Mummy tells me I day-dream too much. And maybe I do. I love it. I dream that I ride beautiful horses like Gill’s. I dream I’m in show-jumping competitions with her, I walk the course with her and I win lots of prizes like her. This all occurs in my version of Heaven. And now, maybe, my Heaven has appeared as a dot on the horizon.
We’ve driven past the place loads of times; me, Mum, Dad and Rosie. Sometimes in my day-dreams me and Gill come back here in a big lorry with our horses after a show, but that’s where the dream’s had to end because the gate is where my knowledge ends. Today I’m going to find out what’s inside. I’m going to find out what it might be like to live in a house like this, with stables and paddocks and all those horses. Heaven indeed.
And it was The Nowhere Boy, who came out of his Nowhere, wherever that is, to give me this invitation to Heaven.
I know full well he’s in Standard Five, so why did I never even think to wonder if he was in the class that did the Mushandike National Park week this year? But he is, and he was there at the exhibition in the Hall, and I nearly fell through the floor when he beckoned me to come over to him. He must’ve seen me long before I was aware of him. Seen me discovering his cool photos of the hippo and reading his tidy, very small handwriting claiming “Pics by Nathan Owen” and “Never, EVER get between a hippo and the water!” and then touching one of the photos with my finger, like I could make it 3D and sweep it round to see where the water was. And seen me standing there gawking at him like a complete numptie.
In the end he had to come over to me. He looked at me with that expressionless face and I’ve no idea exactly what he said to start. Was it something about the photos? I should’ve said he was good at taking pictures but I didn’t. I did wonder if I should say, Do you know how much we all hate this annual event? Even me who likes natural history and conservation and stuff, because all we get to look at is a bunch of leaf and flower arrangements, numerous drawings of poo, fuzzy photographs and boring essays and that crummy old papier-mâché model of the dam?
I very nearly asked, Did you see the baboon spider in Miss Foster’s bedroom and was it as massive as all the rumours claim? And I’d no sooner had this thought when he went, “I learned a lot about wild animals. Particularly spiders. I like spiders. Especially big, hairy ones.”
“Spiders?” I said, then “You didn’t…?” and he said, “Of course I didn’t. You know I don’t do pranks. Poor Miss Foster. The warden’s wife did that thing where they feed the traumatised victim gallons of hot, sweet tea. Do you reckon that works? I don’t. Mr Westfield says we’re not to talk about it anymore and he’s banned the whole story. Like he banned Puff the Magic Dragon.”
Mr Westfield. The gala. And I know he doesn’t do pranks?
Then he shrugged, like he was dismissing all these subjects: Mushandike, the gala, Puff, pranks and me.
“Look, I needed to speak to you because I’ve got a message for you from Gill. Do you want to come to our place sometime and try out some different ponies?”
I thought I’d misunderstood. I made idiotic noises.
“Gill? What? Come? She wants me to… Huh?”
He watched me do this, then as I was about to ask, “When?” he said, “Probably at a weekend. She’ll be at Turnpike tomorrow. Ask her then.”
Like the beginning of that conversation, I don’t remember the end. I do remember yelling at Jess and Jane and Rosie that I was going to ride at Makuti Park and them just staring at me like I’d gone mad. Jess stared past me to where I’d come from and remarked, “I don’t think I’ve seen that guy talking to anyone before. Why was he talking to you?”
Well, the result is that I’m here, about to go beyond these tall white gateposts. Into Heaven.
They each have a black wrought-iron lantern on top and a short, white, curved wing wall that tapers from about a metre in height at the column down to nearly nothing as it extends towards the road. Either side of these are the hedges – dark green hibiscus, with bright red flowers in summer – and grass verges for ever. Driving past, Daddy sometimes says he wants to have our verges mown so perfectly, but he only ever gets Elijah to slash them. These are like a smooth green carpet. A bowling green. Green. It’s winter. It hasn’t rained for a good while and everyone else’s grass has gone brown or blonde.
The lanterns light up at night even though they’re like miles from the house.
The driveway is black, like the road, with little gleaming stones embedded in it. I dismount and walk slowly, pushing my bike. On my left is another hibiscus hedge and behind it, about a hundred metres further on, the black and grey tiled roof of a house. On my right is a creosoted timber four-railed fence and a paddock. Three mares and three foals. Heaven.
