The Big Footprints Read online

  Hammond Innes

  THE BIG FOOTPRINTS

  (1977)

  THE BIG FOOTPRINTS

  There was an eruption of noise, the crack of a shot, flat and hard,

  and in the same instant the herd matriarch charged, not trumpeting,

  not making any sound, just covering the ground at great speed,

  the dust flying from her dancing feet.

  And behind her half a dozen others, big beasts with their

  trunks curled underneath their tusks and their heads high.

  Another shot sounded, and another, a whole ripple of fire.

  One elephant checked, another down, but the rest of them kept

  going, driving straight for the Land-Rover and the two trucks…

  PART ONE

  THE WILDLIFE CONFERENCE

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was raining, a solid tropical downpour, and the beer was warm. The supply trucks had brought it up with the food from Nairobi over the bomb-scarred gravel road I had glimpsed from the plane as we landed. We were rationed to one can each, the froth and the sweetness cloying, and the water unfit to drink. I looked at my watch. It was after ten and the night black, no chance that he would arrive now.

  I lit a cigarette, perched on the crumbling parapet of what had once been a veranda, staring through the rain at the big half-circle of rooms lit by hurricane lamps and candles. The shattered glass of the sliding windows showed walls pock-marked by bullets. Some of the conference delegates were already preparing for bed, shadows in silhouette stripping off their clothes and climbing into the two-tier bunks. Others, like myself, out on the battered verandas, talking quietly, voices subdued by the atmosphere of the place.

  The night was very still, no breeze, only the sound of the rain falling vertically and somewhere the hum of a generator. The organizers had rigged lights in the dining-room and kitchens, but these had been switched off now, the power concentrated on spotlights beamed on the waterhole as though to remind us what the gathering was all about. The big circular pool showed pale and flat through the rain, but nothing moved, not even a bird. Perhaps there really were no animals left.

  I finished my beer and the mood of depression settled deeper on me. I thought of all the tourists who had sat here on this veranda, lolling with ice-cold drinks, watching for elephants and rhinos, and all the small fry that had come like shadows out of the night to drink at the floodlit waterhole. It must have been quite a place then, the Lodge so carefully planned and the waterhole like a stage set. Now the lawn was a jungle growth, the swimming pool cracked and empty, the buildings battered and fallen into decay. It would make a good opening shot, but that was all, and a wildlife conference without wildlife … I stared at my cigarette, listening to the rain. It would be a dead duck, and the only reason I had accepted the assignment, the man I had come here to meet - Cornelius van Delden, who knew the northern frontier - not arrived yet.

  The voices on the next veranda were louder now: I tell you, it’s pointless. The tourists won’t come back, and without tourism…

  You agree with Kirby-Smith then?

  About culling? Yes, if it’s properly organized.

  And somebody else, strident and angry: Killing, you mean. Call it by its proper name, for God’s sake. Shoot anything that moves, make way for cattle. And you call that culling.

  A heavy rasping Bostonian voice cut in. Major Kirby-Smith is a businessman, that’s all. So let’s be practical, gentlemen. Call him what you like, but he’s efficient and he’s got the Government behind him. So I have to tell you this, the Foundation I represent accepts that this pilot scheme is the best deal we’re…

  A figure appeared out of the night, dripping wet, his safari hat shielding his camera. ‘Fabulous!’ It was Ken’s current word when he had something good. He had been playing around with his Leica taking stills. ‘It’s the rain and the hurricane lamps, all those bunks, and the bullet holes, reflections in pools of water.’ He came in under the shelter of the veranda, shaking himself like a dog and smiling his satisfaction. ‘It was in black and white, of course, but tomorrow, shooting in 7252 colour - could be difficult. The light, I mean.’ He went through into the room behind me, enthusing again about the pictures he had taken, wiping his camera before he bothered to strip off and towel himself down. ‘Our room mates are on their way.’ His voice was muffled as he rubbed at the dark mass of hair. ‘Two CBS men.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Karanja told me. They’re coming by truck. He was posting an attendance list on the noticeboard.’

