Tefuga

by Peter Dickinson

  Sarkin Kiti was processing down from the hut, escorted by the small entourage who had been concealed in its entrance—two guards with tasselled spears, a brolly-man carrying not the usual immense and gaudy parasol but a leaf-shaped wicker fan with which to shade his master, and an official whose main duties seemed to be those of opponent in the local variant of ludo. All these wore bright-coloured robes, several layers thick, and looked as old as the Sarkin himself. The spearmen came in front, levering a path through the remains of the crowd with their spear-butts.

  Major Kadu let the indrawn breath out in a long snort, stood to attention and snapped into a spruce salute. The Sarkin made that loose-wristed gesture of greeting which seems common to royalty of whatever race.

  “Major Kadu,” he said. “You have not visited us for much too long. Allow me to introduce my friend Mr Nigel Jackland. His father was D.O. here at the time of our Tefuga Incident—before you were born, of course. Mrs Jackland began to teach me English.”

  Jackland and the Major shook hands. It was clearly a moment for maximum formality.

  “Mr Jackland is a famous television reporter,” said the Sarkin. “This is Mr Malcolm Burn, who is assisting him. Do I understand that you have had to arrest one of Mr Jackland’s servants?”

  “Detained, only,” said the Major.

  He turned and shouted in Hausa to the launch. Another spectator was press-ganged into ferrying the prisoner ashore. By this time the crowd had become aware of Trevor Fish’s reputation, not by any mysterious empathy but because many of them would have known enough English to get the point of the cameraman’s joke. So the man who carried him had to put up with a good deal of jeering, its general meaning perfectly obvious, even in an unknown language. The Sarkin enjoyed the episode, chatting to his official while he watched.

  “We’re going to miss Fred’s bloody sunset,” muttered Burn. “It only lasts about ten mins. Not a hope of getting the launch off in time.”

  Jackland moved to where he could see the landing-stage.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “If Fred sets up right in the water it’ll be out of shot and the other camera can stay in close-up.”

  “We’ll have to bloody hurry.”

  “Right, you get on with it. I’ll endeavour to distract your military friend.”

  “You do that,” said Burn, and bustled down to the shore. Jackland moved smiling over to Major Kadu. Just as he had been able to switch on quasi-Biblical authority for his piece to the camera, so now, as if from some psychic dispensing machine, he poured out for the Major’s benefit another flavour of his personality—not exactly charm, or if charm more at an intellectual than a social level, an apparently sincere absorption in the ideas of the person to whom he was talking. For somebody who had seen so much and met such various strangers, this seeming simplicity of interest was a valuable gift.

  “Sorry about that, Major,” he said. “We’re all a bit on edge. It’s rather like a military operation, I suppose, everything timed and needing to dove-tail.”

  The Major nodded, clearly not prepared to relax immediately from his indignation. Jackland seemed not to notice.

  “You in charge of this district?” he said. “Birnin Soko’s your base, I suppose.”

  “Colonel Goondo is O.C. I do not think he would have been impressed by what Mr Burn had to tell him, and he would certainly not have been pleased by public mockery of the morals of one of his men.”

  “Cameramen are like that, for some reason. Fred especially. So wrapped up in visual effects that their other sensibilities seem to have atrophied. It sometimes seems to me that cameramen only come to this continent to film the more primitive of its people performing some stone-age labour silhouetted against a dying sun. Let me assure you that I am aware there is more than that to Nigeria.”

  “Very much more.”

  “Incredible diversity, to coin a phrase, not to be encapsulated in picturesque images. A marvellous country, in spite of everything.”

  “In spite of what, Mr Jackland?”

  “This last election, to take a prime example. Tell me, if it’s not a tactless question, what the feeling is about that in military circles.”

  It was, of course, a profoundly tactless question, but part of Jackland’s general style. He had the TV interviewer’ professional interest in the awkward point combined with something like the gambler’s compulsion to take unnecessary risks in potentially embarrassing situations. The fact that this was clearly a bad moment perhaps only enhanced the stimulus.

  “The Army would much prefer not to meddle in political matters,” said the Major.

  “There must be limits to its abstinence. There were in ’sixty-six.”

  “What happened in ’sixty-six was little more than a series of accidents.”

  “Only superficially, I’d have thought. The pressure was there. Something had to burst. And to the outside observer it certainly looks that way again.”

