At a later time, though, to my surprise I heard Farah speak in deep admiration of my skill with a rifle. During one of our long safaris, when in the morning after a night’s shooting I was still in bed in my tent, a young Englishman who had his camp some miles south of ours, and who had heard about us from the Natives, came over to inquire about water and game and to have company. He and Farah were talking together outside the tent, and I could follow their conversation through the canvas. ‘What kind of Bwana are you out with?’ the Englishman asked. ‘Is he a good shot, and are you getting anything?’ ‘I am with no Bwana,’ Farah answered, ‘but with a Memsahib from a distant country. And she never misses a thing.’

On this occasion Farah seemed to enjoy talking about me. Generally the Somali will not discuss women and you cannot make them tell you of their wives and daughters. Only in regard to their mothers do they make an exception, and the Koran, Farah said, orders that each time you name your father with reverence you should name your mother with reverence twenty-five times. In this point as in others the Somali are like the old Icelanders. Tormod Kolbrunnaskjald was exiled from Iceland because he had sung the girl he loved, naming her ‘Kolbrunna’.

It is a strange thing that I should have this taboo in me still. At times, when people speak or write about me, I feel that I am breaking my covenant with Farah.

When the Prince of Wales, the present Duke of Windsor, in 1928 came on his first visit to Kenya, I had been invited by my friend Joanie Grigg, the Governor’s wife, to stay for a week at Government House. I felt that this was an opportunity of bringing the cause of the Natives, in the matter of their taxation, before the Prince, and was happy about this chance of getting the ear of the future King of England. ‘Only,’ I said to myself, ‘it will have to be done in a pleasant manner. For if it does not amuse him he will do nothing about it.’

As I sat beside the Prince at dinner I cautiously tried to turn his interest the way I wanted, and he did indeed on the next day come out to the farm to have tea with me. He walked with me into the huts of the squatters and made inquiries as to what they possessed in the way of cattle and goats, what they might earn by working on the farm and what they paid in taxes, writing down the figures. It was to me later on, when I was back in Denmark, a heart-breaking thing that my Prince of Wales should be King of England for only eleven months.