by Robyn Scott
Dad said, “They must have got a ratbag client. Better go take a look.”
Following Dad, Lulu and I turned into the bush and nudged the horses up the bank, towards the big dam wall.
Built long before we arrived, this dam held water throughout the dry season, and the trees here were some of the most magnificent on the farm. The crocodiles, like the trees, had thrived on the reliable water: at night, when we shone flashlights across the deep wide expanse of the dam, the beams illuminated scores of pairs of evil red eyes. And while Fiddian Green, who rarely left his favourite pool in the Lotsane, may have been the biggest croc in the neighbourhood, there were many more here, in the splendid and sinister Limpopo, which with its very deep, wide water and very tall old trees made the nearby Lotsane seem like a mere paddling pool.
So, as we rounded the top of the bank, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Fifty metres across the river, just above the dam wall, four figures splashed in the deep’water – Louis John, Martie, and a young boy and girl, whom we hadn’t yet met.
“They’re bonkers,” I marvelled.
Dad cupped his hands around his mouth. “Afternoon,” he bellowed.
The figures waved and yelled hello.
Then Louis John clambered up the bank and walked across the narrow dam wall. He stopped just before he reached our bank, reluctant to proceed with a technically illegal border crossing, and grinned warmly. “Nice to see you,” he said in his strong Afrikaans accent.
Dad said, “We heard some shots. Thought it might be your hunters, or poachers.”
Louis John shook his head. “That was Louis John junior. He was shooting at the water. To frighten the crocs so we can swim.”
Lulu and I gaped.
Even Dad looked taken aback. “You really think that works?”
“Ja. After the shots, you just mustn’t stay in for too long.”
“How long is that?”
“Ag, a few minutes.” He shrugged. “Five, ten. Not too long. Lovely temperature.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Dad.
“I can tell you, it’s very safe.”
Dad laughed. “Anyway, you should all come over for drinks this evening. It would be nice to meet your kids.”
Louis John thanked Dad but declined. “The border patrols,” he said, ominously. “I don’t want my kids to end up in jail.”
Dad said, “They hardly ever patrol the river. And I’m sure they wouldn’t put you in jail. Anyway, you’re only on the wall for a tew minutes.”
“Ag, no, really, Keith,” said Louis John. “But you come for drinks with us. You Scotts don’t seem scared of these things.”
And so we began to find our way in our new home, and to meet, befriend, bemuse, and occasionally befoe, our various neighbours: a cast of characters who together provided a range of wonder and noxiousness far surpassing even that of the Tuli Block’s technically wild residents.
∨ Twenty Chickens for a Saddle ∧
Twenty
Neighbours
Jean van Riet said, “It’s a pity you missed old Koos van der Merwe. Did you hear about him?’ ‘No.”
Jean chuckled gently. “Jirre! He was something.” The late Koos van der Merwe, said Jean, had been lonely, fond of a drink, and would regularly drive out of his farm gate and park his large Chevrolet across a narrow stretch of the Tuli Block dirt road. Installed thus, drinking steadily, he’d refuse to let anyone pass until they had shared a brandy and a chat with him. “No! Really?”
“Ja, man. Jirre, there re some strange okes in this place.” Jean – pronounced ‘Jaan’ – stroked his dogs continuously as he talked, one hand on a tall, sorrowful-looking whippet, the other on a pig-sized, deeply scarred bull terrier. Both stood in front of him, wagging their tails and resting their heads adoringly in his lap.
“Can I offer you all more drinks?” he said in a gentle Afrikaans accent.
After nods of assent, he disappeared into the house, trailed by the dogs.
The house was old and small – an oblong divided into four gloomy rooms, bachelor forlorn. But the view was spectacular, for the little building stood right on the riverbank, overlooking a deep dammed pool in the Limpopo.
Sitting under the dense high canopy of trees, we could hear the snorts and see the humps of a large pod of hippos. To one side of the house stood rows of orange trees, nearly ripe fruit tugging down the branches. Behind us, further back from the river, were cattle pens, a dusty football pitch, a dirt airstrip, and a large metal hangar for Jean’s microlight plane.
