Storms Over Africa

by Beverley Harper

  ‘You don’t get an African girl pregnant first.’ She was aware of the strict tribal traditions which still influenced even the most urbane African.

  ‘That’s different. If I marry an African girl and she cannot give me a child I can throw her out. Or I can take another wife.’ He put his arms around her and kissed her. ‘If I marry you, darling, I would have to drop some of my people’s ways, you know that.’

  She had resisted him for several months but, finally, after he threatened to withdraw access to the cocaine she needed so much, she agreed. As far as he knew, she was not yet pregnant.

  He made himself a cup of tea and took it outside to the verandah. From there he could see the river, the good grazing land, and the fat, healthy cattle that shared it with the wildlife. We’ll get it all back, he was thinking. All this will be returned to its rightful owners.

  At the house, Steve was full of open-mouthed astonishment at the size and style of the place. The bedroom she and Richard were shown to was as big as an average suburban house in Sydney. ‘If I lived here I’d hate to share it with strangers,’ she said, looking through the windows to two-and-a-half hectares of sculptured garden.

  ‘They have to. They couldn’t afford to live here otherwise.’

  In the early days Tony had been a District Commissioner. The farm had been run by his father. African labour was cheap and the farm flourished. By the time Tony took over, the old ways were changing. Labourers were paid more, the cost of living had gone up, profits from farming were down. The good old days were over with the changing times. The war had interrupted his attempts to change with them.

  ‘Why don’t they sell?’ Steve asked. ‘Surely they don’t need to live like this.’

  ‘How else could they live?’ he replied. ‘Neither of them know any other way. Besides, the history of his family is tied up here. He feels morally obliged to hand this place over to his remaining son. There are many families like this in Zimbabwe, trying to hang onto the old ways.’

  ‘Do we have to dress for dinner?’ She looked a little intimidated at the thought.

  ‘It’s the tradition.’

  ‘Tradition!’ She was amused. ‘I swear, you people in Africa are more traditional than the British.’

  He took her comment seriously. ‘We are. The stiff British upper lip is never more alive than it is in colonial Africa.’

  ‘But you’re not colonial any more.’

  ‘Try telling that to people like Eileen and Tony.’

  She gave up. She shook out the little black dress Richard had advised her to pack and hung it in the wardrobe. ‘Do you want one of the servants to iron it?’

  This was too much. ‘No, I don’t want one of the servants to iron it,’ she mimicked him. ‘It’s a modern dress. It doesn’t need ironing.’

  He put his arms around her. ‘You don’t understand us, do you?’ He kissed her nose.

  She sighed. ‘It just seems to me that you are trying to live in the past.’

  He grinned at her. ‘The past doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, actually. The pace was slower. The air was cleaner. The water was drinkable. And . . .’ he kissed her, ‘. . . women knew their place,’ he teased.

  She leaned against him. His aftershave mingled with the smell of his old leather jacket. He felt solid and competent and yes, she had to admit, totally dominantly masculine. For a moment she thought wistfully of how protected women must have felt in the days before their liberation. But Steve was a woman of the new age. ‘Go soak your head.’ She pushed him away.

  Richard laughed and went to the door. ‘Come and have an old-fashioned, colonial sundowner.’ He held out his hand to her. They went down the wide, curving staircase arm in arm.

  They found Greg sitting on a patio at the back of the house. ‘Doesn’t feel like Africa,’ he grumbled, indicating the climbing roses and clematis covering the trellis around the patio. He was sipping a gin and tonic. ‘What’ll you have?’ He got up and went to a drinks table on which someone had placed decanters of gin, whisky, brandy and cane spirit together with soda, tonic and ginger ale. A silver ice bucket with silver tongs was alongside. Lemon slices, sprigs of mint and slices of cucumber lay on a small silver salver.

  ‘Is there any chance of a beer?’ Steve eyed the glittering crystal and silver and thought it probably unlikely.

  ‘Coming right up, ma’am.’ On the ground next to the table was a cool box. Someone had thought of everything.

