There was a further delay while she tried on the khaki
hat, the sun-goggles, the dust veil, and unfurled her parasol, but eventually she was packed and ready to leave. She descended in the elevator, paid her bill at the desk, left her bag with the porter at the front door and, still carrying her umbrella, headed for the Coffee Hut for lunch before her departure for Chunga. She was hesitating at the door when a man's voice behind her said, "Ha— found you again. Lunching now?"
Mrs. Pollifax turned and found herself staring into a kelly-green shirt. Lifting her gaze she identified its owner as Cyrus Reed, last seen at the Times of Zambia. "As a matter of fact, yes."
"Good. Have it with me," he said, and taking a firm grip on her elbow he piloted her into the patio and seated her efficiently at an umbrella-shaded table. "Don't give you a chance to refuse," he said, taking the chair opposite her.
"No, you didn't."
"Don't often ask women to lunch," he said gruffly. "To dinner either, for that matter. Nuisance, that sort of thing. You aren't, I hope, a real Duchess? Couldn't help overhearing your classified advertisement in the news office." "He did read it in a loud voice," she admitted. "Actually I'm Emily Pollifax. Duchess was a—a sort of nickname."
He extended an arm across the flowers and they gravely shook hands. He was certainly a large man; big was the only word for him, she decided, looking at him, but it seemed a matter of frame and muscle rather than fat. He moved and spoke slowly, as if stricken by lethargy, but he had whisked her to a table in seconds, and his smile, drowsy as it was, was singularly warm and responsive and his eyes shrewd. There was something very oriental about his eyes, she thought; it was because they were set into his face on the same plane as his brows, like almonds pressing into a snowman's face. Those Chinese lids increased his sleepy look and gave him the appearance of a large and slightly rumpled mandarin.
He said now, observantly, "Eyes had a faraway look when you explained the nickname. Good friend, this Farrell?"
"A very good friend, yes."
"Only kind to have," he said, nodding. "Imaginative idea, advertising. Cyrus Reed's my name, by the way. Lawyer, Connecticut. Care for a drink?"
Mrs. Pollifax smiled at the hovering waiter but shook her head. "I've not a great deal of time," she explained. "I'm being called for at half-past two."
"Then we'll order. I can recommend the chicken because I've had it every day since my arrival. Tirelessly, one might say."
Mr. Reed, it seemed, had been in Lusaka for four days. "My daughter," he explained, "is exhausting. Insisted on our stopping in Rome on the way here, and now she's gone off to Livingstone to see Victoria Falls while I catch my breath. Insisted on renting a car for the trip, said she'd see more of the country."
"I expect she will," said Mrs. Pollifax cheerfully. "Already late returning. Due back three hours ago. What brings you here?"
"I'm leaving on safari this afternoon," she told him. His sleepy gaze sharpened. "This afternoon? Not by any chance the five-day Kafue Park safari starting officially tomorrow morning?"
She looked at him in astonishment "As a matter of fact, yes. You don't mean—?"
He nodded. "Exactly. Arrival at Chunga camp in late afternoon, with game-viewing on the river tomorrow morning, followed by Kafwala camp in the afternoon?"
"Yes, with pickup at two-thirty here by Homer?"
He shook his head. "Sorry about that. We're driving. Lisa's idea." He looked at her and added frankly, "Damn sorry about that, actually, but if I'll see you again the fates are smiling. You're—uh—what's the word they use these days, unattached?"
"A widow."
"Ought to say I'm sorry but can't. I like you."
She looked at him and began to laugh. "I really like your directness but I'm not accustomed, you know, to such—such—"
"Unabashed admiration? Can't think why not. You look alive," he said firmly. "Can't stand dull people."
"I'm very dull," Mrs. Pollifax told him sincerely. "I do volunteer work—not very efficiently—and raise geraniums and really—that is, in general" she added conscientiously, "live a very quiet life."
"Doesn't mean a thing," he said. "You look interested, a sense of wonder lingers. True?"
"I feel like a witness being cross-examined on the stand."
He nodded. "Bad habit of mine, the trouble with being a lawyer. My two children call it a deficiency—or rather, when they're pleased with me they say I'm direct, when they're angry I'm blunt."
