Assegai

He had followed her across the pool, but as she approached the black rock he had taken a deep breath and duck-dived, swinging his legs high in the air so that their weight forced his body under. Once he was below the surface he swam on downwards. He had imagined that the pool was probably bottomless, for he had seen no overflow at the surface. The huge volume of water pouring over the falls must have another means of escape. But as he swam down he found he had been mistaken. The bottom appeared below him and, even at this depth, the water was so clear that he could see it was covered with a jumble of rocks that must have fallen from the cliffs.

By now his eardrums were aching with the pressure and he stopped to clear them, holding his nose and blowing air through the Eustachian tubes. His ears squealed and popped, the pain subsided and he swam on down. He reached the bottom and found that among the rocks was scattered a bizarre collection of Masai artefacts: ancient assegais and axes, mounds of pottery shards, necklaces and bracelets made from trade beads, small carvings of hardwood and ivory, primitive jewellery and other artefacts so old and rotten that they were unidentifiable, all offerings made by the Masai over the ages to their tribal gods.

By now he had expended most of his oxygen so he took one last look around, and the mystery of the overflow was solved. The wall below the waterfall was pierced by a number of almost horizontal adits that had probably been blown out in antiquity by boiling lava and gas from the volcano under the mountain. It was these dark and sinister passages that drained away the overflow from the pool and kept it at a constant level. By now his lungs were heaving for air and he swam for the surface. As the light strengthened he saw above him a pair of long, shapely feminine legs dabbling below the surface. He swam up under them, seized the ankles and jerked their owner into the pool on top of him. They came to the surface again, clinging together and gasping for air.

Eva recovered her voice before he did. ‘You heartless swine! I thought you were drowned or swallowed by a crocodile. How can you play such a cruel trick on me?’

They swam back to where they had left their clothes.

‘We don’t want you to catch your death of cold,’ Leon told her, and made her stand naked on the ledge while he dried her with his shirt.

She held her hands above her head and revolved slowly to allow him to reach the difficult places. ‘What big eyes you have, sir. You’re doing a great deal more looking than drying. So is your one-eyed friend down there. I should make both of you wear a blindfold,’ she said, as she came around to face him.

‘And who is the heartless one now?’ he asked.

‘Not me!’ she cried. ‘Let me prove to both of you what a kind heart I have.’ She reached out and grasped his friend firmly but tenderly. In the first divine madness of their passion they were insatiable.

It was almost dark when, hand in hand, they went down the pathway. As soon as they topped the fold of ground that concealed the pool they saw the campfire burning not far below. When they reached it they found that a log had been placed in front of the flames as a bench for them. When they had settled themselves on it, Ishmael appeared, bearing two mugs of strong black coffee, with evaporated milk.

Eva sniffed the air. ‘What is that delicious aroma, Ishmael?’

He showed no surprise that, for the first time, she was speaking English rather than German or French. ‘It is green-pigeon casserole, Memsahib.’

‘Ishmael’s celestial version thereof,’ Leon added. ‘It should only be eaten with bared head on bended knee.’

‘I’m so starving that I’m prepared to go down on both knees. It must be the swimming, or something else, that is so good for the appetite,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘Viva! That little something else.’

Immediately they had eaten, they were overwhelmed by a wonderful weariness. Manyoro and Loikot had built a small thatched shelter for them, well away from their own huts, and Ishmael had cut a mattress of fresh grass and covered it with blankets. Over it he had hung Leon’s mosquito net. They shed their clothes and Leon blew out the candle stub before they crept under the net.

‘It’s so safe and intimate and cosy in here,’ she whispered, and he lay behind her and enfolded her in his embrace. She pushed her round warm buttocks into his belly so that their bodies fitted together like a pair of spoons. The reflection of the campfire played shadow games on the netting over their heads, and the piping duet of two scops owlets in the branches of the tree above them was both plaintive and lulling.

‘I have never been so pleasantly exhausted in my entire life,’ she murmured.

‘Too exhausted?’

‘That’s not what I meant, you silly man.’

She woke in the dawn to find Leon sitting cross-legged over her. ‘You’ve been watching me!’ she accused him.

‘Guilty as charged,’ he admitted. ‘I thought you were never going to wake up. Come on!’

‘It’s midnight, Badger!’ she protested.

‘Do you see that big shiny thing peeking at you through the chinks in the thatching? It’s called the sun.’

‘Where do you want to go at this ridiculous hour?’

‘For a swim in your magical pool.’

‘Well, why didn’t you say so?’ she asked, and threw back the blanket.

The waters were cool and slippery as silk over their bodies. Afterwards they sat naked in the early sunlight to dry off. When the warmth had soaked into them and charged their blood, they made love yet again. Afterwards she said solemnly, ‘I thought nothing could be better than yesterday, but today is.’

‘I want to give you something that will always remind you of how happy we were on this day.’ Leon stood up and dived from the ledge.

She watched him growing smaller and less distinct as he swam down, until finally he had faded into the depths. He was down for so long that she grew anxious until, with a lift of relief, she saw him coming up. He broke through the surface and, with a shake of his head, flicked his wet hair out of his eyes. He swam to the bank below her and clambered up on to the ledge. Then he held up a necklace of ivory beads strung on a leather thong.

‘It’s beautiful!’ She clapped her hands.

‘Two thousand years ago, when she passed this way, the Queen of Sheba offered it to the gods of the pool. Now I give it to you.’ He looped the necklace around her throat and tied it at the nape of her neck.

She looked at the beads as they lay between her breasts, and stroked them as though they were living things. ‘Did the Queen of Sheba really pass this way?’ she asked.

‘Almost certainly not.’ He laughed at her. ‘But it makes a good story.’

‘They’re so lovely, so smooth and delicate.’ She turned one between her fingers. ‘Oh, I wish I had a mirror.’

He led her to the end of the ledge and stood beside her with his arm around her waist. ‘Look down,’ he told her. Silently and seriously they regarded their naked images in the mirror-like surface of the water. At last Leon asked softly, ‘Who is that girl in the water? Her name isn’t Eva von Wellberg, is it?’ He watched her expression crumble and her eyes mist with incipient tears. ‘I’m so sorry. I promised not to make you sad.’

‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘You did the right thing. We’ve had our little dream together, but now it’s time to face reality.’ She turned away from the reflections in the pool and looked up at him. ‘You’re right, Leon. I’m not Eva von Wellberg – von Wellberg was my mother’s maiden name. My name is Eva Barry.’ She took his hand. ‘Come and sit with me and I’ll tell you all you want to know about Eva Barry.’ She led him back to the ledge and they sat cross-legged, facing each other.

‘I must warn you that it’s a mundane and grubby little tale, not much for me to be proud of, and very little in it for your comfort, but I shall try to make it as painless as possible for both of us.’ She drew a deep breath, then went on: ‘Twenty-two years ago I was born in a little village in Northumberland. My father was an Englishman, but my mother was German. I learned the language at her knee. By the time I was twelve my German was almost as good as my English. That was the year my mother died of a terrible new disease, which the doctors called infantile paralysis or poliomyelitis. The sickness paralysed her lungs and she suffocated. Within days of her death my father was struck by the same disease and his legs withered away. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.’