Tefuga (22 page)

I knew at once why he used English. We only talk it at lessons so he doesn't get in the habit and irritate Ted, but he'd been waiting on us at lunch and heard us talking about the new man and he wanted to make sure I realized.

“Why not?” I said. “Do you know him?”

“I do not know the man. Lukar is your enemy.”

“Oh, it's not as bad as that. We've got to have a cook to take on tour.”

“I will be your cook. You must not hire this man.”

“But you don't know how to.”

“You will show me. I tell you, do not hire this man.”

He was so earnest I couldn't laugh. I know it sounds funny, being given orders like that by your servant, but he was so impressive, like a young black Moses—we were only talking about hiring a new cook, but really it was like that—I felt I had to try and take him seriously.

“I'll talk to Master about it,” I said.

“Do not tell him it is my advice. But you must not hire this man. Remember, Lukar is your enemy.”

Terribly difficult. All I could say was, “Well, I'll see.”

After he'd gone I felt rather strange. It sort of preyed on my mind, and the more I thought about it the more I felt I really didn't want a cook Lukar had found. It wasn't just what Elongo had said, it was the way he'd said it, like a messenger from a different world, a black world, speaking my white-world language to make sure I understood. I don't think I'm superstitious but suppose I was and I'd been on my way to something important and a great black cat had crossed my path, that's how I'd have felt. After a bit I just felt I had to talk to Ted. The rains are meant to be over but there was a grumbly little thunderstorm coming up the river and just starting its first sprinklings, so I scuttled across to the office before it really got going.

I smiled at Mr Yo who was adding up an account book (all wrong, pretty certainly) and tip-toed through into Ted's part. I don't go there much. It's the side of him where I don't fit. Even when he had his guinea worm and I was doing all his writing for him I felt uncomfy there so we did most of it in the dining-room. That's why he was surprised to see me. He was sitting in his usual fog of baccy smoke writing another great boring report on the Sokowa settlers. The office is tiny, just room for his files, desk and two chairs, but he keeps one of them folded to make a bit more space so when he swivelled round to say hello I plonked myself on his lap and put my arm round his neck.

“What have I done to deserve this?” he said.

“I've come to wheedle you.”

“The machinery of Empire can wait, in that case.”

“I don't think I want a new cook.”

“Why on earth not? We've got to take one on tour.”

“That's just it. Suppose we wait till we get back, Kimjiri might change his mind.”

“I'll have something to say to him if he does.”

“Elongo can cook on tour. I'll show him what to do. We'll manage between us.”

“I'm sure you would, in an emergency, but it will take up a lot of your time, Rabbit. I don't want to be stuck alone with de Lancey all evening. I'd much rather have you jawing away to each other about art, and I'm sure he would too. There's no reason this chap Lukar's found shouldn't turn out perfectly adequate.”

“I don't want anyone Lukar's found.”

“My dear girl …”

“Please, Ted. I don't want to owe him anything. I don't want one of his friends in our house.”

I felt Ted change. Sitting on his knee stopped being comfy. He jerked his head towards the door to remind me Mr Yo was just the other side of the partition, tho' he couldn't have heard anything 'cos it was raining properly now, booming on the pan roof. The two doorways made a sort of tunnel, v. dramatic, with a lightning blink down onto the river, dark sky and dark trees beyond. Just the weather for cosying up, but he wouldn't let me.

“I'd have thought you'd have learnt by now, Rabbit,” he said. “You really mustn't take any notice of what natives say about each other. Lukar and Elongo appear to have had some kind of dust-up about a fortnight ago. I deduce that from the fact that Lukar has been taking every opportunity to insinuate that Elongo is a thief and I ought to get rid of him.”

“Nonsense. And why didn't you tell me?”

“Because what one native says about another has no meaning. Or rather, it does not mean what it appears to. In this case some petty feud has arisen which I intend to have nothing to do with. That applies to you too, Rabbit.”

“But they don't have anything to do with each other.”

