Paul had taken charge that terrible day. It was Paul who telephoned Chrissy’s parents in Scotland and broke the news to them. When they pleaded that she be sent home for burial, it was Paul who arranged it. All through that long bitter day it was Paul, Paul, Paul. He forced coffee into Alex, cup after cup of it, but the sandwich he made for his brother remained untouched. Alex knew if he took so much as one bite he would be sick.
He followed Paul around as though he could not bear to be alone. But when Paul tried to order the coffin he grabbed the telephone from his brother’s hand and flung it against a wall, smashing it to pieces.
‘It has to be done, Alex.’
‘I know, I know. Just not here, okay? She’ll hear you.’ He was sobbing so hard he could barely speak.
‘I’ll go and arrange it.’ Paul gripped his arm hard. The pain of it was comforting. ‘Do you want to come with me?’
Alex shook his head. He had to stay with Chrissy in case she was frightened.
When Paul returned he found Alex sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed where Chrissy lay. His brother seemed to have retreated into a deep and unreachable place.
‘I think it would be best if she goes to the church tonight. The flight leaves tomorrow morning.’
Alex appeared not to have heard him. But, two hours later, when they came to take her away, two dispassionate men who spoke softly and moved too quickly, the haste with which they were prepared to take her out of his life shocked Alex out of his silence. ‘No!’ he yelled.
‘It’s better this way.’ Paul tried to lead him out of the room.
‘No. She’s not going anywhere. Not tonight.’
The men looked at Paul for guidance. Paul looked into Alex’s eyes and saw the desperate, lonely pain and waved the men away. ‘Come back tomorrow,’ he told them. So the men laid her gently in the coffin and went away, their own hearts aching for the silent despairing man whose eyes were wild with disbelief and pain.
It stood in the lounge for one night, this gleaming horrid box, for though he could not bear to send her to wait in a lonely church, neither could he stand the sight of it. She was in there. Lying on her back which he knew she hated, her hands folded on her breast, her eyes forever closed. Everyone who came to pay their last respects said, ‘But she looks lovely, as if she’s sleeping.’ He wanted to scream at them all, ‘She looks dead, nothing but dead, you fool,’ but he held his peace and said nothing, nodding dumbly. That night, though, when they had all gone away—all those caring, sympathetic eyes which filled him with rage, those sad grieving eyes which overwhelmed him with guilt, Paul’s loving, worried eyes which drenched him with pain—he sat on the floor and rested his head against her coffin.
‘Chrissy, I love you.’ But she had no words for him.
Restless, he prowled the house all night. Her book, open at page 145. Now she’d never know how it ended. Her reading glasses, resting on the open pages. Her shoes, kicked off and lying against each other under the bed. The clothes she was wearing that last day, thrown on the floor as, sick and frightened, she had crawled into bed. The indentation of her head on the pillow. A sandwich on the bedside table, stale and deserted, one tiny bite taken out, he could see the marks of her teeth. In the bathroom, some dirty clothes. He picked up her shirt and held it against his face and he could smell her. Red hair on her brush. ‘Oh Jesus, darling, why didn’t I know?’
And his heart broke again and again. But when they came for the coffin the next day he stood in the doorway and watched it go. ‘She’s not in there,’ he slurred to Paul, waving the bottle of scotch at him. ‘She’s fooled them all. She’s flying.’ And he laughed at his clever Chrissy who was flying without him and then he cried.
He heard the aeroplane that took her away. It flew directly over the house. He did not bother to look up. ‘Why didn’t I know?’ he cried to the doctor the next day who had come to see how he was doing.
‘She was very determined not to let you know. She had great strength. I’m surprised she managed to keep it from you, though. The last couple of months weren’t easy for her.’
‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘I could have helped her.’
‘Mr Theron,’ the doctor said, his voice full of sympathy, ‘your young lady knew that if you discovered the truth she could no longer pretend it wasn’t happening to her. This way, she gave herself many moments during the past few years where she could pretend she was well. I saw her a few months ago. She was talking about the job you’re doing for the Bushmen. She was full of enthusiasm and do you know what she told me? She said, “In a few years it will be good to see the scheme working.” She believed she would see it. These are the moments I’m talking about. If you had known she was ill she could not have deceived herself. Your grief would have been a constant reminder of the fact that she was dying. Don’t blame her.’
‘I don’t blame her,’ Alex said quietly. ‘I blame myself.’
‘You couldn’t have stopped it.’
‘No. But I could have helped.’
It all seemed unreal: the empty house loudly echoing his solitary footsteps as he paced and prowled in lonely despair but which he preferred to the intrusion of well-meaning voices; her clothes and toiletries which mocked and tortured so he hated them but he could not bring himself to throw them away.
Alex did the only thing he could think of. He went into the desert and found !Ka.
Be took one look at his face and she knew. ‘The fire in your girl has gone out.’
‘Yes,’ he cried in anguish. ‘How did you know?’
‘It was already growing cold when you brought her here. She did not know it then but the little arrows of sickness had already been brought by the spirits.’
