PUFFIN BOOKS
Burn my heart
‘How do I tell you this story? Do I tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Do I tell you my side or his? What if I had been born on his side and he on mine? We were both only children…’
Beverley Naidoo grew up in South Africa under apartheid. She says: ‘As a white child I didn’t question the terrible injustices until I was a student. I decided then that unless I joined the resistance, I was part of the problem.’ Beverley Naidoo was detained without trial when she was twenty-one and, in the following year, came into exile in England where she has since lived. Her first children’s book, Journey to Jo’burg, was banned in South Africa until 1991, but it was an eye-opener for hundreds of thousands of readers elsewhere. In Chain of Fire, No Turning Back and Out of Bounds (short stories with a Foreword by Archbishop Tutu) there are extraordinary challenges for young people, black and white, caught in an oppressive society that she describes as ‘more dangerous than any fantasy’. She has won many awards for her writing, including the prestigious Carnegie Medal and the Nestlé Smarties Silver Award for The Other Side of Truth about two refugee children smuggled to London who also feature in Web of Lies. She has written picture books and plays, and has two honorary doctorates as well a doctorate in education.
beverleynaidoo.com
Books by Beverley Naidoo
Burn My Heart Chain of Fire Journey to Jo’Burg No Turning Back Out of Bounds The Other Side of Truth The Great Tug of War Web of Lies
BEVERLEY NAIDOO
Burn my heart
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
penguin.com
First published 2007
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Copyright © Beverley Naidoo, 2007
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
EISBN: 978–0–141–90480–1
For Muiruri and Gabriel
and a new generation who may want to know
Gũtirĩ ũkinyaga mũkinyĩre wa ũngĩ…
Nobody walks with another person’s gait.
Contents
One: ‘It’s our secret, hey?’
Two: Trouble
Three: Anxious Neighbours
Four: Warning
Five: A Storm Outside
Six: Strangers
Seven: Spy
Eight: A Game of Mau Mau
Nine: Brothers
Ten: A Night in the Gorge
Eleven: Messenger
Twelve: Lance Has Plans
Thirteen: A Secret Society
Fourteen: Accusations
Fifteen: ‘Only a little fire’
Sixteen: Caged
Seventeen: ‘I’ll cut you dead forever’
Eighteen: Speechless
Nineteen: Confession and Confusion
Twenty: Breaking
Twenty-one: Cries at the Fence
Twenty-two: Burning
Afterword
Glossary
Kikuyu and Swahili Names
Acknowledgements
‘If you don’t stop that, the Mau Mau will come to get you!’
Anyone who was a child in Britain in the 1950s will probably remember hearing about the Mau Mau. The stories were frightening and, yes, some parents used the name as a threat… even though the Mau Mau were 4,000 miles away in Kenya.
These two words that alarmed many people in Britain, for at least ten years, then seem to have disappeared. They no longer made news. They hardly appeared even in history books. So what was this all about? Why the silence? With the scent of something secret, the detective in me became curious. I grew up in South Africa, 2,000 miles further south of Kenya, and there too we had many secrets.
So just a few words of history before the story begins…
Many Africans fought alongside British soldiers during the Second World War. Many of them died in the name of freedom. After the war, Africans declared that it was about time that they had their own freedom in their own countries. But the white settlers in Kenya refused even to share power. These wazungu, as they were called by Africans (mzungu for one white person), demanded that the country stay in British hands. They insisted that Africans were like children, not ready for independence. When the African leader Jomo Kenyatta called for land, education, freedom, decent wages and equality, they called him a dangerous agitator. To most settlers, ‘good’ Africans were those who were loyal to them and the colony.
Kikuyus led the fiercest resistance. It was their fertile land in the highlands that the wazungu had taken for their farms. Many younger Kikuyus became impatient with older leaders like Kenyatta. They wanted action. A movement grew that became known as the Mau Mau. It was a secret society whose members took oaths and swore to fight unto death to get back their land. Any Kikuyu who was seen to help the white settlers was hated as much as the ‘uninvited guests’. This story begins in the year before the State of Emergency. While the setting is real, my characters are all imagined.
KENYA HIGHLANDS – NOVEMBER 1951
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‘It’s our secret, hey?’
‘The fence is broken! Over here, Mugo!’
Mathew lifted the straggling barbed wire with the barrel of his gun. The other end remained attached to one of Father’s new wooden posts. It was the bottom strand nearest the ground. Above it, row upon row of barbed wire stretched taut and intact, almost twice his height, between him and the bush. The new fence felt like a cage. The old fence had only reached his chest and its sagging wires had been easy for him and Mugo to push apart. Weak like old skin, Mugo had once said.
Careful not to touch the barbs, Mathew pinched the wire between his finger and thumb. He studied it. It hadn’t come loose by itself. The other half hung from the adjoining post. It had been split in the middle. Sensing an adventure, Duma barked. Before he thought to stop her, Duma had stretched herself out and snuffled her way through the gap. From the other side, she wagged her long copper tail at Mathew like a crazy feather duster. It would be difficult for a grown person to slip underneath. If the wire had been deliberately cut, why only the bottom wire?
