Storms Over Africa

by Beverley Harper

  ‘How about a little present?’ Penny’s coyness irritated him. She always asked for cocaine that way.

  ‘You don’t need it,’ he said. ‘It’s got to last.’

  ‘Please, just a little,’ she begged. ‘I haven’t had much today.’

  ‘You’ve had two snorts to my knowledge. You were as high as a kite this morning and you topped up at Beitbridge. You don’t need any more.’

  She lay back on her camp cot and smiled. ‘It’s a celebration,’ she said, ‘join me.’

  ‘What are we celebrating?’ All Joseph wanted to do was go to sleep.

  She propped herself on one elbow and looked over at him. ‘Our child,’ she said softly. ‘I’m five weeks overdue. I didn’t tell you before because I wanted to be sure. The doctor confirmed it three days ago.’

  He was suddenly furious that she had kept it from him for so long, prolonging his involvement with her, but he forced himself to look pleased. ‘That’s wonderful news, darling,’ he used the endearment automatically. He kissed her and she clung to him, making the kiss last. When he was able to move away he went to his toilet kit, then tossed her a little packet of white powder. ‘I won’t join you.’ He watched her feverishly tearing open the packet. ‘I have to get up early tomorrow.’

  She looked at him, disappointed. ‘But I hate getting high on my own.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to stop you as a rule.’

  ‘I won’t be able to sleep. Who can I talk to?’

  ‘Try not having any.’ He was indifferent. Their relationship was nearly over. He was delighted she was pregnant. After her ridiculous outburst earlier, where she was basically spouting words she had heard him use and, typical of her, leaving out the meat, the brilliantly articulated arguments of people like the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole and others, blowing out the emotional froth instead, or, to use her own expression, the rhetorical bullshit, he felt he not could keep his dislike of her from her much longer. Now he could be free of her. The timing could not be better.

  Joseph had sent a message to the leader of UZIP last week: ‘I am going on a hunt in the Tuli Block. I can get away. Do you want to meet?’

  The men running the United Zimbabwe Independent Party were hidden in the Matopos to the west of the Tuli Block. He had intended to use his duties at the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management as an excuse to leave the hunt and make contact with these men but now, as luck would have it, he would not have to think of a reason to leave. Tomorrow, or the next day, he would drop the bombshell to Richard Dunn that his beautiful daughter, the apple of her father’s eye, was hooked on cocaine and pregnant with a black child. He was relying on Richard to act predicably and throw him out of the camp, leaving him free to make his own way to the Matopos on foot.

  He knew it was a good two days walk but Joseph felt he could do it. He had to do it. Word was that action was imminent. He wanted to be there, at the hub of things, so that when his country had a new leader he would be right up there with him.

  Penny lay on her back rubbing her hands down her body. Cocaine always made her feel sexy and her demands nearly drove him mad. She was dressed in one of his white shirts for which she had an obsession. She believed they made her look desirable but the sight of her slim white body dwarfed inside his shirt made him think of a flapping sail on an unmanned yacht. Tonight he did not mind. There would be no more nights.

  ‘Feel like a fuck?’ he said crudely. He wanted to debase her further.

  ‘What . . .’ She was not used to him speaking roughly. It was totally unlike him and, what was even more surprising, totally un-African.

  ‘Open your legs,’ he demanded, stripping off his shorts and pushing his hand between her legs.

  ‘Joe, what’s got into you?’

  He shoved his fingers into her, causing her to cry out softly. His fingernails scraped against the soft skin. ‘Joe, stop, you’re hurting me.’

  ‘Lie on the ground.’ He did not care. He dragged her off the cot and onto the ground. Then, rising above her, he pushed roughly inside her. Her gasp of pain caused him more pleasure than the act. He took her with no finesse, no loving. He fucked her indifferently, not listening to her pleading with him to stop. When he finished and was spent inside her he rose quickly and went to his cot, turning his back and shutting his ears to her soft crying. ‘Thanks,’ he said cruelly, ‘I needed that.’

