The Flames of Time (Flames of Time Series Book 1) (2 page)

In a trance I moved through all the rooms of the house in the hope of finding something that might remind me of what I was supposed to do, but there was nothing. Eventually I wound up in my father’s old room. He must have moved out of the master bedroom when my mother died, and now his things lay where he’d left them, in his attic room. Its one small window looking out over the side garden and the undulating Shropshire plain. In front of that window on the desk lay his journal with pen and ink close to hand, along with an electric table lamp for use in the evenings.

Feeling even more lost and out of place in this room which I’d entered so rarely in the past, it took me a moment to realise these things would never be used again, nobody would ever pick up this pen and write another entry in this journal, or need the light of the lamp in the evenings.

Unless. I sat down in the fading afternoon light and switched on the lamp, and then almost involuntarily, I saw my hands open the journal before me, and I began to read.

At first, it felt like a violation of his privacy, and I almost closed it and walked away. But as my eyes scanned the handwriting before me, I realised that at least in part this record was intended for me. The things he would have said to me, if he’d ever been able to shake off the loss of his wife. The entries for the last few months were a little patchy and introspective, as his health and will declined. But I continued to read, one entry at a time in reverse order, and as I did so, the sense of violation was replaced by a feeling that I not only could read these entries, but that I should read them.

Perhaps sensing his end was near, the last few weeks contained a flurry of entries, several of them referring to earlier journals, and his desire to re-read them with a view to organising and perhaps annotating them before it was too late.

I’d had no idea there were other journals, though as I thought about it I’d always known my father had kept one. Nor did it take me long to find them, all carefully bound and labelled on one shelf in the corner of our small library. It seemed natural now, after having read the most recent journal to read those that preceded it so I settled into one of the library armchairs next to the shelf of journals, selected the first and earliest journal and began.

They went back to before I was born, before my father was even married, when he had apparently become a missionary in Africa.

He’d travelled around a bit, but had eventually settled in Kenya, in a small mission ninety miles or so outside Nyrobi (Nairobi).

The penmanship in his African journals was markedly different, more eccentric and alive, obviously lacking the care and precision of his later journals. There was humour too and passion, aspects to my father’s character I’d hardly experienced. And then there was Africa, the heat and dryness, the sights and scenes of his everyday life there could not have been a greater contrast to the pleasant and safely undulating life of Shropshire.

As though to illustrate the point further, just as I was reading an entry in my father’s journal about his first experience of the torrential African rains, I heard a soft patter of rain outside the library windows. I could see nothing of the outside through the perfect black reflection in the French windows, but in a moment I had the key in my hand and they were open. The rain was coming down in the large idle drops that only ever seem to fall in the Summer, splashing across my face and hands in a half-hearted erratic fashion so different to the horrendous downpour described by my father. Somehow the sheer contrast made me come to a decision. I would go to Africa, perhaps I would retrace my father’s steps. I didn’t know, but it would be a start.

The arrangements were deceptively simple, my housekeeper and a solicitor could take care of any day to day considerations whilst I was away. My father’s journal contained a fairly complete, if dated list of travel requirements. I was even able to book passage from Portsmouth, just as he had done over thirty years earlier. The ship now stopped in a dozen more locations, but it somehow managed to ply the route in the same four and half weeks each way, four times a year. It was a brief fantasy, but for a moment I thought there might even be some of the same crew still working the route.

In what seemed moments the scent of north Africa was in the air and the bay of Gibraltar lay before me. The journey around the coast to Mombassa was like a dream. At some point I must have partially awakened from my confusion for I decided to start keeping my own journal, a naive, unfocused rambling for the first few entries, becoming gradually more direct and informative as I became accustomed to ordering my thoughts before attempting to put them down on paper.

By the time I arrived in Mombassa the writing had become a regular habit, and I remember sitting on the balcony of my hotel pen in hand, watching as the ship that had brought me there pulled out into the Indian Ocean and turned southward back the way we had come.

From Mombassa the journey to Nyrobi across the Taru desert was spectacular and fearful in its barrenness, with every inch of the train line bought in human suffering. But I did arrive in Nyrobi, and over the next eighteen months, time seems almost to have stood still. So entranced was I with the new sights and sensations, the Athi Plain and lowlands, the highlands and Great Rift Valley; a more appropriately named sight I hope never to see; and of course the elusive and ever distant Mount Kenya.

At the end of those eighteen months I was beginning to feel some guilt at my prolonged absence from England, especially with the murmurings of unrest in Europe, but my thirst for Africa was barely whetted. As such it was with a divided mind that I set out again inland from Nyrobi toward Mwanza and the southern edge of Lake Victoria, through the Eastern Rift and hopefully along the way past some Maasai villages my father had visited as a missionary.

It was after I had only been travelling for a week, putting up at a hunting lodge for the evening I was told at reception that I was not the only Englishman resident. A large party of gentlemen had been there for a few days, including several English. This seemed quite a promising change, for despite running into quite a few Europeans in Africa, most seemed somehow settled, especially amongst the missionary communities. The size of this group, immediately made it sound more lively, thinking this I instantly resolved to linger for a short time should they prove amiable. With that I took myself off to my room to get refreshed before they turned up.

So it was that they found me. I was sat on the lodge’s western veranda with a tall glass of something cooling, watching the hot sun sink into a distant bank of cloud. They arrived at a good, but not hasty pace, the dying sun illuminating them in a thousand shades of flame. Fragments of conversation spilling into the growing twilight. Leaving the horses with the hotel staff, they moved toward the front of the lodge, odd individuals waiting and then forming into companionable groups before entering the lodge and leaving my sight.

I sat for a few moments wondering how long I should wait before going in to introduce myself, only half aware of the last quarter of sun, and the growing din of a thousand night-time insect voices being raised in joy.