Mathew squatted, his new Red Ryder rifle tucked under his arm. The blue-steel barrel of the gun pointed down. The hard tawny earth gave nothing away, or had Duma already swept away the evidence? Mathew frowned up towards Mugo, his speckled green eyes squinting against the sun.
‘See any tracks?’
Mugo’s jet-black eyes scoured the clumps of rough grey grass either side of the fence before he shook his head.
‘Hapana… nothing.’
Mathew trusted Mugo’s eyes to pick out the tiniest detail. Mugo was already thirteen, two years older than Mathew. Hi
s name even meant ‘seer’. Before coming to work in the kitchen, he had been a herd boy. He knew all about the surrounding bush beneath their mountain.
‘What did it, Mugo? An animal?’
‘Hapana.’ No. Not animal. Mugo shook his head again.
‘People?’
Mugo said nothing. In the sun his cheeks glistened like the smooth polished walnut stock of Mathew’s gun. But his forehead creased with worry lines. Mathew followed the direction of Mugo’s gaze to a whistling thorn tree on the other side of the fence. Had something snagged there on one of its long jagged spikes?
‘I’m going to see,’ Mathew announced.
Mugo sprang to life. ‘Hapana, young bwana! Your father will be angry!’
‘I’m only going to those trees.’
‘Hapana! We must tell the bwana about the fence!’ Mugo urged.
‘He’s gone out, Mugo,’ Mathew retorted impatiently.
‘Then we must tell –’
‘Juma? His mother is sick and he’s gone to see her. Father said he could.’ Juma was Father’s new foreman. Mathew grinned rather smugly. ‘Don’t worry, Mugo! We’ll sort it out.’
‘We can tell my father!’ Mugo argued earnestly. He pointed to the blue gum trees in the direction of the stables, his fingers jabbing the air as if shocked by a bolt of electricity. Mugo’s father, Kamau, was in charge of the stables.
‘We’ll do that but we’ve plenty of time to get someone to mend it before tonight. I just want to check if something’s there.’
Before Mugo could reply, Mathew pushed his gun through the gap in the fence, flattened himself and began crawling. As long as he didn’t go far and stay too long, why should Father ever know? He felt a little surge of pleasure at his defiance.
The bush on the other side was part of their land, all the way to the river. It extended far downstream into the plains and upstream through the thickly wooded lower slopes of Mount Kenya. ‘Grayson country’, as Mathew’s grandfather used to call it. According to his mother, even as a toddler, Mathew used to beg the ayah who looked after him to let him go into the bush. However, her instructions were to keep him inside the fence. But by the time he was four, Mathew had latched on to Kamau who was responsible for Father’s white stallion and who had worked on the Grayson farm since he was a boy himself.
With young Mathew’s nagging and begging, Kamau was given permission to lead the child on a pony to the nearest stretch of river when he wasn’t too busy. When Mathew could manage the pony himself, Kamau would ride beside him. One of his best feelings in the world was being perched at the top of the ridge early in the morning from where the two of them would watch wildlife come to drink in the water below. Kamau knew every animal and Mathew had never tired of listening to his stories.
Kamau’s younger son, Mugo, had been one of the Grayson’s herd boys until the day he had saved Mathew from a deadly snake. Mathew, then six, had been with Father on his rounds to check that all the cattle were fenced inside the bomas before sundown. They had to be kept safe at night from lions and hyenas, even the occasional leopard from the mountain. Mathew had found an anthill near the entrance to a boma and begun poking it with a stick. Suddenly a black mamba had slithered out, rearing its head. If sharp-eyed Mugo hadn’t yanked him away, its poison could have killed him within minutes. Father had praised Mugo for reacting so smartly and, soon afterwards, he was brought to work in the Grayson’s kitchen.
In time, Mathew persuaded his parents to let him go into the nearby bush just with Mugo. That is whenever Josiah the cook would release him. Josiah used to grumble but usually gave in, especially after Mathew was sent to boarding school and only came home for holidays. At school, he would often lie awake in his narrow dormitory bed, planning expeditions with Mugo. Those plans helped him get through the long weeks away from home.
But recently things had begun to change. His father had said that Mathew wasn’t to go out into the bush without him. It was a ‘precaution’. Like his father always being armed these days… and now there was this new fence. Mother had only informed him about it in the car yesterday, on the way home from school for the weekend. There was nothing special to worry about, she had reassured. Their area was still quite peaceful. ‘We’re just being careful,’ Father had added. ‘Those agitators won’t get far here! I’ve always looked after my labour well so they’re loyal. They won’t want to upset the apple cart for themselves!’
Mathew pulled himself up to his feet on the other side of the fence. Duma shook herself with delight as Mathew raised his Red Ryder like a commando.
‘Come on!’ he called to Mugo. ‘I need you over here.’
