“Is this guy Lewis connected with poaching?”
“On the contrary. But he’d know about anything that went on there. It’s the village he recruits most of his men from. They practically worship him there.”
“Oh,” Stan called out suddenly. He had caught sight of a striped balloon up in the sky. “There’s the love-nest,” he said. “Purple and black, very nice.” In his dream, the balloon had been red.
“It’s a dark blue, in fact. Mauve and blue.”
“It looks like it’s going pretty fast.”
“Hard to tell. The light can be deceptive. As you know.”
“That land over there, where it’s headed. And back beyond the rise there for forty miles or so—what else can you tell me about it?”
“Like what?”
“People, game.”
“Six—I think about six—villages. And a lot of lion.”
“More than in other areas?”
“Much more. It’s like a game park. I think the people there must have a closed season on them at certain times of the year. Antelope, zebra, and so on, but those are in a normal ratio to other areas. The lion there are in a very concentrated high number.”
“A local system of open and closed hunting would be enough to account for it?”
“And if they keep people out. It would have to be agreed. I don’t know anything for certain in any case. Only a guess.”
“Have you ever come across anything you could call lion worship here—a religious cult of some kind?”
“No. Why? You don’t think this is the spot marked X, do you?”
Stan’s face was still directed up into the air but he said, “Well, it’s beginning to look like it.”
*
“Be a dear and look at my eye, would you?” Pippa asked. Rupert leaned over her face. Millie looked out at the bright ground, the hot sky. She turned away from the light.
When Ian returned to camp, Pippa walked out to meet him. Millie heard them stop outside her tent where she sat with her head leaning against her fists.
Ian said, “Binkie? What’s he doing here?”
“He’s brought some dreadful news. Harry Lewis has been killed. Let’s have a drink. I was waiting for you.”
“You’ve been crying, too,” he said. “Your eyes—no, it’s only the one. One of your eyes is red as anything.”
“It’s the same one you looked at. A filament from a grain or a seed—it flew on to the cornea and stuck there. Binkie said the tissues were about to grow over it.”
They walked away, talking in low voices. Millie didn’t move. Much later she heard another landrover drive towards the car park. She rolled over on her cot and put her arm across her eyes. She was lying in the same position when Stan entered the tent.
He talked about the events of the day, about Bernhard’s balloon and the interview with the men in the village. She told him that Rupert Hatchard had come out from town, but Stan interrupted. The folktale was more interesting. As he spoke, he became increasingly engrossed in the subject of the lion god.
“No wedding, after all,” she said.
“That’s the interesting part. This is where I think it leads to human sacrifice.”
“Oh no, Stan. I don’t think so.”
“Well, I do. And it’s my field. The only trouble is, we’re going to have a hell of a time trying to get in there to take a look at what’s going on. Residents only.”
“If it really is their religion, why would they want outsiders?”
“Why not?”
“Not if he’s just died.”
“Died?”
“Gone back to his people, you said.”
“Oh, I see. Well—”
“They might ask you to a wedding, but not to a funeral.”
“But this is supposed to be the wedding. Nicholas thinks it might be connected with ivory poachers.”
“Oh?”
“You really don’t feel so good?”
“I’ve felt a little knocked out by the sun lately.”
“Come have a drink?”
“I don’t think so.”
He leaned over and put the heel of his hand on to her forehead.
“My father used to do that when I was a child,” she said. “I can’t feel anything that way. My hands are always colder than my forehead, at least I think they are. I can only find out by using the inside of my wrist. Actually, I can’t even tell that way.”
“Come keep me company,” he said.
“All right. I’ll be along in a minute.”
When she sat down in the dining tent, Ian was telling Stan, “We’ve had some bad news. A friend of ours has died.”
“Oh. That’s too bad. I’m sorry.” Stan looked at the rest of the company and said, “I guess it was unexpected? Not old age or sickness?”
“He was murdered,” Rupert said. “Although some people are saying it was suicide.”
“Impossible,” Pippa and Nicholas both said.
“And other people claim his ex-wife’s family had a hand in it.”
Millie said, “That’s nonsense. He got along very well with all of them.”
“I know. You wouldn’t credit what some of our self-appointed expert gossipmongers will say. One of the stories these people have hit on is that he was trying to get custody of the children.”
“He could see them whenever he wanted to,” Millie said. “And he had lots of other children, too. Nobody who knew him would take that seriously.”
“Who is this guy?” Stan asked.
“Henry Lewis,” Millie told him. “He was at that party we went to. You know, at Colonel Armstrong’s house.”
“How can you tell all that from only meeting him once?”
“He was one of those people you know right away,” she said, “as though you’ve known them for years. I just fell in love with him.”
“Yes,” Pippa said. “I can’t think of him gone.”
“I’m beginning to get the feeling we went to different parties,” Stan said.
“You were talking about sub judice for an hour and a half in the next room and getting plastered. Remember?”
