“Mr Reynolds? I hope you are well. I wonder, could you spare me a minute?”

“Miss Darby, I am well thank you. Is it urgent? I am just heading up the valley to drill a well for the ... the T’chiko. Is that right? I could look you up tonight?”

“Pretty good. No, not urgent, yes, tonight. Thank you. Good day Mr Reynolds.”

“Good day Miss Darby.”

This was Mr Brough Reynolds – sixty years old. He took early retirement after spending nearly forty years at Kleinthorpe Angirn Ltd. He started after a degree in Engineering. He married, had children and climbed the greasy pole. He climbed well, working hard, working long hours, being away for the birth of his son, subverting truth for profit; and told himself he did it all for his family. Actually, he did it for himself; there was always another rung to climb, always a promotion to go for, always a deal to win. He did well, he ended up a director with knowledge and experience second to none.

Then his wife died; at fifty five, she just collapsed one day. “You’ll be fine, we have private health insurance, we’ll get the best.” He said. But he was mistaken, no amount of treatment, private or otherwise, would help her. She died two months later. At last he began to reconsider his life. He organised the funeral, and slowly went back to work. He had never been close to his children, he was working away for birthday parties, school meetings; only being around for holidays, and even then he would be on the phone; so it wasn’t surprising that they didn’t come round as much now their mother was dead. It was their mother that Chris and Angela had been close to.

He didn’t resent it. He began to understand. He started to address what his life was. It was the honour that finally tipped him over. He was awarded the MBE ‘for services to the engineering world’. He accepted, of course; he would not offend the Queen; but he felt the hypocrisy of the award. He had done little for engineering for the last twenty years; his positions were all about profit for Kleinthorpe Angirn Ltd. He was aware of the careful arrangement of contracts to avoid responsibilities, of the paring of costs to the detriment of quality. He retired at fifty nine, admittedly on a very good pension.

He did nothing for a month, then he returned to his real love, genuine engineering. Six months later, he had an innovation that he wanted to test. Instead of turning up and spending a day setting up a drill to drill for water, the whole structure was built into a pickup truck. He had carefully positioned the drill to go through the floor, avoiding anything underneath. So the rig could be up and running in half an hour, and the pickup acted as the stabilising base, and a clever redesign of tubing allowed it to clip round the drill and be slid down the hole being dug. It was stunning in its efficiency. It could be taken anywhere a four wheel drive could get to. It meant wells could be dug without the expensive equipment that engineering firms tried to sell, and it meant that the operators were not needed for anywhere near the length of time. He just needed to demonstrate this, and nobody wanted to take a chance on an untried idea. So he offered his services free, and would ship the vehicle himself too.

The major charities said thanks, but no thanks. They had their teams, they worked well. It was better to use inefficient tried and tested approaches than go somewhere new. He insisted. A medical check confirmed that for a sixty year old, he was in good condition. He wasn’t a Schwarzenegger, but he was totally capable of coping with the rigours of a trip. Christian Service Overseas took him on.

That was how he came to be helping provide new wells in the Munga Valley. It was hot, humid, snake-ridden, uncomfortable and disease-infested; and he loved it. He was doing something useful.

He drove up a track that was barely wide enough for the car, came to the T’Chiko, a sub tribe who lived in a small valley off the main one up the mountain. The T’Changa had lived up the valley for generations, untouched by the waves of invaders, black and white, even Arab on occasion. It was a hard to reach place, having a cliff at its entrance (which had a terrifying track up and across it now) They hadn’t welcomed visitors until recently. Missionaries had been politely, but firmly, ejected. They were an ethnographers dream, largely untouched by the intrusive cultures that had destroyed other tribes. But they didn’t welcome ethnographers any more than others.

