by Tony Park
Kerry indicated and pulled into the hotel car park. The road ahead looked like it just got busier the closer it got to the waterfalls and she didn’t fancy manoeuvring the big truck in and out of traffic. The desk staff were friendly and, bearing in mind what Graham had said, Kerry asked to see a room.
To her relief the room she was shown not only had a toilet seat, but looked fresh and neat and newly renovated. The rooms were set in long single-storey rows. The place reminded her of a 1960s Australian roadside motel, but the interiors were classier. ‘We’ll take two rooms,’ she told the desk clerk.
Graham cleared his throat and she looked to him.
‘Kerry, I’m a little short of cash.’
‘How much?’
‘A lot short, in fact.’
‘You want me to pay for your room?’
He shrugged. ‘I hadn’t budgeted on paying for accommodation.’
Kerry couldn’t believe it. No, she told herself on second thought. She could.
‘Excuse me, madam?’ the receptionist said.
‘Yes?’
‘Ah, I am sorry, but the room I showed you is the last room we have. There is a big conference on in Victoria Falls at the moment – the ruling party’s annual congress. We are very busy.’
Kerry exhaled. ‘Can you recommend anywhere else?’
The man shook his head. ‘I think you will find all of Victoria Falls is full-full.’
The room she had inspected had twin beds. It would have to do.
‘Eish, I’ll take it,’ she said.
Graham raised his eyebrows. ‘Did you just say “eish”?’
‘I may have.’
‘You’re becoming more African by the minute. Welcome to our world, we mean you no harm.’
Kerry was tired from the early start so after they’d checked in she lay down for a nap, fully clothed. Graham slept off his airline beers, lying on his back on the bed next to hers, snoring.
Every time Kerry dozed off the freight train next to her woke her. After an hour and a half she prodded Graham in the ribs. ‘I’m going to see the falls.’
He rubbed his eyes and checked his watch.
‘Are you coming?’ she asked him.
‘I need to get some beers for the room fridge, so, yes, an afternoon constitutional will do me the world of good.’
‘Is that all you think of, alcohol?’
Graham mulled over the question while picking his nose. ‘Food?’
Kerry got up to go to the toilet. ‘Sex, too, I suppose.’
‘Well, I thought we were going for a walk, but if you’ve got a minute.’
‘In your dreams, buddy.’ She went to the bathroom. He was infuriating, but mildly entertaining, in a gross way.
Kerry came out and took her hat and sunscreen out of her bag and put on both. She held the bottle out to him. ‘Want some?’
‘Never use the stuff.’
‘I can tell. You look like an old handbag. Melanoma will kill you, you know.’
‘Isn’t Melanoma the husband of the Italian girl who works in the deli at Hoedspruit? She fancies me.’
Kerry walked out, making sure she took the key with her. Graham ambled after her.
‘Do you think we need to take a cab?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Graham said. ‘It’s just a short stroll.’
The town of Victoria Falls consisted of one long street leading downhill to the falls, with a few side streets branching off. They passed shops selling gifts and clothing and booking agencies for a host of adrenaline-fuelled pursuits including bungee-jumping, bridge swinging, elephant riding, walking with lions and white-water rafting.
The place was abuzz with tourists, safari guides and a never-ending procession of young men trying to sell them carvings, trillion-dollar Zimbabwean currency notes from the days of hyperinflation and, in hushed tones, dagga.
‘What’s that?’ Kerry asked after Graham told a man to leave them alone.
‘Dagga? Grass. Dope. Weed.’
The man drifted back within earshot of them. He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. ‘Yes, would you like some?’
‘Marijuana? My goodness, no!’
‘I knew you were square,’ Graham said.
‘I am not square.’
‘OK. Want to score?’ asked the dealer.
‘No!’
‘Square,’ said the man.
Graham guffawed. ‘OK, my friend, you can leave us now.’ The dealer shrugged and walked off.
‘I am not square,’ she said.
‘OK. Don’t worry, it was probably oregano, or some such rubbish. The good stuff comes from Malawi in any case.’
Kerry shook her head. She wasn’t surprised he knew where to find the best drugs.
Eventually they came to the entry to the national park, where they had to pay a fee in order to view the falls. Further on, Graham told her, was a border post, and then the high level bridge across the Zambezi that led to Zambia, on the other side of the river.
‘Two, please,’ Kerry said to a national parks employee behind a window.
‘No, I’m not coming in,’ Graham said.
Kerry looked over her shoulder. ‘It’s OK. I’ll pay.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘Come on,’ she said.
‘No thanks. I’ve seen the falls before, a few times. I’ll wait out here for you, in the car park,’ he said in a quiet voice. He glanced away, avoiding her eyes.
Kerry looked at Graham and for once he wasn’t cracking a joke. She shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’
Kerry paid and walked through into the national park and found her way on a well-marked and busy track. As she neared the edge of the escarpment she felt a light mist caressing her face. This was Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke that Thunders. The smoke was water, rising like a cloud above the falls and visible for some distance. The thunder, too, was growing louder. She felt a hint of excitement in her belly.