Mugo continued to look unhappy and sighed loudly enough for Mathew to hear. However, he removed the red fez from his head and pulled off his white tunic. He folded the tunic with care before placing it on a tree stump with the fez on top. Sensible Mugo! Mathew knew how Josiah would berate the boy if there were just a spot on his uniform. He glanced down at his own dust-smeared shirt and trousers. Josiah’s wife, Mercy, would grumble and tut-tut at him, but that would be all. She took such pride in returning his clothes freshly washed and pressed that he was sure her gripes were only show.
Mathew watched Mugo’s muscles flex as he edged his body under the barbed wire. Duma was ecstatic at the adventure, sniffing at Mugo, glancing up at Mathew, and barking.
‘Shh, Duma! Quiet, girl!’
It was broad daylight so it couldn’t be that dangerous in the bush near to the fence. All the same, when Duma quietened down and Mugo was at his side, Mathew felt safer. He ignored the concern written across Mugo’s face.
‘I’ll look for tracks this way. You go that!’ Mathew pointed his two index fingers at right angles. ‘We’ll just go as far as those thorns over there so I still see you. Then we walk towards each other, swap over and come back, OK?’
Mugo frowned and remained silent.
‘Oh, buck up, Mugo! Don’t be such a wet blanket! I’m going anyway.’
As Mathew set off, Duma’s lean copper face swung from one boy to the other. Her dark, elegant eyes looked worried.
‘Here, Duma, here!’ Mathew patted his thigh. But as Mugo started to walk, she padded after him.
Mathew let her go. He needed to concentrate if he was going to find any evidence of whoever might have cut their fence. If his detective work paid off and he had to admit breaking the new rule, surely Father wouldn’t be too upset? He was actually pretty fed up with Father. For weeks he had been looking forward to going out hunting with him today. Whenever he had felt miserable at school, he had cheered himself up thinking about it. Father had promised that he could try out his new Red Ryder properly. He had already spent hours assembling it, cleaning it, and learning to align the sights. He had practised its lightning loader and repeater action on targets far away from the house. He had also brought down a couple of chirpy bulbuls that had been eating fruit in Mother’s orchard. But today was meant to be the first time he could try out the gun on something bigger. That was until Father had been called away to fix a neighbour’s generator. ‘Sorry, son, it has to take priority!’ It seemed to Mathew that other things always took priority.
He set off now, using the Red Ryder barrel to probe clumps of grass as he studied the earth for any tracks. His eyes also veered over nearby bushes and thorn trees for any giveaway signs. Every now and again, he looked across to check how Mugo and Duma were doing. Boy and dog were working as a team. Mathew felt a pang of jealousy. Duma was his dog. She had come to him as a longhaired red setter puppy. He had named her. It wasn’t that she looked much like a cheetah – ‘duma’ in Swahili – but because he wanted her to be the fastest dog in the world! He was older now and knew she would never qualify for that title, but he loved her dearly. When he first had to leave her to spend weeks away at school, he had cried bitterly and, to his shame, had wet his dormitory bed. Matron hadn’t been pleased, especially when under interrogation, and in tears, he had revealed that he was missing his dog. ‘I
f you’d been weeping for your mother, I might understand!’ she had scolded in her Scottish ‘no-nonsense’ accent.
Mathew had almost reached the cluster of thorn trees, when a flicking caught his eye between the sprawl of branches ahead. He stopped dead still. The flicking had stopped. He held his breath, then released it gently when he saw that it was only an impala. However, when the buck lifted its head and turned to look at him, he was spellbound. It was a grown male with a magnificent set of curving, curling horns! Perhaps longer than his arms! The buck remained perfectly still, the black tips on its white ears primed liked antennae.
Trying not to tremble, Mathew slowly raised his rifle. This was his chance! What a trophy, if only…! He pressed the stock under his armpit, brought his left eye in line with the barrel while crooking his left forefinger round the trigger. But before he could squeeze the trigger, the buck swung its head and fled. At the same moment, Duma barked, rushing across the long grass ready to chase. Mathew called her to heel.
‘Silly girl!’ he said crossly. ‘I almost got him!’ He wasn’t sure who had broken the spell, Duma or the impala. Either way he had lost his moment. But, maybe all wasn’t lost. Mathew turned to Mugo, who had followed Duma.
‘Let’s go to the ridge! We’ll see everything from there.’
‘Hapana, young bwana! It’s not safe! We must go back.’ Mugo’s pitch rose.
But Mathew’s nerves were tingling. How could he give up the prize when it was so close? The impala could be drinking at the river. To go to the ridge wouldn’t be that much further. He and Mugo had been there countless times. He ejected the straggling barbed wire from his mind.
‘You’re over-reacting because of the new fence, Mugo. Even Mother says it is only a precaution. Follow me!’ Mathew ordered.
It was roughly the same distance as they had already covered from the fence. Mathew was tempted to run, but Father’s voice in his head restrained him. ‘Don’t run with a gun.’ It was also stupid to think he could ever keep up with the impala. As long as the impala didn’t feel it was being chased, it might stay near the river.
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