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.’
‘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
