“How did they know?”’ Christopher asked.
“You tell me, and we’ll both know!” Craig snapped. Janet expected Christopher to make some sarcastic remark about Craig’s competence, or lack thereof. She was surprised, pleased and relieved: when he didn’t.
The ride back took forever. As the sun dipped heavily on the horizon, the lengthening shadows gave the landscape a gloomy turn that did nothing to lift Janet’s sagging spirits.
The caravan reached the mouth of the Great Zimbabwe Valley at the moment when the setting sun performed one of those miracles only possible in Africa. Within a split second, the gloominess was eradicated in a burst of glorious sunshine that set ground and trees aglow with tawny fire. Everything was magically dipped in gold—each leaf, branch, shrub, puff of dust, and blade of grass. The distant Great Enclosure was a glowing diadem: the crowning treasure. The sky was awash with variegated shades of peach, the sun melting behind gilt-edged clouds.
The beauty of the scene contrasted with Janet’s memory of the waterhole. She felt confused by a country so cruel one minute and so breathtakingly wondrous the next. She was tempted to turn to Christopher and see what the dying rays did to the blondness of his hair and the golden hue of his eyes but resisted. She resented this finish to the day—it was too splendid. She would have preferred no muting of the horrible scene that had preceded it.
The Land Rovers moved through the valley, reaching the dirt road that paralleled the military encampment. The two escort vehicles peeled off. Craig drove Janet and Christopher to the hotel. It was dark when they arrived, the parking lot milky in the weakness of a few phosphorescent bulbs.
“How can you let those poor animals be butchered?” Janet asked, turning on Christopher with a fury she didn’t know had built to fever pitch.
“How can I?” Christopher asked, confused. “I hardly see how I have anything to do with it, Janet. From, what I understand, the killing took place before I got here.”
“You’ve power. You’ve friends in high places. You’ve clout,” Janet insisted. She sounded like an ad proclaiming reasons for taking on a credit card.
“Maybe we should talk about my power, friends and clout,” Christopher said seriously. “We have to talk about many things. Why not those, too? Shall we begin our discussions over supper?” Supper? Janet was aghast. The thought of food after what she had seen that afternoon was enough to bring back waves of nausea. “I understand the food isn’t gourmet here” he continued, “but I’m sure that can be overlooked in the presence of pleasant company.”
“How can you think of food?” she condemned, unable to believe his callousness. “Didn’t you see what I saw? Didn’t you feel what I felt?”
“Listen, Janet,” Christopher said patiently. “Our starving isn’t going to resurrect seven dead elephants. You want to talk about how to save the ones that are left, that’s fine. I’ll be happy to hear your ideas on how I can be of help. But it’s not going to do you, or the elephants, or me, one bit of good to make yourself ill. What you saw this afternoon is tragic, yes. But it’s also a fact of life around here. You’ll be lucky if you don’t see far worse before you leave. So try to get hold of yourself.”
“Well, I’m not hungry!” she said with finality. It angered her that what he said was true. The elephants were dead. They were evidence of a problem that had existed long before she arrived at Great Zimbabwe. Her irrational emotions were at work again, but she couldn’t help it.
“Very well,” Christopher said, seemingly disappointed. “We can do our talking over breakfast. I presume you’ll be eating by then?”
“Breakfast is out of the question!” she said, furious that she wasn’t as calm and cool as he was. “Craig and I are flying to Victoria Falls in the morning.” It just came out. She was grabbing for excuses, and there it was. She was afraid something might have changed since Craig had issued the invitation. The poaching situation had obviously escalated in his absence. Maybe he couldn’t spare the time to show her the sights. Maybe—
“That’s right. I did promise her Victoria Falls,” Craig said, coming to her rescue. “We’ll leave before dawn and eat a little something after we get there.”
Janet was afraid Christopher would ask to tag alone. The idea of facing Victoria Falls with him wasn’t something she relished. Their last time there conjured up too many precious memories, now, that she didn’t want shattered any faster or more completely than she could manage on her own. There was no doubt in her mind that the memories must be destroyed. But as with much-loved pets, there was a right way and a wrong way of putting them to rest. Christopher at Lionspride had raised havoc with Janet’s attempts to erase the past. Christopher at Victoria Falls would make things equally impossible.
