Right here, in the present, the scene is unchanged, the world seems unchanged. It’s the same road that stretches like a dark grey ribbon across our path, the same dry, brown grass under our horses’ hoofs, the same petrol station, banners and signs on the opposite side of the road, next to the same invitingly cool copse of trees we’ll ride into in a few minutes to escape the heat. I have the same horse under me, the familiar black mane to touch, the feel of the saddle under my seat and of the reins in my hands. We’re still standing here waiting for a suitable gap in the traffic.
And as for the future – well, the entire future has been altered, even though I still have to do my geography homework when I get back and swot for a maths test tomorrow.
All I did was ask her what she’s going to do when she’s finished her M Levels. I wanted to cheer her up. When Gill is quiet and won’t smile, she’s being bad-tempered. She’s worried about the exams, I know that, but I thought I could make her feel better by talking about the end of the exams and leaving school.
She’s speaking to me now and I haven’t heard a word.
“Tessa? Hello? There – the red car. After that one, yes?”
A red car flashes past and we trot over the road and past the service station. Induna shies at a swinging metal Coca Cola sign but I don’t react. Gill and Star Point are in front of us, heading into the path through the trees.
I only wanted to cheer her up when I asked her, “Will you teach riding? Start a riding school like Turnpike?”
For ever I’ve assumed that would be what she wanted to do. And of course I wanted that too, because I could ride at her school. In the future. That future was a good one – the best one.
When she said, “No. I don’t think so. I want to teach horses, not people. What I’d like to do is a little bit of breeding so that I can bring on the youngsters and sell them, and also take in livery horses to school for their owners. So then I could coach those people on their horses – you know, like part of the training programme?” I’d thought that was an all right future as well. She could coach me and Induna and I could help her exercise the other horses and her youngsters.
But then she changed that to an inconceivable future.
“I’ll have to be qualified to teach at all though, and I can’t get any instructor qualifications in this country. So guess what? Dad’s promised to send me over to his brother’s family in England so that I can take a British Horse Society instructor course. I’ll probably take a year out first though, after leaving school, and go over when I’m nineteen. Do the course, get some experience, you know?”
I don’t want to know. Go to England? I’ve got to try and put her off.
Even as I think this, I realise I can’t. She needs to go. She’ll go, and she’ll like it so much she’ll stay and never come back. Five kids in my class have left Rhodesia this year and I know they won’t be coming back.
Think. Try to remember why Dad reckons the UK is so awful and why we should be so pleased we live here. IRA bombs, rioting, strikes, Labour governments, drugs, pornography. I open my mouth to inform Gill of this line-up of political and social evils I know nothing about, and say, “England’s cold! Well, I’ve never been there but Daddy says it rains all the time.”
We drop to a walk. Gill sighs and twists her flaxen pony tail up off her neck with one hand, then tosses it aside and tugs at the brim of her riding hat as if she wants to lift it. Her forehead and fringe, like mine, will be disgustingly sweaty.
“On a day like today I could do with a little English cold. I’m sure it’s not that bad. Anyway, it’ll be exciting and I’ll get to ride some lovely horses. Hunters and warm bloods. We have very few of those here. Our competition horses are mostly Thoroughbreds off the track.”
She’s really turned into a grown-up now, talking of leaving school and going to study overseas. What happens when school is over? I can’t imagine life without school. A very creepy shiver slides through me and grips me and shakes me, and I’m not keen on this unsettled, standing on shifty ground, kind of feeling. I’ve dreamed up my future as I would like to see it so many times – always involving owning many talented show jumpers and a house and stable yard like Gill’s – but this is the first time I’ve tried to conjure up something real. Everything will change. Julie said Africa will change, but it’s not just Africa. I snatch a passing idea that might just keep things more or less as they are. Make a decision. Announce it aloud.
“I want to work with horses too. I could also do a course in England.”
She turns on me like she can’t believe I just said what I did.
“Don’t be silly, Tess. You’re so clever. More academic than me. It would be such a waste. You should do a job that will earn you lots of money.”
The ground’s shifting again. While I’m groping for an answer to that, she carries on as if it doesn’t matter. “Did Rosie have her tonsils out?”
Tonsils? Rosie? Oh, yes.
“Last week. She didn’t think she’d come out alive, but she did. She won’t stop boasting about how much ice cream the nurses in St Anne’s let her eat and then she only went and asked the surgeon to keep her tonsils in a bottle and show them to her after the operation.”
Gill closes her eyes and makes a face like she’s about to throw up. “Did he?”
“No. He promised, but then he said he’d had to throw them away.”
We’re nearly back at Makuti Park. When we left here just over an hour ago, the white gateposts and the driveway and the paddocks and the house and stables were as they’ve always been, as they always will be, and they’re still all in place, but now there’s something different about them. It’s an odd, through-the-mirror kind of view, as if they just might not be here for ever after all.
I don’t like it.