She took a minute to admire the setting. The house looked over the garden towards the steep red-gold cliff faces of a mountain. Trees grew thickly at its base along what she thought must be the river she had seen earlier. She slammed her car door shut, and then froze as a storm of barking came around the house. First to appear was an enormous ridgeback who galloped straight for Hannah, as though intent on swallowing her whole. She braced herself, squeezing her eyes shut in terror. When, a second later, she opened them again, the huge dog was standing in front of her, sniffing her jeans and wagging his tail. By this time, two Labradors had joined them and proceeded to gambol around her, their tails thumping her legs. She gingerly offered the dogs her hand to sniff, and was rewarded with licks and broad grins from all three.
As she looked up from stroking the ridgeback’s head, she saw a tall, lean man standing in the farmhouse doorway. His brows were drawn down into a frown, darkening his face.
‘Um, hi,’ said Hannah, smiling uncertainly and trying to direct the ridgeback’s nose out of her crotch.
The man came down the three steps and, as he drew closer, she could see that a white scar ran from his nose, slicing his right cheek and pulling the corner of his mouth down. It destroyed what must once have been a beautiful face.
‘Visitors are by appointment only,’ he said curtly.
‘Sorry,’ Hannah stumbled over her tongue. ‘I was looking for Alistair Barlow? I’ve just arrived from Cape Town—’
‘I thought I made it clear in my email a few weeks ago that I wasn’t interested in your eco-tourism venture.’
‘Um, actually, no—’
He cut her off again: ‘What do you mean, no? This isn’t a debate.’ His eyes hardened to a flinty glare.
‘Um, no, I mean I’m not here about a tourism venture … I’m looking for the camp site.’
‘There is no camping here.’ His voice dropped to a scary softness. ‘Get the fuck off my farm.’
Realising she was not going to rescue this, Hannah got into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and drove off. She looked in her mirror and saw the man staring after her. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets, the dogs sitting at his feet, looking up at him, their tails thumping the ground.
Hannah was furious. She drove back over the cattle grid, the rumbling of the tyres over those bars jarring, just like her thoughts. What the hell was that? That horrible man. Maybe she should just turn the car around and go back. Shred that cold façade with the hot words that were boiling out of her now. She thought of a million things she could have shouted at him, but she had been completely tongue-tied. He had walked all over her, told her to get the fuck off his farm. Nobody had ever spoken to her like that. Well, you bastard. I will not. I’ll find the camp site myself. She swung the Mazda onto a track that trailed between two sloped fields. Her little car bounced and scraped along the track, and she slowed to a crawl. The storm had softened the track, and what were clearly tractor tracks had now become two parallel ditches of mud. Anger fuelled her determination to keep going along the track which was deteriorating fast. Eventually, the Mazda ground to a halt, tyres spinning in her increasingly futile attempts to rev the car out of there. She gave up at last and, opening her door, managed to leap from the cab to the grass edge of the track. From this angle, she could see that her car was well and truly stuck. This made her even angrier. She had left her cellphone in her bedside drawer, loving the freedom of not being contactable. That had come back to bite her. Dammit!
She slammed the Mazda’s door as hard as she could, reaping tiny satisfaction from the car’s shudder. Then, turning back, she made her way down the track towards the farm road, keeping to the grass verge. By the time she came to the road, her running shoes were sopping wet, the hems of her jeans mud-soaked. She stopped at the end of the track, debating with herself whether to make her way back to the farmhouse for help or head for the main road. Thinking that she would rather take her chances with potential axe-murdering motorists than approach the farm owner again, Hannah turned for the road.
Five minutes later, walking resolutely down the farm road, she heard the approach of a vehicle. It came into view before she could scramble and hide, so she kept walking, her head high. The Isuzu pickup drew alongside her and a good-looking older man hung his elbow over the window frame.
‘Can I help you with something?’
Hannah stopped and looked into warm eyes, crinkled at the corners. He was wearing a two-toned khaki-and-blue shirt. A Jack Russell lay across the seat behind the man’s shoulders, its stubby tail wagging against the man’s sunburnt neck.
