Zambezi Seduction (11 page)

Chad paused and Kerry knew from the look on his face that he was coming to the point at last.

“There was also an African wildlife canvas of an old Cape buffalo bull, isolated from the herd and surrounded by hungry lions. The Arab claimed his cousin, the prince, was struck dumb – speechless – with admiration. Such was the detail, the prince told him, you could see the buffalo knew he was doomed, but was steeling himself for the fight.”

“Who was the artist?” Kerry was sure she knew, but wanted to hear him say it.

Chad smiled and continued the story. According to the prince’s cousin all Arabs were hunters at heart. The prince hunted with lanners and peregrines in the desert. Certain animals they loved with a passion: the thoroughbred horse, the camel – so much a part of their culture – and the big hunting cats, admired for their power and merciless killing expertise: the same qualities the great Eastern moguls of the past had shown. The prince – a man who had everything – wanted nothing more in the world than to own the picture. He offered the Italian whatever he had paid plus a fat profit. The offer was politely turned down. He offered double. The Italian did him the honour of considering this, but again declined. The prince then knew not to raise the offer further. The other man was wealthy enough in his own right not to need his money. The Italian would never let the picture go, now that he knew it was coveted by others. Pride of possession would not allow it. It was what drove people to seek the rare, the unusual, the beautiful, the world over.

“There was one other way the prince could obtain satisfaction –”

“Find the artist!” Kerry cried.

Chad
’s face remained deadpan. “He made discreet enquiries . . .” Now the South African smiled hugely. “And the trail led to Johannesburg.”

Kerry squealed in delight. “You sod! Why did you keep me in suspense so long?”

“Punishment. For doubting my word.”

“And what was the outcome of your meeting?”

“He wants paintings . . . and more paintings.” Chad regarded her intently, his eyes alive with thought and imagination. “Have you any idea how royalty lives there? He showed me photos. Unbelievable! Breathtaking! Buck House looks like a dog’s house in comparison.”

Kerry nodded in agreement. “I
’ve seen the king’s palace in Jeddah. And its floating equivalent, rather inaccurately dubbed a yacht. Be specific, Chad. What are you saying?”

Chad Lindsay considered for a moment. His face had turned serious.

“This is between us – right? Anna’s not party to all my business.”

“Oh, Chad, you don
’t
have
to tell me. It’s just such incredibly good news.”

“It
’s no ordinary commission. His palaces have a lot of wall space. He wants a dozen paintings – with a chance of doubling that if the first batch pleases him. Moreover I can name my own price, within reason. Already there’s money in the bank: he’s given me a healthy advance to show his good faith.”

Much to Kerry
’s amusement, Chad threw up his arms and began an impromptu celebratory jig around the foot of her bed – a performance that reminded her of an Olympic athlete on finals day when all the hard years of preparation, training and pain pay off. She had to muster all her self-control to stop herself leaping out of bed to join him.

“I
’m
so
happy for you,” she said. “And this could be just the start. Word will spread amongst the kings, princes and emirs.”

*
**

For a time after he had gone she feared the fever had worsened. One of the nurses told her it sometimes happened with tick-bite fever. You thought it was gone, only for it to return with a vengeance – hence its other name, relapsing fever. It worried her, but gradually her body cooled. She put the scare down to the excitement generated by Chad
’s wonderful news. She
had
to get better. That was all that mattered now. Determined to regain her strength, she tucked in to her midday meal, and afterwards polished off a banana and an orange.

Chad returned in the afternoon to report that he had the Fiat back. He was satisfied – the repair bill had been l
ower than anticipated. He handed over her journal. She had asked him to search her bag in Main Camp for it.

“You didn
’t read it? You promised!”

“I was tempted,” he smiled wickedly. “Tell me about it.”

“Thoughts and impressions. Mostly jotted down last thing before bedtime. Practice – I intend doing some serious writing in the future.”

“A book, you mean?”

“Eventually – perhaps short stories and travel writing to start. You sound sceptical.”

“Surprised.
It’s quite a change from your present work.”

“I
’ve always had a yearning to try. I’m a voracious reader and can recognise good writing when I see it.”

“
You’ll find the competition fierce. The success of the Harry Potter series has everyone imagining they can do the same.”