Once, he’d taken us all up, one after the other, flying across the farm between our two farms and circling our house before returning along the Limpopo: the treetops whizzing by only feet below the wheels, so low that ‘we could see the outlines of crocodiles suspended just beneath the surface, watching the banks.
Jean emerged from the house carrying the drinks – beers for Mum and Dad and glasses of bright orange Oros concentrate drink for Lulu, Damien, and me. Mum frowned slightly at the Oros and the biltong that Jean offered around. It pained her that he lived on a diet consisting mainly of meat – redeemed only by the occasional serving of homegrown cabbage or an orange.
Mum said, “It’s getting late. You must come across and join us for a meal.”
Jean smiled. “Ag, no, Linda. Thank you. I don’t want to trouble you.”
Damien said, “Please come, Jean.”
“Yes, no, really,” said Mum. “Not at all. It would be no imposition. But nor must you feel obliged. I wouldn’t be offended if you didn’t come.”
She paused, looking flustered. Jean frowned. Dad smiled into his beer.
“Jean,” said Dad, “do you want to come for supper?”
“Okay, Keith,” said Jean. “Thankyou.”
Mum blushed and laughed. “Oh, dear. Sorry, doing it again.”
Mum’s conversations with people for whom English was a second language were riveting. The more she struggled to make herself clear, the longer her words, and the more entangled in double negatives. Jean’s English was good, and with him Mum was quite modest. Speaking to those less fluent, it was much worse. And the more confusion Mum caused, the harder she tried, plumbing the dustiest depths of her English, and occasionally Latin and French, vocabularies.
Mum’s polysyllables had rendered many a Tuli Block local dumbfounded – an effect whose magnitude was exceeded only by the reaction to her cooking.
But later that evening, when she placed a steaming dish of vegetable pie on the table, Jean’s face showed no more than a flicker of disappointment before he grinned appreciatively. More than six months after our arrival, and many dinners since the start of our friendship, Jean had learned not to get his hopes up. He applied a liberal sprinkling of salt and began stoically chewing his way though the large mound of broccoli and white sauce.
Lulu, Mum, and I had been full-time vegetarians for the last few years. Damien and Dad were happy to go either way. So apart from the occasional fillet or roast chicken, there was rarely meat on our table.
Jean was an inured survivor of Mum’s vegetarian concoctions.
Dion Steyn, a divorced Afrikaans man who lived on a nearby farm, was not. He had tried, soldiering through several meals of vegetable pie, spinach quiche, and lentil hotpot. Then one evening he’d joined us for dinner the day before Mum’s fortnightly, cross-border, 150-kilometre shopping trip to Ellisras in South Africa.
The cupboards were bare. Mum made green spinach pasta. The sauce, made using boiled, liquidised spinach from the garden, was green too. With it, she served a green salad. The combination was electrifying.
Even Mum noticed. “Turned out rather greener than I’d expected’,” she said apologetically.
“Strange, that,” said Dad.
Dion smiled weakly. He ate his plate of green pasta topped with green sauce and never again accepted a dinner invitation. He’d come for evening drinks, but as soon as dinner was mentioned, he would quickly decline: “Thank you very
much. But I have a beef stew waiting.”
With a look of relief, Jean swallowed the last mouthful and put down his fork. He took a large gulp of beer. “Linda, thank you. Again.”
“Always a pleasure,” said Mum. “Anyway, we owe you a lifetime of meals.”
Dad agreed.
“Ag, no, man,” said Jean, blushing. “It’s nothing.”
From the moment we’d arrived in the Tuli Block, Jean had helped us: fixing pumps, advising on dam building, and lending us tools and machinery. Having arrived only about five years before us, by Tuli Block standards Jean was a newcomer. He also suggested whom we could and couldn’t trust – something he had learned mostly by experience – and explained the complex, longstanding web of Tuli Block feuds. Almost everyone had something against everyone else; but come an outsider, and fierce old enemies could rapidly unite to bring him down.
“Jirre,” he said, “therere some naughty oked in this place.”
