Michael raised his eyebrows. ‘Think you’ll get much business?’
‘Enough.’ She turned and looked over the farm. ‘This yours?’
‘Didn’t Sacha tell you?’
She grinned. ‘Well, actually yes.’
‘How is he?’
‘Busy. He sends regards.’
‘And you? How are you really?’
‘Fine.’ She removed the cap, shook her head and curls went everywhere. ‘Better than fine. How about you?’
‘I’m okay.’ He felt ill at ease and couldn’t figure out why. ‘Look, this is crazy. What are we doing standing out here in the sun? Come inside. Like a drink?’
She stayed put. ‘Can we speak frankly?’
‘Of course.’
‘I mean very frankly. Straight up and out with it.’
‘Try me.’
‘Is there anyone in your life?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like there to be?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You are making this difficult.’
‘Straight up and out with it. That’s what you said isn’t it?’
‘Okay.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘How about me?’
He looked at her. She did not flinch, simply stared back. ‘The idea has merit.’ He grinned, suddenly feeling easier. ‘You don’t beat about the bush do you? Ever heard of girlish modesty?’
She snorted. ‘Haven’t time. I’m thirty-six.’
‘You’re completely different from Jennifer. It might not work.’
‘I’m not asking you to marry me. Just that we try it. If it’s not going to work we’ll know soon enough.’
That made sense. Michael held out his hand and she took it. ‘On one condition,’ he said, leading her towards the house.
‘What’s that?’
‘That you keep your bloody psychiatry to yourself.’
She ducked her head but he could see she was smiling. ‘I’ll try.’
Inside, he turned her to face him. ‘I’ve been thinking about you quite a bit lately,’ he admitted.
‘Where’s Andrew?’
‘At a birthday party.’
‘Good.’ Those eyes told him she wanted him.
Their lovemaking had been a tentative journey where both were fearful of painful memories crowding them. The realisation that this was not going to happen dawned on them slowly. The more each gave, the more they received until finally there was no room for ghosts, there was only the two of them.
Afterwards, lying curled together, there was nothing in Michael’s heart and mind other than Annie. It felt so good to have her next to him, skin to skin. The sensation of sharing and trusting, giving and taking, had been missing from his life for too long. Later, he would search for guilt and find it wasn’t there. The love he’d had for Jennifer would always remain, it had been too good and strong to ever fade away, but, as Michael would soon discover, the heart is a big place with an endless capacity for more.
Annie must have been feeling something of the same contentment. They lay together for a long time, not speaking, at peace with themselves and each other. Finally, she stirred and said, ‘Mmmmm. Yum!’
He kissed her shoulder. ‘Isn’t the cigarette smoked now supposed to be the best?’
‘I gave up.’ She rolled towards him and put her arms around him.
‘Well done.’ He wanted her again. ‘When?’
She was kissing his ear, sending shivers through him. ‘Ages ago.’
Much later he asked her the same question. ‘When?’
She looked a tad shifty. ‘This morning.’
They had been married six months later.
Eighteen months after that, Annie gave birth to their daughter. When Michael suggested they call her Tessa, she agreed without hesitation.
She was, as he had pointed out to her, very different from Jennifer. She could be abrasive, impatient and she loathed domestic chores with a vengeance. But she had a great sense of fun, a quick mind, and an artistic flair that soon turned the barn-like house into a stylishly cosy home. She quickly made friends with Andrew. She loved Michael with unwavering sincerity and loyalty. She cried in sad movies. After Sacha, Michael’s willingness to show affection never failed to surprise and delight her and she learned to reciprocate and took great pleasure in doing so.
And she’d lied about giving up smoking. It took another eleven years before she managed it.
Michael’s thoughts returned to the present. The block Tessa had fired was smouldering but under control. She’d be firing the next one pretty soon.
