Reports filtered in about projects for a stone dairy with a sixteen unit milking parlour and milking machines to run off a new generator, a new pump and pump house at the spring, a rebuilt and richly equipped workshop, a new office and a storeroom like the Nakuru Star Hardware Emporium, the Public Works bulldozer to clear new farm tracks, and miles of fencing. Drivers from other farms saw the new Fairview Chevrolet lorry at the station and Ram Singh said Bwana Panetah had put his name down for a new Ford pick-up to haul his endless purchases from Nakuru. Everyone knew that Paynter was spending money like water and getting little back. Gopal the station master confided to Mark Ethridge, whence the word went round, that Bwana Panetah was shipping less cream than Bwana Looki had in his declining years. Anybody could tart up a farm but that was not the same as making it pay. Charles Gordon’s opinion became general: Paynter would go bankrupt within a year and Fairview be back on the market.
No one had the straight gen from the horse’s mouth because Ian only went to Karula early on Friday mornings to collect cash for payday and his mail. If any of the farmers met him, by chance, Ian answered questions in monosyllables. Sam Brand observed that Paynter always behaved like a man in need of a pee, twitching and wriggling until he could get away. The Memsaabs said that if Ian happened to spot one of them in the distance, he fled. This terror or distaste caused Rose Farrell to ask Maggie Ethridge if she thought Ian was queer.
They were shopping in the general store.
‘Just a minute,’ Mrs Ethridge said, checking her list. ‘Don’t tell me you’re out of Gentlemen’s Relish again, Mr Jivanjee. Oh well, never mind. How do you mean, Rose? Queer-homo or plain queer?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t decide.’
Dick Gale, gnawed by curiosity, dropped in at Fairview Farm uninvited. He did not find Ian, which was all to the good. Beda said the Bwana was cleaning a reservoir. ‘Himself?’ Mr Gale asked. Beda said oh yes, Bwana Panda worked with the men on everything. ‘He comes to this house at night, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, eat, sleep, wake up, go, work, come back eat quick, go, work, come back, eat quick, go, work. Not like Bwana Looki.’ Dick Gale had a snoop round and a chat with Simuni who looked harassed.
Mr Gale’s audience at the Sports Club next day was spellbound. ‘The man’s off his rocker. Can you believe it, Simuni told me he’s putting up a pig palace and he doesn’t own a single sow. There’s an army of builders swarming over Fairview, but the same old mingy herd, from what I could see. Luke was always a lazy farmer, but Paynter must be mad. His watu seem pretty fed up, I mean no one works like that, fourteen hours a day.’
‘He’s a boor,’ Mrs Farrell said. ‘Sending everyone the same note – so sorry, I have to be in Nakuru. As if Nakuru was Calcutta. A child of two would have better manners. He won’t be invited to our house again.’
‘I bet George Stevens is swindling the pants off him,’ Charles Gordon said with some satisfaction. ‘If he asked advice, any of us could save him a lot of money and mistakes.’
Ah Lukie, Helen Gordon thought, they’re all miffed, the men and the women, because your Paynter boy doesn’t want them or need them. How can I keep my promise to speak up for him?
‘I think he looks like Gary Cooper,’ Helen said out of the blue.
This was greeted with shouts of laughter.
‘I do,’ Helen insisted. ‘Nice and shy and with a golden heart, like Gary Cooper. He never says anything but Yes Ma’am or No Sir and everyone suspects him because he’s a loner but in the end he gets the girl and they make him Sheriff. Come on, Charles, we’ll be late for lunch.’
They were wafted out on waves of merriment which was better than pointless spite. How well Luke understood the neighbours or perhaps the human species though, apart from elephants, the animal species didn’t seem full of Christian charity either. She longed to get back to her garden.
The Africans kept headline news to themselves. Though tireless chatterers, they could be secretive when they wished. All the watu around Karula knew that Bwana Panda had quelled a mutiny six months after he took over Fairview.
