by Ann Harries
The names had drifted into the category of the absurd.
‘Umbrella!’
‘Cough-drops!’
‘Suitcase!’
‘Moustache!’
‘Frog!’
Mrs K was clearly enchanted. For a woman who had scientific aspirations, her enthusiasm for nonsense seemed excessive. By the end of their performance she was nearly bent double with laughter, and I must say I envied her sense of humour: to me the children’s game dwelt in the impenetrable category of play, an area of human behaviour about which I know little. Finally, wiping a tear from her eye, she controlled her laughter and gasped: ‘Oh what fun! I assume – by the gap in her mouth – that the little one is responsible for our adventure last night. She’s gorgeous, Professor. Where did you find her?’
I never know whether questions like this are meant to be taken literally, and was about to reply to this one with complete geographical references when a jovial greeting saved me the effort.
‘Hail to thee, blithe spirits!’ called out Kipling, skipping down the flight of stone steps that led to the aviaries. ‘Or am I in the wrong poem? Good to hear your birds singing, Wills. And how are you, O best beloved? Your Mummy tells me you are quite, quite better.’ And he swung his daughter into the air with a lack of self-consciousness that I could only envy.
‘Can I smoke your chimbling, Daddy?’ The little girl whipped his smoking pipe from the depths of his moustache and placed it between her tiny lips.
‘Yes, darling child. Why not wear my hat as well!’ With high seriousness he drowned her in his drooping Panama and placed her back on the ground. The child shrieked with glee, evidently enjoying the sensation of being plunged into utter darkness.
‘Look, Mummy! Now I’m Daddy!’ The effort of speaking with a large pipe in her mouth proved too much, and a violent coughing fit followed. Papa retrieved his belongings, while Mama thumped the child on her back till normal breathing was resumed: ‘Really, dear, you do over-excite the child! You know she was poorly last night.’
‘I’m a terrible man,’ agreed Kipling, packing his pipe bowl with fresh tobacco and inhaling sharply in the way smoking men do. He directed his boyish, dimpled smile at me. ‘We owe you a debt of gratitude, Professor Wills. I must say, I’m having to revise my opinion of Oxford dons. I can make precisely one bird sound –’ and he proceeded to emit a harsh rasping noise, flapping his arms and bending his neck forward as he did so, much to the delight of the little girls. (Chamberlain and Salisbury choked back giggles from behind their hands.)
‘The vulture?’ I suggested.
‘Ah, now the vulture is the bird to bring back my earliest childhood memories.’ He puffed on his pipe, his eyes dancing behind his thick spectacles, while the children gathered round. ‘The vultures of Bombay, these are the birds responsible for my very first memory.’
‘Not in front of the children, dear,’ murmured Mrs K, but he continued as if he had not heard her.
‘We lived by the sea in the shadow of palm groves, but I did not know that our little house on the Bombay esplanade was near the Towers of Silence, where the Hindoos expose their dead to the waiting vultures. One day something dropped from the sky into our garden. I was playing in the open, near the palms. The something fell almost at my feet. My nanya rushed across and picked it up before I could see the something.’ He sucked hard on his pipe, which appeared to have died on him again. ‘She thought I hadn’t seen what fell out of the sky. But even now I often think of that little brown hand, dropping from the vulture’s beak – or would it have been talons, Professor?’
‘As I remember, the vultures of the Old World have feet like eagles, designed to grasp their prey,’ I murmured. ‘Unlike New World vultures.’
But Kipling’s attention had been diverted by the arrival of another guest who now limped down the stone steps, his face still a brilliant yellow above his none-too-clean collar.
‘Vultures?’ yelled Challenger. ‘Stupid bloody birds, if you’ll pardon my language, Madam. They can be standing right next to rotting flesh in the grass, and unless they can see the thing, they won’t know it’s there. Not like the black-and-white carrion crow that can smell a carcass from miles off. Good morning, Madam.’ He bowed at Mrs K, releasing wafts of brandy and tobacco as he did so. ‘Good morning, all. Morning, Wills. Good to see you again.’
It fell to me to introduce Challenger to the Kiplings, a task I rather enjoyed doing with heavy formality.