From the age of ten, it became obvious that Tessa could be as obstinate as her namesake. Dolls and pretty dresses were not for her. Games of cowboys and Indians were more to her liking. She preferred the company of boys to girls. So when, at the age of ten, she announced she wanted to be a cane farmer like her dad, no-one doubted her. Michael thought it was pretty neat. Annie’s attitude was, ‘As long as she’s happy.’ She was very proud of the fact that Tessa had the confidence to be different for, as she said once, ‘It takes courage for a child to be out of step with others.’
Michael, who had come to respect Annie’s innate understanding of human nature, was inclined to agree. But he’d been thinking of another child called Tessa.
Tessa had finished school and then enrolled herself in an agricultural college. And now she was virtually running the farm. She was engaged to the one and only boy she had ever looked at. She had been six when she solemnly informed her parents that she would marry Nick Kelsall, ‘But not for a few years yet.’ Nick had been unaware of her plan but then, he was only eight at the time.
Nick’s parents were friends of Annie and Michael and their farms bordered with each other. Michael had no doubt that one day the two properties would be joined.
Andrew, despite the inheritance from his grandfather, showed no interest in the land. A graphic artist, he lived and worked in Johannesburg and was married to a city girl. When it became apparent that there was little chance he’d take up farming, Harold Bailey was philosophical. ‘It’s yours to do what you will, my boy. When I’m gone it won’t matter what happens to this place.’
But Andrew could see how much the old man loved his farm. ‘You’re going to be around for a long time yet, Grandfather. Don’t worry, I won’t sell it. I’ll put in a manager. Dad can keep an eye on it. Who knows, I might end up a farmer yet.’
So far there were no signs that he would. After the old man passed away, Andrew had hired the best manager in the business, despite dire warnings from others about how you couldn’t trust an Indian. Balram.
The second block caught and roared into life. Michael went back to his musings.
Sally now had three grown-up children: Dominique, who was very gifted in her chosen fields of textile design; Pascale, who went into journalism; and then a son, Charles, a brilliant young scholar who burnt out at university and turned to drugs. He was now on the long road to recovery but the mind-bending acid he’d abused his body with had done terrible things to his ability to concentrate and the only employment he could find was in a special workshop that made simple wooden toys. Sally weathered the heartbreak with the same kind of quiet dignity Claire had displayed when she needed it.
Sally had enjoyed moderate success in the cutthroat world of fashion design and her own label was respected in France and England.
Gregor followed his heart’s desire and went into acting. He was now an established stage actor in Britain, regularly travelling to America for work as well. He married a model and they had one child, a son called Sean. When a cerebral haemorrhage took his wife’s life at the age of twenty-seven, Gregor was heartbroken. So far, he had shown no interest in remarrying.
A few month’s after the tragedy, in an effort to take his mind off his grief, Claire looked after Sean while Sally and Gregor travelled together to South Africa. They found the country of their birth so changed that when they left, both said they would never be back.
; Throughout the 1970s, with apartheid still being practised despite an increasing wave of rebellion, violence was finally met with open defiance and retaliatory violence. Inkatha was revived by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi in the middle of that decade and attracted membership from almost every Zulu in Natal. Then, on 16 June, 1976, as students were protesting in the African township of Soweto, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, about being forced to learn Afrikaans at school, they were cut down by a hail of police bullets. Soweto erupted. Within a year, around 700 African children and youths had been killed. This set off a wave of protest which rapidly spread throughout the country. Boys and girls were actively encouraged to disrupt the system. They did, and they continued to die. Protest marches soon extended to other areas of rebellion. Work boycotts were called in an attempt to destroy the economy. Migrant Zulus living in hostels in Soweto paid no attention to the call for strikes and were attacked as they returned from work. This event set in motion the beginning of open warfare between Zulus and every other African race in South Africa.
At the start of the 1980s, a rift developed between the African National Congress and Chief Buthelezi which was to have far-reaching ramifications within an already wartorn South Africa. By the mid-eighties, international sanctions were beginning to hit hard. Inkatha was losing credibility yet again. Because of Buthelezi’s quarrel with the ANC, a newly formed surrogate for the ANC, the United Democratic Front, was vying with Inkatha for followers and regular street clashes between the two were now occurring in the townships. The unthinkable was happening. Zulu was fighting Zulu. And no-one was spared.
