by T. M. Clark
Wayne looked at the old lady.
‘You,’ she said in a frosty manner.
‘Hello, Lucretia,’ he said politely.
‘You try not hurt my Tara this time,’ she said as a warning, as if she had a say in their relationship.
‘Lucretia, shoosh!’ Tara said.
‘I’ll be watching you,’ Lucretia said, and Wayne smiled, glad to know that she was still with Tara. That Tara had a friend who had stood by her all these years.
Lucretia bustled out the room after placing the forgotten items next to the tray laden with sandwiches, cut into dainty fingers with their crusts cut off, that Gabe had set on the coffee table.
‘So can I expect the same reaction from your mum and Dela?’ Wayne asked.
‘I doubt it. They’re kept too busy. My gran developed Alzheimer’s disease. Mum and Dela both live with her now. Dela is a really good artist, and she tutors advanced art students. She has her studio set up at home so that between them, they watch over gran, look after her, and they have managed to keep her with them at home where she is comfortable and recognises things sometimes.’
‘Sorry to hear about your gran. That can’t be easy, for any of them.’
‘It’s life,’ Tara said.
Wayne looked at the sandwiches. It looked like ham, cheese and salad stuff, and something that resembled tuna and mayo with lettuce or bully beef and cheese. He dithered with his selection, but Tara helped herself to some.
‘Bully beef, yum, I love this stuff. When I was pregnant I would eat it out of the tin, the whole tin … used to drive Lucretia mad,’ she said. He stiffened. This was the first time she’d said anything to him about her pregnancy, and he wasn’t sure just what to say.
‘Because you were eating disgusting bully beef?’ Wayne finally asked.
‘No, because I wouldn’t use a plate. She used to have this thing about leaving food in tins. She would go off about some sickness you could get from tins. So my solution was that if I ate the whole thing she wouldn’t get mad. But as my pregnancy progressed, my tastes changed, and soon eating a whole tin of caramelised condensed milk just wasn’t an option, too much sweet. I would eat half, and then put it in the fridge. Lucretia would always scold me about it when she found it, without fail.’
Gabe said, ‘She still doesn’t use a plate, and Lucretia still goes off at her.’
‘Gabe, I so do!’ she said.
‘No you don’t, Mum.’ Josha backed up Gabe.
Wayne looked down to where she had a sandwich in her hand, without a plate, and battled to cover a smile.
‘Oh, you siding with Gabe is just not fair,’ she said to Josha. She glanced briefly at their other guest, but it was more a passing glance as she focused back on Wayne even before she spoke. ‘Jamison. Do you have children?’ Tara asked, in what was a blatant manipulation of the conversation away from her.
‘Yes, Joy was born just last month on the fifth of February, and her sister Blessing is five.’
‘What beautiful names,’ Tara said and she frowned, turning her attention back to Wayne. ‘And your family, Wayne?’
‘You and Josha have always been the only family I wanted,’ Wayne said.
Unshed tears shone in her eyes.
‘Come on, Tara, don’t cry, it’s a happy time. I have got to meet my beautiful son, and see his beautiful mother,’ Wayne said.
‘I know, they are happy tears, but I was so sure you would have gotten married, had a family. Settled down.’
‘No family. I did buckle down, got to work and made as much money as I could, but it didn’t help me find you,’ he said.
Tara smiled.
‘So are you up to explaining more about your tumour?’ Wayne asked. ‘I did ask Gabe but he said you needed to tell me what you wanted to tell.’
‘That’s Gabe,’ she said looking at her cousin with obvious affection. ‘Always looking out for me. I don’t know what I would have done without him all these years. He’s my rock. I have just under three more weeks until I have the surgery.’
‘So how did you know you had a – you know.’ He pointed to his own head.
‘A brain in my head? Or a tumour?’ Tara smiled. ‘It started a few months back. I began getting these headaches, almost migraines, they were so bad, and I’d never had headaches before. So I went to the doctor, who referred me to the specialist. I had the first MRI done and blood tests galore, and that’s when they saw it, and Mr Brits broke the news and said that he wanted to operate. The date is set for the twenty-third of March.’
