The Flame Trees of Thika Read Free Page B

achievement of the P.W.D.S. Just below it, the river plunged over a waterfall into a pool with slimy rocks and thick-trunked trees all round it, and a little farther on it joined the Thika. This meeting-place of rivers was a famous hunting-ground; not long before, Winston Churchill had slain a lion there, and many others came to camp and shoot. The game, like the soil’s fertility, seemed inexhaustible; no one could imagine the disappearance of either.
    A hotel had been started just below the falls. It consisted of a low-roofed, matched grass hut whose veranda posts were painted blue and gave the place its name; of three or four whitewashed rondavels to sleep in, and a row of stables. The manager was a lean, military-looking, sprucely-dressed man with a bald head and a long moustache, who had the misfortune to be very deaf. One day a safari visitor, admiring his host’s neat attire, rashly asked: ‘Who made your breeches?’ After he had bawled thisquestion several times, growing more and more embarrassed, the deaf man seized his hand and shook it warmly, saying: ‘Ah, yes, Major Breeches, delighted to see you, hope you will enjoy your stay.’ After that the innkeeper was always called Major Breeches, and I never knew his real name at all. The owner was a rich young man called Harry Penton whose best-known exploit (if it could be called that) was to be found stark naked astride the roof of the Norfolk hotel proclaiming himself to be a mushroom, and holding a tin bath over his head.
    Robin rode down on a mule to meet us at the Blue Posts.
    ‘Is the house built?’ Tilly asked hopefully.
    ‘Not exactly,’ Robin answered. ‘I’ve picked out a splendid site, only there doesn’t seem to be any labour to build it with.’
    ‘But Roger Stilbeck said there was any amount.’
    ‘Perhaps he was thinking of ticks and white ants; there are plenty of those.’
    ‘Well, we’ve got tents,’ Tilly said. I think she was glad, really; already she had fallen in love with camp life and was in no hurry to become civilized again.
    ‘There are said to be some chiefs in the reserve,’ Robin added. ‘I shall go and see them. The bush is much heavier than Stilbeck led me to believe. I shall have to do a lot of clearing before I can plough any land.’
    All the clearing had to be done by hand, by young men with pangas. They started off in blankets but soon laid these aside and glistened in the sun like red fish, jingling with charms and ornaments. They did not work hard, and rested often, and their wages were very low. Generally speaking they could earn the price of a goat in thirty days. This was about four rupees. The goat would be added to a flock being slowly assembled to pay for a bride.
    ‘I can only find one river,’ Robin added. ‘The other seems to be just a son of gully with no water in it. And there are several
vleis
which won’t be much use.’
    ‘Mr Stilbeck doesn’t seem to have been particularly truthful.’
    ‘Perhaps he didn’t know himself,’ suggested Robin, who always found excuses, when he could, for his fellow-men, and indeed for himself where necessary. ‘There’s a lot of red oat grass, which everyone says means high fertility. The stream that
is
there has a nice fall and we shall be able to put in a ram. Later on perhaps a little turbine might be possible…. There’s building stone by the river bank. And lots of duiker and guinea-fowl; we oughtn’t to go hungry, anyway.’
    It all sounded wonderful, except the ticks. I had already found a lot crawling up my legs and had learnt to pluck them off and squash them in my fingers. They were red and active, and itched like mad when they dug into the skin. They left an itchy little bump and, if you scratched it, you soon developed a sore.
    There were also jiggas. These burrowed under your toe-nails, laid their eggs, and created a swollen, red, tormenting place on your toe. To extract it, you had to wait until the jigga was ripe. Juma was an expert at