African Assignment

by Carol Gregor

  'Taking animal pictures isn't your normal style, though, is it?' she said, when they were driving once more along the dusty ribbon of road.

  'Oh? And what's my normal style?'

  'War,' she said. 'Famine. Earthquakes. Floods. Epidemics --'

  'I take pictures of what I think is important, what I think people should know about.'

  'And are animals important?'

  'Yes, of course. In their own way.' He glanced at her. 'Although I'll admit this assignment is supposed to be a bit of a holiday. I've been working non-stop for months, and with this shoulder I can't do anything too strenuous.'

  'Otherwise you'd be where? Angola? China?

  Panama?' She plucked three headlines from television news bulletins.

  'Probably.' He grinned. 'Probably all three. Do I scent disapproval?'

  She shook her head. 'No. Only it's dangerous—'

  'You don't have to tell me that. But someone has to do it, if you happen to believe that it's important that people know what's going on in the world, which I do. Just as your father did.'

  'But Mike was always saying he was going to give it up. "Just one more story", he used to say, "just one more trip". And look what happened to him in the end!'

  'He had a family; it was different for him.'

  'You mean if you had a family you'd stop?'

  'It's an entirely academic question. When you live out of a suitcase as I do, you tend not to give it much thought.'

  She drove on in silence, remembering the newspaper cuttings she had read back in Yorkshire, and the documentary film she had watched.

  'Penny for them.'

  'What?' She was startled.

  'I can feel that busy head of yours churning over.'

  She swallowed. 'I was just wondering how much suffering one person could bear,' she said tentatively, 'without getting damaged by it in some way, hardened or bitter --'

  'You think I'm hard and bitter?'

  Yes, she thought. 'I don't know. You might be. I don't know anything about you.'

  He shifted in his seat, pondering over her words, then he glanced over to her. 'If you must know, young Frankie,' he said finally, 'it's a question I've been asking myself of late. When I find the answer, I'll let you know.'

  The day passed in an endless trail of miles, but in the late afternoon they passed into the national park and began to see an abundance of game—zebra and buffalo and giraffe. Frankie stared around entranced, almost forgetting Cal by her side.

  'It's wonderful!'

  'Unfortunately rather a lot of other people think so, too.' He pointed across the plain to where a clutch of black and white striped safari vans was clustered in a circle round a tawny speck. 'The poor lions get no privacy any more. Let's make sure we're away from all that.' He read the map closely and directed her off on a side track and over a jumble of small broken hills. On the other side was a smaller plain, with no safari vehicles in sight.

  'What about here?' He pointed to a lone thorn tree. 'It's flat, there's shade, and some useful branches to hang things on.'

  'Can we just choose anywhere?' She switched off the engine and looked around. 'Aren't there special camping areas?'

  'There are for most people, but we've got an exemption. The park authorities know what I'm doing.'

  'Oh.' She got down. The landscape seemed vast. They were just tiny dots in the middle of infinity.

  He got down and looked at her face. 'What's the matter? Did you expect running water and a cafeteria?'

  'No, of course not.' She turned about. But she had somehow thought they would be camping near a game lodge, or with other campers on safari. Not in such complete and utter isolation.

  Cal got busy and she joined in, working to his directions, until the camp was surprisingly organised and comfortable. There was the tent, a round fireplace of stones, a towel and tea-towels hanging from the thorns of the tree. Cal occupied himself with his camera equipment. She took his binoculars and climbed to the top of a small knoll to survey the scene. Even though the sun was setting, the rock still felt hot under her feet, and bright lizards scuttered away from her.

  'Watch out for lions!' Cal called, squinting up at her. She pulled a face, but he said, 'I'm serious. You never know what's on the other side of a sunny rock out here.'

  But there was nothing, and she sat for a long time training her field glasses on the scene until the peace and tranquillity of the plains seemed to fill her mind and her spirit.

  Cal had vanished when she returned. She could make him out some distance away near a clump of bushes crouching, kneeling and stretching as he photographed something she could not see.