Coming from behind the hedge are short, sharp clipping sounds and, standing on tiptoe, I can see a garden at least twice as big as ours. A gardener in blue overalls and a blue woollen hat is kneeling beside a flagstone path trimming the lawn edge with a pair of shears. The lawn is as smooth and green and beautiful as the verge outside.
The driveway curves to the left, out of sight, into infinity in my imagination. I mount my bike again to pedal round the bend, but almost immediately here’s a gate – matching the fence except that it’s got five rails – and the stable yard, right in front of me. The drive turns left again, very sharply, and ends at another gate, beyond which are two double garages and a parking area and the house.
Now I’m torn, don’t know which way to go, put my toes down on the ground. There’s a plopping and stamping sound; someone walking in rubber boots. A groom, in the yard, with a metal bucket in one hand and a headcollar in the other. The handle of the bucket squeaks a bit as he swings it around. He stops short when he sees me and says, “Hello?”
I jump off my bike and run it to the gate. “Oh, hello. I’m… I’m looking for Gill. Gill Owen?”
He comes towards me and unlatches the gate. He’s quite an old man, with a very small amount of beard, like salt, around his chin, and kind eyes. He’s smiling at me.
“She says you come, yes. Miss Gill is riding in the school. Go, round there.” He points to the end of one of the stable blocks. “Round the corner. She there. Come in.”
The buildings are white and the stable doors are dark blue and the concrete yard is pale grey and spotless apart from a few stalks of hay. Ten stables in all, five in each block, at right angles to each other. I push my bike down a paved path that’s marked all over with white scrapes from horseshoes, and on my left is a hedge, behind which are the garages I saw earlier.
There she is, in the white railed ménage. And although I’ve never seen First Foxtrot, Gill has described her to me so many times that I know it’s her. Deep, rich chestnut and two socks behind. So… heavenly. Heaven.
She hasn’t seen me yet; they’re down the far end. I lean my bike against the back wall of the stables, unstrap my velvet hat from the carrier and, looking down, am really pleased I polished my boots today. They’re going to get dusty now though. I suppose Gill will want me to stand in the middle and watch her ride.
She’s jumped off while I wasn’t watching and is leading First Foxtrot towards a gate to my right.
“Come on, then!” she calls, and she offers me the reins. “Let’s see how you ride a real horse.”
I’ve been riding for two and a half years and the sum of my experience comes to two ponies; my darling Fancy, who was so patient with Beginner-Me, and palomino Peaches, who is a bit livelier for Better-Me. Fancy really was quite small but I’ve got so much better at mounting that I can get on Peaches by myself from the ground. Now I’m staring up at Foxie’s saddle wondering how the hell I’m going to get up there. Did Gill say she was a pony or a horse? The seat is just about level with the top of my head so this isn’t going to work.
“Here.” She takes my hands and places them front and back of the saddle, goes, “Bend your left leg and I’ll boost you up. Ready? On three. One, two… three!” and I’m there, on top. I gather up the reins as she adjusts the stirrup leathers for me.
“Take her round the school.”
I nudge Foxie with my calves, uncertain as to how the horse will react. She sets off briskly, and instead of poking her nose out in front, putting a weight into my hands, like Peaches is apt to do, she drops it and the reins go slack. I shorten up again and her mouth’s like a feather on the end of them. She prances a couple of steps, and I feel like her spine is pushing up at me from under the saddle and it’s a sensation I could never have anticipated or even explained.
“Into the corners!” Gill calls. “Inside leg!” She’s laughing.
Everyone knows Goody Two Shoes Tessa’s dotty about horses. Now she knows she wants horses for life.
*
“Come and meet Mum and Dad,” she says.
We leave Foxie in a field behind the stables with two more of my new acquaintances, Silver Valley and Luna, and I follow Gill back across the yard towards the garden, but not before I’ve tripped over a root belonging to a jacaranda tree near the gate because I had my head over my shoulder watching the three mares wander off together, reminding myself of what this heaven is like. Now I’ve got dirty jodhpurs. I’m going to have to meet Gill’s parents in dirty jodhpurs. What an idiot.
