‘Our first stop will be at Simon’s Town,’ Edda ended, ‘where we’ll see the jackass penguins on Boulder’s Beach. They came by their name because their call sounds like the braying of a donkey.’
As, indeed, it did. The penguins themselves were very tame, getting under their feet as they walked, and it was difficult to gain a sufficient distance from them to take photographs. Anna was trying to get the right angle when Lewis Masters materialized beside her.
‘Shall I take one of you with them?’ he offered.
‘Thanks.’ She handed the camera over and posed rather self-consciously with a group of penguins. ‘My grandchildren would love this! I’d always thought these were cold-weather birds; I hadn’t expected to see them in South Africa.’
‘No, and they’re found in Australia too, which I find equally unlikely.’
‘Somewhere else I’ve never been.’
It was time to return to the coach, and they walked back together, just behind George and Wendy.
‘You mentioned grandchildren,’ Lewis remarked. ‘How many have you?’
‘Three: a girl of thirteen and boys of four and six.’
‘Do you see much of them?’
‘More of the boys, since they live quite close. My granddaughter’s at boarding school, but her home’s in London.’
‘And where’s yours?’
‘Westbridge, in Kent.’
‘Ah, I know it; I’ve played golf there.’
‘Really? It’s quite a famous course, I believe. My husband was a member.’
She climbed ahead of him into the coach, pausing as she saw George seat himself beside his wife.
Wendy looked up with a smile. ‘It seemed a pity to interrupt your conversation,’ she said.
‘May I join you, then?’ Lewis asked after a moment.
‘Of course.’
Anna seated herself with mixed feelings. She already felt she knew Wendy, but Lewis was an unknown quantity, and, remembering his reserve the previous evening, she hoped she wouldn’t have to make conversation.
‘Have you any grandchildren?’ she asked as an opener.
‘Sadly, no, nor any in prospect. My son has what is euphemistically known as a “partner” – in my youth the word was mistress – and marriage doesn’t appear to figure in his plans. My daughter, on the other hand, is living with a prominent barrister fifteen years her senior.’
‘Oh dear! Not married himself, I hope?’
‘Not any longer, nor likely to chance it again.’
Anna nodded in understanding. ‘I have to keep reminding myself we can’t live our children’s lives for them.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘But surely yours are happily settled?’
She hesitated, and he said quickly, ‘Forgive me – that was unpardonably intrusive.’
‘No more than my question about the barrister. Actually, my son left his wife a few months ago, though he comes back every weekend to take the boys out.’
‘Hard on the children.’
‘Yes.’
They lapsed into silence, and Anna gazed out of the window at the flower-studded bush on every side, making occasional notes on her pad. Too bad Beatrice wasn’t here; she would so enjoy this.
In the row in front of them, George and Wendy conversed in low voices, and Harry and Susan, whom she’d spoken to in the bar, were across the aisle. Shelley and Tony had teamed up together, while Jean had attached herself to the woman with whom Anna herself had sat yesterday. Gradually, she was sorting out who everyone was.
It was a day that, for several reasons, she would never forget: climbing up to the lighthouse on Cape Point; the open-air café, where redwing starlings alighted on the table and begged for crumbs; sampling the local fish at lunch on the way back; ostriches in the field alongside the road, and herds of antelope in the distance.
By the end of it, it seemed incredible that she’d known Lewis and the Salters less than twenty-four hours, for during the course of it, she’d been seamlessly incorporated into their party, and they all took it for granted that, back at the hotel, she’d sit at their table for dinner. What a difference a day makes! she thought whimsically.
In fact, it set the pattern for those that followed, and Anna’s reservations about the holiday fell away, freeing her to enjoy the daily wonders of landscape and animals. In view of the number of miles to be covered, early starts were the norm, but as a habitual early riser, they didn’t bother her.
