“I think hunting is ridiculous and cruel,” said Janet.
“Now Janet,” said the vicar, “everyone has a right—”
“Princess Anne hunts,” said Peter.
“She’s a horse,” said Michael. “She doesn’t count.”
“All we did was dance,” said Anne to Munday. “Do you hunt, Doctor Munday?” asked Michael. “I don’t,” said Munday. “But if I did I’d look a bit silly admitting it after what your wife has just said.”
“Are you happy now?” said Michael to Janet. He was exasperated, but she showed no contrition.
“Of course I feel sorry for the poor fox,” said Anne.
Munday said, “Anyone who’s been to Africa knows how a fox feels.”
“But I love to watch the huntsmen gathering on a hill, all the horses stamping—the steam shooting out of their nostrils. And the other chaps scattering and blowing their horns, and the hounds sniffing everywhere. It’s a beautiful sight.” She looked at Janet. “I don’t care what anyone says.”
“Something very military about it,” said Awdry, “and at the same time very colorful. Takes a lot of courage really.”
“Courage?” Janet Strick snorted and crossed her arms. “It’s just torture, and it chills me to the bone. I stand in my kitchen and hear the horns and the hounds baying and I think of that helpless animal. They tear it to pieces. I can’t understand why people do it.”
“Thrill of the chase,” said Awdry. “The village people love it.”
“They love it,” said Janet disgustedly to Munday —but .they were all speaking to Munday, appealing, looking to him for approval, as if he were judging them. “The local people don’t know any better. They chase around on foot while the wealthy ones are on horseback..It’s a class thing in actual fact.”
“Hunting,” said Munday, and everyone listened, “is the perfect expression of the English tribal character. Formal murder, a lot of ceremony, a little blood, the classes together, the aristocrats in the saddle, the poorer on foot, the middle classes gaping from their gardens. It’s how all our best wars have been fought. You can be sure that when someone is dealt with that way the English mean business.”
“What Janet really objects to is the blooding,” said Michael.
“God,” said Janet, “they take the fox’s brush, dripping with blood, and they wipe it—”
“Yes, yes,” said Munday, who had just thought of a Bwamba custom which was an appropriate comparison, one of the puberty rites.
But Awdry interrupted. “They rarely sight a fox— that should give you some consolation, surely? Though on Christmas day,” he said, turning to Munday, “we saw one up by the Black House. We lost him behind the mill at Stoke Abbot.”
“I’m glad,” said Janet.
“Earth-stoppers didn’t do their job properly,” said Awdry.
“They be drinking,” said Peter Motherwell, trying to imitate a local accent; but it was not a good imitation, he was embarrassed, there was a guilty hesitance in his delivery—he blushed—and after he finished by saying, “Oy zeed ’em over yere at The Yew Tree,” there was a silence, the vicar expressed frank disapproval and several of the women glanced nervously in the direction of the door.
Breaking the silence, in what was clearly intended to help out her husband by diverting attention away from his galfe, Anne said, “I wonder what’s happened to Caroline.”
“And Jerry’s coming as well,” said Awdry. “I suggest we all have another drink while we wait. Help yourselves to the punch.”
“Maybe they’re coming together,” said Michael confidentially to Anne.
“I don’t believe all those things they say about Caroline,” Anne said. “Do you?”
“Yes,” said Michael, and smiled, but became serious again when he saw that the rest were listening.
“How long have you lived here?” Emma was asking the Motherwells.
“Two years,” said Peter. “The Stricks have been here five—they’re old-timers!”
“We’re starting our seventh year,” said the vicar proudly. He smiled at his wife. But she looked apprehensive, as if she were being called upon to speak.
Munday made himself a drink and then wandered to a side table where he had spotted an African carving. He picked it up and turned it over and weighed it in his hand.
“Kamba,” he said.
“I know,” said Awdry, who had followed him to the table. “I’m told they’re becoming quite valuable.”
“Nowadays they make them in a factory in Nairobi,” said Munday. “To sell to tourists. Horrible shiny things.”
“I’ll show you some more,” said Awdry, and led Munday to the library. “Here, these are rather fun.” On a table, covered by a kaross of tawny sewn deerskins, there were rows of small carved figures and African clay pipes and bracelets of silver. On the bookshelves there were more carved things, many with woodworm; several Munday recognized as the work of his people. On another table there was a collection of snuffboxes, some silver and brass and others of plugged bamboo. A water-buck’s head stared serenely from under long lashes on the wall between two windows, and over the fireplace was the dark brutish head of a buffalo.
“Head shot?” asked Munday.
“Heart,” said Awdry, “but he kept coming. Then I winged him. It took three shots to bring him down. My gun bearer bolted.”
“That shows he had some common sense.”
On other sections of the walls there were hide shields and crossed spears, and ebony masks grinning under mops of straw hair, with grotesque mouths, like simplified masks of comedy and tragedy superimposed.
“I suppose you recognize this,” said Awdry. He showed Munday a soapstone carving of a woman with exaggerated breasts and a pot belly.
“Fertility figure,” said Munday. “Probably Luo, from the look of it, and,”—he held the piece and glanced at Awdry—“without question, a fake.” There were daggers mounted on a varnished board, rusty-bladed knives with beaded handles, and some Masai broadswords in neatly stitched leather sheaths. Munday looked for his stolen dagger, but saw none that resembled it.
“Didn’t you say in your lecture how African tools look so much like weapons?”
“They do the work of both,” said Munday. “That panga,” he said, pointing at a foot-long machete. “It’s used for clearing land, but a Bwamba would say—” There was a loud rapping in the front hall.
“That must be one of the guests,” said Awdry. “Excuse me.”
Munday quickly searched the room for his dagger; he looked on the top shelves and opened a Zanzibari chest. He could not find it, but he was convinced that Awdry had it, and he considered stealing one of Awdry’s own daggers. They were an inconvenient size. He slipped one of the silver snuffboxes into his pocket and took up his drink and started out of the room. But the theft made him self-conscious. He looked back and saw the high active fire in the hearth as having a life of its own, making a sound like ridicule—intimidating, accusing. He turned to go, but the fire crackling in the empty library remained, a witness to his theft, a crazy threatening presence. Munday returned to the table and put the snuffbox back.
In the living room he headed for Emma, who was talking to Peter Motherwell. But Awdry called to him, “I want you to meet an admirer of yours.” It was the new guest, Caroline Summers. She was Munday’s own height, but gave the impression of being taller. She wore a long blue sleeveless dress of a silky material which clung and emphasized her shape. Her neckline was cut low, revealing part of the rounded undersides of her breasts; a small blue jewel on a chain rested at an angle just between her breasts which, unsupported, sloped against the soft cloth that draped them. Though she stood still and held a wine glass without drinking from it, Munday found himself staring at the slight movements in the cords of her neck and throat and the thin poised bones of her hands. He felt he could read those bones and the shadows on the planes of her face.