Storms Over Africa

by Beverley Harper

  ‘I was dreaming about Paula, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I know, you called out her name.’

  ‘She was a cow.’

  ‘She was okay, just didn’t like Africa.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Greg?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry about earlier.’

  ‘S’okay.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘Course I’m bloody scared.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Richard had once seen Greg stalk a group of eleven terrorists. The rest of his stick were some distance behind, covering his rear and sides. Impatient for action, Greg had jumped from cover, shot three of them and held the others under his automatic weapon until his buddies could join him. When the others caught up Greg took a swig of water, lit a cigarette and remarked calmly, ‘Bunch of nasties in this lot, chaps.’ Neither his hands or his voice had shaken.

  ‘Why don’t we try and take the guards out?’

  ‘No point in hurrying things.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Ever wondered if there’s life after death?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Often, especially when Kath died.’

  ‘Knew a fella once who claimed he’d had an out-of-body experience.’

  ‘That’s bullshit.’

  ‘True as Bob. He’d taken a bit of lead in his chest and the doctors were trying to dig it out on the operating table. Suddenly he felt himself rise up and hover near the ceiling. He could see his own body on the table and heard the doctors speaking to each other. One of them, the guy controlling the anaesthetic, called out “we’re losing him”. The surgeon said “shit, not another day like yesterday”. This made him mad. He said he could feel something pulling at him and he saw a bright light and knew he should head for it. He said the compulsion to go towards that light was pretty powerful but he was angry and determined to kick that surgeon’s arse. He felt himself being drawn back into his body. The next thing he knew he was coming out of the anaesthetic.’

  ‘Did he tear a strip off the doctor?’

  ‘Yeah. Said the man was so surprised when he heard his words repeated he took off like a long dog and handed the case over to a colleague.’

  ‘Serves the bastard right.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Makes you think, though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I sometimes felt Kathy was close, watching me.’

  ‘She’s probably waiting on the other side with a plank of wood.’

  ‘That’d be right.’

  Greg chuckled. ‘I’ll tell you something I’ve never told another living soul.’

  ‘Sure, go ahead. After all, who will I tell?’

  ‘My middle name is Marion.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘My parents named me after John Wayne.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘His real name was Marion.’

  ‘You’re bloody joking.’

  ‘No wonder he changed his name.’

  ‘My father knew a man during the second World War who’s name was John Yellowshite.’

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘Changed his name though.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Yeah. He changed it to Fred Yellowshite.’

  Greg snorted.

  Richard snickered.

  Suddenly both men were laughing. They tried to keep in quiet but it welled up and they roared with laughter until tears ran down their cheeks and half-a-dozen sleepy voices called out for them to be quiet.

  ‘Oh, dearie me, old Didd, that was just what I needed,’ Greg said trying to wipe his eyes with a hunched shoulder and failing.

  ‘I could kill for a cigarette,’ Richard complained.

  They talked of many things. Of unfulfilled ambitions, of their friendship and of other friends. Honesty, which had always been there between the two men, became raw and total. Greg admitted he had once thought he was in love with Kathy. Richard felt honoured and said so. They laughed gently at memories. Anger and frustration came and went.

  ‘Who did you love most? Kathy or Steve?’

  Richard showed no surprise at the question. ‘Kathy was a young man’s love. She was happy to be a wife and mother and had no ambitions to be anything else. I loved her very much and always wanted to protect her. If anyone else had hurt her I’d have killed them with my bare hands. But I hurt her all the time. I neglected her needs terribly because I was always in a rush to do what I wanted to do, not what she wanted to do.’ He grinned, remembering the plank of wood. ‘She had fire though. She gave as good as she got when she got angry. She had a knack of always getting her own way but she did it in such a way that I never knew I was being manipulated. She’s the only woman I’ve ever known who knew me better than I know myself. I miss her terribly.’

  ‘And Steve?’

  ‘If I’d met Steve when I was younger I wouldn’t have known what to do with her. Her independence would have been too much of a challenge to the Dunn ego.’ He sighed. ‘If that business with David hadn’t happened we might have got married and spent the rest of our lives in contented confrontation. She would never accept what she calls my “overbearing masculine psyche” and I would have constantly been up against her fierce feminism. I think we loved each other enough to live with it but it takes an older, more tolerant me, not the selfish young man I was.’

