A Pride of Lions (20 page)

“Where are you going?” Hugo asked them.

“Voi Safari Lodge,” they answered. “Have you seen any game today?”

We smiled wryly at each other. “I saw a cheetah at Voi when I was there,” I encouraged them. A sigh of expectation went round the German passengers. "Good luck!” I called out to them as the Landcruiser started forward.

“And to you!” they called back cheerfully. When I looked back, one or two of them were still waving. The others were busy photographing each other in front of a notice that said that within the Park the animals have the right of way.

“I wonder if we should have told them about the
Mzee
?” I mused aloud.

“Certainly not!” Hugo retorted. “We owe him that much at least!”

I snuggled down in my seat, feeling more friendly towards him than I had all afternoon. “Yes, we do don’t we?” I said. “Hugo, do you feel
guilty—?”

He looked amused. “Do you?”

I felt quite flat with weariness. ‘Yes. Yes, I do,” I said frankly.

“That’s because of your lion eyes!” he teased me.

“And yet you’d cage me up in a city, wouldn’t you?” I accused him, without thought.

He smiled. “Shall we say I’m keeping an open mind about that?” he said lightly.

We sped into the little town of Voi and pulled up outside the Post Office. A curious knot of children gathered about us, ostensibly on their way home from school. Hugo left me to chat with them while he went in to collect the letters, newspapers and magazines for the camp. A couple of women came by, berating the children for getting in the way. They carried heavy, woven baskets full of fruit and vegetables, which they placed on their heads to leave their hands free to pull their cotton
kangas
more closely about their breasts. The children reluctantly followed after them, staring back at me over their shoulders, with fleeting, shy smiles and even more giggles.

Hugo brought out the mail, bagged in a small canvas sack that locked at the neck. He threw a couple of loose letters on to my knee. “They’re for you!” he said, smiling.

For me? I had quite forgotten that I too might get some letters. I turned them over between my fingers, overjoyed to see the familiar handwriting of my mother on one of them. The other was addressed in a less familiar handwriting and it took me a few seconds to place it in my mind.

“It’s Kate Freeman!” I said in surprise.

He glanced at the letter in my hand. “So it is!”

I tore open the envelope, pleased that she should have written to me, though I couldn’t remember that she ever had before. It was a simple note, saying no more than that she had seen my parents and had been able to tell them that she had seen me in Malindi and that I was well.

“What does she say?” Hugo asked.

“She’s had another son!” I exclaimed. “Oh well, Luke will be pleased!”

Hugo smiled faintly. “I envy him,” he said softly.

“Do you?” I murmured, frowning over the last part of Kate’s letter. “Oh! Martin is in Mombasa!”

Hugo’s smile died. “Oh?”

I chuckled happily to myself. “Kate is so
nice
! She wants to know what I’m going to do when Mr. Doffnang has finished with me. She says I can go and stay with her, if I like, and help her with the children. It seems Martin can easily pick me up on his way up country.”

Hugo stiffened. “It will be a long time before Ghui Lodge is finished!” he reminded me.

“Not so very long,” I said happily.

“Then you’ll go?”

“I expect so. There’s nothing much to keep me here, is there?” “Nothing at all,” he agreed.

“Well then,” I said slowly, “I have to do something!”

“Oh quite! Especially with Martin Freeman!” he said savagely.

I trembled inwardly. “I’ve known him for a very long time,” I reminded him.

“Lucky Martin!”

He climbed into the driving seat beside me and set off at a tremendous speed through the town. It was worse still when we reached the open road. We stormed down the metal track, the wind whipping our faces, until the engine began knocking in protest. Hugo eased off a little, but his face was unyielding and angry. I was more than a little afraid of him.

“Hugo—”

He slowed down a bit more, though it still seemed to me that we were going far too fast to be on any public road “Hugo, it isn’t that I want to go!” I cleared my throat, annoyed that I should sound so craven.

“Nobody’s asking you to!” he retorted briefly.

I licked my lips, plucking up my courage as best I could. “But nobody’s asking me to stay either,” I said gently.

“Do you have to be asked?”

I squeezed my fingers together until they hurt. “Yes,” I said at last.

“Why?”

“Because it isn’t my home!” I explained weakly. “I have no
reason
to stay. Can’t you see that?”

“And what of Martin?” he insisted.

“Martin is a friend from my childhood,” I said flatly.

“So you keep saying!” he snorted.

“At least he’s kind—” I began angrily. I broke off, terribly afraid that I was going to cry,

“And I’m not?”

“Not very,” I managed.

“I don’t feel
kind
!” he stormed at me. "And if you need a reason for staying, you can work one out for yourself!”

“I see,” I said stiffly.

“And why go to the Freemans’ anyway?” he added irritably. “Anyone would think you had no home of your own to go to!”

I bit my lip. “Would you prefer that I went home to my parents?” I asked in a dangerously shaky tone of voice.

He shrugged his shoulders. "The matter doesn’t arise yet. It will be months before the Lodge is finished—”

“I’m not sure I shall wait until then!” I interrupted him.

He stopped the Landcruiser so violently that we skidded to the side of the road. “That,” he said viciously, “is what you think! You’ll stay until the last cup and saucer has been put in place, no matter what the claims of Martin Freeman! ”

‘You can’t make me!” I cried, with a courage born of despair.

“That’s what you think!”

Ignoring my protests, he yanked me across the seat towards him. His hand on my arm hurt badly, but gentleness was not his way. His mouth descended on mine without mercy and without love.

“Hugo, please don’t!” I pleaded with him.

