“They wouldn’t do that,” was all I could offer. “They’re all . . . You’re all . . .”
“Black? African? In Africa, that doesn’t count for much. Please, go home.” She went inside. “If you really want to do something, forget you ever came to this school and get on with your life. It’s what I shall do.”
THIRTY-FOUR
“Whatever it is you’re doing, stop it.”
My chest was thumping, so to make it easier I kept my eye on the First XI. It was the last match of the year. I’d waited all week for an opportunity when I could get him alone without actually being alone, and the edge of the cricket field was the perfect place. Masters and parents gently edged the oval.
Ivan loathed cricket. He shuffled on the bench with mild astonishment.
“What are you gibbering about now, Jacko?”
“I spoke to her.”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
Ivan eased back, stretching his spine into a confident arch.
“Jesus, I thought you’d be pleased. I don’t want her anymore, you can dump your muck now. She’s a crap lay anyways, not that you’d know the difference.”
I struggled to keep my voice under control.
“I’m not talking about Adele. I spoke to Miss Marimbo.”
“What has she got to do with anything?”
I turned to him.
“She’s terrified. What did you do?”
He casually cracked his knuckles.
“Marimbo needed to learn respect. Kicking me out of class . . . ? That sort of thing would never have happened in the Old Days.”
“She wouldn’t even have been allowed to teach in a school like this in the Old Days.”
“My point exactly. What’s she going to do about it anyway?”
“She can go to the police. They’d have a thing or two to say about it.”
“She wouldn’t dare.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, because she’s thinking about it.” It was a stupid thing to say. I had his full attention, but it scared me. More than that, I was scared for Miss Marimbo. “You belong in the Dark Ages.”
“Don’t be so naïve. The first rule of nature is inequality. Sir didn’t make that up.”
“Inequality in the sense we’re all different, not what he wants it to mean. Can’t you see how he tried to twist things?” Ivan flicked impatiently at me. I ignored it. “And still is. I know he’s been writing to you.”
He paused.
“Sounds to me like someone wants to play with the big boys and has been snooping around.”
“What’s he been telling you?”
“Shut up and listen, Jacko. If anyone’s got it wrong it’s you. Ask anyone, we all think the same way and we want the same thing. You’re not from here so what would you know?”
“I don’t see anyone else fighting. As far as I can tell, you’re on your own—you and your trained chimps.”
“Don’t get bloody cheeky, Pommie.” He moved in closer. “Have you ever lived through a war? Hey? Of course not. I have. This whole country has, for fifteen years. Fifteen hard years, because when you’re fighting Kaffirs you’re not dealing with human beings, that lot do things dogs would think too cruel. Folks had had enough of fighting. They wanted to be able to breathe again, but if you think they’ve given up dreaming of how it used to be . . . If there was even half a chance they’d have their country back, you see if they don’t.”
Around the edge of the field the scattering of spectators, all white and dressed from another era, applauded a boundary. They drank tea and ate cakes and dismissed black staff without speaking.
“You lost the war, your country’s gone. It’s in the past now. Colonialism is an outdated ideal and it was never going to work—you can’t simply plant a flag and claim rights over someone else’s land.” My father’s words but with my voice. “Accept it and move on.”
“Never. The war wasn’t lost, it was stalemate, and if we’d been allowed to hang on a bit longer the blacks would have fought one another into the ground and we’d still have a nation that means something. But the Poms had to interfere, and now we have a leader who’s going to ruin everything. All that bullshit he talks . . . Mugabe doesn’t care about us or anyone, he’s only after two things: money and power. Power and money. He’ll burn this country to get both. Sir said.”
“How can you believe that?”
“Because he’s already started doing it.” Heads turned to look. Ivan didn’t even notice. “He’s taking land, he’s messing with our school, he’s slaughtering Matabele. I don’t care that he’s killing blacks, but he said he’d cull the whites, too, and he will. I’m telling you, it’ll happen. Mugabe’s hatred hasn’t just gone away. He’s still fighting the war only no one can see it. We have to fight back or we’re fucked. And not just us whites, it’s everyone who isn’t waving his banner and licking his arse. We’re not safe until he and all his lot are wiped out.”
In that moment I sensed what it might have been like to have been Miss Marimbo the night he’d got her.
“And that means cracking heads down at Zama Zama?” I said. I wanted to keep him talking and conceal my nervousness. “The children in the village?”
“We have to fight back. Don’t you see? Exactly as Sir said. I want you to understand. I hoped maybe you would. You were part of it, remember? You were there, too.”
It was true. I was.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood and walked quickly away. Ivan came with me. His arm snaked over my shoulders.
“Hey, come on, Jacko. I never wanted us to fall out, you know.”
It was a trick. I said nothing, just kept on walking.
“I hope you’re not going to do anything silly. You wouldn’t do anything like that. Besides, you’d be in trouble, too. I’d make sure of it, and you’ll just end up wasting that gift of yours. Don’t throw it away.”
I didn’t know what he meant.
“Go away.” I pushed him off.