"You have two children, then?"
He nodded. "Boy's thirty, the girl—that's Lisa—twenty-six. Raised them myself since their mother died, which happened when Lisa was three years old, and then said hands off, at least until two years ago. You've children?"
Mrs. Pollifax nodded. "Also a boy and a girl, both of them grown up and parents now. But what happened two years ago?"
"Had to rescue Lisa," he said, leaning back for the waiter to deposit dishes in front of them. "You can't imagine from what squalor," he added, "which wouldn't have mattered a tinker's damn if she was happy. Found her living in the East Village in New York doing social work, weight down to ninety-six pounds and crying her heart out over a chap she'd been in love with." He snorted indignantly. "Loved him, she said, because he cared. Trouble was the chap seems to have cared indiscriminately—about women mainly, I gather—and led her a merry chase. Considering Lisa graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe it seemed very unintelligent of her."
"Emotions have nothing to do with intellect," pointed out Mrs. Pollifax.
"You understand that," he said, nodding. "Lisa didn't."
"What's happened to her since then?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.
"You'll see her," he reminded her. "Cool, brisk, businesslike, that's Lisa. Liked her better when she tumbled for every cause that came along. Warm-hearted, ardent child."
'Then of course she still is," put in Mrs. Pollifax.
"Somewhere, yes, but in the last two years she's grown a shell three feet thick. Thought the trip might do her good. Not healthy for either of us, living together. Exhausting."
Mrs. Pollifax put down her fork and smiled at him. "Is there anything that doesn't exhaust you?"
He directed a sleepy glance at her and smiled. "As a matter of fact a few things . . . good food, good talk, collecting rare books . . . still play a decent game of tennis and I've been known to rouse myself at dawn for bird-watching."
"That's hard to imagine. Are you," she asked sternly, "ecology-minded?"
"Passionately," he said with a straight face.
Mrs. Pollifax laughed and decided at that moment that if she had been deprived of Farrell's company during her few hours in Lusaka, then Cyrus Reed made a rather fair replacement. She also found herself hoping that Mr. Reed's lethargy was genuine, his daughter bona fide, and that he had not acquired a nasty habit of assassinating people in his spare time.
"Dessert?" suggested Mr. Reed, offering her the menu.
She glanced at her watch and shook her head. "I can only thank you for a delicious lunch," she told him, picking up her umbrella, "and see you next at Chunga."
They said goodbye and she removed herself to the lobby, where she chose a chair in sight of the front door. There she sat, gazing with interest at a party of dark men in turbans. A porter walked past her ringing a bicycle bell and carrying a chalkboard on which were scrawled the words "Mr. Kaacha wanted at desk," and then suddenly Homer Kulumbala appeared before her, smiling.
"Good afternoon, you are ready for Chunga?" he asked.
"Ready and waiting," she told him.
"Your luggage?"
She pointed to her suitcase next the door and he picked it up and led her out to the hotel drive. The same VW bus was parked among the bougainvillea, and again she chose the front seat next to the driver. Homer went off to round up other members of the safari and presently returned escorting a narrow man in a pair of slacks and a bush jacket. "Oh dear, we're twins," thought Mrs. Pollifax ruefully, glancing from his
bush jacket and slacks to her own, and wondered if everyone on safari would wear identical khaki clothes. "Hello," she said as he reached the bus.
He was a prim-looking little man, perhaps forty-five or fifty, his one notable feature a reddish-brown goatee. He seemed an odd candidate for a safari: he looked fastidious and a trifle pinched about the nostrils, as if the world had a slightly rancid odor to him. At sight of Mrs. Pollifax he looked even more disapproving, or perhaps he resented her occupying the front seat. He stepped carefully into the rear and in faintly accented English called to Homer to be careful with his two suitcases. Only then —and after wiping the seat with his handkerchief—did he turn to Mrs. Pollifax and say peevishly, "They throw them, have you noticed?"
"No," said Mrs. Pollifax, and introduced herself.
