Sweet Roots and Honey Read online

  Samantha had established herself in the window-seat and Perry was forced to sit in the middle. The seat was wide, but Samantha seemed to spread herself in a sprawling fashion over the greatest possible space and Perry found herself pressed nearer to Fabian than she would have wished if she had had any choice.

  It was a land of wide spaces. At first they followed a track. It could hardly be called a road but was a flattened area that led through a countryside that seemed to be an endless plain of dry gold colour where the grass, however, turned to silver when the wind swept across it There were small black bushes, brittle thorn trees, and here and there little forests of Mopani trees, their leaves turning in the wind, green, red and gold all at the same time. Soon the track seemed to fade out and the grass was longer. Here the trucks crashed along in a manner more like military tanks, using their lowest gears, going over bushes and smashing down small trees. As they twisted and turned to avoid obstacles, at times it felt as if they were on a ship in a violent storm.

  If Samantha had thought she would be able to hold any conversation with Fabian she was wrong, thought Perry. It was all one could do to cling on to the seat and avoid being bounced up into the air. Fabian did not seem to be in the least affected by the rough ride. He drove along imperturbably as if he were driving along a motorway. At mid-morning they stopped for a breather in a small acacia forest. It was quiet in the little wood, a blessed relief after the noise of the trucks, but as they ate the sandwiches the hotel had provided and drank the tea from thermos flasks, a troupe of small chacma baboons not very much bigger than monkeys came furtively from between the trees and gazed at them from a distance with lively curiosity. Perry was enchanted.

  'Do you think I should try to get a shot of them?' she asked Fabian.

  'Yes, you can try. They've very quick, but fairly tame, I should think, not very afraid of humans.'

  She took her camera and walked quietly after them, but each time she thought she had a perfect shot ready they would run at an incredible pace out of her range. At last she managed a few shots at long range but taken with a telephoto lens. Then she turned to retrace her steps. How confusing it was! She had thought she would be able to see the trucks, but she had walked further than she had realized. Although the country looked flat it was rather deceiving, for it had gentle slopes that one hardly noticed in a vehicle but once you started walking the hollows were deeper than one thought likely. Added to this, the trees, though small, were leafy and little more than the height of a person, so that the foliage came on a level with one's eyes.

  How stupid she had been to lose sight of the trucks, thought Perry. She was not alarmed, for surely a shout would bring to notice the fact that she had done so. Yet on the other hand the last thing she wanted to do was to look as if she had done something foolish - on the very first stop too. She was bewildered about her direction now. Suppose she mistook it and went on walking away from the trucks? She paused quite motionless and listened. It was all so quiet. She could hear the little wind that was stirring the grass below her feet and rustling the leaves on the branches at her side and somewhere far away there was the call of a bird. Then close by beyond the trees she heard a piercing whistle and was relieved to see the ruddy face of Ken Davidson appearing like a lively sun.

  'Are you all right, Perry? I noticed you'd been gone a long time and wondered whether you'd lost track of the way back. It's so easy in this kind of country.'

  'Ken, I'm so glad to see you!' Her response to the young man's kindness was warmer than was her usual habit with a comparative stranger because she had feared Fabian's possible reaction to her foolishness.

  He gave her a little squeeze. It was so brotherly that she could hardly object.

  'A bit worried, were you?'

  'Yes,' she admitted. 'I'll try to be more careful. I get a bit carried away when I'm trying to photograph something. Don't tell Fabian, will you?'

  He smiled, his blue eyes twinkling.

  'You can trust me.'

  But when they returned together to the trucks, which were after all not very far away, this fact did not escape comment.

  'Interested in photography, Ken?' asked Samantha slyly.

  Fabian, who was waiting near the first truck, said impatiently, 'Come along, you two. We have a lot of miles to travel before we set up camp for the night. I'd hoped to be deeper into the desert by now.'

