A Pride of Lions (15 page)

I stared at him. “But you—” I began. Surely he must see that I couldn’t have allowed him to face those men all by himself. He might have been killed or—or anything!

“Yes?” he prompted me.

“N-nothing,” I said sulkily.

He put his hand under my chin and forced me to look at him. “Liar!” he said.

“I couldn’t let you go alone,” I admitted finally.

He grinned. “It was a sweet thought!” he teased me. “Though what good you thought you’d be—”

“I might have known you’d find something to be beastly about!” I exclaimed. “Why don’t you go and—and shave?” “Because I have every intention of seeing how your arm is getting on first,” he returned smoothly.

He was as good as his word. In this he had an able ally in Karibu who had been longing all along to have the bandage off my arm so that she too could investigate my wound more closely. When I tried to back away from Hugo, it was Karibu who barred my way and who pushed me gently back towards him.

“Good girl!” said Hugo, though whether to the elephant or myself I didn’t know.

“I can’t think why you can’t mind your own business!” I said crossly.

“Because I think it must be hurting you pretty badly,” he

answered calmly.

I thought about that for a moment. Then: “Why?” I asked.

He grinned. “Something must be making you so bad-tempered!”

I couldn’t bring myself to look at my arm when he had unwound the bandages and removed the covering lint. It hurt badly, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing it.

“I think you’d better come over to my house,” Hugo said at last.

“But that’s ridiculous!”

“Come on, my girl! I’ll doctor your arm and give you breakfast, I can hardly offer you better than that, can I?”

“But Janice will do it!” I protested.

His face took on a stony look. “Would you prefer that?” he asked silkily.

“No,” I admitted.

“Clare, I don’t like the look of your arm. It needs proper attention. Now will you come?”

Defeated, I nodded my head.

Hugo went first along the path, making sure that none of the low branches touched me as I walked along behind him. He was, in his way, very kind. He made no reference to my reluctance to go with him. On the contrary, he found all sorts of things to talk about and quite ignored the odd monosyllable that seemed to be my total contribution. Only Karibu was truly happy, following slowly, stopping every few steps to get another mouthful of soft new leaves, pleased to be in the company of the two people she liked best. I suppose, in her mind, we were her own family and that she liked to have us herded together.

Rikki gave every appearance of recognizing me from my previous visit to the house. He swung on my skirt, dodging Hugo’s attempts at catching him, his eyes red with excitement. When I flicked my fingers, the mongoose ran up my clothing and sat on my shoulder, eyeing Hugo cautiously through my hair. Hugo, with that acceptance of other beings for which I loved him, pretended a sudden interest in the flowers on the table. Furious at being thus ignored, Rikki jumped from my shoulder to Hugo’s and nibbled the lobe of his ear with apparent affection.

“Now,” said Hugo affably, “are you feeling very brave?”

I wasn’t, of course, but I was hardly going to say so. What he did to my arm I never knew, for I couldn’t bring myself to look. It was a painful session and one I shouldn’t like to repeat. But when he had finished, I had to admit that my arm felt a great deal easier. Some of the tightness had disappeared and it no longer throbbed so badly.

“I suppose I ought to thank you,” I said when he had finished.

He chuckled. “How gracious!” he said dryly.

I flushed. “I’m sorry. The thing is that it does hurt a great deal less. And I am grateful. I—I didn’t mean to be horrid!”

He looked a good deal amused. “You’re never that,” he said.

“Well, I do thank you,” I said handsomely. “I thank you very much!”

“Do you?” He smiled. “And I thought you very brave,” he said gently.

“Well, I wasn’t!” I said flatly.

He sighed. “Must you always contradict me?” he asked with humour. And before I could think of any good reason, he had put a hand under my chin and had kissed me firmly on the lips. His face was rough from the night’s growth of his beard, but it was the nearest thing to perfect bliss I had ever known.

