by Andrew Sharp
‘It’s all my fault. I’ve let Grandad down.’ Miss Camlyn touched her eye with the back of her hand.
‘Nonsense!’ shouted Mr Summerberg, jumping us from the ground. He stood up from his recliner as if resurrected as a young man. ‘Thanks to Mr Mlantushi’s refreshments and my siesta, I’m fully revived. Mr Mlantushi will wait here with El whilst Ben and I make one last do-or-die expedition to record the brackish akalat. I refuse to peck defeat from the beak of victory.’
Miss Camlyn clapped her hands. ‘Yay! No way am I not coming too. It’s do and die!’
Mr Bin raised a hand to discourage Miss Camlyn from standing.
‘Mozzy, sit in the bakkie with Miss Camlyn and wait for Mr Summerberg and me to come back.’
Miss Camlyn dropped her hands into her lap. ‘How’s Grandad going to manage without me?’
Mr Summerberg stood with no support, although swaying somewhat, with his jaw out towards the horizon like a colonist explorer. Mr Bin picked up a broken branch from close by and with his penknife cut off protruding twigs and thorns, even smoothing the bent end to make a suitable handle. He gave it to Mr Summerberg to use as a walking stick. Mr Summerberg swung the stick and poked it out, as if spearing an attacking beast. Then he had to plant it firmly as he was in danger of toppling. Mr Bin picked up the recording equipment and his rifle and then, with not a further word, he assisted Mr Summerberg into the wilderness again.
I turned my attention to Miss Camlyn’s comfort, craving an opportunity to ask her for a commendation to her mother. To such purpose, I wished that I had cooked even finer dishes for our guests that day. For example, my Roast Eland with Gooseberry Sauce followed by Banoffee and Amarula Sundae. Such dishes required a special import of ingredients by clandestine or expensive traders, which Mr Bin was not always disposed towards. But I hoped that my cuisine had already spoken for me. Mr Summerberg had eaten four cherry and pecan nut cookies. I was of the opinion that these had medicinal properties —he had fresh elastic in his sinews.
‘Let’s sit here … not in the vehicle. I feel closer to Ben’s world out here,’ said Miss Camlyn, resting her head back in the Winchester.
I was mindful of our exposed situation in the bush and Mr Bin’s instruction, but I could not be officious with our VIP guest by insisting we sit in the stuffy car. She was also under a contemplative disposition and we were on our own. The time was ripening to request my ticket to New York. It was now most urgent to do so, in case of Mr Bin’s arrest or other commotions relating to the American.
‘I’m gutted I’m not with Ben and Grandad,’ said Miss Camlyn.
‘Mr Bin’s only concerned for the safety and the health of his guests.’
‘What’s worse … Ben didn’t want me to come with him. I know it. All that bacteria baloney.’ She coiled a strand of her hair in her fingers and frowned at it. The soufflé of her happiness had surely collapsed. ‘What’s up with him?’
‘I wouldn’t know. He’s just my employer.’
‘He’s got issues, hasn’t he?’ She was quiet for a few seconds, then said, ‘Mr Mlantushi, can I confide in you? Despite that … I think I’m catching the feels for him. Does it show? He had me when he picked us up. He gave us an awesome smile and said howzit? I forgave him right there for turning up late. But he doesn’t like me. I admit I’ve been sort of tipsy today.’
‘The mint and granadilla cordial’s alcohol free, I assure you,’ I said.
‘I mean I’ve become drunk on nature. On this place. It’s made me loopy… I’ve become childish … starry eyed. Everything’s so beautiful here. Even the grass is stunning. It’s long and lazy and … luminous and misty. Wow! See! It’s made me into a fricking poet.’
I clapped her softly, pleased to hear her little recital.
‘Ben thinks I’m stupid, yeah? I bet it started when I asked him who put the hay in the trees for the giraffes. How was I to know that they were birds’ nests? I’ve never seen nests as big as hay bales before. I’m from — Dagenham.’
‘It was an innocent question.’ I rolled forward on my feet. ‘But if I might ask—’
‘Perhaps Ben could find himself conflicted. In love with me, even if … in some ways … he’s not sure about me.’
