African Dawn (9 page)

Hot and bored, Hope finally got out of the car and walked up to the doorway. She could hear low voices inside. She should have knocked, but the door was open. She walked inside. The Ngwenyas' furniture was old and frayed and the house, while clean, had very few things in it. The floor was bare concrete, with a worn rug on it. There was a tiny kitchen off the main room. The whole place reminded Hope of a doll's house. She could hear George and as she moved to the doorframe she saw him. And Thandi. She was sitting up on the kitchen bench and she had her legs wrapped around George, who was leaning into her, kissing her. George's shirt was plastered to his back with sweat and Thandi had suddenly lolled her head back and moaned, her eyes half-closed.

Hope turned and, as quietly as she could, crept out of the house then ran back to the car. George was coming out of the house even as she was opening the car door. Her heart pounded. George had been kissing Thandi. A black girl. His face was red as he reefed open his door, climbed in and glared at her.

He said nothing for a while.

‘I told you to wait in the car,’ he said at last, running a hand through his hair. Tiny beads of perspiration spattered from his fingers.

‘I was hot.’

‘Did you … I mean … where were you?’

‘In the garden. I was going to walk into the house to look for you, but I got scared.’

He stared at her and they said nothing again for a few moments, until he finally put the car in gear, started the engine and drove off. Hope craned her neck and saw Thandi standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms folded and staring right at Hope.

*

‘Hope, you've got to get quicker at this.’

Hope was sick of learning about the rifle. She dropped the heavy barrel of the FN down on the carpet and threw the gas plug so that it bounced and rolled under her mother's chair. ‘I don't want to play with guns. I don't want to kill any terrorists!’

Her father shook his head. ‘It's not playing, my girl, and it's not about killing people. It's about helping your mom if I'm not around and some bad people come to the farm.’

‘I'm not scared of black people, Dad, and I don't see why there should be a war. I don't want to fight, and I don't want George to keep going away to the valley where people shoot at him. It's wrong.’ She looked at her mother, who was looking at her father.

Her mother put down her book on the side table, reached under her chair and fetched the missing gas plug. She moved to Hope and then knelt on the carpet beside her.

‘Hope, your father and I have lived through one war already, and we don't want anything to happen to you – or to George, or to any of us.’ As she spoke, her mother pushed the piston down into the chamber and deftly fitted the tricky spring-loaded plug. ‘So what your father says is right. If he's away and you and I are left alone, we will need to look after each other.’ Her mother dropped the breech block into its slide and slid it home into the grooves in the rear of the rifle. ‘No one's talking about killing anyone, but if something does go wrong we might need to be able to defend ourselves.’ Her mother slid the breech cover home then snapped the rifle closed.

‘Do you understand what I'm saying, Hope?’ Her mother yanked back on the cocking handle of the FN and then let it fly forward.

Hope nodded sulkily.

Her mother aimed the rifle at a window and pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked on the empty breech. ‘Good. Because I think things are going to get worse in this country before they get better.’

Hope looked up into her mother's eyes. ‘My teacher at school said the war the Americans are fighting in Vietnam is wrong. Is our war right?’

Her mother frowned. ‘No war is right, but sometimes you have to fight to defend your principles, Hope.’

Hope didn't understand. ‘Are our
principles
right?’

Her mother suddenly looked weary. ‘I hope so, my girl, I hope so.’ Her mother looked away, to her father. ‘Pass me the magazine, please Paul. Hope … I'm going to teach you how to load bullets into the FN's magazine, all right?’

‘Yes, Mom,’ Hope said.

6

P
aul Bryant sipped his Lion Lager and leaned against the stout trunk of the massive umbrella thorn tree under which his son had just married a very visibly pregnant Susannah Geary.

It didn't bother him that his son and new daughter-in-law had conceived out of wedlock. It had happened to plenty of blokes he knew in the air force during the war. What did bother him was that at times during the marriage service his son had looked as though he wanted to be somewhere else.

