Captivity (First 8 Chapters) (4) On a personal note, I welcome the potentially early commencement of our professional relations. Best wishes Rosebud P.Hynde Veterinary Nurse Brentwood Park and Gardens Chapter 5 Margarita’s head was hyper-complex neurological labyrinth of information processing, storage and retrieval paraphernalia. Her sensual world was vigorously lush, abounding in stimuli. She could hear remote insects in the air, trees and grass. She heard birds take to the air and come down to earth. She would hear fruit fall from branches, distant bees, the yawning of lions awakening and the yawning of lions drifting off to sleep. She could hear the molerats volcano and unfledged hornbills incarcerated in Mopane trees. The scrub was a dense conurbation of biota, whose scent trails were as obvious to her as the streaks of distant aircraft across the sky were to the Kxoe, but significantly less mystifying. With her nose she could predict the future are read the past. She could smell rain which would not fall for days. She knew how many hyenas had passed that way, how long ago, their ages and sex; she knew if they had stopped to scratch at fleas, or tics, or eczema or to rest the cubs; she knew if they were hungry, angry, boisterous, libidinous or merely passing through. She could smell the panic of the hunted and the intense excitement of the hunters, and such were her predictive powers that she should, in theory, be long gone before any predator came over the horizon. Whenever the world took her by the nose or a significant sound emerged from the seething static, she brought the full power of her magnificent apparatus to bear upon it, swivelling her enormous head to bring her nostrils into line, rolling her eyeballs and rotating her ears. Her visual sense was nowhere near as acute as her ears and nose, but was highly refined to pick out anomalies: strange patterns, unexpected movements, light twinkling on an wet muzzle or nose, eyelids fluttering, or the unique flickering of the tips of the grass when a buffalo fly bit into a lion’s haunch and the muscles briefly twitched. This seething hive of information was filtered and processed. Background noise was eliminated, data smoothed, variations from the norms sorted in order of significance and the world of the sable antelope became exactly that, a world dominated by other sable antelope. One pair of eyes, ears, nostrils - good; many pairs - better. Ears were oversized, not just to capture the tiniest fragment of sound, but to signal to other sable that something interesting was happening. The distinctive white patches on the face and the preposterous horns allowed for clear indications of direction to be sent over the maximum distance. If a member of the herd raised her head and looked north, everyone looked north. Neighbourhood watch, par excellence. So to drift away from the herd was bad news. To loose yourself in nibbling, cud-chewing oblivion for even a few minutes could be fatal. If you paid attention, you stayed alive; if you stayed alive, you bred; if you bred because you paid attention, your offspring would probably pay attention too. Pay attention or die. Head down, Margarita nibbled into the middle of a patch of black-footed grass. An eddy of breeze rippled through the leaves and brought something sharp and unfamiliar briefly to her nose. She raised her head and became completely motionless, except her ears which flick-flacked, listening and signalling, and her rolling, dilated eyes. Bolting was an extremely expensive business. A bolt would use up all the energy she had diligently spent three hours chewing into herself. A bolt would trigger bolting across the whole herd. Giga-calories would combust. A sable who was too easily spooked would needlessly bolt, weaken herself and weaken the herd, but she who hesitated was lost. Waste your valuable energy bolting and you would have less to breed with; pause and you were toast, or some other breakfast foodstuff. A tiny movement, an unnatural click, and a massive jolt of adrenalin, oxygen and cortisol flooded her system, sending hundreds of muscles into rapid contraction and relaxation cycles, firing her straight up in the air and stretching her supple frame back towards the comparative safety of numbers in the herd. From the corner of one eye she saw a tide of great curved horns break from the grass all around and crash towards the dense scrub that lay upwind. From the corner of the other eye she saw a tiny blue bird flying impossibly fast towards her and felt a stinging blow on her shoulder like nothing she had felt before. As she took to the air in her second bound for survival the space around her became oppressive and viscous; her legs were suddenly rubber and her visual world was blurred, acutely bright and very dark. Her ears filled with a swarm of intolerably noisome, vibrant bees and as her hooves hit the ground, her legs collapsed and she slumped into the dirt. She contrived to raise her head for just a second and released a low ululation such as she had never even heard before, let alone produced. Tongue lolling, eyes pulsating randomly, she slumped into the