Binstead's Safari

by Rachel Ingalls

  “Maybe. Nicholas has the same kind of life, but I don’t think he’d disapprove of Jill. He probably just feels terrible for her because he can’t understand what’s happened.”

  “You think Ian disapproves?”

  “Yes. He thinks she should have had the guts to bring up those kids on her own out there and not crack up, because that’s what Pippa would have been able to do.”

  “Yes. And in a way he’s right, isn’t he?”

  “Of course not. People aren’t all alike. And speaking as a woman who fended off an induced crack-up for many years, I’m a little sensitive about it.”

  In all their years of married life, she had never opened her mouth to tell him. Now it was said: It’s your fault. Induced crack-up. And now that she had spoken, he felt helpless. He had no position prepared and he didn’t know how to respond.

  He said, “Goodnight,” and pulled the covers over himself.

  Their new camp was in a clearing by a good-sized stand of trees and behind the trees were bushes. A light breeze played through the branches all day long and most of the night. The hours of painting were never without the sound of leaves rustling, touching, blowing against each other.

  We’re so glad to hear you are having such a good time, Millie read.

  She thought about her mother, who had tried to be tactful in asking about children. During the first two years of her marriage with Stan, her mother had warned her not to become a baby-machine. Millie’s sister, Betty, had had three children right in a row. One summer morning, when she was expecting the fourth, Betty had a long talk with Millie, said she hadn’t wanted any of the children, she’d give anything to get rid of this one, and as far as she was concerned they weren’t children; they were unwanted pregnancies, all of them, but their mother thought it was the right thing because she wanted other women to be as miserable as she was herself. The first child, Betty said, broke her—because she was married, so there was no reason she could give why she didn’t want it. She had thought to begin with that of course they’d have children, but after a few years. Not straight away. She’d been sure he knew what he was doing—he’d said he did. So, with the second one, it didn’t matter. The damage was done. It was too late. One day she would realize that her whole life had been just this: putting up with things she didn’t like, because they were forced upon her. All these unwanted pregnancies would grow up and she would never be given the chance or the time, or maybe after such a long wait, the desire for her real, wanted children.

  “I despise him. I despise myself,” Betty had said. “And if he knew, he’d despise me too. Everybody would.”

  “I don’t despise you,” Millie had said. She had put her own hand over her sister’s, where it rested on the table. Betty’s hand was without response and she stared ahead of her as if waiting, or stationed there by someone else, a statue standing behind a wall.

  Even in the early years, Millie’s attitude had changed at least three times: longing for children because it would mean she was a success, it would please Stan and keep him to herself; revulsion against the idea of children, thinking that she would then not only be betrayed but also saddled with the offspring of a man who didn’t care about her at all; hoping again, because even if she could prevent herself from wishing for love, she needed someone to touch and to hold in her arms.

  She had gone to a doctor at the beginning, had had a thorough check-up and been told there was no reason why she shouldn’t be able to have children. That meant, of course, that something must be wrong with her mentally. It never occurred to her that a similar examination of her husband might show some physical reason. She didn’t want to hear any more from Stan about the subject. For the first time since he’d known her, she had shouted. And, a few years later, at the stage when she was pretending to want children but didn’t, she was using two different methods of contraception simultaneously. She only gave them up because he had stopped wanting to make love. He had his hands full outside the house, she knew that well enough.

  One day after she’d been to her parents for a visit, her father drove her home. She had never talked about her marriage and had finally made it plain that she didn’t like being questioned. But before dropping her off at the apartment, he had asked, “Millie, are you happy?” Her father, who was so charming and agreeable; and it was just the kind of asinine thing he would say. Was her mother happy?

  She didn’t talk to Pippa about any of that. It came across her mind like veils, like curtains, sometimes like a form of speech, as though she were talking to herself while her brush outlined antelope and crocodile, elephant and bouquets of flowers copied from the photographs in a seed catalogue that had arrived in one of the mail deliveries.

  Darling, she wrote. I think about you all the time, I never stop. I’m waiting and waiting. I love you forever.

  *

  Stan and Ian set out in pre-dawn darkness for the village they had been told about. Ian talked nearly the whole way about Nicholas. It seemed probable to Stan that, as Millie had said, Ian blamed Jill; he was ready to find excuses for someone who made a mistake in work—even a stupid or dangerous blunder—but there was no excuse for anyone who made a private mistake, committed an error of emotion or suffered a collapse of psychological strength, a confusion of the personality. He appeared to believe that that was a matter of choice and if you gave in to a failure or a weakness, it was because life was made easier for you that way.

  They sat in a shaded hut: circular, roofed, with supporting poles down the sides but no walls. Stan couldn’t tell whether the building was unfinished or the walls removable and perhaps put back at night for protection against the cold and the night-hunting predators.

  Four other men sat with them, one young, one old, and two middle-aged. The most important man was in his late forties. He had a leisurely, matter-of-fact way of indicating who should speak next, although also a slight air of menace, which might have been unconscious. Maybe it was an effect he had found useful as someone who was in authority over others. It could mean people wouldn’t waste his time as much as they might have if he’d had a sympathetic manner.