  Penny coughed and snuffled to herself, unwilling or unable to speculate why Joe was treating her this way. He had not even mentioned the baby which he seemed to want so much. He was different tonight, cold and uncaring. She crept back onto her camp bed, her mind in overdrive from the cocaine, sighing and sobbing.

  ‘Do shut up.’ His harsh voice made her jump.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased about the baby?’ She got out of her bed and knelt beside him. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. I thought it was what you wanted.’

  Joseph sighed and turned over to face her. ‘I’m very pleased about the baby.’

  ‘Then why are you acting like this?’

  ‘Perhaps I’m having second thoughts,’ he told her. ‘Maybe I don’t want a junkie to be the mother of my child.’

  ‘Joe!’ Penny was suddenly frightened. The possibility that he did not love her had never occurred to her.

  ‘Go to bed,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about it when you’ve come down.’

  ‘I’m already down,’ she said sulkily.

  ‘Just go to bed,’ he said more kindly. ‘We can talk tomorrow, okay?’ He was beginning to regret giving in to his dislike of her. She was so reactive and so connected to her father he knew she was capable of running to Richard, like a child with a cut knee, if he made her angry enough. Joseph wanted to be the one to deliver the blow to Richard.

  ‘You do love me, don’t you, Joe?’ Penny asked in a small voice.

  ‘Of course I love you,’ he lied, ruffling her hair. ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m just tired.’

  ‘I couldn’t bear it if you didn’t love me.’ She was crying.

  Cursing inwardly, he guided her onto his narrow camp bed and held her and soothed her and, when she finally fell asleep, climbed carefully from his bed and stretched out on hers. ‘Don’t blow it now,’ he thought, staring upwards. ‘You’re so close, don’t blow it now.’ Richard Dunn’s pain was essential. It was the first step in a long line of steps he had to take to compensate for his failure to keep his brother alive. Richard Dunn’s pain was the balm. Throwing the whites out of Zimbabwe was the cure.

  Before falling asleep he wondered about Greg Yeomans. He knew who the man was, or at least, who he had been during the war. He wondered if he was on the hunt for the reasons he had given or if he had joined them for motives of his own. The man’s presence disturbed him. Joseph knew he had to be careful.

  Lying in the dark, David told Greg he would probably stay in camp the next day. ‘Why?’ Greg asked.

  ‘If she’s going, I’m not.’

  ‘Why don’t you give her a chance?’ Greg said. ‘She’s a very nice person.’

  ‘She’s a cow,’ David said sulkily, and would not be drawn into further discussion.

  Greg fell asleep almost immediately, comfortable with the bush and its noises. His last thought before he did so was to wonder if his suspicions, that Tshuma would make contact with the main cell of United Zimbabwe Independent Party members who based themselves only seventy kilometres to the west of where they were camped, were right. Greg was counting on it.

  Richard tried to apologise for his argument with Penny. ‘We’re always like that. It blows over just as quickly as it erupts. We’re two of a kind, I’m afraid, and we often rub each other up the wrong way.’

  ‘You sounded like enemies.’ She was still shaken by the raw emotion of the argument. ‘I don’t understand how you can be so racist in front of Joseph.’

  Well, here it is. ‘It must seem like racism to you,’ he conceded. ‘Don’t forget I fought Joseph Tshuma during the war. I fought, like everyone did,
for a principle, for a way of life, for a country I regard as home. I believed, and I still do believe, that Zimbabwe would benefit from white rule.’ He took her hand. ‘Let me ask you a question. How would you feel if your Aborigines wanted to rule Australia, just supposing there were more of them than the whites?’

  ‘If they were in the majority—’

  ‘The truth, Steve.’

  ‘Some of them are already—’

  ‘The truth.’ He was remorseless.

  She thought about it and the blinding truth hit her. She would hate it. But why? And the answer came back. Because I’m used to the way things are now. ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Quite,’ he said crisply. ‘I rest my case, madam.’

  ‘It’s an amazing thing,’ she said slowly, ‘truth has many faces. What appears to be a truth is usually a compromise to accommodate different theories. What is your truth is Joseph’s lie. What is my truth is probably what I’ve read in the newspapers.’ She sighed. ‘I have so much to learn.’

