Amarose Lodge – Private Game Reserve, Karoi, Zimbabwe
1992
‘Happy anniversary, my darling,’ Ebony said to Jamison as he walked through the door. He looked at the room.
It was magical. Ebony had brought every candle in the house and put them in the dining room, and she had a table laid out as if they were in a five-star restaurant.
‘Eb,’ Jamison said. ‘Look at this place. Wow. You did this for us? For me?’ Jamison walked around the flickering room. Shadows danced across his pathway, and the candles flickered and light leapt and soared with the changes of the air swirling through the room.
‘I thought that I could spoil us for our fifth anniversary,’ she said.
He walked up to her and took her in his arms. ‘Ebony, my heart, you spoil me.’
He dipped his head and kissed his wife thoroughly.
Breathless, she eventually pushed him away. ‘Let’s eat, I’ll grab the dinner and put it on the table while you have a quick shower.’
‘Deal, I’ll be two minutes,’ he said as he walked away towards the bathroom. She flicked his butt with a tea towel, laughing.
Jamison headed into the shower. He stepped in without waiting for the water to run warm, and washed so quickly, he was just rinsing off as the water was heating up. He switched the water off and grabbed his towel.
Humming, he quickly drew on a pair of tracksuit pants, and a button-up cotton shirt so that he would at least have clothes on for their dinner. After digging around at the back of his underpants drawer, he took out a small gift box that he put in his pocket, and hurried out to join his wife.
Ebony sat at the table, their dinner in front of her, and he paused for a moment to take in the sight.
‘I still can’t quite believe that you are here, and that you agreed to marry me,’ he said to her from the door.
‘I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere,’ she said.
He grinned.
‘Now, come on over and eat,’ she said and she gestured to his place.
He sat down and looked at her. She glowed with an inner beauty. Her mahogany skin shone in the candle light. His beautiful wife.
‘Happy anniversary, Eb,’ he said as he passed her the box.
She opened it.
‘My wena,’ she said. ‘Jamison, I can’t wear this on a farm, it’s too beautiful.’ She looked at the dainty square-cut sapphire sitting in a channel of diamonds, and set in a platinum band, with separate gold bands on both sides. ‘It’s too beautiful!’
‘I know that they say one year or on the birth of a child, but when I saw this, I knew you would love it, and I had to buy it for you.’ Jamison grinned. ‘I’m glad you like it.’
He reached over and took it from the box, then he stood up, and went and knelt next to her chair. ‘Ebony, you are the love of my life.’ He took her left hand and added the ring to her plain wedding band that was already there, and the band of eight small diamond chips he had given to her for their engagement. The gold colours matched perfectly. But the ring was a little tight to get on.
‘Ebony, I’m sorry it doesn’t fit, I traced one of your other rings, the jeweller must have made a mistake with the size,’ he began protesting.
‘No, there is no mistake. It’s perfect timing. That is my present to you tonight. My hands are already changing. I’m putting on weight and in seven months I’ll be fat like a hippopotamus, and as cantankerous as your buffalo you love to watch in the early hours of the morning.’
‘We are having a baby?’ he asked.
‘We are!’ she said and she reached for his face as he knelt there and kissed him.
After a long while, he got up off his knees, and he picked her up.
‘I’m too heavy, put me down, you idiot!’ she said as she hung on tight with both arms around his neck.
‘No way, Eb. Even when you are huge with our child, I’ll still be able to pick you up. You and I, we just fit right.’ He kissed her on the forehead, then, cradling her to his chest, he walked towards their bedroom. ‘That is the best anniversary present you could ever give me,’ he said, ‘we are having a baby. I never thought I would see that day I got to have a family, a wife and a child. You have made me the happiest man in Zimbabwe, in Africa, in the whole world!’
Jamison heard the shouts of people before he smelled the smoke, and was instantly alert.
‘Jamison, wake up, wake up,’ someone yelled and banged on his front door.
He jumped out of bed, and pulled his tracksuit pants on.
‘What is it?’ Ebony asked.
