“One for you-hoo!” Rosie tosses an airmail envelope at me.
“Jess, by the look of it. Tell me what she has to say. And these three and the phone bill for the folks. This one’s from Uncle Hal. I’d recognise that scrawl anywhere. Moaning about the British winter again, what’s the bet?”
She slaps the remaining post down on the kitchen table. I treat the four envelopes to one rapid, disinterested glance and take my mug and Jess’s letter out onto the patio. It’s going to be a long one by the feel of it.
Before tackling it, I take a brief moment lying back on the lounger with my eyes closed, allowing all the pleasant anticipation for the day to come to seep through my body along with the warmth. I haven’t seen Gill and Piet since the day they got back from honeymoon and I haven’t ridden with Gill now in two months. Piet won’t join us of course but I have a feeling this date will become an anniversary in years to come – the very first time Gill, Nathan and I have ever ridden out together. Worth celebrating.
And talking? There’ll be plenty of that. As Nathan said yesterday, G&T has been deprived of its own company since before the wedding, apart from the two minutes’ allotted time during the Christmas Day call.
The moment’s contemplation is over. I sense Rosie in the doorway behind me.
“What’s Jess got to say for herself? C’mon, tear it open.”
I sigh, and work my thumb under the flap as a crude and blunt envelope knife.
Opening paragraph: “Tess, you are one sly little creature. Nathan? What are his prospects? What did Dan say? Do you know what you’re doing? What do your folks think? Did they meet him on Boxing Day then?”
None of this “Dear Tessa” or “Greetings” or “My dearest friend” stuff.
A slight breeze ruffles the thin pages and I smooth them back a few times. Rosie chortles, standing on one leg against the door frame, her left foot braced on it behind her right knee. The next few paragraphs are a jaunty jumble of descriptions of lecturers, students, her lecture timetable and an outline of each subject curriculum. Then she writes, “I see they’ve started changing the names of everything so maybe Salisbury will become Harare after all? My folks said the hospital’s not going to be the Andrew Fleming any more. It’s going to be called the Parirenyatwa. Is that a word? What the fuck does it mean?”
Rosie’s migrated from the doorway, down the steps and onto the lawn below. She flops down and rolls onto her back, an arm over her eyes.
“I’ve seen that in the paper. Not a clue as to how to pronounce it. Well done you. Rob says it’s already getting to be known as the Paranoia Hospital. Apt, when you consider how all the patients and visitors steal bed linen and food these days.”
If I remember my history rightly, there was a Doctor Parirenyatwa on the scene back in the 1960s. He was something to do with the ANC, or was it ZAPU? I inform her of this, adding, “And last night Chipo told me the Lady Chancellor Maternity hospital – where we were born? – is going to be named after Mbuya Nehanda, who was a spirit medium back in the last century during the old uprising, or First Chimurenga. There. That’s my gem of fascinating fact for today.”
“Okay, O Great Fountain of Knowledge,” she yawns. “Knowledge is power by the way. Just remember I know you let Chipo drive your car last night and Daddy doesn’t.”
“Just like you to stoop to blackmail. She’s a perfectly competent driver but she’s looking to do more practice in different vehicles. Do you want to hear what else Jess has to say or not? Actually, you’ll have to wait because I need to get ready to go.”
The letter will be something to look forward to at the end of my lovely day.
*
“I’ve never seen the Falls,” was intended to lodge my interest in Gill’s idea, rather like, “Hey, ja I’d love to go.”
Except Piet has frozen with his bottle just short of his lips and Gill’s reached under the water to take my hand as though about to commiserate with me on a bereavement.
“What? Never? My God, you haven’t lived.”
“Nath!” Piet bellows in a voice that’s slightly hoarse. He places his bottle on the paving slab beside his lounger without it having touched his mouth. “You have a mission, should you choose to accept it my boy. Take your lady to Victoria Falls! She’s never been.”
You’ve only just surfaced and shaken water out of your ears so you cock your head and go, “What?”
In two strokes you’ve made up the distance and you float in to sit on the step next to me, our hips touching under the water, your eyes flicking quizzically between me and Gill.
