Binstead's Safari (15 page)

It was sunset and about to grow dark when they heard the trucks approaching. The men were singing. Everyone went out to the car park.

“I was beginning to worry,” Pippa whispered.

“Me, too,” Millie said.

The skinners were making a fuss about something. Ian looked startled as he saw the skins of two leopards being carried past.

Nicholas came forward. “I couldn't help it,” he said. “They were right on top of us. And cubs with them. More babies for you, Pippa.”

Ian said, “We only just got rid of the last lot.”

Nicholas washed and changed while the others went to look at the leopards. The cubs were still mewing; they
sounded like mice. Stan stepped back as the women leaned forward. It struck him as odd and faintly ridiculous that they should resemble mothers peering down into a crib.

*

She dreamt that she waited at the edge of camp, between daybreak and night. She had forgotten what she was waiting for—whether for the lion, or for Alistair's driver bringing news—but a sense of urgency and pain compelled her towards whatever it was. She stared into the greyness, longing, until out of it rose a movement like the swell of an ocean wave and suddenly he was there, Henry, standing a few yards from her. He must have walked all the way from town. He put his hands to his heart and opened them out to her. She stepped forward to meet him, and woke up.

Stan slept. He was still sleeping when she woke for the second time and got up. She washed, dressed, and left the tent. And once more, just as she was about to run ahead to greet Nicholas, the lion walked towards her.

“Don't move, Millie,” Nicholas whispered.

She wanted to throw herself into motion, but it was as if her legs had turned to stone and then disappeared beneath her. She was trapped there. Her head and the upper part of her body began to feel farther and farther away from the ground.

The lion had seen Nicholas moving around to the side. It wrinkled its upper lip, showed its teeth, and began a kind of pawing dance, shaking its head sideways. Its tail twitched back and forth.

“Now,” Nicholas breathed softly, “start walking away very slowly. To your right.”

She put one foot behind her and stepped backwards. She thought she must be moving in an awkward, jerky
manner. And all the time there was a strong pull the other way, like the power of a tide running between her and the lion.

Does
he
want
to
kill
me?
she thought.
Is
that
why?
She felt that soon she was going to faint, but she kept going backwards until all at once the lion did the same thing he'd done the first time: wheeled around and raced off.

Over breakfast she said, “It looked even bigger today. It was the size of a horse.”

“Sure it's the same one?” Ian asked.

“Yes,” Nicholas and Millie both answered.

“What were you doing up so early, anyway?” Stan said.

“I couldn't sleep,” Millie told him. “I can't stand it just lying there with my eyes open, so I might as well get up.”

“Anyone seen him at any other time?” Ian asked.

Nicholas shook his head. “Let's warn everyone and leave it at that. He's such a beauty, it'd be a pity to shoot him. Unless one absolutely had to.”

“You know,” Stan said, “this interests me. This is kind of a funny way for a lion to act, isn't it?”

“It is, rather,” Ian said. “But they're all unaccountable. There's not a species in the land that couldn't pull some strange new habit out of a hat after you've studied it for fifty years.”

“Well, I just thought: anything unusual that has to do with lions in this part of the country—we're not too far away from the territory where those legends are supposed to come from. It does seem odd that a full-grown male would seek the company of a large group of people.”

“If you're thinking he's some kind of trained pet, Stan, you can think again,” Nicholas said. “This is positively the most savage wild beast you've ever seen. It's like looking into the inside of a volcano.”

“If you decide to go on a hunt for it, I'd like to come along.”

“No, Stan,” Millie said. “It's dangerous.”

“Everything's dangerous.”

“I've got a feeling about it.”

“It would be dangerous going up in the balloon.”

“Hear, hear,” Ian said.

“I'll let you know,” Nicholas promised. “We won't track him down unless we have to.”

“What does that mean? You'll wait till it jumps on somebody here in the camp?”

“More or less.”

“But that could happen any time.”

“He has a point, Nick,” Ian said. “What do you think?”

“I'd rather not.”

“No,” Millie agreed. “It would be a shame.”