“Hey, Jacko . . . Bru.” A hurt plea. “Don’t be like that. Look, if I upset you I’m sorry. I was just a little pissed off. But that’s all right now, friends are more important than chicks. Adele and I are through. Come on. We can still use you.”
Use me?
“I don’t care about you anymore.” We were around the back of the new boardinghouse. I saw buckets and paint tins and other building materials all around us that had been hidden for the official opening. What I couldn’t see anymore was the cricket field. We were completely isolated. “All our games . . . Games? They’re not games, they’re barbaric, the things we’ve done. Cruel. We hated what Greet and Kasanka and the others used to do to us yet we’re happy to dish out the same. No, worse. It’s not right and it never was. We have to stop. You have to stop.”
“So I’ll stop.” He waved his arms. “Okay?”
“All of it.”
“I swear. Cross my heart. I’ve missed you, man; we all have.”
He smiled in his way, and just like that I believed him. Not because he wanted me to, but because we were alone and I was too afraid not to.
“Shake.” He offered me a hand.
Hesitantly, I took it, and as I did so there was an almost undetectable shift. His smile grew wide.
“You weren’t really going to say anything to Bully, were you?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You would have been wasting your breath. He’s got enough on his plate sorting out Speech Day tomorrow. That sad old oak will do anything to make sure they don’t close the school down and the last thing he needs is you whining in his ear.”
“Why is that so important to you? You used to hate this school. Why does it matter whether they shut it down or not?”
His lips pulled back.
“You’ll find out,” he said. “But I could tell you now if you want, it’s not too late. We’ve got one more game to play.”
I let go and pulled away.
He quickly
closed the gap. “Think about it. Have I really been doing anything that bad? They’ve taken my country and my home, all I’m doing is trying to survive. And people will thank me one day. I’m going to be a hero. Don’t you want to be a part of that?”
I tried to move past and he grabbed my shirt.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Come back into the gang. Be a part of something special.”
We stared at one another for what seemed like minutes. Yes, I thought. I could go back, and it could be like it was before it turned.
“The truth is,” he went on, “as far as I was concerned you never left. Don’t you see? You’re just like us, wanting the life you think you should have had, the life that someone took away. Sir spotted that about you straightaway, even before your mum died. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting. Why shouldn’t you? It’s your life. And you know what? You can do something about it. Shit back! You can take control, make it happen. We’re your only friends, stay with us and we’ll help you.”
He nodded, willing me to copy.
The same old Ivan. He would never change.
I forced myself to look away and stepped around him.
“This is your last chance, Bobby,” he called after me. “Stay with us and it’ll be worth it, I promise you.” And then: “Come on, stop being so staunch. After everything I’ve done for you, the least you can do is give me something back. You owe me. Klompie and Pitters . . . They’re okay, but you’re better. Come on, man, I need you.”
I walked faster.
“You’re being stupid, Jacko. You can finally make something of your sorry excuse of a Pommie life. Don’t go and ruin it now. Bully will never believe you anyway.”
Now I started to run because Ivan was running, too, his feet slapping the lonely path that narrowed and curved. A high wall on one side and a hedge on the other—there was nowhere else for me to go. Why had I come this way?
I sprinted, a push of panicky air escaping my lungs. The bend was relentless and the end always out of sight. My legs pressed and pressed but a nightmare was coming to life, and a heavy hand grabbed my heart and pulled it down as the trap closed in.
Then, thankfully, a couple of boys appeared around the corner. I allowed myself the taste of relief.
“Hey! You guys! Stop him!” Ivan yelled at them. The bark of a Head Boy losing his grip.
I ran harder toward them.
Then my heels were digging into the ground, skidding, trying to stop myself from going any further as Derek De Klomp and Sean Pittman loomed into focus.
Ivan was ripping through the air. I turned and saw him for just long enough to register the length of building wood swinging from behind his head before my world went black.
The ache in my head brought me out of it. I’d been dreaming about watching a dawn rising, and the brighter the sun grew, the greater the pain, so I was surprised when I opened my eyes and found night.
The moon was sharp through the window and showed me a room I’d never seen before. Yet instinctively I knew I was in the new boardinghouse—in one of the study rooms—the smell of plaster and fresh paint thick in my nose. I also realized my hands and feet were bound, and that Ivan had made this happen. He’d hit me unconscious, carried me to the nearest hiding place and would come for me later. I knew these things with total, absolute certainty.
What he’d do next, however, I couldn’t say.
Rolling onto my back, I gnawed at the rope around my wrist. The knot came undone with ease; I could only guess Klompie had been left in charge of that little job. Struggling for balance, I tried the locked door and then moved across to the window. The catch had been glued down but I managed to rip it free and then slipped out onto the lawn.
I waited, listening.
The school was eerily quiet. Lights were on so it couldn’t have been late, yet as I wandered through, the place felt like a ghost town. I saw no one. Prep? The houses were empty, the study rooms void. Supper time? Only kitchen workers occupied the dining hall, clearing the last remnants of the meal.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone striding across the grass. Bully was moving with determined steps toward the theater hall. He’d no doubt called everyone there to make an announcement about tomorrow.
