Binstead's Safari (17 page)

It moved forward. A barrier of silence enveloped its approach; not even the night had been so still. It came nearer. And just as Millie was evidently about to take one more step, a shot rang out. The lion sprang away, heading for open land. Nicholas cursed furiously at Amos, who had fired.

“I didn't know I was doing it. It was like magic. My finger closed.”

“Never mind,” Ian said. “We'll track him from here.”

Millie came walking back. She said, “That was much too close. You almost hit him. You almost hit me.”

“Accident,” Amos said.

“Well, it did what it was supposed to. He's gone, now. If he comes back tomorrow, we just do it again and he'll stop. Right?”

“It's still pretty dark,” Stan said, “but that looked to me like the biggest lion I've ever seen. Wouldn't you say? Wasn't that bigger than average?”

“Yes,” Nicholas said. “Superlative, in every respect. But I agree with Millie. It's hardly necessary to shoot him. A beast of that calibre should be left to sire more like him.”

“We're allowed to hunt lions on our licence, aren't we?”

“One or two.”

“Well, that's the one or two I want. Let's go.”

*

Tom and Mahola brought the food and drove the skinners when it was necessary; most of them walked with the rest of the party. For some reason, although he hadn't been hit at all, the lion was moving very slowly. Twice they saw him ahead of them in the distance. He seemed to have an ability to calculate how long it would take for them to be ready to kill after spotting him. Stan had all his telescopic sights lined up the second time, but that was just the moment Julius chose to be a little tardy in handing up the rifle; he had never hesitated before, not once. Nicholas said something in a language that wasn't Swahili.

Millie thought:
He's told the gunbearers to do everything possible to prevent anyone from getting this lion. If the others catch on, or insist on carrying their own weapons, then someone can always fall over or knock up an arm and make an excuse—for instance, just that moment noticing that the lion is of a proscribed type, then being mistaken, then not being sure about that after all.

Stan became more excited than he had ever been on a hunt. First of all, that glimpse in the dawn light when it came forward out of the indistinct greys of its background: stealthily, and all at once, recognizably, there in front of them—immense and powerful, a foreign being, which was walking easily and without caution straight towards Millie, as though it knew her.

The moment had been so extraordinary that it had seemed to hang in the air for a time, without movement. He had felt almost entranced, as if something had been revealed to him by the appearance of the creature: an animal whose picture was as familiar to his childhood as
the teddy bear but now astonishingly magnified to his perceptions by the nearness, and the enormity of experience. Only after it charged away out of camp did he realize that he had also been stupefied with terror.

Now each time the lion showed itself to the hunters, he felt an electric awareness of its presence, unlike anything he had known before. And this was not like chasing other game; he sensed that the lion was in command. It was leading them to where it wanted them to go.

Once, it rested as if to sleep. They watched for nearly ten minutes to see if it would move away from the clump of dry bushes it had chosen, but nothing happened. Amos suggested creeping along the ground and taking it by surprise. But from the place he had selected, it was definitely the lion that would be doing the watching. There would be no question of surprise.

“Then we make him charge,” Oliver said.

What
a
cowardly
thing
to
do,
Millie thought. He wasn't hurting anyone, and they were miles away from the camp now. He wasn't even a threat.

She too had been fascinated by the way the animal had seemed to lure them on, as though trained to do it. She wondered if it might be his, the one he had told her about.

Ian and Nicholas looked at each other, signed to Joshua, and started down the slope. Stan stayed with Pippa and Millie above, and saw how the lion waited. It stayed where it was until the hunters reached just that point where the background dropped low enough to become invisible behind the bushes, and then it walked away.

He turned towards Julius, who held up his hand. To shout the information might make the lion put on speed.

He watched Ian and Nicholas work their way around to where they realized what had happened. Nicholas
motioned for the rest of them to join him. Julius remained, to keep watch in case the lion moved again from the place where they had seen him go, sliding behind another screening bank of bushes.

