“We’ll drive back to camp like tourists and see the new wonderful green fields and breakfast feels so good in advance.”
But when we got to camp for breakfast there was the young policeman in his mud-spatted Land Rover waiting for us. The car was under a tree and his two askaris were back at the lines. He got out of the car as we came up and his young face was lined with his great cares and responsibilities.
“Good morning, Bwana,” he said. “Good morning, Memsahib. Been making an early patrol I see.”
“Will you have some breakfast?” I asked.
“If I’m not in the way. Turn up anything interesting, governor?”
“Just checking on the stock. What’s the word from the Boma?”
“They nailed them, governor. They got them over on the other side. North of Namanga. You can call in your people.”
“Much of a show?”
“No details yet.”
“Pity we couldn’t have fought here.”
Miss Mary looked at me warningly. She was not happy at having the young policeman for breakfast but she knew he was a lonesome boy and while she was intolerant with fools she was feeling kindly until we had seen the policeman exhausted in his mud-covered vehicle.
“It would have meant a lot to me. Governor, we had almost the perfect plan. Perhaps it was the perfect plan. The only aspect I worried about was the little Memsahib here. If you’ll pardon my saying it, ma’am, this is no work for a woman.”
“I wasn’t in it at all,” Mary said. “Would you have some kidneys and bacon?”
“You were in it,” he said. “You were a part of The Screen. I’m mentioning you in my report. It’s perhaps not the same as a Mention in Dispatches. But it’s all part of one’s record. Someday those who fought in Kenya will be very proud.”
“After wars I’ve found that the people are usually just crashing bores,” Miss Mary said.
“Only to those who did not fight,” the policeman said. “Fighting men, and with your permission fighting women, have a code.”
“Try some beer,” I said. “Have any gen on when we’ll fight again?”
“You’ll have the word, governor, before anyone else has it.”
“You’re too kind to us,” I said. “But I suppose there is glory enough for all.”
“Too true,” the young policeman said. “In a way, governor, we’re the last of the Empire builders. In a way we’re like Rhodes and Dr. Livingstone.”
“In a way,” I said.
That afternoon I went to the Shamba. It was cold since the sun was under the cloud of the Mountain and a heavy wind was blowing from the heights where all the rain that had fallen on us must now be snow. The Shamba was at about six thousand feet and the Mountain was over nineteen thousand feet high. Its sudden cold winds, when heavy snow had fallen, were punishing to those who lived on the upland plain. Higher in the foothills, the houses, we did not call them huts, were built in the folds of hills to have a lee against the wind. But this Shamba had the full force of the wind and on this afternoon it was very cold and bitter with the smell of not quite frozen dung and all birds and beasts were out of the wind.
The man who Miss Mary referred to as my father-in-law had a chest cold too and bad rheumatic pains in his back. I gave him medicine and then rubbed him and applied Sloan’s liniment. None of us Kamba regarded him as the father of his daughter but since he was technically such by tribal law and custom, I was bound to respect him. We treated him in the lee of the house with his daughter watching. She was carrying her sister’s child on her hip and was wearing my last good woolly sweater and a fishing cap which had been given me by a friend. My friend had ordered my initials embroidered on the front of the cap and this had some significance with all of us. Until she had decided that she wanted it, the initials had always been an embarrassment. Under the woolly sweater she wore the last and too many times washed dress from Laitokitok. It was not correct etiquette for me to speak to her while she was carrying the child of her sister and, technically, she should have not watched the treatment of her father. She handled this by keeping her eyes downcast at all times.
The man who was known by a name which means potential father-in-law was not particularly brave under the ordeal of Sloan’s liniment. Ngui, who knew Sloan’s well, and had no regard for the men of this Shamba, wanted me to rub it in and signaled once that I let a few drops fall where they should not go. Mthuka with his beautiful tribal scars on both cheeks was completely happy in his deafness watching what he considered to be a worthless Kamba suffer in a good cause. I was completely ethical with the Sloan’s to the disappointment of everyone including the daughter and all lost interest.
“Jambo, tu,” I said to the daughter when we left and she said with her eyes down and her chest up, “No hay remedio.”
We got into the car, no one waving to anyone, the cold closing in with the formality. There was too much of both and we all felt badly to see a Shamba so miserable.