The garden’s a bit lower than the stable yard so we have to go down five stone steps onto a path that’s covered in black macadam like the driveway. To the right, the lawn slopes down so the level difference is even greater and the bank that’s been formed between the ménage and the garden is steep and covered with rocks of all different sizes, all jumbled together but yet fitting perfectly with neighbours. There must be some good gaps between them though because those spiky-leaved plants can’t be clinging to nothing.
“Are those aloes?” I ask, and Gill says, “Yes, they are. Well, you know a lot about plants.”
Not really. I wouldn’t’ve known that last week, before I went to the Botanical Gardens with Jess and her folks, would I? I don’t tell Gill this.
I scuttle after her to catch up. Out of the corner of my right eye that big rock right on top looks just like a lion, crouching between two of the tallest aloes, with the two flatter rocks in front as its paws. Kind of like the Sphinx.
The lawn here is a little drier than in the front but it still has some green bits. On the left is a black-topped square, with a rotary washing line in the middle and then we’re at the house. Two steps up to a kitchen door that’s exactly like a stable door, the top half open and hooked back to the white-washed wall, and we’re in.
Well, Mummy was super-excited when we got our kitchen fitted out last year and still goes on about it to her friends (“So much nicer than having all those freestanding units”, “More cupboard space than I know what to do with”, “The wall units are such an advantage”, “So modern”) but believe me, she’d do somersaults if she saw this. It’s probably the size of our lounge, which is pretty big, and there are cupboards everywhere, both under the worktop and above it, on three walls out of four. Our kitchen cupboard doors are plain, smooth and pale green, but these are made wholly from decorative panels of dark wood with sculpted brass handles. I doubt even the wooden-looking strips round the edges of ours are real.
There’s no cooker. There must be a cooker, surely? I’m looking at the only wall with no cupboards, and there’s a breakfast bar, with four stools and a basket overflowing with apples, bananas and grapes, a glass fronted timber cabinet containing more wine bottles than I’ve ever seen in one place, then an open door into a hallway, then a fridge that’s big enough to hold all the ice in the Antarctic, then another door that’s closed.
I’ve been left behind, with all my gawping. I hop forward onto the golden tiled floor behind Gill, take in the double sink by the window, and that’s when I spot the glass-fronted ovens, a small one underneath a big one, in a panel between two wall cupboards, and nearby, in the middle of the worktop and under a tiled chimney-like structure, the electric rings that Mummy calls the stovetop. Wow.
“Iwe! Mirai!” It’s a woman’s voice, with a tone like a knife edge, and Gill twitches, falters, and I walk straight into her back. A black woman has silently opened the closed door and is standing before us clasping a red and white striped flour tin against her bosom. In her maid’s uniform of pink, green and blue floral fabric, she’s a large, walking flower garden.
“Why do you not wipe your feet? You making my floor dirty!”
Gill leaps backwards onto the thick reed mat, dragging me with her.
“Oh no. Didn’t. Of course. Sorry, Amai.”
I eye the woman while cowering behind Gill. She can’t be as angry as she sounds because she’s grinning from ear to ear. Gill’s rolling her eyes and shuffling her dusty boots back and forth on the mat so I do the same. The shuffling, that is.
“This kitchen is Amai’s domain. Heaven help those who don’t abide by the rules.”
As amai is Shona for ‘mother’ I take it they’re on pretty good terms, so I try a smile, hoping Amai will respond favourably. She does. She’s still grinning and chuckling. She takes one hand away from the tin and points at me. “Who is this mwana? She looks very scared. Come in, child.”
“This is Tessa, Amai,” Gill announces with a vague gesture in my direction. “She’s come to ride for me.”
It makes me sound like some sort of professional, and therefore a fraud, but Amai gives no indication of being impressed. She says, “Masikati, mwana. Ma swera se?” and I am suddenly aware that my knowledge of Shona is woeful.
Daddy says that Elijah needs to keep practising his English so there’s no need for me or Rosie to learn Shona. And Daddy would never, in a month of Sundays, take orders from Elijah to mind where he put his feet in the domain of the garden. Or think it was any other than his domain anyway.
