Ten Minutes to Turn the Devil

by Douglas Hurd

  That incident was enough to fill her mind as she dined two hours later with the manager of the resort and his wife. The manager talked fascinatingly about the reserve and his history, but Elvira was elsewhere. Peter was callous, unfeeling and she could not get him out of her mind. She knew that she was being thoroughly foolish, that even if the next two days produced something that could lead nowhere, that she owed Luis her loyalty, that she was verging on middle age and too old for such capers. It was not just Peter that she desired. Linked with him in a messy sort of way were the dead dinka, the bloody questions of the bush, reason or anarchy, neutrality or humanity, the Mountfort question about the purpose of all she had seen since she arrived. She felt dislocated, adrift from her moorings. She made poor conversational company.

  ‘Is there anything more you’d like? Anything extra in your hut? I know they’re a bit simple.’

  Elvira moved even further from her moorings. ‘Would it be possible for someone to bring me a newspaper? I’m a bit worried about my husband’s business … he’s having a tricky time …’

  ‘Of course, Mrs de Brundt. I’ll get your ranger to find one. He may have to go down to the shack by the airstrip. That’s where we usually keep them. It’ll only take him ten minutes. Let’s see, Peter isn’t it?’

  She felt scared at her own success. But that did not prevent her undressing hurriedly and putting on night-dress and dressing gown. This was ludicrous, like a bad movie. But she produced a whisky bottle and two glasses from the fridge. The errand took Peter fifteen minutes. He had changed out of shorts into dark blue slacks with a white shirt open at the neck. He carried the Johannesburg Star and the Financial Times.

  ‘How kind of you, Peter. I hope it wasn’t a nuisance. Sit down and have a drink.’

  He looked around, took in the dressing gown, the whisky, the turned-down bed.

  ‘Does your fan need fixing?’ His tone was brutal. In the roof of the hut the white metal fan moved slowly. Like everything in the reserve except her own good sense the fan was working perfectly.

  ‘What do you mean? It’s fine.’

  ‘It’s the phrase we use. Among the rangers.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Like khaki fever.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘When clients want our night-time services.’

  Peter sat down abruptly on the bed. Elvira was appalled – at his harsh manner, at her own absurd situation. The movie was getting worse and worse. One part of her insisted that he must be told to leave at once. The other wanted to fling herself at him and drag him down from the position of advantage he had taken. She hesitated.

  ‘I have a girlfriend in Durban,’ said Peter, still harsh. ‘You asked earlier, that is the answer. I touched your hand because I had been rude.’

  ‘Not rude at all, just private.’ With a huge effort she mastered herself. ‘Stay there. Please don’t go.’

  She went into the bathroom. She imagined him thinking she would come out without night-dress and dressing gown. Instead she tightened the dressing gown cord, and carefully washed all the make-up off her face. ‘Forty, looking fifty,’ she observed to the mirror.

  ‘Can we talk about the animals?’ she said, coming out. He sat on the edge of the bed, wary, his senses alert, like the antelopes they had seen that afternoon. But he sipped the whisky she poured.

  ‘Mrs de Brundt …’

  ‘Elvira.’

  ‘Elvira, we are both tired, and unlike you I have work to do preparing for tomorrow morning. Tomorrow at five-thirty.’

  ‘Before I let you go, do you believe that it’s all ordered and right out there in the bush? We could have saved an antelope yesterday when we were with John.’

  ‘Dinka.’

  ‘Dinka. We didn’t. To my mind we put ourselves at a level with the rest of the bush. But we’re not. We’re apart, we’re human, we have an instinct to save life, to do good …’

  She faltered. She had made her point. It sounded feeble but she felt it. When he stood up they faced each other, neither sure what would happen next. The disagreement and the sexual tension were mixed up together.

  ‘The lions roaring after their prey,’ Peter said slowly and unexpectedly.

  ‘What lions?’