‘So why a whole month from diagnosis to operation, why not right away?’ Wayne asked.
‘So I could get my life sorted.’
Wayne frowned. ‘As in you could still die, even if he takes it out?’
‘Yes. There could be complications—’
‘Like having me come back into your life?’ Wayne said.
‘Like having to admit to Josha that I lied,’ she said and she looked over at Josha, who had just stuffed a whole strip of sandwich in his mouth.
Wayne dropped his voice, knowing that he was talking about Josha and yet he was in the room. ‘That must have been rough on him, he seems like a genuine kid, with a good moral compass.’
‘He is, and shattering his trust in me—’ She sniffed. ‘I knew one day I was going to have to tell him, but the days just went so fast, and turned into years, and soon he was almost thirteen. He’s a great kid,’ she said. ‘Not that I’m biased or anything as his mother—’ She looked at her son, and she smiled.
Wayne had missed that smile. Whenever she smiled at him when they were younger, he thought that the world was made just for the two of them. It had been many years, but he had never forgotten her smile, and the happiness that came with it.
‘Tara, how did we come to this?’ he asked.
‘I got pregnant, remember.’
‘Like it was yesterday—’
‘I can’t do the hurt again, Wayne, I can’t go over all the hurt. I don’t want to rehash what has passed.’
‘Then we don’t. We wipe the slate clean, leave it behind. Maybe one day we can talk about it, maybe after your operation. I want us to have the happy ever after that we didn’t have.’
‘But you don’t know anything about me now. I’m not who I was. I work here in Cape Town with Gabe at the paper. I consult with the other reporters—’
‘I’m not asking you to change your life, but to give us a chance. Let us get to know each other as adults.’
‘I can do that, because soon after this operation I’m going to return to a normal life,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it might help you and Josha to spend some time together, just in case. So he knows a little more about you, where you live—’
Wayne shook his head. ‘I’m not taking Josha to Kujana without you. His time with you at the moment is just as precious as my time getting to know him. I don’t see why they can’t be done together. You are not dead yet, you can come and visit with Josha to Kujana, then you will both know where I live and what I do.’
‘Hluhluwe is a long flight and a longer drive away. I’m not sure I can cope with that,’ she said.
‘You can cope with it, you just need the incentive,’ Wayne said. He grabbed a plate, and dumping the sandwich she had abandoned on the small coffee table on it, he passed it to her. ‘Eat, you need your strength.’ He sat down at the end of the daybed again.
She glared at him.
‘Wayne has a helicopter, Mum,’ Josha said matter of factly from his chair.
‘You seriously have a helicopter?’ she asked.
Wayne nodded.
Jamison said, ‘You won’t need to drive to Hluhluwe. It’s just under an hour in the Squirrel from Virginia Airfield to home.’
Wayne said, ‘Piece of cake, you can manage that.’
‘Will there be room for all of us? Uncle Gabe too?’ Josha asked, all of a sudden paying lots of attention to what was being said.
‘Yes,’ Wayne said as he looked at Tar
a. She looked uncertain, but everyone could hear the excitement in Josha’s voice.
‘Come see the Kujana we have built. It’s not the sugarcane fields that you knew. It’s a game farm.’
‘You own a game farm?’ Josha said, extending the last word in the way that only a teenager could.
Wayne nodded, and Jamison smiled.
‘I guess it’s settled then, we are going for a visit. Gabe,’ she said. ‘You’re coming with us, aren’t you?’
‘You couldn’t leave me behind if you stuck concrete boots on me!’ Gabe said.
‘And Lucretia?’ Josha asked.
‘We can fit her in too. And all the luggage,’ Wayne said.
‘Where is everyone going?’ asked an elderly woman who just at that moment walked into the lounge as if she belonged there in it.
‘Mum,’ Gabe said, getting up from his chair and hugging her. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘Not surprising with all the excitement in this room,’ she said.
