Burn My Heart (11 page)

The grass was waist deep either side of the path
before Lance began to slow down. It was just the kind of place where you could easily be taken by surprise.

‘Why are we going this way?’ Mathew felt a burst of anger. ‘We don’t even have your gun!’

‘Cool down, Mat. I couldn’t ask Mum for the keys to the safe and my gun, just for going to the dairy, could I?’ Lance laughed softly. ‘It’ll be worth it, trust me. We’re nearly there!’

‘Where?’ Mathew hissed in frustration.

‘A place you won’t forget.’

Shortly afterwards, Lance crouched down and signalled Mathew to do the same.

‘Keep your head down,’ he commanded.

They crept forward. Every now and again, Lance raised his head a little but any time that Mathew tried to do so, Lance waved him down. At last, Lance left the path and directed Mathew to follow. They shuffled behind a bush that looked to Mathew like the small poison-arrow tree that Kamau used to warn him about. The leaves, bark and roots made both medicine and poison. Lance delved into his bag and produced a pair of binoculars.

‘I’ll check what we can see from here,’ Lance whispered. ‘Don’t look yet.’

Lance pushed aside the long grass beside the poison-arrow tree and peered through the binoculars. Mathew was left to sit on his heels and listen to hundreds of cicadas piercing his ears.
Mugo once told him that the males sang to attract their mates. They sounded to Mathew like they were going mad.

He felt thoroughly fed up and was wondering what would happen if he ignored his instructions, when Lance crawled back. He held the binoculars out in his left hand but before he gave them to Mathew, he raised the palm of his right hand.

‘Remember,’ Lance breathed. ‘Not a word.’

Mathew held up his hand and they pressed palms. Mathew slithered into position. He poked the binoculars through the grass and rested them on the bony ridges protecting his eyes. There was a round grey blur until he swivelled the knob. A high barbed-wire fence came into focus. That was nothing unusual. But above it rose a wooden watchtower. High up, two guards carried rifles in a square lookout post. A little shock rippled through him as he lowered the binoculars and focused behind the fence. It was like a picture from the war in Europe! So many people herded together behind the wire, like he’d seen in a magazine from England that his parents had bought and kept after the war ended. If the watchtower had been concrete and steel, it would look just like the one in the photo of the Nazi concentration camp. In the far distance, at the side of a low building inside the camp, he spotted a jeep.

‘What’s going on?’ Mathew pulled himself up.

‘It’s dead secret,’ said Lance. ‘Dad’s screening this lot to find who are Mau Mau. I reckon that’s the Morrisons’ labour down there – and their house servants.’

‘Why doesn’t he take them to the police station?’ Mathew was confused. Inspector Smithers belonged to the Police Reserve and there was a police compound in town.

‘It’s better here. Dad’s in charge with his own team. He gets results,’ Lance said with pride.

‘What does he do when he finds a Mau Mau?’

‘Not one! Hundreds! Most of them are! Dad says he can tell by looking at their eyes. They get carted away to prison or government camps. Truck loads of ’em.’

‘Then why is the camp secret?’ Mathew persisted. ‘The government must know about it if they send their trucks.’

‘They don’t know about it
officially
but they know they can rely on Dad to get results. You’re really clueless, aren’t you, Mat?’ Lance rolled his eyes and shook his head.

Mathew resented Lance’s tone. If he was so stupid, why had Lance made a secret pact with him? He thrust the binoculars back to Lance.

‘I’m going to the dairy,’ he said curtly. ‘I want to see Titanic Lady.’ Mathew pushed against the earth and stood up. Lance grabbed his leg and pulled him down. The binoculars fell on the ground.

‘Idiot! They’ll see you!’

‘I don’t care! Let me go!’ Mathew tried to pull away, but Lance held on. They tangled as Mathew refused to give in.

‘OK,’ Lance gasped, releasing his grip. ‘Let’s get out of here. Just keep your head down! If Dad finds out we’ve been here, we’ve had it.’

Mathew scrambled on to his feet and set off, leaving Lance to pick up the binoculars and follow. He was glad that he had stood up a bit to Lance. But he kept his head down. The last thing he wanted was to be ‘had’ by Inspector Smithers.

