‘We were at the top of a long valley at that point, running straight down to the plain fifteen or twenty miles away, empty. And the old man had said this tribe lived in a much smaller valley, to the side, high up. So we looked around all that day. Finally there was this craggy defile we found, hidden to the south along the range, which looked a possibility. And that’s where they were. We got there just before nightfall, up on some big stones that formed a kind of dry dam before the hidden gorge dropped away beyond. We made camp there — and that’s when we first saw them, looking down over the rocks, about half a mile away, at the bottom of a small saucer-shaped valley, small fires glimmering in the half light, blue smoke, stars coming out.
‘And there was this smell in the air from the fires, the cedar wood from the ridges. And a small waterfall from the peaks to one side, and some maize and banana planted out on the flat ground in the middle outside the stockade which enclosed the dozen or so big thatched huts —’
‘A stockade?’
‘Yes. A round boma, made of stakes, thorn bushes.’
I remembered Clare’s endless circular games with the bricks and how she put all the animals from the ark inside.
‘There must have been fifty or sixty people in the settlement. We watched some of them that evening through the binoculars. They were bringing in the animals for the night — cows, goats. Then they pulled a gate of thorn bushes across the entrance and that was that. It was perfect, like a nativity scene.’
‘All untouched, up in these mountains?’
‘Well, not quite. The men were just in loincloths when we saw them; a few of the older ones in monkey skin cloaks. But I don’t think they were a virgin tribe. They’d been driven up here — years before: by Idi Amin’s men or before that by some other rival tribe. The Karamojong have always been fighting among themselves. But this lot were something different, certainly, in that they were totally isolated now, hidden, had reverted completely to a pure subsistence living. They’d gone right back into the old Africa, before the strangers came. This was how Africa worked, do you see? As it all used to before we came. And I remember, from the very start, how George and Willy were sort of … salivating over it all, as we watched from up on the rocks, like vultures.
‘Of course, the problem was, if they had this white girl hidden with them, and especially if she meant something important to them, as soon as they saw us they’d assume the worst, that we’d come to take her away. They’d put up a fight. And Laura and I, at least, assumed we didn’t want that.’
‘So what happened?’
‘We let them find us. We made a fire first thing next morning, on our side of the rocks. And they saw the smoke rising. A group of them came over the boulders half an hour later. There were half a dozen men with assegais. Fierce. Or they could have been.
‘George spoke to them. But he didn’t know much of their dialect. These were part of the Tepeth tribe, entirely mountain people, not Karamojong proper. He could barely understand them. But he managed to explain that we were only looking for fossil sites, rock samples — that we’d come from the other side of the mountains and were going back that way. Their leader was a tall, intelligent-faced middle-aged man. He had trousers and he spoke some English, so he’d obviously lived down on the plains once.
‘Well, we mentioned nothing about the child of course. But we asked if we could stay for twenty-four hours to rest before we went back. Willy offered them some money. But they wouldn’t touch it. And they weren’t at all keen on our staying. We asked if we could come into their camp for water. But they said they’d bring us some — they certainly didn’t want us in their camp. We’d hidden our rifles — and there it was: a stalemate. We could stay until the afternoon, they said. But after that they wanted us on.’
‘But you didn’t leave?’
‘No. And that’s where the trouble began. We stayed there, camped on the rocks that night. Laura and I wanted to go back. But the men were determined to stay. They thought they could do some deal with the tribe over the girclass="underline" offer them one of our guns or more money, corrupt them properly.
‘In the event, we didn’t have a chance to make any offers. They came for us, when we hadn’t left, early next morning. Laura and I were asleep, behind the hobbled camels. But the others had been taking turn about all night as look-outs. And there was a terrible fight. The warriors had crept up to attack — all round beneath us, over the rocks. But George had seen them first, and we had all the advantage of the high ground … and the two sporting Winchesters. They had only their spears and machetes. It was something of a massacre.’
‘You mean they shot them all?’
Annabelle looked at me angrily, as if I’d been responsible for the disaster.
‘Half a dozen of them, I suppose. The rest, the other half dozen, got away, back into the hills to either side of the settlement, because by that time George and Willy had moved down the gorge into the valley, getting between these stragglers and their camp. But the others meanwhile, the women and children, had barricaded themselves into the stockade, closing the great thorn gate.’
‘You got in, though?’
‘Yes. Willy simply set the stockade gate alight — set the whole thing on fire.’
‘I don’t —’
‘It’s true. He thought he’d just burn the gate down. But the flames spread at once, kept us all away — until most of the front of the boma was burnt down. Then Willy was inside, running among the huts, looking for the girl, with the women and children and old people panicking everywhere, screaming, because some of the grass huts had caught fire too. Well, Willy found the girl, in one of the huts at the back, next to the chief’s hut. She was lying on the ground, terrified, curled up like an animal, he said, in with a lot of chickens. But it was a grand hut, there were zebra skins and blankets on the floor. The chickens must have been for their witchcraft, used as a poison oracle probably.
‘Anyway, Willy picked the girl up — I was with him by then. But then this head man, this tall African suddenly came in through the doorway of the hut. He hadn’t been shot and he’d come back into camp — and of course he went for Willy, tried to spear him, missed. George jumped in. And the three of them were struggling about the floor among the chickens for a minute. But the thatch behind them had caught fire — the grass walls. Laura grabbed the child. And then the headman found himself losing against George and Willy. Finally they pushed him into the flames at the side of the hut. And that’s why —’
‘That’s why that African has scars all over the side of his face,’ I interrupted. ‘That man, the one you have living downstairs in your house, the one who killed Laura. It’s the same man, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Annabelle admitted. ‘It’s the same man. He killed Willy. He ran him down later in that car in Nairobi. But I don’t know about Laura.’
‘But it’s still really only the beginning, isn’t it?’ I said, starting to shout once more, angry again. ‘An illiterate African from some hidden tribe in the middle of Africa: how the hell does he come to be living in Oxford?’
Annabelle moved on the picnic bench, as if trying to avoid my attack, her long bronzed body angled sharply at her waist, leaning away from me now. ‘It was only the beginning for us, too,’ she said earnestly, ‘after we’d got the girl safely back to Nairobi. We thought we’d hear no more about it, you see, because shortly afterwards the drought came to Karamoja. The rains failed that year and each year afterwards. The people starved, died. And Amin’s scavenging army did for the few that were left. They even got up into those mountains. Though most of the Tepeth people up there had been finished off already. Their crops had failed. They were in no position to complain of Willy’s depredations. What with the drought and the pillage it was the end of the Karamojong, the Tepeth, the end of all the other hill tribes.’