Elspeth Huxley - The Mottled Lizard

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In this sequel to The Flame of Thika, Elspeth Huxley takes up her story after the family returns to Kenya after the First World War. Her family and friends, their home and their travels, the glorious wildlife and scenery, described in rich and loving detail, all spring to life in this enchanting book.

Elspeth Huxley was born in 1906, the daughter of Major Josceline Grant of Njoro, Kenya, where she spent most of her childhood. She was educated at the European School in Nairobi and at Reading University where she took a diploma in agriculture, and at Cornell University, USA. In 1929 she joined the Empire Marketing Board as a press officer. She married Gervas Huxley in 1931 and travelled widely with him in America, Africa and elsewhere. She was on the BBC General Advisory Council from 1952 to 1959, when she joined the Monckton Advisory Commission on Central Africa. She wrote novels, detective fiction, biography and travel titles, and her books include The Flame Trees of Thika (1959), The Challenge of Africa (1971), Livingstone and His African Journeys (1974), Florence Nightingale (1975), Scott of the Antarctic (1977), Nellie: Letters from Africa (1980), Whipsnade: Captive Breeding for Survival (1981), The Prince Buys the Manor (1982), Last Days in Eden (1985, with Hugo van Lawick) and Out in the Midday Sun: My Kenya (1985). She died in 1997.

Put forth to watch, unschooled, alone,

Twixt hostile earth and sky

The mottled lizard neath the stone

Is wiser here than I.

J UST before she sailed, Tilly got a telegram from Robin saying: Please bring shaving brush and windmill. With everyone being demobilized, even the shaving brush was difficult, a windmill impossible; it was hard enough to get passages for the wife and daughter of a repatriated soldier, let alone for a large metal construction. Tilly had only managed to squeeze us both into a ship by a combination, as she said, of sucking up to shipping clerks and bullying managers. So she left the windmill and took instead a cigar-box full of silkworm cocoons. These were to pioneer a new industry in East Africa; now that the First World War had ended everyone would be crying out for luxuries, the market would expand.

In the Red Sea the sticky heat was appalling. At night we took our mattresses on deck and tried to sleep, impeded by lascar sailors and even more by rats, which abounded. After Aden, we noticed that, about five oclock every morning, and with a great deal of clanking and creaking, the ship swung her bows round to face backwards. The engine stopped for a few minutes and then started up again, and the vessel swung back to resume her course.

Tilly was puzzled by this and so was Randall Swift, a fellow farmer also returning from the wars. Three days out of Aden he came to Tilly with as grave a look as any countenance so merry could assume to say that, despite the heat, we had better sleep in our cabins.

We couldnt sleep, Tilly pointed out.

We can spend the night there, for if we dont, well be spending it in kingdom come, from what I hear. Theres bubonic plague on board.

The purpose of turning the ship round, it appeared, was to allow the bodies of those committed to the deep to avoid entanglement in the screw. Randall had found this out by sleuth-work; the bubonic plague was a secret, for if the health authorities at Mombasa heard of it, we should be kept in quarantine for weeks, at a heavy cost to the owners, and no one would be allowed to land. So those of the passengers who suspected anything were just as anxious to keep the matter quiet as the Captain and crew, and there was no ships doctor.

We went about drenched in Keatinges Powder, of which Tilly had brought a liberal supply, our eyes alert for dead rats. Luckily we were due at Kilindini in less than a week.

Its touch and go with the cocoons, Tilly observed, two days before our hoped-for arrival.

Dont tell me theyre starting to hatch, Randall said.

I think, if the ships punctual, they may just hold out. I dont know what the Customs would say to a lot of grubs crawling about the baggage.

Each morning Tilly examined the cigar-box with mounting anxiety. Whether she had miscalculated, or whether the ship had taken longer than was expected, or whether the Red Seas heat had disarranged the hatching schedule, I do not know. The day before we were due at Kilindini, she observed unmistakable signs of activity among the cocoons.

They cant possibly hatch now, she exclaimed, frowning at them with entreaty and dismay.

But they had made up their collective mind. Not only that, in their new-found freedom no cigar-box was going to keep them confined. On our next visit to the cabin, which Tilly said was hot enough to cook a rice pudding or a meringue, we found little black grubs crawling about all over the drawers.

We must catch them, thats all, Tilly said firmly. She was not going to let a lot of silkworm grubs defeat her on the threshold of their new career. So she and I, Randall and the bride he was taking back with him, chased grubs among handkerchiefs and underclothes, on the floor and in the bunks, and put them into a tin in whose lid Randall punched tiny holes.

Theyll die of starvation, Tilly said in distress. I wonder if I can find any mulberry leaves in Mombasa? Or if they would accept a substitute?

On the morning we were due to dock the entire cabin appeared to be a mass of little grubs. Assisted by Randall, Tilly hauled our luggage into the passage and stood guard to prevent any member of the crew from penetrating into the insectory she had established. Our feelings of relief as we at last walked down the gangway, our heavy double-felt hats (called terais) clamped firmly down on our heads, were immense. Both the bubonic plague and the silkworms were still concealed from the authorities, and once we were ashore we were safe.