Tefuga (14 page)

“Nothing to see, Trevor says,” said Burn.

“Still, it's where it happened. What'll you do here?”

They had hardly begun to discuss this when Miss Tressider came and touched his arm. He turned.

“They want an encore,” she said. “Somewhere else. The old boy will show me. Jalo says he's her son.”

She nodded to where the interpreter was talking to the old man, while the two old women watched. All three of the villagers glanced frequently towards Miss Tressider.

“You want me to tag along?”

“If you can tear yourself away.”

“I'd like to. My sort of thing, this.”

It turned out that only the old man was to go with them. He led them along a barely perceptible path that wound between the tree-clumps. Small irregular patches of “garden”, fenced with mats of cane, lay on either side of the path wherever there were workable pockets of soil, but in places the fences sagged or gaped and the area inside had evidently not been worked this year. The old man seemed to have something wrong with his hip, but hobbled purposefully along in silence.

“Did you really make that up on the spur?” said Jackland. “It was decidedly impressive.”

“Good. It was fun. I don't want to do it again, really, but I suppose I'll have to. Ages ago when I was in rep in Liverpool I went out to that beach. I was mooning round wondering whether to drown myself—not me, of course, just the girl I was playing next week—when I came across a grimy little kid all by herself, crying. She wouldn't tell me what the problem was but she let me watch her magic. I lent her a pin for the blood. She didn't hum. That's one of my exercises.”

“It gives a new meaning to the phrase ‘White Man's magic.'”

“It doesn't need to be white. It wasn't man's.”

Jackland laughed, perhaps not so much at her remark as at the fizz of her company, the shared euphoria of a successful performance. At this moment their guide stopped and spoke, pointing down a long grassless glade to their left. Well over a mile away, and so little more than a hummock in the heat-haze, rose a small hill crowned with a fuzz of trees.

“That's where it happened,” said Jackland. “I thought we might drive out there as soon as we've done whatever this chap wants. All right?”

“We could look at where she met Femora Feng first time, too. You'd have liked to shoot the whole thing here and on the river, wouldn't you?”

“If they'd have let me have the cash. Wouldn't you?”

“Not specially. You think that way you'd get nearer to letting people see what really happened?”

“If the words have any meaning.”

“It's no good. The only way you can know things like that is by imagining them. You can't ever know what Betty was like but you can imagine what it was like to be Betty. That's what I'm for, to help people imagine. If you keep packing in things because they're real—real places, real clothes—they start to clog the pipes up. All you need is scraps. A couple of things to get started. The diary was … I was going to say it was perfect, but I'm not sure I wouldn't rather have had only a few pages saved from a bonfire.”

“You must ask Annie about …”

“Did Betty know?”

“That's the point. If she had …”

“Then I don't want to. Not yet.”

“We're almost through. It can't make any difference.”

“It does.”

Tefuga Hill had vanished behind scrub but could be glimpsed once or twice as the path wound on and only came properly into view again when they reached their goal, a clear space too large for a garden, unfenced, randomly dotted with mounds that might have been ant-hills or termite nests, but were on inspection graves. Presumably so small a village as Tefuga did not supply more than one or two burials a year, so either the bodies of Kitawa were brought in from elsewhere or the graveyard was centuries old, judging by its hundreds of mounds, many of them no more than faint undulations, discernible only by the context of their more recent neighbours. Between the mounds, and sometimes on them, grew tussocks of spiky grass. Nowhere was there any sign of the graves being attended to or cared for, no small fetishes such as are usually found in the cemeteries of animists. It was not guessable whether the clearing was accidental or whether the trees were deliberately prevented from growing there, so that the long suns and brief rains could beat straight down on the graves.

The old man hobbled between the mounds. At a place no different from any other he stopped, pointed and spoke.

“Femora Feng?” said Miss Tressider.

He nodded, apparently unperturbed by the name.

“I really don't feel like it,” said Miss Tressider. “And I gave Sally's knife back. Have you got anything?”

Jackland patted his pockets.

“Find you a thorn, I should think.”