‘My bakkie got stuck up the track. I need a tow, I think.’
‘That, I can help you with,’ he said, smiling. ‘Hop in. I’m Neil Barlow and this is Jim Beam.’ He put a hand behind his neck to the little dog.
‘Hannah Harrison,’ she said and grinned at him in relief.
He looked quizzically at her as he drove off down the road. ‘I’m at a complete loss as to who you are and how you got stuck on the farm. We don’t see many young people here any more.’
‘I’m new in town,’ she said, wanting to steer the conversation away from exactly how she had ended up stuck on the track. ‘I’m managing the bookshop in Leliehoek.’
‘Tim’s shop? For how long?’
‘Well, Tim and Chris are going to try life in Australia. If they settle there, then …’ Hannah shrugged.
Neil looked back from the road to her. ‘Isn’t that interesting. It’s about time we had another beautiful girl in town.’
‘That’s the best welcome I’ve had since I arrived,’ said Hannah, laughing. ‘So, who is the other beautiful girl?’
‘That would be Sarah Breedt – she stopped my heart when I first saw her.’
‘So you’re a ladies man, Mr Barlow.’ Hannah looked out her window and couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed in this charming man.
He smiled across at her. ‘My name is Neil, please. And I’m one lady’s man. Sarah married me forty years ago, and I’m still flummoxed that she chose me in the first place.’
‘Oh,’ said Hannah, ‘your wife.’
‘I saw a sign in a shop – you know those knick-knacky shops?’ Hannah nodded, smiling as he continued. ‘The sign said, “Every love story is beautiful but ours is my favourite.” That’s true for me.’
Hannah felt drawn to indulge him, and was beginning to get an inkling as to why Sarah might have chosen him. ‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘Well,’ he said, settling in to his tale, ‘we met on a train from Pietermaritzburg. Sarah had been at university there and was on her way home to Leliehoek, and I was finishing my studies at Cedara College of Agriculture and going home to Johannesburg.’
‘So you had a farm in the Transvaal?’ said Hannah.
‘No.’ Neil glanced at her, his eyes twinkling. ‘There was no farm in the family at all. My parents wanted me to be a businessman and I just wanted to be a farmer. The thought of their intelligent, good-looking son’ – Neil winked at Hannah – ‘being a farm manager was definitely not in their plans for me. Anyway, by the time Sarah and I reached Ladysmith, instead of changing trains for Joburg, I changed my ticket to spend more time with her. We arrived at Bethlehem station together, and Sarah’s parents just assumed I was a long-standing boyfriend from university, not some stranger she had picked up a few hours previously.’
‘And what happened?’
‘At the end of the Christmas holiday, Sarah returned to finish her last year of studies and left me working for her father on Goshen. She graduated that year and married me. We moved into a cottage that Sarah’s granny had lived in, and you know what?’ Hannah shook her head. ‘It felt like I was home for the first time in my life. Thirty years later, we moved back into that cottage to allow my son to have the farmhouse.’
Hannah coveted the sweet simplicity of his story. Her story was messy. Too many bruised relationships she was limping away from.
She ind
icated the turn-off to the track up ahead and stared at him in surprise as he drove straight past it. ‘My car is up there,’ she said, pointing up the track again. ‘Aren’t we going to tow it?’
‘Yes, we are, but this bakkie doesn’t have a winch on the front. I’m going to pick up my son’s Hilux. Is that okay?’
Hannah hoped her non-committal murmur passed for a response while she slid a few inches down in her seat. She could feel her cheeks flush as they headed up the driveway and took a road Hannah hadn’t noticed earlier, one that led behind the main house.
They pulled into a farmyard where tractors and equipment were parked in a large shed. A kitchen garden, planted with herbs and vegetables sprawled from the back of the house, and a paved path divided the garden, leading to what looked like a kitchen door. Neil crossed to another farm vehicle, a white Toyota Hilux with railings around the bed at the back. He checked for keys. ‘I’ll be right back – my son is much more responsible with keys than I am. Give me a minute.’