He didn’t ask to join them. What he said, though, was no less disturbing. “How does it feel, Captain Sylo, to know Janet is using you to make me jealous?”
“Is that what she’s doing?” Craig asked. He was unfazed; he was amused.
“Aren’t you, Janet?” Christopher persisted.
“You’re crazy!” she said, hating the way he put her on the defensive.
“Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t answer my question, does it?” Christopher pointed out, his voice triumphant.
“No, I’m not trying to make you jealous!” she said with all the insistence she could muster.
“And that little lie fools no one!” Christopher said. “Not me, not Captain Sylo, certainly not you. Drop by for our talk when you’re through playing games.”
She watched him go. As always, she was saddened by the way they never managed even a slight rapport. There was a time—fading fast and far distant—when they had never quarreled, had never said one harsh word to each other.
“Sounds as if there was more between you two in Johannesburg than one interview,” Craig said. She had forgotten he was there.
“Less than he’s willing to admit,” she said bitterly. Perhaps more than she was willing to admit?
“He’s a fine catch,” Craig said, echoing Roger’s sentiments in Johannesburg. Christopher was monopolizing everyone’s thoughts. There were other things that were more important—like those poor dead elephants.
“What if it turns out to be true that I am using you without knowing it?” Janet asked quietly. Craig was an innocent third party. It disturbed her to think she might inadvertently be entangling him in her and Christopher’s emotional web. She didn’t really see much of a possibility of having an intimate relationship with the captain. On the other hand, she dated lots of men who could be regarded simply as friends. It was ridiculous to reject Craig as a possible friend because of half-baked innuendos thrown out by a pouting Christopher.
“I’m a big boy,” Craig said. “I can handle my own with Mr. Van Hoon.”
“I wouldn’t want to be unfair in any way, Craig,” she said, turning to him in the darkness. He was such a considerate man. Why couldn’t she love him?
“I promise I won’t be hurt,” he assured her, “no matter what you decide in the end. How’s that for a guarantee?”
“You’re very nice,” she said. “Really, you are.”
She let him kiss her, hoping for fireworks that didn’t materialize. After sixteen years, Christopher retained a hold over her that still made her unfit for any other man.
CHAPTER SEVEN
VICTORIA FALLS never seemed to change. Any differences were the kind that required thousands of years to be noticeable to the naked eye. The government worked to maintain the natural unexploited look that was almost un-American in its absence of concession stands and falls-view tourist hotels. The hotels, three of them, were built a good distance from where the Zambezi River widened to seventeen hundred meters and plunged into a vertical chasm the width of the river. All that was visible of the falls from the veranda of the Victoria Falls Hotel, from which Janet and Craig started out after a late breakfast, were clouds of spray often reaching five hundred meters in height. The African name for the specta
cle was Mosi oa tunya—the smoke of many thunders.
It was a good kilometer walk to the gorge, almost another two kilometers along the edge opposite the tumbling water. The un-commercialized beauty gave the illusion that civilization was miles away. On November 16, 1855, David Livingstone was the first white man to see the view. “Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight,” he wrote in uncharacteristically flowery prose and christened the spot after Queen Victoria.
Rumbling thunder on their left, rain forest on their right, dense growth periodically opened into pristine clearings in which antelope grazed. Wild monkeys played in a nearby tree. Antelopes and monkeys had been there sixteen years before, but the present-day wildlife appeared somehow less vibrant to Janet’s eye.
Raincoats they had rented at the hotel protected them against sudden updrafts of steamy spray. The yellow slickers were reminiscent of the rubber coats Janet and Christopher had donned at the Van Hoon Deep Levels Mine. Less careful on their previous visit to the falls, Janet and Christopher had braved shifting mists without protection, getting exhilaratingly soaked. Christopher had hugged her on the edge of the precipice, while rainbows arched almost full circles. Craig obliged her with a protective hug as the two peered cautiously over the steep edge. None of it was the same.
