‘What does then?’ Tom asked, switching on the digital camera.
‘Mosquitos,’ Sannie said.
‘True,’ said Duncan. ‘Snakes kill about a hundred and twenty thousand people around the world every year, plenty of them in Africa. Myself, I think the crocodile kills more than the hippo. The deaths take place in the remotest parts of Africa, particularly along the Zambezi River, but you never hear about these on the radio or television. However, when someone gets killed by a hippo, that’s news.’
Tom was disappointed. The hippo had submerged again.
‘Never mind, there’ll be other hippos, I can assure you,’ Sannie said as Duncan pulled back out into the bridge’s main lane.
On the other side of the river they drove up the steep bank, but before reaching the crest Duncan turned right onto a dirt track. By the side of the road was a stone cairn with a sign featuring a red circle with a white bar through it. It said No entry in English, and Geen toegang in Afrikaans.
‘This is the entrance to our concession. No other vehicles can come in here except ours. Once we get to this part of the park your ministers will be safe from prying eyes,’ Duncan smiled.
Tom was glad to leave the sealed road; this felt more like it, more as he’d imagined a drive in the African bush would be. There still was no sign of open savannah or thousands of migrating wildebeest — he knew these images were from Kenya and Tanzania, in any case — but there was a sense of tranquillity mixed with a spookiness about the thick bush on either side of the vehicle. Most of the trees seemed to be studded with thorns. It looked inhospitable in there.
In his early twenties Tom had served in the Territorial Army with the 10th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment for four years. He’d quite enjoyed spending weekends as a part-time soldier in the outdoors, but the freezing, barren hills of Wales and an exercise in the forests of Bavaria had given him few skills that would translate to the African bush.
Duncan slowed the vehicle almost to a crawl and looked down at the dirt.
‘ Ingwe,’ he said, almost to himself.
‘Leopard,’ Sannie translated. ‘How long ago, Duncan?’
‘Not long — maybe an hour or less. There is nothing marking the tracks — no ant footprints, no leaves blown in them. I know this one. He is a big male.’
‘I thought leopards were nocturnal,’ Tom ventured.
‘No,’ Sannie said. ‘They’re active day and night — opportunistic hunters and very adaptable. Here in Kruger some of them have become quite used to the presence of vehicles and actually use them to help them hunt. They use the noise of the engines to cover the sound of their movements as they stalk impala.’
‘You seem to know your stuff.’
‘Duncan’s the real expert. He’s probably forgotten more than I’ll ever know.’
‘I like guiding for people who know the bush,’ Duncan said modestly. ‘It makes me work harder. This leopard is following the river now, keeping to cover. We might come across him later.’
Tom found the drive informative and also relaxing as Duncan stopped every now and then to point out a colourful bush bird, a small herd of braying zebra, a pair of giraffe, and a shy bushbuck, which had a milk chocolate coat painted with delicate white stripes and spots. He’d almost filled his camera’s flash card when Duncan said, ‘Shush! No talking now.’
Tom and Sannie had been discussing the likelihood of media interest in the minister’s visit. Tom had explained that Greeves’s press secretary, Helen MacDonald, had emailed him advising that the Westminster press gallery had no particular interest in the sale of jet trainers to South Africa, although some defence correspondents would follow up the story and one journalist from a London tabloid had asked if there would be a photo opportunity of Greeves viewing game in the Kruger Park. Helen had said there would not, but warned Tom in her message that the reporter had been quite miffed that there would be no official photos released. There was the remote possibility he would hire a South African stringer to try to get a shot. Sannie had doubted the Johannesburg media would intrude on the visit to Tinga. ‘Compared with your lot, our media are positively well behaved,’ she’d said just as Duncan urged them to silence.
‘There, see the ear?’ Duncan whispered.
‘Got him,’ Sannie said.
‘I can’t see a bloody thing,’ Tom confessed.
‘Don’t look at the bush, look through it,’ Sannie replied.
She leaned closer to him, pointing across his chest to his side of the vehicle. He smelled her perfume. It was like roses. ‘Where?’ he said.
‘There, just past the blackened tree. Rhino.’
He saw its bulk. The dull grey hide was the perfect colour for blending into the dry, dusty growth. Its front horn looked as long as his forearm and hand. Its huge head was lowered, and now that the vehicle’s engine was off and they were all silent, he could hear the almost mechanical sound of its grazing, grunch, grunch, grunch, as it cropped the brittle yellow grass. The rhino’s big trumpet-like ears twitched and swivelled like antennae.
‘This is a white rhino. He cannot see very well, but his hearing is good,’ Duncan explained.
The massive prehistoric beast seemed placid enough to Tom, almost like a giant horned cow. ‘Are they dangerous?’
‘Like most animals, only if you by surprise get too close to them. Sometimes when we walk I will clap my hands, to make a noise to let him know that we are near. We don’t like them getting a surprise. The other ones, the black rhino, are more dangerous. They are aggressive and will sometimes charge if they are having a bad day.’
Tom stifled a laugh.
Eventually, the rhinoceros ambled away further into the thorn thickets, its hide impervious to the scratches, and Duncan started the Land Cruiser. The sun was accelerating towards the horizon and getting redder by the second as it entered the band of dust that seemed to hover above the drying bushveld. Duncan pulled off the dirt track onto a grassy clearing, overlooking a stretch of river.
‘Sundowners,’ Sannie announced. ‘My favourite time of the day.’
Duncan slid a trestle table from brackets at the rear of the Land Cruiser, politely declining Tom’s offer of help. He opened the tailgate and slid out a cool box and a hamper with glasses, plates of snacks and, to Tom’s surprise, a white tablecloth.
Sannie asked for a gin and tonic and Tom decided that the working day had come to an end. He took a can of Castle Lager from the ice. It opened with a satisfying pop. ‘The sounds of the African night,’ Sannie said as she sipped her G and T.
Duncan opened a can of Coke and the three of them stood in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the sun slide behind the darkening bush. Birds cried and frogs began their evening chorus. Somewhere down in the river hippos honked in unison. Then came a noise that Tom struggled to identify. It sounded like a very loud, very deep wheezing. Ugh… ugh… ugh.
‘ Ngala,’ Duncan said.
‘Lion?’
‘You’re right,’ Sannie said. ‘Most people expect a big roar, like the MGM lion in the movies, but it’s more mournful; softer, even — unless, of course, they’re right outside your tent, then it’s bloody terrifying!’
‘You get lions around your tent here, in Kruger, when you camp?’ Tom asked.
‘No. Here it’s all electric fences. We went camping in Zimbabwe a few times, before it got bad up there, and in some of their parks there are no fences around the camps. We had lions walking through the camp ground. I nearly wet myself.’
‘Just you and the kids? That’s very brave.’
‘No. Me, my husband and the kids.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Sannie,’ Tom said.
She shrugged. ‘It’s funny, but it’s at times like this, when everything is so nice and peaceful and calm, that I miss him the most. I can deal with problems at work, and the rubbish from the kids when they play up. I have to, being a single mom now, but it’s when everything seems to be perfect that I realise I don’t have anyone to share things with. Sorry. I don’t mean to sound so depressing.’
‘No, it’s okay. I was just thinking the same thing. How much Alex would have liked it here. We’d talked about going on a safari holiday for years.’ He realised how much harder the grieving process must be for Sannie, having to
