skinning-shed.
'We can continue our meeting after breakfast,' Garry suggested over coffee.
'And I'll renew the baits this morning.' Sean came in. 'Matatu says the leopard was never alarmed or spooked. We can try again tonight. This time I'll hunt with you, signora. It takes the touch of the master.' Instead of accepting the suggestions immediately, Elsa glanced across at Shasa and then lowered her eyes demurely to her coffee-cup.
'Well, actually,' Shasa began, 'to tell the truth, we rather thought, that is, Elsa and 1, rather Signora Pignatelli and 1...' As Shasa floundered for words, all three of his brood stared at him in astonishment. Was this the master of savoir- faire? Was this Mr. Cool himself speaking?
'Your father has promised to show me the Victoria Falls,' Elsa came to his rescue, and Shasa looked relieved and rallied gamely.
'We'll take the Beechcraft,' he agreed briskly. 'Signora Pignatelli has never seen the falls. This seems like a good opportunity.'
The other members of the family recovered from their confusion as rapidly as Shasa had. 'That's a lovely idea,' Isabella enthused. 'It's the most awe- inspiring spectacle, signora. You'll adore it.' 'It's only an hour's flight,' Garry nodded. 'You could have lunch at the Vic Falls Hotel and be back here for tea.' 'And you can still be ready to go into the leopard-hide at four this afternoon,' Sean agreed, and waited expectantly for agreement from his client.
Once again, Elsa glanced at Shasa, and he drew a deep breath. 'Actually, we may stay over at the Vic Falls Hotel for a day or two.' Slowly various degrees of comprehension dawned on the three young faces.
'Quite right. You'll need time,' Isabella recovered first. 'You'll want to walk in the rainforest, perhaps take a raft trip down the gorge below the falls.' 'Bella is right; you'll need three or four days. So many interesting things to do and see.' 'That, Garry old boy, is the understatement of the week,' Sean drawled, and both Garry and Isabella glared at him furiously.
In the cool clean air, not yet sullied by the smoke of the bush fires of the late winter season, the spray cloud of the Victoria Falls was visible at sixty miles distance. It rose two thousand feet into the sky, a silver mountain as brilliant as an alp of snow.
Shasa shed altitude as they approached. Ahead of them the great Zambezi glinted in the sun, broad and tranquil, studded by its islands on which the forests of graceful ivory nut palms stood giraffe-necked.
Then the main gorge opened beneath them and they peered down in wonder as they watched the great river, well over a mile wide, tumble over the sheer edge of the chasm, and fall three hundred and fifty feet in a welter of foaming waters and blown spray. Along the brink of the chasm, black castles of rock split the flow of the river. Over it all towered the immense spray-cloud which was shot through with rainbows of astonishing colour.
Below the falls the entire flood of the river, a staggering thirty-eight thousand cubic feet a second, was trapped between vertical cliffs of rock and charged, raging at this restraint, into the narrow throat of the gorge.
Shasa banked the aircraft into a tight right-hand turn, pointing one wing into the abyss, so that Elsa could gaze down with her view unobstructed.
With each circuit he allowed the Beechcraft to drop lower until they were in danger of being engulfed by the splendid chaos of rock and water. The silver leaping spray blew over the canopy, blinding them for an instant before they burst once more into the sunlight and the rainbows garlanded the sky around them.
Shasa landed at the small private airfield of Sprayview on the outskirts of the village, and taxied to the hard stand. He switched off the engines, and turned to Elsa. The wonder of it was still in her eyes, and her expression was solemn with an almost religious awe.
'Now you have worshipped in the cathedral of Africa,' Shasa told her softly. 'The one place that truly embodies all of the grandeur and mystery and savagery of this continent.'
They were fortunate enough to find the Livingstone Suite at the hotel vacant.
The building was in the style and dimensions of a bygone era. The walls were thick and the rooms immense, but cool and comfortable.
The suite was decorated with prints of the drawings that the old explorer Thomas Baines had made of the falls only a few years after David Livingstone first discovered them. From the windows of their sitting-room they looked across the gorge and the railway bridge that spanned it. The steelwork of the arched bridge seemed delicate as lace, and the entire structure was light and graceful as the wing of an eagle in flight.