Paul knew some men suffered from wedding-day jitters, although he hadn't. Pip had been his lifesaver. If they hadn't met he probably would have drunk himself to death. Marrying her had been the happiest day of his life.

George was drinking with three of his mates, fellow pilots from 7 Squadron. They'd taken off their blue air force dress tunics, loosened their ties and rolled up their shirtsleeves. Susannah was nursing a gin and tonic, talking to a girlfriend and trying not to glance across at George too often. She was a good-looking girl, and the pregnancy had only made her look prettier, rounding her out and filling out her face. She'd chosen a tight-fitting ivory minidress – which was not only daringly fashionable, but also her way, Paul thought, of saying, ‘To hell with it, I don't care who knows.’ Susannah senior was talking to Pip, who laughed loudly at something Susannah obviously didn't find so funny. Paul smiled. He loved his wife with all of his heart.

George collected his friends' empties and headed towards the bar table, which brought him past his father.

‘Got a minute, mate?’ Paul asked.

George looked back at his fellow pilots, one of whom mimed downing a pint with his hand. ‘They're not going anywhere,’ Paul said. ‘They'll find a waiter.’

‘Sure, Dad. Sorry. It's like everyone wants a piece of me today.’

Paul nodded. ‘Including your wife.’

George looked at Susannah, then back to his father. ‘We've got the rest of our lives.’

A band, a trio of guys with bushy sideburns and long hair, were tuning up their electric guitars and testing their microphones. Hope darted in and out of the wedding guests, with ten-year-old Braedan Quilter-Phipps in pursuit of her. She squealed in joy as she narrowly missed bumping into an African waiter carrying a tray of drinks.

‘Susannah's a lovely girl, George.’

George called the waiter over and took a beer from the tray. ‘Yeah, she is.’

‘Do you love her?’

‘Of course I do, Dad … It's not just because of the baby, if that's what you mean.’

Paul looked at him steadily. ‘Was there someone else?’

George sipped his drink. ‘Another woman, you mean?’

Paul shrugged.

‘I've never brought another woman home, have I?’

‘There's no need to be defensive, George.’

George raised the brown bottle of Lion to his lips and swallowed half of it. ‘You're telling me I'm not in love with the woman I've just married and who's going to have my baby.
Ag
, I don't need this shit when I'm home on leave, Dad.’ George drained the rest of the beer.

Paul sensed he was on the right track, and that something was troubling his son, but he also knew now was not the time to push things. George hadn't spoken to him like that before in his life, but Paul knew well the strains that combat, and relationships, put on a man. George and Susannah were going to be parents, and if either of them had been harbouring second thoughts, it was too late to do anything about it now. George looked away from him, over the crowd, but not at his wife. Paul saw the emptiness in those eyes and as George waved to the waiter he saw something else in his son. Himself.

Paul had battled with the drink after a crash in his Lancaster bomber, in England during the war. While most of his crew had bailed out safely before Paul belly-landed the bomber on an emergency airstrip, his best friend, Will, the flight engineer, had stayed on board with him, refusing Paul's order to jump. When Paul had successfully landed the stricken bomber he'd thought Will had been hard on his heels as he exited the aircraft, but what he hadn't realised was that Will had been wounded. If Paul had stopped to help him out, they both would have been caught in the explosion that had killed Will. Paul had blamed himself for Will's death and, by the time he'd met Pip in Rhodesia, he had been a borderline alcoholic and close to suicidal.

‘You know you can talk to me any time, George.’

George had started another beer. He looked at his father blankly.

‘About flying … being on operations,’ Paul said.

George sniffed. ‘It's not like your war, Dad. There's no frontline. We're killing our own people. Besides, we're winning and it's not nearly as dangerous as flying a Lancaster or a Mosquito over Germany.’

‘Any operational flying's dangerous, George.’ Paul had thought of the fight being waged against terrorists in the Zambezi Valley as the Rhodesian Government standing up to communist-backed aggression. He hadn't thought of it as Rhodesians
killing our own people
, but of course his son was right.

