DIARY
PETRONELLA WYATT t was becoming very awkward,' mused my host, whose features resembled a sand dune at high tide: brown, knobbly, numerous indentations. 'Especially when the baboons started molesting the guests.' We were sitting under an African sky, where bottle-brush trees blossomed in lantern-light and the air was full of the mesmeric scent of flame flowers. 'What baboons?' I asked idly. 'My sisters,' he replied. 'There are 25 at the bottom of the garden. Oh, and 34 dogs, one chimpanzee, seven peacocks, two parakeets, one wild pig, a couple of jackals and six cheetahs.' Lord M., as I shall call him, said this as calmly as if he were enumerating a list of garden gnomes. Noting, perhaps, that the breath was beginning to struggle from my throat like cigarette puffs through a damp cloth, he remarked, 'Nothing to worry about, really. Just remember to shut your bedroom door at night.' How did I find myself on a baboon farm in the heart of Africa with some expats even Rider Hag- gard wouldn't have dreamt up? It hap- pened, actually, when an English friend suggested that, having recently been bereaved, I might like 'a break somewhere different'. That frisson of fear first entered my blood when I saw the notice before the gate. It said: 'Beware. Apes, birds of prey and other dangerous animals are loose on the estate. Also wild agapan- thus. Enter at your own risk.' Then I remembered that an agapanthus was not an animal but a blue garden flower. Obvi- ously it was a joke. Ha, ha. Molt° inglese. Only it wasn't. Lord M.'s sister was molt° inglese all right — though her husband was Antipodean — but she was deadly serious. Each morning at five Mrs L., as I shall call her, rose to feed the baboons. At seven she took them for a walk. At lunch she fed the jackals, who were kept company by the wild pig. In the late afternoon she walked the cheetahs. At night she went to bed. This may sound like her one sane act of the day. It would have been if she had gone to bed with her husband. But she didn't. She went to bed with the chim- panzee. There were apologies for the early dinner hour — seven (for the humans, that is) — but the chimpanzee liked to be in bed by nine. So that was OK, then. Mrs L. could be found every evening around eight preparing baby bot- tles full of warm milk. 'It can be a frightful bore really. I have to get up five times during the night to feed him.' Your hus- band?"No, the chimpanzee.' It turned out that Mr L., whom we rarely saw, slept in quite another part of the house. One somehow understood how he felt. You Wouldn't want to demand your conjugal rights with an ape on the other side of the pillow. There is something about the African night, though. Those strange stars, cleansed by winds from the Antarctic, are so huge, cold and clear. Beneath them we were as children whose small feet have strayed into some dimly lit temple of a god we have been taught to worship but know not; and standing where the echoing dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, each night we glanced up, half hoping, half afraid to see some awful vision there.
There were plenty of awful visions on the ground. But the house wasn't one of them. It looked like an old Southern plan- tation building, pastel-painted bedrooms, creaking four-posters, white window net- ting making pirouettes in the breeze. Only there was no Rhett Butler. There were no butlers at all, just a lot of black maids who said `Yes'm' and brought you round sweat- ing mangoes on silver trays in the evening. Every few hours one cautiously embarked on a bedroom patrol. The first night some- thing appeared beneath the sheets which seemed to have materialised during the small hours — for it was certainly not there when I lay down, and had disappeared by morning — and kept digging into my spine. Earlier, I had mistakenly sat on a peacock. At least that was one up on the shahs of Persia. They may have reigned from the peacock throne, but I will bet theirs wasn't animate. The baboons, fortunately, were locked up at night. This decision, Lord M. said, had been reached after a number of unpleasant 'incidents'. 'I did tell her to stand perfectly still but the stupid girl wouldn't listen,' he recalled. 'She would insist in coming to tell us that she had seen a baboon on the roof. Suddenly she looked behind her and there it was with all its fangs hanging out. Then it put its arm up her skirt and gave her a good grope.' We both agreed that this had gone beyond the bounds of conventional hospitality. But, my host continued, his eyebrows meeting like the wings of a snowy and possibly endan- gered eagle, that wasn't nearly as bad as what happened to the poor German woman. A few years ago a lady from Munich had driven down the drive while the animals were loose. Lord M. motioned her to stop, simultaneously shouting that on no account was she to wind down the window. 'Vat did you say?' she said, and wound down the window. The nearest baboon took it as an invitation. With one bound he was inside the car. Next, he had grabbed her handbag and taken it up on the roof. The horrified woman watched as the creature began emptying the contents. First it took out her money and threw it to the winds, then it neatly shredded her pass- port. After having experimented with all her cosmetics, including Joy by Jean Patou, apparently the world's most expensive scent, it placed the handbag on its head.
What is it about Englishwomen and animals? After leaving Africa I spent a few days in Madrid. Being in Spain reminded me of the story of a friend's grandmother. During the Spanish civil war, she hired a large yacht for the purpose of rescuing refugees from both sides. My friend's grandmother was by no means left-wing, so everyone wondered why working-class peo- ple always received the largest and most luxurious berths. It turned out that their English benefactress understood not one word of Spanish. On being informed there were large numbers of `labradors' aboard she gave instructions that they be made comfortable at all costs. It was only later that she discovered that in Spain a `labrador' is a labourer, not a breed of dog.
The 18th-century Spanish Bourbons must have been the least appealing royal family in Europe. Their portraits by Goya suggest miracles of ugliness — roped hair; egglike eyes in cake-batter faces blending the weak and the wilful. The wretched Infantas resemble dwarves with goitres. Given that Goya was a court painter and would not have dared show the royal family in anything but their best light, one can only assume they were even more hideous in life. The British were mistaken to oppose the Bourbon claim in the War of the Span- ish Succession. They were the only dynasty that made our own royal family look posi- tively glamorous.
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