‘Well, have you been struck dumb?’
This was even more embarrassing, and I was still tongue-tied.
‘This pony is a present for you,’ Lettice patiently explained. ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Or have you changed your mind, and would prefer a party frock or a talking doll?’
I shook my head, now much too overcome for speech, and gazed at the pony, which gradually changed before my eyes. From a stumpy, rough-coated Somali it became a splendid milk-white charger, fleet of foot and proud of eye, and yet not too proud to acknowledge me as its friend and master. It looked at me, I perceived at once, with a meaning withheld from other people, a look of recognition and mutual conspiracy.
An ability to match my thanks to the gift was quite beyond me; I muttered a few disjointed words and patted the pony. His nostrils were soft and springy, like woodland moss, and his breath sweet. He cocked an ear as if to say that he accepted my advances, and understood that he had come to stay.
‘You’ll have to find a name for him,’ Lettice said. ‘Something very fine and grand like Charlemagne or Galahad. He came from a place called Moyale.’
That was the name that stuck to him, Moyale. I thought of several others but Njombo paid them no attention. Moyale did not mean anything, but he could pronounce it.
Tilly and Robin were nearly as surprised and overcome as I was. Tilly grew pink with embarrassment and was almost grumpy, she did not like receiving presents on a scale much too lavish to reciprocate, yet of course Moyale could not be returned.
‘Ian Crawfurd got him for me,’ Lettice said. This was a name I had not heard before, but one that was to crop up often in my elders’ conversation.
‘It came down with a batch from the Abyssinian frontier,’ she added. ‘They drove the ponies through the desert where only camels live as a rule, but there had been rain. One night they were attacked by raiders and had a pitched battle, and another time lions broke in and stampeded the ponies, and they lost three or four.’
More than ever did Moyale become an object of romance and enchantment. Caparisoned in gold and crimson, with a silver bridle and a flowing mane, he had carried princes on the tented battlefield, and galloped through the night to bring news of victory to maidens with hibiscus flowers in their dark hair, imprisoned in a moated fortress.
‘I hope that he is salted,’ Tilly said.
‘You aren’t going to eat him, surely?’ Lettice inquired. But this was a term, Tilly explained, to indicate that a pony had recovered from horse-sickness and was thenceforth immune.
Njombo, who was used to mules, professed himself delighted with Moyale. ‘What a pony!’ he cried. ‘He will gallop like a zebra, he is strong and healthy and yet not fierce; now you have a pony fit for King George.’
We found a brush, and groomed him every day. His hide had many scars and gashes, and a brand on the flank. To me these scars were relics of spear-thrusts and sabre-strokes delivered in battle. Certainly Moyale had not led a sheltered life, and he was at first suspicious of Njombo and myself, but he soon grew tame and learnt to enjoy sugar and carrots. We had no lump sugar, and fed him on dark brown jagoree made by Indians from local cane, that had a heavy, burnt, rather sickly flavour.
For a prince’s charger full of battle-scars, he was surprisingly placid. I think he had a lazy nature which he was at long last able to indulge. He would amble peacefully along with one ear cocked forward and the other off-duty, as it were, in a resting position, but life had imposed a wary sense upon him, and sometimes I could feel a current of alertness running through his body. Once he shied violently and threw me off sideways into a prickly bush, but waited politely for me to remount. His main fault was a hard mouth, an inevitable result of the long, brutal bits used by Somali and Boran horsemen. Our mild little English bit must have seemed feather-light to him and, had he wanted to, he could have ignored it; but he was not ambitious, and perhaps knew when he was well off, freed from the spurs and whips and curbs and thirst and hunger of the Abyssinian deserts.
Soon after this Ian Crawfurd arrived, to stay with the Palmers, who asked Tilly and Robin over for the evening. I had to go too, as I could not be left, and they arranged for me to sleep there, rather than ride back late at night. I was given a tent, much to my satisfaction, for there was nothing I liked better than tents. By day their hot, jungly smell, as thick as treacle, was delightful, and the dark-green gloom inside reminded me of Turkish delight. At night they had the atavistic charm of caves: a warm, protecting, secret cave, a refuge, and a private kingdom. Lying on the camp-bed, you could make shadows on the canvas by holding your hand near the lantern; on the ground, each sentry-stiff blade of grass threw its pencil of shade. You could imagine yourself looking down upon a great forest in which an ant, staggering along with a tiny crumb in its mandibles, was like a monstrous pachyderm carrying off a rock to drop upon the heads of its enemies.
