A Child Called Happiness

by Stephan Collishaw

  ‘And what about us, Moses?’ Kristine was saying. ‘This is my home. Our daughter was born here. Where are we supposed to go?’

  Moses looked at her, and though he looked suddenly shrunken and defeated, his gaze was still cold and defiant.

  ‘You can go wherever you want,’ he said. ‘You are white. The world is open to you and your children.’ He placed his hand on his granddaughter’s head. ‘Nobody will open their doors for us.’

  EPILOGUE

  31

  Natalie saw the rain approaching as they came over the top of the hill. Memories walked a couple of paces in front of her. She nodded when Natalie pointed to the clouds and indicated with her left hand a great flame tree. They took shelter under the large hanging bough of the old tree. Memories stood close to her and she smelt the comfortable mousey smell of her. Memories looked up and smiled. Natalie smiled back sadly.

  ‘I’m glad you came to see me,’ Natalie said.

  ‘Grandfather would not be happy,’ she said with a grin. ‘He does not want me talking with you. All the time he tells me the stories about the past, about his father and his grandfather.’ She waved her hand as if swatting away a fly. ‘What is the past? I just want an education.’

  The rain moved up the hill battering the flowers on the jacarandas, beating the leaves from the baobab and the mimosas. Soon the foot of the valley was lost from sight, and the village was engulfed, the frail column of smoke rising from its fires flattened to the ground. Half of the family had moved out from the village since the occupation of the farm. Moses had claimed some land up close to the edge of the farm, beneath Drew’s Kopje and close to the ridge where the caves were. It wasn’t particularly profitable land and Roy had been happy to see him on it.

  Moses wasn’t the problem, Roy knew, he was just a pawn. The thatch on the roof of the house had been badly burned on one side, but they had covered it with tarpaulin and the inside of the house was undamaged. Most of the veterans had drifted away as the sun rose and around lunch time a police car drew up. Roy stood in the shade of the doorway with Kristine and Natalie and watched them. Boyle handed over the man who has started the fire and the police took him away.

  Sunday was quiet. Roy walked around the farm with Bhekinkosi, assessing the damage that had been caused. Half of the workers had slipped away as the veterans invaded the farm.

  ‘They’re frightened, bhasa,’ Bhekinkosi said, when Roy spoke to him. ‘They don’t want to get beaten.

  Roy nodded. He knew they would wait and see what happened. As soon as they knew it was safe they would come back. He would get his solicitor to challenge the eviction papers on Monday morning. It would buy them some time.

  When the rain had eased off, Natalie and Memories moved on across the ridge and down, following a narrow path, skirting the large granite boulders that balanced precariously along the hilltop. Memories led the way. She was dressed in her red T-shirt, with its white trimming, and beneath that the grey skirt, with its pocket hanging loose.

  The path opened up suddenly into a little clearing. Dark, wet sand and coarse grass surrounded by trees and bushes. The heat was intense and the air heavy with the evaporating water, now the sun had come back out. Natalie opened the buttons of her blouse and flapped it in an attempt to cool down.

  ‘Here,’ Memories said.

  ‘Why here?’ Natalie asked, looking around the dreary patch of land.

  ‘It’s a sacred place,’ Memories said. ‘There are spirits here. The spirit of the hyena.’

  ‘The hyena?’

  Memories shook her head and grinned ruefully. ‘I don’t know, it’s a story my grandfather tells.’

  Memories walked across the clearing to a small mound around which had been placed stones. Though there were animal tracks, the grave had not been disturbed.

  ‘They buried him deep, so that the animals would not dig him out,’ Memories explained.

  She squatted down beside the earth and Natalie knelt beside her. The grave was little more than a couple of feet square. Memories wiped the pebbles, which were covered in mud from the downfall of rain.

  ‘This is where he’s buried?’ she said softly, almost to herself.

  Memories nodded. ‘This is where we buried him.’

