The Flame Trees of Thika (30 page)

No one liked the ostriches much, they were testy and even vicious, and could break a man’s bones when they kicked out with their bare, muscular, rugger-player’s legs; but up until a year or so before, their feathers had been valuable. Then the price had collapsed, thanks to a sudden change in women’s fashions resulting from the spread of motoring, which did not favour large, ostrich-plumed hats.

Alec got a bargain in Edward Rivett, because he already knew some Swahili and, Alec said, possessed a level head; so after he had settled in, Alec went off to Nairobi for a few days, leaving his pupil in charge. While he was away, trouble that had been brewing for some time between Mr Roos and the Kikuyu came to a head.

Several of Mr Roos’s cattle had been stolen, and although he had complained, with some heat, to the District Commissioner at Fort Hall, no clue as to the culprits had been found. He had sacked his herd-boys and signed on others, but the thefts continued, and were so cunningly carried out that, although he had sat up throughout several nights, as he often watched for lions, he had caught no one. He tried offering a reward, but although several people claimed it their stories, when investigated, were found to be false.

The day after Alec went to Nairobi, five of Mr Roos’s best cows were taken from his
boma
during the night. Two guards had been supposedly watching, but both admitted they had been asleep. They were beaten and sacked, and Mr Roos fell into a cold, determined, unrelenting fury. He rode up to see Kupanya, who disclaimed all knowledge of the affair, but he threatened the chief that, if the thieves were not produced before sunset next day, he would come and burn down all the huts that he could see in the reserve. Mr Roos was the sort of man who carried out his
threats and Robin, when he heard about it, said he was foolish to take the law into his own hands. A man called Russell Bowker, who had lost five hundred sheep without redress, had ridden into the Masai reserve and burnt down a
manyatta
, and he had been arrested and sentenced to imprisonment, which was later reduced to a fine.

‘It is true that those who are paid to enforce the law fail to do so,’ Robin remarked, ‘but they refuse to let others do for them what they cannot do themselves. It’s bitterly unfair, a crying scandal, but Roos will get himself into trouble if he doesn’t look out.’

That afternoon, while I was over at the farm with Robin, Mr Roos arrived in a belligerent mood to say that he was not at all sure whether he had been right to blame the Kikuyu.

‘Your Masai,’ he demanded, ‘how do you know they were sleeping in their huts last night? That headman, you let him boss you too much. Man, I don’t trust him no farther than a mule can kick.’

‘Sammy has nothing whatever to do with it,’ Robin retorted, considerably huffed.

‘You guard his hut, eh? He’s a slim one, your Sammy. Big herds down in his own country, big pay here, friends with the Kikuyu, plenty places for hiding cattle – I don’t trust him, man. Every Masai, when he sees a herd of cattle, he says to himself – “God give me all the cattle in the world and now I take them back from everyone else.” And as for law, I don’t care that.’ He snapped his fingers and Robin promised to talk to Sammy, but added that he had never lost any cattle himself. He knew there was bad blood between the two of them, and thought that Roos was trying to get his own back.

‘You ask that other Masai too, that cook,’ Mr Roos added. ‘Once you get Masai in the place, man, you just as well have rats.’

It was true that a Masai cell was forming itself on the farm. Some time ago, Juma the cook had decided to return to Nairobi. He had come to us largely as a favour, for he was a townsman really; nor could Tilly and Robin afford his wages, so they were relieved when he went. For a while the kitchen
toto
he had trained carried on very well, but then he had to go away to be
circumcised, and there was a hiatus filled by various birds of passage, who scarcely knew how to boil an egg.

One day, when Tilly was riding through an uncleared part of the shamba, a large red Masai in pigtails, who Tilly said was stark naked – in actual fact he probably wore the little short cloak of the warriors, which fell short of the waist – a red Masai stepped out of the bushes and raised his travelling spear. Her pony stopped dead and snorted, and she stared at him in surprise. This was some way from Masai country and she had never before seen a warrior so far from his native plains. He seemed to be alone, not with a party of cattle-raiders, and gave the normal greeting, ‘
Jambo!
’ in clear warrior tones.

She returned the greeting. ‘This is my bwana’s shamba. What do you want?’

‘I want to be your cook,’ the warrior replied.

Even Tilly was surprised at this. ‘Do you know how to cook?’ she inquired.