When Dad told Jean he’d chased poachers on horseback, Jean looked appalled. “Ag, no, Keith!” That Dad had then been shot at didn’t surprise him at all.
We’d all liked Jean at once, and eleven-year-old Damien quickly came to adore him. Jean, who was in his late twenties, had become Damien’s new idol and best friend. Most afternoons, when Lulu and I were riding, Damien would hop on his motorbike and make the five-kilometre drive to Jean’s farm. There he’d follow Jean around as he inspected his game, cattle, and citrus plantations, or join the football matches Jean played with his Batswana farm workers on the dirt pitch behind his house.
Mum said, “Grandpa Terry gets his footballer grandson wish at last. Just not quite as he expected.”
Damien also went hunting impala, although he dared not reveal this to Lulu and me. We only discovered much later, when Jean, forgetting he wasn’t supposed to say anything, said, “Jirre, Damien’s a good shot.”
Damien went pale. Lulu and I, tears of betrayal in our eyes, yelled furiously. Jean watched with a look of guilty amazement.
After we’d stopped shouting, Damien said, “I mainly just shoot at tin cans.”
Jean nodded. “Ja, me too.”
Louis John said, “Have you been swimming yet? The hippos have gone.”
We were in South Africa, technically, sitting on the river-bank of Louis John’s farm, watching the glinting sheet of water above the dam wall. It was perfectly still, the leaves of trees visible in the silky mirror image.
“No way,” said Mum. “Our swimming pool is finished. We’ll stick to that, thanks.”
Dad said, “It’s full of muddy river water at the moment. The kids get scared enough swimming in that. Seem to think a croc might crawl a few kilometres and stop off for a quick dip. Hey, chaps?”
“We saw a hippo standing in our driveway,” I said indignantly.
“Ja,” said Damien. “He was huge.”
Dad said, “He didn’t climb in the swimming pool, did he? He was just passing by, moving between rivers.”
Louis John smiled. Louis John junior and Riette eyed Lulu, Damien, and me with curious expressions. We looked away foolishly.
Damien said, “Anyway, it’s just the girls who’re scared of swimming in our pool.”
I said, “Rubbish. We were the ones who swum across the Lotsane on the horses. That was fun.”
Lulu nodded. “Yeah, that was cool.”
Dad started to speak, but paused. Then he said, “Didn’t realise you two had enjoyed it so much. We must do it again.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” said Lulu.
We both smiled weakly, sick with nostalgic and prospective terror, furious to be caught out like this by Dad.
♦
The three horses had danced and pawed excitedly at the damp leafy earth.
They had never swum before, but the moment we’d rounded the top of the Lotsane riverbank – the river suddenly before us, lying between us and home – they’d known exactly what was about to happen.
“Well, I’m going in,” said Dad. “Come if you like.”
“What about Fiddian?”
“He’d never go for a horse. Got much smaller, easier pickings.”
I turned to Lulu, who, white-faced and silent, stared at the murky water. Earlier, at the house, the idea of swimming with the horses had seemed very different. Now, at the water’s edge, bareback, barefoot, and barelegged, I felt profoundly stupid for having agreed.
“He did eat two cows, Dad,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact.
“Yeah, Dad,” squeaked Lulu.
“We’ve been through this,” replied Dad impatiently. “They were drinking on the bank. That’s when crocs grab things. Just make a big splash. You’ll be fine. Anyway, Lulu, you’re safe. No sane croc would try and eat Winnie.”
“What about me?” I was riding Ashby, the podgy bay show jumper bought for me when Lulu inherited Winnie.
“Bye,” said Dad. “Yee-hah,” he yelled, kicking Quartz forwards and down the steep muddy bank. Quartz plunged in eagerly, disappearing but for his neck.
“Come on, chaps,” called Dad, the water lapping just below his waist. “Lovely in here. Thought you weren’t scared.”
“We’re not,” I yelled. And before I could think about it, I nudged Ashby’s well-padded sides. “Come on, boy. In you go.”
