Natural History Read Online Free

number of famous people had stayed at Lion Manor, but Jane couldn’t remember their names. There’d been an American news anchor, some English actors. Perhaps a James Bond.
    Patrick drank off his bitter and set down his glass. Then he turned off the Dictaphone.
    She said, ‘Enough?’
    He said, ‘Of course not.’
    Saturday night, he went to dinner at her Redland flat. The walls were hung with tie-dye wraps and cheap Hindu trinkets; they belonged to Jane’s flatmate, a woman for whom time had evidently stopped when the Beatles split up.
    Later, they went for a walk.
    On the street, Jane took his arm. The night-time breeze, summer scented with diesel, blew in her hair. He’d known her for a thousand years. They’d been lovers, spouses, parents, in a previous life.
    It was dark. The streets were all but deserted. They walked up to Clifton Downs, an area of high open grassland that overlooked the city. Bristolians would speak—wonderfully, he thought—of going up the Downs.
    On one side, the Downs plunged into the craggy fissure of the Avon Gorge. A suspension bridge had been strung across it, hung with fairylights like dew on a web.
    Here, they were close to the zoo. If they were lucky, they might hear the low rumble of the white tigers, growling.
    They stopped and faced each other. They were a little drunk.
    Patrick said, ‘How long will you stay?’
    â€˜Not long.’
    He blinked it away. He wished he hadn’t met her yet, that she was still in his future, instead of receding already into the past.
    He wanted to reach out and grab her, fold her into him. But instead, he worked his hands into his pockets and blew the fringe from his eyes.
    She reached out. Touched his brow.
    â€˜All those curls.’
    He needed to piss. There was nowhere to go but the bushes, and that was no good. You couldn’t piss in front of a woman before you’d kissed her; not if you wanted to kiss her.
    â€˜So what, exactly, takes you back to Africa?’
    She crossed her arms and kicked at the grass. ‘Well, most female field-workers are primatologists. Actually, it’s the only research field where women outnumber men.’
    He nodded and frowned, wanting to look interested, needing to piss.
    â€˜These women, they’re brilliant. They spend years watching the interaction of chimps, orangs, gorillas. But the data, the long-term observation, it doesn’t seem to be the point. It just makes for good publicity—these good-looking white women devoting themselves to their apes. And there’s a kind of racist undercurrent to it, a sex thing. It pisses me off, actually.’
    â€˜So what are you studying?’
    â€˜Hyenas.’
    â€˜As in laughing?’
    â€˜As in clitorises.’ She considered him sideways.
    He said, ‘So what is it, with hyenas and their clitorises?’
    â€˜She’s got this huge clitoris. I mean, it’s enormous— a real schlong—at least as long as the male’s. And she can erect it at will. Imagine that.’
    â€˜Imagine.’
    â€˜And she’s got a sack of fibrous tissue that dangles down—y’know, there.’ She nodded vaguely at his crotch; he erupted inside like an upended snowglobe. ‘It looks like, it feels like, testicles.’
    â€˜Fibrous tissue?’ He thought about it. ‘Why?’
    She clapped her hands. Someone—a stage-hand—had turned the arc-lights on behind her eyes.
    â€˜Nobody knows! Not for sure. They’re used in greeting ceremonies. A hyena erects its dick or its clitoris—it’s difficult to tell which is which, even up close—and they have a good old sniff and a good old lick.’
    â€˜For some reason, I was unaware of this.’
    â€˜Most people are. But they shouldn’t be, don’t you think?’
    â€˜Oh, definitely not.’
    So they stood there, knowing it, until he muttered, ‘No wonder they