by Adam Thorpe
To the cookhouse, now: outside it, the cook’s assistant, Augustina, is pounding yams for foo-foo. She is enormous, with slender ankles, fat brass ringlets on her arm that clack, and an orange calico dress. I ask her where Joseph is.
‘Chop-shed, Ma.’
She shrugs all the time, I don’t know why. I enter the kitchen (or cookhouse) and look around it discreetly, while Augustina comes in and slops the foo-foo into a big pan. It is horribly close in here. Flies wriggle in past the netted door. Our meat safe hangs in the darkest corner. It has a pretty curtain of pink roses. The linoleum is peeling off the concrete floor. The cupboard, which I have personally scrubbed inside and out only yesterday (thus upsetting Quiri, whose job it really is), swarms with tiny ants, as does the floor. The tap dripping melancholically into the tin sink makes me think of prisons. But it is like a prison, this room: tiny windows, a door with a heavy spring, the minimum of conveniences. How typical of the PWD to separate it from the main building!
Under the eaves of the chop-shed, in a spot always out of the sun, stand five huge water jars from the time of the Germans. The water tank was installed, in 1919, by Northcott’s predecessor – a notoriously rough fellow called Harvey-Lewis. (It has HL 1919 scratched into it by some awful claw, I should think.) The jars are empty. I would like to use them again, as coolers for butter and so forth. The metal tank keeps the water warm, which is hopeless. I hear a grand crash and clatter through the brick walls of the chop-shed and open the door: Joseph stands in a heap of tins, rubbing his head. The shelves run along either side, and the Tilley light swings on empty spaces. These gleam with fresh cobwebs. There are still two chop-crates to unpack, thankfully. The organisation of the chop-shed requires my presence, so I stay an hour with Joseph. We put back the tins of peeled pears and apricots and remove the Ovaltine from the savoury sauces department. The chop-shed must seem a very eccentric place to someone who eats only what grows out of the ground here, but I would die if I lived off nothing but millet, cassava, sweet potatoes, plantains and tiny fried fish. And so forth.
I drop in on James in his ‘office’: this has been carved out from the (diminishing) jumble of crates in the second bedroom. He is studying maps, or typing letters, or sorting his scratch box, or staring into space, imagining that cleared road. And maybe the fleet of lost clerks. (Where will they sleep?) We have tea together, mid-morning. Then I spend time in my little bush hospital, patients or no. (I write letters in the evening.)
Mawangu brings the tea, usually. But on the second day of Hargreaves’s absence, he failed to. Now this is the horrible and exciting bit, Edward. Hold tight.
On that particular day, then, we wait, discussing you-know-who. I imagine the blighter sitting in the forest like a little bear, tucking into my golden syrup. Actually, we are worried. I heave myself from the chair and return to the cookhouse. I ask for Mawangu. They all shrug, now. Then young Quiri runs out.
‘Where kuku-matey fly to?’ I ask.
I open the door and spot Mr Henry crossing the yard. I ask him about Mawangu. He looks concerned.
‘He run away too, like massa DO?’
‘Massa DO is my husband now,’ I reply, forcefully.
I walk sedately back to the main building. YCHA, or You Can’t Hurry Africa.
‘Mawangu’s gone,’ I call over my shoulder, checking the veranda.
Muffled utterance from the office. I go back in.
‘How about up here? With another toilet behind it?’ says James. He is holding up a sketch map of the compound, tapping it with his pencil. He wants to build a brand-new guest bungalow, for VIPs, out of homemade bricks. (He doesn’t think the clerks, or even one clerk, are ever going to come. VIPs first, anyway.)
‘Mawangu’, I say, ‘is absent without leave. Is this normal?’
I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I am bright red in the face, and my hair is awful. I fall into the chair and wipe my top lip with my finger. I am one moist exudation from head to toe.
‘They do this from time to time,’ says James.
After lunch, and the compulsory nap (only Wallis-Gore, Tall’s assistant, flogs himself through the day without one), I decide to venture beyond the compound’s perimeters. It is that very rare thing at this season: a nice day. The cloud has thinned, and the sun shines. I put on my bush-boots. These are frightfully ungainly things of dubbined leather – they will be all the rage in Mayfair soon, I’m sure. I take Quiri with me as guide and moral support, and my shooting stick for same.
