‘You could go to the Cape,’ I suggested. ‘They have African students in the university there. Or Johannesburg.’ Mufaro pulled himself into a sitting position and started picking at a scab on his knee.
‘I can’t study enough to get to university, and it’s so expensive.’ There was a pause, then he burst out, ‘I wish I could drive the whole lot of you out, every single one! I don’t want to see a white face left in Africa.’
I found myself trembling, shocked by the violence of his feelings, by the unfamiliar sensations he had awakened in me. I wanted to get up and run away. He gave the scab a savage tug and it came off. It wasn’t fully healed underneath and a bead of blood appeared. He swiped the blood away with his forearm and we were quiet for a long time.
‘Sorry,’ he said, at last. ‘I’m sorry. Sometimes, I don’t want to see another white person ever again. Not even you. And it makes me feel bad inside.’
I gazed at him, unsure how to respond. ‘I think I understand,’ I managed.
He gave me a hesitant smile, and my affection for him returned. Then, he took something out of his pocket, concealing it in his closed fist.
‘Hold out your arm.’
He uncurled his fingers: on his palm lay a bracelet made of woven elephant hair, joined together by red glass beads that glinted and glittered in the light. ‘This is so you don’t forget me when you’re grown up,’ he said. Slipping the bracelet onto my arm, he began tying the ends into a knot.
Mufaro and I had often touched. We climbed over each other and rolled around, we played chase or tag, we spun and danced. But this time, something was different. This time, a slow warmth started spreading through me as his hands brushed my skin, and there was a trembling sensation in my stomach. And yet, mixed with the sweetness was a pain that I didn’t understand.
Something in Mufaro’s sudden stillness told me that he was feeling it too. His wide eyes searched for mine. Scarcely breathing, I made myself look back at him.
It was late when I got home, the shadows of dusk were advancing on our house from the edges of the forest. It looked low and small and huddled. The front door swung open before I was even up the front steps. My mother stood in the doorway, a dark shape against a rectangle of golden light.
‘Where were you?’ she demanded, her hands clamped to her hips. ‘You know I don’t like you being out after dark. I was worried.’
I told her that I had been with Mufaro and was perfectly safe. She stopped breathing for a moment and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she gave me a long look; her mouth had gone thin. She drew me inside without a word.
15
The Courtaulds, Rhodesia, 1950s
The longed-for rains were late. Day after day, Ginie and Stephen would stand on the veranda, shading their eyes with their hands as they watched great clouds banking up in the sky, piling and thickening, yet day after day, no rain came. Here and there, shafts of sun would break through the cloud, shedding light that was orange and sultry.
Ginie’s arms and legs sprouted a bumpy, itchy heat rash and she grew gloomy and out-of-sorts because of the feeling of waiting. Stephen was more silent than ever. On Christmas morning, they woke to the sound of thunder growling softly in the hills, like a waking beast. The sky was filled with heavy masses of cloud, its underbelly deepest purple, the upper reaches white as cotton. The air was charged and tense. A feverish wind blew thick and hot in their faces, coating their skin and clothes with a film of dust.
The dogs were splayed out on the veranda, tongues lolling. It was a day fit only for lounging on long chairs with iced drinks, but the Courtaulds clung to the traditions of an English Christmas. They exchanged gifts by the tree, which looked hot and overdressed in its tinted glass balls and wreaths of tinsel. Stephen gave Ginie an antique turquoise bracelet from Persia, shaped like a serpent, which she loved. She gave him a beautifully illustrated handbook on astronomy. He was difficult to buy for, as his tastes were so particular, but the look on his face told her that she had chosen well.
Neither of them felt like going to church. Instead, Ginie showed Gideon, their cook, how to make Christmas pudding. Stephen spent the morning in his study working on ‘The Huguenot Family of Courtauld,’ a compilation of letters and narratives about the lives of his ancestors. Drawing on memory and the many photographs, letters and reference books he had shipped from home, he was slowly filling volumes.
Ginie organised Christmas lunch and invited Guthrie because she wasn’t sure he had anyone to spend the holiday with. Guthrie never spoke of his private life, but once when Ginie was out walking early with the dogs, she had seen a slender copper-skinned young man slipping out of his house.
