Listening for Lions (7 page)

“Children must have a bedtime,” Mrs. Bittery was saying.

“Yes, but what is a suitable time?” Burker asked.

Mrs. Bittery approached me and cleared her throat. She was a plump woman whose softness was not unlike the couch pillows. Her face was round with small round
eyes and a little pursed mouth. It was like the faces of people I had made when I first learned to draw. Her hair was braided and wrapped neatly around her head. She wore a long gray dress with a starched white collar and cuffs, and pinned to her waist was a set of keys. “Come along, Miss Valerie,” she said. “I don't know what you have been used to in the jungle, but we keep early hours here.”

She was so solemn that even in my misery I couldn't keep from mischief. “We go to bed early as well, but the roaring of the lions as they pace outside our windows keeps us awake.”

She gave me a suspicious look and sent me off with Ellie.

When at last I was alone, I looked out across the snowy fields. The sky was bright with stars, but they were unfamiliar. The Southern Cross had been snatched from the sky. In all the darkness I could not see one familiar thing.

I
n the morning I was awakened by something so welcome, I leaped out of bed and ran to the window. For a moment I thought I might be back at Tumaini. The sun was coming through the window, the first bit of sun I had seen in England. But it was still England. Ellie appeared to help me with my dressing. I wondered what Mother and Father would have made of having someone hand me shoes and stockings and fasten my dress. When I protested that I could do all that perfectly well, Ellie opened her eyes wider and, looking hurt, said, “I'm sure I'm trying my best, Miss,” so I could only endure her help.

Then I asked, “Have you nothing better to do, Ellie?”

“You was why I was hired in the first place, Miss. If it wasn't for you, I'd be back home mucking out the stable and feeding the chickens. You was heaven-sent, Miss. I'm grateful, I'm sure. Your coming allowed me to better myself.”

I wondered what Ellie would think if she knew feeding the chickens had been one of my jobs at Tumaini. “You lived on a farm then, Ellie?”

“Oh, that would be a fancy name for it, Miss. We had a plow horse and an old cow and the chickens I spoke of, but the bit of land is only big enough to feed us. We couldn't stay at all, but that Mr. Pritchard looks the other way when we can't meet the rent.”

“He owns your farm?”

“Oh, he owns all the land hereabouts. And if you had to have a landlord, you couldn't have a better one. Will that be all, Miss?” She poked the fire into bright flames. “Breakfast will be waiting for you, Miss.”

Burker guided me by slow, measured steps, making a kind of parade of two into the dining room, where a row of silver dishes held enough food to feed a village. “Arthur will assist you, Miss Valerie,” Burker said, and disappeared. There was Arthur standing, red-faced, looking as if he would much rather face the German army. Nervously he lifted the cover of one silver dish after another.

“Who is going to eat all this?” I whispered to him.

He looked about as if he had been instructed not to speak to me and said in a low voice, “What you don't eat goes back to the kitchen, Miss.”

“And in the kitchen?”

He shrugged. “We all have a turn, and what can't be saved goes to the pigs.”

“It's a terrible waste.”

He gave me a sidewise glance. “It is.”

I settled at the place that had been set for me, and as I began to eat my breakfast, Arthur disappeared. I saw that the grandfather had ordered that I should eat in peace, though just then, as I sat alone at the table in the great dining room, Arthur would have been almost welcome.

After breakfast Mrs. Bittery led me to the grandfather's room. “He's waiting for you, Miss Valerie.”

The grandfather was sitting up in bed watching the door. There was color in his cheeks, and his voice, which had been weak the day before, was imperious, truly Masai-like. “I hope you slept well, Valerie, for I have a task for you today if you are willing.”

“Oh, yes,” I said. I thought perhaps I was to sweep the stairs or make the beds, but I should have known better than to think I was to do something useful.

“I want you to be my eyes. It's the last day of February. The spring birds are due any day. I've made a list of three birds, what they look like, and where you might find them. You are to report any sightings back to me.”

He handed me a list in a scrawly handwriting. Words had been crossed off and rewritten and letters retraced as though the grandfather had taken a great deal of time over the list and the writing of it had cost him much effort.