‘Come, my small-small boy,’ I say, and we set off, side by side, up the forest path (James calls it a road, the maps call it a track, I call it a path).
For the first hundred yards or so, there is a something Joy would have kittens about: an utter untidiness. Either side is a mess of broken stems and branches, all entangled in vines and creepers. A real jungle, without rhyme or reason. Then the tall trees begin, the glare dies away, the sunlight slips from one’s shoulders, one feels a momentary cool – even a chill, just like in an English beech-wood, and the path is nothing more than a trail of mud. Quiri is dragging behind, one hand in his shorts’ pocket, looking about him carefully. I have, of course, read Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa at least three times. I have even tried to describe things here in her vivid style (and failed dismally). Now I feel, for the first time, the exhilaration of the explorer. A curious mix of solitude and action (it involves the reclusive part of the soul, Edward). Such virgin realms before one! I look back: the forest has screened the compound from me. I worry about gorillas, momentarily. To right and left I glimpse pools, with vermilion flowers and onyx-winged butterflies. The huge trees soar, as bland trunks, until they reach the light, where they seem to burst into smithereens. It makes me giddy to look up that high. Creepers much bigger than my arm have followed them up. They look uncomfortably like fat snakes, wrapped around the trunks, but only for a moment. There are thrashings and squealings and whoops up there: monkeys and birds, but I see nothing – nothing more than shadows flitting, anyway. Leaves twirl down. Then there is silence, which one imagines might continue for ever. There is a thick carpet of leaves on either side, and ants galore now that the sun is screened (sunlight kills ants – did you know?). There are huge ferns and curving bamboos and palm-like growths that seem to start halfway up the trees. I wish I knew all the names.
The path darkens even more, into a sort of tunnel. My eyes adapt very well. The tiny spots of light that have survived down here seem quite brilliant, independent of the shade. There is a very thick smell, quite different from the smell of the river. It’s a little like old cupboards left out in the garden for the hens – times ten. I will keep going for as long as the panga has done its work: fresh stumps are shrouded with bees, sipping the sap. An enormous beetle whirrs past my face, into its own domain. Yes, the Garden of Eden. Watery bird calls, clearer in here, remind me of nightingales on summer evenings in childhood, in a real twilight. I find English cousins for the flowers, too: viper’s bugloss, yellow rattle, wolfsbane, marsh orchid – anything, really, with tongues, though there is something that looks exactly like a tiny poppy, and creepings of cinquefoil, and a goldeny eggs and bacon.
For many minutes I walk in a daze, dazzled by the beauty and the ease of meeting it. Puddles bother me as little as do thoughts of gorillas, snakes, or leopards; they (I mean, the puddles) lie like tawny ribbons along the path, fringed by bright fungi and ferns and blooms that up and flitter away. My bush-boots slap straight through the mud, spotting my dress. I have never seen, even on the slopes of Mount Cameroon, such enormous leaves. Like an ogre’s aspidistras. A brief recollection of the Palm House in Kew Gardens intrudes: the same luxuriant odour, the same smotheringly hot moistness, yes. But not the immensity! I thrust back the iron-and-glass walls and stop for a moment, smiling at Quiri as he appears around the bend. Easy to imagine this bigger than the scrap of it at Kew, but not so easy to make it bigger than the Botanical Gardens in Victoria. Surely it can’t go on, like this, for
as much as the maps show it does! All of England was once a wilderness of woodland, Edward, I know. You have told me so many times. But that, too, is hard to imagine. I keep seeing little red-brick villas and Esso signs just when the woods are at their thickest.
I notice a lump of black rock, glistening in the mud a few yards in front of me. The rock on Mount Cameroon is black, because it is really hardened lava. This must be old lava, too. Odd in this wonderland of soft green growth – but the range, James has told me, is also volcanic. As Quiri comes up I try to tousle his head but he ducks, as if he thinks I am about to hit him. Perhaps Hargreaves did.