  ‘So what’s your answer?’

  ‘I guess I don’t have one. There are times when I think I’d have done better to stay single and not get involved with anyone.’ He laughed softly. ‘Ouch, Yeomans, that much honesty hurts.

  ‘It’s good for you.’

  ‘So’s going to the dentist but you don’t have to like it.’

  ‘It’s going to be a beautiful day,’ Greg said wistfully.

  They fell silent, each man busy with his own ghosts and memories. Then they heard the owl. Richard felt his spine tingle. ‘Jeff,’ he mouthed.

  Greg nodded. Only one man made that owl call. It had been the cause of much ribbing. They knew it well. He had been in their stick during the war.

  The camp had begun to stir. Men were slowly travelling through the flimsy end of dreams. The army chose this moment to act.

  ‘Get yore hends in the air now, Kaffir.’ The accent was pure Rhodesian and had to be the sweetest sound Richard had ever heard.

  Grinning at each other, they struggled to their feet and shuffled outside. A man, his face blackened with boot polish and wearing the uniform of the Zimbabwe Security Forces, raced up to them. ‘Are you all right, man?’

  ‘What kept you?’ Greg looked closely at the man. ‘You old bastard, Skinner. You still make an owl call that sounds like a budgie with a harelip.’

  Skinner, whose name was Jeff Tanner, had joined the Security Forces after the war because he didn’t know anything else. He sliced through the ropes on their hands and feet.

  ‘Anyone got a cigarette?’ Richard needed one badly. His legs gave way and he sat down heavily on a campchair, rubbing his wrists to get the circulation going.

  ‘Make that two.’ Greg joined him.

  Jeff Tanner handed them a pack and a lighter. ‘You two old farts are losing it.’

  They looked at each other, then they looked at the early morning sky heralding another beautiful day, the one which was meant to be their last, and at a black eagle soaring against it, wild and free. Then they looked at Kobus Conradie, Brigadier Hambalaze and Joseph Tshuma and the others, and at the Security Forces surrounding them, then they looked back at each other.

  Richard put his arm around Greg’s shoulders. ‘I love this stupid old fart.’

  Greg leaned his head on Richard’s shoulder. ‘Kiss me, you fool.’

  Then both men were pounding each other on the back, laughing and shouting, dropping their cigarettes, thumping each other and each man knew from those words that their friendship would endure for as long as they both
would live.

  ‘This calls for a drink,’ Greg shouted to the men around them who were grinning with them.

  ‘What’ll it be, gents? Beer or scotch?’ Someone had found their supplies in the truck.

  ‘Both,’ they shouted.

  ‘Join us,’ Greg invited, popping one of the cans of beer.

  Jeff Tanner pulled a face. ‘Bit early in the day.’ But he joined them anyway.

  A Major came up to them. ‘My name’s Muldoon.’ He eyed the can in Greg’s hand. ‘When you’re up to it you’ll have to write reports. There’s a General Kaguri in Harare who’s anxious to speak to you. I understand the Prime Minister would also like a word.’ He turned to Jeff. ‘Good work, Tanner. If you hadn’t been writing down the coordinates we’d not have found these men in time. Try not to get drunk, there’s a good chap.’

  Jeff Tanner snapped off a salute. ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll do my best, sir.’

  ‘I have to get back to Pretoria,’ Greg said, once Major Muldoon had left them. ‘There’ll be a ton of paperwork waiting for me after this little caper.’

  ‘You can fly back to Harare with one of our choppers.’ Jeff looked at Richard. ‘What about you?’

  Richard waved his can at the truck. ‘I’ll take that.’

  ‘Better check it,’ Greg said grinning.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Probably have a parking ticket by now.’

  Jeff and Richard looked at each other. ‘Shaddup,’ they said in unison.

  ‘He’s parked on a zebra crossing,’ Greg went on seriously.

  Richard glanced over at Jeff, who nodded. Both men pounced on Greg and rumbled him considerably.

