The Flame Trees of Thika (27 page)

Nervously, I touched the leopard; the flesh was warm, it seemed impossible that anything so splendid, so magnificently made, and so instinct with life should be lying there drained and empty. I fingered one of its great pads, large as a plate, rough as sandstone, and yet springy and yielding, and ran a hand down the great sweep of its flank, built for speed like the flank of a race-horse; I could feel hard sinews under a silk-soft skin and sense perfection of design, not a single wasted molecule of tissue, nothing in excess, nothing lacking, nothing ugly or misshapen, the whole thing moulded by its purpose into a miraculous yellow engine of speed, ferocity, and skill. Why did it have to be dead and useless, the agents of putrefaction at work already in its clotting blood? I knew the answer that satisfied my elders – it had failed to respect their property, their goats and calves and dogs, but it was a beast so much finer than the miserable goats it preyed upon – finer even than poor Chang – that for a moment, as I touched the leopard, that answer seemed ridiculous; rather one would have offered goats as tributes to a creature so imperial.

Mr Roos, with a torn shirt-sleeve, was bending down to stroke the pelt as I had done, but with a different purpose. He, like Hereward, looked satisfied.

Hereward had already thanked Mr Roos, not I expect with the best of grace, for saving his life. For Hereward had shot the wounded leopard successfully, and was bending over its corpse, when its mate, whose presence he had not suspected, came at him from the bush without a sound. Mr Roos, who had almost miraculously been in the right position, dropped her just as she was about to leap on top of Hereward and demolish him. He swung round in time to see her topple over, dead.

‘I can’t think how the devil you managed to be in the right place,’ Hereward said, rather grumpily. ‘If it was luck, it seems incredible.’

Mr Roos shook his head and chuckled. ‘Not luck, man. Where you find one
chui
, you look for two, the mate.’

‘I still don’t see how you looked just
there
.’

The steep bank was full of little rocky bluffs and heaps of boulders poking through the shrubs. Mr Roos pointed to one ahead of us.

‘There is a likely place, those rocks. I think to myself: that is where the mate will be. I will look: if she is there, I shoot her; if she is not, I do no harm. She is there, she come, and so I shoot her.’

It sounded as easy as making a pot of tea, and perhaps it was to Mr Roos, whose own wildness had not quite been bred away, and who used a rifle as if it were an extra limb.

‘I keep the skin, eh?’

‘Of course, my dear fellow.’ Hereward glanced down at it and realized, with a slight frown, that it was by far the better pelt of the two. ‘Worth a bit, I daresay,’ he added.

Mr Roos gripped a fold in his fingers and let it go. ‘A few rupees, maybe,’ he agreed cautiously, unable to suppress a tinge of complacency.

‘He didn’t care two hoots about my life,’ Hereward remarked later. ‘All he was after was a good skin.’

‘It was lucky that he saved yours in the process,’ Tilly replied. ‘He must have known there was another leopard all the time, and never said a word to anyone.’

‘Afraid one of us would bag it and claim the skin. Never mind if someone gets killed…. Not an ounce of sportsmanship, just as I said.’

To have his life saved by a man with no sporting instincts, and a Boer at that, must have been a great trial for Hereward; he would perhaps have rather received a mauling and strangled the creature with his bare hands, as people were reputed to have done.

‘I sometimes wonder whether Lettice cares any more than that Dutchman if I get a mauling,’ he remarked gloomily as we rode along.

‘How can you, Hereward!’

‘Of course, I wouldn’t say this to anyone but you. You’re an understanding woman, Tilly…. I think she’d pay more attention to me if I was a dog.’

‘Well, you would need it then. Dogs have to be de-ticked every day, besides expecting constant reassurance that everyone loves them.’

‘Men need that too,’ Hereward said heavily, as if about to reach painfully for his martyr’s crown.

Lettice did not in the least justify Hereward’s gloom. She
was delighted to see us all return safely, horrified to hear of Hereward’s adventures, and apparently thankful for his delivery.

‘You must be careful, Hereward, you must be careful,’ she cried, ‘although of course that is a silly thing to say to any man; no man likes to be careful and, if he does, no woman trusts him, it betrays a finicky, suspicious nature, the sort of man who would set traps – not for leopards, I mean, but perhaps for wives…. And the poor leopard, I’m glad it was put out of its pain, but the mate, how tragic, and how faithful – faithful unto death without a lot of public vows. How much nicer animals are than we are, when we get to know them!’