“That's all very fine,” Pippa said.

“Raving romanticism,” Stan added. “How would you feel if your friend here just got tired waiting for his breakfast and ate somebody up?”

“Let's leave it for a bit,” Nicholas said. “I've told Joshua and Robert and the boys in the cookhouse.”

*

During the next few days, Nicholas took Stan out to look at several different villages. Stan asked questions all the time and kept taking notes. He filled up ring binders with paper; his cardboard and plastic filing portfolios grew fat.

The lion appeared twice again in the early morning, as before. At its first return, Millie said to Nicholas, “It's true. It's as though it's coming for a purpose, or as though he'd been trained.”

Nicholas shook his head. He told her, “Let's not say
anything this time. I've already warned everyone to be careful.”

“Do you think it was his home ground and he's reclaiming it, or something like that? That would mean he's going to keep coming back, no matter what we do.”

“All right. Stan's the one who's interested. We'll follow him out of camp.”

“Could you scare him off, without actually shooting him?”

“I could try. I'd try that first. But if this is his patch, he won't give it up.”

In the afternoon, Nicholas told Stan that they should have an early night, get a good sleep and wake in time to track the lion.

Stan said, “I've been thinking a lot about this thing. Listen. Wouldn't you say that a good method of seizing political power would be to convince everyone that you had supernatural abilities? And you could keep other people out of the area that way. You'd be the only authority. Simba means lion, doesn't it? And this man, Simba Lewis, was good with animals. This was his district—well, not too far from here. He could have trained a cub. He could even have kept the poachers out in order to run his own illegal operations alone.”

“No, he wouldn't. He wasn't like that.”

“What was he like? I'm sure there's a connection.”

“Oh, old Harry had a terrible reputation. Half the people here think he had some kind of magic.”

“Well, maybe they're right.”

“Like a medicine man. I will say, he was the finest tracker and hunter I've ever seen. It was uncanny, almost as if he could speak the language of the beasts. He knew what they were thinking.”

“And was he easy to work with?”

“Yes, very easy, and generous. He'd teach you things, snippets of information, tricks and tips he'd picked up, and you wouldn't even realize how much you were learning. We got on famously in that respect. In other ways, we weren't so well suited. He always liked to have lots happening. Celebrating, letting off steam. He was a bit of a showman. And his effect on women was incredible. I was jealous as hell about that.”

“But you must all attract a lot of women. In a business like this, aren't you sometimes regarded as the hired sex symbol?”

“I don't know so much. Sometimes, perhaps. In any case, I don't know how to—Bobsy Whiteacre, for instance. I think I made that worse than it might have been. What was I to do with the woman?”

“Not knowing the lady, I'm not sure. But I think what you should have done was flirted like crazy and left her standing. She probably wanted the gesture, that's all. To balance out her husband's activities. Don't you think something like that was going on?”

“Who can tell? I don't know what anyone wants. Perhaps.”

*

I
could
change,
Millie thought. Betty had changed, but only because her life had forced her to. After having the baby she hadn't wanted, Betty had said, “You can put up with a lot in life. You have to. I keep going. Why not? But I haven't changed. I feel that my life is over. I don't think it's fair, but I don't have desires any more. I've given up hope. So, I don't care. All the things I have, even the children—how good they'd be if only I'd had any choice in
the matter. I'd say to myself: how lucky I am. The way things are, it's made me hate my own husband. It isn't his fault, not really. Failure. I sometimes think failure is catching.”

“It's cumulative,” Millie had said. “Like success. Each one reinforces the whole series.”

She started to write a letter to Betty and then changed her mind. There was too much to describe and explain and she wanted to say it directly. She leaned against the edge of a packing case and looked at one of her pictures of flowers, white in a green vase.

Like her sister, she could accept the unavoidable. But, it was by accepting things that they became unavoidable in the first place. Now that he was dead, she had no faith in the outcome of events. To break with Stan in order to live on her own, called for more strength than she had at the moment.