  ‘Was van Delden on it?’

  He shook his head, towelling vigorously. ‘There was a Delden representing some American magazine. But the initial was M. There was no Cornelius van Delden.’

  So he wasn’t coming after all. The one man who really knew the NFD, the man whose father had opened the route across the Chalbi Desert to Lake Rudolf and published a book of his travels in Afrikaans.

  ‘Have you roughed anything out yet?’

  ‘No.’ And I stayed there, staring out at the rain, dunking about the script, convinced it wouldn’t be any good and the whole thing a waste of time now that Cornelius van Delden wasn’t coming.

  In the end I went inside and mulled over the agenda and the old tourist maps they had given us, sitting at the broken-legged camp table with the hurricane lamp at my elbow. Tsavo, Serengeti, Arusha, Ngorongoro and its crater, all those national parks and game reserves that had once been household names, and in the North - Meru, Samburu, Marsabit. And further north still, up by Lake Rudolf on the Ethiopian border, the least known, most remote of all - Ileret. At dinner they had been talking about Ileret and unconfirmed reports of game moving up the Rift Valley to the waters of Lake Rudolf. The only real raven left, they had said. But none of them had known Ileret. To them it was the edge of the unknown, all desert country and lava fields, and across the BP map, glazed to protect its surface against the sweat of tourists’ hands, some official had banged his rubber stamp, the single word FORBIDDEN staring at me in violet ink.

  The map didn’t mark Porr, or the islands, only Loiyangalani and Mt Kulal - Oasis Fishing Camp, it said. There would be no fishing camp now, and I didn’t need to measure the mileage. I knew how far it was, a hell of a long way, and the whole area forbidden territory. I reached for my bag, for the map and the translation of that old book - but what was the point of reading the typescript again? I knew the passages by heart, the map clear in my mind, and who else could take me there in present circumstances? I am retired now, but if they ask me I will come. Well, they had asked him and he wasn’t here and the Conference opening in the morning.

  I leaned back, staring at the wall opposite, where a gecko flicked its tongue, feet and tail spread flat like a little jewelled brooch - the only sign of life. Ken turned in his bunk, complaining about the light, and I told him to go to hell. I was feeling angry and frustrated, the rain drumming on the roof, gushing from the broken guttering, the persistent sound of it filling the room and a trickle of water seeping in at one corner where the plaster was cracked and stained. It glistened wet in the lamplight and I was thinking of the last time I had seen the kindly, ineffective man who had helped to bring me up. Almost a year ago now, and his hand quite steady as he gave me Pieter van Delden’s book and the translator’s typescript of it headed JOURNEY THROUGH THE CHALBI TO LAKE RUDOLF. Tucked into the typescript I had found the map drawn on heavy parchment paper. Two days later he had been found dead in that same dingy little basement office in Doughty Street.

  The gecko moved, darting its long tongue at some insect, and I remembered his words, the sense of failure - There’s nothing else of any value for you here. Those words had stayed in my mind. Had there been a note of
censure in his voice? I couldn’t remember now. Probably not. He had been too mild a man, and at the time I had regarded his words as a sort of epitaph to his mismanagement of Southly Tait. When he had taken over from my father it had been quite a thriving little publishing house specializing in travel. Inflation and a changing world had killed it - and him. Or was it my fault, not his? If I had gone into the business, as they had both hoped…

  I pushed back my chair and got to my feet. It had been a long twenty-four hours, the night flight to Nairobi, the interminable wait on the cratered tarmac at Wilson Airport - odd how habit had retained that very English name - and now the rain, the bloody everlasting rain, and this damnable dreary battered place. I should have brought some Scotch. I could hear the clink of glasses next door, the sound of voices mellowed by drink. A bottle of Scotch would have cushioned my mind against the morbid thought of his inadequacy and my own selfish determination to go my own way. Ken Stewart was asleep now. I could hear his breathing, soft as a child’s, and I envied him living for the moment, for the instant exposure of his next shot, his total involvement in camera angles.