!Ka tapped his arm. ‘We could not do the curing dance. She had a sickness we cannot make better.’
‘Yes,’ he said miserably. ‘And now she is gone.’
‘Look up !ebili. Can you see the backbone of the sky?’
But it was no use. !Ka’s wisdom could not help him this time and, three days later, feeling abandoned and alone in his pain, Alex returned to Gaborone and tried to throw himself into his work. But it was no use. The shell worked; he walked, talked, ate, drank and laughed but the impetus to carry on, the enthusiasm he had brought to his project, had gone. There were days when he was too hungover to get out of bed. Timon Setgoma had him removed from the scheme. Too much aid money had been spent on it to allow it to stumble along in the hands of a man who had lost his mind.
Three weeks after that terrible night when Chrissy left forever, a memorial service was held in Gaborone. Paul told him her parents wanted it. They wanted to meet her friends, get a feel for the last few years of her life. Marv and Pru came down for it, Pru heavy with child. She took charge of the arrangements for which Alex supposed he was grateful. He began to drink heavily. He didn’t understand why a service was being held at all. But he kept that thought to himself and watched himself circulate among friends and listened to them saying how sorry they were and heard himself make the right responses. He watched while he comforted her parents who appeared to be as bewildered as he.
‘Why didn’t you let us know she was sick?’ her father kept asking. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’ He missed the worried look which passed between Paul and Marv. He thought how well he was doing. He thought he’d given the kindest answer. Why hurt her parents? Why tell them she lived with her illness right under his nose and he didn’t see it?
They all turned out for the memorial service. A crowd who loved to laugh and have fun. A crowd too young and strong to ever die. A crowd struck dumb that one of them had traitorously fallen under the weight of illness. They were no help to Alex. They were too busy with their own shock. They patted him awkwardly and mumbled about him coming over for dinner and moved away as quickly as they could. Alex preferred their company. Paul, Marv and Pru, Chrissy’s parents, even Mum and Pa who had made the journey from Shakawe, they made him feel. And he didn’t want to feel.
Pa’s sympathy was unbearable. The pain he felt for his son made Alex’s pain worse.
‘Do you have to drink so much, Ali? It won’t help you know.’
Paul dragged their mother away as Alex shouted, ‘How the hell would you know?’ and felt sadistic pleasure at the sudden look of shock on her face.
He didn’t want to feel or think or do. He needed company but, as soon as he had company, he needed to be alone. Then he heard himself agreeing to return to the farm with Marv and Pru. He didn’t have the strength to say no. Besides, at night alone in the house, the pain was too intense. He was sick of thinking and remembering and crying. He was sick of prowling the rooms, touching her things. Without knowing it was happening, a watcher was born who lived inside his head and observed. This watcher, whose impartial eyes observed an Alex who had gone cold, who moved and spoke like the old Alex but who was dead inside, this watcher never judged, simply watched and listened.
While Alex helped Marv with the fences and nodded dumbly when Marv told him hard physical work would take his mind off his grief, the watcher listened. He was there watching when Pru went into labour and Alex drove a calm and matter-of-fact mother-to-be, and a father-to-be who had fallen apart at the seams, two hours to the hospital in Francistown. He—or the watcher, he didn’t know which—saw himself do all the right things. And then he listened when, three months later, he explained to Marv why he was leaving. He did that rather well, too. ‘I just have to get away. Leave Botswana for a while. I’ll be back.’ The voice was his, but the watcher knew if he didn’t leave, the happiness and love between Marv and Pru and their newly born baby son, Alexander James, would send him truly mad.
So he left. He left Botswana. Then he left Africa. Life became a blur. Too many hotels, too many bars, too many girls who left him empty inside and aching, too many bottles of scotch. Sometimes he could not remember which country he was in. They all looked the same. Europe at her quaint best. Doll’s houses lining canals and streets. Ducks in picturesque ponds. Bright green fields and hills dotted with fat black and white cows. Guttural voices and faces which smiled a welcome. Snow-capped mountains. Blazing blue Mediterranean seas. Grapevines. Fishing boats. Blue rivers. Brown rivers. And always, always the welcome oblivion of one amber liquid too many.
Sometimes he remembered snippets. Brawls mainly. He wanted to be left alone but they would not leave him alone. Young and free and convinced everyone was their friend, they badgered him with their conversations. Flat nasal Australians, broad twangy Americans, broken English’d Dutch or Germans or Spaniards or wherever they came from, they would not leave him alone. Mainly he went with the flow, allowed himself to be picked up by their lives and taken along for the ride. After a while, when they realised he had nothing of himself to give, they dropped him. On some occasions, when self-pity and pain were almost too great to bear, he lashed out at them. Verbally, he shouted abuse so he could watch their happy faces turn to bewilderment. Physically, he shoved them away roughly so he could fight them, lose himself in physical rather than emotional pain.
Once or twice the real Alex lifted his head and saw what had become of him. But grief hadn’t finished with him and the pain was too much so the real Alex slunk away and the watcher returned.
