“Better not. Remember that lion on the roof. When these things happen, it’s always very fast. And you aren’t expecting it.”
“Okay,” she said. Behind her, the Japanese had already pulled out a camera of his own and started it whirring.
From then on, as Stan had said, things did happen very fast. They saw Carpenter off in the distance, and another man walking slowly towards him. The two stood together, then both went over to the right and parted again in order to cover a patch of low-growing bushes. They began to move farther and farther away.
And then, there was a rushing. The figures were so small that it was hard to tell at first what it was. But the next moment, leaning forward past the Dutchwoman, Stan realized that what he was seeing was a running woman who fell and writhed around on the ground. There were shots and he saw a lion run back into the undergrowth. That was what had made the woman fall down: the lion had jumped on her from behind while she was trying to escape. They heard the shots distinctly and they heard, even from such a long way and with the windows partly closed, the tiny screaming, quickly lost in the great spaces beyond.
It’s the way it must have been in the war, he thought. The way it must have been the day he died. And they buried him out there.
Later, when Carpenter talked about it, Stan pieced together what had actually taken place. Many of the things he had assumed, were not there. The lion, for instance, was a lioness and had not jumped, but had run along behind and then beside the woman, and brought her down by clawing up at her legs.
The woman was a German children’s nurse, employed to look after a child of seven. She had been wearing white—a suit for a European summer, not a regular nurse’s uniform—which had made her look so hideously bloodstained after the attack that Carpenter and the other guide were sure she was dead when she hit the ground. But she hung on, moaning and whimpering, to die later in the hospital from shock and loss of blood.
The child, so the survivors said, had been an extremely spoiled and obstreperous little boy. He had declared loudly that if they didn’t stop the car, he was going to have to pee on his fellow passengers. The driver had braked, the boy climbed out, and he had immediately skipped off across the grass while the grown-ups yelled at him to come back. The guide started to go out in pursuit, but the nurse brushed him aside. He assumed that the boy would come to her. Of course, she was the one person there whom the child was certain not to obey; he ran on ahead of her, laughing and taunting. All at once they were both far away out on the plain. The guide and driver got out with their rifles, ordering the others to stay put—which they hadn’t done.
The boy raced into some bushes and out the opposite side, where he tripped over a lion, two lionesses and five well-grown cubs all lazing in the shade. The nurse followed. She heard what was happening and, since she was higher off the ground than the child had been at his approach, saw part of it. She turned around, running for her life. By that time, most of the car’s occupants were over to the right, being shouted at by their guide, and, as soon as he joined the group, Carpenter.
The Frenchwoman filmed everything she could. The Japanese likewise fixed himself in a contorted, knee-bent stance up against the roof in order to get a better angle and he kept his finger on the silver lever of his machine. The Dutchwoman clicked her tongue. She murmured doleful phrases in Dutch, but she didn’t look away.
At last Carpenter came back, opened the door and got in. Both cameras were still filming. He spoke to the driver, who started up. They backed away down the track and turned.
At the hotel, Stan invited Carpenter to lunch. Not lunch, he answered, but a drink. They ordered beer in the bar and drank together as Carpenter told the story and added one or two others. He gave the impression that he thought Stan had acted commendably in managing to keep everyone from getting hysterical or leaving the car while the hunt was on. They said goodbye on friendly terms. Stan had the feeling that he had stood up to some kind of test.
The clerk at the reception desk signalled to him as he passed. He handed over a note, which said that Millie had telephoned and she wouldn’t be back for lunch but would meet him in the late afternoon at the sporting goods store to collect their clothes and other equipment. He had forgotten all about her.
He had lunch by himself, went back to their room, sat down in a chair and began to shake. He thought about his brother.
*
She came into the shop at about five-thirty. Stan had been there and gone away again. The man behind the counter called his assistant, who took her through into the room where she had had the fitting. She tried on the finished clothes, moved her arms and legs around and checked the seams. Everything was fine. She changed back and emerged into the main part of the store.
“All right?” the assistant asked.
“Yes, perfect. I’ll take them with me. Did my husband pay?”
“He said he’s coming back. Also he paid, yes.”
“Did he say how soon?”
The assistant beckoned. He ushered her to an enormous rattan chair with a back woven in such a way that it stood up like the hood of a cobra. She sat down on the plump cushion and accepted a cup of tea.
Stan found her chatting to two other customers and the three men who worked in the place. She was talking about a government scheme for preserving rare species of animals, but when she saw him she broke off, saying, “There’s my husband.”
They walked back to the hotel together. He said, “You were the belle of the ball there, weren’t you? Holding your salon with a teacup in your hand.”
“That was nice of them.”
“And what a chair. You could be Fu Manchu’s daughter in a chair like that.”
“In a chair like that, I could be Fu Manchu’s grandmother. Are we going to be late?”
“No. Why?”
“You’re rushing off so fast. Didn’t you get any exercise today?”