George looked back out over the farm, at the far horizon. ‘Two days ago I brought in a soldier who'd lost his leg – mortar got him. He bled out on the chopper. Christ, I didn't know the human body could hold so much blood.’ George laughed a little, then took another swig. ‘And here I am today, getting married.’

Paul nursed his own drink. He wanted to tell George to ease off, but the boy would have to learn in his own time that booze only worked for the symptoms, not the cause. ‘Do you remember those rhinos we helped save, on Kariba?’

George looked at him, surprised by the change of subject. ‘Sure. The mom and the baby?’

Paul nodded. ‘Even though it was dangerous and the cow tried to kill us – remember poor Winston falling overboard and nearly drowning – it was a good thing we did. It was the right thing.’

George lifted his bottle, then seemed to have second thoughts. He swirled it and looked at the frothing contents. ‘I see them … often. Rhinos, I mean. I sometimes wonder if one of them was the little one from that day. One of the army guys told me he came across a dead one in the valley. It looked like it had trod on a land mine. Someone had hacked off its horn. Why would they do that?’

‘Your mother showed me an article the other day about how rhinos are getting nailed in all the countries north of us. Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya … They're being killed in their hundreds and their horns sold to the Chinese for medicines.’

George shook his head and went back to his beer. ‘Makes you wonder if it was worth it, saving all those animals if they're just going to get poached for something as stupid as that.’

The band had launched into a cover of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons's ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’.

‘It was worth it, George. Still is. Go dance with your wife.’

George downed his beer and nodded, then walked away.

*

Patricia Ngwenya would not have gone to the wedding if her husband hadn't ordered her to be there, a fact she shared with her youngest son, Emmerson.

‘But why, Mother?’ Emmerson persisted. ‘You told me women should be the equal of men.’

‘Yes, my son, but this is Africa and some things will take longer to change. Besides, I wanted you to see this place where the Bryants live; how white people live compared to us.’

The minibus taxi dropped them on the main road and Emmerson and his mother walked the three kilometres along the gravel road to the Bryant family's farm. Half-a-dozen times along the way they were coated with dust by cars driven by whites dressed in their Sunday best. Emmerson asked if these people were also going to the wedding and his mother nodded, a look of sheer loathing on her face.

He would rather have been in town, with his friends from the ZAPU youth league. There were rumours of a new party of ZANU boys in town and plans were afoot to welcome them to Matabeleland that night with
knobkerries
and bare knuckles. Emmerson's interest in politics was fuelled by his mother's talks and the books she tried to make him read, but the real attraction of the nationalist struggle for Emmerson was the opportunity to crack some heads.

They crossed a cattle grid and the khaki browns of the bush gave way to a carpet of mown green grass that was being watered by sprinklers. Emmerson stopped and stared. Unlike his older brother, Winston, the runaway, he had never been out to the Bryants' farm, so he was unprepared for what he saw.

‘It's like … like a paradise,’ he said in a hushed voice.

His mother prodded him in the back. ‘Move along, Emmerson. If this is a paradise it is a paradise stolen from us. Take a good look at this place, Emmerson. When our people take control of our country this place will be ours.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, my son, really. The land belongs to the
povo
, the poor people of our country, not to these rich invaders.’

‘And the cars?’ Emmerson looked longingly at the Chevrolets and Fords parked on the lawn, and the elderly African in overalls who was washing one. Emmerson decided that when he was older he would have a shiny car, and a man to wash it.

His mother laughed. ‘Yes, my son, and the cars. Come. Let us get this over with.’

Emmerson ran his finger around the tight, chaffing collar of his shirt, and when his mother wasn't looking he undid his top button. His trousers were too short for him and he could feel the grass and gravel beneath his feet through a hole in his right shoe. By contrast, all of the whites, young and old, were dressed in fine clothes. Emmerson also wanted to be well dressed. It could all be a reality, according to his mother, when the struggle was over.

