Footprints of Lion

by Beverley Harper

‘And I’m older than him.’

  ‘Cecily is older than Stephen.’

  ‘True.’ Ellie stared off into the distance.

  ‘He won’t get in the way of your studies, not if he wants to be a doctor too.’

  ‘Lindsay wants to get out there and be a missionary. I don’t know, Mother; I’m more interested in mending people’s bodies than saving their souls.’

  ‘You can combine both. In fact, it’s perfect.’

  ‘That’s what Lindsay says.’ Ellie sighed and turned to Lorna. ‘Have you been speaking to him?’

  ‘No. It makes sense, though.’ Lorna watched her daughter and thought, she has no idea of her beauty.

  It was true. Ellie, at twenty-five, was not everybody’s idea of beautiful. She wore unglamorous oval glasses – thanks to burning the midnight oil over too many nights of study – perched atop a tip-tilted nose which gave her a bird-like look. Behind the glasses, though, large and vibrant in colour, flecked with gold and rimmed perfectly with mauve, were two of the most delightfully blue eyes anyone could imagine. Framed by thick gold lashes, dark arches of amber above and crowned by a mop of short-cropped blonde hair which, despite Ellie’s best efforts, insisted on curling, she had the look of a fresh-faced tomboy. Her wide, smiling mouth seemed to invite a similar response. Lindsay, the man who had captured her heart, found the combination irresistible.

  For her part, the somewhat large yet naturally kind younger man – Lorna did try to tell her daughter that six months was neither here nor there – with friendly eyes, warm hands and the gentlest kiss in the world, had turned her life upside-down. Lindsay and Ellie became lovers– a fact she omitted from frank and free conversations with her mother. A body was a body and it was there to function in whichever way God designed. In matters sexual, it was no different from anything else.

  With deft, expert movements, Mister David swung pastry over the pie, slit it perfectly, and thumbed down around the edges, frowning with concentration as he worked. Dallas liked his strudel stuffed full of apple and liberally covered with sugar, so that the cooking fruit could flow from each gash in the crust making a gooey mess as it mixed with the sweetener. Lorna preferred everything in moderation, including strudel. Cameron took after his father. Torben picked at food. His wife ate anything put in front of her; Duncan and Meggie tended to do the same. Catering for such a range of preferences made life interesting but the outcome was usually a foregone conclusion. Dallas and Cameron won hands down.

  When life picked up the Granger-Acheson family and placed them at Morningside, Mister David had carried on his duties as induna. For this reason he missed a lot of the two youngest boys’ growing-up. Duncan and Frazer, now twenty-two and nineteen respectively, had a close though unusual relationship. They were as different as chalk and cheese – Duncan sometimes bordering on wild, Frazer quiet and artistic. Where Duncan had a vociferous temper, Frazer preferred to solve problems with calmer words. Everything about them was so directly opposite that even Lorna and Dallas wondered how the two managed to get along so well together.

  Duncan’s bedroom, for example, was a mess of boys’ stuff – cricket bats, tennis racquets, balls, discarded clothes, projects started and never finished. Frayed pennants, sepia team photographs from Hilton College and silver trophies confirmed his prowess at sport. Duncan regarded the accolades as normal. What was on the floor stayed on the floor until a maid cleared it away. He never bothered to ask where anything went, assuming he’d find whatever he wanted in a drawer if and when it was needed.

  Duncan rarely bothered to pull curtains, close windows, tidy cupboards or check his clothes for spiders, scorpions, snakes or just plain muck. He was, as his mother once said, ‘a noise with dirt on it’. Duncan was born making loud sounds. His love of tearing paper ended abruptly, only to be replaced by a fascination with seeing how things worked. He nearly killed himself on several occasions – the most notable being the day he tried to dismantle one of Dallas’s old wagons, which fell on his leg, pinning him underneath. A jagged scar was evidence of that episode but it didn’t stop him. Duncan went on from there to tinker with farm machinery until, at eight, he was banned from the workshop – and also barred from playing with anything mechanical, such as the laundry mangle into which he had nearly fed a cat’s tail. No malice was intended; he simply had a desire to see what would happen. Duncan was no bully or brute. He had sensitivity where others of similar nature had none. The cat’s tail notwithstanding, Duncan’s temper would be sure to flare if he perceived obvious injustice or cruelty. Like his mother, Duncan verbalised displeasure. He rarely resorted to physical violence, quick to back off as if alarmed by the possible consequences.