We look at the rock. It’s not a rock but a swarm of ants, massed in the shape of a cross. Like the X that marks the guest bungalow on James’s map. I want to giggle (you know me, Edward). I am about to poke the nest with my shooting stick when Quiri shrieks and runs off, back down the path. This makes me jump. Something rattles away from my boot. It is the tin of Lyle’s Golden Syrup, cleaned to a shine. I think I see, out of the corner of my eye, a branch shake vigorously a few yards away, where the foliage is very dense. Something snorts tubercularly. I step back, looking around me, having mild palpitations. Then I look down at the nest, noticing something different. The molten ants have parted at one spot, revealing something yellow.
I think to myself: if I’m not jolly mistaken, those are teeth, still set firmly in their gums.
I don’t want to scream. I’m used to horrible sights. But the black, moist horror of the rainforest seems to close around me, wanting to swallow me up. How the Garden of Eden can turn in a second to a dark hell I don’t know, but it did. The toothy leer crawled all over by ants is actually the place itself, about to eat me. I set my own ears abuzz and some hidden birds go flapping away with a decent imitation, high up. Then, muttering furiously to keep myself from fainting, I absolutely hurtle back.
As I splash blindly through the puddles, I have the very curious sensation of hearing my scream answered from somewhere, like a long echo.
There, Edward – I hope that impressed you. I don’t think it comes near to describing what wildnis of this sort can really do to you, but I tried. James was typing out a list of Urgent Things To Be Done when I burst in.
‘That silly man,’ I shrieked (apparently), ‘that silly silly man!’
Then I was sick all over his scratch box.
James was marvellous. He ordered the servants to bring as many debbies of water as they could manage and strode up the track. I followed, against his advice, with the servants. I am a nurse, after all! We both knew from David Tall (Tall Tales, I call him) that one of the methods of execution in certain parts was to peg a man down for a night in the forest, his face and limbs smeared with honey or palm sap. It had sounded too like a Boy’s Own tale to be thoroughly believed. But this was James’s first thought, wondering what on earth old Hargreaves had got himself mixed up in. His second was that he was completely deranged, and gone the way of Northcott.
‘Are you quite sure it’s Hargreaves, darling?’ he asked.
‘No one else has such stained teeth, James.’
We reached the horror at last. It wasn’t like a rock, now, but a discarded overcoat. James has seen many a fresh corpse strewn about – not only in the war, but on his last tour, when there was a bad bout of cholera in his area. All my corpses were tucked up nicely in bed, looking as if they were waiting for Mother’s goodnight kiss (you know how young some of you were, Edward). Did you know that one’s chief dread out here is to incapacitate oneself in the bush, far from help? The flies and ants get to work with admirable thoroughness, starting with the eyes. I have seen lizards crawling along with little ants pouring out of their sockets. What went on in Eden, I wonder?
James had brought along the ceremonial switch of leopard hide, given to him by the Chief in Ikasa. He brushed at the ants vigorously, but they merely crawled up the strips to the handle, and thence towards his glove. They were also advancing up his mud-spattered puttees. He stepped back and said that it might simply be a local type of nest. There was no odour, for a start – not enough, anyway, to intrude on the general fetor. I was about to protest when the ants thinned, and something hollow but peach-like showed. I felt nauseous and so did James – he had to expectorate, at any rate, with his hands on his knees.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Judicial enquiry. DO as detective, jury, judge – and executioner.’
Quite true, too. It’s what DOs most dread, after blackmail.
The servants were instructed to pour water on the spot where I thought I’d seen the teeth. The debbies’ original contents – petrol – would have been better, but it seemed callous. Anyway, enough of the ants were washed away into the path’s gullies to show a human form, rather like a worn Jesus on the Cross, with a face like one of those outlandish masks in Government House. It was still grinning. The ants had been very busy: they would make the Gourmand Society look like prissy vegetarians. Short work had been made of the torso, but in patches, like one of your archaeological excavations, Edward. Where the skin survived, it was cindery black above the pink chitterlings. James put his hand on his helmet.
‘Oh dear God – Mawangu!’ he murmured. ‘Hargreaves has done this to Mawangu. The repercussions, oh my God, the repercussions ...’
‘Pull yourself together, James,’ I replied. ‘Mawangu’s teeth are filed sharp and are white as snow.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘James, they terrified me. I have only just got used to them.’
