My Natural History (16 page)

But not at once. Before doing so, he made a snatch at the impala with those nightmare jaws and ran off with something dangling from them. It was an unborn impala. The impala ewe was pregnant, and the hyena performed this lightning embryectomy to ensure that his evening had not been wasted. And then he too vanished.

Manny was awfully contrite afterwards. He knew the leopard would not come back and claim his own: he knew that the hyena, once we left, would be the one who came back and finished the lot. He knew that an
anthropomorphic
reading of natural events helps no one; after all, he had read a lot of books. He knew that the ecosystem
operates
in a way that works for hyenas and leopards and for that matter, impalas, and it will continue to work without our interference. But the horrible unfairness of the morality play of the bush had overwhelmed him as it
had overwhelmed us all. We came back to the camp with a million contradictions in every mind.

I learned many things from my two months in the bush, not least that two months in the bush is as good a way of dealing with grief as exists anywhere on earth. I also learned, though perhaps I knew already, that wildlife, or indeed any kind of life, is not what you want it to be. Your own vision, your own hopes, are very inadequate
instruments
for understanding what is before you. Life is what it is, and it will carry on whether you agree with its principles or not. The meaning of life is life. Thus the hyena and the leopard and the impalas continued their interwoven lives, while I went back home, saddened and overjoyed.

Manny went on to become the most popular and
successful
guide in the valley. He travelled to England and the United States and elsewhere. He married an Englishwoman, and he now lives with her in Kent, returning to Africa
periodically
to manage his African affairs and get back to the wild. He has an MSc in tourism and conservation and he lectures in ecology, conservation, biodiversity and wildlife management. He and his wife Cheryl also run the High Five Club, a charity which operates poverty alleviation projects in Africa. Jess now manages Flat Dogs Camp in the valley with her husband Ade. Aubrey now works as a guide for another camp. Perry died of an AIDS-related illness. Bob runs Birding With Bob, specialising in avian adventures in Africa. Mchenja Camp still exists, though it
has lost three metres of river frontage because of the relentless action of the Luangwa. It is very much smarter these days; the time of the long-drop has long passed. It is as beautiful as ever, and is run by Norman Carr Safaris.

18. Rabbit

Oryctolagus cuniculus

H
e couldn’t walk, but he could trundle all right. Never a great one for crawling, he got the hang of the
trundler
as soon as he could stand, the trundler being the usual sort of brick-barrow, with a handle that was shoulder high, at least for him. He could lean on that and step out precariously across the carpet. Naturally, there were a few falls – and it’s a nasty thing to fall on – but he was soon more upright than not. And the weather was beginning to get better, and every now and then he would essay a
trundle
about the garden, so of course, our thoughts turned to adventure.

Joe was coming up to one, and was a great adventure in himself. Rum thing, parenthood: you spend all those months worrying about it – and that moment when you go
home with a baby for the first time is the single most
terrifying
thing that ever happens to anybody – but once your bluff has been called, it’s as if it’s always been like that: as if you’d always been three and not two.

Many of my friends declared that having children wouldn’t change their lives. They more or less instantly discovered that you might as well say that death won’t change your life. Everything is changed. I remember the first evening when Cind and I dared to leave Joe in the hands of Cind’s mother for a couple of hours: we went to Pizza Express and talked about Joe. Well, what else was relevant?

He got bigger, as they tend to. He stopped lying about and started rolling. After that, he did marine iguana
impersonations
: holding himself up on two straight arms. Then he stood against chairs and tables, and soon, he began to crawl and then almost instantly, to trundle. So Joe and I went on an adventure, not our last: and this particular adventure became a daily ritual for what seems like an age. It can only have been a few weeks.

We trundled out of the garden, through the back gate that opened onto the little wood, and along the broad path. Then we turned left, on the path that led along the railway track to the station; as I have said, our house was built on the roof of a railway tunnel. We went as far as the place where the view opened out, a considerable distance to trundle, especially for someone who couldn’t actually
walk: a couple of hundred yards. But it was worth doing, because it was a place of enchantment.

We could look down and see wonders. We could see trains; we could see rabbits. The trains went past every few minutes: expresses from King’s Cross going to Yorkshire and Newcastle and Scotland; suburban trains to Stevenage and Cambridge; the local ones that went as far as Welwyn Garden City. We waved to the trains,
identifying
each of the three species as they passed. And we also watched the rabbits.

The path was at the top of the cutting that led to the southern entrance of the tunnel, and the rabbits lived on the slope of the cutting. The precipitous sward was kept short by their constant grazing, and at that time of day, for it was always early evening when we trundled, the rabbits were at their best: grazing contentedly, and going
hoppity-hop
with a nonchalance that suggested they’d never seen a fox in their lives. Behind their fence, on that slope, they were even safe from most dogs. These were rabbits of privilege. They positively flaunted themselves for our pleasure, while the trains rattled and gave out their wails in a minor third. Frseeeeeeeefronnng! That was Molly Bloom’s train whistle, but it’ll do for the cries of trains entering and leaving our tunnel, with the bunnies never cocking an ear nor twitching a hind leg nor flashing a scut.

Was it the trains that gave Joe such delight, or the
bunnies? Or the journey itself? It was all three, of course, and both of us swept up in the extraordinary business of journeys and life and experience: me, and the small me that wasn’t me at all.

