by Ruth Hartley
They journeyed very slowly. The rough surface of the track needed frequent gear changes and constant attention. The spoor imprinted in its surface, the dung along the way told them what creatures had passed, how long ago and in what numbers. They stopped often to check how fresh the tracks were, how moist the dung, what it indicated of the food ingested by the animals. Jason was an expert tracker. Lara a fast learner. They competed as to who could recognise and name the most species of birds. Lara had the edge on Jason in this field. Working most days at the camp had not prevented her from developing her birdwatching skills. Jason however was more forceful in claiming first sight of individual birds and, as their score was so close, Lara let him win the count. She was too happy and engrossed to mind.
Antelope were prolific on the open grassy plains. Elephant crossed the road ahead of them on their return from the river to feed among the forest trees. They saw zebra, waterbuck, wildebeest and warthog, their ears pricked, tails up, as they danced and leapt away from the Cruiser. There were also the quiet creatures, a tortoise, snakes, a swift sun squirrel ducking behind a branch on the tree above and below in a gully, a honey badger, its head down in an anthill, oblivious to them, its silky fur gleaming and rippling in the windy grass.
Before midday Lara and Jason watched a family of hyena on guard over the anteater burrows they had taken over. Their spotted hides were almost invisible under the dappled shade of a thornbush. Soon afterwards, Jason parked where they could observe a pride of well-fed lions resting in a circle around their kill. Lara had seen the circling vultures overhead and Jason had eased the Cruiser up onto a ridge and as close as it was safely possible to go.
In the early afternoon the two of them turned back towards the river bank to eat sandwiches and have a beer. In the hot sun, sweat on their upper lips and foreheads, they kissed, licked the salt off each other’s lips and ended up on a sandy patch of ground by the Cruiser making love.
“Shush, Lara!” Jason warned. “Too much noise and you’ll attract predators.”
“Only bugs and insects!” Lara said, standing up naked to brush off sand and flies.
“You’re not shy, are you?” Jason said half in admiration, half to admonish.
“We’re all alone – oh Jason – you are so beautiful! You have such a gorgeous body. Look at you!” Lara said smiling, her hands held out to Jason. It wasn’t new for Jason to be admired, but it was new to have a lover who expressed herself so directly. He was aroused and annoyed at the same moment.
“We must move,” he said, “We have work to do before we set up camp for the night. We still have to find the site for the new camp.”
Jason took the Cruiser down to several different places on the river bank and up to various higher places that were wooded. One site afforded good access to the river but might be vulnerable to flooding, from another it was possible to see both upstream and downstream. Here road access might be more awkward. There the trees were too dense. At another place the river would eat away at the bank each year. Here was a watering hole that they did not want to disturb and there a hippo path or a nesting site for bee eaters. Eventually they decided they had found the ideal place, close enough, high enough, and on the inside curve of the river, and they set up their camp for the night. They had brought some fire wood as they would not cut any trees but they also found fallen branches nearby. When night fell they would light the fire, but first they sat together in the serenity of the evening, watching flocks of birds gathering for the night, hearing the baboons call to each other from across the river, listening to the noise of a pod of hippo downstream, in the distance the hyena laughing and the occasional sound of a distant lion’s roar. Bats dived over the river to drink where, earlier, swifts had skimmed. Crocodiles’ eyes reflected red in the light of Jason’s torch. The magnificent sweep and spread of the billions of stars in the Milky Way arched overhead in an unending slow spin.
It was time to light the camp fire and cook the steak. To drink wine and beer and kiss and make love, once and then again, and at least once again. Passion and desire made the night-time into a wonderland. Jason did not understand foreplay but Lara’s receptiveness and his virility were more than enough to satisfy them both. The night was alive with movement and sound as hippo trampled heavily towards their night time grazing and splashed thunderously across the river shallows on their way back into the water. Elephants passed by in silence except for their internal body conversations with each other. Lara heard nightjars and owls and watched as the stars spun a slow circling web over her head. The waning moon made the bush visible once more so that Lara could see a single bush-buck and an alert genet pass by her camp. She could even identify the beetles and spiders leaving their tiny trails in the sand under the Cruiser. When the dawn light whitened the sky ahead of the rising rosy sun, Lara had hardly slept but she knew that this was the best, the most perfect day of her life. The whole world had come into existence just for this moment of time and especially for her.
Chapter Eight
Wildlife Art
Lara’s sketches attracted the attention of Bill and Maria’s clients. She was pressed into selling some of her drawings. At first she was reluctant. They were, after all, notes to herself rather than finished works of art and she wasn’t yet sure how she would use them. She found, however that what she valued and what she could sell were not the same. The clients wanted souvenirs of their trips – recognisable animals that they had seen for themselves – mostly lion and elephant. Occasionally they would ask Lara to draw animals from imagination or memory. Sometimes Lara did as they asked then found that the buyers claimed they had been drawn from life. This curious conflation of creativity and fakery puzzled Lara and made her smile. What was art after all? She did not want to cheat, however, though she still did not know what the purpose of art was, either for herself, or for its viewers.