He worked sporadically. Odd jobs he could not recall asking to do. He picked grapes somewhere, probably Spain. He painted boats. Greece, he thought. He shovelled pig shit and had no idea where except it was icy cold and the people spoke a funny lilting language and they all had blond hair. Hard physical labour which had him sweating out last night’s whisky, only to top up again tonight. Mindless jobs which didn’t require him to think. And the watcher in his mind noticed how well he was doing.
One day, nearly three years later, for no reason he could think of, he stopped watching himself. He woke in a strange bed, in a strange flat, in a strange land and the first thing to hit him was he felt pain. Pain in his head. Pain from too much scotch. But he, Alex, was feeling it, not the mind who had watched Alex. It was real and it was inside his own head. He stirred in yellow and ivory striped sheets and wondered whose they were. He cursed when he found one eye was swollen shut. He ran his tongue over teeth which felt like cat fur.
Stumbling, he guessed his way to the bathroom. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. Bloodshot eyes, a couple of scars, hair which needed cutting, a face which needed shaving and one very black eye stared back. But he could see himself. He realised he hadn’t seen himself for a very long time. This time, for some reason, he did not retreat. This time he faced himself head-on. He ran cold water and splashed his face. His hands trembled. He could smell his own body odour.
The bathroom was feminine. He took a shower, a long hot shower. He found a razor and shaved, cutting himself several times. He wrapped a towel around his waist and wandered the flat. Nice view. Rolling hills and a castle. He wondered where he was, which country. He remembered he had been in France. When? How long ago? He went into the small kitchen and made himself coffee. The label was in English. He supposed he could always turn on the television and see what language it was in but he found it didn’t matter to him. Snow was falling outside. The flat was warm. Good. He hated the cold.
He went back to the bedroom and stared at the bed. Had he and the owner of the flat made love? No. Not made love. Fucked. He hadn’t made love to anyone since Chrissy died. Chrissy! He had blocked out her name. Chrissy! He could see her face. He waited for the darkness to cover his heart. Chrissy! But there was only light.
Had he fucked whoever owned the bed? He could not remember. He had just decided to get dressed and leave when he heard a key in the door, then light footsteps coming into the bedroom.
‘Good, you’re up. I bought you some clothes, you don’t appear to live anywhere.’
He stared. ‘Good Christ, Madison!’
She smiled grimly. ‘The very same.’
He shook his head to clear it. ‘Where am I?’
‘My flat.’
‘Yes but where?’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘I guess not.’
‘Stirling.’
‘Stirling? You mean Scotland Stirling? How’d I get here?’
She threw packages on the bed. ‘Bought you some clothes. Yours were disgusting. Get dressed, we’ll talk over breakfast.’
‘Did you get me a toothbrush?’
‘It’s in there somewhere.’
He listened to her accent, South African upper class English, not another like it in the world. It made him think of home. He wanted to ask how he came to be in her flat but she turned on her heel and left the room, closing the door behind her.
He dressed in clean new clothes. She had thought of everything. He found aspirin in her bathroom cupboard and swallowed three, gagging as they stuck in the back of his throat. Then he joined Madison in the kitchen.
‘I don’t remember anything.’
‘Hardy surprising. You’re a helluva mess.’
‘Yeah.’
She was doing something with oranges and a juice extractor. He could smell the tanginess of citrus. His mouth watered. When was the last time he wanted anything other than scotch?
‘Here.’ She handed him a full glass.
He drank it straight down. ‘Like more?’ She held out her hand for the glass.
‘Please.’ The last of the fur in his mouth had been washed away.
She turned back to the sink.
‘How did I get here?’
‘With great difficulty. You’re a dead weight.’
‘You carried me?’ No way, she was too small.
‘Practically.’
‘Did we . . . you know . . . did we do anything?’
‘Do me a favour!’
‘Where did you sleep then?’
‘On the sofa.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s all right. It’s quite comfortable, really.’ She handed him another glass of orange juice. ‘I found you in the street outside a bar. You’d been tossed out.’
Chrissy’s parents. He remembered. He had gone to see Chrissy’s parents. He couldn’t recall what happened but he knew he left their home with a feeling of deep sadness. The words ‘We blame you,’ rang in his head.
‘I guess I was a bit of a mess.’
She answered with a directness typical of people who came from a country like Botswana and had no time for coyness. ‘You were covered in vomit and blood. You hadn’t bathed in God knows how long. You had no coat, no jacket. You’d have frozen to death in the street.’
‘And you picked me up?’
‘Yes,’ she said crisply. ‘Much to the amusement of the occupants of the bar.’
He could imagine it. The small amount he was beginning to remember told him it hadn’t been a very nice place. ‘Thank you.’
‘Consider us even.’
He let that pass. ‘What are you doing here? Last I heard you were in Europe at finishing school.’
She grunted, half amused, half angry. ‘They threw me out.’
He laughed. ‘What’d you do, use the wrong knife?’
She laughed back. ‘A couple of us decided to abseil from the third floor.’
‘They threw you out for that?’