She wasn’t glad she had come. Thinking about the good times was too painful. Rather than blotting out those memories she reinforced them. Helpless comparisons emphasized all that was gone. She was just another tourist; before she had been more. At eighteen, Christopher had added an elusive magic.
“Does it bring back old memories?” Craig asked. It was undiplomatic question, but he couldn’t know that.
“It’s beautiful,” Janet said noncommittally. They reached the end of the pathway and stood on another brink of the gorge. Around them, mist shot upward. Moisture tingled their skin with refreshing dampness. So many small birds darted on the updrafts that it was a miracle there were no collisions.
“Rainbow!” Craig said. The sun penetrated a drifting curtain of moisture, imposing a multicolored arc on the ethereal canvas.
There had been another morning on the edge of this precipice, another rainbow, another man who had taken her in his arms. There had been another kiss that was the chief reason Janet allowed this one. She was comparing again, when comparisons were unfair to Craig. His kisses wouldn’t stand up to those received when she was thirteen and dewy-eyed with illusions of first love.
Craig wanted another kiss, but she shook her head sadly. He didn’t press for an advantage. He was a gentleman—something Christopher had forgotten how to be somewhere along the line. Christopher would have persisted. He would have taken full advantage of their precarious perch, locking her in his arms, his mouth greedily drinking from the spray-splattered wetness of her lips.
She shook off those day dreams. Christopher wasn’t here. She didn’t want him here, but she missed him anyway.
“Still worried about using me?” Craig asked. There was a miraculous shift in the wind that bared a segment of pathway. The ground was damp, leaves glossy with moisture, but the sun was warm.
“Sometimes I get confused,” Janet admitted, “about my feelings for Christopher.” She hadn’t intended to speak of him, especially to this near stranger, but Craig seemed sympathetic.
He answered her in a quiet reassuring voice. “He seems less confused about his feelings toward you,” he said, pushing back a water-laden branch that bled liquid down his arm.
“Oh, he knows what he wants from me all right,” Janet said, her voice dripping sarcasm. “However, you’ll excuse me if I find it not in the least romantic.”
“I see,” Craig said. She wondered if he did.
“It seems to me,” Janet said carefully, “that people these days jump into physical intimacy without considering any other kind—I mean without taking emotions into account. Not that I’m emotionally involved with Christopher,” she hastened to add. “It’s just that his standards of behavior are very different from my own. Do you see what I mean?”
“Sure, I understand,” Craig answered. “Christopher’s problem is that he comes from another world. The rich have their own morals. Most of us poor slobs are unhappy because we can’t pay our bills, or build houses, or buy cars. Love makes our disappointments bearable. The rich don’t have those everyday disappointments. Love is, therefore, less necessary as a panacea.”
“To Christopher, money is paramount,” Janet said sadly. “But money isn’t everything, as the old cliché says.”
“So why does everything else come in a distant second?” Craig asked, surprising her with his sentiment.
“You don’t believe that!” Janet chided. A wispy veil of moisture shrouded them for seconds before releasing them to more sunshine.
“Sometimes I do,” Craig admitted. “I find myself wishing I were in Christopher Van Hoon’s shoes for a day to see what it’s like to get the money, the power, the women.” Was he thinking of her in particular, Janet wondered?
“Don’t you dare wish such a thing on yourself!” she insisted. “You stay the way you are. There are too many emotional weaklings in the world—there’s no call to wish you were one. Money makes a man believe everything is for sale. That simply isn’t true.”
The wet fog moved in. Cool drops of water seeped beneath the collar of Janet’s slicker and trickled between her breasts. On the trail just ahead, a man sought momentary protection beneath the shelter of a tree. A persistent ray of sunlight illuminated his wet hair, converting blond to radiant gold. Janet thought it was Christopher. She expected him at every turn. He followed her to Great Zimbabwe. Why not to Victoria Falls? Her legs were weak. Her mind flashed memories: two kids drenched to the skin and futilely trying to escape the deluge beneath branches too wet to shelter them.
