She looked across at him, but she couldn’t read his eyes because of the sunglasses. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Sitting in her wooden chair, sipping ice-cold water, Kumari looked out at the savannah that stretched into the distance. They were in a safari park, she knew, because they’d driven past a sign a long way back. The vegetation was sparse, but beautiful. Here and there the vast swathes of red and brown were broken up by clusters of trees or patches of bright red and orange flowers. A breeze rippled through, carrying with it the smell of hot earth.
It was stunning.
When she was working for Better For All, she had been to the mountain parks in Lesotho on her rare days off, but she’d rarely stopped to absorb their beauty. The medical camp itself had been surrounded by mountains, but she’d barely had time to look up and admire them. She had lived and worked in Africa, albeit a very different part of Africa to this one, but not really seen it. This time, her second visit to the continent, was different. There was no background noise of people weeping. No hum of the generators. There was no press of expectation. This time, she could pause to admire a beautiful landscape and let it feed her soul.
And then there was Ben. She looked across at him. He looked different here too, more relaxed. He leant forward in his seat. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘I’m thinking that it’s a very thoughtful thing for you to have done.’ Not to mention hugely over-the-top for a third date. But then, he was a prince. Maybe this was nothing to him. Either way, she wasn’t complaining. She reached over and put her hand in his. In the bright daylight, her hand looked very brown against his pink-white one. ‘You didn’t have to.’
His fingers wrapped around hers. He leant forward.
‘Except that I did,’ he said. ‘In London, I feel like I’ve got to have eyes in the back of my head. I’m always on duty. Even when I’m meeting a girl – like that time we met for a drink. I have to always have this low-level awareness of everything around me. I can’t really relax and, honestly, neither can you. Out here . . .’ He waved an arm to encompass the wide savannah. ‘Out here there’s nothing. Just you and me. Even Dave over there . . .’ He nodded to where his bodyguards were sitting unobtrusively at the other end of the hut. ‘Even Dave and his colleagues can keep a bit of distance.’
She wondered what it must be like to be constantly on your guard like that. ‘That must be hard,’ she said.
He inclined his head. ‘My family . . .’ he said. ‘We are in the public eye rather a lot. It’s part of the job. People feel like they know us. They almost expect us to know them. We have to learn to always be gracious. Always be welcoming.’
He smiled a half-smile, as though he was thinking about a memory.
‘It’s not a hardship, really. Sometimes you get to meet some fascinating people. I don’t mean high-profile people, I mean ordinary ones, or at least they think they’re ordinary, but they do incredible things. It’s inspiring and humbling and . . . quite often exhausting.’ He squeezed her hand gently. ‘And sometimes you meet an individual who you really want to get to know and you don’t want to give your attention to anyone else.’ He smiled. ‘This is a place where I can concentrate on you. I know it’s only for a few days but . . .’
‘Thank you. I want to get to know you too.’ She meant it. When they had been talking by phone or messaging each other, it felt like a normal relationship – and he made her happy. It was only when she stopped to consider that in order to be alone, he had flown her to Namibia that the whole thing felt surreal.
‘Perfect.’ He brought their joined hands up to his lips and kissed her knuckles. ‘What do you want to do first?’
‘Right now, I feel like I’ve been travelling forever and I would really like to have a shower and change into clean clothes.’
‘Of course.’ He leant back and beckoned the waiter. ‘Are the tents ready?’
The man nodded. ‘Yes, sir. We set it up just as you asked.’ Tent? A shot of trepidation. She looked at the artfully tiled floor and stylised moulded walls. This was far too fancy a place for tents.
The ‘tents’ turned out to be canopied lodges, spread out in a circle around a central building. They faced outwards, so that you couldn’t see the solar panels, water towers and practical buildings in the middle.
‘That’s my tent,’ said Ben, pointing. ‘And that’s yours.’
Her tent was sparsely furnished, but contained everything she needed. There was a large double bed, with bolsters and drop-down mosquito nets. With the sides of the tent rolled up, you could lie in bed and watch the world go by. It would have felt very exposed if it wasn’t for the fact that no one was around for miles.