  ‘My father used to take us to church in Bulawayo. Every Sunday, scrubbed spotless. Till my voice broke I was in the choir; we sang the psalms. “… The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from God … Thence all wait upon thee: that thou mayest give them meat in due season.” That is the order of things. We are part of that order. It is not for us to upset it.’

  ‘Even if the result is cruel, bloody, awful …’

  ‘Even so.’

  Elvira gathered her strength. She had tightened the dressing gown cord, stripped off the make-up. It was time for the final step.

  ‘It would be best if I went with another ranger tomorrow.’

  She still half hoped that he would hesitate at this closing of the door between them.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ he said at once.

  ‘Goodnight. And please think you may be mistaken.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  So the next day, the last day, it was John again, also a young English couple. It was the first day for the English, so John had to begin his painstaking explanations over again. The English had plenty of questions, which suited Elvira. She felt suspended between the foolishness of yesterday and the reality of tomorrow. Luis would collect her and they would go back to the routines of their life, domestic comfort and boredom at Sandton, business worries in downtown Johannesburg. Today was a nothing day. The sun rose, blazed, sank.

  They turned for home soon after the tracker turned on the searchlight. Elvira thought of suitcase and tips. The trackers obviously, Peter obviously not: but what about John? She had no idea what was suitable, and there had been no helpful little note of advice on the dressing table in the hut.

  ‘Something rather exceptional is happening,’ said John in his careful way, taking the radio from his ear. He did not explain or ask whether they wanted to change their homeward plans. After a word with the tracker he quickly reversed the Land Rover, drove back along the track for a mile, then headed abruptly into the bush.

  ‘What’s the drama?’ asked Elvira, irritated.

  ‘We’re nearly there.’

  ‘There’ was a dried-up river, and the Land Rover driven by Peter. Along the river bed trotted a rhinoceros, behind the rhinoceros its baby, making a big effort to keep up.

  ‘About three weeks old,’ said John.

  But that was not the drama. Wild dogs were the drama, about six of them. It was difficult to count as they swerved in and out of the lights. Two wild dogs trotted alongside the baby rhino, darting at it but not biting, trying to cut it off from its mother. It looked as if this had been going on for some time; the baby rhino was showing signs of distress. Its mother stopped at a point where the river bed widened and turned to confront the pack. The baby scurried to safety under her flanks. But the dogs multiplied round her, circling in and out of the shadows, long ears alert, silent and formidable, keeping well clear of the huge head and horn. The rangers turned off their engines. The rhino surveyed her enemies, then turned and began to lumber once again down the river bed. The Land Rovers restarted and moved in parallel through the bush, keeping their lights trained on the animals.

  After three minutes the rhino paused again, took stock, changed tactics. She turned aside from the river bed and began to move into the gap of only twenty yards between the two Land Rovers driven by John and by Peter. She seemed to calculate that the wild dogs might be put off from following by the lights and the engine noise. She passed without hesitating through the gap. But something had failed in the communication between mother and baby. The baby hesitated before following her mother. The increased distance between them gave the two leading dogs their chance. They raced ahead of the baby, and cut it off from its mother. None of the animals showed th
e least awareness of the Land Rovers. The confrontation occurred within a yard of Elvira. The cudgel stored beneath the back seat was part of the vehicle’s standard equipment. Without thinking Elvira grabbed it and swung at the leading dog just as it prepared to spring at the baby rhino. The dog aborted its spring and for the first time took notice of a human presence. His revolting smell filled Elvira with hatred and fear. She raised the cudgel again, though he was just beyond her reach. The movement decided the dog to attack this interference before returning to the baby rhino. It crouched to spring at Elvira, eyes fastened on the target. John in front seized his rifle. Elvira was puzzled that he managed to fire before the rifle reached his shoulder. The dog snarled for the first and last time, rolled over, kicked, died. Then Elvira saw Peter, out on his feet in the gap between the vehicles, rifle in hand, hair flopping over his forehead. The second dog fled back into the darkness, the baby rhino hurried forward to safety. Elvira knew that she was about to faint. She stayed conscious long enough to hear the charge of the mother rhino, to scream as Peter took the impact, to see him under the beast, then stretched, a crumpled heap of shirt and shorts, on the floor of the bush.