Tilly wanted to tie the flap back to admit plenty of air, but I implored her to shut it.
‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ she said.
‘There are the cannibals.’
‘Cannibals! You must control your imagination.’
I reminded her about the Kavirondo who had perhaps – though no one seemed to know – eaten the man Njombo had killed.
‘Nonsense,’ Tilly said. ‘That was just an invention of Sammy’s. In any case, they only eat people who are dead.’
All the same, she did close the flap and leave the lantern burning. The tent was close enough to the living-room for me to hear bursts of laughter now and then – in fact, most of the time. Ian Crawfurd was a young man who left a wake of laughter as he skimmed along. Hereward Palmer was the best-looking man I knew, but Ian Crawfurd was much more attractive. He was even fairer – his hair looked almost silver in the lamplight – and his face drew your eyes because its expression was always changing, like cloud-shadows on mountains, and because the bones were so beautifully formed. They seemed to have been very carefully moulded out of some malleable material like plasticine, whereas Hereward’s were rigid, as if cast in iron. The hollows of his cheeks and temples were soft and delicate, like curves in Chinese porcelain. I do not mean that there was anything effeminate about his looks; on the contrary, he was strong and lean, but he did not walk heavily, like Hereward, he walked with precision and spring, like a tracker. When he spoke he often tipped his head to one side a little, and his eyes, blue-grey in colour, were candid and clear.
Ian Crawfurd was a friendly person who found life entertaining and agreeable, as indeed it could be for the young, healthy, and adventurous. He had arrived on horseback attended by a tall, thin, proud Somali who wore a shawl of bright tomato-red wound loosely round his head, and who appeared to disdain all that he saw. To him, no doubt, we were fat, effete, root-bound heathen southerners who consorted with dogs and ate pork; only loyalty, the virtue next to courage, obliged him to come amongst us, like an eagle in a parrot cage.
When I awoke, a blade of sunlight had thrust under the flap of my tent, and outside the doves gurgled like cool water tumbling from a narrow-necked jar. Also came the three notes in a falling cadence, half a whistle, half a call, of a nondescript but vociferous bird the Kikuyu called the ‘thrower of firewood’ – why, goodness knows. I got up to pay my morning visit to Moyale and found Ian Crawfurd at the stable preparing for an early ride. His hair shone like kingcups in the morning light. He wore a leather strap, for some reason, on his right wrist, and looked as slender-waisted as a whippet in his shirt and breeches.
‘I’m glad you liked the pony,’ he said. ‘I picked him out from a batch of twenty or so; I thought he was the nicest, if not perhaps the most beautiful.’
‘Did he belong to a prince?’
Ian Crawfurd looked thoughtful, and replied that, in a sense, he had. ‘He belonged to a Ras, and a Ras is a kind of prince, if frequently a villain also: I daresay the two go together more often than not. The Ras didn’t want him to leave Abyssinia, even though he accepted a red cloak and a
Winchester rifle and gave me his word; so he had to be smuggled out, with his nineteen companions.’
I had heard of watches being smuggled, and scent; but ponies…?
‘That’s a long story,’ Ian Crawfurd said. ‘Too long to tell before breakfast; let’s ride up the ridge and you shall tell me who lives where, and what sort of animals you’d turn them into if you had been apprenticed to a witch who knew how.’
Everyone (he went on to explain) had some affinity with a bird or beast or reptile – and not always the one that you would think. Doves, for instance, were unpleasant characters who squabbled, scolded, and were greedy and cross, whereas eagles were very shy, and cobras liked nothing better than to curl up in someone’s bed and go peacefully to sleep in the warmth, and only spat when they were terrified.
