Jane (15 page)

“Let me at it,” I said.

Disaster, for the moment, had been averted.

Later that night, however, I had found it impossible to fall asleep, furious at my weakness and still harboring apprehensions about our team. I would simply have to live with it all and hope for the best. But I would never, as Cecily had advised, turn my back on Ral Conrath again.

Now, late in the afternoon, I’d taken a seat on the veranda and guests were beginning to arrive for Cecily’s farewell dinner. It would end early so everyone could turn in by nine. We’d be up well before dawn. The steamer was already loaded with our supplies, but Ral Conrath was insistent on a final muster for his team—the carriers, rowers, laborers, cooks. We would leave the Gabon River estuary at sunrise.

D’Arnot was the first to come. He wore a small bandage over his injury, and about his head was a cloud of misery that broke my heart to see. But I was wary of the Frenchman since I had seen him with Mr. Conrath in the company of the Belgians. He greeted me warmly, and despite what I perceived as his questionable motives, I returned the greeting with matched cordiality.

A lanky older gentleman in a suit of pale linen so well-worn it failed to wrinkle even in the humid heat of late afternoon came striding up the flowered path. When he tipped his straw hat to me and introduced himself as Mr. Batty, I recognized his northern English accent. His face, while still handsome, was heavily lined about the mouth and forehead, with deep crinkles at the sides of his eyes. This was a man, I was sure, who had spent the better part of his seventy-odd years outdoors, and I guessed from the languid ease in his long joints that it was the tropics in which he had made his home—one of Captain Kelly’s Old Coasters, I thought, the kind of man who “went to his death with a joke in his teeth.”

Finally, a native man looking uncomfortable in his European bush suit, wearing on his face the telltale scarification of the Bantu, bowed formally from the waist, introducing himself as Yabi of the Ogowe Mbele tribe. He was to be our guide.

Father and Ral descended from their upstairs bedrooms, and Cecily emerged from the kitchen with a film of perspiration on her upper lip but looking lovely in a rose silk gown and hibiscus laced through her upswept hair. She had been giving the cook last-minute instructions on the lamb roast which, indeed, smelled divine.

We were seated quickly, allowing no time for chitter-chatter, but the underlying buzz of excitement for tomorrow’s departure was as loud and ever-present as a thousand cicadas at sunset. I wondered as we were served a sweet yam soup whether Ral Conrath would, both this evening and in the months to come, control his obnoxiousness and antipathy toward the Negroes of our party, in particular toward Yabi. Outbursts of the kind I’d several times witnessed could be disastrous if proud native bearers, fed up with Ral’s antics, walked away from the safari in the middle of nowhere.

But at least for this night, to my great relief, Mr. Conrath was as cheerful and courtly and intelligent as the day we’d met him at Cambridge. He was in very good form, entertaining us with the most shocking stories in his repertoire. His favorites revolved around the cannibal tribes whose preferred form of ritual sacrifice was, besides the hacking off of heads, burying the still-living victim in the ground up to his neck with only his “bean” sticking out. This would be gnawed upon by sundry creatures, eyes plucked out by the vultures, all, of course, while the poor man was conscious.

Yabi offered that this “head-above-ground” tradition was his tribe’s usual mode of burial, but for the dead, of course. He had nothing but contempt for the cannibal tribes upriver from the Mbele. He had been chosen as our guide because his tribe lived along the tributary of the Ogowe at the point of departure into the uncharted wilds. He explained that though few of his people had ever strayed farther south from where their tributary ended in a mangrove swamp, once, as a boy, Yabi’s father—a great hunter—had taken him in that direction. They had eventually found themselves at the northern edge of a small mountain range with “trees that touched the sky.” They saw no other tribes, though there had always been persistent rumors of the Waziri. Before they could go any farther, the ground had begun to shake violently. This terrified his father, who quickly decided it was a message from the spirits that they were trespassing where they should not be. They returned home.

