Death in Kenya Read Free Page B

it’s no use your lookin’ at me like that, Alice! I’ve known your husband since he was in short pants, and if you ask me, its a pity his grandmother didn’t dust ’em more often – with a slipper!’
    Mrs Brandon frowned reprovingly at her husband and said pacifically: ‘You mustn’t mind Hector, Alice. He always says what he thinks.’
    â€˜And proud of it!’ boomed Hector.
    Why? thought Alice with a spasm of nervous exasperation. Why should anyone consider it an admirable trait to speak their mind when it hurt other people’s feelings? – when it was rude and unkind?
    â€˜Rugged individualism,’ murmured Mr Stratton absently into his glass.
    He caught Alice’s eye and grinned at her, and some of her defensive hostility left her. Her taut nerves relaxed a little, and she returned the smile, but with a visible effort.
    She liked Drew Stratton. He was one of the very few people with whom she felt entirely at ease. Perhaps because he took people as he found them and did not trouble to interest himself in their private affairs. Drew was tall and fair; as fair as Gilly but, unlike Gilly, very brown from the sun that had bleached his hair and brows. His blue eyes were deceptively bland, and if there was any rugged individualism in his make-up it did not take the form of blunt outspokenness. Nor did he find it necessary, in the manner of Hector, to dress in ill-fitting and sweat-stained clothes in order to emphasize the fact that he worked, and worked hard, in a new and raw land.
    Gilly was talking again; his voice slurred and over loud: ‘Hear some of your cattle were stolen last night, Hector. Serve you right! Y’ought to keep ’em boma’d. Asking for trouble, leavin’ ’em loose. It’s men like you who play into the hands of the gangs. If I’ve heard the D.C. tell you that once, I’ve heard him tell you a thousand times! Invitation to help themselves – cattle all over the place.’
    Hector’s large red face showed signs of imminent apoplexy, and Mabel Brandon said hurriedly: ‘You know we always kept our cattle close boma’d during the Emergency, Gilly. But now that it’s over there didn’t seem to be any sense in it. And anyway, Drew has never boma’d his!’
    â€˜Drew happens to employ Masai,’ retorted Gilly. ‘Makes a difference. Makes a hell of a lot of difference! Who owned the Rift before the whites came? The Masai – that’s who! And in those days if any Kikuyu had so much as put his nose into it, they’d have speared him! That’s why chaps like Drew were left alone in the Emergency. But more than half your labour are Kukes. You’re as bad as Em! Won’t give them up, and won’t hear a word against them.’
    â€˜There isn’t one of our Kikuyu who I wouldn’t trust with my life,’ said Mrs Brandon, bristling slightly. ‘Why, they’ve worked for us for twenty years and more. Samuel was with us before Ken was born!’
    â€˜Then why do you carry a gun in that knitting bag?’ demanded Gilly. ‘Tell me that! Think I don’t know?’
    Mrs Brandon flushed pinkly and looked as dismayed and conscience-stricken as a child who has been discovered in a fault, and Gilly laughed loudly.
    â€˜Pipe down, Gil,’ requested Drew mildly. ‘You’re tight.’
    â€˜ A hit, a very palpable hit. Of course I am!’ admitted Gilly with unexpected candour. ‘Only possible thing to be these days.’
    Drew said softly: ‘What are you afraid of, Gilly?’
    The alcoholic truculence faded from Gilly’s pale, puffy face, leaving it drawn and old beyond his years, and he said in a hoarse whisper that was suddenly and unbelievably shocking in that frilled and beruffled room: ‘The same thing that Em is afraid of!’
    He looked round the circle of still faces, his eyes flickering and darting as