Binstead's Safari (6 page)

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 version, 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 might 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.

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.”