“Sure. What’s happened about that? The man that got pushed out of his car in the game park.”
“Even more theories about that,” Rupert said.
“What’s the odds?” Ian asked.
“The woman will get off. And—it’s curious you should say that. Thousands of people are making book on it. I think the three of them will be acquitted in the end. They’re backing each other up, that’s the main thing. Afterwards they can thrash out the question of who gets what. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Yes, I suppose there’s money in it, too,” Pippa said. “That always makes crime interesting.”
“It makes crime happen,” said Nicholas. Ian took a deep breath and let it go. He ran a hand over his face. Pippa made a tentative motion towards her bad eye and stopped. They all had extra drinks; all, except Millie.
After dinner Stan said to her that he’d like to take a walk but Nicholas had warned him not to, because of the lion.
“That was weird,” she told him. “He walked straight towards me, like he was going to come right up to my face and say hello.”
“You must have been paralysed.”
“I was like somebody who’s stuck his finger in the light socket. Thrilled and shocked. And I knew—totally, all over—that nothing I could do would stop it. If Nicholas hadn’t spoken, I think I’d have started to go out of my mind. I mean it. I had this feeling that he’d come to get me. It was so strange. I can’t describe it. If he hadn’t intended to charge, I’d have done something to make him. I wouldn’t have been able to help it.”
“Panic.”
“Um.”
“This guy, Lewis. What was he like?”
“Wonderful. He was wonderful.”
“I just realized, he’s the same one Ian told me about, who got his brotherhood spearing a lion.”
�
��Yes, he told me about that.”
“You two sure covered a lot of ground in an hour and a half.”
“Yes. I told you. It was like meeting someone you’ve known all your life.”
“I know. Parties. It helps to be drunk.”
Millie thought: I should say it now, that I wasn’t drunk and neither was he. We saw each other through the window that day in town, and the next morning he picked me up and asked me to his rooms and we went there, and went to bed and stayed there for the next seven hours. And at that party, too, we were in a room at the back. We were going to get married. And we’re having a baby.
“But what was he like?”
“A man of action. Bold, ardent, playful, fun, generous. No wonder they hated him.”
“Who?”
“Racketeers, or whatever they are. Running a business poaching and selling ivory. But they couldn’t do it out of his territory, because all his people were loyal to him.”
“What people, Millie?”
“Oh, he had this job once with the game department and everybody in the area treated him as if he were an official from before Independence: they used to come to him about any disputes, and so on. He had a big reputation already because of the lions. He could call them, make them come out and lie down near him and they wouldn’t hurt him. He said it was just a trick, that you did it by the voice, like that man down in Georgia your mother told us about, who could call crows.”
“You’d need plenty of nerve.”
“Well, he had that.”
She was crying, but silently. Stan didn’t notice.
“You see, I’ve got this theory—”
“I know, Stan. We all know.”
“No, listen. If it’s possible that these cults start with a real person, this guy could be it. I’ve just realized. And he was about to get married, too. It all fits. Tell me some more about him.”
“Not now,” she said. “I want to sleep.”
*
She woke, crying, and put her hands over her eyes. Her body felt tightened and sore. She tried to swallow her sobbing. Stan’s breathing was slow and even.
Never see him again. Never be with him. Never anything any more.
All the camp around her was still. Gradually her weeping subsided. And then, she heard a cough outside. She sat bolt upright. It had sounded exactly like Henry, that night before they left town; when he had stood under her window. The last time she had ever seen him. No animal could make a sound like that. No animal except a human being.
Maybe it was Nicholas. That was possible. Probably it was. She turned to her other side and stared into the blackness. She tried to remember. Tears moved hotly across her face, running into her nose, her mouth, her ears.
If you were here, if you could talk. Speak to me now. If we were lying side by side or with our arms circling each other, outside around inside and inside around outside. If I could die.
*
Rupert began the drive back to town early the next morning when it was still dark. Millie was at the car park to say goodbye to him and Nicholas met her on her way to the dining tent. He said, “Are you still out and about, after your fright yesterday?”
“That’s right. It wasn’t you coughing last night, was it?”
“No. It must have been the lion again. Short of hunting him out, I don’t know what I can do about it. Pity, but we can’t have a beast like that roaming about the place for long.”
They strolled through the camp as the morning light grew around them. Nicholas moved his eyes to the left and back, to the right and back.
“You really think that lion could jump out on us?”
“I don’t think anything. But there’s always the danger. It was curious behaviour.”
“Maybe he’s attracted by the smell of the skins.”
“I could sit up tonight, try to fire a warning shot across his bows tomorrow morning.”
“Your tent is so far away from everyone else’s, Nicholas. It looks like the house of a hermit.”
“Oh. Come see where I’ve put the zebra.”
