‘I see you, Manyoro,’ Leon replied, and did not bother to hide the irritation in his voice as he said, in English, ‘You promised me a good man.’
Manyoro looked back at him and flatly said, ‘No, I did not promise, brother. You demanded. And I told you that my best men would think this challenge beneath them. And so I have given you a runner and Bwana de Lancey can decide if he wants to race against him or not.’
‘He’s hardly going to say no to that, is he?’ said Leon, pointedly.
‘Shall I take him away, then? You can forfeit the wager if you wish.’
Leon forced himself to take his time and calmed down before he or Manyoro talked each other into a corner from which they could not extricate themselves.
‘Very well, then, you had better introduce us.’
Manyoro switched to Masai as he said, ‘M’Bogo, this is Simel. He is the son of one of my sisters. Simel, pay your respects to my brother M’Bogo. When you run for him, you run for me too, and for all our people. Do not let us down.’
‘I see you, Simel,’ Leon said.
‘I see you, M’Bogo, and I promise you I will run like a wind over the grass that blows all day without ceasing.’
Aye, you might at that, thought Leon. For when he looked more closely he saw the lad had a flat, well-muscled stomach hidden behind the absurdly bunched-up waistband of his shorts. And he certainly seemed healthy. He stood as straight-backed as a guardsman and his eyes were bright with life and youthful optimism. Ah well, nothing for it now. Better introduce him to the opposition.
Leon walked Simel over to the part of the polo field where de Lancey had set up his camp. A large tent had been erected, within which stood a couple of camp beds on which his runners could rest before their exertions, or recover after them. There were deckchairs for de Lancey and his cronies – a thoroughly rum crowd of chancers and remittance men, so far as Leon could see – and the women they had brought with them. A steady stream of porters had brought crates of champagne and Tusker, Kenya’s first brand of locally brewed beer. A campfire stood ready to provide sustenance to his opponent’s entire party. A large iron kettle was coming to the boil and the smell of sausages sizzling on the grill, the whole set-up under the control of a couple of totos, suggested a late but hearty breakfast was being prepared.
A female face that Leon half-recognized caught his eye. It took him a second to place, but then he realized it belonged to Amelia Cory-Porter, his dinner companion a week earlier. He waved politely at her and she very pointedly did not wave back. Leon grinned to himself: Hell hath no fury, eh? Fair enough, I showed her no interest, so now she’s pitching her tent in de Lancey’s camp. At least she’ll be well fed.
‘Here’s my man,’ said Leon once he had found de Lancey. He could practically see the cogs working in the other man’s mind as he tried to decide whether this was some kind of set-up. Simel was grinning at de Lancey in an amiable, unthreatening fashion. He was so diminutive that his three competitors, who were now emerging from various corners of the camp to discover what they were up against, looked like champion middleweight boxers up against an untrained flyweight.
De Lancey gave Simel one last once-over, saw no threat and said, ‘Very well, then. You’re on.’
Jonty Sopwith had been running long enough to know that good athletes came in all shapes and sizes. This little Masai had the look of a distance runner about him. He’d said as much to Hugo Birchinall who’d agreed. ‘Looks like a classic Nilotic ectomorph to me. That means thin, Camel,’ he added, knowing that Sopwith had studied Land Economy and was unlikely to be familiar with physiological terminology. ‘Their light body-mass sheds heat more quickly than a more burly chap like me. Also helps them run long distances because they don’t overheat, the way we do, like a car engine boiling over.’
‘Then we’d better get this done as quickly as possible,’ Sopwith said. ‘I’m going to take it out hard. Then he has to decide whether to match me or not. If he doesn’t he’ll fall way behind. If he does go with me, I reckon I can run the strength out of him, same way I did to Bobby Snelling in the ’21 Varsity match, do you remember?’
‘I certainly do. Dear old Snellers hung on to your coat tails right up to the final bend, then you kicked again and he practically collapsed on the spot. Poor chap just didn’t have another ounce of energy left in him.’
‘Exactly. Now, I reckon I’m good for a pretty sharp mile, at the very least. So I’m going to give it absolutely everything and hand over to you when I feel myself start to weaken.’
‘And then I’ll come on and pick him off. Good work, Camel. That’s a damned sound plan.’
‘So let’s do the job ourselves, eh? Can’t let it be said that two good Varsity men needed help from the hoi polloi.’
‘No, we certainly can’t.’
The tall, fair-skinned figure of Jonty Sopwith stood on the starting line beside the diminutive Simel. The two men shook hands and Sopwith said, ‘Good luck, old man,’ because it was the done thing to treat one’s opponents with good manners and respect even if you then intended to grind them into the red African earth.
The starter fired his pistol and the two men set off to the sound of great roars of encouragement from the native Kenyans along one side of the polo field and the settlers on the other. As promised, Jonty Sopwith began at a punishing pace. In his introduction to Leon Courtney, he had understated his achievements, for he had a very good chance of making the British team for the Paris Olympics, two years earlier, until a badly twisted knee rendered him unable to compete. Sopwith therefore had every reason to believe that he could beat Simel, and get the job done pretty quickly too.
For a few seconds, Simel tried to keep up with the man whose hair was the colour of flame-tree flowers. But then he remembered the words that Manyoro had told him, just as they were walking to the start. ‘Do not try to race any of them. Just run. And keep running. Think to yourself, “I am running back to Lonsonyo Mountain to see Lusima Mama and so I must run all day.” But do not let the white men make you run any more quickly or slowly than you want to go. You must be a wildebeest, not a cheetah. Just run.’
Now Simel understood the point of Manyoro’s words. This man who had introduced himself so politely was trying to tempt him into running fast, like a cheetah. But a cheetah could not run for long at top speed. If it did not catch its prey within a few seconds it stopped, gathered its strength and then tried again, some while later. The wildebeest, on the other hand, kept moving, running all day with its brothers and sisters, from one horizon to the other.
Now I will be the wildebeest, Simel thought, and he slowed from the near-sprint in which he had started and settled into an apparently effortless, loping stride, his feet springing as lightly as an antelope’s hooves from one step to the next and his hands held up high by his chest.
Within a matter of seconds a gap of five yards had opened up between the two runners. It grew wider, to ten, then twenty yards. The cheering in the white stands rose in volume. In de Lancey’s camp the hangers-on were all slapping him on the back, while the women shrieked encouragement to Jonty Sopwith.
This