‘There is a fire, I have to find out where,’ he said. ‘Stay there, I’ll come back.’
Jamison briskly strode to the front door and opened it, stopping the incessant knocking.
Moeketsi, one of the farm’s best trackers, who was nearly qualified as a professional hunter, stood outside. ‘There is a fire, Jamison, in the tobacco drying shed number 35.’
‘Get my bakkie,’ Jamison said as he turned and ran to his room. ‘Ebony, one of the tobacco sheds is on fire. I have to go!’ He hurried into the walk-in wardrobe and pulled on clothes that he could fight a fire in, a long sleeved shirt and long pants. He dragged on cotton socks. ‘Damn, this season was going so well too,’ he cursed.
‘It will be okay, Jamison.’ Ebony said from the bedroom. ‘You will get the fire out, you will keep it from spreading and everyone will be safe. You always look after everyone, they know it. They rely on you to keep them safe.’
‘I know, Eb, but a barn fire, we have never had one since I took over for Widow Crosby. They burn hot, Eb, someone could be hurt badly.’
‘Then hurry up and go,’ Ebony said, but she softened the command with a smile. ‘I love you, now go do you job,’ she said as she kissed him as he ran past. ‘Stay safe.’
‘Love you!’ he replied as he fled from the room, his mind focused on the fire.
Moeketsi waited outside his front door, the bakkie already running. Jamison jumped into the driver’s seat, the soft sand spraying backwards from his tyres as he sped off.
He slowed and stopped for the workmen from the safari camp, who flagged him down for a lift as they ran towards him, eager to help him with the farm fire. Fully loaded, with men standing in the back, hanging on, he drove through the reserve’s double gates, and towards the glow in the distance.
Jamison arrived at the burning tobacco shed. For a second, he just sat there looking at the inferno that used to be shed 35. Not believing what his eyes saw. Then he sprang into action.
‘Hoses, get the irrigation pipes,’ he called as men scrambled at his command. ‘Stop the fire spreading to the other sheds!’
He jumped back in his bakkie and drove for the main control valve for the irrigation. It was about halfway down the tobacco field, in the middle of the planted land. He checked that the couplings were in place, and then he turned on the power, and spun the handle so that water would pump into the hard pipes.
The pump gargled and spluttered before it came to life and it churned out fresh water from deep in the earth. He could see his workers as they put the last section of pipe into place, and then held the pipe tightly, knowing the velocity of water that was rushing up the pipe.
Once he could see the water at the shed he relaxed a little, and wiped the sweat that gathered from his forehead. Running back to his bakkie, he gunned the engine until he got almost to the fire, then he brought it to a dead stop, about two hundred metres from the fire. He got out, and reassessed the situation.
The tobacco barn would probably burn out, but they needed to continue fighting the fire, because if it spread, or embers from that fire spread to one of the other drying sheds, they could have more than one fire on their hands.
‘That’s it, well done, Moeketsi,’ he said as he saw the young man turn the water on to yet another patch of the exterior of the barn that was now on fire.
The fire continued to consume the building. Its huge orange and red flames licked out the top as if trying to escape. The roof would be gone soon, and then the building was sure to collapse.
‘Maidza, you sure no one is in there?’ Jamison asked as he passed the worker who was rostered on duty that night for the barn.
‘No one, I was outside when I saw the fire,’ Maidza said.
‘More mvura,’ Jamison said as the next team of men brought more irrigation hoses closer to the structure. The couplings were holding despite the angle the men were bending the pipes in, and the water rushed from the pipe, and into the fire at high pressure.
There was no fire truck in the bush that could help them. They were on their own unless a neighbour saw the smoke and glow, and came to help.
The interior structure gave way, and the whole barn leant to the left, then collapsed in on itself. Embers were pushed upwards, high into the night, burning orange, illuminating the dark sky as if a million fireflies had been released simultaneously. They glowed then slowly faded. There was no re-glow. The embers were no longer alive.