In Kwa-Mashu, Wilson Mpande answered a knock on his door one evening and was dragged outside. He must have known what to expect but that didn’t stop him sticking to his own principles. When he refused the crowd’s demands that he switch sides from Inkatha to the UDF, a petrol-soaked tyre was rammed over Wilson’s head and set alight. The ‘necklace’ killing was just another death in a land where literally thousands were dying each year.
Michael, who had heard of the necklace murder in Kwa-Mashu but had no idea it had been Wilson, only became aware of all the facts when a distraught Nandi was brought to him by her youngest son. The unenviable task of telling Dyson fell to him. And while the gruesome news devastated his old friend there was some comfort in the fact that Nandi and Dyson, who had not spoken to each other for twenty-five years, were able to spend nearly an hour on the telephone together.
The violence continued to escalate throughout South Africa. The economy was in ruins, the country in chaos. Then, six months after taking office, President Frederik de Klerk announced the unbanning of the ANC and promised the release of Nelson Mandela. Nine days later, the world watched as the tall political prisoner, who had not been seen for twenty-seven years, walked free.
Many people, Michael included, believed that the worst was over. Unfortunately, it was not. The Zulus were divided. The more traditional followed Buthelezi’s Inkatha, while the educated leaned towards the ANC and its policy of one voice for all blacks. Within the ANC, a radical arm was forming to continue feuding with Inkatha. And a ‘third force’ of police and army officers was being deliberately encouraged to exacerbate the violence. This ‘third force’, it was said, had been formed by the outgoing Nationalist Party.
Claire Dawson, now eighty and confined to a walking frame, increasingly begged Michael to sell up and get out. Michael and Annie discussed it a couple of times but their answer always came back to one thing. Africa was their home. But when Claire asked Michael in a recent letter, ‘What chance do the Zulus have? They cannot unite. They have lost sight of their cause. I fear it is the end of them.’ Michael tended to agree. So did the eighth king of the Zulus, King Goodwill Zwelithini, who asked, ‘If Britain is at war, her people unite under their queen against the enemy. How could we face the problem here, when we are enemies among ourselves?’
In the first all-race elections conducted in 1994, Inkatha won an overall majority in KwaZulu Natal, though voter fraud north of the Tugela River was suspected by the ANC. It also won ten per cent of the vote for the national assembly. The political violence should have stopped. Instead, as well as continuing, it gained a sinister alter-ego.
Drug-related crime. The terrible carnage continued, visiting on whites and blacks alike. In KwaZulu Natal it was as bad, if not worse, than anywhere else in the country. The incidence of robbery skyrocketed with money and weapons being the prime objective and rape an added bonus. These crimes were largely committed by the twelve to twenty-five age group half out of their minds on drugs. No-one was exempted.
Michael, who hated the idea, was forced to install burglar bars, bulletproof glass and a rape gate in his house. Annie closed her practice in Empangeni. Driving home at night on her own was too dangerous. Older Zulus who remembered a different time when the young respected the elderly could only shake their heads at what was happening.
Farmers in isolated areas were particularly vulnerable and private security patrols were formed all over the country. Everybody had two-way radios within easy reach and cell phones were never far away. Nor were their weapons. Still, reports of murder kept coming in from rural areas.
After Wilson’s necklace killing, Michael tried to convince Nandi to come and live on his farm. ‘Please, Nandi. You will be safe here.’
‘No, Master Michael. Nowhere is safe. I am returning to my home.’
She went back into the mountains where she had grown up and where she had first met Wilson. There, on the death of her mother-in-law, she was installed into the matriarch’s large hut where she resided with all Wilson’s ancestors. Over the years the village had changed like everything else had changed but, because of its remoteness, life still bore some resemblance to the old ways. Her two youngest children, though now adults, married with families of their own, joined her. Like most decent people, they were sick of the violence and fearful for their children lest they too get caught in it.
