She blew kisses, which she hadn’t done since Christmas vacation in her childhood when she used to leave her grandparents at the station.
He held both hands to his heart and made a quick movement outwards, as if throwing something up to her.
They started out so early that it was still dark. And cold. The air was as clear as it would have been right up in the mountains. Stan hardly spoke. He had a slight hangover—nothing really painful and certainly not on the scale he had suffered in London, but something else bothered him, too. He sensed again the dread that had visited him two days before. So far there was merely his own faint misgiving rather than a definite presence; but, even so, it was disagreeable.
He didn’t want to think about his brother, or about London, yet now he assumed that this physical oppression had to be connected with a period of his life that had already gone—it was his past catching up with him: all the regrets and anger and moments of bad conscience that he’d pushed away from him at the time in order to get to more unused and untainted life, more pleasures. He would never have associated the feeling with the future. He didn’t believe in things like that unless it could be proved that a wish or fear had warped someone’s attitude to such a degree that the distortion itself then helped to make an event happen.
They travelled with Ian and his driver, Mahola. The heavy equipment—tents, cooking stores and so on—was in the trucks coming behind them. One other landrover accompanied the cookhouse staff, driven by a man named Mohammed. Pippa would start out later in the morning with Tom and Amos.
It took only a little while to leave the town, leave people, at last to leave all noise. The only sounds proceeded from the engine as they moved forward, and the wheels on ground and undergrowth. Sometimes Mahola turned off the road to take a narrower track that went across the open plain. They saw the shapes of animals moving over the earth before the real daylight began. Figures drew away from them. Once Millie whispered, “Look,” and pushed Stan’s arm. On her side, near the horizon, a black herd of elephant was outlined against the grey sky. He said, “Like the central hall in the Museum of Natural History.”
“This came first.”
When the sun started to show itself, it was as if during the night the continent had been under construction, and now the builders had finished putting it together and the curtain was going up. Millie felt at peace. Strength had come back into her, and just as suddenly as this: the sun rose and everything was different. It hadn’t ever been this way before, not during the years of her marriage, nor before that, when she’d lived at home with her family. Only now. Nothing threatened her. She had found her life.
Stan slumped towards her until she felt the whole of his weight pressing down and she shifted so that he slid across her lap.
“What a wonderful place,” she said, still in the lowered voice they had been using in the dark.
“It’s not bad,” Ian said. “Not bad.”
“It’s like the beginning of the world. It makes you wonder how anyone could bear to live anyplace else.”
“Wait till we show you the mosquitoes. After we catch one, it takes an hour to get the hide off.”
“That part must be a lot easier now, with pills and antibiotics.”
“I should say so. Still won’t help you if you fall in the river.”
“Oh, don’t. That was in Rupert’s book.”
“Rupert?”
“Dr Hatchard. He said last night I should call him by his first name.”
“We’ve always called him Binkie. I suppose he thought it too—well, it’s a silly name. Can’t say to a lady: call me Binkie.”
“Oh, I don’t know. A name’s a name.”
“They wouldn’t agree with you out here. A name can make or break you.”
“You mean a kind of description—Dewey looking like the man on top of the wedding cake?”
“Sometimes it’s even simpler.”
“Oh,” Millie said. “Colonel Headstrong.”
“Precisely. Got it in one.”
Soon after sunrise, the air began to feel warm. They drank coffee and tea and ate soda crackers. Millie caught sight of a strange object up in the air. It looked like a large peppermint. Ian told her, “That’s Archie Bell and what’s-his-name. His partner. They’re carrying out one of their surveys.”
“For maps?”
“Ecological maps. They’re counting. Just counting the numbers of animals in a herd and in a district. It’s easier to keep track of them from the air. You work through the space systematically and don’t find yourself going over the same herds twice. Or not at all. Druce, that’s his name.”
“I’ve never seen a balloon like it. It looks like a candycane, with those pink and white stripes.”
“It’s like one of those things in a picture of the World’s Fair years ago.”
“And it really works?”
“Oh, absolutely. For the forests, it’s the only way.”
“Have you ever been up in it?”
“Curious you should ask.”
Mahola gave a muffled snort of laughter.
Ian said, “Yes, I went up in it once. Not for me. The wind took us and nearly blew us against the mountain. Next day, Pippa insisted on going up. I warned her. I couldn’t stop her. Of course it was beautiful weather, clear as crystal, gentle breeze. Only way to travel, she says. But you couldn’t get me back in the thing for love nor money.”
“It looks like such an easy way to drift along, so lightly. And it would be quiet too, up there, wouldn’t it?”
“So quiet, the only sound you can hear is your dinner going over the side. I never saw the poetry of it. That’s the way it affected her, too. For weeks I heard about the new insight on life and she kept wanting to go again. It’s just luck that they’re professionals—they haven’t the time to give lifts to everyone who wants one.”
“They should have some kind of cross-check.”