So why Lucy Darby? She had turned to being a missionary after training as a nurse. She found that her strongly held, religiously based ethics conflicted with the new NHS. It was right to treat a drug addict by giving them controlled doses of a methadone, even though that addicted them to something else; but not alright to treat someone who was addicted to food until they lost weight. She was unhappy with the partial advice offered on abortion, she found the unconsidered delivery of contraceptives questionable, and thought the morning after pill was rarely explained to the recipient. Not that she found the missionary school a smooth road either, she was not the normal evangelical missionary that they trained. She asked questions, she challenged thinking. So Christian Service Overseas sent her to their most difficult area, expecting her to fail like so many others. But she didn’t. Lucy was an odd Christian in that she had seen how much of the original teaching had been overlaid with layer upon layer of societal requirements. Jesus was a blonde in ninety percent of the Victorian church stained glass, Jesus preached in the open, not in dedicated buildings opened once a week to the faithful. Jesus talked with all, loved all. Her father was proud of her, and pleased that she went away as she asked too many difficult questions.

They felt sorry for her, calling her the Ugly Girl. It was a question of perspective. In some cultures, a slim, pinky-white girl, with long straight blonde hair, a good bust and a small waist would be seen as stunningly attractive. The T’Changa had a saying which roughly translated as ‘black as night, smooth as silk’. The darker the skin, the more attractive a body was, it stood to reason. The curlier the hair on the head, the more potent the person, so it was believed. So Lucy had little going for her. Other missionaries had been variously black, brown, dark, or men. They just seemed like apologies. Lucy was so ugly to them that they felt sorry for her and let her stay. The views that had so offended the missionary school now stood her in good stead. Unlike Victorian and many modern American Evangelising missionaries, she had not come to bring ‘civilisation’ to them, she was willing to learn. She had not come to bring a western slanted Christianity to them. She strongly believed that, just as English Christianity had assimilated The Holly and The Ivy as Christian rather than pagan symbols, had built churches in the Yew groves of the druids, and had tolerated the Yule log, so she must learn to accommodate the local traditions and only teach the essential message of hope and a loving God rather than a god (or gods) that needed appeasing. It was an unusual view in the college, but no-one challenged her beliefs successfully; even the staunchest fundamentalist accepted that she was a true believer, they just thought she was led astray a little. She would not condemn lest she be condemned, which was great in theory to a fundamentalist, but gays were still in need of re-alignment therapy.

She did not suggest that all the unmarried girls should cover their breasts, though she did wear a tee-shirt herself. The tribe realised this was because her pure white breasts were horribly ugly compared to the jet black of the local girls. She concluded that breasts only became sexual when they were covered up, as in the West. She was only partially correct. Married women (and this usually meant mothers), covered up, not because the T’Changa did not regard breasts as sexual, they did not regard non-productive breasts as sexual. A breast in milk was stunningly erotic, spelling out the ability of the woman to give life; therefore even a breast not currently producing milk was a source of sexual potential. Mothers had a track record, so they should cover up. Having grown up with supportive bras, and being the result of generations of selection for large breasts, she found wearing a bra was more comfortable than having them flop about, she tried to explain once, but her language skills weren’t up to it and the three girls she was talking to heard her say that without a bra her tits would explode. They were sure that she was mistaken.

She was thirty, but looked twenty five. She was very old not to be married, but it was understandable, being so ugly. She had explained how, in her country, it was often men that made the first move. They had all laughed at that. So, as an unmarried virgin (the two things worked together in the tribal life) she was invited to join one of the other traditions. From the age of 5 rains (5 years), local virgin girls always attended the birth of a child. Not just milled around outside, they were in the hut, watching. It may have been a very effective form of birth control; but the reason was, the Wise Woman explained slowly in her own language to Lucy in simple words, that birth signified sexual potency, fecundity. Such fecundity (she used simpler words) was catching. The T’Changa knew that men had something to do with stimulating the conception, but the real growth of a baby was the woman choosing to grow a seed in her body. The more unmarried girls caught this from mothers giving birth, the more babies they would grow when they had the chance.

