by Tony Park
‘And what did you say?’
Farina looked away, unable to hold his gaze. ‘I told him I agreed this would be the best course of action.’
‘This matter,’ Tate said, rising from the cot, ‘never happened, Farina!’
‘Tate, calm down,’ Farina said.
‘No. I quit.’
16
‘Knock, knock,’ a female voice said.
Tate looked up from stuffing clothes into his kitbag.
Natalie Bryant tried not to show it but she was pissed off that she'd taken four days out of her African schedule to make her way to this place and would now miss out on seeing a rhino capture. She'd been interested as much in the process as the work the charity was doing in the Serengeti. She was writing a book, as well as a series of articles for Outdoor Adventure, and wanted to see for herself what her father and grandfather and other pioneers in rhino capture and translocation had been up to. As well as being the main talent for her magazine article, Tate Quilter-Phipps was also someone she needed to interview for her book. She hadn't told Farina about her hidden agenda, or emailed Tate in case he tried to fob her off before she could meet him in person. She knew from her own father's reluctance to be interviewed that some people just did not want to talk about the war years in Rhodesia.
‘Farina said you had urgent personal business to attend to, back in Zimbabwe, is that right?’
Tate zipped his pack. ‘Why wouldn't it be?’
‘It's probably none of my business anyway.’
‘You're right there.’
‘Are you always so abrupt?’
‘Yes.’
She laughed, but then saw he was serious. She remembered him, vaguely, as being the quiet, shy one, and had heard her parents and grandparents remark on it occasionally in the years since Aunty Hope's death. In that respect he was so very different to what she remembered about Hope. ‘But you are going back to Zimbabwe?’
Tate packed a hairbrush, toothpaste and toothbrush into a toiletries bag and zipped it closed. ‘Yes.’
‘Me too.’
He looked at her and raised his eyebrows. ‘When was the last time you went back?’
‘I've never been back. My parents left in 1979. People used to call it the chicken run, so I've been told.’
‘George and Susannah,’ Tate said, nodding, as if fragments of her story were being plucked from the files of his scientist's mind and slotted into place. ‘Yes, we used to call it that, but by the following year, as independence approached, people started calling it the owl run … the option the wise chose.’
‘But you stayed.’
He shrugged. ‘My work … it was all I ever knew, all that mattered to me after …’
‘After my aunt?’
‘Yes.’
They were both silent for a while, remembering their own versions of that year.
‘You stayed in the national parks service, I read, until recently.’
He nodded.
Natalie was starting to feel glad he was leaving. He would have been a nightmare to interview anyway. He was not far off monosyllabic. She couldn't blame him, she supposed, for being rude. All she'd done was drag up some bad memories for him at a time when he probably had a lot more than ‘urgent personal business’ on his mind. Her journalist's instinct told her Tate Quilter-Phipps was leaving for a different reason. It didn't matter, though, as the World Nature Fund had been little more than her free ticket to the Serengeti. She was about to say goodbye to him when he straightened again, his packing finished.
‘Why are you going back to Zimbabwe? Does it have anything to do with what happened to you during the war?’
As a journalist she liked asking probing questions, not answering them. ‘I could give you my counsellor's answer – that I'm going back because what happened has always been a part of me, and possibly the root cause of some issues I've had, and the only way to exorcise these demons is to go back to where it all began and confront them head on.’
‘But …’
‘But the truth is, I got a junket to Africa courtesy of the NGO that employs you, and a tour company called Maasai Wanderings. I've tacked on a flight to Zimbabwe as well to see my gran and grandfather. Also, I'm writing a book about growing up in Rhodesia, during the war, and my grandparents' work in rhino conservation. That's another reason why I wanted to talk to you.’
Tate snorted. He didn't look impressed.
