True at First Light полностью

“On your own two feet and when the chips are down?”

“No. In the aircraft.”

“Probably sounder in the aircraft. And will you carry these principles into Life, son?”

“Drink your beer, Billy Graham,” G.C. said. “What will you do when I am gone, General? No nervous breakdowns, I hope? No trauma? You’re up to it, I hope? It’s not too late to refuse the flank.”

“Which flank?”

“Any flank. It’s one of the few military terms that I retained. I always wanted to refuse them a flank. In actual life you’re always putting out a defensive flank and anchoring it somewhere. Until I refuse a flank I’ve been thwarted.”

“Mon flanc gauche est protégé par une colline,” I said remembering too well. “J’ai les mittrailleuses bien placés. Je me trouve très bien ici et je reste.”

“You’re taking refuge in a foreign tongue,” G.C. said. “Pour one and we’ll go out and get that measuring over while my well-peppered ruffians do whatever it is they do this morning before they are for the town’s end to beg during life.”

“Did you ever read Sergeant Shakespeare?”

“No.”

“I’ll get it for you. Duff Cooper gave it to me. He wrote it.”

“It isn’t reminiscences?”

“No.”

We had been reading the Reminiscences serialized in one of the thin paper airmail editions that came out to Nairobi on the Comets that landed at Entebbe. I had not liked them very much in the newspaper installments. But I had liked Sergeant Shakespeare very much and I had liked Duff Cooper without his wife. But there was so much of her in the Reminiscences that both G.C. and I had been put off.

“When are you going to write your reminiscences, G.C.?” I asked. “Don’t you know old men forget?”

“I hadn’t really thought much of writing them.”

“You’ll have to. There’s not many of the really old timers left. You could start on the early phases now. Get in the early volumes. Far Away and Long Ago in Abyssinia would be a good one to start with. Skip the university and bohemian times in London and the Continent and cut to A Youngster with the Fuzzy Wuzzies then move into your early days as a Game Ranger while you can still recall them.”

“Could I use that inimitable style you carved out of a walnut stick in An Unwed Mother on the Italian Front?” G.C. asked. “I always liked that the best of your books except for Under Two Flags. That was yours wasn’t it?”

“No. Mine was The Death of a Guardsman.”

“Good book too,” G.C. said. “I never told you but I modeled my life on that book. Mummy gave it to me when I went away to school.”

“You don’t really want to go out on this measurement nonsense do you?” I said hopefully.

“I do.”

“Should we take neutral witnesses?”

“There are none. We’ll walk it ourselves.”

“Let’s get out then. I’ll see if Miss Mary’s still sleeping.”

She was sleeping and she had drunk her tea and looked as though she might well sleep for another two hours. Her lips were closed and her face was smooth as ivory against the pillow. She was breathing easily but as she moved her head I could tell that she was dreaming.

I picked up the rifle where Ngui had hung it on a tree and climbed into the Land Rover beside G.C. We went and finally picked up the old tracks and found where Miss Mary had shot the lion. Many things were changed as they always are on any old battlefield but we found her empty cartridges and G.C.’s and off to the left we found mine. I put one in my pocket.

“Now I’ll drive to where he was killed and then you pace it on a straight line.”

I watched him go off in the car, his brown hair shining in the early morning sun; the big dog looking back at me and then turning to look straight ahead. When the Land Rover made a circle and stopped this side of the heavy clump of trees and bush I put my toe a pace to the left of the most westerly of the ejected shells and started to pace toward the vehicle counting as I paced. I carried the rifle over my shoulder holding it by the barrel with my right hand and when I started the Land Rover looked very small and foreshortened. The big dog was out and G.C. was walking around. They looked very small too and sometimes I could only see the dog’s head and neck. When I got to the Land Rover I stopped where the grass was bent where the lion had first lain.

“How many?” G.C. asked and I told him. He shook his head and asked, “Did you bring the Jinny flask?”

“Yes.”

We each took a drink.

“We never, never tell anybody how long a shot it was,” G.C. said. “Drunk or sober with shits or decent people.”

“Never.”

“Now we’ll set the speedometer and you drive it back in a straight line and I’ll pace it.”

There was a couple of paces’ difference in our tallies and a slight discrepancy between the speedometer reading and the paces so we cut four paces off the whole thing. Then we drove back to camp watching the Mountain and feeling sad because we would not hunt together again until Christmas.