The Lion Tamer Who Lost

by Louise Beech

  Now he wonders if it is wrong to join her for breakfast. He doesn’t want to mislead her. He suddenly remembers Jodie Cartwright back home, and cringes. How wrong he got that. How unkind he was to her the night of his brother Mike’s wedding. But Esther is such a gentle-natured yet feisty girl, always quick to befriend a volunteer who’s being left out. There is a charm about her that grabs Ben’s affection if not his sexual interest.

  ‘Sit here!’ Esther’s voice rises over the din in the breakfast room.

  He gets a mug of coffee and joins her.

  ‘No muesli today?’ she asks.

  ‘Can’t stomach it.’

  ‘Ben’ she starts, ‘I just wanted to s––’

  At this moment Stig, sitting on the bench behind them, speaks. ‘I have bad news.’ The room quietens. Sometimes only tragedy breaks the simple routine of the project; an animal found hurt and needing to be picked up or put down, an injury in the enclosure, or a lioness refusing to eat. Today it is thirteen-month-old Aslan, who was injured in a fight.

  ‘John has operated on the scar,’ explains Stig. ‘But his face wound won’t heal, despite two courses of antibiotics.’

  The usual chorus of ahhhs fills the room.

  ‘Emily,’ Stig says, nodding at the nineteen-year-old art student on a gap year, who has moved closer to listen. ‘I want you and a partner to separate Aslan from the pride. He won’t be bloody happy as he’s just begun to assert himself there. He’s a feisty bugger too! I’m concerned about upsetting the balance in the group, but we risk further deterioration if we leave him with them.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Emily. She looks around the room for a partner and chooses Esther to go with her. Esther is popular. As they leave, she glances at Ben, clearly not altogether happy to be taken away.

  ‘See you later?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ he replies.

  ‘Okay, great.’

  Ben is going to have to tell her something so that they can be friends. He could try the truth. The core of it is so simple. Just three words. But he is not sure he will ever say them. To himself. To anyone.

  But he is glad now to be free to go and see Lucy for the first time since the rescue. Yesterday she and Chuma were given a thorough medical and then settled in rooms in The Nursery, so he stayed away. When Ben asked why they had to be separated, saying that surely the siblings needed one another more than ever since they had been orphaned, John explained that it was for their own good, as they would be separated anyway within the enclosure.

  ‘Ben,’ calls Stig as he tries to leave the breakfast room.

  Ben’s heart sinks. Is he going to be given some tiresome duty instead?

  ‘You going to see Lucy?’ Stig asks catching him up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. That’s what I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ben hopes it isn’t bad news. ‘She okay?’

  ‘As far as we can tell,’ says Stig. ‘A little undernourished. They both are. But it’s not their physical health we’re most concerned with. As you know, their mother was killed. If she was around she would still be nursing them, be caring for them in general. She’d be teaching Lucy to hunt very soon.’

  Ben nods. Poor Lucy. Poor Chuma.

  ‘I want you to try and bond with Lucy,’ says Stig. ‘I’m going to ask Esther to do the same with Chuma when she gets back.’

  ‘Okay.’ The word comes out so softly that Ben says again, ‘Okay.’

  ‘Bonding with a newborn cub is a long and slow process,’ explains Stig. ‘It usually begins at birth with bottle-feeding, so getting a three-month-old to accept you is going to be challenging.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How should I do it then?’

  ‘In practical terms, milk. You’ll feed her, and also we’ll begin her on some meat.’

  ‘But she attacked us,’ says Ben. ‘Won’t she just fight me?’

  ‘Probably. I tried yesterday, and she was so hungry she took it, but John had to help.’

  ‘And you want me to do it alone?’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ says Ben.

  ‘You’ll have to intimidate her. She must learn that you are superior, or she’ll want to kill you.’

  ‘Great.’

  Stig laughs. ‘No, not now. But when she gets older, if you haven’t connected with her. Get her to trust you. As you know, our lions are taught from the start that volunteers are dominant members of the tribe. Lucy, however, won’t accept this easily.’