dust. * * * * * Roz was a new woman. Like the surgery, she had been spring cleaned, or deep-cleaned as Peter called it. She felt as if she had spent twenty years whacking herself with a carpet beater only be suddenly run over by a sparkling new Dyson. “And this,” said Peter, “is the surgery? Where you perform operations on animals to make them better if they are sick?” “Yes,” she said hesitatingly. “You saw it when you were here at the interviews.” “Yes, I suppose I must have done. It didn’t look quite so… antediluvian then. Do the sick little animals ever get better in here, or just sicker?” “George was good vet.” “What in hell is this stuff?” Igglesden waved a huge pair of shiny brass callipers at her. “Did they have animals in the Spanish Inquisition? I thought it was just for Jews and apostates.” He took a dusty jar from a shelf far too high for Roz to have ever reached. “Sodium Bario-chlorate-3” he read and raised his eyebrows. “Interesting stuff. Do you snort it or rub it on your gums?” “I’m sorry. George was quite set in his ways, not much of a one for ‘innovation’, but a very good vet, despite some rather curious idiosyncrasies. We’ve been in dire need of a new broom for some time.” Igglseden took an enormous stirrup pump, also brass, from an umbrella stand in the corner. “Should we ask Sir Miles for a skip, or set up our own shop on ebay? Where is the computer, by the way?” “Um… the computer is in my house.” “What is it doing there?” “That’s where it lives. George…” “George didn’t use a computer?” “Um…” “Where are all the records and case notes?” “Mainly, really, they are on the computer at my house, but…” Roz nodded towards the door at the other end of the room. “George’s office?” Roz nodded. “I’m not going to like it in there, am I?” Roz bit her lip and shook her head. “Antediluvian?” “Jurrasic,” said Roz, failing to contort the smile that broke across the bottom of her face into a semi-serious grimace. Igglesden crossed the room in two strides. Like a crane, thought Roz, an Icabod Crane. He grabbed the handle and pulled the door towards him with what would have been some considerable flourish, but all that happened was the wood-look Formica covered partition rattled and the wall flexed slightly. “Push,” said Roz. “I know that… now!’ he sniggered as he turned to handle and gently pushed. “This,” he was slightly speechless, “this… is not an office. This is a garden shed. Did he sit in here listening to the cricket on long wave? Is that fly-tying gear?” His eye fell upon a box of Kleenex Man-Size on the desk. “Is the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet full of Reader’s Wives? What the hell is that smell?” “Ah yes. That reminds me.” Roz generated a plastimation-style toothy grin. “Would you like a dog?” “Would I like a dog?” “Yes. We have a spare dog. Poppy.” “George’s dog? Does Poppy stink like his office?” “Not really. Well, not now. She’s been with me for the last week, but she’s a black lab, three years old. You know how they like to roll…” “Why don’t you keep her?” “It’s not really practicable. I always have at least two or three kids staying with me and a big boisterous, drooling monster like Poppy doesn’t really fit in.” “Whose kids?” “Well, mine of course… Ah… yes… You see I do almost all of Brentwood’s fostering and it just doesn’t work, having a lolloping great lab slobbering everywhere. Someone will take her, but I just thought…” “Well, give me a few days to settle in. I haven’t even found a place to live yet.” Igglseden had arrived only the previous day, accompanied by Frank Littel, Sir Miles’ grandson, who had arrived at Heathrow a few hours before him, on a flight from Berlin. He was staying in one of the many guest suites at The House. Sir Miles, Roz and he had had supper the evening before, while Frank slept off the jet-lag acquired on his two hour flight. Sir Miles had presented the pair of them to the staff at a special breakfast that morning. At supper Roz had simply been unable to contain her… Her what? Excitement? Peter had a manner which was on one hand boyish and demure, but on the other hand rakish and daring. He smiled and ate almost delicately. He was quite the model of a modern major, Roz thought, though he had only been a captain. He was dashing and witty with Sir Miles and deferential to Roz. Home alone on her sofa after supper, all the kids fed and bedded down, Roz was acutely aware of how different her life was about to become and tingled in anticipation. “Plan of action. Everything goes. Everything. Every drug, medicine, brass doo-dah, enema pump, shrunken head, every copy of the telegraph, every stinking dog’s bed, all the porn mags (if there are any), the mashey-niblick in the corner, and the bloody elephants foot.” He waved his hand towards the umbrella stand. “I want that partition down, if the files are not in your computer, put them there. If they don’t seem relevant, chuck them away. There,” he waved at the operating trolley in the middle of the room, “there, on that trolley, you can put anything which you really, really think is worth keeping. No more than what will comfortably fit on that trolley. OK?” “Um… Ok…” It