Kerry
had been counting on his support. Instead he seemed to take special delight in mocking her.

“Chad, I
’d intended seeking your advice. But I can see that would be a waste of time. Let’s just drop it.”

She showed her hurt and displeasure by avoiding his eyes; but she could feel them boring into her.

“I know that look,” he said. “You’re serious – you mean business.”

“I said, let
’s drop it.”

“Maybe I was a little hasty. Creative types are my kind of people. I know one or two writers, how they operate.”

“It’s not rocket science, Chad. How they operate is by lifting a pen or working a keyboard.”

“Come to think of it, you
’ve seen a lot more of life than most –”

“My, my, you
’ve changed your tune.” Kerry couldn’t resist the dig. “Not so long ago you classified me as positively
virginal.
”

He acknowledged her small victory with a smile.

“Kerry Stevens, if you weren’t ill,” he told her huskily, “I’d be tempted . . .”

He didn
’t finish. The look on his face and his blunt words shocked Kerry. Since her refusal to sleep with him on their first night in the game reserve, Chad had avoided physical contact between them. Last night when he’d kissed her, he had not been driven by desire. Affection yes; sympathy yes.

But now his mood was different. She could see the raw desire burning in his eyes.

Its effect left her feeling weak and weightless, like she was floating on air. Part of her longed for him to crush her in his strong arms and make love to her. But the dominant part knew he would not do it.

He would bide his time, wait for a more opportune moment.

Lover Boy Lindsay had signalled his intent.

TWELVE

The next two days passed slowly for Kerry. She spent her time reading, writing in her journal and resting. Late afternoon Chad would visit, sit with her and talk about his day. He might describe a herd of buffalo at a waterhole, a road-kill puff adder or a sighting of something smaller like a scorpion or dung-beetle. She would ask about leopards and see his eyes darken and his smile fade.

After he had gone she would record everything in her journal while it was fresh in her mind. She had missed so much. She felt like a prisoner wrongly convicted, missing the freedom of the outside world.

On the last afternoon before her discharge, Chad told her that both the police and chief warden had accepted his explanation of the storm being the cause of their being on the unauthorised road. No action would be taken against him. Senior park officials would be holding an internal inquiry. Chad had indicated his willingness to attend
. A decision on that would be taken later.

***

The drive to Victoria Falls was a leisurely affair. The Fiat was running well and Kerry was happy to be on the road once more, free, seeing more of Africa.

Mindful of what she had been through, Chad took things easily. He stopped twice at roadside shops. Beneath shady trees they sat sipping cool fruit juices.

“Have you given any thought to the prince’s pictures?” Kerry asked during one of these breaks. “Any particular animals he wants?”

“Cats mostly, but anything dramatic.
He’s left it up to me.”

“Our lion, After the Fight?”

“Yep, I’m aching to start on it. He wants leopards too.”

Kerry chose not to pursue this line. Leopards were a sore point with Chad.

“Were you surprised by the Arab interest in your work?” she asked.

“A little, I guess. They haven’t put much money into Western art, unlike the Japanese. But, like I said, they love their animals.”

Although she’d had nothing to do with Chad’s working life, just being with him at this high point thrilled Kerry. Her own work was so different. There was a certain satisfaction that came from a job well done, but nothing compared to the personal rewards a talented individual could reap. She was determined to test her ability with the pen over the coming year. Story lines, plots, settings and characters were increasingly occupying her mind.

***

At the town of Victoria Falls they stopped to pick up provisions. Kerry wrote a postcard to her father and, at Chad’s insistence, purchased a floppy hat. The October heat was unrelenting. Kerry noticed that many African women carried colourful umbrellas, not as protection against rain – for there was none – but to shade themselves from the fierce sun.

A few miles outside town they entered the national park and found their lodge close to the Zambezi River. It was a low tile-roofed cottage painted olive-green, which toned in with the surrounding vegetation. It was similar in design and colour to Chad’s home near
Kyalami. In front, a strip of ground thirty yards wide had been cleared of bush. The cleared strip ran from the lodge’s
stoep
to the riverbank sixty yards away. Beside the lodge, palm trees reached well above roof height and the ground was littered with their hard round nuts which resembled balls of sun-dried dung. Blocks of tangled scrub bush bordered the cleared ground, ensuring that each lodge had privacy from its neighbours.

