‘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 knees I noticed that there was rust on the barrel. Slowly I pulled it along and looked at the muzzle. It was freshly brown with rust.