The surrounds seemed to darken as the fire, no longer reaching upwards, burnt in a heap, yet it had no less ferocity. Its orange flames consumed everything, the tobacco, and the structure. There was a roar as oxygen reached a place previously inaccessible, and the fire found a new angle to burn, then the sound of the irrigation pump throbbing in the distance, and the water as it hissed and popped when the men sprayed it onto the glowing embers.
A bakkie load of people arrived from the TTL to help, having seen the orange light in the sky and the smoke that rose up into the darkness. They came armed with hessian sacks and a 44-gallon drum of water on the back of their bakkie to help fight the fire. Old Widow Crosby had been gone two years already, but memories ran deep, and many still remembered her help during the droughts, and her support of the people within the boundary of the TTL.
They gathered in a close group when they saw that nothing could be done for the barn, and murmurs could be heard as people watched the last of the barn burn black.
‘Moeketsi, take my bakkie and turn off the irrigation pump, there is no more we can do here,’ Jamison said eventually. He dreaded having to call the owners and tell them that there had been a fire. They still didn’t live on the property, allowing him to manage both what was left of the tobacco fields, and the newer safari reserve.
But things were changing.
They were after a higher income than the fledgling safari camp could raise from tourism alone, and had expressed an interest to venture into big game hunting.
Jamison had expressed his dismay.
But they were unmoving.
For the first time in ten years, Jamison felt uneasy. He was now keeping his eye out for another manager’s job. He didn’t want to be manager of a hunting safari, that had never been his intention or Widow Crosby’s when they set up Amarose.
But in his heart he knew that his reluctance to stay was about more than simply the hunting safaris. He couldn’t shake the thought that Buffel was a hunter, and he might now visit the ranch looking for trophies. He had managed to stay hidden from Buffel for so long. He had flown under the radar, and he had found a life worth living. He didn’t want to put his life on hold once more, and especially not now he had Ebony, and a baby coming.
He looked at the black charcoal and twisted metal roofing that remained of the shed and thought of the tobacco crop destroyed, that was now just ash. Embers still glowed in the dark, but the majority of the fire had subsided. Its fuel depleted, the fire was fast losing its life, and would soon be totally out.
Maidza came and stood next to him.
‘What happened?’ Jamison asked, his voice thick from the smoke he had breathed in.
‘I don’t know, Jamison. I swear it,’ he said. ‘You were with me last night, we checked this shed together, and the fire was good. I stoked the fire at one o’clock. There were no leaves on the flume pipe.’
‘Maidza, tell me honestly. Did you go to sleep?’
‘No, Jamison, I was awake. I heard a noise, like a baboon barking, behind the shed, and I went to see what it was, but when I got back, I saw the orange glowing under the shed door, and then I could see that there was a fire.’
‘Did you find the gudo?’ Jamison asked, alarmed.
‘No, there was nothing there.’
‘Did you see anyone running away when you returned?’ Jamison asked. In the ten years he had been on the farm, they had never had a barn fire. He was careful with the fires, he checked the barns about four times during the day, and he scheduled mature men to stoke the fire during the night. Everyone knew that the vents in the bottom of the barn picked up the heat from the fires lit in the furnace, and they took the hot air from the flume pipes up to the vent in the top of the roof so that the moisture in the barn was removed. The heat dried the leaves, not lit them on fire, unless there was an accident or an untidy shed where the leaves were allowed to fall onto the flume pipes and stay there. Their farm was run neatly and with pride by all the men and women who worked there. They were still on a profit share basis for now.
Jamison shook his head, trying to dislodge an uneasy feeling that they were being watched, just as his bakkie returned.
‘Moeketsi, did you see any footprints of a baboon in the water around the pump?’ Jamison asked.
‘No. Not that I noticed,’ Moeketsi said. But he had a look on his face, that of a tracker now wanting to look again.
‘I tell you, it sounded like a baboon, Jamison,’ Maidza said.
‘First light, we meet back here, we fan out and look for spoor from this baboon. I want to make sure that he’s a wild one and not a human. This shed shouldn’t have gone up in flames.’ He looked all around in a circle. ‘It makes no sense. Oh no—’ he said as he saw an orange glow in the sky, from the direction of the safari camp. ‘Ebony!’ he said. ‘Quickly, everyone in the bakkies. Fire at the safari camp.’