“You’re under orders to make sure I get to see Vic Falls because my failure to do so thus far is upsetting the balance of the universe.”
You lean forward and across me, your right elbow on my left knee.
“I gather it’s settled then? You’d better get booking, Gill honey.”
She’s still gripping my right hand.
“And Wankie? Kariba? Oh, hang on, I know you’ve been to Kariba but that was some years ago.”
“Some years ago? It was 1973. Jesus. Where does the time go? And Dad took us to Wankie Game Reserve even earlier than that. I vaguely remember us living in a little rondavel hut and him saying it was the week all the animals moved out. He’s still mentally scarred from being let down by the Big Five and being taunted by the same warthog family and a few scraggly wildebeest every day. He swore he’d never go on safari again.”
“Well,” she says, encompassing all of the rest of us in her glance around, “I can most certainly investigate the prices, flight times and tour details then. When should we go? Sometime towards the end of May? I could do with a holiday.”
“Bloody hell, you’ve only just come back from a holiday. It’s all right for some of us.”
“Yes, all right, Nathan. Jealousy gets you nowhere. We did send you a postcard.”
Gill lets go of me, launches herself off her step and breaststrokes away towards the edge where Piet is sitting. All the postcards they sent are still attached to the stable duties pinboard with bright green tacks – the lighthouse at Cape Point for the grooms and Amai, a Stellenbosch scene for Moira and Charles and a sunset-tinged Table Mountain addressed to Tessa and Nathan. She didn’t waste any time putting us two together.
Together. A three-destination holiday. Three hotels over six nights. There’s a buzzing in my head and a shiver of anticipation – or something – in my belly.
Precisely the same thread is running through your mind. We watch Gill clamber out of the pool and take her towel from where it’s hanging over the back of the lounger next to Piet’s. When you speak, I already know what you’re going to say.
“I’m absolutely up for going on a Flame Lily Tour with you and Gill and Piet. Are you? But Tess, look, I need you to consider carefully how… if… Well, first off, do you think your folks will object to us going on holiday together?”
I’m damned sure they will, although to be fair their faith in my morality will be naively unshakeable. The fact that I’m having to contemplate this decision is quite extraordinary. And very intriguing. It’s like I’m studying myself from the outside during a behavioural experiment. What will Tessa do? How will her brain respond to these stimuli? She’s being given a choice that relies on several other choices. Will the brain short circuit or make a cool and rational and correct decision, or will she just run away?
“Think about it,” you say, and I can tell from your eyes that you’ve been panicked into wondering if all the thought processes you can see in my face are going to result in either the short circuit or the running away. I touch the hand that’s resting on my knee.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I predict that what they’ll object to is me doing it so soon into the relationship. I’ll have to do some talking but I can probably get round it as Gill and Piet will be going too. So it’s a group of four and they know Gill’s been my friend for ever.”
You raise your eyebrows and give me a sideways look. “What, all chums together? You can bring your dog and we’ll be like the Famous Five.”
I’m hardly likely to say no to this, am I, when I can’t get enough of delving into your history?
“You read the Famous Five? Did you really? I was more into her adventure series with Jack, Dinah, Philip and Lucy-Ann. Did you have those? What were they called? The Island of Adventure, The…”
“Tessa. Stick to the subject. We’re grown-ups now.”
You don’t do stern – that face just creases me up.
“All right, I’ll be serious.” I sit up straight, remove your hand and place it down in the water between us.
“Good. That’s very proper. Now, how do you want Gill to book rooms at the hotel? She can get us single rooms each. Is that what you would prefer?”
I hear myself say, “Frankly, if it’s okay with you we can share a room,” then, “Oh, no, go back. That came out all wrong. I mean, don’t think that… I don’t… I’ve never…”
“What on earth are you two up to over there?” Gill calls, paused with her towel wrapped around her middle like a sarong. “Behave yourselves.”
When you laugh at me like that I know you understand me no matter what gobbledegook comes out of my mouth. I’ll sort it with the parents. I can’t wait to see their faces when I tell them about this holiday.
