A Guide to the Birds of East Africa Page 4

  When Emanuel’s boss at the factory where he worked announced that he was in need of someone – trustworthy, efficient, young-who might need a job as shamba boy, Emanuel’s arm shot up. After a few more questions to which Emanuel’s boss seemed satisfied with the answers – yes this person was young, yes he had worked on the land, yes he was a Christian, and most importantly yes, he had not been long in the city so had not been corrupted by city ways – it was arranged that Benjamin would arrive for an interview the following day at the boss’s house.

  And as I’m sure you have guessed, Emanuel’s boss – proprietor and Managing Director of the Jolly Man Manufacturing Company – was Mr Malik.

  8

  But to get back to what Mr Malik had discovered at the Asadi Club about Harry Khan. The wager business having been arranged, Mr Malik refilled his glass and reached for another handful of chilli popcorn.

  ‘Saw a chap yesterday, haven’t seen him in years.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  Mr Gopez had picked up the newspaper again and was reading the sports page.

  ‘Yes, not since school.’

  Australia’s favourite for the cricket – again. What happened to the West Indies? No really, I mean – what happened?’

  ‘Turned up at the bird walk.’

  Mr Gopez looked up from his paper.

  ‘The West Indies?’

  ‘No, this chap. Harry Khan.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound West Indian.’

  ‘He isn’t, he was born here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. I was at school with him.’

  ‘Well, what’s he doing playing for the West Indies?’

  Mr Malik was rescued by Mr Patel.

  ‘Harry Khan – you mean Bertie Khan’s boy?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the fellow. As I say, I used to know him at school.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Gopez. ‘Khan’s for Kwality and all that. Died, didn’t he?’

  ‘No, I saw him yesterday.’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re quite sure about that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Strange. Wonder who got buried then? I’ll never forget the samosas. No peas. I don’t like peas.’

  ‘I think Malik is talking about Harry Khan, A.B., not Bertie.’

  ‘What, died too, did he?’

  ‘As I recall,’ said Mr Patel, ‘the family moved to Canada. I heard they did pretty well. Shops and things.’

  Tiger Singh broke into the conversation.

  ‘Shops and things, and hotels and things, and import and export and franchises and even a couple of pretty decent restaurants, I heard. Toronto, first, then New York.’

  ‘New York?’

  ‘That’s what my wife says. She told me Harry Khan was back in town. Fourth wife just divorced him – serial adultery according to my wife. A philanderer of the first water, she says – none of this no-fault nonsense with her. Looking for another one I suppose.’

  Another wife? No, please, no. Not Harry Khan. Not… Rose. And not when Mr Malik had just written that letter.

  The letter. I’m sure you remember that Mr Malik is rather enamoured of Rose Mbikwa – indeed, if you were to use the word ‘enraptured’ or even ‘entranced’ you might be nearer the mark. He had fallen for her the moment he first saw her, and three years of seeing the woman of his dreams at each Tuesday morning bird walk had only fuelled the flames of his passion. You may have gathered that Mr Malik is not a brash, confident, outgoing kind of chap. But you have also discovered that when the chips are down, he is by no means a cowardly man. Put these facts together with the imminent occurrence of the premier social occasion of the Kenyan calendar, and what you get is Mr Malik sitting down at his desk the previous week (immediately after the bird walk, as it happens) to pen a letter to Mrs Rose Mbikwa in which he asked whether she would do him the honour of accepting his invitation to accompany him to the annual Nairobi Hunt Club Ball.

  Mr Malik, it has to be said, is not a dancer. I am not a runner – running just doesn’t feel right. But in my dreams I am Pheidippides running fleet of foot from Marathon to Athens to announce victory over the Persians; I am Tom Longboat at Madison Square Garden breaking the line three full minutes ahead of the pack; I am Julius Ruto. In his dreams Mr Malik is Fred Astaire, and not only did he write this letter inviting Rose Mbikwa to the ball, he put it into an envelope, addressed it and stamped it. Though he was not yet in possession of a single ticket to the ball – let alone two – he had already sent a confident cheque and as soon as the tickets arrived he would walk down to the postbox on the corner of Garden Lane and Parklands Drive and post that letter.