His heart raced. He knew that it wasn’t a coincidence.
They had controlled the embers from the barn fire as best they could, and they had put out spot fires around when they saw them happening. The spot fires were few, the grass was green, the bottom leaves from the tobacco field closest had only just been harvested, so there wasn’t lots of dry foliage around. The men from the TTL had spread out with their sacks and made sure that there was no fires on the outskirts of the tobacco field in the bush. The fire in the safari camp couldn’t possibly be related.
Unless both had been deliberately lit.
He gunned the engine just as someone tapped on the roof that they were ready to go on the back. He raced as fast as he dared along the dirt road that ran down the centre of the tobacco and past the irrigation pump. He turned at the bottom onto the main road that lead through to the game reserve. The game guard on duty at the gate was nowhere to be seen, and both the gates were open.
Jamison’s heart sank. He was unarmed, having run out into the night to fight a fire, not deal with wildlife.
He stopped his bakkie.
Moeketsi jumped off the back, and after the TTL bakkie had followed them through, he closed the outside gate, then the inside one, all the time cautiously looking around for lion. Jamison pushed towards the camp, leaving Moeketsi to jump onto the back of the already crowded TTL bakkie.
Jamison rounded the last bend in the road, and the scene in front of him was a nightmare. Thankfully, the main camp was untouched, but tourists were milling about, many had cameras and were running in the direction of the glow that came from the where his own house was tucked into the back of the camp.
His house.
‘Hold on there, Eb, I’m coming,’ he said quietly.
He drove through the main camp, and headed towards his home.
He could see pieces of his furniture on the lawn area outside his house, the lounge suite, the dining room table, some things from the kitchen, Eb’s prized chef mixer, and a toaster. His game guards were hurrying in and out carrying the furniture, trying to shift it as quickly as they could, pulling his personal possessions from the clutches of the fire, trying to save as much as they could.
Two men had the garden hose switched onto full, and they attempted to spray the burning thatch. As much water as they put on the roof, it was never going to be enough to stop the fire, but they didn’t give up, hoping perhaps it might just maybe slow it.
‘Ebony!’ he called as he stopped the bakkie and jumped out at the same time. ‘Eb!’
He could see the back end of the house was already well alight, the fire’s grip on the thatch making billows of white smoke rise into the sky.
‘Ebony!’ he called again, running towards the house.
‘She’s over there,’ Felix said as he quickly set down the television set. He motioned with his head, and Jamison looked over to where Felix had indicated.
‘Go, I got it this end,’ Felix said.
Ebony lay on the grass, Joss kneeling next to her. Jamison couldn’t run fast enough.
‘Eb, I’m here,’ Jamison called as he ran, and soon he skidded down next to her. ‘Are you okay?’
She held her hand up to him, and he took it. Her other hand lay possessively on her stomach. ‘I’m sore, Jamison, but I’m alive. When the fire started I couldn’t get out the room. I tried to push the door, but something was blocking it. I tried to climb out the window instead, but I couldn’t get it open. I had to break the French windows, the glass panels with the chair, and then I had to break a hole in the timber frames. But climbing out, it was too high and I slipped, and hit my stomach on the windowsill. I got out though—I got out.’
Jamison put his hand over hers resting on her stomach, and he could see her wince.
Joss interrupted. ‘Felix and I were doing a perimeter check. We saw the fire. We thought that Ebony was still inside. But when we got to the bedroom, an old kist was blocking the door.’
‘Inside the house?’ Jamison asked.
‘Someone had blocked her inside the bedroom,’ Joss said. ‘But we heard her screaming still, and we went through the door and out the window after her. She was still too close to the fire, and she has breathed in lots of smoke.’
Jamison looked at his wife properly for the first time. She was dressed in her night gown, but it was torn, and she had lost the sash that closed it somewhere. He could see the ugly purple bruising across her stomach, and he quickly closed her gown as best he could. She would hate to know that she was indecently dressed.