Eager to rinse the heat and tiredness off her skin, Kumari had a shower – supplied by a water tank that stood on a tower behind – in the bathroom, which was housed in a low-slung building adjacent to the tent. And once she’d put on the cotton shirt she’d thought too fussy when she was packing, with a pair of cotton trousers, she felt much better.
When she got back to her tent, she found Ben lying on her bed, wearing his glasses and reading a brochure. He had changed into shorts and a cotton shirt. It made him look ridiculously colonial. She noticed for the first time that he had very muscular legs. Nice.
‘There’s about twelve different trips we can make, depending on what animals we want to see,’ he said.
She flopped down on the bed next to him. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to be lying next to him on a big bed, looking out at the open savannah. He opened his arm and she snuggled in next to him, her head on his shoulder. ‘What do you fancy?’
‘They all look pretty good.’ She breathed in the smell of him. Even out here, he reminded her of woodland and summer.
‘I wouldn’t mind going to see if there are any birds. Try out my new camera.’
‘OK. That sounds good. Let’s do that.’ She was suddenly incredibly tired. She tried to focus on the brochure and read the information, but she couldn’t.
‘There’s a few safari trails we could try,’ Ben said.
But she wasn’t listening. She studied his profile. The familiar line of his straight nose, the dip below his lower lip. She changed position so that she could kiss his cheek. He lowered the brochure and smiled. ‘Hello, you.’
She tapped the bridge of his nose. ‘How come you don’t wear contacts?’
‘Can’t stand putting things in my eyes,’ he said. ‘How come you like my glasses so much?’
She changed position and rested her chin on his shoulder. ‘I’ve always have a thing for men in glasses.’
‘Really.’ His eyes sparkled. He really was gorgeous. With or without the glasses. And he liked that she teased him. Wow.
‘Uh-huh. I think glasses on a handsome man are . . . sexy.’
‘Very wise.’
‘I know, right.’ She reached up and pushed the spectacles to the top of his head so that she could kiss him properly.
*
Very early the next morning, they were bouncing along in the back of an open-sided safari truck. Kumari and Ben were in the back, sitting close together in the middle of a seat designed to hold four. In the front were their guide and the tracker. Also in the front was a radio and ammunition for the guns that were in the cab. She had asked why they needed a rifle on board if they weren’t hunting and they’d said, cryptically, ‘For safety.’
Behind them another jeep carried several armed men, including Dave. Ben seemed to have mastered the art of being polite and friendly to Dave while simultaneously ignoring him most of the time. She didn’t know how he did it.
Kumari yawned. Her body wasn’t entirely sure what time zone she was in, but it knew it was too early. The sky was lemon and pink with dawn. Around her the details of the landscape were coming into focus.
‘Look at all that sky,’ she breathed. It astounded her, the unbroken expanse that arched from horizon to horizon. In London the sky was only available in patches
– hemmed in by trees and buildings, sliced up by vapour trails. Even in Yorkshire, the sky was parcelled up by the hills.
Ben was fiddling with his camera. He looked up. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s beautiful.’ He pointed the camera at her and took a picture. Checking the screen on the back he said, ‘Nope,’ and deleted it.
She watched him. Every time she looked at him, she felt the pull of him, that deep-felt urge to give something of herself, to form a connection. But she had been there before. Wonderful though it was to surrender to love, she also knew what it was like to see that love wither with neglect. To lose that bond. To watch the dreams of a future together dwindle to nothing but dust. As much as she wanted to take a chance on him, she was afraid to. She didn’t think she had the strength to go through heartbreak again.
A flock of birds took to the sky from a thicket not far away. The vehicle slowed. The tracker said, ‘Shh.’
The guide, who was driving, slowed the vehicle and they crawled towards the thicket. Kumari leant forward. Now that the noise of the jeep was gone, they could hear the animal sounds and, in the distance, birdsong that was carried to them by the breeze.