He let me go as suddenly as he had seized me. Very slowly, he reached for a cigarette and lit one for himself, inhaling deeply. “Very well, I won’t,” he ground out. “Not until you beg me to—if you ever do!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We drove home in a sulky silence, both of us seared by the row that had blown up so quickly between us. All I could think of was that I hadn’t known that it could be like that! Love, to me, was a comfortable, civilised emotion, not a whirlwind ready to blow one out of one’s depth without a moment’s notice. To quarrel about Martin Freeman was ridiculous, of course. But how did one turn back and explain such a thing to Hugo Canning? I couldn’t do it! I couldn’t break through the growing silence between us, because—well, frankly, because I was afraid I should be even more hurt if I made the attempt. And I was hurt. Badly hurt.

When we reached the river, Hugo set the Landcruiser too fast at the bank and I thought we were going to stick fast in the mud that had been brought down by the now quite strong current. To make matters worse, it had started to rain. Great spots of rain stained the dusty bonnet in front of us, running into each other, until the whole was a wet and uniform dark green, marred by muddy streaks of red.

“You shouldn’t allow your bad temper to affect your driving!”

I observed huffily as Hugo wrenched the wheel round in an attempt to retrieve our position.

“It would serve you right if I dumped you in the river and left you there!” he retorted pleasantly.

“It looks to me as though that’s exactly what you’re going to do!” I returned.

The Landcruiser came to a tremulous stop, spraying the water up on my side. I gave a little gasp of anxiety and hoped that Hugo hadn’t noticed. He had.

“I bet you’re wishing you were in the city now!” he said with contempt.

“Well, I expect you’re wishing we were safely over the other side,” I replied reasonably.

He laughed without much amusement. “I don’t know,” he said. “It might be an interesting experience for us both to get stuck in the mud.”

I was genuinely appalled at the thought.
“Interesting?”
I squawked.

“Why not? It would give us time to find out what we genuinely thought of one another.”

“I don’t want to think about it,” I said harshly.

He gave me a bitter smile. “No? I suppose you prefer to dream about Martin Freeman! ”

“You can suppose what you like!”

“I shall!”

We swerved back on to the track across the river and edged forward through the swirling waters. If there was much more rain higher up, it would soon be impassable, I thought.
Then
Martin wouldn’t be able to drive up from Mombasa and collect me on the way, for the camp would be isolated from the whole world, except for Johnny’s plane, for no one except a lunatic would attempt to reach the camp by any other route. The rain came pelting down, bouncing off the surface of the river, to fall again and join the swelling waters. A crocodile rose lazily on to its feet and eased itself into the brown water and was lost to sight.

“You haven’t opened your other letter,” Hugo said in a more friendly voice.

“No,” I agreed miserably. “It’s from my parents.”

“And what will they say to your deserting your job to go to the Freemans’?” he asked, his eyes firmly on the track ahead.

“Does it matter?” I returned with a sigh.

He gave me a quick look. ‘You mean that Harry deJong approves of that sort of thing?”

The Landcruiser jolted, slipped forward, and was jerked back on to course. I held on to my seat with everything I had.

“Sorry,” Hugo said briefly. He was so unapologetic, though, that I wondered why he bothered.

“I
am
grown up, you know,” I snapped. “So my father doesn’t come into it, one way or the other.”

“Huh!” he jeered.

I was silent, concentrating madly on this nightmare crossing of the swollen river. When we reached the other side and had rushed up the bank, Hugo disengaged the four-wheel drive and increased our speed as we drove towards the camp. I felt mentally and physically exhausted, and my shoulder ached. I put up a hand to feel the bandage which, during the day, had grown tighter and tighter. As I had expected, I found my arm was swollen and constricted.

“I’ll have a look at it as soon as we get back to camp,” Hugo said suddenly. The kindness in his voice made me want to cry.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

But apparently he thought otherwise. As soon as we had reached the camp, he parked the Landcruiser neatly under the trees and came round the front to help me out of my seat. There was no sign that anyone had heard our arrival, only the dripping noise of the rain and the water sliding off the leaves of the trees.

‘You’d better go to your tent,” he said. “I’ll bring some hot water and some fresh bandages.”

I nodded. I was too tired to argue and, anyway, I didn’t want to. I staggered off to my tent, stiff from the hours of driving and my adventures with the lion. I unzipped the entrance, pushed my way inside, and lay down flat on my bed, waiting for my aching muscles to ease.

Hugo was not long behind me. I swung my legs to the ground as he came in, ashamed of my moment of weakness.

“I’m not tired really,” I explained quickly. “But there isn’t anywhere to sit.”

Hugo put the bowl of steaming water down on the wash-stand just outside the tent. Without a word to me, he went to work unwinding the bandage from my arm. As it fell away, it was easy to see the bruise marks he had made when he had grabbed me and kissed me. He stood in silence for a long moment, gazing down at my arm.

“I see that I owe you an apology,” he said at last.

I wiped my free hand on the side of my trousers. “Not really,” I muttered. “It was my fault too.”

His eyes smiled at me. “That’s very generous. But not quite true. I had no business to use force—”

I bit my lip. “It’s all right,” I said awkwardly.

His hands were very gentle as he bathed away the pus that had gathered in the open gash. “As Katundi would say, a woman lives in the past and the future as well as in the present. She links our ancestors with our descendants, therefore she ranks higher than a man. A man may strike his father, but he may not strike his mother. This is the law.”

“But not our law,” I said flatly.

He smiled. “We, too, are African born and bred.”

“But—It’s ridiculous! In Africa, a woman may rank higher than a man, but much good does it do her!”

“Not very much,” he agreed. “But I truly am sorry, Clare.”