*
I imagine Mum and Dad will be surprised, and perhaps proud, that I’m making my own vacation arrangements now, all independent. Rosie will probably be jealous, but she’ll get over it. She’ll want a detailed itinerary and will try to re-plan whatever I propose. Where I choose to sleep in any hotels, however, will be entirely my own business. It won’t be a problem. Mum won’t even ask. She’ll assume that separate rooms goes without saying.
His eyes were so soft – and I’m still so unused to reading such expression in him – when he kissed me lightly, amicably, perfectly. No need for anything more dramatic. We both know we’ve got what we’ve always wanted, even if we weren’t aware we did want it. Or at least I wasn’t aware. I’m starting to suspect now that he was.
He said, “Of course I won’t ask anything of you, Kitten. We’ll all have the best time and I’ll be the one to show you the Falls for the first time. You’ve never seen anything like it and you never will, anywhere else. Oh, and by the way, there’s another amateur race meeting in May. At the Beatrice track this time. Are you game?”
It’s my chance to get a race ride at last.
I chuck my bike in the shed, padlock the door and amble into the house, trying half-heartedly to guess what’s for supper from the smells that greet me. The feeling of well-being and fulfilment is whole.
Within a split second of walking through the back door and taking in the scene before me, it’s all drained away.
Mother is standing, hands on hips, before the row of fitted wall cupboards. All the doors have been flung open to expose their contents – assorted cookware, crockery and glassware. For a few heartbeats I stare and say nothing. The scene before me is, in many respects, unremarkable, but it sets all the hair on my head and arms into a frenzy and drops a sickness into my abdomen. Something momentous has happened while I’ve been gone. A voice tells me to turn round, walk out and come in again to make sure I haven’t imagined this… this weird, indecipherable atmosphere.
“Oh hello, love!” Mum greets me as though I’ve just interrupted her from a reverie. She offers no more than that and I slide past her and along the corridor to my room, still prickling all over. Their bedroom door at the end of the corridor is open and Dad’s in there, seated at the clumsy, old-fashioned bureau in the far corner. If I can believe my eyes, he’s writing on a blue aerogramme letter sheet. Dad, writing a letter?
He senses my presence and looks up, smiling. “Oh, it’s you Tessa. Hello.”
I’m being ridiculous. They both sound normal, and a letter arrived from Uncle Harry today. Dad’ll be writing back to him. It’s usually Mum who does the writing, but does it matter? Don’t worry about it.
Rosie’s not around.
She breezes in half an hour later, just minutes before Mum calls us to the table, and subjects me to a detailed description of the make-up set Helen Gillespie’s sister brought back from Jo’burg. I humour her with a show of interest while eyeing up the peri-peri pork chop on my plate. I only had an apple and a packet of biltong for lunch so I’m ready for this.
Five minutes into the meal, Dad taps the side of his wine glass with his knife.
“Ladies! Ladies, listen up. I have news.”
A study of his expression gives no clue as to whether this is good or bad news. He places the knife back on the table next to his plate. Mum carries on eating, delicately, like she’s trying to be unobtrusive, but then I guess she knows what’s coming.
“We had a letter from Hal today. I’m very sad to find out our Aunty Julia has passed away, quite suddenly. It turns out she had a tumour on one kidney that she must have lived with for quite a while without telling anyone she wasn’t well. When her doctor found out, it was too late. The cancer had spread to most of her organs and there was nothing anyone could do. She went downhill very fast and died last Tuesday.”
“Poor Aunty Julia,” Rosie says with a commendable attempt at sympathy. “Great Aunty Julia. Shame we never got to meet her.”
We’ve seen photos of her. Sepia pictures of three children in various stages of growing up in the early part of the century – Grandad, Barbara and Julia.
“The last of my father’s family – gone,” Dad muses. He actually sounds like he might cry. He doesn’t, though. He perks up and says, “Julia was such a character. She used to tell us how my grandad forbade her to dance the Charleston and to cut her hair and to wear short dresses, but she did so anyway. Quite a girl. You’d’ve liked her, Tessa. Quite keen on horse riding she was.”