And then we were skidding down the bank. And then we were in, swimming. Cold, deep croc-filled water surrounded my legs and lower body. Shuddering, I quickly tucked them up beside me, almost kneeling on Ashby’s submerged back. All around was deep muddy water, stretching twenty metres at least to the opposite bank.
Behind me came a cry and then a splash. “See, Dad,” shouted Lulu, “we’re not scared.”
Winnie drew alongside me. “If I see a croc now, Rob,” Lulu ‘whispered, “I will die.”
“Me too.”
Egging the horses on, Lulu and I quickly caught up with Quartz.
“Slow down,” said Dad. “You must appreciate the view. Fantastic, isn’t it? See, once you’re in, it’s not at all scary. Hey?”
“No,” I croaked.
“Not at all,” said Lulu.
We both grinned unconvincingly.
“That’s my girls,” said Dad.
♦
Louis John junior and Riette were still smiling. Louis John junior was about a year older than me, Riette was Damien’s age. They weren’t confident speaking English, and we spoke no Afrikaans. But they clearly found us amusing.
Damien said, “Well, I donnercd a croc.”
Grinning confidently, adopting just the slightest of Afrikaans accents, he explained how he’d been paddling in his low plastic canoe when the eyes and warty nostrils had begun to trail him. “Jirre, it was big,” said Damien. “This far between the eyes and nose.” He held his hands nearly two feet apart. “I wasn’t scared, though. When its nose got to the back of the canoe, I just turned around and clobbered it with my paddle. Disappeared.” Damien grinned. “Think I scared the shit out of it.”
Dad gave him a warning look.
Louis John just nodded thoughtfully. “Ja, that’s how you’ve got to deal with these small crocs. They’re scared of people now. Not like when I was a boy.”
He poured more drinks, explaining that before the crocs had been widely hunted, they’d been much bigger, and much braver. Then he told us how as a ten-year-old he used to hunt crocs at night with a gun, floating in half a forty-four-gallon drum on the river, shining a flashlight in search of the little red eyes.
“That was scary,” he said.
♦
In this farmed part of the Tuli Block, many of the more exciting and bigger species had been hunted or chased out completely. On Molope Farm, one of the largest resident animals was a lone wildebeest. No one knew how he had come to be here by himself, but we assumed he must have lost his mother as a baby. He had since decided he was a waterbuck and cut a truly weird figure grazing beside his adopted herd of the fluffy antelope – which were odd i
n their own right, with their absurd white-ringed bottoms, like they’d sat on freshly painted toilet seats.
Zebra, giraffe, and rhino were found only on some of the nearby game-fenced farms, and in the large game areas of the northern Tuli Block. Elephants moved through just a few times a decade, destroying trees and fences. And lions hadn’t been seen in this part of the Tuli Block for several years.
But then, only a few months after we moved in, lion spoor appeared, tracking along the river from farm to farm, and eventually to our farm.
“Terrible,” said Jean, shaking his head.
We were walking along the Lotsane, Jean helping us follow the occasional spoor through the brush and riverside scrub. It was thrilling, and terrifying. We jumped at every crackle in the bushes – except for Jean, who strolled along, talking mainly about the weather and how much the Tuli Block needed rain.
“Pity,” agreed Dad. “Having lions around does make evening walks a little less relaxed.”
Jean laughed, “Ag, no. Don’t worry about that. These lions are scared of people. It’s terrible because they’re taking cows. Someone up the river lost three the other night.”
“Ah.”
The tracks drifted away from the river brush and became easier to follow. Then we saw drag marks, leading to the expansive shade of an umbrella thorn. There, beneath the tree, not more than a kilometre from our house, lay the scant remains of an impala. All around in the dirt were paw prints: big lion paws, and the smaller prints of hyenas, which had cleaned the bones, and dragged some a few metres off into the bush.
“A day old,” said Jean. “Maybe less.”
“One of them is a brute,” said Dad, pointing to a saucer-size print.
We returned the next morning with plaster of paris from Dad’s clinic and made several splendid casts of the biggest prints, which we later used to lay tracks – and alarm visitors.
A few days later, the lions were spotted several farms down the river. To our considerable relief, they never returned. And they never crossed into South Africa.