A Fool's Knot Read online

  “Can you tell us what it was that attracted you to Inner London, rather than, say, a borough closer to your family home?”

  Janet answered as if her application had come about as a result of a long process of analysis and decision. In fact, some four months beforehand, she had suddenly realised that returning to England would involve getting some kind of job. Until then it had been a problem she could safely ignore. It was just too far away to deserve thought. When the time came round, however, she had realised that her two years of experience in Kenya would count for nothing. She would have to apply for posts as a newly trained teacher, still without having completed her qualifying probationary year. She had therefore placed a general enquiry to the Inner London Education Authority in the hope that such a large organisation would be bound to have at least something to get her started. At twenty-four, she had no designs yet on permanence.

  “I’ve spent two years working with poor students in a poor area,” she said. “I want to apply the same principles in my future work. Where my mother lives is solidly middle class. They even still have grammar schools. I have a strong belief in the power of education to change people’s lives, so I would like to work in Inner London.” Even as she spoke, she mused on the nature of self-deception. She surely did believe what she had just said. But how often in Kenya had she wanted to suggest to her students – especially the poorer ones – that they should think of doing something else with their time, something more likely to be of use and profit for them?

  “I must say that you were very wise to have done something about finding a job before you got back,” said Mrs Skemp. “Most impressive. And tell me what you might see yourself doing five or six years from now. Are you ambitious at all? Have you considered setting yourself some career goals?”

  “I have no idea at the moment. All I want to do is get myself established somewhere. And complete my probationary year, of course. It will always look strange, I suppose, that I didn’t achieve that until three years after completing my training.”

  There was a moment’s silence. “I have a feeling that in your case it will have no long-term consequences,” said Mrs Skemp. There was another long pause as Miss Williams and Mrs Skemp consulted one another in near silence. They pointed at a couple of documents, whispered a little and nodded. Then Mrs Skemp looked Janet straight in the eye, her gaze angled above her half spectacles. “How does Clapham strike you?”

  “Clapham,” Janet repeated. “It will be a long journey… A change of trains… but then I don’t expect I’ll stay at home with my mother once I have a salary of my own.”

  “You realise of course that all of the posts we are currently recruiting for are late vacancies. Jobs are normally filled during the summer term…”

  “I realise that,” interrupted Janet, not wanting to appear reluctant to accept the offer. “Clapham will be fine.”

  “It’s a Scale 1 post in the English Department at St Mary’s. You might even get some A-level work in that school,” mused Miss Williams. “It’s a really good opportunity. The post is vacant only because they have had a resignation on health grounds in the last two weeks.”

  “That’s fine.” And Janet was employed.

  “There are a couple of forms to fill in. Miss Williams will give them to you on the way out. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Miss Rowlandson.” Mrs Skemp rose from her seat, leaned across the functional, local authority issue desk and offered a handshake.

  Over a coffee in a nearby café, apparently squashed beneath Waterloo Station, Janet sifted though the papers she had been given. Thank goodness that was all over. She had no reason to be nervous and knew it. But she had been nervous, so much so that her voice had trembled and her facial muscles entered spasm. And now she was employed. She would ring the school from home tomorrow and arrange to visit the head. In a few years would she herself be a Mrs Skemp or a Miss Williams, a clone of professional woman, safe, dependable, even conventional? And what wonderfully overt concern the English expressed for the plight of others! Had she really lived for the last two years amidst poverty, disease and starvation to find that, on her return, the cause for greatest concern was the comfort of trains? How parochial even the professedly sophisticated seemed to be. Despite the lip service paid to ‘awareness’ and ‘education’, people here seemed to know as little about the world and its problems of poverty as the poor in Kenya knew of the problems of affluence. People everywhere lived small lives in small worlds, it seemed. Everything seemed to be fine until something from outside this limited universe levered its way into their lives. Then, she thought, the result was at best misunderstanding and at worst direct conflict. In a way, this inability of everyone she had met over the previous few days to visualise the life she had led during her two years in Kenya helped her to live with the sadness of Migwani’s tragedy. If the affluent in Britain could not visualise a ‘different way’, how could one expect an old man in Migwani to do it?

  Outside, the rush hour was now in full swing. For some time she had been spared the experience of traffic jams and crowded trains. Now reunited with these joys, they somehow felt rather silly and pointless, perhaps even insane. Within a month she would be doing the same herself twice a day, without thought, without question.

  Half an hour later she pressed the bell on the door of a semi-detached house in a quiet area deep within a west London suburb, after a rickety ride on a clanking District Line train. The door was opened by a tall red-haired man. He was plainly very happy to see her and shook her hand warmly as she stepped into the house.

  “How did the interview go? Did you get it?” he asked.

  “Yes. It was something of an anticlimax. It all seemed so easy.”