  Eileen arrived with a tray of dainty snacks. Richard helped himself to a whisky. ‘Where’s your old man?’ He was perfectly at ease in such a setting.

  ‘Right behind you,’ a rumbling voice said. Tony Saunders was a big man with thinning grey hair and a very red face. His moustache was a military one, twirled and waxed into points at the ends. He had the greenest eyes Steve had ever seen.

  Richard did the introductions and, just as he finished, Penny arrived looking better than she had during the past couple of days. ‘Where’s your brother?’ Richard asked her.

  She shrugged. ‘Haven’t a clue. I saw him wandering in the garden a while ago.’

  ‘Should we ask Mr Tshuma to join us for a sundowner?’ Eileen appeared worried by the thought.

  ‘He doesn’t drink,’ Richard said, in a manner which indicated that, as far as he was concerned, excluded him from their company.

  ‘I might wander over and see if he’s okay,’ Penny rose, declining a drink.

  When she left, Tony raised his eyebrows. ‘Bit of a worry, old man.’

  ‘A worry! It’s the most embarrassing, hurtful thing she’s ever done and, believe me, she’s done some bad things in the past,’ Richard said with feeling. He saw Steve watching him, troubled by his obvious dislike of the black man who had pushed his way into the family.

  ‘Can’t you stop it?’ Eileen asked. To her, the idea of Penny with a black man was an outrage.

  ‘She’s twenty-two. She’s always gone out of her way to upset me. I’ll just have to wear it.’

  Greg changed the subject and had Eileen talking about the garden, the servants and the price of commodities. Steve tried to tell her about water conservation methods employed by gardeners in Australia, but the woman was either oblivious to the world’s growing concern for conserving its natural resources or she simply did not care. She seemed unwilling, or unable, to discuss anything but the most mundane subjects. Steve quickly became bored with her.

  Tony was another matter. He had a quick mind and interesting opinions on most matters. He even had a rather bizarre opinion on the subject of Australia’s aboriginal people. ‘Your government gives ’em too much,’ he told Steve. ‘It takes away their need to join in. It separates ’em from the rest of you, makes ’em feel worthless and left out, unable to fend for themselves.’

  Later that night, she said to Richard, ‘Considering the history of this country, he’s hardly in a position to tell us what to do.’ She had found his words outrageously offensive.

  But Richard did not want to talk politics. He did not want to think about Penny and Tshuma who had drawn together during dinner and not joined the conversation. He refused to worry about David who remained polite and aloof. Richard wanted to make love in the great big four-poster bed to the girl who thought about life in different terms to him but with whom he had fallen completely in love. ‘He’s okay, he’s just out of touch with reality.’

  She laughed at that. ‘Just a little.’

  He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her. ‘Tell me you don’t have people like him in Australia.’

  She thought about a friend of her father’s whom she had labelled ‘a pompous old fart’. She remembered an uncle who ‘hated the bloody boongs’.

  ‘They don’t get away with it in Australia.’ She knew that was lame.

  ‘Must be a pretty remarkable country.’ He was laughing at her gently.

  She did not want to fight. It was her last week.

  THIRTEEN

  The territory through wh
ich they drove the next day was familiar to both Richard and Greg. They had spent a little time during the war in this operational area, codenamed Repulse. The region was used mainly for training exercises, not having seen much action. It was a vast tract of land in the southeast corner of the country, bordering with Mozambique and South Africa. Regular incursions across both borders were commonplace before and during the war, something the Mozambique government tried to stop and to which the South Africans turned a blind eye before the war and, once the war started, each country switched its policy. Richard, driving the Land Rover, with Philamon reinstated behind the wheel of the lorry following, found he could remember the scenery much more vividly than he could recall any action in the area.

