Читать книгу In Praise of Savagery - Warwick Cairns - Страница 13

Two weeks later I was at Thesiger’s flat, with the books and the sword, the paintings and the photographs, drinking too much sherry than was good for me and talking about travel. I didn’t mention the clinic experience, though. It didn’t seem the place to do so.

And he invited me out to Africa, and said he would show me the country round about, and I asked—I don’t think I mentioned this earlier—but I asked if he minded at all if I brought two companions along; my brother Frazer and my friend Andy. He replied, ‘Well, if they’re anything like you, it will be a pleasure to see them.’

‘They are,’ I said.

Although on what level Andy—black athlete with a Mohican haircut—may be thought to be ‘like me’ is, perhaps, a matter for debate; but he was a good travelling companion. He’d been with me in America, building trails in the mountains, and was blessed with an extraordinarily even temperament and an ability to take more or less anything in his stride. Like the clear, sunny day, for example, on top of a bare rocky ridge high above the treeline, when we were caught, quite suddenly, by a violent electrical storm that appeared out of nowhere, as they do in those parts. There was no shelter and nowhere to hide, and a steep drop on either side, and the lightning began to hit the ground around us, so close that we could smell the singed granite boulders just feet away from where we stood.

I was overwhelmed by fear and panic, and the sheer size and force of the storm, the power of it; and I screamed at Andy to take his pack off and get down on the ground. He considered my words carefully, rain hammering down on his head and lightning striking all around him, then removed first one arm and then the other from his rucksack, upon which hung a large aluminium cooking-pot. This done, he put it neatly down on the ground and crouched down beside it. He was like that.

He was keen on the idea of going to Africa when I told him about it.

‘Is it going to be tough going, do you think?’

‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but then again he is eighty, this Thesiger, so there’s probably a limit to how tough.’

I booked our flights with Aeroflot, on account of it being the very cheapest airline I could find, by about £5; and in the mistaken assumption that one airline is very much like any other.