At first, Ian’s watu could hardly believe their good luck. Fine houses, more goods and chattels than ever owned before, clothes, double rations of tea and sugar and posho, kuni and charcoal, and those large bars of soap. Soft Voice even laid out a big new shamba for the women, and gave them seed. Instead of scratching at a few plants of their own, they were to cultivate the shamba in turn and share the produce. The women were doubtful of this innovation until the shamba sprouted a glut of cabbages and beans, potatoes and tomatoes, maize and onions, more than enough for all. The men were paid regularly once a week instead of irregularly maybe once a month. Soft Voice evidently had a soft heart.
The watu were happy until Soft Voice expected them to earn his gifts. After hours, Soft Voice wanted them to tear down their old houses; for what reason; they had moved to new quarters. Soft Voice ordered this same kind of useless work all over the farm. They were sick of hearing Soft Voice say ‘Safi’, clean – clean this, clean that, make it clean, keep it clean. Every week, he inspected their village, sharp-eyed for taka-taka, dirty papers, empty bottles, and stern about latrines. Bwana Looki was easy-going; he let them live as they liked. Simuni was their proper overseer; Bwana Looki didn’t interfere with Simuni; he also let them work as they liked.
They took their comforts for granted now and told each other life was better in the old days when a man had time to down tools and rest and laugh with his friends. They began to dawdle and loaf and malinger. They were sullen and complaining. Ian saw this at once with despair.
At the Lavering estate as a newcomer to Kenya, Ian was quickly taught the European doctrine on Africans. The watu were lazy and filthy and ungrateful. It was senseless to try to change them or improve their lives. This didn’t mean the watu were wicked, it simply meant that they were shiftless children and should be treated accordingly with a firm hand. Left to themselves they would do nothing except get drunk and screw their women. Firmness was all they understood.
Ian rejected this doctrine. He had been treated as inferior; flea-ridden, half starved, dirty, ragged and helpless while his jailers were clean, well-fed and powerful. All men were not equal, of course, but all men had a right to respect. He meant to trust his watu, assure their needs, and explain the purpose of their work. He talked to every man on every job, pointing out that their joint task was to make Fairview efficient. Dirt and disorder were not efficient. When the farm operated as he planned and showed a profit, their wages would rise. He should have saved his breath. The watu were determined to prove the European doctrine correct.
Ian knew what he had to do and he hated it. Make examples, he thought with bitterness, like the goddamned despicable bloody Germans. In one week Ian sacked a Masai herder who had neglected to report a sick cow, three men who were smoking and telling stories instead of cleaning a reservoir, and the gardener who was watering Ian’s roses in the heat of the day. Ian gave them all twenty-four hours to get off the farm. The watu were impressed, and especially by the way Soft Voice shouted at the gardener. His face was pale with rage, he swore at the man.
No one heard what went on at the Masai encampment but in the African lines there was female wailing. The wives knew they would never live so well on any other farm. A revolt against the men flared among the women. They screamed and nagged; if their men were bure and shenzi and lost their jobs, they would leave them. Punishment worked like a charm.
It worked on Ian like an illness. He slept badly and lost his appetite. He couldn’t rest, he walked up and down, sitting room to verandah, back and forth, trying to understand why he had come to this ugly relation with the watu. He had to talk to someone or jump out of his skin so he wrote a letter to Luke which he knew he would tear up. Dear Mr Hardy; I thought I got on well with the watu, I liked them and I thought they liked me. I know I’m a deadweight with other people and I even know what they think of me because I overheard that too, Mrs Mayfield telling Larry I
had an inferiority complex from being a P.O.W. Out here I didn’t care what people thought, I could keep out of their way and I felt easy with the watu and I was happy because I’d found the right life for me. I wanted them to live and work in decent conditions and I wanted Fairview to look the way it should. That’s all I’ve been working for. You’ve got to admit Fairview was a shambles and the watu lived in a pigsty. But they loved you and now they treat me as if I wanted to cheat them instead of help them and I feel they hate me. They’ve made me see I can’t get on with anyone. I’m a misfit wherever I am.
He tore the letter up; apart from being shameful, a good cry on Mr Hardy’s shoulder would not help. The full truth was worse. The watu could defeat him. The watu could drive him from his home. If the only way to run Fairview Farm was by bullying and fear, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t live like that.
