Journey to Freedom (12 page)

‘All set?’ he asked Paul, his driver, with a grin.

‘Can’t wait,’ Paul answered happily, ‘to see the look on Ellen’s face.’

Joel nodded. ‘Or Lorna’s,’ he murmured.

Simon and Joel swapped relieved stories as they wrung each other’s hands at Kamenza. ‘She’s holding on,’ were Simon’s first words.

Everyone at the refuge wanted to see Lorna join her sister lioness. Annie was dancing with excitement. She clung to her mother’s hand and hopped from one foot to the other. But first Ratel was put into Upesi’s old pen. The badger instantly disappeared from sight.

‘Digging,’ Simon commented with a rueful smile.

‘We owe that little creature quite a lot,’ Joel said with a hint of affection. ‘As I told you on the phone, he really found Lorna for us.’

And then the great moment arrived. Lorna, still crated, was placed inside the enclosure where Ellen lay on her side under a bush, breathing deeply. It was darkening, but Joel could see how emaciated she was. The onlookers held their breath as Lorna’s crate was opened and the huge lioness, looking almost twice
the size of her unfortunate sister, stepped from it uncertainly. It was obvious that she didn’t yet see that another animal was already occupying the pen. She looked back at the men removing the crate, who were quickly fastening the lock of the enclosure gate behind them, and growled, unsure of what would happen next.

The people stood back, willing her on. They wanted to see the lionesses reunited before darkness made them invisible. Annie could hardly keep still. Lorna moved slowly, warily. Then, suddenly, she spotted the sleeping Ellen. She froze, growling low in her throat. Ellen awoke and looked up. The lionesses stared at one another. Neither moved a muscle. Lorna seemed to be trying to catch a scent. She was testing the air. She growled again and this time there was a low, feeble answering call from Ellen. Lorna moved forward more confidently, walking directly up to her sister. Ellen stood up, swaying slightly. Lorna reached her and nuzzled her, uttering a soft half growl, half purring sound.

‘She knows her!’ someone whispered tensely.

It was an emotional moment for everybody. The lionesses were talking to each other, nuzzling and licking each other’s faces in a kind of ecstasy. Ellen soon had to lie down again, and Joel’s eyes smarted as her sister at once crouched next to her and put a protective paw across her shoulders. He dared not trust his voice. It was over. He had done it! As the darkness deepened the onlookers walked away, leaving the sisters at peace.

Lorna knew her sister by her smell and her call. Ellen’s appearance, of course, was very much altered. When the humans had gone – Annie lingering until her mother had to drag her away – Lorna raised the subject.

‘Sister, what’s wrong? Are you ill?’

‘Not now,’ Ellen purred. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘You’re so weak. Have the men been cruel?’

‘No. They’ve fed and cared for me as much as in our old home.’

‘Then what—’

‘I couldn’t eat,’ said Ellen. ‘I can’t live alone, sister. I thought you were lost. I don’t know why I had to spend this time on my own. But I waited and waited . . .’

‘And I thought you were dead,’ Lorna murmured. ‘I escaped from the old home and lived my life in the forest. I thought of you many, many times.’

Ellen couldn’t grasp what she was hearing. ‘You lived . . . in the forest? Where’s that?’ Lorna explained. ‘But how did you survive?’ Ellen persisted. ‘You were
alone?
’

‘Not quite,’ Lorna answered. ‘Ratel escaped too. We hunted together sometimes.’

‘You have a tale to tell,’ Ellen said. ‘I long to hear it. But first, I am going to eat. There’s meat in that corner. There has always been meat. I never could face it before. I felt as though half of me had been left behind with you, wherever you were. Now I’m –
we’re
– whole again. With you here, sister, I’ve got my life back.’

Even by the next morning Ellen seemed different. Of course she was as thin as ever but, for the first time since her arrival, she seemed interested in what was going on around her. She was more alert than anyone had seen her before. Lorna, on the other hand, was angry and embittered towards the humans. She had known freedom and now she was confined again. She snarled furiously whenever any of the staff stopped to look or passed nearby.

‘This place is no better than the old one we used to think of as home,’ she complained to Ellen. ‘Why were we moved here? We must escape.’