  ‘He’ll live,’ said Luis, comforting her as she lay in bed in the hut. ‘The horn missed him.’

  ‘But if the horn missed him …’

  ‘Her foot crushed his left rib into his lung. They’ve managed to stop the internal bleeding, so he’s no longer in danger.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘They’re going to keep him unconscious for several days yet. Otherwise the pain would be too great.’

  Elvira kept asking questions so that she did not have to feel anything.

  ‘Can they operate?’

  ‘No. They rely on the lung to get rid of the bits of bone and heal itself. He’ll be out of action for several months. But he should count his blessings.’

  ‘Good morning, Mrs de Brundt.’ She realised that John was in the hut too, hanging back while she talked to her husband. ‘You had a fearful shock. I hope you’re feeling better.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Elvira chose words carefully. Her head ached, slowing down thought. ‘Peter saved my life.’

  ‘He was quicker with his rifle than I was. You were certainly in danger.’

  ‘Of my life?’

  ‘Not your life probably. But the dog might have clawed you. There would have been danger of infection.’

  Careful, accurate John. But there was something else.

  ‘There’s something else which isn’t right.’

  She wished her mind would move faster. She had to think of it while John was still there. Luis wouldn’t understand. She found it.

  Peter was out of the vehicle. She confirmed to collect the thought. ‘He was out of his Land Rover before I was in any danger.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs de Brundt. I was surprised.’

  ‘Why surprised?’ asked Luis.

  ‘Because it is our rule not to intervene except to save human life. Peter intervened before that moment was reached.’

  ‘Luckily,’ said Luis, not understanding.

  ‘Luckily perhaps, though I would have shot the dog in time with my rifle.’

  Elvira had reached the point.

  ‘Peter intervened to save that baby rhino.’

  ‘It seems so.’

  John could not conceal his disappointment.

  Elvira allowed herself a last recall of standing at the foot of the bed with Peter, where the two men stood now, of his argument and of hers. So after all she had won.

  ‘I’m feeling better now. I think I’ll get up and pack.’

  6 Fog of Peace

  They had ordered lunch to be served on the seven-seater jet because the Secretary of State would arrive too late for the official meal at Dublin Castle. The RAF lunch did not vary. The half-grapefruit sheltered at its heart a scarlet cherry. The seafood salad was abundant, and came with salad dressing in little plastic packets hard to open. A gâteau lush with cream lurked in the tiny stewards’ pantry between the passenger cabin and the two pilots; but there would hardly be time for pudding on so short a flight. The Chablis was satisfactorily cold and of a different quality from the food.

  The Secretary of State took a second glass of wine and looked through gaps in the clouds at grey-green fields and hills below, first of England, then of Wales. He enjoyed travel, even cooped up in the tiny HS125. He liked being with his team from the Northern Ireland Office – his Private Secretary, tall and scowling with anxiety, opposite him across the seafood salad, his curly-haired Chief Information Officer, a grizzled senior official on the aisle opposite, his protection officer up front. Two secretaries towards the rear gossiped about office dramas past and future, one with a Belfast voice which lilted more emphatically as the stories multiplied.

  His brief lay open on his lap. He did not need to read it, though he could feel his Private Secretary willing him to do so. The young man was new, and meticulous. He would learn. The Secretary of State had spent most of the last few weeks on these negotiations and the whole of the morning at 10 Downing Street discussing the latest tactics. He could have written the brief himself. Anyway it was out of date. The Prime Minister that morning had insisted on a tougher variation. They had intelligence of two Blowpipe missiles smuggled by the IRA out of the Shorts factory in Belfast – a new threat that had to be countered. The Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary, and he himself had quickly concurred. They decided not to agree to separate referendums North and South of the Border until the Provisional IRA had handed over all weapons above the calibre of a rifle. They then spent too long re-drafting the communique. Technical drafting points were already being discussed between the Irish and British delegates in Dublin Castle, but he would descend from the skies neatly in time for the main session in the early afternoon.