Cold and unsmiling, Ian went on with the work; no more jolly chat, no more stripping off his shirt to give a hand and an example. Simuni received flat orders; inspecting the jobs from his pick-up, Ian made flat corrections. The watu were subdued; everyone worked as directed. Ian wondered how long he could stand this atmosphere, harsh master, obedient slaves. Slowly, the climate of the farm changed. The watu worked without that air of cringing; they smiled and greeted him amiably. Jambo Bwana habari. Ian assumed they had made their choice: work and be rewarded, otherwise get kicked off the farm. He was wrong. They had simply become accustomed to the new regime and the new Bwana who would tolerate no nonsense and now kept his distance as a Bwana should. Fairview hummed along cheerfully, Bwana Looki and the old ways forgotten.
Ian still liked the watu but they had disappointed him. They did not respond to trust, they responded to a firm hand. A firm hand need not be cruel. He could live on these terms, accepting the barriers set up by the watu. He felt lonelier but compensated by the work; week by week he saw his dreams for Fairview coming true.
He dealt with the men all day long and could not have worked with them except on terms of liking, however altered. He saw the women once a week and they repelled him with their shrieking laughter and their hideous bodies, black blubber swelling out to huge bottoms. But these repellent women produced the best totos he had ever seen, round-eyed, chubby, fur-topped, fending for themselves as soon as they could waddle. In childhood, they grew thin and swift and lovely as gazelles. More food, good housing, soap, enforced hygiene had transformed these totos. The totos loved the new Bwana. When Ian inspected the African lines, they rushed to meet him. He brought them toffees, he let them clamber over him, patting and hugging, he played with them, he carried the smallest in his arms. With them there were no barriers.
The watu were amazed by the Bwana’s devotion to their children. They mulled over this clear but mysterious fact and decided that Soft Voice felt about their totos as he felt about his roses. No one understood his feeling for the roses either.
Ian had made a trip to Nairobi to buy the plants at a nursery. The names meant nothing to him, Golden Dawn, President Hoover, Madame Butterfly, Picture: they were roses and roses had been his mother’s favourite. Ian’s roses were set out in two rectangular beds, like infantry platoons, on the rough lawn in front of his verandah. To protect them from the sun, they were hidden under little thatch roofs with straw packed around their roots. Perhaps they didn’t look like much but they were there and occasionally Ian cut a few and put them in a beer mug in his sitting room. The roses mattered to him. His mother was buried in the churchyard in Aylesbury. He felt that his roses kept something of her alive and with him.
Coming out of the post office, Ian saw Helen Gordon in tears by the wall of mail boxes. He could not pass without a word yet could not think what word to say to an unknown woman in unknown trouble. He stood near her, silent and awkward until she looked up.
‘It’s Luke. He’s dead. Read it.’ She gave Ian a telegram.
LUKE DIED LAST NIGHT IN HIS SLEEP DOCTOR SAYS
HEART ATTACK HE LOOKED PEACEFUL WHAT SHALL
I DO BLAKE.
Ian felt a pain that was as sharp as it was unexpected, for himself not Luke. He had written to Luke a week ago inviting him to Fairview to see how he had spent his money, how he had kept his promise. In the year of work, he imagined Luke approving, he counted on that, he wanted desperately to show what he had done and talk about it and be praised. Now there was no one who would care. He had thought of Luke as somehow his partner and his friend because they both loved Fairview.
‘I can’t bear to think of Lukie dying there alone,’ Helen said.
‘He wouldn’t mind that. He couldn’t bear living alone.’
Helen brushed at her tears, too absorbed in grief to notice that Ian had spoken to her for the first time.
‘But he had so many friends, we all loved him.’
‘It’s not the same thing.’ He had friends too, long ago in Aylesbury. If only he could have shown Luke Fairview, if only that, just once, for both their sakes.
‘This Mr Blake,’ Ian said. ‘Does he mean what to do with the body?’
Helen flinched. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘He ought to be buried at Fairview, beside his wife. He ought to have the same headstone, only saying beloved husband of, instead of beloved wife.’
‘You really are a very nice man just as Luke said.’
Instantly Ian was thrown back into himself and became a mumbler, anxious to flee.
‘I’ll have the place ready. And I’d like to pay for it all, whatever there is. I owe Mr Hardy a lot.’