He hadn’t taken a step when the kitchen door opened, and there stood the tall man from earlier. He frowned at Hannah and looked at his father, before saying, ‘What’s going on, Dad?’
‘This is Hannah Harrison. I found her marching down the farm road.’ Neil gestured across to her, smiling at the younger man. ‘She’s taken over Tim’s shop in town. Her bakkie got stuck up in the donkey pasture, and she needs a tow.’
Neil’s son stared at Hannah. ‘What the hell were you doing up that track? I told you there was nothing here for you.’
Those million things Hannah had thought to say to him fled and her mouth gaped in shock while she wondered how she could possibly be surprised at the rudeness of this man.
‘I see you have already met my son, Alistair,’ Neil said dryly. ‘I’m afraid he’s lost the manners I raised him with, and seems not to have inherited any of my charm.’ He touched Hannah’s arm briefly and smiled. ‘I’ll be your knight in shining armour today, be it an old, creaky one.’ He turned to his son, who was standing, arms folded, defensiveness rolling off him in waves. ‘Come on, boy,’ Neil said cheerfully, ‘get those keys – we have a quest.’
When Alistair disappeared inside, his three dogs responded to Neil’s whistle, leaping and scrambling onto the back of the vehicle. Jim Beam jumped neatly into the cab and settled in his usual place on the seat back while Neil leant across the seat to open the passenger door for Hannah. She climbed in while he attempted to clear miscellaneous items from the dusty footwell. Boxes of sparkplugs were shoved into the cubby hole, a pair of binoculars dumped on the seat between them.
‘Sorry about the mess, Hannah,’ said Neil. ‘My son needs a woman to improve his habits.’ He waggled his eyebrows at her, and she shook her head, but couldn’t help a grin for him.
Alistair returned, throwing the keys to his dad, who caught them one-handed out the window. He then walked around to Hannah’s side, opened the door, and waited for her to move up on the seat to make space for him. His mouth was pulled into a sneer, daring her to refuse. She glanced across at Neil, who grinned at her. She shifted up on the bench seat so that she was sitting in the middle and wondered, awkwardly, if she should put her right leg over the transmission into the driver’s side, but then decided that, as much as she did not want to be squeezed against Alistair, having someone she’d just met change gears between her legs was a little more intimate than she was comfortable with. Alistair wound the window right down, hooked his left arm out the window frame, and shifted as much of his body as was possible away from Hannah.
‘I would still like to know what you were doing up in the donkey pasture after I told you to get off the farm,’ said Alistair.
Hannah snapped. ‘What’s your problem? I came to ask permission from you to visit the memorial site and you jumped down my throat before I could even get my name out.’
Alistair was glaring at her. ‘What the hell are you talking about? First you ask if there’s camping on the farm and now you’re talking about a memorial. There’s nothing on this farm that would interest you. But more than that,’ his voice rose, ‘I told you to get off the farm and you deliberately drove off the road into the donkey pasture.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Hannah spat back at him, ‘I didn’t know it was a donkey pasture. There was not a donkey in sight—’ She broke off to mutter, ‘“That’s one thing about our Harry. Harry hates everybody.”’
Neil laughed out loud, ‘You can quote Dirty Harry? You’re not old enough to know those movies.’
Hannah tried to shift away from Alistair. ‘My father’s a fan,’ she said as she gripped the edge of the seat as hard as she could, bracing her body against the motion of the truck as it rolled and bounced.
Her miserable Mazda came into view and, as soon as they drew to a stop, Alistair jumped out, getting away from her as quickly as possible.
Hannah watched as he walked around the small blue Mazda, seemingly assessing whether to tow it forwards or back. He returned to Hannah’s side of the car and swept his arm in a wide, sarcastic bow which, combined with his hard angry look, had Hannah scrambling out. He yanked the seat forwards and scrabbled around behind it, pulling out two strips of old carpet. He threw one to Neil and the two men hunkered down at the Mazda’s back wheels to slip the ends of the carpet strips under the tyres.
The dogs had jumped off the pickup and were ranging around in the field, noses to the ground and tails wagging high in the air. Hannah stood on the grass verge above the track with her hands in her back pockets, helpless and embarrassed.
