Maurice & Friends

Betty Chimpo was acquiring that knack that Ashley Lyon had always had of staying very friendly with ex-mates. She had always been sociable with Montecore and Ashley. Now she added to her list of friendly ex-husbands, Sam Simba and his littermate Shane. Ashley, in his misery at having to marry Lucy Cougar, was spending a great deal of time at her home on Leoparde Drive. Sam would bring their youngest son, Jason and Tawny Tigeres to visit Betty and his son, Joshua, who now lived with his mother. Betty was gathering unto herself a sort of collective salon consisting of Wilda Wildebeest, Jack Tarzan, her two sons, Ashley, Montecore, Sam and Tawny. Jack began a firm friendship with Montecore whom he admired for having brought Roy Horn down on the stage in Las Vegas. She also had an ongoing friendship with her old nemesis Jane Leoparde. Jane and her husband Luke were often invited to Sunday evening barbecues. Some late Sunday afternoons, Lachlan and I would join the very pleasant group.

Betty has the knack for remaining friends with her ex-husbands...

Shane called often but Betty held him at bay. She was still madly in love with him and couldn’t take his presence until she healed, if ever. She no longer took the Kenyan newspapers. She didn’t want to see Shane splashed all over with his latest lover, Alexandra Delamere.

If Betty had reached a certain amount of resignation, living a full life, there was none for Johanna Delacroix who was pregnant and bored. Shane was gone more often than not. She walked about the mansion and played occasionally with Shane and Betty’s twin sons. They were getting a bit rough so were not really good for a pregnant human to handle. Staci Simba Mnyama took pity on Johanna and invited her to her home some evenings when her father was absent from the mansion. However, Johanna just wanted to see Shane and pined even in the company of Juma and Staci.

Shane went to Mombasa taking Johanna with him. Once there, he left Johanna napping in the master bedroom of his luxurious house and headed for Alexandra’s beach home where he planned to engage in water sports with her. He called Staci to join them. Staci took right away to the leggy human with the sense of fun. Father, lover and daughter wind sailed until the sun was beginning to set over the ocean. They were invited to have a drink at Alexandra’s house. Juma Mnyama declined joining them. He was deeply disapproving of his father-in-law and his ongoing harem. He was also not terribly approving of human-animal liaisons. When Alexandra had gone to the kitchen to bring more drinks, Staci took note of something.

“Daddy, this is odd but Alexandra reminds me of Mummy.”

“She does me also, Pumpkin. She is almost like the human version of your mother.”

“It’s her personality too, Daddy.”

“I know.”

Upon arrival back in the Masai Mara, Johanna hit her second trimester and with that her doctors scheduled another ultrasound. They found a fetus that still appeared to be human. They had already taken a blood sample in uteri and knew that the child held lion DNA as well as human. This time they could tell the gender.

“You two have got a son, it appears,” announced Frank Tigeres.

Shane took Johanna to OKAPI’S to celebrate.

Shane and Johanna learn their baby is a boy.....

“Ash, you are not being fair to Lucy,” said Betty on a Sunday evening when Ashley remained at her house for dinner.

“Betts, I didn’t want to marry her.”

“But you did, Ash. Bring her over here sometime. She can join the fun too. Lucy worked for me for a brief time when I was living with Shane. She’s suffered a great deal in her life. She has never had a husband that really cared deeply for her. That can be painful, Ash.”

So Lucy Cougar Lyon joined the salon group at Betty’s house. She remembered Betty very fondly and was grateful that she had intervened with Ashley.

“I think it’s best you not go there, Shane. We are having fun but if you think I am going to get serious with you, you’re very wrong,” announced Alexandra, taking Shane’s cigarette and putting it to the one dangling from her lips for a light.

They were in her house in Nairobi after a day where Shane had addressed the parliament.

“I’m not going to ask why that is, Alex. I just want you to think it all over. I’ve never met anyone like you before. I want to try and clear my life of some of the obstacles and have you reconsider things.”

She blew a smoke ring and narrowed her frost blue eyes.

“Am I supposed to fall all over myself at that statement, Shane? You are a player and will probably remain that way for the rest of your life. If I ever gave in to you, I would be just another conquest to be set aside as the others.”

“You don’t think you are different?”

“I’m well aware of being a unique person but you’ve had an overload of distinctive animals and people in your life and have trod merrily over them. I won’t be one of those - ever.”

“Why do you see me then, Alex?”

“I am very infatuated with you but I can easily control that emotion and not get carried too far past the break off point. I have no intention of going with a great rush of water over Victoria Falls in a wooden barrel with your name carved on it.”

He slept with her that night in her home in Nairobi. They had made love many times and were finally sleeping deeply when the first tremors hit. They were followed by more as the house shook and vibrated, throwing bits of ceiling plaster to the floor. They could hear screams from the neighbors. Kenya had been hit by a 6 point quake near the Tanzanian border. It was all over the news the following day. Shane stayed to speak once again to the populace and ease their fears. He spent the next four days in Nairobi and spent each of those nights in Alexandra Delamere’s bed.

Jack Tarzan had a talent other than writing devastating prose. The young adored the extra-tall and very rugged lion. Betty’s sons Solly and Joshua Simba thought he hung the moon. They spent much time with Betty at Jack’s home in the savanna and the one in Mombasa. When he would arrive with fresh fish from Mombasa, the two boys made a beeline for him.