She wore no shoes, and her legs were bloody. She had taken the skin off her shins and her knees, and there was dirt in the wounds. She still held her stomach with the hand that he didn’t hold, and he could tell that pain had just ripped into her as her body tensed. She gripped his hand tightly.
‘My stomach hurts. It hurts to breathe,’ she said, and tears ran freely down from her eyes, into her hair.
‘Eb, I will get you to a hospital, you need help, but you are going to be okay. You have to be okay!’ He squeezed her hand back. ‘Joss, go call the ambulance.’
‘Bennett went to the office already, they are on their way.’
He held onto Ebony’s hand, stroking his thumb gently against her skin. Reassuring her he was there.
Deep down inside, this was his fault.
Because of him, she was hurt.
It could only be Buffel who had attempted to kill him, and hurt Ebony instead. Even though he hadn’t talked, he had kept to the code.
But he had no proof. He’d had no call from his cousin to warn him of Buffel’s extended absence either. Not that their warning system was infallible. Gibson often accompanied Buffel to places, but they had thought that as long as he travelled with him, they could know that he wasn’t looking for Shilo.
The first fire had probably been a decoy for the workers, and Buffel hadn’t counted on him getting out of his house to organise the fire fighting. Buffel had gone in to his house, and instead of trapping Shilo in his house to burn to death, it was his pregnant Ebony who had been trapped.
But Ebony was strong. She was a farm worker. She wasn’t a town princess who was afraid to break a fingernail. She had found a way to save herself despite the fire, and she had got out.
He heard Felix commanding, ‘That’s it, everyone stay outside.’
He looked at his home.
Felix was right, in the short time since he had arrived, it had become unsafe for anyone to go inside anymore. Everything that they hadn’t got out needed to stay. It would simply burn. He was suddenly aware of the heat that came from the house. The whole roof was now on fire, and the flames played tag through the windows. The noise of the fire as it celebrated its victory in consuming the house was loud and triumphant as the level of the flames rose for a moment.
The game guards were watching for embers, and the TTL bakkie men were once again putting out any embers that landed with their wet sacks.
Jamison realised that in his hurry to get to Ebony, he had not instructed everyone on what to do, but somehow they had all managed to find a way to help, to work together, to be a team, even without his instructions.
The thatch on the roof slid down, off the steep pitched rafters, and suddenly the house looked like it was ringed in fire. Its black skeleton poked out from the top as if a pyre was burning.
The heat continued to push those with the hose further away from it, and the men with the bags were still unable to get in close enough to fight the real fire, as the inferno that burnt the house was still too new.
‘Go, sort out your farm,’ Ebony said. ‘Joss can stay with me, then when the fire is out, we can go to the hospital together.’
‘No, Eb, there is nothing more I can do there.’ He kissed and gently hugged his wife. ‘It can just burn out now.’
Together they surveying the fire from a safe distance,
Frazzled embers rained down on them, but Jamison brushed them aside. Black and grey ash streaked their clothes.
‘It is mostly gone. They saved what they could,’ Ebony said as she looked at the pitiful pile of their possessions.
‘Posessions don’t matter, Eb. I’m just thankful that they went in after you. You are the most precious item in that house, and nothing else really matters in this fire, except for you.’
Ebony reached up and put her hand against Jamison’s cheek. He put his hand overs hers and moved it to where his heart beat in his chest.
In silence they watched the fire, as the last of the flames turned to smouldering embers, and as the sky turned from black to grey then brilliant red and orange as the sun rose, and with the smoke particles in the air, the stunning day began for the rest of Africa.
‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning,’ Jamison commented.
An hour later, the police arrived, their arrival sparking an excited hum of conversation. People shouted to one another as they came to stand near to hear what was being said, shattering the quietness of the African bush. The birds stopped singing. Even the crickets hushed for a moment as the sound of loud human activity invaded the normally tranquil ranch. An ambulance had arrived first, and the paramedics who had stabilised Ebony were still working on her. They had put in a drip and given her pain medication.
Jamison glanced over to where Ebony was, with the paramedics working constantly, but the police were keeping him busy and they wanted him to remain at the farm.