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘I hated the bloody place and I hated the bloody people. When the headmistress had me on the mat and told me that nice young ladies don’t climb out of windows, particularly in their nightdresses and especially not in full view of the townsfolk, I sort of let fly.’
‘Let fly?’ he was grinning. He felt his mouth widen and his spirits lift. The last time he felt this good was so long ago, too long ago.
‘Sort of.’ She smiled at him. ‘I . . . uh . . . well I kind of implied that she ate too much, was of the canine variety and she could stick her manners and rules someplace no-one had ever been.’
He laughed out loud, he could just imagine her exact words. It felt good to laugh. ‘So you stayed in Europe?’
‘No. I went home.’
‘But now you’re back.’
She avoided his eyes. ‘I felt like a break from Africa. Been working my way around Europe.’
She was hiding something, he could tell. But he didn’t care. He was too happy at being happy again. ‘I’ve been drinking my way around it.’
‘I heard what happened. I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah well. It was a long time ago.’ Suddenly that’s how it felt. The crushing weight of grief was lifting.
‘You must have loved her very much.’
‘I did.’ He did not want to talk to Madison about Chrissy.
She placed toast and Marmite in front of him and sat opposite. ‘Haven’t got anything else, sorry.’ The homely smell of toast and melting butter had his mouth watering again.
Her accent made him homesick. Suddenly he wanted to go home. He wanted to smell the bush again, feel the freedom of being the only person for miles, listen to the wind whispering through the sand dunes, talk the clicking language of the San. He wanted to taste the tangy tsamma melon and feel the juicy tenderness of Botswana beefsteak in his mouth. ‘I’m going back.’
‘How?’
‘I think I’ve got money there. I’ll send for some.’
‘You think?’ She was incredulous.
‘I might have already sent for it.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘I don’t remember much at all. It’s like I’ve been asleep.’ He frowned. ‘This is weird, Madison. To suddenly wake up and you’re here. It’s the strangest feeling.’
‘I guess it must be.’ Again, she was avoiding something.
‘I need to get home. I need to be myself again.’ He looked at her. ‘Do you understand what I mean?’
‘Yes.’ She passed him more hot toast and sat opposite him. ‘Anything’s better than what you’ve become.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ he said drily.
‘You’ll see changes. Gabs has grown a great deal.’ She nibbled a piece of toast. ‘Do you know the date?’
He was insulted. ‘I’m not that far gone, Madison. It’s January seventeenth, 1969.’
She pounced. ‘Eighteenth, actually. Saturday the eighteenth.’
‘Oh.’ He had finished the toast. ‘Feel like a walk?’
‘Where to?’
He stood up. ‘I’m still starving.’
She laughed at him. ‘You’re not so sick.’
‘Not any more. I’ve just woken up. It’s a nice feeling.’
She handed him some money. ‘I found this in your pocket. Nothing else. I burned your clothes by the way.’
He counted the notes: eighteen pounds. Enough for breakfast anyway. ‘I have to find a bank.’
‘It’s Saturday.’
‘Don’t they open Saturday in Scotland?’
‘In the mornings. It’s 1.15 in the afternoon. You’ll have to wait until Monday. You’re welcome to stay with me but I get the bed, you have the sofa.’
‘Fine with me.’
‘And don’t get any ideas. I’m helping because I know you.’
‘Madison?’
‘What?’
‘You’re full of shit.’
For a brief moment the watcher was back, wondering what she would do and not caring very much one way or another. But when she threw back her head and laughed, it was Alex who was relieved. The watcher was on the way out.
After the weekend she left him to himself, alone in her flat with his thoughts, while she went to work as a receptionist at a doctor’s surgery. He thought of Chrissy and the terrible ache in his heart was gone. Instead he found himself smiling at a memory. He thought of Marv and Pru and the baby Alexander James who had caused him such pain. He would no longer be a baby. He thought of Paul and of his parents. By mid-week his mind was clear. It was time to go back.
The bank arranged to ascertain his account balance in Gaborone. ‘Come back the day after tomorrow,’ the teller told him. ‘We’ll have an answer by then.’
That evening Madison smiled when she saw his determination to go home. ‘I miss it too. I’ll probably go home soon. Mummy is lonely.’
‘Why?’
‘My father died last year. He got caught up in a stampede at Kang.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Are you?’ Her smile was wry.
‘Yes.’ He found he was. ‘There’s no point in trying to hide the fact that I didn’t like him. I didn’t. You know what happened. I’m sorry he died like that and I’m sorry for the pain it would have caused you and your mother. That’s all.’
‘He always regretted what he did to you.’
‘You wanted to talk about it that night we . . .’ he left it hanging, wondering what she would say.
‘The night we made love.’ She smiled briefly. ‘It’s okay, Alex, you can say it.’
‘I wasn’t using you. I know you think I was but it wasn’t like that.’
She took two beers from the refrigerator, then put one back when he shook his head. ‘I know that now.’ She popped the can and drank straight from it. Lowering it she grinned at him. ‘I probably knew it then as well. I was just too bloody full of myself to admit it.’
Alex laughed. Then, ‘I still don’t want to talk about your father. There’s no point.’