She could see, behind the eyes, more files being shuffled in this odd man's mind. With his bushy, uncombed greying hair and cheap glasses he could have passed for an absent-minded professor, but his bare arms and legs were tanned and muscled and his body was as lean and hard as a strip of old biltong. Tate had lived his life in the bush, and the African sun and wind and dust had shaped his body into something that could survive in the extremes of the veldt. He was actually more handsome now than she remembered him and Natalie couldn't help but wonder how his twin brother, who had saved her life, looked these days.
‘Your grandparents are good people,’ he said at last. ‘I see them occasionally.’
‘Then you'll have heard they're probably going to lose the farm?’
His eyebrows arched above his glasses. ‘No, I hadn't. The whole ranch? Even the rhinos?’
Natalie nodded. It was going to be part of her book. From all she'd read online, and from her grandfather's emails, it seemed that the numbers of Zimbabwe's last wild rhinos were fast dwindling and that government-sanctioned land invaders were making a renewed assault on the private game conservancies.
Tate shook his head and looked at the floor of the tent. ‘This is terrible. I have to see them. Paul and Pip are out on their own – all the other farms around them have gone. There's no security other than what they have on the property. If their farm changes hands their rhinos will be dead in a week.’
Natalie felt the anger rise from her core. ‘What about my grandparents? All you can think about is their rhinos. Can't you imagine what it's like to lose your home? My grandfather's ninety-two and my gran's not far behind him. They've got nowhere else to go.’
He looked at her blankly. Perhaps he couldn't imagine. From what she knew of him he'd never married, never had children. He'd probably lived in national parks houses and research camps all his life. She doubted Tate really was absent-minded, but nor did it seem he was particularly connected to the reality of most people's lives.
Tate pursed his lips and nodded. ‘I see your point, but to be perfectly honest with you, yes I am more concerned about their rhinos. Paul and Pip have people who will care for them – you among them, presumably. Those animals will soon have no one.’
‘So what can you do for the rhinos?’
‘I can try and convince your grandfather to let me relocate them to a conservancy in the Lowveld. The war vets have got their eyes on that area as well, but there are a number of foreign-owned properties there and it's been harder for the invaders to make inroads.’
Natalie didn't know if this was a good thing or not. Her grandfather had told her that one of the reasons they had been allowed to keep their farm up until now was because he had been involved in lengthy negotiations with the parks and wildlife service about the eventual reintroduction of some of the Bryant family's rhinos into the Zambezi Valley. Natalie put this to Tate, who shook his head vigorously.
‘Can't be done and shouldn't be done. There isn't the money in Zimbabwe to relocate rhinos back to the valley yet, and even if there was, parks and wildlife would be incapable of monitoring and protecting them around the clock. They'd be killed almost as quickly as if Paul's farm was handed over to a poacher.’
‘My grandfather reckons there's a still a black rhino living up there, somewhere near Kariba.’
‘Makuti?’ Tate shook his head and laughed. ‘Look, your grandfather's a great man, but he's mupengo – crazy – when it comes to that old piece of folklore. More than anyone else I'd love to believe there was a black rhino that was still roaming wild around Makut
i, but there's no scientific basis to his claim. He's collected so-called eyewitness accounts but most of those were drunks driving to or from Kariba at night.’
‘Well, I'm going to write a story about it,’ Natalie said defiantly.
‘Good for you. Like most journalistic pieces about conservation issues I'm sure your story will be based on falsehoods, totally lacking in scientific rigour, and needlessly sensational and sentimental.’
Natalie ignored his taunts. ‘Instead of criticising, you could help me with some facts and figures. I googled you – you're something of a legend in rhino circles.’
Tate scoffed. ‘A legend who's broke and out of work. Your grandfather can tell you all you need to know about rhinos, I'm sure.’
‘Out of work? So you're not leaving to attend to personal business?’
He realised he'd been caught out. ‘My mother is widowed and living back in Bulawayo. She's finding it hard to make ends meet. I don't think she can afford to buy enough food to live on. That's my business and it's why I'm going home.’
‘Oh. So I might see you around town when I'm there?’