  They reached Beitbridge just on midday. It was a pretty town with a long main street, at the end of which the bridge spanning the Limpopo could be seen behind the Customs building. During the years of sanctions against Rhodesia the customs officials had appeared not to notice the local people who crossed into South Africa and bought supplies in Messina, just on the other side of the river. Being a border town, Beitbridge boasted the greatest number of petrol stations per capita of any place in Zimbabwe, most of which displayed ‘first petrol stop in Zimbabwe’ on one side of a sandwich board and ‘last petrol stop in Zimbabwe’ on the other. Older-style government buildings gave the town an air of solidarity.

  They pulled up at a Shell station which doubled as a small supermarket. Richard gave Samson a list of supplies and a roll of notes. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said to Steve. They walked across the road to the hotel. Several drinkers sat at the bar and eyed them curiously when they walked in but Richard, who had been there before, took them to the back of the hotel to where a small beer garden nestled under trellised grapevines. Everyone wanted beer except Joseph who ordered a lemon squash.

  ‘This hotel reminds me of some of the older hotels in Australia.’ Steve looked around. ‘In fact, it’s amazingly like some of them.’

  ‘Alfred Beit, after whom this town is named, and Australia, appear to have mingled destinies,’ Greg told her.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He was a fabulously wealthy man and a great friend of Cecil Rhodes. He set up something called the Beit Trust for the purpose of financing Rhodesian Railways. The Trust also turned its hand to bridge-building and constructed the bridge over the Limpopo. You might have noticed it at the end of the main street. It also built the Birchenough Bridge over the Sabi river east of Masvingo. It was designed along the same lines as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and many Australian tourists have been surprised to see it out in the middle of the African bush.’

  ‘I would be, too. Our coat hanger is very precious to us. We like to think of it as being unique. Will I get to see this carbon copy?’

  ‘No, it’s a bit far east for this trip,’ Richard said.

  ‘Not to worry, I’ll see it another time. I might do a feature on it if I can get enough information. Australians would be fascinated to see their bridge in Africa.’

  ‘It’s a scaled-down version but it does look impressive when it appears out of nowhere,’ Richard told her.

  ‘I think it’s ridiculous,’ David burst out, determined to disagree. ‘Why copy another country?’

  ‘You would think that.’ Penny ruffled his hair but he shook away from her angrily. ‘For God’s sake, David, lighten up,’ she snapped, exasperated.

  In the uneasy silence which followed, they drank their beers quickly, before returning to the vehicles. David’s behaviour was, to everyone but Steve, becoming a bore and they could not wait to get away from him. Perversely, he chose to ride in the Land Rover.

  ‘If that boy gives Steve any more trouble I’ll knock his block off,’ Richard thought, getting behind the wheel.

  From Beitbridge to the junction of the Shashi and Limpopo rivers the road was nothing more than a dirt track. Steve wondered how Richard knew the way. Sometimes the road forked, sometimes there were more than half-a-dozen directions he might have taken, but he never hesitated. ‘How come you don’t get lost?’ she asked as he deftly swung the wheel to follow one particular track.

  ‘We came here every year when my mother was alive,’ David said from behind her.

  Steve fell silent and watched the passing scenery.

  Just beyond the junction, where the two rivers met, was a camp site of extraordinary beauty. Shaded by huge wild figs and mopane trees, the level grassy banks of the Limpopo were like a terrace, with a drop of some 2 metres down to the river, making the site safe from crocodiles. The trees formed a semicircle around an area of nearly a hectare. Clumps within the circle screened the various tents.

  The lorry was unloaded and everyone given a job to do. Philamon was to dig a pit latrine, then erect the ablutions tent off to one side. Samson unpacked the supplies into a large, open-ended tent, set up the collapsible work table, distributed the various camp chairs and tables, cut wood for the fires, set up his cooking fire and packed the old gas refrigerator they had carried on the lorry with fresh food and beers.

  David and Greg shared a tent and went off to find a good place to erect it. ‘Here should be okay.’ Greg indicated a spot which had a great view of the river and of the bush on the other side.

  David looked over to where Steve and his father were putting up their tent. ‘Back here is better.’ He pointed to a cleared area which had trees screening the rest of the camp from view.

  Greg shrugged and said nothing.

