Listening for Lions (8 page)

I was glad to have someone to talk with so that the time would pass. “Was Grandfather always interested in birds?” I asked.

“If you ask me, it started after his wife died and your father made all the trouble, if you'll forgive me. The old gentleman gave up on people and turned to birds. You can't go wrong there. They come and go just when they are supposed to. A bird won't disappoint you. I think one more disappointment would be the end of the old gentleman.”

After that I wandered over toward the fountain. “One more disappointment would be the end of the old gentleman.” The words were very terrible to me. How could I tell him the truth? I settled down on the fountain's ledge. With the water turned off the fountain looked forsaken. A bird flew out of the nearby oak tree with a bit of straw in its beak. I knew at once from its rusty breast that it was the robin. I hurried into the house, hoping that Grandfather was better and that the news of the robin's return would cheer him. Mrs. Bittery stopped me in the hallway outside
Grandfather's room.

“You can't go in there now, Miss Valerie. Your grandfather sent for Mr. Grumbloch, and he's with your grandfather right now.”

A moment later Mr. Grumbloch himself appeared, a scowl on his face, and swept by me, giving no return to my greeting.

I crept down the stairs and huddled in the library, too miserable to pick up a book. There on the desk was paper and pen. I wrote a note:

I slipped it under the door of Grandfather's bedroom. The next days were torture. Grandfather was too sick to see me. I imagined the terrible Pritchards on their way. I ate so little that the cook, Mrs. Nessel, came into the dining room in her apron with a smudge of flour and a stern look on her face.

“I am sure, Miss Valerie, that I am doing all I can to give you tasty food. I suppose you are used to cooking elephants and such, but I can assure you there are no elephants to be had at Butcher Brogan's.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “I've never had such good food. It's
just that I don't feel very well.”

Her look softened. “I suppose you miss your parents. That's only natural.”

“Yes,” I said, glad to tell the truth for once. “I miss my parents.”

Mr. Grumbloch returned, but the moment I saw him, I disappeared into my room, afraid of another of his angry looks. At supper I stuffed some of the food into my handkerchief and hid it in my pocket so that Mrs. Nessel should think I had eaten it and not be upset. I was so miserable, I was ready to leave Stagsway and walk wherever the road would take me. I had gone so far as to gather the few things that belonged to me and not Valerie and make a little bundle when Ellie appeared.

“Your grandfather wants you, Miss.”

I knocked softly on his door and heard him summon me.

“Come and sit beside the bed, child; my voice is weak this evening.” He looked at me for a long while. I thought, Now is the chance to tell the truth, but then I remembered Mr. Duggen saying, “One more disappointment would be the end of the old gentleman,” and I swallowed my words.

“I have had a letter from my son,” he said. “He and his wife wish to come to England. It seems they are lonesome for you and they wish for a reconciliation with me.” He straightened up in bed, and I could imagine how he had once been an impressive and a stern man. “My son's reck
less behavior sent his mother to the grave. I can never forgive him for that. However, I have found that he has had his own disappointments. At any rate he has sent you. For that I can forgive him a great deal.”

He paused to catch his breath. “It will be several months before they come, so we will have some time to welcome the spring and enjoy the summer. I had your note about the robin and the willow wren.” He handed me a paper. “I have a new list. You can begin in the morning. Now I must rest.”

I took the list to my room and read the names of the birds: swallow, turtledove, redstart. A description followed the name of each bird. I tried to sort everything out. Grandfather was not angry with me. The Pritchards would not arrive for several months. I did not dare risk Grandfather's life by revealing that the real Valerie was dead. I resolved I would spend the next months making Grandfather as happy as I could. As I made my resolution, I realized I no longer called him “the grandfather.” Now, as if I were truly his grandchild, I called him Grandfather.

A
s spring came on and the days warmed, I spent more and more time out of doors with Grandfather's lists. The fountain was turned on, and birds came to drink from it and bathe in its pool. The wagtails and whitethroats arrived, and the goldfinches turned yellow like bits of sun. Grandfather checked off a list he kept by his bedside and taught me the songs of the cuckoo and the nightingale.

“Bird by bird you have brought me the spring,” he said.

Grandfather was able to leave his bed and sit in a chair by the window. When I was outside, I could look up and wave to him. He was eager to hear any news. I told him what flowers Duggen was planting and brought him bouquets of wildflowers, a little wilted and droopy from being crushed in my fist. Grandfather would name the flowers for me: cowslips, cuckooflower, and lords-and-ladies.
With the summer came foxgloves and forget-me-nots and cranesbill.

The English names made me remember Mother saying them over and how disappointed she was not to be able to grow English flowers in Africa. In the fields around Stagsway there were flowers everywhere you looked. Once I asked Duggen, “Why do you plant flowers when there are so many wildflowers?”

