.The Springfield was very wet when we got out of the car and I told M’Cola to clean it carefully and oil it well. He said he would and I went on and into the tent where a lantern was burning, took off my clothes, had a bath in the canvas tub and came out to the fire comfortable and relaxed in pyjamas, dressing-gown and mosquito boots.
P.O.M. and Pop were sitting in their chairs by the fire and P.O.M. got up to make me a whisky and soda.
‘M’Cola told me,’ Pop said from his chair by the fire.
‘A damned big cow,’ I told him. ‘I nearly busted her. What do you think about the morning?’
‘The lick I suppose. We’ve scouts out to watch both of these hills. You remember that old man from the village? He’s on a wild-goose chase after them in some country over beyond the hills. He and the Wanderobo. They’ve been gone three days.’
‘There’s no reason why we shouldn’t get one on the lick where Karl shot his. One day is as good as another.’
‘Quite.’
‘It’s the last damned day though and the lick may be rained out. As soon as it’s wet there’s no salt. Just mud.’
‘That’s it.’
‘I’d like to see one.’
‘When you do, take your time and make sure of him. Take your time and kill him.’
‘I don’t worry about that.’
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ P.O.M. said. ‘This makes me too nervous.’
‘I wish we had old Leather Pants,’ Pop said. ‘God, he was a talker. He made the old man here talk too. Give us that spiel on modern writers again.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Why don’t we have some intellectual life?’ P.O.M. asked. ‘Why don’t you men ever discuss world topics? Why am I kept in ignorance of everything that goes on?’
‘World’s in a hell of a shape,’ Pop stated.
‘Awful.’
‘What’s going on in America?’
‘Damned if I know! Some sort of Y.M.C.A. show. Starry eyed bastards spending money that somebody will have to pay. Everybody in our town quit work to go on relief. Fishermen all turned carpenters. Reverse of the Bible.’
‘How are things in Turkey?’
‘Frightful. Took the fezzes away. Hanged any amount of old pals. Ismet’s still around though.’
‘Been in France lately?’
‘Didn’t like it. Gloomy as hell. Been a bad show there just now.’
‘By God,’ said Pop, ‘it must have been if you can believe the papers.’
‘When they riot they really riot. Hell, they’ve got a tradition.’
‘Were you in Spain for the revolution?’
‘I got there late. Then we waited for two that didn’t come. Then we missed another.’
‘Did you see the one in Cuba?’
‘From the start.’
‘How was it?’
‘Beautiful. Then lousy. You couldn’t believe how lousy.’
‘Stop it,’ P.O.M. said. ‘I know about those things. I was crouched down behind a marble-topped table while they were shooting in Havana. They came by in cars shooting at everybody they saw. I took my drink with me and I was very proud not to have spilled it or forgotten it. The children said, «Mother, can we go out in the afternoon to see the shooting?» They got so worked up about revolution we had to stop mentioning it. Bumby got so bloodthirsty about Mr. M. he had terrible dreams.’
‘Extraordinary,’ Pop said.
‘Don’t make fun of me. I don’t want to just hear about revolutions. All we see or hear is revolutions. I’m sick of them. ‘
‘The old man must like them.’
‘I’m sick of them.’
‘You know, I’ve never seen one,’ Pop said.
‘They’re beautiful. Really. For quite a while. Then they go bad.’
‘They’re very exciting,’ P.O.M. said. ‘I’ll admit that. But I’m sick of them. Really, I don’t care anything about them.’
‘I’ve been studying them a little.’
‘What did you find out?’ Pop asked.
‘They were all very different but there were some things you could co-ordinate. I’m going to try to write a study of them.’
‘It could be damned interesting.’
‘If you have enough material. You need an awful lot of past performances. It’s very hard to get anything true on anything you haven’t seen yourself because the ones that fail have such a bad press and the winners always lie so. Then you can only really follow anything in places where you speak the language. That limits you of course.
That’s why I would never go to Russia. When you can’t overhear it’s no good. All you get are handouts and sight-seeing. Any one who knows a foreign language in any country is damned liable to lie to you. You get your good dope always from the people and when you can’t talk with people and can’t overhear you don’t get anything that’s of anything but journalistic value.’
‘You want to knuckle down on your Swahili then.’
‘I’m trying to.’
‘Even then you can’t overhear because they’re always talking their own language.’