They left the suite and wandered down the pathway to the brink of the gorge and walked hand in hand through the rainforest, where the spray fell in an eternal soaking rain and the vegetation was green and luxuriant. The rock trembled beneath their feet, and the air was filled with the thunder of the falling waters. The spray soaked their clothing and their hair, and ran down their faces, and they laughed together with the joy of it.
They followed the rim of the gorge downstream, out of the spray-cloud. The bright sunshine dried their hair and clothing almost as swiftly as the spray had drenched them. They found a rocky perch on the very edge and sat side-by side, dangling their legs over the terrifying chasm while the mad waters churned into green whirlpools far below.
'Look!' Shasa cried, and pointed upwards as a small bird of prey stooped out of the sun and fell on whistling knife-blade wings into the flock of black swifts that swirled along the cliff face below them.
'A Taita falcon,' Shasa exulted. 'One of the rarest birds in Africa.' The falcon struck one of the -swifts in flight, killing it instantly in a burst of feathers. Then, binding to its prey, it fell into the void and disappeared from their view in the gloom far below.
That evening they dined on steaks of crocodile-tail that tasted like lobster, but when they went up to the suite they were suddenly both shy and nervous. Shasa drank a Cognac in the sitting-room. When finally he went through into the bedroom, Elsa was already propped up on the pillows. Her hair was down on the shoulders of her lace nightdress, and it was thick and black and glossy.
Shasa was overcome by a sense of panic. He was no longer young and there had been one or two occasions recently with other women which had shaken his confidence.
She smiled and lifted her arms to him in invitation. He need not have worried. She managed him as no other we ever had. In the morning, when they awoke in each other's arms, the sun was streaming in through the high windows.
She sighed and smiled with a slow and languorous contentment and said: 'My man.' And kissed him.
Their illicit honeymoon drew out from one day to the next. They did things together, silly little things for which for many years Shasa had had neither the time nor the inclination.
They slept late each morning and then spent the rest of it loafing in their swimming-costurnes beside the pool. They read for hours in companionable silence, stretched out in the sunlight. At intervals, they anointed each other with sun-tan oil, making it a fine excuse to touch and examine each other in leisurely detail.
Elsa was lean and smooth and tanned. The condition and tone of her muscle and skin were the rewards for endless hours of aerobics and callisthenics and beauty care. She was obviously proud of her body. Shasa came to share that pride as he compared her to the other semi-naked bodies sunning themselves under the msasa trees on the green lawns.
Only up very close were the stigmata that life and childbirth had left upon her visible. Shasa found even those small blemishes appealing. They emphasized her maturity and bespoke her experience and understanding of life. She was a woman, ripe and complete.
This was made even more apparent when they talked. They talked for hours at a time. These were lazy contented conversations during which they explored each other's mind in the same way they had explored each other's body in the double bed upstairs in the Livingstone Suite.
She told him about herself with an engaging candour. She described Bruno's slow cruel death as the crab of cancer ate him alive, and her own agony as she watched helplessly. She spoke of the loneliness that followed, seven long years of it. She did not have to tell him that she hoped that was now behind her. She merely reached out and touched his hand and it was understood.
She told him of her children: a son, also named Bruno, and three daughters.
Two of the girls were married, the youngest was at university in Milano, and Bruno junior was an MBA from Harvard, now working for Pignatelli Industries in Rome.
'He does not have his father's fire,' she told Shasa frankly. 'I do not think he will ever fill those shoes; they are many sizes too large for him.' She made Shasa think of his own sons. They spoke of the heartaches and disappointments that their children had brought them and of the rare joys that some had bestowed upon them.
They explored together their love of horses and hunting, of music and art and fine things lovingly crafted, of books and music and theatre. Finally they spoke of power and money, and openly admitted their addictions to all these things.
They held nothing back, and at one point Elsa regarded him solemnly. 'It is too early to be absolutely certain, but I think that you and I will be good together.' 'I believe that also,' he replied as gravely, and it was as though they had made a vow and a commitment.
They danced in the balmy African
