It didn’t, of course, answer any of the questions that were pulsing through her head. Why had she been brought here at such short notice? How long would she be staying? What were her duties supposed to be? Mr Campion (Bill, as he’d kept telling her to call him) hadn’t been able to enlighten her much.
‘Don’t be freaked out about it,’ he’d said. ‘These people have a lot of money. To you, it may seem like a big deal that they’re flying you all the way out there. But to them, it really isn’t. You’re going there to do some work with Lucas, Sir Gilbert’s son from his first marriage. For some reason Sir Gilbert took a dislike to the last tutor and hasn’t renewed his contract. He says you don’t need to take out any books or anything like that. I think he has something in mind that’s a bit … more general. He has two daughters, as well — twins — by his current marriage, to the second Lady Gunn, who I believe used to be a fashion model, and is originally from Kazakhstan. I don’t think you’ll be having much to do with them on this trip. Just relax and enjoy it. It’s not everyone who gets to go on a luxury safari without paying!’
‘Relax and enjoy it.’ That had been the advice, but Rachel was finding it impossible to follow. She spent the afternoon lying on her bed, regretting the fact that there was no cell phone coverage in the Kruger national park, and wondering if her grandfather’s test results had come through yet.
*
Shortly after six o’clock, the stillness of the camp was broken by the arrival of a jeep, carrying three African guides and a family of five. The guides were in good spirits as they helped the family down the high step from the vehicle to ground level. There were two pretty young girls of about eight or nine, and a tall, handsome, but slightly pale and dreamy-looking boy in his late teens. Sir Gilbert Gunn was in his mid-fifties, grey-haired and serious: Rachel recognized him from the picture on his Wikipedia page. The elegant blonde accompanying him, some twenty years his junior, was presumably his second wife, Madiana. ‘Don’t appear too shy or backward,’ Mr Campion had said, ‘they won’t appreciate it. They only like strong people.’ So she bounded down the steps from her tent and held out her hand in greeting.
‘Hello,’ she said, ‘I’m Rachel. From Albion Tutors. Thank you for bringing me here.’
The guides dispersed, looking tired but still cheerful. Sir Gilbert, his wife and their children did not, on the other hand, seem especially invigorated by their day’s activities.
‘Not at all. Thank you for coming,’ said Sir Gilbert, giving her hand the briefest of shakes. ‘Excuse me while I go and freshen up.’
‘Was the safari good?’ Rachel asked.
‘There were no lions,’ said Madiana, brushing past her, and addressing the remark more to her husband than to anybody else. ‘For the third time, no lions.’
‘You can’t just lay lions on on tap, you know,’ said Sir Gilbert, heading for his tent without looking back. ‘We saw bloody rhinos and elephants, for God’s sake. What more do you want?’
‘They want lions, obviously,’ said Lucas, the teenager, in a weary voice as he made for a different tent. Madiana and the two girls — who looked hot and disgruntled — trudged towards a third tent, the one nearest the swimming pooclass="underline" this meant, Rachel realized, that Sir Gilbert’s family and entourage accounted for four out of the six tents in camp. She later found out that the other two were empty, and that he had actually booked the entire camp for the week.
‘Come and see me in fifteen minutes,’ he called back to her. ‘We’ll have a drink and I’ll tell you what I want.’
‘Fine,’ said Rachel, and returned briefly to her own quarters.
Dusk was falling as she made her way to Sir Gilbert’s tent fifteen minutes later. A slow, magnificent sunset was in progress, with a shimmering ochre sun casting valedictory rays through the canopy of trees, while the cicadas sang and the night birds began their early chorus. Sir Gilbert was drinking a gin and tonic at his table and seemed to be enjoying the sunset, although, as Rachel was to learn over the next few months, he was not much given to revealing his emotions.
‘Not a bad spot,’ was all he said to her.
‘It’s amazing,’ said Rachel.
‘Been here before?’
‘No. This is very much a first, for me.’
‘Wouldn’t have been my first choice,’ he said. ‘But the kids wanted to see some animals and, you know … They take priority.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘So,’ he said, after summoning the butler and ordering a glass of white wine for Rachel, ‘about my son. When he’s not at school he mostly lives with his mother, so I don’t take much responsibility for how he’s turned out.’
‘Which school does he go to?’ Rachel asked.
‘Eton. Just starting his last year there, which means he’s got university interviews coming up in a few months. He’s aiming for maths at Oxford. You were at Oxford, is that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t go to public school?’
‘No.’
‘Good. That’s what they told me. Well, the crux of the matter is this. Because of the cock-eyed ideology which permeates education in Britain at the moment, Oxford colleges are under a lot of pressure to favour state-educated pupils like yourself. I believe it’s called “inclusivity”. Or “anti-elitism”. Whatever you call it, the upshot is that boys like Lucas, who’s never seen the inside of a state school in his life, have to try extra hard to make the right impression. His mother’s spoiled him. I don’t believe I’ve spoiled him, but I’ve certainly spent a lot of money on him over the last seventeen years, which I think is only natural when it comes to your own offspring. Not surprisingly, he’s turned out cocky, arrogant and with a sense of entitlement you can spot from ten miles away. None of which would have been a problem, in the past, but nowadays, as I said, this sort of thing apparently puts people’s backs up at our great centres of learning. So what we’ve got to do is try to knock some of it out of him. Do you follow?’
‘Sort of …’ Rachel said, although there was no mistaking the note of uncertainty in her voice.
‘Well, I’ll put it as simply as I can,’ said Sir Gilbert. ‘I want you to turn my son into a normal person.’
Rachel would have considered this a bizarre request at the best of times. Here, disorientated after her long journey, she thought it stranger than ever, and for a moment she found herself wondering if she had somehow passed through a looking glass in the last twenty-four hours, and emerged into a parallel world where the everyday rules and assumptions had been inverted.
‘A normal person?’ she repeated.
‘Yes. I want him to be able to open his mouth without it sounding as though he thinks he owns the world and everything in it.’
Rachel took a deep breath. ‘OK then. I’ll … see what I can do about that.’
‘You have a very strong accent,’ said Sir Gilbert. ‘What is it, Lancashire?’
‘Yorkshire. You don’t want me to give him a Yorkshire accent, do you?’
‘No. I don’t really care what you do to him. Talk to him, read to him, whatever it takes. You can start tomorrow at nine. Spend the day with him and see what you can manage.’
With that, he picked up his iPad and began reading a magazine article. Rachel realized that this was his way of telling her the conversation was at an end.
*
The next morning, Lucas did not go on safari with the others. Nor did his father. Rachel imagined, at first, that Sir Gilbert wanted to stay behind to keep a watchful eye on their tutorial, but it turned out that this was not the case at all. He took no notice of them, and confined himself to his tent, where he busied himself with his iPad, a slim leather briefcase full of documents and a number of phone calls. (While mobile reception was non-existent for Rachel, Sir Gilbert had brought along what seemed to be some sort of military satellite phone — a chunky piece of kit complete with retractable aerial — and he spent a good deal of the morning talking on it.)