African Dawn

by Tony Park

It was dark when they came to Gweru, the main city of Midlands Province. The power was out, so it was a gloomy, slightly eerie crawl through the town she'd known as Gwelo. Natalie and her family had lived just out of town for a while, on the Mvuma Road, near the sprawling Thornhill Air Base where her father had been posted for a couple of years as an instructor.

  ‘In the old days, before we had candles, we used to have electricity,’ Braedan said as he braked to avoid running into a truck that was driving without lights.

  Natalie gripped the dashboard to avoid being thrown through the windscreen. It struck her as crazy that she would be driving in the black night with no seatbelt, while drinking a beer. It was unsafe and foolish, but at the same time it was oddly exciting; liberating, even.

  ‘Another beer?’ she asked Braedan, and leaned forward to pick two rolling bottles off the floor of the cab.

  ‘Ja.’

  Natalie unzipped her daypack and took out a Swiss Army knife. She used the bottle opener to open the beers and passed one to Braedan.

  He raised the bottle to her. ‘Welcome home to Africa, fucked-up place that it is.’

  After eleven attempts, and being constantly told that the cellular phone network was busy, Natalie finally got through to her grandfather on his cell phone and told him she was nearing Bulawayo.

  Grandpa Paul sounded delighted, as always, to hear from her, and when she told him she was getting a lift with the Quilter-Phipps boys he ordered her to make sure they stayed for supper.

  ‘I'm sure their mom will want to see them,’ she told him.

  ‘Can they hear me?’ Grandpa Paul asked her quietly. Natalie looked at Braedan, who was intent on drinking and driving and didn't appear to be paying attention to what she was saying.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then make sure they both come to dinner, Natalie. Their mother's on a government pension that barely pays enough for her to buy a loaf of bread or a few potatoes a month. She'll want to see both the boys, but we'll be doing her a favour if we send them home fed.’

  ‘OK Grandpa, I understand.’

  The lights were on in Bulawayo, but the town still seemed dead. They passed a couple of restaurants that were open, but business was slow judging by the small number of cars and bakkies parked outside. Young men loitered in the shadows of shop awnings. She'd loved coming here, before the incident on her grandparents' farm. She loved the big wide streets, and the carpet of purple blossoms shed by the jacaranda trees, and Lyon's Maid ice cream from the little place near the Haddon and Sly department store. Nineteen seventy-nine changed all that.

  Once out of town the road towards Plumtree and the Botswana border took them through open, undulating grasslands studded with granite kopjes. It was beautiful, empty and wild. She'd loved this drive as a child, but now she was heading back to the land of her nightmares.

  ‘Remembering?’

  She looked across at Braedan. ‘Oh, yes, sorry. Lost in my thoughts.’

  ‘It happens. This country's got too many ghosts and not enough soul any more.’

  ‘Yet you've come back.’

  He drained his third beer and slipped it under his seat. ‘I'm like a lot of people here – I've got nowhere else to go. The ones with money and relatives overseas have gone; the ones with small kids have gone to find them a better education; the ones with professional qualifications have gone to places that appreciate them, and that leaves the ones like me.’

  ‘My grandparents have stayed.’

  ‘Ja … and then there are the idealists. The ones who believe that if they hope and pray and have faith in the goodness of man and the strength of the human spirit then things will come right.’

  ‘You sound like you don't believe it.’

  ‘I don't. But don't get me wrong – I like your grandparents, always did.’

  And it was true, he did. And they seemed genuinely pleased to see him and even sour old Tate, Braedan thought.

  They'd passed through two security gates manned by smartly dressed Africans who'd made them sign in and radioed ahead for permission for them to proceed. The parallel fences looked in good condition and Braedan had heard the tick, tick, tick that told him the fences were electrified and the power was on.

  The Bryants met them on the gravelled drive outside the same farmhouse they'd lived in when Braedan had parachuted into the field at the back. Braedan took in the place while Natalie's grandparents hugged and kissed and fussed over her. The fire damage had long since been repaired and the place looked a little larger than he remembered – some extensions over the years, he thought – but like everywhere else in this country it was another reminder of the life they'd all once lived, good and bad. A Land Cruiser bakkie was parked under a carport next to the house, and Braedan could see it was packed with camping gear.

