Captivity (First 8 Chapters) (6)
The barrow contained a great black and white leg of cow. The thigh lay in the barrow while the actual leg and hoof extended out the front like a lance. On top of the thigh was the cow’s head, which had been split in two. Frank could clearly see the brains, bones and tongue on one side, fragments of skull and skin impacted in the pinkish-grey goo. From the other half of her skull, her one visible eye peered off into infinity. Flies arrived immediately and swarmed over the tongue and brain, into her eye. Frank wondered where the flies had been. How did they get there so quickly? What had they been doing before the dead cow turned up? Banrock waved his arms in front of his face. “Freakin’ flies. What the f…” The bovine boy emerged from the tea shed with a mug and a bowl of chips and cheese. “Are you stupid, or just lazy or lazy and stupid?” “Huh?” The boy came to a halt beside the neighbouring table and put down his tea. Banrock was looking pretty angry. “I don’t want to see your frickin’ cow guts while I’m having my break. Where the hell are you taking that stuff?” The bovine boy chewed the cud for a second and said, “Leopards,” making a hitchhiking gesture over his right shoulder indicating to Banrock where the leopards had lived for the last twenty years. “Well take it to the leopards and THEN have your tea.” The boy glanced at his watch. “Oh, OK,” said Banrock, standing up. “Frank.” He unhooked his keys from his belt and tossed them to Frank. “You’ve had your tea, do us all a favour.” Frank caught the keys. “Where do I go?” Banrock pointed off in the opposite direction from that indicated by boy who was methodically cramming fatty carbs with extra fat into his mouth. “See that small gate down there, by the garbage can?” Frank nodded. “Through that gate then just follow the inside path past the small cats, past that big empty cage, go through the trees and just dump it at the back of the leopards shed. You’ll recognize it. Like a little Wendy house with a nasty big spotty cat inside. Grrrrr.” Banrock made a camp gesture, presumably representative of a leopard rending Frank’s flesh. The assembled company tittered. “Which key boss?” “Duh! The key that fits in the padlock, dumb-ass.” More tittering. Frank clipped the keys to his belt and squeaked his way towards the distant gate. At the gate there were about 40 keys on Banrock’s chain which might fit the lock and it took him quite a few minutes to find the right one. As he closed the gate behind him he noticed that all the keepers were gathered round one table. It looked like there was a full scale argument in progress, but he was too far away to hear anything. There was stout log-pole and mesh fence about a metre high to keep the visitors a safe distance from the cages. Then, there was the paved path upon which Frank now perambulated. Then there may be a second safety fence or just the cage or enclosure itself. The enclosures generally had double or single layers of mesh of variable thickness and strengths. He squeaked past the Pallas’s cat cage; nothing to see in there. He squeaked past the fishing cat cage; nothing to see in there either. An obscene cloud of flies now hovered above the meat which was stinking in the sun. Frank squeaked on past the jungle (or swap) cats where there was always something to see: Oedipuss. Oedipuss became blind through a parasitic infection a few years ago, he had been told, and was female despite the name. Constantly prowling around her cage, she knew the exact location of every stick or rock. If you knew she were blind, you could just about tell by observing her behaviour. Beside the laminated sign which told her story, was a wooden collection box for the RNIB. Oedipuss, he was told, had collected more than a thousand pounds since her misfortune, and raised two litters of kittens. He squeaked on to the empty enclosure, a big desolate affair in grey. The substrate was gravel and pebbles, a heap of slatey rocks and a concrete pool occupied in the middle of the space. At the rear was a wooden shed. As Frank squeaked by he became aware of a thunderous rumbling like a distant train coming from the enclosure. He turned his head towards the sound and saw something enormous, two or three times bigger than any tiger he had ever seen, sprinting towards him. The beast splashed into the pool and let out a terrific roar. From a distance of several metres, it launched itself at Frank. Frank in turn launched himself straight up the air, abandoning the wheelbarrow, and hitch-kicked over the fence. There was a sickening, terrifying screech of metal against metal as the tiger collided with the mesh of his cage