  I started to undress then, wondering whether I could have breathed some life into the business. The memory of his body laid out in that funeral parlour had haunted me ever since. The rain, my own loneliness, the dreary atmosphere of this Lodge - he had been lonely, too, after my aunt’s death, and I had been too busy writing scripts, launching my own company, to help him cope with a rundown business and an alien world. And now here I was in Africa trying to make use of the only thing he had left me - a map that he had asked me to return, knowing he was going to die.

  Footsteps sounded on the veranda outside. I was half undressed and I turned to find a soldier holding an umbrella and two men coming in out of the rain. Their plastic macs dripped water on the tiled floor as they introduced themselves. They were both TV men, the taller of the two, Erd Lindstrom, fair-haired, blue-eyed, the other, Abe Finkel, slim, dark and intensely Jewish. ‘You’re representing the BBC, are you?’

  ‘On assignment only.’

  ‘An independent, eh?’ He stared at me, then gave a quick shrug. ‘Well, I guess it has its advantages.’ But I knew what he was thinking as they dumped their equipment and stripped off their plastics. ‘Has anybody given you a forecast? How long is this rain gonna last? It’s supposed to be the dry season.’

  ‘The little rains didn’t materialize, so they think this may be it and the weather out of step again.’

  ‘So we film it all against a backdrop of rain. And we were told there was a drought. That’s why we trucked up. Thought we might get some shots of elephant carcasses, something to give a visual point to all the talk, and the rain caught us as we climbed up out of the Rift. You been out at all since the rain started?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hear that, Erd? They’ve been stuck in this dump since the rain started.’ His voice was in time with the rain, a flat continuous monotone. ‘At least we got shots of the truck up to its axles, but I’m sure glad we don’t have to market this one. That Karanja says nobody’s seen anything since they arrived, not even the elephant who used to go the rounds of the garbage cans each morning at breakfast time. You seen anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Ken rolled over, blinking his eyes. ‘I got a quick shot at a warthog, tail up and going like a little train. But the light was bad and we’re using 7252 - Ekta-chrome Commercial. If this rain continues we’d do better with EF 7241. You got any of that?’

  It was Lindstrom who answered. ‘No, we’re on Kodak 7242, and it’s negative, not reversal.’ They were equipped with a Bolex and a Bach-Auricon. They also had the remains of a bottle of rye, so that by the time I finally climbed into my bunk I was happily insulated against morbid thoughts.

  The opening day of what was officially designated the East African Federation’s Conference on Wildlife Resources dawned humid and heavy, the air reeking of wet earth. It had stopped raining, but that was about all, the clouds hanging over the Lodge like a damp blanket, moist and menacing. Breakfast was a soup-kitchen affair, tin mugs and platters on the verandas because the dining-room roof had leaked during the night and all the tables were wet. The room toilets and showers didn’t work, of course, and the area around the tin-roofed conference latrines was soon a quagmire of reddish mud. There were several women delegates and Ken made the most of their ablutions until he was distracted by the appearance of Karanja in a neat grey suit, an ingratiating grin on his face and his big ears standing out like sails. He was holding a loudhailer as though it were a bazooka.

  ‘Guess the Minister hasn’t made it,’ Abe Finkel said.

  Karanja reached the centre of what had once been the lawn, turned to face the half-circle of rooms and put the loudhailer to his lips. ‘Conference delegates and newspeople please I have to express the regret of our Minister, but due to circumstances of so unusual weather …’ The Conference, due to open at ten with a speech of welcome to the delegates by Mr Kimani, Minister for Lands and Resources, was postponed until his aircraft could get through. It was not an auspicious start.

  ‘Pity we can’t take off for the Serengeti on our own.’

  I pointed to the agenda. ‘That’s scheduled for tomorrow. Also a view of the cattle reserve in the Crater.’