“Hugo, I wish you wouldn’t!” I murmured foolishly.

He laughed. He looked pleased with himself and more than a little pleased with me. “I invariably keep my promises,” he said smugly.

“Promises?” I repeated vaguely.

“When I last kissed you!” he reminded me.

I bit my lip. “I hope you’re not going to make a habit of it!” I managed.

“Why not?”

Why not?
Why not?
Surely it must be obvious why not! But it appeared that it wasn’t. Much agitated, I tried to find some reason that would serve as well as the truth, which was simply that I liked it far too well.

“I—I don’t think you have any right—”

“Of course not!”

I knew that he was laughing at me and felt a little gurgle of response which I only just managed to repress.

“And I won’t discuss it with you!” I ended fiercely.

“Much better not!” he agreed.

I retreated to the safety of the other side of the room and sat down, stiff-backed, on the most uncomfortable chair I could find.

“I thought we were going to have breakfast?” I said, pleased to find such an uncontroversial topic of conversation.

“So we were!” The thread of laughter in his voice did much to undermine my new-found dignity. “What will you have? Eggs and bacon?”

I inclined my head, suspicious that even breakfast might not be as innocuous as I had supposed. But Hugo was apparently as glad of a truce as I, for, with a barely expressed apology, he left the room and I could hear him ordering the breakfast in the kitchen beyond.

Left alone, I wandered about the room, exploring his possessions. A couple of bookshelves, full of paperbacks, stood against one wall. On another was a native shield, criss-crossed with two wicked-looking spears. The verandah took up the whole of the third wall, and as there were two doors in the fourth wall, there was little room for anything else. The chairs were comfortable and there were some odd tables dotted around and a number of flower arrangements, all of them rather better than any I had ever produced.

When Hugo came back, he had shaved and done his hair, and so he had lost the raffish look of earlier. He seemed to have lost his former mood too, a thing which should have made me grateful, but such was my own mood that it did nothing of the sort.

“Breakfast is just coming,” he said.

I smiled at him. “Good. I’m hungry.”

He did not smile in return. “I heard last night that the poachers talked in the end. I meant to tell you about it earlier.” “What did they say?” I asked. “I listened to practically every news broadcast, but there was no mention of them at all.”

“There will be today,” he returned grimly. “The VoK was full of it earlier. The police have arrested several dealers down on the coast who were in the process of smuggling ivory and skins out of the country. I wish I could think they’d caught the lot!” Remembering Janice’s wish to have a fur coat, I wriggled uncomfortably. “Not everyone would agree with you,” I muttered.

I have seldom seen such anger in anyone’s face. “I suppose you would willingly sacrifice
any
animal to put its coat on your back!” he raged at me.

“I didn’t say that,” I demurred.

'"You didn’t have to! Tell me, what kind of a coat do you want? Leopard? Or tiger, perhaps? You know there aren’t enough tigers left for them to survive another twenty years, don’t you?”

“You don’t find tigers in Africa anyway,” I returned flippantly.

“Leopard, then?” he fumed.

I shook my head. “To tell you the truth a sheepskin coat is more my mark,” I told him. “And it’s rather too hot here for one of those, don’t you think?”

He glared at me suspiciously. “Just who is it who wants a fur coat?” he demanded.

I remembered my own anger over Janice’s remark and I regretted having said anything now.

“It—it was hypothetical,” I stammered.

“I’ll bet!” he said. But his spurt of temper had died away and he smiled “A friend of yours is serving our breakfast,” he told me mysteriously. “I expect he’s waiting for us.”

We went out on to the verandah where the table had been laid for breakfast. Karibu was busy demolishing a thorn bush only a few feet away from the low-walled edge of the verandah. It seemed that elephants never stopped eating! She rumbled with joy at the sight of us, but she was too busy munching her favourite delicacy to pay us much heed.