The table was laid with white linen, crystal, silver and great bowls of amaryllis, winter jasmine and poinsettia. Sam had sent the flowers all the way from Eltham, a gesture that touched Ginie and Stephen deeply, yet made them homesick. There were bottles of red and white wine, a huge baked ham, roast potatoes, buttered vegetables, a dish of glistening cranberry sauce and a splendid stilton that had arrived alongside Sam’s flowers. Stephen carved the turkey at the sideboard.
‘Why is there no stuffing?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Ginie retorted, ‘of course there is.’
‘There isn’t.’
Ginie rang the bell and Gideon came in, dressed in his whites. He was a very tall and thin man, with the thinness of those fired by nervous tension.
‘Gideon, where’s the stuffing?’ she asked.
Gideon walked over to the sideboard and took the carving fork out of Stephen’s hand. He dug into the middle of the turkey and, raising the fork aloft, walked to Ginie and deposited a joined string of sausages onto her plate. Thunk, thunk, thunk.
‘Thank you, Gideon,’ said Ginie, at last. ‘It looks lovely.’
‘It’s not exactly like home,’ remarked Stephen, when Gideon was out of earshot.
After the meal, the children of their staff were invited to the house for Christmas gifts. On the lawn, the Courtaulds and Guthrie handed out packages they had wrapped the previous day, containing chocolate bars and sweets, paper and coloured pencils, clothes and blankets and toys. Stephen had learnt a few sentences of Shona.
‘Manga muri vana vakanaka pano?’ he asked, smiling broadly. Have you all been good children?
‘Hongu!’ they shouted. We are very good children!
There were about forty of them with their parents, all different ages. Few could contain their excitement, sucking sweets and comparing gifts as they chattered away. However, some of the smaller children were frightened and wary of being handed to these strange white people.
As Ginie gave the last rattle to a baby on his mother’s back, a few heavy drops of rain began to fall. There was a flurry of wind and dust. Thunder rolled overhead, lightning streaked from one hill to another and a curtain of rain plunged down, so dense that the trees looked shrouded and ghostly.
Yelling joyfully to the heavy sky, they ran to the veranda for shelter, where they huddled and watched water pour off the edge of the roof in sheets, their voices competing with the sound of the rain. The gutters were overrun, everything streamed and splashed. From the pool came the sound of frogs exulting. Some of the children stayed on the grass, stamping in puddles that were already forming, their heads thrown back in ecstasy, eyes shut and mouths open to catch the raindrops.
Ginie’s heart soared at the sight. She wanted to join the children and let the warm rain soak her hair and skin; she longed for the pleasure of feeling her feet suck and squelch in the mud.
By suppertime, the rain had stopped. Night fell abruptly and the house was full of shadows. Outside, owls hooted, crickets chirped, and night-jars screamed. The sound of singing and drums came throbbing from the staff houses and every now and then, someone let out a high ululation. The lawn was churned to a thick red mud and the sky was filled with mounds of cloud which broke intermittently to reveal stars in between. The trees were dim bulky shapes, tossed by the wind. Stephen and
Ginie sat at opposite ends of the long table and ate cold ham, turkey and salad, though they weren’t hungry.
The lamps were shrouded by a handful of large flying insects. Jongy trotted in and lunged at them. An insect gave a tiny whining scream, which stopped abruptly when Jongy squashed it in his jaws. He pounced again and there was another miniscule shriek. Ginie peeled a banana and offered it to him so that he would settle down.
‘I think our first Christmas went rather well, don’t you?’ she said, watching Jongy cram chunks of banana into his mouth.
‘Yes, apart from the stuffing fiasco,’ Stephen’s eyes twinkled. Ginie smiled back at him.
‘When the Richardsons return from holiday,’ he said, taking a drink of wine, ‘we can carry on with plans for the farming college.’
‘Yes, let’s. I’m excited about it.’
The dogs began to bark frantically and the Courtaulds exchanged an alarmed glance. Moments later, they heard Gideon shouting ‘Nkosi! Nkosi!’ His footsteps hurried towards them, with the dogs scrambling behind.