walls. The walls of the pen bulged far enough for the momentum of the roaring Behemoth to overturn the wheelbarrow. Frank hit the ground running but stumbled on his first step and crashed face first into the short, hard grass of the picnic area. He felt the spray from the tigers fur moisten his back. From the tea shed, the whole keeping staff came running. “Fresh Meat,” someone shouted. Frank lay with his face buried in the grass until a hand grabbed his collar and Moose dragged him to his feet. In fact, Moose lifted him completely off his feet and into the air, still with one hand. Moose inhaled deeply through his nose before dumping him back on the ground. The whole staff of Brentwood seemed to have formed a ring around Frank and many of them now approached him, snorting and sniffing loudly. They pressed their faces close to him, sniffed and grimaced. The bovine boy even fell to his knees and sniffed Frank’s crotch. There was a general atmosphere of disappointment as the staff drifted back to their tea. Frank was left alone with Moose. “What in the name of…?” “Initiation. Rite of passage, bonny lad. You’ll probably be needing a cup of tea after that.” Frank looked into the enclosure which was empty again, save for few inches of jerking, stripy tail protruding from the hut. Banrock had remained at the table throughout, and, as Moose and Frank approached, his radio squawked. “Mr Banrock, if you would be so good as to pick up.” “Sir Miles, what an unexpected pleasure.” Banrock held the walkie-talkie in one hand and pulled Moose’s Akubra towards him with the other. The hat was full of pound coins which Banrock dumped onto the table. “Mr Banrock, I was taking tea by the pool a few minutes ago, when my ears were met by the almost unmistakable sound of Raskolnikov in expectation of prey. I take it by that the initiation is now complete?” “The initiation is, indeed, complete, Sir Miles.” “And what, if you would be so good Mr Banrock, was the SP?” “The starting price, Sir Miles, was 9 -1 , or should I say 18 – 2.” “18 – 2? My, my, my. I had hoped for 19-1!” “So had I, Sir Miles, so had I.” “And what, if you would indulge me a little further Mr Banrock - I understand you are a very busy man – what was the outcome of our little game of chance? Shit or no shit?” Banrock pressed the ‘talk’ button and the whole staff shouted, “NO SHIT!” “Marvellous! The boy truly is a Gordon after all. So, Mr Banrock, you seem to owe me a tenner. Please be so kind as to send the dear boy up to The House with my winnings.” “My pleasure, Sir Miles. Over and out.” Chapter8 “Look at you! Smell you! Is that Opium?” “Poison. And what do you mean ‘look at me?’ Look at you! Exactly what kind of a fool do you think you are making of yourself? You are a child-molester!” “Me? Me? Look at me? What have I done?” Bianca leant over the table and whispered in Roz’s ear. “There’s only one slut at this table!” She drew the word out for as long as possible before spitting out the final ‘t’, then sat back and emitted a sound that could have been giggling. Roz stood up and put her hand on her hips. She dropped her jaw open and held it there. “Bianca Petrescu, you are quite the nastiest little minx ever to be trafficked into Kent. Shiraz?” Roz and Bianca met in the Leg O’ Mutton most Thursday evenings. If they were in the mood they would stay for the quiz which they never won, because neither of them knew anything about TV, sport or celebs. Roz sometimes felt that she was Bianca’s only friend, and the feeling was wholly reciprocated. Bianca had been at Brentwood for almost ten years. She and Roz were just about the only members of staff who were qualified in an academic sense, Roz with a HND from Maidstone College, Bianca with a zoology degree she had taken in Romania and a PhD in primatology from Stanford. It was widely rumoured that Sir Miles had won her in a poker game, and in fact, Bianca herself sometimes told this story. It was of course, complete nonsense. It was true, however, that Bianca had emerged from Sir Miles’s Bentley on foggy day in March. It was also true that she disappeared into Brentwood House on the arm of Sir Miles and had not been seen again for more than two weeks until Roz encountered her wandering through The Cathedral and dragged her back to the cottage for tea and interrogation. Mark was still alive back then, and the three of them had become fast friends. Ten years of gentle prying later, Roz remained in the dark about much of the minutiae of Bianca’s life. What was clear was that Bianca had more in common with many of the apes she was custodian to than with the keepers and visitors to the park. Habituating wild Gorillas to humans