Softly Calls the Serengeti Read Online Free PDF Page A

even more nervous than usual because she’d lied to her tutor about her travel arrangements. Her strict upbringing had taught her to be truthful in all situations, no matter the cost, but getting her professor’s approval for her first visit to Kenya had put the price of truthfulness too high. Regrettably, she had lied through her teeth to Professor Hornsby. The field visit in Kenya and the PhD thesis that relied upon it were too important to her, and she’d feared that if he learnt she’d changed her plans and intended to travel alone, he wouldn’t have approved the funding for her trip. She needed first-hand information from leaders of the Luo community, otherwise her thesis would simply comprise a desk study and would do nothing to convince a leading research organisationthat she had the stuff required for a position in field anthropology—her great obsession since childhood.
    An African man occupied the seat beside her, reading a magazine under the beam of his personal reading light. His rather large wife sat in the aisle seat. Charlotte felt a familiar claustrophobia rising. What if there were an emergency and all passengers were told to vacate the plane immediately?
    A ding sounded and a flight attendant began to demonstrate the safety drill. Charlotte dwelt on every word. The method of inflating the life vest, the implausible whistle. She wished she could check for the row of little lights that would guide her to the nearest exit, but her neighbour and his oversized wife blocked her view.
    Her palms began to sweat. Oh, gross! she thought. She fumbled for a tissue, trying to calm herself as she calculated how long it would take to reach her nearest escape exit.
    The cabin hummed with air-conditioning sounds and the whir of invisible equipment. Somewhere behind her a baby howled.
    The British Airway’s jumbo lurched forward, rumbled, and again came to a halt, this time with a faint screech that sounded like bad brakes. The thought sent a flutter through her midriff. She tried to dismiss her fear and looked out the window again. The jumbo she didn’t recognise roared down the tarmac, leaving a heat mirage in its wake that caused the distant terminal buildings to shimmer.
    Her plane lurched forward again, creaking as it wheeled towards the main runway, pitching her gently onto the black man’s shoulder.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she said.
    He nodded and smiled.
    The four jet engines screamed, but the plane continued to amble along. Beneath her feet she could feel vibrations, slow at first, then increasing in periodicity. It felt like a galloping horse—or, she thought with some alarm, a flat tyre! The plane gathered speed and the sound level rose, but it appeared toCharlotte they were travelling no faster than a suburban bus. She closed her eyes and, after an interminable period, the rumbling ceased, the engines whined rather than screamed, and, after a final bump as the landing gear was stowed, the cabin became relatively quiet.
    Charlotte took a long breath and relaxed, opening her eyes. The plane had levelled out and below them the French shoreline came into view. She leant back, suddenly feeling very tired from the expended emotional energy.
    Even the check-in and departure process had been emotional. She had expected her mother and father to be there, but she hadn’t expected to see Bradley. He hadn’t changed one iota: hair immaculately in place, well-dressed, smiling as if they had been separated for only a week rather than three months.
    Had she missed him during those three months? She wasn’t sure. Their relationship had fallen into a pattern, one of friendship more than anything else. Their love-making—when it happened at all—had become perfunctory and predictable.
    â€˜So you’re actually leaving,’ he’d said.
    She wasn’t sure if he’d meant leaving their relationship or leaving the country. ‘I am,’ she’d replied. It