But when she came to the first of a number of viewing points on the edge, overlooking the majestic falls, her excitement dissipated. It wasn’t the cascading wall of water or the view that disappointed, but rather the fact that apart from a group of Chinese tourists who chattered and snapped beside her, she was alone.
Kerry thought about Graham, sitting outside in the car park, fending off touts, and Eli, in Mozambique, or wherever he was right now. They were, all three of them, dedicated to their work, perhaps married to their jobs, but none of them had a partner.
Graham seemed to have something going on with the Sarah woman who was organising the fundraising for Animals Without Borders, and she imagined Eli had no trouble attracting women, yet none of them was in a traditional relationship. She wondered why that might be. She found a rock to sit on, and took some pictures of the falls with her phone.
Kerry thought about her father. Bruce was a wily one. She had seen the way the South African nurse, Tamara, fussed over him. She was attractive, though perhaps fifteen or twenty years younger than her father. Kerry felt a twinge of something – jealousy perhaps – that Tamara and her father were spending time together on safari, and a pinprick of sadness when she remembered her mother and how happy her parents had been together.
How happy had they really been, though?
She replayed parts of her childhood, good and bad. Her mother was not given to outbursts of emotion – perhaps that was something to do with her upbringing – but by the time Kerry was in her teens her mother was Australian enough and army-wife enough to complain about Bruce’s continual absences from home. She had been outright angry when Bruce had told them that they were leaving Perth – he had agreed to transfer from the Special Air Service in Perth to a newly created Commando battalion in Holsworthy, on the outskirts of Sydney. It was the same time he was commissioned, as an officer, so it had been a time of great upheaval for her father, as well as the family.
But they had come through it, because they were a family. Kerry wondered if she would ever find someone and settle down, maybe ev
en have children.
She shook her head to clear it and tried to focus on what was in front of her. From what she could see it was apparent tourists experienced a very different view of Victoria Falls depending on which side of the Zambezi River they were on. From her side, in Zimbabwe, she looked over to a wide rock wall with water cascading down over the sheer cliff across a panoramic frontage. At the right of her view, on the other side of the river, she could see half-a-dozen dozen people splashing about in a pool on the very edge of the waterfall.
This, she recalled reading in the airline magazine, was the Devil’s Pools, on the Zambian side of the river. Kerry reckoned her view of the falls was better than that of those kamikaze backpackers in the pools, who were taking selfies and pictures of each other standing on the rim of the waterfall, but by contrast they were clearly having a lot more fun than she.
Was that her life? Was she a spectator, well heeled and organised enough to view one of the world’s wonders, but not able to experience it the way the carefree travellers across the river from her were experiencing it?
The events of the past couple of weeks had shaken her, turned her upside down in fact. She had come to Africa expecting – though she would never have thought of it this way – to be an onlooker, watching the barefoot vet, Graham Baird, operating on animals, perhaps saving a couple, perhaps helping out by applying a bandage or bandaid. She had never really imagined she would play any direct part in the saving of Africa’s wildlife. She would have gone back to Australia, if everything had gone according to plan, feeling good about herself, happy that she had helped out, but in reality she would have been no more than a tourist who had paid to play veterinary nurse and pet some animals. She would not have changed a thing.
What had happened was that she had been dropped into the war on poaching and seen and felt firsthand the horrors of a life lived on the edge. She had stared death in the face not once but twice, and she had survived.
Yet here she was, a tourist once more, observing an amazing scene while other people lived it. She wanted to be those people on the other side of the river; she wanted the excitement, even the danger. It wasn’t for the thrill, it was to feel alive and to feel like she mattered.
Graham and Eli, two very different men with different jobs, were fighting this battle on a day-to-day basis. Now that she had seen what they were up against, had encountered the evil they had to confront every day, she didn’t know how she could go back to her safe, sane, predictable life in Australia.
Two of the people on the other side, a man and a woman wearing T-shirts and shorts, stood in the rock pool, water up to their waists and a sheer drop beside them. They embraced and started kissing.
That’s what Kerry was missing, someone to share not only this incredible view with, but to share her life with. She got up off her rock and continued following the path along the edge of the cliff.
‘Hello, madam,’ a man said to her as she rounded a bend. ‘Would you like a guide to the falls?’
‘No, to life.’
The man paused, speechless for a moment. He smiled. ‘You look like a good person. You will find your way yourself.’
Chapter 19
Graham had sent a tout to the liquor shop in the main street of Victoria Falls to buy him a sixpack of Zambezi Lager on the promise of a big tip, and his faith in humanity was pleasantly and at least temporarily restored when the skinny young man returned with the goods.
Graham gave him a five-dollar tip and the street vendor, perhaps feeling the same way, threw in a carved stone pendant on a thin leather thong.
‘Tatenda, shamwari,’ Graham said, thanking his new friend.
‘Fambai zvakanaka; go well, baba.’
Graham touched the brim of his sweat-stained cap and used one bottle’s cap to lever open another. He was no one’s baba – father – and that probably wasn’t a bad thing. The Zambezi tasted like a plunge in a cool lake on a hot day. A baboon sauntered past him, eyed the green bottle, then sniffed and jumped up on a rubbish bin. It fossicked for snacks and inspected a cigarette butt.