dawned on Roz that she was being instructed to do all this. “Contact DEFRA, because we have a lot of controlled substances to be gotten rid of. And I have no idea and don’t care how you dispose of huge quantities of rubbish around here. My advice is to hire a skip, but do whatever you think is right. If you, or anyone else wants anything that does not belong in twenty first century veterinary medicine, then you are more than welcome to help yourself. Hold a boot sale if you wish.” Igglesden threw open the main door and a brisk breeze swept through the room. “I am going to talk to Sir Miles and his wallet. You have the con, Nurse Hynde; let’s do some good.” Instead, Roz did a little more tingling. * * * * * Banrock knew a spoiled rich brat when he saw one, and knew how to treat them. Presumably Sir Miles was well aware that Frank and Banrock would get on like a forest on fire. “You’re gonna be cutting a lot of grass.” Frank raised his eyebrows. “You are not going to be smoking any. Not before work in the morning, and not while you are working. No fly doobies behind the snow leopards.” “Doobies?” said Frank dead-pan. “No fly doobies?” He shrugged. Banrock was disturbingly reminded of his youthful self. Both were dark, swarthy and wiry, arrogant and insolent. Both were stoners, though Banrock no more. But at 18, Banrock was already at work at Cincinnati Zoo, tending to a despondent group of chimps, scratching their miserable days away in an urban concrete Hell. Banrock had never been anything like a hippie, spending his life in work boots or wellies, lumberjack shirts and jeans. Banrock opened the first gate of the enormous tiger paddock. Tigers at Brentwood lived in extended families, sometimes in groups of up to eight. This was in no way semblant of the way tigers lived in the wild, where they were almost completely solitary; fighting or fornicating whenever they met, indulging their taste for infanticide: but it worked. The group from this paddock were holed up in a much smaller compound next door. Frank pushed the wheelbarrow into the cramped space between the first and second gate. Banrock passed him the padlock. “Lock that gate behind you.” Banrock opened the inner gate and stepped into the paddock, Frank followed. “On no account close this gate.” The barrow was empty except for a shovel and a lawn rake. Banrock took a few strides into the paddock and stopped. He stooped, picked up a small piece of bone and tossed it into the barrow. Frank was at the stage in his zoo-keeping career (his first day) when he was hyper-nervous and closely observed everything the intimidating Banrock did. He was also inside a tiger cage, albeit one with no tigers. This somewhat sharpened his apprehensions. He stared at the bone. I was obviously a rib, or part of a rib: white, with strands of hard grey flesh stuck on it. It was about the size of a teaspoon. A couple of strides later Banrock picked up another fragment of bone, a smooth curved shining piece. It could have been a section of human skull as far as Frank was concerned, but when it clattered into the barrow he reckoned in might be a fragment of the ball of a ball-and-socket joint, maybe some enormous knee or a gigantic hip. It was about the size of a jam jar lid. By the time they had crossed about 10 metres of the paddock they had four or five fragments of bones; the teaspoon, the jam jar lid, a baby’s fist, a television remote control, a piece of cake… Banrock whipped the shovel and rake from the barrow and scratched around the long grass before dumping a pile of dry tiger dung into the front of the barrow. “Try to keep the poop and the bones separate. Makes things a lot easier when you empty the barrow. Bones in the skip behind the butchery shed, shit in the shit heap.” Banrock gesticulated vaguely towards a small copse in the distance. “You’ll find them easy enough.” They continued across the paddock till they reached the fence that separated the holding pen from the main paddock. The tigers were lolling about in the sun. As they approached, Banrock started making an odd noise. He breathed out sharply between loose lips, repeating an abrupt “F-f-f-f-r-r-r-r-p”, like a child who can’t blow a raspberry. A couple of tigers got up and trotted over to the fence, making the same sound. Banrock met the tigers at the fence and they began a deep mewing, groaning exchange. The tigers rubbed themselves on the wire. Through the mesh Banrock scratched them on their cheeks and shoulders, mewing and ejaculating more failed raspberries. A third, much larger beast came to the fence and pushed the others out of the way. Banrock and the bigger tiger fell into a kind of ecstasy of explosive consonants and modulated diphthongs. “Come and meet Tyblat.” As Frank approached the fence, Tybalt pressed his back against it and slumped to the ground with Banrock scratching his ears. “Learn these noises. Practice them. These sounds will make you friends and may save your life some day.” Frank squatted down beside Banrock. “F-f-f-f-f.” “Let your lips go slack. Blow harder.” Frank tried again and this time made more of a farting sound. Banrock