She swigged her beer and he watched her hair. ‘I don’t either.’ She put her beer down. ‘We had a sort of falling out a few years back. I thought I knew him but . . . ,’ she shrugged. ‘Let’s drop it.’
He stared at her. ‘You’re different somehow.’
‘Older and wiser.’ She grinned. ‘Had to happen.’
‘Do Pat and the rest of them still work at your place?’
‘Artie has gone, he’s returned to Rhodesia. The rest are still there although I don’t know for how long. Mummy’s got the farm up for sale.’ She looked at him. ‘What will you do when you get back?’
‘Probably go back to Shakawe. I expect Pa could do with some help on the farm. He’s not getting any younger. Mum’s been trying to get me home for years.’
She nodded. ‘That Bushman scheme of yours is off the ground. It’s doing very well from what I gather.’
He was glad to hear it. ‘Anyone found diamonds yet near Jwaneng?’
‘Kel?’ She laughed. ‘He went broke.’
‘Good.’
‘Sent most of his family broke as well.’
‘Good.’
‘You’re a charming little dear, aren’t you?’
He shrugged. ‘I guess I don’t like bullies and cheats.’
She looked angry but said nothing.
‘That wasn’t a dig, Madison.’
‘You’ll never forgive Dad, will you?’
‘It’s over.’ He saw she was waiting to hear more. ‘You’re right, I’ll never forgive him. I’ve tried but I can’t.’
‘He was always sorry about it.’
Again, he changed the subject. He did not want to fight her. ‘What will you do when you get back?’
‘Try to get back my old job with Game Department. I liked that work.’ She seemed pleased to talk of something else.
He realised how hard it must have been for her, loving her father as she did, to learn of his darker side. One day they might be able to speak of it together. Not today. ‘Will you work in Gabs or Maun?’
‘Wherever they send me, I don’t mind.’
Alex discovered he didn’t mind where he went either. The desert, the Okavango, Gaborone, Francistown, he loved it all. The freedom of space, the open people. He looked out through her window: a wintry scene in Scotland. It was beautiful but it wasn’t for him.
The bank informed him he had 8,000 rand in his account in Gaborone. The teller seemed surprised he didn’t know that, with independence, Botswana had moved into the Rand Monetary Area. Alex remembered there had been talk of it. He did not bother to enlighten the man as to why he needed to have the figure converted into pounds.
‘Four thousand approximately,’ the teller said.
Four thousand. More than enough to fly home. More than enough to get him back to Shakawe. He had money in Francistown too, unless he’d spent it on alcohol.
He arranged a transfer of 5,000 Rand. The Botswana High Commission in London told him over the telephone that a passport to replace the one he had lost along the way would take two weeks to arrange. It seemed like a very long time.
His body showed the ravages of neglect. He felt white and flabby. He spent the two weeks trying to get into shape. He jogged for an hour every morning and evening. He swam daily at the local swimming baths. He ate plain food with lots of fruit and vegetables. He avoided alcohol completely.
Madison appeared happy enough for him to stay with her. They spent most evenings either talking or playing scrabble. She was easy to be with but he was wary of her. There was something she was not telling him. He tried once to find out what it was.
‘How come you have a place in Stirling?’ It seemed strange to him that she lived where Chrissy had lived.
She was making a salad and did not look up as she spoke. ‘Guess I had to end up somewhere. Stirling seemed as good a place as anywhere.’
‘Why not London or Edinburgh?’
‘I spent time in both.’ She was paying close attention to a tomato.
‘Madison, look at me.’
She looked up, eyes wary.
‘You’ve known pain too, haven’t you?’ he asked softly.
She bit her lip, went to say something, changed her mind, shrugged, then said, ‘I’ll tell you about it some time.’
He left it. He knew about pain.
Chrissy stayed at the forefront of his mind. She lay in his memories, warm and loving. There was sadness but it did not consume him. Instead, he invited the memories. Madison remarked on it one evening.
‘You’ve been talking about her a lot in the past few days.’
‘Do you mind?’
She shook her head. ‘Of course not. It’s good for you. You’ve bottled it up for so long. Grief has to be expressed.’
‘It’s no longer grief.’
‘Yes it is. But it’s only grief. The anger and guilt have passed.’
‘What are you? Some kind of shrink?’
She smiled. ‘When Dad died I felt he’d somehow betrayed Mummy and me. I was very angry about it and that made me feel guilty. I’ve been there.’
Yes she had. He put his hand across the table and took one of hers in it. ‘I’m sorry. I have been very self-absorbed, haven’t I?’
She removed her hand. ‘Very.’
‘Ouch!’
She put some scrabble pieces on the board. She had turned his word ZOO into ZOOLOGICAL and picked up a triple word score bonus. ‘Bitch!’
She laughed at him and he grinned back.
Madison drove him to Glasgow airport. She hugged him goodbye and said, ‘Go well, Alex Theron.’
‘Stay well, Madison Carter.’
It was an old African greeting and farewell and it made both of them friends. So he kissed her cheek.
