Any accountant would have told her, but wills were usually drawn up by solicitors, not accountants, and solicitors didn’t give financial advice.
Danilo, with his mathematical mind, had read the will and seen the barbs in it, as I would have done. Danilo must have begun plotting my death from that very moment.
He had only had to tell me what she had written. But how could he know that? If he himself in reversed positions would have stuck two fingers up in my face, perhaps he thought that I, that anyone, would do that too.
Nerissa, I thought. Dear, dear Nerissa. Meaning good to everyone, and happily leaving them presents, and landing me in consequence in the most unholy bloody mess.
Danilo the gambler. Danilo the bright lad who knew that Hodgkin’s disease was fatal. Danilo the little schemer who started by lowering the value of a string of racehorses to pay less estate duty on them, and who, when he found that the real stakes were much higher, had the nerve to move at once into the senior league.
I remembered his fascination down the mine, his questions about quantities at lunch, and his tennis game with Sally. He was after the whole works, not just half. Inherit one half and marry the other. No matter that she was only fifteen: in two more years it would be a highly suitable alliance.
Danilo...
I tugged uselessly, in sudden shaking fury, at the obstinate steering wheel. Such cruelty was impossible. How could he... how could anyone... lock a man in a car and leave him to die of heat and thirst and exhaustion? It only happened in films... in one film... in Man in a Car.
Don’t get out of the car, Haagner had said. It is not safe to get out of the car. And a right bloody laugh that was. If I could get out of this car I would take my chance with the lions.
All that screaming and shouting I had done in the film. I remembered it coldly. The agony of spirit I had imagined and acted. The disintegration of a soul, a process I had dissected into a series of pictures to be presented one by one until the progression led inexorably to the empty shell of a man too far gone to recover his mind, even if his body were saved.
The man in the Special had been a fictional character. The man had been shown as reacting to every situation throughout the story with impulsive emotion, which was why his weeping fits in extremis had been valid. But I was not like the man: in many respects, diametrically opposite. I saw the present problem in mainly practical terms, and intended to go on doing so.
Someone, sometime, would find me. I would just have to try, in any way I could, to be alive — and sane — when they did so.
The sun rose high and the car grew hot; but this was only a secondary discomfort.
My bladder was full to bursting.
I could stretch my hands round the wheel to reach and undo the fly zip fastener, which I did. But I couldn’t move far on the seat and even if I managed to open the door with my elbow, there would be no chance of clearing the car. Although there was no sense in it, I postponed the inevitable moment until continence was nearer a pain than a nuisance. But reluctance had its limits. When in the end I had to let go, a lot went as far as the floor, but a lot of it didn’t, and I could feel the wetness soaking into my trousers from crutch to knee.
Sitting in a puddle made me extremely angry. Quite unreasonably, forcing me to mess myself seemed a more callous act than putting me in the car in the first place. In the film, we had glossed over this problem as being secondary to the mental state. We had been wrong. It was part of it.
The net result on me was to make me more resolved than ever not to be defeated. It made me mean and revengeful.
It made me hate Danilo.
The morning wore on. The heat became a trial and I got tired of sitting still. I had however, I told myself, spent three weeks in Spain in precisely this position. There, in fact, it had been much hotter. I wilfully ignored the thought that in Spain we had knocked off for lunch.
Lunchtime was pretty near, by my watch. Well... maybe someone would come...
And how would they get there, I wondered. Ahead of me there was no road, just small trees, dry grass and scrubby undergrowth. To each side, just the same. But the car must have been driven there, not dropped by passing eagle... Twisting my neck, and consulting the reflection in the mirror, I saw that the road, such as it was, lay directly at my back. It was an earth road showing no sign of upkeep and all too many of desertion, and it petered out completely twenty yards or so from where I sat. My car had been driven straight off the end of it into the bush.
In less than a month it would rain: the trees and the grass would grow thick and green, and the road turn to mud. No one would find the car, if it were still there when the rains came.
If I... were still there when the rains came.
I shook myself. That way led straight towards the mental state of the Man in the film, and of course I had decided to steer clear of it.
Of course.
Perhaps they would send a helicopter...
It was a grey car; nondescript. But surely any car would show up, from the air. There was a small aerodrome near Skukuza, I’d seen it marked on the map. Surely Evan would send a helicopter...
But where to? I was facing north, off the end of an abandoned track. I could be anywhere.
Maybe if I did after all make a noise, someone would hear... All those people driving along miles away in their safe little cars with the engines droning and the windows securely shut.
The car’s horn... Useless. It was one of those cars which had to have the ignition switched on before the horn would sound.
In the ignition... no keys.
Lunchtime came and went. I could have done with a nice cold beer.
A heavy swishing in the bush behind me sent my head twisting hopefully in its direction. Someone had come... Well, hadn’t I known they would?
No human voices, though, exclaimed over me, bringing freedom. My visitor, in fact, had no voice at all, as he was a giraffe.
The great fawn sky-scraper with paler patches rolled rhythmically past the car and began pulling at the sparse leaves scattering the top of the tree straight ahead. He was so close that his bulk shut out the sun, giving me a welcome oasis of shade. Huge and graceful, he stayed for a while, munching peacefully and pausing now and then to bend his great horned head towards the car, peering at it from eyes fringed by outrageously long lashes. The most seductive lady would be reduced to despair by a giraffe’s eyelashes.
I found myself talking to him aloud. ‘Just buzz off over to Skukuza, will you, and get our friend Haagner to come here in his Range Rover at the bloody double.’
The sound of my voice startled me, because in it I heard my own conviction. I might hope that Evan or Conrad or Haagner or the merest passing stranger would soon find me, but I didn’t believe it. Unconsciously, because of the film, I was already geared to a long wait.
But what I did believe was that in the end someone would come. The peasant would ride by on his donkey, and see the car, and rescue the man. That was the only tolerable ending. The one I had to cling to, and work for.
For in the end, people would search.
If I didn’t turn up at the premiere, there would be questions and checks, and finally a search.
The premiere was next Wednesday.
Today, I supposed, was Friday.
People could live only six or seven days without water.
I stared sombrely at the giraffe. He batted the fantastic eyelashes, shook his head gently as if in sorrow, and ambled elegantly away.
By Wednesday night I would have spent six whole days without water. No one would find me as soon as the Thursday.
Friday or Saturday, perhaps, if they were clever.