‘I trust you have had a good night’s sleep?’ said Mrs K, perhaps in the hope of an apology for the previous night’s events, but it was plain that Challenger had no recollection whatever of any irregular behaviour.
‘Top of the world, thank you,’ he replied. ‘Mind you, once you’ve slept under a cloud of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in a leech-infested swamp, anywhere is comfortable.’
‘Ah, Challenger.’ Kipling interrupted the wild cackle that followed this piece of information. ‘I was hoping to get a chance to speak to you. You’re a famous ivory hunter and dealer. Your African elephant is a very different creature from my Indian one, and I need some information for a story I’m writing. May I pick your brains?’
‘By all means. What’s left of them. Africa addles the frontal lobes, I’m afraid.’
‘My story goes like this: An African tribesman kills an elephant with poisoned arrows. Tusk number one is exchanged with a slave trader for a Snider rifle and a hundred cartridges; the slave trader exchanges the tusk for neck yokes and brass collars; eventually it reaches the West Coast of Africa from whence it is transported to Europe. Meantime the original hunter’s village is raided by Arabs and his wife taken prisoner and ransomed for ivory in the form of tusk number two. This tusk finds its way to the East Coast and on to Zanzibar and on to the salesrooms of the London docks where it is reunited with tusk number one. Tusk number one is converted into piano keys while tusk number two is less gloriously metamorphosed into billiard balls and umbrella handles. Now, what I need to know is details about the weight of tusks, their length, their quality. Are both the tusks the same size, for instance? Can you help me?’ He gave an amiable puff on his pipe.
‘Ah, elephants! What couldn’t I tell you about elephants!’ And for the next twenty minutes Challenger regaled us with one elephantine anecdote after another (Mrs K and the two girls stole away half-way through as much of it was bloodthirsty). And once elephants were dealt with, he lectured us on the most appropriate guns for shooting different types of big game; this led him to reminisce about his childhood and his ability with guns even in his early youth; this in turn reminded him of Winchester, whose playing fields he had transformed into the cradle of Africa; now he remembered his burning childhood ambition to discover the true source of the Nile and his bitter disappointment when Speke proved that that mighty river sprang from Lake Albert and not the Four Mystical Fountains of Herodotus, as Livingstone had so passionately believed; this led him to regret the intrusion of the missionary …
How is it possible to be a bore when the content of your discourse is extraordinary? Perhaps if we had been sitting in a lecture hall we might have listened with awe to this frenzied monologue but, instead, both Kipling and I found ourselves shifting from one foot to another, glancing at each other helplessly as either he or I attempted to interrupt the relentless torrent of words. Yet, even in the rigidity of my boredom, I felt soothed. I could spend hours, days, weeks, in the company of this madman, thought I, as I tugged at my beard and found the most coiled spring of hair in it; there is something about his craziness that allays my fears. Perhaps I will one day capture the Dodo with him, and become ravaged by Africa, that I may ravage her in return …
‘Even twenty years ago Africa was still the terra incognita where we Europeans might at last come to know ourselves,’ cried Challenger, revived by the deep draught he had taken from his flask. ‘But now, with all due respect to Dr Livingstone, whom I admire more than any man, living or dead, we have missionaries by the hundred tr
ying to introduce that very civilisation from which men like myself are trying to escape. In their innocence, those missionaries do untold damage to the tribal structures they seek to uplift through Christianity –’
At this point Kipling removed his spectacles and began to clean them with exaggerated vigour. ‘I would have thought,’ said he, his face owlish and round-cheeked without the protection of his glasses, ‘that the arrival of the gun had more impact on African social structures than any missionary. Surely –’
‘Bunduki sultani ya bara bara!’ thundered Challenger in a terrible voice. ‘The gun is the Sultan of Africa, as Mr Stanley’s wangwana so succinctly expressed it. Why do you think Robert Moffat, the most successful missionary in Southern Africa, had the Matabele flocking to his sermons? Not to be converted, I assure you. Twenty-four is a generous estimate of the number of Matabeles Moffat succeeded in converting. No, Moffat had two attributes the Matabeles wanted and needed: he could cure their ailments with his medicine box and, more importantly, he was prepared to mend their guns!’