‘It almost sounds like the night rejoicing in its dominion over the day.’ I hadn’t heard his approach, but somehow the unexpected voice hadn’t startled me, and I was able to offer my affirmation before I stood and beheld the man for the first time.

He stood in the doorway to the veranda, his travelling clothes still dusty from the ride, a tall glass of iced water in one hand. He was just slightly above average height with deep auburn hair made almost black by the dying light.

‘It doesn’t matter how many times I see it, it always fascinates me, whether over land or sea, forest, mountain or moor, it never seems to set the same way twice. Yet somehow here in Africa where the horizon stretches so far…’

With these words his gaze had drifted back to the west and the last fraction of crimson disk as it slid into the quenching bank of distant cloud.

As though released from a trance he turned back to me with an apology for his dramatic air, and offered me his name and his hand. ‘Robert Marlow, at your service.’

Moving inside from the now dark evening he explained that the reception had told him of my arrival, and that I was travelling with just a guide and a couple of servants. As such he’d come straight over to make sure I didn’t go in to dine before he’d had the opportunity of inviting me to join his own small group for the evening.

As we moved through the reception it was immediately apparent that the group were well accustomed to their own mutual habits, as everyone who I’d seen ride in had now moved through into the bar area for a drink before changing. Anticipating this, Marlow lead me straight to them, stopping only briefly in the doorway to introduce me to his companions.

‘My friends! We have with us another visitor from England, Mr George Whitaker. Who has kindly agreed to join us for dinner this evening, so please make him feel at home.’

‘It is a wonder there are any Englishmen left in England, there are so many of you in Kenya alone!’ piped up one obviously Gallic member of the group.

‘This is Jean Louis de Gris, our resident artist and philosopher,’ replied Marlow, ‘… and possibly one of the worst shots in the whole of Africa!’

‘Ah, do not listen m’sieur Whitaker, it is Mr Marlow himself, who has to wait until the quarry is almost upon him before he shoots.’

There was much good-natured laughter at this, and then as conversations came to a natural close, two or three individuals would disappear briefly, to return a few minutes later changed and refreshed for dinner.

And so it was, being already changed, that I at least briefly got to meet everyone as the group gradually dwindled and then swelled again ready for dinner.

Dinner itself was a very good-natured affair. Polite yet informal, during which the conversation split and fragmented a hundred times, only to be re-united with the advent of a popular topic. I was politely quizzed about my background and tastes, and in my turn I questioned and observed the members that made up this sociable and welcoming group.

I discovered that they had mostly been on tour together for the past three years, and had gradually come together through chance encounter, but had stayed together through mutual interest. They had wandered around Africa, at times only a few hours separating them from myself, in search of life and sport and spectacle. Occasionally individuals would leave for a while to re-join later. Their company reminding me greatly of my time at Cambridge, or what it would have been like in such surroundings, before my father’s waning health had obliged me to abandon my studies.

The only permanent members of the group seemed to be Jean, Marlow, a slightly older and eccentric American called Harrison Sutherland, and an Italian about my own age called Luke Cassanelli, all of whom had met through a mutual friend in London.

Jean and Harry were clearly the older and most settled members of the group, with each regularly poking good natured fun at the other.

While he hid it well with his jovial manner, there was something about the well-dressed Frenchman that made me think he must have been in the army at some point.

In contrast both Marlow and Harry couldn’t be less military in their aspect. Harry, while taller and broader, had the unmistakably round shouldered build of the habitual academic, while Marlow sported the relaxed poise and grace of the natural athlete.

As the evening wore on we relaxed again in the bar with Brandy and cigars. Marlow began to question me upon my immediate plans, and hearing that I was travelling inland to see the southern end of Lake Victoria and the spectacular Bismarck rocks, he suggested I delay my visit for a few days and join them on their hunt for a man-eating lion. Apparently it had recently killed a young man from a nearby village, thus becoming a monster that would almost certainly attack people again. Many tribesmen and locals had already gone to hunt the beast, but after a week without success, they were now beginning to give up the search to return to their farms and villages, presuming the animal to have moved off.

‘We know it must be a rogue,’ said Marlow, ‘as male lions never go out to hunt unless they’re no longer in a pride. We also know from a couple of eyewitnesses that it’s far from being a grizzled old beast, typical of the usual rogue. So it’s probably been ousted from its pride for some temporary infirmity, from which it unusually seems to have recovered.’

‘Yes, but what makes you think it’s still in the area,’ I asked.

‘Well, it’s nothing definite, more a general feeling for the type of animal. If it were just an old male, past its prime and evicted from its pride by a young buck, then I think we’d have seen it move by now. These animals soon lose their strength outside the pride, they get harassed by animals that would normally give them a wide berth and are forced to move on from their resting place or their kill before they’re ready.

‘This lion is different, if it is still in its prime, then it can probably hang on to both its kills and its resting places. And once a big male lion has had a belly full of meat, it can lie back and rest for over a week before it really needs to eat again. As you probably know it’s the females that usually do all the work, so unless it’s already adapted it’ll rest until it really gets hungry.’

I had known this already, and on reflection could see Marlow’s point, but how would one go about hunting such an animal? Spotting a pride on the savannah was one thing, but a solitary animal, that was another thing altogether.

‘We also know a rogue lion similar to this one has been reported moving up from the south,’ continued Marlow, ‘where it’s thought responsible for the deaths of several domestic cattle. Now if this is the same animal, then these reports indicate it’s in no hurry to move on from a good hunting ground. In one case it stayed in the same area for nearly two months before the local farmers managed to make their livestock too difficult to get at. So if it’s here, there’s a good chance it’ll stick around until something forces it to move.’