‘Don’t,’ Graham said.
He reached into the pocket of his shirt and shook his last cigarette from the packet and lit it. He looked at his nicotine-stained fingers. He should probably give up, though what was the point?
Graham was in the shade of a tree but it was damned hot up here, much warmer even than Hoedspruit. He took off his damp cap and dropped it on the ground in front of him, in the sun, upside down so the sun could dry the perspiration a bit.
A party of Chinese tourists, some wearing surgical masks to protect them from Africa, emerged from the national park entry gate. Their leader, holding a pink parasol aloft, marched towards a waiting bus. Most of the lemmings followed but two of them, women with strands of grey in their jet-black hair, lingered at the rear of the column.
One held up an iPhone and snapped a picture of him.
Graham smiled and raised his beer. The other woman didn’t take a picture but moved cautiously forward, approaching him as one of the other group members was approaching the baboon.
The woman closed the distance between them and Graham looked up at her, lost for words, as she dropped a US five-dollar bill into his hat, gave a little bow, then turned and scurried away to catch up with her group.
Graham stared down at the green note in his grimy hat. He finished his beer, took another from the sixpack nestled behind him, and opened it. Then he picked up the money, folded it, and put it in his pocket. He didn’t know whether to be offended or touched.
‘You found the grog shop, I see.’
Graham looked up. The sun was behind her, making him squint. ‘I got home delivery. Life’s tough in Africa.’
She looked at her watch. ‘Well, I suppose the sun is well over the yardarm.’
He held up the remains of the sixpack. ‘Join me?’
Kerry shrugged. ‘Well, when in Zimbabwe.’
She sat down on the concrete kerb next to him and he opened a bottle and passed it to her.
‘Cheers,’ Kerry said, and they clinked.
‘Tell me,’ he said after another sip, ‘do I look like a hobo?’
‘A hobo?’ She screwed up her face in concentration. ‘Oh, you mean a homeless person? They haven’t been called hobos in the rest of the world since 1929.’
‘Whatever. Do I?’
She leaned away from him and gave him a good look. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘A Chinese lady just dropped five dollars in my hat.’
Kerry laughed and then coughed as her beer went down the wrong way. ‘Well, put your hat back out!’
‘That’s not funny,’ Graham said.
‘It is. Kind of.’
Graham drank some more beer in silence.
‘You could shave. That would make you look slightly less homeless,’ she said. ‘And do something about that forest of hair in your ears. Why is it that men start sprouting hair in the oddest of places as they get older?’
Unconsciously he touched his greying bristles, and his ears. ‘I do shave. Once a fortnight or when crossing borders.’
‘Why when crossing borders?’
‘So I don’t look like a drug dealer or a homeless person to the immigration authorities.’
Kerry nodded. ‘The only drug dealer I ever met was clean-shaven and wore an Armani suit, but he was only a part-time dealer. The rest of the time he was a barrister. And that guy today, he was well dressed.’
‘Lawyers and touts, same things,’ Graham scoffed.
‘Lawyer jokes, Graham? Seriously? Plus, you didn’t shave to enter Zimbabwe.’
‘Normal rules don’t apply to Zimbabwe. And I forgot my razor.’
‘So, basically, Graham’s number one rule is that there are no rules, is that it?’
He thought about that for a moment. ‘Yes. Pretty much. I’ve had rules before, at school, veterinary college, in the army. Rules aren’t always good; they don’t always guarantee that everything will work out. So
me rules were made to be broken, but some rules are there for a very good reason.’
‘Well, that clears that up.’ Kerry gave a small laugh.
Graham looked at Kerry. There was an innocence about her that hadn’t been stolen from her by life. That was good, for her, especially given what Africa had thrown at her already. Perhaps she was one of those people who were made stronger by adversity. She had lost her mother and Graham knew how hard it could be to lose a loved one. But the death of her parent was not her fault.
That was the difference.
‘What rules are good?’ she asked.
‘You’re taking a malaria prophylactic? Pills?’
‘Yes, I am,’ she said.
‘Good. You look like the sort who would.’
‘The sort who keeps their arms and legs covered and sprays with repellent in the evenings?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you mocking me?’
‘No.’ He managed a smile. ‘Not right now, at least. Big towns like Victoria Falls are where there’s a high risk of malaria – plenty of people here will be carrying the disease and the mosquitos spread it from person to person.’
‘Why are you so concerned about malaria, but happy to drink and smoke yourself to death?’
‘Malaria kills about twenty million people a year and it’s preventable.’
‘Yes, I read that,’ she said.
‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘what you didn’t read was that my wife was one of those people. She caught cerebral malaria and died.’
Her mouth fell open. ‘Oh, Graham. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘How could you?’
‘I’m so very sorry.’ She paused. ‘Did you come here with her?’
‘Yes. That was the last time I saw the falls, with Carla, my wife. We should be getting back. Come.’
He turned away, not wanting to see her pitying expression any longer.
‘Yes, all right.’
‘Oh, by the way,’ he reached into his pocket, ‘I thought you might like this. It’s an old family heirloom.’ He handed her the carved stone pendant.