  His abrupt manner, the arrogant tilt of his head, roused Perry's indignation, but she tried to calm down, realizing that she had been at fault. All the same he need not have been so extremely abrupt, like a teacher reprimanding his pupils for being late.

  She took her seat in the truck, but this time Samantha had decided she preferred to sit next to Fabian, and for this small mercy Perry was thankful. She sat beside the window watching the countryside when it was not being obscured by the clouds of dust being thrust up by the huge wheels. They were out of the trees and into an area of broad plains of waving grass with the occasional thorn bush. The trucks drove a little more smoothly than before because the ground seemed harder and they progressed in and out of the almost imperceptible hollows. Sometimes they would be deeper into a round cavity then out again up on the rim with a sight of endless yellow plains rolling ahead of than. Far in the distance every now and again they could see small herds of antelopes, but they kicked up their heels in a flurry of dust when they saw the trucks and Perry was not able to photograph them.

  'You'll get plenty of opportunity for that, I can promise you,' Fabian assured her when she voiced her disappointment. It was hot in the cab of the truck. Samantha had ceased her bright chatter and had curled up with her legs underneath her on the seat and her head resting against Fabian's shoulder with a scant disregard for Perry's comfort. Perry was very weary.

  'You may as well try to doze off if you can too,' Fabian said to her, glancing with a rather enigmatic expression at the honey-gold head nestling against him. Samantha asleep looked very appealing, all her sophistication vanished and her head nodding on its fragile neck like a flower. Perry was exhausted, hot, dusty and thirsty, but she would never have admitted this to Fabian, She closed her eyes and felt the lurching progress of the truck calm a little as she fell into a half doze in which the various scenes since she had set out on her journey flitted through her mind. An hour later she woke feeling surprised that she had actually managed to sleep. There was a change in the tempo of the engine. It was slowing down and Fabian was exchanging words with the Bushman interpreter, Samgau.

  'We've had enough for the first day's journey,' he said to Samantha as she yawned sleepily and murmured her objections to being dislodged from his shoulder. 'There's a small waterhole somewhere near here and we'll set up camp there. If we get most of our camping gear unpacked, tomorrow we can make sweeps of the desert looking for Bushmen. At this time of year they shouldn't be too far away from sources of water supply.'

  'Oh, super! Will it be an oasis, all romantic and flowering in the desert?' asked Samantha.

  Fabian smiled. His expression was quite brilliant and full of charm.

  'You've been reading too many romantic novels,' he chaffed. 'You mustn't expect palm trees and sheiks here, you know. At this time of year you may be lucky even to be able to see the water.'

  How true this was, Perry realized, when a little while later the truck came over a rise of ground and they saw a basin-shaped hollow shining silvery white in the late afternoon sun. There were trees and bushes on the further side, but Samgau pointed to a group of green reeds across the salty surface of the rock-hard ground.

  'He says there's a permanent water supply there where the reeds are. In the rainy season from December to March there's a lake here. They say it looks beautiful with storks and flamingoes beside the edge of the water and lilies growing. But now is the driest time. It will do for our needs, however, and we needn't use our own supply yet.'

  They climbed down rather stiffly from the trucks and soon there was enormous activity as Ken Davidson and Fabia
n supervised the erection of the tents.

  'We won't camp too near the waterhole,' Fabian told Perry. 'I want you to get a chance to photograph any game that may possibly use it at night or in the early morning.'

  While all this activity was taking place, Paul Curtis had erected a sun umbrella and was sitting in a camp chair smoking a cigar. Extraordinary man, thought Perry. He evidently intended to make the most of the fact that he was contributing towards the financing of the expedition. And Samantha had fished out a guitar from her belongings. How on earth had she persuaded Fabian to let her bring that? In the shade of a small bush, she was plucking at the strings, oblivious to the fact that everyone else was engaged in frenzied activity. Perry went to supervise the unpacking of her equipment.

  The tents that were being erected looked of superb quality. Perry was astonished to see Samgau carrying a small Persian rug towards one of them. Ken, who was passing, noticed her expression and grinned.

