I'm on the train! Read Online Free Page A

puff-adder . My boy kept me walking up and down all night, to stop the venom taking hold. I did feel a bit off-colour, but only for a matter of days. The following week, I was right as rain. I even played squash that weekend and beat my opponent hands-down. It was partly thanks to my boy’s good sense, but even so….’
    She wondered how old his boy was. Quite old, most like, if he was allowed to stay up all night. It was rude to ask people’s ages, so she asked, instead, if he had a lot of children.
    ‘Lord, no! None whatever. Sadly, my wife had problems in thatdepartment. We did employ a lot of staff, though, all waiting on us hand and foot. I never had to lift a finger until I came back here. Of course, I was up to my eyes with my own work – dispensing justice and all that sort of thing. I used to hold a daily court in Nyeri, to make sure the locals were kept in line. The watu were very fond of stealing each other’s cattle, which often led to fights, so I’d have to put my foot down and order the culprits to be caned.’
    At Sunnyhill, the staff weren’t allowed to cane you, however naughty you were. In the old days, though, children were beaten black and blue, so Miss Batsby said.
    ‘I was also personally responsible for the hospitals, the prisons, the state of the roads, and general law and order. Sometimes, I’d be called out in the dead of night, to deal with an emergency or….’
    He was still eating the dead fish – even the heads and tails, which meant he was eating their eyes and teeth. Once, in Bournemouth, she had seen a fish’s teeth, but that fish was dead, as well. She had never seen a live fish.
    ‘I remember, during Mau Mau, there was a really nasty incident. An entire white family were hacked to death, in the early hours of the morning. I was fast asleep, of course, but the minute I was summoned, I leapt out of bed and we drove full-pelt to the house. We arrived too late, though – found the place full of mangled bodies. Even their new-born baby had been slaughtered, and the poor damned dog.’
    He’d seen lots of people die – first, the man killed by the ant-bear, and now a whole family and a baby and a dog. Yet he didn’t seem the slightest bit upset.
    ‘The Kenyan house-staff managed to escape. They were warned in advance, you see, and got out before the butchery. And the perpetrators were never caught. They just disappeared back into the forest and….’
    At last, he finished eating and wiped his mouth on something called a napkin, which was like a small piece of the tablecloth, very white and stiff. It left a lot of greasy marks, but no one told him off. Then, he leaned forward and inspected her, close-up. He probably thought her clothes weren’t right for such a fancy club, or thatshe shouldn’t have her hair loose. Edna said it was unhygienic to have it hanging round your shoulders and dangling onto your plate. But, all at once, he smiled – a big, wide smile that showed his three gold teeth.
    ‘You’re damned pretty, Jo, d’you know that? In fact, I’d go as far as to call you a real stunner. Which is why you need to be more careful, for God’s sake, or someone will take advantage. I mean, a girl your age ought to be safe at home, not wandering the streets on your own.’
    She should have added on two years and told him she was eighteen, instead of sixteen-and-a-half. But it was wicked to tell lies and, anyway, she wasn’t even sixteen – or only on the outside. ‘Sixteen in body,’ Miss Batsby had told her, on her birthday, ‘but a child of ten in mind’. She wasn’t a child. She knew a lot of things that even grown-ups didn’t know and, anyway, they called her ‘madam’ here and you wouldn’t say that to a child. The man was eighty-four – he’d told her that as soon as they met, like he was proud of being old – but said he had the constitution of someone half his age. She didn’t know what a constitution was, but probably something expensive, like the