They took an easy route home, after trying to detach a prize gazelle from its herd. They were unsuccessful at that too, but Stan didn’t mind. Joshua told him a long story about a scorpion, large parts of which, he recognized with pleasure, were almost identical to folktales from Egypt and Mexico.
*
Long before Alistair’s landrover pulled up, Millie could see there was someone travelling with him.
“At last,” Pippa said. “Carrol.”
Alistair became shy and flushed as he introduced his fiancée. She was a nice-looking, forthright girl, slightly plump, who had easy manners and evidently liked meeting people. Pippa was delighted with her. Millie, too, wondered why Eddie had become tired of such a wife.
They showed Carrol everything as though she were a visitor from another planet, then they sat down to lunch. Ian said it was a pity that Rupert hadn’t stayed.
“He’s very broken up about Henry,” Millie said. “I think he just needs to be alone for a while. He only came because he wanted us to get the true story instead of a lot of those rumours going around town.”
“What’s this?” Alistair asked.
They went through the story once more. Alistair wanted to know all the details. “There seems to be a terrible amount of homicidal activity in the country at the moment,” he said. “More than usual, I mean.”
“No worse than New York,” Carrol told him.
They changed the subject and talked about making films, and about art. They went to look at the paintings. Millie presented Carrol with a picture of a bird. To Alistair she gave a picture he asked for specially: of a python about to eat a goat, which he referred to as a poodle.
“I shall treasure it,” he said. “The snake looks more apprehensive than the dog. I don’t know that one can blame him.”
As they all said goodbye, Millie saw that Alistair had a different driver. She didn’t ask why. Now there was no need to know.
*
She sat in front of her paints for a long while, looking at nothing. She thought about walking under the shadows of the trees in town, first dark, then light. She went back to the moment when he put his hand on her arm. She stared down at the ground and tried not to cry. Suddenly she remembered the talk she had had over breakfast in the hotel dining room with Mrs Miller, and how the old woman had said that she believed all life was a single cell. He and she, the animals, the birds and flowers she had painted—she was related to everything now, and to the future. But without him.
“I love colour,” he had said. “I love it. Sometimes out here when it’s really hot, it disappears. All the colour just goes, whole bands drop out of the spectrum, like in the desert. A couple of times recently I’ve caught myself thinking I miss the snow, but not often, not much. I like being here. Especially now.”
She lifted her paintbrush and thought she would make a picture of a flower she had seen years ago.
He’d said, “It wasn’t completely accidental, you know. I had you followed everywhere. There were about twelve of them trying to find out where you were staying, and reporting back to me.”
After a little while, Pippa came and stood by her.
“How’s the eye?” Millie asked. “Still okay?”
“All well still, thank goodness. I like that. You have a marvellous memory.”
“I don’t think so. I make it up. I can’t really remember what the thing looked like, just what impression it made on me. There. Like that. It’s too bad Alistair couldn’t stay to talk with Nicholas. A letter isn’t the same.”
“No. And it would be a great pity if that marriage broke up.”
She’s talking about me being in his tent, Millie thought. “I think so too,” she said. “I think Nicholas needs all the help he can get. He needs to talk, he needs company. He needs people who like him and don’t believe he’s failed at anything. He’s lonely. He needs not to be isolated. Don’t you agree?”
“Well, yes,” Pippa said. “If you put it like that.”
Millie almost told her about Henry, about how she had planned to leave Stan and go away with him.
“Were you married out here?” she asked.
“Indeed we were. The reception lasted for three days. I still have the newspaper cutting. It said we had a ‘tired’ wedding cake.”
They found Stan back in camp and telling Ian about driving after the balloon. Ian kept waving away Stan’s fervour. He had had enough of balloons to last any man a lifetime, he said.
It was late, but still there was no sign of Nicholas. They had tea, talked about Alistair and Carrol, and moved to the dining tent, where the evening’s drinks had been set out as usual. Stan almost said he hoped everything was all right, but realized in time that it would be another of those things that wasn’t done. He asked Millie if she’d like to go up in the balloon.
“Very much. You think the love-nest story is true?”
“Sure.”
Pippa said, “But it doesn’t really sound the sort of thing a man would allow his fiancée—well, any decent man, right there in front of him.”
“Well, maybe not. Who knows?”
Who knew anything? Only when it was nearly too late, you looked up and your future went flying away from you, invisible, like Joshua’s lines in the air.
It was sunset and about to grow dark when they heard the trucks approaching. The men were singing. Everyone went out to the car park.
“I was beginning to worry,” Pippa whispered.
“Me, too,” Millie said.
The skinners were making a fuss about something. Ian looked startled as he saw the skins of two leopards being carried past.
Nicholas came forward. “I couldn’t help it,” he said. “They were right on top of us. And cubs with them. More babies for you, Pippa.”
Ian said, “We only just got rid of the last lot.”
Nicholas washed and changed while the others went to look at the leopards. The cubs were still mewing; they sounded like mice. Stan stepped back as the women leaned forward. It struck him as odd and faintly ridiculous that they should resemble mothers peering down into a crib.