Yeah, yeah, he’s told us this before. I gave up wishing I could meet her because there never seemed any likelihood, given Dad’s aversion to holidays in England. It strikes me I haven’t thought about her in years.
“She inherited most of Barbara’s estate,” Mum says, and when I look up at her she quickly drops her head and concentrates on her dinner. Suddenly I know where this is going.
“So she’s left you some money?” Next to me, I feel Rosie prick up her ears.
Dad has a distant air about him now. He’s focussed on something on the far side of the dining room.
“Me and Hal. Half each. With her property and other assets he reckons her total estate is worth around half a million pounds. Got to go through probate and all that malarkey so we won’t know for sure for a bit.”
Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds? That’s an awful lot of money considering there are nearly three Zimbabwe dollars to the pound. No wonder the folks were behaving strangely earlier. Wow. I open my mouth, but Rosie beats me to it.
“What’s that in dollars?” she says, around a mouthful of peas. “Will you buy us a new house? And we could do a round-the-world holiday couldn’t we? I’ll need a car soon. And we could…”
Dad cuts her short with a flick of his hand. He has a weird grin on his face that’s not just happy – it’s triumphant.
“It doesn’t matter a toss what it is in dollars my girlie, because there’s no way on this earth I’m bringing the money here. With the foreign currency restrictions we have now – and they’re likely to get even tougher – I’d never get it out again. So the bloody government would get it, or it would have to stay here in a blocked account for ever. No way. The Zimbabwe currency will only devalue so I’d lose out big time on whatever I could get out. We made good use of my parents’ money and Mummy’s inheritance at the time, but with hindsight it was a crying shame we had it all sent over here. A mistake, a big, big mistake. Not this time. Things have altered dramatically now anyway and it’s the opportunity I’ve always wanted. A real blessing, God rest poor Julia’s soul. No, we leave it in my account in England and we now have the means to set up home over there.”
There’s a pulse roaring in my ears.
“Set up home? In England?”
He extends his arms wide as if to embrace us all. “Yes, of course! Not, like, tomorrow though! There’s a lot to sort out. But certainly by this time next year I’d say.”
He beams again with that far-away look. Mum sighs and leans back in her chair and her face says it all. We’ve been provided with the means to leave behind the troubles of black Africa. Our future security is guaranteed.
Horror rises up my throat and the mouthful I’m just swallowing catches and goes the wrong way. Through my choking fit and watery eyes I relive the scene in the kitchen; Mum standing in front of the flung open cupboards, her distraction, her not asking me, for the first time ever, how my day had gone. She had only one thought in her mind, didn’t she? Packing. What will go with us and what will be ditched?
I’m not stupid. Down deep in my soul I knew this day would come. I’ve gone la-la-la-la-la and pretended I haven’t seen the warnings, haven’t heard the warnings. While the Titanic has been sinking next to me, I’ve been sitting on top of the iceberg admiring the view. But I knew. Inheritance or no inheritance, they would’ve made up their minds to leave sometime. Some event, some political decision, would’ve pushed them over the edge.
They’re all acting alarmed, wondering if they’re going to have to do a Heimlich on me. I shake my head, wave a hand, wipe my mouth with my napkin. The haze clears fractionally.
“This time next year?”
I repeat his words in the strangled little voice that comes out of a choked throat and Rosie doubles up next to me. She attacks her dinner again without a care in the world. Says, “Don’t die on us, Tee!”
My appetite’s long gone.
“Do you mean yourself, or you and Mum, to sort out the affairs?” I ask him. Silly question. Only thing I can think of saying when my whole self is trying to run as fast as it can away from here without actually doing so.
“All of us, Tess,” he answers. “I want all of us to leave. Together.”
Still that gentle, euphoric smile. The other two are carrying on with their lives, beginning to scrape plates clean. I’m fixing his eyes, but I’m not being aggressive. Not yet. I just can’t move a muscle. After the pause has dragged on for a bit, the smile slips sideways and he looks at the sideboard.
“But Zimbabwe is my home. My country.”
“Rhodesia was your country.”
Okay, we’ll let that go for now.