  She watched his lithe figure move with grace and economy. It was obvious that he and his camera were one, and that when he was working he entirely forgot any pain his shoulder might give him.

  The light was fading fast by the time he came back to her.

  'What were you photographing?'

  'Dung beetles. Nothing exciting. I'm just getting back in practice. Tomorrow I want you to drive me to a waterhole I've been told about. We'll make a dawn start. It might be a boring day for you.'

  She shook her head. 'I could never be bored here! There's so much to watch.'

  He took out a can of beer, opened it and drank. She watched him. He looked across at her, cursed softly under his breath, and got out another can for her.

  'So you like Africa, do you, young Frankie O'Shea?'

  'I love it. I knew I would.' She set her drink beside her and knelt to cut bread and slice tomatoes.

  'It's like a mistress. Once you're under the spell you can't break free. Although I suppose in your case that should be "lover".'

  Cal swigged reflectively on his beer, eyeing her speculatively, and she suddenly knew he was remembering how she had stood naked before him that morning. She battled with a blush, and won. 'It certainly beats London,' she said with feeling.

  'You're not a city girl?'

  'I don't know. I certainly didn't like it when I tried it, but maybe that was because of the job --'

  'Ah, that sexual harassment again——'

  'You can mock, but it was awful. And in the end it got frightening. He started making veiled threats.'

  'So what did you do?'

  'I walked out.'

  'That's often the best way with problems. Turn your back on them and walk away.'

  'Is that what you do?'

  'It depends on the problem. If it's my own, I work it out; if it's a problem someone else is giving me, I prefer to just leave.'

  'Love and leave,' she murmured, remembering what Alice had said.

  'What?'

  She looked up. it's your reputation—love and leave.'

  'Newspaper rubbish,' he said scathingly. 'And anyway, my life doesn't allow much time for anything else.'

  'But you can't just walk away from everyone who's giving you problems --'

  'Can't you?'

  'Well, look at my Aunt Jenny. I'm sure she would have liked to have turned her back on me hundreds of times. She was very happy living her quiet, spinsterly life, and then Mum was killed and Mike dumped me on her. And then he was killed, too, so she knew she was landed with me for life. And I don't suppose I was exactly easy to bring up. I was quite a tomboy, and wayward with it.'

  'Like your father. Maybe you should follow in his footsteps and become a journalist.'

  'No, I'm no good at words. I'm not good at anything very much. At the convent they said I had no application. But the lessons were all so boring!'

  'You're a good driver. And a pretty good camp caterer.'

  She dished out soup and fished jacket potatoes out of the fire.

  'Useful skills in Skipton.'

  'You'll find your niche. Give it time.'

  'Oh, it's easy to say that when you've already found your own!'

  'I was never without,' he admitted, sitting down and reaching for the food. 'I knew what I wanted to do from the time I could walk. It was just a question
of learning my craft.'

  'And you said Mike helped you?' She looked at him eagerly. Cal seemed so much more affable out here in the bush that she longed to capitalise on his good humour. 'What did he seem like to you? Will you tell me about him?'

  It was an innocent question, but she saw his head jerk up and his expression grow hard and closed. The bush had been silent as darkness settled, but now night noises began to pierce the quiet all around. She looked at him, surprised by the dark intensity of his look, and the way he deflected her question straight back to her. 'You must remember quite a lot about him yourself?'

  'Oh, yes. I can remember him coming down the path to our front door, calling my name, with presents spilling out of every pocket. I loved his visits, they were magical times for me, and even Aunt Jenny used to get quite carried away. She'd drink three sherries and play the harmonium with gusto! But I never saw his serious side. I never saw him at work.'

  Cal put down his plate, thinking carefully, and choosing his words slowly. 'He was a fine man, everyone thought so, and one of the best correspondents around. He knew everyone worth knowing, all kinds of doors were open to him, but he was never arrogant about his skills or his contacts.' He paused, then he looked up at Frankie, his eyes piercing in the firelight. 'He was very kind to me. I was just a young puppy when I first went out there, but he showed me patience and tolerance. I owed him everything, yet --' He stopped.

