Simon Barnes - Rogue Lion Safaris

‘Is there a moral in this story?’ Caroline asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Philip said. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Perhaps the moral is that you’ve always been faithful to your true love.’

Philip stared at her for a moment in some surprise; he had not expected acuteness. Nor, it must be said, had I.

George came back, running his hand through the growing-out stubble of his haircut, making himself look rather like a crested barbet. He and Philip exchanged greetings. ‘And is all well back in Chipembere, George?’

‘Oh, well enough. But I just feel I’m getting a bit old for all this. I spend my life worrying about cheese.’

‘Oh no, you’re not, George. You’re just the same; it’s the park that’s grown older. It’s older and softer and easier, and it doesn’t suit you any more. It’s not what it was when you first came here, let alone what it was like when I came here, all but fifty years back, and started killing all those poor animals. The park has become a success, and that is not what you are made for, George.’

‘Success?’ George asked disbelievingly. ‘We’re going broke.’

‘I’m talking about the park, not about your or anyone else’s business operation. The pioneering has been done, it’s time now for the second-phase people to try and make sure that the work of the pioneers doesn’t get wasted. But you’re a pioneer; you shouldn’t be here any more.’

‘Thanks, Philip.’

‘George, I’ll tell you what you should do.’

‘Do, Philip, do.’

‘Go north. Go to the North Park. Open it up for tourists. Bring in the first wave. It’s a matter of starting all over again up there, no roads, no camps, no tourists. Just the bush. The South Park is too soft for you. Go north.’

‘Why don’t you go?’ I asked. This was a bit cheeky, from someone like me to a person of Philip’s eminence, but I thought on the whole that he deserved to be asked.

‘Too old. Too stiff to live in a tent, too tired to go where there are no roads. If I were twenty years younger, I’d go. Goodness, I’d go like a shot, because the North Park is now what the South Park was when I first came here. But I’m not. Young, that is. The South Park has kept pace with me. We’ve grown old together, old and soft. But you’re young, George; it’s what you should be doing.’

‘I don’t feel young,’ George said, feelingly.

‘Have a beer then,’ I suggested.

‘A good idea. Not totally devoid of initiative, are they, George, the young buggers? Are you training him well? Or does he still confuse the barking of heron and bushbuck?’

This was a reference to a brick I had dropped during my safari guide exam, the examiner being Philip Pocock. In fairness to myself, I must add that it was the only real error: I had passed with an A grade. Philip had given me a tough time during the exam; his principal technique for unnerving a candidate was to respond to a piece of proffered information with the single word ‘Elaborate’. But I had elaborated in a most elaborate fashion, and if my botany had been a little shaky, my large mammal stuff had been easily enough to carry the day.

So now I merely gave Philip the brief version of my normally elaborate impersonation of the call of the wood owl, and stood up to wave to the barman, indicating that four more Lion would be in order.

‘And what is it you are doing with Lion Safaris, Caroline? I know – they are abducting you from Leon and making you work for them as the caterer they so badly need.’ Philip glanced at George with amiable malice.

‘Yes, that’s something I’ve often wondered, George,’ Caroline said. ‘Why don’t you have a caterer? You must be the only camp in the Valley without one.’

‘Oh.’ George gave himself a vigorous scalp massage, changing the style from crested barbet to hoopoe. ‘It was a row I had at the start of the season with the office.’ He gestured vaguely in the direction of the phone, meaning Joyce. ‘They wouldn’t let me employ a caterer, after I had taken on Dan as well as Joseph Ngwei. Said I had too many staff.’

‘How do you work it out, then?’

‘By sort of committee. Me, Dan and Joseph, and Sunday the cook. He’s done rather well, actually.’

‘So well you will surely pay me a double bone-arse,’ I said, in Sunday’s voice.

‘He’ll be furious about the bloody cheese,’ George said. ‘I daren’t tell him.’

‘I’ll get Joseph to do it,’ I said. ‘He’ll take it better from him.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Oh, you should join these people, Caroline,’ Philip said delightedly. ‘Look at the mess they are making of it all. Join them and sort them out. You’re just the person they’ve been looking for.’

‘I should bloody well think not,’ said Caroline, sitting up straight, all her primness returning. ‘I hardly think a business diploma, not to mention cordon bleu cooking qualifications, is the sort of thing they need.’

‘ Exactly what we need,’ I said, with great heartiness. ‘Start this afternoon. No, you’re our guest this afternoon. Start tonight after supper. From nine o’clock tonight you must do everything I want, all right?’

‘ No chance,’ she said. No teasing required today, clearly. Sod you then. How were we going to get through the day without coming to blows? ‘I am assistant manager of a properly run tourist operation that offers a luxury safari to top-drawer international clients. And that’s how I intend things to remain.’

‘We just show our people the bush,’ I said. ‘Food is not cordon bleu, but we offer the best lion in the Valley. Lion is the principal item on our menu.’

‘That’s why you get the sort of clients you get, and we get the sort of clients we get.’

Philip was laughing at this exchange. ‘That will suffice, children, thank you. Ah, George, I used to put lion before the comfort of my clients once, but not any more. I am old, and my clients are too fat. It seems that this is the way clients want it to be: a taste of wilderness, and a lot of food and drink and lying around, and then off to Palmyra Resort for a rest, that is to say, lying around eating and drinking. That is the way it must be. So if you are not joining Lion Safaris, Caroline, what is this visit all about? A spying mission, no doubt. See what your deadly rivals across the river are getting up to.’

Caroline stiffened. ‘They have very kindly offered to show me some lion, since we haven’t got any clients in camp tonight. For once.’

‘Oh, a visit to the Tondo Pride,’ Philip said. ‘That should be part of every bush person’s experience. To visit the Tondo Pride with George. Are they well, the Tondo buggers.’

‘Killing left and right,’ George said.

‘Is George really as dangerous with lion as they say?’ Caroline asked.

‘You mean, as dangerous as Leon says,’ said Philip. ‘Oh yes, I should think so. But the thing is, I’ve never felt terribly safe with George. Even when there are no lion around. Even when we’re not in the bush. Not a terribly safe chap, George. You go with him and see the lion. You’ll have the time of your life.’

From the moment that I joined up with George, I felt as if I were becoming part of an African legend: a minor character in the great legend that was George. Though in fact there were really two legends about him. Among ethologists, and among readers of popular science, he was a ground-breaking genius. But in the Mchindeni Valley he was a dangerous lunatic. His book Lions of the Plains , popular science at its best, had hit me like a shell in my teens. The behaviour of animals, both wild and tame, or half-tamed, had always been the central part of my life; with this book, things acquired a clarity and a purpose they had never before possessed. Hence the zoology degree, hence the study on zebra.