“They’re nocturnal,” I reminded, and then hesitated, not wanting to share my thoughts. But the truth had to be faced if we were ever to live in peace here. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it were Tom. He looked mighty ticked off when I tossed him off the sofa. Maybe he came up here to vent his fury.”
Gwynn looked up in surprise. “Tom? But—but he seemed so content this afternoon.”
To prove Gwynn wrong, Tom stepped around the reed fence into our garden, hissing as if he owned the place, which, admittedly, he had until we’d arrived.
Woodie sank her claws into Gwynn’s arm, trembling even harder.
From then on I didn’t like Tom one bit.
My logic told me it wasn’t his fault. He’d had the entire island to himself before this little upstart appeared. But then so had Morag, and her behaviour was little better than Tom’s. Although I couldn’t openly fight Morag, I could sort out the cat. So I did, chasing him out of our yard.
“I must stay with her,” Gwynn said, sitting down to examine Woodie’s injuries.
Just beginning to realise the impracticality of having a city cat in the African wilds, I replied hesitantly, “Okay, I’ll go and check on the staff. And tonight I suggest we lock her up in the CIM room while we have supper. Just until we can sort Tom out.” I left Gwynn disinfecting Woodie’s wounds with Betadine cream from our first aid kit.
They were still busy when I returned ten minutes later.
Gwynn looked up from her ministrations. “Anything to report?”
“No sign of Morag. Alfred lit the fires in the donkey boilers (a small wood-burning furnace plumbed to the showers for heating barrels of water) so we’ll have hot water. Matanta is in the kitchen preparing snacks and dinner. Kekgebele is setting the table. Lecir asked me which guides to call for the guests tomorrow. Like I had the answer to that.”
“Did you ask Matanta for help?”
“Didn’t have to. He was right there. He suggested I call Kamanaga. You know, Morag is a great help. Don’t know what we’d do without her.” I headed for the shower. “Oh, and by the way, Lecir and Herb said they saw a lion on their walk. Apparently Mary almost wet herself.”
* * *
Half an hour later, with Woodie safely ensconced in the CIM room, Gwynn and I joined Herb and Mary around the campfire. The four of us enjoyed a drink while admiring the distant palm trees, black sentinels against a vivid red, orange, and pink sky. The moment the sun dipped below the horizon, a sticky humidity settled over my skin as sweet lily-scented air drifted in from the river. It could not have been more tranquil.
The peace was short-lived.
A fierce scream tore through the dusk, followed by a hysterical yowl.
We all jumped with fright.
Then it struck me that the sound was coming from the CIM room.
Gwynn and I, joined by Morag and Hazel who had just arrived, rushed over to investigate. I flung open the door, expecting to see Tom and Woodie battling it out, but the room was empty. The sound of fighting receded through the camp. It was then I noticed that the reed walls didn’t reach the roof—like that was news at Tau Camp. I could have kicked myself.
With no time to lose, Gwynn, Morag, and I ran after the cats, with Matanta bringing up the rear. Not to be out done, Hazel raced up and down the pathway, barking manically.
Morag grabbed Tom, and Gwynn and I finally caught Woodie at the entrance to our cottage. After spending a few minutes comforting her, Gwynn hid her in the rolled-up blind where she seemed happiest.
Steps heavy, we returned to our guests.
Morag, with Tom on her lap, sat with Herb and Mary at the fire. His eyes were closed as he blissfully leaned into her cuddle.
“Tom’s being a real bully,” Gwynn said, looking at them both with open loathing.
“What do you expect?” Morag replied. “You knew there was a cat here when you decided to come. Your cat must take her chances because Tom was here first.”
I could see Gwynn wasn’t going to let this pass unchallenged. I shook my head, wondering if there was a special Tau poison—something in the air, maybe?—that turned every discussion between senior camp management into a free-for-all to ‘entertain’ the guests. Before I could stop her, Gwynn shot an apologetic look at the wide-eyed Herb and Mary, and said to Morag, “Let’s talk. Right now.”
Morag put Tom down and followed Gwynn the few yards to the dining room. In true Tau fashion, Gwynn attacked before I’d even entered the room.
