Phineas caught my eye and made a little gesture: let’s move in still closer. I grinned back at him. The previous night, we had had a silly conversation about who was the more terrified by George’s way with lion. ‘That time we had to climb the tree, Dan, we were stuck up the tree for half a day.’ ‘Phineas, you don’t want the story of the definite male again, do you? That was worse than anything you’ve told me about.’
But George was now counting vultures; he had seen two lappet-faced vultures on the far side of the umbrella thorn, and was asking his tape recorder why no hooded vultures had shown up. I looked at him, made a head gesture: we withdraw? ‘Oh, well, all right, I suppose so. Helen, are you all right? Do you want to move in a little closer and take a photograph? Oh no, you don’t have a camera, do you? Happy? Don’t want a closer look? Very well then. All right. Phineas?’
‘Lead us out, Dan,’ Phineas said quietly.
I did so: forty-five degrees, cosmic courtesy, Phineas between us and the lion, rifle uselessly across his shoulders. Auntie Joyce watched every step of our crackling retreat.
About five minutes later, Helen had shifted from enraptured silence to compulsive talking. ‘Why did you call that lioness Auntie Joyce?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps you’d better answer that one, George,’ I said. I couldn’t bring myself to speak of the human Joyce: a female of infinitely worse temper, our sworn enemy in all her dealings.
‘Oh, well, really, just a joke, really; we called her after the lady who met you at Chipembere, off the plane from England, the lady who looks after our interests in Chip. Silly joke.’
Helen let it pass. Delight had filled her: and it filled me too, in the delight of showing. ‘The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, how can I ever thank you? So wonderful, so marvellous, and all the time I felt so safe with you and Phineas and everyone.’ Helen, in neatly pressed khaki slacks, a shirt buttoned at the wrists for fear of the sun, and a straw hat suitable for the sport of bowls, was in a frenzy of leonine love.
‘Safe?’ I said, smiling at her pleasure. ‘I never do.’
‘Oh, you’re just teasing.’
‘I am not. George has taken me closer to lion than any sane person would consider safe.’
‘Definite male,’ George said, rummaging around obscenely in the pockets of his shorts until he came up with a box of matches. He lit the cigarette he had just, with great concentration, rolled; a small shower of burning shards fell to earth. ‘Collared barbet,’ he said smokefully, vaguely brushing at the front of his shirt. He expected no reply to this observation.
The country was open as we returned to Lion Camp, and the discipline of the walk broke down. We moved in a line abreast, instead of the Manual’s strictly ordered single file. ‘But surely the lion are fairly safe here,’ Helen said. ‘I remember when we went for a drink at Mukango Lodge, one of the guests was telling me how docile the lions in this park were.’
‘Pretty docile,’ I said. ‘They only killed three people in the wet season this year.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes,’ George said. ‘One schoolboy, poor little sod, one jealous lover, and one old pisscart – oh, I do beg your pardon, Helen.’
Helen waved the apology aside. ‘Jealous lover?’
‘Chap from one of the villages,’ I said. ‘Apparently he thought his girl was dallying with another man. He wanted to catch the pair of them at it, and so he stayed up all night to spy on her. Lion took him while he was sneaking about.’
‘Found bits of him all over the village next morning,’ George continued callously. ‘Lion buggered off before dawn, I’d say, and the village dogs had a tuck-in before the village woke up. Terrible to-do. Lion prints all over the shop.’
‘Was it the same lion every time?’
‘They thought so. There was a lot of talk about the Rogue Lion at the time. Lot of jokes at the start of the season.’
‘It was the same,’ Phineas said. ‘I was with the party of scouts that went to track him. The warden, Mr Mvuu, he said to shoot him before he eat a tourist. But this lion, he is a very clever fellow. One day he kill the schoolboy, next day gone. We tracked him, but always he is ahead. As if he knows we are tracking him. North, always north. We travelled north until we lost him. We tracked him into the North Park, long long way, very beautiful trip, we make camp in a very special place, many many lion there. And that is where we lost him. Too many lion tracks, and he got lost amongst them.’
‘It was a male then?’ Helen asked.
‘Oh yes. Big tracks, big fellow.’
Helen laughed suddenly. ‘Is that why it says Rogue Lion Safaris on your Land Cruiser?’
‘Oh dear. Does it still show?’ George asked, dropping his cigarette butt to the ground and leaving it to smoulder.
‘Of course it bloody shows,’ I said, automatically treading out the cigarette.
‘But I painted over it,’ George said peevishly.
This demonstrated very clearly George’s selective vision of reality, no doubt an essential adaptation for his survival. ‘Your paint job makes it more obvious, not less.’
‘Oh dear. Do you think another layer will do the trick?’
‘We’ll have to do something before Joyce comes out again.’
‘Oh God. We’re in enough trouble as it is.’
‘But why are you called Rogue Lion Safaris?’ Helen asked.
‘We are called Lion Safaris,’ George said, rather primly.
‘The people at Mukango Lodge called you Rogue Lion Safaris. So did that nice boy who looked after me while I was waiting for you to turn up at the airport.’
‘Bloody Lloyd the Stringer,’ I said, or rather muttered beneath my breath.
‘I really can’t apologise enough for being so late that day,’ George said. He didn’t explain that we had found a leopard on the way, and had watched it for half an hour while it stalked fruitlessly about in the unconcealing daylight, after what had plainly been an empty night of hunting. ‘But, no, I think people like Lloyd think that, well … the point is that our operation is –’
‘Not so dull as the others,’ I suggested. ‘Rather more concerned with the bush than with anything else. I bet it was van der Aardvark who wrote on our vehicle, or his eejit assistant, your friend Lloyd. Even money it was them. Better, I’ll take six to four.’
We dropped into the Tondo, a dry riverbed, floored with sand, a wet-season river that flowed, when it flowed, into the mighty Mchindeni River itself. We made our crossing about a hundred yards upstream from this confluence. Ahead, a couple of hundred yards further, we could see the tiny scatter of huts that made up Lion Camp. From any sort of distance, it always appeared absurdly vulnerable and small: no mighty stockade against the perils of the bush, rather, a small hiding place lurking beneath the ebony trees. The few huts, each walled with bamboo matting and wearing a small hat of thatch, looked, from the banks of the Tondo, like abandoned laundry baskets. To one side, no more obtrusive and as deeply stained with the colours of the bush as the huts, the vehicle. Bush-weathered, it seemed as if the camp and the vehicle had all sprung from the floor