Too soon, and not soon enough, he stood watching the ambulance take the love of his life away from him.
She was hurt. She needed medical attention, and the sooner the better, even if it meant he couldn’t be with her.
He had seen the way the bruising showed on the top of her stomach area. She was being brave for him, and for everyone else, but he was certain that the internal bleeding was bad. He hoped that the baby was still safe, and not affected.
He felt selfish because for the first time ever, he wanted to put his family before the people he managed. All he wanted was for Ebony to be alright.
‘Jamison.’ The police constable redirected his attention onto their ongoing conversation. ‘We have looked at the first fire site, my colleagues said that they couldn’t find baboon prints, but one of your trackers, he found boot prints, and they were going in a different direction to everyone else. Those same prints are nearby your house.’
‘Did you find the man in the boots?’ Jamison asked.
‘No, it’s like he disappeared. Your tracker is going over the site again and there is a reservist with him.’
‘If anyone can find him, Moeketsi will,’ Jamison said. But he wondered if Moeketsi’s skills were good enough to find Buffel, the master of concealment.
They continued their walk around the site of the burnt-out house. The policeman looked at the smouldering rubble.
‘You were lucky your wife got out, that she was strong enough to break the wood on those fancy windows you had.’
‘I know. And I’m blessed that she managed.’
‘So if you didn’t put the kist blocking the doorway, who did?’
‘I have no idea. But if I ever find out, I’ll kill him!’ Jamison said.
‘No, Jamison, you won’t, that is just the adrenaline talking, you need to leave him to the law to sort out. You will do that, won’t you?’ The policeman looked at Jamison, as if to say he mustn’t say things like that in front of him.
‘Yes, of course,’ Jamison said.
‘You sure you don’t know who could have started these fires? Someone you fired? Someone not happy with the change from a reserve into a hunting ranch?’
‘No one has been fired in the last six years since I took over control. Everyone who has gone has either died of the thinning disease or they left on their own. This ranch is profitable. We all share in those profits, and I make sure I employ the right person for the job. My work force isn’t transient, they stay. This is their home too, they don’t leave.’
‘So there is no inside reason? No fighting internally going on?’ the policeman asked.
‘No.’
‘So it has to be personal. Against you or against the owners.’
‘I don’t know of anyone who would want me dead, or my family dead,’ he said, and silently he crossed his fingers to cover up his lie.
It had to be Buffel, but he couldn’t report him. If the code was broken, he would die. Of that he had no doubt.
‘—we will look into the new owners,’ the policeman was saying.
But both men knew that the police force was stretched to its limit in the countryside, and no more investigation would take place.
This was Africa.
No one had died in the fire, so the priority on the case wouldn’t be very high.
‘Thank you, Jamison.’ They shook hands, and Jamison watched as the police climbed in their bakkies and vans and left the farm.
Felix had organised that the tourists were to still go on their morning game drive, and they were about to leave. He regretted that they had been subject to the interrogation and questioning by the police, but they all seemed happy enough to help, realizing how lucky they were that the fire had not spread into the main section of the camp.
He waved down Felix as he passed.
‘Felix, I have to go away, Ebony is in hospital. I’m putting you in charge of Amarose. Maidza will watch over Malabar and the tobacco. You will need to work together to run everything.’
‘Thank you, Jamison,’ Felix said. ‘And I will look after everything until you return.’
Jamison shook his head as he reached out his hand. Felix took it.
‘I am sorry, Jamison. I have worked with you for many years, you are a good man. You take care, and good luck,’ Felix said. ‘Look after Ebony.’
‘I will,’ Jamison said as Felix let his clutch out and glided away.
Jamison knew that the game reserve would be in good hands. He had trained Felix well. Once just Widow Crosby’s gardener, he had been able to expand his education and become a game guide. At the moment he was still studying for his professional hunter’s licence, but he would get there, he was keen and he loved the bush and the animals, and had respect for it. Unlike the new owners who did not share that respect.
But there was one person left to say a personal goodbye to before he left Amarose for ever. He went in search of Moeketsi.