Each evening she wrote her diary, transcribing and enlarging on notes made during the day to record its events in more detail: a visit to an ostrich farm, where they’d watched feather dusters being made, hand-fed the birds, and taken it in turns to stand on the eggs – (we were told an ostrich’s brain would fit in a teaspoon! she wrote); the mysteriously beautiful Cango Caves; the thrill of stroking a semi-tame cheetah and hearing it purr.
Throughout these crowded, exciting days, the members of the group came to know each other quite well, the ephemeral nature of their friendship allowing more openness than would have been the case at home. Even Jean, whom they’d originally been wary of, grew progressively less strident and, as a result, more agreeable.
As the week went on, Lewis began to alternate with Wendy in sitting next to Anna on the coach trips. He was an interesting and knowledgeable companion, but she quickly learned that he had a short fuse if anything went wrong – an extra-long wait for the coach, a dish at dinner that wasn’t up to standard.
One evening, when she and Wendy were waiting for the men to bring drinks from the bar, Anna asked casually, ‘How long have you and George known Lewis?’
‘Oh, donkey’s years,’ she replied. ‘He and George met at university, and he was best man at our wedding.’
‘He’s mentioned his children, but not his wife,’ Anna said tentatively.
Wendy grimaced. ‘Par for the course. They’ve been divorced for years now, but it was a wonder they stuck it as long as they did. Talk about opposites attracting! Granted, Lewis wouldn’t be the easiest person to live with, but Myrtle was impossible.’ She glanced at Anna. ‘You might have heard of her – Myrtle Page? She was one of the top models of the seventies.’
Anna had a vague memory of an ultra-thin woman in out-rageous clothes on the cover of Vogue.
‘Of course, she’s not done any modelling for years,’ Wendy continued, ‘but she still hits the headlines pretty regularly and makes life difficult for him. As if he’s not got enough on his plate.’
‘Such as?’ Anna asked carefully, monitoring the progress of the men in the bar queue.
‘Oh, business worries, as always. He’s a complete workaholic, to such an extent that we became quite worried about him. He’s not as tough as he thinks, so we scooped him up and insisted he came away with us. God knows when he last had a holiday.’
‘I gather he’s involved with some sort of hotel?’
Wendy gave a short laugh. ‘Is that what he implied? Not quite accurate, but at least he’s sticking to our rule of no business talk.’
‘So what does he do?’ Anna asked curiously.
‘Only owns the Mandelyns Health Resorts Group.’
‘Owns it? You mean those luxury health spas?’ Anna stared at her in amazement.
‘Yep. He started way back by opening a series of health clubs, and gradually expanded into spas. They have three now, and another in the offing, I gather, but it’s thirty years since he opened the first one, and celebrations are planned for later in the year. Myrtle was the face of their Lasting Youth line for years.’
‘Good heavens!’ Anna sat back to digest the news. ‘Didn’t they have some breakthrough new treatment a few months ago? I seem to remember reading about it.’
‘They’re always having breakthrough new treatments!’ Wendy said wryly.
Lewis and George returning with their drinks put an end to the conversation, but it left Anna regarding Lewis in a slightly different light.
It was now more often than not Lewis who sat with
Anna on the coach and who remained at her side while sightseeing, helping her up steep steps and guiding her over rough terrain. On the odd occasions when Wendy replaced him, Anna surprised in herself a fleeting disappointment, which she instantly suppressed. Nonetheless, after months of grieving, his obvious interest was balm to her bruised heart. He was, after all, an attractive man, and she privately admitted that, were she unattached, she might well reciprocate – before realizing with a start that she was unattached, and hastily dismissing the thought.
Today, we drove along the famous Garden Route, and Edda pointed out indigenous trees, among them the prehistoric cycat, which was around at the time of the dinosaurs. They look like stunted palms, with wide, barky trunks. Edda says they’re sometimes called bread trees, because flour can be made from them.
Beatrice would be interested in that; she was an inveterate gardener. Anna paused and stared into space. As usual when the time came to write her diary, she was too tired to concentrate and wanted only to slide into bed. But she’d promised Beatrice, and in any case, what she wrote would be a vivid reminder that would last her for life.