demonstrated again and Frank had it. As he made the sound again and again, the first two tigers, clearly youngsters but not exactly cubs, came over to the fence and investigated him. “New friends,” said Banrock. One of them rubbed its head on the fence. Frank tentatively pushed his fingers through the links and scratched its ear, before joining in with the mewing. Frank became to totally absorbed in the cats and it was some minutes before he directed his attention to the now silent Banrock. Gnome-like, Banrock was cross-legged on the grass. Frank didn’t know it, but the Banrock smile which beamed out at him was as rare a beast as any that ever roamed Brentwood. He nodded his head slowly. “You might just do OK, you know, you might just… mate.” Then he jumped up. “The shit won’t shovel itself,” a sullen mask of Banrock ordinaire overtaking his face once again. He took the wheelbarrow and began squeaking back towards the gate with Frank strolling beside him. After a few paces Banrock stopped and stood silently. Frank stood beside him, also silently. Interminable seconds limped past before Banrock grunted and nodded his head at Frank’s feet. Frank looked down at the enormous bone barely visible in the grass. Banrock rolled his eyes towards the barrow and Frank got the message. The bone he had missed was straight out of the Flintstones: it seemed almost a metre long, it was slippery and the flesh that adhered to it was still red and blue. Frank had to use both hands. It would have toppled the barrow had Banrock not been there to steady it. Step by step, they collected turds and bones all the way back to gate. Banrock removed the key to the external padlock from his key ring and gave it to Frank. “The outside gate stays locked at all times. Check?” “Check.” “The internal gate is never closed while you are in the paddock. Check?” “Check.” “I’ll be back to see what you’ve done at lunchtime.” “OK.” “Any questions?” “Nope.” “Welcome to your birthright, Francis Littel, of Binalong Bay. Shovel shit and lock the gate behind me. No fly doobies.” Chapter6 The two men stared at each other across the beaten laterite floor of the hut. Trekkers across this part of the Sperrgebiet were mustered into groups of at least four before setting out for a gruelling two week march across the Succulent Karoo. The land, owned by the Namibia Diamond Conglomerate, is an area of outstanding natural beauty and part of one of the greatest national parks in the world. Parties of walkers were encouraged. The Conglomerate were happy to let the world see the pristine state of the wilderness over which it presided. But these trips were not cheap. All parties were accompanied by a guide, two or more armed guards, a cook, and at least four porters. Security was extremely strict. At the end of the trek, you were obliged to remain in a kind quarantine until authorities were satisfied that you had not ingested handfuls of diamonds, which reputedly littered the ground. The area was no longer commercially exploited, but supplies must be protected. This was Igglesden’s second such trek. Last time he had seen nothing that resembled a diamond until the guide had shown him some. But he never saw any on his own. On the previous trip the rest of the party had comprised of a South African couple, amateur and poor wildlife photographers, but serious yompers; a sullen young Russian man with whom Igglesden had shared a tent, without ever sharing a conversation; and a stout asexual Dutch woman, a physics teacher from Utrecht who had become almost a friend, and as unlikely a friend as he had ever had. A few minutes ago, he had been introduced to a party of Spanish birdwatchers, only one of whom spoke even rudimentary English. Igglesden was constantly amazed at how few foreigners actually spoke conversational English. Basil, the guide, had then ushered him into the tin roofed supplies hut to meet his ‘fellow Englishman, Mr Crack’. ‘Mr Crack’ occupied one of two equal and opposite benches which took up the front half of the hut, stitching a strap on his day-pack. Igglesden had opened the door of the hut with his right hand outstretched, pursuant of a shake and “Peter Igglesden, how do you do?” on his lips. But the sight of ‘Mr Crack’ rendered him mute. He remained with his hand stuck out stupidly in front of him, almost as if he held a gun, and circled round the man, keeping him covered with same gun, until he sat or slumped onto the opposing bench. Neither man had spoken but their eyes remained locked together and both jaws hung slightly slack. The moment demanded a great line: both men knew that they should have something profound, or brutal, or desperately witty to say. Both knew not to say, “..I presume.” Igglesden closed his mouth and licked his lips, wetting his dry tongue, fully aware of the possibility of coughing or choking, “Hillary Malbeck-Creek.” Malbeck-Creek raised his eyebrows, slightly. “Piggles.” He nodded slightly, “Plus ça change.” * * * * * Bianca laid claim to her usual table in the corner of the Leg O’Mutton. She never thought of it as hiding, but it was. She wanted to be invisible, or at least undisturbed. The next