“Hello, um, masikati.” I whisper the word because I’m not altogether sure I’ve got it right, and scuttle after Gill.
The vast house is silent. The hush is soaked into the thick pile wall to wall carpets and the luxurious drapes and soars up into the golden pine ceilings and into every corner. A square inner hallway, large enough to be a room in itself, offers me such tantalising views in several different directions – a dining room on the left with quite the biggest table I’ve ever seen, a living room directly ahead, and on the right an endless corridor. I start trying to count the rectangles of light that cross the carpeted passage from unseen rooms but Gill is talking to me.
“Aah… This way. Come. I bet they’re in the garden.”
This hallway is a picture gallery. The framed photographs lining the walls are, at a quick glance, mostly of horses and ponies. Makes sense. Gill is jumping them, racing them in gymkhanas, sitting on them and shaking hands while receiving a trophy, standing next to them wearing a winner’s sash. She’s in both black and white and in colour and at a variety of ages. My eyes are bouncing around like rubber balls trying to take them all in as rapidly as possible but I’m going to get left behind. Among the ponies I get snatches of German Shepherds and terriers and of adults, posed with the dogs and with Gill and… Nathan, I think. He’s always the only one not grinning at the photographer. He’s looking down at his feet, or off to one side, and in a few of them he’s actually turned to face away. Where a dog’s involved, he’s the one bending down or crouched, cuddling it, his face in its coat.
Gill’s already flitted through a wide spanning arch, down two steps into the sunken lounge and has vanished. Quick, one more glance around. Just one. This time I register that, here and there, the rider of the ponies – and occasionally of a horse that seems too big for him – is a boy. They’re mostly action shots of the pair flying over obstacles in the ménage out the back and in similar arenas I don’t recognise, although one looks like it could be Turnpike Equestrian Centre. That’s it – go.
The lounge wall opposite is not painted cream like all the others. It’s faced with rough bricks in varying hues from terracotta to pale pink to almost blue and has a central dark grey stone fireplace and chimney breast. The pine shelves on either side are filled with books. No, crammed with books. I have a sizeable bookcase in my bedroom, but this is a library.
Don’t, Tessa. Do not just head over there and start studying the titles. It’s rude.
Among the books are scattered several silver trophies and there’s a television set twice the size of ours in the corner.
Gill’s been waiting for me, there by the open French doors on the left. She gives me a quizzical grin, beckons and skips through the doors, flicking aside the fine white sun-filter curtain. Outside I can see a roofed patio, braaivleis area, the glinting water of a swimming pool and the emerald glow of the garden. A very slight breeze stirs the curtains and slides deliciously into the lounge. Gill turns to her left, smiles her enchanting smile and waves to someone who is out of sight. Then with feet together and chest thrust out, she holds the open palm of her left hand to me and declares, “This, Daddy, is my friend Tessa. I’ve told you about her. She’s just ridden Foxie in the school.”
“You’ve missed your vocation my love. You look a bit Shakespearian there, Gilly.”
The voice is deep, and rich. The sort of male voice you just want to keep listening to. I creep through the door and come face to face with Gill’s father.
He elbows himself into a sitting position on his lounger and lays his newspaper on his lap. His face is lined and golden brown and in deep contrast to his thatch of dark blonde hair. He’s stretched out at knee height, but he feels immensely tall because he’s wearing denim shorts and is barefoot and his browned legs are lean. There is something very familiar about his eyes when he creases them up to smile. It’s a few moments before it strikes me that he has Gill’s eyes. Or rather, she has his eyes.
“Well Tessa, what did you think of the little mare?” he asks and he sounds so genuinely pleased to see me that all my shyness evaporates. He wants to know my opinion, as if I’m an experienced rider. I am that professional Gill announced to Amai. I feel taller myself.
“Oh wonderful, thank you. She did everything I asked instantly and Gill even let me canter her.”
“My Gill’s told me you’re turning into a capable rider and she’s a good judge. I’m sure next time you come she’ll let you do even more. She could teach you a lot, that little horse.”
He looks at Gill.
“She could ride some of the others, too.”
Next time? Others?