More immediately, though, it was now eleven thirty. They were leaving at seven for the long drive to Port Elizabeth, and her case must be outside her door by six thirty. She really should get some sleep, despite the postcards waiting to be written. She’d do them tomorrow, she promised herself.
They flew from Port Elizabeth to Durban, bidding farewell at the airport to Ali, their Cape Muslim driver, and his Greyhound bus. The driver who met them at Durban was a Zulu by the name of Nelson. He proved more taciturn than his predecessor and, as they later found, less willing to stop on demand when they came upon a group of animals. Like the others, Anna missed Ali and his unfailingly cheerful smile.
Edda, however, was still with them, deftly filling them in on South African history and politics as they went, interspersed with tales of black magic and the ‘immortal’ Rain Queen, matriarch of the Nabado tribe.
Whether or not thanks to the latter, the rain finally caught up with them in Durban, spoiling their visit to the Botanical Gardens and the afternoon trip to the Valley of A Thousand Hills, which was shrouded in mist. The tour was cut short, and they thankfully returned to the warmth of the hotel, where, at last, Anna was able to bring her diary up to date and write her postcards.
Nor was the following day any better, and Durban’s famous landmarks were viewed through a curtain of relentless rain. There was a general feeling of disappointment and fear that the bad weather might follow them when they left the next day.
That evening, as Anna transferred items from her daytime bag to a smaller one, her mobile fell on the bed, and, thinking to check its battery level, she switched it on.
Immediately, its red light started flashing, and, to her surprise, she discovered a batch of texts from her family, a reminder that she’d been so caught up in the holiday and her new friends that she’d spared them little thought for the last few days.
She sat down and read the messages one after the other – from Sophie, from Tamsin, from Jonathan, and separate ones from the boys – of the ‘Dear Granny, I hope you are well’ variety. Anna felt a surge of love for them all, and, although it meant being late for pre-dinner drinks, she briefly replied to each of them.
But, as in Cape Town, sleep later that evening proved elusive. Since receiving their texts, her family had remained very much in mind, most particularly Jonathan and Vicky and the wedge that had come between them. She accepted that she’d been hard on her son, alloting him his boyhood room when he came for the weekend, rather than the adult comfort of the guest room, and making no attempt to conceal her displeasure with him. But for some time she’d been increasingly aware of his inconsiderate behaviour towards his wife, and it upset her to see Vicky, who’d always been so bright and bouncy, subdued and prone to tears.
Vicky had been only sixteen when her mother died, and five years later, her father had remarried and gone to live in the south of France. Consequently, when she and Jonathan became engaged, Anna and Miles had evolved more into parents than parents-in-law, and since Miles’s death, the two women had grown even closer. It was therefore, incongruously enough, in the arms of her mother-in-law that Vicky had sobbed brokenheartedly on Jonathan’s departure.
What was it Lewis had said, back among the penguins? Hard on the children. And indeed it was: her heart ached to see the eagerness with which the little boys awaited their father’s weekly visits.
In the darkness of her hotel room, Anna gave a frustrated sigh. She loved Jonathan dearly – of course she did – but that didn’t stop her wanting to shake some sense into him.
This was getting her nowhere, she told herself firmly, and, pushing her problems aside, she determinedly closed her eyes and waited for sleep to come.
As luck would have it, the next morning, as they were leaving Durban, the sun finally came out, and their last view of the city was, at last, under blue skies.
The drive north was a constantly changing kaleidoscope of hills folding away into the distance, of pineapples growing by the roadside, banana plantations, and sugar canes stretching for mile after mile.
They stopped for lunch at the village of Shakaland, where they were shown a display of Zulu dancing. Anna was particularly intrigued by the grass circlets the girls wore on their heads to enable them to carry pots.
It was late afternoon when they arrived at the game reserve where they were to stay, and a further twenty minutes before they reached the Reception Centre. Anna was taken aback by the vastness of the area; she wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but certainly not mile after mile of hilly shrubland covered with bushes and stunted trees. As the coach moved slowly along, Edda pointed out groups of game browsing in the relative cool of late afternoon – white rhino, giraffe, herds of zebra and even, in the distance, a solitary elephant.
