Simon Barnes - Rogue Lion Safaris

Caroline placed both her hands on the bamboo rail, and looked out over the river. I said nothing; nor, for once, did she. A sudden piercing whistle, surprisingly close, cut the air, and she jumped. ‘Puku,’ I said softly. ‘Alarm call. Look, there he is, right below us.’

‘Antelope whistle? Is this a tease?’

‘Would I do such a thing? I know it’s an odd noise for an antelope, but it’s what they do.’

Obligingly the puku did it again, and Caroline laughed suddenly. ‘You know, there are moments when I see the point of you lot. The shower is lovely. But doesn’t all this neo-primitivism upset the clients?’

‘Some are a bit taken aback at first,’ I said, answering seriously because this was intended as a serious question. ‘Especially if they’ve been told to expect something different. And that happens more often than we would wish.’

‘But that’s dreadful. Can’t you control the way you are marketed? It’s the first rule of business, surely.’

‘Well, that’s our Joyce for you. But the thing is, once we’ve got the clients – on the rare occasions we get any, that is – it begins to work to our advantage. We tell them this is a camp, a bush camp, the real thing, no half-cocked lodge. This is where the real bush people go. And we give them lots and lots of bush, lots and lots of animals. They mostly get the hang of things. The ones who are nervy at first generally end up the biggest fans. They feel they’ve achieved something, which they have, and they end up really pleased with themselves. That’s great fun for us, when it happens, and it happens a lot.’

‘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.’