*
She dreamt that she waited at the edge of camp, between daybreak and night. She had forgotten what she was waiting for—whether for the lion, or for Alistair’s driver bringing news—but a sense of urgency and pain compelled her towards whatever it was. She stared into the greyness, longing, until out of it rose a movement like the swell of an ocean wave and suddenly he was there, Henry, standing a few yards from her. He must have walked all the way from town. He put his hands to his heart and opened them out to her. She stepped forward to meet him, and woke up.
Stan slept. He was still sleeping when she woke for the second time and got up. She washed, dressed, and left the tent. And once more, just as she was about to run ahead to greet Nicholas, the lion walked towards her.
“Don’t move, Millie,” Nicholas whispered.
She wanted to throw herself into motion, but it was as if her legs had turned to stone and then disappeared beneath her. She was trapped there. Her head and the upper part of her body began to feel farther and farther away from the ground.
The lion had seen Nicholas moving around to the side. It wrinkled its upper lip, showed its teeth, and began a kind of pawing dance, shaking its head sideways. Its tail twitched back and forth.
“Now,” Nicholas breathed softly, “start walking away very slowly. To your right.”
She put one foot behind her and stepped backwards. She thought she must be moving in an awkward, jerky manner. And all the time there was a strong pull the other way, like the power of a tide running between her and the lion.
Does he want to kill me? she thought. Is that why? She felt that soon she was going to faint, but she kept going backwards until all at once the lion did the same thing he’d done the first time: wheeled around and raced off.
Over breakfast she said, “It looked even bigger today. It was the size of a horse.”
“Sure it’s
the same one?” Ian asked.
“Yes,” Nicholas and Millie both answered.
“What were you doing up so early, anyway?” Stan said.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Millie told him. “I can’t stand it just lying there with my eyes open, so I might as well get up.”
“Anyone seen him at any other time?” Ian asked.
Nicholas shook his head. “Let’s warn everyone and leave it at that. He’s such a beauty, it’d be a pity to shoot him. Unless one absolutely had to.”
“You know,” Stan said, “this interests me. This is kind of a funny way for a lion to act, isn’t it?”
“It is, rather,” Ian said. “But they’re all unaccountable. There’s not a species in the land that couldn’t pull some strange new habit out of a hat after you’ve studied it for fifty years.”
“Well, I just thought: anything unusual that has to do with lions in this part of the country—we’re not too far away from the territory where those legends are supposed to come from. It does seem odd that a full-grown male would seek the company of a large group of people.”
“If you’re thinking he’s some kind of trained pet, Stan, you can think again,” Nicholas said. “This is positively the most savage wild beast you’ve ever seen. It’s like looking into the inside of a volcano.”
“If you decide to go on a hunt for it, I’d like to come along.”
“No, Stan,” Millie said. “It’s dangerous.”
“Everything’s dangerous.”
“I’ve got a feeling about it.”
“It would be dangerous going up in the balloon.”
“Hear, hear,” Ian said.
“I’ll let you know,” Nicholas promised. “We won’t track him down unless we have to.”
“What does that mean? You’ll wait till it jumps on somebody here in the camp?”
“More or less.”
“But that could happen any time.”
“He has a point, Nick,” Ian said. “What do you think?”
“I’d rather not.”
“No,” Millie agreed. “It would be a shame.”
“That’s all very fine,” Pippa said.
“Raving romanticism,” Stan added. “How would you feel if your friend here just got tired waiting for his breakfast and ate somebody up?”
“Let’s leave it for a bit,” Nicholas said. “I’ve told Joshua and Robert and the boys in the cookhouse.”
*
During the next few days, Nicholas took Stan out to look at several different villages. Stan asked questions all the time and kept taking notes. He filled up ring binders with paper; his cardboard and plastic filing portfolios grew fat.
The lion appeared twice again in the early morning, as before. At its first return, Millie said to Nicholas, “It’s true. It’s as though it’s coming for a purpose, or as though he’d been trained.”
Nicholas shook his head. He told her, “Let’s not say anything this time. I’ve already warned everyone to be careful.”
“Do you think it was his home ground and he’s reclaiming it, or something like that? That would mean he’s going to keep coming back, no matter what we do.”
“All right. Stan’s the one who’s interested. We’ll follow him out of camp.”
“Could you scare him off, without actually shooting him?”
“I could try. I’d try that first. But if this is his patch, he won’t give it up.”
In the afternoon, Nicholas told Stan that they should have an early night, get a good sleep and wake in time to track the lion.
Stan said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about this thing. Listen. Wouldn’t you say that a good method of seizing political power would be to convince everyone that you had supernatural abilities? And you could keep other people out of the area that way. You’d be the only authority. Simba means lion, doesn’t it? And this man, Simba Lewis, was good with animals. This was his district—well, not too far from here. He could have trained a cub. He could even have kept the poachers out in order to run his own illegal operations alone.”
“No, he wouldn’t. He wasn’t like that.”