  Penny and her father had argued long and hard about her sleeping arrangements. Richard wanted her to sleep in a tent alone. Penny had refused. ‘Whether you like it or not, Daddy,’ she told him, ‘Joe and I are practically engaged. We sleep together.’

  He felt he was fighting a losing battle with Penny. Often he wondered what Kathy would have done. Despite her soft ways, she had been much tougher on their daughter than he could ever be. And strangely, Penny had accepted her mother’s discipline. It was her father she challenged, keeping alive a fierce competitiveness which she appeared to need. Sometimes he wondered if she actually loved him. There were times he questioned why he loved her. All he knew with certainty was that he was afraid to lose her and it was this thought alone which caused him to give in to her.

  Joseph and Penny erected their tent some distance from the rest, towards the back of the circle of trees and furthest from the river.

  Samson and Philamon were to share another, which they put up just behind the supplies tent.

  It took several hours to set up camp to Richard’s liking. There had to be a big fire in the centre so that, in the evenings, they could sit around it and look out over the river. Binoculars, waterbags, tilly lamps and fly swatters were hung in trees at strategic places. The supplies tent, with its gas-operated refrigerator and small paraffin deep freeze on one side, work table just at the entrance, piles of boxes containing dry goods at the back and crates of beer and boxes of wine and scotch on the other side, gave their camp an almost permanent appearance. A second pit, for their rubbish, was dug well away from the main camp. Richard had brought a small pump and a long length of rubber hose for pumping water from the river to the ablutions tent. They had brought their drinking water with them from Pentland.

  When the camp was finished Steve realised just how much organising Richard had done for everyone’s comfort. ‘This is brilliant,’ she commented. ‘Everything is so well set up.’

  ‘We used to hunt a lot in the old days.’ He was delighted she liked it. ‘We learned by trial and error. One time we arrived and I’d forgotten the shovel. We had to dig the toilet and rubbish pits with sticks. I wasn’t very popular I can tell you. Another time Kathy forgot the mosquito coils. That was hell.’

  ‘Is this where you used to camp?’ She did not much like the idea of treading in his dead wife’s shoes.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that to you.’ He gave her a quick hug. ‘I found this place during the war. I’ve never camped here before.’

  Before it grew too
dark Richard repacked the Land Rover with rifles, ammunition and food supplies for the next day.

  ‘Do you carry the animals you shoot in the Land Rover?’ Steve was thinking of the vehicle’s almost new interior.

  ‘The lorry will come with us.’ Richard wanted to share every moment with her, wanted her to understand every aspect of a safari. ‘The way it works is this, we get up at first light and go out. By ten you can forget it, everything is resting under the trees. We come back to camp and leave Samson and Philamon to remove the skin and cut up the meat. Then they bring it back, and if we want to keep the skin we have to clean it up and salt it. We save some chunks of meat for the deep freeze and the rest is made into biltong. There’s a lot to do. We don’t go out again until around four in the afternoon.’

  ‘So if I want to get good pictures . . .’

  ‘You really should come out with us.’

  ‘But up at Kariba, and in the game reserves, I took pictures all through the day.’ Steve didn’t want to go with them and their murderous guns.

  ‘Darling, they’re protected in the reserves. The animals aren’t jumpy. This is a hunting block where they’re used to being shot at. You won’t find anything to photograph in the middle of the day.’

  Greg came to her rescue. ‘We won’t be hunting all the time, Steve. You’ll get plenty of opportunities to get your pictures.’

  She shot him a grateful look. Richard was clearly disappointed. ‘I’m sorry.’ She tried to make it up to him. ‘I just can’t watch you kill these beautiful animals even though I know it’s a form of culling and if you didn’t kill them, someone else would have to. Call it a head-in-the-sand mentality if you like, it’s just the way I am. I’m one of those people who avert their eyes when they see an abattoir but love eating steak.’

  ‘Come and have a drink.’ He put his arm around her. ‘Just my luck to get lumbered with a soft-hearted Disney fiend,’ he grumbled, squeezing her shoulders to show he was joking.