“There’s two other teams. We may see all of them. But the others are amateur outfits. One from London—some sort of conservationist group. And the others are Swedes—that is, one Swede and one American. The American’s married to a girl who’s a doctor, working as a GP. And the Swede has a girlfriend who—I’m not sure quite what she does. Sometimes she follows in the landrover, sometimes she’s with the men in the gondola.”
“Gondola?”
“That’s what they call it. The basket bit.”
Stan woke up thirsty when the sun was already fairly high and the day growing hot. He looked at the others, at Millie in particular. It seemed increasingly odd to him—astonishing—that she, who always made a mess of everything, worried, and then made the worrying come true, had not put a foot wrong from the moment she’d found herself in foreign surroundings. Once she was away from home, she said the right words, did the right things, and was accepted by everyone. More than that—they all liked her, very much and straight away. Whereas he—they tolerated him. And they didn’t consider him so interesting or think his academic theory was all that exciting, either. They had undoubtedly seen lots of visiting anthropologists, sociologists, conservationists, and they only trusted the ones who were born there or had chosen to settle down there for life. He had the impression that Hatchard’s book, no matter how bad it probably was, would be regarded as a success simply because the doctor was one of them. A better work by an outsider would not be countenanced. Even the archaeologists seemed to agree that whatever you believed should be put into practice. It had to be your occupation, not just thought about. Scholarship was what you stepped on and walked over.
To a certain extent, they were right; it was the only way to find out. Otherwise, why travel thousands of miles, when he could just have used the tapes and translations, and borrowed video material from Jack? He wanted the part of the mystery you couldn’t get by sitting at a desk and theorizing. And he was certain there was something in Adler’s idea.
*
They went through hilly country with trees, continued
on among flatter grassy plains and scrub, and drove through a stretch of land like a desert covered by high anthills that resembled totem-poles. They saw a lioness asleep in the crook of a tree. The sky was like the portraits of heaven in the backgrounds of religious paintings: fresh, delicately tinted, unending.
Lunch was sandwiches. They didn’t bother to stop. Ian told them about the country as they passed by: how that was where he had taken out a client back in the thirties with Odell and the man had had a clear shot at the biggest kudu buck you’d ever seen, standing still straight in front of them, broadside on, had missed four times and then brought it down by throwing a rock at it and hitting it on the head; how a zebra had gone mad and—totally unprovoked—attacked Rollo Harding’s landrover, starting off by kicking in one of the headlamps. Over in that direction ran an ancient elephant walk and beyond the trees there, that was a village—two of the boys came from there.
They made temporary halts, teaming up with Pippa that afternoon, but it took them three days to reach the site of their first camp. During that period, Millie had time to get used to the tents, the washing, cooking and dressing routines, and most of all the idea that at any time they might pick everything up and move on. She loved it all except the washing arrangements.
“You should have been here in the good old days,” Pippa told her.
“I know. I’ve read about them.”
“Still, we’ll have lovely times when we join GHQ. I saw the plans. It looks like a Hilton hotel. Chemical purifiers, waste-disposal machines that turn everything into heat or electricity, fridges everywhere, generators and batteries. You have no idea.”
“It sounds wonderful. I’m still finding it weird enough to be out roughing it with a platoon of people who do all the cooking and cleaning and laundry.”
They stayed at the first camp for nearly three weeks. Every day Stan hunted with Ian. They killed antelope for the table and took excursions far out of the area a few times in order to shoot birds.
Sometimes Millie and Pippa went with the men on the hunt; more often they stayed back at the camp or just took a walk and painted, morning and afternoon, with Tom or an older man named Robert. Pippa looked for what she called “a good view” or a singular plant or tree. She worked rapidly and talked at the same time. After the first week, a second folding chair was found for Millie and she was supplied with paints. The two of them sat a few feet from each other, Pippa concentrated and frowning a little, Millie smiling and absorbed.
She hadn’t painted anything since grammar school. And now she made no attempt to reproduce what was in front of her. Her childhood art classes had never taught her that. She could only put down something imaginary.
She made a picture of a large gazelle. She tried hard to remember how the markings went and what size the horns were in relation to the body. Mahola looked at the painting, expressed his wonderment, and kept looking at it in a way so flattering that she gave it to him. The word went around, Ian saw the picture and praised it; everyone did. Millie was persuaded to do more, first another gazelle, then one of giraffe and elephant. She painted a bird standing, a whole flock flying, and a fish. Her masterpiece was a rhinoceros which Ian himself begged her to give him.
Stan too, said they were nice. “Sort of like Rousseau.”
“They should be in oils, but this is fun, too. Pippa’s letting me use all the poster paint.”
She hadn’t been crushed by his comment or read criticism into it as she would have before. She was unconcerned.
*
Day by day the four of them grew closer to each other. Ian and Pippa heard about life in New England and Millie and Stan were gradually introduced to stories about most of the people the Fosters knew or had known in their part of the country; they also learned that Nicholas had a wife named Jill and three small children; and that several months before, Jill had had a complete breakdown and was now in a psychiatric ward. Her mental condition was still so unstable that they weren’t letting her out for visits. And the children had had to be taken into care.