“What was he like? I’m sure there’s a connection.”
“Oh, old Harry had a terrible reputation. Half the people here think he had some kind of magic.”
“Well, maybe they’re right.”
“Like a medicine man. I will say, he was the finest tracker and hunter I’ve ever seen. It was uncanny, almost as if he could speak the language of the beasts. He knew what they were thinking.”
“And was he easy to work with?”
“Yes, very easy, and generous. He’d teach you things, snippets of information, tricks and tips he’d picked up, and you wouldn’t even realize how much you were learning. We got on famously in that respect. In other ways, we weren’t so well suited. He always liked to have lots happening. Celebrating, letting off steam. He was a bit of a showman. And his effect on women was incredible. I was jealous as hell about that.”
“But you must all attract a lot of women. In a business like this, aren’t you sometimes regarded as the hired sex symbol?”
“I don’t know so much. Sometimes, perhaps. In any case, I don’t know how to—Bobsy Whiteacre, for instance. I think I made that worse than it might have been. What was I to do with the woman?”
“Not knowing the lady, I’m not sure. But I think what you should have done was flirted like crazy and left her standing. She probably wanted the gesture, that’s all. To balance out her husband’s activities. Don’t you think something like that was going on?”
“Who can tell? I don’t know what anyone wants. Perhaps.”
*
I could change, Millie thought. Betty had changed, but only because her life had forced her to. After having the baby she hadn’t wanted, Betty had said, “You can put up with a lot in life. You have to. I keep going. Why not? But I haven’t changed. I feel that my life is over. I don’t think it’s fair, but I don’t have desires any more. I’ve given up hope. So, I don’t care. All the things I have, even the children—how good they’d be if only I’d had any choice in the matter. I’d say to myself: how lucky I am. The way things are, it’s made me hate my own husband. It isn’t his fault, not really. Failure. I sometimes think failure is catching.”
“It’s cumulative,” Millie had said. “Like success. Each one reinforces the whole series.”
She started to write a letter to Betty and then changed her mind. There was too much to describe and explain and she wanted to say it directly. She leaned against the edge of a packing case and looked at one of her pictures of flowers, white in a green vase.
Like her sister, she could accept the unavoidable. But, it was by accepting things that they became unavoidable in the first place. Now that he was dead, she had no faith in the outcome of events. To break with Stan in order to live on her own, called for more strength than she had at the moment.
The strength had been partly his and it was leaving her fast. There was still enough for a decision, but nothing seemed worth the effort. Maybe later she could work out some kind of career using her painting, but it wouldn’t take up her whole life. Even the baby wouldn’t be enough to do that.
Soon she would have to tell Stan. She had already told Nicholas, who had guessed and asked her. She had also told him that she had been thinking of leaving Stan.
“Is it different now?” he had asked.
She had answered yes before he could finish or add anything. The reasons didn’t matter. In some ways now, things still weren’t different and they wouldn’t be, so it was better not to talk about them. She thought about Henry; all day long, and at night when she couldn’t sleep, he was there. Her memory of him was part of her as naturally as the sound of the heart in her body. She couldn’t believe that it referred to nothing.
“Tell me more about your friend, Simba Lewis,” Stan asked Ian. “How old was he, by the way?”
“Oh, that’s hard to say. Perhaps Pippa knows. Somewhere betwe
en twenty-eight and thirty-eight. Thirty-two, four, five perhaps.”
“And he was a kind of colourful character from what everybody says?”
“Well, he could drink anyone under the table and he was a great one for the ladies, if those are qualifications. And one of the best men in the profession—perhaps the best I’ve seen. He was a grand chap, Harry.”
“Why is it, do you think, that everyone has these stories about him?”
“Well, he was immediately likeable and easy to get on with. Full of jokes and stories, very friendly. And yet—he was also a strange man. Terrifying. I always thought he was slightly insane.”
“In what way?”
“I’ve seen him do things, and get other people to do things, that were impossible. He had a terrible temper, really—not human. He always had it held back, but every once in a while you felt it was there.”
“Do you mean you thought he wasn’t to be trusted in certain ways?”
“No, no, no. Trust him with anything. I mean that when he wanted to use it, he had an extraordinary command over other people. Mesmerizing. And he was someone whose word you wouldn’t doubt. So, you began to believe things were possible, if he said they were.”
“How far do you think he exercised his ability? Do you think he turned those villages of his district into a little kingdom for himself?”
“Possibly. The people who lived there thought of him that way. They might just have handed the whole bang-shoot over to him as the man best able to run it.”
“A poaching empire?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Everybody’s so sure about that. That’s what Nick says, too.”
“And he’s right. If you’d known Harry, you’d realize that.”
In the evening, Stan told Millie, “I’ve got it all figured out. Ian doesn’t agree with me, but I think this guy Lewis was building up a private empire here and he encouraged a kind of admiration society. What’s known in politics as a ‘personality cult’. He was running some kind of a racket, probably ivory, and giving back a certain amount to the villages to keep them sweet. The old Robin Hood system.”
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