A Child Called Happiness

by Stephan Collishaw

  ‘I want to stay, Roy.’

  Roy placed his hand on her shoulder and pressed it hard.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d say to your mother if something went wrong.’

  As he was leaving, Natalie called to her uncle.

  ‘Roy, the other day Memories came up here,’ she said. ‘She told me that the baby, Happiness, had gone. That the baby died.’

  Roy stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the bright glare of the early morning sunshine, his hat crushed in his hand. For a moment he was silent, still, then he sighed heavily.

  ‘I hadn’t heard that,’ he said. ‘It happens, Natalie. A fever. It can happen quickly in the villages.’ He shook his head and turned, closing the door quietly behind him.

  And not just in an African village, she thought desolately. Turning she went to the window and placed her forehead against the glass. One day here, the next gone. Ceasing to exist as quickly as that.

  At the breakfast table the mood was artificially light. Kristine laughed and the maid sang softly to herself as she placed the fruit and cereals onto the table. Roy talked about the farm, about the crops and his hopes for the year, of how work needed to be done on the roof of the barn and what a good-for-nothing Bhekinkosi could be sometimes. He told a long anecdote about one of their neighbouring farmers, an old man who was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, but refused to give up working. Nobody said a word about the papers that had been served, or the War Veterans.

  After breakfast Natalie followed Roy into the back room where the gun cabinet was kept. Roy unlocked the doors and undid the chain. In silence they cleaned the guns carefully, checked the ammunition, made sure everything was in place and in working order. Only when the guns were replaced in the cabinet did Roy look up at Natalie, his eyebrows raised.

  ‘There’s still time to change your mind. It won’t take long to get you over to Harare.’

  Natalie shook her head.

  ‘I’m staying.’

  The heat of the day was intense. Natalie went to work in the barn with Bhekinkosi and several of the other farm hands, cleaning the stables and grooming the horses. She was soon covered in sweat and her T-shirt clung to her damply, but the physical labour helped keep her nerves in check and her mind off what might happen. They broke for lunch and Natalie went back to her room for a shower and in the afternoon lay on her bed writing letters to friends in England. She missed the routine of going down to teach the children in the village.

  In the middle of the afternoon a car approached from Bindura and the whole farm seemed to tense its nerves, but it rattled by, kicking up a cloud of dust that hung in the thick air long after it had disappeared around the corner of the hill. Natalie walked around the back of her small cottage and across the neatly cut lawn towards the stream that ran at the edge of the farm. Because of the rains it ran faster than when she had first arrived, licking the muddy edges of its banks. The frogs sounded lazy and defeated, and even there, under the shade of the trees, close to the water the day was almost too oppressive to cope with.

  When they ate dinner that evening, a light salad with salmon, nobody said much. The maid served the food in silence and Kristine kept her head down. Roy excused himself quickly after eating saying he had a job on the Land Rover that he wanted to get finished while there was some light left to work with. Natalie sat for some time with Kristine and tried to engage her in conversation, but soon she too returned to her room and sat close to the window reading a book, looking up every few minutes to survey the calm, green lawn. Just as the light began to fade, Kristine sent the maid around to Natalie’s cottage and invited her back into the main house.

  ‘I think it’s better you sleep in here tonight,’ Kristine said. ‘I’ve made up the bed in Barbara’s room, you can sleep there.’

  It was late when she heard Roy out in the hall. She pulled on a dressing gown and stumbled out to see what was going on. Roy was dressed. Kristine stood in the doorway of their room.

  ‘There’s some movement around the perimeter of the farm,’ Roy said. ‘I’m just going out to see what is going on.’

  23

  Late one evening in 1954 there was a hurried knock at the door of Zindonga’s house in Bindura. It was October and the heat barely eased with the fall of darkness. The land was dry and seemed to call out for the rains. The white settlers called it ‘suicide season’. The slightest spark soon burned into a conflagration.

