Listening for Lions by Gloria Whelan

set out, weak tea where money was scarce. Plates of scones or biscuits where all was well, and thin slices of bread and butter where money was wanted.
    Often the tenants would discuss their problems with me, knowing I would pass them along to Grandfather. “The chimney wants rebuilding,” one tenant said. “It smokes so we daren’t have a fire even to cook a meal.”
    I told Grandfather, and he issued an order to have the chimney repaired. When I reported sickness, he saw to it that Mrs. Bittery made up a basket of nourishing food and I would carry it to the sick tenant’s cottage. Sometimes he sent his own doctor to check on an ill child or an elderly tenant. At times I recognized the illness and sometimeseven suggested something to make the patient better, but I never mentioned my interference to Grandfather. Often the message I would carry from a tenant to Grandfather would be a plea for the wait of a month or two for rent. Grandfather would complain and talk of idleness and spendthrifts, but in the end he always agreed.
    Again and again the tenants would tell me of neighboring landlords who threw their tenants out of their homes for any little thing, or landlords who charged exorbitant rents. “There aren’t many like your grandfather,” they said.
    Bird by bird, flower by flower, tenant by tenant, I came to know and love Stagsway. Yet always in the back of my mind was Tumaini. Everything in England seemed pale and tame in comparison to Africa. The flowers and birds were not as colorful; no lion or leopard lay in wait in the fields, only a sheep and a cow or two. I missed the beating of the drums and the stories I used to hear in the Kikuyu shamba s. I missed the smell and the glow of the evening campfires and the sound of the lions at night. I missed the bustle and purpose of the hospital and the satisfaction of seeing patients carried sick and even dying into the hospital and then watching as the same patients left to return to their village, well and healthy again.
    At the end of July I came upon a bit of Africa in Hampshire. I had seen birds with familiar names but different coloring; now I saw a bird that looked and soundedlike birds I had known at Tumaini. I was in the orchard when suddenly a pair of hoopoes settled beneath one of the apple trees. They had the same cockade of feathers, tipped in black, sticking out of their heads as the African birds, and the same long, sharp bill. They had the same elegant walk. For a moment I thought I was seeing things, that I had imagined them because I wanted so much to be at Tumaini, but they were real. I stood there for nearly a half hour, not daring to move. The moment they flew away, I ran to Grandfather, bursting into his room. “Hoopoes!” I said. “I saw a pair of hoopoes. I am sure of it.”
    Grandfather was as excited as I was. He said, “I once heard a tale from Duggen’s father, who worked here, of a pair of hoopoes. Tell Duggen no one is to go into the orchard to disturb them. What a sight we will have for Pernick.” Mr. Pernick was the director of the Royal Bird Society. He called upon Grandfather each summer.
    Grandfather said, “Now you must tell me about your African hoopoes.”
    â€œThey are common in Africa. They were always about.”
    I was happy when Grandfather encouraged me to tell him not only of African birds but of all my memories of Africa. In the telling, it seemed I was back there once more. I told him of the lion that had carried away small children and how the lion had been hunted down and a mask made of his mane and a great ngoma held to bothcelebrate and mourn his death. Though the Africans feared the lions, they never questioned the lion’s need to kill.
    He asked about the illnesses that were treated in the hospital. “I suppose your little friend Rachel would tell you of such things,” he said.
    â€œYes,” I said, and described for him the terrible