Simon Barnes - Rogue Lion Safaris

And George walked on, neither creeping nor hurrying. Neither fear nor love was discernible: only his eternal curiosity. I watched the lion with the usual rapt anxiety. They were aware of us, but intent on their meal: all save one. She raised her yellow eyes from the carcass before her and with them followed our progress. And we walked on. And on. At length, we halted by a small bush, one that did not conceal us at all. It was another aspect of cosmic courtesy. We were not so bold as to approach openly, nor so timorous as to lurk behind cover. We were neither good nor bad, neither prey nor predator.

A walk through drought-dried grass fills your ears with the noise of your own passage. In the sudden silence of stopping, the sounds of the lions’ banquet came towards us. They were devouring a buffalo, a colossal and absorbing task. In the clarity of the morning, I could hear the slicing of the carnassial shear.

‘Buffalo,’ said George, to Helen and also to a small tape recorder, plucked from the bulging pocket of his khaki shirt. ‘Male.’

‘Definite male,’ I said, an ancient joke.

‘Clearly old, and presumably one of the group of five old males seen near the Tondo confluence yesterday. Remember to check the area this afternoon, try and find the same group, see if it has been reduced to four.’

‘Do you think these are the lion we heard last night during supper?’ Helen asked.

George shifted his specs to the extreme end of his nose, giving himself an air of prim stupidity. There was a new cigarette burn in his shirt, I noticed, just above the left pocket. There were moments when, even to me, George looked like a dangerous lunatic, one quite incapable of comprehending his own interests. It was hard to remember that he was a businessman: hard for him too, I suspected. ‘Well, yes, certainly, or at any rate probably, because it was rather a good chorus last night, wasn’t it? Not a full pride chorus of course, but I counted half a dozen individuals, I think, and we are now in the core area of their territory, around the Tondo confluence, this being the Tondo Pride, of course, territory insofar as lion have a territory, which they do, of course, but rule one of lion is that you must never make rules about lion, because lion certainly won’t stick to them.’

George paused for a moment, perhaps contemplating the inevitability of leonine lawlessness. ‘Where was I? Oh yes, well, they probably didn’t kill last night, there’s rather a lot of buff left, and they are all tucking in, no one lying around digesting and waiting for second helpings. I suspect they killed at first light, and it is a little unusual that the vultures should be here so early. Check the thermometer when I get back to camp, maybe it’s warmer than it’s been so far this season, thermals available for the vultures earlier than previously.’ This last to the tape recorder. ‘But I could get a better idea if I moved around a little, and saw how much of the buffalo is left –’ George took a step forward, and Phineas stretched out a long arm and placed a hand mildly and briefly on George’s shoulder. It looked like nothing more than a gesture of affection. ‘Oh, Phineas, really, I was only going to – oh! Auntie Joyce!’

I heard Phineas’s voice, soft and delighted. ‘Ohhh. She is crazy , that one.’ For one of the lionesses, no doubt sensing a momentary lack of cosmic courtesy in George’s attempted advance, had, in a sudden instant of action, rolled to her feet. To receive the stare of an irritated lion is rather like being struck in the chest by a death ray. Enormous, unreadable yellow eyes, tiny dots of pupils in the ferocious morning light. One lion after another followed her lead, not standing, but raising a head from the carcass to stare at us: four cosmically discourteous intruders.

It was a near-certain fact that if we turned and ran at this moment of tension, the lion would pursue us. In the bush, nothing inspires pursuit so much as flight. But Phineas remained still, leaning on his gun, smiling very faintly to himself. He liked his animals fierce. George too was still, muttering quietly to his machine, recording details of position around the kill. I was also still, from long habit. Relish of the scene fed on its distant but distinct peril. I felt a slow smile crawl up my face: I wanted no other life than this. What if it should end? But I thrust the thought aside. And then, abruptly, Auntie Joyce sat down on her haunches, front paws together, like a domestic cat. She continued to watch: she was no longer considering immediate action. Stand-off.

Auntie Joyce, George said, was the oldest lioness in the pride ‘and probably the pride’s leader, insofar as lion have a leader, which they don’t of course’. She was easily the most crotchety. Lion on a kill are disposed to be peaceful and preoccupied, but Auntie Joyce didn’t go by the rules any more than did George. At the moment of stand-off, I moved half a pace sideways: I wanted to see how Helen was taking all this. No sign of panic. Quite the reverse. I wondered then how many people – how many men – had seen that expression on her face. Eyes wide, mouth slack, quite motionless. She was enraptured: ravished by the eyes of Auntie Joyce. Terror and beauty, or terrible beauty, had undone her. And all the while the lion but forty yards away.

We stood for a further fifteen minutes in flesh-ripping silence, while Auntie Joyce stared unwinking. At last, and slowly, she lowered her body to the ground and lay on her chest, her eyes never leaving us. We remained still. And then, almost reluctantly, she lowered her head and began once again to feed. Silently I released a long sigh. George did not. He had not for an instant ceased to alternate long stares at the lion and muttered comments to his tape recorder. I sometimes wondered what people would conclude if our party were ever devoured by lion, leaving nothing behind but bones, Phineas’s unready, inedible weapon and George’s tape recorder, like the little black box of an aeroplane disaster. Our finders would have every detail of the positions the lions took up relative to each other, how long each fed, where each one rested, who rested alone and who sought company. George could recognise every individual in the pride from scars and nicks, from size and age, from the individual freckling of whisker spots. So could I, for that matter, though rather less certainly. George loved information: he was a scientist long before he became a safari guide, and he believed devoutly that God dwelled in the details. I was never wholly convinced that George transcribed all those tape-recorded notes. Certainly, the tapes themselves were endlessly re-used and re-recorded, stratum upon stratum of leonine detail: a Grand Canyon with endless layers of lion. George’s mind was rather like that.

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.