  'Nothing but the best for Paul,' he whispered. 'He insisted that he must have some beautiful things around him on his travels. There's a separate tent for him and one for Samantha. She has a sheepskin rug, fortunately natural colour, not white. It'll be the very devil to keep the dust out of it. But I was forgetting, you'll be sleeping in there too. Fabian gave instructions for two beds to be put in it.'

  'Beds?' said Perry. 'I thought we would have sleeping bags.'

  'We have sleeping bags, but you three are getting the luxuries of life. Fabian ordered another folding bed at crack of dawn this morning specially for you.'

  No wonder he had been difficult with her, thought Perry. She had added to his last-minute troubles over the preparations for the trip. But why had he bothered? She supposed he had thought she would expect the same treatment as Samantha. But their case was very different. She was working for the expedition and did not expect preferential treatment. She had not thought about sleeping arrangements and was rather appalled to find she would have to share Samantha's tent. However, when Samantha strolled over to view the living quarters, she looked it over and then went over to her father. Perry saw her talking to him rather emphatically and although she could not hear all she said she gathered enough to conclude that she was objecting to sharing her tent. Paul listened to her and then walked over to where Fabian was fixing up the gas cylinders for the cooking.

  Now what? thought Perry. It was going to be difficult if Samantha objected to her presence in her tent, but what could she do about it? Perry adjusted her wide angle lens and walked towards the salt pan to photograph the site of their first camp. The sun was lower in the sky now and the breeze cooler. The salty surface glittered in the evening light. She heard the crunching sound of footsteps behind her and turned to see Fabian approaching.

  'We've struck a little snag, I'm afraid,' he informed her abruptly. 'Samantha doesn't want to share a tent. Of course she's perfectly within her rights. As she says, it was a condition of their joining our expedition that they had tents to themselves.'

  'I can sleep in the truck. I wasn't expecting any luxuries.'

  'No go. Ken is sleeping in one and the Africans in the other. There's very little room anyway in either of them. But I have a small tent that I intended using for myself. You'll have to put up with that, I'm afraid.'

  'But where will you sleep?'

  'In the truck with Ken but preferably, when the weather is good, under the stars. It won't be the first time I've slept beside the camp fire. I'll have to keep it going to ward off lions in any case. But the tent is too small to hold a bed. There's not even room to stand and you'll have to put up with a sleeping bag.'

  'I'm sorry—' Perry began tentatively.

  'Don't give it a thought. I don't suppose Mike thought of all these complications when he chose to send you in his place. Don't let it worry you.'

  'I won't,' said Perry sharply, irked by the reference to Mike and the mistake about her sex. Fabian looked at her quizzically. He knew very well, she thought, that he had annoyed her. But he was thinking of something else.

  'Your hair is on fire in the light of the setting sun,' he said. 'Perhaps the hairdresser was right. It would have been a waste to throw away all that molten gold.'

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the small tent, Perry had slept the sleep of complete exhaustion and woke refreshed to gaze at the dim green light around her. Her new home was so small that she could stretch an arm from her sleeping bag and raise the flap to look out. Dawn was breaking upon the horizon with a rosy red glow, and small bushes and trees showed black against this light. The rest of the landscape was grey and dim, but as she watched, some few hundred metres away, a small buck detached itself from the surrounding shadows and trotted briskly in the direction of the waterhole. The waterhole! She would dress quickly in slacks and inconspicuous khaki top and then she would go to see whether it would be possible to get photographs of animals in this early dawn light. She rose and made use of the toilet facilities that had been set up near the tents, using the water sparingly to splash her face and hands.

  She had tried to walk quietly, avoiding the central part of the encampment where the ashes of last night's fire glowed like a burning rose. But, as she emerged from her little tent, camera in hand, she was startled by a tall figure rising up in front of her as if he were a genie appearing from the wisps of smoke at the fireside.

  'You're an early riser, Perry,' Fabian said. 'Are you intending to go to the waterhole? If so, you can't go on your own, I'm afraid.'

