The Flame Trees of Thika (34 page)

The pleasant feature of this forest was the open glades, like lakes of grass in the mountains of cedar. At one moment you would be walking along a dark tunnel, scrambling over logs, pushing through creepers, and listening for the squawk of a monkey or the harsh, sudden cry, like the protest of a rusty hinge, of that queer bird the plantain-eater, with its awkward flight and crimson-banded wings. The next moment you would stand on the margin of a glade lying before you as open and inviting as a garden or park. No human beings had created these glades; how they had arisen, why trees would not grow in them, I never discovered. Each time you came to one, you had the feeling that you were the first human being ever to stand upon that verge and gaze across the tufted grasses, like Cortez and the Pacific, and that some extraordinary prehistoric animal would be browsing there.

The Crawfurds’ furrow started in one of these open glades, and the things I principally remember were the scent of jasmine, and the butterflies. A strong-smelling species of jasmine grew in this forest for the most part invisibly, but now and then you
would see a cluster of tiny white stars gleaming from the dark, knotted undergrowth. Its scent blended in an exciting way with the musky, fat-and-ochre smell of the spectators, and in the background was the dry smell of wiry grass, with a faint undertone of aromatic cedar.

The sunlight drenched us all, the air was clean as ice and large, vivid butterflies, purple and gold, quivered on the bush while Mr Crawfurd took a spade to dig away the last foot of furrow, and thus to link it with a little pool that had formed just below a spring. It was quite a small spring, but Mr Crawfurd was satisfied that it would supply many thousands of gallons, I forget how many, every day.

‘What a thrilling moment we are coming to!’ Mrs Crawfurd cried. ‘Humphrey, I’m sure you ought to be presented with a silver spade. We should have the date engraved on it with a motto, or quotation…. Perhaps we ought to have asked someone to come and open it, not the Governor exactly, possibly Lord Delamere, or the
D.C
.’

‘No, not the
D.C.
’

‘Surely he would have loved it, such a change from collecting taxes and sending natives to prison, and he’s a great one for a party, is our
D.C.
’

‘Not one with so much water about.’

Mrs Crawfurd laughed, not in a dutiful wifely way but as if she really meant it, and musically, in a series of up-and-down trills.

‘If only Althea were here! How she would enjoy it! Althea would take a spade and make a lot of lakes and rivers, and a pond for ornamental fish. Do you think we shall be able to keep goldfish, Humphrey? Would they live at this height?’

‘No,’ Mr Crawfurd said, digging away with his spade. When he was not listening he always said no, because it was safer. You could change to yes later, but not from yes to no.

‘Never mind, think of the sweet peas and new potatoes and the strawberries. And water from a tap! It’s
too
exciting. Do you think frogs will get into the pipe? Do you think the buffalo will use the furrow to wash in, Humphrey?’

‘No.’

‘The water’s going to rush through any minute! What a lot
of people have come! Isn’t it a good sign, that they’re so interested! Do you think they’ll all go away and tell their friends, and the friends will start to irrigate in the reserves?’

‘No.’

Mr Crawfurd had now paused beside the last barrier of soil to fall before his spade. The water seemed to lean against it, awaiting its release. Under a cedar, a group of elders sat on their haunches taking snuff. They wore robes of stitched goatskin – their own dress, not blankets – and looked watchful and wise. They were fascinated by the furrow and everything about it, for the Kikuyu, although so intelligent in many ways, had never thought of irrigation; yet other, smaller, and much less successful tribes such as the Elgeyo and Njemps had worked out clever systems of their own.

‘Perhaps they think that we are being sacrilegious,’ Mrs Crawfurd said. ‘They think it wrong to cut down sacred trees; if spirits live in them, they believe, the spirits should not be disturbed. Perhaps it
is
wrong to move a stream, or in this case create a whole new one. Do you suppose we’re being sacrilegious, Humphrey?’

‘No.’ Mr Crawfurd straightened his back and looked round before he knocked away the last barrier. Several of the old men now came forward and made a little speech which I could not understand, for it was in Kikuyu; their faces were animated, they moved their skinny arms in graceful gestures and their voices slid like a stream over smooth rocks, and gurgled into little pools.