  “Remember, now,” Ian said as they went in, “I don’t know any of these men. I’ve only got a sort of letter of recommendation from my friend.” He translated.

  From the old man: “I heard it said when I was a child that a lion would come into the country one day that had the powers of a witch. I took this to mean a great man who would lead the people in battle, who would make us rich and happy and bring back the health we have lost.”

  From the young man: “I hear the children singing new stories about the lion. But songs change after a time. The songs I sang with my friends aren’t all the same as the songs my father and his friends sang. Some of them were new to us because they were ours, not from our fathers. This is the way new songs are born. First the singers, then the song. These new ones are about the wedding of the lion and the feast of the guests who make welcome for the bridal pair. The songs don’t come from my village. They come from the East.”

  From the middle-aged man who was not heading the talk: “I heard such songs when I was passing through the country near the red rocks. The Bwana knows it. These songs all come from one village. They are not about a lion; they are about a man who is their witch. He kills the lion.”

  From the leader: “I too have heard the songs, most of the time sung by children, in a few cases by young girls or boys. But I have also heard of men with masks and dressed in lion skins, who hunt elephant and rhino and sell ivory and horn against the law. I have heard these men don’t like anyone to talk. They know boys in many villages who will work for them, make money, go to the city, live like a rich man. I’ve heard last year six boys, who wanted to talk, died.”

  The leader didn’t sum up, or indicate which explanation he thought should be accepted. He had included his own opinion, not pushing it, and that was enough for him. He turned to Stan, having realized without being told, that all this was for his
benefit. Or perhaps he had been briefed by Ian’s friend in the other village. Stan caught an ironic glint in the man’s eyes. How laughable this is, the look said. Food is more important, infectious disease and all other illnesses are more important; doctors, guns, schools, water, the fear of the locusts coming back, of swine fever among the cattle. Or, if this were a search for an enemy—that too would be understandable.

  Stan moved his head in a slight nod. He turned to Ian. “Thanks,” he said, “that’s fine, if you can find out the name of that village. And say I appreciate it.”

  Ian asked the name of the village. After that, good manners forced them to stay a while. Ian talked a great deal and drank tea made from some thin, dark shreds that might have been leaves, bark, herbs or even wood. Stan saw that he too was about to be offered some of the drink. He told Ian quickly, “I thought I said it was against my religion to eat or drink anything on these special days.”

  Ian explained. The men looked at Stan. He tried to appear staunchly religious without seeming unfriendly.

  On their way back to camp, he said, “Well it lasted a long time, but that one man was a winner. If I could get my hands on a witch doctor who’s building up his own cult—do you know the village?”

  “Not well. I’ve been there with Harry. He uses a lot of boys who come from there. It’s a bit off the beaten path.”

  “Lion country?”

  “Absolutely. Not the easiest terrain for shooting, but they’re there, right enough. Of course it’s fairly wild country. Not like this, where you can run slap into a tourist hotel every fifty miles or so, if you want to. Different breed of wildlife, of people. The nearer you go to the towns—you wouldn’t credit what we’ve cut out of the digestive tract of some of the game we shoot: dolls, cameras, plastic washing-up bowls. Incredible. That’s civilization for you.”

  “Just to settle whether these things might be imported, or a revival. It makes it more interesting if they’re connected with something still happening.”

  Ian began to talk about lion. He said they were like elephant: once the idea took hold of you, no other animal would do. It could cloud your judgement. He went on to tell a story concerning a hunter who had had a partiality for black-maned lion and wouldn’t touch anything else, so a friend of his had caught a lion in a net-trap and dyed the mane. The narrative rambled on, longer and more elaborate than a shaggy-dog story.

  “Ian, what did they give you in that tea?”

  “Well may you ask, my son.”

  “Are you tight?”

  “I’m … absolutely blasted. Happens every time. Marvellous stuff, God knows what’s in it. Lasts about six hours and then sleepy.”

  “You feel all right?”

  “On top of the world. Like one of those balloons on a very thin rope. Keep bouncing up, straining away from the ground.”

  That night, Stan was full of the new possibilities for proving his theory. Millie was quiet, listening and occasionally saying, “Yes, yes, that would be interesting.”

  *

  Sometimes she thought she heard a car in the distance and would go wait at the edge of the camp to see if Alistair’s driver could be bringing her another letter. She’d stand still and try to will the car into her vision. Bring me a letter, she’d repeat to herself. Bring it now.

  Whenever she remembered him, excitement and pleasure carried her upwards as if she were moving on a tide. But she also began to feel lazy and she slept a lot. She thought she might be pregnant.

  The next time Alistair stopped at the camp to deliver the mail, she took him aside to ask if he could do a test for her. “Just to make it official. I’ve never missed before, but maybe the change of climate has something to do with it.”

  “I’ll need a specimen,” he said. “No end of phials and retorts with me, and nothing the right size. It’s always the way.”

  “We’ve got a lot of extra little cans for the paints. I’ll find something.”

  As he was leaving, she handed him an old jam jar wrapped up in a brown paper bag. “Takes me back to my student days,” he said. “Extraordinary containers I saw. Coffee jars were far and away the favourite.”

