Four

 

Earnshaw’s arrival at Ma-Imi caused an uproar. Twigg was having one of his periodical parties and Earnshaw’s appearance in the middle of it, weary, muddy and in a mountainous temper, provided quite an eruption.

He arrived just when the party was at its height, red-eyed with the smoke, his shirt scorched by flames, his hands bruised and his body aching with his efforts to launch an overweight Susu canoe.

He had struggled with Suri and two other boys in the swiftly ebbing tide to float the only boat he had salvaged from the wreckage of the jetty and had managed to pole it down-stream in the darkness to King Tim. There he had begged a native dugout, a cigar-slim affair half full of dirty water and fish guts, and he and Suri had pushed themselves off again.

Twigg’s amiable drunkenness disappeared as Earnshaw told his story, downing great gulps of whisky and soda while he talked.

“There they are,” he was saying, surrounded by wide-eyed men and women holding glasses, “burning and smashing everything they can lay their hands on. You’ve lost your mine office by this time, Henry Twigg, or my name’s not Archibald Earnshaw. You’ve lost your bungalow, too, I’ll bet. But that’s nothing. Indian Joe’s lost his life and so have one or two others. It’s a proper barney, believe me.”

“The swine,” someone said from the back of the crowd. “The treacherous swine.”

“Treacherous, my backside,” Earnshaw said hotly. “It was just the way it happened.”

“But, I mean, setting about everybody like that.”

“Listen, old lad,” Earnshaw said aggressively, “it ain’t the wogs what’s to blame, so don’t you make no mistake about it. If anybody’s to blame, it’s that flaming Gotto.”

“Gotto,” Twigg said in amazement. “What’s he done?”

“What hasn’t he done? I reckon he’s upset everybody in the whole of Amama.”

“How long has he been doing this?”

“Ever since he went up there.”

“Well, why didn’t someone tell me?” Twigg’s voice rose in a welter of indignation.

“Listen,” – Earnshaw half rose, his eyes angry – “somebody did tell you. I did. Young Jimmy did. If you’d taken some notice it wouldn’t have happened.”

“But I thought you were only acting the fool.”

“You know bloody well we wasn’t acting the fool. You didn’t want him down here. That’s the trouble.”

“I hope you realise what you’re accusing me of,” Twigg said with an intoxicated dignity.

“Not half I don’t. And if you don’t stop arguing about it and get on with something a bit sharpish, everybody up there’ll cop it. Young Jimmy. Swannack. Romney. The whole lot.”

As Earnshaw finished, Twigg was galvanised into life, hiding his confusion at knowing he was in the wrong by violent action.

He ran out of the room shouting for the house-boy and sent him in search of the native drivers. One of these he sent in a lorry for the police, others to load vehicles with supplies of all kinds, food, bandages, and tents.

Then, with his jeep full of people and the lorries behind crowded with more people, black and white alike, and followed by an odd procession of cars, they set off towards Amama, in a nightmare drive up and down the house-side hills and round the hairpin bends of the bush road.

 

The mob had split up a little now, beating at the undergrowth in the shadows round the mine bungalow. They were howling with rage, cheated of what they were seeking. All the hatreds and enmities that had been worked out during the night had crystallised now into the greater one – the mad desire to get their hands on Gotto. Everything was being laid at his door, even Indian Joe’s treachery and greed, even the Mende dislike of the Temne and the Temne hatred of the Mende, even the resentment of the ex-soldiers. Every little quarrel was being blamed on Gotto. Houses had been burned, people had been beaten up, and everyone seeking vengeance seemed to be seeking Gotto.

Their quarry, hiding in a drainage gully beneath the black base of a banana palm, watched them shouting and screaming through the burning bungalow with eyes that were shocked with fear, his own peculiar brand of obsessed fear of the darkness and black African faces. Most of the mob had clubs or staves or bottles, but he could also see the flash of machetes and even an occasional spear.

His face was stiff with horror and his muscles were frozen into immobility again. For the life of him just then he couldn’t have moved. He could hear his own name shouted over and over again with the lusty hatred of the half-crazed mob, washed backwards and forwards like driftwood on the tides of sound.