“My darling Rabbit, that's something you don't know. You see about a tenth—a twentieth—of Elongo's existence. What goes on in the remaining ninety-five per cent is a closed book. All you can be sure of is that it contains a great web of feuds and alliances and obligations and distrusts, and the one thing you must not do is go blundering in, taking sides, trying to alter the web for the better. Only disaster can result.”

“Then what are we doing in Nigeria at all?”

“That, if de Lancey has his way. I take it you told Elongo that Lukar has found a new cook and was sending him out to interview us this evening?”

“Please, darling. I don't want him.”

The rain was really roaring down now. You couldn't hear the thunder 'cos of the noise from the roof, but you knew from the lightning-blinks it must be there. If we hadn't been sitting so close we'd have needed to shout. The rain made it colder. I tried to snuggle into Ted but his body didn't answer.

“What I propose to do,” he said, “is interview this fellow. You can be present, of course, but unless he is clearly useless we will hire him.”

“Please, darling.”

“I have already told Lukar to send the man out.”

“And Lukar's gone to collect a present from him.”

“Very likely. So it is not in Lukar's interest to send us someone unsuitable. It follows that if we refuse to hire this fellow Lukar will be perfectly well aware of the reason. In effect you will have forced me to take sides publicly against him in his feud with Elongo. Is that what you want?”

I started to cry.

It really wasn't fair. It was breaking the rules of the game. But you see, all of a sudden it wasn't just a game. The whole point about the game was that it didn't make any difference in the real world. Ted wasn't being beaten by Mr de Lancey 'cos of anything
I'd
done (that's what he thought and it's sort of true 'cos I hadn't actually done anything since long before we'd started playing). Now I was trying to make something real happen. I know it was a silly little thing, hiring a cook, but it was part of everything else and that's why it mattered.

I didn't care. I still don't. I'm not at all ashamed of myself. I don't usually cry when there's anyone there—Daddy cured me of that—but once I'd got going it was easy to keep it up so I sobbed away and wheedled at Ted's shirt with my fingers and watched the rain slithering over the mud outside the door—he couldn't even send me away while it was sheeting down like that—and said to myself, Come on, Bets—you're winning. Ted was terribly embarrassed and kept telling me to pull myself together and then I'd sob a bit more and say, “Please, Ted!” until at last he gave a great sigh and said, “Oh, all right. Have it your own way. Mind you, I shall expect
haute cuisine
all the way to Binja and back.” Then I kissed him like a puppy until the rain stopped and he pushed me off and told me to run away and I sploshed my way home. Extraordinary how
well
all that's made me feel—like a swim before breakfast!

Mon August 11

I absolutely must scribble this down, spite of the rush and bother of getting ready for the tour—Mr de Lancey here this evening and then off first light tomorrow—cooler than last tour, so no more torch-light treks. I don't think I'll take the diary with me, not with de L. there, too public. But something v. strange has happened I've simply got to get down before it goes fuzzy.

It started with a letter from Kimjiri. First off I just thought it was a complete hoot. K. must have got hold of some sort of mission-educated clerk in Birnin Soko and together they'd cooked up their letter. It started off ‘Dear Mr Edward Jackland Esquire Sir, with reference to the absence of the undersigned from his duty as cook to your goodself …' and on it went like that, apologizing over and over to Ted, and boasting how well he always boiled everything and kept all the lids tight on the boxes and scorned those who begged him to steal food from our stores so
a fortiori
(yes, really—Kimjiri!) he scorned one who came to him with improper gifts, and then a really funny bit about Madam being the jewel of Mr Edward Jackland Esquire's soul and his heart's treasure, and then straight back from that to boiling the water and not letting improper substances get into the food lest he should be hanged by the neck till he was dead (really, I don't think Ted's ever gone quite that far) but he was a simple man and afraid of damnable pagan practices and his heartiest wish was to cook for Mr E.J. Esq. again as soon as he left Kiti, and he would pray every day that Mr E.J. Esq. and Madam stayed alive and perceived the wiles of their enemies. And then a lot of flowery farewells.