“What do you know of Sumbula?” Conrath asked Yabi.

The native shook his head.

“The Enduro Escarpment caves?” Father inquired of his guide.

“There were caves where my father and I went. I believe they are the same ones Mr. Conrath explored, coming from another direction.”

Mr. Batty, as I suspected, had stories of his own, not so horrid or bloody as Ral’s but steeped in the mystery and magic of the continent. As he wove his tales, I became quite convinced that Cecily’s “private appointment” had been with this Old Coaster to whom she listened intently with her eyes closed and her pretty mouth bowed into a smile.

The realization made me unaccountably happy.

As the main course was served and the heat of the day began slowly to diminish, Mr. Batty’s entertaining stories grew even more wild and improbable. He spoke of “lost cities of gold,” which, I noticed, had Ral Conrath sitting up straighter in his chair.

Childish fantasies of antediluvian civilizations,
I thought scornfully. It was unnerving that my feelings of mild dislike for the man had so quickly transmuted into revulsion. I was aware that unchecked emotions were many times the root of costly mistakes in behavior. I’d best rein myself in.

I redirected my attention to Mr. Batty, who was still holding forth about the mysteries of the Gabonese lowland jungles.

Then Yabi smiled enigmatically. “There is a tale, one that even our most wise charm doctors cannot be sure is true…” He paused and went inward, as if to retrieve the story hidden in the deepest folds of his mind.

“You must tell us, Yabi,” I insisted.

Father poured himself another glass of wine as if preparing himself for a ripping yarn. I was glad to see him enjoying himself, all the tension of the previous evening gone from his demeanor.

“Many along the Ogowe speak of the ‘Wild Ape-Man of the Forest,’” Yabi said. “He is partly a man … and partly an ape.”

“Now that’s rich,” Ral Conrath said with a derisive laugh. “Which part is which?”

“It is hard to say, because most of those who have seen him have only caught a brief glimpse.”

“That
is
a tall story, Yabi,” Father said. “Perhaps it’s a deformed lowland gorilla, or a native with a particularly hirsute body.”

“No, no. He has skin, and it is
white,
” Yabi said.

“What a load of horseshit!” Ral Conrath had clearly run out of this evening’s supply of gracious good humor.

D’Arnot interjected, the first time he had instigated conversation the whole of the evening. “I have spoken with a man who claims to have seen this creature with his own eyes.”

“He must have been as bad a boozer as you, then,” Conrath said.

D’Arnot appeared unoffended. He went on. “The man was a respected chief of the Okande tribe. He had been hunting far from his lands for a tiny zebra only found many miles south of the Ogowe. He was frightened by the sight of this beast who looked like a man but swung naked through the treetops and could kill a crocodile single-handedly.”

“It
is
preposterous,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with Mr. Conrath for once.”

“Well,” Conrath said, leaning back in his chair with a cynical grin, “if I were ever to lay eyes on this ape-man, I’d get out my nets and take him alive. Then I’d haul his hairy ass back to America and sell him to the Ringling Brothers Circus.”

“Is everyone ready for dessert?” Cecily chirped. She fluttered her eyelids at her old admirer.

“What do we have tonight, Mrs. Fournier?” Mr. Batty asked with sweet familiarity.

“Will you dim the lights, dear?”

He did this and the dining room was bathed in the night’s first shadows.

Suddenly the door to the kitchen flew open and a servant walked out looking as though her head was on fire.

“Bombe Alaska!” Cecily cried, naming the flambéed ice cream confection the cook held in front of her. “From one end of the earth to the other.” She raised her wineglass high. “To the Porter Expedition. May you all find your dreams and desires!”

Everyone toasted heartily, Father muttering, “Hear, hear,” and Ral crying, “I’ll drink to that!”

I was silent, but Cecily’s salute had, like a well-aimed arrow, found its mark. Tomorrow would begin the realization of my dreams and the culmination of my desires.

When I lifted the glass to my lips and sipped the sweet wine, the covenant was sealed.