  Natalie pictured the tiny child. She felt the slight weight of him in her arms as she had lifted him from the rock. She recalled the way that he had moved, his eyes opening, looking up into hers. It was the first time she could recall picking up a baby. The first time that she had held a child. He was almost no weight at all. She had gazed down into his eyes and felt such a deep connection.

  A hard bubble rose within her.

  ‘Happiness,’ she murmured.

  And then she was crying. And she felt stupid before Memories but she couldn’t stop herself. The tears flowed down her cheeks and dripped off onto the sandy grave and she felt a deep stabbing pain in her chest.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Memories peered at her from the other side of the circle, but for some moments she could not answer. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and took a deep, jagged breath of damp air. She had not cried. Not once during the whole process, during those horrible black weeks after the loss of her child had she cried.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  Memories gazed at her curiously.

  ‘It’s not about Happiness,’ she explained. ‘Well, kind of it is. I don’t know how to express it.’ She paused and looked up and wiped her face with the sleeve of her blouse. ‘I was going to have a child,’ she explained. ‘Back in England. I was pregnant.’

  Memories watched her. When Natalie didn’t say anything more she asked, ‘What happened?’

  Natalie looked up at her. Her small delicate features, the soft curve of her face, her eyes, dark, wide, inquisitive.

  ‘I lost it,’ she said, and the tears came again. ‘I had a miscarriage.’ She paused, but Memories was watching her closely.

  ‘A miscarriage,’ she repeated, straightening up, wiping her face. ‘Do you know what that is?’

  Memories nodded.

  Natalie paused, her mind reeling back across the months, to those moments when she rushed to the hospital. How it had been in the days afterwards. The sudden darkness. The unbearable sense of loss.

  It had been late; she was into the third trimester and when she had first suspected something was wrong they had sent her back home from the hospital. Lawrence had tried to calm her, but when after a few days she had felt no movement she began to really worry. The midwife took out the handheld ultra sound and spread the gel across her belly. She had smiled and squeezed Natalie’s hand. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said.

  How many seconds had it taken for panic to set in? She watched the midwife’s face with fierce attention and saw immediately something was wrong.

  Lawrence had come to pick her up from the hospital as soon as he had heard the news. He was caring and sad and had cried and for some reason she had hated him then. When he said he would stay the night with her, she did not let him.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she had said, not crying. ‘Go home, you have work tomorrow.’

  For some days she lay in her bed staring up at the ceiling. Lawrence called, but she did not answer the phone. She did not want to speak to him.

  ‘I found it hard,’ Natalie explained.

  She glanced up at Memories, and then up, above her head to the kopje that rose up against the clearing sky. The hard rock jutted out, dark against the cerulean brightness of the heavens.

  ‘That’s why I came out here,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t cope.’ She paused, then continued. ‘We were due to get married, the father of the child and I, but something inside me was broken. It affected us, the way that we were with each other.’

  She waved her hand to indicate the things she could not say. Memories looked at her quietly, saying nothing.

  ‘I never got to hold the child,’ Natalie said. ‘My baby.’

  For some time they sat in sil
ence. The air was heavy and pulsed with the steady rhythm of the cicadas. The clouds had gone now and the sky was perfectly clear, pale blue and the sun shone on them brightly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Memories said softly.

  Natalie smiled sadly. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘We found out who left the baby,’ Memories said, a little later looking down at the grave.

  Natalie wiped her face. ‘Did you? Who?’

  ‘She was from another village further north. The mother died soon after childbirth. There was nobody left to look after the baby, only an older brother. He was ten.’

  ‘Your age?’

  ‘I am twelve.’

  ‘And the father?’ Natalie asked.

  ‘He had died. He had AIDs.’

  Natalie looked across the small grave at Memories; her face was serious but the tone of her voice was matter-of-fact. Natalie shook her head. She took off a small silver cross that she wore around her neck. It was something Lawrence had bought for her at a craft market. She laid it on the grave. Slowly she got to her feet.

  ‘So the boy took the baby up to the kopje?’

  ‘He said that he did not know what to do with it.’ Memories shrugged. She gazed at the small silver cross glittering in the dust where Natalie had laid it. ‘It’s not unusual,’ Memories continued, ‘many people die of AIDs or of other things. Many people do not have enough to eat.’