Another tradition was the bone. The Silver Mountain Mouse, to give it its British name, was ubiquitous in the region. It was everywhere. In times of shortage, it had even been part of their diet, though it was small and had little meat, but it kept people alive until crops came back. It bred like Topsie; the females could produce up to twelve at a time and the young could have their own young from two months old. When a woman had developed sufficiently, the bone of the leg of a Silver Mountain Mouse was inserted through the right labia. A thorn was pushed through and then the bone forced through the hole and a little stitch put in to hold the bone in place. It was symbolical of a woman producing many babies, like the mouse. The missionaries knew of this and told them they should stop, and the CSO told Lucy she should stop it because it was unsafe (they meant that it was probably some pagan rite that was unChristian). They saw it as an animistic act. Lucy saw it as just a tradition, a symbol, like, she had said ‘like the communion in church, a small sip of wine and a small piece of bread is symbolic rather than the actual supper that Jesus talked at’. The ministers taking the class were dumbfounded and the other students were shocked beyond words. Many were fundamentalists who prided (and prided is the right word) themselves on believing in the Bible as the exact Word of God; but when it came to ‘do this in memory of me’ they were happy to take a sip of wine from a small glass cup and a wafer of specially prepared unleavened bread. Lucy was that rare thing, a truly considerate and considered Christian.

On the second time of watching a birth, it had gone on a long time, twenty hours had not produced any progress. If the Wise Woman had been around, she would have known there was a problem, but the old lady was up the valley dealing with another difficulty. Lucy found she could not stand by and watch any longer, she broke some taboo by stepping forward and taking the girl’s hand. Then she had broken another by pushing her fingers, and then her hand inside the girl. It was as she feared, the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby. Only the Wise Woman or a husband should go there. Every push restricted the baby, and the cord prevented the birth. She pushed the baby back in, untangled the cord and then pulled out her arm. All of this was done with low moans from the girl where a British girl would have been screaming in agony and fear. Tough people, she thought, I could never do even a normal birth without anaesthetic. It was as if the mother and baby knew to get it over with quickly; half an hour later the baby was mewling on the mother’s chest, the mother was smiling and clicking her gratitude, and Lucy had been promoted unofficially to respected member of the community. That act did more to persuade the tribe that she was good than any amount of preaching.

When the Wise Woman came back, she met the baby – called Lucille after her saviour, and then she met Lucy. Slowly Lucy came to understand that she was being invited to join the tribe. The initiation was simple enough: a tattoo of a butterfly on her left shoulder indicated the precise affiliation, this particular family tribe. The bone in the right labia was a surprise, but she felt she had no right to stand above their traditions. They were listening to her about the one loving God rather than the multiplicity of gods in the valley; she was taking St Paul’s line – that the arrival of the one God was a fulfilment of the stories and prophecies of a single power taking over all the gods roles. She allowed their gods to be considered angels. Why not? Weren’t angels messengers and sometimes guardians with swords (or bows and arrows for the tribe’s comprehension)? She was making progress and asked for the missionary society to start a translation of the Bible, that would need a written language, of course, so there was a way to go yet.

The insertion of the bone was, Lucy had admitted ‘Combetaa gk’tango’ which caused laughter and applause. Translated, it roughly meant ‘bloody painful’. Literally it mean ‘like having a large stick up your arse’, which would, of course, be bloody painful. But she was an accepted member of the tribe now; she introduced them to some of her medicines when necessary, and the Wise Woman showed her and the two acolytes who were learning the lore the plants in the jungle that helped with diseases. The poultice for a bite was clearly possessed of antibiotic properties, it worked a treat. The treatment for snakebite (eating a particular spider live), possibly more luck than efficacious, but how could anybody be sure?

She helped with the communal cooking which happened once a week; she had her own plot for vegetables. They thought it funny that she slept on the roof of her vehicle, but they knew people have these funny attitudes. She had a roof box tent on her Landover Defender, she had a slight fear of snakes. She fitted in to the tribal way of life, and since she listened to them, they listened to her.

She had been there for two years and was reporting progress and asking when the Bibles would come, her society back home were impressed at least that she hadn’t been asked to leave like the others.