  ‘What if she doesn’t at all?’ asks Ben.

  Stig ignores the question, which worries him.

  ‘You must make her, and fast. This kind of thing can take months, but you need to do it in weeks. We need to move her in with the other lionesses as soon as we can, or she’ll not learn to mix, and then she won’t learn to hunt with them – and you know what that means for her survival in the wild.’

  Stig pauses then, his silence as dramatic as his words.

  ‘Do you think you’re up for it, Ben?’

  ‘I guess,’ he says, not sure at all.

  ‘Good.’ Stig pauses. ‘There’s no time like now.’

  ‘No. I suppose not.’

  Ben heads for the place affectionately called The Nursery. This is a brick building where cubs requiring constant attention are cared for. Young girls come to the project for these babies – it is the job most applied to do. Older cubs able to eat prepared meat get moved into the fenced enclosures where they will hopefully form prides and then go into the reserve to learn to hunt in packs. By eighteen months, most lions can fend for themselves. But a perimeter fence still keeps them on the vast reserve, where they can be monitored.

  Swatting tsetse flies and still not quite used to the overpowering smell of lion shit, Ben makes his way inside. He asks the first person he sees where Lucy is. Then he goes along the corridor, smiling at a woman bottle-feeding a cub in one of the rooms that he passes, her arms cradling him as though he is her own baby. Ben pauses at the fifth wooden door.

  Then he opens it slowly.

  For a split second he is walking through a different door. Into a flat for the first time. He can smell bread. See books. Feel breath on his neck. Feel the anticipation of what might happen within its walls. Then it is gone, and he is here again.

  Here in a room with a lioness.

  The light illuminates her tawny body sprawled against a back wall. As Ben enters the room, she stands up, haunches high, and growls a low warning. Her chains clank as she tugs on them.

  ‘Lucy,’ he says softly.

  She growls again. Multihued fur ripples like a dirty river. Head dipped, she snarls, revealing tiny fangs.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’ asks Ben, kneeling with enough space between them to protect himself.

  More growling.

  ‘Don’t you remember the journey?’

  More growling.

  ‘I know,’ says Ben. ‘You must hate being chained like up this but it’s for your own safety, and for mine. Just until you get used to being here. Just until you and I form some sort of bond, I guess.’

  More growling, even louder.

  Shit. How is he going to do this?

  ‘I bet you miss your brother,’ he says.

  Lucy tugs again on her chains again; the clanking sound reminds Ben of a silver box with a wonky lid that often fell off. He closes his eyes. He is back again in the flat that he so misses. He imagines hands opening the box. Hands that he knows as well as his own. Hands he longs to grasp. Ben sees the contents of the box. Sees tiny yellow Post-it notes. Sees tiny words written neatly there. Tiny wishes.

  And a face.

  That face. Those eyes. The gold-flecked irises he has tried so hard not to think about.

  The face has a name. One Ben can only whisper when he is alone at dawn; a name that escapes his lips and floats over the burnt land to simmer with the heat. A name he has come here to try and forget. A name that he now re
alises will need more than physical distance and more than time to erase. The name rises in his throat.

  Ben puts a hand over his mouth.

  Shakes his head and lets out a strangled moan.

  Lucy returns to her spot against the back wall and views him with narrow, distrustful, gold eyes.

  Maybe if Ben says the name aloud he will finally sleep. Not toss and turn and cry out, not risk disturbing Simon and revealing all his secrets.

  He closes his eyes.

  ‘Andrew,’ he whispers.

  Lucy purrs her acceptance of the word.

  Andrew.

  4

  ZIMBABWE

  I’m Going To Lie Here

  Ben slept, knowing the lions would wake.

  Andrew Fitzgerald, The Lion Tamer Who Lost

  For the next five days Ben concentrates mostly on Lucy. He is grateful for the challenge Stig has set him; glad to have something to occupy so much of his time.

  Each morning – after his solitary sunrise, the usual banter with Simon, and a muesli breakfast – Ben and Esther head to The Nursery. Calling hello to Lois, a volunteer who seems to spend time with the newborns around the clock, they collect their bottles of milk and then part ways, each with their own ward to tend.