“Yes, Morag,” Gwynn snarled, sounding remarkably like the fighting cats. “I thought you’d say that about Tom. And I suppose I must take my chances, too, because you were here first? Well, understand something—Woodie might not win the fight against Tom, but I will win against you. And the reason for that is simple. You are just a teacher of sorts and I am just the manager. It’s the manager who decides what animals live where, not the teacher. As manager, I have decided: one more stunt like that, and Tom will be on the next mokoro, headed for Scops Camp.”
I sucked in a breath. Although I spoke glibly about running the camp on our own, we still needed Morag’s help. I hurried over to douse the flames.
Then I stopped.
Gwynn might like playing with fire—she does, literally—but this was no arson attack. Morag had made it abundantly clear she had no intention of teaching Gwynn anything to help her run the camp. My wife had taken the only face-saving option available to her—to go it alone. Pity she’d done it so publicly.
Morag stared at Gwynn. Then, she said, “But I am friends with Sandy. You can’t—”
“That does not make you bulletproof,” Gwynn snapped. “So don’t bother throwing it in my face again. I’m impervious.” She folded her arms across her chest, tilted her jaw up, and grilled Morag with flashing green eyes.
I held my breath, waiting for Morag’s reaction.
It was as unexpected as Tom’s attack on Woodie had been predictable. Morag walked out the room and disappeared into the night.
Still, something told me this wasn’t the end. Morag didn’t strike me as the kind who’d roll over and play dead just because someone snapped at her. The next few weeks were going to be interesting as these two struggled for ownership of this patch of jungle.
With a huge sigh, I took Gwynn’s hand and dragged her back to face her guests.
They looked embarrassed.
“I apologise,” I said in my most apologetic voice. “But Morag is making life somewhat difficult.”
Surprisingly, Herb came to Gwynn’s defence. “I sensed something like this might happen, but I didn’t think we would still be here to see it. Whatever happens, Gwynn, I wish you well in this lovely place. And, for what it’s worth, I think you and Andrew are already good managers.”
“Thank you, Herb, but I’m still sorry,” Gwynn said, quickly recovering from her anger, like she always did.
“I’m not,” I said, now that I knew the guests weren’t about to fire us. Yes, brave, I know. “Like Herb said, a showdown with you and Morag was inevitable. Now I can stop worrying about who’s going to throw the first bomb. Oh, and a direct hit, I think.”
Gwynn struggled to restrain her smile as she led Herb and Mary to dinner.
Our first night as managers of Tau Camp wasn’t a late one. After dinner, Gwynn and I locked up the pantry, and walked slowly through the shadows to our house.
The camp was full of sound. A tiny Scops owl purred its insect-like call, while crickets chirped merrily all around us. Ahead of us on the path, a fiery-necked nightjar called its mournful cry, “Good Lord Deliver Us.” Appropriate I thought. Far in the distance, we caught the sound of hyena yapping and laughing.
Then a new, unfamiliar noise.
We stopped to listen. It was a high-pitched, monotonous squeaking, rather like a rusty sign swinging in the wind. I was about to suggest we go and find it, when Gwynn whispered, “Woodie will be waiting for us.”
Sighing, I left the mystery unsolved, and we went to greet our cat
. She was still where we’d left her after the fight. Tom, too engrossed in snitching tidbits from the table, had not troubled her again.
I was just drifting off to sleep when Gwynn poked me in the back. “You awake?”
“I am now,” I mumbled.
“Just to let you know, I’ve shed all the tears I ever intend crying over Tau Camp. Starting tomorrow, I own this world.”
I smiled. This was the girl I’d married.
Chapter 19
The buzz of the alarm clock jerked me awake. I looked at the time in disbelief. Five thirty. It felt as if I’d only just gone to bed. Worse, my entire body ached from yesterday’s unaccustomed walking. Sadly, that was a testament to how unfit I was, given that I’d spent most of yesterday afternoon moping in the lounge.
I wasn’t the only one in pain, because Andrew groused, “I guess we’ve got to move, but I don’t think I can.”
“Are you aching too?”
“Muscles I didn’t even know I had.”
“The guests will be up soon,” I replied, wishing I wasn’t so painfully diligent.
“And the baboons.”
That decided it.
After dressing, we bade Woodie farewell and headed for the kitchen.
