Ghosts of the Past

by Tony Park

  ‘I intend to, mate.’

  Blake thought that if the red-head had plans of escape then a stroll with the infamous Magrietta would be a logical path to follow. It might be easier for him to find her where the inmates did their ‘trading’ rather than talking his way into the camp proper with the scruffy Paul in tow.

  The two of them followed a track that ran along the outside of the camp fence. On the other side of the wire he saw the rows and rows of bell tents. In the distance he heard a violin playing and a woman singing. The song was mournful and Blake was under no illusions that anyone behind the wire was having fun. These camps were repugnant. He reckoned that if he were a Boer whose wife and children had been locked up it wouldn’t force him to surrender – rather he’d be like Paul and Hermanus and the other bitter-enders, fighting to the death to see his family freed.

  Blake held up a hand to signal Paul to stop. The young Boer spoke very little English. Blake dismounted and Paul followed suit.

  ‘Tie the horses up here,’ he said, leading Bluey into the shelter of a stand of trees. ‘We walk from here.’ Blake pantomimed the action with the first two fingers of his right hand and Paul nodded.

  Ahead of them he saw a trio of soldiers walking slowly along the fence line, peering into the camp after every few steps. Beyond the wire he saw that some of the women were ignoring the gawking soldiers, but others were smiling shyly or even waving.

  As they neared the end of the line he noticed a woman stoop and pick her way through the barbed wire. A British officer offered her his arm once she was through and they walked off together down a grassy slope.

  Blake took off his slouch hat and tried to smooth down his matted hair. He hadn’t washed since his false imprisonment at Walters’ hands and he was acutely aware of his own body odour. Paul, of course, still smelled like a decaying lion kill after his months on the veld. They would be lucky to get the red-head to even talk to them, he thought.

  Chapter 14

  North Sydney, Australia, the present day

  ‘What?’ Susan said, leaning forward, eyes wide. ‘You can’t stop there.’

  Nick shrugged, but grinned. ‘That’s where Lili got up to. I wonder if there’s a German word for cliffhanger?’

  ‘Damn,’ Susan said. ‘I want to know what happens next.’

  Nick gathered up the printouts, tapped them on the table to square them up and put them back in his bag. ‘Dinner is what happens next. They do a great burger here if you want to be bad.’

  ‘Bad is good.’

  Nick tried to give himself a reality check and tell himself Susan was not flirting with him on their second meeting. ‘I’ll get us some menus.’

  ‘The burger sounds great. I’m not the sort of girl who messes around when it comes to food and if I like the sound of something – or the look of it – I’m more than likely to throw caution to the wind and go for it.’

  ‘OK.’ He stood and went to the bar and ordered for both of them.

  ‘I’m annoyed,’ Susan said, slumping back into the couch as he arrived.

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘It was a long shot, that you or your family might have known something about Cyril Blake, let alone have some sort of records from him or about him, and here, now, on my last night in Australia, you come up with the goods.’

  When Nick sat back down their thighs were so close they were almost touching. ‘So what do we do? Get Lili to put in some overtime tonight?’

  Susan laughed. ‘Poor girl, I’m sure your boss works her hard enough as it is.’

  ‘You got that right,’ he said. ‘That place is – or was, in my case – like a salt mine.’

  ‘Seriously, Nick, I can’t wait to read the rest of the manuscript.’

  Nick frowned.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s just that . . .’

  She let his unfinished sentence hang there for a few moments. ‘Just that it would have been nice if I’d stayed around to hear the ending?’

  He nodded.

  She raised her glass and they clinked. ‘It’s been nice hanging out with you, even if it was only twice.’

  ‘I feel the same way.’

  The silence that descended was companionable, tinged with a bit of regret, at least on his part. He wondered what she was thinking. Susan looked out across the bowling greens towards Sydney Harbour and Nick followed her gaze; glimpses of silvery water were just visible amid the high-rises on the horizon.

  ‘What will you do with yourself while you decide what to do with your life?’ Susan asked.

  ‘I don’t know. To be honest, when I thought about you, researching this story and the implications of an historical feature on current politics, well, I was a bit envious.’

  Susan laughed. ‘You and I both know there’s no money in journalism. And remember, I still have to do some part-time PR to pay my bills.’

  ‘So you said. Your client in Cape Town?’

  She nodded and sipped her wine. ‘But let’s not talk about work. It’s my last night in this beautiful country, at least for now. Part of me is looking forward to getting home to South Africa, but I’ve come to love this place in a very short time – even if you do have too many rules and regulations.’

  ‘I hear you. It’s strange, though.’

  ‘What is?’ Susan asked.

  ‘I feel some sort of connection with Africa now, through this long-dead ancestor of mine, even though I’ve never been.’

  ‘I saw an interview with the author Bryce Courtenay once,’ Susan said. ‘You know he was born in South Africa but became an Australian?’

  Nick nodded.

  ‘I’m paraphrasing, but he said that as remains of the earliest known humans had been discovered there, it was as though we were all of us descended from Africans, that there’s a little bit of the continent in all of us,’ Susan said.

  Nick thought about that. ‘Tell me about Africa.’