“I don’t want to live in England. It’s alien to me. It’s crowded and grey and cold and it rains all the time. You want me to tear up my existence and live in some place I can’t call home?”
He’s amazed. “You’ve never even been to England! You don’t know what it’s like.”
“No, I haven’t. You’re right. Because you’ve never taken us there. You always seemed to think that we never needed to see England because we lived in such a great place.”
He searches hard for a response. Mum and Rosie are paying attention now, although they’re pretending not to. The vibes tell me there won’t be any back-up for either me or Dad.
“We will be safe there,” he says finally. “And financially secure. Both of those matter a lot to me, as a father and a husband. Do you realise that? I think maybe you don’t. Have you ever stopped to think just what this government might do in the future? They’ve already turned the tide against the whites and now they’re squabbling amongst themselves. There’s been rumours that anyone who is not a Zimbabwe citizen will not be allowed to own property. That means people like me would have to relinquish British or other foreign passports – my own birth right, dammit – and take on citizenship of this banana republic. The economy’s already showing signs of collapse, just like the rest of black Africa. You’ll find that we won’t be able to get anything apart from subsistence goods and you’ll end up eating sadza for all your meals. These price control laws on foods are forcing people out of business and, as soon as this pitiful Lancaster House Agreement period is over, who knows what other ridiculous laws they will dream up overnight to follow their ‘New Order’ and their Marxist ideals and to cover up for their own embezzlement and corruption. You haven’t thought about any of this, have you? Have you?”
I have not. This outrage, and his pride at being the head of his family, have formed a cold shadow that’s fallen across my self-constructed platform of indignation. Across my shallowness. Across a reluctant guilty acknowledgment that I don’t pay enough attention to the news for any of this to be on my happy little radar. But I can’t – won’t – lie down and roll over. I’ll be eighteen before this year’s out and then he can’t tell me what to do. I’m staying. It’s my decision. Things might never get that bad surely? I mean, this might just all be doom-and-gloom rumours. He takes too much stock of rumours. And as for Rhodesia – well I’m sorry but it is no more. It’s gone. This country is mine and it’s now called Zimbabwe, and it’s not going to ever go back to Rhodesia.
I don’t mean to sound wheedling, but it comes out that way when I say, “Can’t we just give it a chance, like, two years maybe? My whole world is here. Our whole world. This lovely lifestyle. And what about my horses?”
And what about my Nathan?
He doesn’t give me the chance to voice this question and he doesn’t register the shock as it hits me. He bangs the table top with the flat of his hand.
“Give it a chance? Anything can happen in two years! I’ve just told you these people make up new laws and rules overnight to suit themselves. Aren’t you listening to a word I say, Tessa? And what about the horses? You can sell them, can’t you? They’re certainly not coming with!”
He ignores, or doesn’t hear, the distraught whimper that comes from Mum. Rosie groans, “Oh, God” and shoves her plate aside and puts her head down on her folded arms. As I kick back my chair and leave the room, Mum turns her whimper into a sob.
“Oh for Christ’s sake Bob! Let her get used to the idea before you start on that, please!”
She bolts after me down the corridor but I’m much faster. I’ve slammed my bedroom door before she’s got halfway.
She tries all sorts of different knocks; soft and apologetic, loud and demanding, a pleading kind of scraping sound. I think about throwing myself on the bed or onto the carpet and I think about grabbing anything that comes to hand and chucking it against one of the walls, or the window, with all my strength, but I end up just standing in the middle of the room. She’ll just have to keep knocking and pleading because I can’t let anyone in while I’m on fire, the sweat is pumping out of me and my breathing sounds like a dragon’s, or when my mind just consists of woolly strands like this, each beginning and ending nowhere.
It takes twenty minutes. Maybe. Thirty, perhaps? I’m not counting. I come down in stages to settle on a bleak, flat plain that’s made entirely of sadness. Not a weeping, grieving kind of sadness, just a calm acceptance of what’s inevitable.
“I’m not leaving,” I tell the top of her head as I unlock and open the door. The whole house feels empty, apart from us two. I’ve already turned my back on her so I only hear her struggling to her feet and she sounds like a much older woman.
