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  The rain eased and a cold wind set in. Mugo knew he should set off home before the meeting ended. When it seemed that everyone had returned from Wamai’s hut, he told himself it was time. But the captain now introduced the oath administrator who had travelled with his assistant all the way from Nairobi. He wore a blanket over his European shirt and trousers and spoke so passionately that Mugo was captivated.

  ‘The mzungu is our enemy!’ he declared bluntly. ‘He has stolen our land and it must be returned to us. That is why we must act like one man with one mind. That is why every Kikuyu must take the Oath of Unity.’

  Mugo had never heard anyone talk like this, using such stirring words in openly accusing the wazungu. He could never imagine this man saying ‘Yes, bwana’ and ‘No, bwana’ to Bwana Grayson! But the oath administrator had not finished.

  ‘You are now joined with that “Mau Mau” that the government has banned. Never reveal this secret to any non-member! If you do, the government will throw you into their prisons. We will also kill you for breaking your oath. We have our people everywhere.’

  Mugo felt the quivers enter him. What would be the punishment for a spy? He had to get away! But the administrator’s assistant had begun to teach some old Kikuyu greetings and a special handshake by which members could recognize each other. If anyone was sent on a mission to someone they didn’t know, these signs could be used, he said. Once again, Mugo was mesmerized.

  It was only when he saw the administrator looking at his watch, that he pulled himself away from the peephole and hurriedly crept along the wall the way he had come. But when he reached the corner, to his horror, he saw a figure at the gate. Wamai! How was he going to get out? Could he crawl under the fence? The strands of barbed wire would surely be too close to the ground. He remembered Mathew scrambling under the other broken fence a few hours ago. He had been cross at the foolishness of the mzungu boy. But was he not even more foolish? He could hear Baba saying that only a fool pokes his head into the fire to discover what makes it burn.

  He wondered if he should risk trying to slip in with the others when they came out of the shed. Someone would surely notice and take him to the captain! He had just decided to go back into hiding behind the shed until everyone had gone, when the figure at the gate turned and saw him. Mugo froze.

  ‘Eh! What are you doing?’ Wamai fiercely signalled Mugo to come to him.

  Mugo approached the dairyman, inhaling deeply to steel himself against trembling. He held out his hand and greeted the old man with the handshake he had just seen demonstrated through the peephole. Wamai returned the greeting.

  ‘So it’s you, Mugo! Why are you outside when everyone is inside?’ Mugo felt the dairyman’s watery eyes trying to penetrate him.

  ‘I am on a mission, Mzee Wamai,’ Mugo whispered. ‘The others will follow.’

  ‘I see,’ said Wamai. ‘You had better hurry, then.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mzee,’ said Mugo. He ran off as if the wind were chasing him. He had tricked the old dairyman into believing that he was a new ‘member’. It was the only way out. Mugo didn’t stop running until he reached the slope beneath the pepper trees. He glanced up towards Kirinyaga. The clouds were clearing and a few stars sparkled above. As he scrambled up the muddy slope towards his grandfather’s grove, he heard the first cocks crowing.

  THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER, DECEMBER 1952

  8

  A Game of Mau Mau

  ‘I’m the oldest, so I’ll be the general. Mathew can be my adjutant.’

  Lance Smithers surveyed the cluster of children on the freshly mown lawn outside the lounge at the club. Mathew pushed his hands deeper in his pockets and pulled back his shoulders. He had already discovered that Lance, who was only a few months older, always liked to be in charge.

  Lance’s family had been occasional visitors to the club while his grandfather, Major Smithers, was alive. When the major had recently died of a heart attack, Lance’s father, Frank, had been worried about his elderly mother living on her own. Mau Mau attacks on isolated farms were becoming more frequent. Yet, according to Mathew’s mother, the major’s widow had refused to leave the farm, point-blank. She insisted her servants were loyal and that she could still handle her .22. In the end, Frank Smithers had left his office job in Nairobi and brought his family up to the highlands to manage the farm himself. They had arrived at the end of October, on the weekend after the governor had declared a State of Emergency. Rumour was that the old lady was secretly delighted. Lance’s father had volunteered for the local Kenya Police Reserve and her conversations were full of references to ‘my inspector son’.