Lara learnt to hide the drawings she intended to work on later. Those were slighter, more suggestive, much more uncertain, a search for something glimpsed, something moving, half-hidden, in flight, in half-light, perhaps even sensed not seen during the night. On the whole the clients liked detail. Spots, stripes, feathers and fur carefully inked and coloured. Drawings that Lara thought lifeless; where her determination to get something right had stolen the soul of the creature she was drawing, where she had worked for hours, and as she thought done the animal to death, those were the choice of the tourists. They had taken hours to do and did not fetch much money but Lara did not in the end regret parting with them.
A couple of the clients were also wild-life artists, one rather well-known. Each had come to spend some time refreshing their skills and replenishing their portfolios. Lara found them generous with advice and information, with ideas about techniques and how to transport materials into the bush, how to work en plein air, and bring the results back safely. The most famous of the artists insisted on leaving Lara most of his materials, water colours, inks and beautiful sheets of Fabriano handmade paper 360 grams in weight. Lara was both humbled by his kindness and proud that he considered her work good enough to encourage. The attention she received appeared to Lara’s surprise to annoy Jason but there was a more subtle edge to his jealousy. Lara knew Jason was by far the better at knowing and recognising game in the bush. What was strange was her ability to capture in a sketch more than should have been possible from her learnt knowledge alone. It was as if the artist in her saw with a third eye. Jason was empowered by her drawings to explain the nature of the creatures she illustrated and they each wondered, but did not discuss, how she had managed to draw what she understood but was not yet able to explain verbally.
“My Ma paints, you know.” Jason said to Lara, “She paints watercolours – landscapes of the bush – they’re nice but she doesn’t spend so much of her time doing it as you do.”
Lara looked at Jason. They were both occupied in different ways in the camp. Finding much time together wasn’t alw
ays easy. They were late to bed and up early. She swished her paintbrush clean, stuck its handle down in the water jar and went to kiss him. Maybe when Jason was occupied with clients on a night drive there would be time when she could finish her work. She wasn’t going to give up her evenings making art if she could help it. There were dangers, she acknowledged. Jason was a sexy and handsome young man. Lara knew very well that some of their female clients, regardless of age and sometimes regardless of husbands, partners or children, came for the glamour and the erotic thrill of the safari camp and that Jason was the embodiment of both.
She could see that he was sensible enough with the married women, but she knew that he enjoyed it when the single women flirted with him. Maria had hinted that before Lara’s arrival, Jason had helped a number of the single women fill photo albums with romantic memories. Bill shook his head, recounting the stories as if they were all past history.
“Honestly, Jason – remember how I had to tell you to stick to girls who had careers and return tickets – you nearly got yourself married off several times.”
He scratched his chin. Lara wondered who he was warning, her, or Jason, or both of them together.
“The camp needs you both,” Bill said.
Maria said nothing. She wiped her hand over the top of the bar. It was dusty. If the weather was windy everything would be covered with a filmy cover of finest sand.
Lara felt confident about Jason in spite of Bill’s comments. She was good-looking enough not to worry about her appearance. That freed her to focus on the world around her and not on the impact of her appearance on others. When she stopped to look in a mirror in one of the guest chalets she saw that she was slim, that her breasts were full, but not too large. Her buttocks were more curvaceous than she personally would have wished and her hips heavier but who was perfect anyway? She had always preferred the fleshier life models to the skinny ones at art school. She tanned easily to a warm dark honey. Her light brown hair, thick and slightly waved, had sun-bleached blond streaks because she was outdoors so often. Life was a delight. Jason was fun. She had so much pleasure with Jason. Loving him made her body glow with satisfaction. She could feel that she was attractive to men, and also to some women. She was like sugar to ants. Lara knew her power and was sure that she and Jason were made for each other.
Okay – Jason needed to assert his independence from time to time – she did too. It was the same for both of them, wasn’t it?
As their third season at the camp and their second as lovers drew to a close, Lara saw, but did not take notice of the small creased ridge that hooked Jason’s brow down when her drawings were pulled out to show to clients. She saw, but did not take real notice of, Jason’s look of relaxation and relief when Maria decided that Jason and Lara should leave the valley separately when they completed their different tasks.
All the same, separation fed their sexual desire. Jason and Lara even found time while clearing the camp to make love on the bags of linen piled in the store.
“You and me – we’re together right?” Jason said, “Got this Christmas at Hluhluwe rhino conservancy then I’ll be back for next winter. No messing around Lara – you promise don’t you?”
Lara promised easily. Jason promised the same.
“No messing around for me either, Lara.”
She had heard that, hadn’t she?