Three times the lion employed the same trick. It was now mid-afternoon and Ian was heated and profane.

Stan said, “Have you ever seen such a sneaky bastard? Ever had a lion do this kind of thing to you before?”

Nicholas shook his head. He was amused. He looked over to where Julius and Joshua stood and said, “Let's throw in the sponge.”

“Yes,” Millie said.

“Yes, let's,” Pippa agreed. “This isn't getting us anywhere.”

“Not on your life.”

“He'll just go on,” Nicholas said. “Leading us a merry dance. In country like this, he could keep it up indefinitely.”

“I don't believe it,” Stan said.

“It's repeating everything,” Pippa said to Ian, “but so are we. I don't understand why we keep doing the same thing. If we fanned out to the sides and blocked the back way, then we'd have him in a circle.”

“It's not worth it,” Nicholas said.

“We'd make him charge, and that would end it.”

“Possibly. I don't think I'd really want to be in the way of this chap when he's on the warpath. Nor should I care to be shot by someone else in the circle.”

“Well, not a real circle. If you're really going on with this, it would be a waste to go back to camp when we've come all this distance and never tried to force his hand.”

“She's right,” Stan said. “That goddamn animal gets us where he wants us every time, and all we've been doing as
far as he's concerned is just follow orders.” He was in favour of going in and taking the lion. But—although he didn't say it—he wanted to do the shooting himself. After a whole day of traipsing around and being strung along, he felt that he had earned the right to the kill.

Millie saw that his eyes were shining and his jaw set. She thought he was probably going to try to work himself into a position where he could beat everyone else to the first shot.

“I'll come too,” she said.

“Not in your state. You stay here.”

“You might need me to make the lion come out.”

“Don't be silly. We'll have him cornered. He's going to be furious. There's no telling what he'll do.”

“I can just stand there.”

Nicholas said, “Better not,” and Pippa told her, “I'll be stopping here.”

“You can stand near Ajuma,” Ian said, “if you don't get in the way.” He detailed Julius to go with Stan and, after one more look at the clumped island of bushes where the lion now lay hiding, they all started off, leaving Pippa behind with Oliver. Millie would be all right; she was a good length behind Ajuma.

Nicholas and Stan took the sides. They kept on going after the others pulled up and waited. Then Ian followed behind Nicholas. Joshua and Amos trailed through the centre line of the semicircle.

Stan thought the approach was wonderful. He was frightened and exhilarated at the same time, realizing that there was or soon could be a possibility of panic breaking out around him, but enjoying the thought. He knew all the separate leaves of every bush his eye fell on. He had memorized each single inch.

Everything seemed all right until he stole a look back and realized that the person coming along behind him was not Julius but Millie, and that she was walking as carelessly as if she had been sauntering through a park. He wanted to shout at her, yet he didn't dare. He made a sign with his hand, for her to get down or go back. She ignored it. He couldn't leave her like that—it was too dangerous. As he went around the curve, he would come to the stretch which they hadn't been able to see from above. The lion could be anywhere; not just in the bushes, but anywhere at all in the long grass surrounding them.

He waited for her to catch up with him. She was smiling. She looked as if she were daydreaming of pleasant things. For a moment he felt his chest clamped and squeezed by fear for her and her vulnerability and the extra life he knew she held and shouldn't be bringing into a place where there was to be a killing. And then he thought:
She's coming because she wants to be near me. She's looking at me and she's smiling.

He put his finger to his lips, motioned her down again, and kept going forward, throwing out small stones as he went. It was only a very short time afterwards that Millie, without any kind of warning, ran past him and the lion came out as though shot by a cannon from a hummock of grass where two stones had already landed.

Joshua, sighting from behind them, said afterwards that Millie had had her arms open. He was the first to bring his rifle up, but even then it was too late.