  “And don’t say anything about it, please.”

  “My dear lady,” he told her.

  “Yes, I know. I’m only asking because it’s important. And I want to be the one to break the news if there is any.” She went on to ask him if she could be doing herself or a baby any harm by taking anti-malaria pills. He questioned her about prescriptions and recent vaccinations. After he had driven away, she stood looking at the dust from the road as it billowed into the air. It spread out and hung in front of her for a moment like a piece of veiling across the landscape, then gradually dispersed, leaving only light and heat and the sound of a breeze in the trees nearby.

  *

  Stan went over his notes and copied some of the earlier jottings into his current folder. He made a recording of a long chapter on possession and the theory of substitution. He added a footnote about changelings. And he wrote a letter to Switzerland. After lunch he lay on his side with his elbow out and one hand under his cheek. He read. Across from him Millie was curled up on her cot. She looked through magazines and catalogues.

  He read about lions; their power, speed and agility. It was amazing what they could do: leap over a high fence to pick up a larger, heavier animal in their jaws and then jump back over with it. Wonderful. The degree of strength in ratio to their size was certainly greater than a man’s. They were also stupendously virile. Ian had told him that one of the big zoos in Europe had made a study of how often a leonine courting couple mated in a set number of minutes, and the figures were astounding. But it was the lion’s character that interested Stan; that is, the character it had been given. He had studied ballads and epic poems that likened men to all different kinds of creature—no animal was excluded from comparison. And every country or region had its own special types. But lions were universal. Most people knew what they were and everyone who was acquainted with them agreed that they were the fastest, the wildest, the most kingly, strongest, most terrifying, the proudest. And they were never afraid, never.

  *

  In the evening, after dinner, they played bridge. Ian kept yawning, almost as much as he had the night before, but wouldn’t give up. He said that only on this safari had he learned to enjoy cards.

  “Never had the time before. It’s always been such an awful bore to have to entertain the clients after a hard day’s work. It’s grand to be able to put one’s feet up, not have to go beating round the district for dirty great trophies. I often think if I were entering the profession now as a young chap, I’d only allow cameras, like everyone else. I suppose it’ll come to that.”

  “Like Gregor Mandrake?” Millie asked.

  “Who?”

  “The fashion photographer. I read someplace, he was out here last year. He’s famous.”

  “Is that the fellow’s name? It doesn’t surprise me. You’re seriously asking if I—”

  “I was joking, Ian.”

  “I should hope so. Frightful charlatan. Tom thought the world of him, wanted to be a cameraman for a while.”

  “It couldn’t be real,” Stan said. “It’s got to be made up, a name like that.”

  Millie said, “You once told me everything important was made up.”

  “You keep resuscitating all my star quotations. I hardly remember any of them.”

  “Ah, that’s a habit wives have,” Ian said. “I’ve noticed that myself.”

  Alistair looked in on them a few days later. He’d seen Nicholas, was bringing a letter from him, and also had two scandalous stories to relate.

  “Now that is kind,” Pippa told him. “How should we ever know about the latest news if you didn’t take pity on us? And two of them.”

  The first story was about the accident in the game park, which had taken place just before the death of the German nurse.

  “The man who jumped out of the car,” Stan sai
d, “and the lion on the roof got him.”

  “That’s the one. It seems now that they pushed him out. Two of the men are under arrest. They don’t know what to do with the wife: charge her with complicity, or let her go. She’s still a free woman, the last I heard.”

  “Two men,” Ian repeated.

  “What a feast,” Pippa said appreciatively. “Were they both having an affair with the woman, or has money been changing hands? Definitely one of the best we’ve had.”

  “The other one’s not so much a scandal as an outrage. More our line of country. Some poacher with his musket pointed it up in the air and fired at the London balloon—Freeman and the New Zealander, Pembroke. It’s a miracle they’re alive.”

  “Good Lord,” Ian said. “He brought them down?”

  “Down with a thump. Pembroke’s got a broken leg, arm, and crushed ribs. I couldn’t remember his name at the time and I was in such a rush, I told matron he was called Mr Bonebroke. She’s going to be dining out on that one for years.”

  “Outrage is putting it mildly. I can’t understand it, except out of sheer malice.”

  Stan said, “Maybe he thought they were looking for poachers instead of counting the game.”

  “What about the other one?” Pippa asked. “Freebody.”

  “Freeman. That’s more serious. He has a fractured skull. I thought at first his neck was broken too, but it was just the way he was lying. And blood everywhere. Something they had with them was made of glass. They both looked as if they’d been shot with the pieces. Don’t they make most of those expedition articles from plastic or safety glass nowadays? It was a fine old mess, I can tell you. Picking out the bits for hours.”

  Ian talked vehemently and at length about poachers until Stan changed the subject by saying, “I just remembered, the party we went to. The night before we left town. I was talking about that accident in the game park, and then I said something about sub judice and I thought everybody was going to die laughing. One of them was named Wilson, and—let me think.”

  After prompting from Ian and Alistair, he brought out one more name and some descriptions. Ian said, “I don’t wonder they laughed. You were talking to a judge, a magistrate, and probably defending and prosecuting counsel.”