Binstead's Safari Read online

  *

  They had nearly three weeks in London. Millie kept walking through museums, went to movies, wrote postcards and thought about sending packages home to his parents and sister. At the right time—convenient for them and not for her—she phoned her own parents, and then his. And she tried to get Stan to help with some shopping, but he left it to her to choose presents. No one at home expected a thing, he said. Why waste the short time they had?

  She wanted another dress, too—maybe he could help her pick one. But, he wouldn’t. That was her business. He thought it was a little strange, anyway. She had never bought herself unnecessary and fancy clothes.

  “You’ve been spending money like water,” he told her. “Where are you going to wear all those things? We’re going into the African bush, not to a cocktail party.”

  “I bet they have cocktails in Africa, too.”

  “Not the part we’re going to.”

  She took a tour out to Hampton Court and on the same day visited the zoo. The place was almost deserted; she strolled past owls, monkeys, seals, parrots, bears. A family of three took photographs of each other in the distance and two girls walked by, one of them wheeling a baby in a push-chair.

  She went to look at the tigers, where she stood not far from a boy of twelve or so, who was listening to some kind of taped commentary on the animals. There were no tigers in Africa, she knew that; only in India and farther east. The boy was fiddling with the earpiece and the volume. Millie overheard the voice from the tape saying, “Note the white spot behind the ears.” She looked. The nearest tiger rolled smoothly by and moved away. Sure enough, at the back of each ear was a large, round, white spot. It interested and amazed her: that every tiger should have white circles on its ears. Why were the markings there—so the cubs could follow the parents through the twilit jungle without losing them? It was a mystery.

  She couldn’t find the right way out, and, in trying to get back to where she’d been, came across the pandas. They sat eating their bamboo shoots with delicate bites and didn’t hurry their meal. She thought they were charming. And they were very civilized eaters. Maybe that was the trouble. They certainly had their problems. Their failed love-life had been on the front pages of all the daily papers. Never mind, she thought. There are lots of us.

  On the day before they left, she discovered the one museum on her list that she’d missed. She just had time to fit it in.

  A guard looked at her bag as she entered, and asked her to leave her umbrella in the cloakroom. She picked up a leaflet from a table near the stairs and glanced at the diagram of the rooms.

  There were several exhibitions on at the same time: Mexican turquoise inlaid figurines, Captain Cook’s voyages, African masks, and all the regular exhibits and displays. She wandered around from floor to floor, leaning over glass cases, scanning explanatory printed cards. Cloth with border of stylized eye emblem she read, and looked closely at a small, dark rectangle inside a large, white one: the iris inside the cornea, she supposed. Axe handle carved with picture of Indian slaying enemy read another card. The enemy warrior was tiny, the Indian extremely large. What it means to be the winner. And if you lose, you die. That hadn’t changed.

  She looked at two red and yellow Hawaiian cloaks made out of parrot feathers, studied a canoe and a swordfish of black wood and mother-of-pearl, and reached the section full of objects from aboriginal life: bones, snail-like decorations which were maps, apparently; either of the world or the heavens. Not far from the collection of boomerangs lay a dark wooden object that looked like a thole pin. Its descriptive tag said: Implement for making toeholds in trees.

  “It’s a wonderful town for anybody who lives alone,” she said to Stan later in the day. “You could never get bored. You could never get lonely.”

  He waited for her to bring out all the little pieces of entertainment she had saved up to tell him, but she left it there. She no longer had the eager, pathetic look, hoping to please; nor the stunned, expressionless stare. London had changed her. He was glad. If only she could make some kind of attachment outside, things might be better. He might even be able to leave her—who could tell?

  She went over the list of presents she’d send off in the mail the next morning, their last. Better leave a lot of time, pack that night. They might celebrate a little.

  “Shall we go out someplace special on our last night?”

  “I sort of promised Jack.”

  “And I’m still never going to meet him?”

  “We’re just always talking about—”

  “All right, I know. I’ll see if I can get a ticket to go to another ballet.”

  It was because he was ashamed of her, of course. He didn’t want his friend Jack to see the miserable frump he’d ended up with. Even though she looked fine now, with her new clothes and her haircut. Of course it might be another woman again—that was possible, too. Jack might just be the excuse he gave. Or Jack might not exist.

  She bought a ticket at the opera house that evening from a girl with glasses and long, straight yellow hair, who said, “Dowell’s off, you know. It’s Wall tonight.”

  Millie said, “Oh?”

  “Is that all right?”

  “Isn’t this one any good?”

  “Oh yes, of course. He’s very good, only he’s not the one I wanted to see tonight. I’m seeing him next week.”

  “I understand. You have your favourite.”

  “Yes. She’s lovely, of course.”

  Millie climbed the stairs, bought a programme and sat in her seat. She was early. She read through the notes about the plot: about Romeo and Juliet, whom she already knew about, and the composer, whom she’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce, and all the dancers and the choreographer, who was a modern one. She thought about Stan and the rest of the trip. When they’d been back home she would have taken any chance to get away, and as far as possible. But now she felt safe in London and didn’t want to leave. The thought of flying off again made her worry. He was probably right: here, she could go out and do things, but where would she go in Africa? If they were way out in the middle of nowhere, she wouldn’t be able to do anything but sit in the tent.

