HAVING ACCEPTED the decision of the elders and driven Debba, the Widow and the Informer home to the Shamba where I left her with the things that I had bought for her I returned to camp. The things that I had bought made a difference and they did both have the cloth for their dresses. I would not speak to my father-in-law and gave him no explanations and we all acted as though we were returning, a little late perhaps, from a purchasing expedition. I had seen the bulge of the Grand MacNish bottle containing the adulterated lion fat wrapped in the Informer’s paisley shawl but that meant nothing. We had better lion fat than that and would have better if we wished and there is no minor satisfaction comparable to have anyone, from a writer on up, and up is a long way, steal from you and think that they have not been detected. With writers you must never let them know since it might break their hearts if they had them and some have them and who should judge another man’s cardiac performance unless you are in competition? With the Informer it was another matter, involving, as it did, his degree of loyalty which was already in dispute. Keiti hated the Informer, with considerable cause, since he had served under Keiti in the old days and they had many old unresolved things dating from when the Informer had served as a lorry driver and off-ended Keiti with, then, youthful insolence and with treasonable frankness about the great nobleman who was, by other accounts than the Informer’s, a backward man. Keiti had loved Pop ever since he had taken service under him and with the Kamba hatred of homosexuality he could not tolerate a Masai lorry driver impugning a White Man and especially one of such renown and when the bad boys painted the lips of the statue that had been erected to this man with lipstick, as they did each night in Nairobi, Keiti would not look at it when he rode past. Charo, who was a more devout Moslem than Keiti, would look at it and laugh the way we all did. But when Keiti had taken the Queen’s shilling he had taken it for always. He was a true Victorian and the rest of us, who had been Edwardians and then Georgians and Edwardians for a brief period again only to become Georgians and now were frankly and completely Elizabethans within our capacity to serve and our tribal loyalties, had little in common with Keiti’s Victorianism. On this night I felt so badly that I did not wish to be personal nor think about any personal things and especially not to be unjust with someone that I admired and respected. But I knew Keiti was more shocked that Debba and the Widow and I should eat together at the table in the mess tent than he was worried about Kamba law because he was a grown man with five wives of his own and a beautiful young wife and who was he to administer our morals or lack of them?
Driving along in the night, trying not to be bitter, and thinking of Debba and our arbitrary deprivation of formal happiness which could have been overlooked by anyone regardless of their seniority, I thought of turning off to the left and going down that red road to the other Shamba where I would find two of our group and not Lot’s nor Potiphar’s, but a Masai wife and see if we could parlay yaws into true love. But that was not the thing to do either so I drove home and parked the car and sat in the mess tent and read Simenon. Msembi felt terribly about it but he and I were not conversationalists either.
He made one very gallant suggestion: that he would go with our lorry driver and bring the Widow. I said hapana to that and read some more Simenon.
Msembi kept feeling worse all the time and had no Simenon to read and his next suggestion was that he and I should go with the car and get the girl. He said it was a Kamba custom and there was nothing to be paid but a fine. Besides he said the Shamba was illegal; no one was qualified to bring us to trial and I had made my father-in-law many presents as well as having killed a leopard for him on this same day.