  Frazer, on the other hand, was neat to the point of obsession. His room had a place for everything and, if an overzealous maid put something back in the wrong position, Frazer would quietly return it to where it belonged. His walls were adorned with drawings of African animals – mainly his own, though he had managed to acquire some fine pieces from elsewhere. Art was Frazer’s passion – crayon and pencil drawings, watercolours and, more recently, an experimental foray into oil painting. His work ranged from expansive vistas which captured the very essence of Africa to amazingly detailed studies of its fauna. Portraits and the like he left to those for whom nature held no fascination.

  Being the two youngest boys, Duncan and Frazer played a lot of games together, most of which they made up. Some included Zulu children of similar ages, like Mister David’s eldest son, Henry, who introduced them to the art of spear throwing. Tests of skill were keenly contested but when Duncan and Henry went off to prove their prowess, seeking out small buck or giant rats in the stands of sugar cane, Frazer always found something else he had to do. Despite his dislike of hunting for hunting’s sake, Frazer was no wet blanket. In stature he was solidly built, tall with a broad chest, tapering waist and slim hips. Blond like Lorna, he resembled Ellie facially, with one exception: her glasses. Frazer had excellent eyesight.

  Both boys enjoyed more than a passing interest in the opposite sex. Surprisingly, it was Frazer who would normally find favour, soft words and gentle eyes winning hands down over the swashbuckling bravado to which his brother resorted. Older by two years, Duncan took these setbacks philosophically, secretly pleased for his younger sibling.

  When Frazer went away, as he had now, Duncan missed him. It was strange not having a head popping around the corner of his bedroom door with a quiet ‘Got a minute?’. The five-year gap between himself and Cameron was the difference between an adult and a fledgling. He loved his older brother but felt very much the junior. Torben was never part of the equation, being as distant from Duncan as the years had made Katie.

  Pie finished, Mister David popped it into the oven. The rest was easy: cold meats and salad. Dallas would grumble but the strudel should more than make up for that. Served with fresh cream and wild honey from the farm, it would bring a gleam to his employer’s eye.

  FOUR

  Two hundred and fifty miles more or less due west of Morningside, another family also sat down to lunch. Compared to the Granger-Achesons, their manners were atrocious.

  A relative youngster had chanced upon the meal. He hadn’t even been looking for one. Out for a walk to stretch his youthful limbs, lethargic from inactivity in the spot he’d chosen for a morning nap, the two and a bit year old lion virtually stumbled over it. As a young male he was nearing his last days with the pride. Soon they would kick him out to fend for himself. He was learning to do just that and, an opportunist by nature, wasted no time securing his share, more if he could, of such a windfall.

  The victim stared skywards, unseeing. Two hours earlier, he had been a strapping sixteen year old boy out in search of a buck of some kind so that his mother would have venison to cook later that week. The fact that he was on someone else’s land was of no concern to him. He was Danny Reese. His father owned nearly ten thousand morgen – about twenty thousand acres – around their house and the best herd of A
frikander cattle in the Orange Free State. Danny could do what he liked, or so he thought. Now he was dead, a bullet hole in the middle of his chest the apparent cause. And the reason? A twenty year old feud between his father and the perpetrator’s.

  Ripping into soft groin flesh, the lion made rapid inroads, tearing out both stomach and bowel to reach more favoured morsels, and was soon breaking his way up through the rib cage. Hungry, he was not at all bothered to be eating his only real predator. This one could not harm him. As still-warm intestines spilled onto sunbaked ground, the distinctive aroma brought others who, using their status and strength within the pride, soon swiped and snarled him off the feast. Before long, the boy’s body was surrounded by gorging, mannerless lions.