The lion was never even hit. It struck, bolted, and was gone before Stan could think of raising his rifle. He saw only the speed of the impact, a flash of the moving body, the open-jawed head, all teeth instead of a face, and a splurge of blood, with Millie twirling in front of him and
then suddenly twisted down on the ground, still.

In the days that followed Millie's death, Pippa took charge of Stan's affairs. She saw to it that telegrams were sent off to Millie's family, and to his. She packed up clothes and papers and paintings.

They held the funeral not far outside camp, at a spot where Millie and Pippa had often sat in the afternoons: she had said one day how much she liked the place. Alistair came. Rupert had been on his way when his wife was taken ill and so he had to stay with her instead, but several extra men turned up with Alistair's driver and Robert was accompanied by many friends. The service included a lot of shouting and wailing, especially from a group of people brought along by Odinga. Mourners would suddenly break out, singly or together, with a sound they had decided to contribute. It reminded Stan of a revival meeting. Dr Adler would have loved it.

Tom looked scandalized when he heard the boys from the cookhouse chanting the same song they had sung when Millie died. They had been singing it almost without a break since then. When Stan questioned Ian about it, he was told it was “just a dirge sort of thing”. He asked Tom what the words were.

Tom said, “It's some old—you know, superstition. No good. This isn't the way of the future, to have these things. We are not back in the old days, believing all that rubbish. We have cars and hospitals and universities. This is like something for the old people.”

“But they're all young. What are they saying?”

“The bride goes to her husband in the marriage place.
They go to their house. They eat and drink, they are happy all the time. They love each other all the time. They never grow old. They are never sick. They never thirst. All the time they have each other, all the time.”

Stan stared blankly at the dry ground in front of him. He asked, “Do they always sing this when somebody dies?”

“No. This is a special song, I think. I don't know it. They admire very much … what happened. The masaba's bravery is a thing they can't forget. That's something like what would be a hero-thing for a man to do, but for a woman—it's unknown before. She didn't even have a knife, anything, did she?”

“No,” Stan said. She just stepped forward and embraced the horror; like going into a furnace, like throwing your arms around a bomb.

*

The chanting of the skinners had sunk to a vague hum, as if retreated into the air. The days seemed suddenly soundless, they burned silently before his eyes. At night he shivered with cold. The Whiteacres wrote from the coast that in two weeks, or possibly less, they would be coming back to their camp; Ian, Ajuma and Mahola were busy getting ready for their arrival. Pippa let Stan sit saying nothing, or cry when he could, or talk. And Nicholas promised, at his insistence, that they would go get the lion. They had to, Stan said. It was a matter of principle.

It would have been a matter of principle even if it had had nothing to do with Millie. But Stan didn't say that, nor that from the moment when that blurring faceful of teeth had come flying up from the ground, his life had stopped. He knew no way of going beyond that point except to get back to it and repeat it somehow.
The
mechanics
of
revenge,
he thought:
the ceremony in which you reproduce the previous act in a slightly altered way or with a reversed outcome, and then it cancels what took place before. Good psychology, favoured by many primitive peoples and recommended in folklore. My subject, my field, my specialty.

He waited with Nicholas through the dawn, into the early morning. Twice they kept watch but there was nothing. They drank cups of tea together. Stan was glad of the company, yet grateful that Nicholas hardly spoke; he too seemed grieved and bewildered.

“You think this is useless, don't you?” Stan asked him on the second morning.

“No, of course not. It's not the way I should feel about it myself, but I can understand it.”

“It's like a personal—”

“Yes, yes. It's what I'd feel if my wife had been killed by another man. But the animal kingdom is my profession, you see. These things happen naturally, without malice. Blindly. I couldn't harbour a grudge against a brute beast. In the heat of the moment, but not afterwards.”

“Even you must admit, that lion led us around. It wasn't ordinary. It was uncanny.”

“It was unusual. I've seen every strange thing you can think of from lion and there's always a new exception to the rule. But it's merely instinct. None of it's conscious, like a man. Some people would agree with you, I dare say. Lion experts are all a bit dotty on the subject. They'll swear there's a mind there. Harry was an expert and he thought so.”

