of a party, even if it consisted only of one guest with nothing beyond a clean pair of socks in his saddle-bag, always gave Tilly’s eye a sparkle and her laugh a new contagious gaiety. Life could stab her to the heart, but her powers of resilience were great. She could write off her failures, not because she did not mind about them but because she minded too much; the next venture was sure to succeed, life would be unbearable if it did not.
Having lost her cherished hen in such distressing circumstances, Tilly instructed Juma to wring the neck of one of its valuable companions in order to provide a meal worthy of the occasion. I was allowed to stay up for the party, the first we had enjoyed in the grass hut. I picked some wild flowers and Tilly arranged them in one of the cut-glass tumblers, but we were still eating off a packing-case, over which a damask table-cloth was spread. A hollow silver cow that held (or should have held) sweets of some kind, occupied the centre of the table, but we ate with kitchen knives and forks, the rest of the silver having been swept away in the Crash. In Tilly’s bedroom the packing-case which did duty as a dressing-table bore a number of cut-glass bottles and jars with silver tops on which her initials were elaborately engraved, and which belonged to a handsome dressing case that she had managed to retain.
By now Tilly’s attempts to preserve an appearance of leisured elegance, never perhaps very determined, had gone by the board. She was by nature a participator, and had a dozen enterprises under way. While Juma took care of the domestic chores, she was abroad in the sunshine laying out a garden, supervising the planting of coffee seedlings, marking out a citrus plantation, paying labour in a corner of the store that served as an office, rendering first-aid, and in many other ways filling her day with occupations that made her hot, dirty, and tired. Now she had a chance for once to dress up like a lady, and she took it. She wore grey, a kind and gentle background for her corn-gold hair andmilky skin and wild-rose complexion, and her emerald ear-rings shone with the radiance of a sunlit beech-leaf in spring. I was allowed to squeeze the scent-spray, encased in a coat of mesh, that lived among her bottles, a simple pleasure rarely indulged. She looked at her hands with a frown.
‘I haven’t any white gloves; anyway, that would be over-doing it. My hands are like a navvy’s, dirt won’t come out of the cracks and as for my nails….’ She had been attacking them with a file, long, thin scissors, a buffer, and some polish from a tiny flat jar, but the result was discouraging. Tilly was downcast; as with all perfectionists, it was the detail others might not notice that destroyed for her the pleasure of achievement. I doubt if she was ever fully satisfied with anything she did. But she breasted each failure as a dinghy rides a choppy sea, and faced the next with confidence and gaiety. So she frowned at her nails, remarked: ‘Well, they’re clean anyway, and there’s nothing I can do about it,’ and proceeded to arrange her hair in a new fashion she had noticed in an illustrated magazine.
Randall was entranced, as indeed he might have been, for she was a handsome woman in the fullness of youth and she had besides that flame of animation without which all beauty is petrified. I think he fell in love with her a little that night and never lost his admiration afterwards. He was himself at heart also a romantic, drawn to Africa less by a dream of fortune than by a wish for freedom and the danger to be found in sport. His Sundays were spent walking about the plains and hills in search of lions and buffaloes.
‘When we make our fortune out of sisal,’ he said, ‘I shall go home every winter to hunt the fox in County Meath, and in the summer I shall come back here to hunt the elephant. Ah, what a grand life that will be! And when the coffee’s made a fortune for you, what will you do
Having lost her cherished hen in such distressing circumstances, Tilly instructed Juma to wring the neck of one of its valuable companions in order to provide a meal worthy of the occasion. I was allowed to stay up for the party, the first we had enjoyed in the grass hut. I picked some wild flowers and Tilly arranged them in one of the cut-glass tumblers, but we were still eating off a packing-case, over which a damask table-cloth was spread. A hollow silver cow that held (or should have held) sweets of some kind, occupied the centre of the table, but we ate with kitchen knives and forks, the rest of the silver having been swept away in the Crash. In Tilly’s bedroom the packing-case which did duty as a dressing-table bore a number of cut-glass bottles and jars with silver tops on which her initials were elaborately engraved, and which belonged to a handsome dressing case that she had managed to retain.
By now Tilly’s attempts to preserve an appearance of leisured elegance, never perhaps very determined, had gone by the board. She was by nature a participator, and had a dozen enterprises under way. While Juma took care of the domestic chores, she was abroad in the sunshine laying out a garden, supervising the planting of coffee seedlings, marking out a citrus plantation, paying labour in a corner of the store that served as an office, rendering first-aid, and in many other ways filling her day with occupations that made her hot, dirty, and tired. Now she had a chance for once to dress up like a lady, and she took it. She wore grey, a kind and gentle background for her corn-gold hair andmilky skin and wild-rose complexion, and her emerald ear-rings shone with the radiance of a sunlit beech-leaf in spring. I was allowed to squeeze the scent-spray, encased in a coat of mesh, that lived among her bottles, a simple pleasure rarely indulged. She looked at her hands with a frown.
‘I haven’t any white gloves; anyway, that would be over-doing it. My hands are like a navvy’s, dirt won’t come out of the cracks and as for my nails….’ She had been attacking them with a file, long, thin scissors, a buffer, and some polish from a tiny flat jar, but the result was discouraging. Tilly was downcast; as with all perfectionists, it was the detail others might not notice that destroyed for her the pleasure of achievement. I doubt if she was ever fully satisfied with anything she did. But she breasted each failure as a dinghy rides a choppy sea, and faced the next with confidence and gaiety. So she frowned at her nails, remarked: ‘Well, they’re clean anyway, and there’s nothing I can do about it,’ and proceeded to arrange her hair in a new fashion she had noticed in an illustrated magazine.
Randall was entranced, as indeed he might have been, for she was a handsome woman in the fullness of youth and she had besides that flame of animation without which all beauty is petrified. I think he fell in love with her a little that night and never lost his admiration afterwards. He was himself at heart also a romantic, drawn to Africa less by a dream of fortune than by a wish for freedom and the danger to be found in sport. His Sundays were spent walking about the plains and hills in search of lions and buffaloes.
‘When we make our fortune out of sisal,’ he said, ‘I shall go home every winter to hunt the fox in County Meath, and in the summer I shall come back here to hunt the elephant. Ah, what a grand life that will be! And when the coffee’s made a fortune for you, what will you do
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