Free The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley Page A

cool judgement and presence of mind. He stayed for lunch and then rode off on his pony.
    The case against Sammy cost everyone a great deal of time, trouble, and expense. When finally it came before the District Commissioner, Sammy went to Fort Hall and did not return fornearly a month. Fearing he had gone to jail, Robin sent a chit to the District Commissioner and learnt that the case had fizzled out owing to contradictory evidence, and Sammy had left a free, unfined man.
    When at last he returned, sleek and smiling, Robin asked angrily what had detained him.
    ‘I had to go to my father’s
manyatta
to fetch some cattle,’ he replied.
    ‘You did not have to pay a fine. Why did you need more cattle?’
    ‘To pay the witnesses.’
    So it ended happily. All Europeans, in those days, received a native name derived from some peculiar characteristic, quality, or habit. Soon we learnt that Mr Roos’s name was Meat of the Wild Pig.
    Robin’s name was bwana Kofia Mbaya, or Bad Hat. When Tilly heard this she exclaimed: ‘But how extraordinary! That was the name the natives gave you in Rhodesia before we were married.’
    ‘It’s not really so strange,’ Robin explained.’ You see, it’s the same hat.’

Chapter 6
    W ITHIN a few months of our arrival, several neighbours had settled nearby.
    The first was a shy but determined young man called Alec Wilson who had started life as an office-boy in some drab Midland city and quickly risen, by means of excessive work and resolution, to become a solicitor’s clerk. His was the sort of life and character that Arnold Bennett might have described. Then his health broke down and he was told to seek a dry and sunny climate if he was to survive. He came out with, I think, two hundred pounds of scraped-together capital, and was lucky enough to meet in the ship a man with somewhat larger resources, who became a sleeping partner, and the two between them bought a block of bush next to ours.
    Alec Wilson knew even less than Robin did about the business in hand. But people who knew nothing at all were more likely to learn than those who knew a little, and mistook this for a great deal. Alec Wilson thought that he could learn from books. In this he was mistaken, for at that time little, if anything, that was useful had been recorded, and most of what had been recorded was wrong. But the grass hut he built for himself, one like ours, was soon filled with Government reports and pamphlets, manuals of engineering, text-books on plantation industries, and works of that kind. When he came over to see us he would generally start the conversation with some such remark as: ‘According to my calculations, the volume of water in the river has fallen by point o five of a cusec, which would suggest that a furrow…’ Or: ‘I have been giving some thought to the question of wind-breaks; in Brazil the species
gravilea robusta
…’
    This was a bore, yet his enthusiasm was touching. He was like a bird that has become the embodiment of a single intention, to migrate over thousands of miles of ocean and desert, so that nothing on earth will deflect it – no lure of food, no need for rest, no weariness, and no temptation. It will get there or perish. No doubt he had a family in Wolverhampton or wherever it was, but he seldom mentioned them, although he corresponded with a married sister in Wales. Naturally enough, he counted every cent of his money. The only reason we knew about his married sister was that he would sometimes give us an unstamped letter to post next time we sent to Thika, and he never repaid us for the stamp. Robin helped him in a great many ways: lent him oxen to start his ploughing, chains to pull out tree-stumps, tools, all sorts of things, and even lent him Sammy for a week to organize his labour. When Alec Wilson paid Robin for some things bought on his behalf in Nairobi, he deducted one rupee for Sammy’s keep.
    When Sammy got back, he remarked: ‘That bwana should get a wife to