‘The leopard wasn’t going to be nice to Hereward,’ Tilly pointed out.

‘Le léopard est un méchant animal; quand l’on attaque, il se défend
. Well, I suppose we are all like that, though not so graceful as the leopard, and we kill our food before we eat it, which perhaps is kinder – though not in the case of oysters, if you come to think of it…. Where is Mr Roos? If he saved your life, Hereward, oughtn’t we to offer him a cup of coffee?’

‘He’s got the best pelt,’ Hereward replied sourly, but he did invite Mr Roos, who sat on the veranda twiddling between his knees his old hat, with a strip of leopard-skin round it in place of a band, and talking of the animals he had killed in different places – lions and elephants, buffaloes and rhinos; and discussing with Hereward the merits of different kinds of rifle, large and small. When at last he left he grinned at me and said: ‘You come soon again to visit me, and see the
boomklop
, eh?’

I had been worrying about the
boomklop
on and off all through the leopard hunt, for in retrospect I seemed to have been absurdly timid, indeed cowardly, about a creature that was probably a mere bird; and in any case, whatever it was, Mr Roos would obviously have it strictly under control. In fact I was by now thoroughly ashamed of my behaviour and blushed, not wanting the others to know.

‘May I come soon?’ I asked, anxious to redeem my shame as quickly as possible.

‘Any time, man. Jump on your pony and come.’

I saw at once from Tilly’s expression that she was displeased.

‘What is a
boomklop
?’ she inquired, when Mr Roos had gone.

‘I don’t know,’ I truthfully answered.

‘Of course you know. It seems to be something Mr Roos showed you.’

‘He didn’t show me, because…’

‘Because what?’

This was becoming horrible. I could not reply, ‘Because I was frightened.’ So I said lamely: ‘Well, someone came…’

‘Is this a thing he can only show you in
private
?’ Tilly inquired, now looking quite alarmed.

‘Surely he would hardly…’ Lettice said, in tones equally perturbed.

‘One never knows, with these…’ Tilly suggested darkly.

‘Of course, living alone…’

‘Unless it’s true about the native girl…’

No one seemed able to finish a sentence, and I felt that some dreadful penalty was in the wind for no crime at all – a situation that often seemed about to arise, and sometimes did so, although I suppose there could be room for disagreement on the definition of a crime.

‘The
boomklop
has a nest,’ I said firmly.

‘A
what
?’ Tilly asked, as if she could not believe her ears.

‘Well, Mr Roos said so. Of course he didn’t have time…’

‘Whatever happens, you are
not
to ride over there alone again. And if Mr Roos ever offers to show you a
boomklop
you are to refuse at once, do you understand?’

‘Perhaps it would be a good thing to give her a whistle, and if she finds herself in trouble she could blow for help,’ Lettice suggested.

‘But would anyone come?’

‘That is a difficulty,’ Lettice agreed. ‘The nearest policemen are nearly forty miles away and probably they aren’t trained to whistles. Perhaps Hereward was right after all about Hugh.’

‘I shall simply have to be more careful in future not to let her out of my sight.’

It now looked as if I had been right about the
boomklop
; it seemed to be a most ferocious creature, not one to be trifled with. I pictured a nest the size of a thorn-bush, eggs like those of ostriches, and a sort of dragon with fire coming out of its nose. Even so, I felt that Mr Roos would have its measure and, now
that I was expressly forbidden to see it, I made up my mind to ride over to Mr Roos’s at the first opportunity and ask him to show me the nest.

Chang was avenged: but Zena was lonely, and had no heart for the short walks with Lettice she had previously enjoyed so much. Tilly was already in correspondence with Roger Stilbeck, who knew someone who bred Pekinese. They were very expensive, and Tilly discovered that she would have to sell most of her turkeys, not merely a pair, to pay for a single puppy.

‘You’d be mad to do it,’ Robin advised, for once playing the part of the cautious, level-headed male. ‘Think what they’ll be worth at Christmas. Besides, the Palmers can perfectly well afford a dozen Pekes if they want them. They are much richer than us.’