‘For two years I have looked after seven hundred goats.’

At the time, she reported, this had struck her as an adequate reply. ‘It didn’t seem much use to ask his form on cheese soufflés, or whether his puff-pastry was really light. His repertoire will no doubt consist mainly of well-curdled milk and blood, served high, varied perhaps by a little ghee and raw steak, which I daresay is very healthy. At any rate he seemed quite resolved to come, and ran home behind the pony, his pigtails flying in the breeze.’

He was not a good cook, but he had, it appeared, received a little training and he was willing, cheerful, and anxious to learn. After a while he brought a wife, and brother who looked after the oxen, and another relative who learnt to prune the citrus trees. Sammy’s son had returned from hospital with one arm missing and a sadly-ravaged face, and been provided with a job in the garden, so our little Masai colony grew. As a rule the Masai never worked for Europeans except to herd cattle, but I think all Sammy’s relations had Kikuyu blood in them, and so were more adaptable.

Mr Roos resolved to sit up every night to guard his cattle, and Edward Rivett volunteered to help, I suppose because he was of the age to enjoy any form of excitement.

There was a lot of feeling about stock thefts, at this time,
between Government and farmers. The tiny, scattered police force could not possibly protect the farmers’ property, yet when they protected it themselves, they were had up and condemned, like Russell Bowker, or like Galbraith Cole, who, after a succession of sheep thefts, had caught a man in the act and shot him as he ran away. He was tried for manslaughter, and, when a jury mainly composed of sympathetic fellow-farmers acquitted him, the Governor went above their heads and deported him from the country. All the farmers took his part, but this did not help him, even though he was said to be the finest stockman in East Africa, and Lord Delamere’s brother-in-law. Robin warned Edward Rivett not to do the same thing, or he would get into the same kind of trouble.

For several nights nothing happened, as of course the robbers knew how close a guard was being kept. By day, Mr Roos rode right down to the plains towards the Masai country to search for traces of cattle on the move, but his quest was hopeless; a hundred gulleys, dry river-beds, and folds of ground offered shelter for a few cattle, or for a few hundred for that matter. Mr Roos became red-eyed from lack of sleep and grew a bristly stubble, and Edward Rivett began to look quite pale instead of pink, and found the long nights anything but exciting. Mrs Nimmo had taken a fancy to him, and made him sandwiches and cakes and a flask of hot soup to take every night to his place of concealment near Mr Roos’s cattle
boma
.

We had reached the time when, as the Kikuyu said, the moon died for three days before it was reborn as a slender maiden lying on her back, who would grow again to matronly fullness, only once more to wither away. The sky bristled with such innumerable stars, as close-packed as the quills on a porcupine, that a half-light resulted which, though stronger than in northern latitudes, was fickle, and as often tricked as served the eye.

Perhaps the thieves, like Edward Rivett, wanted excitement, or perhaps they felt contempt for the watching Europeans and a sly pleasure in challenging them. They must have stolen up to the
boma
and worked so quietly that they breached its thorns without alarming the cattle. Somehow they edged out three cows and drove them away. Mr Roos and Edward Rivett were taking it in turns to watch and sleep. Edward Rivett was on duty, but he
must have been dozing; when at last a sound disturbed him, he was just in time to see a dark shape vanish into the bush. As it disappeared he fired into the ground behind the shadow. He heard a sort of grunt or cry, and then pandemonium broke out, with people rushing about and shouting and the cattle trying to escape. He and Mr Roos and the herds beat through the bush and searched for the rest of the night, but the robbers managed to slip away between them, and they had to wait for dawn to search for tracks.

When the light came they found blood on the grass. ‘You hit him, man,’ Mr Roos said with satisfaction. ‘Now we can follow the spoor.’

The blood went on for a little and then stopped. Although they searched all morning, they could not find the place where the cattle had crossed the stream in order to get down to the plains. Yet if the robbers and their booty had remained on our side of the river, they would have come by way of other farms to its junction with the Thika, near the Blue Posts, and found themselves travelling towards civilization instead of away from it.

Edward Rivett did not say much, but he was very worried, and repeated several times: ‘I hope I haven’t done the fellow in…. I should have fired above his head….’