He slowed down. He hadn’t realized that he had been forging ahead along the street. He still felt thrown off balance by the sight of her sitting in the strange, throne-like piece of furniture, with a crowd of people paying court to her. And she had looked so pretty. He hadn’t recognized her at first.
“I swam some, earlier. After lunch. Before I came to meet you. Where did you have lunch?”
“Oh, a little place somewhere.”
“What was it like?”
“Oh, nice. Sort of Indian stew with vegetables.”
“You should be careful where you eat in a country like this.”
“Think I’ll suddenly find a human arm on the plate?”
“I’d be more worried about parasites or one of those venereal diseases that don’t respond to penicillin. Half the population—”
“Okay, I feel wonderful now. You can stop. How was your tour?”
He told her about the trip and about the nurse and her charge.
“How horrible. God. Is she going to be all right?”
“I heard she died later in the hospital.”
“And the little boy?”
“Well, that’s almost too gruesome to talk about. He was sort of divided up.”
“Right. I don’t want to hear the rest.”
“They found his shoes. With his feet—”
“I said I didn’t want to hear all that.”
“It’s been quite a day. Carpenter told me in the bar that the first death they had there may not have been as straightforward as they thought at the time. There’s some question now about whether the man panicked at all, or whether he was thrown out of the car by the other people in it. The driver seems to have his own story to tell. But the other passengers deny it.”
“These Jacobean death-scenes,” Millie said. “Terror by daylight, people grabbed by the throat. It sounds like you got the full tour, Stan.”
“Yes. It didn’t look much like melodrama to me, though. It looked like war. I guess it’s a lot less grisly than a good set of US statistics for car crashes. I was only getting the old-style versi
on, that’s all.”
Millie thought: He’s started on that again, his brother killed in the war and he himself alive because of being out in Hawaii at a desk job and surfboarding in his free time. But this thing is nothing to do with war, which is all pushbuttons nowadays anyway, and spraying the trees. It was only the blood that made him think that. As if every woman in the world hadn’t seen more blood in her lifetime than any number of soldiers ever saw in the field. Only doctors see as much.
“Let’s skip the party,” he said. “I’d much rather find a quiet place and have a couple of drinks.”
“Oh, but we can’t. Not after accepting.”
“I don’t see why not. We’re leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow.”
“What are you going to say—you’ve got a splitting headache?”
He moved his neck and shoulder evasively and she realized instantly that he must have been thinking just that, but of course he would have planned to say that she was the one who had the headache—like the time, early in their marriage, when he had come home forty minutes late to pick her up for a party and then excused himself to their hosts on the grounds that she had taken so long to decide which dress to wear.
“Okay,” she said, “you do what you want to. I’m going to the party. We’ll have the quiet dinner and drinks first, and then I can make your apologies when I arrive. Somebody’s sure to be able to give me a ride home. Or I could call a cab.”
“No,” Stan said, “no, I don’t want you to go all alone.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be much fun for you, would it?” He couldn’t imagine her going out to a party alone if he stayed behind. It was the first time she had suggested such a thing. Of course, she had gone out in the evening in London, but that was different. At a party, you had to talk to people. Then he thought: Armstrong and that eye doctor who wrote the book—she got along with both of them like a house on fire. A kind of dizziness moved across his senses, left and came again, sliding away and washing back over him. She shouldn’t be this way. She never was before. It had started in London. While all that other business was beginning for him.
“Who knows?” Millie said. “I might meet somebody. At any rate, I’m certainly going to put in an appearance.”
“Oh, all right. We’ll go to the party.”
“Don’t come if you don’t want to.”
“Of course I’ll come.”
They ate at the hotel and completed the arrangements for their early start the next morning. Millie did some more of the packing. She changed into one of her London dresses.
“This isn’t a first night at the opera or anything,” he told her.
“I bet they’ll be all dressed up.”
“I bet they’re in bush jackets and hiking boots.”
“The women, too?”
“Sure.”
“But you’ll be wearing a suit, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I just thought—that thing looks so formal. All the way down to the floor.”
“That woman last night—her dress was floor-length.”
“Well, she was a foreigner.”
Millie laughed. “What am I?” she asked.
*
At the front entrance of the hotel she recognized Mrs Miller, who was standing all by herself, looking out into the street. Millie asked, “Can we give you a lift anywhere?” and she answered, “Oh, thank you, but my son is coming for me.” Millie said they were setting out early the next morning, so this would be goodbye. She shook hands and introduced Stan. Mrs Miller admired the long dress.
“See?” Millie said to him as they got into the taxi.
As it turned out, not only was the party full of women wearing long dresses and jewellery, but several of the men were in evening clothes, too. Millie looked for Henry as soon as they came in the door, and saw that if he had arrived already he must be at the other side of the front hallway. It was a very large house. Every room was a step up, or down two steps, or at some level that varied from each neighbouring floor. The basic structure of the building was a square around an enclosed garden, but that was just the beginning. A babble of voices came from many directions, all the different wings of the house.
