Halt, make Induna stand for several seconds, tell him he’s a good darling. Don’t look at the gate.
I love you, Indie. You’re so willing and you always give me your all. So I wanted to add a third jump to the grid for you to do, but not now. Not now I’m all flustered and self-conscious, because I’ll mess something up for sure. I’ll make an idiot of myself. In front of him.
Okay, just walk on and slip the reins. I do look at the gate, although I’m still telling myself not to. Can’t resist it. He’s watching me, caressing High Time’s nose as she stands with her chin on his shoulder. One of us is going to have to say something.
“Do you want to use the ménage? I’ve finished. He’s going well. I’ll come back and dismantle the jumps for you.”
My voice sounds well-controlled, which isn’t how I feel. I want to disappear, show off and ask his opinion of my beautiful pony all at the same time, but I know I won’t do any of these things.
He yanks the gate bolt with a screech of metal on metal and says, “Okay. It’s all right. Leave them, thanks. I’ll use them too,” from behind his impenetrable mask.
Dismounting, I ask, “How’s Hightie?”
There was no need to ask that question. I’m getting like my mother, just saying things for the sake of it now. I run up the stirrups, watch him out of the corner of my eye.
“Oh fine.” He swings into the saddle. Mounting in the conventional way, but with an agility that’s almost liquid.
As conversations with Nathan tend to have abrupt endings, I’m prepared to let it go at that and cluck my tongue to encourage Induna to follow me to the gate, but this time he hasn’t finished.
“I’m really getting too big for her now. Uncle Charles has bought me a new horse. He’s coming next month.”
That pricks up my ears. I turn back to face him, causing Induna to check his stride and eye me expectantly. Nathan is tightening the girth, one leg hitched up over the front of the saddle. Without looking at me, he tells me that the horse is a six-year-old gelding and that after a tricky start he’s rapidly gaining dressage points and has recently won a C Grade jumping class.
“What’s his name?” I ask, wondering, have I heard of him?
“Oh something complex and ridiculous as usual,” he replies dismissively. “It’s Red Lane whatsit-whatsit-whatsit. Er, Red Lane Stud’s Garden Party. Bloody silly name.”
With a slight movement from his seat and hands he persuades High Time to drop softly onto the bit and shift into a perfect square halt. He’s watching her ears, which are turned slightly back towards him and it’s one of those rare moments when his mask dissolves. All I can see in his face is, undeniably, love.
Then it’s gone and he looks over at me, making me flick my fascinated eyes away and pretend I’m not really that interested.
“I shall call him Bravo.”
That’s so cool. I should tell him. Flick back again.
“Perfect! Much better.”
It’s lame, but the almost-smile tweaks his lips for a second. He doesn’t reply. He just gives High Time the minutest of squeezes and walks her onto the track.
The temperature’s soaring now it’s nearing lunchtime. I’ve got some serious hunger pangs that are telling me I had no breakfast.And I need a shower. Indie’s rubbing his muzzle up and down my back, pushing me against the gate and through it so now I’ll have greenish horse-slobber streaks on my T-shirt. Nathan will see them, but hey, he must empathise with that. If he even notices me go.
I must tell George to oil this bolt.
*
Funny how I’d never even heard of a rice salad before Moira asked me if I’d ever made one.
Mum’s salads consist of paper-thin slivers of tomato and cucumber hidden in piles of Cos lettuce, unvarying and boring as hell. Everyone else’s mother is capable of producing multi-coloured and multi-textured concoctions containing interesting things. Potatoes and eggs, capsicums, fruit, pasta, seeds, nuts, an endless variety of tasty dressings and, unbelievably, bacon chunks. Take Moira’s recipe here, with cooked brown rice, spring onions, walnuts, pine nuts, celery, apple and avocado slices, all tossed in walnut oil and vinaigrette. The only purpose the beastly tomatoes serve is as a garnish. Presumably Charles brought the walnut oil back from Jo’burg last month. I didn’t like to ask.
She thinks I should write out the recipe and take it home to Mum, but I know all I’ll get will be the usual excuse that it’s no good her buying all that stuff and then finding she doesn’t like it. No sense of adventure.
