David Bracken walked slowly back from the police post, across Shebiya’s main square, on his way home. Now and then he slapped ineffectively at the mosquitoes which hung in clouds round his bare knees and forearms – his khaki shorts and bush shirt were a long way from Government House rig, and further still from Whitehall, but they were the only thing to wear in the intolerable heat. Even so, his shirt clung stickily to his back, and his scalp under the wide-brimmed bush hat prickled and ran with sweat. Shebiya, just before the rains, was scarcely bearable.
He had been attending a small military ceremony – the formal lowering of colours, for the last time, at the police post, where the soldiers had been quartered.The two platoons of Lancashire Fusiliers had been stationed at Shebiya for five months; now they were on their way back to Kenya. The subaltern in charge, a keen young man who smoked a pipe and read nothing but the Manual of Small Arms Drill, would be coming over later for a farewell drink. After that, David would be on his own.
As he surveyed his small empire, he was content to have it so, whatever happened in the future. Though nothing in his life so far had been as exciting, as difficult, as fraught with fear and hope, as taking over the job of District Officer in this tightrope-walking corner of the world, yet now that he had made a start, he would not have exchanged his job for any other, on any conceivable horizon.
The U-Maulas were still, by turns, surly, neutral, or afraid, although they had long ago been purged of their Fish Oath, in an elaborate tribal ceremony of purification; and he himself still functioned as the sole native authority, since no candidates for the local Council of Headmen had yet come forward. But they would come, if not this year, then the next … In the meantime, the spring sowing was not far off; he had made some friends; a new mission house had been built; a produce exchange system with Gamate had been established; and a full-width road was being cleared down to Fish Village on the coast, where – wonder of wonders – the harbour was even now being enlarged to accommodate Pharamaul’s first fish-processing plant. The omens, for the most part, were good, the small future assessable.
But, of course, there could be no neat ending to this story, either here in Shebiya, or anywhere else in Pharamaul; there could only be slow progress, and hard work extending over a hundred hills into the future. No fairy, good or bad, would wave a wand and conjure up sufficient gold to keep each Maula man, woman, and child in affluence for ever; no wizard would grant them Parliamentary franchise and a seat at UN. The gold might be stumbled upon, a hundred years from now, by a man looking for something else; Pharamaul might conceivably be heard in the councils of the world, on some federal basis, in AD 2200. Such was the pace of Africa; and in the meantime, there was a garden to be cultivated, with the tools that were to hand.
There was no swift charm for friendship, either. It was not possible, now, to say, of any Maula or U-Maula, that he was your firm friend. They had all learned that, the hard way … For the white men who had been killed had all been the helpers: Oosthuizen, the farmer, strict but always paternal in his dealings; Father Schwemmer, the devoted Catholic priest who was as poor as the poorest of his flock; Tom Ronald, the administrator known for his fairness and straight dealing. It was the hospital at Gamate which had been the prime target of the rioters; it was the police who had attracted the hatred not only of bad men, but of all men. It had been Andrew Macmillan who had been goaded to his death …
Friendship also must be tied to the pace of Africa; and mutual trust emerged as the slowest growth of all.
There was a man coming towards him down the track, an old man in a yellow blanket and beehive hat. But for all his years he held himself proudly; and when he drew near, David saw that it was Pemboli, the headman from Fish Village, who was here to recruit labour for the work on the new harbour. That, in itself, was something fresh and hopeful; under Gotwela’s hard rule, there had been perennial bad feeling between the villages.
‘Well, Pemboli,’ said David, saluting him.
‘Jah, barena.’ Pemboli raised his hat gravely.
‘All goes well?’
‘Jah, barena.’
‘The men are coming forward?’
‘Slowly.’
‘Ask me if you need help.’
‘Jah, barena.’
‘Ahsula!’
‘Ahsula, barena.’
My empire, thought David wryly: what will it become, what can I make of it, where does progress lie? … He recalled the proclamation recently issued by the new Governor, when he succeeded Sir Elliott Vere-Toombs at Port Victoria. His aims, declared the new Governor, a shrewd, energetic ex-soldier with a reputation for decisive action, were ‘to restore order, and work towards such degree of self-government for Pharamaul as Her Majesty’s Government may from time to time approve’.
David, struck by a familiar ring, had thumbed through the manuscript of Andrew’s book on the territory, which was now in his care. The new Governor’s wording was almost identical with that used by the first Lieutenant-Governor, after the original troop-landing in Pharamaul, more than a hundred years earlier.
Things moved on, but only a step at a time. It was indeed an ordained pace, and it could not be challenged. Even the murderous disorder through which they had just passed was, in the life of this fabled continent, no more than an uneasy dream, a turning-over, a muffled groaning in the sleep.
Someone else was coming towards him. This time it was Nicole.
He watched her loved figure against the now familiar background of Shebiya – the dusty tracks, the thatched reed huts, the goats and the children running between them. It was the time of the evening meal; smoke from a thousand fires drifted across the sky, blunting the firm outlines, giving the whole scene a hazy dreamlike quality. He had thought that Shebiya would be a place of fear and loathing, poisoned by what he had seen there. So it had been, to start with. But Nicole had cured all that.
‘Hallo, darling,’ he said, as soon as she was close. ‘What’s for supper?’
‘My romantic lover,’ she said, kissing him.
‘Eat first, make love afterwards,’ he said. ‘American plan.’
With his arm round her he turned and looked back at the way he had come. In the doorways of many huts, U-Maula men and women were standing. Some few of them were watching them, most were busy, intent on the evening tasks at the end of another day.
‘How goes the empire?’ asked Nicole, watching his face as he stared down the hill towards the police post and the bare flagpole. ‘Did you have a good day?’
‘Not bad … Lots to do, still.’
‘Tired? Worried?’
‘Not really. But I often wish we could move a bit faster. It’ll be years before things get going here, years before Dinamaula comes back – if he comes back, years before we have anything to show for all the effort.’
‘But Shebiya is settling down again. So is the whole island.’
‘Oh yes …’ He pressed her side, and then swung round, looking towards a much wider horizon. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he told her, ‘as long as we love each other.’
Aylmer Road, Province of Quebec.
May 1953 – January 1956