  While his parents were relieved, Mathew had also been pleased. When Lance arrived at his boarding school, he had felt secretly flattered when the new boy announced to everyone that he was Mathew’s neighbour and friend. Matron had put Lance into his dormitory and told Mathew to look after him. It didn’t take Lance long to get the hang of most things about the school and to gather a whole collection of friends. Lance had reserved, however, a special place for Mathew. His ‘adjutant’.

  ‘We’re going to hunt Mau Mau!’ Lance commanded, sweeping his eyes across the group on the lawn up towards the mountain. The other children were all younger. Some of them wriggled and made scared faces.

  ‘I don’t want to play that!’ someone whined.

  ‘It’s only a game! Mathew and I are the search party.’ Lance nodded briskly at Mathew. Then he signalled a stubby boy who was in the year below them at school.

  ‘John will be our guard at number-three tennis court.’ Lance pointed to the children’s court, beyond the enclosure for the swimming pool. John’s cheeks puffed out in a grin.

  ‘The rest of you are Mau Mau, so you can hide wherever you like in the grounds. No one goes inside the club house. We’ll count to a hundred. If we catch you, we put you in detention in the tennis court, where John guards you. We’ve got twenty minutes to catch you all, so start running NOW!’

  Squealing and screaming, the younger ones ran off. Amazing, thought Mathew, how they all obeyed! Lance just said what he wanted and that was that!

  ‘Right turn! Adjutant! Start counting!’

  Mathew turned his face towards the wall near the French windows leading into the lounge. He scanned the grown-ups at the bar and in armchairs around coffee tables. Mother said that seeing so many men in the Police Reserve’s khaki uniform reminded her of wartime. His parents were sitting with Lance’s parents not far from the French windows. Both fathers’ revolvers lay out of their holsters on the coffee table.

  ‘One, two, three…’ he began loudly but quickly lowered his voice. The two fathers were arguing! Lance’s father sounded tetchy.

  ‘I grant you know a damn side more about farming than I do, Jack –’

  ‘I also understand my labour!’ Father interrupted irritably. ‘I speak their language! I grew up with some of them!’

  ‘If you believe that means you know them, you kid yourself! These Mau Mau aren’t human like you and me, Jack! Look what they’ve just done to their own people in Nyeri! Slaughtering their own elders, women, children! Good Christian people… on Christmas Eve to boot!’

  ‘I’m not talking about those damn murdering Mau Mau but – my – own – labour!’ Mathew could hear Father struggling to be patient. ‘I know them individually. I know their families. I even help some of them with school fees, damn it!’

  ‘That doesn’t mean a thing.’

  ‘Take my syce, Kamau. I’ve known him nearly all my life and he has – never once – given me cause to distrust him. I provide his family with work! I have his boy in my kitchen, his wife in my garden, and I’m helping see his older boy through school! So he knows on which side his bread is buttered!’

  ‘I’m telling you, Jack, they don’t see it like that.’

  ‘If any Mau Mau terrorist had come to my farm to stir up my labour, Kamau would have told me.’

  ‘Hmmph!’ Lance’s father snorted. ‘My war years as an intell
igence officer evidently taught me to be less trusting than you… It’s safer that way.’

  There was an awkward silence around the coffee table. Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight… Mathew continued counting but realized that he was now silently mouthing his numbers. He glanced at Lance beside him. It was obvious that he had also been listening.

  ‘Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy…’ Mathew whispered. He heard his mother ask if anyone wanted more coffee. That was so like Mother, smoothing over any discord and keeping her voice bright.

  ‘How is Lance settling in at school?’ Mother changed the conversation.

  ‘Quite happily, we’re glad to say.’ Lance’s mother picked up her cue. ‘We’re also very grateful to Mathew. He has been so…’ Mathew didn’t hear any more because Lance began counting out loud alongside him.

  ‘Ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three…’ Together their voices blurred those inside.

  ‘One hundred!’ Lance shouted across the lawn.

  Mathew turned. There were no children in sight except for John, who stood by the tennis court with arms folded, waiting for his captives.

