The grooms are back.
I dismount and start running up Encore’s stirrups. He’s watching me out of the corner of his left eye. He studies me a lot, especially when I’ve tied him to the baling twine on the ménage gate while I rearrange poles and jumps for him, like he’s curious about what I’m doing, hauling stuff around. Probably thinks I’m crazy dragging two jump poles across the school like a carthorse between the traces. Role reversal.
Induna would’ve stood there gazing into space, probably dreaming about acres of grass, but Encore watches me. I like this. I find myself waving to him and calling out a running commentary.
“Shall we put this cross pole here? What about if we set up a grid over here of trot poles that lead into a cross and then a nice little oxer?”
If the Karen Meltons and Lauren Collingwoods of this world could see me at it, they’d know they were right after all. I can hear them: “She actually talks to her horse like it’s a person – can you believe that?”
George approaches, holding Encore’s headcollar. He doesn’t look me in the eye.
“So Miss Tessa. We have done our votes and now we are here again. You didn’t need to go because you have voted already, yes?”
“Only my parents, George. Two weeks ago today. I’m not old enough to vote.”
“Ah, shame,” he says, shaking his head and tut-tutting. “Well Mr Owen said we could have the afternoon off but it only took us two hours. The queue was quite short. I went into the booth and I put my cross on…”
“Don’t tell me, George! You don’t have to tell anyone who you voted for, remember? Where’s Gill today?”
“Ah!” he grunts, with something approaching irritation in his tone. George is never irritated.
“She is neglecting her horses. She has gone visiting again, Miss Tessa. This man, Piet? Eish, but I think they are now very good friends.”
I can’t do anything but laugh at that pretend scowl.
“What’s the matter George? Don’t you approve?”
He tries very hard not to smile, twisting the scowl, but he won’t answer my question.
Moira appears in the yard after I’ve turned my horse out. Confirms what George just said, with the exact same whimsical aura Gill has about her when she mentions a certain Mr van Rooyen.
“Oh yes. She’s at Piet’s farm. You know what she said to me, Tessa? She said that Piet came with your horse and went away with a part of her. We like him so much. He runs that farm totally for his father, who’s got a bad heart, you know. It’s good to see Gilly happy. She was so down after she split up with Tim. Now she’s got her spark back.”
“Sounds like you’ve all been captivated by him. Although Gill tried very hard to pretend not to be after he took her to the farm the first time. Said things like oh, ja, he showed me around the farm, I particularly wanted to see the farm, you know how I like all animals, they have some nice dairy cattle.”
Her face creases up with delight. “That’s Gill through and through. Come, walk with me back to the house. You going home now?”
On the way we come to the conclusion that it’s just a plain weird situation. Rhodesia now officially never existed. We’re Southern Rhodesia again and we have a British Governor, at least until the elections are over. That’s what this place was called at the time I was born. We’re going backwards to go forwards. And it’s a sad fact that everyone, even those in favour of majority rule, knows the elections will be a farce.
“There can be no doubt,” she says, “that intimidation will be rife. The rural folk in this country have a deep suspicion of the secret ballot. It goes against all their traditional beliefs and the inheritance of power, of kingship. They won’t believe it’s secret. Some will, of course, but not enough. Think about it as if you’re someone from a remote village. If a man slides up to you in the dark and tells you that if you don’t vote for the right party the spirits will know and that they’ll tattle, then you vote for whoever he says you should. I would, if I believed in ancestral spirits, wouldn’t you?”
It’s more or less what Charles told me two weeks ago. He reckoned, “The United Nations think they can control intimidation with their Monitoring Forces, but none of those guys understand Africa, or the Africans. New Zealanders? Well maybe they understand the Maoris. I know little about Maoris. And Fijians? All full of wanting to do a good job and keen to visit a new country I’m sure, but hell, no clue. British Bobbies? Seriously? Well trained and efficient in their own country, but they have no notion of what they’re dealing with out here.”
When he left the office on that day to vote in the so-called ‘White Roll’, along with Debbie, Nathan and one of his site guys whose name escapes me right now, I said, “Careful now. Your ancestors are watching you. Make sure you vote the right way!”
I was being neither scornful nor disparaging. We whites have turned it into a joke because it scares the hell out of us. We don’t understand it, but we know it’s real. Very real and very intimidating.
Mum and Dad queued the same day to cast their votes for the twenty ‘white seats’ in the new government’s parliament. That’s all we’re allowed. There’s been much talking, more arguing and plenty of wailing. We’ve been sorry for ourselves, we’ve blamed the whole world for our predicament. We’ve ignored what was staring us in the face then we’ve woken up and fought it tooth and nail. We’ve done lots of dying, trying to hang on to something we could never keep and simply wouldn’t accept that we could never keep. But now we’ve arrived here and, like the power of the ancestors, it’s real.
Yet the ever-sardonic humour of the Rhodesians has risen again. Christmas 1979 will always be known as The-Last-White-Christmas.