I thought Mrs Nimmo might become an ostrich because she had a large behind which waggled when she hurried, and he assigned to Captain Palmer the giraffe because he was long and thin and had large feet and a thick hide. A bat-eared fox for Alec Wilson for his large ears and big brown eyes; for Victor Patterson a greater bustard with whom he shared a long stride, long neck, and toughness – ‘and both need to be hung,’ Ian Crawfurd said.
When I mentioned Lettice Palmer, he laughed and shook his head.
‘We must leave her out of it,’ he said.
‘But why?’
He pointed with his whip at the sun, which was climbing quickly above the tawny ridge towards some fluffy clouds as light as meringues ‘Suppose the sun entered the sign of Virgo, the tide turned, and an eagle perched upon the Sphinx all at the same moment, it might really happen; and we should look fools if we got back to breakfast and found our hostess had become a wallaby.’
I felt disappointed in Ian; like nearly all grown-ups, he had started something sensible and let it tail off into stupidity. But when I looked at him it was impossible to be annoyed, he was so gay and spirited, and smiled with such goodwill; he had in him the brightness of the morning, you could not imagine him ill-tempered and morose, and whatever he did, you accepted.
‘Perhaps she’d be a sort of bird,’ I suggested, determined to persist with the game. ‘With lovely feathers. A kind sort, of course.’
‘I’m not sure there are any,’ said Ian, who did not seem to have a high opinion of birds. ‘Rather, I think, “the milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged”, if that isn’t blasphemous.’
We turned our ponies, who became immediately transformed from sluggish, heavy-livered creatures into prancing steeds, tossing their heads and stroking the ground with their forefeet. On the outward journey Moyale had treated his surroundings with a lordly indifference, but now every bush became an object of the deepest suspicion, to be approached with pricked ears, wide nostrils, and stiff legs. I rode Moyale in a state of bliss shot through by stabs of anxiety. He could have done just what he liked.
We took a short cut through the bush and Ian, leading the way, suddenly pulled up his pony and signalled to me with his riding-crop. Our ponies, responding instantly to a current of warning, stopped their jiggling and stood stock-still. I caught a glimpse of some moving object in the long grass. It was part of the excitement of any ride that you never knew what you might encounter; apart from reed-buck, duiker, and other small game there were plenty of leopards about, and lions came now and then oh visits from the plains.
Then I saw Ian relax and urge his pony forward. The grass reached above the ponies’ knees. We halted on a low hump and saw below us nothing more ferocious than a circle of beaten-down grass, like a miniature race-course, about two feet across – a perfect little circle; and round the ring a single black and shiny-feathered bird, with a ruff like a Tudor courtier’s, only black too, with head thrown back and wings outstretched, was prancing and hopping, like a demented ballet-dancer, first on one leg and then on the other, and springing into the air. In the middle of the circle, on a tuft of grass, a small, drab bird sat and brooded, rather hunched, thrusting a neck forward and backward as if something had stuck in its throat.
‘Whydah-birds,’ Ian said softly. ‘Watch them, you don’t often catch them at the game.’
We watched in silence while the birds performed their antics ten or twelve paces away. The dancing cock seemed about to stumble and fall, then recovered and leapt in the air as if to take off, only to land again. But after a while the central hen evidently grew bored and started to peck at some seed-heads in the tuft of grass. Whether because of her indifference, or for some other reason, the cock’s attention also wandered, his ruff subsided, his wings drooped, his tail sagged, and suddenly he took off and flew away. We waited to see whether the hen would follow him. But no, she had other plans; and presently a second black and shiny cock landed in the ring, ruffed up his neck feathers, arched the long plumes of his tail so that they curved back almost to his head, and began to prance for all the world like a jet of black water leaping from a fountain in the grass.
I do not know how long we should have watched them if Moyale, growing bored, had not snorted and sneezed. There was a chattering of alarm, a flapping of wings, and both birds took off and vanished over the crest of the ridge.
It was their mating dance, Ian Crawfurd explained. One after the other, cocks came to parade in their finery before the female, who squatted in the centre with a bright appraising eye; after a while, she would choose one for her mate.
‘What happens to the others?’ I inquired.
‘They fly away, and look for another hen to fascinate with their splendid plumage and their strong, masterful hops.’