‘I'll be busy, so I doubt it.’
‘I've been in touch with your brother. He knows about my book and he said he'd be happy to talk to me. Perhaps the three of us can get together.’
Tate stuffed a couple of dirty shirts into his backpack and zipped it closed. ‘I don't think so.’
‘Right, well maybe I could drop you an email to see if we can catch up in Bulawayo,’ she tried.
He looked at his watch. Victoria would be wanting to take off. ‘I'm sorry, Natalie, but if I'm going to get a lift out on the helicopter, I have to leave now. Good luck with your book project. I hope you find what you're looking for.’
Tate hefted his pack onto one shoulder, picked up his laptop bag and walked out of the tent.
*
Natalie spent the afternoon interviewing members of the rhino research and monitoring team – it was, after all, the main reason she was here. Several of them had digital photos of the captures from the last couple of days, which they offered her for use in her article, but most of them were either blurry, taken too far away from the subject, or overexposed.
Natalie had cross-trained as both a photographer and journalist and she knew that without good quality pics her editor wouldn't be interested. Hopefully she could bulk out the story with some pics of her own while she was on safari in the next few days.
Nigel Wilson, a British postgraduate student with wavy blond hair and too many copper and elephant-hair bangles on his sunburned arms, was clicking through some of his photos. Ironically, the best of the bunch was a tight vertical shot of Tate Quilter-Phipps kneeling and cradling the blindfolded head of a black rhino. The look in Tate's eye was something she barely thought him capable of – love. How odd, she thought, that if things had turned out differently this rude, unsociable man could have been her uncle. She shuddered.
‘What's he like to work with?’ Natalie asked.
Nigel looked at her, then back at his screen. He was obviously trying to work out the right thing to say. ‘I don't know if I'm the right person to ask.’
‘How long did you work with Dr Quilter-Phipps?’
‘Six months,’ he said.
‘Six months, day in, day out; you sound like the right person.’ She smiled at the young man.
‘He's one of the best in his field – perhaps the best. He's totally devoted to conserving rhinos and he knows more about them than anyone I've ever met. He's got experience in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Kenya and here, of course. The rhinos we've been implanting with tracking devices were all either brought here by Tate, or they're descended from the stock he brought up here from South Africa.’
‘But …’
Nigel gritted his teeth and grimaced. ‘But he doesn't have any people skills at all. He expects you to know what to do and how to act from the moment you arrive.’
‘He doesn't give you any training or instruction?’ Natalie interrupted.
Nigel reconsidered. ‘No, he does give everyone a briefing, but you only get told something once. We're all human – except Tate. No one's allowed to forget something, or get scared, or make a mistake. He's a perfectionist.’
‘Sounds like a bit of an arsehole,’ Natalie said.
Nigel shook his head. ‘No, I don't mean that. Um …’ He ran a hand through his unkempt hair. ‘I want to be like him, but I don't, if you know what I mean.’
‘Not really.’ Natalie looked up from her notebook.
‘I want to have his single-minded devotion to conservation. I want to be out here, in the bush, every day, not worrying about the heat, the dust, the ticks, the danger, the lack of company – I want to be as professional and dedicated and motivated as him, but …’
‘You also want a life.’
Nigel nodded. ‘That's right. Tate doesn't have one.’
As a journalist Natalie was a trained observer and listener. In the few short hours since she'd arrived she'd moved about the camp gathering information. She'd seen other students consoling an American girl called Zoe and she'd heard muttered complaints about Tate Quilter-Phipps. The rhino expert was leaving in an unexpected rush. Natalie put two and two together and kept coming up with scandal.
‘Has Tate ever been romantically involved with one of the research students?’
Nigel shook his head. ‘No, which makes …’ He looked back down at his computer and clicked on the next picture. It was Tate Quilter-Phipps in a helicopter, leaning out and aiming a dart gun at a rhino, which was close enough to be easily caught in the same frame as the conservationist.