in the interests of science was a long, slow and perilous business. With a posse of porters, Bianca and two colleagues from Stanford had been following a troop through the Rwenzoris for over a year when the poachers attacked. The story she told Roz was that she had been alone in the bush attending to what she delicately described as her ‘toilet’ when the attack took place and had been completely overlooked. Roz knew that while Bianca had been spared mutilation, rape and death she had witnessed unthinkable horrors and had remained alone for many days at the scene of the carnage, without medical supplies, clean water or food, a powerless spectator at her fiancé’s protracted, painful, and noisy death. She had spent two weeks trekking back to what passed for civilisation in Rwanda. The civilisation she had eventually found was Sir Miles Gordon’s luxurious camp in the foothills, where champagne flowed, cigars reeked and backgammon was the only game in town. Sir Miles was much predisposed to rescue and had a zoo full of orphans, cripples, pariahs, outcasts and hostages whose freedom he, and principally Banrock, had fought for or bought. Bianca was unique amongst them, not merely in that she was human, but no wolf would kill or die for Banrock. Returning from the bar, Roz had barely sat down when Bianca was at her again. “You’ve been dying your hair,” “What?” “You have. You’ve been dying your hair. Its all… shiny and filled with living, vibrant colour.” “I have not been dying my hair! I have not! How dare you!” Roz had never, ever dyed her hair, not once in her life and she was never going to. In her gawky, lanky youth, she had hated her hair. There was so much of it. It was unmanageable and untameable. If she cut it short it grew back in hectic, frizzy mop. If she let it grow it just seemed to expand. At primary school they called her Crystal Tips. The unfortunate dog of her adolescence had been a Golden Lab called Midge (after an otter, not a mouse) but everyone called him Alistair. Age had softened both the colour and the frizz; she had grown into her hair. Bianca had once given her a book called ‘The Ugly Duckling Syndrome’ and approaching forty she really did feel that she was in her prime. And that her prime was passing her by. “It’s different. You’ve been dying it!” “It’s a henna shampoo!” “That’s dye.” “It’s shampoo.” “The question is, are you really worth it? Is he?” “He, who?” “You know who.” “Voldermort? You are losing it Bianca! I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about!” “Higglety-Pigglety.” “What? Who? Higglety-Pigglety?” “You know exactly who I mean. St Peter. The vet from your wettest dreams. Everyone is calling him Higglety-Pigglety!” “You’re not making any sense, Bianca. I don’t know what you are talking about. Anyway, if anyone has been behaving a bit strangely, it’s been you. Tongues are wagging. Young Frank’s mainly, I shouldn’t wonder.” Bianca reddened and looked almost frightened “What? Who? Me? I would never, never lay one finger on Sir Miles’s grandson!” “You’ve been boozing in here with him every night this week.” “No I haven’t! How do you know?” Roz made a zipping gesture across her lips and rolled her eyes before staring pointedly into the empty grate. “It’s a free country. I am not in Cluj now! I am going the pub whenever I want.” “Of course you do Bianca. No one denies that. For as long as I have known you, you’ve gone to the pub whenever you want to. At half past five, with a bloody book for two glasses of wine, except on a Thursday, if we stay for the quiz.” “So?” “Well you have been here till closing time every night this week.” “Are you spying on me?” “Yes. Of course I am. I have no choice. I live directly across the road. Remember? You’re not exactly quiet going home, and neither is he. Last night you were both singing, in Romanian I guess. Does Frank speak Romanian?” Bianca blushed again. Roz had never seen her blush before. “Frank is my new friend. I do not touch him. It is a nursery song.” “A cradle-snatching song?” “I do not know what you mean. It is a Romanian children’s song. It is very much like your Higglety-Pigglety. At least Frank is not my boss!” “No, but I’m not up to anything with my boss, and you are his boss! Speaking of my boss… well?” “Well, what?” “Well, you know… Well?” “What do I think?” “Well, yes. What do you think? What is being said?” “Nothing much. You probably hear more than me. I never go to the tea-shed and that is where all the gossiping is happening. He is going to breakfast every morning and has become liked by Banrock. Moose hates him in his guts.” “Does he? Moose? Moose doesn’t hate anyone! Why on earth?” “Higglety-Pigglety