Later that day, when they looked in on the leopard cubs, they found that one had died in the night. Nicholas lifted it out of the corner where it lay on its own. The others had moved away from it. “Before Pippa sees it,” he said.
“She'll go mad. She never stopped complaining about the other lot, then she was beside herself when she found they were going to be sent out of the country.”

Pippa had finished the packing, handed everything over to Stan, and given him the keys. He looked bleakly at the boxes and suitcases. There was a folder full of letters, which had been put in with the painting pads. It didn't include any of Henry's letters, since Millie had finally burned them, all except one piece of the last letter she had had from him. That single sheet had been found by Pippa in Millie's jacket pocket. There had been no signature. The handwriting seemed slightly familiar, but Pippa knew it didn't belong to Stan or Nicholas. On both sides it just said, “I love you”, over and over again. She left it where it was, then thought that Stan would find it, and didn't know what to do. In the end, she took it out, rolled it into a cylinder and set fire to it. Of course, the note might have been years old, in spite of its look of having been written recently—a kind of good luck charm. But really it was a mystery. She forgot about it.

“Shall we go for a walk?” she suggested. “Just a short one.”

Stan agreed. He took his rifle and they set out down the road, but soon branched off. Pippa realized that on the way back they would pass by the grave in its lovely surroundings. It had been one of the nicest “good views” near the camp.

Their walk was sad and quiet until it was time to turn around; then Pippa broke into talk about Millie. She praised her poise and natural diplomacy. “That was one of the reasons why the Africans all liked her so much. It wasn't just the paintings that made her famous among them. Oh, yes—she was. Robert and Odinga were always
bringing their friends to come bow to her. I used to see them during our painting sessions, like royal audiences. She was always very gracious about it—respected their dignity, never laughed. She was very patient.”

Stan said, “Yes, she was,” and almost broke down.

“There is one thing,” Pippa said. “It's unimportant, but it upsets me. The necklace she was wearing: I put the two pieces in her shoulder bag. It was one of the first things, when I was packing up her clothes. Well, it's gone. I've looked everywhere.”

“You think someone in camp took it?”

“It has to be. There's no other explantion. I don't like to think it of anyone, but it was a very fine piece, and gold.”

“What about the ear-rings? Those big gold ones she called her Chinese ear-rings.”

“Still there. They were right in with the pieces of the chain.”

“Well, it doesn't matter. Maybe you could send the
ear-rings
—or give them to me. Her sister may want them.”

“Yes, all right. I'll remember.”

“And that painting she did for Jill—I told you about that—and the one for Dr Hatchard's wife: all the elephants squirting water at each other.”

Pippa nodded and said yes. They turned the corner, came out near a small stand of trees and were in sight of the grave. Directly on top of the plot of earth where they had buried Millie, the lion was sitting, as still and massive as a monument and looking as though it might actually have been the headstone of the grave.

Stan rushed forward. “You bastard!” he screamed. He slung his rifle up and began to fire, reload, and fire again.

Pippa ran to him. “What is it?” she said. She put her hand on his shoulder.

He gritted his teeth and took another sighting. The lion was gone. He lifted his head.

“Did you see it?”

“No. What? What was it?”

“You didn't see a lion there? Sitting right there, looking around so satisfied?”

“No, Stan.”

“It was there. It must have run off at the first shot and I was too wound-up to notice.”

“Let's look.”

They approached the grave. Stan bent down to inspect the mound and the earth and grasses surrounding it. He saw no sign of animal traces, nor even of digging, which he had feared so much. He had had nightmares about the hyenas and jackals digging her up. It was important that she should be happy. The idea of animals scrabbling away at the place where she rested was more loathsome to him than anything he had ever imagined, even worse than the dream he had had years ago about the tropical insects eating the eyes out of his brother's face as he lay on his back in the jungle.

