War Cry

‘Ooh, yes please!’ cried Saffron, who loved secrets and could tell from Mummy’s expression that this was going to be a really good one.

‘Well, Iris Storm is a pretend character, but she’s based on a real person.’

‘Is that the secret?’ asked Saffron, disappointedly.

‘It’s part of the secret,’ Eva said. ‘The other part is that the real woman is someone you know.’

Now that was interesting. Saffron’s eyes widened. ‘Who?’ she gasped.

‘I can’t tell you, because it’s a secret … but …’ Mummy let the word hang tantalizingly in the air, ‘In the book, Iris Storm drives a great big yellow Hispano–Suiza car with a silver stork on the bonnet. What do you think about that?’

Saffron frowned in concentration. And then it struck her. She had seen a great big yellow car with a stork. ‘I know, I know!’ she squealed excitedly. ‘It’s …’

‘Ssshhh …’ Mummy had put a finger to her lips. ‘Don’t say a word. It’s a secret.’

Moments like that, when she and Mummy were sharing things and it felt as though they lived in their own little world – although Daddy and Kippy were allowed into it too, of course – were one of the things Saffron loved about her mother. So now she smiled to herself as she picked up the book and put it into Mummy’s bag, taking care not to let the bookmark fall out, so that Mummy didn’t lose her place.

‘Hey you … Missy!’ someone called out. ‘What do you think you’re doing with that bag?’

Saffron turned and saw a cross-looking man she didn’t recognise.

‘It’s my mummy’s bag,’ she said. ‘I’m going to take it to her.’ Then she stopped and, suddenly feeling very frightened, said, ‘I don’t know where she is.’

The man’s face fell. He looked around as if looking for an escape route.

‘My mummy is Eva Courtney,’ Saffron said. ‘Do you know where she’s gone?’

‘Ah … I … that’s to say … must dash,’ the man said and disappeared into the crowd.

Saffron was surrounded by people yet utterly alone. More alone than she’d ever been in her life. She wished she’d let Manyoro look after her. She always felt completely safe when she was with him.

A waitress came up to her and got down on her haunches in front of her. ‘I will take you to your mother,’ she said, and held out her hand.

Saffron took it. The feel of the waitress’s smooth warm skin calmed and comforted her a little. She walked with her into the main body of the clubhouse, still clutching her mother’s handbag tight to her body with her spare hand. There was a bar inside where children weren’t supposed to go, filled with men talking about the race, settling up their own side bets and loudly calling for more beer. No one paid Saffron any attention as the waitress led her across the bar and opened a door with a wooden sign on it that said ‘Committee Room’.

‘You go in there, Miss,’ said the waitress, softly, opening the door and gently ushering Saffron into the room.

Saffron crept in, knowing she was not supposed to be there and not wanting to disturb anyone.

She saw three people grouped around the table that stood in the middle of the room. A woman was standing at the far end with her back towards her. Saffron recognized her as Mrs Thompson, the doctor’s wife. Daddy was next to her, also with his back towards the door. Between them Saffron could just see the snowy-white top of Doctor Thompson’s head on the other side of the table. He seemed to be looking down at something in front of him. There was someone next to him and as she crabbed her neck to see better Saffron realized that it was the runner, Dr Birchinall, still in his shorts and a white cricket jumper, but with a white bandage wrapped around his injured thigh.

Only then did Saffron see her mother’s legs and shoeless feet on the table, lying between her father and Birchinall.

Mummy’s feet were jerking up and down, as if she were shaking or kicking them, but the way they were moving was really strange, not like anything anyone would normally do.

Saffron crept around the side of the room, until she was almost opposite the end of the table. She hadn’t looked up at all, not wanting to catch anyone’s eye. But finally she turned and looked down the table.

Mummy was lying on her back with her arms to her side. The Thompsons were up by her head with their arms pressing down on her shoulders. Daddy had his arms on Mummy’s legs. And the reason they were all pushing down was that she was throwing herself from side to side, her body shaking and her limbs twitching.

Saffron didn’t understand what was happening or why her mother was moving the way she was, or why her eyes were open but she didn’t seem to be seeing anything. The beautiful face that had always looked at her with such love in its eyes was twisted into something ugly and unrecognizable. Mummy’s dress had ridden up and there was a wet, dark stain between her legs and on the surface of the table. And then she groaned and it was a ghastly sound that was nothing like her mother’s normal voice but more the howl of a wounded animal and Saffron could not control herself a second longer. She screamed out, ‘Mummy!’ dropped the bag and dashed towards the table.

‘Who let that girl in here?’ Doctor Thompson shouted. ‘Get her out at once!’

Saffron saw her father let go of Mummy’s thrashing legs. He stepped towards her with such an angry desperate look on his face that she burst out crying and this time when he picked her up there was no happiness, not even any affection, just his angry face and his hands holding her so tightly that it hurt.

‘Mummy!’ Saffron screamed again and then a third time, ‘Mummy! I’ve got to see Mummy!’

But it was no use. Her father was carrying her out of the room and across the bar and no matter how hard she punched or kicked him or how loudly she shouted, ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ he would not loosen his grip on her.

He pushed his way through the crowd on the veranda, and walked down the steps to where Manyoro was waiting.

Then, and only then, did Leon Courtney drop his daughter to the ground, though he still held her arms so that she could not get away. He glared at Manyoro with fury in his eyes and there was not the slightest trace of brotherly affection in his voice as he snarled, ‘I thought I told you to look after her.’