He changed terminals at Heathrow and returned to Johannesburg in a bright orange and white Boeing 707 with a flying springbok on the tail. Air Botswana then took him to the land of his birth in a blue, black and white DC3 which shook and rattled but did nothing to stop the rising tide of feeling as he stared down at the barren brown land beneath him. The cluster of low buildings which did for an airport terminal at Gaborone never looked better.
He stepped out of the aeroplane and breathed in the heat and dust of Africa. He looked out across the flat-topped acacia trees to the hills near Kgale Mission. He took in the evidence of new building, sprawling outwards, the ever-increasing suburbia of Gaborone. The braying of a donkey. The greeting ‘duméla rra. A o sa tsogile sentlé?’ The low fence running up to the terminal. Paul just the other side. He was home. He was home. He was home.
Paul looked tanned and slim and healthy. Next to him, despite exercise and plain food, Alex still felt white and flabby.
‘I’m taking a month off work,’ Paul said, delighted to see Alex. ‘We’ll go home. Mum and Pa will love it—both of us there together.’
Paul lived in the newly established Extension 11. Alex was glad he did not live in The Village. He did not want to see the old house. Gaborone, as Madison had warned, had changed and grown. New streets, new houses, a shopping mall. ‘Expats are pouring in,’ Paul explained. ‘There’s an estimated 20,000 and it’s growing every day. This is a boom town.’
‘How about Francistown?’ Alex didn’t much fancy the idea of a boom town.
‘Hasn’t changed. Sleepy as hell.’
‘Good.’
Paul had a swimming pool. Alex spent the next few days relaxing around it, trying to get some colour back into his winter white body.
They headed north at the weekend in Alex’s Land Rover which Paul had kept in his garage. A couple of suitcases and Paul’s dog, Ralph. They called in and saw Marv and Pru. Marv had put on weight and patted his girth self-consciously. ‘She feeds me too well,’ he said, his arm around Pru.
Pru was expecting their third child. ‘One every two years,’ she said, ‘that’s the ticket.’
Alexander James, or ‘AJ’ as he was called, was a shy three-year-old. His sister, Christine Priscilla, a chubby one-year-old baby.
The farm was doing well. Marv had extended their house as the babies came. ‘Can’t keep up with them,’ he complained happily. He proudly showed them around. The original rectangle had been extended at both ends so the house was now U-shaped, with scaffolding and trusses where a further extension was planned. Marv seemed to be in his element; his farm was flourishing, as a father, he was a natural. With AJ, he was stern but fair and had a lot of time to play games or read to the youngster. With the baby Christine, he was an unashamed bumbling pushover. She had him around her little finger and he knew it. Disciplining this little dimpled charmer was left to Pru. Alex immediately referred to her as Chrissy and, after an awkward silence, everyone else did the same.
Marv and Pru hadn’t changed. They were as in love now as they had been when they married. Their mirth bubbled out at the slightest thing. They touched each other constantly and the love on their faces when they looked at each other, or at their children, left Alex feeling mellow and gentle. He was glad of that. He had been afraid of jealousy.
They spent three days with Marv and Pru. The dog, Ralph, befriended Alexander James to such an extent that Paul left him with the boy. ‘Bloody traitor,’ he muttered, as they drove off while Ralph stood next to AJ with his tail wagging madly. ‘To think I rescued him from death row.’
‘Dog’s gotta do what a dog’s gotta do,’ Alex chanted, feeling relaxed and happy.
Paul was right. Francistown hadn’t changed much. Aunty Dorie insisted they spend a night with her and produced enough food to feed a small army. ‘Your mum’s real sick,’ she told them. ‘She’ll be glad to see you both.’
Paul admitted the next day that he hadn’t been home for several years. ‘Just got caught up with things.’
‘Makes you feel guilty, doesn’t it?’
Paul sighed. ‘Yeah. If it were only Pa then. . .’ He let it hang in the air. Both knew they would go home more often if only their mother were not so strange.
‘Does she go on at you about coming home and helping Pa?’
‘No.’ Paul glanced at him. ‘I have a profession. She saves that for you.’
‘You know all that stuff about our having black blood?’
Paul laughed. ‘Only a South African could get hung up about black blood. It’s ridiculous. Look at you—blond, blue-eyed—any black blood in us is long gone.’
‘But it’s the key to it. That’s why she’s like that.’
‘She went to the Kirk every week to listen to the Dominie yelling fire and brimstone about the inferior blacks. She grew up with it.’
‘If Pa had stamped on it early . . .’ It was the only time in his life he felt critical of his father.
‘If Mum told Pa to jump in a fire he’d do it, you know that.’
Alex grimaced. ‘Sad isn’t it? When I get married I’ll make damned sure my wife and I are on the same wavelength.’
‘Yeah,’ Paul agreed. ‘Me too.’
Maun was still the same except safari lodges were springing up to the east of town. ‘It’s big business now. Brings a lot of foreign exchange into the country. The Delta is becoming a great tourist attraction.’ Paul’s job with the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning was diverse. He had just completed a feasibility study on the financial benefits of tourism and professional hunting if they were promoted more vigorously.