  There followed the beginning of a ritual. He introduced his wife, whom Janet had never met, but whom Janet knew to be his second. Then, after taking Janet’s jacket and haversack and hanging them on the coat rack, he showed her through into the living room, which was comfortably floral, overtly safe. He opened the sideboard and offered her a drink, but Janet, still standing, ignored his question. There was a tear in her eye as she started to speak.

  “Dr Goodman,” she said hesitantly, “I have some bad news for you.”

  Chapter Three

  January 1975

  “Will you bring the arresting officer?” The sliding door over the small hatchway set in the wall snapped shut. The young man, who had been typing a record of the proceedings of the previous day’s sitting of the magistrate’s court, got up from his desk abruptly and left the room with perhaps over-stated purpose. The police station was only a stone’s throw from the office, just across the main road. He walked briskly out of the District Officer’s compound and crossed the road without looking. Traffic here announced itself noisily a minute or more before it approached. There was little else here to cloud the silence, save for an occasional call from a bulbul. Only the morning and evening bus to Katse and the occasional Ministry of Works lorry passed along that road, and both bus and lorry made so much noise and raised so much dust that you could generally see and hear them coming several minutes before they even reached the town.

  After only a few seconds inside the police station, the young clerk was making his way back across the road accompanied by another young man dressed in the grey uniform and blue stockings of the Kenya Police.

  “The arresting officer, sir,” said the clerk, showing the policeman through into the spacious, but largely bare office.

  “Thank you, Syengo,” said John.

  Syengo closed the door behind him and then returned to his typewriter in the adjoining room. His office was small and cramped, but extremely tidy and well ordered. He took great care with his work and was proud to be the clerk to the court. After all, he had only left school a year before and only six of his classmates had managed to find a job at all. What had happened to the rest he had no idea. Many of them had no doubt returned home after finish
ing school and were probably spending their time tending their father’s cows. This made him feel even prouder. Others would be walking the streets of Nairobi, drifting from one casual job to another, living from hand to mouth. This comforted him greatly as he sat down again behind his desk, taking care to rearrange the pencils in his desk tidy so that they were all parallel, all facing the same way. Above all else he was grateful. He was grateful to his teachers, to the Government for employing him and to his father, who had paid the school fees and also helped him to get the job. He was already earning as much as a teacher in a primary school and had already saved enough to buy four bulls.

  “It is stated that you, Mulindi Kisuva, did on the third of January 1975…”

  The slow untrained clicking of the typewriter filtered through the partition into John’s office. The policeman and two other men sat facing John. The three watched in silence until he had finished. John, after reading through what he had just written, replaced the top of his fountain pen and put it into the top pocket of his jacket.

  “Constable,” said John without looking up, “since there seems to be some confusion surrounding the events in Nzawa last night, I have asked you to come here in order to listen to this statement which we have prepared. If this tallies with what you have been told by Mr Muchira, then we will have established that there is a case to answer.”

  John took up the papers and began to read. “I, Boniface Njeru Muchira, am a teacher at Nzawa Primary School in Migwani Location, Kitui District. I have taught in the said school for three years. On the evening of January 25 1975 I was in my house talking with my colleague, one James Gitonga Kivara.”

  The policeman, whose first language was also Kikuyu, could not suppress an intended quiet chuckle to himself becoming quite audible at this point. The name, Kivara, means ‘baldy’.

  “At approximately 9pm I heard the sound of shouting outside the house, which is within the school compound, so I went to the window and looked out to see what was happening. At this point a large stone hit the window, breaking the glass. I saw a group of about ten school students. There was a full moon and I could see some of them clearly. I shouted at them, telling them to go away or I would tell the police. Their reply was to shower the house with stones and shout obscene remarks about myself and my colleague. They continued to throw stones for about ten minutes. Mr Kivara –”

  There was only a muted smile from the policeman this time.

  “- and myself then decided to try to chase the boys away. Together we rushed from the house towards the group. We carried sticks to protect ourselves. Some of the boys ran away but others continued to throw stones. Five stones hit me before the rest of the children turned and ran. Fortunately I managed to catch hold of one boy and overpower him. I asked him to tell me the names of the others present. His only reply was to curse me. Two of the others turned round, came back and began to beat me with sticks until Mr Kivara chased them away. But to protect myself, I had to let go of the boy and he ran away. I then asked Mr Kivara to ride on his motorcycle to the police station in Mwingi to report the incident. He returned with a police officer at about 11pm and I made a full report to the officer. He asked me to come to the police station the following morning, January 26 1975, which I did. I found that he had assembled a large number of school students as a result of his investigations. He asked me to inspect each one and say which of them had taken part in the attack on my home. This I did. I feel I have done my job at Nzawa well and can think of no reason why such an attack should have taken place.” John looked up. “Is that accurate? Does it reflect what you want to be recorded?” he asked looking from one to another.

  “It is fine,” said the policeman. The others nodded.

  “Will you then sign the paper at the bottom, Mr Muchira? And you, Mr Kivara, can you sign your copy? I see no point in reading that one to the officer as well. It is substantively the same.”