  ‘I’ll check the cricket pavilion. You go round the guest quarters,’ Lance decreed. ‘Any resistance and give me a shout!’ He dashed off before waiting for a reply.

  Mathew smiled wryly to himself. He wasn’t likely to need Lance’s help. Their victims-to-be were all under nine. Since the Emergency, families from outlying farms had cut down travelling to town except for necessities. So it was a matter of luck who had called in at the club for tea or lunch. No one stayed late and few stayed overnight. It was best to be home well before dark and behind your own fence.

  Mathew sprinted across the lawn towards the guest huts. Around the corner and before he had even reached the first building, he found a cluster of younger children hiding beneath a thick bougainvillea, cascading with orange-paper flowers. When he pulled out the first child, the rest meekly trooped out and followed him to their ‘detention’.

  ‘You’re not much good at being Mau Mau,’ he said rather crossly.

  Within ten minutes, Mathew and Lance had rounded up nearly everyone. It wasn’t much of a game as no one had resisted.

  ‘When is your dad going to sign up with the Police Reserve?’ Lance asked Mathew as they marched the last captive to the tennis court. In school Lance had told everyone how his father would soon be a chief inspector.

  ‘He says he’s going to… if things get worse.’ Mathew felt embarrassed by Lance’s directness.

  ‘What’s he waiting for? Dad says if we want to get rid of the Mau Mau, we have to do it ourselves.

  He reckons we’ll all be dead if we sit back and wait for the government to do it.’

  Mathew was silent. He wanted to defend Father… to say that Father wasn’t ‘sitting back’. He had built a second security fence, only a hundred metres from the house. He had it guarded night and day by tall Turkana men from the north who had nothing to do with the local Kikuyu. Father never went anywhere now without his revolver, even inside the house. He had even made Mother take lessons on how to shoot and she had her own pistol. But what if Lance’s father was correct? What if Father was too trusting? Father wasn’t like some farmers who had their labourers whipped. Everyone knew how Lance’s grandfather used to have his foreman whip men with the stinging kiboko made from hippo hide. Father had never let that happen on their farm. ‘It turns your labour against you.’ That’s why he thought they were loyal. But how could you tell?

  Mathew felt uneasy for the rest of the afternoon at the club. After Lance ordered the release of their captives from the tennis court, they all trooped into the dining room for juice, cakes and biscuits. Mathew found himself looking at waiters who were always polite and who sometimes joked and laughed with him. Was it possible that their smiles concealed other feelings? Did some of them really support the Mau Mau and hate him?

  He tried to push these troubling thoughts out of his head. He wanted to talk with Father. In fact, he needed to talk with both his parents. Mother had to learn that he was old enough. She shouldn’t keep trying to protect him from what she said were ‘adult matters’. He wanted to tell them that he had heard the conversation with Lance’s father and also what Lance had said. He resolved to do it while everything was fresh in his head. Yes, he would talk with them in the car as they drove home.

  Then he remembered! How could he have forgotten? They would not be alone. This morning he had shared the back seat with Kamau and Mugo on their journey into town. Kamau had come to Father about an urgent message that his sister was sick. So Father had agreed to drop him and Mugo outside the location where his sister lived on the other side of town and then to collect them at four o’clock. Mathew had been present yesterday evening when Father had told Mother about the arrangement. Mother had raised her eyebrows and said ‘I only hope he appreciates you going out of your way like this!’

  ‘Drat!’ Mathew said under his breath as he walked with his parents and Lance’s family to their cars. He couldn’t possibly talk with his parents in front of Kamau and Mugo. It would have to wait.

  ‘I’ll follow you,’ suggested Lance’s father. ‘We should keep together until we get to your place.’

  It was ten miles to the Graysons’ farm and a couple of miles further to the Smithers’ place. Mathew watched as his father explained that the others should go ahead because he was going to collect his syce from the location. Mrs Smithers looked pityingly at Mathew’s mother. Lance’s father looked at his watch with an audible sigh.

  ‘That will take you at least another half an hour. You’d better get a move on,’ he said brusquely.

  ‘Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine,’ said Father.