‘I’ve recommended that the government spend rather more than they’re doing now. The Okavango has to be Botswana’s best kept secret. It needs more promotion.’
‘What about the ecology of the place? Can the swamps handle it?’
‘Ecologists are swarming all over the swamps.’ Paul grinned. ‘One lot suggested dredging the river. Another guy is studying blind worms. Someone wants to cut down the trees along the river, someone else wants to plant more. One poor bastard lost a leg trying to prove that crocodiles were not aggressive. It’s mayhem.’
‘So what will happen?’ They were driving along the Panhandle, along the road they both hated so much as schoolboys. Alex watched the scenery, not wanting it to change so much as a leaf.
‘What will happen is what usually happens. Nothing.’ Paul grinned again. ‘Even the tsetse stays.’
‘Why?’
Alex well remembered this dreaded fly which thrives in the southern Okavango. It has a bite as painful as a horse fly and carries the disease known as sleeping sickness in man or rinderpest in animals. Hosted, with little to no adverse effect, by warthog, buffalo, bushbuck, kudu and others, the tsetse is deadly to cattle and can also prove fatal to man. For years attempts to eradicate the fly were made. When it was discovered that it could not live in temperatures over 40°C large areas of bush were cleared, giving the fly nowhere to shelter. The tsetse moved on. Fences were built to contain the host wildlife and huge belts of animals were deliberately wiped out. The fly population decreased significantly. DDT and Dieldrin were sprayed on the large trees favoured as the tsetse fly’s resting places. Total eradication became a real possibility. The cattlemen wanted the fly gone. The Okavango was the only place of permanent surface water in the entire country. Why would Paul recommend a halt to the eradication program?
‘Money, my friend. Or, to be more specific, foreign exchange. Believe it or not, the wildlife has more potential for foreign exchange than the beef industry ever could. If we get rid of the tsetse, cattle will come back. If that happens, farmers will want to fence their properties. The wildlife will either move on or, worse, die of starvation. So, while the government has the know-how to get rid of the tsetse, they’re not doing it.’
Paul cursed as he swerved to avoid a pothole. ‘Oh sure,’ he continued, having shaken the Land Rover to the point where an array of items had fallen off the back seat, ‘the government wants to keep everybody happy. So they spray regularly and keep talking about how tsetse numbers are reducing. But we now have the means to completely eradicate them. Endosulphan. Sprayed every twenty-one days, after six applications the fly density has been reduced by 99.9 per cent. But we sure as hell aren’t telling the farmers.’ He glanced at Alex. ‘The wonderful world of economics,’ he laughed. ‘Wars, disease, politics, you name it. Any man-made or natural disaster you care to mention, and I include politicians deliberately. They’re all controlled by the bottom line.’
‘That’s kind of cynical,’ Alex said.
‘Show me an economist and I’ll show you a cynic.’ Paul raised both hands and the Land Rover headed towards the bush. ‘What’s even more depressing,’ he went on, grabbing the steering wheel, ‘is the hidden agenda. We call it number crunching. More often than not the bottom line is given to us before we start a feasibility study. In other words, we get a brief like, “Do the study, show us the numbers, but get them to say what we want them to say”. To hell with the truth. Profit is truth.’
Alex cocked his head. ‘Enjoy your work, do you?’
Paul grinned and raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s a living.’
They stopped in Shakawe and picked up supplies. Their parents, not knowing they were coming, would need the extra food. Pig Face was still there. He was stacking tins of baked beans on the shelves and nearly jumped out of his skin when Alex came up behind him quietly and said ‘Boo’.
The road to the farm was more rutted than they remembered. ‘Jesus, you’d think they’d grade it once in a while,’ Paul said, as they bottomed again on the high ridge of sand in the centre.
‘For all the traffic you mean?’
Paul laughed. ‘Must be at least one vehicle a week on it.’
The farmhouse brought a lump to his throat. But not as big a lump as when he saw Pa sitting on the verandah in his favourite chair smoking his pipe. Pa rose stiffly and stared at them. ‘Pets,’ he called suddenly, excitement making his voice high. ‘Pets, come and see. The boys are home.’
Alex jumped the garden gate. His mother ran out of the front door and down the steps. He embraced her and his father together, then stood back while Paul did the same. They all had tears in their eyes. ‘Praise the Lord, you’re home.’
His eyes met Paul’s over their parents’ heads. She hadn’t changed.
Pa was grinning like a fool. ‘Welcome home, welcome,’ he kept saying.
‘How long can you stay?’ Mum asked.
Alex looked at her. She had lost some weight and the lines around her eyes and mouth were deeper. ‘Paul’s got a couple of weeks,’ he told her. ‘I thought I’d stay on for a while.’
‘Oh, Ali. Thank God, thank you Lord.’ He folded her into his arms. Over her head he saw Pa brush tears away from his eyes.
‘It’s the right thing to do,’ he thought.
They all sat on the verandah talking. Pa quietly happy, Mum bubbling with joy. Her conversation was still peppered with praise and prayer but Alex realised after half an hour that she had not actually quoted from the Bible once. She seemed more content somehow.