“No. Anyway they say don't give blood more than once a week.”

She knelt in a space between two tussocks that grew by the flattened mound and drew her circle, visible in this looser earth. Her movements had no drama, no intensity. She dragged her hand along the back of her neck as if to remove a smear of the dust she had poured there at the earlier ceremony, and so link it with this later one. She spat, took earth from the grave and tried to roll a pellet, but the paste would not cohere. Her hum seemed no more than a hum in her throat. She scraped the messy crumbs from her hand into the centre of the circle, smothered them with more dust, erased them in an outward spiral. The old man made no sign that he thought the ritual inadequate. Miss Tressider rose and bent to brush the dust from her knees.

“God! Nigel!” she whispered. “What's that?”

Half way up her right calf was a dark purple hemispherical growth, about the size of a hazelnut but visibly still swelling. She touched it with a fingertip, then shaped her nails into pincer-formation to pluck it away.

“Hold it,” said Jackland. “Not like that.”

He had a cigarette out and was lighting it. He squatted beside her, puffing the cigarette to a bright glow. When he pressed the tip against the creature it loosed its hold and dropped. He scuffed the thing clear of Miss Tressider's foot and stamped on it, smearing it on to the grave-mound.

Miss Tressider gave a sighing shudder.

“We didn't need the knife,” she said. “It's like that horrible bit in the Bible. God will provide the sacrifice. Oh, well.”

She bent, scooped up earth and dribbled it on to the smear. The old man spoke, not in Hausa but in Kiti. He looked pleased.

“Are you all right?”

“No. But it's not hurting. Yes, it is. Ow. What was it?”

“Tick of some kind. Extraordinary life-cycle. They can go dormant for years …”

“I don't want to know. Ow. Do you think there's anything left in?”

“Not supposed to be if you use a cigarette. Of course, they inject a bit of fluid … Stand still.”

Jackland put on his spectacles and squatted again to look. The place was clearly visible, a pale circle in the golden skin, with a small bright blotch at its centre. He squeezed at it with careful thumbs. A bead of watery blood emerged. Miss Tressider muttered with pain. Jackland wiped the blood away, put his lips to the place and sucked hard. He rose and spat.

“Best I can do for the moment. How does it feel?”

“Better, thanks.”

“Shall I go and get one of the cars?”

“No, I'll walk.”

She limped only slightly as they made their way back. Sounds of enjoyment could be heard from the village, and when they came out of the screening scrub they saw that all the small crowd visitors and villagers could muster was gathered round some spectacle, from which rose an erratically rhythmic thud. Craning over the shoulders of the spectators Jackland saw that Miss Boyaba was being given a lesson in the use of a pestle and mortar. She was wearing only a grass girdle and lace-like grass collar, as was the older woman who was teaching her. Despite their shared nakedness and shared laughter they could not have seemed more different. Miss Boyaba was still completely out of place, with her paler skin and her urban hair-style, her youth, her pointed up-turned breasts on the long and lissom torso which swayed like a dancer's as she tried to master the to-and-fro rhythm of the big pestle. She was a child dressing up in grandmother's ball-gown and tiara, which she herself would never wear as an adult because society no longer went in for that sort of party. That was the joke she and the spectators were so enjoying. Pittapoulos from behind his purring camera waved a V-sign at Jackland, who laughed in answer.

“Nigel, my leg is hurting.”

“I take it you don't feel like the trip out to the hill now?”

“If you don't mind. I'll wait.”

“The hill can wait. I'll have a word with Malcolm. We'll have to take at least two of the others. It'd better be the good car—they can come home in convoy when Fred's got his sunset. What about Annie? Do you think she's green enough not to grasp she's got a story? We can't have the insurers taking fright.”

“Get Malcolm to tell her I threw a tantrum seeing someone else in the limelight … Nigel, you know she asked me about my love-life—I'll make it true if you stand there goggling any longer.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I said I fancied Major Kadu.”

