Return to the Wild

James Hendry

Description

Following on from his bestselling novels A Year in the Wild and Back to the Bush, James Hendry returns to the setting of Sasekile Private Game Reserve for another tale that takes the reader behind the scenes with the MacNaughton brothers, Angus and Hugh.

It is four and a half years since Angus’s last year in the wild when he was newly appointed to the position of head ranger at Sasekile. Much has happened in the interim.

In Return to the Wild there is high drama, much hilarity and close encounters with wildlife, fire and human incompetence as Angus unexpectedly returns to Sasekile to take on the training of a motley group of would-be game rangers with his usual stark but eloquent honesty. Alongside him, Hugh manages the lodge and its colourful staff with a varying degree of competence as events lurch from mishap to potential catastrophe.

Whether you are a fan of the MacNaughtons’ previous misadventures or a reader new to their story, Return to the Wild is a highly amusing, engaging and heartfelt read.

Sujets

• Holidays
• World Literature
• Humorous
• Adventure (Guyana)
• África
• Southern Africa
• General officer
• General
• Adventure
• Africa
• Fiction
• Humour

Informations

• Publié par: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Date de parution: 03 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770108073
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Return to the Wild


OTHER ADVENTURES OF THE MACNAUGHTON BROTHERS
Back to the Bush: Another Year in the Wild
‘Witty and hilarious, Back to the Bush captures life in a game lodge brilliantly. I could not put it down!’
– NICKY RATTRAY
‘ Back to the Bush is just as readable and entertaining, if not more so, than A Year in the Wild . It is filled with pathos and bathos and much to make you chuckle, laugh out loud, and even shed a tear or two. There is an unexpected twist in this riotous read.’
– BRIAN JOSS, Constantiaberg Bulletin
A Year in the Wild: A Riotous Novel
‘There’s family conflict, romance, funny anecdotes, poaching and all kinds of i ntrigue – in other words, something for everyone.’
– KAY-ANN VAN ROOYEN, GO!
‘It’s both delicious and deliciously funny. It draws easy-to-imagine pictures of madness and mayhem; hilarity and horror. And it gives the most fascinating insights into what goes on behind the posh scenes of larney lodges.’
– TIFFANY MARKMAN, Women24
‘ A Year in the Wild is more than an amusing and entertaining account of game lodge goings on; it is also a coming-of-age tale of two brothers who explore life, love, lust and loss.’
– CHRIS ROCHE, Wilderness Safaris


Return to the Wild
A Novel
Yet Another Year in the Wild
James Hendry
MACMILLAN


First published in 2022 by Pan Macmillan South Africa
Private Bag X19
Northlands
2116
Johannesburg
South Africa
www.panmacmillan.co.za
ISBN 978-1-77010-806-6
e-ISBN 978-1-77010-807-3
© 2022 James Hendry
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual places, events, organisations or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editing by Nicola Rijsdijk
Proofreading by Sean Fraser
Design and typesetting by Nyx Design
Cover design by publicide
Front cover photograph by James Hendry


For my precious wife Kirsten with whom I fell in love surrounded by the wilderness




INTRODUCTION
I t is fou r and a half years since the start of Angus MacNaughton’s last year in the wild. Much has happened since last we heard from him in the wake of his ascension to the exalted position of head ranger at Sasekile Private Game Reserve.


1
T he rain battered agai nst the window, borne on an incessant northwest wind that seemed to have been blowing for at least three months. I stared into the grey gloom. A pine tree waved in the gale, buffeted by rain that came in horizontal needles sharper than those it tore from the tree.
It was impossible to be warm in this weather. I had heard of ‘cold seeping into bones’, of course, but assumed it applied to winters in the vicinity of the poles – certainly not in the Fair Cape.
Fair Cape, my arse.
The only reason I was looking out at the miserable conifer was because the contents of the small room was so deeply unappealing. I returned my attention to Gareth Watkins, aged seven, just in time to see a shiny globule of snot fall from his left nostril onto the front of his guitar. The mucus slid down inexorably towards the sound hole, whence it disappeared. Gareth Watkins seemed not to notice the emptying of his befouled sinuses onto the cheap instrument, for he continued trying to play ‘Mary had a little lamb’ – three notes the obviously cretinous child had been attempting to master for three months.
‘Watkins,’ I said, ‘you seem to be leaking.’
The boy looked up, his blue blazer (the cost of which exceeded my pathetic wages by an order of magnitude) covered in food and scuffs.
‘Huh?’ he grunted, sniffed, and then wiped his nose, adding a slimy green stripe to the right sleeve.
‘Never mind,’ I replied. ‘Time’s up – go back to class. I’d tell you to practise but that would be like prevailing upon this northwester to cease.’
‘Huh?’
‘Go away, Watkins.’
The boy opened the door and mooched out, replaced with a frigid gust from the corridor. I rose, shut the door and slumped back onto my chair.
How the hell had it come to this? How had I sunk so low? Not that I thought teaching was, in any way, an inferior occupation – quite to the contrary. I had huge admiration bordering on jealousy for my more skilled colleagues. But I, Angus MacNaughton, simply did not have the patience for or love of humanity to be teaching its growing members. My occupation as a guitar teacher to the ungrateful children of the rich at this massively pretentious Cape Town private school was borne of the greatest instinct: survival. I had no money, and being skint in Western society means dying of cold and starvation. Poverty in Cape Town means dying of cold, starvation and loneliness – Capetonians being famously insular (also conceited, xenophobic and possessed of absurd delusions of their social worth).
Three and a half years previously I had made the move to the Cape in need of a change of scenery – I had left the bush to make a fresh start in what had recently been voted the ‘world’s most beautiful city’. As I sat there in the guitar room, the incessant bloody wind flinging water at the panes, I had cause to wonder how it had come to this.