1. Examine the beechwood tree at the entrance to the woods to see if the raven has made its nest there.
   
2. Look for a robin building its nest among the branches of the big oak tree by the fountain.
   
3. Keep an eye out for
   Hylocichla guttata pritchardi.
   

When he saw the bewildered look on my face, he indicated a pile of books of various sizes, some as small as a folded handkerchief and some as large as a sofa pillow.

“The third book on the second pile, my dear. Page twenty-three, I believe. You will find a very good picture of a raven. Let me show you how it differs from a rook. The robin will be on page seventy-two, though this time of year the breast will be more sorrel than orange. Now for the
Hylocichla guttata pritchardi
. The Latin is quite simple.
Hylo
in a word means wood, and this little thrush is to be found near trees.
Gutta
refers to drops, or in this case the spots on the bird's chest. I'm afraid
pritchardi
is the result of my own vanity. When a new bird is found, it is often named after the person who discovers it, but the Royal Bird Society has refused to accept my bird as a new subspecies, and so they will not give it my name. They
insist that I am mistaken in saying that it does not have the white eye ring, but I do not make mistakes where birds are concerned.”

For a moment he looked almost ferocious, and then his voice softened and he said, “Little
Hylocichla guttata pritchardi
has a distinctive song. It sounds something like this….”

Then came such a melodious whistle, I looked about thinking that a bird had flown into the room.

“Now you must try it so that you have it firmly in your head.”

Over and over I copied as best I could the thrush's song.

“Off you go, my dear, and dress warmly. Ellie will find you some Wellingtons for your feet so you can tramp about and not worry about snow and mud.”

Ellie slipped my feet into great rubber boots. Scarves and gloves were applied until I was so wrapped up, I could scarcely move. Still, as soon as I walked out into the cold English day, I found myself shivering again. With no idea where the beech tree might be, I approached a gentleman muttering to himself as he dug up a flower bed.

“You can't tell me the Lord made this clay—it's the work of the devil.” When he noticed me, he said, “You'll be Mr. Pritchard's granddaughter, I suppose. From Africa I hear. That's the bottom of the world and hot. Too hot for proper flowers, no doubt.”

I longed to tell him how my mother had tried for years to grow proper English flowers and could not for the very reason he gave. Instead I could only ask, “Please, Sir, could you tell me where the beech trees are?”

“No need to call me ‘sir'—name's Duggen, diggen Duggen. Ha ha. The beech trees are over there, just where the woods start. Don't wander too far into them woods. I have no time to go looking for young ladies as gets lost.”

I thanked him and headed for the beech trees, great high things with smooth gray trunks like the legs of elephants. A flock of rooks started up from one of the trees, but they hadn't the ravens' chin feathers the grandfather had described. I stood looking up into the bare branches. The wind crept up my sleeves and down my neck. I thought English birds foolish for coming into such cold country. Then I saw it, at first gliding overhead and then settling onto an arrangement of twigs that had been cobbled together and lay untidily on one of the branches. It was surely the raven.

With no help from Mr. Duggen I found the great oak tree by the fountain but no robin's nest. The walking about had warmed me, and the sun had melted the snow, and here and there I saw bits of green poking through the black earth. Though the fields were very different from the African bush, the feeling of space was the same. In all that open country I saw how small I was and how small my problems. I found enough room to begin to let go of my
worries and fears. I would be the grandfather's eyes and ears, but somehow I would find a way to tell the truth as well.

It was nearly noon when Mr. Duggen discovered me listening to the thrush's song. Though I heard the song, I hadn't been able to see the bird. The song was so like the grandfather's imitation that I didn't know whether the bird was an enchanted man or the man was an enchanted bird.

“They've sent me to fetch you for your lunch,” Mr. Duggen said. “They say you'll be frozen from head to toe. I told them fresh air never hurt a soul, but you best go in.”

As soon as I had gulped down my meal of hot soup and a mutton chop, I ran up the stairs and hurried into the grandfather's room to make my report. The moment I opened the door, the words were out of my mouth. “I saw the raven, and it's started a nest, no robin, but I heard the thrush's song, only I couldn't see him.”

