It was gray and cold and blowing and all over the flats and in and beside the tracks were the plover running and feeding busily and then calling sharply and wildly as they flew. There were three different kinds only one of which was really good to eat. But the men would not eat them and thought I wasted a cartridge to shoot them. I knew there might be curlew up on the flat but we could try for them another day.
“We can go on a little further,” I said. “There is a pretty good ridge of fairly high ground where we can turn,” I said to Mary.
“Let’s go on then.”
Then it began to rain and I thought we had better get turned around where we could and back to camp before we were stuck in some of the soft places.
Close to camp, which showed happily against the trees and the gray mist, the smoke of the fires rising and the white-and-green tents looking comfortable and home-like, there were sand grouse drinking at the small pools of water on the open prairie. I got out with Ngui to get some for us to eat while Mary went on to camp. They were hunched low beside the little pools and scattered about in the short grass where the sand burrs grew. They clattered up and they were not hard to hit if you took them quickly on the rise. These were the medium-sized sand grouse and they were like plump little desert pigeons masquerading as partridges. I loved their strange flight, which was like a pigeon or a kestrel, and the wonderful way they used their long back-swept wings once they were in full flight. Walking them up this way was nothing like shooting them when they came in great strings and packs to the water in the morning in the dry season when G.C. and I would take only the highest-crossing birds and high incomers and paid a shilling penalty any time we took more than one bird to a shot fired. Walking them up you missed the guttural chuckling noise the pack made as they talked across the sky. I did not like to shoot so close to camp either so I took only four brace, which would make at least two meals for the two of us or a good meal if anyone dropped in.
The safari crew did not like to eat them. I did not like them as well as lesser bustard, teal or snipe or the spur-winged plover. But they were very good eating and would be good for supper. The small rain had stopped again but the mist and the clouds came down to the foot of the Mountain.
Mary was sitting in the dining tent with a Campari and soda.
“Did you get many?”
“Eight. They were a little like shooting pigeons at the Club de Cazadores del Cerro.”
“They break away much faster than pigeons.”
“I think it just seems that way because of the clatter and because they are smaller. Nothing breaks faster than a really strong racing pigeon.”
“My, I’m glad we’re here instead of shooting at the Club.”
“I am too. I wonder if I can go back there.”
“You will.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think maybe not.”
“There are an awful lot of things I’m not sure I can go back to.”
“I wish we didn’t have to go back at all. I wish we didn’t have any property nor any possessions nor any responsibilities. I wish we only owned a safari outfit and a good hunting car and two good trucks.”
“I’d be the most popular hostess under canvas in the world. I know just how it would be. People would turn up in their private planes and the pilot would get out and open the door for the man and then the man would say, ‘Bet you can’t tell me who I am. I’ll bet you don’t remember me. Who am I?’ Sometime somebody is going to say that and I’m going to ask Charo for my bunduki and shoot the man right straight between the eyes.”
“And Charo can halal him.”
“They don’t eat men.”
“The Wakamba used to. In what you and Pop always refer to as the good old days.”
“You’re part Kamba. Would you eat a man?”
“No.”
“Do you know I’ve never killed a man in my life? Remember when I wanted to share everything with you and I felt so terribly because I had never killed a Kraut and how worried everyone became?”
“I remember very well.”
“Should I make the speech about when I kill the woman who steals your affection?”
“If you’ll make me a Campari and soda too.”
“I will and I’ll make you the speech.”
She poured the red Campari bitters and put in some Gordon’s and then squirted the siphon.
“The gin is a reward for listening to the speech. I know you’ve heard the speech many times. But I like to make it. It’s good for me to make it and it’s good for you to hear it.”
“OK. Start it.”
“Ah hah,” Miss Mary said. “So you think you can make my husband a better wife than I can. Ah hah. So you think you are ideally and perfectly suited to one another and that you will be better for him than I am. Ah hah. So you think that you and he would lead a perfect existence together and at least he would have the love of a woman who understands communism, psychoanalysis and the true meaning of the word love? What do you know about love you bedraggled hag? What do you know about my husband and the things we have shared and have in common?”
“Hear. Hear.”