  He put his arms around her, punctuating his words with kisses, ‘And I, beautiful one, am standing here . . . just waiting . . . to teach you . . . ever so slowly . . . so slowly, in fact . . . that I hope . . . it takes . . . the rest of my life.’

  She drowned happily in a lake of emotions but, later, as they were preparing for sleep, she remembered the story of the lion and refused to leave the tent flap open. She and Richard sweated their way through the night, Richard deeply asleep, Steve waking with a start at every unfamiliar noise. She was fairly convinced she was spending her last few days on earth. She was also excitedly anticipating the photographs she would take the next day.

  FOURTEEN

  Richard shook Steve awake in what appeared to be the middle of the night. It was pitch dark. Clearing her mind from sleep she slowly became aware of muted voices outside the tent. At that point, she almost changed her mind about going. She had spent the night sleeping in fits and starts and felt tired and stiff after the unaccustomed hardness of the camp bed, but by the time she swung out of bed and pulled on shorts and a shirt the excitement of last night came back.

  They were a ragged lot standing around the rekindled fire, sipping steaming mugs of coffee. Steve had run a brush through her hair and pulled it back into a ponytail. Greg’s hair looked like a clump of spinifex, that spiny-leaved tussock grass which grows in parts of Australia. Joseph could not stop yawning. In the light of the tilly lamp, Richard looked badly in need of a shave. There would be time for ablutions later in the morning.

  Samson packed a couple of thermos flasks, sandwiches and rusks into the Land Rover. They set off in the cool dawn, the sky just beginning to lighten in the east. Richard had asked where David was, but Greg said, ‘Decided to sleep in,’ so he left it at that. Emerging through their circle of mopane trees, the flat open country of the lowveld was like another world. The Land Rover lights picked up the narrow sandy track and the tall, dry grass and thorn trees on either side. Richard drove fast, heading directly to where he had seen the buffalo spoor the previous day. Experience told him they had perhaps three hours to find the animals before they went under cover for the rest of the day, only coming out around four in the afternoon for a drink.

  It was just light enough to see by the time he stopped the vehicle. The lorry pulled up behind. Samson and Richard examined the ground. It was churned up and covered with droppings. ‘Still here,’ Richard commented briefly, getting back into the driving seat.

  ‘Where will they be?’ Steve stared at the ground. She was reminded of muddy cattle yards but knew the comparison ended there.

  ‘Hopefully, just over that hill.’ He started up the vehicle and drove off the track.

  ‘What do you do now?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘We stalk them,’ he said calmly, and she wondered how he had the nerves required to sneak up on nearly a tonne of irascible, unpredictable bovine. She was beginning to learn to respect the animals of the bush.

  ‘I think I’ll stay here.’

  ‘Don’t wander too far from the vehicles,’ he advised. ‘At this time of day you’re likely to meet anything.’

  They walked quietly away, holding their rifles up and ready. Samson, in front, kept his eyes firmly on the spoor. The others watched ahead, to the sides and behind. They had become wild things themselves, entering the animal world where one false move could mean death or injury. Again, Steve wondered where they found the courage. She had harboured a vision of hunting where indifferent men sat in vehicles and poured lead into unsuspecting animals. She had never considered the risk to the men themselves, never envisaged them actually entering the animals’ domain and never once thought how hunting was a complete experience of camps and stories and dawns and the African smell of dung and dry leaves and weapons lovingly oiled and nerves of steel.

  She watched them disappear over a small rise in the land, dark shapes against a rapidly lightening day. They looked incredibly small and vulnerable. Then she noticed the colour of the sky and how the lacy pattern of the leaves against it looked delicate and pretty and she got busy with her camera and forgot the buffalo and the part of hunting she could not accept—the death scene. Philamon, who had stayed with the lorry, appeared to have gone back to sleep.

  Topping the rise, Richard scanned the land ahead with his binoculars. The buffalo were there, grazing peacefully, scattered over an area of some twenty-five hectares. Dawn was breaking fast and he had no trouble picking out the herd. Two bulls caught his attention, heads down, pulling at the grass, slightly apart from the others, about a kilometre away. He touched Greg’s arm and pointed to them. Greg nodded. Samson tested the wind. They had to stay downwind. The animals would spook and run if they got a whiff of them.