  He did not know whether the Irish Government would accept this new precondition. Probably not today, though they would come round later. The Taoiseach was keen to hold these referendums as soon as possible, well before the Irish Parliamentary elections expected in the autumn.

  The Secretary of State did not intend to linger in Dublin.

  ‘You told them at Hillsborough I’d still be there in time for dinner?’

  James, the Private Secretary, uncoiled his legs.

  ‘Yes, Secretary of State. Your guests are invited for eight. I suppose we might be a bit late.’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  This was a dinner for personal friends. It was surprising how quickly it was possible to make such friends in Northern Ireland. And of course they liked coming to Hillsborough Castle, as did he. It wasn’t really a castle but a large country house, comfortable, with good books, open fires, dark handsome pictures by Lavery, limes and beeches taller than their English counterparts, his welcoming wife, and David the butler with a tray of gin and whisky.

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ he repeated.

  ‘Getting quite thick, sir,’ said the protection officer in front of them.

  They must be over the Irish Sea, but there was no sea in sight. A thick curling fog rose towards them though they had not yet begun their descent to Dublin. Sunlight caught the grey wing of the plane, then disappeared, as if for good. The fog reached up and engulfed them.

  The steward appeared. Even though the HS125 was tiny, he used the same formality as if it were a VC10.

  ‘The pilot’s compliments, sir. The weather’s closed in. We can’t get in to Dublin at present. We could go west to Cork, or north to Aldergrove … or,’ he hesitated, ‘back to Northolt.’

  ‘Damn,’ said the Secretary of State.

  ‘Shit,’ said James, the Private Secretary, simultaneously and surprisingly, for up to then his vocabulary had been notably decorous. They looked at their watches. In Dublin Castle the lunch would begin in five minutes.

  No problem about that. Denis Flack, Deputy Under-Secretary, could take his place as he had already done in the morning’s preliminary talks. But Flack could not handle th
e main session beginning at 3 p.m. Flack did not know how the session at Number 10 had gone that morning.

  ‘What happens if we circle above Dublin till it lifts?’

  ‘We can do that, sir,’ said the steward. ‘We’ve enough fuel to try that for an hour or so. Fair chance of it lifting by then.’ He sounded dubious.

  It was as if they had entered a timeless zone. Nothing to show where they were or what was happening in the rest of the world. Neither light nor dark, neither fast nor slow, heading neither north, south, east nor west, just round and round in greyness that might be eternal. The Secretary of State was quite comfortable, and among a team who were friends. The girls continued to gossip till the gossip turned to giggles. The gâteau appeared, and imposed five minutes’ silence until it had disappeared. The Secretary of State, declining gâteau, took a third glass of Chablis. James the Private Secretary fretted, making little notes for his master, fiddling with his watch, going forward with stooped head to confer with the pilot.

  It seemed endless, but eventually they were down. Armoured cars ringed the runway, but this was routine. The reception was efficient. A helicopter flew them over Georgian squares to within the ramparts of Dublin Castle. A large and ancient Bentley drove them for two minutes from the helicopter pad into the main courtyard. The green copper dome of the Castle gleamed with wet. James looked at his watch for the umpteenth time. ‘Ten past four exactly,’ he said unnecessarily.

  There was a gathering outside the main entrance, seething with the unmistakable motion of excited journalists. They could hear the click of cameras, the shout of photographers, and see their flashes in the dim afternoon light. The Taoiseach stood in the porch behind a battery of microphones. Flack, small, bald and somewhat flushed, was at his elbow. They could see that Flack was speaking, but he had stopped by the time the Secretary of State, moving very fast, had left the car.

  ‘Sorry you were held up,’ said the Taoiseach. ‘We’ve done a good day’s work.’

  One journalist shouted a question to the Secretary of State, but was hustled away by Irish officials.