  Old Paul Bryant must be at least ninety, but his eyes were clear and his handshake was strong. ‘Good to see you, again,’ he said, and Braedan could still hear the slight twang of the Australian accent in the old man's voice. He wore a two-tone farmer's bush shirt of green and khaki and shorts that looked as though they were handmade, with a simple elastic waist.

  ‘Howzit, Mrs Bryant,’ Braedan said to Natalie's grandmother. Pip was tiny – he'd remembered her as being short, but she'd shrunk with age. She'd made her face up a little and he could see where Natalie and Hope had got their looks.

  ‘Braedan, how lovely to see you.’ Pip gave him a hug and she felt as though she might snap in his arms if he put the slightest amount of pressure on her. She turned from him and beamed up into Tate's face. ‘Tate, Tate, Tate … it's been too long, how are you, my boy?’

  Paul clapped a bony hand on Braedan's shoulder and winked at him. ‘Come, let's get a beer in before dinner.’ Braedan let Paul lead him inside as Pip bustled along between Tate and Natalie.

  Braedan smelled roast chicken as they entered the house, and a rotund African woman came out from the kitchen and said good evening to him and Tate. Braedan returned her greeting in fluent Ndebele and noted, with a touch of self-satisfaction, Natalie's surprise at that.

  ‘Dinner will be ready in about twenty minutes,’ Pip Bryant said. ‘Portia,’ she said to the maid, ‘please won't you set another two places for dinner.’

  ‘Really, Mrs Bryant, we're fine,’ said Tate.

  Braedan felt like smacking him. He was starving and the smell of the chicken was making his stomach do parachute landing rolls.

  ‘Nonsense, Tate, you will stay for dinner. Portia's doing two chickens in any case, so it's fine.’

  Pip wasn't unfriendly or unwelcoming towards Braedan, but she seemed much more interested in Tate. It figured, Braedan thought, as they were both rhino people. It seemed they'd had a bit to do with each other over the years.

  And there, on the mantelpiece, over an already stacked fire of mopane wood interspersed with old mealie cobs, was Hope. If Paul Bryant noticed Braedan staring at the black and white studio print, he gave no indication of it. ‘And what have you been up to lately, Braedan? I heard from your mother you'd been in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tricky places to fight a war, eh?’

  Braedan gave the answers he usually did to such questions, about how hard it was to tell friend from foe, and how both countries were locked in internal conflicts that foreign troops could hardly begin to understand, let alone solve. But his eyes were drawn back to Hope's face. It must have been taken not long before her death, and it sent a shiver down his spine.

  Paul suggested they go outside, on the pretext of showing Braedan the garden.

  ‘Paul, dinner's nearly ready,’ Pip said.

  ‘Won't be a mo,’ he replied.

  Braedan wondered how much the Bryants knew about what had gone on between him, Hope and Tate. They would have quizzed Tate after Hope's death about why she'd got on a plane back to Salisbury so soon after arriving in Kariba. Tate probably told them there'd been an argument, but he would have been too embarrassed to tell them what the argument had been about. Still, Braedan mused, George and
Susannah would have raised their eyebrows at the time Hope got home the night before she left; they would have put two and two together, but maybe they would have protected Hope's parents from the truth. He suddenly regretted being so candid with their granddaughter. Would she put all that in her book? It was all so sad, but it was also ancient history.

  ‘How does it feel being back here, on the farm?’ Paul asked him, and Braedan took a sip of cold Lion Lager from his glass while he thought about that one. The old man was sharp, for sure.

  ‘It's funny, hey,’ he said at last. ‘It was thirty years ago, but coming back here makes it all feel like it was just yesterday.’ Braedan reached for his cigarettes and saw the grandfather's eyes brighten.

  He looked furtively back at the farmhouse. ‘Can you score me a loose one, Braedan?’ he whispered. Braedan smiled and shook a cigarette free of the pack and lit it for Paul. He breathed deep, his eyes closed. ‘She'd kill me if she knew. I expect you know all about Natalie's book by now. How do you feel about going over all that again?’

