by Robyn Scott
“For goodness sake, Keith,” yelled Mum. “Focus on Robbie.” “Shbb. Shbh,” said Dad, returning his attention to Feste. “Bloody impossible man,” he muttered. “Hop off, Robbie. Enough for today.”
♦
Over the following weeks – first as I was led around the kraal, later as I began to steer Feste myself – Grandpa issued a steady stream of advice.
“Lean forwards…grip with your knees…straighten your elbows…keep your eyes on the horizon!” he would shout, waving his arms for emphasis as he leaned against the acacia tree beside the kraal. And if things went suddenly wrong, he would always return to his central piece of wisdom. “It’s all in the wrists…use your bloody wrists,” he’d yell as I scrambled to my feet, dusted myself off, and trudged towards Feste. As soon as she had deposited me – frequently in the direction of a tree or the fence – she would charge to the other side of the kraal. Here she would wait, panting, standing placidly as I remounted and she caught her breath in preparation for her next attempt to throw me off.
Grandpa always spoke with compete assurance, and not once did his instructions agree with Dad’s or with any of my books on how to ride. Which, Dad said, was “just bloody typical of Ivor. The less he knows about something, the more he tells you what to do.”
♦
This rule, as I’d long ago discovered, also worked the other way round.
A few months after we arrived in Botswana, we’d all joined Dad for his first flying lesson. He hadn’t flown for more than ten years. “I’m almost as rusty as the plane,” he announced as we walked across the hot tarmac to Grandpa’s ancient Cherokee six-seater.
The takeoff, however, went smoothly and as soon as we’d leveled off and the engines had eased, Grandpa picked up his latest copy of New Scientist magazine. He didn’t look up again, reading silently and chewing his way through several matchsticks.
After half an hour, the airport reappeared far beneath us. The plane continued straight ahead. Only when we were close enough to make out the white stripes on the runway did we start to drop; first gently, then in big, stomach-churning lurches.
I looked around nervously. Lulu began to whimper. Mum’s face turned pale as she stroked Lulu’s hair. Damien’s head hung to his lap. Dad was staring intently at the gauges and switches before him. Only Grandpa seemed unperturbed, still chewing his matchstick and studying the magazine.
The lurches got worse. I shut my eyes. My ears popped.
Another giant lurch, and the little plane’s wheels thumped hard against the runway. We immediately bounced back up into the air. Several horrible thuds and bounces folio-wed, then the plane clung to the ground with a soft screeching sound. I opened my eyes again as we skidded to a jolting stop at the far end of the runway. Magazines, papers, and old shopping receipts flew past us towards the front. Everything was quiet, except for the slowing engines and Lulu’s snivelling. Mum wiped streaks of vomit off Lulu’s face. Dad flicked switches on the control panel.
Then Grandpa sighed, closed his magazine, took the match out of his mouth and the earphones off his head, and turned back to look at us.
“Astronauts have a word for that, chaps’,” he grinned. “It’s called RE-ENTRY.”
♦
Shaken though he was by the landing, Dad had been entirely unsurprised by Grandpa’s nonchalance. “Typical Ivor,” was all he’d said. “You’ve heard my stories.”
We had. But it still took time getting used to the fact that Grandpa really was exactly like his stranger-than-fiction character in Dad’s tales – fearlessly and recklessly embracing situations that made normal people quail, and generally expecting others to do likewise.
In 1963, when Grandpa Ivor and Granny Mavis divorced, and Grandpa left for Botswana, Dad ‘was twelve. Henry was fourteen, Jonathan just ten.
From the moment they arrived in Botswana for their holiday visits, the three young boys were given total, unadulterated freedom. Grandpa Ivor’s early caravan camp at Motopi, just east of the base of the Okavango Delta, stood on the bank of the Boteti River, one of the most crocodile-infested rivers in the country. This the brothers would swim across, Grandpa Ivor cheering them on as they raced to the opposite bank and back again. Driving in Grandpa’s old brakeless Land Rover – “Why drive anything but wrecks on these bloody roads?” – was probably as treacherous. And almost certainly more so on the regular occasions that the unlicenced boys, who’d often had several drinks themselves, had to drive their inebriated driver back home after fetching supplies in nearby Maun, the dusty town at the gateway to the delta.