‘He is saying that he is very happy to see water coming down from the mountain,’ the headman translated. ‘He asks God to see that it is good, and to help us.’

Mr Crawfurd waited restively while the old men invoked blessings, which took some time, for each one had to speak in turn. No doubt they felt that this was the very least they could do on such an important occasion. Had it been their own furrow they were opening, they would certainly have held a long and solemn religious ceremony, and sacrificed a goat at least, and probably a bullock.

‘He is saying that God will send much water to help the crops and cattle, and he hopes God will help the bwana as the bwana helps the Kikuyu. And he hopes the bwana will help the Kikuyu
to get back the cattle that the Nandi stole and sent to Fort Ternan, for it is a bad thing that thieves should come to this farm.’

The elder was referring to a long
shauri
about some cattle lost by the senior Kikuyu on the place. Mr Crawfurd had engaged as cattleherds one or two men from the Nandi tribe, who despised the Kikuyu in the manner of a baron despising an ignorant churl, while the Kikuyu, for their part, hated the Nandi in the manner of a Roman loathing a barbaric Goth or Vandal. Ever since the Nandi came there had been nothing but
shauris
, and now the Kikuyu had accused the Nandi of stealing their cows. If Mr Crawfurd had not been there they might have slain the Nandi with poisoned arrows, or attacked them in their sleep with swords, and probably been massacred in return; as it was, they were frustrated to a terrible degree.

‘Thank you, old man,’ said Mr Crawfurd, who, although a believer, liked God to be confined to Sundays and not to interfere in the farm. ‘If you have proof it was the Nandi, you must bring a case before the
D.C.
Meanwhile you must remember what I told you about this new river. You may water your cattle at the tank but never, never, never in this furrow, and if you do I will fine you heavily and confiscate your cows.’

‘That we understand,’ the elder agreed, ‘but you must also ask God to keep away the buffaloes.’ So he had the last word, as befitted a Kikuyu. Nor could he resist sprinkling a little earth on the water as it trickled through and muttering an incantation, a blessing of some sort, I suppose.

Mr Crawfurd struck away the last clod and stepped aside and down gushed the water, full of curiosity to explore this new path. It curled along like a snake with a creamy-yellow head, and flowed in great excitement down the clay bed. There was a murmur from the people, surprised perhaps that the water really did flow along the furrow, as Mr Crawfurd had told them it would. This they did not regard as a certain consequence of digging; it was a happy conclusion, as when a boy is safely born; he might have been a girl, or been stillborn, or led to the death of his mother, but he had not; the prayers and magic had succeeded, the hoped-for result had been achieved. I do not suppose there was a single person there, except for the Crawfurds and
Dirk, who did not believe that, had spirits frowned upon the enterprise, the water would have refused to flow along the clay bed.

Now that all was safely over there was a great deal of smiling and laughter and congratulation. There must always be magic in the birth of a river, especially, no doubt, one that you have made yourself. Perhaps Mr Crawfurd felt as Moses felt when he struck the rock and water gushed forth into the desert.

I can remember still the smell of the jasmine, and the purple butterflies, and the elders’ red goatskin robes, their long bead ear-rings and dangling snuff-horns, and the water singing down among the cedars, and Mrs Crawfurd standing with her hand in Bay’s, her face gay with pleasure, looking from the furrow to Mr Crawfurd as though he had indeed performed a miracle. Bay disengaged himself and waddled like a duckling to the furrow, and began to fill it with twigs and clods of earth. He was retrieved, and his father made a paper boat for him to launch upon the water, now flowing calmly as if it had been there for a hundred years. Of course one boat was not enough, and soon a small fleet had been dispatched, carrying sailors in the shape of twigs.

We ate our sandwiches beside the pool and listened to the silence of the forest, and birds moving in the foliage, and the humming of a bumble-bee. The war they had talked of in Nairobi was a word without a meaning, and Humphrey Crawfurd munched his luncheon with a satisfied look in his eye. But before the meal was over he had spoken to his wife about another, longer furrow that he hoped to dig, to carry water to a more distant part of his farm.

