‘Did my literary pal get off?’
‘Yes,’ Pop said. ‘He’s gone into Handeni.’
‘He told me all about American women,’ P.O.M. said. ‘Poor old Poppa, I was sure you’d get one. Danin the rain.’
‘How are American women?’
‘He thinks they’re terrible.’
‘Very sound fellow,’ said Pop. ‘Tell me just what happened to-day.’
We sat in the shade of the dining tent and I told them.
‘A Wanderobo,’ Pop said. ‘They’re frightful shots. Bad luck.’
‘I thought it might be one of those travelling sportsmen you see with their bows slung going along the road. He saw the lick by the road and trailed up to the other one.’
‘Not very likely. They carry those bows and arrows as protection. They’re not hunters.’
‘Well, whoever it was put it on us. ‘
‘Bad luck. That, and the rain. I’ve had scouts out here on both the hills but they’ve seen nothing.’
‘Well, we’re not hitched until to-morrow night. When do we have to leave?’
‘After to-morrow.’
‘That bloody savage.’
‘I suppose Karl is blasting up the sable down there.’
‘We won’t be able to get into camp for the horns. Have you heard anything?’
‘No.’
‘I’m going to give up smoking for six months for you to get one,’ P.O.M. said. ‘I’ve started already.’
We had lunch and afterwards I went into the tent and lay down and read. I knew we still had a chance on the lick in the morning and I was not going to worry about it. But I {was} worried and I did not want to go to sleep and wake up feeling dopey so I came out and sat in one of the canvas chairs under the open dining tent and read somebody’s life of Charles the Second and looked up every once in a while to watch the locusts. The locusts were exciting to see and it was difficult for me to take them as a matter of course.
Finally I went to sleep in the chair with my feet on a chop-box and when I woke there was Garrick, the bastard, wearing a large, very floppy, black and white ostrich-plume head-dress.
‘Go away,’ I said in English.
He stood smirking proudly, then turned so I could see the head-dress from the side.
I saw Pop coming out of his tent with a pipe in his mouth. ‘Look what we have,’ I called to him.
He looked, said, ‘Christ’, and went back into the tent.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’ll just ignore it.’
Pop came out, finally, with a book and we took no notice of Garrick’s head-dress at all, sitting and talking, while he posed with it.
‘Bastard’s been drinking, too,’ I said.
‘Probably.’
‘I can smell it.’
Pop, without looking at him, spoke a few words to Garrick in a very soft voice.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘To go and get dressed properly and be ready to start.’
Garrick walked off, his plums waving.
‘Not the moment for his ostrich plumes,’ Pop said.
‘Some people probably like them.’
‘That’s it. Start photographing them.’
‘Awful,’ I said.
‘Frightful,’ Pop agreed.
‘On the last day if we don’t get anything, I’m going to shoot Garrick in the behind. What would that cost me?’
‘Might make lots of trouble. If you shoot one, you have to shoot the other, too.’
‘Only Garrick.’
‘Better not shoot then. Remember it’s me you get into trouble.’
‘Joking, Pop.’
Garrick, un-head-dressed and with Abdullah, appeared and Pop spoke with them.
‘They want to hunt around the hill a new way.’
‘Splendid. When?’
‘Any time now. It looks like rain. You might get going.’
I sent Molo for my boots and a raincoat, M’Cola came out with the Springfield, and we walked down to the car. It had been heavily cloudy all day although the sun had come through the clouds in the forenoon for a time and again at noon. The rains were moving up on us. Now it was starting to rain and the locusts were no longer flying.
‘I’m dopey with sleep,’ I told Pop. ‘I’m going to have a drink.’
We were standing under the big tree by the cooking fire with the light rain pattering in the leaves. M’Cola brought the whisky flask and handed it to me very solemnly.