Daddy's Girls (65)

“I made it in thirty-six.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for meeting me.” She looked at him gratefully. It was nice to see a familiar face, even if she didn’t know him well.

“Be careful of the monkeys, by the way. Some of them bite, or they grab your wallet and run up a tree. The perils of Africa.”

“Better than snakes,” she muttered, as he looked at her bags and explained to the porters that there was a truck outside to take them to a chartered plane waiting at another part of the airport. He must have tipped them well because they all bowed and thanked him and gave him a thumbs-up, and headed outside to load her bags into an old truck waiting for them with a driver. Gemma had followed Rufus out of the airport.

“I’m afraid you’ve got another short flight ahead of you. This one will be easier, to Victoria Falls. From there, it’s about an hour’s drive to the main camp. It’s very comfortable and quite civilized. It was a Swiss colony at one time, so there are even chalets. But we’ve put everyone in the main building. We’ll drive out from there to film with the animals. But we wanted everyone in the most agreeable accommodations we could get.” He helped her into the truck, and they headed toward a remote part of the airport, and drove onto the tarmac, where an old cargo plane refitted for charter was waiting, and the pilot waved and smiled in greeting when he saw them. “This won’t take long,” Rufus assured her. The pilot loaded her bags and she saw sandwiches and biscuits set out for them and cold mineral water once they stepped into the plane. The seats were large, they had chartered the plane for the duration of their shoot to ferry the crew and equipment back and forth to Harare.

    Rufus took a seat next to her, and a few minutes later they took off, and were in the air very quickly, cleared by the tower. The pilot said it would take them just under an hour. It was her fourth flight of the trip, and Rufus chatted with her as they flew toward the northwest corner of Zimbabwe, their ultimate goal being Hwange National Park. Rufus explained to her that there was an “Intensive Protection Zone” in Sinamatella, about seventy miles from their camp, where they would be shooting too. And the park had one of the largest elephant populations in the world.

“This is definitely premium service, the director picking me up at the airport, and flying to the camp with me,” Gemma said with a grateful smile. She was tired, but excited to be there, and she had slept on the last flight.

“I told you we were desperate to have you.”

“I get the feeling you’ve been to Africa before,” she said, from his descriptions of the area.

“I’ve shot a few films here. And I spent some years in Africa as a boy. My father was a career diplomat. We got some of the worst posts imaginable until they finally took mercy on him and sent him to Rome and Barcelona, and I had a ball. But I enjoyed the time in Africa too, more than my mother did. I think she bribed the Foreign Office to send us back to Europe.” He smiled and she laughed. “It’s useful knowing some of the customs and the history, though. I think you’ll enjoy shooting here. We try to make it as easy as possible,” he said, “and Victoria Falls is spectacular, the largest natural falls in the world.” He was already making it easy for her, meeting her, and accompanying her on the last leg of the trip in the comfortable chartered plane.

    “I don’t know how I got so lucky. My agent was sending me out for teenage vampire movies when my show closed.” He laughed, and she ate one of the cookies and offered him some.

She was curious what the camp would be like, and the rest of the cast. She had recognized some of the names as well-known British actors, particularly one woman and two men. It was an all-star cast. Their young star was new, but the others were well seasoned and had been in many successful shows and movies. It was the hallmark of his work. He used big name actors in his series, including her.

They flew for a while without speaking, and then he asked her where she grew up.

“In the Santa Ynez Valley, on the ranch I mentioned. My father was a cowboy from Texas. He built it from nothing. I hated it growing up. I thought I’d been switched at birth, and was meant to be a princess somewhere. One of my sisters thought that too. She was sure that intellectual parents had lost her at the hospital, and she wound up in a hick town with no culture, and a bunch of rednecks. You have to have a strong identity and ambition not to get stuck there.”

“I used to feel that way about England. Now I’m happy to be back. But it took a while to readjust. I thought I was Tarzan’s son, meant to swing on trees, or the son of a rajah in India. I was certain that boring British parents and freezing winters were not in my genes. But apparently they are. The older I get, the more I enjoy my roots. There’s something comforting about it.” She smiled at him.

    “I just discovered that. I spent the summer on our ranch for the first time in years, and Thanksgiving there with my sisters. I loved it. My father just died in May, and it’s brought us closer together. I thought it would have the opposite effect, but it hasn’t. I think he’d be pleased. He had to die to get us back there.”

“It often works that way. I’ve inherited my grandparents’ crumbling manor house in Sussex. My parents are gone now. I detested going there as a child. Now I kill to spend weekends there, and go shooting like my father, which I swore I’d never do. It’s all so predictable and so British. Nothing ever changes there. I love that now. My children hate the same traditions and swear they’ll sell the house the hour I die.”