I
N
the Crawfurds’ sitting-room there was a photograph of Ian, looking young and handsome in a kilt. I hoped that he would come to see his brother, but Mrs Crawfurd said that he had gone to a district called the Trans Nzoia, wild and uninhabited, to
take up land the Government had given out, and start a farm of his own.

‘But of course he won’t stay there when he hears about the war,’ she added. ‘He will go straight down to Nairobi to join up. But I don’t know how the news will reach him, there are no posts, and he said he wasn’t coming back until he’d built a house and planted a crop, what sort of crop I can’t imagine, and it’s really quite unlike Ian to stay in one place and be a farmer, he will probably go off into the blue as soon as he gets wind of a herd of elephants. Do you think he will ever make a farmer, Humphrey?’

‘No.’

‘Although of course it may be a sign that he’s wanting to settle down, and perhaps for the usual reason; it is high time that he was married, although I can’t imagine him as a domesticated husband with a little woman fetching him his slippers, but I suppose it might not be like that, he might marry someone like Tilly who is so good with horses, or a rich widow, or one of those women explorers. Do you think that would be a good plan, Humphrey?’

‘No.’

A little while before I came to Molo, Dirk had broken a leg. He had flatly refused to be put on a train to reach a doctor, so one of the Kikuyu, who laid claim to some surgical skill, had set the bone and bound the leg in splints. By the time I arrived, he was able to ride and to walk short distances. It was because of this leg that Dirk had not been able to enlist in anybody’s Horse or Scouts, and he was burning with impatience and frustrated zeal. Dutchmen like Dirk had nothing against the Germans, but they longed for a fight, and did not want to let a lot of
rooineks
get in ahead of them.

His home was on the plateau, and he was one of a family of nine. His father had a light carbine rifle, the perfect weapon to shoot Germans with, and Dirk’s immediate wish was to go home and claim it before an elder brother did so; whoever enlisted first, he said, would be sure to get the rifle, but it was useless to go until his leg was sound. So he was fuming at the slowness of his recovery, and almost in despair about the carbine; his hope was that his elder brother was away on a transport job, or
else had enlisted in Nairobi without returning to the plateau first.

The day after the furrow was opened, I followed up its course to see if I could find the paper boats; a path had been made and it was easy going, so it became my favourite walk, especially before breakfast when the air was fresh with the smell of dew and leaf-mould and cedar, and when the chestnut bushbuck, with their graceful, twisted horns and dappled spots, were still abroad, and would bound back into the forest at my approach with a short bark of alarm, and vanish as abruptly as if they had been dissolved.

One morning I surprised two dikdik in the glade, standing among grass that countless quivering cobwebs had silvered all over, each one – and each strand of every cobweb – beaded with dew. It was amazing to think of all the untold millions of cobwebs in all the forest glades, and all across the bush and plains of Africa, and of the number of spiders, more numerous even than the stars, patiently weaving their tents of filament to satisfy their appetites, and of all the even greater millions of flies and bees and butterflies that must go to nourish them; and for what end, no one could say.

In the middle of this field of silver splendour stood the two dikdiks with their tiny heads lifted, their nostrils dilated and their unwinking eyes, as bright as blackberries, looking straight into mine. I never ceased to marvel at the delicacy and brittleness of their legs, slender as reeds; it seemed impossible that the dikdiks should not break them as they bounded over tufts or hummocks, even with their leaf-light weight.

These dikdiks had the charm of the miniature. They were perfectly made, not a single hair or sinew less than immaculate; little engines of muscle and grace, more like spirits than creatures. One always saw them in pairs. So long as I stood still, so did the dikdiks; I wondered what would happen if I never moved at all. Would they stand and stare all day? Should we all be there at evening, still motionless? But it was hopeless to try to out-stare the dikdiks; after a while I took a step forward and, with a movement of superb ease and elegance, the little buck sprang away to melt into the trees.

I then became aware, as one so mysteriously does, that I was
being watched. I looked round, saw nothing, and stepped forward to sit on a fallen log. A current of watching still trembled in the air. After a while I saw a stirring in the dark undergrowth, and a brown furry figure stepped forth into a shaft of sunlight, which awoke in his fur pelt a rich, rufous glow, and twinkled on his copper ornaments.