While Alistair unwound the winch cable and set about attaching it to the towing eye of the Mazda, Neil came across to stand with Hannah.
‘So where are the donkeys?’ said Hannah, wanting to distract him from her flushed face.
He smiled at her. ‘There haven’t been donkeys here for fifty years, but the name stuck for some reason.’ Neil was quiet for a moment and then he glanced at her. ‘What’s this about a memorial?’
Hannah kicked the toe of her running shoe into the grass tufts on the verge. ‘I heard there was a concentration camp from the South African War on this farm.’
‘Where did you hear that?’ Neil’s brows had lifted in surprise.
‘I didn’t hear it exactly,’ she admitted. ‘I found a reference to it in the shop. I was clearing out some old stuff.’ She felt the need to explain, but couldn’t bring herself to mention Rachel’s journal with Dirty Harry in earshot. ‘I thought there might be a memorial to the camp,’ she said. ‘I suppose it piqued my interest enough to want to explore.’
‘You wasted your time,’ said Alistair, as he came back to the truck. ‘And a lot of ours. There’s nothing like that on the farm.’ Then, just as abruptly: ‘Dad, you get in the Mazda and reverse slowly when you feel the car starting to move.’
‘I can do that,’ said Hannah.
‘You stay where you are,’ said Alistair, leaning into the truck to manage the winch. ‘You’ve caused enough trouble.’
Neil shook his head at his son’s rudeness and, with a squeeze of Hannah’s arm, climbed into her car.
Hannah folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes. ‘“You’re a legend in your own mind, Harry,”’ she said under her breath.
The winch pulled and Neil slowly began to reverse. The tyres found traction on the strips of carpet, and the car slid out of the mud as easily as she had driven into it. This made her feel even more stupid. Alistair didn’t look her way as he approached her car again to unhook the winch cable.
Neil, still in Hannah’s driver’s seat, reversed the car up onto the opposite grass verge and swung it around, skirting Alistair’s truck. He leant out of the window. ‘I’ll drive this back to the house. See you there.’ Alistair and Hannah could only watch him make his way down the slope.
They drove in silence to the house. The tension was palpable between them and, as soon as he had parked the pickup at the back door of the farmhouse, Alistair disappeared inside
without a word. Hannah, muttering curses, made her way across the yard to Neil, who was leaning against the bonnet of her mud-covered car. He smiled as he handed the keys back to her. ‘Don’t worry about him. He’s more comfortable with his dogs than with people.’
Hannah grimaced. ‘They’ve got him used to giving orders and being blindly obeyed.’
Neil laughed. ‘Not a whole lot of obedience in you, though.’
She coloured again. ‘Sorry I caused so much trouble for you today. I really appreciate the help.’
‘It was a pleasure, Hannah Harrison, made completely worthwhile by seeing my son knocked off his even keel. He’s been despondent lately, and that worries me more than seeing him angry.’ Neil looked to the kitchen door, his face suddenly older.
‘Okay then.’ Hannah awkwardly jingled her keys. ‘I’ll be off home. Thank you again, Neil.’
‘You don’t want to stay for lunch, as late as it is? I’ll introduce you to the other beautiful girl in Leliehoek.’
‘No, I’ve put you out enough for one day. Thanks for the offer though. Another time?’
‘I’ll hold you to it,’ he said, closing her car door firmly.
Neil found Alistair in the kitchen, peering into the fridge.
‘Your mother has lunch waiting for us. Come on over to the cottage. But leave the mood behind, please. I’ve seen enough of it for a day.’
Alistair closed the fridge door and gave Neil a filthy look.
‘What?’ Neil said. ‘Was I supposed to leave her walking down the road looking for help?’
‘Dad, you encouraged her, downright charmed her.’
‘She’s a pretty girl who needed help – why wouldn’t I?’
They left the farmhouse through the front door. Neil glanced at his son. ‘The real question is, why you wouldn’t help her? What are you holding against a girl you’ve hardly met?’
‘She irritated me.’
‘More like she got to you,’ Neil said, smiling.
An Unquiet Place Page 5