Eight

M
onday March 24

Back home. Something really amazing! Must write about it. Didn't write any more during the tour—fact, after Tefuga I almost thought I'd give up doing this. It brings things out of me I'm a bit frightened of, you see. I mean like what I said while I was waiting at Tefuga for Ted to come and take me riding. When I looked at it next day I felt perfectly horrid. I wonder if I'd had a touch of the sun ('tho I did see the women and they did tell me those things, far as I could understand, and so on) but really I'm not like that. I know I'm not. I'm an ordinary loyal little wife. It's just something that sort of spills out of the pencil while I'm scribbling away, and it's none of my business how Ted runs his show. My job is to back him up.

Well, just to join the story up—we did ten days' more tour, and I was v. good and didn't complain any more about the women refusing to talk while I was doctoring, or even keep telling Ted how frightened I was sure they were. Or how disappointed I was not getting much chance to practise my Kiti. I painted quite a bit. At first Z. always made sure I had a spearman watching, but after a bit he gave that up, but even then the women wouldn't come near me. They didn't like me painting them, either. I could have insisted, but that's no fun. All a bit sad, but it couldn't be helped.

We did a wide circuit and got back yesterday, Sunday. We'd been held up an extra day 'cos of a muddle about bearers—the old lot had gone home and the new lot didn't show up. So it was almost evening when we reached the river, a bit south of here—just a barrier of trees running each way far as you could see. Surprising how green they looked after the fawny, ashy, strawy bush—real leaves, with proper sap in them, tho' when we've been back a couple of days they'll get that dark, stodgy look again. Z.'s men cheered up no end. They don't like tours—much rather leave it to their agents, pet slaves really, to squeeze the taxes out of the villagers. They forked off towards Kiti Town and left us with only our bearers. We were just going into the trees when I saw a man, a Bakiti, standing by the track. It was only wide enough for one here and I was leading. I didn't recognize who it was till he held up his hand to stop me. He looked so different without his housecoat, grown-up, not a boy any more. (Of course we call all our servants boys, even when they're grandfathers!)

“A strong spirit in Elongo Sisefonge,” I said.

He didn't look at all surprised at me knowing his whole name, tho' he'd never told me.

“A strong spirit in Betty Jackland.” (Not cheek at all, absolutely right!) “A white man has come. Dlanzi. He came two days ago.”

He turned and ran off down the path. I explained to Ted.

“Oh lor,” said Ted. “de Lancey's not supposed to be here till Tuesday.”

“It's all right, darling,” I said. “Old Kama Boi asked me to go at the last minute. There wasn't time to tell him.”

“We don't exactly see eye to eye over Kama Boi.”

“It'll be all right. I'll wheedle him.”

“You'll do no such thing. He's not that type.”

He was quite right about that, anyway. We found Mr de Lancey in the dining-room smoking a Turkish cigarette and reading Homer in Greek(!) He is a small, round-faced man with pale blue eyes. Rather bald, blotchy brown over the top. What's left is silvery blond. He wears a monocle to read with. He's always dressed, right in the middle of Africa, as tho' his clothes were fresh from the shop. He has a special boy to wash and iron them—Ted says he pays him more than his cook! And he's got enough boiled shirts to be able to post them home to London two dozen at a time to be washed and starched and posted back! He talks in a drawly, bored way and gives a little nod when he's finished to show it's your turn but you'd better not say too much. I thought, 'cos of the nod and the name, he might be half French but Ted (who can't
stand
him—I hadn't properly realized till I saw them together) says he isn't. He says Mr de Lancey likes people to know his family have lived in the same house in Derbyshire since the twelfth century and his mother is one of the Norfolk Dudleys. (That
means
something, I gather.)

So we got home fagged and dusty and wanting to flop in our chairs with a b. & s.—and we found this horribly non-flop man waiting for us. Ted introduced me.

“I'm afraid your boy seems to have run off,” he said. “He didn't like the look of me, no doubt. I hope you'll forgive my using your room, Mrs Jackland. You have made it very pleasantly inhabitable.”

That all looks perfectly polite, written down like that, but he's got a sneery way of saying things, as tho' it was terribly gracious of him to bother to apologize, and quite surprising our house wasn't a pig-sty! I couldn't help wanting to get my own back.