She waved to Mr Reynolds and carried on teaching the children, she was teaching them to read and write a version of their language, and compiling a dictionary - trying to be careful to keep them in the culture of their tribe. The day passed and Mr Reynolds returned with a smile. “Another well, one more to go.” He had arrived at the right time. The river running down the mountain had become polluted, the water was nearly undrinkable. What had happened? Up high on the mountain, a crack had opened. The mountain was actually a volcano, quiescent but still active. It rumbled occasionally but there seemed no need to worry. The valley the tribe occupied was actually a huge lahar from a past eruption. The crack that opened up had poisoned a small lake with volcanic fumes which fed into the river. So when he arrived and offered to drill wells, the tribal elders were far more amenable than normal to interlopers. They figured that another ugly pastey dough coloured - he looked even worse, since he had a beard – man was not much of a risk for a short period.

“Oh? Only one more. I see.”

“But you wanted to talk about something. Drink?” Reynolds had brought gin and tonic with him, he was careful not to share. The T’Changa made their own drinks, they had a fermented drink made from leaves and berries. It was a strong drink. Young children were only allowed a little on special occasions.

“Oh, thank you. You are so clever to have brought this with you. Yes, well ... look I ... Oh, well. You know I am a member of the tribe?” She pulled the shoulder of her teeshirt. He nodded and said it was a good tattoo. “Yes, not just that there is the bone too. Oh, look, nevermind. I’ll tell you later. The thing is, I wanted to be part of the society, I want to be part of the society. I believe it important not to undermine their traditions. I should have checked the traditions before I got involved. I was told about the wedding tradition a week ago. This is a very special society, Mr Reynolds.”

“Please, call me Brough. My dad loved motorbikes”

She had no idea what that meant. “Brough? Okay, then call me Lucy.”

“I thought that baby was called Lucille after you?”

“Yes, I hate my name, makes me think of Lucille Ball. Anyway every four years, they have this ceremony in which the women choose their husbands. That is unique! The women choose! All the unmarried women, well, the virgins. They have to have reached puberty, but the Wise Woman can block a girl. There was one four years ago who was only eleven, she’s fifteen now, so she will be in the group this time. As expected, she no longer loves the boy she loved four years ago, I was told. Anyway, all the unmarried virg- I mean women, take part. I am expected to. You see my problem? I am supposed to pick a man to be married to. If I refuse then I am undermining their traditions. It is a dilemma.” She explained how the women would line up opposite the men and then dance to their choice. It was possible that she had not understood the detail.

“Yes, I see, I think. That is a dilemma. How can I help ... oh! Oh I see, you wish to pick me? Are you sure? I mean I am older than you.”

She laughed, obviously this would be for the show of the thing. When they left, they could go their separate ways. It wouldn’t mean anything. He agreed. She was the kind of person who you would agree with. Not just because of her looks, she was a kind, considerate person; she was trying not to break down their societal structure; she wanted to remain accepted.

Being an engineer, he asked more questions. He liked understanding the detail. He liked to know what he was getting into. What the boys told him was that he would need to be part of the tribe to take part. He could get the tattoo, it would not be a problem, two ugly people could console each other. Obviously he was an adult, but did he have the bone? They were surprised that his culture did not have such things. The next day, he was taken to the Wise Woman, who stuck a thorn through his foreskin and forced a bone through the hole and sewed it up. He was lucky that she was old, having a female holding your penis can be embarrassing, but her wizened hand had no effect on him. He was also forewarned slightly and put some antiseptic gel on his foreskin, followed by some local anaesthetic. Otherwise he might have been screaming blue murder for the pain. His calm demeanour won him some kudos. The cream he put on after helped him heal quickly, the boys were impressed, they had all gone red for days as small infections took hold. They held him in high esteem for being so tough. He was misleading them, but it wasn’t like he was leading them astray.

Next was the tattoo. He was taken straight to the official tattoo artist and had no time to put some topical painkiller on. He held his breath and his tears as a porcupine quill dipped ink was banged over and over into his left shoulder (women were right, men were left). He put some antiseptic on straight after, which kept any infection at bay.