nearest pub was five miles away, but in the Lego, there were no strangers. Mainly there were zoo staff, or the families of zoo staff, or other estate workers and, at this time in the evening a collection of blow-in lawyerly commuters from Maidstone, Folkestone or Hastings, affecting faux first-name familiarity with everyone. They ordered pints of ‘best’ and called Bex the barmaid ‘luv’. It made them, Bianca supposed, feel like they belonged, like they were part of something, less isolated. The commuters had only begun to arrive in Maybury some five years ago, and had more or less reached their limit. Only three houses in the village, which were not owned by the estate, lacked an Audi in the driveway or a Mercedes in the road outside. Bianca did not like rich people, poor people, other zoo staff, or strangers, or talking about work after hours, or indeed anyone who wanted to chat to her or worse yet, chat her up. So she sat assertively invisible at a small, corner table with a book. A pint was plonked onto Bianca’s table and bottom plunked onto the stool. Bianca looked up from her book, sighed and quickly looked back down. “Is anyone sitting here?” Bianca looked up again. “There is now, I think” she said and returned to her book, quickly flicking over a page and then flicking back because she hadn’t finished reading it. She stared fixedly at the page reading the same line over and over again. “Anything interesting?” Bianca looked up at the man / boy again. She been introduced to Francis “Call-Me-Frank” Littel at breakfast that morning and she had disliked him immediately. Another woman, or most likely a ‘girl’, regarding Call-Me-Frank may well have found herself confronted by the very personification of human perfection, but not Bianca. Bianca just saw a jerk. Bianca was one of those people who almost constantly said, “One of the few things that really bugs me…” In this case one of the few things that really bugged her was dreadlocks, on a white man. She hated it almost to the point of violence. Dreadlocks were, in Bianca’s mind, a hairstyle for black people, which emerged as the result of taking very little care of the hair. They were ‘dirty’. Dreadlocks in a skinny white teenager indicated a fussy, prissy poseur who spent all to much time fiddling with hair so as to affect an air of careless insouciance. Call-Me-Frank had thick black dreds that might have been transplanted straight off Peter Tosh, but were tangled with bits of blue string and had little silver rings and cowry shells interwoven. Bianca had a pleasing vision of an enraged Johnny Depp leaping on Call-Me-Frank as he walked home through the darkened Brentwood and scissoring his filthy locks back to the bone. “Not very interesting, no.” Bianca shivered a little and sipped from her glass of wine. Frank tugged the book from under her hands. One of the few things that really bugged Bianca was dirty fingernails, and stupid little straggly beatnik beards. And Australians. Another thing that really bugged Bianca was people who walked around in shapeless, raggedy clothes they had bought in India or Thailand, and leather thongs around the neck and wrists, and cheap strings of beads. Bianca was greatly incommoded by people who said “man”. One of the few things that perturbed her was lithe young men with deep-set dark eyes who sprouted three days worth of stubble in half an hour; and ankle jewellery. She hated ankle jewellery. “Three Singles to Adventure? What’s that about then, man?” “The Pantanal. It’s a classic.” Frank flicked through the paperback pausing to read a sentence here and there, smirking and raising his eyebrows. “Pretty racey stuff,” he smirked as he fanned himself with the book. “Not exactly your Dan Brown, is it?” Bianca reached across the table and plucked the book from Frank’s dirty fingers. “Thanks. Now if you don’t mind… Are you trying to say you have never heard of Gerald Durrell?” “Sorry, no. Should I have done?” Frank peered into his pint. Bianca couldn’t concentrate on anything. Miles of excruciating silence stretched between them. Bianca stared fixedly at page 48 of her book without seeing any of the words. “Ever been to Brazil, then?” Frank pronounced it ‘Brazzeel’. “No.” Bianca looked Frank straight in the eye and looked pointedly back at her Durrell. “You should go. It’s the coolest place in the world. ” Bianca turned the book over and laid it face down on the table. “And what do you mean by ‘cool’?” “Dunno, mate. Anything fun. I take it as it comes.” Bianca had very little idea of what Brazil was actually like, but in her imagination was a semi-paradise, consisting of vast tracts of lush, unspoiled wilderness teeming in biota, surrounded to a giant urban sprawl populated by footballers and gorgeous women who went naked apart from spangles and feathers. In Brazil, many evil capitalist enslaved the peaceful local forest residents and set them to clearing football pitches from the jungle. Over three hundred football pitches a day, she had read. “It’s cheap as hell. Gorgeous women. The best music in the world. Fruit falls from the trees. Gorillas in the mist.”
Copyright © 2009 Jonathan Shearer |