‘Money’s beside the point; Lettice is miserable, and I want to do what little I can to cheer her up.’

‘Surely there must be some cheaper way,’ Robin suggested.

‘When the puppy grows up, Lettice can breed from Zena, and I’m sure she’ll give me one of the litter; and then we can sell it, and get our money back.’

‘I suppose that’s all right, if you can get rid of the things.’

‘
Get rid of them?
This friend of Roger Stilbeck’s has a waiting list two years long. In fact, we might do better to buy another Peke, when we get a puppy from Lettice, and do some breeding ourselves. There’s going to be money in pedigree dogs, just like horses; and if we could get in on the ground floor…’

Before the turkeys could be sold, Tilly received a birthday present from her sister, who had come into a windfall – whether a rising share, a lucky bet, or an inheritance I cannot remember; anyway, she sent Tilly £25. This was looked on as an act of God; Tilly went into Nairobi and bought Lettice a Pekinese puppy for £10, a new saddle, and a second-hand ram which Robin wanted to install to pump out water from the river, and save the oxen a steep, slippery climb.

The puppy came out with the rupees on Robin’s next monthly trip to Nairobi: a small, cream-coloured ball of fluff with a bright pink tongue, two beady eyes, and a tremendous fund of energy. Lettice was delighted with it, and called it Puffball.

R
OBIN
decided that he was too busy to go on the safari Ian Crawfurd had arranged, and Tilly said she would not go without him; but he urged her so earnestly to seize the chance, and Hereward implored her so convincingly to keep Lettice company, that she gave way, and the bustle of a coming departure stirred the life of the farm. Ian was collecting porters, equipment, and stores in Nairobi, but Tilly wanted to contribute, and for some days there was a great roasting of chickens, a boiling of marmalade, and a concocting of lotions according to a most valuable formula, handed down by a member of the family who had lived in India, which infallibly healed bites, alleviated sunburn, and prevented the festering of sores.

Ian marched the safari out from Nairobi and camped at Thika, and Tilly and the Palmers rode down to meet him there accompanied by Robin and myself, who were to breakfast with them at the Blue Posts and see them leave for their long journey.

As we descended the last bit of hill above the Blue Posts, we saw the safari passing just below. The porters were marching smartly with their morning strength and chanting a vigorous song. Their loads were of all shapes and sizes: long tent-poles which, though jointed, poked out such a distance fore and aft that to manoeuvre them through bush must have presented appalling difficulty; a tin bath full of lanterns; folding-chairs and tables; rolls of bedding; chop-boxes of food; everything you could think of. It was a miniature army on the march, guarded by three or four askaris looking fierce and superior with nothing to carry but their rifles and water-bottles. The porters wore all sorts of nondescript clothing – tattered shorts, vests consisting mostly of holes, football stockings, discarded greatcoats, red blankets. This was a working safari, not one of the de luxe affairs equipped by the firm of Newland, Tarlton & Co., whose porters marched forth in long blue jerseys, like those worn by police askaris, with the letters ‘N & T’ stitched on in red. It was
a rule or custom, I do not know which, among safari outfitters to present each porter with a pair of boots – much too good a pair to spoil by wearing, which in any case cramped and distorted the feet; so every man set forth with a pair of boots tied round his neck.

As the porters swung by with their bobbing loads, their song of challenge rose among the rocks, a dusty halo hung about the backs of the rear-guard askaris, two men left behind with slipping loads half-walked, half-ran after them, and the column wound out of sight along the wagon-road that dipped to cross the river by a log bridge. They were gone, marching to far romantic places beyond the last farm, the ultimate shamba, where the wild game of Africa had their wide plains and secret reeded water-holes all to themselves, and when you camped among the thorns beside a dry sand-river, and dug for moisture in the hot sand, it might be that you were treading where no man, white or black, had ever set his foot before. It was a moment to lift the heart, but also to fill the mind with anguish because the others were going, and I was left behind, and would never see these far imagination-torturing places, or taste the solitudes where nature keeps her pure and intricate balance free from the crass destructiveness of man.

‘You shall come on a safari when you’re older,’ Tilly promised, noticing my state of mind.

‘I shall never be older,’ I said gloomily.

‘You will be older tomorrow. You will even be a bit older when you get back to the farm.’