‘They’re not meant to be terrifying. They’re meant to be beautiful.’
James seemed rather lost. He had always dreaded dealing with murder.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘Hargreaves might have disguised himself.’
I told him, Edward, how the Ulverton Mumming Team would rub their faces with soot and lard or burnt cork, and became quite unrecognisable. What a pity this horrible sight was not dear Ernest Shadlow the schoolteacher, turned Turkish Knight, ready to be revived by Henry Fergusson or (in the old days) Harry Dimmick, surrounded by a circle of delighted village faces! (And what a pity such innocent entertainment is now deemed old-fashioned. You should revive it yourself, Edward, as part of your grand scheme.)
James seemed not at all convinced, but he wasn’t about to test my theory on his finger. Apart from anything else, the ants looked quite vicious. Another debbie was emptied, glugging unpleasantly. There seemed to be a ceremonial mantle of fur over the shoulders, the thickness of my boa (left behind in England, of course!), and exactly like the one the Chief wore in Ikasa. Extraordinary, what the ants could do in a matter of hours. The teeth grinned, bigger than in life. The eyes were gone. Despite the foraging pits in the flesh, the nipples were intact.
I heard laughter: the servants were laughing.
‘Who done dis ting?’ James demanded.
Best to start with the ones you knew, of course.
They didn’t stop laughing, however. Mr Henry in particular was enjoying himself, pointing and slapping his head, the side of his face, as if he couldn’t believe the madness of it. In a hundred years, I thought, the native sense of humour will be colonised, and we will understand each other.
James was flushed and furious. He took off his helmet and mopped his brow.
I said, ‘People laugh from shock, darling. It’s medically proven, and quite normal.’
He gripped my arm and took me aside. ‘For God’s sake, Charlotte – whether this is Hargreaves or some other poor fellow stuffed with ju-ju rot, we provided the murder weapon –’
‘James, a tin of Tate & Lyle’s Golden Syrup can hardly be classed as a murder weapon –’
‘Can’t it?’
He shook his head slowly and sadly from side to side.
‘Absolutely anything can be classed as a murder weapon, Charlotte,’ he said, very faintly. ‘Anything. Even a word.’
He was thinking of poor young Bailey, of course. He came out to Togoland when James was about to go on tour up north, beyond Y
endi. Bailey had asked to go with him and James had said yes. The fellow wasn’t properly acclimatised. James has always blamed himself, especially as he knew they’d be passing through a yellow fever belt. I don’t think, frankly, James will ever get over the horror of watching Bailey vomit himself to death in the tent, while feeling seedy himself.
But to see James in that state, now, was doubly awful. It was as if he had never got physically better: his face went quite pale and bony again, and even his bald patch seemed to expand.
Astonishingly, young Quiri then gave the corpse a kick.
James positively exploded.
‘Stop dat!’ he shrieked. He hit the little fellow with the leopard-skin switch, across the shoulders. ‘Stop dat! Stop dat ting!’
I held James’s arm very tight. To be sued by an African is run of the mill, but it is awfully tiresome and potentially damaging.
‘Sorry,’ said James. ‘Sorry.’
Mr Henry was now brushing the remaining ants from the top of the head with a large, stiff leaf. There was a furry, black cap. The face was frowning. The nose had actually gone, eaten to the bone, exposing great nostrils. Something huge crashed through the trees fifty yards from the path. There was that curious, hooting sound. I felt my scream welling again. Even Mr Henry looked frightened, now. He ordered us to stay put in a sharp, hissy voice.
‘Hey, no move atall! Bad-bad beef! Dis beef big an’ strong too much! A man move one finger, ’e go chop urn!’
We froze for at least a minute. I was sure the ’beef in question was a snake. Since all snakes are regarded as venomous to the natives, it did not need to be a black mamba, or a puff adder, or something equally frightful – but it just might be. Birds trilled and burbled in the echoey pastures, high up. A lizard snaked across the path, with horns like worms on its head. The ants were struggling in the mud at my feet. The corpse’s half-eaten arms were ridiculously long, with calloused hands. I remembered, in London Zoo, a certain large beast scratching its fleas in the corner of a miserable cage, with surprisingly long arms and just such calloused hands. I leaned towards James.