killed Bambi.” “Oh, that is just ridiculous! Peter didn’t kill Parvati! But he would have done, of course, or I would have done, if he had got her back to the surgery. She was a goner. You can’t have a three-legged four-horned antelope. She would topple under the weight of the numbers!” “Even so. Moose calls him Captain Bambi-Killer. He says that your Peter didn’t have a clue, sending text messages for advice, says Moose. And you know how Moose is like. If that had been George Amis… blah… blah… Upper bloody class bloody twerp.. blah… blah…” “He’s not my Peter…” “Not yet.” “..and I suppose George Amis would have knocked her out with a hammer and stitched her up on the spot with hair plucked from her own scut.” “Yes, more or less this is Moose’s view. But Banrock likes him, as much as Banrock can like a human who is not his child or his wife. Peter has no-nonsense. Clinical and efficient… you can imagine.” “And you Bianca, what do you think?” “Nothing. I haven’t seen him. I’ve had no reason to see him, so I’m happy like Larry with our shiny new vet. It will not last, I think. ” * * * * * Both men were there for the same reason: to be a man alone trudging across a desert. The birdwatchers had different objectives. Igglesden and Malbeck-Creek found themselves on familiar ground. Essentially, they were in solitary confinement, except they were not alone and they were not confined. They had spent more than four years cooped up together, alone, and here in the desert it was no different. Each morning, they were first at breakfast. Igglesden raked the ashes and put the coffee on. Malbeck-Creek found a hidden spot where he would meditate for twenty minutes as the sun came up and burnt off the fog. When the cook rose they munched in silence through the changeless breakfast of pancakes and syrup while the Spaniards frolicked, mumbled and engaged in the high-jinx of Latin urbanites in rural seclusion. Five minutes after they dropped their tin plates into the basin they were off, leaving the birdwatchers to their paraphernalia. Immanuel, the youngest and fittest of the security guards trailing twenty or thirty metres behind in tattered khakis with the ubiquitous battered FN-FAL across his back. As soon as they were out of sight of camp, Igglesden accelerated, until he was a further twenty or thirty metres in front of Malbeck-Creek. The dust was not loosening them up and since leaving Elizabeth Bay conversation had consisted of little more than minimalist syllables: coffee, goodnight, hot, drink, water, let’s go. In the tent, they slept. When they awoke, they made coffee, ate breakfast and marched on. They found the pace (20 miles a day) painfully slow, just as the Spaniards found it punishingly arduous. They had often arrived at their destination by two or three in the afternoon. Immanuel became nervous if either of them went out of sight and so they were restricted to hanging around in camp. Some of the camps were cleared patches of ground with a fireplace and sometimes a latrine; others were collections of abandoned German buildings from the days when diamond collection was still viable. There were no less diamonds than before in the Sperrgebiet, but the rich offshore deposits along the shore meant that Corporation had no reason to peck like chickens across the desert when the could feast like gannets in the tide. The land was as dry and dull as the company. Malbeck-Creek marched with his eyes firmly fixed on the ground in front of him, Igglesden gazed longingly into the horizon. There were birds, for sure, and movements in the periphery of the vision which were sometimes reptiles, sometimes rodents. There was nothing succulent about this part of the Karoo. The three walkers were almost invisible to each other through the shimmering heat haze. Hafmens drifted in and out of focus and did indeed resemble men looming out of the glare. Malbeck-Creek paused for a drink and saw that Igglesden had stopped up ahead and was sitting on a rock, fanning himself with his hat. As Malbeck-Creek approached Igglesden got to his feet. “Camp.” Following the line of Igglesden’s finger Malbeck-Creek picked out three buildings through the gleaming air. The Karoo was dotted with industrial archaeology. Rusting fossils of engineering dinosaurs and pre-cambian clapboard houses drowned in a sea of sand recalled a time when the only reason anyone came here was to get rich. These were functional buildings. One appeared to be a warehouse or an aircraft hanger. “Bowling alley,” said Igglesden. “Dance Hall,” said Malbeck-Creek. The spot where Igglesden had paused was slightly raised. The sky to the left was a deeper blue through the haze and Malbeck-Creek