  9

  Brothers

  Mugo stared in dismay at the high barbed-wire fence that stretched as far as he could see. The wazungu had fenced in the whole location! The place where Baba’s sister lived looked as if it was now a vast prison. He wondered if there had been a fence like this around the location in Nyeri on Christmas Eve. The news had travelled fast how the elders and their families who refused to take the oath had been murdered there. He wanted to ask Baba what he thought, but it wasn’t the right time.

  Bwana Grayson had left them at the side of the road in sight of the closed gate. Ahead of them, two Kikuyu police guards stood vigilant and alert in white shorts and black shirts with long sleeves. Their tall red hats looked like the memsahib’s plant pots turned upside down with a thick black tassel hanging from the top of each hat. Around each guard’s neck hung a long white rope carrying a whistle that was secured into his belt, next to a shiny buckle. From the side of each belt hung a baton. Mugo thought how hot and uncomfortable it must be under all that uniform in the burning sun. It could make someone bad-tempered. Mugo hadn’t heard anyone on Bwana Grayson’s farm say a good word about these ‘red hats’. He had even heard Mzee Josiah recently say, ‘Some of them think they are bwanas themselves.’

  As they drew near, Mugo felt the intensity of their eyes. Baba greeted them both politely.

  ‘We want to enter,’ said Baba. ‘This is my son and we have come to visit my sister.’

  ‘Where are your papers?’ The guard’s outstretched palm shimmered with sweat.

  ‘I did not know that I need papers to visit my sister.’

  ‘Everyone must have papers! It’s the Emergency! Have you been sleeping?’ The guard was much younger than Baba and his rude tone shocked Mugo.

  ‘My sister is sick,’ Baba said quietly. ‘She sent for me. That is why I am here.’

  ‘We don’t have permission to let you in without papers. You must go and get them.’ The guard waved his hand, dismissing them.

  Anger jumped into Mugo’s throat. This red hat was talking to Baba like he was nobody. But Baba remained calm.

  ‘Did you not see us come out from the bwana’s car? If we are coming to make trouble, will we be travelling with a mzungu?’

  Mugo saw the guard glance
at his companion. It was clear that they had seen Bwana Grayson and his car. Baba persisted. He told them how the bwana had specially brought them to the location and that this same bwana would return at four o’clock.

  ‘You can ask Bwana Grayson yourself. He will tell you that we work for him. He will be upset that you did not let us in.’

  Mugo saw the guards’ eyes begin to waver. They would not like a problem with a bwana.

  ‘Come with me to my sister’s house,’ Baba continued. ‘You will see that I am telling the truth.’

  Mugo marvelled at his father’s assurance. Suddenly the second guard, who hadn’t spoken so far, pointed to the bulge in each of Mugo’s trouser pockets.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  Mugo swallowed hard. He had heard about guards who helped themselves to things they liked. He put a hand in each pocket and reluctantly pulled out two little wooden elephants. Each had outstretched ears and a raised trunk as if ready to charge.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ The man’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘They are mine.’

  ‘They are very well made. Perhaps you stole them?’

  ‘I made them myself!’ Mugo heard his voice rise. ‘They are for –’

  Baba cut him short. ‘My son is good at carving. When the bwana comes you can ask him.’

  The reminder about Bwana Grayson worked. With an abrupt wave, the second guard signalled to the first to let Baba and Mugo through. Mugo slipped the elephants back into his pockets. Baba’s smartness had got them on their way.

  A few days earlier Baba had received a message that his sister was ill and she wanted him to come. But when Baba had asked for a day off work, Bwana Grayson said he must wait until Saturday. The bwana had added that he would be driving into town himself and would give Baba a lift. There had been no choice… and the lift certainly saved hours of walking. Mugo had begged Baba to ask the bwana to let him come too. He had been dying to give the newly carved elephants to his brother Gitau and his cousin Karanja. These days Gitau rarely came home when not at school. He preferred to stay with Baba’s sister in the location and to earn a little money by working for one of the Asian shopkeepers in town. He had not even come home over Christmas. Mami had especially missed him and given Mugo a message. ‘Tell your brother I hope he is well. He must come before he goes back to school. I am waiting for him.’ Mugo was also longing to see his brother although he knew that Gitau might be out working. If so, he would ask his cousin Karanja to pass on his present and the message.