by Tony Park
‘Shame, man, you can’t go into the bush dressed like that!’ Sannie said. She was wearing green shorts – which were very short – rubber sandals with Velcro straps decorated with some sort of geometric African pattern, and a sleeveless khaki button-up shirt which hung over her holster.
‘Why not?’ he asked, mildly offended.
‘We’ll be getting out of the vehicle at some point. I’m not having some bloody elephant charge that snow-white target you’re wearing! Stay here, I’ll be back.’
Miffed, Tom turned on the television and watched some people in a soap opera talking Afrikaans. He understood not a word. Then there was another knock on the door.
‘Here,’ Sannie said. ‘Your new best friend Carla said this should fit your “big broad shoulders”. Jissis, but that woman is transparent.’
She walked into the suite while he pulled off his white T-shirt and donned a khaki golfing shirt with a Tinga lion’s-head logo on the left breast. ‘You think there was something going on between her and Nick?’ Tom asked.
Sannie laughed. ‘Think? I know. I caught her coming out of his suite one night on an advance visit. She’s hot for cops, that girl.’
‘What do you think?’ Tom said, showing off the new shirt.
‘At least we won’t be killed by an elephant. Let’s go.’
Tea, filter coffee and a selection of cakes and homemade biscuits were laid out in the reception area when Sannie and Tom returned. An American family, parents and three children, was busy clearing the spread. At Sannie’s suggestion she and Tom skipped afternoon tea and headed outside to where two Toyota Land Cruisers were parked. Carla introduced them to their guide, whose name was Duncan Nyari. ‘It means buffalo,’ he said. ‘Nyari, that is.’
The vehicles were open on all sides but each had a canvas roof supported by a metal framework. In the back were three rows of tiered seats covered in green rip-stop canvas. Duncan gave them a briefing which came down to a few key rules: don’t stand up, as the movement would alarm any animals they were watching; keep the noise down; and don’t get out of the vehicle unless told to.
‘You are working for Mr Robert Greeves?’ Duncan asked Tom as he and Sannie climbed into the seat immediately behind the driver’s.
‘Yes.’
‘He is a good man. He loves Africa and its animals, and the people too. He has provided some textbooks for my eldest son for his university studies – even though I did not ask him for these. He is a good friend.’
Tom nodded, silently impressed. Greeves had a reputation as a hard arse in politics – some in the media called him ‘Iron Bob’ – so it was interesting to hear he had a human side as well. ‘Will we follow the same route today that you’ll be taking Mr Greeves and Mr Dule during the visit?’
Duncan shrugged. ‘Generally we go where we think the animals are – we get calls on the radio from our vehicles and talk to other guides and people on the road. However, we will stay in the area of our concession for the most part for the ministers’ visit, so you won’t have too much contact with the other park users.’
‘Going where the animals are sounds fine. Unpredictability’s good.’ In Tom’s line of work the most dangerous periods were when people were entering and leaving buildings – homes, offices, even the heavily guarded Houses of Parliament – at set times. The things which couldn’t be changed provided opportunities to potential assassins.
As they drove out of Tinga’s electronic gates Duncan explained that Tinga was one of a number of private concessions within the Kruger National Park. The concessions had been awarded several years earlier as a means of raising revenue for the National Parks Board. The old Jakkalsbessie camp had been partially destroyed by catastrophic floods which hit the park in February 2000 and, rather than rebuild it, the government had decided to lease the site and a parcel of land to a private operator for exclusive game drives. Tinga’s concession encompassed a block between the parallel-running Sabie and Sand rivers – prime game-viewing country with year-round water. The lodge’s vehicles were also free to roam the public roads in the national park, which were open to holiday-makers from South Africa and abroad. However, inside their own concession they were able to drive off road into the bush – something strictly forbidden in the rest of the park.
Sannie produced a map book of the Kruger Park, the pages of which were illustrated with drawings of wild animals, birds and reptiles, and descriptions of their behaviour. Tom followed their progress as they turned onto a sealed road and crossed the Sand River via a single-lane low-level bridge. Duncan pulled into a passing bay to let a car towing a caravan pass. ‘Hippo,’ he said, pointing to their right.