‘I have a—’
‘What do you think, Mr Mlantushi? Can I call you Mozzy?
‘Please call me by any name you wish, certainly.’
‘He liked my legs. It’s a start. We could work up from there. Not literally, of course. Has Ben got someone else?’
‘I can assure you there’s no one at all in Mr Bin’s life. He’s not dating. Here, we’re too far from city lights. Here, it’s only fowl and vermin.’
‘He’s only in love with nature, isn’t he?’ said Miss Camlyn. ‘I’m probably not wild enough for him. I should be more natural. Mess up my hair and make a fire … eat with my fingers and pick my teeth with a twig.’
I subsided back on my heels but was cognisant of the delicate nature of this conversation with a client concerning my employer. Furthermore, my future might depend on the outcome. I hoped for discernment.
‘He’s dedicated to nature, true, and so are you,’ I said. ‘That’s undeniable. There’s a perfect concordance between you.’
She served me a doubting glance.
‘Furthermore … he both loves you and likes you when you’re appreciating the silence that travels with him. Be like … a bat.’
‘A bat?’
‘As silent as a bat.’
She weighed my words. ‘I’m more like an excited parrot, aren’t I?’
I offered her my finest Arabica coffee or another glass of homemade granadilla and mint cordial, which was always a big deal with the guests, but she declined, and I could see that she wished to practice being soundless. I stood discretely in the background ready to be of service to her any request. Even though I sorely needed to ask about her mother, I restrained, waiting for a more receptive moment.
After approaching ten seconds she said, ‘Who does Ben’s marketing?’
‘Marketing?’
‘His website, for example.’
‘I’m not a party to that information. He handles every aspect of the business himself except the cuisine and … the customer service.’
‘It’s rubbish!’ said Miss Camlyn.
‘The customer service?’
‘Oh no, that’s awesome —in a kooky sort of way. It’s his marketing. His website looks like it’s been thrown together by a self-employed tarmac layer. The links go nowhere. The design’s hideous! As for the ultra-bad name of your safari company. BOD hyphen W! Bird Observation Day … I can’t even bear to say it. If the brackish akalat hadn’t been on his bird sightings list, we wouldn’t have come. He’s not even on social media. I know about these things. I’m in marketing.’
I drew breath to speak. But she started divulging again.
‘But I loathe my job. I’m a tiny ball in the marketing division of a bearing-distribution company. So boring. I want something more. Do you ever feel that, Mozzy? Something more … and I want someone more. Someone like Ben, I guess! Hah … Ben’s just the sort of man my mother would despise. May be that’s what I love about him. That, and his rare smile.’
‘I believed you worked with your mother … in her restaurant business.’
‘Oh my god no, she doesn’t need silly little Chantella.’
I put my face in neutral gear and declined to comment on my future employer’s reported opinion of her daughter. A misunderstanding, surely.
‘My mother’s got her marketing all buttoned up and I’d be a danger in the kitchens. I can’t even boil an egg.’
I would have to conceal this information from Mr Bin, concerning Miss Camlyn’s lack of skill in boiling an egg, but I was building to decorously enquire if her mother might need. A chef who could create a first-class dish of creamed
scrambled egg with truffle and sage. I would even, I admitted to myself, have been exultant to take employment with her mother as just a sous chef, not yet as head chef. Not in the first instance.
‘Now, if you don’t mind, Mozzy, I’m going to read my book.’
She reached inside her bag and pulled out a heavy book titled Purple Hornbill and extoled on the jacket as Conrad meets Naipaul. Serious and disturbing.
At all times I respected my guests’ wishes, so was silent. This was not yet to be the auspicious hour of the first step on my path out of the wilderness. A patient man will eat ripe fruit. I so wished it. I tidied the lunch accoutrements into the Safari Hamper.
I did not disturb Miss Camlyn, but I only hoped that Mr Summerberg was still living and that they had heard the fowl. In my opinion they should have found a way to trap it, or flush it out by throwing stones, but Mr Bin would never have considered such a pragmatic solution, forgetting that the needs of the guests should come first before the amenity of the fowl. If I was in Mr Bin’s veldskoen, I would have made it sing.
