“I know,” I said. “It’s all a part of the same thing, kitten. Nothing is as simple as it looks. I’m not really rude to that girl. That’s just being sort of formal.”
“Please never be rude to her in front of me.”
“I won’t.”
“Nor to me in front of her.”
“I won’t.”
“You’re not going to take her up to fly in the aircraft are you?”
“No, honey. I promise you that truly.”
“I wish Pop were here or that Willie would come.”
“So do I,” I said, and went out and looked at the weather again. There was a little more cloud over the Chulus but the shoulder of the Mountain was still clear.
“You’re not going to drop that Shamba owner out of the aircraft are you? You and Ngui?”
“Good God, no. Will you believe me that I hadn’t thought of it?”
“I’d thought of it when I heard you talking to him this morning.”
“Who’s getting to have bad thoughts now?”
“It’s not that you think things so bad. All of you do things in that sudden awful way as though there were no consequences.”
“Honey, I think a lot about consequences.”
“But there’s that strange suddenness and the inhumanity and the cruel jokes. There’s death in every joke. When will it start being nice and lovely again?”
“Right away. This nonsense only goes on for a few days more. We don’t think those people are coming down here and they’ll be caught wherever they go.”
“I want it to be the way it was when every morning we woke and knew something wonderful would happen. I hate this hunting men.”
“This isn’t hunting men, honey. You’ve never seen that. That’s what goes on up in the North. Here, everybody is our friend.”
“Not in Laitokitok.”
“Yes, but those people will be picked up. Don’t worry about that.”
“I only worry about all of you when you are bad. Pop was never bad.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I mean bad the way you and G.C. are. Even you and Willie are bad when you’re together.”
I WENT OUTSIDE and checked the weather. There was just the steady building up of cloud over the Chulus and the flank of the Mountain was clear. As I watched I thought I heard the plane. Then I was sure and called out for the hunting car. Mary came out and we scrambled for the car and started out from camp and on the motor car tracks through the new green grass for the landing strip. The game trotted and then galloped out of our way. The aircraft buzzed the camp and then it came down, clean silver and blue, lovely wings shining, with the big flaps down and for a moment we were keeping almost abreast of it before Willie, smiling out through the Plexiglas as the blue of the prop passed us, touched the aircraft down so that she landed strutting gently like a crane and then wheeled around to come fanning up to us.
Willie opened the door and smiled, “Hello, you chaps.” He looked for Mary and said, “Get the lion yet, Miss Mary?”
He spoke in a sort of swinging lilting voice that moved with the rhythm that a great boxer has when he is floating in and out with perfect, unwasting movements. His voice had a sweetness that was true but I knew it could say the most deadly things without a change of tone.
“I couldn’t kill him, Willie,” Miss Mary called. “He hasn’t come down yet.”
“Pity,” said Willie. “I have to get a few odds and ends out here. Ngui can give me a hand. Pots of mail for you, Miss Mary. Papa has a few bills. Here’s the mail.”
He tossed the big manila envelope to me and I caught it.
“Good to see you retain some sign of basic reflexes,” Willie said. “G.C. sent his love. He’s on his way.”
I handed the mail to Mary and we commenced to unload the plane and put the packages and boxes into the hunting car.
“Better not do any actual physical labor, Papa,” Willie said. “Don’t tire yourself. Remember we’re saving you for the Main Event.”
“I heard it was canceled.”
“Still on I believe,” Willie said. “Not that I’d pay to see it.”
“Even you and Willie,” Mary said.
“Come on let’s go to campi,” she said to Willie.
“Coming, Miss Mary,” Willie said. He came down now in his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his blue serge shorts and his low brogues and smiled lovingly at Miss Mary as he took her hand. He was handsome with fine merry eyes and an alive tanned face and dark hair and shy without any awkwardness. He was the most natural and best-mannered person I have ever known. He had all the sureness of a great pilot. He was modest and he was doing what he loved in the country he loved.
We had never asked each other any questions except about aircraft and flying. Everything else was supposed to be understood. I assumed he had been born in Kenya because he spoke such fine Swahili and was gentle and understanding with Africans but it never occurred to me to ask him where he was born and he might have come out to Africa as a boy for all I knew.