  ‘Pa, Pa, Pa!’ ’Torben asked, ignoring him.The terror and excitement in Erich Gil’s voice alerted his parents that something serious was bothering the usually taciturn youngster. The boy was fourteen, big for his age, with bushy tow-coloured hair and pale grey-blue eyes which rarely registered emotion. His long nose was noticeably crooked, broken years ago in a scuffle with an African boy. He had a mouth that hardly ever smiled and, when it did, seemed shy and uncertain. Erich’s head was too large for his body, which was in turn too large for his arms and legs. God had bestowed on him huge hands and feet in an attempt to compensate but all these gave him was a misshapen appearance, clumsy movements and a tendency to try to hide both features by sitting on them.

  Erich Gil was, according to their neighbour and his father’s longstanding enemy, ‘a fuck-up’. But the fuck-up had just done something he’d never forget – killed that very neighbour’s pride and joy; his son, Danny. As the entire Gil family were well aware, holier-than-thou Wallace Reese did not forget or forgive anything, especially a direct challenge and particularly where it involved his only son. In this case the deed had been carried out – on the surface, anyway – for no other reason than simple trespass.

  ‘What is it, boy?’ Erich’s father, Roth Gil, hurried outside.

  ‘Come, come, you come quickly.’ Erich turned to run.

  Roth grabbed his arm. ‘Whoa. What is wrong?’

  Erich’s mother joined them, followed by a string of younger children, each no more than a year apart in age. ‘The boy is scared, Roth.’

  ‘I can see that, Selma.’ He turned back to Erich. ‘Come inside, son. Tell us.’ Roth led his trembling eldest into the house.

  ‘Danny, ’ the boy managed, grasping a tumbler of brandy forced on him by his mother – her cure-all for everything from a mild cold to severe trauma.

  Roth scowled. ‘Do not mention that family in this house, boy. How many times must you be told?’

  ‘But, Pa – ’

  ‘Never, ’his father shouted. ‘May God strike them all down.’

  Selma interrupted timidly. ‘Let him speak, Roth. Something has happened. I think he should tell us what it is.’

  For all his bluster, Roth Gil was a reasonable man and could see the extent of his son’s distress. ‘Very well. Just this once.’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Wha– ’ Roth hadn’t been expecting news of this kind. ‘How?’

  ‘I shot him, Pa.’

  Roth Gil slumped into a chair opposite his son. ‘You what?’ His staring eyes widened in disbelief.

  Erich dropped his oversized head into huge hands and nodded. Looking up again, his father saw fear and tears. ‘Will I go to prison, Pa?’

  ‘Not if I can help it, ’Roth growled. He tapped Erich on one knee: ‘Drink that dop and tell us what happened.’ He waited patiently as his son sipped sparingly on the fiery liquid, pulled a face and set it aside.

  ‘I was trying to find the old bull when I saw him. Danny was on our land, Pa, trespassing like he owned it. He had a gun and was looking for something to shoot. I challenged him.’

  ‘Rightly so.’ Roth was proud of his brave son. Two years younger than the bullying Englishman’s cub, though more than a match for him physically, Erich had the dual disadvantage of age and confidence. Yet, right was on his side in questioning what Danny Reese might be doing on their property.

  ‘So, he pointed the gun at you, did he?’

  Erich dropped his head again. ‘I can’t remember, Pa. I think so but I can’t remember. All I can see in my mind is him falling over backwards.’

  Selma held the knuckles of one hand between her teeth. ‘The police, ’she whispered, drawing one of the younger children closer as her words caused him to whimper.

  Roth waved a dismissive hand. ‘Pah! They hate Reese and that son of his as much as we do.’

  ‘But, Roth. This is murder.’

  He rounded on her. ‘Don’t say that. Not now, not ever. How do you know Erich wasn’t in danger and fired to defend himself? That’s what we’ll tell the police.’ Roth stood. ‘Come, son. You’d better show us where.’

  By the time they reached the spot where Danny Reese had been shot, the lions had dragged his body some yards away. The carcass, with its telltale bullet hole, had already been crushed beyond recognition. One full-maned male was still feeding. A hyena, several black-backed jackals and a growing number of vultures waited patiently. Of the pride, only their footprints remained.