Miss Camlyn, I saw, was easily distracted from her book to close her eyes or to stare up at the tree. She seemed to read the same page three times. Then all sudden she turned to the last page, read some and then dropped Purple Hornbill back into her bag and pulled out another fable, thinner, titled Into the Red Sunset. The jacket featured the eye of a weeping elephant, a politician with a greedy eye and an expatriate girl with a seducing eye. Can conservationist, Kylie Strong, save the last elephant family?
A fantasy fable indeed.
The afternoon passed in a lazy hum of insects and wafting bush miasmas whilst Miss Camlyn read. Still Mr Bin and Mr Summerberg did not return.
‘Wow … just look at the sunset,’ said Miss Camlyn towards late afternoon. ‘It’s like the thousands in my book.’ She sat up. ‘It’s getting late! Where are Grandad and Ben?’
‘It’s five forty-six hours … very late. The sun goes down at six zero-five.’ In that geographical location the sun falls off the horizon as sudden as a tomato rolling off a table. Presently, we would be blind.
‘Do you think they’re lost?’
‘Mr Bin’s never lost in the bush. It’s his habitat. He’d like to be a beast and sleep under a bush. We’ll just have to wait. We can only conclude that they’ve found the bird and are occupied in recording it.’
The sky behind the trees caught fire for a minute before flaring out, leaving only the dark plum cloak of the dusk.
‘Have they taken a torch?’
‘I’m sure so, but we’d better retire to the safety of the car. We’re now in the sights of night predators.’
Surely there would be another chance in the car to enquire of an introduction to her mother.
‘Let’s sound the horn so they know we’re worried about them.’
‘No, no, Mr Bin would be most dismayed if we disturbed the night. He only permits the sounds of nature.’
‘Of course, silly me. Even so … I’m really scared about Grandad. Hasn’t Ben got a phone? He must have a mobile.’
‘There’s little signal here. We’re on our own, far beyond help. That’s the way Mr Bin likes it. He plays at being stone-age man.’ I did not confess to her that Mr Bin did not own a phone. He was the only person on the continent without a mobile phone. He did everything to make it difficult to connect with the human race.
Miss Camlyn peered into the foreboding shades and shapes of the night. ‘We can’t just do nothing. What if something’s happened to Grandad … like he’s fallen …. broken his hip and Ben’s hoping we’ll come and help? We should go and find them.’ She put on her sandals and then her hat, even though the dark plum of the dusk had become the black gravy of the night.
This presented me with a situation of a delicate nature. Miss Camlyn was willing to bravely put herself in gravest danger to find her adored grandfather, but I had a responsibility to protect her from the scorpions of the night. I did not have to ponder this dilemma for long. We heard a loud and terrible scream out in the darkness. It was like the scream of a lost soul; a lost soul falling into a bottomless abyss.
When the scream ceased, the bush fell as soundless and still as the dark side of the moon.
For a moment, Miss Camlyn was also silent, and then she hissed, ‘Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!’ She ran behind me.
The scream repeated. Miss Camlyn clung to me. I could feel the goosey bumps on the skin of her arm.
‘What was that?’ she said, crying. ‘Something’s out there. Something horrible’s happening. Someone’s being eaten! What if it’s Grandad?’
‘We should shift to the sanctuary of the car,’ I suggested.
‘Quickly!’ She clung to me. ‘I’ll stay close to you, Mozzy. I’m scared witless.’ She hunched over. ‘Ben was right, I should’ve waited in the truck. We need to get help. We should never have come here.’
I neglected to inform her that said scream was the call of a bird. Mr Bin had instructed me on a former occasion that it was the call of a giant owl named Pel’s fishing owl, which occasioned a water hole. It makes a scream like the scream of a lost soul falling into a bottomless abyss. The sounds are so alike that if you heard a lost soul falling into a bottomless abyss, then you would erroneously conclude that it was a Pel’s fishing owl and continue about your business without concern and without offering aid to such a soul.
When we reached the vehicle, Miss Camlyn dared to look back. She released me. ‘Oh yay! Look! They’re safe!’
It was indeed Mr Summerberg and Mr Bin. Mr Summerberg was carried in Mr Bin’s arms like firewood. I hastened to his assistance.