Chapter Nine
Helen
Back in Chambeshi City Jane dragged Lara off to the small art gallery in the centre of town to sell some more of the cards that had been printed from Lara’s drawings. Jane had met the owner, Helen Ioannou, at a cocktail party and even been to a preview of an art exhibition at the gallery. Tutorials at art school had not included the business of selling art or finding an agent. At the camp, selling her art made Lara feel false. She was uncomfortable with the praise she received. It had been fulsome rather than critically appreciative. After three years working in the bush, Lara could not imagine herself having an exhibition. She hadn’t talked to other artists or been to exhibitions during that time apart from the wildlife artists’. She recognised their skills but could not relate their work to anything she had seen at art school or even to what she wanted to do with her own wildlife sketches.
Helen Ioannou was a dumpy woman with thick wavy hair dyed to an indigo blue-black. Large amber and blue and white trade bead necklaces bounced off the broad soft shelf of her breasts. She was squared off by her long shapeless kaftan in bright African colours but her clear voice had the modulated accent of an Oxbridge graduate. She was divorced. Her ex-husband was a Cypriot and a wealthy businessman in Chambeshi. Her divorce settlement had included a well-frequented grocery and bar near the town market and a luxury flat in a good suburb. Helen employed a good manager for the shop and bar. Her passion was art. She looked Lara over with calm dark eyes and then looked Jane over with the same ruminative glance.
“Let’s see your work, shall we?” she suggested and spread the cards out on the reception desk.
“The cards will sell – they are quite commercial. Your choice?” she asked Lara and nodded when Jane said that she had helped select them. “I like to see where the images are taken from,” she explained. “Here in Chambeshi so many artists make excellent copies of the work of other artists and see no harm in it. We try to encourage and explain professional standards in art and insist on intellectual copyright.”
“But this is Lara’s own work!” Jane said, offended.
“Did you bring your sketch book and portfolio?” Helen asked Lara.
Lara smiled.
“I did bring it. It’s in the car – I’ll get it”
Helen Ioannou placed herself between Lara and her mother as she reached over the portfolio, her jewelled and weighted bosom smoothing away the dust of the bush from the plastic envelopes holding Lara’s drawings. She looked in silence every now and then raising an eyebrow or pursing her lips so her lipstick wrinkled. At last she turned to Lara who was feeling more and more uncertain.
“What do you want to do with these? Where are you going with your work?”
“I don’t know.” Lara confessed. “I love doing them but I think they are only beginnings – ideas but for what – I don’t know.”
Helen examined her shrewdly for a long moment.
“Right – this is how it is at the gallery. We choose not to exhibit wild life art here. My artists are all African, mostly Chambeshian. For them, wild animals are what they eat – even lion if necessary – or what they can sell – skins, bones, ivories, horns, teeth. I see bush meat from every species for sale everyday outside my store at the market. My artists will happily make copies from well-known wildlife artists even down to the signature because they know it is big money from tourists – that won’t stop them eating bush meat if they are hungry. They know I don’t approve of plagiarism or fakes. If I exhibit the work of a white wildlife artist then it looks to my artists as if I have double standards – but you – what are you Lara? Is this really your chosen genre?”
Helen waited a moment while Lara hesitated, tried to answer, then stopped.
“All the same I think your drawings are exceptional and I would like to show them here. They have a different quality to most wildlife art. They suggest the elusiveness of wild animals, the spirits of the creatures, they have movement – they have more life. Some wildlife artists are very skilled but they concentrate on biological accuracy and knowledge – you don’t.”
Lara worried that Helen saw this as a fault or a weakness.
Helen continued, “I would like to take some of your work, Lara, but no pictures of the Big Five – no elephants, rhino, lion, buffalo or leopard. The small creatures, sun squirrels, the mongoose, jackals, and the birds and actually for the moment I will take those that are most sketchy and experimental. Think about it and come back to me.”
Jane was furious.
&nbs
p; “Dreadful woman! Dreadful taste!” she said as she swung the car round the busy roundabout near the gallery. “Don’t go back, Lara! We can do an exhibition for you in the hotel lobby in Parkside. People will love your work. They will buy the lion and elephant paintings, I know!”
“I’ll go back Mum,” said Lara, “I think Helen’s okay!”
Her mind was already moving and shifting, creating new drawings in different ways.
Part Four
London 1997
Chapter One
Tintin au Congo
Lara’s therapy sessions with Brendan are all going quite smoothly, or so Lara thinks. She has enjoyed talking about her childhood, about Liseli, about art school; she is in the driving seat with Brendan. She is in control, isn’t she?
The therapy sessions are also proving useful in making her think about how and why she makes art. Lara chews sideways at her lower lip.
It is not enough, though, is it? I’m avoiding the real issues aren’t I? Don’t even really know what they are. I miss Tim so very much. Will he come home and want to live with me?