It seems that the word is out that superstar Roy Lee Simba’s version of Spartacus is going to be his film best yet. The photographs and rushes each day from the location site in Italy have been incredible. Simone Serval is so poignant as the slave girl Lavinia that it will probably give a boost to her career.

Superstar Roy Lee Simba's new role a Spartacus...

Alexandra Delamere was alarmed at the force of her feelings for Shane Simba. She was determined not to cave into what she knew would be a vortex of passion with the subsequent chill on his part. She had been a contained young woman concentrating on her studies and then her marriage which had failed due to another philanderer. She had come home to Kenya and taken over the management of the Delamere’s considerable properties and plantations. She sensed that he was also falling in love with her but didn’t trust his ability to continue his love affairs. She decided to go to France and visit her former sister-in-law who had a summer home in St. Tropez. She and Pascal spent their mornings on the beach and their afternoons shopping. She was photographed by the paparazzi coming out of a shoe store. Shane had a few days free so he sailed with the official yacht to St. Tropez and called Alexandra. She weakened and spent three days and nights with him in the luxury and confinement of Kenya’s presidential boat. Finally the shit hit the fan. The Pope got interested.

Alexandra suns topless on the presidential yacht off St. Tropez...

“Shane, I think I should let you see this in the Washington Post and London Times,” I told him very hesitantly one morning after he had come home from his latest French sojourn.

“What is it, Maurice?”

I handed him the newspapers with their front page items in bold print.

“I don’t really care what the Pope thinks of my affair with Alexandra, Maurice. I’m not Catholic.”

I was bowled over at his obtuse take on the matter. It was almost a Ralph Lyon déjà vu moment.

“It’s not that, Shane. It is that the Pope influences popular opinion everywhere. He thinks your continued affairs with humans are lewd.”

“I only care what the Kenyans think,” he flatly stated.

He was right on the money for the Kenyans still adored him. It seemed the naughtier he was, the more our populace loved him. He could do no wrong in their eyes. He had brought us swiftly onto the world stage with his brilliant governing. He had cleared up internal problems in Kenya by addressing them head on and in the flesh. We all cherished him for that.

Alexandra and Shane caught by the paparazzi in St. Tropez..

He went to Alexandra’s plantation in the Great Rift Valley after spending the day with plantation owners in that area resolving conflicts with the government’s policy. There he paced to and fro on her veranda under the panoply of richly green equatorial trees.

“Alex, when are you going to put me out of my misery and say you’ll marry me? I can’t concentrate on anything these days.”

“Shane that is the most insulting proposal I have ever received from a man.”

“I’m not a man, I’m a lion,” he shouted, lighting a cigarette.

“Posing as a man- and if I were to marry you I’d be dead meat in three months. You would tire of me. How many fascinating and accomplished females have you tired of?”

“We’ve screwed our brains out, Alex and I still want to marry you. I won’t tire of you….you can be assured of that.”

“You’d think you were a primitive male lion in the bush and I was a lioness in estrus. You act exactly like that. You are not in fact civilized….you are merely parading as such.”

“How dare you speak to me this way, Alexandra?”

“What will you do with me? Put me in prison and throw Kenya back to the darkness of a third world country?”

Their voices were raised, their eyes fiery with suppressed fury and frustration. He wanted her to relent and she was fearful yet very much in love with him as she had finally realized.

“Why are we standing here shouting at each other? I’ve just proposed to you and you act as if I’ve sentenced you to life chained in a brothel with water and bread as your only sustenance.”

“I daresay when you have tired of someone and asked them off to the corner, they feel even worse than that particular sentencing,” she raged.

Finally they tired of their flurry and went to sit on the sofa. Eventually, sitting on the sofa led to heavy petting and then heavy sex. They were back to square one by the dawn’s early rays. When Shane left the valley he was determined to teach Alexandra Delamere a lesson. He would ignore her for a time – as if he really could. She spent the day on horseback in the burning sun riding through every single row of the growing tea plants that heralded this season’s crop.

Bertram and Gloria (Chimpo) Baboon accompanied her sister Betty to Manhattan and the glorious pied-à-terre she had recently acquired. They had a week of being wined and dined in the most fashionable restaurants Soho and the East Side provided. Betty and Gloria shopped non-stop while Bertram met with film makers in New York in search of landmark project. Bertram was desperate to cop another major film award.

“Betts, are you getting over Shane at all?” asked her concerned sister over cocktails at the Four Seasons Restaurant.

“No, Glo, just making my peace with the situation, bit by bit….I’ll be okay though. I have my boys. I’m visiting Arlon in London over All Thanks weekend.”

Bertram bought a copy of Jack Tarzan’s book at Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue and reading it during his New York stay. During an early afternoon when the trio were resting from their strenuous doing of New York, Bertram came to the living room where Betty and Gloria were having a drink.

“I believe your friend has the answer to my prayers, Betts. I am going to dicker with Jack Tarzan when I get back to Kenya. I’m sure Roy Lee will agree for the studio to buy his book for a film. Roy Lee would be marvelous in the main role,” said Bertram, filled with more enthusiasm than Gloria had seen in her husband in months.

“Bertram, what a splendid idea,” said Betty.

“Dear, that IS a stroke of genius,” agreed Gloria.