The strength had been partly his and it was leaving her fast. There was still enough for a decision, but nothing seemed worth the effort. Maybe later she could work out some kind of career using her painting, but it wouldn't take up her whole life. Even the baby wouldn't be enough to do that.

Soon she would have to tell Stan. She had already told Nicholas, who had guessed and asked her. She had also told him that she had been thinking of leaving Stan.

“Is it different now?” he had asked.

She had answered yes before he could finish or add anything. The reasons didn't matter. In some ways now, things still weren't different and they wouldn't be, so it was better not to talk about them. She thought about Henry; all day long, and at night when she couldn't sleep, he was there. Her memory of him was part of her as naturally as
the sound of the heart in her body. She couldn't believe that it referred to nothing.

“Tell me more about your friend, Simba Lewis,” Stan asked Ian. “How old was he, by the way?”

“Oh, that's hard to say. Perhaps Pippa knows. Somewhere between twenty-eight and thirty-eight. Thirty-two, four, five perhaps.”

“And he was a kind of colourful character from what everybody says?”

“Well, he could drink anyone under the table and he was a great one for the ladies, if those are qualifications. And one of the best men in the profession—perhaps the best I've seen. He was a grand chap, Harry.”

“Why is it, do you think, that everyone has these stories about him?”

“Well, he was immediately likeable and easy to get on with. Full of jokes and stories, very friendly. And yet—he was also a strange man. Terrifying. I always thought he was slightly insane.”

“In what way?”

“I've seen him do things, and get other people to do things, that were impossible. He had a terrible temper, really—not human. He always had it held back, but every once in a while you felt it was there.”

“Do you mean you thought he wasn't to be trusted in certain ways?”

“No, no, no. Trust him with anything. I mean that when he wanted to use it, he had an extraordinary command over other people. Mesmerizing. And he was someone whose word you wouldn't doubt. So, you began
to believe things were possible, if he said they were.”

“How far do you think he exercised his ability? Do you think he turned those villages of his district into a little kingdom for himself?”

“Possibly. The people who lived there thought of him that way. They might just have handed the whole
bang-shoot
over to him as the man best able to run it.”

“A poaching empire?”

“No. Definitely not.”

“Everybody's so sure about that. That's what Nick says, too.”

“And he's right. If you'd known Harry, you'd realize that.”

In the evening, Stan told Millie, “I've got it all figured out. Ian doesn't agree with me, but I think this guy Lewis was building up a private empire here and he encouraged a kind of admiration society. What's known in politics as a ‘personality cult'. He was running some kind of a racket, probably ivory, and giving back a certain amount to the villages to keep them sweet. The old Robin Hood system.”

“Ivory wasn't ever his interest,” she said. “He was a known specialist for lion, not elephant.”

“He gave Rupert Hatchard nearly all the stories in that book of his about elephants, didn't he?”

“Yes, that's true. But—well, he just wouldn't do such a thing.”

“Why not? Beautiful scheme.”

“He wasn't like that.”

“Okay, tell me. What was he like?”

“I told you already. Direct, simple. If he thought something, he did it. He didn't sit on his thoughts. Very daring. He didn't save anything. He lived a hundred per cent. And—he was very ordinary, in a way. I mean, you
felt right from the beginning that you'd known him all your life, you relaxed with him. But he also—it's like what Aunt Edna used to say about special people: he gave out, he shone. Really. I'm sure there's something in it scientifically, some kind of radiation. That's why people are called stars, or you say they have star quality—you can't see it, but it sort of pours off them. When you were with him, you felt that way, too. You started to radiate, too. You felt free. Of course, I'm not sure if a man would have been impressed in quite the same way.”

“Sounds pretty fancy. You seem to have thought an awful lot about him in such a short time.”

“Mm. That's what he was like.”

“Go on. This is the kind of thing I want.”

“Is it? Oh, for your research. Well, that's all. I don't know what else you want.”

“What did he look like?”

“Very romantic, but no pretty-boy. Medium height, strong, sort of chunky. His hair—going like this, back away from his face, like the busts of Beethoven. Eyes like … eyes….” She stopped. “He was at that party, standing right next to me. Didn't you see him?”

