Rogue Lion Safaris

‘Yes, I can see how that might be a good strategy,’ Caroline said thoughtfully. ‘If you could market it properly, it would certainly be effective. If you could tap in to the right sort of clients.’ She laughed at herself suddenly. ‘God, if I stay here much longer, I might even start to see the point of George’s insane driving.’

‘You’re a lady very easily swayed.’ I realised that this was a rather risqué remark far too late to call it back.

But Caroline only laughed, and ran up the steps ahead of me.

Sunday coped well with the unexpected guest, producing a quiche from his hole-in-the-ground oven – that too fascinated and appalled Caroline – and putting together a salad. Over the meal, Caroline started to ask how we managed for light. Paraffin. What, no electricity? No generator? Leon had a generator. Yes, we knew that. We knew that very well indeed. We heard it start every evening, and when the wind blew in the right, or the wrong direction, we heard its mutter throughout the evening. We had no wish to impose further din on ourselves, on our clients, on the bush. ‘But how do you keep the animals out?’

‘We don’t.’

‘But don’t you get animals in the camp? I mean, we use the generator to run an electric fence. So the clients can walk about camp in comfort and safety.’

George broke into the conversation suddenly, with his mouth full of quiche. ‘Course we get animals in camp. It’s in the middle of the bloody bush, isn’t it? Where do you think you are, Kew bloody Gardens?’

‘I’m sorry, George,’ Caroline said, quite humbly. ‘I’m not used to the idea of animals in camp. Impala Lodge is sort of a safe area, an island, if you like, surrounded by bush, where the clients feel safe. You look out at the bush from the safety of Impala Lodge, if you see what I mean. You do it differently here, and I’m not used to it.’

‘Out here we’re awash with animals,’ I said. ‘Going for a pee in the middle of the night is one of life’s great adventures.’

‘And the animals really come into camp? What sort of animals?’

‘Elephant the other night,’ said George. ‘Hippo round the edges every night.’

‘Heard leopard this morning,’ I said. ‘Did I say? While I was waiting for you and Helen, right on the edge of the ebony glade.’

‘And bloody honey badger,’ George said.

‘We bear good will to all living creatures at this camp,’ I said. ‘Except honey badger.’

‘What do they do?’ asked Caroline. ‘Steal honey?’

‘They steal bloody everything, and last week they managed to rip open a tin trunk full of food. A tin trunk! They bit it open.’

‘We had lion in the camp last night,’ Joseph said. ‘I found tracks after you had left on the walk.’

He had George’s full attention immediately. ‘Really? How many?’

‘Just one. Female, I think, not a full-grown male, certainly. She passed between your hut and Dan’s, round the back of the sitenji, and then in front of huts four and five.’

George considered this for a moment.

‘But what are you going to do about it?’ Caroline asked, alarmed, and no doubt already considering the adventure of the nocturnal pee.

‘Not sure. I’d like to have followed her,’ George said. ‘But it’ll be too late now, of course. Perhaps she was going to look for our old friend, the alpha male. Because he wasn’t with the rest of the Tondo Pride this morning, was he? Perhaps there’s a honeymoon going on.’

‘But the rest were all there on the buff this morning, George, all twelve of them.’

‘I know. That’s why it’s interesting. She must have come from another pride, probably the one to the south of us. Seeking a spot of exogamy, perhaps.’

‘Exogamy?’ Joseph asked.

‘Copulation outside the pride. Very healthy thing, of course. Refreshes the gene pool.’

Caroline said nothing, but you could see that she badly wanted to. She could not understand how lion, rather than the camp, were George’s priority.

‘I know,’ George said. ‘Perhaps we could do a little detour tomorrow and look for her. On the way to the airport to collect the vegetarians.’

‘They’re not coming tomorrow,’ I reminded him.

‘Nor are they, bugger it. Oh, bugger this bloody season. Bugger everything. Well, never mind. We’ll listen out. Maybe drive out tomorrow if we hear anything in the night.’

‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘We’ll do it. Now, here’s the plan for today. We have coffee. Then we go and see lion on the kill. I’ll pack a cool box for sundowners. Beer, everybody? You coming, Joseph? Lion, Coke?’

‘Sure. Lion.’

‘Caroline, you haven’t got binoculars, have you? A few spare pairs on the bar, the small ones at the end are the best. All right?’