  Think back to when you were younger. Think of that letter (or email, or text message if you must) to that someone. Think of waiting for the reply. Would Rose accept? Of course not. No, of course not. A reply would arrive, an exquisite little note in a stiff paper envelope. Extremely polite, no reasons given. But might she? Well, she might. The phone would ring and he would say, ‘Malik here,’ and he would hear her say that it was a perfectly lovely idea and she hadn’t been to the Hunt Club Ball for years and she would love to come. Or he would be out and when he got home there would be a message on the pad – no name, just one word. Yes.

  A word about the Nairobi Hunt. Had you been outside the main entrance to the Karen Club early on the morning of the last Saturday in May of 1962, you would have seen assembled on the lawn seventeen horses and riders – red jackets, white jodhpurs, black riding hats and all. A cacophony of bays and barks announces the arrival of a full pack of foxhounds, brought from the kennels just down the road past the tennis courts. As the first rays of sun peep over the Ngombo Hills, the final meeting of the Nairobi Hunt rides out. Before the morning is over they will have found and killed two foxes, which was two more than usual, and the hunt is judged a great success. It is a fitting finale to a tradition which has been going on for more than fifty years.

  I should explain that the foxes were really jackals – there being no suitable foxes in that part of Africa – but they were always called foxes by members of the hunt. The foxhounds were real foxhounds, though – descendants of those brought over by Lord Delamere of blessed memory in 1912. But while all the hounds have long since passed over to that great hunting ground in the sky, and galloping over the dewy savannah towards the rising sun trying to spot the aardvark holes while taking a stiff pull from the whisky flask is now but a fading memory in the minds of a few Old Hands, the hunt has not completely vanished. Its ghost still exists as the Hunt Committee of the Karen Club, whose sole function is to arrange the annual Hunt Club Ball. Come, let me take you there.

  We are in the Grand Ballroom of the Suffolk Hotel. Chandeliers sparkle, the candles are lit. Swathes of bougainvillea wreathe the columns along each side of the room, whole branches of hibiscus adorn windows and doors. At the far end of the room the orchestra is tuning up. Tonight, just as on this night for the last twenty-nine years, we will thrill to the music of Milton Kapriadis and his Safari Swingers. Along one side of the room the starched white cloth of the long table is almost hidden beneath scores of laden plates and dishes.

  The buffet consists, as usual, of assorted canapés (I see volau-vents are big again this year), followed by salads, cold meats, devilled chicken and devilled shrimps, curries, birianis, fruit platters, and cakes that would have made my grandmother – who had a thing for pink icing and whipped cream – cry. On a separate table, watched over by a white-uniformed and tall-hatted chef with carving implements agleam, rests a whole roasted sheep. Two more are ready in the kitchen waiting to be brought out – they have always done these things well at the Suffolk. Teams of waiters, white-saronged, maroon-jacketed and silver-buttoned, stand beside the door, silver trays balanced on white-gloved hands. On each tray are two glasses each of beer, gin and tonic, whisky soda, brandy soda, and plain soda water – the ‘big five’ drinks of East Africa. So, let the party begin.

  Who wi
ll be arriving at the ball? Well, everybody, really. Two hundred couples and more of the very top layers of Kenyan Society. All the Old Hands, of course, and most of the Young Hands, and quite a few of their brattish offspring – most of whom have abandoned Africa for Kensington or Belgravia (or even Islington these days) but still return once a year to avoid the British winter. It is a tradition that the British High Commissioner attend the ball, and (apart from a three-year hiatus during Harold Macmillan’s leadership in the UK when the winds of change sweeping through Africa put a chill on such frivolities), he usually does. There is also a fair smattering of other high-ups from the rest of the diplomatic community and the various NGOs that nowadays have made a home in Nairobi.