‘Then there must be some over,’ I suggested, ‘who don’t get a mate.’
‘Yes, there are the doomed, perpetual bachelors; no nest to go home to, no little chicks to find insects for, no one to puff out chests and sing about when other cocks go by.’
‘It sounds very sad.’
‘Yes, it is. There was once a cock who loved the fairest of all the whydah-birds – the darkest, perhaps I should say, the darkest and the kindest; but another cock, a cock with blacker wings and longer tail-feathers, had made her his own. So she shared the nest of another, and sat by his side, and when her chosen mate danced before her, she nodded her head at him to say bravo, bravo. The first cock knew that she could not be his, because he came too late, and hadn’t got such black wings, or such a long tail. So he flew far away into the mountains and looked for worms and beetles and things like that. Sometimes he found them, but they did not taste very good, and he knew that they never would, so long as he had to eat them all by himself, with his lady-love so far away.’
Ian Crawfurd paused, I thought to collect words for the ending; but that seemed to be all. I did not like inconclusive stories.
‘What happened then?’
‘Nothing happened – and that’s the way to tell a true story from a made-up one. A made-up story always has a neat and tidy end. But true stories don’t end, at least until their heroes and heroines die, and not then really, because the things they did, and didn’t do, sometimes live on.’
‘Does every story’, I wondered, ‘have to have a hero and a heroine?’
‘Every story, since Adam and Eve.’
That story, I reflected, if you came to think of it, scarcely had an ending either; it started well, but tailed off into Cain and Abel, and I could not remember what had happened to Eve. Ian Crawfurd, I supposed, was right, but it was unsatisfactory, for everything ought to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Chapter 11
AHMED the Somali was waiting to welcome Ian back, clad in a white tussore silk robe, a green sash, and his loosely-wrapped tomato-red turban. He bowed and brought a cupped hand to the centre of his forehead with a wide sweep of the arm. There should have been an embroidered cloak and a sword for him to receive from his master; as it was, Ian threw his binoculars to this haughty noble, and expressed the hope that, in the absence of camels’ milk, he had found suitable nourishment.
Ahmed wore the mettled air of a highly-bre
d race-horse. His long, thin, grey fingers seemed curved to grasp a dagger’s handle, his eye was proud and lonely as a kestrel’s. With the air of one conferring a dukedom on a retainer he inclined his head and replied:
‘I have eaten, bwana.’
At breakfast, Lettice Palmer remarked: ‘Ahmed makes me uneasy; I can never quite get over the feeling that I ought to be on my knees like a Circassian slave offering him a bowl of rose-water. He’s the only regal character I’ve ever encountered.’
‘I had the same sort of fear myself at first,’ Ian admitted, ‘but his manners are so perfect he’s managed to make me feel like a Caliph born to command the services of princes; so we are both satisfied.’
‘I had a jemadar very like him once on the Frontier,’ Hereward announced. ‘A splendid fellow; he once killed four Pathans single-handed and recaptured a Maxim gun after he’d been hit in both legs.’
‘And ate them all for breakfast,’ Lettice said sharply. She immediately looked contrite, and asked Hereward how the farm work was getting on. Hereward replied meekly; he was her slave. He had the farm labour organized in gangs called after colours: the blue squad, the red squad, and so on. In his office, a cubicle divided off from the store, he kept on the wall a large map of his farm studded with pins bearing little coloured flags, so that he could see at once where each squad was, or ought to be. It was his intention to create a healthy spirit of inter-squad rivalry, but in this the African response was disappointing; if rivalry existed, it was not expressed in terms of work.
He was, moreover, plagued by a distressing tendency on the part of his men to wander from one squad to another as the spirit moved them. If he put the blue squad on to clearing tree-stumps, a hot, strenuous activity, and the red squad on to thatching shelters for coffee seedlings, which took place by the river in the shade, by ten o’clock he would find the red squad twice its proper size and the blue squad sadly diminished. The respective headmen, tackled on the subject, would merely look hurt, shrug their shoulders, and make some excuse bearing no possible relation to the truth, but applied as an emollient to irritated feelings. This, among Africans, was an expression of politeness, a desire to please; but of course it only angered white men, and especially Hereward.