Assegai

It was almost dark when, hand in hand, they went down the pathway. As soon as they topped the fold of ground that concealed the pool they saw the campfire burning not far below. When they reached it they found that a log had been placed in front of the flames as a bench for them. When they had settled themselves on it, Ishmael appeared, bearing two mugs of strong black coffee, with evaporated milk.

Eva sniffed the air. ‘What is that delicious aroma, Ishmael?’

He showed no surprise that, for the first time, she was speaking English rather than German or French. ‘It is green-pigeon casserole, Memsahib.’

‘Ishmael’s celestial version thereof,’ Leon added. ‘It should only be eaten with bared head on bended knee.’

‘I’m so starving that I’m prepared to go down on both knees. It must be the swimming, or something else, that is so good for the appetite,’ she said.

He laughed. ‘Viva! That little something else.’

Immediately they had eaten, they were overwhelmed by a wonderful weariness. Manyoro and Loikot had built a small thatched shelter for them, well away from their own huts, and Ishmael had cut a mattress of fresh grass and covered it with blankets. Over it he had hung Leon’s mosquito net. They shed their clothes and Leon blew out the candle stub before they crept under the net.

‘It’s so safe and intimate and cosy in here,’ she whispered, and he lay behind her and enfolded her in his embrace. She pushed her round warm buttocks into his belly so that their bodies fitted together like a pair of spoons. The reflection of the campfire played shadow games on the netting over their heads, and the piping duet of two scops owlets in the branches of the tree above them was both plaintive and lulling.

‘I have never been so pleasantly exhausted in my entire life,’ she murmured.

‘Too exhausted?’

‘That’s not what I meant, you silly man.’