  The band strikes up, the British High Commissioner and his wife take the floor for the first waltz (it is always a waltz, the British High Commissioner is always a man, and he is always married), and off we go. Dancing, chatting, eating, drinking, flirting – and above all, being seen. I’ve been there, and it really is quite fun. Mr Malik, whose wife had never been keen on all this old colonial stuff and nonsense, had not been there and was not sure if it would be fun, but he knew that it was the only place that he wanted to take Rose Mbikwa. The tickets might well arrive in the very next post.

  As soon as they did, his invitation was ready to pop into the postbox at the corner of Garden Lane and Parklands Drive.

  9

  At her home in Serengeti Gardens, Hatton Rise, Rose Mbikwa was standing in her bedroom, an empty suitcase on the bed. As she had explained at the bird walk that morning, she would be away next week. What she had not explained was why.

  I have already mentioned that the car Rose drives is a Peugeot 504 and that it has seen better days. But though the last 504 came off the Sausheim production line in 1989 they’re tough old cars – thousands are still found on African roads from Cape Town to Cairo. The 1600cc engine, basically the same unit that was used in the old Pinafarina-styled 404, just seems to keep chugging on for ever. The four-speed manual gearbox, while lacking top-end speed, is legendary for its reliability. What usually goes first is the differential, though the decline is gradual and the whine of a worn-out worm gear can accompany a Peugeot 504 for years before it finally gives up its mechanical ghost.

  So it is with many a human body. As the years roll on there is often one part that starts to show signs of wear before the others. With Rose, apart from that occasional twinge in her left hip after a particularly strenuous walk, it was not engine or transmission that was the problem, though. It was her eyes.

  At first she tried to ignore the slight fuzziness that seemed to surround things, especially in bright light. It was nothing serious, it would get better by itself. It didn’t. Oh well, just getting old – perhaps some glasses would fix it, the ones you can get at the pharmacist should do. They didn’t. As her eyesight got worse she noticed that her colour vision was being affected (fancy mistaking that green-headed sunbird for a blue-headed). She went to see her doctor and told him all about it. He looked closely into each of her eyes down an ancient ophthalmoscope.

  ‘I regret to say, Mrs Mbikwa, that you are developing cataracts. The one in the lens of your left eye is particularly bad. It’s going yellow, which is probably why you are having trouble with some colours.’

  The doctor explained that the condition was particularly common in his white patients.

  ‘All this strong light and infrared, you know. It damages the proteins. I’m afraid it will only get worse.’

  He recommended that she should consider a lens replacement.

  ‘Just the left one to start with. It’s a simple enough procedure and the lenses are very reliable these days, though I have to say it’s not the kind of thing we’re very good at here in Kenya.’

  He suggested she have the operation somewhere in Europe or the US.

  The news, though half suspected, was devastating. Of all the things to fail, her eyesight was the most difficult to cope with. What about her guide training? What about the bird walks? Could she even live without the beauty of her beloved birds? But there, nothing could be done. There was no way Rose was going to spend that kind of money on herself even if she could somehow scrape it together, and what cannot be cured must be endured. She thanked her doctor and went home. Her vision got worse. But then just last month her son Angus, now grown-up and graduated and working for the United Nations, was visiting from Geneva. He soon saw through his mother’s stoic pretence. He made a few phone calls.

  ‘You’re booked in at Dr Strauss’s clinic in Bonstetten next Wednesday. I’ve arranged the air tickets. Don’t argue, Mother dear, it’s all paid for.’

  So that very afternoon Rose is due to leave on the Swiss International flight to Zurich. She will be away for nine days. While she looks around the bedroom, deciding what to pack and what to leave behind, let us examine the rest of the house.