“Sir!” He didn’t hear. I ran past the dining room, down the stairs. “Excuse me, sir!”
I wasn’t fast enough. He slipped through the doors and into the back of the hall. Bent sore and out of breath in the foyer, I heard everyone on the other side standing to attention, then sitting again, then Bully’s cigarette-raked voice begin.
“Tomorrow,” he said, and in my mind I could see him standing upright and rigid, “brings with it a very special day in the school calendar: Speech Day.”
I should have just gone in. I should have torn through the doors, made an entrance, and told them all. They would have listened to me, then, and Ivan wouldn’t have been able to do a thing.
“As ambassadors of the school, your behavior and appearance will be unblemished. You will be walking examples of the kind of model pupil that this education establishment prides itself on turning out.”
But I didn’t go in. There was something that made me want to listen. With the fascination of someone watching a crash, I wanted to hear what Bully had to say.
“These are the things I want and expect; you know me by now.”
I moved right up to the door and pressed against it, and through the thin crack I made I could see the boys at the back. Ivan was there with the other school prefects. I pushed a fraction harder and I could spy Klompie and Pitters two rows in front.
“But I call from you your sense of duty and pride more than ever before, for tomorrow holds importance that raises this above all Speech Days of the past. Yes, it is the school’s thirtieth anniversary, and, yes, it will include the official opening of Mugabe House, the single most important statement to our new government of our determination to look to the future. The one thing that truly heightens the occasion, however, is the acceptance of our invitation to open the House by Prime Minister Robert Mugabe himself.”
Excited whispers through the hall.
A few feet away, I watched Klompie and Pittman look around with strange smiles on their faces. Ivan gave an imperceptible nod, a secret sign that no one else would have noticed, and they turned back. It was at that point, as when a heavy cloud rolls clear of the sun, that I began to see.
“I’m sure you can appreciate,” Bully’s voice went on, calming the ripple, “why I’ve been unable to tell you before now of these plans. Security has to be at its highest, our leader’s aides instructed that I make the announcement as late as possible and to facilitate a curfew under the watch of the prime minister’s own soldiers, who must ensure no terrorist faction takes advantage of our VIP invitation. They will be patrolling the school grounds all night. Under no, absolutely no circumstances must you step beyond the inner-ring road. The soldiers are under strict orders to protect at any cost, and I warn you now they are unlikely to ask questions first.”
The ripple turned into a buzz.
Ivan moved his head sagely up and down. None of this news was a surprise to him. Of course it wasn’t.
“Our honored guest is scheduled to arrive at ten o’clock, shortly after which he will commence speeches and prize giving. Parents and government officials will take priority over the seating, naturally, so all junior boys will collect chairs from the classrooms and arrange themselves in an orderly fashion on the grass. Sixth formers not receiving prizes will be up in the gallery. Prime Minister Mugabe will speak second, after the Head Boy.”
Ivan had planned this. Him and Mr. van Hout, coming up with a way to lure the prime minister into the school. All these years, I thought.
“Following on from this, the prime minister will be invited for coffee at my home together with the Chaplain and the Senior Master.”
Waiting patiently. Making plans together. Looking for ways to achieve the impossible
dream.
“At one o’clock, boys who have been selected will gather for the formal opening of their new boardinghouse.”
Plotting. Lining up the pieces. Biding their time.
And now that time had come.
We have to fight back.
Ivan’s words swarmed around me. Like the bees. Stabbing, always stabbing.
If there was even half a chance they’d have their country back, you see if they don’t . . .
. . . People will thank me one day, I’m going to be a hero . . .
. . . Don’t you want to be part of that? Klompie and Pitters . . . They’re okay, but you’re better . . .
Sweating, winded, I staggered from the door.
A low rumble rose beyond the glass. I saw lights by the Admin Block as three army Crocodile trucks trundled into the parking lot. They lined up side by side, then a jumble of soldiers with red berets poured out with rifles. They lit up smokes and spat. One urinated into the storm drain.
“So now you know.”
The words floated gently.
I spun around, and he was standing there. Just him and me at opposite ends of the foyer.
A few quick steps and he was on me.
“You could have been part of it but you turned your back on us.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “Assassinate Mugabe?”
He launched his forehead and pain exploded in my nose. A powerful jab and I was down, gasping for air.
“Shut up. You’re the only one who can get in the way and I’ve waited too long to let a stupid Pommie ruin it.”
But I wasn’t the only one. Not really.
He read my face.
“I think you and I need to go for a little walk. We’ll pay a surprise visit to Miss Marimbo before she opens her ugly black mouth, sort the both of you out at the same time.”
He grabbed my hair, but right then the doors to the main hall blew open and suddenly the foyer was flooded with boys. Ivan’s grip dropped and I took my chance, I elbowed him and jumped into the current.
When I dared a glance, Ivan had been joined by the other two. They were looking for me, tracking my path. I started running and dived into the thick, warm night.
Out of Shadows Page 20