert in his deep, soothing voice.
; “And Aaron? Was he there?”
There was a tense pause. “Yes, I saw him.”
“Good. At least he grants me that much.”
“Is the boy ready?”
“Manu will do fine,” his father replied.
“But he is so young,” his mother complained. “Some of those other boys will be fifteen. And from South Africa.”
His father snorted. “Manu will hold his own, trust me.”
#
His dreams drifted into rugby after that. He was on a wide field chasing after a ball that was perpetually out of reach, having to sidestep and spin out of the way of ghostly opponents who would change from mannish figures with pale, corpse-like skin who swung at him with stone axes and clubs, to packs of jackals who snapped at him from slavering jaws.
“So it is confirmed then?” his father asked. “The last of Waitley’s crew is dead?”
“Yes. The Kalenjin confirmed it. Ndururu was the last. He was an old man, one of the few from the screen-camps during the Mau-mau. The Kalenjin are convinced that it is the reason why the elephants are on the move. They say that Ndururu was the only thing protecting against Ekipe and so they are very much afraid.”
His father made a grunting noise and there was the clinking of ice in a glass. “And the Leopard King?”
Manu heard Robert shift his weight before responding. “The El Molo have seen him. You were right, he has returned from the other side of the rift. They are keeping it at bay. For now.”
“Not for long.”
“No. But what can we do? We are stretched too thin James, too thin. Addis Ababa doesn’t respond anymore and Aden are worse than useless. I fear we are very much alone. We need London, James. We need help.”
There was a long pause. “Addis is lost to us. I got news from Harrington.” His father sighed. “Don’t look to London, Robert. Don’t look to Europe at all. The old world has forgotten us, or wishes that it could. We have to deal with this ourselves.”
Something in his father’s tone pricked at Manu and he creaked open an eye, slow and cautious. He saw Robert standing with an expression of one receiving unpleasant but expected news, his whiskey gripped tight in one hand. Seeing the unflappable pilot shaken frightened Manu and he fought to stay still, mindful that they thought him asleep.
Robert spoke again, his voice grave. “This is big, James. Very big. The rift… it is getting worse.”
“I know. We’ll think of something.”
“What about…” Robert cocked his head towards Manu’s mother, who was still stroking his hair. Manu felt her shake her head.
“No.” His father responded, his voice firm. “We can’t risk it again. She passed too much over. Until we can get back to the South Island I won’t allow it. I worry…”
“It’s O.K. James, I understand. What do we do, then?”
“We have to go up there. I’ll call Harrington and try to get Warimu as well. We will need a quorum if we hope to achieve anything.” His father paused then set down his drink. “Alright Manu, you can stop pretending now. Off to bed with you.”
Manu made a big show of yawning and acting sleepy as he picked himself up off the couch. “I heard something about a match?” he asked, trying to pretend that that was all he had heard.
“Yes son, big rugby match for you coming up, you better get your rest. We need you to impress an English schoolmaster for us, can you do that?”
“Yes Dad, I can do it.”
“Good boy, sleep tight Manu, I love you.”
Chapter Three: Stonehouse
School re-started the next day. It was a long drive through the valley and up the busy and winding escarpment roads. They passed overcrowded buses with luggage strapped to every surface. Slow moving lorries huddled in the crawler lane, winding up the mountainside like army ants. The Landrover engine roared as it powered up the incline and Manu sat in the back in sullen silence as his parents chatted to each other in the front, their voices lost in the noise. He stared back at the striking view down the sharp slope and across the wide valley to the other side of the rift, which was pale and blue and distant. He strained, as he always did, to pick out the small dot of their farm but, as always, he didn’t see it.
Stonehouse School was set in the coffee rich highlands. It was surrounded by green covered hills with the neat bushes of tree plantations stretching out like manicured lawns to each horizon. The buildings were a mixture of old colonial houses that rose, cathedral like and the newer rounded squat ‘bandas’ which were made of thatch and mud and wood. The grounds were extensive with playing fields that were wide and open which petered out into the bushland and the coffee without so much as a fence. The cultivated gardens led past the old buildings and up to the modern, blocky, boarding house.