‘But if I ever write anything about this it will just be landscape painting until I know something about it. Your first seeing of a country is a very valuable one. Probably more valuable to yourself than to anyone else, is the hell of it. But you ought to always write it to try to get it stated. No matter what you do with it.’
‘Most of the damned Safari books are most awful bloody bores.’
‘They’re terrible.’
‘The only one I ever liked was Streeter’s. What did he call it?
‘Denatured Africa’. He made you feel what it was like. That’s the best.’
‘I liked Charlie Curtis’s. It was very honest and it made a fine picture.’
‘That man Streeter was damned funny though. Do you remember when he shot the kongoni?’
‘It was very funny.’
‘I’ve never read anything, though, that could make you feel about the country the way we feel about it. They all have Nairobi fast life or else rot about shooting beasts with horns half an inch longer than someone else shot. Or muck about danger.’
‘I’d like to try to write something about the country and the animals and what it’s like to someone who knows nothing about it.’
‘Have a try at it. Can’t do any harm. You know I wrote a diary of that Alaskan trip.’
‘I’d love to read it,’ P.O.M. said. ‘I didn’t know you were a writer, Mr. J. P.’
‘No bloody fear,’ said Pop. ‘If you’d read it, though, I’ll send for it. You know it’s just what we did each day and how Alaska looked to an Englishman from Africa. It’d bore you.’
‘Not if you wrote it,’ P.O.M. said.
‘Little woman’s giving us compliments,’ Pop said.
‘Not me. You.’
‘I’ve read things by him,’ she said. ‘I want to read what Mr. J. P. writes.’
‘Is the old man really a writer?’ Pop asked her.
CHAPTER TWO
Molo waked me by pulling on the blanket in the morning and I was dressing, dressed, and out washing the sleep out of my eyes before I was really awake. It was still very dark and I could see Pop’s back shadowed against the fire. I walked over holding the early morning cup of hot tea and milk in my hand waiting for it to be cool enough to drink.
‘Morning,’ I said.
‘Morning,’ he answered in that husky whisper.
‘Sleep?’
‘Very well. Feeling fit?’
‘Sleepy is all.’
I drank the tea and spat the leaves into the fire.
‘Tell your bloody fortune with those,’ Pop said.
‘No fear.’
Breakfast in the dark with a lantern, cool juice-slippery apricots, hash, hot-centred, brown, and catsup spread, two fried eggs and the warm promise-keeping coffee. On the third cup Pop, watching, smoking his pipe, said, ‘Too early for me to face it yet.’
‘Get you?’
‘A little.’
‘I’m getting exercise,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t bother me.’
‘Bloody anecdotes,’ Pop said. ‘Memsahib must think we’re silly beggars.’
‘I’ll think up some more.’
‘Nothing better than drinking. Don’t know why it should make you feel bad.’
‘Are you bad?’
‘Not too.’
‘Take a spot of Eno’s?’
‘It’s this damned riding in cars.’
‘Well, to-day’s the day.’
‘Remember to take it very easy.’
‘You’re not worried about that, are you?’
‘Just a touch.’
‘Don’t. It never worries me a minute. Truly.’
‘Good. Better get going.’
‘Have to make a trip first.’
Standing in front of the canvas circle of the latrine I looked, as each morning, at that fuzzy blur of stars that the romanticists of astronomers called the Southern Cross. Each morning at this moment I observed the Southern Cross in solemn ceremony.
Pop was at the car. M’Cola handed me the Springfield and I got in the front. The tragedian and his tracker were in the back. M’Cola climbed in with them.
‘Good luck,’ Pop said. Someone was coming from towards the tents. It was P.O.M. in her blue robe and mosquito boots. »Oh’, good luck,’ she said.
‘Please’, good luck.’
I waved and we started, the headlights showing the way to the road.
There was nothing on the salt when we came up to it after leaving the car about three miles away and making a very careful stalk. Nothing came all morning. We sat with our heads down in the blind, each covering a different direction through openings in the thatched withes, and always I expected the miracle of a bull kudu coming majestic and beautiful through the open scrub to the grey, dusty opening in the trees where the salt lick was worn, grooved, and trampled. There were many trails to it through the trees and on any one a bull might come silently.
But nothing came. When the sun was up and we were warmed after the misty cold of the morning I settled my rump deeper in the dust and lay back against the wall of the hole, resting against the small of my back and my shoulders, and still able to see out through the slit in the blind. Putting the Springfield across my