  “I would prefer not to discuss it.”

  Jackland smiled, unrebuffed. Sarkin Kiti was after all only a few feet away, a senior political figure who had introduced Jackland as his friend. Indeed perhaps he was able to hear, or at least sense what was being said, for he turned at this moment and spoke.

  “May we go down closer, Mr Jackland? I would like to see them land.”

  “Oh, I should think so. Come and meet Mary Tressider, Major. I want the Sarkin to tell me how close he thinks she’s got to my mother.”

  They walked together down the slope, the spearmen again clearing a path with their spear-butts. The Africans did not seem to resent this—indeed, they may have regarded it as a natural part of their relationship with the Sarkin. On the other hand they seemed in little awe of him, judging by the way they jostled in close as soon as he had reached a point from which he could watch the landing.

  The sunset, dull and fuzzy after the long heat of day, gleamed off the water, lighting the muscled arms of the naked paddlers. There were three of these in the front of the leading canoe, then Mary Tressider in white cotton shirt, jodhpurs and sun-helmet, then Piers Smith in white shirt, khaki trousers, tennis shoes and helmet, and then three more paddlers. The canoe (there had been several rehearsals) slid cleanly in to the landing-stage. Paddlers at front and rear grabbed the staging so that Smith could stand and step up. He bent to take Miss Tressider’s hand. She rose, balanced against an unrehearsed lurch of the canoe, stepped up on to the landing-stage and straightened, still holding Smith’s hand but gazing now up the hill as though film-crew and crowd were invisible. She was freckled, with a flattish, earnest face, pale eyes set wide, something hesitant about the line of the full-lipped mouth. The sunset light rippled up her cheek under the brim of her helmet. The Sarkin was muttering to himself, not in English.

  “Well?” whispered Jackland. “Pretty good to judge by the photos, anyway.”

  “It is not the same woman. It is the same spirit. Mrs Jackland carried her head so. Exactly so. Yes, she is there.”

  The Sarkin too had whispered, but his tone implied more than the need to keep quiet for the sake of the shot. It was as if he was in the presence of something before which he would naturally have lowered his voice.

  Still paying no attention to anyone, Miss Tressider stared up the slope. At last she turned to Smith with a quivering smile.

  “But, Ted,” she said, “it’s beautiful. Why wouldn’t you tell me? I can’t think what you were worried about.”

  Two

  Thurs Dec 13, 1923

  Our house. It’s called The Warren. Ted chose that ’cos he calls me Rabbit when he’s being fond—not terribly tactful, but very Teddish. I’ll do some sketches, of course, but it’s too hot to paint just now. Too hot to do anything! Will I ever get used to this heat? There’s always a sort of haze in the air so the sun doesn’t look nearly as glaring as I’d expected, but the moment you walk out it pre
sses down on you like an enormous load. I’ll do a sketch this evening. The light’s more interesting then, anyway. That’s when I first saw The Warren too.

  Ted utterly refused to tell me anything before but I guessed he was worried—it’d be his fault if I didn’t like it, you see. Usually, when you’re posted you find there’s a house there already and you just move in and lump it, but when Mr Hardinge and then Mr Prout died one after the other, Kaduna (that’s what we call the Govt) ordered a new compound to be built further from Kiti Town, so Ted could do what he liked. He actually spent some of his own money, making it nice for me, which Mr Wallace-Hodge, the D.O. at Fajujo, said was silly as we’re sure to be posted somewhere else soon, but I think is rather darling. Ted wouldn’t have dreamed of doing it for himself.

  Anyway, he wouldn’t even tell me what it wasn’t like. I asked him at Fajujo where he came to meet me if it was like Mr Wallace-Hodge’s horrid tin bungalow, but he did his trick of being too busy lighting his pipe to answer. He didn’t even point it out when we came round the last bend, and I thought the compound was just another native village till I noticed the flagpole. Apart from that, The Warren’s completely native-looking—all roof, made of cane-stalks and needing a haircut round the edges. There are proper walls but the brim sticks out so far you don’t see them—just that great silvery-gold raggedy roof. Rather a shock, first time. The idea of this being home!