“I can't remember. I was plastered. Everybody says what a ladies' man he was. Is it true?”

“Yes, like a magnet. So much that he never had to do anything with it or even be aware of using it.”

“But he did use it. He used all that bunch of talents to make a fortune out here.”

“Stan, when you write up this thesis, are you going to name names and everything?”

“That's a thought. I'd better find out about—no, that's all right. Just leave it out about the poaching. It'll be okay. But I've got to get in and get some tapes of those songs. I
think they were trying to keep us away. Nick thinks so, too.”

After he had put the light out, Millie turned over in her bed. She listened. He was still awake. She said, “Stan, I'm pregnant.”

There was a long silence, then he said, “I thought you couldn't.”

“I know. You thought I couldn't do anything.”

“I thought you couldn't, because I knew it wasn't me. I went to the doctor right at the start and got checked out.”

“So did I. Just a few months after we got married.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

“You know, I meant it when I told you I was going to leave you.”

“But you've changed your mind.”

“I don't know. If I could wave a magic wand and say we're divorced, I'd do it. Honest. But to go through the whole thing, with lawyers and settlements and moving house—it needs a good reason. More than just lack of … lack of everything. But there isn't anybody else. There isn't—yes, okay. We'll see how it goes. But I'm not doing all the stuff I used to. If you aren't satisfied, you can do everything yourself, or you get the divorce, if you like.”

“Just one thing,” he said. “Does this mean I'm still married to the virgin bride, or not?”

*

Millie stepped out of the tent to join Nicholas. This time Stan came with her and he brought his rifle. Nicholas saw them approaching, touched his hat, but didn't speak. The three of them waited.

It was nearing the time at which the lion normally came into camp to prowl around, when they heard the boys from
the cookhouse tent begin to sing.

The chant grew louder and more insistent, until Nicholas held his hand up, gestured that he'd return soon, and walked off in the direction of the sound.

From the distance Millie and Stan heard a slight break in the song, voices talking, and the singing continuing more quietly. Then, it was broken again and disintegrated into speech, calling, and the noise of breakfast preparations.

Nicholas came back. He said, “They don't like it. They say it should be forbidden to hunt the lion in any way, that it would bring bad luck. I told them we just wanted to scare him off.”

“What did they say to that?”

“They boasted that we couldn't frighten him. I think they've taken him up as a sort of mascot. Let's wait a while longer.”

Millie said, “Maybe I should get out there and walk around the places where I was the last times I saw him.”

“No,” Stan said quickly.

“I think today is finished anyway, but let's see.”

The lion didn't come. At breakfast they talked about it. Stan advanced theories as to why no lion would hang around a camp unless for some purpose.

“Are they feeding it?” he asked. “Or leaving food?”

“Don't be daft,” Ian said.

“I don't think it's such a dumb idea. You said yourself, and Nicholas, that this lion may be a kind of cookhouse pet.”

“I said mascot, not pet. You couldn't possibly describe him as a pet,” Nicholas said. “This is a hell of a large lion. Enormous. The finest I've seen, I think.”

“I wonder why he didn't show up.”

Pippa turned to Ian. “Perhaps tomorrow,” she said.

“All right, we'll all have a go tomorrow.” Ian rose from the table to join Oliver. “And if you want a crack at the best part of today, speak now. Home again by sundown.”

Pippa shook her head. Stan asked Millie, “Are you staying here, or coming wth us? I've still got to do my research. Nick has to translate for me.”

“I think I might come with you.”

“Have you room for one more?” Pippa said. “I've seen so many good views now, it might be rather nice to see some people.”

*

They drove to a village where Nicholas had expected to meet a friend, but no one was there to greet them. When they looked closer, they realized that the whole place was deserted.

They went back and sat in the landrover. Stan said, “What's the next village? We could try that instead.”

“But the next village—the point about this one was that there was someone we could talk to.”

Maybe somebody had died, Stan thought, but it looked worse than that.