  In the late 1940s the white population grew rapidly in Rhodesia; the settlers doubled in number in the space of ten years. Thousands of migrants flew into the country, some from England, others from Eastern Europe, and new housing spread out around the picturesque perimeters of the main towns. The capital, Salisbury, had grown from being little more than an extended village to a bustling town. Bindura, too, saw an influx of new white migrants. To make room for them over one hundred thousand black farmers were moved from their properties, forced onto the already over-crowded reserves.

  Hearing the knock, Grace looked up from bed. There was fear in her eyes as though she knew the messenger could only be bringing trouble.

  ‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘Don’t answer it.’

  Zindonga was sat at the small table preparing some work for his lessons. He glanced over at the door and then at Grace and smiled.

  ‘The light is burning,’ he said, indicating the kerosene lamp. ‘They can see that somebody is at home.’

  The boy who stood in the doorway was young. His clothes were dirty and tattered. The boy could hardly talk and stood stuttering in the doorway. Zindonga knelt down and drew the boy closer to him so that he could whisper into his ear. From across the room Grace could barely hear the child’s voice.

  I was sleeping by my mother’s side, so I too did not hear the message the boy had come to deliver. Nor did I see my father as he stood up and squeezed the boy’s shoulder and stepped over to pull his jacket from the hook on the wall. He did not walk over the small room and reach out and stroke my hair. He did not bend down and kiss me.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ Zindonga said.

  Zindonga had bought himself a bicycle and he rushed around to the back of the house to fetch it.

  ‘Grace,’ he said, poking his head in the door. ‘Give the child something to drink.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Grace asked again.

  The boy stood in the doorway looking nervously from Zindonga to Grace. Grace levered herself into a sitting position, and arranged the thin sheet over my sleeping body. Zindonga did not reply. Mounting the bicycle, he pedalled off into the darkness. Getting up from the bed, Grace pulled the boy into the room and sat him on a stool. She dipped a chipped cup into the bucket of water and held it out for him. The boy took it nervously, but drank thirstily.

  ‘I know what happened next,’ my mother told me as I grew older, ‘only from what I was told by others. I never saw your father alive again.’

  Before Zindonga had even arrived at the small farm north of Bindura, he could smell the smoke in the air and see the soft glow of burning. He peddled hard up the rough road, but then had to leave the bicycle as the track deteriorated. As he drew closer the sound of voices drifted with the smoke on the heavy air. The high, mournful ululation of a distraught woman sent shivers down his spine despite the heat of the night.

  The light of the fire illuminated the awkward shapes of lorries parked lopsidedly in the grass. Dogs barked and Zindonga saw the silhouettes of figures darting backwards and forwards before the flames.

  A man stumbled out of the grass and Zindonga caught him by the arms as he fell. For a moment the figure pulled back, afraid, but recognising Zindonga’s face, the farm labourer grabbed hold of him, like a ship-wrecked mariner clinging to a buoy in the storm.

  ‘They have burned the homes, they have destroyed it all,’ he wailed.

  The farm was a little further down the valley from the kopje Tafara had taken Zindonga to as a child. Drew’
s farm had expanded over the years, swallowing up the smaller farms on the valley floor, creeping closer towards Bindura.

  Disengaging himself, Zindonga marched up the hill to the where the fire was burning on the summit. A white figure approached him, rifle slung carelessly across his arm, a barking dog barely restrained on a leather leash at his side. Seeing Zindonga emerge from the darkness the white farmer bridled, his face tight with hostility.

  ‘What do you want?’ he shouted.

  Zindonga felt his heart accelerate. He paused a moment to ensure that his voice was in control before he responded.

  ‘What do you think you are doing? You cannot just come onto somebody’s property and burn it to the ground.’

  He glanced at the flames dancing behind the white figure. They were beginning to die down now. There was a sudden crash as a wall collapsed and sparks rose tower-like into the air, where they pirouetted prettily against the dark canvas of the night sky. The white man laughed.

  ‘They got the letter,’ he said.

  He came closer to examine Zindonga, and seeing his face, recognised him.