After they had unloaded the car, they walked to the river. In spite of the proximity of a vast volume of water, the cleared ground was bone-dry.

Through her dad’s love of fishing, Kerry had known many rivers. She had never seen a more impressive one than this – or one as beautiful. There was no sign of man’s hand in the vast panorama before their eyes. Several tree-filled islands – some belonging to Zambia, some to Zimbabwe – made judging width difficult. However Chad assured her that the Zambezi’s width here a few miles above the Falls was at least a mile. He explained that its source was hundreds of miles away where the borders of Angola, the Congo and Zambia met. It was Africa’s greatest west to east flowing river.

They waited until
late afternoon, when the air was marginally cooler, before visiting the waterfall. Kerry had feared that after Chad’s fabulous news of his meeting in Johannesburg the rest of the trip might pale into insignificance. The magnificence of the Falls soon banished that thought. Below a perfect blue sky, nature presented a true feast for the eyes. Across a wide front the river dropped sheer in white foamy sheets into a narrow gorge. A fine mist spray rose high above and the roar of the falling water was like thunder.

Best of all, in Kerry’s opinion, was the ease with which it could be viewed. The spray had nurtured a small rainforest through which ran a pathway
to the side of the gorge.

A pair of bushbuck moved as if by magic through a sunny glade in the rainforest. Here among humans, Chad suggested, they had lost their normal shyness and felt safe from their natural predators.

They followed the path out of the rainforest and along the rim of the gorge. The roar was unceasing. Kerry was thankful she wore the hat for even now close to sundown the heat was oppressive and she was not yet back to full strength. Chad seemed untroubled by the sun. His well-muscled legs ate up the ground with ease, and several times he had to check his stride and wait for her to catch up.

By the time they returned to the car Kerry felt exhausted, yet she could remember
few more exhilarating experiences.

“Imagine seeing the
Falls in wet season,” Chad said. “The volume of water is treble what it is now.”

Imagine indeed, Kerry thought. Africa was one long shock to the system. The more her knowledge of it grew, the more questions there were to be answered.

***

As dusk fell they sat on the
stoep
of their lodge looking out at the river. The only sounds were birdsong and the rasp of palm fronds moving in the gentle breeze. A pair of banded mongooses appeared just yards away. The visitors looked up at the humans with such an air of expectancy, Kerry could not help smiling. After a minute the mongooses gave up and moved on. It had the look of a regular food-seeking patrol, lodge to lodge.

The next arrivals were a party of guinea fowl. They seemed to flow across the ground, running in quick bursts, stopping to scratch and peck in a late feeding frenzy. Soon they would fly to high branches to roost for the night.

Chad nursed a cold beer. Mindful of her recent illness, Kerry stuck to guava juice. She was blissfully happy to be back in the wilds. She put aside her journal with a sigh.

“So much to describe – the lion and elephant episodes, my stay in hospital, now the beauty of this
great river and waterfall.”

The South African continued to stare ahead at the vastness of the Zambezi.

“I spent a year bumming around Europe,” he said. “Earl’s Court, Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona.”

“Colonial boy on a culture tour,” Kerry ventured with a smile, “or sowing his wild oats?”

“A bit of both,” Chad conceded reflectively. “Something I noticed – and hated – was the influence of television. Untold millions don’t
do
– they
watch!
I made up my mind there and then to never own a TV set.”

“I notice
d and thought of asking.”

“In this part of the world we’re fortunate: we can still
do
. Though it’s not like the old days when a man could hitch up a team of oxen, travel, hunt, prospect for gold – do whatever the hell he wanted.”

He got up and wandered inside leaving Kerry mulling over his words. She heard the pop as he opened another beer can in the kitchen.

“I’m not sure I’d have liked it then,” she said on his return. “There was so much hardship, disease, slavery, exploitation by the colonial powers.”

The South African’s brows darkened. “My God, Kerry, you’ve fallen into the trap, swallowed the leftist, Marxist crap about the poor Africans suffering under the yoke of their imperial masters. How they were raped, pillaged, bled dry and finally discarded.”

“There’s some truth to it.”

“Garbage!
Have you read anything of early Africa?”

Kerry tossed her head defiantly. “I have, as a matter of fact.”