"Oh. Yes. Well." He extended a thin dry hand and shook hers. "Kleiber here. Willem Kleiber." He did not exactly wipe his hand after touching hers but she had the impression that he wanted to, and that the gesture was aborted only because he thought better of it.
"German?" she asked.
"No, no, Dutch," he said firmly.
If Mrs. Pollifax had feared that all bush outfits might look alike, this idea was quickly dispelled now as Homer escorted a third member of the safari to the bus. The woman walking beside him made Mrs. Pollifax feel suddenly dowdy and not at all swashbuckling. In her forties, she wore her long platinum hair tied in the back with a scarlet silk kerchief. Her bush jacket and slacks were cut out of pale-beige gabardine that very nearly matched the color of her hair, and they had been tailored to outline every curve of her figure. Diamonds glittered on several fingers, and a stunning turquoise was pinned to her black turtleneck shirt. Everything about her was striking, from her outfit to her cool sapphire eyes, the clear-cut features, pale-pink mouth and subtly tanned face.
". . . very nearly didn't stop, you know, and I was afraid I'd not be here in time, and then—oh, two already here, isn't this super," she said, stopping by the bus and smiling at Mr. Kleiber. "I think we'd better introduce ourselves, don't you?" Her voice was caressing, with a somewhat affected British accent, so that the word better emerged as baytor, spoken through the nose with a not unattractive nasal quality. "I'm Mrs. Lovecraft," she said. "Amy Lovecraft."
At this moment a tall, good-looking young man walked out of the hotel, shouted to Homer and then strode toward the bus calling, "I say, is this the transportation to Chunga camp for the KT/3 safari?"
"What a lovely man," murmured Mrs. Lovecraft appreciatively.
"Yes, yes," said Homer. "You are—?"
"John Steeves." He was dressed very casually in a heavy turtleneck sweater and shabby twill slacks; he looked, thought Mrs. Pollifax, like a man who would know that African mornings were cold. He looked seasoned. His voice marked him as an Englishman, the patina on his boots marked him as a hiker. His face was long and intense, with a thick brown mustache and interesting dark eyes.
Homer's face lighted up at the name. "Of course—yes, I was inquiring for you. Have you luggage?"
"A duffelbag, but Tom's bringing it. He's one of the party, too, we met in the Coffee Hut. Tom Henry." He turned and gestured vaguely toward the hotel entrance. "There he is," he said.
Mrs. Pollifax turned and saw a solid-looking young man walk out of the hotel carrying a suitcase and a duffelbag, followed by a barefooted black boy carrying a second suitcase. Tom Henry looked cheerful and uncomplicated, with sandy hair and a pair of level, candid gray eyes. No nonsense about him, thought Mrs. Pollifax, liking him at once; relaxed, stable and efficient. The boy walking beside him suddenly looked up at him and smiled. It was, thought Mrs. Pollifax, the most adoring glance that she'd ever seen a child give an adult, and she realized that the two belonged together.
"Henry?" said Homer, puzzled, and then, "Ah, this is Doctor Henry? Dr. Henry from the mission hospital?"
"And Chanda," the young man said firmly. "Chanda Henry."
The three men and the boy moved to the back of the bus to stow away their luggage, and Mrs. Lovecraft climbed in beside Mr. Kleiber, saying, "Isn't this fun?"
Glancing toward the hotel Mrs. Pollifax saw Cyrus Reed walk out, looking vaguely concerned. He had exchanged his seersucker suit for a pair of new bluejeans that made his legs look very long indeed, and over this he wore a shirt and a shabby jacket. After noticing the bus he came toward it, and looking extraordinarily pleased at seeing her in it, he leaned over and spoke to her through the window.
"She's five hours late now," he said. "Difficulties mount."
At that moment a small red Fiat raced into the drive of the hotel and came to a sudden stop, its tires protesting shrilly. A voice called, "Dad!" and a young woman as petite as Reed was enormous jumped out of the car and waved. "I'm here, Judge!"
"That," said Cyrus Reed resignedly, "is Lisa."
"Judge?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.
"Retired."
She turned to look again at the young woman who was now opening the door of the car. She was slim and long-legged and difficult to overlook because her hair was bright auburn, the color of a new penny, and her face was round and pixie-like, with a dimple in the chin. Mrs. Pollifax said, "She doesn't look at all cold and businesslike."