The tracker put his finger to his lips again and slipped out. He walked forward, crouching a little to look at the ground. The guide killed the engine, unzipped the gun bag and pulled out a rifle, moving quietly.
Kumari frowned. She objected to guns in general, but this was probably not the time to get into an argument about it. One of the many lessons she’d learnt working in the vaccination camp was that things weren’t always how they seemed.
The tracker froze. He started to raise his hand, then his whole body tensed. What had he seen? Kumari strained to see. Behind her, she could feel Ben stretching to see past her. His chest was warm and solid against her shoulder.
Suddenly the tracker shouted something, turned and ran back towards the jeep. A loud crack rang out and he pitched forward.
‘Kumari, get down.’ Ben pulled her backwards and somehow pushed her into the footwell while simultaneously grabbing a handgun from the front. The guide was on the radio, shouting into it. More shots. Repeated gunfire came from the jeep behind and was returned from the thicket. Ben took aim and shot at the trees. Kumari cowered, making herself as small as possible and keeping out of the way. In the front, the driver crouched down and radioed for help.
Dave had appeared from somewhere and was trying to pull Ben down. Ben shrugged him off and took aim again. Dave, who probably knew his boss pretty well, joined in, angling himself so that he was kneeling in front of Ben.
Kumari, even with her arms wrapped over her head, felt the shots reverberate around her. The guide dropped the radio and grabbed the rifle.
A few minutes later, she heard another noise. An engine whine. A plane? The shooting stopped abruptly and from somewhere there was the sound of a powerful engine starting. The plane swooped and shots rang out again. They were shooting at the attackers. As the sounds receded, Ben lowered his gun. ‘Kumari, are you hurt?’
‘No.’ She lifted her head and looked at the three men in the vehicle.
Ben had a cut on his forehead that was bleeding, but didn’t look too bad. Dave and the guide seemed unhurt. She sat up and looked beyond them. The tracker lay on the ground, crying and moaning. If he was crying, that was a good sign. He was conscious.
‘First aid kit,’ she said.
The guide pulled out a tiny kit. This would have things for cuts and bites, but nothing useful. She grabbed it and made to get out of the vehicle.
Ben caught her arm. ‘What are you doing?’
‘He’s hurt. I’m going to help him.’
‘But you don’t know if it’s safe. If one of the poachers was injured, he might have been left behind and still be armed.’
‘If he’s injured,’ she said, ‘I’ll help him too.’
He stared at her for a second, as though trying to make her see sense. She met his gaze.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Dave.’
The men went ahead of her, guns at the ready. Moving like they were trying to watch all directions at the same time. She ignored them and rushed to the injured man. He was bleeding heavily from one side. She found the bullet wound in his stomach. The first aid pack contained one bandage. She used it as a dressing and pressed it against the wound. She couldn’t see where the bullet had gone and didn’t dare move him to find an exit wound. Blood seeped onto the bandage, but it didn’t soak it immediately. She needed something to keep this in place.
‘Hold this,’ she instructed Ben. He put his gun down and did as he was told. She took off the man’s shirt, pulled it tight over the bandage and tied it, binding the dressing to the wound. All the while, she talked to him, her voice low and calm, until he stilled enough to talk to her and tell her more about the pain.
Once she was sure he was stable, she left one of the men with him, with instructions to keep talking to him, and went to check on the others. The second jeep had caught most of the gunfire. Its side was full of holes and the tyres were in shreds. One of the other men had taken a shot to the shoulder. Kumari stabilised it and bound it using someone’s shirt.
It seemed an age until the plane returned. Soon after that a convoy of vehicles arrived. A stretcher was produced and the injured men were carried off to be flown to the hospital.
The manager of the campsite, who had arrived with the backup, gabbled his apologies, but Kumari, bloodstained and suddenly exhausted as the adrenaline drained out of her, ignored him and let Ben guide her back to one of the new jeeps. Ben tried to talk to her, but she shook her head. They sat close together in silence, bloodstained hands tightly clutched, all the way back to the lodge.