  ‘You don’t give a monkey’s do you?’ Greg chuckled when they climbed off him. He remained on the ground.

  Jeff raised his eyes.

  Kobus Conradie was being marched past them, his hands cuffed, a look of total defeat on his face. ‘Kind of gets your goat doesn’t it?’ Greg taunted him. He lay flat on the ground, chuckling.

  Conradie showed no sign of having heard.

  ‘What happens to him?’ Richard was smiling at Greg and shaking his head.

  ‘He’ll be reacquainted with his cell in Pretoria.’ Jeff was making circles around his ear with his finger. Greg was still chuckling.

  ‘Guess you bet on the wrong horse,’ Greg called out after Conradie, laughing harder.

  ‘Won’t he go to prison here?’ Richard had almost given up on Greg.

  ‘Pretoria lay claim to the lion’s share.’ Greg was howling.

  ‘Mugabe doesn’t want him, keeping him here costs money.’ Jeff crossed his eyes and bared his teeth at Greg.

  ‘An elephant never forgets,’ Greg roared.

  Richard reached for another can. ‘Perhaps we can ignore him.’

  Jeff reached for the other. ‘Bit hard.’

  They popped their cans and sipped. Then both men realised that Greg’s mirth had stopped.

  ‘Uh oh,’ Richard said.

  They looked down. They were a fraction too late. Greg came off the ground as easily and as fast as a leopard springing for the kill, locked an arm around each man’s legs and flattened both of them. Then, leaving them on the ground, he walked away, still laughing and saying something about finding the beer because he was as dry as hyena turd.

  Lying flat on the ground, with his beer spilling over his chest, Richard had never loved his fellow man so much.

  At a bit of a loss as to what to do while the Security Forces mopped up, Richard, Greg, Jeff and a couple of other men sat around drinking beer. It was good to be in the company of these men, good to feel the sun burning through his shirt, good to feel the amber perfection of a Zimbabwe Lion beer slipping down his throat. Looking up Richard saw the black eagle again. Classified endangered, the Matopos was one of their last havens on earth. It might have been his last sight on earth. God, it felt good to be alive.

  ‘Do you remember that time up in Hurricane trying to live rough?’ Jeff said, mentioning the vast operational area to the north of the country which bordered with Zambia and Mozambique and which saw the first action of the war. Part of the men’s training was to be dropped in the middle of nowhere and expected to survive with no food, no weapons and no means of making a fire. All they had were knives.

  Greg laughed. ‘That coloured platoon.’

  They had been camped on a vast flat plain. Six men, three knives and four days to go, having already spent three days out there. They had just consumed a snake, killed with a rock and cooked over a fire made the hard way, by rubbing sticks together. It was Jeff who noticed thick dust in the distance and drew the others’ attention to it. Trucks were coming their way at a hell of a pace. They did not try to hide. Terrorists would not be out in the open like that. As the four trucks drew closer they could see they contained what was left of a platoon of ‘coloureds’. ‘Coloureds’ in Africa are not black men, they are a race unto themselves from the days when the whites first came to Africa and copulated freely with the blacks. So many offspring did these couplings produce that, over the decades, they developed their own language and had their own culture. During the war, two battalions of coloureds were formed.

  The platoon was in poor shape. Dead and dying men were bouncing around in the back of the trucks. They had obviously encountered terrorists. As they passed the six Selous Scouts on the ground a man yelled out to them. ‘Hey, you whities had better start fokking the blacks again because we coloureds are about to be extinct.’ The humour in the face of disaster was typical of these people and probably the reason why, when they had been despised by black and white populations of Africa alike, they had managed to survive.

  ‘Plucky little beggar,’ Jeff grinned.

  Major Muldoon joined them, looking pointedly at the beers in his men’s hands. ‘You chaps like to move? There’s a group just leaving with Hambalaze and Conradie.’

  ‘What about Tshuma?’

  The Major pursed his lips. ‘We’d like to keep him alive if you don’t mind, Dunn. We have some questions for him. He’s going with the next lot. I’ll put you in charge of that, Tanner, if you’d like to stop drinking now.’

  ‘I’ll take him in my truck if you like.’

  Major Muldoon ignored him.

