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.
About five minutes later, Helen had shifted from enraptured silence to compulsive talking. ‘Why did you call that lioness Auntie Joyce?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps you’d better answer that one, George,’ I said. I couldn’t bring myself to speak of the human Joyce: a female of infinitely worse temper, our sworn enemy in all her dealings.
‘Oh, well, really, just a joke, really; we called her after the lady who met you at Chipembere, off the plane from England, the lady who looks after our interests in Chip. Silly joke.’
Helen let it pass. Delight had filled her: and it filled me too, in the delight of showing. ‘The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life, how can I ever thank you? So wonderful, so marvellous, and all the time I felt so safe with you and Phineas and everyone.’ Helen, in neatly pressed khaki slacks, a shirt buttoned at the wrists for fear of the sun, and a straw hat suitable for the sport of bowls, was in a frenzy of leonine love.
‘Safe?’ I said, smiling at her pleasure. ‘I never do.’
‘Oh, you’re just teasing.’
‘I am not. George has taken me closer to lion than any sane person would consider safe.’
‘Definite male,’ George said, rummaging around obscenely in the pockets of his shorts until he came up with a box of matches. He lit the cigarette he had just, with great concentration, rolled; a small shower of burning shards fell to earth. ‘Collared barbet,’ he said smokefully, vaguely brushing at the front of his shirt. He expected no reply to this observation.
The country was open as we returned to Lion Camp, and the discipline of the walk broke down. We moved in a line abreast, instead of the Manual’s strictly ordered single file. ‘But surely the lion are fairly safe here,’ Helen said. ‘I remember when we went for a drink at Mukango Lodge, one of the guests was telling me how docile the lions in this park were.’
‘Pretty docile,’ I said. ‘They only killed three people in the wet season this year.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh yes,’ George said. ‘One schoolboy, poor little sod, one jealous lover, and one old pisscart – oh, I do beg your pardon, Helen.’
Helen waved the apology aside. ‘Jealous lover?’
‘Chap from one of the villages,’ I said. ‘Apparently he thought his girl was dallying with another man. He wanted to catch the pair of them at it, and so he stayed up all night to spy on her. Lion took him while he was sneaking about.’
‘Found bits of him all over the village next morning,’ George continued callously. ‘Lion buggered off before dawn, I’d say, and the village dogs had a tuck-in before the village woke up. Terrible to-do. Lion prints all over the shop.’
‘Was it the same lion every time?’
‘They thought so. There was a lot of talk about the Rogue Lion at the time. Lot of jokes at the start of the season.’
‘It was the same,’ Phineas said. ‘I was with the party of scouts that went to track him. The warden, Mr Mvuu, he said to shoot him before he eat a tourist. But this lion, he is a very clever fellow. One day he kill the schoolboy, next day gone. We tracked him, but always he is ahead. As if he knows we are tracking him. North, always north. We travelled north until we lost him. We tracked him into the North Park, long long way, very beautiful trip, we make camp in a very special place, many many lion there. And that is where we lost him. Too many lion tracks, and he got lost amongst them.’
‘It was a male then?’ Helen asked.
‘Oh yes. Big tracks, big fellow.’
Helen laughed suddenly. ‘Is that why it says Rogue Lion Safaris on your Land Cruiser?’
‘Oh dear. Does it still show?’ George asked, dropping his cigarette butt to the ground and leaving it to smoulder.
‘Of course it bloody shows,’ I said, automatically treading out the cigarette.
‘But I painted over it,’ George said peevishly.
This demonstrated very clearly George’s selective vision of reality, no doubt an essential adaptation for his survival. ‘Your paint job makes it more obvious, not less.’
‘Oh dear. Do you think another layer will do the trick?’
‘We’ll have to do something before Joyce comes out again.’
‘Oh God. We’re in enough trouble as it is.’
‘But why are you called Rogue Lion