A giant hand has squeezed me about the chest, leaving me short of breath. He’s just endowed my future with glorious prospects. Trouble is, I can’t come up with a single word. I just grin stupidly at him and all the words I can’t say come out as a crimson flush that makes my cheeks burn.
“Have a drink with us,” he suggests, casting aside the paper and swinging his elongated legs to the ground. “I don’t suppose your father would be too impressed if I gave you a Castle but you’re welcome to have a shandy or just lemonade or Coke. Or tonic water. Or cream soda. What would you like? I’m Charles, by the way.”
Upright, he towers over me. I squint up at him against the brightness of the afternoon sun and I want to be able to have a proper drink, like a beer shandy, but I’ve never had one before and can’t bring myself to say so. I ask for lemonade instead.
“Make that two, please Dad. Where’s Mum?”
Gill leaps down onto the lower braaivleis area and trots away across the grass towards the end of the long house. I’m left standing alone to absorb my surroundings, for her father has vanished indoors and I can hear glassware tinkling somewhere. The swimming pool is kidney shaped and is lined with pale cream glitterstone paving rather than the usual tiles. At the deep end the surround is raised into a small dais, lined with stone, and at the shallow end are some broad steps into the water and a rockery. A channel, carved into a flat stone at the top of the rockery, sends an arc of silvery water, glittering in the sun, splashing into the pool with a tinkling sound.
Gill reappears, accompanied by a willowy woman who walks like a ballerina, like she’s about to sweep into a curtsey and start to perform Swan Lake. She’s wearing a calf-length denim skirt that has some light green stains and some dark brown smears. Up close, she’s not quite as tall as she looks, but her fingers, brushing wisps of nut brown hair from her face, are really long and slender.
“Please excuse me,” she says, holding out her right hand. “I’m in gardening mode today and I can look better than this. And please, my name’s Moira. You don’t have to call me Mrs Owen, hey?”
She speaks with a hint of an Afrikaans accent. That’s right – Gill told me how her great-grandfather came up to Rhodesia with Cecil Rhodes. He was the one who shot a lion in self-defence, hunted elephant and fought the Matabele impi. I can’t remember anything I might have been told about my great grandfathers. I take the hand I’ve been offered.
Moira and Charles.
Mummy and Daddy’s friends are Aunty This or Uncle That, or Mr and Mrs Something-or-other, and I don’t think I’ve ever called an adult by a Christian name. It like the Owens want to be friends with me, Tessa, and not just be ‘Gill’s parents’ or Mr and Mrs Owen. I grow another inch.
Mrs Owen – Moira – excuses herself and goes back to her gardening. Gill and I perch on the edge of the patio with our lemonade while Charles sinks back onto the lounger and coerces me into talking about my family, riding lessons and school. He doesn’t ask me what I want to be when I grow up, like most adults do. Instead, he tells me he’s a civil engineering contractor. Well that’s a co-incidence. Dad’s a civil engineer.
“We won the Firle contract, by the way,” he says to Gill, who claps her hands and goes, “Woo-hoo!”
He turns back to me and swills his lager around in its glass to leave a shiny swathe of foam.
“So, you can tell your parents when you get home that you’ve met a man who builds sewage treatment works.”
I hide my smile in the cool, fizzy lemonade, feeling the bubbles tickling my nose as I take a gulp. Then some subconscious part of my brain pulls the words ‘parents’ and ‘get home’ out of his sentence and sounds an alarm.
Christ, what’s the time? What time did I say I’d be home? Four-thirty?
Wristwatch. Four twenty-five. Okay, panic.
There’s no way I’m going to jeopardise future visits to Makuti Park by getting home late. I drain my glass and scramble to my feet.
“I’ve got to go! My mother will kill me if I’m late.”
It sounds so rude.
I wave my wrist in Gill’s direction and point at the watch, not wanting to be ungracious but desperate to get away, not wanting to invite myself to come again but hoping someone else will.
“How about next weekend then?” she asks, and I could kiss her. She’s just kicked off her jodhpur boots and pulled her damp socks from her feet and is holding them as if she wants to get as far away from them as possible. She stands up.
“Give me your phone number. Here, come inside.”
A lifetime later, I’m mounting my bike on the run along the driveway and my feet have wings.