Whenever they could, Dad, Henry, and Jonathan accompanied Grandpa Ivor on his flights: conducting game counts of the animals around the delta’s vast patchwork of water and islands, or dropping hunters deep in the inaccessible bush and collecting them, days later, with their sad, splendid trophies. And, flying beside him over the years, the boys had experienced first hand many of the famous petrifying-for-normal-people Grandpa Ivor flying stories – taking off overloaded, landing in the bush when an engine failed, flying a plane with so little fuel that he’d touched down, taxied in, and the next day been unable to restart it. Not one drop was left in the tank.
But like snakes and crocodiles, none of these real dangers scared Grandpa. How much of this was just his character, and how much dated to the numbing years of World War II, no one was certain. When we asked him about it – “How many planes? How many bombs? How many dead?” – Grandpa’s face would become blank. “For God’s sake,” he’d mutter, “I’m an old man. Ya can’t expect me to remember these things.”
His own sons didn’t get a great deal further, and until he became much older and began to share his painful memories, I’d know little more than that he’d been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for ‘exceptional cool under fire’. Asked what precisely he’d got it for, he would just shrug. “Nothing much.”
Whether or not the war had inured Grandpa to danger, it had certainly deepened that odd, profoundly suspicious part of him, where his real fears now lay.
“I hate flying on the thirteenth,” he would say. “Bad stuff. Ronnie died on the thirteenth. Ya know the story? Terrifying story.”
We did, but we were always happy to listen again.
Ronald was Grandpa Ivor’s brother. Handsome, talented, and charismatic, he was loved by everyone, and adored by Grandpa. But all through his life, Ronnie carried with him one unshakable black mark: the words of his allegedly psychic grandmother, who’d allegedly proclaimed on first seeing the baby, “Cannon fodder.” At the start of World War II, Ronnie, like Grandpa Ivor, enrolled in the South African Air Force – he becoming a fighter pilot, Grandpa a bomber pilot.
Ronnie’s registration number was 103711.
“Ya see,” Grandpa would say, “adds up to thirteen.” Scottie, as he became known in the air force, was shot down near Tripoli on Friday the thirteenth, December 1942. Apparently, that same day, his picture fell off his mother’s wall and his pet donkey went missing. A year later, to the day, Grandpa was flying across the same skies in which his brother’s plane had gone down. “Blacked out,” said Grandpa, “don’t remember a thing.” For fifteen minutes, he recalled nothing, and all communications directed at his plane went unacknowledged. He recovered to find himself miles away from the spot he last remembered.
“Bloody terrifying,” he’d say, shaking his head. “Never forget it. Ronnie got to me, I tell you. Absolutely bloody terrifying.”
♦
But dead bodies themselves – provided their spirits weren’t troublesome – didn’t bother Grandpa Ivor in the slightest.
During his early years in Botswana, as one of the few charter pilots, he’d often been called on to fly corpses back to their families in South Africa and Zimbabwe. “Ya could hear them breathe with the pressure changes,” he’d say, reminiscing thoughtfully. “Fascinating.”
Nowadays he ran a coffin-making factory in Phikwe, in a small corrugated-iron roofed building at the foot of a
koppie.
Sometimes, when he went to check on things and wanted company, he’d invite one of us along. On a bad day, when there were problems at the factory and Grandpa ranted at the coffin makers, this could result in a long, boring wait amongst the varnish and sawdust-smelling coffins. But if things went well, Grandpa might tell hours of stories about the old days, or – if I wanted to talk – provide an audience willing to listen, seriously and without teasing, to anything I said.
“This is a bloody wonderful business, Robbie,” said Grandpa, flinging open arms towards the cluttered workshop entrance. “Absolutely bloody wonderful!”
I nodded from my uncomfortable perch on the lid of a dark wood, gold-handled coffin.
“You see, you’ve got guaranteed demand.”
“How come?”
“Ah-ha. Well, think about it.” Grandpa was pacing up and down the dirt in front of the tiny factory building. Inside, two bored-looking Batswana men were swatting flies and varnishing a new pine coffin. “People always gotta die.”
“I knew that.”