One afternoon as they worked at their paintings, Millie asked Pippa, “Was there some special thing that started Jill’s trouble?”
“It’s so difficult to know. She was a bit scatty sometimes and then she’d cry. Things got to be too much for her. It was as though she lost her nerve. Everyone came to the rescue, but she hasn’t been able to get back to where she was. She worried so much about the children. Nicky’s been shattered, of course. No idea how to help. Well, she’s in hospital now.”
“It sounds like ordinary depression. If she can just get through two years from when it started, it should work itself out. The main thing is to take life day by day and keep up with little practical routines. Or maybe it’s more serious than that.”
“I’m afraid so,” Pippa said. She kept painting. Her attack was more like that of a pianist than a painter, the brush in her hand constantly flicking away and dashing back. Millie’s approach was slower and altogether more careful.
Pippa said, “A young doctor friend of ours helped with everything. Alistair James. We’ll be seeing him soon. He was splendid. We’d had a note from Nick to stop by at the farm, and one of his friends told us she was in there, but there wasn’t a sound. We stood outside and shouted, but no one answered. We went in and it was like a tomb. Then the baby started to cry and we found all four of them hiding on the floor of the broom cupboard. All in a heap—buckets and mops and boxes of soap powder and the children staring like owls and holding on to Jill. She was pointing a pistol straight at my head. My dear—she just wasn’t there, you know. Completely vacant. I was petrified. But then Alistair said something ordinary about dropping in for a cup of tea and she stood up and came out muttering, ‘Nice cup of tea’. And she handed over the gun as meek as a lamb. Well, it’s been a dreadful business. And it’s not over yet.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed anything was upsetting Nicholas,” Millie said. “He seemed so calm.”
“I’ve often thought it a mistake for him to throw himself into this extra work. And then again, I know it’s good to take his mind off his family. Who knows what the solution will be? But he’s very tired. Unhappy. Let’s hope these Whiteacre people aren’t really as horrid as they sound. Ian’s had such horrendous reports of them.”
“I hope they’re even worse,” Millie said. “I hope they’re revolting. Think of the stories we’ll have to tell.”
“Not so funny, to be out in the bush with a large crowd of rich boors who’ve got access to firearms and can’t hold their drink. Ian will only stand for so much. He peppered a man with birdshot once. There was no end of a stink about that. I’d rather have a pleasant trip and no story, thank you.”
“Not like Stan,” Millie said. “Stan says he’d put up with anything if there’s a story at the end.”
“Even Stan might change his mind if we have to live with it.”
*
Stan developed a speckling of small, pink heat-bumps over the backs of his hands and across his shoulders. They quickly spread into a red rash that itched all the time, until Millie said to him, “Stan, you’re scratching yourself to death. Let me see that.” And she brought out a tube of cream, just like a television actress in a commercial, and cured him within twenty-four hours.
His days began to seem like a summer vacation from long ago, or dreams of a kind of life he had never lived except on hiking trips. Ian talked a great deal, describing the country as it used to be, and deploring the way it was headed. He told Stan a lot about the Masai and the lion hunts, initiation ceremonies and general beliefs.
“I’ve read about it,” Stan said, “and heard about it from a friend who was doing a documentary for television. But I thought they weren’t allowed to have the lion hunt any more.”
“No, well that’s why one can’t learn much from watching the telly.”
“They still do? What’s it like?”
“The same as it was. It hasn’t changed. They go out and drive the lio
n into an open space. They surround him, make a circle with their shields up on the inside. He’s in the middle of the circle. Each man has a spear. They egg him on till he’s in a fine old rage—that’s not hard. And then the man who’s proving himself steps out of the line and into the middle of the circle with the lion. The others close ranks behind him.”
“And you’ve seen it?”
“Oh, yes. Five times in all. The only European I saw who went through it was Simba Lewis. That’s how he got his name.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You’re like my boy Davy: ‘Tell us about the war, Dad. Tell us again.’ Well, there you are with a sort of javelin and a leather shield. Coming at you is your lion, weighing four-fifty to five hundred pounds, has a speed of zero to sixty-five miles per hour in four seconds and on a charge is doing about a hundred and ten. Opinions differ as to what he looks like at that stage, stretched out or bunched up. To me, he looks like a flying rocket even when he’s still on the ground coming on. If he’s fifteen yards away, you haven’t a hope of doing much more than try to raise your shield. When a lion charges home, the speed is so much faster than you’d expected. It’s all much more than you expected. You don’t know what killer instinct is till you’ve seen a lion charge. It’s terrible. Glorious. Harry said he knew what to do because he’d been taught how to use a harpoon out in Canada. His one worry was that the spear might not be strong enough to take the strain. Binkie was there, too; said he’d shoot the swine if things got out of hand. I don’t know how he thought he could help—he’d only got his revolver on him in any case, and even if you had enough gun, what can you do when your man is out there practically locked in the bugger’s arms? Well, the idea is that if you can stand up to all that, you must have the qualities of the beast you’ve conquered. I’m not so sure but what they’ve got a point.”
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