He answered impatiently, “They don't grow in neat rows, Miss Valerie, only ragged clumps here and there. What kind of garden would that be?”

Mr. Duggen carried on a battle with the ferrets and moles that dug up his garden, but he was fond of hedgehogs. “They're useful little things,” he said. “They nibble the weeds.” One day he showed me a baby hedgehog. It looked like a pincushion and was so tiny it fit into my hand. Its prickles were soft and its eyes still closed. “Will I make a cage for it?” Mr. Duggen asked.

I did not like animals in cages. I remembered a lion that a planter in Africa had kept caged as a kind of amusement. I shook my head. “Please put it back in its nest,” I said.

In my wanderings over the summer I met the people who lived on Grandfather's estate and paid him rent for their cottages. There was Mr. Garth, who kept bees. I stayed at a distance as he put in the trays of comb that would soon be filled with honey. “Oh, Miss, you can come
as close as you like. You couldn't ask for a friendlier bunch of bees.” But I remembered the stings of the wild bees in Africa.

Many of the farmers grew hops for the making of beer, others grew nothing more than grain for their chickens and straw and oats for their horses. As I walked along the paths, the tenants would greet me and sometimes the mistress of the house would invite me in to see her children and have a cup of tea.

The cottage might be messy with tumbled beds, unswept floors, and grimy children, their mouths smeared with jam, their noses needing a good blow. More often the cottage would be tidy, the floor swept, the beds made, and the children scrubbed. Wherever I went, tea would be set out, weak tea where money was scarce. Plates of scones or biscuits where all was well, and thin slices of bread and butter where money was wanted.

Often the tenants would discuss their problems with me, knowing I would pass them along to Grandfather. “The chimney wants rebuilding,” one tenant said. “It smokes so we daren't have a fire even to cook a meal.”

I told Grandfather, and he issued an order to have the chimney repaired. When I reported sickness, he saw to it that Mrs. Bittery made up a basket of nourishing food and I would carry it to the sick tenant's cottage. Sometimes he sent his own doctor to check on an ill child or an elderly tenant. At times I recognized the illness and sometimes
even suggested something to make the patient better, but I never mentioned my interference to Grandfather. Often the message I would carry from a tenant to Grandfather would be a plea for the wait of a month or two for rent. Grandfather would complain and talk of idleness and spendthrifts, but in the end he always agreed.

Again and again the tenants would tell me of neighboring landlords who threw their tenants out of their homes for any little thing, or landlords who charged exorbitant rents. “There aren't many like your grandfather,” they said.

Bird by bird, flower by flower, tenant by tenant, I came to know and love Stagsway. Yet always in the back of my mind was Tumaini. Everything in England seemed pale and tame in comparison to Africa. The flowers and birds were not as colorful; no lion or leopard lay in wait in the fields, only a sheep and a cow or two. I missed the beating of the drums and the stories I used to hear in the Kikuyu
shamba
s. I missed the smell and the glow of the evening campfires and the sound of the lions at night. I missed the bustle and purpose of the hospital and the satisfaction of seeing patients carried sick and even dying into the hospital and then watching as the same patients left to return to their village, well and healthy again.

At the end of July I came upon a bit of Africa in Hampshire. I had seen birds with familiar names but different coloring; now I saw a bird that looked and sounded
like birds I had known at Tumaini. I was in the orchard when suddenly a pair of hoopoes settled beneath one of the apple trees. They had the same cockade of feathers, tipped in black, sticking out of their heads as the African birds, and the same long, sharp bill. They had the same elegant walk. For a moment I thought I was seeing things, that I had imagined them because I wanted so much to be at Tumaini, but they were real. I stood there for nearly a half hour, not daring to move. The moment they flew away, I ran to Grandfather, bursting into his room. “Hoopoes!” I said. “I saw a pair of hoopoes. I am sure of it.”

Grandfather was as excited as I was. He said, “I once heard a tale from Duggen's father, who worked here, of a pair of hoopoes. Tell Duggen no one is to go into the orchard to disturb them. What a sight we will have for Pernick.” Mr. Pernick was the director of the Royal Bird Society. He called upon Grandfather each summer.

Grandfather said, “Now you must tell me about your African hoopoes.”

“They are common in Africa. They were always about.”

I was happy when Grandfather encouraged me to tell him not only of African birds but of all my memories of Africa. In the telling, it seemed I was back there once more. I told him of the lion that had carried away small children and how the lion had been hunted down and a mask made of his mane and a great
ngoma
held to both
celebrate and mourn his death. Though the Africans feared the lions, they never questioned the lion's need to kill.