Ellen, who had only known human care, wasn’t alarmed. ‘We can manage here, can’t we?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand any other way. You told me life was harder in the forest. You were injured. And at least we’re together.’

‘No. We can’t manage here, sister,’ Lorna corrected her. ‘I can’t accept this dreary kind of existence where nothing is real. Where you saunter around the extent of your world and when you’ve done it you do it all over again because there is nothing else. Where you wait to be fed instead of finding prey when you want to. There’s something in the air here that seems to be
beckoning me, but it’s beyond this . . . this . . . false world. Don’t you feel it too?’

Ellen thought and she did remember a strange, indefinable feeling that had gripped her on her arrival: a feeling almost of familiarity, as though she were returning from afar. It was impossible to comprehend it. ‘There is
something
,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t quite grasp it.’

‘Believe me,’ said Lorna, ‘when you’ve tasted a fresh kill, anything else is false. We were meant to hunt, you and I. I know it. Even Ratel was a hunter in the woods. We were meant to look after ourselves.’

‘It’s good to have him here,’ Ellen said dreamily. ‘Just like it used to be.’

‘No. It can never be like that again,’ Lorna answered exasperatedly. ‘We have to escape. You will need all your strength. You must be as strong as me again.’

Ellen’s health improved steadily. She ate almost as well as Lorna. Annie was ecstatic. She still visited the pen. She loved to see the sisters together. Lorna ignored her but Ellen occasionally came to the fence to rub her head against it when Annie was there. That was more than enough for Annie. She knew that Lorna’s presence was the most important thing in Ellen’s life now.

‘Now you’re not sad,’ she would cry. ‘Now you’re happy!’

Photos were taken of the sister lionesses and articles written about their separation: what it had done to them, and how joyful their lives were now that they were together again. The honey badger was featured too for his part in the drama. But Joel was the hero of the hour who had devoted himself to reuniting the lionesses he had known since their cub days. He was interviewed by the press and television. No one asked him, now that his mission was accomplished, what he
would do next. No one appreciated, it seemed, that he had in effect made himself redundant.

Lorna could think of nothing but escape. Day after day she paced her African enclosure, staring out beyond it to the savannah landscape. She and Ellen would walk separate paths, then meet, nuzzle each other and break apart again. Ellen was gradually putting on weight and Lorna constantly looked for the slightest chance of regaining freedom. She watched the routine comings and goings of staff; of Joel; she watched the deliveries of food and water; the arrangements for cleaning the lionesses’ pen. At night-time she and Ratel would often talk about escape. The honey badger was every bit as eager as his lioness friend to fend for himself again.

‘They’ve got a whole pack of us well fenced in here,’ the badger told Lorna sourly. ‘On my other side there’s a family of warthogs. It seems the mother was injured when she was pregnant and was brought here by some of the men to bear her young in this place. They’re still here.’

‘My sister tells me that before you came there was a cheetah in your pen,’ Lorna said. ‘Where has she gone?’

‘Who knows? Where are any of us to go? I’ve tried tunnelling but there are barriers set just as deep here as there were in the old place.’

‘Humans can make mistakes,’ Lorna growled. ‘They only need to make one with me and I’ll be off.’

‘Will your sister go with you?’

‘Yes. She can’t live on her own. She nearly died here before I arrived. But I’m worried her reactions might not be quick enough yet. She has a lot to learn.’

‘And would you wait for her?’ the honey badger asked.

Lorna didn’t answer at once. Then she said, ‘That might make the difference between freedom and . . .’

‘Imprisonment?’ the badger suggested.

‘Yes. It’s very difficult.’ Lorna turned to look at her sleeping sister. ‘I couldn’t abandon her,’ she said finally. ‘She
would
die next time.’

‘Perhaps she’ll sharpen up when she’s back to full health,’ said the badger.

‘Perhaps.’

‘I’ve been talking to Ratel,’ Lorna told her sister later.

‘I can guess what about,’ said Ellen. ‘Escape. That’s all you think of.’

‘What else is there?’

‘I don’t know. We never used to think about such a thing.’

‘Oh, sister, if I could only make you understand. Why don’t you talk to Ratel? He could tell you things. You used to talk a lot to him.’

