‘Big trout?’
‘The biggest kind.’
‘God save us,’ said Pop. ‘What did you do then?’
‘Rigged up my rod and made a cast and it was dark, and there was a nighthawk swooping around and it was cold as a bastard and then I was fast to three fish the second the flies hit the water.’
‘Did you land them?’
‘The three of them.’
‘You damned liar.’
‘I swear to God.’
‘I believe you. Tell me the rest when you come back. Were they big trout?’
‘The biggest bloody kind.’
‘God save us,’ said Pop. ‘You’re going to get a kudu. Get started.’
In the tent I found P.O.M. and told her.
‘Not really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hurry up,’ she said. ‘Don’t talk. Get started.’
I found raincoat, extra boots, socks, bathrobe, bottle of quinine tablets, citronella, note book, a pencil, my solids, the cameras, the emergency kit, knife, matches, extra shirt and undershirt, a book, two candles, money, the flask . . .
‘What else?’
‘Have you got soap? Take a comb and a towel. Got handkerchiefs?’
‘All right.’
Molo had everything packed in a rucksack and I found my field glasses, M’Cola taking Pop’s big field glasses, a canteen with water and Kati sending a chop-box with food. ‘Take plenty of beer,’ Pop said. ‘You can leave it in the car. We’re short on whisky but there’s a bottle.’
‘How will that leave you?’
‘All right. There’s more at the other camp. We sent two bottles on with Mr. K.’
‘I’ll only need the flask,’ I said. ‘We’ll split the bottle.’
‘Take plenty of beer then. There’s any amount of it.’
‘What’s the bastard doing?’ I said, pointing at Garrick who was getting into the car.
‘He says you and M’Cola wont be able to talk with the natives there. You’ll have to have some one to interpret.’
‘He’s poison.’
‘You ‘will’ need someone to interpret whatever they speak into Swahili.’
‘All right. But tell him he’s not running the show and to keep his bloody mouth shut.’
‘We’ll go to the top of the hill with you,’ Pop said and we started off, the Wanderobo hanging to the side of the car. ‘Going to pick the old man up in the village.’
Everyone in camp was out to watch us go.
‘Have we plenty of salt?’
‘Yes.’
Now we were standing by the car on the road in the village waiting for the old man and Garrick to come back from their huts. It was early afternoon and the sky was clouding over and I was looking at P.O.M., very desirable, cool, and neat-looking in her khaki and her boots, her Stetson on one side of her head, and at Pop, big, thick, in the faded corduroy sleeveless jacket that was almost white now from washing and the sun.
‘You be a good girl.’
‘Don’t ever worry. I wish I could go.’
‘It’s a one-man show,’ Pop said. ‘You want to get in fast and do the dirty and get out fast. You’ve a big load as it is.’
The old man appeared and got into the back of the car with M’Cola who was wearing my old khaki sleeveless, quail-shooting coat.
‘M’Cola’s got the old man’s coat,’ Pop said.
‘He likes to carry things in the game pockets,’ I said.
M’Cola saw we were talking about him. I had forgotten about the uncleaned rifle. Now I remembered it and said to Pop, ‘Ask him where he got the new coat’.
M’Cola grinned and said something.
‘He says it is his property.’
I grinned at him and he shook his old bald head and it was understood that I had said nothing about the rifle.
‘Where’s that bastard Garrick?’ I asked.
Finally he came with his blanket and got in with M’Cola and the old man behind. The Wanderobo sat with me in front beside Kamau.
‘That’s a lovely-looking friend you have,’ P.O.M. said. ‘You be good too.’
I kissed her good-bye and we whispered something.
‘Billing and cooing,’ Pop said. ‘Disgusting.’
‘Good-bye, you old bastard.’
‘Good-bye, you damned bullfighter.’
‘Good-bye, sweet.’
‘Good-bye and good luck.’
‘You’ve plenty of petrol and we’ll leave some here,’ Pop called.
I waved and we were starting down hill through the village on a narrow track that led down and on to the scrubby dry plain that spread out below the two great blue hills.