  During the balcony scene, she cried a little. She was also very moved by the argument between Juliet and her parents. That’s the way I should have been, she thought. I should have talked back and said what I wanted myself.

  In the first interval, she had a cup of coffee and unobtrusively examined the people around her, some of whom looked like dancers. It was fine being alone. Several other people were on their own. It was better than being with Stan. He wouldn’t have liked it. He had even said: what a hell of a thing to do to a good play.

  *

  He was saying goodbye. They were in the living-room. Jack was laughing at him.

  “You take it lightly,” Stan said.

  “Sure. No use getting morbid about things.”

  “You think all emotion is morbid.”

  “Look, four guys I worked with went out like a light last year. Just like that. Ashes to ashes, Stan. Now you see them, now you don’t. Abracadabra. One of them stepped on a mine, one of them caught a ricochet, one of them was in that plane in the Canary Islands, one of them was grabbed out of his taxi by some secret service heavies who said later it must have been political fanatics. So, what I think is: I hope they had all the good times they could squeeze in before they got it. I hope they never said no to something they wanted, just to be polite or because somebody didn’t think it would be ladylike. The purpose of this, all this, is pleasure. If you don’t even like it—hell, it’s wasted on you. Get out and let somebody else enjoy it. I mean it, Stanley.”

  Shirley walked into the room. She said, “What is this Stanley and Livingstone thing?”

  “It started the first time we met. Because he kept calling me Stanley.”

  “Isn’t that your name?”

  “No, my middle name’s Dunstan, that’s all.”

  “What’s your first
name?”

  “Don’t tell her,” Stan said, “or I’ll tell yours.”

  “My first name is John.”

  “That’s what he tells everybody.”

  “Come on. He’s kidding.”

  Kathy called from the next room, “What are you up to now?”

  “All these years we’ve been calling each other Stanley and Livingstone,” Jack said, “and now suddenly you’re going off to Africa and I just got back from there.”

  They drank one another’s health, and, before the party broke up, Jack added a warning. He told Stan, “If it looks like I’m right about the protection racket side of it, steer clear. Those things can be just as prickly in an African mudhole as back in Little Italy, believe me.”

  Millie leaned up against the window and looked down as they flew over. She said, “It’s so different. It doesn’t look at all like the way I imagined Africa.”

  Stan said, “What did you expect—grass huts?”

  She didn’t answer. He thought: Of course, that’s exactly what she did expect.

  Their room was ready for them. All the arrangements, from airport to hotel, went smoothly. Stan felt slightly out of step because of the sudden change in temperature, altitude, and the general look of things—the tremendous variation and mixture of peoples and languages. He realized some hours later, when he had a moment to think about it, that for once Millie wasn’t tied up in knots by a nervous reaction to the strangeness of her surroundings. She was actually smiling and looking around with interest.

  They rested for a couple of hours at the hotel, together but separate, as usual. Millie unpacked a few clothes and hung them up. Later in the day, they went to the offices of the safari company. They met Ian Foster, a man in his early sixties, who was to be their professional hunter; he was short, husky, very tanned and had a close-cut brindled beard he later told them had started as a way of protecting himself against a sun eczema. He looked weather-beaten and trustworthy. A muscular young man, blond and blue-eyed, joined them and was introduced as Nicholas Fairchild; he might have been in his late twenties or early thirties but seemed younger, like a college athlete. Ian referred to him as his partner.

  They talked about clothes, firearms, licences and recording equipment. Ian walked over to a map on the wall and drew his right hand across it. Stan thought about the projected route for a moment, then tapped his finger over three different places.

  Millie studied the photographs on the walls and gazed at the one large animal head in the room, up above the lintel: a buffalo, with the horns that began on the middle of its forehead, like an old-fashioned haircut parted in the centre or a low-fitting matador’s hat. Nicholas followed her eyes. “They’re the worst,” he said.

  “I can imagine. It looks huge.”

  “That’s not important. It’s the fact that the boss makes him almost invulnerable, and they won’t give in. Most beasts will let one alone. Buff goes out of his way to hunt you down. Nasty.”

  She made a face, commiserating.

  “Are you shooting?” he asked.

  “Not me. I’m just coming along for the ride. Trying not to get in anybody’s way.”

  “Jolly good.”

  Even in London, Millie hadn’t met anyone who said, “Jolly good.” She was delighted.

  They looked through stores, went wandering around the streets and were measured for their clothes. This time, Stan didn’t seem to mind the shopping. They also tried out different kinds of rifles and shotguns.

  “Not for my wife,” he said.

  “No?” Ian looked disappointed. “You’re not going to shoot at all?”

  Millie said, “I don’t know how.”

  “We’ll soon teach you. All part of the service.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll take whatever gun fits.”

  Ian laughed.

  “You aren’t serious?” Stan asked.