“That was Ted,” I said. I tinkled my little glass bell. Elongo came in at once, wearing his white housecoat and skull-cap. I was watching Mr de Lancey sideways to see how he took it, but he just stared contemptuously at Elongo.

“Pass tea-chop,” I said, as tho' everything was just ordinary. Elongo bowed in his dignified way and left. One up to the Jacklands!

“Didn't you get my message, sir?” said Ted. “We weren't expecting you till Tuesday.”

“I rather fancied a couple of days' fishing. I expected to find Mrs Jackland here, but not wanting to force my company on her I set up camp in that clearing down river. I have simply been taking advantage of your admirable mosquito-defences in the evening. I haven't suffered one whit from your boy running off.”

“He's bush Kiti,” said Ted. “We're still training him.”

“I stick to Ibibio. They've been in contact with the white man for long enough to have a reasonable idea of what they can get away with. In the words of the poet, they steal in measure.”

“I'm absolutely certain Elongo isn't a thief,” I said.

“My dear Mrs Jackland, of course he's not. Very few Africans are. To be a thief you need to have a clear notion of property, of a society in which everything has an owner with an absolute right to it. The African grasp of such ideas is, to put it mildly, erratic. The cattle Fulani has it, for instance, as applied to cattle. If you took one of his cows from him you would be a thief, but take almost anything else and you would merely be stealing. All Africans steal, from the emir in his palace to the fisherman in his canoe. If your boy does not, he is not merely an exception, he is a nonpareil.”

Oh, I wish I could … It's the
tone
you can't write down, even if you've got the exact words. The beastly man was amused, not just at the idea of stealing being different from thieving, which I suppose some people would think was clever—I mean amused at telling
me
'cos he knew I was too stupid to think of something like that for myself.

“Ted told me …” I said, but then Elongo came in with the tea things. I was going to explain about Ted's Resident at Jos who used to drive his Morris out to the Plateau and just leave it in the open for days on end while he tried to talk to the savage tribes up there and no one ever touched it. Of course I didn't want to talk about stealing in front of E. Mr de Lancey didn't care.

“Wonder where he's been hiding,” he said, staring at him while he moved around. “It's quite a good sign him showing up like that the moment you came back. Years ago, when I was fresh out, I was idiot enough to bring a bulldog bitch with me. Inevitably I spent half my time nursing her from one disease to the next, but I'd got her pretty well seasoned by my first leave. You remember Pop Allen, Jackland? Died in Bauchi in 'seventeen. He took her over. I got a letter from him before I'd been home a week. Apparently the moment I was out of the house Doris had vanished too. Allen had sent the boys out to hunt, offered a reward and so on. He realized I'd be cut up about losing her. I wrote back, of course, telling him it was all my fault bringing her out in the first place. Six months later, my first evening back on seat, I was sitting out on the veranda when Doris crawled up the path. She was skin and bone. Sores all over her body. One eye gone. She died in my arms.”

“How awful,” I managed to say. Goodness, he was lucky he didn't find himself with an eye gone! Really! Our boy, my Elongo, in our dining­-room, drawling away about him as tho' he was no better than a dog! I said I'd just run and clean up but as soon as I'd got away I snatched up a bit of charcoal and drew a picture of Mr de Lancey on the wall of my little room. I made him a French poodle, all bobbed and clipped and pom-pommed, wearing a monocle. It was terribly like. I longed to fetch Ted and show him. And at least it made me feel better enough to go back and make tea-chat after I'd changed into a frock.

It was all horribly sticky at first. He must have known I absolutely
loathed
him. And there was absolutely nothing to talk
about
, not even small-talk. For instance he can't stand dance-music—
his
favourite records are by someone called Bartok—at least he hasn't brought them, thank heavens.
He thinks Rupert Brooke is a bad poet!
And I hardly know anyone in the service, 'part from the ones I met coming up. Or the people he knows back home. (His face when I said Daddy was an auctioneer!) Poor Ted's better than me at hiding his hates. He was just ghastily embarrassed and scraped away at his pipe (which of course he couldn't light tho' if we'd been alone he'd have done it like a shot). And worst of all I could see Mr de Lancey was really rather enjoying it all inside him, finding out what a dreadful common little wife Ted had picked up. It was one of the worst half-hours I've ever had in my life, bad as when Daddy insisted on asking people to dinner.