Once again, his home had been destroyed with fire by Buffel. Only this time he cared about what had been in the house. Ebony.
He longed to dig his heels in and make a stand against Buffel, but he knew he couldn’t, not on the farm he was on. If Buffel had found him, and hadn’t immediately killed him, then Buffel wanted information from him. Once again there was another he would need to protect. One he had saved before, one he knew was in danger, because if he was dead, Buffel would track her to the end of the earth to use as a sacrifice.
Jamison knew there was another farm that was being reforested, planted with green trees and transformed, and it would soon be a game ranch, a huge bonus was that the owner was special ops, like him. He prayed that perhaps, united, the two men standing together, they could take on Buffel and win the next time he came at Jamison and his family. He prayed that if Wayne had found Tara Wright since their last meeting together, they could protect her too.
He knew that if Buffel had come after him, he would try again.
He had no choice but to move on. He had to leave Amarose. This time it was not only him, he had Ebony and their unborn child, but he knew how to keep moving, to double back, to cover their tracks. He knew how to hide from Buffel, he had done it before.
Already he knew where he could find a place for a fresh start, only getting there would take time. Ebony was in hospital, and his first priority was her and the baby’s health. He needed to get them, then they would disappear.
He would take Ebony and their baby to the end of the world to ensure they was safe.
He looked around.
He would miss Amarose.
He had dirtied his hands as he had got into the mud and planted trees, he had spilt blood as he found and transported animals with Widow Crosby. He had seen it built from nothing into the game ranch that it was. He had shared in the profits of the tobacco harvest. He would miss the green tobacco fields of Malabar, but he could easily be replaced as the manager.
He could never replace Ebony.
There was no contest.
Jamison knew that covering his tracks when they involved hospitals and doctors was never going to be easy. Ebony was a striking woman, and the type of injuries she had sustained were easily recognisable, especially in rural Africa. A few questions here and there, and money changing hands, and they would be found.
He couldn’t afford to let Buffel find them, because next time they wouldn’t escape. Buffel had made an uncharacteristic mistake with the fires, and Jamison was not going to let him try again. Moving so fast, reacting right away, would be his first advantage over Buffel, who would have expected them to remain in Karoi hospital. To not move Ebony. To be sitting ducks to be finished off at Buffel’s leisure. But Jamison had other plans to ensure his family would survive.
He drove along the tar road towards Francistown, Botswana. Ebony lay flat in the back of his bakkie on a mattress. It was the only way to transport her, without access to an ambulance, and he needed to move her to the next hospital that night. After one day in hospital, the doctors had said she was stable, and he and Ebony had made the decision to run then.
Years before, they had discussed this very scenario together, hoping it would never play out. But it had, and now they had reacted.
They were on the move.
Somewhere that Buffel wouldn’t expect.
Jamison had thought of going to Widow Crosby for help in Johannesburg, but then he would be putting her at risk, and besides, getting through the Beit Bridge border post always took an excessive amount of time. He couldn’t take the chance that Ebony might collapse there, and be taken into another Zimbabwe hospital, not after he had practically had to kidnap his own wife from the hospital in Karoi.
His closest border post was into Zambia, but if Buffel decided to come after him, that would be the first place that he would begin looking. It was logical.
He slowed for a donkey in the road, before continuing.
They had passed through Plumtree border post as they opened, Ebony usually so strong, having to lean heavily on him for support as they cleared through the customs building with their passports. Putting her back to lie flat again, and leaving her there while he drove had been one of the hardest acts he had ever had to perform.
‘Drive, just get me to another hospital,’ Ebony said. ‘I love you, Jamison, know that always.’
‘And I you, with my whole life,’ he said and kissed her. ‘Just tap the window if you need me to stop,’ he reminded her.
Luckily, their passports had been in a fireproof safe in the Amarose lodge office, and not at the house.
For a while he had to concentrate on the light traffic on the road, then he saw the turning from the A1 towards the University of Botswana, and the Nyangabwe Referral Hospital, and he turned towards people who could help his Ebony and their unborn child.