  As soon as Ben enters the dimly lit room, Lucy is up on her feet, snarling savagely. He stoops low on the straw-covered cement floor, about six feet away, and talks to her in an even tone, ignoring her teeth-baring and swinging paw.

  ‘Look, milk,’ he says the first time. ‘You know you want some of this lovely stuff. You must be bloody ravenous, girl.’

  Most cubs her age would have already begun the process of being weaned off their milk, but Stig insists Lucy should have three bottles a day for now. She should also be winded like a human baby so she doesn’t get tummy ache, but Ben can’t get close enough to do that.

  The first bottle ends up being hurled against the wall by her left paw. Thankfully, it’s plastic so it bounces, and Ben retrieves it and tries again. Lions have a special organ on the roof of their mouths that picks up odours, so he unscrews the teat to let her smell the creamy contents more strongly, and holds the open bottle as near to her as he dares.

  ‘Come on, you stubborn little madam. I reckon you want this more than you don’t want me.’

  She sniffs it. Growls softly. He screws the teat back on and holds it out, a little closer still, shaking it so that some drops spill on the floor to tease her. He has seen how most of the newborns are fed here. Volunteers cradle them closely, stroke their fur, whisper words of encouragement – giving them that feeling of being with a mother. The real mothers of these cubs are either dead or have abandoned them, so without the care at the project the babies would perish. Ben doesn’t think Lucy will let him stroke her while she drinks, but for now he doesn’t mind, if she will only take it.

  In the end, he ignores her.

  After a while, she approaches the bottle. Making no eye contact with Ben, she latches onto the teat. The noisy slurping as she drains the milk in minutes shows just how hungry she really is. Ben doesn’t speak, not wanting to disturb her. He doesn’t reach out to touch her, even though he longs to.

  The hair on her back looks the coarsest, with dark little tufts dotted here and there like the bushes on the surrounding landscape. It appears softer at the sides, and particularly behind her ears, where it is most glossy and golden. Perhaps one day Ben will get to feel it under his fingers.

  For now, he is just pleased Lucy has drained her first bottle.

  ‘Good girl,’ he coos. She snarls and returns to the far corner of the room.

  His heart sinks.

  After this, however, she takes her bottle at least. Each time Ben enters the room with one, she sits and allows him to feed her, the only sound her slurpy guzzles. Once done, she retreats. Ignores him. For hours in between these feeds, Ben sits about six feet away from her, talking gently, and crawling a little closer when she seems to calm. For this he receives just a clawy little scratch on his cheek as payment.

  ‘Well, cheers for that, Lucy.’

  Ben wipes the blood from his face and looks at the crimson streak on his palm. Flashbacks engulf him. The circus. Blood streaming from a fingertip. A bathroom. A new baby. Blood staining every surface. A hospital ward. A streak of red near a radiator.

  The clanking chain dispels the memories. Lucy is getting comfortable for a snooze. Ben can try as hard as he likes to bury them – he can devote his energy to making the most of his time here – but he is powerless when some random sound or sight or smell evokes them. Maybe if he looked back on the happier moments before he came here then the past would not haunt him so much.

  But he knows what those good days will lead to.

  One evening, Ben spends some time with Esther. Sharing a large, rotten log that gives the best views of the long-shadowed savanna – a place she discovered and showed him – they compare notes about the progress of their lion wards.

  ‘I know it’s only been three days,’ says Esther, excitedly, taking some chocolate from her pocket and giving some to Ben, ‘but Chuma seems to be adapting. He actually let me stroke him today. Okay, he might have been busy feeding, but I got to tickle his tummy. Ben, it was so unbelievably soft. I actually melted.’

  ‘Maybe it’s because you’re a nurse,’ says Ben, a little jealous.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I guess you have to have a way with people? A bedside manner…’

  Esther laughs. ‘Doubt I’ve got that. Never got much chance. We were so overworked on the wards that there was no time to make any sort of connection with the patients.’ She looks sad. ‘That was why I wanted to be a nurse. And it … well, it isn’t what I hoped it would be. How about you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What were you doing before you came here?’