Bunnies and birdies and choochoo trains: they’re all part of growing up. The way we first come to terms with our own life is by contemplating other lives. The
realisation
that there are non-human creatures in the world – like us, but not us – is not just a pretty decoration in the child’s book: it is the portal of understanding and the beginning of language. A child may not be able to talk: but ask what a cow says and a sheep says and a doggy says and a cat says, and speech has begun. Moooo! In the Babel of the farmyards and jungles of the nursery we learn speech and we learn about life’s possibilities: with baa and woof and meow and quack our consciousness is formed. Non-human life fascinates: enthrals: non-human life is the great
adventure
of childhood.

We would turn and go back home. Joe, now
righteously
tired from his exertions and from the wildness of the adventure, would sit in the trundler with his knees up round his ears, and I would trundle us back up the railway path through the wood, through the back gate, across the garden and back into the kitchen.

I remember reading a book review in, I think, the
Spectator
, in which the reviewer comes across a passage in a biography or memoir, in which the author or subject says
with vague regret that he had never “seen” his son “being bathed”. The reviewer added that on reading this, he
realised
for the first time that he had never “witnessed that ceremony” himself. It was one of those moments when you feel profoundly thankful that you live in the age that you do: when you can, for once, praise modernity and advancement and change rather than regret the errors of past generations. For a modern father, the idea of “
witnessing
”, still less not witnessing the ceremony, are almost equally unthinkable. A modern father conducts the
ceremony
: plays splashing games, persecutes with the Demon Boy Squirter, sinks the ducks and the boats, and does the stuff afterwards with towels and nappies and sleep-suits. It is required behaviour for us all and everyone involved – mother, father, child – is the richer because of it.

I don’t want to overstate my claims for hands-on parenting, not least because Cind will read these words at some stage. But I did my bit, or some of it. So on some nights I would put Joe to bed and read him a story. And yes, it generally had animals in it, not because I had chosen it but because he had.

David Attenborough is often asked how he got his love of animals. His response is to ask: “How did you ever lose yours?” Every child loves and is fascinated by animals. I did, I was. The difference is that many people lose that fascination: I can speak here with immense authority, because I did myself. I was lucky: it was there under the
surface all along, bubbling away, crying out for release.

In teenage years we seek symbols and badges of
maturity
: clothes, haircuts, records, cigarettes, beers. We reject things that might make us seem immature: public displays of parental affection, religion, the things we liked when we were younger. One of the things we reject is the wild world: God forbid that anyone should think us soppy about furry animals. Oddly, we don’t reject childhood games. Football, a child’s game frequently loved by
children
, seamlessly becomes a passion in youth and maturity. But the wild world – not childish at all – is regarded as a childish thing and to be put aside as quickly as possible.

Picasso said that it took him four years to paint like Raphael and a lifetime to paint like a child. My loss of the wild world was one of the great errors of my life: the slow regaining of that love and the beginning of an
understanding
– the realisation that this is not a childish thing at all – has been one of the great joys of my life. All the same, I don’t think it is true that to find something you must first lose it. Every child finds the wild world, at least by means of the imagination. I don’t think that losing it makes you understand its value still more, either: I know many
people
, starting with Attenborough, whose love has never wavered, still less weakened.

I didn’t want Joe to lose it either. But what can a parent do? You want so many things for a child. I wanted Joe to become a kind of super-me: perhaps a great ethologist and
writer, the Konrad Lorenz of the new millennium. But one of the wonders of those very first few months is the
realisation
that you have a complete personality already there: that everything that happens is consistent with what
happened
before. This understanding comes to a parent long before crawling and walking is an option. I’d find it hard to say what that personality was – hard enough to find the right words even for a fully made personality – but it’s one of the things that strikes every parent with wonder and yet, at the same time, is quite blindingly obvious.

It is a universal experience of parenthood: there is a part of you that wants to make a mark, to shape and forge and mould, but you realise almost from the beginning that you can do nothing of the kind. Part of me wanted, and wants to make sure that Joe is long-haired, word-drunk, with addictive reading habits, a great naturalist, finding when the time is ripe a taste for cold beer and malt whisky, heterosexual, monogamous, a person who loves to discuss wildlife and sport and
Ulysses
, a horseman, a person with a taste for abstract ideas, and first and most importantly, a writer. But Joe isn’t going to turn into a super-me, and never looked like doing so. All a parent can do is open doors and be there with any kind of assistance and support and encouragement that may be necessary: or, to be brief and economical with my words, to be utterly and brutally frank, offer love, uncritical and unconditional. I had failed to be an international lawyer: Joe is not going to be any of
the things that I might have planned for him. That is
parenthood
almost from the beginning: it means that you might as well stop making plans. This third person is not you. It is not even half you, as an elementary reading of genetics would suggest. He is completely and hermetically himself: he may have half his genes from each of his
parents
, but the mixture is unique, and the way he develops and comes to understand the world is beyond all control.

Parenthood is not an abandonment of responsibility: it is the exact opposite. But it is not something you get on your own terms. You have responsibility without power. You can oppress and bully and push, as some parents do, but you can’t create a personality because it’s already there. Perhaps you can destroy one: but that’s not
something
many of us want to investigate.

We trundled up and down that path as spring arrived, and I told Joe about the birds that sang and the plants that flowered. And soon Joe no longer needed the trundler to stay upright, but he took it anyway, for the security and for the love of ritual and for the pleasure of the ride home. We would identify the three species of train, and watch the rabbits at their evening graze, great fat contented things, living within touching distance of the crazy and
destructive
world that humans have created, and yet somehow immune from it: safe in a land of plenty, a fence to keep out danger, and no ambition but to stay in it for ever. All I wanted was to create a country like that for my son: but
that, like the son himself, was beyond my control. We turned for home: Joe in the brick-bed of the trundler, knees up round his ears, and me bent in half as I pushed him back up the hill.