I see the skin on his back, across one side from the shoulder blade to his hip, is mottled with scarring. The skin doesn’t move, doesn’t ripple with the rest of his body as he walks. It looks as if it has melted. There is flesh missing.
He is—naked—like a warrior sculpted in bronze, an archetype of masculinity, and I am both compelled and repulsed by his strangeness. He wades into the water, then dives in and stays underneath for a long moment. I can see his shape gliding under the sun’s reflection like a fish. I watch enviously. The water ripples outward, cool and liquid against his body, and I want to be swimming too, submerged beneath its surface.
—
MY MOTHER’S FISHING ROD is in my hand, when I hear the District Officer’s car pull up. He steps out and walks toward the veranda where I am standing.
“Going out?” he asks, looking up at me. He is dressed in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved, khaki bush shirt, the buttons undone at the top. His blond hair—greased back—makes his face appear overly large, and there is something chilling in the heavy tread of his boots as he walks up the wooden steps.
I am conscious suddenly of the house silent around us. And I find—now that I am alone with him—that he makes me afraid. I might be twelve years old again.
“To the dam,” I say, my voice not quite steady.
“Is your father in?”
I shake my head.
“Sara?”
“She’s resting.”
“That suits me fine. It’s been a long day.” He sits down on one of the chairs on the veranda and stretches out his legs, the floorboards creaking under his weight. “Can I trouble you for a glass of water?”
“Of course.” I lean the fishing rod against the wall of the house, noticing as I do so that my hands are sweating. I pad down the steps past him, across the narrow strip of grass, under the burning sun, to the kitchen hut, conscious of him watching me the whole way. It is the middle of the day and Jim has gone back to the shamba. The heat is saturating. It scalds my face, and my back runs with sweat. It smells of earth in here, and food. Flies circle and alight in a lazy dance. One side of the kitchen is open to the air; it is cooler here at the back and I pour water from the jug into a glass, then stand for a moment, wondering if I have to go back, or whether I can slip off without him noticing. I hear a noise behind me and glance round. Steven is standing in the open doorway, watching me. Anxiety slides like acid through my stomach, and I swallow heavily.
“Did I interrupt?” he asks, looking at me, but not going away.
“I was just coming out.”
He walks a little way into the kitchen, and I have to force myself not to step backward. There is not much room in here for both of us. I remember his hands, when I was twelve, pinning me in his lap. He is more my father’s age than mine and—although I want to run past him—I struggle under a sense of his authority.
“The water?” he asks, smiling.
When I hand him the glass he doesn’t take it, just looks at me with pleasure, as though I have been naive, and I am embarrassed. I put the glass down behind me and go to step past him, but he sidesteps in front of me at the last moment and laughs when I flinch.
I move the other way, and he sidesteps with me, copying my movement exactly as though we are dancing, and my heart is thumping in my chest.
Then he steps forward into me, so that his stomach nudges against my shirt. I back up against the sink. He smiles slowly, putting a hand to the waist of my trousers, watching for my reaction. My skin crawls under the pressure of his fingers, and I try to move out of his grasp, but clumsily, not wanting him to think he has me trapped. He gives a low laugh, putting his other hand lightly on my hip, so that he is pinning me, and there is something both intimate and assertive in the gesture. I remember what it was like before—the struggle—and try not to move, not to make this worse by encouraging him to use any kind of force.
“It can’t be easy for you, being home after so long.”
“It’s fine,” I say, willing him to let go of me.
“And your father too busy to notice you, eyes only for Sara.”
“That’s not true.” I muster the courage to look him in the eye, but when my gaze meets his I wish I hadn’t. It is too knowing, too intimate, and I look away.
“Oh, you can’t tell me it doesn’t hurt. I’ve seen the way you watch them, him looking at her with those big eyes. You’re all on your own here and I think it scares you.”
Even though I dislike him—I know he is right, and I can feel myself coloring while he watches me. With his eyes still on me, he steps a little to the side—letting me escape—and I dart past him, the skin on my back crawling, into the bright day outside.
—
MICHAEL LOOKS UP when I come into the yard. I stop when I see him, taking in a ragged breath. He puts down his tools and watches me. My hands are at my sides, and my head is ringing. I can still feel the pressure of Steven’s fingers on my hip.
“What is it?” he asks, stepping out of the garage. I can see him trying to read in me what has happened.
“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head. I had not anticipated this. I came down here for something else. We are watching each other across the yard. The light, the colors—they are too bright. I bite my lower lip, staring at him, tears frozen in my eyes.
I want something—I am molding it in my mind. It is to do with him—but I shake it off. I walk over to my mother’s trunks and push back the lid of the first, bend down and pick up an armful of dresses. My hands are full of soft fabric. There are almost too many for me to carry and my mouth is buried. The smell of them is overwhelming. Musty, dry, and of my mother. It is the smell of her dead.
He moves, closer to me now.
I stumble away from him, trip and fall on my knees. The dresses are scattered on the earth—green, yellow, silver. One of my knees is bleeding.
His shadow slides over me—I see his feet—the arch of his foot pale like the inside of his lips.