Not a day passed without Mugo worrying about Gitau. Had his brother and Maina reached the forest? What were they doing? How were they surviving? At first Mami had been very quiet when Baba told her what had happened. Later, when Baba expressed his anger that Gitau had ‘
thrown away his education
’, Mugo was surprised how Mami reacted: ‘
Do not judge him harshly! If you walked in your son’s skin, would you not feel like him?
’ Their evenings, however, were now often filled with heavy silence. There was still no word of Mugo’s uncle but many stories reached them of new detention camps springing up across the country. They heard about droves of Kikuyus driven out of their homes on wazungu farms and forced into the reserves. Sometimes, when he had a free hour, Mugo went down to the gate by the road. He sat beside the Turkana guards from where he sometimes saw passing trucks crammed with men, women and
children. Whenever he saw a truck transporting prisoners inside a wire cage, he strained his eyes to scour the faces. But the vehicles were usually too fast, reducing everyone to an angry blur in the dust.

He began to talk to the guards. He was curious about them but because they looked so fearsome, he had to dare himself. Once he had found the courage, he discovered that they were not much older than Gitau. They spoke a little Swahili and he asked them to teach him some of their Turkana words. In turn he taught them some Kikuyu ones. Occasionally he wondered what Gitau would say, if he saw Mugo being friendly with people paid to guard the wazungu who had stolen their grandfather’s land. It was all so confusing. He learned about where they lived near a great lake in the north surrounded by desert sand. For most of the year, there was no rain so their cattle were always thin. Their families were very poor and they had never been to school. They missed their homes but had come to work for the wazungu because they needed money. They had soon learned that many people hated what they did. It was lonely work.

Mugo had also begun to know loneliness. His days were spent in and around the kitchen. Mzee Josiah seemed to have become much older. He rarely spoke except to discuss the day’s menu with
the memsahib and to tell Mugo what needed to be done. Even when Mama Mercy came to the kitchen and began a conversation with her husband, Mzee Josiah would cut her short. Mugo wondered if they even talked at home. When he glanced at Mzee Josiah’s eyes, they seemed tormented.

In the past during his ‘time off’, Mugo used to enjoy going to play in the labour lines or he would track his friends in the bush when they were herding cattle. But that too had changed in the last year. When he approached boys of his own age, they no longer seemed at ease with him. He suspected that they did not trust him. They must have known that he hadn’t taken the oath.

Every night Mugo lay awake, unable to sleep, wondering if Dreadlock would find his way through the security fences and come for him. He had heard about the inspector uncovering a Muhimu hideout not far from where the bwana’s car had broken down. As far as he knew, they hadn’t caught anyone. But what if Dreadlock and Longcoat had discovered that Mugo had lied to them? They wouldn’t forgive him for protecting the bwana’s family. His biggest fear was that they would decide to put Baba and everyone else to the test. It was well known how a servant or a trusted worker would be used to trick a mzungu into opening the door for the Muhimu. It was said that servants had even been made to use the knives themselves. It
scared him. One thing he knew for sure. Whatever oath Baba had taken, he would tell the Muhimu to kill him first rather than make him harm the bwana and his family.

When nearly three months had passed and Dreadlock still hadn’t come for him, Mugo began to think that they knew the truth and that was why they weren’t bothering with him. In their eyes, he was probably already a traitor. They would certainly think that if they knew that he had felt a small surge of pleasure when the memsahib told him that the young bwana was coming home soon for his ‘Easter holiday’. Mugo’s smile had come by itself and took him by surprise. He had even shared the news playfully with Duma, who had barked as if she understood. After his visit to the location with Baba, he had withdrawn into himself, finding excuses to stay in the kitchen rather than go outside with Mathew. But as time passed, after Mathew had returned to school, the truth was that Mugo missed him. Even if the mzungu boy was sometimes bossy and annoying, he wasn’t, in himself, a bad boy. Whatever his turbulent thoughts at night, Mugo still didn’t carry ill feelings towards him. However, when he heard the memsahib tell Mzee Josiah to cook for an extra person over the weekend and that this was Mathew’s friend the inspector’s son, Mugo felt a sharp twinge of resentment. That mzungu boy had been present when his inspector
father had questioned Mugo about the note and he had accompanied them to the gorge. His blue eyes were the colour of sky but cold as the ice cubes in the memsahib’s fridge. Except for their colour, they were like the eyes of a fish eagle waiting for its prey to make a mistake.

Mugo heard the car approaching but waited until he heard the bwana tooting. Duma was already jumping and wagging her tail around Mathew and the inspector’s son in the driveway, when he reached the front of the house.