So he hung around until the ceremony. He could have left, his work in the valley was done, but this seemed a good thing to do. The next thing he was told was that he had to build a hut. He didn’t have long. His one nod at luxury had been to bring more than a ridge tent. He had brought a frame tent and an inflatable mattress, and then never used either. He had found it just as easy to sleep in the cabin of the pickup. Now the boys started to tell him how he had to build a hut. He produced his tent, and they looked astounded as a small hut appeared from the bags of metal and material. He collected thorn bush to build the fence around it, and his kraal was ready. The hardest part had been collecting the vicious thorn bush branches and weaving them into a fence. The spines were three inches long and would put off most attackers. They were more impressed by this instant hut than by the metal wheelbarrow he travelled in, they had seen those before, even the ugly girl had one; but the hut was amazing. Brough laughed to himself, it was one of the things he remembered from his work, you could not predict what would impress people. The most brilliant elegant design could be overlooked, but the colour of the paint could wow them.

The day arrived. Lucy was somewhat naive, she had assumed the girls just gyrated around and then grabbed their man. Nothing so laissez faire. It was likely that the girls had practiced this particular dance since they were young children. A successful dance got you the mate of your choice. A twelve year old was told she was too young. There was no appeal, what the Wise Woman said was the law in this ceremony. Two widows showed up. Widows had the choice of taking on a new man, or staying as widows. Four old men decided to try for a new mate. Mostly the men who attended were the men who had been told to. They had no choice, but there was nothing to stop other men putting themselves forward too.

Four women took Lucy to one side to arrange her. “Oh really? Oh well, I suppose so.” She was given a waistband with two flaps to cover front and back, that was it. Hands removed her teeshirt and bra, in this, at least, she would be dressed like all the others. The sight of her bold red circles and red-brown nipples brought sympathetic cllucks from the women; fancy not having black skin, it must be so sad for her. She had never been so naked in public. Even with her doctor, she would have been hesitant to be so undressed. It wasn’t that she was a prude. Much of it was her upbringing. But she was very aware that too much movement would raise the loin-flaps at the front or back. She had never, ever sunbathed topless. Actually, her one small piece of pride was how good her bust was; she understood that to the women, she was ugly-cream, but she knew that “These two boys would drive a man wild.” But then she realised that that was exactly what would happen. She was to dance up to a man she barely knew with her tits waving in the breeze. Actually, given that she was telling herself she had no choice, she was a little turned on by this.

Brough was dressed the same way by the boys; they thought it hilarious that such an ugly man should get a girl, but weren’t surprised as she was nearly as bad looking as him. Now he understood what he had not understood before. He had been told by two boys that sometimes a man did not show enough appreciation of the approaching female. In that case the match was off, and she was free to pick another, even to become second wife to another man. Some boys did not fancy the girl who fancied him, and some boys had no interest in girls. That was not frowned upon. In the next village – one on the ridge – there were two young men of sixteen with a child. They had formed a close friendship, and when a sister and her husband had been killed by a rogue lion (‘these things happen. The gods let them sometimes’), the two took on the child. It was applauded and approved.

They lined up the girls at least fifty yards away. The rest of the village and neighbours watched from afar. Lucy had been told to follow the others. At first she wasn’t that good. As one, all the girls lifted their right leg moving the knee leftwards and then rotating it back and stamping it down. Then the other leg. She was ready to do this next time. But instead they all jumped and turned 180 degrees and landed. Then they took one step back the way they had come with the same high swinging stamp. Then they turned, not with a jump.

The process was repeated, but with three steps forward and two back.

Then four steps forward and three back.

Then five and four. She was getting confident now. But then the number of steps dropped back to two and the whole cycle repeated itself.

Slowly, by single steps, the line of girls and women approached. Brough looked down the line and saw some front flaps starting to rise already. This was not a difficult judgement. By the time the girls were with you, you were either rampant and proud or disappointingly flaccid. He wondered what happened to half-mast. At the far end, he saw the two older women, their dugs hung down and flapped rather than shook with each step. He wondered how the men were doing, but they were too far along to see. He noticed the girls though. Young women of sixteen and seventeen had enough breast tissue for their breast to rise and fall with each stamp. Damn! That was a turn on. He looked at fifteen year olds, two of them, and realised that they too were interesting him. Even the youngest, a fourteen year old with distinctly firm conical breast was something to watch as she kept exact time with the others. And then he realised that was probably not appropriate; getting hot under the collar about fourteen year old girls was something that his culture said was paedophilia, even though they were often attractive nymphets sporting their attraction. He looked away.