*   *   *

The men had retired to the veranda for their port and cigars. Cecily and I remained alone at the table, both of us staring at the last remaining slice of the dessert. The meringue was still stiff and stood in a pretty peak at the center, but the vanilla ice cream at the base was nearly melted.

“I think we should share it,” Cecily suggested. I agreed. She cut the meringue in two, placing a piece of it on either of our plates, then drizzled the liquefied ice cream on top. We ate with great pleasure, savoring every bite.

“I hope you don’t mind my saying I find you a rather odd girl. You’re unmarried and clearly a virgin…”

I felt myself beginning to blush.

“… but unless I’m mistaken, passions run deep in you.”

“I suppose so. Passions of a sort. Not the usual kind.”

Cecily eyed me strangely.

“No, no, I don’t tend toward the Sapphic,” I said. “I’d happily chase some fossilized bones halfway around the world, but not a man, the way Isabel Burton did Sir Richard.”

“She meant to have him under any circumstances, didn’t she,” Cecily agreed. “But Jane Digby was even more shameless.”

Cecily chuckled at the thought of Lady Jane Ellenborough, our nobly born countrywoman who had in the last century famously (or rather infamously) taken into her bed three husbands and several lovers, including two kings, a count, and a brigadier general. She’d ended her life as the wife of a nomadic Bedouin sheikh twenty years her junior.

“I thought it a bit undignified the way she knelt before him in his goat-hair tent, washing his feet every night,” I said.

Cecily smiled and sat back in her chair. “Yes, but she also rode out at his side into desert battles, guns blazing, on a pure white charger. And the sheikh adored her till the day she died. Really, there are far worse fates for a woman than that.”

“I have to agree,” I said, thinking just then of the Mr. Cartwrights of the world.

“So you haven’t any interest in love?” Cecily said, taking the flower from behind her ear and slowly inhaling the fragrance.

The question took me aback. No one had ever thought to ask such a thing before.

“If I could find a man as wonderful as my father, perhaps then…” I felt suddenly shy. “You’ve known a lot of men, Cecily. Did you ever find one you couldn’t live without?”

My hostess grinned wickedly. “I do wish I’d met Mr. Batty a bit earlier on.”

“Cecily, what is it like to live so long in Africa?”

She fell silent, her eyes growing soft and unfocused, as though she was both remembering the past and seeing into tomorrow. Then she reached across the table and took my hand in hers.

“You do not live in Africa, my dear,” Cecily replied with equal measures of tenderness and passion. “Africa lives in
you.
”

I felt tears spring suddenly to my eyes and warmth spreading from the center of my chest, for this was the very core of a truth I had known from the moment of my first footfall on the continent. I had never put much stock in notions such as fate or luck or destiny. But there was something about Africa, something calling to me now. It had always called me.
Was it too outlandish to believe it might be my future? My home?

When I gazed again at the twinkling eyes and contented expression of Cecily Fournier enjoying the last bite of her bombe Alaska, it suddenly and forcefully occurred to me that it could.

And with that, I knew my life would never be the same again.

The Great River

It had begun to go really wrong the moment we’d disembarked from
La Belle Fille
onto the banks of the Ogowe. Prior to that moment, Ral Conrath had reverted to another period of admirable behavior. Once again he had provided excellent accommodations on the clean, perfectly maintained little stern-wheel steamer. Its two passenger cabins and saloon on the upper deck had been large and exquisitely fitted up, its lower deck used for business.

Father and D’Arnot had discovered a friendship of the heart between them and spent many long hours on the deck, deep in quiet conversation. I noticed, too, that D’Arnot drank very little, if at all, and he suffered for it with tremors and sweats of withdrawal. I thought it brave of him and the honorable thing to do before we headed into the jungle. It was, I surmised, done out of growing respect for my father. I saw clear admiration in D’Arnot’s eyes as we ate dinner at the captain’s table every evening.