Tom put down the map book and grabbed the camera from his day pack. ‘They say the hippo kills more people than any other animal in Africa, but I don’t believe this,’ Duncan said.
‘What does then?’ Tom asked, switching on the digital camera.
‘Mosquitos,’ Sannie said.
‘True,’ said Duncan. ‘Snakes kill about a hundred and twenty thousand people around the world every year, plenty of them in Africa. Myself, I think the crocodile kills more than the hippo. The deaths take place in the remotest parts of Africa, particularly along the Zambezi River, but you never hear about these on the radio or television. However, when someone gets killed by a hippo, that’s news.’
Tom was disappointed. The hippo had submerged again.
‘Never mind, there’ll be other hippos, I can assure you,’ Sannie said as Duncan pulled back out into the bridge’s main lane.
On the other side of the river they drove up the steep bank, but before reaching the crest Duncan turned right onto a dirt track. By the side of the road was a stone cairn with a sign featuring a red circle with a white bar through it. It said No entry in English, and Geen toegang in Afrikaans.
‘This is the entrance to our concession. No other vehicles can come in here except ours. Once we get to this part of the park your ministers will be safe from prying eyes,’ Duncan smiled.
Tom was glad to leave the sealed road; this felt more like it, more as he’d imagined a drive in the African bush would be. There still was no sign of open savannah or thousands of migrating wildebeest – he knew these images were from Kenya and Tanzania, in any case – but there was a sense of tranquillity mixed with a spookiness about the thick bush on either side of the vehicle. Most of the trees seemed to be studded with thorns. It looked inhospitable in there.
In his early twenties Tom had served in the Territorial Army with the 10th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment for four years. He’d quite enjoyed spending weekends as a part-time soldier in the outdoors, but the freezing, barren hills of Wales and an exercise in the forests of Bavaria had given him few skills that would translate to the African bush.
Duncan slowed the vehicle almost to a crawl and looked down at the dirt.
‘Ingwe,’ he said, almost to himself.
‘Leopard,’ Sannie translated. ‘How long ago, Duncan?’
‘Not long – maybe an hour or less. There is nothing marking the tracks – no ant footprints, no leaves blown in them. I know this one. He is a big male.’
‘I thought leopards were nocturnal,’ Tom ventured.
‘No,’ Sannie said. ‘They’re active day and night – opportunistic hunters and very adaptable. Here in Kruger some of them have become quite used to the presence of vehicles and actually use them to help them hunt. They use the noise of the engines to cover the sound of their movements as they stalk impala.’
‘You seem to know your stuff.’
‘Duncan’s the real expert. He’s probably forgotten more than I’ll ever know.’
‘I like guiding for people who know the bush,’ Duncan said modestly. ‘It makes me work harder. This leopard is following the river now, keeping to cover. We might come across him later.’
Tom found the drive informative and also relaxing as Duncan stopped every now and then to point out a colourful bush bird, a small herd of braying zebra, a
pair of giraffe, and a shy bushbuck, which had a milk chocolate coat painted with delicate white stripes and spots. He’d almost filled his camera’s flash card when Duncan said, ‘Shush! No talking now.’
Tom and Sannie had been discussing the likelihood of media interest in the minister’s visit. Tom had explained that Greeves’s press secretary, Helen MacDonald, had emailed him advising that the Westminster press gallery had no particular interest in the sale of jet trainers to South Africa, although some defence correspondents would follow up the story and one journalist from a London tabloid had asked if there would be a photo opportunity of Greeves viewing game in the Kruger Park. Helen had said there would not, but warned Tom in her message that the reporter had been quite miffed that there would be no official photos released. There was the remote possibility he would hire a South African stringer to try to get a shot. Sannie had doubted the Johannesburg media would intrude on the visit to Tinga. ‘Compared with your lot, our media are positively well behaved,’ she’d said just as Duncan urged them to silence.
