Free Binstead's Safari by Rachel Ingalls

thrown out of the car by the other people in it. The driver seems to have his own story to tell. But the other passengers deny it.”
    â€œThese Jacobean death-scenes,” Millie said. “Terror by daylight, people grabbed by the throat. It sounds like you got the full tour, Stan.”
    â€œYes. It didn’t look much like melodrama to me, though. It looked like war. I guess it’s a lot less grisly than a good set of US statistics for car crashes. I was only getting the old-style version, that’s all.”
    Millie thought:
He’s started on that again, his brother killed in the war and he himself alive because of being out in Hawaii at a desk job and surfboarding in his free time. But this thing is nothing to do with war, which is all pushbuttons nowadays anyway, and spraying the trees. It was only the blood that made him think that. As if every woman in the world hadn’t seen more blood in her lifetime than any number of soldiers ever saw in the field. Only doctors see as much.
    â€œLet’s skip the party,” he said. “I’d much rather find a quiet place and have a couple of drinks.”
    â€œOh, but we can’t. Not after accepting.”
    â€œI don’t see why not. We’re leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow.”
    â€œWhat are you going to say—you’ve got a splitting headache?”
    He moved his neck and shoulder evasively and she realized instantly that he must have been thinking just that, but of course he would have planned to say that she was the one who had the headache—like the time, early in their marriage, when he had come home forty minutes late to pick her up for a party and then excused himself to theirhosts on the grounds that she had taken so long to decide which dress to wear.
    â€œOkay,” she said, “you do what you want to. I’m going to the party. We’ll have the quiet dinner and drinks first, and then I can make your apologies when I arrive. Somebody’s sure to be able to give me a ride home. Or I could call a cab.”
    â€œNo,” Stan said, “no, I don’t want you to go all alone.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWell, it wouldn’t be much fun for you, would it?” He couldn’t imagine her going out to a party alone if he stayed behind. It was the first time she had suggested such a thing. Of course, she had gone out in the evening in London, but that was different. At a party, you had to talk to people. Then he thought:
Armstrong and that eye doctor who wrote the book—she got along with both of them like a house on fire
. A kind of dizziness moved across his senses, left and came again, sliding away and washing back over him. She shouldn’t be this way. She never was before. It had started in London. While all that other business was beginning for him.
    â€œWho knows?” Millie said. “I might meet somebody. At any rate, I’m certainly going to put in an appearance.”
    â€œOh, all right. We’ll go to the party.”
    â€œDon’t come if you don’t want to.”
    â€œOf course I’ll come.”
    They ate at the hotel and completed the arrangements for their early start the next morning. Millie did some more of the packing. She changed into one of her London dresses.
    â€œThis isn’t a first night at the opera or anything,” he told her.
    â€œI bet they’ll be all dressed up.”
    â€œI bet they’re in bush jackets and hiking boots.”
    â€œThe women, too?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œBut you’ll be wearing a suit, won’t you?”
    â€œOh, yes. I just thought—that thing looks so formal. All the way down to the floor.”
    â€œThat woman last night—her dress was floor-length.”
    â€œWell, she was a foreigner.”
    Millie laughed. “What am I?” she asked.
    *
    At the front entrance of the hotel she recognized Mrs Miller, who was standing all by herself,