  ‘Hey,’ he called across the flickering grass to a group of shadows, ‘it’s that commie-munt come along to give us a hard time.’

  The figures stirred and the murmur of their voices drifted across the dry grass. Zindonga recognised Drew’s irritated voice among the others. The crowd moved towards him. Zindonga stood his ground. He glanced around, but the occupants of the farm had fled; only one man remained, wandering dazed and confused at the bottom of the hill.

  ‘What are you doing here, Drew?’ Zindonga called.

  ‘It’s none of your bloody business!’ Drew’s voice was sharp.

  ‘You burn down the homes of our farmers and it is my business.’ Zindonga drew himself up taller, his feet slightly apart.

  Drew came closer and Zindonga noted his furious features in the light from the burning huts. Behind him the white men grouped; Zindonga recognised them as local farmers and a member of the local police force out of uniform. Drew’s face was smeared darkly. They smelled of smoke. As they drew closer, Zindonga instinctively placed his hand on his chest; in the inside pocket of his jacket he carried a photograph given to him by Tafara many years before. His father had told him the story of the strange white man and his box and pointed out the figures in the picture, Ngunzi, Mhuru, himself as a young man. And behind him was the village nestled beneath the kopje.

  ‘This is European land,’ Drew said.

  He stepped closer to Zindonga and he waved some papers in the air, as if fanning himself. His eyes were pale blue, almost grey. ‘You know the law,’ Drew continued. ‘You know the Land Apportionment Act. This land was designated for European farming. This family were served with notices to move to the native reserves months ago.’

  ‘Why should they move, Drew?’ Zindonga shot back. ‘This is their land. They have farmed it all their lives.’

  ‘Farmed it?’ Drew said.

  Behind him the white men laughed. It was a hollow and aggressive sound, more like the growling of dogs.

  ‘They barely scratch out enough to feed themselves. They’ve been allocated land in the reserve. It’s the law, Zindonga, and you and all your monkeys have to accept it.’

  Zindonga felt the anger growing from deep within him. He looked around the group of men. There were ten of them, all armed, with dogs straining at their leads. He knew then that he should not have come alone, but he felt himself exploding with rage.

  ‘It’s your law Drew,’ he said, barely controlling his voice. ‘It’s not our law.’

  ‘Listen, you little shit.’ Drew stepped forward, his red hair burning with all the intensity of the thatch on the African farmhouses. ‘This country didn’t have any laws before we came here. This shitty country didn’t have anything before we came here. Don’t you come to me with your stuck up black nose, just because you got an education from some bleeding Irishman. You’re filth and you know it, and you should be down on your knees thanking us for coming here to give you a smell of civilisation.’

  Zindonga cleared his throat. He coughed deeply, working up a fat globule of mucus and spat it out on Drew’s shoe.

  ‘There’s my thanks,’ he said acidly.

  The next morning, early, in the coolest hour, not long after the sun had begun to rise and the earth was still shrouded in mist, Grace was awoken by another knock on the door. This time two women stood on the threshold; poor women, peasant farmers, squat and humble. Seeing the tears on their faces, and hearing the soft moans on their lips, the bowing of their heads, Grace understood their message.

  She woke me then, and hushed me as I complained. She pulled a jumper over my head and pulled me from the bed.

  ‘Come,’ she said. ‘We must say goodbye to your father.’

  24

  It was just after midnight. Natalie glanced at her watch. She had gone to bed at eleven thinking she would not be able to sleep, but had dropped off fairly quickly. Roy had awoken her from a dream. She stood in the hallway suddenly wide awake. Kristine came out from her room and together they followed Roy down the stairs

  The kitchen was in darkness. The night was still. Through the window, faintly, it was possible to hear the faint pulse of the grasshoppers and occasionally the deep-throated, ugly, cry of a frog. Roy’s figure was silhouetted against the window.

  ‘Are you going out there?’ Kristine said.

  On the table was a hand gun. Seeing Natalie glance at it, Roy half smiled at the look on her face.