He had fled from the mine office after Smith’s death and had tried to get up to Romney’s but there were still sufficient stragglers from the mob in the roadway to prevent him passing. In a state of panic he had hidden in the bush and eventually had returned to the mine bungalow, hoping Jimmy and Earnshaw would find him there, but again he had waited too long in an agony of indecision, and when he had finally tried to creep away again he had been stopped once more by growing groups of whooping black men, the vanguard of the returning crowd. Several times since he had been almost trodden on as they dashed past him and now they seemed to be everywhere, all round him as he lay beneath the banana plant, naked and vulnerable without the car and petrified by their violence.

Beyond the fear the noise engendered in his mind was only one emotion – resentment. There was no feeling of guilt, just the firm belief that this horror had been wished on him by the treachery of others – Jimmy, Earnshaw, Romney, Twigg, Alf Momo, even the people back in London who had tricked him into coming to Sierra Leone.

From the first day of setting his foot ashore in Freetown from the ship which had brought him from England, he had been fighting this mounting sense of indignation. The romantic Africa he had read about had not emerged – only a raw, ugly land of poverty-stricken dwellings and dirty villages, with the inevitable congregations of vultures and starving thin dogs that sickened him, and the hundreds of millions of insects, grossly huge or infinitesimally small, that had scraped at his nerves until they were paper-thin.

He had been unsettled from the start by the heat and the savage splendour which had given him too many impressions to cope with at once and, try as he might to see Amama as Jimmy saw it, the palm trees had remained just palm trees and the mountains had remained just mountains.

He lifted his head as the noise seemed to die down and for a moment he thought the crowd had dispersed. Then he realised they were systematically beating the bush around the bungalow for him, their silence an indication of their determination. They were moving slowly round the building, beating at the foliage and the grass with their machetes and staves, and he suddenly knew the feelings of a rabbit trapped in a dwindling field of corn as the reaper draws near.

Inside his brain was still the nagging feeling that he must reach Zaidee Soloman, that she would know what to do. That her advice up to now had been wrong never occurred to him. She had not criticised him. She had let him make his clumsy love to her, and that was sufficient. The bludgeoning of fright on his mind seemed to hammer that point further home as he thought of the crowds he must negotiate to get to her – all the black faces, more sinister with the darkness.

The line of men moving through the bush was only thirty yards from him when his limbs suddenly found their life again and he leapt up and began to crash through the foliage towards the road. Fortunately, there was so much noise of trampled undergrowth no one noticed him until he left the darkness of the bush and ran for the hidden car.

A yell went up as the engine started and he was recognised immediately, and the crowd streamed after him. Frantically, he took off the brake and let in the clutch. The rear wheels spun in the mud as he accelerated violently and for a moment he thought the car would never move away, then it jerked forward, almost throwing his hands from the wheel.

Jimmy was watching from the fringes of the hullabaloo, always keeping in the shadows, armed with a stave as much for disguise as for his own safety, making as much noise as the others and taking refuge in anonymity in the hope of finding Gotto before the rest of them did. He saw the angular form leap from the darkness, and, with his heart in his mouth, watched the car jerk away out of the shadows and roll violently on to the road. He was in the tail of the crowd as they set of, yelling and shrieking abuse with the best of them as they streamed after it.

A hundred yards along the road, they began to turn off through the bush, and he realised they were taking a short cut to Amama Town. Panting and exhausted, having to stop every now and then to apply more of the mud that his own perspiration threatened to remove, he struggled along with them, weary, horrified, sickened by the noise, the violence and the destruction. He had watched his own bungalow go up in flames together with all the lorries and all the equipment. He had watched the destruction of the explosives store and the wreckage of all the other hutments and shelters they had built so painstakingly, but the thing that moved him most was the trampling of the flower beds he had built and the plantain tree growing outside his window, and the knowledge that, fried in the burning bungalow, were the dozen bananas that Amadu had brought him as a gift.

 

Fortunately for Gotto in his headlong, panic-stricken flight which was without conscious direction of reasoning, the mob was mostly behind him when he set off. Only isolated groups of angry men and women were along the road and none of these, momentarily petrified by the headlights, attempted to stop the car as it thundered down on them, and he was able to make the town with safety.

Amama was silent by this time, the mob, its violence there expended, having moved to the mine. A few flames still licked at the ruins, and in the light of blazing torches, a few scantily clad figures were trying to salvage their belongings from the wreckage of their homes. Once he saw a woman crouched by the sprawling figure of a man, beating her breast and tearing her hair as she wailed her misery, and that panicking drumming of fright that threatened to take away the power of movement came round again.