  Braedan shrugged as he lit his own cigarette. ‘It was different for me. I was just doing a job. Natalie wants to find answers, and to tie what happened back then into what's happening in the country now. Me, I'd prefer to forget it.’

  ‘That's impossible,’ Paul said, exhaling.

  Braedan nodded. ‘I know what you mean. It was different for you, in your day … during the Second World War, I mean. You won. You were a hero.’

  Paul held up his hand. ‘Enough of the bullshit, mate. I don't like that word. Fact is, for a good part of the war I was a coward, and it wasn't until I met Pip that I straightened myself out. But what you did, Braedan, was truly inspirational, at a time when people needed inspiring. The sensible thing for you and your men to do that day, the right thing, was to wait for reinforcements to arrive. But you didn't. You went out alone and you saved my granddaughter's life. That's a story that needs to be told.’

  ‘Enough of the bullshit, mate,’ said Braedan, imitating the Australian accent.

  Paul laughed, then clapped Braedan on the shoulder again. ‘We should get inside. The women will be clucking like those two chooks were a few hours ago. But first, I've got one more thing to ask you.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Paul preceded his question by telling Braedan that he had lost a rhino to poachers three days earlier – the second animal killed in the past twelve months. ‘Things are so desperate here, one of my security guards was turned, by a bribe. I reported it to the police and he was arrested, but I just heard today he's been released on bail. He'll probably get out of the country before he can be prosecuted.’

  ‘The rest of your guards?’ Braedan asked.

  ‘Good men, as good as you'll find, but they're human, Braedan. My senior guard, a former national parks warden, died of the Big A a month ago. I'd like to promote someone from within, but the truth is none of them has the leadership potential, or the will to take the fight to the poachers. They're not saying anything to me, and outwardly they're behaving as professionally as ever, but the fire's gone out of their bellies, Braedan. I think someone's getting to them.’

  Braedan finished his cigarette and thought about what Paul Bryant was saying. He had nowhere near the interest or passion for wildlife and its conservation as his brother did, but this might be interesting work, with the prospect of a little action.

  ‘I've got a grant from an Australian-based rhino conservation charity,’ Paul went on. ‘It's not much, but I can pay you in US dollars and you'll have a vehicle and a house on the farm, and I'll get your weapons permits sorted for you.’

  Braedan had a mounting pile of debts both in Zimbabwe and Australia, and he was months behind on his child support payments. He wanted to see his daughters, Ashley and Jess, but couldn't afford an airfare to Australia, let alone the tickets to fly them both to Zimbabwe. He was, he knew, a burden on his mother as well. His life was a mess and he had few prospects. Anything Bryant could pay him would be more than he had now. He had one final question, though, before he accepted the offer.

  ‘Why didn't you offer this to Tate? He's ex parks and wildlife and knows all there is to know about rhinos and anti-poaching operations … He could help you in so many more ways than I could.’

  Bryant stubbed out his cigarette and threw the butt into a flowerbed. He took a sip of beer and swilled it around his mouth, before wiping his lips and looking Braedan in the eye. ‘Tate's not a soldier, Braedan. You are. You have what it takes.’

  21

  Tate didn't like sit-down meals, where one felt obliged to engage in meaningless small talk. Even in the field, where there were often a dozen or more researchers and students working on a project, Tate preferred to eat alone.

  He found himself seated between Philippa and Natalie. Pip seemed to want to coddle him all the time, and Natalie kept leaning on her elbows so she could engage Braedan, seated opposite her, with more talk of his travels to various war zones.

  Old Paul Bryant had come up with the terrible idea that the brothers and Natalie should travel with him and Pip to Hwange National Park the next day, to join them on the annual game census.

  Natalie was obviously excited about the idea of going on the count, but Tate was a lot less enthusiastic. ‘I was hoping we might have a word about the future of your rhinos, Paul,’ Tate said, in between mouthfuls of chicken. He had no desire to camp out in the park and sit in the bush for twenty-four hours counting animals in the company of a bunch of farmers, foreigners and amateur environmentalists.

  Paul rested his knife and fork on the table. ‘Come to Hwange with us if you want to talk, Tate.’