“I’ll refresh your memory. Africans had no use for writing – so we can only go by reports from the first whites who ventured into the interior. There was cannibalism – David Livingstone stayed well clear of some areas – slavery too. It wasn’t an evil thought up by early American colonists or Europeans or even the Arabs before them. It had always been there in Africa. There’s an account by an early explorer who, following the death of a king, witnessed dozens of slaves being slaughtered in the cruellest ways. Why? So the poor wretches could attend their master, the dead king, on his journey to the spirit world.”

As he spoke, Kerry wondered despairingly why it was that just when their bond was strengthening,
something always happened to knock it back. Was it fate? Or were she and Chad too opposite in their views to be compatible?

But he was not finished yet.

“In what is now Uganda, when the first Scots missionaries arrived the natives stood about in awe. The reason was not the sight of the bearded white men, but their ox-carts. They’d never seen a
wheel
before.”

The South African took a swig of beer, glancing at her over the rim of the can.

“What the European brought to Africa was order. He pacified warring tribes, built roads, railways, bridges, schools, hospitals, taught hygiene, medicine, sound farming methods, Christian good-fellowship. He gets precious little thanks for it now. The new generation of educated blacks is only too keen to shift the blame for today’s ills away from their own graft and incompetence and onto their former colonial masters. Mugabe never misses an opportunity. If it hadn’t been for Europeans they’d still be living in mud huts. You Brits should be proud of what you achieved under extremely difficult conditions.
Proud
. And never,
ever
, apologize for your past role in Africa.”

“You present a pretty strong case,” Kerry said.

“Following instructions,” Chad said without emotion. “You wanted to learn about Africa.”

“When you look at what
’s wrong with Britain today,” Kerry said. “Hooliganism, drugs, soaring crime rates – you wish there was still an Empire. Somewhere tough and unpleasant where you could unload the riff-raff.”

The South African smiled at her triumphantly. “The old days were best. My point, if you remember.”

For a moment their eyes met. In the evening gloom, Kerry could only imagine the gleam of amusement in his. He had clearly enjoyed their verbal sparring. Together they walked to the river bank, drawn by a wish to keep the river’s image with them through the night.

The colour was gone from the sky. Night closed in. Chad talked of a man named Thomas Baines who had come to the Zambezi not long after Livingstone.

“He did some fine paintings of the river and Falls. I have prints. Show you when we return home.”

“As your tongue is well lubricated,” Kerry said glancing at
his can of lager, “tell me what’s gone wrong in Africa.”

“Wrong? Everyone with an eye in their head in pre-independence days predicted what would happen.”

“But there are success stories: Germany since the war, Japan, South Korea. China and India are on their way to becoming the new superpowers. Why has Africa failed?”

“It’s a topic that’
s occupied the minds of economists for years. You have a male-dominant society, with most of the work being done by women. Women tend the household, draw water, carry firewood, work in the fields, prepare food – as well as having on average eight kids, in Kenya at least. Meanwhile the men drink with their mates and watch the herdboys tend the cattle and goats. A man’s sole aim in life is to increase his herd so he can buy a second wife and raise another batch of children. Added to the rapid population increase there is overgrazing –”

“Man-made problems that can be tackled.”

“Agreed. But that requires the will of politicians. And your typical African government minister couldn’t care a hoot about his people. African politics is about power and corruption. Everything flows from power – money, including the numbered Swiss account, the Mercedes limousine, the big house, servants, the kept mistresses.” Chad paused, running a hand back through his hair. Slowly, they began walking back towards the lodge.

“Africans crave wealth – unfortunately very few show themselves capable of creating it. Bu
t why should the men in power worry? They just need to be patient. With the West so fond of playing Santa Claus, there’ll soon be another World Bank or IMF loan to be divided up amongst the top men.”

“It’
s a bleak picture.”

Chad gave a rueful laugh. “It
’s
worse
than that. The ivory smugglers are in cahoots with politicians. There’s hardly a rhino left in East and Central Africa. When the elephants are gone the tourists will stop coming. Next to disappear will be the forests as the rare hardwoods are felled. It’s happening right now. One natural asset after another will go – because it’s easy money. If slavery were reintroduced, they’d sell their own sisters tomorrow.”