"She doesn't, does she," said Reed. He looked surprised. "Something's different. Like you to meet her. I'll bring her back."
Mrs. Pollifax watched as Lisa spoke to someone inside the car, and then from its confining interior crept a woman with a baby in a sling over her shoulders, followed by a small black man in a business suit and spectacles, three grinning barefooted boys, a bent old man carrying a crutch, and at last a young man in purple slacks and pink shirt. It was rather like that old circus act, thought Mrs. Pollifax, where dozens of people kept emerging from a tiny car, and she wondered how on earth they had all fitted inside. Lisa shook hands with each of them and then allowed herself to be led off to the minibus by her father.
"... a flat tire," she was saying, "but Kanyama helped me change it and Mbulo was carrying firewood when I picked him up, so we had a jolly fire by the side of the road and cooked a breakfast. Really neat—and you should have seen the Falls!"
"I suppose you had to give rides to everyone?"
"Well, but wasn't it providential that I did? Otherwise I'd still be down near Penga somewhere with a flat tire. It's not at all like the States, Dad. Nobody asked for a ride, but how could I drive by them when I had a car and they didn't? Hello," she said, smiling warmly at Mrs. Pollifax. "Hello," she added, nodding to Mrs. Lovecraft and Mr. Kleiber.
"Well, you've not made it with much time to spare," said her father, sounding like fathers everywhere.
"Yes, but I made it, didn't I?" said Lisa, grinning. "And who's holding us up now? See you all later," she called over her shoulder, and began propelling her father toward the hotel.
On the way to the entrance they passed Homer carrying luggage for another guest. The Reeds stopped to speak to him, leaving the newest member of the party waiting patiently, a faint smile on his lips. He was a man of average height, perhaps fifty, carrying an attach6 case and a battered trench coat over his arm. He was still dressed for traveling, Mrs. Pollifax noted, in a light suit that must once have been well-cut but was wrinkled now.
He wore his hair rather long; it was jet black, with streaks of pure white.
The group abruptly dissolved and Homer came toward them smiling. "We now have Mr. Mclntosh," he said, gesturing at the man beside him. "We go. Gentlemen, if you will be so kind as to get in the bus now?"
The two men and the boy Chanda climbed into the seat in the far rear, next the luggage. Mr. Mclntosh crawled past Mrs. Lovecraft to sit in the space between her and Mr. Kleiber. Homer closed and locked the doors and a moment later they were off, driving on the left side of the road like the British.
They passed the National Assembly building with its roof sheathed in copper and gleaming in the sun. They passed neat rows of government housing and then a shantytown with thatched-roof huts,
and finally, leaving the city behind, a satellite station that had been built by the Japanese, Homer told them. As the traffic thinned they sped past fields of cotton, sunflowers and maize, and the pedestrians along the side of the road increased: women walking with loads of firewood balanced carefully on their heads, a few men wheeling bicycles. Then these, too, vanished and they settled down to the long road ahead, moving steadily toward the Mungwa mountain range. The sun began to look surprisingly low on the horizon to Mrs. Pollifax, and when she commented on this she was startled to learn that in Zambia the sun set at six o'clock. She began to understand some of the urgency behind Homer's driving; certainly he drove like a man pursued by something, and now it was heartening to realize the something was darkness, because she had no desire to be caught among wild animals in the dark either. The excessive speed rendered conversation almost impossible, however; everything rattled and it was necessary to cling to one's seat.
An hour later Mrs. Pollifax was still clinging to her seat when Homer placed his foot on the brake and nearly sent her through the windshield. Up ahead she saw a roadblock, a gaily striped red-and-white pole extending from one side of the road to the other.
From the rear Mr. Kleiber called, "And what is this?"
The bridge," said Homer. "All our bridges are guarded by the police."
"Good heavens why?" asked Mrs. Pollifax, turning to look at him in surprise.
"Rhodesian spies," he said with a shrug. "They try to bomb our bridges. We have three in Zambia, all of them over the Kafue River." He pronounced it Ka-jooey.
The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax Page 26