“Dad’s in the garden. I’ve never seen him like this, Tessa. He’s been through a bit of a roller coaster today you know. He wasn’t that close to Julia after all these years but it was still a sad shock to hear she’s died, that his parents’ whole generation is now gone. But he was buoyed up with the relief that her money can help us like this. Our financial future’s been on his mind a long time now and he couldn’t see the way clear. Now he can, and earlier today while he and I were talking about what we should do next, I thought he looked years younger again. We talked a lot before you came home. Will you talk to me now?”
If she’s been crying, there’s no sign now. We perch together on the bed and she looks as resigned as I feel, tucking her silvery-blonde hair behind her ears and smoothing down her dress. “Please, Tessa. Talk to me.”
I don’t wish to, no, but from a sense of duty towards her it comes out of me in awkward fits and starts. That I hear all Dad said. That I accept he has fears about the future here. That I understand. But that I’m prepared to give it a chance even if he isn’t. I have a job, I have a relationship, I’m perfectly settled. I don’t have these fears, only hope. The war’s finished, so why shouldn’t we hope?
Her angle is this: we whites will have no more privileges.
She tells me how we’ve led a lovely life up until now. I have a job, as I pointed out, and so has Dad, but this process they call ‘Africanisation’ is scary. It’s a move to let blacks take over everything, step into positions of authority, get promotions over whites, simply as a form of retaliation. Rosie could get bumped off university or college waiting lists, she will have tough competition for jobs from blacks who are not as well qualified or because she’s not been able to get qualified. Everything will be against white people and it could affect all of us. There will be whites out of work and where would they live? What would they do? It’s not a welfare state, like England. Isn’t it dreadful, she asks me, a hand over mine, to think there may, in the future, be destitute whites living in the townships with no jobs?
“No more privileges? Like we have a right to those privileges because of the colour of our skin? So white people might end up living in townships on nothing, like you’ve assumed black people will always do. When blacks don’t have jobs they have to rely on their extended family. Is it only us who have the right to jobs and a decent standard of living then? So we can govern our black people successfully? It’s very Animal Farm, Mum. Look, I get that the false Africanisation is wrong and a problem. It’s your attitude about skin colour that I can’t stomach I’m afraid. Everyone has a right to education, qualification and good jobs if they have the ability to do them.”
She recoils. She blinks at me as if she’s wondering if I’m really still Tessa and not some possessed apparition. Tessa doesn’t pick fights or contradict her or sarcastically imply that her opinions and her beliefs are ridiculous. I blink back at her, tight-chested, loathing myself for hacking her concrete ideals to pieces, but she has to know I don’t just believe what my parents tell me to believe any more. She can’t go on thinking she – they – can influence me for ever. That I will always accept they know best. They don’t.
And they can’t influence what I do with the things l love. How dare he tell me to sell my horses? My horses. He used to pay for their keep but now they take a large chunk out of my salary – my choice because they mean the world to me. They’re living creatures; they’re my responsibility. Living creatures with welfare rights. He’s putting them on the same plane as Rosie’s tennis racquets, to be sold if considered past their best, or else conveniently packed and shipped. With a sick, sick jolt it occurs to me that this also applies to Cleo and Skellum, the faithful family pets.
And as for Nathan? There’s nothing to debate here. I have a man who is a part of me. We’re making up for a lot of lost time and we’ll go on doing that for the rest of our lives. That’s it. My mind is made up. I roll away from her and face the wall, screwing my face up to stop the tears.
“I’ll turn eighteen before Dad’s deadline. You, Dad and Rosie go. Honestly. It’s your decision if that’s what you’re so desperate to do. I’ve made mine, and I’m not going. I’m afraid you can’t make me. That’s it.”
She says nothing for nearly a minute, doesn’t move, and we’re frozen as if time has stopped. I won’t look at her face because I don’t wish to know how she’s reacted. Eventually time starts moving again. The bed lifts slightly as she gets up. There are light slipper-steps on the carpet and the door opens. Her voice is a whisper.
“We’ll talk about it again, darling, when things have calmed down.”
I shake my head. Like I said, my mind is made up.