by Paul Twivy
Selima thought she saw Barbara’s shoulders tense. She also noticed a heavy sigh which Barbara then sought to smother with reassuring words.
‘We pride ourselves on our sustainability. It’s paramount in all that we do.’
Barbara didn’t even convince herself. She was aware that she was protesting too much, papering over the cracks of her boss’s patchy environmental track record.
‘We only use wood from FSC forests,’ Barbara continued. ‘No hardwoods. We use materials such as bamboo. Our brick is often re-constituted…’
Ilana put her hand up in a traffic warden gesture indicating that Barbara should stop her litany.
‘I am not worried about your use of materials or your building methods. Indeed, I am reassured by what you have already said. My concern is something different. Are you aware of the nature of this site?’
Barbara hesitated. Did Ilana mean the soil or rock type? Or the views? The remoteness?
‘I am not sure what you are referring to. Do explain.’
‘I am referring to the fact that this is on the edge of an ancient burial site. A site sacred to the local tribespeople. Even the limited disturbance you have caused up until now has caused them great distress,’ Ilana explained.
‘No one has said anything,’ Barbara protested.
‘They’re hoping you will go away. They find it difficult to confront foreigners.’
Barbara pulled herself up to her full height as if she were an accused prisoner in the dock about to deliver her own defence.
‘There is nothing marked here to signify anything sacred…nothing on the landscape itself, nor on the maps that the local council has provided.’
Ilana pulled herself up to an even fuller height in response.
‘That’s because in Namibia, the maps that matter are in people’s heads, in their collective memory. No planning clerk will give you that information. Although I keep lobbying that they should.’
Selima raised her eyes from her water glass, looked at her mum, her ardent posture, her passion, and felt a rush of pride. The justice of her mother’s cause prickled the back of Selima’s neck.
Barbara stood up and surveyed the terrain in front of them. There was nothing to indicate a burial ground. However, she cast her mind back to some work she had done in rural Australia several years earlier, when Joe was young.
They had been surveying another possible hotel site. The Aborigines had pointed a few hundred metres away to ‘their larder, their food store’. She looked and saw only flat sand. After shrugging her shoulders and protesting, they took her over to the spot they’d indicated. After digging down a few feet with their cupped hands and some improvised spades, they pulled out ‘provisions’ kept cool in the damp sand, well below the burning surface. This was their ‘fridge’. It had made her realise that not everything important below the ground was signalled above the ground.
‘So how were we supposed to know this?’ Barbara asked, trying not to sound too defensive. She was respectful by nature, but this was irritating her in the boiling heat. This was first-class inconvenience, and she could already envisage the rows with her boss, as it all unfolded and a new site had to be found.
‘That’s why I came here,’ Ilana answered. ‘I came here because I suspected that you didn’t know and to stop your mistake from getting worse, from spreading like a stain.’
‘We’ve started negotiations on the land,’ Barbara said in an irritated tone.
‘There are plenty of sites not far from here that would suit. In fact, they might well suit you better. They have better views, better transport links. We can help you locate them.’
‘Look, Ilana, I appreciate everything you are saying but…’
At that moment a gruff voice cut her off.
‘Mrs Kaplan, there’s something you need to see…’
A head appeared from beneath where they were sitting. But even before the face appeared, the unmistakeable twang of the voice had made Selima and Ilana sit bolt upright.
‘Darius?’ Ilana exclaimed.
‘Dad?!’ Selima echoed.
Darius looked sheepish and shoved the spade in his hand trenchantly into the soil as a vent for his embarrassment. He was sweating.
‘What are you doing here?’ Ilana pressed.
‘I told you I was helping out, driving, for an American company.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t know that you were also digging test excavations for a hotel. Or that it was here.’
Barbara, who had felt on the back foot before, now felt on two back feet. This family seemed to have surrounded her in their various ways and, to make matters worse, were now in conflict with each other.
‘Darius, I had no idea,’ Barbara said, ‘that your daughter and my son knew each other.’
‘Neither did I,’ he replied defensively, ‘until this moment.’
Selima’s gaze darted between her two parents. She could see that her mother was struggling with this ‘deceit’ by her father. Equally, she could see that he was flummoxed and probably innocent of any crime. She always felt for his vulnerability.
‘But, Darius, you are helping to explore foundations for a hotel that can never be built here,’ Ilana protested, looking at him with a burning piety that Selima could see made her father defensive and angry.
‘Well it certainly can’t be built here now,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ Barbara asked, trying to keep up.
‘Come and have a look,’ he replied, signalling for them all to follow him.
‘Selima, I’m not sure you should come.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dad!’
They all followed him down a straggly trail. A pit lay ahead, where they had been excavating. It was the size of a small swimming-pool and about as deep. In the corner of the pit, a worker stood as still as stone. At his feet lay what looked like a long and ragged bag of clothes.
As Selima got closer, she realised it was a military uniform of some kind. Inside the uniform was a skeleton, the shrunken remnants of the full-bodied man that had once filled it. The ribs protruded from under the jacket. Boots encased its skeletal feet, splaying them outwards with their weight and giving the corpse a sinister, clown-like appearance.