  The two men signed the papers, despite the fact that in Kivara’s case he had no idea what the word substantively might mean. They handed the sheets back over the substantial desk to John. Beneath each statement he printed John Mwangangi Musyoka, and then rubber-stamped the words, District Officer, Mwingi, at the bottom of each page. He then countersigned across his printed name and the stamp.

  “That seems to be all,” said John with an air of finality borne of relief. “I will write to you, Mr Muchira, as soon as a date for the hearing is fixed.” Turning to the policeman, he continued, “Those boys you have in the police station can now go in the Land Rover to Kitui. They are to be held in custody until all the witnesses have been traced and have made their statements.”

  The policeman got up and stood to an overstated attention, the Prussian-style heel click of his boots following some seconds after the achievement of his fully stretched height. Then, stamping his foot with a great slap on the concrete floor as he turned, he marched out of the room as if performing a military tattoo. A brace of consciously dignified, but clearly hurt and rather belittled teachers followed. John Mwangangi watched all three leave his office, carefully filing their mannerisms and behaviour in his memory for future reference.

  There was more to the case than met the eye, of that he was sure. But, as John collected the papers and filed them away in the neatly labelled grey cabinets along the wall behind his desk, his mind was initially filled with condemnation of the indiscipline of the children and their lack of respect for their elders. He had been taught to respect a teacher like he respected his own father. He wondered how many of the boys now handcuffed, and being ushered into the back of a police Land Rover with weld mesh over the windows, would have dared even to disagree with their own fathers, let alone stone them or beat them.

  After a glance at his watch, he slid back the hatchway door in the wall behind his desk and told Syengo that he could finish work for the day. Syengo waited until the hatch door closed again – a full minute after John had spoken – before grabbing his brightly coloured cap and setting off home. He liked to make doubly sure that Bwana Mwangangi had no more work for him before he left. The District Officer was a very important man and he would hate to offend him.

  Chapter Four

  April 1951

  Good things are seen during the rains, but this season the rains were poor, a bad omen for the people of Migwani, the pessimists had claimed. The good things, however, were all planned. Sugar cane had been cut and stored for some weeks and children had been sent to climb trees to collect the hanging seedpods. Then, two weeks before the first day of the celebrations, the town’s old men had pulped and boiled the sugar cane with water, and set aside the liquor in large earthenware pots, which they kept for this one function each year. They ground seeds from the pods to a fine powder and stirred it into the liquor. During these two weeks the liquid fermented and matured to a fine, light sugar cane beer that would keep the gods awake. In every home, thoughts of celebration, dancing and music were paramount. Goats had been fattened for the feast and cows had been milked dry. All the beehives were empty, their honey brewed to beer, the special uki wa nzuki, and stored with care in fresh gourds. At one home in Migwani a high arch of banana leaves had been built by the parents of children who were to participate this year. The leaves were cut from the plants and carried by the youngsters. The adults sang as they built the arch, sang loudly, so the young children could hear the words which told them why, when and how, one day, they too would pass through this arch.

  Musyoka, son of Mwangangi, had taken part in every ceremony since his own father died. How long ago that was he could not remember, but he did recall the first arch to be built before his own homestead. He had felt such pride that day, because it had not been until then that he fully realised what it meant to be the doctor in Migwani. Every year since then, the arch had been built during the month of the long rains, but on every occasion Musyoka remembered that same pride which, if anything, grew as time passed. This year, though, was to be a
special time for him. This year his own first-born son was to pass through the arch into manhood and thereby become his rightful heir. Once a man, Mwangangi son of Musyoka could then succeed him as doctor, when finally his own work was finished and he was called to join his ancestors. The son was growing old: it was time. New days start when old ones end.

  The dancing and singing stopped for a while and even the drunken reeling old men stood quietly to watch. Drums and horns, which had pulsed their rhythms during the dance, were silenced. The initiates began to assemble beneath the arch. As they stood motionless, young men moved along the crooked rows and hung garlands of flowers around their necks. Others threw chains of flowers over the arch. Their feet were caked with earth wet by libations poured in the honour of ancestors from every cup of beer. They took great care, though, not to pass under the arch themselves. That is not allowed, for that road is a way you take just once in your life.

  On a far ridge, just discernible across the low, shallow valley, the entire scene around Musyoka’s home was being mirrored. Over there were the girls, soon to be women, and these were the boys, soon to be men. Thus words were spoken and the process began. Girls and boys passed through their respective arches and there was no turning back. The girls walked as a group, followed closely by the women, all striding in time with the rhythmic chants they all sang. The boys ran. It was a race. The first to arrive would be leader of the age-set and, once upon a time, the head warrior and hunt leader of the group, the one who would lead the way to counter a threat to their people. But these days were long ago. Screaming, shouting and laughing, the boys ran up the steep hillside to Migwani with the mature and old panting on behind.