  I daresay we could’ve had a tin bungalow if Ted had wanted but I suspect … oh, isn’t it extraordinary how little I know about my dear man! Just the tennis club, and walks along the beach, and tea-rooms, and then our week in Torquay (don’t like to think about that). He does so hate talking about himself, so I have to guess. Lots to find out. All rather interesting! Where was I …? Yes, I suspect he actually prefers doing things the African way if he can. Mr Wallace-Hodge gave me a hint about this. We were sitting in his mosquito-cage after dinner, but Ted had gone back to the house to fill his baccy-pouch and Mr W. H. took the chance to try and pat my knee. He’d had six big whiskies—I’d counted—just habit from watching Daddy—tho’ Ted says it’s not the same as it would be back home ’cos you sweat it out so quick. I’m jumpy about things like that—knee-patting, I mean—I know they can’t help it but I wish they wouldn’t—and I slapped his hand rather hard instead of just pushing it away. Then he leaned back in his chair and said, “I’m glad old Ted’s marrying. Steady him up. He’s always been a bit too keen on things African. That’s why he’s not got his step, though he’s senior enough in all conscience. They don’t like it in Kaduna, so you keep an eye on him, my dear, and we’ll see him a Resident before he retires.”

  Quite a nasty little speech if you think about it, rubbing in that Ted’s twenty-three years older than me, and hinting about African women. I don’t think that’s true—in fact I’m almost sure. Not just because Ted is so decent, but really he didn’t know any more than I did when we first tried!

  Goodness, I shall have to tear this page out and burn it—I never meant to be writing things like this! Surprising how much I want to. Not having anyone to talk to, I suppose. Better get back to The Warren.

  Inside it’s not quite so native, apart from the mud floor, which is rather a drawback. European boots scuff it up, so there’s always a fine layer of dust settling all over everything. The walls are mud too, which helps you keep cool in the day-time but by night they’ve sucked in the heat so you do rather roast in bed.

  The front room, which we call the dining-room tho’ we spend most of our time here, is really rather nice. It’s more like an enormous deep veranda than a room, with mosquito-wire instead of the outside walls, and just the poles that carry the roof-beams interrupting the view. I can sit and look right up and down the river. Sometimes there are fishermen throwing their nets from their boats, or just paddling by, or a big trading canoe going up to Kiti, or cranes coming in to drink, and so on. I thought when I first looked at it the river wouldn’t be very interesting if nothing like that was happening, but now I don’t know. The light keeps changing in tiny subtle ways—not like English light at all—I expect I’ll spend quite a lot of time trying to paint the river. Quite a challenge. The dining-room has a cloth stretched across the top to make a pretend ceiling, and some proper furniture, and the gramophone (very important). Not many books.

  That’s the front half of the house, almost. If Ted’d just left it to the Govt to pay for, all there’d have been behind is one more room, but we’ve got four! Our bedroom, a tiny room of my own (for me to have tantrums in, I told Ted!) a bathroom and Ted’s dressing-room which we can use for a spare bedroom if we have to put someone up. Mosquito-wire over all the windows (more of Ted’s own money!) and we still have to Flit every two hours and carry our Flit-guns to the B.G. (that’s the latrine—horrid!), and sleep under a net, in case. I’ll get malaria anyway, Ted says, and there’s tsetse too, but not all the year round ’cos we’re just on the fringe and so the bad season for that is over. Ted says malaria isn’t any worse than flu. He usually works on through when he has a go.

  Idea! When I’ve done writing this I’ll draw a cartoon for Ted—a line of bearers going through the bush with loads on their heads, only the bearers will be white and the loads will be labelled MALARIA and BLACK-WATER and TYPHUS and so on. Some natives standing by laughing. I’ll call it THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN.

  Behind our house there’s the compound. It’s a big clearing and the huts are at the back of it, all nice and new, not tumbledown like I saw down-river. They’re just round native huts, one room each. Kimjiri, our cook, has two, ’cos of his wives, then there’s one for Elongo, the houseboy, one each for the grooms, Mafote and Ibrahim, and one for the horses, one for the gardener, who’s called Joe ’cos his real name is too difficult, two for the policemen tho’ there’s only one policeman at the mo, two for messengers (the head messenger lives at Kiti) and one for Mr Yo, Ted’s clerk. Last of all, over at the side, Ted’s office, which is made of corrugated iron, perfectly horrid, but it’s harder to break into and white ants can’t eat it.