  The girl stood up and brushed the dirt from her dress. Her eyes lingered still on the silver cross.

  ‘Would you like it?’ Natalie asked.

  Memories’ eyebrows rose quizzically.

  ‘The cross,’ Natalie clarified. She bent down and picked it up. ‘It’s a shame to leave it here.’

  ‘Somebody would find it and take it,’ Memories agreed.

  Natalie stepped closer to the girl and slipped the chain over her head. The cross shone brightly against her dark skin.

  ‘Thank you,’ Memories said.

  ‘It’s so very little,’ Natalie said. ‘So very little.’

  So, no myths, she thought. No hyenas, no tales – just poverty and disease on a scale that I cannot even begin to comprehend.

  Later they walked back up the path, to the ridge that overlooked the farm. For a moment they paused and looked down the long green slope to the valley spread out below and, at the foot of the hill, the farm and the pale thread of road that wriggled down to Bindura.

  ‘I’m sorry about the school,’ Natalie said. ‘I’ve let you down.’

  Memories leant against her and grinned, linking her arm through Natalie’s. ‘Thank you for the lessons, teacher,’ she said.

  ‘What will you do?’ Natalie asked as they worked their way down the steep path, walking slowly, taking care as the ground was still wet in the shade and slippery.

  ‘There is a school in Bindura,’ she said. ‘Sekuru – grandfather – said that I could go. He said that he would arrange it. His father was good at school; he went to university in South Africa and became a teacher. Sekuru says that I must be like his father, because I like studying.’

  Natalie smiled.

  Memories stepped forward, skipping lightly across a stream. ‘I will be a teacher like you.’ She grinned. ‘And then I will come back here and teach. Will you go back to England to teach?’

  Natalie glanced at her then gazed back down across the valley. The trees shimmered in the heat and the distant hills seemed to recede. The valley was verdantly green after the weeks of rain. She felt a sudden deep, intense love for this landscape.

  She thought about going back to England. She thought about Lawrence and what they had. She could go back to him and rebuild what had been lost, mend some of the damage that had been done and try again. Perhaps think about having another child.

  ‘No,’ she said, turning to Memories. When she spoke again the words came out more passionately than she had intended. ‘You can’t go back. You cannot relive what was. You can mourn it, you can regret its passing, but you shouldn’t try to recreate something that has gone.’ She paused. ‘I’m going to Botswana for a couple of months,’ she said to Memories. ‘And then possibly down to South Africa to see Barbara. After that… ’

  She shrugged.

  At the edge of the farm she said goodbye to Memories. Impulsively she bent forward and embraced the girl. Memories giggled and clung to her tightly.

  ‘I’ll miss you, teacher,’ Memories said.

  Natalie nodded. ‘I’ll miss you.’ She touched the cross on the girl’s chest. ‘Take care.’

  Memories walked north around the edge of the property. For some minutes Natalie stood in the shade of the jacaranda tree and watched her as she went. She turned once and smiled and waved and Natalie waved back. Natalie watched her until she dissolved in the heat haze and only then did she turn back to the farmhouse.

  Walking through the gates she recalled that morning when she had rode back beneath the tree and through the gates with the baby cradled in her arms.

  In the cottage she sat down at her desk and picked up the photograph and for some moments gazed at it. In the photo she stood next to Lawrence. He had his arm around her shoulders and had a large grin on his face. She was smiling too, but her smile was more reserved, secretive. Her arm cradled her belly. She remembered the day distinctly.

  She stroked the photograph gently with the tip of her finger. For a moment she felt lost.

  She recalled the small grave of the little boy. She thought about the grave back in Lewisham, the tiny little plot beneath the extended shade of a beech tree that overhung the wall of the cemetery.

  She sighed and tucked the photograph inside her diary, placing it in her bag.