‘Yes,’ said Ellen. ‘In the old place. He’s different now. I have tried talking, but I seem to make him impatient.’

‘It’s not you. It’s being cooped up here. He had a new life like me and it was taken away from him.’

Ellen sighed. Always the same thing. ‘If we did escape, how would we make out? I’d be a liability, wouldn’t I?’

‘Of course not. I’ll soon show you how to catch your food.’

‘I’m not strong enough for that.’

‘Not yet. But you will be. You’ve come a long way already. And strength isn’t the only thing. You need speed. And above all, stealth.’

‘Quite a tall order really,’ said Ellen ironically, ‘when you’ve been provided for all your life.’

‘If I could do it . . .’

‘You were always bolder, sister,’ said Ellen. ‘Could you make me bold?’

‘Hunger would do that,’ said Lorna.

The more Ellen thought about the prospect of having to hunt, dim though it seemed, the more unlikely it appeared. In health she had never known real hunger and she couldn’t share her sister’s strange enthusiasm for courting it. Was freedom so wonderful if it made you suffer? She found herself hoping that the humans would remain too clever for the impatient Lorna. It never crossed her mind that in the long term the humans shared the same ambition for the lionesses as Lorna did.

The men watched the animals closely. Joel wanted to stay on until it was time for their release, but he was only on the newspaper’s payroll to the end of the month. That was just over a week away, so Simon Obagwe offered him open house. Joel was profoundly grateful. He had come this far and to miss out on the final drama would have been a great disappointment. Ellen was improving day by day. She ate heartily and gained energy. Lorna’s temper, however, had reached a new low point. She was completely unpredictable and the men began to fear her. Even Joel never took a chance with her.

The honey badger took to staring through the link fence at dusk, trying to gauge Lorna’s mood before he passed a remark. She had become so touchy. Yet the sisters were as affectionate together as ever. They repeatedly nuzzled or licked each other in greeting as they moved about the pen. When they slept they always lay down together, heads or paws touching. It was a heartwarming sight. By comparison the badger’s solitude was all the more dreary. How he would have liked a companion of his own!

‘They don’t have much time for me now,’ he complained to himself as he watched the lionesses. ‘Oh, if I could only get out of here!’

Ellen heard his growl and looked up. ‘It’s Ratel,’ she said without interest, and yawned.

Lorna took a few steps towards the wire. ‘Any plans?’ she murmured.

‘Plenty; and no means of carrying them out!’ snapped Ratel.

‘No change then,’ Lorna grunted and turned away.

The next day a small section of the fence around Ratel’s enclosure was removed. The badger had been declared fit and healthy and it was accepted that he must be a competent hunter after his long spell in the English woodland. Access to the surrounding savannah was suddenly presented to him. As it was his habit to hide in the daytime, it was early evening before this astonishing fact was noticed. Ratel could hardly believe his eyes.

‘They’ve slipped up here,’ he chuckled to himself, ‘and
I
can slip
through
.’ He would never know that his exit from Kamenza was expected, nor that the collar that had been fitted around his neck would enable the humans to keep track of his movements around the game park.

The lionesses weren’t aware of Ratel’s disappearance for a while. Their attention, particularly Lorna’s, had been drawn to a number of small live mammals that had suddenly been introduced into their pen. This was part of the programme at Kamenza, to monitor the sisters’ readiness and ability to make a kill. The small prey animals were hares and there wasn’t much doubt about Lorna’s intentions towards them as soon as she saw them. Her golden eyes widened and her head swivelled from side to side as she tried to follow the creatures’ dashes from one point to another. When
one of the little animals came close, Lorna pressed herself flat to the dusty ground. She was motionless; a statue. Her eyes fixed unwaveringly on the hare, her huge powerful shoulder muscles bunched ready to launch her forward the instant the prey was within range. Ellen lolled against a tree, watching Lorna with scant interest. The hare nibbled some grass, but then sensed it was in danger and took off. Lorna sprang. She missed her target and the hare scooted to the far end of the enclosure, sending all the others into a panic. They ran blindly hither and thither. Lorna spun round this way and that in an effort to track them. One darted by Ellen, who simply stared at it curiously.