  She sighed. ‘Where do I start?’

  ‘What do you miss, what are you most looking forward to seeing?’

  ‘Nothing, that’s what I miss. To stand on a koppie, a hill, and to look around you, three hundred and sixty degrees, where you can’t see another human being, and you know that this is what life was once like, what it should be, what it could be.’

  ‘There are plenty of places like that in Australia, true wilderness,’ he said, playing the devil’s advocate.

  Susan smiled. ‘Yes, but we have lions.’

  ‘Touché. Isn’t it dangerous, in the bush?’

  ‘Yes and no, depending on where you are and what you do. The stupid don’t survive, Nick. There’s a sense of living in the moment that’s missing here in Australia. You could be camping on the banks of the Zambezi River in Zimbabwe, where there are no fences around the camp grounds, and if you get up in the middle of the night you could be killed by a lion or, more likely, charged by a buffalo during the day on your way to the ablutions block.’

  ‘Scary.’

  She nodded. ‘It is. And fun. Lots of fun.’

  ‘I get it, I think,’ he said.

  ‘Africa’s how Australia likes to think it is. We are more in touch with the bush, closer to the land, freer, more adventurous, reckless. It’s not all rosy, though. You have too many laws here in Australia; in Africa we don’t have enough, and those we do have are treated more as, say, guidelines.’

  He laughed.

  ‘It’s sad, Africa. Thousands of people are killed on the roads every year in South Africa, and hundreds of thousands die of malaria throughout the continent, far more than from Ebola or any other exotic diseases you read about. There are wars and coups, poverty, corruption and crime, murders and mayhem, and yet . . .’

  ‘You’re not painting a very attractive picture here.’

  She hel
d up a hand. ‘Hear me out. And yet . . . despite all these terrible things, life goes on, Nick. Ordinary, good people face hardships and trauma the likes of which people in Australia couldn’t imagine, but they don’t give up or complain or crumble. They come together, more often than not at the grassroots level, to find solutions, to make a plan, as we say in South Africa, to help each other.’

  Her eyes were bright and she was full of passion. It was odd how she could talk about the continent’s problems in one breath and still be inspired by it in the next.

  ‘You’d make a good PR person for South African tourism,’ he said. ‘You’ve brought up all the negatives people think of before visiting, and turned them into positives.’

  She laughed. ‘You’ll have to come see for yourself.’

  He didn’t say anything, as he was fairly sure it wasn’t a direct invitation, but a thought had been forming in his mind over the weekend. He had no job for now, and he risked spiralling into a depression thinking about his future and torturing himself over Jill’s death. He had money and had been promising himself an overseas trip to try and move on. Jill had told him he should go, before she died. Like talking to other women, though, he had feared he would be racked by guilt, spending their savings on a holiday when that was what he and Jill had planned for later in their lives.

  Their food arrived and they fell back on small talk while they devoured their burgers. They had to raise their voices as a DJ had started up, playing some retro tunes from the sixties and seventies.

  When they’d finished eating, the wine bottle was also empty.

  Nick nodded towards it. ‘What do you say to another?’

  ‘I say you’re turning me into an alcoholic. And I thought South Africans could drink.’

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘What are you having?’

  ‘A beer, I think.’

  ‘I’ll have one more glass of white, but let me get it.’

  ‘No, I insist.’ Nick went to the bar and by the time he came back with their drinks a band had started playing.

  ‘Thanks,’ Susan said, having to raise her voice over the music.

  ‘You know,’ said Nick, sitting back down, ‘I’ve been thinking about my great-great-uncle. If the manuscript confirms he fought in the uprising against the Germans in 1906 and that he was some kind of hero, then it might be of interest to the media here in Australia.’

  ‘I agree,’ Susan said. ‘Do you want to help me write the piece?’

  He smiled. ‘You’re a mind-reader.’

  ‘I’d be very happy with that, Nick, especially as I know you’re a good journalist. I googled you, so I know about the work you’ve done in the past, when you worked on The Australian.’

  ‘Past being the operative word.’

  She reached out and touched his arm. ‘No, Nick, that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean to suggest that you’ve somehow gone downhill. I know you’ve had a rough time lately. This might be just the thing you need, a break before you start another job and a chance to do some investigation.’

  ‘You think?’ It was what he had been hoping for. He had been reluctant, though, to muscle in on her story.

  ‘News organisations collaborate on stories all the time these days. With media organisations shrinking they often have to pool their resources. We can do the same thing. This could be a big story and, yes, even a book, one that would sell on both sides of the Indian Ocean, and in Europe, Germany in particular.’

  ‘Thank you, Susan, that’s very gracious of you to offer.’

  Susan stuck out her hand. ‘What’s say we go into this as partners, fifty–fifty on the workload and the same split on whatever we make?’

  Nick was taken aback. It was a generous offer. However, he didn’t need to think about it for more than a second. ‘I’ve got nothing to lose, I just hope I can help.’

  ‘You already have,’ Susan said.

  They shook hands and toasted each other.

  ‘How about we seal the deal with a dance,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a bit forward, Nick,’ she said, her face serious.