Gideon burst into the room, his eyes were narrowed and desperate. ‘Please come!’ he said. They were already on their feet, ready to follow him. In the kitchen, a man lay on the floor, his skin and clothes slick with blood. It was Eliot, the Thompson’s houseboy, Gideon’s brother.
‘Oh, Christ,’ Stephen said.
Nausea moved in the pit of Ginie’s stomach. She held the dogs back, hoping she wouldn’t vomit. Eliot’s eyes were closed and a dreadful gurgling was coming from his throat. A sickening, metallic smell filled their nostrils as his blood pooled on the floor. While Stephen knelt down next to him trying to gauge the extent of his injuries, Gideon told them what had happened.
Eric Thompson had tied Eliot up that morning because he claimed a sack of flour was missing. At the end of a long day of drinking, Eric beat him and when Eliot complained that it was against the law to lay hands on him, Eric tied him to the car by a rope, dragged him to the boundary of his property and left him there. Eliot had managed to stagger to La Rochelle, but collapsed soon after arriving.
‘Pray for him,’ Gideon begged. A muscle twitched sharply in his cheek.
Ginie didn’t tell him she wasn’t one for prayer.
Please, God, she began in her head, do something. Eliot was losing blood fast.
‘Let’s get him to the car,’ said Stephen. ‘I’ll take him to our doctor.’
‘Your white man’s doctor won’t treat him.’
‘I’ll damn well make him.’
Stephen tore down the treacherous road to Umtali, with Eliot and Gideon in the back. Eliot’s gurgled breathing was quieter now. The night was alive with the sounds of the bush; bird noises, insect noises, the crashing of a startled buck. They hadn’t gone far when Gideon said ‘Nkosi’. His tone made Stephen brake sharply and look round.
Eliot was dead.
Without a word, Stephen turned the car around and began the drive back up the hill towards La Rochelle. Gideon started tearing at his hair and keening; a hollow sound that reminded Stephen of the quiet, desperate death-cries of men in the trenches.
He pulled up by the staff quarters. Men and women came pouring out of their houses to help Gideon carry his brother. It was difficult to get him out and one arm clonked hideously against the door of the car. Stephen said goodnight, giving Gideon a hard squeeze on the shoulder.
He presumed they were going bury Eliot as soon as it grew light. The dead had to be buried quickly because of the heat.
Eric received a fine for killing Eliot. When the Courtaulds heard the news, Ginie began to cry and she couldn’t stop.
‘I’d like to kill Eric myself,’ Stephen said grimly. He drove his fist into the wall and paced about the room.
Ginie blew her nose. ‘What can we do?’ she asked, shakily.
‘Absolutely nothing. The police are the farmers’ friends. Eric has the police, the courts and the prisons on his side.’ His fury drained away, leaving him deflated and overcome with hopelessness. He should have known that something like this was coming – he should have expected it, some kind of brutality or bloodshed. In a country where people were so terribly oppressed, periodic eruptions were inevitable. He had been a naïve fool trying to create his own incorruptible Eden, not seeing that it would catch up with him eventually.
His thoughts flew back to the hissing snake coiled around the telephone and Dixon’s warning that he was in danger. Was the prediction coming true?
16
Catherine, Rhodesia, 1950s
‘I’m going to find Mufaro,’ I said, opening our front door. We’d just got back from our annual Christmas trip to Durban, and I was eager to see him. Mum looked up from the case she was unpacking.
‘I don’t want that boy hanging around you anymore.’
‘Why not?’ I was already on the doorstep, itching to be gone.
‘Because I say so,’ she shot back.
‘But we’ve always been friends.’
‘You’re too old for it now.’
‘But why?’
‘Because ‘Y’ is a crooked letter.’ Then, in weary exasperation, ‘Stop with your nonsense, Cathy. You’re too old to be with a black boy. It was all right when you were small, but it isn’t nice now.’