The colonel welcomed them loudly and with gusto. He introduced them to a redhead of Wagnerian girth and with the pleased, wide-open eyes and shy smile of a child: his wife, the one who could keep him under control. Her name was Rita. Millie fell into talk with her, spoke of London and asked about the outside garden, which they hadn’t been able to see too clearly as they drove up. She listened to information about shrubs and plants, while Armstrong steered Stan into a group of men who could tell him any amount of stories about lion, if that was what he wanted.
Mrs Armstrong delved into the crowd in order to carry out her duties as hostess. She brought two couples out of the teeming congregation of guests, like a gundog going in after the fallen birds, and slotted them into two different small groups. Millie was joined by Rupert Hatchard. She heard more about the elephant book. And she saw the woman who had been in the lilac dress, this time wearing pink and silver brocade.
There could be no hope that Rupert would introduce anyone. He was a man on his own, who had no aptitude for mixing with strangers. Millie settled down for a long talk with him. She learned that he had a wife at home who was an invalid—she had had a bad fall from a horse seven years before; the accident had left her paralysed from the waist down. She typed his books and helped with the editing. And she kept herself active in many ways. Sometimes she would come to parties, but she hadn’t felt like it that night.
As fresh loads of people arrived, the two of them went with the current that swept into the adjoining room. One of the white-jacketed waiters approached Millie and said a gentleman had a message. She looked at the tray he was carrying, which held only drinks, no message, and realized that she was meant to go with him.
“Will you excuse me for a minute?” she said. The waiter led her inwards, towards the courtyard. She couldn’t understand how Stan had managed to work his way through so many rooms in such a short time.
They went around two corners. The man opened a door into a hallway. There were no guests here. Even the sound of the party was almost completely blocked out. He kept going. Now she knew it had to be Henry.
The next time the waiter opened a door, he stood back to let her enter, closing it after her.
Henry stood up from where he’d been sitting on the bed and said, “What a wonderful dress.”
She turned all the way around and ended in a fast twist, which let the skirt fan out.
He said, “I was looking for you everywhere.”
“If you couldn’t find me, how did he know who I was?”
“Oh, that’s easy. I described you.”
“But you didn’t know about the dress.”
He said, “It wasn’t the dress I described.”
*
In the room two beyond the larger one into which Rupert had moved with Millie, Stan listened to one anecdote after another about lion. They were the usual tall stories, some of them, he sensed, originally not from East Africa at all, but from South Africa. The men around him seemed prepared to pull his leg indefinitely without becoming openly unpleasant about it. He played along, acting the good sport. Then he told a story himself, which he simply lifted straight from the Journal of American Folklore. It was such a hit that the company decided to give up making fun of him. He heard again what Jack had told him back in London—that gangs like the Leopard Men were just criminals, although since the fifties one could also find that they might claim some kind of political position. And, the claim having been made, it would therefore probably be true.
He drank quite a lot. The men spoke of the German nurse and he mentioned that he’d been there—well, not there, but in the back seat and had been told everything by Carpenter. What he’d like to know, he said, was what had happened in the first accident: the one where the lion was on the roof and the man mi
ght have been thrown out by the rest of the passengers.
There was a short silence. Three of the others exchanged glances. One of them, named Wilson, said, “Yes, we’ve been wondering about that. But at this stage, it’s only speculation.”
“And after that, I guess it’s sub judice,” Stan said. They laughed for a long time, as though he were really one of the boys. Shortly after that, he excused himself from the group.
He walked carefully down the step into the next room, asked a uniformed houseboy how to get to the bathroom, and eventually found it. Just before he reached the sink, he had the sensation of pulling away from himself, as if he were nearly ready to pass out.
He splashed some cold water on his face and thought: It’s because of this morning. I hadn’t intended to drink much. And better stop now.
They had been at the party for an hour and three-quarters. He made up his mind to get Millie and go on back to the hotel.
A waiter sidled up to him as he was wandering from room to room, trying to find her, and asked if he could help.
“Looking for my wife. Time to go home. We’ve got to leave early tomorrow.”
“What does the lady look like?”
Stan described Millie’s hair and dress. The man left his side. Not long afterwards, Millie appeared at the other end of the room.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Plastered and ready to go home.”
“All right. Let’s find the Armstrongs.”
“Advantage of a New England wife. You may be drunk as a coot, but you thank your hostess.” And she would take time the next morning, even in the middle of their departure, to send a note. His parents were devoted to her, so was his sister. They all thought he probably treated her badly in some way they didn’t know about. Which he did, of course.
“Lovely evening,” Millie said to Rita Armstrong. “It’s been so nice to meet you.” Stan pumped the colonel’s hand, thinking: He looks a lot more pickled than I feel, so at least I’m not the only one.
Later that night, Millie heard someone cough. She thought the sound had come from outside. She went to the window and drew back the curtain. The street was still, empty. Then she noticed a shadow near the double line of trees, between the black shapes of trunks and leaves. It moved to the side. He walked out into the open, looking up. He lifted his arms, reaching out to her.
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