‘Mum, meet Tara’s Wayne, and this is Jamison,’ he said. ‘Mauve, my mother.’
They all shook hands and Mauve crossed over to Tara and kissed her on the cheek. She spent a moment rearranging Tara’s blanket.
Her affection for Tara showed as she touched Tara’s cheek lightly. Then she turned to Josha, and opened her arms.
Josha got up off his chair and went and hugged her.
‘How you holding up, kid?’ Mauve asked.
‘Good. But it’s been a rollercoaster day.’
‘I bet,’ Mauve said. ‘If you need breathing room, we can go shopping. I need some new potting mix and I thought you could help me to choose the new flowers for that front bed.’
‘Nah, I’m cool. But I’ll go with you tomorrow if you need me to—’
‘We can cross that bridge tomorrow,’ Mauve said, and then she sat in a chair that Gabe had fetched for her.
Lucretia came in and brought her a cup of tea. It was obvious that she was a welcome addition to the party.
Wayne felt emotion lodge in his throat. This woman had an obvious deep love for Tara and for Josha too, and they seemed like a tightly woven family unit.
He envied Gabe. His mother was so accepting, and so openly proud of her son and his extended family. It was a stark contrast to the relationship he had with his own mother. He shuddered just thinking of the last call she had made to him. He still tended to avoid her calls, not wanting the confrontations that she always attempted to embroil him in.
Despite his father now having been dead for eight years, his mother had not remarried.
She had, however, spent every rand she had, and was now about to come home to live on his farm with him again. He knew that she was family. He wouldn’t abandon her, but he’d quickly started construction on a new cottage for her. Not near the safari camps, but closer to his home, in the grounds of the homestead area, but independent from him. He had ensured that she would have her own garage and driveway as part of the plan. Her cottage was almost finished, and there would be no happy mother–son time in his house. She would move directly into her own house, and he hoped to see as little of her as he could.
It wasn’t that he didn’t love his mother, she was just a hard woman to love. Besides, he held her directly responsible for ripping Tara from his life. That he had never been able to forgive or forget.
His mother was a cold fish.
Such a contrast to Gabe’s situation.
Gabe looked like he loved having his mother around, and she was so good with Josha. Everyone was so great with Tara, he felt like the intruder.
He stood up and shook his head.
So many mistakes, that both he and Tara had made. But they had a second chance now.
She wasn’t having her operation for just under three weeks, and there was a chance that she would be alright afterwards. He had time to get to know her again.
Now he had met Josha there was no way he wasn’t going to be part of his son’s life.
He looked at Tara.
She’d been the most selfish person he knew for keeping Josha from him, hiding away all those years.
He should hate her.
But he didn’t.
He still loved her. A deep love that burnt in his chest, that made him feel ill just thinking about loosing her again. But he felt pity, and sadness too. Pity for who they once were, and how dominated and manipulated he had been by his parents at the time, without realising it. And sadness, for the fact that they had lost so many years when they could have been happy together.
He cleared his throat. Getting rid of the emotion, ensuring that he could talk.
‘What day are we planning this trip to Kujana?’ he asked.
‘I’m happy for it to be this week. We don’t have lots of time before the operation, so we might as well go there and see it. See how Josha gets on. He’s the most important factor in all this,’ Tara said.
Wayne nodded. ‘Great.’
‘I have a travel agent that does all our booking for the paper, I’ll give her a call and she can arrange our side of it,’ Gabe said, ‘ensure we are all on the same flight into Durban together. I’ll get her on the phone. Today is Tuesday the third, let’s say Thursday morning, first flight out? Tara, does that work?’
‘Yes!’ said Josha, punching the air. ‘My first time in a plane, and then a helicopter!’
Tara was frowning. ‘It’s fine. I might snore a bit on the plane when I’m dead to the world from the drugs, but hopefully Josha will close my mouth if it hangs open, won’t you my son?’
‘Mum! You are so funny!’ Josha said and he got up and went and hugged her.