Even though he was still considered too young to fight, he had already played a part in the struggle as a
mujiba
, a young lookout. When the older men gathered for their meetings and their war councils, Emmerson and his friends from the youth league were posted on street corners, where they watched out for police patrols. Using an elaborate series of signals they passed messages of warning to each other. Some of the senior men had recently dangled the promise of him travelling out of Rhodesia, to Tanzania or even Russia or East Germany, for training by the comrades overseas. Emmerson looked forward to the day when he would carry a gun instead of leaning on a building watching for passing patrol cars.

‘Hello Emmerson!’

He turned at the high-pitched voice and saw Hope Bryant running behind him. She waved at him and he self-consciously raised his hand to her. Hope was being chased by two boys of her own age, who looked exactly the same as each other, though one was a faster runner. The boy in the lead turned his head to glare at Emmerson as he chased after the girl.

‘Stay away from them,’ his mother said to him. ‘We're only here as long as we have to be.’

Emmerson had seen Hope a few times when her mother had occasionally come to visit, to bring food to the family. Emmerson was always happy to have his belly full of beef and milk, and he found it hard to understand why his mother always seemed so surly after Mrs Bryant had visited. In the school holidays it had been Hope's older brother, George, who had brought the provisions, and while his mother also scowled at George, Emmerson had noticed that his big sister, Thandi, had looked forward to the boy's visits. But Thandi was gone now, studying in Mozambique. It was just Emmerson at home these days and he longed for the time when he, too, could leave the house and the township and see some more of the world before returning to fight in the struggle.

Emmerson's gaze rested on a group of white men in air force uniforms. They were laughing and drinking beer and raising their glasses in a toast. Emmerson wondered if they flew jets or helicopters, and how hard it might be to shoot one of them down.

‘They celebrate the deaths of our comrades, killed in the name of your freedom, Emmerson,’ his mother whispered to him.

‘Patricia, how lovely to see you. I'm so glad you could make it,’ Mrs Bryant said, striding across the lawn, lifting her feet high so her stiletto heels didn't get stuck in the grass. ‘And good to see you, too, Emmerson.’

His mother extended a hand and shook the white woman's, muttering some words of congratulations.

‘Do help yourself to food and I'll ask one of the waiters to get you drinks,’ Mrs Bryant said.

Mr Bryant and George came over just as Mrs Bryant excused herself, saying she had to go and talk to the cooks about something. Emmerson shook hands with them both and cringed when the older man patted him on his head and told him how tall he was getting. Emmerson knew how tall he was and didn't need some white man remarking on it.

‘How's Kenneth doing?’ Mr Bryant asked Emmerson's mother.

‘Emmerson?’

He turned. It was Hope again, panting slightly after running up from her latest game. He looked at her.

‘Don't you want to come and play with us?’ Hope asked.

‘I am too old for games,’ he said to her.

Hope took a couple of paces closer to him and lowered her voice. ‘The boys have got an air rifle,’ she whispered. ‘We're hunting tree squirrels.’

Emmerson's eyes widened. His mother had her back to him and Hope was sidling off, beckoning him with a finger. Emmerson looked around him. He'd never fired a rifle of any kind and the promise of handling any sort of weapon was too good to pass up. ‘Mother,’ he said. She turned to him. ‘I'm going to play with the other children.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘I don't want you getting into trouble, and we will be leaving soon.’

‘Ah, let the boy have some fun, Patricia,’ Mr Bryant said. ‘Go along, son, I'm sure the other kids will be happy to have you along. Hope will look after you, won't you, chicken?’

‘Yes Dad,’ Hope said with a wave. ‘Come on, Emmerson.’

He followed her, lengthening his stride to keep up with her half-skipping, half-running jog. She seemed so happy, always smiling. Emmerson didn't have time to play at anything these days. If he wasn't in school he was hanging around with the youth league and the other
mujibas
. How did these white children have time for games when the country was at war? Did they know nothing of the struggle against them?