Binstead's Safari by Rachel Ingalls Page B

heaven in the backgrounds of religious paintings: fresh, delicately tinted, unending.
    Lunch was sandwiches. They didn’t bother to stop. Ian told them about the country as they passed by: how that was where he had taken out a client back in the thirties with Odell and the man had had a clear shot at the biggest kudu buck you’d ever seen, standing still straight in frontof them, broadside on, had missed four times and then brought it down by throwing a rock at it and hitting it on the head; how a zebra had gone mad and—totally unprovoked—attacked Rollo Harding’s landrover, starting off by kicking in one of the headlamps. Over in that direction ran an ancient elephant walk and beyond the trees there, that was a village—two of the boys came from there.
    They made temporary halts, teaming up with Pippa that afternoon, but it took them three days to reach the site of their first camp. During that period, Millie had time to get used to the tents, the washing, cooking and dressing routines, and most of all the idea that at any time they might pick everything up and move on. She loved it all except the washing arrangements.
    “You should have been here in the good old days,” Pippa told her.
    “I know. I’ve read about them.”
    “Still, we’ll have lovely times when we join GHQ. I saw the plans. It looks like a Hilton hotel. Chemical purifiers, waste-disposal machines that turn everything into heat or electricity, fridges everywhere, generators and batteries. You have no idea.”
    “It sounds wonderful. I’m still finding it weird enough to be out roughing it with a platoon of people who do all the cooking and cleaning and laundry.”
    They stayed at the first camp for nearly three weeks. Every day Stan hunted with Ian. They killed antelope for the table and took excursions far out of the area a few times in order to shoot birds.
    Sometimes Millie and Pippa went with the men on the hunt; more often they stayed back at the camp or just took a walk and painted, morning and afternoon, with Tom oran older man named Robert. Pippa looked for what she called “a good view” or a singular plant or tree. She worked rapidly and talked at the same time. After the first week, a second folding chair was found for Millie and she was supplied with paints. The two of them sat a few feet from each other, Pippa concentrated and frowning a little, Millie smiling and absorbed.
    She hadn’t painted anything since grammar school. And now she made no attempt to reproduce what was in front of her. Her childhood art classes had never taught her that. She could only put down something imaginary.
    She made a picture of a large gazelle. She tried hard to remember how the markings went and what size the horns were in relation to the body. Mahola looked at the painting, expressed his wonderment, and kept looking at it in a way so flattering that she gave it to him. The word went around, Ian saw the picture and praised it; everyone did. Millie was persuaded to do more, first another gazelle, then one of giraffe and elephant. She painted a bird standing , a whole flock flying, and a fish. Her masterpiece was a rhinoceros which Ian himself begged her to give him.
    Stan too, said they were nice. “Sort of like Rousseau.”
    “They should be in oils, but this is fun, too. Pippa’s letting me use all the poster paint.”
    She hadn’t been crushed by his comment or read criticism into it as she would have before. She was unconcerned.
    *
    Day by day the four of them grew closer to each other. Ian and Pippa heard about life in New England and Millie and Stan were gradually introduced to stories about most of the people the Fosters knew or had known in their part ofthe country; they also learned that Nicholas had a wife named Jill and three small children; and that several months before, Jill had had a complete breakdown and was now in a psychiatric ward. Her mental condition was still so unstable that they weren’t letting her out for visits.