‘And would you not say that a man like yourself has done untold damage to the indigenous wildlife of Africa, to say nothing of its social structures?’ asked Kipling politely, though continuing to polish the lenses of his spectacles till I feared they might fall apart. ‘My tusk story will have the sister of the slaughtered elephant finding herself safe in the sanctuary set up in the north by the old Boer president.’
Challenger’s eyes roved wildly. He seemed to be addressing the top of a distant palm tree when he next spoke. ‘The truth of it is not so much that I possess the gun, but that the gun possesses me. I cannot live without it. When I have my new arm measured in England, I might just as well have a rifle fitted permanently to my shoulder instead. When in Africa, shoot. It’s the only language that everyone understands at once. Give me a light, old chap.’ From some other pocket he produced a silver case of heavily scented cigarillos, which he offered me with his shaking hand. Kipling sprang forward to oblige. ‘I keep a tally of what I have shot: most hunters do. Last year in the space of six months I had shot a hundred and seven big-game animals: thirty-two –’
An abrupt movement at the top of the flight of stone steps made him pause. Frank Harris leaned on his cane, raised his hat, and grinned. ‘Ah, Wills! I was told you’d be down here!’ Spruce and gleaming, he could have been on the way to his club, or the opera, a dandy on the Strand. It struck me that this man was always in remarkably good health. His eyes bore no trace of our late-night drinking; his body was lean and supple; the flush in his cheek was due to good circulation rather than over-indulgence. Again, I felt an unaccountable surge of affection upon hearing his voice.
Challenger was gazing at the intruder with an incredulity that I at first attributed to outrage at this interruption. But as he knitted his brows together and gazed upon Harris with a fervour that altogether lacked resentment, I saw in his eyes the stirrings of delighted recognition. Harris, for his part, bounded down the steps, swinging his cane and greeting Kipling with a breezy confidence that made me realise they already knew each other. Challenger watched his every move; then a hideous smile cracked open his face, and he staggered towards the swarthy little fellow before him.
‘Inundi! My brother!’ he cried hoarsely.
Harris looked up at him in surprise, no doubt taking him for some beggar we had stumbled upon in the gardens. Then surprise was overtaken by horror as the beggar threw his remaining arm round Harris’s neck and implanted a resonant kiss upon his closely-shaved, perfumed cheek. The little dandy leapt back, wiping his face with the handkerchief that peeped from his pocket: for a moment I thought he had lost his famous self-assurance.
‘I fear you are – mistaken!’ he exclaimed, but even as he uttered the last word, doubt entered his flashing eyes, and exactly the same emotion I had observed upon Challenger’s face now began to transform his gaze. In a changed voice he whispered:
‘It is you!’
‘Zambezi rapids ’96!’ blurted Challenger. ‘Treacherous carriers; malaria; high fever; no quinine; imminent death –then you appeared like a mirage with your line of porters and your medicine chest: you saved my life, no less – and I never even learnt your name!’
By now Harris had recovered his composure and was puffing out his chest with ill-disguised pleasure as Challenger catalogued his gratitude. ‘Think nothing of it, my dear chap,’ he purred. ‘We were ships that passed in the night. You’d have done the same for me, no question of that. But that excursion of mine along the Zambezi was soon to become a nightmare of intolerable proportions. I can quite honestly say I nearly died.’ He shuddered theatrically, and continued: ‘My charming porters deserted me and smashed my medicine chest when I was in a state of delirium brought on by blackwater fever. I was left with three tins of sardines to live on. By the time I arrived in Portuguese East Africa, I weighed eighty pounds, literally skin and bone. The Negroes fled from me in the streets, thinking I was a zombie or suchlike.’ His glance suddenly descended to Challenger’s empty sleeve. ‘I say, lost an arm, have you?’
‘Perhaps you two need to be introduced,’ interposed Kipling. ‘Frank Harris, editor, adviser to the rich and famous, bon viveur. G. B. Challenger, ivory hunter and explorer.’
Harris’s editorial eye lit up. ‘You don’t mean the Challenger – whose exploits the nation reads about in the broadsheets? The man I have longed to meet and interview?’
Challenger took a swig from his flask and bared his yellow teeth. ‘The very same!’ he leered. ‘At your service!’