  Roth smiled at Erich. ‘Perfect, ja. We have an alibi. It couldn’t be better. Let the law make sense of this. By the time they get here, there’ll be nothing left. Come, use this branch to clear the area of our signs. Leave everything else as it is. Make haste. The Engelsman may come looking for his precious son.’

  The incident, unrecorded and remarked on by any but immediate family and friends, was typical of the depth of dislike which had built up between Boer and British settlers for more than half a century. Hatred fed on hatred until a line – blurred at the best of times with emotion rather than reason – was no longer visible. It was simply there. Acts like those committed by young Erich Gil were applauded by Afrikaners, bringing howls of protest and threats of reciprocal action from the British. By the time a full-scale Anglo-Boer war erupted, such incidents were so commonplace that no-one noticed an escalation in the atrocities. All they saw was the natural extension of a loathing which had fuelled distrust between the two races for so many years. Some, like Erich Gil, even Erich’s and Danny’s parents, knew of no other way to live.

  The pride of lions, existing on slim pickings in the harsh veld of the Orange Free State, had long since learned to capitalise on opportunity in what would soon prove to be a land of plenty. It was as well they were prepared. Feasting in such barren conditions was virtually unheard of.

  Sated and sleepy, the pride found shade and resumed their slumbers. Wallace Reese considered shooting the lot. In the end he left them alone. Danny had been born and brought up in the bush and, as such, took his chances along with everyone else, including the animals. He would not have found it necessary to kill those who killed him. His fate was at one with the continent on which he lived.

  Not suspecting foul play, there was, nevertheless, an inevitability about the incident that left an incredibly bitter taste in the Englishman’s mouth.

  Erich and Danny might have been friends except for the ongoing distrust between their respective families. Wallace’s wife often commented on what a shame it was that, in such desolate surroundings, their son remained ostracised because of his background, growing up lonely and friendless. His parents had tried sending Danny to boarding school. That proved a disaster. The boy would not conform to discipline, made no attempt to fit in and was ultimately asked to leave after deliberately smashing a stained-glass window in the school chapel. Elizabeth Wallace knew their only son was socially flawed but always made excuses for him. In truth, Danny Wallace was arrogant, sneaky and often dishonest. Despite her husband’s unnecessarily insulting description of Erich Gil, Elizabeth found the Afrikaner a nice enough lad: polite, well-mannered, helpful and open.

  Although it didn’t consciously occur to Elizabeth that deep-seated tensions between British and Boer could have been responsible f
or Danny’s death, at the back of her mind she must have suspected something. She was English, married to an Englishman, and it was right that her family’s loyalties and duty should stand squarely behind Queen and country. Yet somewhere deep inside lurked the sad certainty that Danny might still be alive if Britain’s insatiable greed for land, power and mineral wealth could be contained. It was a very big if. Elizabeth doubted that such a thing would ever be possible.

  Totally unaware of the unfolding drama so far away, the Granger-Achesons continued yet another squabbling lunch. A stranger to the household might have come to the conclusion that this was their way, but under normal circumstances, Dallas and his family enjoyed their meals together. They used the time to catch up with each other, talk of new ideas, memories, ambitions or whatever subjects occurred to them. Torben inevitably brought dissension – it was as though he couldn’t help himself.

  Gerda– dressed in cream silk and, contrary to Torben’s advice, bright-green accessories – started the ball rolling, complaining she had no jewellery to wear with her ensemble.

  ‘I swear, darling, you’d make a wonderful lawyer, ’Lorna commented.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Unsure if she was being criticised or not, Gerda frowned.

  ‘Simply that you don’t drop anything until you’ve shaken every last crumb from it.’

  Silence followed. Lorna seldom came so close to outright censure.

  Torben came to his wife’s defence. ‘Gerda isn’t complaining, Mother.’ She was. ‘It was nothing more than a comment about her wardrobe.’ It wasn’t. ‘She packed the wrong things, didn’t you, darling?’

  ‘Of course.’ Gerda sprayed laughter and a little lime juice cordial across the table, fanning herself with a chubby hand. ‘Don’t think for one moment, Ma, that I’m not grateful for all you’ve given me.’

  ‘Good.’ Lorna was being very brisk and Dallas glanced at her, wondering what was wrong.