The next morning in the office, as David was working at his desk, I told him what Bill and I had decided, hoping against hope that he would reassure me and be happy at the news. Instead, he looked up sharply, and said: ‘Are you quite sure you know what you are doing, Daphne? I hope I have not unwittingly influenced your decision or that you might have included me in your future.’ At that moment I felt as though I had been punched in the stomach and instantly saw red. ‘You should be so lucky,’ I retorted, striding from the room. At that moment I hated him, and driving back home I vowed never to set foot in his office again.
Needless to say, that resolve evaporated rapidly, and the next day David apologized for his tactless words. I could sense that he had something to ask me, and over a conciliatory cup of coffee he told me that Sir Julian Huxley, a much-respected scientist, and several other experts were flying down to Tsavo to take a look at the elephants’ impact on the habitat. A safari into the northern area was planned, and David asked me if I would be prepared to come along to supervise the catering in camp. Bill agreed that Jill and I would enjoy another safari, since he needed to fill his elephant licence and had planned, while on his hunting expedition, to spend time with Eugene.
The visitors were due to arrive imminently, so an advance party went on ahead to set up camp. There was nothing I enjoyed more than camping out in the bush, and I was well versed in what to do, consulting my reliable ‘master list’. Professional and a perfectionist in all he undertook, David’s safaris were luxurious compared to those of Bill, for he had, after all, escorted many VIPs, including the Aga Khan and his vast entourage, when working for the early professional hunting firm Safariland. Recalling my father’s take on Bill’s early camping habits, I couldn’t help smiling! David even had a safari fridge, which, in those days, was the height of luxury in a bush camp. It was enclosed in a stout box that opened at the front and back, and it made housekeeping in the bush a great deal easier, since we could take along plenty of fresh provisions. I took great pleasure in packing the smart green numbered chop-boxes with whatever we needed to produce gourmet meals for our VIP visitors. Like my mother and our pioneering ancestors, I was proficient at turning out fresh bread and even cakes while in the bush, something that never failed to impress important guests, and, more importantly, David. The oven was an empty paraffin tin, with a lengthways shelf halfway down and a door in front that closed. By heaping varying quantities of glowing coals around and on top of the tin, the temperature could be easily regulated, the trick being to know how much coal made up a hot, medium or cool oven. There were a few other tricks of the trade that I had up my sleeve, gleaned from my forebears. Carrots and other root vegetables could be kept for longer if ‘planted’ in damp earth, and poultry when gutted and stuffed with charcoal and leaves would keep for longer if it were left unwashed and hung in an airy place.
So it was that within minutes of arriving at our camping destination the tents sprang up like mushrooms under David’s supervision, and Jill and I busily began gathering wood so that a huge bonfire could be lit and the embers scraped aside for the safari kettle and the much-needed cup of tea. The safari kettle was mine, a huge black cast-iron monster weighing a ton that had come with Great-Uncle Will all the way from South Africa. Although water took ages to boil in it, it held the heat like no other, and once it was heated, tea or coffee was readily available at short notice. I knew that Jill was well versed in the do’s and don’ts of safari life, instinctively on the lookout for snakes and scorpions that might be sheltering in the nooks and crannies of the fallen logs we collected for the fire, and careful not to wander on her own too far from camp. As the tea brewed, the camp rapidly took shape. Ready-made bedding for each camp bed was unfolded from a rolled-up canvas bedroll; camp tables for the mess tent were draped with brightly coloured kekoy tablecloths, and a basin positioned beside each tent was filled with hot water, with towels secured to the guy ropes by a clothes peg. David’s camps were always sited with great attention to pleasing surroundings, with an eye for shade and the view and, where possible, within reach of water. Twelve-volt bulbs connected to a vehicle supplied electric light, and a hot bath or cold shower was always available, with a bamboo mat to keep feet clean as soon as one stepped out. The shower itself consisted of a rose fitted to a drum, which was filled with water to the required temperature, hoisted over a branch and anchored by a stout rope. Such luxury and detail in terms of camping was unusual and impressive in the 50s, even though today it is expected.
The night before the guests arrived, when Jill and the safari staff were asleep, David and I found ourselves alone by the campfire. We sat long into the night talking of many things and sharing memories, as the embers of the fire slowly dimmed to the music of the night – the plaintive piping of a pearl-spotted owlet, the roar of a distant lion, the splashing of elephants drinking downstream. As the embers were reduced to just a soft glow, inhibitions evaporated and our souls opened to the mutual longing in our eyes. David put his arm loosely around me as he walked me towards my tent. At the entrance, he turned as though to move away, but within a heartbeat he was back, crushing me to him as he kissed my lips, my hair, my eyes, my neck, murmuring that perhaps we should share a camp bed, just this once.
That night remains with me, indelibly etched in my soul. It was a night of wonder, igniting an all-consuming love that has not faltered since. It was a magical night, unleashing a passion and tenderness in David that I had hardly dared to allow myself even to dream of. Today I would give the rest of my life to simply experience that time again. I hold it deep within my heart, along with an image of him that never fades. As the cool yellow light of the Tsavo moon framed the entrance of the tent, I knew that I would love this man for ever.