‘When will it stop?’ Dyson asked Michael in despair.
He had returned in 1990, two weeks after the unbanning of the ANC. No-one knew he was coming. Michael came in from the fields one day and there was his old friend sitting on the verandah waiting for him.
‘Dyson!’ Michael yelled.
Dyson sprang up, grinning like a fool. Though they’d seen each other whenever Michael and Annie took the children to England, it was different here. It was right here.
They behaved like kids again, cuffing each other, trying to wrestle each other to the ground. Both men were short of breath when they stopped.
‘We grow old,’ Dyson said. He was fifty-two and had lived in exile for thirty years.
‘Are you back to stay?’
‘Yes. I’ll never leave again.’
‘Want a job?’
Dyson shook his head. ‘I’m going back to my father’s village. I’m going to live the old way. I want nothing to do with the new. I’m going to take a wife, have children and tend my cattle. I’m going to smell the fresh air, dance to the rhythm of Africa, feel the sun burn my back and speak nothing but Zulu. You, Nkawu, will be very welcome to visit me.’
‘You’ll get sick of it.’
‘I’ll never get sick of it.’
And he hadn’t, though he did have to leave one more time. The first thing Dyson had done when he returned, after greeting his mother, was to visit the sangoma. She told him what he already knew. ‘You have come home.’ But she added, ‘There are those who will hear your words. The time is coming when great wrongs will be put right.’
In 1996 the new South African regime instigated the biggest purging campaign ever undertaken in the history of the world. Called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and presided over by, among others, the 1985 Nobel peace prizewinner, Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the aim of the commission was to learn, not to judge. Stories concealed over the decades were enough to reduce Bishop Tutu to tears on more than one occasion. Anybody who had suffered as a result of apartheid, or who had c
aused that suffering, whether they be freedom fighters, South African Security Police, ANC, Inkatha, United Democratic Front, Eugene Terre Blanche’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement, Nationalist Party members, ex-Bureau of State Security employees, Umkhonto we Sizwe, it didn’t matter who, was called to appear before the commission. Both Dyson Mpande and Sacha Devilliers testified.
Michael, following the process through the media, found it hard to understand how so many people, on so many opposing sides, could get it so wrong. No-one was blameless. Not one faction could afford to point a finger at another. The innocent victims, ordinary African men, women and children who had borne the brunt of one form of cruelty or another, told stories of untold horror, hardships and heartache. South Africa should have died of shame. But it seemed to Michael that while some displayed evidence of a conscience, most were too busy trying to justify their actions.
Dyson gave evidence on two counts. His treatment in prison, and his involvement with Umkhonto we Sizwe. A victim on one hand, a perpetrator of suffering on the other. A typical example of the complex face of South Africa that had evolved over the past fifty years.
Sacha spoke unemotionally of his work and the reasons he believed in it. Yes, he agreed that the system had been less than perfect, less than fair. That was not his concern. He had been involved in preventing those who would undermine his country from doing so. Simple as that.
Annie, watching her ex-husband on television said sadly, ‘He’s a dinosaur really. A relic of the past. Look at him. Ramrod straight, stiff upper lip, no apology, no feelings at all really. If he suspects he’s wrong he’d rather die than admit it. There’s no place in this world for such people any more. I feel sorry for him.’
Just another facet in the complicated face of South Africa.
It had to get better. South Africa had to turn the corner. But when the pendulum swings so far out in one direction, it has to swing just as far out in the other. Eventually it would stop swinging. Only then would peace be found. Or so Michael fervently hoped.
Michael had kept up to date with the black rhinoceros project at Umfolozi, visiting the reserve several times a year. With a greater understanding of the animal’s needs through research, better security against poachers, a habitat that agreed with the beast, the black rhinoceros was thriving. Not only in Umfolozi but all over Africa the animal was breeding and had been removed from the Red Data Book.
People of Heaven Page 48