Halfway down the path we met Lesego. I called out a greeting, hoping to make up for my rudeness yesterday. He seemed please I’d remembered his name and fell into step with us. A few paces on, Andrew stopped, pointing to something in the bush not far from the kitchen door. I stepped off the path to pick it up—a large black saucepan.
“Damn,” Andrew muttered. “Did we miss the baboons?”
“No, Rra. They’re still on the other side of the runway, sitting in the sun,” Lesego replied.
“Well, something or someone got into the kitchen and swiped that pot,” Andrew said, walking purposefully to the door. There he stopped and his hand flew to his mouth.
I quickened my pace and then also stopped. The wood-and-mesh kitchen door lay on the floor in six tangled pieces, one corner still attached by a loose hinge.
“Eish!” Lesego gasped. “What could make such damage?”
“You live here, and you don’t know?” Andrew asked, stepping into the kitchen.
I followed, immediately stumbling over the oven warming-draw and two heavy steel pots. My mouth gaped as I found my feet. My kitchen looked as if a giant had picked it up and shaken it.
A large black dustbin, which had held the accumulation of yesterday’s rubbish, had been tipped over and the contents strewn over the floor. Next to it, a smaller plastic dustbin, used for collecting greens for the compost heap, had also been emptied, and then shredded. Tupperware boxes and bowls lay scattered everywhere, some of them sporting teeth marks. The plastic coating on the oven door handle had been gnawed away. All five knobs from the stove were gone. And, most frightening of all, the heavy gas range had been dragged at least three feet across the floor. The rubber gas pipe, stretched to breaking point, had stopped its progress.
“The burner on the fridges …they’re open flames,” I croaked, almost scared speaking out loud would ignite the gas. Our archaic fridges used a small flame as a heat-exchanger to turn bottled gas into…well, to be honest, I’m not sure because it certainly wasn’t cold air or ice.
“If that oven had moved an inch further,” I continued, “the pipe would have snapped and the gas would have exploded. We’d have lost the whole kitchen.”
“Imagine the radio call to Maun,” Andrew said. “Hello, Sean. Our first day was great. Today not so good. We blew up your camp.”
We both giggled—then stopped simultaneously when we spotted the piece de resistance of the carnage.
The door of our shiny, brand-new Fresh fridge hung open, the shelves neatly positioned on their racks with the greens untouched. Below, the floor was coated white with millions of tiny polystyrene balls. Our plastic junkie visitor had munched its way into the door lining, releasing the insulation. If that was not bad enough, it had also chewed the rubber door seal, which lay in three pieces in a sea of synthetic snow.
“What on Earth happened here?” I turned to see Herb and Mary standing behind us, ready for their morning walk.
“We were doing waiter training. But it’s not going very well,” Andrew said.
Lesego gave him a this-man-is-mad look while everyone else laughed.
“I thought for a moment it was the cats fighting,” Herb volunteered.
“Good one, Herb! Fortunately not, though. They’d really have wrecked the place,” Andrew replied.
“Then what do you think it was?” Mary asked. From her fearful tone, she didn’t see the funny side of all this.
“I’d say we were visited by a hyena,” Andrew said. “Amazing that we heard nothing last night. Did you?”
“Not a sound. We both slept like the dead,” Herb replied.
Now looking decidedly nervous, Mary asked, “But aren’t hyenas dangerous? I mean would they attack a person? Would they come near the cottages?”
“Spotted hyena, and this was probably a spotty, can be quite vicious,” I said.
“Especially if they’re in a pack,” Andrew added for spice.
“Do you think a pack did this?” Herb asked. His face glowed with excitement.
“Maybe,” Andrew said with a mischievous grin.
Mouth trembling, Mary started wringing her sunhat.
I took pity on her. “I think we’d definitely have heard something if a pack of hyenas had torn through the camp. I would say this was a solitary animal.”
“But aren’t they dangerous?” Mary repeated.
“Yes, of course they are,” Herb yelled at her. “You heard what Gwynn said.” Having shut his wife up, he continued with unbridled enthusiasm, “Do you think he’ll come back tonight? I’d love to see him. I’ve read that their jaws have the strongest bite out of all the African mammals. And they can be very nasty. Perhaps we can wait up for him? Hide behind a bush.”
