“What was the trooper’s name,” G.C. asked. “Albertine?”
“No. Monsieur.”
“He’s baffling us, Miss Mary,” G.C. said.
They went on talking about London. So I started to think about London too and it was not unpleasant although much too noisy and not normal. I realized I knew nothing about London and so I started to think about Paris and in greater detail than before. Actually I was worried about Mary’s lion and so was G.C. and we were just handling it in different ways. It was always easy enough when it really happened. But Mary’s lion had been going on for a long time and I wanted to get him the hell over with.
Finally, when the different dudus, which was the generic name for all bugs, beetles and insects, were thick enough on the dining tent floor so that they made a light crunching when you walked we went to bed.
“Don’t worry about the morrow,” I said to G.C. as he went off to his tent.
“Come here a moment,” he said. We were standing halfway to his tent and Mary had gone into ours. “Where did she aim at that unfortunate wildebeest?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“No.”
“Go to sleep,” I said. “We don’t come in until the second act anyway.”
“You couldn’t do the old husband and wife thing?”
“No. Charo’s been begging me to do that for a month.”
“She’s awfully admirable,” G.C. said. “You’re even faintly admirable.”
“Just a lot of admirals.”
“Good night, Admiral.”
“Put a telescope to my blind eye and kiss my ass, Hardy.”
“You’re confusing the line of battle.”
Just then the lion roared. G.C. and I shook hands.
“He probably heard you misquoting Nelson,” G.C. said.
“He got tired of hearing you and Mary talk about London.”
“He is in good voice,” G.C. said. “Go to bed, Admiral, and get some sleep.”
In the night I heard the lion roar several more times. Then I went to sleep and Mwindi was pulling on the blanket at the foot of the cot.
“Chai, Bwana.”
It was very dark outside but someone was building up the fire. I woke Mary with her tea but she did not feel well. She felt ill and had bad cramps.
“Do you want to cancel it, honey?”
“No. I just feel awful. After the tea maybe I’ll be better.”
“We can wash it. It might be better to give him another day’s rest.”
“No. I want to go. But just let me try and feel better if I can.”
I went out and washed in the cold water in the basin and washed my eyes with boric, dressed and went out to the fire. I could see G.C. shaving in front of his tent. He finished, dressed and came over.
“Mary feels rocky,” I told him.
“Poor child.”
“She wants to go anyway.”
“Naturally.”
“How’d you sleep?”
“Well. You?”
“Very well. What do you think he was doing last night?”
“I think he was just going walkabout. And sounding off.”
“He talks a lot. Want to split a bottle of beer?”
“It won’t hurt us.”
I went and got the beer and two glasses and waited for Mary. She came out of the tent and walked down the path to the latrine tent. She came back and walked down again.
“How do you feel, honey?” I asked when she came over to the table by the fire with her tea. Charo and Ngui were getting the guns and the binoculars and shell bags out from under the tents and taking them to the hunting car.
“I don’t feel good at all. Do we have anything for it?”
“Yes. But it makes you feel dopey. We’ve got Terramycin too. It’s supposed to be good for both kinds but it can make you feel funny too.”
“Why did I have to get something when my lion’s here?”
“Don’t you worry, Miss Mary,” G.C. said. “We’ll get you fit and the lion will get confident.”
“But I want to go out after him.”
She was in obvious pain and I could see it coming back on her again.
“Honey, we’ll lay off him this morning and rest him. It’s the best thing to do anyway. You take it easy and take care of yourself. G.C. can stay a couple of more days anyway.”
G.C. shook his hand, palm down, in negation. But Mary did not see him.
“He’s your lion and you take your time and be in shape to shoot him and all the time we let him alone he will be getting more confident. If we don’t go out at all this morning it’s much better.”
I went over to the car and said we were not going out. Then I went and found Keiti by the fire. He seemed to know all about it but he was very delicate and polite.
“Memsahib is sick.”
“I know.”
“Maybe spaghetti. Maybe dysentery.”
“Yes,” Keiti said. “I think spaghetti.”
“Meat too old.”
“Yes. Maybe little piece. Made in the dark.”
“We leave lion alone take care of Memsahib. The lion gets confident.”
“Mzuri,” Keiti said. “Poli poli. You shoot kwali or kanga. Mbebia make Memsahib broth.”
After we were sure that the lion would have left the bait if he had been on it G.C. and I went out to have a look at the country in his Land Rover.
I asked Ngui for a bottle. It was wrapped in a wet sack and was still cold from the night and we sat in the Land Rover in the shade of the tree and drank it out of the bottle and looked off across the dried mud flat and watched the small Tommies and the black movement of the wildebeest and the zebra that looked a gray white in this light as they moved out across the flat to the grass on the far side and at the end toward the Chulu hills. The hills were a dark blue this morning and looked very far away. When we turned to look back at the great Mountain it looked very close. It seemed to be just behind camp and the snow was heavy and bright in the sun.
“We could hunt Miss Mary on stilts,” I said. “Then she could see him in the tall grass.”
“There’s nothing in the Game Laws against it.”
“Or Charo could carry a stepladder such as they have in libraries for the higher stacks.”
“That’s brilliant,” G.C. said. “We’d pad the rungs and she could take a rest with the rifle on the rung above where she stood.”
“You don’t think it would be too immobile?”
“It’d be up to Charo to make it mobile.”
“It would be a beautiful sight,” I said. “We could mount an electric fan on it.”