I was just thinking at last I could ring for Elongo to come and clear away so Ted could take the man off to his office or somewhere to look at files or something when Mr de Lancey said, “Jackland tells me you are an artist, Mrs Jackland.”

“I only try and paint a bit,” I said.

“May I see?”

Oh, how I longed to say no! Vulgar little daubs by Jackland's ugly common little wife. I glanced at Ted, begging him to get me out of it, but tho' I did catch his eye he looked away. He knew what Mr de Lancey would think, too. So there was nothing for it. I fetched the album I'd been putting together before the tour, mostly river paintings. I couldn't say anything—I'd have choked. I just gave it him.

He screwed in his monocle and slowly, slowly opened the album at the beginning. The first picture is a quick sketch I did of a fisherman throwing his net, the sort you get right straight off or tear up. He looked at it. I could hear Ted's pipe-scraping and the evening dove-calls and the tick-tick of things in the thatch. At last he turned the page. I could have screamed, waiting for the axe to fall. Then after five pages he looked up and opened his eye muscles so that the monocle dropped on to its string and stared at me with his horrid pale eyes. It was as tho' I'd been a cockroach on his breakfast tray.

“These are extraordinarily good, Mrs Jackland.”

IT ABSOLUTELY ISN'T FAIR!!! Why should darling, kind, decent Ted, whom I truly love, not be able to understand, when horrible, horrible Mr de Lancey could see at once? In fact I saw Ted's jaw drop and he picked up his cup and took a swig to hide it but it was all cold dregs and he almost choked. I didn't understand at first. Nobody's ever said anything like that before—only people who don't know being polite—I'm almost crying with a stupid sort of happiness now while I'm writing. The point is, you see, he meant it. And he
knew
. He wasn't being nice. He hadn't any reason at all to say anything nice—quite the opposite. Oh!! (Pull yourself together, Bets!)

Well, of course I couldn't do anything except stammer. I'm simply not used to people thinking anything I do is any good. I don't know how to behave. Mr de Lancey looked at me as tho' he still thought I was a perfect fool, then put his monocle in and went back to the album.

“Who taught you to do this wash?” he said.

He tilted the book towards me so I could see. It was the one of the rapids at Kiti. I'd got the sky just right, hazed but huge. All that emptiness, and Africa going on for ever underneath it.

“'Fraid I just taught myself,” I said. “I saw some Japanese pictures and thought I'd like to copy their kind of wash. It took me ages to learn, and it's still not quite the same.”

“Ordinary camel-hairbrush?”

“Oh, yes.”

“No wonder it took a bit of learning. The Japs have a different trick.”

“I didn't know.”

“Ignorance has its rewards, and this is evidently one of them.”

He went through the whole album, looking at every picture as tho' he was reading the pages of a difficult book. I caught Ted's eye. He was still totally amazed, I could see, dear man, but he made a thumbs-up sign to me. I rang my bell and Elongo came and cleared away. I don't suppose Mr de Lancey even noticed him.

I hadn't finished doing the album and there were some loose pictures in the back. He took them out one by one to look at them. I'd forgotten, but I must have shoved in the sketches of KB's wives and the copies I'd made for the old brute. I'd been meaning to mount the copies to make them look a bit special, but what with Ted's guinea worm and then getting ready to go on tour I'd not got round to it. I only remembered when I saw Mr de Lancey comparing two, glancing from one to the other. He put three on one side before he closed the album. I knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, which is quite extraordinary 'cos it's never happened to me before.

“May I buy these three, since you have duplicates?”

I just shook my head. I couldn't say anything. I must have reached out without thinking, 'cos next thing he was handing me the three pictures. Oh, he knew all right. They were the real ones, the ones I'd done in the harem.