“Where are you going?” he asks. I can’t bring myself to look up at him. The skin on my knee has peeled back, and the flesh beneath is bleeding small pinpricks of blood. My head feels heavy. I gather up the dresses, clumsily, and carry them out of the yard.
—
THE SUN IS A HARD, flat glare. My arms sweat beneath the weight of the fabric. I reach the dam and throw the dresses into the boat, untie the old rope from the post, throw it in and step in after it. I take one of the oars and push against the bank, and the boat dips out into the dam. I drift right into the middle, close to the swell of earth where my father said a witch lived. The water laps at the sides of the hull, all around me its depth falling away, the light turning it a murky yellow, full of particles that sift down through its many layers.
I take one of the dresses and hold it over the surface. Water laps at the bottom of it, turning the bright yellow cotton a dull green, limp and wet as though my mother has walked out here herself. It grasps at the dress. I let it go and the dress floats, with the substance of air, for a long moment, then the water—like fire to paper—slowly takes hold of it, and it is sucked wetly onto the surface, before sinking into the depths. The fabric billows as it goes down, and it is as though my mother is there, turning, trapped beneath me.
There are seven dresses in all. The last dress is made of green silk. My father bought it for her at the coast, and she had worn it very occasionally, eliciting a look of hunger from him, an understanding passing between them that excluded me. I cannot bring myself to throw it into the water, and so I bundle it into a ball on my lap and row myself back to the bank.
When I turn, Michael is waiting at the edge of the water.
He wades out and pulls in the boat. Tears pour down my face. I step out into ankle-deep water. “It’s all right,” he says, and the patient softness of his voice loosens something in me. Without thinking I lean forward and
rest my forehead on his shoulder. He puts a hand on the back of my neck, and I feel the warm, dry surface of his skin settle against mine, as it had in my dream. His hand is barely touching me, but it is there and I don’t know how it became true or whether there is fault in it, but I know that he is the only person who can offer me comfort, the only person whose presence can make me feel as though everything might—after all—be all right.
—
IT IS STEVEN LOCKHART who brings the news. I see him step out of his jeep one morning, with Harold’s rucksack in one hand. The one he left with a few months ago, carrying his small bundle of belongings. And I know what has happened before I stand at the door and hear Sara screaming. My father tries to hold her but she throws him off. Her cries come out of silence and fall back into silence, like the screams of an impala caught in the jaws of a lion. There is no crying in between.
She staggers to the table and sweeps her hand across it, knocking a yellow porcelain bowl to the floor; one of the set she had brought with her from Nairobi. It shatters on the boards. My father bends down to pick up the fragments, as though it might still be within his grasp to mend the situation.
Harold died out on patrol. An ambush. Two English boys killed and not a single Mick. They slipped away into the forest, Steven says, like bats into the night. Sara does not come to lunch. Steven says to my father, “We will make sure they pay. The whole disgusting, fucking tribe.”
I knock on Sara’s door. She is sitting on the far side of the bed, facing the window. She does not turn around. “I am so sorry,” I say.
After a moment she turns her face to me. There are no tears. She looks at me, until I am uneasy, her eyes staring, her face blank and taut, full of grief, hate and accusation.
Harold is buried in Nakuru. My father and Sara go to the funeral, and I am left behind to watch the empty house. She does not want anyone with her but my father. They will be back before it is dark, my father says, and Kahiki is outside in case there is trouble. I walk down the corridor to Harold’s darkroom and sit on the single bed, the springs creaking beneath my weight. We sat here, his head against my shoulder, his tears falling wet onto my nightdress. And where is he now? I lie down and close my eyes. It is not good to be in here like this, but I do not move, giving myself up to the darkness. My head spins, grief and fear turning a circle, one indistinguishable from the other, until I feel something dark and awful pressing down on me, and I open my eyes with a jolt and run from the room, down the corridor, along the track to the stables. There is no one there. The yard is silent. I open the stable door and sink into the straw beside Juno, her nose pushing into my hand, and her puppies tumbling over my legs, trying to shut out the fears that grip me.
My father and Sara come back in the late afternoon. Neither of them talk about the funeral, and Harold is not mentioned. When I say his name, my father shakes his head. Sara must have asked for it to be that way.
In the evening, I see my father on his own at the table, gluing the pieces of Sara’s broken porcelain bowl; three fragments on a tray in front of him. He assembles them, holding them together, the delicate bowl perfect for a moment in his grasp; his hands shaking with the tension of keeping them steady. I realize suddenly that his jaw is clenched. He is pressing too hard. It will not hold. The pieces crush against each other, the bowl broken, but my father keeps pushing, his knuckles whitening, until the porcelain snaps into shards, squeezed into the palms of his hands. A drop of blood runs down one fist, into his shirtsleeve.
He hasn’t seen that I am watching.
Sara retreats to her room and doesn’t come out during the day. A few nights later she appears for dinner, fully dressed, but when I look at her I see that there is something changed in her—a looseness behind her eyes—as though the stitches have been picked out and she is unraveling.