“It’s not Christopher,” Craig said, giving her hand a squeeze. It wasn’t. It was a young man. Eighteen? There should have been a thirteen-year-old girl with him.
“A little wet!” the young man said. Janet was embarrassed—because she had been staring, because Craig had read her thoughts.
“More than a little wet,” Janet amended, her laugh unreal to her ears.
“It’s worth it, though, isn’t it?” he said. He wasn’t wearing a slicker. The muscles of his chest showed beneath his plastered shirt. Sixteen years before, Christopher’s shirt had been the same way, and his pants. Now there was sexiness to the memory, even though Janet hadn’t used that word in those days.
“Yes, it is worth it,” Janet agreed. She looked away, fearing the boy might misconstrue the message in her eyes. The message wasn’t for him. It was for someone who was a boy no longer. She gave Craig’s arm a tug, and they moved on. “How did you know I thought he was Christopher?” she asked.
“He fooled me for a minute, too,” Craig admitted. “I guess I’ve been expecting Christopher all along. He had a determined look last night. He’s not the kind of man who gives up what he wants. Any idiot can see he wants you.”
“He wants another acquisition,” she said bitterly. It wasn’t an easy admission. It was painful, humiliating. “I’m one more tomato in the supermarket.” Craig laughed at the simile, and his laughter made Janet feel better. “Why are we spoiling the morning by talking about Christopher Van Hoon?” she asked incredulously, determined to shift the conversation. “I can’t believe, with all this natural wonder around us, we’re wasting our time on him.”
“It sometimes helps to talk things out,” Craig said.
“I’d rather not if you don’t mind,” She couldn’t share her memories with anyone. Not yet.
“Then maybe you should at least talk to Christopher,” Craig said. His suggestion surprised her. She was a little let down that he would surrender her to Christopher so easily. Craig read her disappointment. “Actually, that wasn’t Craig Sylo, adviser to the lovelorn, you just heard,” he commented. “It was a concerned naturalist who sees the possibility of Christopher’s becoming a ma
jor force in animal preservation. That same naturalist sees a lady who might convert him.” Janet wasn’t sure she found that flattering, either. “I’m not for a minute suggesting you compromise yourself or your morals by encouraging Christopher in order to bribe him to join our cause,” Craig said hurriedly. He was ahead of her every step of the way. “It’s just that, whether or not you care to admit it, I sense electricity between you two that hints at something more lasting than an overnight roll in the hay. Why not use it for a good purpose?”
“You’re imagining things!” Janet snapped.
“You know better than I do,” Craig granted. After a pause, he qualified that with a, “Maybe.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Janet asked, piqued by the turn of the conversation.
“As a third party, I’m possibly more objective,” Craig clarified.
“And possibly you’re not!” Janet said with a finality she hoped ended the subject of Christopher Van Hoon once and for all. It didn’t.
“He offered to talk about saving the animals,” Craig reminded her. “That’s a concession I doubt he’s made to anyone before. Talking doesn’t mean you have to go to bed with him, does it?” They walked in silence, taking the cutoff that led back to the hotel.
Christopher had offered, and Janet had let the offer slide by. If she were as concerned about animal preservation as she pretended, she would have swallowed her pride and jumped at the opening he’d given her.
“I can’t blame you if you’re skittish,” Craig said, “especially if, as I suspect, you’ve been burned by Christopher before. He’s a formidable opponent, no matter what the game. But you’re not playing alone this time, Janet. I’m here—to talk if you want to talk, to run to if our friend finds it too difficult to take no for an answer.”
She knew it was a reason to continue a relationship with Christopher, even if it wasn’t the reason or the type of relationship she wanted. She didn’t plan to go to bed with him, even if he offered the salvation of every last animal in Africa. But she could make him see his duty to keep alive a part of Africa—that was important. “I’m not promising anything,” she said. They were some distance from the falls now, and she unsnapped her slicker. Craig helped her off with it.
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