‘There, see the ear?’ Duncan whispered.
‘Got him,’ Sannie said.
‘I can’t see a bloody thing,’ Tom confessed.
‘Don’t look at the bush, look through it,’ Sannie replied.
She leaned closer to him, pointing across his chest to his side of the vehicle. He smelled her perfume. It was like roses. ‘Where?’ he said.
‘There, just past the blackened tree. Rhino.’
He saw its bulk. The dull grey hide was the perfect colour for blending into the dry, dusty growth. Its front horn looked as long as his forearm and hand. Its huge head was lowered, and now that the vehicle’s engine was off and they were all silent, he could hear the almost mechanical sound of its grazing, grunch, grunch, grunch, as it cropped the brittle yellow grass. The rhino’s big trumpet-like ears twitched and swivelled like antennae.
‘This is a white rhino. He cannot see very well, but his hearing is good,’ Duncan explained.
The massive prehistoric beast seemed placid enough to Tom, almost like a giant horned cow. ‘Are they dangerous?’
‘Like most animals, only if you by surprise get too close to them. Sometimes when we walk I will clap my hands, to make a noise to let him know that we are near. We don’t like them getting a surprise. The other ones, the black rhino, are more dangerous. They are aggressive and will sometimes charge if they are having a bad day.’
Tom stifled a laugh.
Eventually, the rhinoceros ambled away further into the thorn thickets, its hide impervious to the scratches, and Duncan started the Land Cruiser. The sun was accelerating towards the horizon and getting redder by the second as it entered the band of dust that seemed to hover above the drying bushveld. Duncan pulled off the dirt track onto a grassy clearing, overlooking a stretch of river.
‘Sundowners,’ Sannie announced. ‘My favourite time of the day.’
Duncan slid a trestle table from brackets at the rear of the Land Cruiser, politely declining Tom’s offer of help. He opened the tailgate and slid out a cool box and a hamper with glasses, plates of snacks and, to Tom’s surprise, a white tablecloth.
Sannie asked for a gin and tonic and Tom decided that the working day had come to an end. He took a can of Castle Lager from the ice. It opened with a satisfying pop. ‘The sounds of the African night,’ Sannie said as she sipped her G and T.
Duncan opened a can of Coke and the three of them stood in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the sun slide behind the darkening bush. Birds cried and frogs began their evening chorus. Somewhere down in the river hippos honked in unison. Then came a noise that Tom struggled to identify. It sounded like a very loud, very deep wheezing. Ugh . . . ugh . . . ugh.
‘Ngala,’ Duncan said.
‘Lion?’
‘You’re right,’ Sannie said. ‘Most people expect a big roar, like the MGM lion in the movies, but it’s more mournful; softer, even – unless, of course, they’re right outside your tent, then it’s bloody terrifying!’
‘You get lions around your tent here, in Kruger, when you camp?’ Tom asked.
‘No. Here it’s all electric fences. We went camping in Zimbabwe a few times, before it got bad up there, and in some of their parks there are no fences around the camps. We had lions walking through the camp ground. I nearly wet myself.’
‘Just you and the kids? That’s very brave.’
‘No. Me, my husband and the kids.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Sannie,’ Tom said.
She shrugged. ‘It’s funny, but it’s at times like this, when everything is so nice and peaceful and calm, that I miss him the most. I can deal with problems at work, and the rubbish from the kids when they play up. I have to, being a single mom now, but it’s when everything seems to be perfect that I realise I don’t have anyone to share things with. Sorry. I don’t mean to sound so depressing.’
‘No, it’s okay. I was just thinking the same thing. How much Alex would have liked it here. We’d talked about going on a safari holiday for years.’ He realised how much harder the grieving process must be for Sannie, having to bring up her kids and be strong for them. He admired her not just for carrying on in the circumstances but for being so honest. She wasn’t afraid to talk about her grief, something he usually found hard to do.
‘It can’t be easy for you,’ she said.
