White Lies. Dexter Petley

spent an hour smacking the torch in the barn as I looked for the jemmy, unable to strike matches in there because of all the US Army jerrycans leaking jeep fumes since 1944. Everything was black except this old goat skin nailed to the back of the barn door. The same door the Normans used to nail owls to in 1745.

      I stepped on a rake and the six-foot handle smacked me under the left eye. I couldn’t get the Land Rover started to use the headlights and even the split-charge terminal had rusted up in the damp so I couldn’t run a spot off the lighter socket.

      When I did get back to the house with the jemmy I couldn’t smell the body at all. I hoped I’d dreamt it, only once the door was closed the stink unfolded twice the size. The problem was now obvious. To get the planks up I’d have to take the wood stove out and it was still alight. I opened the door and all four windows, kicked the smokepipe off and dragged and rocked the iron box across the clay tiles. It belched smoke and I had to wrap my left arm in a wet towel. When I reached the big granite fireplace the stove crashed on to its side. I’d forgotten to take the chimney panels out so the smoke spewed back into the room. I knocked the panels down and rushed outside half asphyxiated, waiting for the smoke to clear from the house.

      Then I had to empty and dismantle the armoire because it was too big and heavy to move alone, which meant bagging Joy’s clothes, something I’d been putting off. Once that was done I knocked the armoire pegs out and stacked the pieces neatly in the grand séjour. Next came the armchair, the table, the bookcases and some barrels we’d used as tables. The worst thing was this polystyrene sheeting we’d glued down to keep the damp and the cold out. On top of it was cheap blue carpeting tacked tight against the skirting. In spite of this the wind still got under there and the carpet billowed, in-out, in-out, like the floor was breathing.

      It was 3.30 a.m. by the time I had the boards up and there were drifts of polystyrene swirling round the house, all charged with static and wind from the open door like a scene from one of those dozy plastic snowshakers I had in the sixties, a souvenir of Madame Tussaud’s.

      I stepped onto the bare clay three feet below the floorboards and found the body of our cat curled up in the corner. She must have crawled through the vent after a mouse or eaten a poisoned rat and crawled in there to die. It was me who’d put rat poison down. I hadn’t minded too much when they’d gnawed holes in the night or even when I saw one run across the floor with an apple, only one night I woke to find a rat sitting on my stomach.

      I put the cat in a bin bag and buried her in the wind and the dark as tears blew in my mouth and up my nose like flies. Then I sat at the table in three jumpers and two joggings, drinking coffee as the sun rose like a glint on the ice, the door still open, unable to see the point in putting anything back.

       FOUR

      Austen met me at the airport in his 1956 Land Rover and we left Ray, Steve and Frogget arguing with porters in the airport bar. Straight off Austen said:

      —So you’re Zan’s boyfriend are you, bloke? Well, she said I’ve got to keep you away from all those Kuke dolly birds at the Starlight Club, ha!

      A crate of Guinness rattled in the back along with two sacks of maize, two hens tied by the legs and debes of paraffin and water.

      —They’re for Wanja, he shouted over the engine as we rattled across potholes towards the Ngong Hills.

      —Zan tell you about Wanja, bloke?

      —What do you mean?

      —I think she’s gone mad. Bloody worrying, bloke.

      —Zanna?

      —No, ha. Wanja. Round the bloody bend. Those fucking Tanzanian witch doctors. She puts bloody lipstick round her eyes and mutters to herself all day. Found her walking round the shamba last night, starkers. Says there’s a devil in her stomach. Wanjiku’s running the place now. She’s only twelve. Can’t go to school in case her mother burns the place down.

      It was probably the drought turned Wanja mad because a wind like a blowtorch scorched across the shadeless plain. The Ngong Hills looked desolate in the clear air.

      —Lions still up there, bloke.

      This was Masai country parcelled up and sold to Kikuyus who didn’t already have an ancestral plot in the bush. Narrow strips of land still shadeless between rough homesteads. Umbrella thorn and clumps of candelabra where Masai cattle grazed on the unenclosed land. Grey-black cotton-soil sloped up to the hills patrolled by kites and eagles.

      In Austen’s compound the rainwater tanks were empty and the earth was cracked. Wanja was in the shamba tying strips of cloth and ribbon to withered stalks. She wore an anorak despite the heat, hair uncombed and dusty. An ex-prostitute Austen had ‘rescued’ from the tourist bars, now she was singing a Kikuyu hymn as a big old white drake with goiters and sores stumbled round her.

      Austen told her he’d got the chickens but she just stared and shrugged. He untied them and they ran round the compound. Wanjiku looked like a mission-school house-girl with dusty knees, short white socks and grey cotton frock. No one knew the identity of her father, just that he was one of Wanja’s Johns from the Starlite days. Wanjiku curtsied and helped us unload the truck. There was a gas fridge in the storeroom and I guzzled cold water from glass bottles.

      —Don’t forget to boil the water first, bloke. Comes from a standpipe in the village.

      It tasted of flouride and Wanjiku’s teeth were stained from it. Inside, the hut was baking because there was no ceiling under the pitched tin roof. Austen said there were love birds nesting up there once, but the chatter drove him nuts so he’d chased them away. Wanjiku started sweeping the bare concrete floor round the tatty sofa and dusted Austen’s desk which rocked against the shiplap walls. There were stacks of blue flimsy foolscap, a huge grey typewriter, a paraffin lamp, some rare books on a single shelf reserved for Africana.

      I dozed in a corner all afternoon while Austen was away. Wanjiku crept about, peeled potatoes, filled the paraffin lamps. The roof clanked and the smell of baked creosote fumes gave me a headache. The sunset didn’t linger into evening and Wanjiku lit the oil lamps and put the potatoes on the bottled gas stove. Austen came back with two oil drums full of water and I helped him drain them into one of the rainwater tanks which were sunk underground. I said I needed a shave and a wash.

      —Piss on the saplings, bloke, and waste-water on the paw-paw tree.

      Wanja came in to eat the fluffy boiled potatoes and bean stew with fragments of goat’s leg. She started singing Kikuyu hymns and Wanjiku joined in.

      —The Spirit of Zion Church, Austen said. I could throttle the fucker who put that up. Just a tin duka with a cross on it by the water tap. I say we go out bloke. Bring a sweater, it gets chilly.

      He really wanted to take me to the Starlite or the Pub, but he was being protective because he said Zanna wouldn’t approve.

      —First day, bloke. Take it easy, ha.

      

      We headed out through Masai country and came to the Craze which was supposed to be an out-of-town nightspot and hotel. The bar was empty and there was one white couple on the disco floor, dancing like it was a game of blind man’s buff. Me and Austen sat on twirly iron chairs with red, heart-shaped, leather upholstery. On the menu was chips, fried eggs, fried bread and baked beans: sixteen bob. There was tomato sauce on the table and waiters in red jackets lined up to shake our hands. When the white couple saw us they came straight over and the disco was turned off. They were brother and sister, the bloke a slightly younger version of Austen, tanned and wiry with a clipped voice like he’d been shouting at natives all his life. The moustache was 1901. He was repatriating himself, that’s what he said. Eleven years in Zambia. He banged his fist on the table.

      —Why should I bother with that man? Eh? Tell me that.

      —Who? Kaunda? Austen