And so, half an hour later, we set off. I must confess to a paltry stratagem. Joseph and I conducted a constant, never admitted competition for the front seat of the vehicle. Travelling up-front with George was always instructive; you could never learn enough. But on this occasion, I ‘forgot’ my hat and went back to fetch it at the last minute, returning to find George and Joseph in the front, Caroline on the back. I swung jauntily into the back alongside, trilby at a dashing angle. Cool in the Bush.

We were delayed on the way to the lion kill by a small group of kudu females, tall, stately and gorgeous, a deep maroon, almost a purple colour, painted with white stripes by a wavering hand. They had ears like satellite dishes, large eyes in faces also picked out with slim white stripes. They stopped motionless at our approach, an utterly characteristic antelope attitude: neither quite trusting nor quite fearful, they gazed unwinking. ‘Oh, the lovely, lovely things,’ Caroline murmured beneath her breath.

‘Surely you’ve seen them before.’

‘Not close. Look at those faces, it’s like the hymn; you know, that line about “looked down with sad and wondering eyes”.’

‘Bateleur,’ said George. ‘Oh, and hear the brubru, sounds just like a telephone.’

‘So it does,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ve never heard that before.’

We drove on. ‘How odd, to start singing hymns in the middle of the bush.’

‘Not so odd. I sing hymns everywhere. My father is a vicar.’

‘Oh,’ I said, rather inadequately. ‘What does he think about you being in the bush?’

‘He thinks I’ll grow out of it.’

‘My mother thought that,’ George called from the front. ‘A lot more vultures.’

He was right. The umbrella thorn above the kill was now thick with them, motionless, like weird and probably poisonous fruit, as they surveyed the banquet from which they were still excluded.

‘All right,’ George said. ‘Ready for a spot of bundu-bashing, Caroline?’ Without reducing speed, he drove off the track and onto the bush-studded plain. This had a drastic effect on the motion of the Land Cruiser: on the road, it rolled like a Channel ferry in mildly inclement weather; the plain imparted a violent pitching and yawing motion that mimicked a sea passage in a typhoon. Caroline, propelled from her seat, made a desperate lunge for the grab-bar. I was already standing high, one foot on the spare wheel and the other on the vehicle’s side, holding onto the grab-bar with one hand. Though it looked fairly cool, this position was not, in fact, for Caroline’s benefit: good bush-driving in these circumstances is a team job. With the height, I could give George useful information.

The way between us and the lion was blocked by the dry watercourse. ‘Left. No, on a bit. Past the bushes. There, you can get down and up here.’ George inched the vehicle down, and then took the rise on the other side with a sudden rush. At the lip, the vehicle twisted giddily, one wheel lost contact with the ground, but after a moment it toppled and fell back with a gratifying thump, and we were across. The way ahead was across a wide area of black cotton soil. This is perfectly horrible stuff. The ground, flooded, dried out and baked, cracks into cobbles. It feels like crossing a sea of cricket balls. You can make walking pace at the easy parts.

‘Is it legal to drive so far off the road?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Leon says you need a fast escape route when you drive near lion.’

We drove on. ‘The kill’s where it was this morning,’ I called from my crow’s nest. ‘Two, maybe three lion on it. I can see six lying around still under the thorn tree.’

‘Two more under the bush on the right,’ Joseph said.

‘I was just coming to them,’ I said with dignity. I hadn’t seen them at all.

‘Bullshit,’ Joseph said. ‘And a single female there, that makes twelve.’

‘I still can’t see them,’ Caroline said anxiously.

‘Take the nearer of the two thorn trees. Follow the trunk down to the ground. Then left, just a little.’

‘Oh.’

We drove juddering on, pitching and yawing across the merciless ground. George cut away from the line we had walked that morning, coming back to the lion from a more open area. The bushes fell away: we had an uninterrupted view: sandy shapes in sand-coloured grass, a hundred yards away.

George halted for a moment, looking around, and said encouragingly: ‘Perfect. Perfect.’ And then, without any more ado, he drove straight into the middle of them.

He drove furiously on at the not quite walking pace that the conditions demanded, and once comfortably and utterly surrounded by lion, he stopped. And, to an audible gasp from Caroline, switched off the engine.

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