  Tate had twice raised the issue of Paul relocating his rhinos to a larger conservancy, preferably in the Save Valley, in the southeast of Zimbabwe, where they might be less vulnerable than sitting on a farm out in the middle of Matabeleland, surrounded by properties that had already been overrun by war veterans. Tate himself was considering an emailed offer of a job as warden of the Save Valley conservancy and he would dearly love to have Paul's fourteen animals under his care.

  ‘In any case,’ Paul said, resting a hand on Braedan's shoulder, ‘my rhinos are going to enjoy a much safer future thanks to this young fellow agreeing to be my new head of security.’

  Tate stared across the table at his brother. ‘What?’

  ‘Ja, I'm going to be overseeing security and anti-poaching patrols.’

  Tate was incensed. ‘He knows nothing about rhinos!’

  They all looked at him. Tate reddened. He realised he'd sounded churlish, but it was the truth.

  ‘Braedan doesn't need to know about rhinos, he needs to know about catching poachers,’ Paul said gruffly.

  The war hero, Tate thought. He said nothing more about the appointment during dinner, but he was annoyed that instead of talking about much more sensible options for securing the long-term future of his rhinos, Paul Bryant had latched on to his wastrel brother as a solution. What Tate really wanted to ask Paul was what was going to happen to his precious animals after he died. The old man seemed in good health for his age, but he wouldn't be around forever.

  Paul offered Tate and Braedan the use of a Toyota Hilux bakkie to travel to the game count. Tate weighed up the pros and cons of accepting the offer and coming along, or of getting a lift back to Bulawayo, then catching a bus to Harare.

  In the end, he agreed. Braedan said something, which Tate didn't catch because he wasn't paying attention, and Natalie laughed uproariously. Tate looked to Braedan and saw him wink at the woman. Tate felt nauseous.

  At Pip's insistence the brothers agreed to stay the night at the farm. Tate had decided he would go see his mother the next day, before leaving for Hwange. Pip showed Braedan and Natalie to their rooms, then laid a bony hand on Tate's forearm and whispered, ‘Come with me.’

  The guest rooms were in a wing of the house that had been added after the guerilla attack on the farm. Pip led Tate back into the old part of the house. She stopped
by a door and Tate suddenly realised where he was.

  Pip opened the door. ‘I've kept it just as it was, well, apart from some of the fire damage that we had to repair.’

  Tate saw the bed and the posters on the wall of rock stars he'd never known so couldn't remember. One, of a young man with long straight black hair, was singed at the edges. But mostly it was all exactly as it had been the last time he'd been in this room. They'd sat on the bed – he remembered it squeaking and his flush of panic, in case her parents heard. But all he'd done was kiss her. He was so shy, he didn't even know if, or how, he should touch her, but that kiss had left his head spinning.

  It was his imagination he was sure, but he almost thought he could still smell Hope's perfume.

  ‘I couldn't show Natalie,’ Pip said in a hushed voice, ‘as she'd probably freak out or whatever it is young people say. But you … I thought you'd …’

  Tate, himself, was feeling a bit freaked out, but he knew people had to deal with grief in their own way. He had thrown himself into his work, Pip had maintained a shrine to her daughter; both of them thought of Hope every day of their lives. He didn't know what to do, or say. He felt Pip's spindly arm encircle him and hold him as tight as she could. Awkwardly, he put his own arm around her.

  ‘I miss her so,’ Pip said, her voice catching.

  Tate felt the tears well behind his eyes. He wanted to blurt out that it was his fault Hope had been killed, that he didn't deserve to still be alive.

  ‘Goodnight, Mrs Bryant,’ Tate said, extracting himself from her embrace and walking out the bedroom door.

  *

  With the extra company and her grandparents' easy manner over dinner Natalie had not dwelled on what had happened to her in this house when she was a child. It was different, though, when she said goodnight and went to the room Grandma Pip had prepared for her. It wasn't Hope's room, thank goodness.

  A scops owl called in the night, in a tree outside her window. Its soft, high-pitched brrr brrr might have sounded benign to anyone else, but it jarred her nerves. It was hot, which was normal for this time of year, but it was also very humid. She lay on her bed, a ceiling fan rotating slowly above her, and when she ran a hand under her T-shirt and down her tummy, she felt a sheen of perspiration. The owl called again, and she shuddered, despite the heat.