  She said, “Well, I think it’s always nice to be on the safe side, like knowing how to drive a car, or swim. You never know when you may need to. As far as the shooting goes, I wouldn’t want to kill anything I wasn’t going to eat, and actually I’m so squeamish I’d rather let somebody else do it, but I really would just like to know how.”

  “Target practice isn’t any good,” Stan told her. “If you’re ever going to shoot anything, it’s going to be moving.”

  “I’ll leave it all up to Mr Foster,” she said, turning to him. “You’re the expert.”

  “Right you are. We’ll start tomorrow. Come out to the farm for lunch and we’ll see what we can do.”

  *

  There was some hitch in the preparations for the safari, but it was the fault of other people. The original plan had been to organize a large, double safari; Ian would take charge of the Binsteads and Nicholas would be working with a couple named Whiteacre, who were monstrously rich and intended to do a lot of serious hunting while travelling slowly or stationed in one place for many weeks at a time. The Whiteacres were going to be accompanied by great amounts of luxury equipment and their main site could serve as a base camp for other hunters, especially for someone like Stan, who wanted to visit distant villages lying among parts of the country poor in game. Now the Whiteacres were cabling that they thought they might postpone the date, or maybe not, or perhaps a friend or two might be coming with them. Ian wanted to give them a couple of days and then divide the safari in two. Everyone could join up later and there would be no difference in the money. Stan’s position would be the same; with the university’s help, he was now semi-official. The costs were taken care of. He paid the extras, of course, but he was hoping to get a book out of the expedition, and that would even up his expenses afterwards.

  The gist of the book was already down on paper. It was a theory about mythic character and its relation to the society that gives rise to it. He was especially interested in the changes the central personality underwent as different generations of storytellers shaped the incidents in their hero’s career.

  *

  Ian showed them around the city. They went into shops, to bars, including the hotel bar, had restaurants pointed out, met people walking down the street. Everyone knew Ian. And all at once, everyone knew the Binsteads, too. It was like being in a small town, except for the fact that there were high modern buildings and the crowds were of many nationalities and races and were dressed in all manner of clothing. During a walk of only four blocks Millie saw two women wearing silk saris, an African tribesman in a ceremonial dress decorated with green fur and black feathers, and a white man, dark as a gypsy, who looked as if he had come straight off the plains and was carrying a snake around his left arm. Ian nodded to them all.

  In the evening, they sat outside on the hotel terrace. Ian was their guest, but the talk was of the trip rather than general chat.

  “Anything you can tell me about the whole area,” Stan said.

  “That’s a tall order.”

  “Especially any stories about lions.”

  “You mean travellers’ tales? The one that got away?”

  “I mean lion worship.”

  “Well, there’s the Masai and the spearhunts, but is that what you had in mind? Initiation trials—that sort of thing?”

  “No, not at all.” Stan began to talk about the Swiss researches and theories. In the middle of the explanations it was settled that they all call each other by their first names, which would have been unheard of only ten years before, but now it would be silly not to.

  “What Dr Adler told me, and what he’s given to me in translation, is a series of linked stories about a man with supernatural powers in battle and medicine, and love. When he’s in a tough situation, he can turn himself into a lion, because his bravery was so great that the lions gave him the ability: to make himself one of them.”

  “That’s a new one on me,” Ian said.

  Millie, who had been left out of the talk, suddenly exclaimed, “Like Superman.”

  “No, Millie. Not like Superman.”

  Ian
laughed. “I’ll get you out there and interpret for you,” he said. “The rest is up to you.” He said goodnight and left early, before the dancing began.

  Millie and Stan watched for a while, without joining in. As the hotel guests and their friends became drunker, the overall air of comradeship increased. Names were exchanged, people danced with each other’s wives and husbands. It was the kind of thing that happened on board ship. Most of the couples wouldn’t know each other in two days’ time. Talk grew louder, the music slowed down, and Stan began to yawn. The black waiters and bar attendants looked on silently, doing their work quickly and politely, as they had before Independence.

  In the morning, Stan checked with the government officials he had spoken to over the phone. He spent an hour with three of them who were helpful, interested, and glad to be able to act together in such a simple matter—in other words, something that wasn’t political. At least, that was the way it seemed. There was a strange reserve between the men, as though they might have been quarrelling or talking about some unpleasant subject just before he’d come into the room. He was handed a load of papers, all stamped and signed, and went on to talk to a Frenchman named Lavalle about anthropology. Stan told him what Jack had said about the probabilities of fraud.

  “Yes, quite possibly,” Lavalle said. “One must be there, where it is taking place. That’s the only way to find out. It can go the other way too, you know.” He told a brief tale about a Canadian scholar who, against all advice from the professional hunters, mounted an expedition to a part of the country that couldn’t conceivably be interesting, camped there for many weeks until the rainy season, and returned with a thick typescript describing ceremonies and rituals no one had known of before.

  “All fantasy,” Lavalle added.

  And the Canadian had been crazy enough to think he could get away with it. He had submitted the work to his university press for publication. Fortunately, some of his colleagues had looked through the document and saved him. For a while, no one knew whether or not he was going to be fired. Then they found out that he had made a few alterations to the book and sold it for a stupendous sum to an independent film producer.