Read Online Tefuga by Peter Dickinson - Free Book Online Page A

D.O. hadn’t been doing his job properly they stuck by him because otherwise it would have shown the Resident and the A.D.O. had been in the right!
    I’m glad I’m going. I don’t want to stay here alone. It would be horribly easy to work myself into the dumps. Just now, while I was writing, a shower of fine fawn dust floated down onto the page. It came through a place where the ceiling-cloth doesn’t quite fit. Some kind of borer is up there, chewing its way through Ted’s lovely new timber. Africa’s like that. Terribly soon there’ll be dust dribbling down everywhere. If I sit very still I think I can hear them, wriggling and munching into our thatch and beams, like the little nasties wriggling around inside me when I had the malaria. We can’t give the poor house quinine!
    Cheer up, Bets! No use brooding. If only the harmattan would let up—it does, some days—I could ride over to Kiti and do a few pictures. Start outside then ask if I can come in—just getting KB used to the idea. I’m not going to do anything about Elongo’s sister for the mo. (It’s funny, he doesn’t want to talk about her now. Almost as tho’ he wishes he’d never said anything. Perhaps when I know a bit more Kiti.) Ted says he doesn’t think KB will mind me sketching inside the walls, ’cos he’s not a thoroughgoing Mohammedan. When the Fulani emirs further north pay visits to their Residents the Residents’ wives and dogs have to be put somewhere out of sight. The dogs are unclean and the women almost as bad!
    Tues Jan 15
    Goodness, what a day! Yesterday, I mean. Absolute, absolute luck, everything happening just how I could have prayed for, without me having to do anything to deserve it. And on top of that the three best sketches I’ll ever do in my life!
    Moment I woke up I felt the harmattan had stopped. Ran to the dining-room and looked down the river. Dawn. River mist. Pale, pearly sky. I could feel, tho’ it was nice and cool still, there was a scorcher coming! So I rang for Elongo and told him to stop everything and tell Mafote to get Salaki saddled and be ready himself to come with me. Twenty minutes later we were off. My idea was to get two good hours in and be back for breakfast.
    Soon as I’d set up outside the main gate of Kiti one of KB’s people came out to see what I was up to and I told him in my best Hausa and asked him to send a message to KB saying could I come and do some sketches inside the walls. (Of course I could, without asking, but I wanted to get the horrid old man used to the idea.) Then I started dabbing away. It was only eight o’clock but getting hot already. Fascinating trying to paint that light, so heavy and strong but somehow thick. If you get it right you find you’ve painted the heat as well.
    I’d almost finished the first sketch—quite nice—and Elongo was doing his best to keep the flies off me—and the little native children who were almost as bad!—when a squawky trumpet blew and KB and all his “court”—far more than last time—came out to see how I was getting on!
    KB was tickled pink by what I’d done so far but immediately said I’d got to paint him and his court. I did three quick brush sketches, Chinese style, one of the group, one of KB with his waziri, and one of a spearman on his horse. Terribly quick, like a pavement artist, but my hand seemed simply to be longing to paint after the gap and they came out alright. I managed to put enough Hausa together to tell KB they were a present for him, and he immediately sent a servant (a slave, I expect, but we aren’t supposed to know that) off to bring me a present in return. It was a live turkey!
    Then I pulled my Hausa together and asked KB if I could go and do another picture inside the walls. In fact, I took the bull by the horns and said I’d like to paint his house. He jumped at the idea