The coach deposited them at the Centre, and there was a long wait while their accommodation was sorted out. It transpired that they’d been allotted individual huts, referred to as rondavels, that were spread over quite a wide area of the camp, and maps were handed out, on which the route to their own huts had been highlighted in pink.
Typically African in appearance, they were, however, comfortably equipped with baths or showers, a sitting area, and a kitchen where, had they been on a self-catering holiday, they could have cooked their meals. As they were not, and would be eating at the main Centre, they’d been warned in advance to bring torches to light their way back after supper.
That first evening, after a convivial meal in the crowded restaurant, it was an eerie sensation to leave the lighted Centre and set off in the dark along unfamiliar paths. Anna was glad of Harry and Susan’s company, their hut lying in the same direction as hers.
Then, when they’d almost reached their destination, she came to a sudden halt.
The other two also stopped, looking at her questioningly. ‘Something wrong?’
‘I’m trying to think what I’ve done with my key,’ Anna said worriedly. ‘It was too big to fit into my bag, so I was carrying it separately. I must have put it on the table when I sat down to dinner. Oh God, it’s probably still there! I’ll have to go back.’
Harry immediately offered to accompany her, but she shook her head.
‘It’s very kind of you, but I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll be fine – I know the way now.’
Before he could insist, she turned and started to hurry back, passing other groups, indistinguishable in the dark, making their way to their own huts. She alone was going in the opposite direction, and she began to worry that the restaurant might be closed by the time she reached it.
To her infinite relief, however, it was not, though it was now almost empty and none of her own party remained. She hurried to the table where she’d been sitting and thankfully retrieved the key, still lying where she’d left it. Now for the return journey – alone.
A notice in the hut had informed her that although an electr
ified fence surrounded the camp, this was not ‘foolproof’, and great care should be taken when returning to the rondavels in the dark. Her mouth dry, she hurried along the path illuminated by her torch, seemingly the only light in the whole African night.
At one point, a pair of eyes glowed red in its beam, and she stopped with a frightened gasp. But it was only a zebra, peacefully grazing. Anna skirted it and had reached the place where she’d left Harry and Susan when her torch suddenly went out, leaving her stranded in total darkness. She came to a halt, desperately shaking it and pressing the switch again and again, before being forced to accept that the battery had failed. Now, of all times!
Heart thumping, she waited impatiently for her eyes to acclimatize, glancing nervously about her for the odd marauding lion. Then, moving cautiously forward, she started along the path again, before once more coming to a stop. Beside her was a fork she didn’t remember. Oh God, had she taken a wrong turning? Should she carry straight on, or change direction?
Some way down the fork, a light showed in one of the huts, throwing a pale patch on to the grass outside, and, drawn to it like a moth to a flame, Anna started towards it. Perhaps, if she knocked on the door, someone could lend her a torch to light her to her own hut.
She’d just reached it when a voice spoke suddenly from behind the curtains of the open window. Startled, she came to an abrupt stop, before, seconds later, recognizing it as Lewis’s. With a wave of relief, she’d raised her hand to knock when something in his tone made her pause.
‘God, that’s awful!’ he was saying. ‘What happened?’ There was a brief silence, and she realized he must be speaking on the phone. ‘Just like that? It’s . . . unbelievable.’ A longer pause, then his voice sharpened. ‘What the hell do you mean by that? Of course there’s no connection! God, what are you thinking? . . . This is confined to the two of you, I trust? . . . You’re positive? Then make damn sure it stays that way . . . Yes, yes, I know. You did right to phone me, but— All right. Yes. Yes, I will. Goodbye.’
Motionless by the door, Anna gave a little shiver, then, abandoning her intention, turned quietly back the way she had come. As she regained the fork, still puzzling over his words, she saw a wavering light coming towards her.
Shifting Sands Page 3