And that was where the photograph came into its own. Hanging in the hallway that linked the study to the rest of the house, it made its point unceremoniously. For all the apparent nonchalance with which it had been placed on the wall, the photograph had a quiet eloquence. It said: here was a family that was comfortable with race, even if in the country outside the opposite was the case.
Now, as Lindi’s eyes scoured the photograph, she mused that it was accurate in every detail, but the image as a whole managed to convey an impression that Lindi no longer felt was honest. It was greater than the sum of its parts. She had come to think of that photo like one of those mirrors in department-store fitting rooms that make even the most generously proportioned customers look good in an unwise choice. The mirror doesn’t lie: it just plays around with the truth.
As she grew up and began to make up her own mind about what was happening in South Africa, Lindi couldn’t stop herself thinking that her parents had taken the easy option. She knew there were South African-born teenagers like her in London, whose parents really were a part of ‘the struggle’. She remembered the memorial service for the father of one of her friends. Afterwards the congregation had taken over the upstairs room in a pub. There had been plenty of talk about what he’d been like, how he’d always been the guy who would go the extra mile. Nobody said how he’d actually died, except that he’d been on a mission in one of the camps run by the African National Congress, in those days spearheading the liberation movement. It was always that way with the real activists. It had seemed to her that the less you knew about them, the more important their role in ‘the movement’. Not like her parents and their friends, who were constantly talking about the struggle as if it were a club anyone could join.
And there was the whole business of her name. Lindi was the diminutive of Lindiwe, ‘the awaited one’. It wasn’t that she didn’t like being called Lindi (though she got bored with explaining its meaning) but that she suspected it was a part of her parents’ image of themselves. How contrived to give your child a Zulu name, even if the only Zulu person you knew really well was the woman who washed the dishes and ironed the clothes. She was a part of their myth: that’s what Lindi thought when her mind took an uncharitable bent.
Lindi did what she always did when these thoughts came to the surface: she gave herself a gentle ticking off and willed them away. Self-control had always seemed a strength to her but it invariably felt like a dowdy little virtue against the expansive mood that was her family’s natural state. She’d spent so many years being the practical child, the one who injected a note of realism into a conversation, that she could no longer tell whether that was the way she was wired or whether it was merely a reaction to her family. She preferred the latter explanation, but worried the former was more accurate. What if she was always going to be the serious little girl in the photograph, the one who wanted to be spontaneous and free, like her brother, but so often retreated into studied reliability?
A clinking of bottles down in the cellar ended this train of thought.
Harry was dusting off a couple of bottles of his precious Meerlust Rubicon. This choice was a kind of vinic semaphore – it was his way of saying how special this meal was going to be. Every year an old friend in Johannesburg, Marney van Rensburg, would send a case of Rubicon. It was a private joke. Back in the old days, when Harry worked for Marney on the Rand Daily Mail’s special investigations team, a particularly incisive piece of journalism was always celebrated with a bottle of the Meerlust vineyard’s finest. Never mind that it cost a hefty portion of their joint pay-packets – though mostly they found a way of hiding it in their expense claims.
As he brought the first glass to his lips the older man would always lean back in his chair and say, ‘One day, when the revolution comes, Harry, we’ll all be drinking this stuff. But till that day – we mustn’t let the bastards have it all to themselves. Drink up, man.’
The memory always brought a smile to Harry’s lips.
He emerged from the cellar, saw Lindi, and put his arm around her. They stood in silence together, staring at the collection of memories on the wall. He glanced from a childhood photo of Lindi to the woman beside him now. A flick of the eye but a journey across time. Not for the first time he marvelled at the change. When had it happened? He’d seen it all and yet he’d seen nothing. It occurred to him that the change was less to do with individual features and more to do with the way they had accommodated each other. He could remember how, as a child, her ears, her lips, her eyes had all seemed to compete with each other. The ears stood out too much, the lips were too full and the eyes too big. Each seemed to make a claim to be the defining feature. He thought back to the way Lindi used to fold her lips inwards in a self-conscious attempt to hide them. And how those big, staring eyes made her look as if she were in a constant state of shock. Now her features had settled into happy coexistence in a face that had once been round but now resembled a heart. Those large green eyes – ‘At least one of my genes survived,’ Helen would say – were no longer out of proportion; instead they lit her face. And her ears, well, you couldn’t even see them now, buried under a tumbling wave of thick brown hair.
He could never look at her without being overcome with a powerful protective urge. There was something vulnerable about her. In truth, he’d always known what it was. Lindi needed protecting from herself, her self-imposed need to be conscientious, to be productive.
As his mind focused back into the present, Harry wondered how long he had been standing there with Lindi: he hadn’t even noticed that she’d snuggled her head into his shoulder.
‘I’m proud of you, my girl,’ he said leaning down, kissing the top of her head.