He noticed some attempt had been made to start a garden and commented.
‘Mum did that, didn’t you, Pets?’
‘We had a lovely garden once,’ Mum said wistfully. ‘We never had enough rain though. Everything died eventually.’
Alex could not remember a garden. A few bougainvillea struggling to grow against the fence and a line of frangipani at the back where the water from the house drained was all.
‘We’ve got a new well,’ Pa said. ‘It gives us all the water we need.’
‘The good Lord provides.’ Mum rose. ‘I’ll go and see to dinner.’
‘Is Mum well?’ Paul asked once she had gone.
Pa tapped his pipe on his shoe. ‘No,’ he said sadly. ‘She’s got something wrong with her heart.’
‘Pa,’ Alex said. ‘Should you be living way out here? Why not move to a town? Then at least you’re close to a doctor.’
Pa stared out at the Tsodilo Hills. ‘Mum won’t hear of it,’ he said finally.
‘She seems . . . better. Know what I mean, Pa?’ Alex wasn’t sure how much his father would say.
‘Better?’ Pa smiled sadly. ‘In a way I suppose she is. She’s made peace with her God. Now she’s just waiting for the call. You boys . . . well, make the most of your stay.’
Sobered by his words, both Alex and Paul went out of their way to listen to her, praise the food and answer her questions. It was too late for either of them to love her unconditionally but they loved her enough to go out of their way for her.
She seemed to be calmed by their interest. But Alex felt something was not quite right. In her calmness there was an eerie emptiness.
After dinner she asked them both to join her in the lounge. Expecting a Bible reading, they joined her with some reluctance. Pa, as usual, had gone onto the verandah to smoke his pipe.
‘I have something to tell you both,’ she said, once they were settled. Her eyes glinted strangely although she was smiling. ‘Your father is trying to kill me.’
In the silence which followed only the clock on the mantelpiece could be heard.
‘Mum . . .’ Paul said uneasily.
She held up her hand. ‘I know you find it hard to believe. He’s an evil, evil man. He’s black you see. Black men are not like us.’
Alex sat stunned. What he’d taken as contentment earlier was insanity. His mother was totally mad. And like many unhinged people, she was able to conceal her affliction until suddenly, wham, she hit you with it right between the eyes.
She was crying. Neither Alex nor Paul knew what to do. They held her until her sobs subsided. When she looked up, her insanity was gone. She smiled as though nothing had taken place. ‘I’m going to sit here and read my Bible for a while. I’ll join you later.’
Shaken, they went outside. Their father, from the darkness, said quietly, ‘Well boys, now you know.’ Then sensed, rather than heard, that Danie Theron was crying like a little kid.
Two days later, as she worked in the kitchen, Peta Theron finally found her peace. They heard a crash and a scream from the servant and had run to investigate.
‘Her heart, her heart.’ Pa rushed to her side. ‘It’s her heart. Pets. Pets, darling.’
Paul picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. He lay her on the bed. Her face had gone grey.
‘I’ll call the doctor,’ Pa said, wringing his hands. ‘You hang on there, Pets, the doctor is coming.’
‘I’ll call him.’ Alex could see it was no use. ‘You stay with Mum.’
The doctor was busy in his bush clinic some ten miles the other side of Shakawe and his wife was unable to reach him.
It took him nearly four hours to arrive. By the time he did, Mum had been dead for three and a half hours.
Paul went back to Gaborone two weeks later. Alex and Pa settled into a comfortable routine, Alex taking on the harder tasks, Pa content to supervise or assist. They didn’t talk much. Pa had long ago got used to sitting by himself on the verandah while Mum read her Bible. Alex had his own thoughts to occupy his mind. The days turned into weeks. The weeks into months.
He and Pa repaired fences, dipped cattle, dug a new dam, fixed the verandah roof, drove some cattle into South West Africa and built new water troughs. Before he knew it, he had been on the farm eighteen months. His body responded to the hard work. He became fit and slim and brown and strong. And after that time, he knew he had to get away.
‘Farm’s looking good, son. I couldn’t have done it alone.’ Pa knew. Pa always knew.
‘I’ve enjoyed working with you, Pa.’
‘I’ve enjoyed having you here, Alex. But Shakawe is not for you, I know that. When are you leaving?’
‘You don’t mind?’
Pa smiled, a slow, sad kind of smile. ‘Of course I mind. A man likes to have his sons around him. But I’d mind even more if I felt you were staying on just to please me.’
Good old Pa. Poor old Pa. All alone now, with his pipe. At least Mum had been company of sorts. ‘I’ll stay until the new calves are born, help you with that.’
‘Thanks, son.’
‘Pa?’
‘No, son, I won’t sell.’
‘Okay. Just a thought.’
Pa, standing at the gate wearing his old clothes and his old hat, puffing on his old pipe, waving his old arm goodbye, his Pa who had once been fit and strong, his Pa who the young Alex wanted to be like, his old Pa. Now he was old and alone. It was the saddest thing he’d ever seen.