  Hatton Rise was built in the 1920s as a comfortable middle-class suburb for white settlers. Think Sunningdale in Berkshire or some of the older parts of Freeport, Long Island and you will have some idea of its comfortable houses in spacious grounds. It is now an upper-class suburb for Kenyans of any colour who can afford a house there. Rose has lived in the house on the hill in Serengeti Gardens ever since she was married. She is now the only white person in the street. On the side where Bunny and Sue Harrington used to live, her neighbour is now an Asian businessman who owns the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Nairobi, the largest in East Africa (Rose seldom sees his wife). On the other side – a sprawling hacienda-style building that once housed the younger Delamere boy, his good friend Jeremy and at least a dozen dachshunds – now lives a justice of the high court who, judging by the ever-changing number and variety of cars always jamming the driveway and spilling out into the street, has a surfeit of disposable income and a small problem with brand loyalty.

  Though Rose’s is a large house it is, by modern East African standards, old-fashioned. The rooms are not small, but nor are they as palatial as the newer houses in the street. Downstairs the main sitting room opens on to a veranda through folding wooden doors. Folding in theory, that is; it has been many years since anyone thought to close them and it is doubtful now whether the hinges would stand it. The veranda extends the full width of the back of the house, and sometimes Rose sits outside on the rattan chairs under the yellow banksia rose (her very favourite rose) and sometimes she sits inside on one or other of the old armchairs or lies back on the sofa. She isn’t like some people, with ‘their’ chair. There is a music system in the corner with a jumble of wires behind it and CDs in untidy stacks on the shelves above, but no television and so no enormous satellite dish in the garden – a feature of most homes in the street these days. Neither is there air conditioning. Even if Rose liked air conditioning, with the veranda door in the shape it’s in there would not be much point. Adjoining the sitting room but separated by three archways is the dining room, with its large walnut table, twelve chairs and matching sideboard. Made in Dundee in the early nineteenth century, they were a late wedding present from her father. The kitchen is off the dining room and there is a cloakroom in the entrance hall by the front door. A stairway leads off the entrance hall to four plain, square bedrooms upstairs and a bathroom. Yes, only one bathroom. That’s how old-fashioned it is.

  A feature of Rose’s home is the number of photographs and pictures that crowd every wall. Over the mantelpiece in the sitting room (there is a wide fireplace in the sitting room, though she seldom uses it these days) is a portrait in oils of a handsome black man in a grey pinstripe suit. He is sitting at a desk with a sheet of paper before him and a fountain pen in his hand. The shelves behind him are lined with books bound in black and red, giving the impression that this man is serious, important – a lawyer or a politician perhaps. The impression is slightly spoilt by the fact that the man wears a large and cheerful grin. This is Joshua Mbikwa, the man who thirty-five years ago swept the young Rose Macdonald off her Scottish feet. This is the man w
ho introduced her to Africa. This is the man she still loves.

  Rose clicked closed the locks on the old Samsonite suitcase, picked up the phone and dialled. She would accept that invitation of a lift after all. It would save the bother of having to find a taxi. At only the fifth attempt she got through to the Hilton and was connected to the room of Harry Khan.

  Tiger Singh and A.B. had been quite right about Harry. His grandfather Mohammed Khan had first come to Africa from India for the same reason as most of his compatriots – to build the railway for the British. The British had decided that they couldn’t do it themselves (white labourers couldn’t take the heat, you see) but had soon discovered that the local African men saw no reason to labour all day for a bowl of rice when they could sit under a tree for the same length of time and be brought a bowl of sorghum by their womenfolk. So the British recruited shiploads of Indian labourers, each of whom as he came down the gangplank at Mombasa was handed a shovel and a bowl, and they got that railway built quicksmart (even despite the delays caused by those man-eating lions which everyone still makes such a fuss about). But when on 16th July 1903 the first train puffed along that railway all the way from the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria, what was Harry Khan’s grandfather to do then – go back to the dustbowl that was central India and be bossed around by the British some more? Mohammed Khan had already noticed that there might be openings for a man with get-up-and-go in this strange but fertile country. Though he had started out on the railway with a shovel in his hand just like everyone else, he had soon risen to become at first foreman, then section boss, then line supply manager. He still worked long hours, but his promotion meant that he travelled up and down the line and had a little time to look around. In one section the engineers were being delayed by a shortage of dynamite.