It tastes amazing, even if I say so myself. I use the spoon to smooth over the dent I’ve made, pause and munch and stare out of the window in front of me. The back garden’s so green, lush and glowing under a mild March sun and the rockery’s overflowing with leafy plants that only appear at this time of year. It’s how I imagine the Hanging Gardens of Babylon must have looked. I picture that every time we climb up there to sit on the Lion Rock and drink orange juice and eat Amai’s delectable shortbread and talk. It’ll still be too hot up there today. Best in winter, when it’s the warmest place after the sun has slid around towards the north, leaving the front garden in shadow.
I swallow my mouthful and turn to Gill.
“Nathan told me he’s getting a new horse. Sounds lovely.”
Her eyebrows shoot upwards. “He told you that, did he? Well, well, well. He’s not said much about it. Yes, that’s right. It’s got quite a few issues but I’m sure he can do something with it. Bloody nice horse. It’s a belated birthday present and also Daddy’s incentive to try and get him to work hard for his O Levels this year, and to be honest he’s been a little miffed that Nathan hasn’t been displaying much in the way of enthusiasm. Well, nothing new that he keeps himself to himself I guess. Typical going-it-alone. Probably working out a training regime though, if I know him.”
“Nathan’s birthday was in January, yeah? What date? He never has a party, does he?”
“No. Not interested and the folks gave up trying. It was on the fifteenth. Turned sixteen this year. I can’t believe it – him doing O Levels already. And getting his driving licence.”
She leans her left hip against the edge of the worktop and folds her arms, staring through the window into the garden. “God how the years fly by. He’s not had the easiest time as you know and getting him to take an interest in anything he does, not just birthdays, has been hit and miss. Got no self esteem, but maybe at the back of his mind somewhere he’s still the same kid he was before. One that still respects himself after all. I’d like to think he’ll go on and get his M Levels next year too before he has to go into the army. At least then he’s set up for getting a good job. Listen to me, Tessa! I sound like I’m his mother. He’ll end up working in Dad’s company I’m sure.”
“He honestly did sound like he was pleased to be getting his new horse. At least I thought so.”
She’s moved on though, shifted to another track. She snaps her middle finger and thumb together in my direction.
“Hey, you know I was talking ages ago about enrolling on a British Horse Society course in England? Well, I got a reply from a training yard this morning. They’ve granted me a place! I’m going over in three months’ time. Just three months! It sounds super, Tess. It’s at a BHS approved riding school in Surrey and I’ll be a student there, a live-in student, and I’ll get paid for doing work in the yard alongside my studies. I’ll get to compete on their horses and I’ll be over there for just over a year.”
She’s leaning on the worktop now, propped on her elbows, chin on her clasped hands. Her eyes are dancing right in front of me.
I’d forgotten all about that. Assumed she had too. For her, this is my cue to get all enthusiastic, excited to find out more, but the world, seconds ago normal and sunny and horsey and congenial, has fallen flat on its face, sending my belly sliding around with that same sense of disquiet I discovered when she first told me. The opportunities she’ll get overseas could, for all I know, be so good as to convince her to stay in England for ever.
And this winter we won’t be sitting together on the Lion Rock drinking juice and eating shortbread and swapping stories, will we? She’ll be there and I’ll be here. I might never see her again. And not just her. In virtually the same breath she’s tossed me two feel-good destroyers with no notion of what she’s done. It’s not just her who will be gone from this, my second home. Nathan’s fast approaching the end of his school career. He’ll go too. The dreaded call-up.
A chilling mixture of emotions.
“But soldiers are always, like, grown men,” I protest, aloud, unintentionally.
“What?” She cocks her head on one side, smiling, unable to follow my train of thought.
I flick a hand in the air to fan away the last few minutes like braai smoke, search for the necessary words and fail to find them.
“Nothing.”
At least try to sound enthusiastic, Tessa. Ask a few questions. Will she meet any of the famous riders we follow in the magazines – Harvey Smith, David Broome, Lucinda Prior-Palmer? Will Lucinda know who she is? Will she go fox hunting?
She laughs, tells me she doubts it, says no, they’ll never have heard of Gill Owen from Darkest Africa. And yes, she possibly will end up doing some hunting.