He fought it down, however, as the need to find Zaidee in this hell of burning buildings and mad shouts became a thunder in his mind.

Even through his panic, he was shocked by the sight of the Swannack’s ruined home, and the burned-out shell of the schoolroom. There were still a few looters picking through the remains of Indian Joe’s store and bar but most of what was valuable there had been removed in the first assault.

Gotto drove past desperately, not quite seeing where he was going, knowing only that he must find Zaidee and escape with her along the bush road away from Amama until the riot subsided. He knew that what he was doing was dangerous but the importance of finding Zaidee had suddenly become an obsession.

As he reached her house on the outskirts of Amama Town, he stopped the car violently, skidding on the muddy road, convinced in his stubborn, unthinking way that she who had advised him once could save him now.

There was no sign of life but the house’s distance from the centre of the town had saved it and the mob had not been near it. He ran through the rooms, flashing his torch, shouting Zaidee’s name, sobbing and bewildered and lost as a small boy when he was not answered.

It had started raining again in heavy hot drops when he eventually found her in a hut in the garden, where she was crouching with her maid. They were in total darkness huddled together, Zaidee wearing only a native lappa in the hope of being mistaken for a village woman.

Suddenly, she looked more African than Syrian with the naked fear showing in her face, as though she had renounced all her white blood and was just a scared black woman with rolling eyes.

“Zaidee,” he croaked. “I’ve come. They’re after me.”

Zaidee glared at him, her eyes baleful through her terror. She had not seen Indian Joe’s store wrecked and fired but she had been well informed and she knew quite well what would happen to her if the mob found her.

She hadn’t been able to escape herself, for Indian Joe’s car had been burned with the store and it had never occurred to the languid Zaidee, who had never used her feet in her life to walk, that she might make her way safely up the bush road on foot. Conscious that the plot she had worked out with her father for the destruction of the mine had recoiled on their own heads, she stared angrily at Gotto for a moment from her hiding place, feeling that he was to blame that it had gone awry, then she became aware of the white glare of headlights on the foliage round the house.

“The car?” she said. “Have you got the car?”

“Yes, it’s in the road.” Gotto never noticed that the concern in her voice was not for him.

“Outside, then! Quick! Quick!” Zaidee clutched the lappa high round her waist and scrambled to her feet, pushing him in front of her while the little black maid brought up the rear snivelling with fear. “Drive as fast as you can! Up-bush! Anywhere!”

Thankful to have found her, thankful to be told what to do and blind to the sharp opportunism in her voice, Gotto led the way back to the car. They ran through the silent house, clattering and crashing into the furniture in the darkened rooms, and out into the road. The doors slammed as they crammed inside and Gotto started the engine. The drops of rain were beginning to tap more quickly on the roof and Zaidee’s hair was limp and dank with it already.

Gotto’s mind was numbed with the impact of the evening’s events but suddenly through the beating fists of fear came a feeling of courage, of strength. He had found Zaidee and was rescuing her. He was suddenly carried away by a feeling of pride in himself.

He jammed his foot on the accelerator and swung the car confidently on to the road again, the rain like brass knives now as it slashed across the beam of the headlights. Even as he heaved on the wheel, however, the first of the crowd, broken and distorted by the water on the windscreen, burst out of the trees a hundred yards away, between them and the bush road.

“My God!” Gotto yelped. “They’ve cut us off!”

“Turn round,” Zaidee shrieked, pounding his shoulder with her fist. “The other way! Towards the coast!”

The mob had seen the car now and were streaming towards it. Even at that distance they could hear the yelling.

Backwards and forwards, Gotto reversed the car in the narrow road until he was facing the other way.

“Quickly! Quickly!” Zaidee shrieked. “They’re here!”

Gotto put his foot on the accelerator again and the wheels flung up mud as the car lurched forward. But the first of the crowd had caught up with him and a wet black hand came through the side window and wrenched at the wheel.

Fighting with his free hand against the African who was being dragged along with them at increasing speed, Gotto struggled to keep the car from being swung to the right side of the road. Almost before he knew what had happened, Zaidee leaned across him and, in a savage gesture that appalled him even then in his panic, she sank her teeth into the black hand that held the wheel. The African yelled with pain and, releasing his hold, went rolling into the ditch. Immediately, the steering wheel, freed of the tug towards the right, swung back in Gotto’s grasp to the left and the car leapt towards the opposite side of the road. There was a violent clang as the near-side tyres dropped into the drainage ditch and for a yard or two the car scraped along on one wheel, with the water slashing up in a brown wave, until the nose slewed round and it rolled on its side, scoring a great wound on the muddy earth, and they were all flung to the left-hand side of the vehicle.