concluded that the sea was just out of sight. Immanuel joined them and the three men shared the kind of moment which was all too common on this trip. Three men, ahead of the pace and the clock, arriving, or nearly arriving, at a place where there was absolutely no reason to be with all the time in the world to do anything and nothing to do. Immanuel gently nudged Malbeck-Creek and pointed into the shimmering valley. He held his hand close to his face and his pointing finger seemed almost like an extensions of his nose. “Gemsbok, sir.” Malbeck-Creek shaded his eyes with his hand but could see nothing. Igglesden raised his binoculars, located the antelope and passed the glasses to Malbeck-Creek. It was the first large animal they had seen on the trek. In theory the guides and guards were to shoot game along the trail, but in practice they were eating out of tins from the food and water dumps along the way. One of the other guards had shot a hare on the first morning but the 7.62mm shell had transformed what may otherwise have been a decent meal for four men into a single dose of hare-smoothy which mostly seeped into the sand. As Immanuel raised his weapon, Malbeck-Creek placed his left hand gently on the handguard and raised the index finger of his right hand to his lips in the universal gesture of silence. The bok was almost invisible, perhaps two hundred metres away, slightly downhill, it’s outline wobbling as if the Namib’s vertical hold was in need of slight tweak. Malbeck-Creek guessed that it would be a good shot if Immanuel even hit the ground at that distance. He kept his eyes fixed on Immanuel’s as he smoothly tugged the rifle from his grasp and passed it to Igglesden. Igglesden frowned and glared at Malbreck-Creek before showing him the change lever as he flicked it from “A” (automatic) to “S” (safety). He positively grimaced on discovery that there was one up the breech already. They had, it transpired, spent the last several days only a stumble or trip away from an ambiance populated by large quantities of ordinance moving randomly amongst them at muzzle velocity. He flicked the change lever to “R” (semi-automatic). The Gemsbok had proceeded a few hazy yards across their vista. The FN-FAL was not a weapon designed for long range accuracy, but it was designed to kill, reputedly democratically, as the right arm of the free world. Igglesden sat calmly back down on the boulder, raised his foot onto the rock and stabilized his elbow on his knee. Malbeck-Creek watched the antelope through the binoculars. The first shot sent up a small cloud of dust and as the buck bolted there were two more shots before he collapsed into the dust. Immanuel let out a whoop and more or less sprinted off towards the carcass before Malbeck-Creek called him back. Sentences exchanged between the two men and Immanuel were generally no longer than two or three words. He may well have been an articulate and intelligent young man, but since their own conversations were seldom more than twenty words a day, neither had been motivated to find out and Immanuel had given no signs of desire to communicate with them. “Oi! Where do you think you’re going?” which had halted him in his tracks. Malbeck-Creek took the rifle from Igglesden and held it out to Immanuel to retrieve. He beckoned Immanuel and dumb-showed that he should closely observe the rifle. With pantomime extravagance of gesture, using his thumb and index finger, he pulled to safety/fire lever to “S”, and looked at Immanuel with wide eyes and his head cocked to the side. When the lever clicked into position Malbeck-Creek nodded his head exaggeratedly and smiled; he flicked the lever to R and shook his head aggressively. He repeated this show several times until Immanuel nodded on “S” and shook on “R” or “A”. He then removed the magazine, and pulled back the charge lever on the left, extracting and ejecting the chambered round before clunking the magazine back into its cradle. He tossed the cartridge up in the air for Immanuel to catch, which he did. Immanuel grinned broadly at this demonstration of his prestidigitation skills, and as he did so, Malbeck-Creek swung the gun, whacking him on the side of the head and knocking him to his knees. Malbeck-Creek bent down and spoke deliberately, directly into Immanuel’s face, “Never, ever, ever try to kill me again. Never. Horrible. Little. Man.” He tossed the gun onto the ground and turned back to Igglseden, looking as pleased with himself as Immanuel had done two minutes before. “Shall we go and see if there any dancing girls in the dance hall, then?” “It’s a bowling alley,” mumbled Igglesden.
Copyright © 2009 Jonathan Shearer |