2
F or many people, the thought of living in Cape Town i s deeply appealing – it certainly was for me. Table Mountain, two oceans (in popular lore if not actual fact), the winelands on your doorstep, art, sophistication, gastronomy (is that really the best word for it?), national parks, Robben Island (now an attraction, not a prison) …
On arrival, I stepped from the plane and was hit in the face by a wind fiercer than a lion charge. This explained the number of passengers awkwardly clutching leaking paper bags. Still, I was in Cape Town – the weather is not perfect anywhere, is it?
Luggage? None. Ever again. The last I saw of my bag was when I bade it a fond adieu in Johannesburg. It contained all of my clothes, bar the pair of shorts and T-shirt I was wearing. (I should have had a jersey for the plane – why do airlines insist on trying to cryogenically preserve their passengers?) Thankfully, I had told the unimpressed flight attendant at check-in that there were greater chances of my parting with my own head than with my guitar.
So I emerged from the airport armed with a guitar and a small knapsack containing a book, a laptop and a pair of earphones. Thus equipped, I met my aunt Kay, who observed my approach with one eyebrow cocked. She and my uncle George had agreed to take me in for a few days – it would have been longer, but they were inconveniently emigrating from the world’s greatest city a week after my arrival.
Through the use of George and Kay’s stone-age Wi-Fi and Gumtree, I managed to source a room to live in. My dear mother had warned me to consider the wind when seeking accommodation, saying, ‘Angus, whatever you do, don’t find a place on the town side of the mountain – try to find a spot in Newlands. At least it’s vaguely sheltered from that dreadful southeaster.’ Despite her propensity for hyperbole, I decided to take her advice. I found a charming garden cottage at the end of an extensive property about a block from Kirstenbosch Gardens and arranged a viewing.
When I rang the doorbell of my potential new landlords, there was an explosion of barking from two obviously immense hounds.
‘Good morning,’ I said as the heavy oak door to the palatial schloss opened to reveal stately white-and-black chequered tiles. Staircases rose on either side of the space, which centred on a massive rosewood table bowing under the weight of the biggest flower arrangement outside of a funeral I had ever seen.
‘Good morning?’ said Mrs Clarice van der Veen, flanked by two enormous, slavering Alsatians. They growled, displaying their impressive weapons, and Mrs Van der Veen made no move to quiet them.
‘You must be Mrs Van der Veen,’ I said, trying not to look the curs in the eye. ‘Apologies for my tardiness – I couldn’t find the address in Bishopscourt. According to my Google maps, this street is in Newlands.’
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed as though I’d poked her in the eye. ‘No, we are definitely in Bishopscourt.’ I was about to apologise for this dastardly error when she continued, ‘And it’s Van der Veen, not Fan der Feean .’
‘Right,’ I said. An awkward silence followed.
I was standing beneath a portico between two cherub-topiaried hedges, wearing my only garments, which were starting to look like I’d been wearing them for three days – which I had. I was also sweating heavily – the only transport available to me on this scorching day being Uncle George’s rusting bicycle (my credit card had bounced on hailing an Uber). On my feet were slops and I held my baseball cap in supplication beneath my chin. It became apparent that to Clarice van der Veen, aged roughly 55, I resembled a beggar poised to ask for bread or taxi fare.
‘Can I help you?’ she demanded presently. The growling ratcheted up a notch.
She was dressed immaculately in a floral summer dress, low-heeled pink pumps, an intimidatingly complex coiffure, two pearl earrings and about four kilometres of the same around her neck. Other than that, it was difficult to tell what Mrs Van der Veen actually looked like, such was the volume of makeup on her face. The immobility of her forehead spoke of Botox.
‘Um, yes, sorry,’ I said. ‘I am Angus MacNaughton. We spoke on the phone yesterday evening about the flatlet you have for rent?’
‘Oh … ye