‘I’m pretty sure it’s a British Army uniform,’ Darius said, circling the body. ‘Victorian. You can tell from the VR on the buttons.’
‘Not the burial site I was imagining,’ said Ilana.
‘Burial site?’ Darius asked.
‘There’s supposed to be a tribal burial site here,’ Ilana explained.
‘Well, that may be beneath of course. We haven’t dug that deep yet,’ Darius pointed out.
Barbara found herself held in a grim fascination with this corpse. She knelt as close to it as she could bear.
‘What’s that wrapped around the… neck?’ she asked, pointing. She hesitated to use the term as the neck was long gone.
‘That’s what I’ve been pondering,’ Darius chimed.
‘It’s a Herero garland,’ Ilana said with some certainty, kneeling close to the corpse. She knew tribal ways well and had studied them as part of her degree. ‘It’s a garland of honour. You can tell from the gemstones.’
Selima gazed at the gemstones dulled by the soil, strung together in a long, still-unbroken necklace. The contrast between their strong colours, muddied though they were, and the black of the decaying uniform, could not have been greater.
‘This soldier was honoured by the local people when they buried him. That was rare,’ Ilana commented.
Selima was silent. She was fixated by one thing. The jaws of the skull were wide apart, gaping. Perhaps all skulls buried for this long were like this, she didn’t know. But it was as if this soldier, whoever he was, had died from a sudden shock, his jaw locked in horror, at the moment of his death.
‘I must call Ben… my husband… Joe’s father,’ Barbara said, trying to gather her wits. ‘He’s an anthropologist. He’ll be able to unravel what’s happened here.’
‘We have our own anthropologists in Namibia,’ Ilana said defensively. ‘Darius, what are you doing? Leave it…him… alone,’ Ilana called out.
Selima watched fascinated as her father gently slid his hand into the inside of the skeleton’s jacket and felt inside the pockets for clues to his identity. She didn’t share her mother’s squeamishness. If Darius hadn’t investigated, she probably would have done the same.
He pulled out a Victorian pocket watch and rubbed it clean with his sleeve. It was in remarkably good condition. He turned it over, finding an inscription on the back.
‘What does it say, Dad?’
‘It’s got some initials and a date. J.W.A. 1829.’
Freddie’s father had worked in grander Embassies but none more interesting than this one in Windhoek. Spending a day with his father at work was always awkward, wherever they’d been in the world. He had often been palmed off with photocopying or filing of some particularly pointless kind. He was rarely allowed into meetings. They were ‘confidential’ and ‘Government business’ which he understood but resented. So, he eavesdropped when he could but was usually disappointed or confused by the fragments he picked up.
Once, he had accompanied his father to 10, Downing Street. It was late afternoon on a Sunday and so the place seemed eerily quiet. His mother was away for the weekend with Clara, and so Ralph had no choice when the emergency summons came, but to take Freddie with him.
Downing Street was like a Tardis. From the outside it seemed a very modest, terraced, Georgian house, but once you were inside the famous front door, it all opened out. The door had swung open without them knocking which struck Freddie as quite magical. No wonder people liked these powerful jobs if doors opened automatically as you approached.
The Prime Minister had returned early from Chequers and Ralph was needed.
‘Wait here,’ his father said, ‘and don’t move. You’ve brought something to read, I hope. They’re very strict on security here as you can imagine. I won’t be long.’
If only Freddie had got £5 for every time he’d heard that one. He sat in a dark, unremarkable waiting-room and tried to read his book. He went into the toilet, excited by the idea that Prime Ministers had sat on its old-fashioned wooden seat. Then he wandered down a corridor leading to number 11.
Staircases seemed to appear in odd places like an Escher drawing. Computers and photocopiers lay silent, apart from one person in a far corner tapping furiously at the keyboard. He looked up momentarily as Freddie appeared, looked vaguely quizzical and then returned to the notes he was typing.
Returning to the entrance hall of Number 10, with its black and white, chess-board flooring, Freddie half expected the White Rabbit to run across it and disappear through a hidden door, pursued by a breathless Alice. He noticed that the man on security behind the front door was now nowhere to be seen.
It was too tempting not to creep down the central corridor further into the house. After all, how cross could they be with a stray ten-year old boy? He was already formulating lame excuses in his head. His heart raced as he crept down the corridor.
He stood in front of double-doors that seemed significant (he later learned it was the Cabinet Room) and heard voices from inside, including his father’s. He quickly turned right fearing the double-doors might suddenly open and reveal him. He came to a very grand staircase with ornate banisters. On the walls stretching above him were portraits and photos of every Prime Minister. It looked too imposing to walk upstairs, so instead he proceeded down.
At the foot of the stairs he found a magnificent globe. It rested on a stand on the marble floor and must have been four or five feet tall. On the perimeter of the globe itself was a key to every flag of every nation in the world.