I hesitated, looking out towards the trees. Deep down, I had always known this was coming. I also knew that Mum’s objection was part of all the things my parents wouldn’t talk about. The strongest emotions were bound up in that silence. I didn’t understand them but I felt their force, as powerful as a spell or a drug. There was nothing to be done but lock my confusion and anger tight in my chest.
‘There are things you don’t understand yet,’ Mum said, and she turned away from me and went back to her unpacking.
A few days later, I was tossing a ball around at the bottom of the garden when I heard a soft whistle from the trees just beyond. I turned and saw Mufaro peering out from behind a tree trunk. I smiled despite myself and brought my hand up to wave, then dropped my eyes and made my face go hard.
‘I’m not allowed to talk to you anymore.’
He blinked a few times, looking as though I had struck him.
‘Oh, I see. And are you going to do what they say?’
‘I have to.’
‘You’re going to give in without trying? Aren’t you old enough to think for yourself?’
I was speechless and my cheeks flushed scarlet.
‘My friends and family tell me I shouldn’t talk to you either, but I’ve chosen not to listen to them.’ Now it was my turn to feel like I’d been slapped across the face.
‘I want to be with you too, but. . .’ I couldn’t explain the impossibility of going against Mum’s prohibition. It was as though my passage to adulthood depended on obeying her, though it made me feel sick and lost because I knew it was all wrong.
‘I never thought you were a coward,’ he flung out.
‘I’m not.’
‘Yes you are, you are.’
His eyes were full of pain and accusation. I moved away from him and gave the ball a hard kick. He called my name once and when I didn’t answer, walked away without looking back. I threw myself down by a tree and watched the leaves swaying overhead, the dappled and shifting light. It seemed that part of my freedom had been snatched away, and I was facing a new phase of rules and constraints. I wept bitterly because I had never felt so torn.
Later, I looked at myself in the mirror. A thin, grave face stared back at me. Fine, mousy hair straggling down to my chin. My gaze travelled to my body. It was neither one thing nor the other. My legs were still boyish; narrow and bony. They joined with a curving torso, on which breasts were starting to bud.
After Mufaro had fastened the bracelet on my arm, he’d held my eyes until the sweetness and pain became so unbearable that I had to look away. Then, I felt his lips against the corner of my mouth. A fleeting touch, a butterfly’s soft brush. Thinking of it now, a shiver unfurled deep in my belly and I turned from m
y reflection in shame.
It was around this time that the noises coming from my parents’ bedroom at night stopped. I had hated those sounds – grunts and gasps that made them sound like animals. Yet I was troubled by their absence in a way I couldn’t quite describe.
17
Ginie, Rhodesia, 1950s
The weeks that followed Eliot’s death were hot and wet. The garden was lush and deep green, but there was something violent about its growth. The lawn was pocked with puddles. Several times a day, banks of heavy cloud rolled over the property and doused everything in a grey downpour. When the sun came out again, the ground would steam and smoke, the foliage shimmering through waves of humidity. The roads were churned to mud, making the weekly trip to Umtali more dangerous than usual, and it was malaria season. The garden was full of baby mosquitoes, squirming in the hollows of trees, in their leaves and in patches of long grass. Ginie and Stephen started taking quinine every night on doctors’ orders. The pills were huge and made their ears ring.
Strange things were happening in the days after the rains began. Dixon had found several snakes in the house. Stephen explained that it was because their holes were flooded, but the servants’ old fears were fully re-awakened. One of the gardeners reported seeing a small girl wandering in the Dell, clutching a teddy bear. When he tried to speak to her, she hid behind a tree. ‘We’re living in a time of bad omens,’ he said.
Another night, a leopard got into a gardener’s house and attacked his young son. He was woken by the noise and managed to drive the beast out, but not before the boy sustained deep gashes in his thigh and minor lacerations to his chest. Ginie and Stephen were woken by a violent hammering on their front door. They opened it and found the gardener carrying his bleeding, barely conscious son in his arms. After Ginie had staunched the bleeding, she smothered his wounds in antiseptic cream and bandaged them up. Stephen rushed the child to the clinic in Umtali. The Courtaulds’ staff, carrying lanterns and weapons, searched the grounds for the leopard, but there was no sign of it.
The Dragon Lady Page 9