‘Let me down now,’ said Mr Summerberg, struggling feebly, but Mr Bin passed him to myself. He weighed hardly more than a chicken.
Whilst Miss Camlyn held his hand, I carried him towards the vehicle. ‘Did you hear the brackish akalat?’ I enquired with polite formality, as if it was a regular service to carry our guests around whilst discussing the sounds and sightings of the day.
‘Don’t ask,’ said Mr Summerberg with much groaning. ‘We only saw it … we think. Just a glimpse. But maybe we didn’t. Put me down, will you?’ I lowered him to the ground, but he could not bear his chicken weight, so I put his arm around my shoulder and transported him like a sack, his white hair bursting out like cotton bolls. Mr Summerberg groaned again, but said, ‘We thought we saw it … then nothing. Like a ghost. We sat around until dusk. Never glimpsed it again. Never heard it. Here’s a thing, I’m not even sure we knew what we were listening for.’
‘Only certain people can hear it,’ said Miss Camlyn. ‘But which people, Ben? Who? We need to know.’
‘Did you hear the Pel’s fishing owl?’ said Mr Bin. ‘It makes a call like the scream of a lost soul falling into a bottomless abyss.’
‘It was just an owl? I nearly wet myself. I thought something had died.’
‘It had, it had,’ said Mr Summerberg. ‘All hope died out there today. They’ll be no farewell message from me at my funeral.’
Miss Camlyn puzzle-faced me, then said, ‘Oh Grandad, how sad. At least you tried. A lot of people your age wouldn’t even bother. They’d just be shuffling into the sitting room to doze off in front of the telly.’
In the vehicle I served Mr Summerberg a glass of Kilimanjaro Spring Water. Miss Camlyn said that I should not trouble with the ice as Mr Summerberg needed resuscitation and rehydration rather than ‘silver service pampering’.
So it was in silence and in a sombre mood that we returned our guests to their hotel, but both alive, thank the heavens. Miss Camlyn was attentive to her grandfather and said not a word to Mr Bin. Mr Bin, of course, said not a word to any of us.
The brightly lit hotel was well away from the scrappy village and had its own driveway, and a weed-suppressed, block-paved forecourt lined by a trimmed hedge. Its sharply-plastered white walls and polis
hed black stone steps leading up to a mahogany double door with long gold handles was all in the style of a civilised residence. Everything was tidy and straight under its tiled roof. It was of a suitable standard for our guests to step into, unlike Mr Bin’s primitive dwelling.
A concierge in a scarlet jacket hurried to open the vehicle door, delivering a face-splitting smile and verbose expressions of overwhelming delight at welcoming the guests back to the hotel.
Mr Summerberg leant forward and in a feeble voice said, ‘Ben, do you have any guests tomorrow?’
‘Ja.’
‘No, Mr Bin, you forget,’ I said. ‘We’ve no one. It seems that bookings are poor.’
‘El,’ said Mr Summerberg, strengthening somewhat, ‘as soon as we’re in the hotel, email our agent and say we’re rearranging. Ben will pick you up tomorrow morning at six and you’ll return to where Ben and I thought we saw the bird. As Ben says, if it sings, it’ll do so at dawn. It’ll be the last chance. I’m relying on you El.’
‘Yikes! But yes, I’ll do it Grandad.’
‘I can’t,’ said Mr Bin.
‘I’ll pay you double, Ben. It’ll save on inheritance tax.’
‘Tomorrow’s out because—’
‘Ben, tomorrow,’ said Miss Camlyn, ‘I’ll only be interested in knowing about the birds. The difference between a brackish akalat and a not so brackish one. I want to know their Latvian names —ha, Latin names.’
Mr Bin did not reply.
She corrected her expression to thoughtful and prudent, as if regretting her silly word conjure. ‘And when you’re not telling me everything about birds … I’ll be as quiet as a bat. No dumb questions. No silly-ha-ha.’
‘Miss Camlyn is born again, converted to orni … theology,’ I said.
My Bin’s gaze slid up to the roof, but his fists no longer gripped the steering wheel as tight as a man hanging from a branch above an abyss.