The Elkingtons’ house had leaded-glass windows and a pretty veranda that backed onto absolute wilderness, a thousand miles or more of untamed Africa. There was a feeling, as you sat and ate your nice sandwich or had your tea, that you were on the slowly tipping edge of nothingness and might fall forward at any moment, and that if you did, it was possible that nothing would know you’d ever been there at all.
Jim Elkington was round and red faced and even tempered. His wife wore a straw boater and white blouses she kept crisp and civilized looking, somehow, even with a rawhide whip tucked into her belt. The whip was for Paddy, who roamed about the property as if he owned it. In the clearest sort of way, he did. Who would challenge him, after all? He’d been like a puppy once, thick pawed, wrestling Jim on the lawn, but now he was full grown, his ruff of mane black tipped and glossy. The whip was only a prop.
The last time I had seen Paddy, Jim Elkington had fed him a string of skinned rabbits on a pike as we watched. The lion rested flat with his paws crossed, full shouldered and rust coloured with black lips and jowls. He had enormous golden eyes and seemed aware of the picture he made as he let the dainties come to him. There was a wrinkled place above his perfectly square nose, which made him look puzzled or even a little amused by us.
As we settled our horses, I didn’t see Paddy, but I could hear him off somewhere, maybe miles away, roaring. It was a tortured sound and also a little mournful, stiffening the fine hairs on the back of my neck. “He sounds lonely,” I said.
“Rot,” my father said. “More like a howling banshee.”
“I don’t hear it any more,” Mrs. Elkington said, and then led us to her tea: small, nice-smelling ginger cakes, dried fruit, potato dumplings in crisped skins that were eaten with your fingers, and good China tea in a pot. Jim had made a pitcher of cocktails with rye whisky and crushed lemons. He stirred the pitcher with a glass rod, rare ice tinkling like crystal teardrops.
The veranda was airless that day, and the conversation stultifying. I sighed and picked at a second ginger cake until my father finally gave me a look and a nod—Go on, then—as he and Jim rose to go towards the stables. Mrs. Elkington tried to ply me with a dice game, but I made off as quickly as I could, flinging my shoes and stockings into the grass and hurrying across the long yard.
I went out into the open country running fast, just to feel myself do it. Their land was much like ours, with dry grasses, dusty green and gold, and the rolling plain studded with thorn and flame trees or sometimes a single fat baobab. Away in the distance I could see the cloud-softened crags of Mount Kenya and thought of how wonderful it would be to run there, a hundred miles away. Of how proud my father would be when I returned, and how Kibii would be sick with jealousy.
Ahead of me there was a low hill with gooseberry bushes on top. I made a beeline for them, only half noticing a place in the grass where something large had slept recently, crushing the stems all around into a curved pressed-down mould. I had my eyes on the hill and didn’t think of anything else or know that I was being watched as I ran, stalked from behind like a young gazelle or kongoni.
I picked up speed, scrambling over the rise, and that’s when I felt a force of air push at me, hot and meaty. The blow was like a steel pipe aimed at the muscles of my back. I went down hard, face-first in the grass, my arms coming up instinctively to protect myself.
I didn’t know how long Paddy had been watching me. He’d smelled me first—possibly before I’d left the veranda. Maybe he’d only been curious about my girl-smell, or maybe he’d started hunting me then. It didn’t really matter, because he had already overpowered me.
Paddy’s jaw closed on my thigh above the knee. I felt his dagger teeth and his wet tongue. The strangely cool feel of his mouth. My head swam as I smelled my own blood, and then he released me to bellow. It was everything I’d heard from the veranda and more—a vibrating black cave of noise that swallowed the earth and sky and swallowed me, too.
I closed my eyes and tried to scream, but only released a puff of air. I felt Paddy’s mouth again and knew I had no chance at all. He would eat me here or drag me off to a glade or valley only he knew of, a place from which I’d never return. The last thought I remember having was This is how it feels, then. This is what it means to be eaten by a lion.
When I came back to myself, Bishon Singh was carrying me in his arms, his face bent over mine. I didn’t want to ask about Paddy and where he’d gone, or to know how hurt I was. Blood dripped from a long gash along my leg onto Bishon Singh’s white cotton tunic.