To this last building his father drove, pulling the Landrover up by the front door. As was always the case after a break the boarding house was in chaos. Some of Manu’s friends recognised the car and clustered around to help him unload his possessions in an unruly mob. He said his goodbyes to his parents and was swept up in the excitement of being back amongst his peers before he could form another thought.
“Have you heard Manu? It is this Saturday,” Irungu said to him as they manhandled his case up the stairs to his room.
“What’s this Saturday?” Manu replied grunting. It would be easier if he just lifted his case himself, he realised.
“He hasn’t heard,” Eric replied walking beside them and shaking his big mop of red hair, not helping in the slightest, “And trials are on Wednesday.”
“Oh, the rugby,” Manu said, understanding. “Who are we playing?”
Irungu and Eric shared a look and laughed. “Oh Manu, how little you know,” Eric said running his hands through his hair, “First of all,” he pounded his palm with his index finger, “this isn’t just Stonehouse. It’s a country-wide select team playing. All of the big schools are doing trials.”
Manu’s eyes went wide and he stopped moving in the corridor, causing Irungu to stumble with a curse. He had expected to be playing against St. David’s or Kings College. He was prepared for another test against the old enemies. Something big must be brewing if they were combining. He had never even heard of such a thing happening before.
Eric continued, satisfied at Manu’s reaction. “Second, we are playing against Grey College.” Into the silence he said with a tinge of exasperation: “You know, from Bloemfontein?” Manu was a blank slate and Eric rolled his eyes. “You’ve heard of the Springboks, right?” Manu nodded and started back down the corridor. “Well, Grey College is the same thing, just younger.”
“Peter is attending trials, right?” Irungu asked.
Eric nodded and said something about seeing Peter having his food brought down to the pitch so he could continue practising his goal kicking without interruption. The captain of Stonehouse under fifteens was as dedicated to the sport as it was possible to be. For Peter, life was the irritant that got in the way of rugby matches. He was from one of the old families here, a first wave settler back when the continent was a true unknown. The Andrews family were as English and as African as it was possible to be.
Manu stopped again in the corridor as a thought occurred to him. “Do you think they’ll pick me? If it’s a selection from across the country… I’m only just thirteen, maybe they’ll think I’m too young.”
His two friends turned in the corridor and looked back at him, on the verge of barraging him with scorn and derision. “Did you hit your head or something camping out in the bush? Of course they’ll pick you. It’s whether you’ll live through the match that you should be worrying about. These guys are HUGE.”
#
The next day dragged for Manu. He tried not to think about the match on Saturday, the trials on Wednesday or even training after school. Mr. Franks rapped his desk with his ruler to stop him day-dreaming in Geography. He bungled the question Mrs. Stirling asked about The Lord of the Flies in English. This last failure annoyed and embarrassed h
im; he prided himself of being top of the class in English at least. He had read the book three times over the break and adored everything about it, but not as much as he loved sport. But to forget Ralph’s name – Ralph – was horrifying and Manu resolved to sort his mind out.
At break-time he took a walk down to the little stream that was hidden by the deep grass on the far side of the first team pitch. It was a quiet place, away from shouting crowds that packed in around the tuck-shop and the violent whirlwind that was the five aside pitches. He sunk to his haunches and watched the stream trickle past. The noise and the feel of the water on his dipped hands calmed him and he managed to work the excitement from his mind. He followed the methods his father had told him. Calm. Calm. He started from his toes and worked up to his scalp. His breathing slowed and he felt a wonderful slackness in his shoulders, which he rolled. Good. He started to feel ready to face the day. He needed to make sure he concentrated in class. He was clever, he knew that, but he also knew that he was not clever enough to coast through without working. There. The rugby was gone.
Manu smiled, and then grimaced as he heard a familiar leathery thud from behind him. Wincing, he turned his head and sure enough he saw Peter Andrews lining up another kick at goal. Manu sighed and stood as Peter strode up to the kicking tee and swung his boot with another thud. The two boys watched as the ball flew end over end through the dead centre of the posts. As he bent over to pick up another ball Peter saw Manu and hurried over.
“Manu, good. I was hoping to see you. Look, this game – it’s serious.”
Manu kept his face straight. Was there any game, ever, that Peter didn’t think was deadly serious?