  ‘It’s just for protection,’ he grinned. ‘You never know. Just to give them a scare. I’m not planning on shooting anyone – I don’t fancy spending the rest of my life in the Chikurubi.’

  ‘The Chikurubi?’

  ‘It’s a maximum security prison in Harare,’ Kristine explained. ‘You don’t want to end up there. They lock you up, twenty-five to a cell, half of them dying of AIDS or Hepatitis. It’s hell on earth.’

  The dog, which had been slouched beneath the kitchen table, got up, its hackles raised and growled. Roy bent down and shushed it, laying his hand firmly on the dog’s head, stroking it under the muzzle with the other.

  ‘Something’s out there,’ Roy said.

  ‘Is it wise to go and see at this time of night?’ Kristine’s voice was tight with concern.

  Roy grinned. ‘Why not? Let’s see what they’re up to.’

  The moon had risen a couple of hours before, but a bank of cloud had built up and its wan light was obscured so that the night felt particularly dark. Natalie and Kristine followed Roy to the door, and stood watching as he pushed the hand gun into the back of his jeans and stepped out onto the pathway; the crunch of the soles of his shoes on the gravel sounded explosively loud. He had the dog on a lead, growling softly. Roy walked quickly over to the grass and pressed forward towards the perimeter fencing following the pace set by the dog.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t had much time for you,’ Kristine said.

  Natalie glanced at her aunt. Kristine stood leant against the doorjamb, eyes firmly fixed on her husband who was disappearing into the darkness.

  ‘Barbara was always with her father,’ Kristine said, and Natalie thought there was a touch of sadness alongside the dry humour in the way she spoke. ‘She was always a tomboy. Roy taught her to ride and to shoot. She’s a better shot than he is. She won a national tournament.’

  Kristine straightened up.

  ‘You want tea?’

  Natalie nodded.

  ‘I was never so good as a mother,’ Kristine said, turning back into the house.

  ‘Barbara spoke about you often,’ Natalie said.

  Kristine laughed. ‘I’m sure she did. Complaining about the way I try to restrict her. She was desperate to go to England. I didn’t want her to go so far.’

  They settled at the table in the kitchen. Kristine had filled the kettle and put it on to boil. She had not turned on the lights and they sat in the faint light that fell through t
he window.

  ‘The truth is,’ Kristine continued, ‘I didn’t want her in England. It’s changed so much since I was there. I didn’t want her turning out like they are there.’ She paused and reached out and touched Natalie. ‘No offence meant to you.’

  ‘She loves Africa,’ Natalie said. ‘It’s all she would talk about. She was always telling me that I needed to come.’

  The kettle boiled and Kristine got up and made two cups of Earl Grey. She placed the steaming cups on the table and eased herself back down into the chair. She sighed.

  ‘That is the problem for her generation,’ she said. ‘It’s their home. It’s everything they know. They love it, and yet they know their future is not here.’

  As Roy crossed the lawn, the murmur of low conversation became faintly audible. The dog strained against the lead, but Roy bent down close to it, enfolding his arms around its body, whispering into its ear to calm it. Peering into the darkness he tried to make out the figures beyond the mesh fencing, but nothing was visible.

  Roy indicated for the dog to lie down, and it did so, obediently. Roy moved towards the perimeter of the farm. From the window Natalie watched him go. He paused behind the trunk of a Msasa tree, sheltered beneath the heavy branches which hung down towards the floor, their amber-red leaves screening him from the road.

  Through the leaves, looking out beyond the fence onto the dust road, Roy could see dark shapes milling. The men were building a fire. A thin flame shuddered in the breeze. They squatted around the faint, flickering light talking in low voices. As Roy watched, more men joined in small groups, looming up out of the darkness and falling in with those crouched around the fire.

  The dog was waiting for Roy on the lawn, whining softly. It jumped up seeing him and barked softly. Roy bent down to stroke it. He moved back across the lawn towards the house. Inside, Roy switched on the light. He took the hand gun and went and locked it away in the safe.