‘Hello, Mugo!’ Mathew’s eyes and teeth sparkled. His ‘coming home for a holiday’ face was very different from his ‘going away’ face. Mugo responded with a little smile. There was going to be life in the house for a while. He tried not to look directly at Mathew’s friend as he hurried to lift Mathew’s suitcase from the car boot on to his shoulder.

‘Put the other suitcase into the spare room, Mugo!’

The memsahib turned to the inspector’s son and beamed. ‘I hope you’ll enjoy your weekend with us, Lance.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Grayson. Mathew and I have great plans, haven’t we, Mat?’

Mugo understood immediately who would take charge.

*

Usually on Mathew’s first morning home, Mugo expected to see him after breakfast in the kitchen. Apart from coming to make ‘Don’t tell Josiah!’ raids on the biscuit jar, he would come to nag Mzee Josiah to release Mugo early from his duties. But on Saturday morning, the kitchen remained quiet. While moving dishes back and forth from the dining room, Mugo had caught snatches of a conversation about riding and target practice. After breakfast, he was washing up outside and caught sight of Mathew and the inspector’s boy running to the stables ahead of the bwana. A little later, the bwana appeared on his white stallion with the two boys following him on the grey and chestnut mares. The inspector’s son was on the chestnut, Mugo’s favourite.

Baba stood at the stable entrance, watching them go. His eyes appeared to be trained on the inspector’s son. Suddenly he called out to the riders to stop. Mugo wished he were closer to hear what Baba was saying. He was pointing to the bit in the chestnut’s mouth. The mzungu boy was pulling the bit too tightly. There had been a problem with the chestnut’s mouth. But the inspector’s son seemed to ignore Baba until the bwana turned around and spoke to him as well. Mugo resolved to ask Baba about the incident. His father was very protective of all the horses.

The riders came back in time for the memsahib’s
morning tea. The sun was hot, and Mathew and the other boy brought his model aeroplanes and tin soldiers on to the veranda. By the time Mugo came to clear away the tea things, Mathew was so deep in a game with his friend that he didn’t even seem to know that Mugo was there. Usually he liked to explain in great detail to Mugo what he was doing with his soldiers. Mugo stalled with the tray in his hand, curious to see what kind of battle had been set up with the two armies. When he realized that the inspector’s son was staring at him, he jolted so abruptly that the cups and saucers rattled. As Mugo hurried away, he heard him comment to Mathew.

‘You’ve got a cheeky one, haven’t you?’

Mugo was washing vegetables for Saturday’s lunch when the memsahib came to tell Mzee Josiah that he was to prepare for a large picnic on Sunday. The inspector and his wife were coming and the two families were going to drive out into the bush on the farm for the day. It was to be a shooting expedition and she hoped to bring Mzee Josiah back plenty of meat. At lunch, Mugo heard Mathew and his friend chatter about animals and guns. Even the bwana seemed cheerful. It was like there was going to be a party.

‘We can’t let the Emergency stop all our pleasures!’ the memsahib announced as Mugo stacked up a pile of dirty plates.

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Grayson. We’ll have my dad!’ The voice of the inspector’s son quavered with excitement.

The wazungu boys’ target practice began later in the afternoon. Mathew had asked Mzee Josiah if Mugo could help them in setting up the targets.

‘Kitchen toto must finish his work, bwana kidogo!’ Mzee Josiah said, much to Mugo’s relief. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the inspector’s boy. He felt much safer sitting on a large stone next to the shed outside the kitchen, polishing the memsahib’s silver. The sound of firing and the crack of pellet against tin resounded through the air over the orchard. He remembered Gitau saying, ‘
Wazungu only respect those who are more powerful!
’ Had his brother already been thinking then that he would fight the wazungu with their own weapons? Guns against guns?

Mugo was rubbing a knife until the silver blade glinted when he heard the noisy chattering of some go-away birds. He took no particular notice until they broke into wild, fearful screeching above the sound of a shot. Surely the wazungu boys weren’t shooting at them? Every herd boy knew how go-away birds helped him by warning of predators! If you killed one it brought bad luck. Mathew should know that from Baba’s stories and teaching! Mugo dropped his polishing cloth and the knife
and ran. Veering around the corner of the storeroom, he saw in a glance that the inspector’s son was holding the gun.