  'Yet what?'

  The night had suddenly grown twice as dark. Somewhere far off an animal howled.

  There was a long silence. Then he said, 'Yet nothing.'

  'You were going to go on.'

  There was another long silence, then he began to talk swiftly, changing the subject. 'Let me tell you about a trip we once did out into the desert with a group of nomads, your father and I. We couldn't really talk to them because of the language barrier, but Mike poured them drinks and mimed jokes for them and you could see they loved him. Everyone did. He was one of those rare people who enhance people's lives. Everyone felt better for spending time with him.'

  'His memorial service was crammed,' Frankie said. 'I had no idea he knew so many people.'

  'I couldn't go. I was still in the Middle East. But I remember walking out of the hospital, into the garden, to be by myself at the time when it was happening. I thought about him, and how passionately I wished he was still alive.'

  'Hospital?'

  'It was nothing,' he said crisply.

  She swallowed. 'Did you know how it happened— the bomb?' No one had ever told her more than the barest facts.

  'Yes, I know.'

  'What did happen?'

  'It's enough that it happened,' he said, and his voice had grown hard and forbidding again. 'There's no point in dwelling on the details.' It was clear he would say no more.

  'I felt so angry with him for getting killed,' she confessed. 'I couldn't cry because I felt so angry. In a way I still do. I feel I've missed so much by not knowing him now.'

  'He would have still been abroad, in the Middle East, or somewhere. That was his life. There would always have been "one more trip".'

  'I know, but he would have come back from time to time. I could have talked to him. Aunt Jenny just doesn't know what sort of person I am.'

  'And do you, yet?'

  He looked at her in the firelight and for a moment some sort of thread of invisible tension seemed to spin across the flames between them. Out here, alone in the vastness, they sat unmoving, held by the flickering light, until Frankie's heart began to bump uncomfortably round her ribs.

  'I know enough. Enough to know that I could never stand the kind of future she had in mind for me.'

  'Then you're halfway there, young Frankie.' He stood up, and away from the firelight he was only a dark silhouette, powerful and remote. 'You know what you don't want. Now you have to find out what you do.' And he walked away, swallowed up by the darkness, leaving her smarting at the way he had suddenly spoken down to her as if she were little more than a child.

  Yet later that night she felt very much a child.

  It was the early hours and something had woken her up. She sat bolt upright in her sleeping-bag, every sense aquiver, the hairs on her arms standing up on end. She was alone in the tent—Cal had chosen to take his sleeping-bag and sleep under the stars outside—but something was definitely moving close at hand.

  'Oh!' She whimpered to herself as her ears strained in the darkness.

  Somewhere, far off, there was a haunting chuckle which Cal had told her was a hyena, but it was not that which had scared her. She listened harder, holding her breath. Then it came again, a rasping, grunting noise so close to hand that it was almost in the tent. An animal was just the other side of the canvas and it could be anything—a lion or elephant or cheetah.

  'Oh!' Her head whipped round. There it was again, but now from the other side. She was frozen with fear. The noise seemed to be all around her. Somewhere by her sleeping-bag there was a torch, but she was too scared to reach out her hand to it, too scared even to breathe.

  Yet whatever was outside was breathing. She could hear hot animal breaths against the tent, then a dark shadow loomed up against the canvas.

  'Oh!' She screamed, and the raw sound of her fear filled the air.

  Within seconds the canvas flaps of her tent were being thrust aside.

  'What in heaven's --?'

  'Oh!' She fought to stifle another scream as she realised who it was. 'Oh, it's you!'

  Suddenly her tension broke, and she began to tremble all over.

  'There's something just outside—I don't know what. It woke me,' she got out. Now she was sobbing and shaking with fright.

  Cal bent over and came in.