Manyoro said nothing. He just took Saffron’s hand, a little more gently than her father had done, but still holding her just as tightly. Leon Courtney waited for a moment to see that his daughter was finally secured. Then he turned on his heels and ran back up the clubhouse steps.

As Saffron watched him go she felt abandoned, desolate and completely unable to understand what was happening. Her whole world that had seemed so secure and so happy just a few minutes earlier was falling apart around her. Her mother was desperately ill. Her father hated her. Nothing was as it should be and none of it made any sense.

Just then she felt the first drops of rain fall on her and spatter across the red earth all around her. There was a sudden explosive crack of thunder and only a couple of seconds later a dazzling flash of lightning. The wind whipped at her dress and within an instant her tears were washed from her face by torrential rain, and the sound of her crying was drowned by the roaring of the storm.

How is she?’ Leon shouted for the hundredth time, trying to make himself heard over the straining of the engine and the pounding of the rain, and received much the same answer from the back of the car as he had on every previous occasion. He was leaning back in the driver’s seat, his head half-turned to the back of the Rolls-Royce.

‘She’s very weak, Mr Courtney. But she’s still here.’ Dr Hugo Birchinall was behind him, sitting on the back seat with Eva cradled in his arms. ‘She’s a fighter, sir, you should be very proud of her. But Mr Courtney, may I give you a word of advice … as a doctor?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Your wife is very ill indeed. There’s no guarantee she’ll make it. But she certainly won’t make it if we crash. So please, focus all your attention on your driving. It’ll help take your mind off things.’

Leon said nothing, but he turned his eyes back to the road ahead. Birchinall was right. It was an act of sheer desperation even to try to make the drive to Nairobi in this kind of weather. The distance wasn’t an issue. The Rolls’s six-cylinder, eighty-horsepower engine would make short work of the seventy-five miles between Gilgil and the Kenyan capital if the journey ran along flat, straight roads. But the truth was very different.

Like most of western Kenya, Gilgil lay within the confines of the Great Rift Valley, the stupendous tear in the earth’s surface that ran in a great arc southwards for almost four thousand miles, from the Red Sea coast of Ethiopia through the heart of East Africa to the Indian Ocean in Mozambique.

Nairobi, however, lay outside the Rift and the only way to reach it by car was a dirt road, surfaced with gravel that ran up the towering escarpment, as much as three thousand feet of virtually sheer rock at its highest points, that formed one side of the valley. The road clung to the side of this gargantuan natural wall, snaking and twisting, seeking every possible scrap of purchase as it rose and rose towards the summit.

There were no barriers of any kind at its side, nor even any markings to indicate where the road ended and the plummeting drop into the void began. Occasional trees clung to the scraps of rocky soil by the side of the road and a few enterprising, or possibly just foolhardy tradesmen had set up shacks, selling food and drinks on the very few patches of flat land, just a few yards wide, that lay between the road and the edge of the cliff.

On a clear, sunny day with a dry road beneath the wheels, the view from the road, looking out across the apparently limitless expanse of the Great Rift Valley, was a sight so heart-stopping in its magnificence that it justified the nervousness that even the most cool-headed driver or passenger felt when braving the escarpment road. And the fearful could console themselves that this petrifying stretch of their journey was less than ten miles in length. But when rain fell as hard as this it might as well have been ten thousand miles, for no sensible person even attempted to negotiate what swiftly became an impossibly treacherous cross between a muddy track and a rushing stream. The water didn’t just fall onto the road from the sky. It cascaded in torrents from the heights up above. So it was by no means uncommon for sections of the road’s surface to be washed away in really bad storms and any hostess who invited guests for a weekend anywhere within the valley did so on the mutual understanding that, if the weather turned bad, they might be there for a week.

But Eva Courtney could not wait a week, or even a day. Her only hope was to get to a hospital and the nearest one of any size at all was in Nairobi.

‘I’ll try to get a message through to let them know you’re coming,’ Doc Thompson had said. ‘Birchinall, you look after Mrs Courtney along the way. Courtney, you’d better pray that fancy car of yours is as powerful as you always tell us it is. And may God be with you, for you’ll need all the luck He can give.’

It was barely midday by the time they had set off. Eva’s first fit had passed, though others could be expected. Her face had lost its normal golden tan and was a ghostly, greyish white. Yet she seemed to be at peace, as if she were just sleeping as she was taken on a stretcher to the car and then laid on her side along the back seat. Leon had relented a little and let Saffron see her mother and whisper, ‘I love you,’ in her ear, but he had resisted his daughter’s increasingly frantic pleas to be allowed to come with them to the hospital and she had been taken away, kicking and screaming, to be driven back to Lusima in the truck with Manyoro, Loikot and the staff.

The first section of the drive was relatively straightforward as the road ran southeast along the valley floor. The rain was far too much for the Rolls’s windscreen wipers to cope with, but Leon knew the route so well that he only needed a few visual clues, no matter how blurred by water, to tell him where he was, and there was almost no other traffic on the road to worry about. He was even able, in a desperate attempt to talk about something, anything other than Eva’s plight, to tell Birchinall, ‘This storm has come at just the right time for your Mr de Lancey.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I doubt he’s stripped down to his birthday suit and run round the polo field in this weather. Even if he did there’d be no one still left to watch him.’