Zaidee and the maid were both kicking and screaming in terror at the bottom of the pile as Gotto pushed himself clear. His booted feet sank into soft flesh as he fought his way free, and as he fell on his hands and knees beside the car, the heavy rain chill on his face and arms, he saw the crowd still approaching. He yanked Zaidee half out of the car, lost his grip on her and fell into the shadows at the side of the road, wrenching his ankle. As the shouting swelled up, his fear caught him again, and instead of turning back to her he plunged into the wet foliage. He heard her shriek of terror as the mob surrounded the car and black hands started to grab at her. He halted for a moment and swung about, his hands against the bole of a palm tree, and in the instant, by the flames of the torches, he saw her half in and half out of the car fighting them off as they clutched at her. As he watched, one of the grabbing hands seized her clothes to pull her over, and like the peel from a banana the lappa came away and left her body shining in the glow of the torches. Then her feet slipped and she disappeared inside the car again and he heard the ‘woof’ as the petrol went up, and the bush in front of him was suddenly lit with the glare from the burning vehicle which flared up with orange flames touched with sooty black. As the crowd shrieked its delight, he flopped into the grass, weeping and muttering with anguish, beating his fists on the ground, horrified and sickened that Zaidee had not escaped and he was again bereft of help.

 

It was some time before he could drag himself to his feet. Sobbing with horror, he eventually found himself at the backs of the houses near the centre of Amama. Most of them were barricaded and barred, and occasionally between them there were the charred remains of a burned-out dwelling.

He stumbled along, numb to everything – to weariness and hunger and the pain in his ankle – to everything except the idiot knowledge that Zaidee, the one person he had felt he could trust, the one person who had been kind to him, was gone and he was friendless again. Then, through the haze of rain that filled his eyes, he recognised Alf Momo’s house and he crept whimpering to the door. His clothes drenched and torn, his eyes wild, his mouth hanging open, he stumbled forward, prepared to throw himself on the shift boss’ mercy.

Alf Momo had returned and was standing guard again in the entrance with a machete when Gotto appeared.

“Momo! Alf Momo,” Gotto begged in his cracked voice.

Momo’s head swung round but Gotto saw no sign of recognition in his face, and the machete came up in front of him at the ready.

“Momo! Let me in! You’ve got to save me!”

Momo still kept the machete in position, his eyes narrow and cold.

“It’s me! Gotto! I’m a white man! You’ve got to help me!”

He could hear the yells of the crowd in the distance once more. The burning of the car had held them up for a while but they had discovered he had escaped and they were still hot on his heels.

“Momo! For Christ’s sake, Momo,” he begged, his voice breaking.

“You cannot come in here,” Momo said at last. “Nobody can come in here tonight.”

The yells of the crowd sounded in Gotto’s ears like the baying of bloodhounds.

“Momo! Momo!” Gotto’s voice rose to a thin shriek but the shift boss suddenly turned his back on him.

Whether his action was caused by the desire to protect his own house, or because he deliberately refused to give him shelter, Gotto never found out. He could hear the mob not far away now and he swung round, desperate, frantic, blinded by the rain, and set off stumbling down the road again, his feet splashing in the puddles.

The mob saw him as he fled and the yells grew louder. Dodging, zigzagging, he staggered on, slipping in the mud, his breath scalding in his lungs as he struggled for air. Then he saw the path obstructed by half a dozen older men who had obviously not been able to keep up with the crowd in the short cut through the bush and had entered Amama from the other end.

Gotto halted. “No,” he shouted despairingly and swung off towards the black bush again. But, as he tried to turn, his weary ankle collapsed under him and he skidded on the wet road and fell into the ditch.

He had not even time to raise himself to his knees before the first of the mob was on him.

Huddled and drenched in the shadows at the other side of the road as the shrieking crowd swept round, his body trembling with exhaustion, Jimmy hid his face in the thick leaves of a banana tree and, overcome by weariness and revulsion, broke into a fit of sobbing.

“Oh, God,” he said out loud in an agony of pity. “Gotty. Poor Gotty.”