Katundi brought our breakfast. His wide grin announced to the world his pleasure in the occasion. He laid my plate before me with a flourish that would have been worthy of a waiter at the Ritz.

“Mama
is more comfortable here?” he suggested slyly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m pretty comfortable at the camp.”

Katundi clicked his tongue against his teeth. “But here everyone is happy to see you!” he reproved me gently. “Karibu, even the dog, is pleased!”

My eyes mocked him. “Have a heart, Katundi! The Bwana wants some place where he can escape from us all!”

Katundi’s smile returned. “Indeed?” he said in Kikuyu, obviously thinking that Hugo would not be able to

understand him. “What man does not prefer a meal cooked by his own woman? A contented man goes abroad, but he returns to his own hearth in the evening.”

I blushed, bitterly aware of Hugo’s intrigued look.

“Exactly!” I retorted in Kikuyu too. “And he doesn’t expect to find strangers round his hearth!”

“Oh, hardly a stranger, Clare!” Hugo said in the same language.

Katundi, wisely, melted away back into the kitchen, but I had no such option open to me. Hugo’s eyes held mine across the table.

“Do you feel a stranger?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” I admitted.

His eyes smiled at me. “How odd! I had thought you completely at home amongst us all.”

“With the others—” I began.

“And with Katundi?”

“Well, yes,” I said.

“I see. So it’s only with me that you feel a stranger?”

I nodded, feeling more than a little silly. “Katundi

makes me laugh,” I explained. “He thinks all of life is exactly

like his own village!”

Hugo smiled. “In a way it is,” he said. He gave me a speculative look. “I suppose you can cook?” he asked.

“Ye-es. Why?”

“Katundi seems to have matters so well in hand that I thought he could hardly have overlooked such a detail,” he commented casually.

“But—” I choked. “But he doesn’t mean it
seriously
!” I objected.

But Hugo only laughed. “You’ll be late for work,” he said, glancing at his watch. He rose from the table and I did so too, only too glad to escape. I thanked him for breakfast and for doing my arm with a nervous stutter that I resented quite as much as it amused him.

“I’ll see you this evening,” he said gently.

“No!” I said sharply. “I—I’m doing something for Mr. Doffnang this evening.”

Hugo’s face was full of humour. “I expect I can wait,” he said. I departed in a state of fright. I was accustomed to thinking of myself as a level-headed individual, seldom put out by any

unexpected event. That day I learned I was nothing of the sort. I had only to think of Hugo’s lips on mine to have my innards dissolve into panic. I was thoroughly unsettled. It was so
ridiculous
! Other men had courteously saluted me when they had brought me home after dinner and a dance. Other men had paid me compliments in the most romantic surroundings possible. And through it all, I had remained staid and stolidly unmoved. But Hugo had only to spend a few disastrous moments flirting with me, probably because he had nothing better to do at that precise moment, and there was I in a state of shattered ecstasy, that even I could see couldn’t possibly last, unless Hugo intended that it should, and I had no reason to suppose that he did.

On the contrary, I had every reason to suppose that he did not intend anything of the sort. A fool I might be, but I was not such a fool that I didn’t know that Hugo was playing with me, for no better reason than that he was amused by my fascination with the raw, wild Africa that he considered home. It would take more than tolerant amusement to make him think of marriage! Indeed, I wouldn’t have thought of it myself, had it not been for Katundi and his euphemistic suggestions that I was destined to share Hugo’s house and hearth, but the idea had managed to take root in my very being. To spend the rest of my life in Tsavo would answer every dream I had ever had.

The only answer was work and still more work. Mr. Doffnang was an able ally in this. The Dutchman had an immense appetite for the sheer business of building. His plans were immaculate and he expected the work to be just the same. Every stone had to be properly laid, every corner made good, and every load of cement properly and carefully mixed. He insisted on overseeing everything himself, and where he went, I went too, translating both his words and his ideas to the workmen who were carrying them out. When four o’clock came, he was exhausted.