Mrs Nimmo, to whom he often came for meals while Alec was away, soothed him. If the robber had been killed, they would have found the body; as it was, he would not dare to make a complaint and prove himself a cattle-thief. Death was the native penalty for this, and always had been, and the tribesmen had not yet realized how light a view was taken by the new British law of a crime they all considered to be the worst that any man could perpetrate, except sorcery.

Next day Robin arrived at Mrs Nimmo’s with a grave face and called her outside. They spoke for a few moments and then Mrs Nimmo bustled through the living-room saying that she would come at once and bring her first-aid bag.

‘Don’t say anything,’ he warned her.

‘Mum’s the word, of course. Mind you, I’ll not be a party to anything that isn’t fair and above-board, but we don’t know it’s anything to do with…well, you know what. I’ll be along in half a jiffy.’

A week ago, I realized sadly, I should have feared for Twinkle, but now she had gone where nobody could help her if she was hurt, so I did not trouble to ask who had been injured.

Alec returned that day from Nairobi, and he and Edward Rivett came to supper. I was sent to bed, but not before I had gathered from their conversation the gist of the day’s events. Mrs Nimmo had gone over to attend to Andrew, our Masai cook, whose foot had been injured. He had lost a lot of blood, but they hoped he would survive, unless the foot was infected by gangrene.

‘Perhaps I ought to report it,’ Edward Rivett suggested gloomily.

‘Och, what would be the good of that?’ cried Mrs Nimmo. ‘They’d put you on your trial and turn everything upside-down. And Andrew would be put on
his
trial for cattle-thieving, and very likely Sammy dragged in, and everyone would finish up in jail or else be fined and made uncomfortable, and what would be the use of it all? Mr Roos will never get his cattle back.’

‘I bet he will,’ Alec remarked. ‘He’ll get them back if he has to go down to the Masai reserve and examine every cow between the German border and the Mara river.’

‘We must keep him from knowing,’ Mrs Nimmo said. ‘If he hears of the injury he’ll never keep it quiet, and then we shall all be in trouble.’

‘We had better have a good meal while we still can,’ Alec suggested. ‘I believe they play some good bridge in Mombasa jail.’

Now I knew a secret of which Mr Roos was ignorant, not to mention all the forces of authority; but it did not interest me a great deal. I kept it to myself, Andrew kept to his hut, and Robin lived on tinned meat, bread like slabs of rock, and tea tasting like Epsom salts, provided by the kitchen
toto
.

Mr Roos went off to search for his cattle on the plains and up in the reserve; he cross-questioned Kupanya, he went to see the District Commissioner, he bullied the Italian Fathers, whom he suspected of harbouring the wounded thief in their rough-and-ready little hospital. It was all in vain.

Robin told Sammy he must quit the farm within a month. He
could prove nothing, of course, and Sammy was a walking monument to injured innocence. He would no more take part in cattle stealing, he vowed, than he would blind his own eyes, or cut out Robin’s heart, or forswear King George. He went about his duties with an air of patient courage under great affliction, and Robin mumbled at him sulkily. Robin had absolutely no wish to sack him, and Sammy did not in the least wish to leave, and probably both of them knew that in the end things would go on as they were.

Some weeks later, when Robin was at Thika, the Indian station-master handed him a paper to give to Mr Roos. Robin did so when he next saw our neighbour, who glared at the paper and said: ‘I do not know what this is for.’

‘It’s a way-bill from the railway,’ Robin replied, glancing at it, ‘for some cattle that you railed to Nairobi.’

‘I have sent no cattle to Nairobi!’ Mr Roos eyed the paper as though it had itself invented the lie.

‘The railway think you have, but they make mistakes every day. You had better take it up with the station-master.’

Mr Roos evidently did so, for he rode over next day positively quivering with rage.

‘Those cattle were loaded by a native,’ he exclaimed.

‘What is wrong with that?’

Mr Roos thrust two way-bills under Robin’s face. ‘It is there, the dates, on those papers! I never loaded cattle! Those –’ Mr Roos swore. The dates on the way-bills corresponded to the dates of the days following the two stock thefts.

It was wrong of Robin, but he could not help it: he burst out laughing, he laughed and laughed. Mr Roos very nearly knocked him down. It was surprising that he did not do so, but merely clenched his fists and ground his teeth (this he did literally, Robin said he had never heard the actual sound before, except when pigs had worms) and rode away.