  ‘It’ll be scrubbed,’ Abe said. The only thing of real interest…’

  A figure squelched on to the veranda. I didn’t realize it was a young woman, not immediately, for she was tall and broad-shouldered, dressed like a hardened safari hunter in faded khaki trousers, bush jacket and worn calf-length boots, a floppy hat on her head with an ostrich feather stuck in it. ‘Any of you men Colin Tait?’ Her voice came deep from the throat, slightly husky.

  I got up. ‘Yes, I’m Colin Tait.’

  She stared at me, a long, hard, searching look. ‘I’d like a word with you.’ And she turned abruptly and stepped down into the trampled grass, standing there, waiting. ‘I’m Mary Delden,’ she said as I joined her. ‘Shall we go down towards the waterhole? I can’t talk to you here.’ She began walking then and she didn’t say anything more until we had gone beyond the Lodge buildings, past what had been the VIP suite with its veranda directly facing on to the water. The long stalks of the drought-sered grass were wet with the rain, my trousers soaked by the time we stopped out of earshot. ‘You wrote to Cornelius van Delden.’

  ‘You’re related, are you?’

  She nodded. ‘My father.’ She had a dark, very unusual face, rather long with a wide, thin-lipped mouth and a determined jaw; but it was the nose that was the dominant feature, strong and aquiline. Her eyes, as she faced me, were large and of a deep aquamarine colour, the whites made whiter by the darkness of her skin. ‘I dropped the “van” when I went to America. There were political undertones and as a journalist Mary Delden seemed a more appropriate name.’ She smiled and the smile lit up her whole face, softening the virility of it. ‘Anyway, my mother was Italian, not South African.’ Then abruptly she said, ‘What did you want to see him about? You didn’t say in your letter, only that you had a copy of Reis dew Chalbi and it contains new information about…’

  ‘I was expecting to meet him here.’

  ‘You don’t want to tell me, is that it?’ She said it lightly, still smiling, but the jut of the jaw, the frosty look in her eyes betrayed a certain hostility. ‘Let’s walk on.’

  I hesitated, reminding her that the Conference was due to open as soon as the Minister arrived. She gave a derisive laugh. ‘Nothing is going to happen today and the Conference won’t start until tomorrow.’

  ‘Did Karanja tell you that?’

  ‘Of course not. But you’ve looked at your agenda. Tomorrow we were all going off in the supply trucks to have a look at the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro. The organizers in America insisted on that. Can you imagine what the mood of the Conference would be if the delegates were allowed to see the plains empty, the migrating herds all dead, no predators, not even a vulture, and the Cra
ter full of cattle?’ Her voice had risen sharply. ‘They’ve been bloody lucky with the weather.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  She looked at me as though I were a fool. ‘It was never intended we should see the Serengeti. They’d have found some reason for the Minister to be delayed. Or the trucks would all have broken down. They’d have explained it in some way. Now they have the weather, a perfect excuse. Have you ever been to East Africa before?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  She nodded as though it confirmed the impression she had already formed. And then she began questioning me, not about the reason for my seeking a meeting with her father, but about my background. Clearly she wanted to know what sort of person I was and I sensed that she was trying to make up her mind about something. Finally she stopped. We were at the far side of the waterhole. ‘I don’t know,’ she said uncertainly. ‘We’ve got time enough, all morning, but…’ Her mouth tightened. ‘I think you’d better tell me what it’s all about.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You’re not doubting I’m Cornelius van Delden’s daughter?’

  I shook my head, wondering when she had seen him.

  ‘Then why won’t you tell me? Why the secrecy? Is it something in his past, something that happened up there at Marsabit?’ She was staring at me, her eyes puzzled. ‘No, of course not. That book was written long before. So what makes you think he’d risk his life to take you into the NFD?’

  Something swept over my head, the whisper of wings planing, and a stork landed by the water, disturbing a pair of guinea fowl. It was the first sign of life I had seen. ‘How did you know about my letter? Did you see your father before coming on here?’ And when she didn’t answer, I said, ‘Is he still in the Seychelles? That’s where he wrote from. It’s his home, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s his home now. An old planter’s house on La Digue that belonged to my mother’s family.’