  She could see in the half light the glint of his teeth in his dark face as he smiled, presumably at her rebellious expression. But she was startled when he put his hand under her elbow and shook it gently.

  'I've just persuaded Joshua to hustle with some coffee. Come and have a cup, then we'll both go together. I can't risk my chief photographer so early in the journey. Who knows? A lion or leopard may have had the same ideas as you about catching a troupe of antelope beside the water.'

  His manner was pleasant though teasing and she felt herself relaxing from the tensions that his presence had brought to her before. A fresh cool wind was blowing and she was glad of the mug of sweet hot coffee and the dry rusk that Joshua brought. They drank it sitting beside the glowing embers on the sleeping bag where Fabian had spent the night. After all, it was a good thing Fabian had come with her. Perry reflected a little later, for she would never have known how to approach down wind of the waterhole making a wide detour so that they would not disturb any creatures that might have come to drink. In the next weeks Perry was to see many strange and wonderful things, but she was never to forget the thrill of the first morning when, as the day came with peach-coloured light, she saw three antelopes, their pelts a warm brown, drinking at the small pool.

  'They're constantly aware of danger,' whispered Fabian as she carefully lifted the camera. 'Try to be as quiet as possible.'

  But the slight click of the shutter sent them prancing away to stand immobile in the shelter of a bush. A few minutes passed. Fabian and Perry were crouching in the long grass and she was very aware of the man at her side. She glanced at him. He was as still as any other creature of the wild, his dark profile clear-cut against the morning sky, his shoulder almost touching hers, as he scanned the landscape with his field glasses. Unexpectedly his hand came down upon hers and she found it difficult to keep calm, for her instinct was to run away like the antelope they had just seen. His face brushed her hair as he whispered, 'Wildebeeste , over there.'

  Down they came to the water's edge, odd untidy-looking creatures with tousled grey manes, ungainly with their small hindquarters and larger fronts. They drank and disappeared hastily, then all that was left was a large bird gazing at himself in the water.

  'Don't waste too much of your film,' Fabian advised. 'There's lots of the journey still ahead of us and I'm hoping we'll find the Bushmen soon.'

  The immediate need for quiet seemed to have passed, for it was getting much lighter and no more animals were coming to drink.
r />   'I'm rather ignorant of your plans,' Perry confessed. 'This all happened so suddenly. Mike told me something about the expedition when he thought that he was coming himself, but not all of it.'

  Fabian smiled. He seemed different this morning, much more approachable. It was as if the desert was his natural element and now he had cast off the ties of civilization he was a happier person.

  'My main aim is that I'm hoping to find a group of Bushmen living in their natural surroundings. Next to the Australian aborigines, they're the most primitive of living men, almost approximating to the ancient cave dwellers, but when we've found them it's not just a question of measuring them, testing their health and so on. That's interesting, but it's been done before. No, I want to find out how they think and feel, what goes on in their minds.'

  The sky was becoming lighter and Perry could see his face clearly now, very close to hers, alight with vivid interest.

  'The idea of the Bushman has always intrigued me. There's something very fascinating about a race of men and women so small that they seem like characters in some folk tale. They're little men, sturdy and well-made with heart-shaped, rather elfin faces, and they can run like the wind.'

  'Have they always lived in the desert?'

  'Not always. At one time the whole of the southern tip of Africa was their home. When the settlers arrived, the Bushmen didn't understand it when their water-holes were fenced off. The game became scarcer, so they raided for cattle. They were hunted in their turn and forced to retreat deeper into the desert where only themselves with their fantastic knowledge of nature could survive. They don't cultivate crops or have settled homes, nor do they have many possessions, and yet in spite of their incredibly harsh lives they're a very gentle people.'

  Perry was carried away by the zest with which Fabian spoke. She could sense how he had achieved his reputation as an authority on the wild places of the world. In the glow of his enthusiasm she forgot for a while that she had made up her mind she could never like this man.