I looked at Herb in delight. In one breath he’d admitted hyenas have a nasty bite and a bad temper, in the next, he was begging to be allowed to stay up and, from the scant protection of a bush, eavesdrop on this one’s dustbin raid. It was classic; you couldn’t make this up.
“Herb,” I asked innocently, “did you know hyenas often drive lions off their kills?”
Before he could reply, Andrew butted in. “Yes, they also attack campers during the night, biting their faces or feet if they sleep in the open. I remember one camping trip to the Savuti in southern Chobe when we ran into hyena.”
Herb leaned forward, mouth open, hanging onto Andrew’s every word. I bet he was looking forward to hearing that one of the party had been dragged off into the night.
“We’d made a stew in a heavy cast iron pot,” Andrew continued. “After supper, we filled it with water and left it to soak. During the night, we were visited by a spotty, and in the morning the pot was gone. We saw the tracks where he’d dragged it about hundred yards into the bush.”
As I expected, Herb’s face registered mild disappointment with that outcome. Mary just looked terrified—a bug just seconds before the chameleon’s tongue lashed out.
“Eish! Matata.” This was followed by a rapid series of tongue clicks.
We turned to see Lecir, Herb’s and Mary’s guide, standing at the door, shaking his head.
“A hyena come to cause trouble in the kitchen.” Lecir waved his arms to make his point. “It will come back now, many, many times.” He poked Andrew in the chest with knobbly finger. “You must shoot him. Hyena in camp is no good.” Having declared his verdict, he clasped Herb and Mary firmly by the arm and walked them out of the kitchen. “Today, we go for long walk. Find hyena. Then I bring you back for breakfast.”
They had just left when Morag took their spot. She shook her head, also clicking her tongue. Was that a Tau Camp thing?
“You’re the teacher,” I said to her. “Any ideas for warding off hyenas?”
She must have still been tic
ked off with me after our fight because she turned her back and made a point of looking at Andrew. I snorted; she’d have to try harder than that to get me down today. It was obvious by her silence that she had no bright ideas to offer.
Sounding somewhat overwhelmed, Andrew said, “He better not come back or else I’ll have to schedule the construction of a hyena-proof door into my maintenance programme.” He shot a disgruntled look at the Fresh fridge as if it was at fault for being mauled. “As it is, I must see if I can fix the fridge this morning.”
“Fix the fridge? Not possible,” Morag said.
She didn’t know Andrew like I did. Once on a fix-it mission, a few pieces of chewed plastic would not defeat him.
Andrew shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”
“Don’t forget you have to come to Otter Lodge with me today, too.” Morag’s voice brooked no argument.
“Okay,” Andrew said, annoyingly. What was his game? He knew I couldn’t stand her, so why was he sucking up to her?
Once we were alone, I asked. “Why are you helping Morag? We have more important things to sort out.”
“I’m going to make a deal with her. I’ll fix up Otter in exchange for her help with the admin. And when her house is fixed, she won’t be living here anymore.”
Ah…why hadn’t I thought of that? “Brilliant. Good boy. Off you go.” I waved him on with a grin. “I think today is going to turn out very well indeed.”
I stayed in the kitchen while Andrew tackled Morag. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but soon they were sitting together in reception, shuffling papers and ledgers. Andrew and I’d agreed, because he’s more methodical than I am, that he’d handle the bulk of the camp admin. The kitchen paperwork was my baby. I would have to find someone else to help me with my pink shopping lists.
Right now, that was the furthest thing from my mind. My kitchen had been trashed, and I had guests coming into camp in a few hours.
Chapter 20
Concentrating on bookkeeping was impossible. All I could hear were laughter and jokes coming from the kitchen. The morning staff were cleaning up the chaos from the hyena attack. I’d expected them to be annoyed at having to start the day by scrubbing, but no, they sounded as if they were having a party. Jealous, I took a break from Morag and headed over to join them. It was then I noticed Gwynn standing in the shadows, grinning. She quickly put her finger to her lips to silence me and beckoned me over to watch.
Torn Trousers: A True Story of Courage and Adventure: How a Couple Sacrificed Everything to Escape to Paradise Page 10