It was the most welcome shower she’d ever had. Sometime during her shower, as the tracker’s blood washed off her, she realised how lucky they’d been. She still felt shaky. It was the first time she’d heard real gunfire or come anywhere close to death. The enormity of what could have happened struck her with some force.
The poachers had concentrated on the heavily armed jeep rather than the one with the tourists in it. The rangers in the armed vehicle had been well trained, as were Dave and Ben. If the guide hadn’t kept his head and radioed for help, if they had been any closer when the poachers opened fire . . . there were so many ways in which things could have gone much worse. And Ben. He had put himself in front of her. He could literally have taken a bullet for her.
They could have both been killed.
Kumari put clean clothes on and tied her hair up in a bun. It would dry out creased and frizzy, but who cared. She was alive. How had she forgotten what a joy it was to be alive? And Ben. He liked her. She knew she liked him back, but she was fighting it. Why? Because she was afraid of what would happen if it didn’t work out? Was she so mad as to throw away the chance of something wonderful on the off-chance that it might not go well? Life was, she decided, too short for playing games.
She checked her boots, put them on and walked the short distance between her tent and Ben’s. Everything seemed brighter and sharper, as though her senses had been dialled up to maximum sensitivity. The world was an astounding place. How wonderful to be alive in it.
Ben was sitting on the porch in front of the tent, where an awning provided some shade. He was fiddling with his camera again. He lifted his head and raised his sunglasses to the top of his head when she approached. He had a small butterfly bandage on his forehead where he’d been cut.
‘Hey.’ He stood up. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Much better now, thanks.’
‘You were amazing out there,’ he said. ‘Most women would have screamed the place down.’
She stepped up to him and touched his cheek. ‘I told you. I’m not most women.’
‘No.’ He looked into her eyes, want burning in his expression. ‘You’re incredible.’
She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him. His breath hitched. She pressed closer and he returned her kiss. His arms pulled her hard agains
t him. She ran her hands into his hair. His mouth moved from hers and his kisses travelled down her jaw to her neck. She let her head tip back and breathed him in.
‘Are you sure?’ he whispered in between kisses.
She opened her eyes and smiled. She had never been so sure of anything in her life. ‘Yes.’ She pushed him gently towards the opening of the tent. He took her hand and led her inside.
*
They were sitting on the porch of his tent, with a hurricane lamp on a table between them. The staff at the park had zipped down the sides of the tent and lit lamps while they had been at dinner. Lemon and eucalyptus candles floated in bowls in an attempt to keep the bugs at bay. Ben had turned the lamp down low, so that their eyes could adjust to the darkness and see the shapes of the trees around them. Above them, the astounding sky was full of stars.
‘Ben?’
‘Yes?’ His hand found hers in the gloom. His thumb stroked across her knuckles.
‘I really like you,’ she said. She did. He made her feel a sense of contentment that she hadn’t had in years. It was almost as though her life had been ever so slightly askew and needed him to put everything into balance.
Ben’s thumb stopped moving. He leant forward. ‘Why do I feel there’s going to be a “but” ’ next?’
‘How is this going to work? I mean, it’s all well and good out here, with no one around, but when we get back . . . how can we possibly date like normal people?’
He didn’t reply. He was quiet for so long that she said, ‘Ben?’ to check if he was OK.
‘I’m thinking,’ he said.
Kumari leant across and, with her free hand, raised the wick so that the flame in the lamp rose higher. In the warm light, she could see Ben’s frown.
‘I’ve never had what you’d call a normal life,’ he said solemnly. ‘My parents tried very hard to keep things normal for us. You know, prep school and playtime and holidays where it was just us . . . I mean, there was security, and nannies, of course, but that was fairly normal compared to how it could have been. But I’m not so out of touch that I don’t realise how different my life has been. When I was in the army . . . I was one of the guys. I liked that. But it was always made clear to me that it wasn’t a long-term thing. I would always have to give up and come home to take on royal duties. It’s . . . the rules.’
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