I looked back as we went down the hill and saw the two figures, the tall thick one and the small neat one, each wearing big Stetson hats, silhouetted on the road as they walked back toward camp, then I looked ahead at the dried-up, scrubby plain.
PART IV PURSUIT AS HAPPINESS
CHAPTER ONE
The road was only a track and the plain was very discouraging to see.
As we went on we saw a few thin Grant’s gazelles showing white against the burnt yellow of the grass and the grey trees. My exhilaration died with the stretching out of this plain, the typical poor game country, and it all began to ‘seem’. very impossible and romantic and quite untrue. The Wanderobo had a very strong odour and I looked at the way the lobes of his ear were stretched and then neatly wrapped on themselves and at his strange un-negroid, thin-lipped face. When he saw me studying his face he smiled pleasantly and scratched his chest. I looked around at the back of the car.
M’Cola was asleep. Garrick was sitting straight up, dramatizing his awakeness, and the old man was trying to see the road.
By now there was no more road, only a cattle track, but we were coming to the edge of the plain. Then the plain was behind us and ahead there were big trees and we were entering a country the loveliest that I had seen in Africa. The grass was green and smooth, short as a meadow that has been mown and is newly grown, and the trees were big, high-trunked, and old with no undergrowth but only the smooth green of the turf like a deer park and we drove on through shade and patches of sunlight following a faint trail the Wanderobo pointed out. I could not believe we had suddenly come to any such wonderful country.
It was a country to wake from, happy to have had the dream and, seeing if it would clown away, I reached up and touched the Wanderobo’s ear. He jumped and Kamau snickered. M’Cola nudged me from the back seat and pointed and there, standing in an open space between the trees, his head up, staring at us, the bristles on his back erect, long, thick, white tusks upcurving, his eyes showing bright, was a very large wart-hog boar watching us from less than twenty yards. I motioned to Kamau to stop and we sat looking at him and he at us. I put the rifle up and sighted on his chest. He watched and did not move. Then I motioned to Kamau to throw in the clutch and we went on and made a curve to the right and left the wart-hog, who had never moved, nor showed any fright at seeing us.
I could see that Kamau was excited and, looking back, M’Cola nodded his head up and down in agreement. None of us had ever seen a wart-hog that would not bolt off, fast-trotting, tail in air. This was a virgin country, an un-hunted pocket in the million miles of bloody Africa. I was ready to stop and make camp anywhere.
This was the finest country I had seen but we went on, winding along through the big trees over the softly rolling grass. Then ahead and to the right we saw the high stockade of a Masai village. It was a very large village and out of it came running long-legged, brown, smooth-moving men who all seemed to be of the same age and who wore their hair in a heavy club-like queue that swung against their shoulders as they ran. They came up to the car and surrounded it, all laughing and smiling and talking.
They all were tall, their teeth were white and good, and their hair was stained a red brown and arranged in a looped fringe on their foreheads. They carried spears and they were very handsome and extremely jolly, not sullen, nor contemptuous like the northern Masai, and they wanted to know what we were going to do. The Wanderobo evidently said we were hunting kudu and were in a hurry. They had the car surrounded so we could not move. One said something and three or four others joined in and Kamau explained to me that they had seen two kudu bulls go along the trail in the afternoon.
‘It can’t be true,’ I said to myself. ‘It can’t be.’
I told Kamau to start and slowly we pushed through them, they all laughing and trying to stop the car, making it all but run over them. They were the tallest, best-built, handsomest people I had ever seen and the first truly light-hearted happy people I had seen in Africa. Finally, when we were moving, they started to run beside the car smiling and laughing and showing how easily they could run and then, as the going was better, up the smooth valley of a stream, it became a contest and one after another dropped out of the running, waving and smiling as they left until there were only two still running with us, the finest runners of the lot, who kept pace easily with the car as they moved long-legged, smoothly, loosely, and with pride. They were running too, at the pace of a fast miler, and carrying
