lifetime passed, then abruptly the filthy curtains of rain and cloud were stripped aside and we burst into a freak hole in the weather.
There before us, full in our path and washed by watery sunlight, stood a rampart of red stone cliffs. It was only the merest fleeting glimpse of red rock rushing down on us, then Louren had dragged the jet up on its tail and the rock seemed almost to scrape our belly as we slid over the crest and arrowed upwards into the clouds with the force of gravity squashing me down on buckling knees.
No one spoke until we had plunged out into the sunlight high above. Sally softly disengaged her hand from mine as Louren turned in his seat to look at us. I noticed with grim satisfaction that both he and Sally were looking slightly greenish with reaction. They stared at each other for a moment. Then Louren snorted with laughter.
‘Look at Ben’s face!’ he roared and Sally thought that was very funny. When they finished laughing, Sally asked eagerly.
‘Did anyone see the ruins? I just got a glimpse of the hills, but did anyone see the ruins?’
‘The only thing I saw,’ muttered Roger, ‘was my own hairy little ring.’ And I knew how he felt.
The cloud was breaking up by the time we reached Maun. Roger took us in through a gap and put us down sedately, and Peter Larkin was waiting for us.
Peter is one of the very few left. An anachronism, complete with fat cartridges looped to the breast of his bush jacket and his trousers tucked into the tops of mosquito boots. He has a big red beefy face and huge hands, the right index finger scarred by the recoil of heavy rifles. His single level of communication is a gravelly, whisky-raddled shout. He has no feelings and very little intelligence, so consequently never experiences fear. He has lived in Africa all his life and never bothered to learn a native language. He uses the lingua franca of South Africa, the bastard Fanagalo, and emphasizes his points with boot or fist. His knowledge of the animals on which he preys is limited to how to find them and where to aim to bring them down. Yet there is something appealing about him in an elephantine oafish way.
While his gang of hunting boys loaded our gear into the trucks he shouted amiable inanities at Louren and me.
‘Wish I was coming with you. Got this bunch of yanks arriving tomorrow - with a big sack of green dollars. Short notice, you gave me, Mr Sturvesant. But I’m giving you my best boys. Good rains in the south, be plenty of game in the area. Should run into gemsbok this time of year. And jumbo, of course, shouldn’t be surprised if you get a simba or two—’
The coy use of pet names for game animals sickens me, especially when the intention is to blast them with a high-velocity rifle. I went to where Sally was supervising the packing of our gear.
‘It’s after one o’clock already,’ she protested. ‘When do we get cracking?’
‘We’ll probably push through to the top end of the Makarikari Pan tonight. It’s about 200 miles on a fair road. Tomorrow we’ll bash off into the deep bush.’
‘Is Ernest Hemingway coming with us?’ she asked, eyeing Peter Larkin with distaste.
‘No such luck,’ I assured her. I was trying to form some idea of those who were accompanying us. Two drivers, their superior status evident in the white shirts, long grey slacks and shod feet, with paisley-patterned scarves knotted at the throat. One for each of the three-ton trucks. Then there was the cook, carrying a lot of weight from his sampling, skin glossy from good food. Two gnarled and grey-headed gunboys who had jealously taken out Louren’s sporting rifles from the other luggage, had unpacked them from their travelling cases, and were now fondling and caressing them lovingly. These were the elite and took no part in the frenzied scurryings of the camp boys as they packed away our gear. Bamangwatos most of them, I listened briefly to their chattering. The gunboys were Matabele, as was to be expected and the drivers were Shangaans. Good, I would understand every word on this expedition.
‘By the way. Sal,’ I told her quietly, ‘don’t let on that I speak the language.’
‘Why?’ She looked startled.
‘I like to monitor the goings-on and if they know I understand they’ll freeze.’
‘Svengali!’ She pulled a face at me. I don’t think I’d have laughed if anyone else had called me that. It was a bit too close to the bone. We went to shake hands and say goodbye to Roger, the pilot.
‘Don’t frighten the lions,’ Roger told Sally. Clearly she had made another conquest. He climbed into the jet and we stood in a group and watched him taxi out to the end of the runway and then take off and wing away southwards.
‘What are we waiting for?’ asked Louren.
‘What indeed,’ I agreed.
Louren took the wheel of the Land-Rover and I climbed in beside him. Sally was in the back seat with the gunbearers on the bench seats.
‘With you two I feel a damned sight safer on the ground,’ I said.
The road ran through open scrubland and baobab country. Dry and sun-scorched. The Land-Rover lifted a pale bank of drifting dust, and the two trucks followed us at a distance to let it settle.
There were occasional steep, rock-strewn dry river-beds to cross, and at intervals we passed villages of mud and thatched huts where the naked pot-bellied piccaninnies lined the side of the road to wave and sing as though we were royalty. Sally soon ran out of pennies, throwing them to watch the resulting scramble, and clapping her hands with delight. When she started tossing our lunch out of the window I pulled my guitar from its case to distract her.
‘Sing happy, Ben,’ Sally instructed.
‘And bawdy,’ added Louren. I think it was to needle her, or perhaps test her.
‘Yes,’ Sally agreed readily. ‘Make it meaty and happy.’
And I started with the saga of the Wild, Wild Duck, with Sal and Louren shouting the chorus at the end of each verse.
We were children going on a picnic that first day out, and we made a good run of it to the pan. The sun was a big fat ball of fire amongst the tattered streamers of cloud on the horizon when we came out on the edge of the
