Simon Barnes - Rogue Lion Safaris

George looked benign and mildly surprised. ‘Sorry, Dan, I thought you rather liked her, I wouldn’t have invited her if …’

‘There’s a difference between fancying and liking, George. Not my type. No bloody parcel, of course. Another of Joyce’s cock-ups. Oh, well. Let’s go and take the bitch to the lions.’

We walked back to Caroline. ‘Let’s go to Mukango, then,’ George said.

‘If we’ve got to go to Mukango, we won’t get back till mid-afternoon,’ I said. ‘So maybe we should take the spot and have a little go for leopard as well.’

‘I’d love to see leopard,’ Caroline said.

‘You haven’t seen leopard?’ I was amazed. Leopard were rather a speciality of the Mchindeni Valley.

‘Well, I don’t normally go out with the clients,’ Caroline said. It’s not the way we do things. I tend to be a fixed point at camp, apart from when I go out to get vegetables and so on. There’s not much time for game viewing when you are running a lodge full of demanding international clients. I’d love the chance to get out into the bush, actually.’

‘Come along, then,’ George said. ‘If you can face it, after Leon’s dire warnings.’

‘Rather because of Leon’s dire warnings.’

I turned to her with sudden pleasure. ‘Is there a latent craziness in this apparently sane woman?’ I asked George. Caroline laughed. I thought then that there was a chance of reclaiming her for the human race.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Here’s the plan.’ This was something I quite often said. This was because it was something George never said. ‘We drive to Mukango, both vehicles. George calls the office, talks to Joyce and hears her latest plan for ruining the company. Then we all have a beer. We drive to Lion Camp in two vehicles. Sunday gives us late lunch. Then we drive off and look for lion. Sundowner. Spotlight on, and cruise back looking for leopard. Get back for supper. How does that sound?’

‘Admirable,’ George said. Caroline smiled at me again, but I coped.

We drove in convoy to Mukango, an hour’s journey south. Philip Pocock’s lodge had one of the two telephones in the Valley – the other was at the airport but they kept it for themselves – and other camps were permitted to use it for a fee. Philip often pretended that the telephone was his principal source of income; he ran Mukango from a planter’s chair beneath a colossal leadwood tree in the Mukango garden. Now in his seventies, he had of late, he boasted, learned the art of delegation. His staff were inclined to dispute this.

I went up to the Mukango Bar, an establishment so grand it had a real barman, and asked for three Lion, Lion being the name of the beer of the country, and it came out a good shade of lion colour, if occasionally a touch cloudy. George was preparing his mind, or perhaps not preparing his mind, for his call. Lion Safaris was a partnership between George and a charming, generous man named Bruce Wallace, and the booking and administration were carried out from Bruce’s office in Chipembere. Most generously, Bruce had delegated the day-to-day running of the company to his poisonous ex-mistress. Her name, as it happened, was Joyce.

George drank half his beer and took the other half to the telephone, which was in reception a few paces away. Joyce, of course, would already have met Helen at the airport, and helped her to make her connection to Palmyra: the standard tourist trip to the country involved a visit to South Mchindeni for the game viewing and then to Palmyra Resort to wind down.

George got through surprisingly quickly, but the line, judging from his bellow, seemed a poor one. And, all too audibly, it was clear that George was in receipt of a royal bollocking. ‘No, she liked it … Joyce, she may well have been frightened, but … Joyce, she said it was the most marvellous day of her life. No, she was not in any danger. She enjoyed it, I promise you. Ah, Heuglin’s. What? Oh, sorry, no, a Heuglin’s robin has just started singing. No, I know. Sorry. It’s just singing. No, of course not, Joyce, it was a great success. Joyce, I’m sure she didn’t tell you that she had a terrible time. She said she wanted to come back. Well, next time, don’t apologise on my behalf. Oh Joyce, remember Wilderness Express? They’re going to stay at Impala Lodge. That was seventy bed-nights you turned down. Oh, all right then, sixty-three. We can’t afford those mistakes, Joyce. It was a mistake. No, I tell you it was. Oh, never mind. Oh, yes, I knew there was something I wanted to ask you, what about that parcel you promised? There was nothing on the plane. Can you get it to us tomorrow? Why not? Look, Joyce, I know cheese is expensive, but so is meat, and this couple coming tomorrow are vegetarians. Oh, not coming tomorrow? Oh God. Not another cancellation, I can’t bear it. Joyce, this is ruination. Oh, I see. They’ve cancelled one night and are coming the day after tomorrow. So we’re empty two nights now, oh dear. But we still need the cheese. For Christ’s sake, Joyce, I know cheese is expensive, but we’ll save money on meat. Do you want to starve them or something? Sorry, Joyce, I know you don’t. How should I know why they’re vegetarian? Shall I send them to another camp where they’ll get properly fed then? Joyce, this doesn’t make sense.’

Caroline was listening unashamedly, and to George, not the Heuglin’s robin singing strenuously in the shrubbery. More gossip of Rogue Lion Safaris would be spinning round the Valley. Bitch. Bitches both of them. I listened myself, hearing doom in every word George spoke. I had a terrible fear that, one day, Joyce would take the bush away from me. But what could I do?

Philip entered the bar, chuckling to himself. He looked smaller than ever, tortoise neck protruding from the collar of a beautifully pressed khaki shirt. ‘Hullo. Is George having problems,’ he stated rather than asked.

‘George always has problems with that insane woman in Chipembere. And so does everybody else. He’s calling the office, you see.’

‘Oh, I guessed that. Tying George down, it won’t do. George is a free spirit, you do know that, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ I said, mildly nettled. ‘I work with him.’

‘Not you, this charming – er –’

‘Caroline.’

‘Yes, of course, and you do realise that George is a great man, don’t you? George is bush, you see, pure bush.’

‘I see,’ Caroline said. ‘And you approve of that, do you?’

To my surprise, instead of getting cross, Philip laughed his wheezy old man’s laugh. ‘I was pure bush myself, once,’ he said. ‘Then I started being a sort of politician, when we needed to get the park established all those years ago. And then I became an old man running a tourist business. But I was pure bush first. And last too, I think.’

‘I see,’ said Caroline.

‘Yes, maybe you do, and maybe you don’t. Humour the old bugger, eh? What do you think of life out here, now you’ve been in the Valley for – what? – four months?’

‘It’s been wonderful. I love it. I never want to leave. Can’t imagine any other way of living.’

Philip began laughing again at this, and followed with a bout of coughing. ‘I’m so sorry, er, Caroline, but your words have a dreadful ring to them. I have known three ladies, each one as lovely as yourself, who said the same thing to me. I can’t imagine any other way to live. I never want to leave. And I married them, all three of them, consecutively, not simultaneously. And do you know what else they said? After a while, they all said the same thing. It’s me or the bush, Philip. Face facts: me or the bush. And so I faced them; the facts, that is. And I always said the same thing, or maybe I just thought it: awfully sorry, old girl, but that is not really a fair contest, is it? And so I have a wife in Cape Town, a wife in Chipembere, and a wife in Wiltshire. And I’m still here.’