“Where do you think they all went? It's kind of spooky.” It was like the story he had read as a boy, about the village on Greenland, which had been found completely empty of people; the food had been on the tables—everything, but no people.

“Have they taken all their belongings?”

“Not all,” Nicholas said. “They're coming back.”

Millie suggested, “Maybe they went off to visit the neighbours.”

“A whole village?” Stan said.

“Maybe it's a big party.”

“It could be,” Nicholas said. “If they're preparing for their celebrations. But I don't think it's really a very brilliant idea for us to sit in on that, Stan.”

“We could try. What can they do to us? Would they do anything to us if Pippa's with us?”

“If they were going to do anything,” Pippa said, “I don't think I'd make a difference.”

They drove on. Nicholas said that they should probably have taken someone with them who knew the local rumours: Julius or Amos.

“If you'd taken anyone, it should have been Robert,” Millie told him. “He comes from someplace fairly near here.”

“How do you know that?” Stan asked.

“He told me.”

The next village, which was small, was also empty. But at the third, they found such a throng of people that it looked as though several villages were jammed together. There was a great deal of talking, laughing, and occasional bursts of singing. The crowd parted for them as they stepped forward, and then a line of young men tried to block their way.

“What's happening?” Millie asked.

At the sound of her voice, attention was drawn to her. A sigh went up around them. The men stood back. One of them pointed.

Stan whispered, “I think they want your necklace.” He said to Nicholas, “Should she hand it over as a gesture of good will?”

Millie said, “I'm certainly not handing over my necklace to anyone.”

“No,” Nicholas said. “Wait.”

A mass of people, at first noisy and cheerful, then rapidly becoming wildly loud and excited, bunched closely around them, screeching and yelping. Stan couldn't even get to his tape recorder to start it. He had to shout at Nicholas, “Hell of a big mob. I've got a feeling they could start pushing us. What's going on?”

“We arrived just as they were about to have a bit of singing and dancing, I expect.”

“They're trying to shove Millie in another direction. Grab her other hand, Nick.”

The villagers began a song. It sounded to Stan like the chant the cookhouse staff and skinners had been singing, but his ear was not attuned to the melodies or syllabification of African music. He thought the rhythms were the same. A group of children had been thrust towards Millie through the swinging crush of packed bodies. They jumped up and down, singing at her. It was touching in a way, but it was also eerie. Stan was beginning to feel rushed and scared. He was sure that at any minute, soon and suddenly, the movement and power around them was going to come to a head, everything would go out of control. And being squashed together like that couldn't be good for her health, either.

The children began to push harder. They were smiling. The young men were smiling too, but they didn't try to get too near. All of them seemed riveted by the sight of Millie, and they kept staring at her necklace.

“Nick,” Stan said sharply, “let's get out of here, for God's sake. I've got the creeps.”

Nicholas threw back his head and let out a high, sustained scream like a battle-cry. Afterwards there was a lull in the noise around them. He began to speak quickly. Some of the young men answered.

“What's happening?” Stan asked. His own voice was shaky.

“They say they want Millie to join the party. They want her to play the bride. That thing she's wearing is like something associated with the god, something he always wears. This is all beyond me, you know. I've never heard any of this before.”

“All right,” Millie said, “I'll join the dance.”

“No,” Stan told her. “Take off the necklace and let them have it.”

“Not for anything. I don't know why you're being so free with my things. I'm the one it's supposed to belong to.”

“It's getting them all excited.”

“Wait till they see my Chinese ear-rings. I think I left them in my pocket.”

“Let's get out,” Stan said.

All at once, the ranks of swaying children parted. They sang the four visitors on their way. As they retreated, Nicholas said, “I told them Millie needed to be alone in order to prepare herself.”

“Prepare herself for what?” Pippa asked.

“Lord knows. But it's worked.”

When they reached the landrover and started off back to camp, Nicholas asked Millie about her life: had she grown up in such-and-such a place, had this number of sisters, that number of aunts, and so on.

“Yes. How did you know? I never told you all that, did I?”