With daylight came the guilt, of course – and with the guilt, the guests. From then on neither he nor I could deny ourselves the stolen opportunities that came our way in all sorts of wild and unlikely places. Now I knew David’s body as well as his mind, and both were strong and beautiful.
7. New Beginnings
‘I have a very handsome man, who is honey to a bee; he fluttered every female heart, and that included me. And some were coy, and others bold, and some had hair of shining gold. But of the many in the game, just one would live to bear his name.’
– Anon
At the end of 1958 Jill and I left the wild spaces of Tsavo and headed for Nairobi. We moved in with my sister Sheila and her family and I found work as a secretary in a finance office. While I mostly felt as if I were suffocating, Jill adapted to our new life, enjoying the company of her young cousins, Alistair and Valerie, and attending a nearby nursery school. Sheila and her husband, Jim, kindly welcomed us into their home, the sound of children’s voices and lively piano-playing filling the house each evening after work. Nights were my worst time: I was haunted by the decisions I had made, racked by insecurity and anxiety. It was not as if David had even hinted at a life together with him, and on the evening of my departure from Tsavo, as the night train left the platform at Voi station, I tearfully watched his tall figure diminish until the station was just a glow of yellow lights beyond the curve of the horizon. I knew that I could not live without this man. But David had continued to make it clear that he was too scarred by the experience of his first marriage ever to contemplate it again, so I had no idea what lay ahead. It was the love and support of my family, together with Jill’s sunny disposition, that got me through those dark-blue days.
By this time, my younger sister Betty was also working in Nairobi and it was she who secured me a job, working in the same office but for a different boss. Her fiancé, Graham Bales, was extremely helpful and supportive of our family and was already a great favourite with us all. Betty and I had not spent much time together as we grew up, the four years between us separating our paths through school. I had left home when she was just fifteen, so this was a welcome opportunity to get to know her and Graham, whom she had met at their Baptist chapel. It was a surprise to find
that Betty had become so religious, but she was never judgemental about my situation, already very fond of David as well as Bill. Graham was a truly good man who I could see was going to be a devoted husband, and I was happy for Betty – happy, too, that Jill now had the opportunity to spend time with her cousins and aunts.
Like me, Jill missed being in the open air of the bush country. Bill was soon settled at Nyeri, with the Aberdare Mountains, with which he was so familiar, just a stone’s throw away, so Jill enjoyed visiting him whenever opportunity permitted. The sordid process of initiating divorce proceedings of course fell to me and it turned out that there were two avenues I could pursue – proving cruelty, which certainly was not an option, or adultery. The lawyer advised me that the charge of adultery would be easy to prove but would require Bill’s cooperation, along with a considerable loan from my father, for it would entail employing a detective who would have to witness Bill and a hired lady ‘partner’ signing in at the hotel as Mr and Mrs. They then had to be seen leaving the hotel together the next morning, having ostensibly shared the same bed. The detective’s testimony together with the hotel register would suffice for the court proceedings, and this, said the lawyer, was how most incompatible couples managed to untie the marriage knot. Bill was willing to follow this option and so duly signed into the Avenue Hotel, though he remarked later that he would rather have taken Eugene along than the woman he found himself with in the hotel room. Following presentation of the ‘evidence’, the court then issued the decree nisi, but we had to wait a full year for the decree absolute to come through and officially dissolve our marriage. Bill was amusingly supportive throughout this process and we remained good friends, something that seemed to amaze everyone. From our perspective, we had merely made a simple mistake when young – no reason at all now to become arch-enemies.
However, every day my mind was 300 miles away in Tsavo with David. I missed him and Tsavo sorely and lived for his letters, unsettled whenever he alluded to a Saturday night party at the Voi Hotel. I longed to meet Kanderi and Aruba, two newly orphaned elephants that had been welcomed joyously into the fold by Samson and Fatuma. By now Samson was well over six feet tall and the self-appointed ‘prefect’ of the group, basking in the admiration of the other little bull, Kanderi, while Fatuma as the matriarch was the leader, focused on mothering both Kanderi and Aruba. She and Samson often met up with wild elephants during sorties along the Voi River, where they went to enjoy a wallow during the heat of the day. David wrote that Fatuma had played truant one day, opting to go off with a wild herd and taking Kanderi and Aruba with her. By nightfall they had not yet returned and David wondered whether this was the parting of the ways. Samson was restless that night, bellowing and trumpeting, obviously missing his three friends, and the next morning he was even more forlorn, refusing to accompany the keepers out into the bush as usual and even uncharacteristically disinterested in food, fluid running from his temporal glands an indication of emotional distress.
