We saw him turn and walk away, but had no time to watch him out of sight. Our varied collection of packages had to be reorganized, with the aid of our fellow-passengers, who eyed it with misgiving, especially a bundle done up in sacking from which a pungent odour emerged. This contained home-cured sheepskins Tilly was taking with her to fashion into a warm waistcoat for Robin, a piece of work more suited, she thought, to a Greek cargo-boat in wartime than the bedspread she was embroidering with flowers and birds in fine Chinese silk, and which she had left in the bank, having heard that submarines were sinking ships all over the Mediterranean, and feeling reluctant to risk the loss of something that had cost her so much time and care.
‘I wonder if those skins were properly cured,’ she remarked, inspecting the bundle. ‘If not, they will make their presence felt in the Red Sea.’
I carried the kiondo, that soft woven basket Kupanya’s wife had given me, with a number of treasures inside: the stuffed baby crocodile presented to me by Pioneer Mary, my bead necklace, a cardboard box of birds’ eggs, several cocoons in matchboxes, some grenadillas – Kamau’s parting present – from the vine partially covering our kitchen, and Njombo’s gift, the little bead-edged cap made from a sheep’s stomach that I had so much admired. Sammy’s spear lay in the rack, together with a small native drum, a Kikuyu sword in its vermilion scabbard, a Dorobo bow and arrows, and my favourite hippo-hide riding-whip. It was not until all our hand packages lay around us in the confined space of a railway carriage that Tilly quite realized their number and variety.
‘Do you think’, she inquired, ‘that you will really need all those weapons, as well as a drum?’
‘Sammy said I was to kill Germans with the spear, and cut off their heads with the sword.’
‘There are no Germans at your aunt Mildred’s in Porchester Terrace, where we shall stay: only a Belgian refugee.’
I was surprised to see that when she looked out of the window at the retreating wooden shacks and tin roofs of Nairobi, her eyes were red. She delved into her bag, made by an Indian from the skin of the python Robin had shot.
‘All this luggage,’ she remarked glumly, ‘and I seem to have left my hankies behind.’
I was preoccupied with other troubles. A ripe pawpaw someone had given us for the journey had fallen from its basket on the rack into a large pith topee resting on the seat by its owner’s side. He was a red-faced gentleman with bloodshot eyes, generous moustaches, and a neat, compact, and well-disciplined quota of hand luggage, including one of those leather cases, shaped like a coal-scuttle, used to transport top-hats and other headgear of a superior kind. The pawpaw had burst, releasing a cascade of squashy yellow pulp and slimy black seeds, like fish-roe only many times larger. The topee’s owner, who had not yet noticed this accident, coughed and turned his head.
‘Look at that funny animal,’ I cried, pointing out of the window. Everyone turned, but there was nothing to be seen except the plains, green with fresh growth, the tin sheds, a rusty siding, a knot of ragged gangers leaning on their picks, a few waggle-tailed Thomson’s gazelle, a pair of ostriches, and an Indian, obviously a Muslim, squatting with his back to the train.
I made a face at Tilly. She saw the pawpaw, and frowned; we were trapped, the train had no corridor. She did not hesitate; smiling with all her charm, she asked the red-faced gentleman to help her stow our soda-water bottles on the rack, and in five minutes he was eating out of her hand. I looked through the open window at the undulating purple ridge-back of the Ngong hills, a haunt of lions and buffaloes, and was glad that I had kissed the four walls of the grass hut at Thika, and was bound to return.
Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends