Courtesy of Robyn Dunne
Charl and Tertia Geldenhuys, our neighbors on Two Tree Hill farm. Many of their horses became a part of our growing herd after they were forcibly removed from their home.
Courtesy of Hester de Jager
Pat and I love the view from the Red Dunes. Together we have traversed countless miles and suffered incredible loss, all while doing what we could to save the horses we love. Now, in Vilanculos, we are thankful for each new day and the promise it brings.
Courtesy of Katharine Easteal
Chapter 9
A PLANE BANKED in descent toward Harare International Airport. A familiar city unfolded before me. I had been away for twelve long weeks, and though I had spoken to Pat almost every night, the feeling of coming home was almost overwhelming.
In the seat beside me sat my mother, her closed eyes somehow still betraying her sadness—for, after three hard months of searching, we had not been able to find her a home.
England had seemed such an opportunity, but almost as soon as we touched down, the scale of the challenge felt insurmountable. After spending some time with Paul, now firmly ensconced in London life and living in Wimbledon, south London—a place so filled with exiled Zimbabweans that it had earned itself a new nickname, Zimbledon—we had headed off for the country town of Princess Riseborough. There, we had stayed with my cousin Julie while I made some money as a waitress and we tried to steer my mother through the labyrinthine bureaucracy of England’s Social Services Department. Though we visited their offices every day, we were repeatedly sent away and told to come back at a later date. Even though my mother had been born in England and worked there for many years, it did not, we were told, guarantee her a state pension or the support of Britain’s care homes. We begged and pleaded, but no matter how many times I tried to explain the terrible predicament my mother was in, the officious woman at the office only batted our questions back. I still remember the way she looked at us as she declared, “Political situations in Zimbabwe are not our concern . . .” It was as if we were being sent away before we had even presented our case.
After three months of trying, Granny Beryl and I were returning to the country that no longer wanted us. It was only as we began our descent into Harare that the real sense of failure hit me. Granny Beryl still slept, but I wondered what I was taking her back into. As the seat-belt sign flashed on and we prepared to land, I woke her.
“Are we home?” she asked.
It seemed such an absurd question. What did home mean anymore?
Coming through Customs in the airport was always tense, but never more so than since the land invasions had started. Slowly, we made our way through. On the other side, our driver Jonathan was waiting. We pulled off into Harare traffic, passing the place where—in that long-ago world—my mother had had a safe, reliable home.
“Where’s Pat?” I asked.
Jonathan looked over his shoulder, wearing an inscrutable grin. “He is with his horses . . .”
It was not until we turned from the main road to follow the red dirt track toward Biri Farm that I understood how much I had missed this place. There can be nothing comparable to coming home to Africa, and all homesick Africans, whether white or black, will tell you the same. Africa has a smell. It has a rhythm. The wealth of feeling that bubbled up inside me seemed incredible. Was I really so attached to this place in which Pat and I were holed up? Did I really consider Biri Farm my home? It was August, and the first colors of Zimbabwean spring were beginning to appear in the bush: a soft pink that would harden to mauve, before lines of stark green appeared along the veins of every leaf and spread out to cloak the country.
“Mum?”
Beside me, Granny Beryl, too, was gazing out of the window.
“It looks like Crofton used to look,” she whispered.
Jonathan guided the car over a crest of red, banking left, and there, sitting below us, was the glittering blue of Biri Dam. Along the line of the water, a tiny figure galloped on horseback, a shimmer of gray underneath him. We drove alongside, the smell of citrus strong in the air.
“Welcome home,” said Jonathan.
At first, it looked like a mirage: the paddock with the glittering water in the background. Somehow, it was unreal. Then, as I stepped out of the car and saw familiar faces crowding at the fence—Lady, Deja Vu, the tiny Brutus with his face still set in permanent concern—I understood why.
“Amanda,” Granny Beryl began, climbing out of the car, “what happened here?”
From the paddock, the eyes of fifty, sixty, seventy horses stared back. There were twice as many horses as when I had left. Here were mares and geldings and foals I had never seen before; familiar faces from a farm beyond Braeside and Palmerston Estates; a horse that I somehow recognized from the home of another murdered farmer. I stepped forward. Deja Vu spotted me at once and was weaving her way through the herd, favoring her scarred leg.
I was lost, looking into this sea of horses, when I heard the beat of hooves and turned to see Pat riding up in Grey’s saddle.
“Oh, Pat,” I said, throwing back my head to laugh. “What have you done?”
“Here she is. Shere Khan . . .”
She was, I had to admit, the most beautiful horse I had seen, regal and lofty and a full hand higher than any of the familiar faces of the herd. She stood, statuesque, a dun mare with glistening black points and big, shining eyes that positively shimmered with intelligence. In the setting sun she looked golden, and as she walked toward us she tossed her dark mane from side to side, seemingly declaring herself the most wonderful horse in Zimbabwe. I reached out so that she could draw in the scent from my fingertips and nibble at my hand, but she simply dropped her head to snatch a clump of grass and flicked her tail disdainfully. Only when Pat called to her did she come to the fence. Regally, she dropped her head to nuzzle him, but she was promptly bustled out of the way. Lady, it seemed, could not stand to share.
“Where did all these horses come from, Pat?”
“All over. It’s been getting worse, more and more farmers leaving . . .”
“Is that Tieg Howsen’s horse?”
I had spied a small, dark Arabian stallion standing among the herd, a horse much older than the Crawford foals who milled around him, and recognized him as Uzuk, who had once lived on a farm neighboring Pat’s brother’s.
“There’s a story to that horse,” Pat began. “You see that foal?” He pointed, but it was difficult to make out where he was pointing; the field was full of foals. “Uzuk’s daughter, I think. Tieg had named her Horrid . . .”
“Horrid?”
“I couldn’t call her that. She’s Holly now.”
“Isn’t it terrible luck to change a horse’s name?”
“It didn’t do Frisky any harm. She had another name when I met her.” Pat paused. “Tieg called me up. She’d left the farm and found a place in Harare, but there were too many horses for her to take with her. So I helped her by taking Holly, Uzuk, and an old mare. She’d wondered if I could put the old girl out of her misery . . .”
It would not have been the first time. Back before I had left Biri, we had had calls from distraught farmers who thought the kindest thing would be to destroy their beloved horses, rather than leave them to the war vets.
“She loved that horse,” I said.
“I promised I’d look after her, if we could take Holly, too. I just couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her up there, Mandy. So here she is.”
“What’s she like?”
“Deranged. I wanted to get her in the training ring as soon as I could, get her joined-up, get her used to being handled . . . She panicked. I think it was because she couldn’t see through the walls. She just dropped her head and charged. But the walls wouldn’t give. She flopped down. Just collapsed. I thought she was dead . . . but, when I crept over, one eye opened up and, groggily, she got back to her feet. She just stood there, staring at me like she’s staring now . . .”
In th
e paddock, Holly was considering us both with a calculating gaze.
“How’s their training going?”
Pat gave a crumpled grin. “I thought I knew about training horses. Turns out, I don’t know a thing. I don’t think you can know about training horses until you’ve trained a hundred of them.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Well, how many have we got?”
“Seventy-one.” Pat smiled. “But there’s time yet. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the rest.”
Shere Khan looked imperious, the queen of the herd, but her subjects were many and varied. Among them was an ear-less mare Pat had taken in from the same farm, who had foaled down almost as soon as she arrived on Biri. The foal, silvery gray, had been named Nzeve (“ear” in Shona) in honor of his mother’s missing ears and seemed already to have struck up a friendship with a bay foal named Slash.
I watched Nzeve and Slash running at each other. Soon they were joined by a collection of other foals. Brutus hung at Jade’s side at first, but finally wandered over to join them, nosing tentatively forward. They seemed to be lining up, as if to race.
“They’re at it again,” muttered Pat.
The foals nearest, Pat explained, had come from Gary Hensman, who farmed close to where his brother Rory had farmed on Braeside. Gary still managed to cling to his farm, but sections of it were constantly being taken by settlers and he was worried how long he might last. On the farm he had bred polo horses, and two of the foals who now pushed among the others had been too small. They were Slash, a bay with a white slash on his brow, and Mouse, a timid, inquisitive chestnut gelding.
Above them stood Stardust, a chestnut mare who had belonged to one of Tieg Howsen’s friends. I watched them for the longest time. It was, I supposed, good to be back.
I searched the herd for signs of Princess, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“How is she?” I finally asked, fearing the worst.
“Let’s take a look.”
Pat and I walked the circumference of the paddock, followed by the boisterous Lady on the other side of the fence. As we made our way to the stable where I had last seen Princess, a Thoroughbred eyed me dolefully from the paddock.
“That’s Terry’s horse, isn’t it?”
Pat nodded. “He’s called Fordson.” We lingered for a moment, the horse’s eyes tracking us. “I was at Terry’s funeral. I couldn’t not take them in, not after what happened.”
Terry Ford was the tenth farmer to have been murdered during the land invasions. Terry had been a good friend, and we had spent many years showing sheep together at the Harare shows. Like countless other farmers, Terry had given up living on his farm many months ago. His farm was under particular scrutiny, for Sabina Mugabe, the president’s elder sister, had declared her interest in taking it over—but, on hearing that his son was coming to visit from where he now lived in New Zealand, Terry had made the trip back to tidy, clean, and prepare for the homecoming.
It was the last trip he ever made. That night, the farmstead was besieged. Terry made frantic phone calls to his friends and neighbors, but they would never see him again. When his body was found, his beloved Jack Russell, Squeak, was standing guard, refusing to let anybody near.
“I took two others as well as Fordson,” Pat explained. “I couldn’t stand the thought of them being destroyed.”
In the stable, Princess was waiting. If she recognized me at all, she did not react. Pat and I walked along her side, where one end of her wound was open. In the dark cavity I could see that the passage carved by the bullet had narrowed. Even so, a sour, steamy smell rose from her, and the edges of the wound glistened with pus.
“Fistulous withers,” Pat began. “There isn’t enough blood supply to a horse’s withers, so she won’t heal.”
“Won’t heal at all?”
“It closed up once, but as soon as it does, infection sets in, and the new tissue starts dying away . . .”
I reached out to stroke Princess’s muzzle. “What will you do?”
“She’s come this far. We just have to believe she’ll get all the way.”
“It’s been a long time.”
Pat’s hand ran along Princess’s flank, stopping only when he began to feel her tremor at his touch.
“I’m sorry, Princess,” he said, “it might take a lot longer . . .”
Pat turned to lead me back to the farmhouse, recounting endless stories of the first time he had taken the foals into the ring, the way Lady refused to be trained and demanded to be pampered, the panic that set in whenever Brutus was led away on his own. I knew he was trying to make me laugh, but I barely heard a word. As we crossed the farm, I found that I could barely look at the horses. Every last one of them was a symbol of what was happening to the country we loved.
I had been away for only three months, but it seemed the evil would never end.
In the weeks to come, family reunion was more and more on my mind. And so, it was with pleasant surprise that I put down the phone one morning and turned to Pat with the wonderful news: Paul was coming home.
It was the first time Pat had seen Paul since he left for England, and no sooner had he arrived on Biri Farm than father and son took out along the training trail with Imprevu and Grey. At the farmhouse, Granny Beryl and I supervised the preparation of a family feast to welcome Paul back, and we eagerly awaited Jonathan’s arrival with Kate from school. Jay, meanwhile, had managed to get a week off from his apprenticeship and was, even now, making his way across Zimbabwe to be with us.
It felt good to be together again. Shortly after Kate arrived, Pat and Paul returned from their ride. I looked out of the farmhouse window to see Paul surrounded by the Crawford foals, tempting the ever-reticent Brutus to eat horse cubes from his hand while Lady tried to get in the way and Shere Khan looked disdainfully down, and watched Kate rush out to meet him. Even in the months he had been gone, she seemed to have grown. Surrounded by foals, he hugged her, putting her down only when Lady pushed her head between them.
As Granny Beryl was making the final preparations for dinner, I went out to join them.
“So, Paul,” I began, “is it anything like you imagined?”
Across the paddock, Pat was running his hands over Deja Vu, his fingers softly stroking the scars on the leg she had trapped in the wire fence on Crofton, all that time ago.
“No,” Paul replied, “it’s even crazier than that . . .”
We were a long time waiting for dinner, for Jay was nowhere to be found. As plates went back into the oven to be heated and the bowls of potatoes and meat were covered in tinfoil, I returned time and again to the veranda. Dusk was settling on Biri Farm, the horses settling down for the night, and still there was no sign of our returning son. I was beginning to get worried.
“What do you think, Pat?”
“It’s Jay. He’ll be okay.”
I was not so certain. I could not forget the feeling of realizing how much Zimbabwe had worsened in the time I had been away.
In the farmhouse, Kate sat, held rapt by Paul’s stories of England. On the couch she had her knees tucked up under her chin, hanging on to his every word. I listened to the ebb and flow of their conversation. England must have seemed so exotic to Kate. I wondered if she might ever follow her brother there. Perhaps she would have to.
The darkness was already absolute when I heard the rumbling of an engine. Two tiny orbs of light appeared in the distance, their beams growing. I called for Kate and Paul, who rushed out to join me on the veranda. At last, a Land Rover hove into view, grinding to a halt in front of the paddocks. The eyes of more than seventy suspicious horses watched from the gloom.
Out stepped Jay.
As he ambled over to say hello, he had the same cocksure swagger of old. His hair, blond and wild as ever, had grown longer. It hung in curls below his ears. He ambled to a stop in front of the veranda and squinted into the light.
“We were worried sick,” I said.
“So was I,” Jay replied. “I
was held up.”
“Held up?”
“It was because of my gun.”
“What gun?”
“The police stopped me at a roadblock, wanted to search the car. I told them to go right ahead.” Jay stopped, shaking his head. “I’d forgotten all about the hunting rifle I’d stored behind the seat back at camp.”
I remembered the police on Palmerston, who had flagrantly helped themselves to our crops. I remembered the farmers summoned to stations and imprisoned without charges or trial. Even though I knew Jay was safe, I was not sure I could hear the rest of this story.
Silent as ever, Jay tramped on into the house, his nose leading him straight to the table where dinner was slowly getting cold.
“Well?” Kate asked, as we all followed after.
“Well, they wanted to arrest me.”
Jay slumped into a chair and started piling his food up.
“Arrest you?”
“It was okay, though. I knew the member in charge from the hunting camp. I had to call him to straighten it out.”
“And they just let you go?”
“Not quite.” Jay’s mouth was now full. “They told me to bring my gun license in on the way back through.” He paused. “Hey, you don’t know where it is, do you?”
I dreaded to think. Probably it had been lost on Crofton, along with everything else—but, before I could answer, Jay threw me a look, his dark eyes glowing.
“Mum,” he said, “is there any beer?”
The next morning we rode together across the length of Biri Farm. For a few scant hours we were a family again. It felt as if we had never left Crofton. Even Jay, so rare a rider, cantered along the line of the dam, sitting in Lady’s saddle. In the afternoon, Kate and Paul helped Pat in the training ring, leading in each of the Crawford foals, and I tried to coax Brutus out of his shell.
When it came time for the boys to depart, Jay back to his hunting camp via an unwelcome trip to the Harare police and Paul off to stay with friends in Harare, Kate and I stood in the doorway to wave them off. Jay and Paul hugged their little sister and playfully punched her on the arm. Never one to take a beating, Kate punched back, repelling them down the steps. She was sixteen now, but she would always be their little sister. Those few days we had together felt more golden, even, than the long years of Crofton.
One Hundred and Four Horses Page 14