‘Which makes the issue with Zoe seem so out of character?’ Natalie ventured.
Nigel stared at the screen for a few seconds, then looked up at her. ‘We've had quite a few students – the majority of them girls – come through the research camp since I've been here. I know of at least two of them who made a move on Tate, even though he was old enough to be their father. At least one of them was pissed that he rejected her. And before you ask the question, no, he's never been interested in the guys, either. The dude's like a monk, you know?’
Natalie nodded, but said nothing. She knew that silence was often the best way to keep an interview flowing.
Nigel spread his hands wide. ‘I mean, if I was fifty or whatever and I had these twenty-year-old babes throwing themselves at me, I'd be like, bring it on, you know? Maybe he succumbed to pressure with Zoe, but even so, I can't see him trying to force himself on her, or hurt her. I don't know … The guy's such a cold fish. What makes someone like that?’
Natalie shrugged her shoulders, although she was pretty sure she knew what made someone like that. She'd been rejected, too, and while she wasn't as uptight and grumpy as Tate, she knew what loneliness could do to a person.
*
Tate and Farina Khan sat in the green canvas mess tent in the centre of the research camp. They were alone, except for the African cook who set a cup of tea down in front of each of them, then moved away. Like the research students, the man knew there was big trouble.
‘Stay, Tate. Please. We'll work this out.’
Tate looked at his watch. ‘Victoria wants to leave in fifteen minutes.’
Farina reached across the wooden trestle table and laid her hand on his. He looked down at it. ‘Tate …’
He looked up at her and said nothing until she removed her hand. ‘I didn't touch the girl, Farina.’
‘I know. I've just been with her. She now says that she doesn't want to press charges. She says she'd been drinking and that it's possible she might have done something to lead you on.’
He snorted. ‘She came into my tent and stripped naked, Farina. And I didn't touch her. She told me she thought I was gay.’
Farina gave a sympathetic smile. ‘I wondered the same thing after that night in New York.’
He looked into her dark eyes and allowed himself his first grin of the day. People wrongly assu
med that because Farina Khan was a Muslim from Pakistan she wouldn't drink, smoke or swear. She did all of the above with an impressive level of diligence and in the hotel bar at the WNF NY conference one night she'd put her hand on his thigh and whispered into his ear that she wanted him to come back to her room with her. He'd been tempted, but he'd politely declined. Nothing would come of it, he'd told himself, and she wasn't his type. Not that he even knew what his type was any more.
‘There's more important work for me back in Zimbabwe,’ he said, and it was the truth.
‘Tate, we've raised a huge amount of money from all around the world for this project. Zoe's father is just one of our major donors. It's important work.’
Slowly he shook his head. ‘No, it isn't. It's window dressing and it's convenient. There are a hundred more important, more deserving projects that you could have funded with this money. You picked the Serengeti because it's a nice safe place for rich American and English kids to come for a holiday.’
Farina slapped the table with an open palm and the cook retreated back into the kitchen tent. ‘That's not true, Tate. This work is vital to the future of the East African population of the black rhino and your role is as important now as it was when your team moved these animals up here.’
‘My role here is to be a babysitter for spoiled children. Zimbabwe's population of black rhino is just about extinct, but your organisation's too scared to put money into the country.’
‘We don't want to be seen to be endorsing a corrupt regime,’ she retorted.
‘Rubbish. You're not in Zimbabwe because there are no foreign media allowed in, so you'll get no PR out of it, and because Zoe's father wouldn't want his little princess travelling there.’
Farina glared at him, her palm still flat on the table. ‘You're infuriating, Tate. You don't care about anything other than yourself, do you?’
He'd never thought about it that way, but she was wrong. He didn't care anything about himself.
17
Natalie Bryant pulled her hair back into a ponytail and tied it with an elastic band. She gripped the padded sides of the viewing hatch of the Land Cruiser and rode the rocking of the springs as the vehicle raced across the Ndutu Plains in the Serengeti National Park.