“Hang on!” He shouted. “It’s not so simple. Ya gotta listen to what I’m telling you. Ya listening?”
“Yip.”
“Marvellous. You see, the Batswana will spend anything on funerals,” he continued. “What’s a thousand pula for a coffin when you’ve gotta kill three cows just to feed your five hundred guests?”
I nodded again, bewildered by the enormous figure.
Grandpa said that in Botswana, going to funerals was practically a national pastime. Not actually knowing the deceased did not, moreover, prevent people from attending. “It’s a perfect market, Robbie! Business is all about time and motion and understanding your market.” Hands on hips, he paused and glared down at me. “D’ya understand what I’m saying?”
“Course I do,” I said, still a bit confused.
“Marvellous.” He relaxed, smiled, and began his laps again. “You’ll make a great little entrepreneur. Might even have you running my company one day.”
“Really?”
But Grandpa wasn’t listening any more. “By then I’ll be supplying coffins all over the country – and beyond. Internationally.” He gazed into the distance above the corrugated tin roof. “A coffin empire!” He took a deep breath. “Now, how does that sound, eh?”
I felt myself grinning stupidly, tingling with pride.
“It sounds wonderful, Grandpa.”
It did. And as we sped back home in the rattling old bakkie, hooting wildly at dawdling cars, meandering donkey carts, and dozing goats, everything seemed wonderful. “Land of opportunity,” yelled Grandpa, turning to me and hurriedly swerving back onto the road. “If you’ve got vision, you can do anything here. Democratic! Peaceful! Untapped! Look at all that space.”
Far ahead of us, swathed in a haze of heat waves, the black strip of road melted into the flat bush. Far beyond that, at some elusive point, the bush became endless, cloudless blue sky. Only a few black bird flecks and the glowing white sphere of sun gave perspective to the gigantic expanse.
Hot, dry, and unforgiving still. But with fast cool air buffeting sticky skin and the untapped world whizzing past, inimitably wonderful too, I stared until my eyes watered in the brightness and dry air.
“That’s generous of him,” said Dad, when I announced I might one day be running Grandpa’s coffin empire. “But concentrate on building your own empire first.”
“Huh?”
“Grandpa’s a dreamer, Robbie.”
“But people are always going to die,” I blurted. “It’s a perfect market.”
“Grandpa’s built lots of empires in his head before.”
“This is different.”
♦
“Maybe,” laughed Dad. “But I’ll believe it when I see it.”
♦
The main problem, maintained Dad, was that Grandpa was like a magnet for jkellumj who took advantage of him.
“Like that bloody Motswagole.”
Mr. Motswagole was one ol Grandpa’s business partners in a general store in a nearby village. When he came round to announce a new disaster that required more money, he was always polite and smiling. He spoke excellent English and wore a suit. He wasn’t how I imagined skellum.
“Ah-ah! Dear, dear me,” he would say, rubbing his palms together and shaking his head. “This is a terrible thing. Terrible. Most unfortunate. So regrettable. But then we mustn’t weep over spilt milk.”
The news always involved something that had been lost, stolen, or broken, and someone who had let him, Mr. Motswagole, down. Grandpa’s response always involved yelling, “You’re fucking unbelievable, Motswagole,” followed by more shouting.
It was unmissable theatre. At Grandpa’s first furious bellow, Lulu, Damien, and I would charge towards the dusty parking lot beside Grandpa’s house, where Mr. Motswagole, leaning against his bakkie and studying his feet with a thoughtful expression, would be waiting in silence as Grandpa yelled.
As soon as Grandpa paused, he too would start shouting.
“Ab-ab. It is terrible. There are lots of bad people in this country.”
“Bloody disgrace,” Grandpa would splutter.
“Everyone trying to make money. Eish! No respect.”
“Bunch of bloody crooks! Scoundrels, Motswagole, I tellyou.”
“So it is up to us to succeed despite them. After all, it is the early bird that catches the golden egg.”
“Absolutely bloody right.”
Sometimes Granny Betty would shuffle outside. Quietly stroking the cat, she’d listen with an expression of growing despair.
“You know, Ivor,” Mr. Motswagole would continue, “as I always say, birds of a feather roost together. We are going to have a great success. We have a great business. We are a great team. You are a grrr-reat man.”