But I’m not paying much attention to her answers. I’ve gone back in time to some day last year and a conversation we had in this very kitchen, mentally scrolling through the names of some of the boys in my own year at school as though they’re credits on the cinema screen; Timothy Dunn, Alan Marchwood, Richard Hall, Mark Hainsworth, Leon Tanner, Mike Groenewald. Seeing Timothy, wanting his piece of the action, his chance to fight. And, maybe his chance to die and get his name on the Honour Roll. Has he thought about that?
Isn’t it better to just stay a kid? Peter Pan wanted to. I do. But they won’t let us. It’s no wonder the boys are already thinking of getting out of school. We’re barely three months into the first year of senior school and they’ve started us on special lessons about how to study for and pass public exams and next term Mrs Parks says she’ll be giving us career advice sessions. Career advice? We’ve only just started on this path and they’re prepping us for what’s going to happen at the end. Like, this is it guys – you can’t be kids anymore.
It’s a bit of a shame my last memory of junior school is of that interminable Speech Night back in December. They got the name right okay. Sitting on a hard chair in a hot, stuffy hall all evening while Mr Westfield rambled on and on about how well we’d all done and how much the cake sales and the jumble sales raised and what the money’d been used for and how our teams won this and that and, gosh, we’d got two new Governors in one year and then those two Governors followed suit and made more ramblings about… what? I haven’t a clue. I’d stopped listening by then. The whole evening was, literally, one monumental pain in the nether regions.
Then the prize-giving. We were right at the end of course, us Standard Fives. Any sense of pride I might’ve had about winning awards had long gone by the time I got to be passed across the stage from hand to hand, from Mr Westfield to a Mr Thingy with a pompous goatee beard and then to a Mrs Something-hyphen-Something Else with a plum in her mouth.
Like the scrolling names, I’m watching memories of the evening rolling across my mental vision. Jess, dropping an elegant curtsey to the Headmaster as he placed the sash over her head and making the audience laugh, such a long way from the shy, timid girl who cried in the toilets when bullies like Lauren and Karen teased her about her mouth brace and her glasses. Jess, with her hands full of certificates and tokens and badges, collecting the First Prize for Academic Achievement for the third year in a row and the School Colours for swimming and diving. My Rosie, bouncing onto the stage to receive the Most Improved Tennis Trophy, vivacious and vibrant, her unruly dark hair trapped into two curly bunches by strong elastic and wide ribbons. Monty Papadopoulos, tripping on the top step and ending up on his knees and going so bright red he looked like one of the tomatoes on my salad. Mum, watching me exiting stage left, dabbing at her eyes with a square of pink tissue.
I guess she’s got issues about this growing up thing too, hey? Probably why she was acting so emotional. She might have also been seeing a string of images running through her head in double-time, like an old movie. Her first baby, then me as a toddler, then a second baby, then growing children turning into gawky teenagers. Flashes of me and Rosie, her and Dad, living our lives. Her, busy raising us and us busy being us. All mothers must do this, surely, and wonder what on earth their kids are going to come up with next, or achieve in five years’ time. Was she also thinking, though, that added into this recipe for nostalgia and pride and speculation is the fact that the future of this country seems to be sliding into a wobbling dive? That any hopes she has for a secure life for us are on shaky ground?
Was it last week, when Moira reminded me about the curfew? Must have been last Sunday, when I took Indie for that long hack and got back here just after six. She’s never, ever, told me off for anything before. I need to get used to remembering that the limits of the curfew area are only five kays away, because that’s nothing to me and Indie.
It’s yet another thing that’s changing our lives, like how we can’t go to Beira for holidays anymore. Jess’s been to there every year for the last five. Beaches, seafood, all the stuff we don’t have here, and cheaper than South Africa, but now the border’s closed. Charles reckons we’ll never get those railway engines back and on top of that, South Africa’s now our only trade outlet. All our eggs in one basket, he says. Alone, cut off, condemned. Conducting cross-border raids on military camps in Mozambique and taking out civilians in the process isn’t helping our case, is it?
Dad says it’s too bad. All is fair in war.