She went with him into the tent, which was as large as the one she and Stan had. For one person, there was plenty of room. She sat on the bed and looked over to where Nicholas pointed, at the painting, which had been ingeniously taped to a wire and the wire attached to the canvas. He stood his rifle in the corner and sat down beside her. They both stared at the picture. She cleared her throat, about to start up a conversation, but changed her mind.
She put her hand on his wrist and said, “It’s very hard for you without her, isn’t it?” He lowered his head until his face almost rested against her neck. He said, “I used to think. When people said they were lonely….” He swallowed. She waited for him to go on. Her wristwatch started to tick loudly. He raised his head. “I used to think it was their own fault,” he said.
*
Stan was ready to leave and was going to join Joshua in the car park, when the world in front of him slowed down. Everything came to a stop. He could hear, but the sound reached him from far away. He looked out into a blazon of light and tried to concentrate. He stood completely still, hoping for the confusion to pass, for his mind to remember what he had been about to do. Come back, he thought. Come back.
And then he was standing there again, on his way to the car park. And, as always, it was as though the thing had never been.
Millie came up to him as he went by their tent. “Bon voyage,” she said. She moved forward, as if preparing to give him a goodbye kiss. He pulled back, and said, “Don’t peck at me like that. It’s such an insult.”
“You don’t like it? Okay.”
“It isn’t that I don’t. It just isn’t enough. Look, I’m feeling totally deprived, Millie. It’s bad enough waiting for you to make up your mind about what the hell you think you’re doing. And what was that Pippa said at breakfast—some kind of hint about you and Nicholas?”
“Start worrying about Rupert Hatchard. That’s my idea of a man I could spend my life with.”
“Oh, very funny.”
“I’m serious. Not the great romance or twin souls that beat as one, but I could be very happily married with him. Never run out of things to talk about, and put up with each other’s habits.”
“And you’ve come to the end of my conversation? Or is it my irritating habits? Don’t you think we could still patch up the cracks and keep going for a little while?”
“I don’t know. We may have to, I guess. I just don’t know.”
“What enthusiasm. How long is it going to take before you do know?”
She gave him a push with the flat of her hand. “Go on,” she said. “You’ll be late at the office.”
He laughed. He felt for a moment that things were going to be all right. And there was something about her at last that made her seem more accessible. He had an idea that she had decided, and that the decision had been to stay together.
He got into the landrover with Nicholas and Joshua. Nicholas said, “I’ll drop you two there after I talk with the man in charge. Want to see if I can find a buff Tom told me about.”
They drove in silence until Joshua began to sing softly. Stan blinked at the grassland and trees, the blue sky, the long horizon. Nothing was wrong with his focus now. He’d always had good eyesight. All the good things he’d always had, never given a thought to them, and now it seemed that they were running out. But if Millie stayed, it would have to be all right.
He knew he wasn’t sick. Once or twice he’d thought he might have picked up parasites from the food or the water. But that couldn’t be the answer. It had started in town. He remembered how his skin had reacted to the sun at first. Maybe that was all it was—an unusual kind of photosensitivity.
*
As soon as they arrived in the village Nicholas singled out an old man to talk to. They discussed something for several minutes. The man twice made a gesture in the air with his arm: slow and final, like the action of a man using a scythe.
; Nicholas returned to the landrover and they began to drive on. “What next?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Stan said. “What was he telling you?”
“A lot of codswallop. Shop’s closed today. The gods wouldn’t like it, or words to that effect.”
“That’s great. What did he say exactly?”
“Stan, they’ve got some business of their own on, or having friends round, or some such—”
“What did he say?”
“He said that these were the days of preparation and they belonged to the king. We could come back another time. In a month, was what he said. Are you joining me for the shoot?”
“Look,” Joshua said. He pointed. Up in the sky the lilac and blue balloon drifted ahead on a course parallel to theirs. “We can drive to where they come down.”
Nicholas shook his head. “Not me. You want to?” Stan said yes; he’d like a trip in the balloon. Nicholas got out into the road and waited for the skinners, who were travelling behind them. Stan and Joshua started out on their own.
They chased the balloon for miles, choking in dust whenever they came to a sharp bend or had to reverse. Joshua waved ecstatically and shouted. He beat his hand against the door.
“They must see us signalling,” Stan said.
“They see us. Sometimes they can’t stop. They ride on the lines in the air. They have to follow.”
“They can’t turn around?”
“If they come to another line.”
“What is it, like a spiderweb up there?”
“It’s like the wind. Lines. We can’t see them, but they’re there.”
The balloon floated slowly ahead of them until they thought they would be able to cut over to the right and drive across its path. And just then it picked up speed and flew high into the sky, diminishing so rapidly that it might have been a plane or a rocket.
“Look at her go,” Stan said. “That’s amazing.”
Joshua gazed upward. He didn’t seem sad or defeated, but for a long time he wouldn’t look away from the place where the balloon had been. He told Stan later that he only wanted to see his friends, Bernhard and Karen. The balloon itself made him seasick; he had been up in it once and his stomach had died and died.
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