  He felt foolish, having overstepped the mark. ‘Sorry . . .’

  ‘I’m joking,’ she said with a grin. ‘Let’s go, I love this rock and roll stuff!’

  Susan jumped up and led him by the hand to the dance floor.

  He had learned, for his wedding, but had never been much of a dancer. His spontaneous invitation to Susan to dance had surprised him as well. Susan was a natural and the song called for some old-time moves and it didn’t seem unnatural for him to draw her close. He felt a buzz of excitement. She smelled nice, just a hint of perfume, and soon they were both perspiring in the warm Sydney evening air.

  The number finished. Susan grinned and fanned her face with her hands. ‘More!’

  Nick was happy to stay, happier, he realised, as he twirled her, than he had been in months. He forgot about everything and concentrated on the moment, a pretty girl in his arms and their bodies moving in almost perfect unison to the beat. For a moment it felt good to be alive.

  ‘That was great,’ she said when the next song ended, ‘but I need water, and the loo.’

  ‘Me too, but first . . .’ He took out his iPhone and swiped to bring up the camera function.

  ‘No!’ Susan tried to protest, but he held out his hand and took a selfie of the two of them.

  When they reconvened after the bathroom they sat to finish the last of their drinks.

  ‘I’ve had a great night, Nick. I almost don’t want to get on the flight tomorrow morning.’ She looked deep into his eyes as she finished the last of her wine.

  Nick wondered if she was feeling what he was. ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

  ‘The Four Seasons, in the city.’

  ‘They have a great bar,’ Nick said. ‘I could see you safely to the hotel and have a quick drink.’

  ‘Very gentlemanly.’ Her eyes glittered as she smiled and Nick felt his heart quicken.

  He ordered an Uber, then they left The Greens and walked through St Leonards Park to Miller Street. Nick’s flat was less than two hundred metres away, but he thought that if he suggested going there for a drink it would seem just that little bit too forward. And having a drink or two in the city was fine with him.

  A Volkswagen Polo arrived and they both got in the back. Susan was fumbling for the seatbelt as the driver merged into the traffic and headed for the Harbour Bridge.

  ‘Can I help?’ Nick said.

  Susan moved her hand slightly, and Nick felt for the buckle. Susan was sitting on it and as she shifted, his fingers dug into the warm skin of her thigh. He found the buckle and clicked it home for her. He smiled and found she was looking into his eyes. It was cramped in the back of the little car and they were already close.

  Nick felt emboldened by the wine. He leaned a fraction closer to her, and Susan mirrored his action. She blinked and he licked his lips. It was now or never, he thought.

  Nick closed the gap between them and she tilted her face to one side to allow their lips to meet perfectly. Their first kiss was soft, but not tentative, more testing. She must have liked it as much as he, because her lips parted.

  He shifted as close as he could to her given the confines of their seatbelts. Nick opened his eyes and saw that Susan had hers open as well and they were smiling at him.

  They broke apart. ‘Your lips are softer than I thought,’ she said.

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘Very.’

  They kissed again, and continued exploring each other, hands moving over arms and shoulders and thighs, until the Uber driver pulled up outside Susan’s hotel and farewelled them with a grin.

  Susan strode across the polished floor, past reception, and Nick followed, mesmerised and increasingly aroused. It had been a long time for him. He felt a needle-stic
k of guilt, but told himself this couldn’t be wrong. She stopped at the lifts and pressed the up button and they stood side by side, hands clasped in front of them.

  Inside the lift, alone, Nick gave in and pinned her against the mirrored wall and kissed her deeper and harder than he had so far. Susan clawed at the back of his shirt and, for the first time, touched him through his pants. Nick reached down and ran a hand up her thigh, his fingers unable to linger too long on the soft, cool skin, until he found her pants. She ground against him.

  As the chime signalled her floor they tumbled out and along the corridor, laughing at the three attempts it took for her key card to work on the lock.

  *

  Susan couldn’t help it.

  She hadn’t come to Australia to find a man, at least not like this. She had accomplished her mission, she thought, tracking down Nick Eatwell, descendent of Cyril Blake, but she hadn’t meant to fall for him.

  Shit, she thought to herself.

  And now they were all over each other and this was only going to end one way. Nick seemed like a decent enough guy, if a little down on his luck. She had done better than she could have imagined, not only in finding him, but also in discovering that his aunt had what could be vital information in the old manuscript, and now she was surprised to find that she had feelings for him. She thought of the conversation she’d had with her client in Cape Town and she felt terrible.

  Inside the hotel room she wondered if she should cool it, if this had gone too far too soon.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, almost panting.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ No, she told herself. It was better not to tell him everything now. Two reasons – one, he would decide not to share the manuscript with her, and two, she liked him too much.

  He exhaled audibly. ‘It’s fine, Susan. If you want to take it slow I’m OK, we can go to the bar and have that nightcap instead.’

  Damn it. She was not this sort of person and he was a really nice guy. She looked at him. She found him attractive; physically he was in pretty good shape, and when he wasn’t down in the mouth he could be fun and engaging. Finding the manuscript seemed to have lifted his spirits, and she was part of that, which made her feel good.