He asked about the illnesses that were treated in the hospital. “I suppose your little friend Rachel would tell you of such things,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, and described for him the terrible fevers and chills of malaria, and the children who suffered from worms, and how thorn wounds could become infected, and all the old people who were blind until their cataracts were removed. I told of the time there was a cholera epidemic and of the illnesses that came from bad water. “But there were never enough medicines,” I said. “Everything had to be sent from England, and it took forever.”

“Did the nurses come from England as well?”

“Oh, no, they were all Kikuyu. The nurses started in as sweepers in the hospital and the doctor would see which ones did the best work and who always came on time. Those were the ones he would train to become proper nurses.”

“Rachel's father must have been an exceptional man,” Grandfather said.

“Yes,” I said, and turned my head so that he should not see my tears.

“And did Rachel's parents live in a large comfortable house like your parents?”

“Their house was made of mud-brick walls and an iron roof. The floor was earth that had been tamped down
and covered with grass mats. The roof leaked when it rained. Kanoro would have to climb up on the roof and move the sheets of iron about.”

“And wasn't such a life hard for your friend and her parents?”

“I don't think they thought much about it. Her father was too busy at the hospital and her mother had the school to attend to.”

“And Rachel?”

“Well, she helped out at the hospital, but she was outdoors as well. She liked to visit the Africans'
shamba
s.”

“
Shamba
s?”

I explained. “That's what we called the small African farms.”

“Ah, I see. Like our lodges. And if Rachel were here, do you think she would go about to the lodges, taking tea and settling problems as you are doing?”

I was about to smile, taking Grandfather's remark as a little joke, but I saw that Grandfather was looking closely at me. Why was he comparing me with Rachel, pointing out how we were doing the same thing? I felt my face burning and could think of no easy answer.

He reached over and patted my hand. “I only meant that had I known her, I am sure I would have liked your Rachel. Now, tell me again how many tortoiseshell butterflies you saw on the rosebush this morning.”

The end of August Mr. Pernick alighted. He was a
slight, slim young gentleman who, like his beloved birds, moved about so quickly and lightly, his feet seemed barely to touch the ground.

After introducing me, Grandfather said, “I have assured Pernick that you have seen and heard the
Hylocichla guttata pritchardi.
Your description could not be mistaken, and it matches mine to the last feather. There is no eye ring.” He gave Mr. Pernick a severe look. “There can be no doubt that this is a new subspecies. It is high time it was adequately recognized.” Grandfather turned to me. “Pernick and I are in the habit of going about together to see the birds,” he said. “Since I can't accompany him this year, he will have the pleasure of your company, my dear. You are as familiar with the whereabouts of the birds at Stagsway as I am. I have also told him you have a special treat for him today.”

Mr. Pernick was a lively companion. “Today is St. Bartholomew's day,” he said. “It is said, ‘Bartholomew brings the cold dew.' Autumn is on its way, and our friends the birds will soon be leaving us.”

His words sent shivers up and down my spine, for I knew that like the cold dew, the Pritchards would soon arrive to make everything chilly. At that moment a gros-beak flew out of a rowan tree and Mr. Pernick caught at my sleeve in his delight.

Though we did a great deal of sneaking about among the trees, I could not find the
Hylocichla guttata pritchardi
for Mr. Pernick, but I assured him I had seen it. “Don't you think you could convince the Royal Bird Society to accept my grandfather's discovery of the bird? His heart is set on it.”

“How I wish I could, Miss Pritchard, but science cannot do just what it wishes. If it could, we would all have a bird sporting our name. I promise that the proper committees are looking into it.”

The words
proper committees
did not have a promising sound.

“Now, Miss Pritchard, what is this special treat you have for me?”

I led him to the apple orchard and, signaling him to be quiet, pointed to where I had seen the hoopoes. They were still there, hopping under the trees, pecking at the insects that buzzed about the fallen apples that lay rotting on the ground. We stood there frozen and silent until the hoopoes flew off.

“That must be the high point of my many visits to Stagsway. What a pleasure it has been to have you accompany me. What a treasure this place is, and how generous your grandfather is to promise it to the Royal Bird Society. I assure you we will treasure it. It will remain just as it is so that people may come from far and near to enjoy its beauty.”

After Mr. Pernick left, having first said many kind things about me to Grandfather, Grandfather and I had a
quiet dinner together in his room. The windows were open, and the curtains fluttered in the evening breeze. “Tell me, my dear,” Grandfather said, “what do you think of my idea of giving Stagsway to the Royal Bird Society?”

“I think it's a fine idea, but what would happen to your tenants and to Mr. Duggen and the rest of the people who work for you?”

“That would all be taken care of. And what would you do if you were to have a great deal of money?”

Without thinking, I said the first thing that came into my mind. “I would find a way to rebuild the hospital at Tumaini.”

“Yes,” Grandfather said, “I believe you would.”