He leaned forward and spun the globe on its axis. Fortunately, it made practically no sound just the quiet shuffling of longitudes and latitudes. He thought about how many countries he had already visited, indeed lived in. He was struck by how manageable it all was when you could spin and control the entire world and race across continents, with your fingertips. It was so different to the actual, overwhelming impact of arriving in another country: the feeling on your skin, the unexpected smells, new horizons, gabbled languages. He had feared each new beginning and yet loved it as well.
He was so absorbed by his games with the globe, that he failed to hear the approaching footsteps.
‘And how did you find your way here young man?’
He spun round. It was a policeman wearing a white shirt and dark blue, bullet-proof vest. Attached to his vest was a walkie-talkie which periodically crackled into life with a burst of static.
‘Sorry, sir, I am here with my father and I seemed to have got lost coming back from the toilet.’
‘Who is your father?’ the policeman replied, enjoying his authority.
‘Ralph Wilde, sir. He’s a High Commissioner.’
Freddie felt he sounded like a spoiled brat as he said these words. He was sure the policemen would feel the same. He felt just as ashamed of his privilege as he did at being caught.
‘Is he indeed? Well I suppose that makes you a High Commissioner’s son then,’ the policemen goaded.
‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean any harm.’
‘Come on then, let’s take you back to where you’re supposed to be’. His voice seemed to have softened at Freddie’s tone of remorse but also of respect. Not like the snotty politician’s kids he normally had to herd.
‘My mum says I am always poking my nose where I shouldn’t. Curiosity killed the cat.’
‘Ah yes, but not the Downing Street cat. Have you heard about Larry the number 10 cat?’ The policeman was enjoying this interlude in his boring Sunday afternoon.
‘No, but I imagine he’s allowed to roam anywhere?’ Freddie said.
‘He is… because of his role as mouser, you see,’ the policeman explained.
Freddie was then treated to a tour of the grandest rooms in the house, many of which faced on to the garden at the back. Freddie’s head was whirling by the time he was reunited with his pale and stressed father waiting by the front door.
‘There you are, Freddie. Where on earth have you been? I told you not to move.’
The policeman intervened.
‘And he didn’t sir. I took pity on him, sitting in that dark waiting room for hours, so I gave him a tour. Sorry if that’s caused you any alarm, sir.’
‘Not at all. It’s extremely kind of you. I’m very obliged officer.’
Freddie had never seen his father back down quite so quickly. He had made two mental notes at the time. One was ‘Always be respectful to policemen.’ The other: ‘If you don’t go wandering, you’re bound to miss out on the best things in life.’
That’s why today, whilst his father was embroiled in endless meetings, Freddie had ventured into every nook and cranny of the High Commission. He’d talked to the gardener about the vegetable patch and why the grass had started to scorch. He had helped the cook prepare a jug of iced smoothies in the basement kitchen. He had toured the digital photographs of Namibian tribes that his father had insisted should replace the old-fashioned paintings that preceded them. He had even tried to read a framed copy of the Namibian constitution.
Now the afternoon was rolling towards its conclusion and Freddie was fading. He was trapped in the boiling hot office next door to his father’s. He could hear animated voices and realised that his father had mistakenly left the door to his office open. He could see through a gap between the door and its frame, into the room.
Ralph Wilde and a few of his team were gathered around a small table in the centre of which sat a triangular conference phone with speakers embedded in each of its three ten
tacles. A rather grating and very English voice was blasting out from the speakers.
‘Look, Ralph, I cannot stress enough the importance of our trade with Africa post Brexit. We are talking about “Global Britain” here. It’s the first time that we’ve ever had a department dedicated to international trade. That tells you how seriously we’re taking it.’
He heard his father replying in a tone Freddie knew only too well from family rows: rising tension just about held in check, like floodwater building up behind a dam.
‘I appreciate that, Minister, and we have strong, bilateral trade agreements between Namibia and the UK that will survive Brexit. I’m just not sure how much more you can expect from a country as small as this.’
‘Well, more uranium for a start. We’re in a race with the Chinese and others as you know. It’s vital for nuclear energy, which is the only way we’re going to meet our carbon emission targets. Then there’s the gas from Kudu…’
‘The copper at Tsumeb…’ Ralph added
‘Greater access to diamonds wouldn’t go amiss either.’
‘I’ve grasped all of that, Minister. But with the greatest respect, Namibia’s trade with the EU dwarfs their trade with us. When we leave Europe, it’s going to make things much more complex.’
There was a pause. Freddie felt worried that his father had overstepped the mark and was about to be slapped down by the Minister. If so, the repercussions on the family would last for days.
The Minister’s voice, when it returned, was slightly chilling.
‘We have a solution to that in Namibia. Who leads Europe?’
‘Germany… well and France.’
‘Exactly. The Germans and Namibians have been negotiating for three years now, but it seems that Germany is pulling back from admitting its genocide in their former colony. They fear the legal repercussions apparently. They don’t want to admit to a state crime.’
‘I have spoken to a number of the Namibian negotiators and they won’t give up,’ Ralph replied. ‘They want a formal admission, a “deep apology” as they call it… and reparations. And I don’t blame them.’