  32

  Moses was tired after the walk up to the cave at the top of the kopje. He had forgotten what a climb it was. He wished Memories had been there with him to share the moment, but she had disappeared some hours before. For some moments he stood in the mouth of the cave and looked out over the land. Heat waves were rising from the trees and the sound of insects filled the air. There was no other sound; no cars, no machinery, no planes, it was as though the earth had been born anew and was back as it had been when his ancestors had farmed this land. He breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the pure air.

  He took a small pack from his back and opened it on the floor of the cave. Inside were a couple of cans of Eagle beer and a bowl of sadza. It would have been better to brew the beer himself, seven day beer, but he had not had time to do that. He spread the libations in front of him, cracked open one of beer cans and poured it over the floor of the cave.

  ‘Mudzimu!’ He called. ‘Spirits, hear my call. I welcome you back home. Chimukoko, come to guide your family. Have patience with us. Treat us with mercy.’

  His words echoed dully from the walls of the cave. In the silence after, he listened, his entire senses alert.

  ‘Mudzimu!’ he called again, louder now. ‘Spirits! Chimukoko!’

  There was a sudden breath of air, a hot breeze that lifted the dust from the earth. Moses shuddered. He bowed his head to the floor of the cave.

  ‘Mudzimu!’ he whispered.

  He heard the wind stir in the trees behind him. He heard the rumble of the thunder and the day was suddenly darkened. He heard the rustle of water on the leaves and its hiss on the dry earth behind him and he felt the presence of the spirits and his heart was filled with fear and joy. He pressed his forehead to the earth with the sound of the rain and the rumble of the thunder in his ears.

  ‘Chimukoko, Tafawa, and Zindonga, my father,’ he whispered. ‘Your names will never be forgotten. One day this land will be ours again and you will be free to wander the pastures and to rest beneath the shade of the trees and to drink from the streams and to hunt the duiker in the fields and hills.’

  We hope you enjoyed Stephan’s novel. If you would like to read more, here are the first two chapters of The Song of the Stork. A beautifully atmospheric read, this tells the story of Yael, a young Jewish girl on the
run. A story of love, hope and survival, this is one woman’s story as she struggles to find her voice, while voices around her are extinguished.

  1

  They left the barn as soon as it was dark. Rivka had stood by the door watching as the light faded, moving from one foot to the other, anxious. When, finally, the shadows were deep enough, they slipped out, ears straining for sounds, stepping bare foot on the gravel, fear numbing the pain of the sharp stones that bit into the soft flesh of the soles of their feet.

  The turned earth of the harvested fields was cool and soft after the gravel, but it was heavy going and they were tired before they had crossed halfway towards the forest that lipped the hilltop. Rivka coughed continuously into her sleeve, fearing the sound would travel back across the field.

  They sank down when they reached the forest’s edge. The moon had just risen and the field shone, illuminated. Rivka’s face looked drawn.

  “You’re bleeding,” Yael whispered, and reaching out wiped the streak of dark blood from her lips with the cuff of her sleeve.

  “I must have bitten my lip,” Rivka said.

  “But look at your jacket,” Yael pointed at the dark stain in the crook of her arm, into which Rivka had been coughing.

  “Come on, we must move.”

  Rivka hauled herself up and turned towards the darkness of the woods.

  “We must move as fast as we can.”

  Yael followed behind Rivka, arms in front, shielding her face against the supple pine branches that snapped back ferociously as Rivka pushed through them.

  They covered no more than a couple of miles that night. Exhausted, they found a deep patch of undergrowth and wriggled into the centre of it, the brambles scratching at their faces, bloodying the backs of their hands and calves. Rivka fell asleep almost immediately. For some time, Yael watched her. Her body was emaciated, her cheeks sunken, the skin around her eyes loose and dark. Dried blood flecked her pale lips. Her hands looked like the hands of an old woman. Her breathing was fast, feverish. Her chest rose in a shallow, rapid rhythm. Yael sank down beside her, pulling her close. Covered their bodies with twigs and bracken. Rivka seemed to have shrunk. She was no longer the larger-than-life young woman Yael had first seen on the stage of the House of Culture in Selo, part of the young Yiddish theatre group.