It was a chilly September day, one of those that takes everyone by surprise after the gentleness of a wishy-washy British summer, and there was something rather comforting about an oven stuffed with a joint of beef, potatoes and Yorkshire puddings sitting in sizzling hot trays. Besides, a roast lunch had its special place in the Seaton family story. Years ago, when they were trying to persuade their reluctant children that going to England would be fun, Helen and Harry had drawn up a list of all the wonderful things they could look forward to. As time went by and hardly any of it had come to pass Ralph and Lindi would tease their parents. ‘I wonder when we’re going to get to England,’ they’d say.
The parental list of inducements had included snow on Christmas Day (never); a milkman in a striped apron who brought bottles to your door (not where they lived); double-decker buses with conductors who shouted, ‘Hold on tight now’ (they’d all been made redundant); and Concorde streaking across the sky (taken out of service). The only thing from the list that had survived intact was the Sunday roast – and even that hadn’t turned out to be quite the British staple that Harry and Helen had suggested. The Seatons had adopted the ritual of a Sunday lunch with all the vigour of converts, even if most of the locals had moved on to more varied fare.
‘Listen, you must give Marney a call. He’s retired now but I bet he’s still plugged into what’s going on,’ he said to Lindi, handing her a piece of paper with Marney’s address and phone number on it. She glanced at it and saw that he’d moved down to Knysna, a coastal resort in the south of the country. Even with her second-hand knowledge of South Africa she was aware that Knysna was not exactly the place to be to judge the pulse of a nation. Put your ear to the ground in Knysna and all you’d detect would be the sound of a thousand feet shuffling in and out of fish restaurants and curio shops.
Helen had packed a parcel for Maude. ‘It’s just a few goodies,’ she said, pointing to a package in the corner of the dining room.
‘A few goodies! There won’t be space for me to carry anything but a toothbrush if I take that lot,’ she said.
‘You must check out the old house,’ Ralph said. ‘Hey, Dad, I wonder if our goalposts are still there.’
‘Not that you or Kagiso ever managed to hit the ball between them,’ retorted Harry.
The two boys, Ralph and Kagiso, had been an unlikely pairing and not just because one was white and the other black, or because one was the son of a servant and the other the son of the employer. Those things didn’t matter in the Seaton household. No, it was their temperaments that were so different. Ralph was boisterous while Kagiso was solemn; one was loud, the other quiet; one confident, the other diffident. Harry and Helen had often thought Lindi a better playmate for Kagiso. They were both earnest, so neither would dominate the other.
‘Where is Kagiso now?’ asked Ralph. ‘You must try to hook up with him, Lindi.’
‘Maybe he’s moved on,’ she replied. ‘He might not want to be reminded that he was the housemaid’s son.’
‘That’s a bit harsh,’ said Harry, clearly affronted at what Lindi was implying. ‘We treated him exactly the way we treated you two.’
‘The last time Maude talked about him he’d left his government job,’ said Helen. ‘Apparently he’d gone to work for some cooperative or other in the rural areas. He’d told Maude it was real grassroots work. She wasn’t even sure that he was being paid properly. He hadn’t sent her any cash for months and he was always so good about that. Maude was so funny talking about it on the phone.’ Helen now mimicked Maude at her irritable best. ‘I asked him what for he was so worried about grassroots. I told him we are not inkomo pulling grass from the ground. I told him what we need is maize-meal and medicines. I tell you! That boy he likes to dream.’
‘It’s certainly going to take more than dreams to turn things around now,’ said Harry. ‘I’m not sure how you recover from a thing like Lesedi Motlantshe’s murder.’
Harry had known Lesedi’s father. His interview with him had angered the apartheid government of the time. The article had ended with Motlantshe saying he looked forward to the day Harry would interview him in a Pretoria office, and BOSS (the notorious Bureau of State Security) would be protecting him rather than monitoring him. In fact, it was shortly after the double-page spread that the first threats against Harry and the family had begun to drop through his letterbox.
Harry recounted the occasion, then added, ‘Well, he certainly took to life in Pretoria.’
‘And then some,’ said Ralph. ‘Isn’t he one of the richest men in South Africa?’
‘He certainly is. I suppose I should say, “Good luck to him,” but it still leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.’
After lunch Lindi headed west from Stoke Newington towards Finsbury Park, where she shared a flat with friends. Her journey took her through one of the most cosmopolitan parts of London. She’d become blind to it but friends from her university days who’d settled outside London would occasionally remark at how there were more foreign faces than English ones. What they meant was that there were more black and brown people than white.
Kebab restaurants jostled with pound stores and pavement vendors. The Finsbury Park mosque had long since lost its radical associations but not its huge congregation. On Fridays, after prayers, the men would crush into the numerous cafés, with the Al Jazeera Arabic news channel providing a constant stream of information to argue about.