“Well done. That is good news. To hear the excitement in your voice is almost as satisfying as being out there myself. Now come and sit next to me and tell me more about your Africa. You will be my living storybook.”

After having to keep my secret for all those weeks on the boat, I longed to say aloud the names of the people and places I loved. “I could tell you about my friend Rachel,” I said.

“And why this Rachel?” the grandfather asked. “Why not stories about yourself?”

“My life wasn't very interesting.”

He gave me a quizzical smile. “Then by all means, let's hear about Rachel.”

“She had an African friend, Kanoro, who taught her about the birds like you are teaching me. He taught her where to see the nightjars just as the sun went down and how to whistle like the mousebird.”

“And can you whistle like a mousebird?” the grandfather asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said, and began to purse my lips, for Kanoro had said he could not tell my whistle from a real mousebird. I stopped myself. Surely the real Valerie would not know how to make that whistle. I flushed. “That is, I think I once heard a mousebird but I don't remember now just what it sounded like.”

The grandfather gave me a long look. “What did Rachel's missionary parents do?” he asked.

Here I thought I was on safe ground, for I was no longer talking about me but only my parents. “They had a hospital for sick Africans. It was too far for the Africans in the bush to go all the way into Nairobi. It was a mission hospital, but because of the war there was no minister available, so Rachel's father, who was the doctor, did the preaching. Rachel used to help in the hospital.”

“And doesn't she help there anymore?”

“Her father and mother died from the influenza.” I took a deep breath and, sure I would be struck down by a thunderbolt, added, “Rachel died as well.”

“You must have been very close to Rachel and her parents,” the grandfather said. “There are tears in your eyes.”

I clenched my fists until my nails bit into the palms of my hands. I blinked the tears away. “They were very good to me,” I said.

The grandfather sank back upon his pillows and closed his eyes. “Thank you for the story,” he said. “Now I must rest for a bit.”

The grandfather's face was pale. His eyes fluttered shut. I tiptoed out of the room wondering if I had said something to worry the grandfather. I decided that I had better not talk of Rachel or her parents. It was too hard to keep my feelings from spilling over into the words.

After that I spoke only of the animals and the birds. Each day I was out on the grounds of the estate, and each evening I reported back to the grandfather a description of the birds I had seen. I had been at Stagsway a month when Burker, finding me on the stairway, handed me a letter. “This came for you, Miss Valerie.”

At first I was startled, wondering who could know I was here, but a glance at the return address on the envelope sent me to my room, where I could open the letter by myself.

I had fallen into the Pritchards' trap. I had agreed to come to England for the sake of the old grandfather. That was what I had told myself. In my heart I knew that I had
also hoped to escape the orphanage. Now the Pritchards planned to use me to help them to return to England. Once here, who knows what mischief they would do. I would tell the grandfather the first thing in the morning.

All night long I rehearsed my confession. I was resolved not to blame the Pritchards, for if I were honest with myself, I had to admit that I could have told the truth at any time. I could have confessed to Miss Limplinger on the boat. I could have told Mr. Grumbloch. It was my fault, and I would admit it. I believed that the grandfather was a kind man—hadn't Ellie said that he was a generous landlord? Yet I did not see how he could forgive me. My lie weighed so heavily on me, I could not wait until I told the truth.

At breakfast all the silver dishes were on display. Arthur was there to hand me a plate and take the covers off, but I was too upset to eat more than a bite of toast.

“Are you sick, then?” Arthur asked, and then blushed. “Sorry, Miss, I didn't mean to be nosy.”

“That's all right, Arthur. I do feel a little funny today. I think I'll just go up to see my grandfather.

“I'm sorry, Miss, but Mrs. Bittery left word that your grandfather was not well and wasn't to be disturbed.”

I was alarmed to hear that the grandfather was ill and upset that I had lost my chance finally to tell the truth. I did not see how I was to survive another minute with my secret. I put on my coat and went outdoors, for the great,
dark, silent house was too much for me. Mr. Duggen had a wheelbarrow full of small, brightly colored flowers with large faces. When I asked what they were, he said, “Pansies, Miss. They don't mind the cold weather. I've seen them with snow on and none the worse for it. You might tell your grandfather I saw a willow wren this morning.”