‘But where is Mary?’ cried Frank. ‘Where is your little poodle? Of course! How could I have been so stupid? You and she were already inseparable when I met you in ’96 – but in ’96 you were not a household name!’
‘Mary!’ called out Challenger, and the little creature flew out of a pot of tumbling geraniums and scampered up to her master on her hind legs. I began to back away, my whole body at once throbbing with high anxiety – when Mary turned round and daintily, daintily, dropped her front paws to the ground and trotted up to me. I felt the sweat gush from my forehead and armpits, and by a supreme act of self-discipline restrained myself from shrieking out aloud.
‘Go on, old boy, give her a pat. Not often she comes up to a stranger!’
Mary sat on her haunches before me and smiled. Whether this was a circus trick she had learnt from Challenger I could not say, but her black lips stretched back into her white curls in what was unmistakably a gesture of friendliness. She raised one tiny paw.
‘She wants it shaken. She’ll never forgive you if you don’t!’
The dog’s laughing eyes egged me on. I could see the pleasure of grasping her paw momentarily with my fingertips – but what if those sharp little teeth sank into my scarred hand?
Kipling and Harris had joined Challenger with cries of encouragement, somehow sensing the seriousness of this moment. I forced a shrill, quivering voice out of my throat:
‘Sure she doesn’t b-b-bite?’
‘Not if she likes you – which she does! Clear as day!’
I bent my knees. A drop of moisture fell from my face on to the dog’s head. Her tail began to wag. Inch by inch, as it seemed, I extended my hand.
And touched her little paw with my finger. She lowered her jaws, but before I could whip my hand away, her pink tongue protruded into my palm. It was extremely wet and extremely warm.
‘There you are!’ cried Challenger. ‘She’s giving you a kiss!’
Her job done, Mary began to sniff at the shoes of all the gentlemen, and might have offered them her paw (I found myself hoping she would not) when an unfamiliar noise drifted up from the far end of the avenue.
At this point, Chamberlain and Salisbury disentangled themselves from the shadows beyond the cages and ran forward joyously, chanting out a word at first incomprehensible to me: ‘ah-tah-mah-beeleh! ah-tab-mah-beeleh!’
And from the curve of the driveway emerged the object of their excitement, all b
rass and leather and heat and dust, with the Colossus himself behind the wheel, surrounded by three laughing female faces.
Jove in his chariot could not have looked more exultant than our sweating host, most of whose face was obscured by a pair of grotesque, rubber-rimmed spectacles, surmounted by a well-worn slouch hat. Beneath this headgear hung an ecstatic smile that nevertheless suggested to me a hint of mental derangement, in the style of Dodgson’s Cheshire Cat. And clustered around him, like laughing cherubs upon grubby clouds, were the two little girls and Mrs K, her stern visage relaxed into the same beaming smile.
‘Well, what do you think?’
Our host levered himself out of the driver’s seat and removed his ridiculous rubber spectacles. Miraculously absolved of our father-confessor roles, Kipling, Harris and I hurried to the top of the stairs, while Challenger appeared not to have heard the summons. Mrs K and the two girls waved feverishly.
The Colossus had by now pulled off his hat so that the crumpled thatch of his hair stood on end. His eyes were bloodshot once again, but full of blue animation. Words began to erupt from his mouth. ‘The country’s first horseless carriage – sprung and braked, single cylinder, belt-driven, fixed-ignition, twelve miles an hour: shall I buy her?’
At once Kipling, Harris, Salisbury and Chamberlain sprang into action. It was as if an invisible key had been turned to ignite some area of their consciousness and set their motors throbbing. The two boys danced in adoration around the automobile, touching the tyres, the brass trimmings, the folded Victoria hood, with a reverence they had certainly never accorded my birds, while the three men entered into a contest concerning the superior features of the French horseless carriage as compared with German and American rival makes. I had the feeling that unless someone turned their engines off they would run forever.
It seemed that Kipling already had a steam-car called a Locomobile, and had test-driven the very first Lanchester, whose springing he pronounced to be perfect. Harris, needless to say, had bought a motor-car three years earlier in Monte Carlo: a Georges Richard, seven horsepower, driven by belts. He was the first person in the world to have seen the four great cathedrals of France in one day, driving his motor from Amiens to Paris to Chartres to Rheims before the sun set.