There was nothing at all. The pleasantness of the landscape around them made nonsense of his hysteria, his fears, his love, his loss, his life.

Why had he ever come there? And what reason could there have been, other than the necessity of war or starvation, so urgent that it would force a man to bring his wife to a place where she was in danger of being killed? It had been such a stupid thing to do that nothing could ever explain it.

And yet, she had loved everything about the country. She had blossomed there. And it was there that she had finally come back to him.

“Stan,” Pippa said, “shall I wait for you over by the trees?”

“Yes,” he said. “Just a minute.” If there were no prints, no hairs, no disturbed places or crushed stalks, there had been no lion.

But that didn't matter. Forget all that. What mattered was that she had loved him after all.

She saw it before I did,
he thought,
and she threw herself in front of me to save me. She did love me. She wouldn't have left. It was all the unsettling new experience of having a child, that was all; like the depressions she used to go through—they were all probably caused by hormones or something like that.

*

Pippa mentioned the incident to Ian. He spoke to Nicholas, who said, “All right, we'll start tomorrow. See if the lion's anywhere to be seen. And if he isn't, get out and beat the bushes. Give him something to do with himself. It's better than sitting about in camp.” That afternoon he talked to Stan.

Stan said, “Pippa didn't see anything. And I couldn't see a sign of him either when I got up close. She probably thinks I'm bats.”

“She thinks you're going without sleep and seeing objects and movements out of the corner of your eye, rather like hallucinations. It happens frequently in bereavement. When you hear of people seeing their dead relations walking, that's what's behind it. It doesn't mean you're deranged, Stan.”

He managed to laugh. He said, “You should have my job. That's just the kind of thing I used to send in to the folklore journals as an introduction: ‘Ghost Stories of the Southern Highlands', and so on. She thinks I'm crazy. She
also thinks you were having an affair with my wife.”

“Pippa wouldn't believe that. She knows how kind Millie was to me. She helped. I could talk to her.”

“Yes, I know. Okay. Tomorrow. Do you think he's still hanging around camp?”

“No, but we'll try that first.”

Stan drank an extra whisky that night. He also opened the bottle he kept in the tent, but nothing had any effect. He could tell that even if he finished off the whole bottle, it wouldn't help. Everything would only feel progressively flatter until he passed out. He borrowed a pack of cigarettes from a carton the Whiteacres had left behind, although he didn't really want them, either. They tasted bad and made his mouth smell like a room fumigated against contagion. He hadn't smoked since his early twenties.

In a way, her death was easy to understand. It had come about because among all the dangers he had thought about, he had forgotten to take the wild animals into account. He had expected trouble from people—protection rackets, politics, obstructive officials. And possibly also from the climate and local fevers or infection. But what had happened was so much simpler, and he'd overlooked it. Jack hadn't suspected, or Lavalle. Yet it was obvious. Any child who had seen a few Saturday morning movies back home could have told him: Africa was full of wild animals. Of all the world's continents, it had the biggest supply of large, ferocious four-legged animals. And they spent their entire lives killing. Killing was their life.

He looked at all the cards and papers and addresses in her wallet, put them back and pulled the photographs out of the section of plastic holders.

There they were: at home, inside their living-room with
the Murchisons, at his parents' house. There was her mother and father and Millie herself with her sisters and schoolfriends. There he was too, many times over, at different ages.

He remembered the slightly off-angle snapshot she had taken with Pippa's camera, of him and Pippa and Ian at the dining table in one of their first camps. But several of the other pictures he didn't know: Nicholas from the waist up and smiling, and a full-length shot of a man Stan had never seen before; the background was Africa, but the man was a stranger. There were some copies of the London street scenes he himself had done all in one morning to wind up the roll, and then another picture of the stranger, this time just of his head, which might even have been a passport photo. He put the whole bunch into his own wallet and forgot about them. He went to sleep in her bed.