XXI
The Home Guard post needs volunteers to go out on patrol. All the farmers are on rota, offering their services. My father makes plans to leave. He says he has no choice; they need him to do his bit. He will be gone for three weeks.
“What are we to do without you?” Sara asks, her voice rising.
“You’ll do fine without me,” he says, putting a reassuring hand over hers, but she pulls her hand out from under his.
“Why can’t they send one of the boys from the KAR?”
“They’d be lost before they started. I know the land like the back of my hand. It takes years for these boys from England to learn the terrain, how to track and how to hide. I can make a real difference—” He puts a hand on hers again and says softly, “I think you would like me to go. For Harold?”
Sara looks away, but there is consent in her posture.
“You’ll both be fine,” my father says to us. “Steven has said he will check in when he can.”
I cannot imagine being in the house without him. What if there is an attack? I watched a Western once, two women alone on a farm, the Indians creeping up silently on the house, under the cover of night. The gunshots and the screaming. Mau Mau has the upper hand. Harold is dead. And if my father leaves, we will be more vulnerable than ever to attack.
When I find my father alone and tell him that I am afraid, he says, “They are not brave, and they are mostly poorly armed. They won’t be able to get inside, unless you open the doors. So whatever you do, don’t be fooled into letting anyone in. You are both armed, and Kahiki will be sleeping in the kitchen. If there is an attack there is every chance that you will be all right.” He squeezes my hand. “I need you to be brave, Rachel. Sara has had a hard time of it, with Harold. It would be good if you could be strong for both of you.” I want to tell him about Steven, that he scares me, but I can’t see a way to get at it. It feels unimportant with everything that is going on. What did he actually do to me when I was twelve? What has he done to me since I have been here? Is it anything more than insinuation, and my own imagination?
My father insists that Juno is brought into the house, and even Sara agrees without a fuss. We need a guard dog. The puppies have stopped suckling—they are a few months old, and will live down at the stables.
We watch him drive off for his first patrol in the Land Rover. When we can no longer see the car through the dust, I go to my bedroom. I push against the bars on the windows—they are cold against my hands and immovable. We have been left alone in the house, with our guns, to ward off the evils of the night as best we are able.
—
I READ IN the newspaper the story of a Kikuyu laborer. When he refused to take the Mau Mau oath and kill the farmer for whom he worked, the Mau Mau gang tied him to a rope and put a panga in his hand. He was told—under the pain of death—to enter the farmhouse and kill the old farmer. He did as he was told. The judge suggested the courts should show him mercy, but the Governor disagreed. He will be hanged later this week.
—
MUNGAI IS ON his knees setting the fire. It is half past five and the sitting room is quiet. Sara is still in her room—I haven’t seen her all day. I place my gun carefully on the table in front of me. It is different now, the feeling I have as night approaches. The menace is tangible; thick in the air. A slow drum starts beating somewhere in the hills. I prick my ears—I have not imagined it. A low vibration from far off that pulls my heart into its rhythm. A Mau Mau oathing ceremony? It is nearly dark. Curfew means no one should be allowed outside after dark. What does it mean? Are they mustering for an attack? Or just holding an ngoma?
Mungai looks as though he hasn’t heard. He moves quietly around the room, putting out glasses, laying the table for dinner. He is only allowed in once at dusk to light the fire and lay out supper. We eat a lukewarm dinner every night, and the plates are cleared in the bright light of the morning.
Only when Mungai goes to draw the curtains do I see him stop and stare out into the dwindling light. The window is a dangerous place to stand—a precision rifle was stolen two nights ago fr
om a farm not far away, but what should he fear? Night is gathering and the drums beat a little faster. His hand grips the yellow and white cotton print. I want to know what he is thinking. Have they been oathing in the shamba? Would our servants—under pressure—plot an attack against us? Everyone on the farm has been forced to take sides. Which side is Mungai on? Jim? Michael?
“They are louder tonight than I have heard them before,” I say.
Mungai turns, as if he has forgotten me. “Memsaab?” The question is thrown back at me as if I am imagining what he has so clearly heard. As if hearing the drums might be admitting to guilt. I feel the confusion in him—compelled and repelled like the rest of us.
The low thudding of the drums continues as Sara and I eat dinner, lifting into the air with the rising moon—a theatrical score, heightening our anxiety. We eat with our revolvers on the table. The night outside feels vast and menacing, clamoring at our windows, seeping through the cracks of the house, the open seams, and dissolving our security into its blackness.
—
THE SOUND OF a leopard wakes me again that night and the nights which follow; the hoarse, rasping cough marking out the dark. Is it Mau Mau, come down from the forest to oath in the shamba? Do they know that my father is away? I struggle to sleep. At the edges of my waking mind I can hear the bleating of the goat as it waited, with its legs hobbled, for the inevitable, violent grasping of claws.
—
“HOW IS THAT bunting coming along?” Sara asks at breakfast, digging her spoon into the wet, pink flesh of a pawpaw.
“Do we still need it?” I ask, surprised. I had assumed, after Harold’s death, that she would call off the celebration.
Leopard at the Door Page 22