CHAPTER
21
Memories And Nightmares
Cape Town, South Africa
3rd March 1998
While everyone talked around her, Tara took the time to look at Jamison. When she had been introduced to him, she had a feeling that she knew him, he was familiar to her in a way that was unsettling. She knew that she knew him, she just had to rake through her drug-filled brain to find where. He was so familiar …
He looked at her, and he smiled, letting her know he had seen her observing him.
And suddenly she knew.
Last time she had seen him he had been in farm overalls, not dressed like a well-off businessman in a light blue checked shirt and denims. He had opened the gate on the day her father had been shot. He had saved her.
‘I know you,’ she said looking at him, and she lifted her hand and pointed her finger at him. ‘I knew you before …’
‘Yes, Miss Tara,’ Jamison said and he got up off his chair and walked to her daybed and knelt next to it. ‘You know me, Miss Tara, from years ago.’
Wayne stared at Jamison and Tara.
‘What did you say your name was?’ she asked, a frown creasing her forehead.
‘Jamison, but you know me as Shilo. It’s been many years, Imbodla,’ Jamison said, and he dipped his head at her as a sign of respect.
‘Oh my God,’ she cried. ‘It’s you. It’s really you!’
There was silence in the room as all eyes turned to Jamison and Tara.
‘Why, Shilo—Jamison?’ she asked. ‘Why are you here? Why are you with Wayne?’
‘To protect you again,’ Jamison said. ‘And this time you have two ex-special forces men working together to keep you safe.’
Tara looked at him, taken aback.
‘Mum?’ Josha asked, moving closer to where she was in her day bed.
Wayne still sat on the bed with her, holding her hand. ‘What’s going on?’
She looked at Jamison, and then at her son. So much time had passed since that fateful day. She had been just younger than Josha was now, and yet here Shilo was, popping back into her life, and warning her of danger once again.
She looked back at Shilo – Jamison. He nodded to her, as if telling her that now it was alright to talk. It was okay to tell people the truth.
‘Josha, come, sit here with
me,’ she said as she patted her bed next to her. Wayne moved futher down and Josha sat where his mum indicated.
She looked at Jamison. ‘All these years, I didn’t tell.’
‘But you need to now, Imbodla, the time has come when the truth needs to be told,’ Jamison said.
She turned back to look at Josha. There were so many things in her life she had kept from him. Tried to protect him from. But this man, and what he had done, was heroic, and so she explained simply, ‘Shilo saved my life when I was just twelve.’
‘Son-of-a-bitch,’ Gabe said. ‘After all this time, finally we might get another piece in the puzzle.’
‘Gabe!’ Tara said, glaring at him.
‘Well you have always been as tight as a duck’s arse about what happened, then suddenly there is a man in my house saying he needs to protect you again. Sorry, Tara, I’m going to go off a little!’
‘Calm down, everyone,’ Mauve said. ‘All this excitement can’t be good for Tara’s head. Josha come, we are going shopping!’
Tara shook her head. ‘No. Mauve, Josha needs to hear this. It’s just another secret that should never have been buried in my life.’
Jamison nodded, he adjusted his weight in the chair opposite Tara. ‘We cannot face what is to come in this time without the past being known.’
‘My son is old enough to hear this,’ Tara said as she took one of his hands in hers.
A pregnant silence hovered over the room. All eyes were on Jamison.
‘I swore the oath to the motto “Tiri Tose”. It means “we are together” but it also means “there is no escape”, in my native Shona. But I can help Wayne to protect you from him. The man who murdered Tara’s father and uncle is obsessed with finding her again, and he still searches for me, and for her. He is coming for you, Miss Tara. He is cunning, and even after all these years he is still penga.’
‘You know the man who killed Tara’s father?’ Gabe said.
‘Yes, I know him. But he is one of the elite, and he cannot be judged by the law,’ Jamison said.
‘He’s a diplomat?’ Gabe asked.
‘No,’ Jamison said. ‘What he is doesn’t matter. But what he is capable of, and how we can protect Tara, that is what we need to focus on, now that Wayne has found her again.’