At the time, wrote David, he had guests in residence, and that evening, returning from a trip to Mudanda, they came across a herd of twenty-five or so elephants feeding on an open plain. At the approach of the vehicle the herd moved off, but three familiar figures remained behind, clearly puzzled by the nervousness of their wild friends. ‘I recognized Fatuma at once,’ wrote David, ‘so I got out of the car to call her. She immediately came hurrying over to me, little Kanderi and Aruba trailing behind. She wanted me to join her in following the herd, after a few paces turning round to see if I was coming. When she saw I hadn’t moved, she came back to me, rumbled softly and wrapped her trunk around me, so I stood there with her beside me until the herd had moved off. I decided to let the guests drive the car back while I walked Fatuma, Kanderi and Aruba home.’
David then recounted his walk with the elephants back across country and I could visualize every step as though I were there myself. The night was pitch black, the indistinct outline of Mazinga Hill just a distant beacon, so he could see only a couple of paces in front of him. However, the elephants knew the way unerringly, never faltering for a moment. What touched him the most was the fact that they seemed to understand that he was disadvantaged in the dark and knew he needed guidance. As it became darker, they pressed closer to him, until he found himself sandwiched between Fatuma and Kanderi, walking with a hand resting lightly against a foreleg, the pace of their walk adjusted to match his own. He knew that they passed other groups of elephants in the dark, as he could hear them and even smell them, and it surprised him that the orphans avoided contact, presumably because they instinctively knew that David’s presence would be unwelcome. ‘It was such a humbling and stirring experience,’ he continued. ‘I felt at one with them in their world, entirely dependent on them for my safety, sheltered and protected as if I were one of their own. How I wish we humans could interpret what was going on beyond our field of vision by smell or hearing like they can. It took about four hours to get back, and you should have seen the welcome Samson gave us. He was beside himself with joy.’
This account made me yearn to return to Tsavo, and I was elated when a week or so later, with the Easter weekend break approaching, David invited me to visit the newly completed ‘game blind’ on the banks of the Tiva River. He added that he would invite my parents as well, sure that they would enjoy seeing Peter, and I would be respectably chaperoned. In those days it was not proper for a single girl to be alone in a house with an eligible man, so my parents agreed to meet me in Tsavo while Sheila offered to look after Jill, who was more than happy to stay with her cousins. I will never forget this first journey back to Tsavo from Nairobi – boarding the overnight Mombasa train straight from work, dozing to the rhythm of the rocking carriage and waking in the moonlight as the nyika began to unfold in the early hours of the morning. As the train passed slowly through the eerie little station of Tsavo and shadows danced on the windows, my thoughts turned to the infamous Tsavo lions, which were known to patrol the platform at night and in the past had dragged people out of the carriages and had devoured hundreds of Indian workers building the railway. When the train rattled on towards the home stretch and the hands of my watch approached 4 a.m., my heart began to race with nervous excitement. Soon I could detect the glow of Voi station and make out David’s tall silhouette on the platform. It took all my self-control to walk sedately down the steps, kiss him lightly on the cheek in front of the throng of people also waiting on the platform, hand him my bag and walk to the waiting car. But once we were clear of the town, David stopped the car and took me into his arms, holding me tight and kissing me passionately.
The next morning, I was overjoyed to be reunited with my parents, warmly welcomed by all the team at Park HQ and delighted to see Samson and Fatuma, who proudly showed off their two new friends. Over breakfast, David spoke vividly about the ‘elephant problem’, about which he was clearly deeply concerned, explaining that Sir Julian Huxley had concluded that one third of the elephant population of Tsavo would have to go if the Park were not to be reduced to a desert. This was a shocking recommendation. The prospect of an indiscriminate cull of Tsavo’s elephants seemed like the ultimate betrayal, but no alternative solution had so far presented itself. The Galana Game Management Scheme, in which a large chunk of land between the eastern boundary of the Park and the coast had been set aside for the Waliangulu to be able to harvest a specified number of elephants and other animals annually on a sustained yield basis, marketing the ivory, meat and hides legally as a cooperative game ranch, had failed. All the elephants had left for the sanctity of the Park, and others had become so wild that it was impossible to get at them. In any case, for David the concept of ‘sustainable yield’ was flawed, as it was quite impossible to try and ‘farm’ wild free-ranging animals as one would the domestic species. The only solution would appear to be in targeting breeding female age groups throughout the entire population to reduce recruitment and numbers, but the practicality of this was non-existent. The conventional metho
d of annihilating intact families, as in southern Africa, merely relieved the pressure on the land, made life easier for the elephant population, and the breeding rate went up. Female elephant units remain bonded for life, their love and support of family members strong and enduring, so wading into the female herds would result in a dangerously berserk elephant population that would pose a threat to visiting tourists.
But something had to be done, for sure, and public pressure was mounting through the media. As we set off for Ithumba and David’s new game blind, I couldn’t help noticing the scale of devastation bordering Tsavo’s main watercourses, far worse now than when I had last been there. Tree debris lay in tangled heaps on bare baked soil; baobabs were actually gouged out, with some even felled entirely. The elephant problem obviously dominated David’s mind and kept him awake at night, but here, on our first reunion – albeit with my parents in tow – he put it briefly aside and enjoyed the moments we could share.
Love, Life, and Elephants Page 14
