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Authors: Elspeth Huxley
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with it?’
‘I don’t know what comes first,’ Tilly answered. ‘Robin wants a castle in Scotland, and I should like a safari across the Northern Frontier into Abyssinia and home by the Nile. And then I’d like to own a balloon, and to breed New Forest ponies, and to get to China on the trans-Siberian railway, and to have a model poultry farm, and buy a Daimler, and fish in Norway – oh, and lots of other things.’
When the same question was put to Robin, he replied that he meant to buy the most expensive luxury in the world. The others tried to guess its nature: running a yacht, shooting tigers, owning a racing-stable, buying jewels for Tilly. Robin beamed genially, and said:
‘Doing absolutely nothing. A very expensive affair.’ He quoted a favourite West Highland song:
‘Oh that the peats would cut themselves
And all the little fishes would leap upon the shore,
That I might lie upon my back
And rest for ever more. Oich! Oich!’
Then Randall turned to me and asked me the same question. Not only was I acutely embarrassed by this sudden attention, but the question baffled me. I had no money and it did not seem to be a thing one needed for any purpose at all.
‘He means, what would you like best in all the world if you could choose?’ Tilly explained.
I knew that a quick, decisive answer was expected and my thoughts fled like a herd of kongoni when a shot is fired. Of course I wanted a lot of things, but no one great need over-topped the others. A sharper knife, a mule of my own, one of the lustre coffee-cups to keep, a guinea-pig, mice made of pink and white sugar? What I wanted most of all was perhaps a companion, but I knew this did not fall within Randall’s meaning, so I answered at random, ‘a chameleon’. Indeed these creatures with their air of patient, knowing, and obstinate complacency fascinated me. I admired the way they swivelled their deep and watchful eyes in big, baggy purple sockets that enabled them to see in any direction they pleased, and loved to feel the dry, cold, burr-like pluck of their agile little fingers on my flesh, and to observe them sway backwards and forwards, like a man about to take a tremendous leap, when they contemplated a sudden, darting, forward waddle.
My reply caused the sort of laughter any child dislikes, because it has a ring of patronage; but Juma had made a meringue-crusted pudding with which I was able to console myself, while my elders returned to a topic that never bored them, that of sport. Although Tilly and Robin then believed as firmly as theirfriends did that to shoot animals was one of life’s richest pleasures, I do not believe their hearts were ever wholly in it. Safaris they loved, and Robin would enjoy a walk with his gun in the cool of the evening to bang away at a red-legged francolin or a fat guinea-fowl, but as a rule he left the antelope alone, and he was not always hoping, as most others were, for a trip to the game-abounding plains along the Athi river. He preferred to plan irrigation works, dams and furrows, forestry projects, and sites for little factories to treat the coffee, citrus, and other crops that were not even planted; and of an evening, to sit by the hissing lamp with any reading matter he could lay his hands on, even out-of-date copies of motoring journals or the
Field
, and to cover scraps of paper with detailed, complicated calculations which invariably proved, beyond all question, the brilliant success of whatever plan he was hatching.
Once, when clearing up some of these abandoned bits of paper, Tilly noticed, at the bottom of a long column of very high figures, the terse conclusion: ‘Therefore, small sums do not matter.’ It was on this robust principle that Robin conducted his affairs.
Randall kept his word about a headman, and in due course Sammy arrived. He was a tall, beak-nosed individual with fine, almost Asiatic features and thin bones; instead of the usual blanket he wore a shirt and shorts and a pair
‘I don’t know what comes first,’ Tilly answered. ‘Robin wants a castle in Scotland, and I should like a safari across the Northern Frontier into Abyssinia and home by the Nile. And then I’d like to own a balloon, and to breed New Forest ponies, and to get to China on the trans-Siberian railway, and to have a model poultry farm, and buy a Daimler, and fish in Norway – oh, and lots of other things.’
When the same question was put to Robin, he replied that he meant to buy the most expensive luxury in the world. The others tried to guess its nature: running a yacht, shooting tigers, owning a racing-stable, buying jewels for Tilly. Robin beamed genially, and said:
‘Doing absolutely nothing. A very expensive affair.’ He quoted a favourite West Highland song:
‘Oh that the peats would cut themselves
And all the little fishes would leap upon the shore,
That I might lie upon my back
And rest for ever more. Oich! Oich!’
Then Randall turned to me and asked me the same question. Not only was I acutely embarrassed by this sudden attention, but the question baffled me. I had no money and it did not seem to be a thing one needed for any purpose at all.
‘He means, what would you like best in all the world if you could choose?’ Tilly explained.
I knew that a quick, decisive answer was expected and my thoughts fled like a herd of kongoni when a shot is fired. Of course I wanted a lot of things, but no one great need over-topped the others. A sharper knife, a mule of my own, one of the lustre coffee-cups to keep, a guinea-pig, mice made of pink and white sugar? What I wanted most of all was perhaps a companion, but I knew this did not fall within Randall’s meaning, so I answered at random, ‘a chameleon’. Indeed these creatures with their air of patient, knowing, and obstinate complacency fascinated me. I admired the way they swivelled their deep and watchful eyes in big, baggy purple sockets that enabled them to see in any direction they pleased, and loved to feel the dry, cold, burr-like pluck of their agile little fingers on my flesh, and to observe them sway backwards and forwards, like a man about to take a tremendous leap, when they contemplated a sudden, darting, forward waddle.
My reply caused the sort of laughter any child dislikes, because it has a ring of patronage; but Juma had made a meringue-crusted pudding with which I was able to console myself, while my elders returned to a topic that never bored them, that of sport. Although Tilly and Robin then believed as firmly as theirfriends did that to shoot animals was one of life’s richest pleasures, I do not believe their hearts were ever wholly in it. Safaris they loved, and Robin would enjoy a walk with his gun in the cool of the evening to bang away at a red-legged francolin or a fat guinea-fowl, but as a rule he left the antelope alone, and he was not always hoping, as most others were, for a trip to the game-abounding plains along the Athi river. He preferred to plan irrigation works, dams and furrows, forestry projects, and sites for little factories to treat the coffee, citrus, and other crops that were not even planted; and of an evening, to sit by the hissing lamp with any reading matter he could lay his hands on, even out-of-date copies of motoring journals or the
Field
, and to cover scraps of paper with detailed, complicated calculations which invariably proved, beyond all question, the brilliant success of whatever plan he was hatching.
Once, when clearing up some of these abandoned bits of paper, Tilly noticed, at the bottom of a long column of very high figures, the terse conclusion: ‘Therefore, small sums do not matter.’ It was on this robust principle that Robin conducted his affairs.
Randall kept his word about a headman, and in due course Sammy arrived. He was a tall, beak-nosed individual with fine, almost Asiatic features and thin bones; instead of the usual blanket he wore a shirt and shorts and a pair
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