It wasn’t the breasts that were the turn on; every time the girl took one of the steps forward, her front flap was lifted and offered a brief, tantalising view of her triangle of black curls. As they got closer, he realised, they would get to see more clearly the slit that they would get to invade later. No wonder they were getting excited. On the jump and turn, the back flap would fly up and reveal a view of their rumps. They were showing their charms and any man or boy who was heterosexual would be likely to get excited.

He looked straight again and watched Lucy now taking her steps. She wasn’t as in time, nor as graceful, but she was exposing that delightful groin for brief flashes. She jumped and turned and her pure white bottom appeared and disappeared. When she turned again, he watched the breasts. She had fully developed breasts which, unfettered by a bra, rose and fell in hypnotic fashion. He wondered if she was finding this as much a turn on as he was – and he was definitely turned on. His erection was rock hard and vertical, the front flap had been pushed aside by it. Had she known any of this when she started? Very little, she should have asked more questions, she was pretty sure that when (if?) this got back to the headquarters in Ruislip in London, she would be sacked immediately. Still, it was rather fun being rewarded with a view of twenty erections opposite. That was getting her excited. No, nineteen, one boy was failing to show any response. She jumped, turned, and landed, and realised that her nipples were rock hard too; as were the girl’s beside her. It was plain that she wasn’t the only one to find dancing for her man a very erotic turn on. She briefly imagined this as part of the wedding ceremony at home, a girl in a white veil and nothing else dancing to the front where her man stood with a ring on his cock. She dismissed the thoughts as distinctly disrespectful and irreligious. She was pleased to see that Brough was standing to attention, and realised that it was her he was standing for; he was watching her.

Brough had asked more questions, and knew that if the bone insertion was the first act of a play, and this dance the second, plays rarely ended like that. His enquiries had clarified two things. One, the Wise Women had checked that all the women were genuine virgins (she only asked, people were trusted to be honest), which meant that Lucy was one such, and two: that after the night of the ceremony, the Wise Women again asked for the truth of the uniting. In other words they had to honestly state that the marriage was consummated. Failure was an expelling offence. Those who did not seek to procreate to maintain the tribe were not allowed to stay in the tribe. Harsh, but understandable. It also meant that male and female were less likely to stray; the girl had picked someone who would have willing sex with her, and the boy had been chosen by someone willing to open her legs. Lucy would have to understand that this was no sham marriage.

It was hot; midday with the sun shining overhead. Even the girls who were used to heat were perspiring, Lucy (who always wore a hat to shade her from the sun so she did not turn red like a tomato) was sweating profusely, Her face was running with little streams, which she was sure was unattractive. Her bouncing breasts were glistening with sweat. Brough was looking at her breasts and the drops of glistening liquid on them. He would have loved to lick the droplets off her smooth skin. If it would have been possible, it would have made his rock hard erection even harder.

Lucy had heard of the checks about consummation just before the start of the dance, and had berated herself for not asking more, earlier. She felt guilty about Brough Reynolds. Supposing he didn’t want to have sex with her? Perhaps he had sworn off women since his wife had died. He was a nice man and she felt she had misled him. Well, if he was unwilling, that was okay, she would accept that and tell the Wise Woman the truth. Then she started to think about what she was proposing, that a man she had spoken to only about drilling wells and the Bible (he was not a believer and had asked why she was) should now take her virginity, should now drill her, she thought with a snigger. Because she was genuinely a virgin. She had been brought up in a small church in her town with a father who was the pastor and a mother who wore floral dresses and radiated purity. Her brother had rebelled against it all, but had found himself drawn back slowly. He attended church in his new home town, maybe it wasn’t quite the same Bible based teaching, but it was a church. Then the dance had begun.