Four days later the funeral cortège arrived at Fairview, six cars and the coffin in the Gordon pick-up. Helen made a blanket of rose geraniums to cover the coffin. The pick-up looked like a florist’s van with all the sheafs and wreaths and bouquets contributed by the neighbours. The neighbours had doubled up, since you wanted company badly when going to a funeral. Beda faced this crowd and delivered his speech in agitated English.
‘Bwana Panda say you follow his driver, please come after here for food and drinking. Bwana Panda sorry he must go Nakuru.’
Mrs Ethridge laughed.
Mrs Gale said, ‘I don’t think it’s funny.’
Mrs Farrell said, ‘I think it’s the absolute limit.’
Helen Gordon slipped away from the indignation meeting. Walking around the house, she saw that Ian had obviously planted the seeds in the borders packet by packet. Pansies grew beside hollyhock, lavender next to dahlias, asters clumped by gladioli. The lawn was coarse Kikuyu grass but well mowed with the hideous rose beds in the centre. Poor old boy, Helen thought, he’s tried hard. Sue would think it touching, the feeling was right even if the result was an eyesore. Helen returned to hear Sam Brand saying, ‘Look, he didn’t invite us to a party. He offered a place to bury Luke so let’s get on with it, shall we?’
They piled into the cars, following Ian’s pick-up. Ian had detailed two men, in clean overalls, with ropes and shovels for the manual labour. On the way to the gravesite everyone craned and peered, rather shamefaced, to see what Ian had been doing out here alone. They pulled themselves together on the mountain, forgetting Ian, while Sam Brand read parts of the funeral service. Though Luke was not a churchgoer or believer, they had agreed he wouldn’t mind if they left out the Resurrection and so on, and kept the factual bits about being born of a woman cometh up and is cut down.
No one stopped at the house for food and drink. The Farrells and the Brands and the Gordons were silent driving back to Karula in the Gordons’ estate car. Helen prepared to give them hell if they began to complain of Ian’s manners. Luke’s little burial ground was turfed and fenced in, with morning glories twining around the white slats of the fence. As a gardener, she knew this work was recent and she knew whose work it was.
Charles Gordon broke the silence. ‘Whatever one thinks about him, I have to hand it to Paynter. He’s made Fairview better than it ever was. He’s really done a bang-up job. Luke would appreciate that.’
These were lush years for the farmers in
Kenya. Britain needed all the food it could get; the African weather did nothing drastic; no epidemics of disease or insects blighted the animals or the crops. The farms boomed, none more than Fairview. Ian sold off the lacklustre cattle inherited from Luke and bought pedigreed Friesian bulls to serve his high grade shorthorn cows. Now he had two lorries making two daily trips to Karula station, hauling whole milk as well as cream. He filled what Dick Gale had called his pig palace with large white sows and shipped baconers to the Uplands factory. He acquired sheep because he liked the look of them nibbling away on the slopes north of his house, but soon the sheep proved so fertile that he was sending lambs to the Nairobi market. His own vegetable garden and chickens also overproduced and Mr Jivangee at the general store was pleased to take the surplus. The watu were not slow to see that profits for Fairview meant profit for them, as their wages rose; they settled down into a reliable work force.
Fairview was coining money. Ian did not care about money; he would have been satisfied if the farm broke even. But money was the sure proof of success and he coveted success for Fairview. This success had a soothing effect on Ian. He gained weight and forgot his teeth for weeks at a time until he forgot them entirely. Though not by nature a roistering type, he smiled when he wanted to. He felt equal to other men, in work at least. He could talk farming with confidence and knew that his peers, the Karula farmers, accepted him as one of them. He was still clumsy with the Memsaabs but no longer bolted on sight and managed polite if brief conversations. The Memsaabs were used to him and besides had him taped ever since Simon Farrell said that Paynter couldn’t help it if he was a misogynist. ‘I never believed they really existed,’ Simon Farrell said. ‘But obviously that’s what Paynter is. Poor fellow, he doesn’t know what he’s missing.’ There was nothing personal in being a misogynist so the Memsaabs stopped scolding about Ian’s manners.
The Weather in Africa Page 14