Lindi cycled past one of many internet cafés in the area, its window plastered with advertisements for phone cards, all of them promising the cheapest rates yet to keep in touch with people back home. She wondered what they told their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. Did they admit to being lonely, or did they dare to tell them that they loved this place and they wanted to stay? These Somalis, Algerians, Moroccans and Pakistanis were buffeted by the same competing emotional tides that generations of migrants before them had struggled with. Some longed to call this grimy city their home but worried that it might never fully accept them. Others saw how their children embraced its mayhem and materialism, and knew in their heart of hearts that they would never get away, as they had promised the folk back home. All around Lindi were people whose lives had been transformed – for good or ill – by journeys begun in a fit of hope, but often lived in the limbo of not knowing for sure if they had made the right move.
In only twenty-four hours’ time, it would be Lindi’s turn to find herself in a foreign country.
8
The uniformed immigration officer at O.R. Tambo International Airport left his station, taking Lindi’s passport with him. ‘Wait there,’ he said, barely looking back at her. Lindi turned around and shrugged her shoulders, acknowledging the evident impatience of the man waiting behind her in the queue. The immigration clerk was back within minutes, a suited official in tow.
‘Come with me,’ the second man said.
‘Why?’
‘We are going to talk.’
‘Talk? Talk about what?’
‘What you are doing in South Africa.’
‘I can tell you right here. I’m like everyone else in the queue. I’ve come to visit South Africa.’
‘We are going to my office. You can come with me or I can ask one of those policemen to escort you.’
He started walking and Lindi followed. It dawned on her that they were expecting her. How was that possible? Just the question was unsettling. As for the answer, every option was as chilling as the next. Either they had been told or they had made it their business to find out. It had been Anton’s idea for her to come in as a tourist. Perhaps that had been a mistake. He’d called Lesedi’s death a ‘game-changer’, something like that, but even he might have underestimated what was at stake for the authorities here.
They entered an airless room. Lindi took a deep breath. The unadorned walls – save for the obligatory portrait of the president – were painted in that indiscriminate version of cream common to official places everywhere. There was a single desk and a single chair, which the official took, leaving Lindi to stand, like a naughty schoolgirl in front of the head teacher.
‘So what is the purpose of your visit?’
‘I grew up here, and I’ve come back to see family and friends,’ Lindi replied, her words rehearsed numerous times on the plane.
‘Where are they?’
‘Who?’
‘Your relatives, these people you have come to see.’
‘They’re all over the country.’
‘Is that so, all over the country? Like where?’
Lindi knew she was going to have to feed him something, something bland, someone on the coast, somewhere that evoked a holiday. ‘Oh, I haven’t got a firm plan yet but I’ll probably head down to Knysna at some point.’ She knew what was coming next.
‘And who is there?’
‘My father’s oldest friend.’ So Marney van Rensburg had come in useful, after all.
‘And what about here, in Johannesburg?’
‘Look, I really don’t have to give you a blow-by-blow account of my plans. What’s all this about?’
The man ignored the question. ‘So you’re not doing any work here?’
The official’s mobile phone rang. He looked at the number and moved towards the door. Lindi could just about hear his voice. ‘Yes, she’s here.’
So they knew who she was. They must have known what flight she was on. Anton’s last words to her had been ‘Be careful.’ She’d assumed the comment was habitual, but now realised it was specific to this trip.
The man was listening to whoever was at the other end of the call. It was not a conversation: he was being told what to do. Finally, he took the mobile away from his ear, came back to where Lindi was standing and picked up the desk phone. ‘The passenger is ready now. Come and get her.’
Turning to Lindi, he forced a grim smile: ‘So, you are welcome in our country. Just remember you are here to enjoy yourself. We want you to play, no work. You understand.’
It was an order, not a question.
‘If we find you behaving badly we will know what to do.’
Anton had arranged for Lindi to rent a spare room at the BBC office in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial heartland – the kind of city that says to the capital, th
e seat of government, ‘You can have the politics, I’ll take the money.’ Anton’s habitual disdain for journalists, and foreign correspondents in particular, did not extend to the World Service, the BBC’s international radio station. It recruited many of its broadcasters locally, and the editors back in London were men and women steeped in the affairs of the region they were reporting on.
‘You couldn’t have them on the News at Six, could you?’ Anton would ask rhetorically. ‘I mean, they actually know what they’re talking about.’
The Africa editor at the World Service’s headquarters in London’s Portland Place – a legendary figure whose love for Africa seemed to have grown, inexplicably, with every new and brutal war he’d covered – was an old friend of Anton’s and the two had come to an informal arrangement. It was the kind of you-scratch-mine-and-I’ll-scratch-yours deal that underpinned many a story.
After Lindi had passed Immigration (she was taken to the front of the queue and the formalities took less than a minute), she turned on her phone to find several messages waiting for her. There was one from her father, and another from Ralph. She ignored them for the time being and scrolled down to one that had been sent from a Johannesburg number. It was from the office manager at the BBC. The woman had said she would be at the airport – despite Lindi’s insistence that she could get a cab – but now apologised that it was turning into a very busy morning and that she’d been asked to go straight to the BBC bureau.
The Burning Land Page 6