‘We had our future planned. It was as if we put the first half of our married life on hold, with the idea that we’d make up for it during holidays and after an early retirement . . . My turn to apologise now. I don’t usually talk this much about Alex.’
She laid a hand on his forearm, briefly. ‘It’s not often I can find someone who’ll listen. I’m sure policemen are the same in England as they are in South Africa. We bottle up a lot of bad stuff and make out it doesn’t affect us.’
She smiled and Tom nodded. It was so hard not just to stand there gazing into her eyes. He felt a growing connection to her that was comforting , exciting and a bit scary all at once.
‘Where was your favourite holiday destination?’ she asked.
He was grateful she spoke again; he was starting to feel as self-conscious as a teenager. ‘A little Greek island, just off the coast of Turkey, called Lipsi. Beautiful, unspoiled, and far from the tourist crowds. A bit like here, I suppose.’
‘Oh, don’t be too sure about that. You should see Kruger in the school holidays – it’s like Jozi peak hour sometimes on the roads here.’
‘More drinks?’ Duncan said. They both said yes, though Tom was a little disappointed that Duncan had interrupted their conversation.
Unlike in England, darkness descended in Africa with the suddenness of a curtain closing. It was pitch black, the night moonless, as they drove back to the lodge. As well as having his headlights on, Duncan held a spotlight in one hand as he drove. He swivelled it continuously left and right, searching for the eyes of night creatures, which he explained would glow like reflectors in the bright beam.
He stopped and Tom peered into the inky bush. ‘In the tree – the big one,’ Duncan hissed.
Tom followed the shaft of light up the pale trunk and saw the cat. The leopard crouched on a branch. Gripped in its vicelike jaws was a fawn-coloured antelope – the cat had it by the throat.
‘He has killed that impala by suffocation,’ Duncan explained in a matter-of-fact tone while Tom’s heart pounded in his chest. He was awestruck, silent. Duncan started the truck’s engine again and turned off the road, moving at walking pace closer and closer to the tree. The leopard stared malevolently down at them, its eyes glowing like yellow beacons. Duncan shifted the light slightly to one side of the animal, so it was still visible but not shining directly into its eyes.
‘He can carry between two and three times his own body weight in his jaws. He needs to climb into a tree to eat his prey, otherwise lions and hyenas will steal it from him. This is the big male whose tracks we saw this afternoon on the road.’
&nb
sp; ‘Amazing,’ Tom whispered.
‘You’re very lucky,’ Sannie said. ‘Some people go their whole life without seeing a leopard.’
The cat walked backwards up the branch and hung the antelope’s carcass in a fork, wedging it there securely. He bit into its rump, his spotted face immediately stained red.
‘They kill by suffocation so that the prey does not make a noise and attract the other predators. The silent predator,’ Duncan said.
Tom lathered his body under the strong, stinging hot shower spray, washing away the African dust that had coated his skin. Despite the short time he’d spent in the afternoon sun, he noticed his arms and legs were already pinking up.
He reached across the ledge and grabbed his Castle. He’d liberated one from the mini-bar to drink while showering, which seemed an appropriately decadent thing to do in the five-star safari hideaway. He smiled as the cold lager ran down his throat in delicious contrast to the water on his body. It had, he thought, been a great day. Business travel for him usually meant moving from one hotel room to another. In the down time there were hotel restaurants and bars which were indistinguishable save for the language of the bar staff. The venues he’d had to advance were more often than not hotel conference rooms or function centres, or perhaps a school or a hospital – other favourite haunts of high-profile politicians. Never had he had an experience on a protection job as he’d had this afternoon. He could see the attraction now of protecting someone like Robert Greeves – even without the two beautiful women he’d also come into contact with.
Tom thought about Sannie and how vulnerable she’d seemed in the moment she’d mentioned going on holiday with her husband and kids. It was amazing that they’d both been thinking virtually the same thing at the same time. He sensed she was still brittle and shook his head at Nick’s insensitivity. Still, he could see how a ladies’ man like him would certainly consider it worth a try.