“That’s good and I’m so glad to be home.”

“Anything else happen in Nairobi?”

“I got that nice man who took me out to take me to the Coryndon Museum. But I think he was bored.”

“What did you eat at the Grill?”

“There was fine fish from the big lakes. In filets, but like bass or walleye pike. They didn’t tell what fish. Just called it samaki. There was really good fresh smoked salmon that they flew in and there were oysters, I think, but I can’t remember.”

“Did you have the Greek dry wine?”

“Lots of it. Alec didn’t like it. He was in Greece and Crete I think with that friend of yours in the RAF. He doesn’t like him either.”

“Was Alec very difficult?”

“Only about small things.”

“Let’s not be difficult about anything.”

“Let’s not. Can I make you another drink?”

“Thank you very much. Keiti’s here. What do you want?”

“I’ll take Campari with just a little gin.”

“I like it when you’re home in bed. Let’s go to bed right after supper.”

“Good.”

“You promise you won’t go out tonight?”

“I promise.”

So, after the supper I sat and read the Time air edition while Mary wrote in her diary and then she walked on the new cut path with her searchlight to the latrine tent and I turned off the gaslight and put the lantern on the tree and undressed folding my things carefully and laying them on the trunk at the foot of the bed and got into my bed, folding the mosquito bar back under the mattress.

It was early in the night but I was tired and sleepy. After a while Miss Mary came in to the bed and I put the other Africa away somewhere and we made our own Africa again. It was another Africa from where I had been and at first, I felt the red spilling up my chest and then I accepted it and did not think at all and felt only what I felt and Mary felt lovely in bed. We made love and then made love again and then after we had made love once more, quiet and dark and unspeaking and unthinking and then like a shower of meteors on a cold night, we went to sleep. Maybe there was a shower of meteors. It was cold enough and clear enough. Sometime in the night Mary left the bed for her bed and I said, “Good night, blessed.”

I woke when it was getting light and put on a sweater and mosquito boots over my pajamas and buckled my bathrobe around with the pistol belt and went out to where Msembi was building up the fire to read the papers and drink the pot of tea Mwindi had brought. First I put all the papers in order and then started to read the oldest ones first. The horses would just be finishing at Auteuil and Enghien now, but there were no French racing results in these British airmail editions. I went to see if Miss Mary was awake and she was up and dressed, fresh and shining and putting drops in her eyes.

“How are you, darling? How did you sleep?”

“Wonderfully,” I said. “And you?”

“Until just this minute. I went right back to sleep when Mwindi brought the tea.”

I held her in my arms feeling her fresh early morning shirt and her lovely build. Picasso had called her my pocket Rubens once and she was a pocket Rubens, but trained down to one hundred and twelve pounds and she had never had a Rubens face and now I felt her clean, freshly washed-ness and whispered something to her.

“Oh yes, and you?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it wonderful to be here alone with our own Mountain and our lovely country and nothing to spoil it?”

“Yes. Come on and get your breakfast.”

She had a proper breakfast with impala liver broiled with bacon and a half of papaya from town with lemon to squeeze on it and two cups of coffee. I drank a cup of coffee with tinned milk but no sugar and would have taken another cup but I did not know what we were going to do and I did not want coffee sloshing in my stomach whatever we did.

“Did you miss me?”

“Oh yes.”

“I missed you terribly but there were so many things to do. There wasn’t any time at all, really.”

“Did you see Pop?”

“No. He didn’t come into town and I didn’t have any time nor any transport to get out there.”

“Did you see G.C.?”

“He was in one evening. He said for you to use your own judgment but adhere strictly to the scheme as outlined. He made me memorize it.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all. I memorized it. He’s invited Wilson Blake down for Christmas. They get in the night before. He says for you to be prepared to like his boss, Wilson Blake.”

“Did he make you memorize that?”

“No. It was just a remark. I asked him if it was an order and he said no, that it was a hopeful suggestion.”

“I’m open to suggestion. How was G.C.?”

“He wasn’t difficult in the same way Alec was. But he’s tired. He says he misses us and he’s very outspoken with people.”

“How?”

“I think fools are beginning to annoy him and he’s rude to them.”

“Poor G.C.,” I said.

“You’re both quite a bad influence on each other.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

“Well, I think you’re a bad influence on him.”

“Didn’t we go into this once or twice before?”

“Not this morning,” Miss Mary said. “Certainly not recently. Did you write anything while I was away?”

“Very little.”

“Didn’t you write any letters?”

“No. Oh, yes. I wrote G.C. once.”

“What did you do with all your time?”

“Small tasks and routine duties. I made a trip to Laitokitok after we killed the unfortunate leopard.”

“Well, we are going to get the real Christmas tree and that will be something accomplished.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ll have to get one we can bring back in the hunting car. I’ve sent away the truck.”

“We’re going to get that one that is picked out.”

“Good. Did you find out what sort of tree it is?”

“No, but I’ll find it in the tree book.”

“Good. Let’s go and get it.”

We started out, finally, to get the tree. Keiti was with us and we had shovels, pangas, sacking for the roots of the tree, large guns and small guns in the rack across the back of the front seat and I had told Ngui to bring four bottles of beer for us and two of Coca-Cola for the Moslems. We were clearly out to accomplish and except for the nature of the tree, which would make an elephant drunk for two days if he ever ate it, we were out to accomplish something so fine and so blameless that I might write about it for some religious publication.

We were all on our good behavior and we noted tracks without commenting on them. We read the record of what had crossed the road that night. And I watched sand grouse flighting in long wavering wisps to the water beyond the salt flats and Ngui watched them too. But we did not comment. We were hunters but this morning we were working for the Forestry Department of our Lord, the Baby Jesus.

Actually we were working for Miss Mary so we felt a great shifting in our allegiance. We were all mercenaries and it was clearly understood that Miss Mary was not a missionary. She was not even under Christian orders; she did not have to go to church as other Memsahibs did and this business of the tree was her shauri as the lion had been.

We went into the deep green and yellow-trunked forest by our old road that had become overgrown with grass and weeds since we had been over it last, coming out in the glade where the silver-leafed trees grew. Ngui and I made a circle, he one way and I the other, to check if this rhino and her calf were in the bush. We found nothing but some impala and I found the track of a very big leopard. He had been hunting along the edge of the swamp. I measured the pug marks with my hand and we went back to join the tree diggers.