“No, no, Motswagole. Just good instincts.” Grandpa would pat his partner on the back. “Now come in and have a beer.” And Grandpa and Mr. Motswagole would disappear through the front door. And Granny Betty would follow slowly, thin shoulders hunched, head bent and shaking.
Once, in a thrilling twist to the performance, Granny Betty interjected, silencing Grandpa Ivor and Mr- Motswagole, who stared at her in amazement. In her soft, smoking-husky voice, she quietly suggested that Grandpa perhaps shouldn’t give Mr. Motswagole another loan.
Mr. Motswagole winced. “Eish, Mrs. Scott.” He gave a pained look and hung his head.
“What, Betty?” Grandpa snapped. “Areya trying to ruin my business too?”
“Ivor, I’m trying to save your business.”
“Then whaddaya suggest I bloody well do?”
“Say no.” She glared at Mr. Motswagole. “And please don’t swear in front of the kids.”
“Let down my partner?” Grandpa spluttered. “Out of the bloody question.”
Granny pointed out that there was no money left to loan. “I can show you the books.”
“Course there’s money. You’ve made a mistake. Been using that bloody Japanese brain again, have you?”
But Granny had already turned away and was hobbling back inside.
Japanese brain was Grandpa’s name for the calculator, which he viewed with contempt. “Use your own head,” he yelled, when he caught me using one. “That’s what it’s there for.”
“It’s too hard.”
“Nonsense.” He stared at the elaborate sum, running his hand through his thin, standing-on-end white hair. Then he grabbed a pen and wrote down a four-figure number.
“Check it. Whaddaya waiting for?”
I carefully pressed the buttons and stared at Grandpa in wonder.
“Whaddid I tell you? Piece of cake. Don’t be so lazy.”
♦
Grandpa’s presence extended far beyond his physical appearances.
During late evenings by the fire, when the lights across the road had long been extinguished and the last sticky heat had vanished from the air, he was there too: hero and villain – occ
asiona lly both – of endless laugh-till-you-hurt, open-your-mouth-in-amazement tales. Sometimes, when Henry or Jonathan and their families were visiting from South Africa, Grandpa Ivor stories could go on for hours, the sons vying gently for the rapt attention of the grandchildren, who, in turn, competed too: Henry’s four, Greg, Ryan, Andrew, and Michael, against Keith’s three, against Jonathans two, Daniel and William – each faction gleeful to discover a familiar Grandpa Ivor story that the others had yet to hear. And bedtime rules wou Id then be for once forgotten as the brothers took turns out-Ivor-storytelling each other, choking on their laughter and the sweet smoke of the mopane ‘wood.
I was not the first to be told off for mental shortcuts. Grandpa had been famously unable to teach his flying school students how to use coordinate-calculating equipment, as, working out everything in his head, he’d long forgotten how to use it himself. It was with this amazing mental computing that he’d become so famous for breaking after-dark landing rules, often calculating in his head the location of the run-way by triangulating signals from towns hundreds of kilometres away.
Grandpa Ivor broke rules of decency and duty too, forgetting to tell his sons that he had remarried – a fact they only discovered when, after a two-day journey from South Africa, they arrived at his caravan camp at four in the morning and were greeted by Granny Betty in her pyjamas. Granny Betty, who was just as surprised, explained, as she lit a fire in the half a forty-four-gallon drum suspended from a tree beside the caravans. A few minutes after she’d set about frying the boys a large eggs-and-bacon breakfast, Grandpa stuck his head out of his caravan door. “You guys could have timed it a bit bloody better,” he yelled, before disappearing back inside to bed.
Sometimes when Dad was in a rare sentimental mood, he’d say, “I wish Grandpa had spent more time with me when I was a boy.”
Even when he and Granny Mavis were still married, Grandpa had often disappeared on many-day drinking binges, with no word to his wife or sons. He hadn’t celebrated Christmas; he rarely remembered birthdays. At first, I’d felt sick ‘with pity for Dad: the idea of him doing the same to us ‘was inconceivable. But a few months after we arrived in Botswana, having witnessed several spectacular tirades, I began to think that Dad was probably quite fortunate to have had only limited exposure to Grandpa.