  'Hey. Steady. Steady.' He knelt and put his arms round her, holding her hard until her shaking began to steady. He wore only shorts, and the warm skin of his arms and his chest soothed her fears. She leaned into his strength, still trembling against him like a terrified deer. 'Can't you hear it?'

  He grinned. 'I can hear it. Look.' He put out an arm and lifted the tent flap and she slowly made out shapes dotting the grass. 'It's a herd of wildebeest grazing their way past us. Nothing worse. They're noisy devils, but they'll do us no harm.'

  Frankie looked at the animals scattered about the plain, as harmless as the sheep grazing in the field next to her Yorkshire home, and wanted to cry with humiliation and relief. 'Oh, I feel such a fool! I thought it was an elephant, at the very least.'

  Cal spread his hands on her shoulders, holding her firmly so that she could feel his every finger on her flesh. 'All right now?' She looked at him, wide-eyed and tousled.

  'I'm sorry. You must think I'm very stupid.'

  His grey eyes looked into her green ones and as they did she saw them darken, and felt his mood shift.

  'I woke you,' she burbled, unnerved by the change in him. 'And I'm behaving just like a girl --'

  'The wildebeest had already woken me.'

  He looked at her face, her neck, then down to where her body pushed against the thin cotton of her T-shirt, and she saw his throat move as his hands moved on her shoulders, moulding her slenderness, in the instinctive gesture of a sensual man. Her shaking had stopped, he could have let her go, but he did not. They seemed to kneel like that, facing each other, for minutes without speaking.

  She looked up into his face, which was broodingly handsome in the dark shadows, and smelled the warmth of his skin, and a sudden, overwhelming desire for him arrowed through her. She closed her eyes against the assault on her senses. Was she crazy? She'd never felt like this before, not for any man, but the feeling was unmistakable. She wanted Cal, she wanted him as her lover, and she wanted him with a brute and primitive longing that almost propelled her hard into his arms.

  She opened her eyes again, reeling inside from her feelings, and met Cal's steady gaze.

  'What's the matter?' His voice was roughened. 'There's no danger.'

  'I know,' she lied. But there was. T
he danger was here in the tent, beside her, inside her. And it was far more dangerous, far more wild, than any wild animal.

  Their looks snagged, weighted with knowledge, and she felt her lips soften and part. His eyes went to her mouth.

  'Do you want me to sleep in here for the rest of the night?'

  Yes, said her body, yes; stay with me. No, said her common sense, no; you mustn't!

  He dragged his eyes back to meet her gaze and at that moment something savage seemed to flare between them, as they both knew what would be the consequence of such a move.

  'I --' she began, then stopped, her throat dry. She swallowed. 'No,' she got out, 'you mustn't.' She saw a movement in his throat as he, too, swallowed back his tension, then he slowly dropped his hands. 'No,' he said harshly, 'you're right. I mustn't.' And he went out, leaving her alone with her churning heart.

  CHAPTER SIX

  'Pass me my two hundred mill, lens,' Cal murmured quietly.

  Frankie picked it deftly out of his camera-case and passed it over, then kept her hand outstretched, ready to take the lens he was removing from his camera out of his grasp. A cow elephant, with a baby, was coming slowly out of the bushes on the other side of the water. She watched the two animals step to the water's edge, dainty despite their huge feet, and watched Cal shoot them unerringly with the harmless trigger of his camera.

  They crouched together in the scrub near the Land Rover. Cal lowered his camera and waited. He wore khaki shorts and a T-shirt. Sweat slicked his bronzed shoulders and ran down his face.

  She looked at him, then quickly away, not daring to let her gaze linger. When she did, her throat seemed to close until she could scarcely breathe. On a branch near by was a beautiful bird, vivid with blue and lavender plumage, and she distracted herself by concentrating on it.

  Cal, sensing her fascination with his work, had loaned her one of his cameras and now she raised it from where it hung round her neck and focused it on the bird. She clicked the trigger just as it rose from the branch, and hoped she had captured the beauty of its sunlit take-off.

  Cal looked round at the sound and their eyes met. Then he, too, looked away.

  'Oh!'