  Samson, having performed his function of tracking, an easy task on this occasion, dropped back to where he could watch but would be in no danger if anything went wrong. Richard glanced over at Tshuma. The man was breathing evenly, his eyes were watchful and his rifle was held correctly. He did not bother to look at Greg. He knew he could rely on him.

  Crouching, they cut through the bush, watching for other animals that might run and scare the buffalo. They had to get in close. Richard felt an urgent tap on his arm and froze. Greg pointed and he saw the head and neck of a giraffe off to their left. The animal was grazing on some sweet new leaves at the top of a tree and had its back to them. They all squatted down on their haunches, waiting for it to move off. Eventually it did but they stayed immobile for five minutes before moving on themselves.

  They crept to within twenty metres of the two bulls before stopping. They had fair cover, a couple of scrubby bushes and the advantage of the land sloping down towards them. They were so close they could smell the cow-like scent of the animals, hear them pulling at the grass. Behind the two bulls the herd spread out, unaware of the presence of man. Richard assessed the bulls. The animal nearest them was a good size though not in world-record class. That did not matter. It was meat they were after. The most important thing was to drop the beast with the first shot, otherwise he would run. Even a couple of minutes made a difference as the adrenalin flowing in the animal’s body tended to toughen the meat and give it a strong, gamy flavour.

  Because he was head of the hunt, it was Richard’s choice as to who should shoot. He knew he could drop the bull and he knew Greg could. Joseph was an unknown quantity. The bull was in good company and, unlike other animals which, when wounded, instinctively head off and hide on their own, buffalo tended to stay with their herd, making if difficult to track them down and finish them off in relative safety. With the herd spread out as it was, it was impossible to guess which way they would run, although some dense bush about 300 metres off to the left seemed the most likely place. The second bull was also an unknown factor. He might run away, or he might charge. He decided to play safe. Tapping Greg’s arm, he nodded towards the bull, holding up one finger to indicate he should take the one closest. Then, using sign language they developed between them during the w
ar, he told Greg to take the shot and that he would act as backup.

  Greg steadied himself for the shot, Richard held his gun ready and was pleased to see Joseph doing the same thing. The loud ‘bang’ of the gun was closely followed by a ‘whock’ as the bullet hit home. The buffalo staggered, sat down, then toppled to his side. The bull with him skittered sideways, snorting and tossing his head. Richard, flimsily screened by the bushes, kept him in his sights. The animal could not tell where the shot had come from. He churned in a full circle, then ran straight at their cover, head held high, trying to find something to charge. The three men froze. Richard’s finger tightened on the trigger, ready to fire. The animal veered off at the last minute and thundered away towards the dense sanctuary of thicket. The rest of the herd galloped after him.

  They ran quickly up to the fallen animal, Greg reloading as he went. It was an unnecessary precaution. It had been a perfect shot. But he placed a second bullet in the animal’s brain as insurance.

  ‘Good shooting, man,’ Joseph thumped Greg’s shoulder. His face was alight with excitement and his breathing, a little faster than normal, showing the release of tension which comes from being so close to such a formidable force.

  Samson came running up, a wide smile on his face. ‘Eh heh, eh heh,’ he chuckled, walking around the fallen buffalo. ‘Very good meat.’

  ‘Bit close.’ Greg was referring to the second bull.

  ‘He had another tenth of a second before I fired,’ Richard replied.

  ‘Certainly lets you know your heart’s still working,’ Greg grinned. ‘Mine’s still in overdrive.’

  Richard looked at Tshuma. The man had brought his gun to a firing position as soon as Greg had dropped the first bull. He had kept a cool head in the face of danger, had not panicked and run, or worse, fired off a wild shot.

  It was good to know he could be relied on in a situation where anything could have happened, but it alerted Richard to his capabilities as an enemy. Tshuma glanced briefly at the fallen bull then concentrated his attention on the thicket in case there was a charge. Richard could have told him to forget it, the buffalo would not come out now, but he said nothing.