  All these natives make an incredible lot of noise, and on top of ours there’s always at least half a dozen waiting outside the office to see Ted. About once a week, Ted says, he calls everyone together and makes a little speech, in Hausa and pidgin, telling them they don’t have to talk as tho’ the person they were having the conversation with was on the other side of the river. They think this is a marvellous joke, and roar with laughter, and remember for about half a day and then start yelling again!

  Kimjiri’s wives are the worst. He is fat and pale brown, about forty, I should think, only it’s hard to tell. He came with Ted from Yola. He belongs to a small tribe over that side, but when he was a boy he was caught in a slave raid and sold in Bornu market. That was just before the English came. He was sent to work on a farm belonging to the Emir’s cousin, but he wasn’t very obedient so they decided to have him made into a eunuch! They sent him off to a special place where they were going to give him a drug and when he woke up he’d find out what had happened to him, but luckily he’d heard about this place and managed to run away on the journey and after a bit he stumbled into the camp of a touring A.D.O. (the English had got here by then) who took him on as a cook and passed him on to someone else later and eventually he came to Ted. He’s got four wives and masses of children, and whenever Ted sees one of them he makes a joke about the eunuch-making place not being very good at its job, and everyone in earshot laughs as tho’ it was the first time they’d heard it.

  (Interesting. Ted’s terribly shy about talking about s**. He simply refused to when we were finding things so awkward the first few goes—we just had to learn in deaf-and-dumb, in the dark! But ’cos Kimjiri’s a native Ted can make public jokes about it—and explain them to me, too!)

  K. is not a good cook, but Ted says that doesn’t matter compared with us being quite certain he’s cooked everything right through. A lot of white men, he says, expla
in carefully to their boys about bilharzia and cholera bacilli and so on, and the boys smile and say they understand and then fill the water-cans straight from the river or forget to wash the filters or something. Ted told K. there was a very dreadful fetish over all that, so now K. is quite certain that if the water isn’t boiled and filtered and if the food isn’t properly cooked ghastly things will happen, not just to Ted but to K. and his wives and children! (Joke about fetishes. Ted says our sun-helmets are one! We have to wear them whenever we go out, you see. It’s a rule. If you’ve got a skylight in your bathroom which the sun might come through, you wear your helmet in your bath! Natives say when the White Man stops wearing his sun-helmet he’ll lose his juju-power which makes everyone obey him, and then he’ll go away!)

  Elongo is quite different. He isn’t married, for a start, ’cos he’s only about sixteen. He was the one I really noticed when they all came down to meet us on the landing-stage. He is a proper Bakiti. (Difficult—the town and the district are called Kiti, and so is the language. The tribe are the Kitawa, but if there’s only one of them he’s a Bakiti.) Tall and lithe but strong-looking. His skin is a beautiful soft dark brown with a sort of light inside it like you get on polished wood. If he were white he’d have a marvellous complexion, like a girl’s. His eyes are large and wide apart. He’s got a snub nose but not the fat sort of lips I saw down-river. There are three little scar-lines on the corners of his forehead which give him a funny sort of frown as tho’ he spent the whole time trying to remember something he’s forgotten. All the Kitawa boys are marked that way when they’re fourteen—rather a pity but not nearly as horrid as some of the scar-marks you see. He wears a white cotton robe and a little white skull-cap. He wasn’t used to wearing anything till a few weeks ago except a grass belt! He came and asked Ted for a job when the hut was building, and Ted took to him and asked him to stay on and be houseboy ’cos perhaps he won’t try and cheat me as much as an experienced houseboy might. Ted sacked his last one for stealing tinned pilchards. It was clever of Ted to choose Elongo. He’s exactly right for me. He moves with such grace, and cleans everything with slow proud movements and stands so still when he’s waiting at meals, almost as tho’ he’s left his body and gone somewhere else. But he’s very quick if you want anything. Another nice thing is that his Hausa is even worse than mine. He hardly knows any. I’m truly grateful to Ted for making me start learning before I came out, and I’ve got on far better than he’d guessed—but I always liked French best at school, after art. Hausa is rather easy. Ted says Kiti is absolute h***! It’s what’s called tonal, which means singy. You have to say the syllables on the right note or they mean something else. It’s never been worth white men learning it ’cos sure as eggs, soon as they’d got anywhere they’d get posted. Anyway the Govt at Kaduna don’t like D.O.s knowing too much about the real Africans in case it upsets the emirs.