  Greg held out his hand and Richard took it. ‘See you, pal.’

  ‘Not if I see you first,’ Richard grinned suddenly. ‘Marion.’

  ‘I lied,’ Greg lied.

  As he watched the helicopter take off he felt as though something had been severed inside him. He was not a man’s man, preferring the company of women, and even though he had drawn close to several men, Greg included, during the war, he never felt truly connected to them. The experiences shared with Greg over the past two days had bonded him to the man. It went beyond respect and liking. Watching Greg leave hurt, he felt deserted. ‘You’re getting soft, Dunn,’ he thought, amused.

  But he watched Greg’s helicopter until he could see it no more. Then he turned to Jeff. ‘Can the army do me a favour?’

  ‘Sure, name it.’

  ‘Loan me a helicopter.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, you might as well ask for a million dollars.’

  ‘Who should I ask?’

  Jeff saw how serious he was. ‘Why do you want it?’

  ‘I want to bury Samson. I want to bury him next to the Shangani Patrol.’

  The Shangani Patrol. That brave band of thirty-four men who, in 1893, had been dispatched by a Major Forbes to capture King Lobengula. The King’s camp, however, had been filled with 30,000 warriors. Not daunted, or perhaps simply obeying orders, Major Allan Wilson who was in charge of the Shangani Patrol ordered his men to open fire. The fight lasted all morning, despite an attempt by the Matabele to convince the surviving white men to surrender. When the last white man had died the Matabele Induna intoned the words which are still remembered with pride today.

  ‘They were men of men, and their fathers were men before them.’

  The thirt
y-four men were buried under a tree near the site of their death but later were reburied near the Zimbabwe ruins before Cecil Rhodes eventually had their much-travelled remains moved to World’s View, high up in the Matopos, where he himself is buried.

  They spoke to Major Muldoon. ‘No,’ he told them bluntly.

  So Richard grabbed the Major and forced him to where Samson lay in a body bag, his severed limbs gently laid where they should have been.

  ‘Jesus.’ The Major was shocked. ‘What a helluva way to die.’

  ‘He died like a man. He will be buried with the men of men. Even if I have to carry him there myself.’ Richard got his helicopter.

  Several soldiers went with Samson on his last ride. They found a place, just downhill from Cecil Rhodes’s grave and next to the monument for the Shangani Patrol. Richard stood, tears again running freely, over Samson’s grave. With the soldiers behind him, and his voice choked with emotion, he said goodbye to this man who came from a wild and spirited continent. This man whom he had come to love.

  ‘Go well, my father. Go with the departed spirits who will help you in your rest. Go with your head held proud for you are truly a man among men and I, my father, as your son, will make sure that all will know of your bravery. Walk to your resting place on strong legs with your arms swinging free. For you died like a man and none shall hear otherwise from me.’ He spoke in Shona.

  Then he added in English for the benefit of the soldiers who may not have understood, ‘God be with you,’ before turning away.

  During the silent helicopter ride back to his truck, if the soldiers with him wondered why this white man was so grief-stricken by the death of a black man, they said nothing. Richard could not be bothered to enlighten them. He was dropped at his truck and the helicopter left quickly. The rest of the army had already departed.

  The sight of the truck standing exactly where it had been left, with the keys still dangling in the ignition, reinforced his sense of loneliness. Greg was there. He was there with his rucksack and the tent they had shared, a battered old hat and an empty and crumpled packet of cigarettes. But more than that. Samson was there. Richard fancied he could smell the man when he picked up his sleeping blankets. In a sudden fever of activity he hauled all the equipment and supplies off the back of the truck, piling them neatly on the ground next to his tent. Then he dismantled his tent and loaded it, all of Samson’s belongings and a couple of tins of food, back into the truck. Leaving the rest where they were, he drove away. As he pulled away he saw a solitary impala male watching him curiously. The animal was poised for flight but seemed to understand he was in no immediate danger, standing with his head slightly cocked, his stubby tail erect. Richard slowed the truck and called to him, ‘Got any use for camping equipment?’ The animal, which had stood its ground despite the noise of the helicopter, fled at the sound of a human voice. ‘Enjoy!’ Richard called after him.