“That’s right. Women aren’t the menu. He’ll go for you.” She moved to the railing and stood with her hands on it, looking toward the river and the escarpment beyond, its top faintly illuminated by the waning moon. “I’m rather glad we came here. I love Tsavo, the last really wild place left in Kenya. My father hunted here, my grandfather as well. He hunted with Finch-Hatton.”
“Ah yes, the mighty sahibs,” Fitzhugh remarked. He never could understand the white man’s fascination with wildlife, whether he shot it for sport or photographed it. For the African, wild animals were a nuisance or a menace.
Diana turned her head, gazing at him over her bare shoulder. “There’s another thing I’m glad of. That we both broke down.”
He would not have broken if she hadn’t first. She had sent him a letter a little more than a week ago, declaring an end to the “intermission” she’d imposed. She couldn’t bear another day without him, she didn’t care what happened in the future, she needed him now. He answered immediately, writing that the separation was unbearable for him as well and that he had to see her as soon as possible. The exchange coincided with Douglas’s decision to give the Knight Air staff a holiday—a long weekend on the coast, at company expense. He’d arranged a bird-watching safari in Tsavo for himself and invited Fitzhugh to join him to talk over some business matters. Fitzhugh accepted, provided Diana could come along.
“I’m glad, too,” he said.
“You sound a little ambivalent.”
“But I’m not,” he protested, though in fact he was. It seemed to him that the only thing in charge of their relationship was her mood of the moment. If she felt that they should be together, then they would be; if not, then they wouldn’t. He criticized himself for not taking command and holding her to her demand for a breathing spell till he could resolve the question of whether he was capable of committing to her, whatever the cost to himself. They were reunited, but they were adrift again, to wherever the currents of love and need might carry them.
“Don’t tell me you’re glad,” Diana demanded. “Show me.”
In the moonlight, she had the cool beauty of a statue, her pale hair flipped over a pale shoulder, her cream-colored nightgown almost indistinguishable from her skin. He came up behind her and, circling her waist, kissed her throat.
“We’ll just have to have faith that this will sort itself out, since we can’t,” she said, as if guessing his thoughts.
Her tummy bulged softly under his hands. He adored this mature, preserved body of hers, held between ripeness and decay, toughness and vulnerability. Yet the thought that there was something a little unnatural in this attraction, as if it manifested Oedipal longings, brought a modesty to his embrace. He held her loosely and with a discreet space between himself and her.
“I feel shameless,” she said, seized his wrists, and drew him to her, lewdly rubbing her hips against him as she tilted her head back and brushed her lips across the underside of his chin. “Utterly, completely shameless.” She pulled his hands below her waist, and he caressed her there, through the satin, arousing himself as much as he did her. “Oh yes, here, now, like this,” she whispered, turning to slide down his body, tugging his undershorts to his ankles as she fell in a mimic of a dancer’s swoon, drawing him to the veranda’s floor with her.
A river breeze slithered through the trees, carrying the smell of the gallery forest, a jungle smell, rank and sweet at the same time. Branches shook as the elephant foraged. They heard the lion again—the drawn-out, belly-deep moan, followed by a series of grunts. Fitzhugh lay under her, to spare her from the rough planks. Straddling him, she lifted her gown up over her waist and gave a low gasp as he penetrated her; and in the quaking instant that he poured himself into her, all things were resolved—but only for that instant.
She flung herself over his chest and kissed him. “I have lost all my self-respect, and I’m perfectly, perfectly happy.”
The lion groaned.
“He sounds closer,” Fitzhugh said. “Maybe we should go inside.”
“Oh, a lion won’t come in with a bull elephant in camp,” she said. “Do you think he heard us?”
“That depends on how well lions hear.”
“I meant next door. Doug.”
“He’s a sound sleeper,” Fitzhugh said. “He’s probably dreaming of birds.”