We saw the plane come over blue and silvery and spindle-legged and buzz the camp and then we were barreling down along the side of the clearing and she was opposite us, with the big flaps down, passing us to land without a bounce and circling now, her nose high and arrogant, throwing dust in the knee-deep white flowers.
Miss Mary was on the near side now and she came out in a great, small rush. I held her tight and kissed her and then she shook hands with everyone, Charo first.
“Morning, Papa,” Willie said. “Let me have Ngui to pass some of this out. She’s a bit laden!”
“You must have bought all Nairobi,” I said to Mary.
“All I could afford. They wouldn’t sell the Muthaiga Club.”
“She bought the New Stanley and Torr’s,” Willie said. “So we’re always sure of a room, Papa.”
“What else did you buy?”
“She wanted to buy me a Comet,” Willie said. “You can pick up quite good bargains in them now, you know.”
We drove to camp with Miss Mary and me sitting close together in front. Willie was talking with Ngui and Charo. At camp Mary wanted the stuff unloaded into Bwana Mouse’s empty tent and I was to stay away and not watch it. I had been told not to watch anything in detail at the aircraft either and I had not watched. There was a big bundle of letters, papers and magazines and some cables and I had taken them into the mess tent and Willie and I were drinking a beer.
“Good trip?”
“Not lumpy. The ground doesn’t really heat up anymore with these cold nights. Mary saw her elephants at Salengai and a very big pack of wild dogs.”
Miss Mary came in. She had received all the official visits and was beaming. She was well-beloved, well-received, and people had been formal about it. She loved the designation of Memsahib.
“I didn’t know Mousie’s bed was broken.”
“Is it?”
“And I haven’t said a thing about the leopard. Let me kiss you. G.C. laughed at your cable about him.”
“They’ve got their leopard. They don’t have to worry. Nobody has to worry. Not even the leopard.”
“Tell me about him.”
“No. Sometime when we are coming home I’ll show you the place.”
“Can I see any mail you’re finished with?”
“Open it all.”
“What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you glad to have me back? I was having a wonderful time in Nairobi or at least I was going out every night and everyone was nice to me.”
“We’ll all practice up and be nice to you and pretty soon it will be just like Nairobi.”
“Please be good, Papa. This is what I love. I only went to Nairobi to be cured and to buy presents for Christmas and I know you wanted me to have fun.”
“Good, and now you’re back. Give me a hold hard and a good anti-Nairobi kiss.”
She was slim and shiny in her khakis and hard inside them and she smelled very good and her hair was silver gold, cropped close, and I rejoined the white or European race as easily as a mercenary of Henry IV saying Paris was worth a mass.
Willie was happy to see the rejoining and he said, “Papa, any news beside the chui?”
“Nothing.”
“No troubles?”
“The road at night is a scandal.”
“It seems to me they rely a little too much on the desert as being impassable.”
I sent for the saddle of meat for Willie and Mary went to our tent for her letters. We rode out and Willie took off. Everyone’s face shone at the angle he pulled her into and then, when he was a distant silver speck, we went on our way home.
Mary was loving and lovely and Ngui was feeling badly because I had not taken him. It would soon be evening and there would be Time and the British airmail papers and for the bright receding light and the fire and a tall drink.
The hell with it, I thought. I have complicated my life too much and the complications are extending. Now I’ll read whichever Time Miss Mary doesn’t want and I have her back and I will enjoy the fire and we’ll enjoy our drink and the dinner afterwards. Mwindi was fixing her bath in the canvas tub and mine was the second bath. I thought that I would wash everything away and soak it out with the bathi and when the canvas tub had been emptied and washed out and filled again with former petrol tins of hot water from the fire, I lay back in the water and soaked and soaped with the Lifebuoy soap.
I rubbed dry with my towel and put on pajamas and my old mosquito boots from China and a bathrobe. It was the first time since Mary had been gone that I had taken a hot bath. The British took one every night when it was possible. But I preferred to scrub every morning in the washbowl when I dressed, again when we came in from hunting and in the evening.
Pop hated this as the bathi ritual was one of the few surviving rites of the old safari. So when he was with us I made a point of taking the hot bathi. But in the other kind of washing yourself clean you found the ticks you’d picked up in the day and had either Mwindi or Ngui remove those that you could not reach. In the old days, when I had hunted alone with Mkola, we had burrowing chiggers that dug into the toes under the toenails and every night we would sit down in the lantern flare and he would remove mine and I would remove his. No bathi would have taken these out, but we had no bathi.
I was thinking about the old days and how hard we used to hunt, or rather, how simply. On those days when you sent for an aircraft, it meant you were insufferably rich and could not be bored by any part of Africa where it was at all difficult to travel or it meant that you were dying.
“How are you really, honey, after your bath and did you have a good time?”
“I’m well and fine. The doctor gave me the same stuff I was taking and some bismuth. People were very nice to me. But I missed you all the time.”
“You look wonderful,” I said. “How did you get such a fine Kamba haircut?”
“I cut it square at the sides some more this afternoon,” she said. “Do you like it?”
“Tell me about Nairobi.”
“The first night I ran into a very nice man and he took me to the Traveler’s Club and it wasn’t so bad and he brought me home to the hotel.”
“What was he like?”
“I don’t remember him terribly well, but he was quite nice.”
“What about the second night?”
“I went out with Alec and his girl and we went someplace that was terribly crowded. You had to be dressed and Alec wasn’t dressed. I don’t remember if we stayed there or went somewhere else.”
“Sounds wonderful. Just like Kimana.”
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing. I went out to a few places with Ngui and Charo and Keiti. I think we went to a church supper of some kind. What did you do the third night?”
“Honey, I don’t remember really. Oh, yes. Alec and his girl and G.C. and I went somewhere. Alec was difficult. We went a couple of other places and they took me home.”
“Same type of life we’ve been having here. Only Keiti was difficult instead of Alec.”
“What was he difficult about?”
“It escapes me,” I said. “Which of these Times would you rather read?”
“I’ve looked at one. Does it make any difference to you?”
“No.”
“You haven’t said you loved me or were glad to have me back.”
“I love you and I’m glad to have you back.”