  Hating my dad, comes to Ben, heatedly. Hating him for what he did.

  ‘I … I was at university … then I…’

  ‘You came here?’

  ‘Yes. I came here.’

  Quiet punctuates the evening insect song. There is nothing else. Just heavy darkness and the two of them. During a long, comfortable silence, Esther blows in Ben’s ear – whether accidentally or intentionally he doesn’t know – but it reminds him. Reminds him of Andrew’s passionate breath. Of his soft snoring when he slept. Of him being there.

  ‘Esther,’ Ben says gently. ‘I wanted to say … about … the other night … the wine…’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she interjects, moving away from him. ‘Honestly. I just thought we could chat. That’s all. I’m sorry. I tried to say that at breakfast the other day.’ Her words are a nervous gabble. ‘I just thought you’d seemed so grumpy and down that you could use a friend, and some wine.’

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry,’ he says. ‘Nothing to be sorry for.’

  ‘I do. I gave you the wrong idea. The invite. It must have seemed like a come-on.’

  ‘I didn’t think that at all,’ lies Ben.

  ‘You did. But it’s fine. It’s all fine.’ She clearly isn’t though. ‘Can we forget it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good.’

  There doesn’t seem to be much else to say. He doesn’t want an imbalance in feelings to get in the way of their friendship. Ben opens his mouth to thank Esther for putting up with his moods and distance, but she says goodnight and heads back to the huts.

  In the middle of the night, while awake for hours, Ben realises what he must do. It occurs to him that it’s fine going to see Lucy every day, but night is surely when she is more vulnerable. Perhaps therefore more receptive. Lions are territorial; this why a lion tamer always enters the ring first, establishing his ownership of the domain. The lion will jump and dance and perform for this master because he owns their world. Ben hasn’t had the advantage of being there first with Lucy. He has been trying all week to own the space. To make her trust him, as Stig suggested. Now, he figures, what better w
ay than when she’s most defenceless: sleeping? If she dozes off and then wakes it will appear that Ben got there first.

  That he was always there.

  Ben sits up in his hammock, excited by the idea. He anticipates little sleep if he goes; he knows both he and Lucy will end up exhausted, but decides it’s the only way.

  Ben gets up. Doing this means he won’t have to sleep, to dream, and then wake and toss and turn. He knows, as he puts a bottle of water and some chocolate into his rucksack, that Lucy will put up a fight. It will be him saying yes and her saying no; a game Ben has played before.

  Swatting moths, blanket underarm, he makes his way through hot, woody blackness to the brick building and its nurseries. He says ‘hi’ to the three women doing night feeds in the room opposite, telling them that if they need chocolate he has plenty.

  Then he opens the door.

  Lucy stares at him. She stands up and growls softly. As always, her chains clank. Ben knows he will forever hear the sound in his mind and think of her.

  ‘Hello, girl,’ he says softly. ‘You didn’t expect this, huh?’

  He approaches slowly.

  ‘We’re going to try something different.’

  Lucy backs up towards the wall. This is something she has never done. Usually she glares, growls, haunches high, then launches, her chains tight. Is she submitting to him? Surely not so soon?

  ‘I’m going to lie here too.’

  Ben speaks firmly as though to a child, and Lucy bares her teeth and moves a little closer. No, he has not won her trust yet. It will not be as easy as that.

  ‘You can complain all you want, but it’s happening.’ He scoops up straw to form a makeshift mattress, placing it a safe distance from Lucy. ‘Think of it as a sleepover.’ Ben gets onto his straw pile and covers his torso and legs with the blanket. ‘You can growl at me all you like, but I’m staying. You hear me? I’m staying.’

  Lucy snarls but doesn’t move. Standing, she watches Ben, warily.

  ‘Not exactly the Hilton, is it? No wonder you grumble all the time.’

  Another snarl.

  ‘You gonna stand all night? You’ll be knackered.’