There are days when you learn quite a lot of things you don’t give a damn about. Like Chipo’s last three dates with her new boyfriend and now Rosie’s ball-by-ball account of the entire Wimbledon tournament. Convincing her how I managed to miss the live broadcast of the finals without actually saying how far down tennis is on my list of watchable sports is going to be a challenge.
Her curly ponytails have gone and, like Gill, she’s got a short, fashionable cut that takes some of the attention from her round face and rather stubby nose. Much more grown up. Maybe I should get a haircut. Everyone’s doing it.
She stops short in her diatribe about the semi-finals, or some match or other, and instructs me, “Wait here! I have something to show you. I’ll be back.”
Maybe she’s finally realised I’m not with her. She bolts from the lounge, lanky, all arms and legs, but tough and wiry rather than frail. She’s almost as tall as me now. After ten minutes she comes rushing back in a tiny white mini dress; her new tennis outfit.
“London was amazing, Tee! We did Madame Tussaud’s, Big Ben, the Tower of London, the London Dungeon. And – shopping.” This with a long gusty sigh.
“So, what do you think? It’s cool, huh? You know, I could’ve spent three times the money I had. It’s so unfair. You can pay for an air ticket to fly all the way round the world from here but you can’t take diddly squat money with you. But I loved England. So much choice. So many things we’ve never had here! You know what? It’s supposed to be summer over there, right? Well the temps were about twenty degrees C max. Sort of pleasant really, but the natives were all stripping off and whingeing that it was too hot! And hardly anyone knows where Zimbabwe is. They all still call it Rhodesia or else they think it’s part of South Africa. I can’t wait for my first lesson in my new dress.”
It suits her, and she’s twirling about, holding the skirt out – what little there is of it. She loved England. I knew she would. Flashback to the night she left, with her embracing me like there was no tomorrow, promising me loads of presents, disappearing through the doors to Emigration with her friends and Rob, and me left wondering, as I did with Gill, if she would ever want to return. Flashback to me standing on the balcony with Mum and Dad, overlooking the floodlit apron, half of me hoping the Wimbledon trip would go so wrong she would hate the place forever, the other half feeling guilty as hell for daring to wish that. Flashback to how I’d tried to hide the fact that I was crying as I watched the British Airways Boeing 747 thunder ponderously out onto the runway, bearing my sister away to her future.
She only brought me a London mug in the end, but I don’t mind. I’d rather she spent her money on herself.
And she’s still madly and pointlessly in love with Rob. He’s getting married next year.
Love.
Rosie loves Rob, Gill loves Piet, I love Danny and now Chipo’s gone and met the man of her dreams as well, and I’m beginning to wonder if the world’s legendary love affairs – Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, Anthony and Cleopatra, Scarlett and Rhett – were of any significance after all. This hero is Paul Ndhlovu and he’s in the National Army. She goes on at length about his physique, the way he dances and the way he makes her feel, and how she’s eternally grateful to her cousin Ezekiel, who was in the Rhodesian African Rifles and who set her up with him.
“Why did you go to college today then?” Rosie asks. “I thought you were off for a week.”
“I couldn’t stand another day around the house knowing I can’t ride. I’m only back to work next Monday but yeah, I got Dad to take me into college today.”
The next four weeks are going to go bloody slowly.