I wanted to shriek with laughter when Ted showed me the letter. Dear old Kimjiri talking like that!
Not
a poetical soul. “What on earth does it all mean?” I said.

“Somebody offered him a bribe and when he wouldn't take it they threatened him with some kind of juju and he decided to clear out.”

Ted wasn't anything like as amused as I was. He's minded about Kimjiri running off when they've been together so long, and natives using jujus on each other can be a serious nuisance, but it wasn't that made me suddenly stop chortling. I read the letter again. The bit about the wiles of our enemies. Elongo standing in front of my chair, so serious, warning me about enemies.

“Lukar,” I said.

“Oh, come, darling. I must say I'm getting a bit tired of your obsession with Lukar.”

“I've often wondered, in the old days, when our people were dying like flies anyway, how was anyone sure what they actually died of?”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“Improper substances in our food.”

I was feeling very cold and shivery and frightened. Elongo'd warned me, hadn't he? That's why it had mattered so much.

“This is perfectly ridiculous,” said Ted. “Old Kimjiri's only talking about kitchen hygiene.”

“He wouldn't know the difference.”

“Are you feeling all right, Rabbit?”

He tried to put his big warm hand on my forehead to feel if I had a fever, but I pushed it away.

“I'm feeling a lot better than I might've if you'd let that friend of Lukar's come and cook for us,” I said.

“What earthly motive would Lukar have? He's a shrewd chap. He's been Messenger nine years. He knows how the world works. He's got a well-paid job with a pension coming in the end.”

“Not if we go on tour and find that Kama Boi's people have been cheating us out of a lot of tax and Lukar's been in it up to his neck.”

“Now that is nonsense. Lukar doesn't read English. I didn't say a word to him about going on tour till three days ago when I went over to see old Kama Boi. That was the morning Kimjiri cleared out, so whatever he was frightened of must have happened before that—several days before.”

It's funny how people will go on arguing after they've changed their mind. I could hear it in Ted's voice. He didn't agree with me—I mean what he said about Lukar not knowing was quite true—but all of a sudden he wasn't sure. He picked up Kimjiri's letter and started to read it again. I got out of my chair and put my arm round him so I could read it too. It wasn't really that. I was still rather trembly, thinking about what might have happened. I needed to hold him. I wasn't wheedling—it was real. He put his spare arm round my shoulder and went on reading. We felt very one.

“I suppose it's just possible,” he said. “Something might have got out the Kaduna end. First thing is to get hold of Kimjiri. He'll have headed for his home village, pretty certainly. I'll drop a line to Burroughs at Jos and have him arrested as a material witness.”

“Poor Kimjiri.”

“Just shows you can never read the African mind, any more than you can expect an African to read ours. By all European lights the sensible thing would have been for him to come to me with the whole story. Surely he must know I'd stick by him after all these years. But no. I'm still as much of a mystery to him as a juju in a jungle pool.”

“What are you going to say to Lukar?”

“I suppose I shall have to tackle him. It's only fair. We may be barking up completely the wrong tree. Chances are old Kimjiri had some quite different bee in his bonnet.”

“But you do think there's a chance …”

“I honestly don't know, and nor do you, Rabbit. I'm still completely at sea. All I know is this. You are—what's the fellow say?—the jewel of my heart and my soul's treasure.”

Aren't men peculiar? I could feel it all through him, not just in his words and his voice, a terrific sense of relief. He was quite right about K.'s letter being useless to go on, it could've meant dozens of different things, but it was just enough. It gave Ted the excuse he'd been waiting for, without knowing it. Now, 'cos of what might've happened to me,
he could change sides!
He's known for weeks it was no use going on trying to protect KB, but he had to, or he'd lose face. He thought he was honour bound, but he's even more honour bound to look after me, so Kimjiri's letter saying one of KB's people had tried to have me poisoned (if that's what it meant) let him off. I think he's still very bitter inside about being beaten by Mr de Lancey, but it's not so bad as it would have been otherwise. At least it'll make the tour a bit less sticky.