Out of Shadows (5 page)

“Mum!”

“You remember Natalie, don't you? I don't think she knew what a boy was the last time you and her met, but apparently she couldn't take her eyes off you. I'm sure none of the girls at home will be able to when we go back, you're the talk of the town. The mysterious boy from Africa. And so handsome!”

From somewhere I found a laugh.

“That's silly,” I said.

“It's true! Cross my heart.” And then, coming even closer—“Bobby?”

“Yes, Mum?”

“I haven't forgotten, you know. About what I said in the
car. We still have a deal, yes?” I found myself nodding even if she couldn't see. “I want to go home, too, but your father assures me he's doing a good job of running the office and we have to give it a chance. We have to be fair. But if you're not happy I will discuss it with him very soon. I promise.”

“Yes, Mum.”

“Good boy. Just hang on in there a bit longer.” The sound of my father's voice rumbled somewhere behind her. “I've got to go now. I'll write . . .”

Now he was taking the phone from her; I could hear the scratching of his beard.

“It's gone
nine
, Robert.” He carried on from where he'd left off, as if only just realizing what that meant. “Shouldn't you be in bed?”

“I . . .”

“Good-bye, Robert. Sleep well.”

Clunk
.

A few seconds passed. The sound of someone not saying anything, and then a gentle click as the operator closed the line.

It took forever
, but that first term rolled and shuffled and eventually passed by. I couldn't wait to get home. None of us could. Four whole weeks of not being at school was a dream come true.

April turned into May. The rains had stopped and autumn was starting to bite the evening air. The holidays were good, but my father said he had to work all through them because his staff weren't up to scratch. It meant we couldn't go anywhere as a family like we'd planned. My mother met the news with a resigned nod and a long sip of her drink.

About two weeks in I phoned Nelson.

“What you up to?” he asked.

“Not much.” Which was true. The next bit wasn't, though. “This and that. You?”

“I've been selected to run for the National Junior Team,” he said, unable to contain his excitement. “I've been training every day. It's lekker. The best thing ever.”

“I said you were good.” I was pleased for him. Then a drop
of disappointment hissed on the flames. “So you're busy every day?”

“
Ja
. But you can come watch me race if you like. It's not far, about half an hour's drive from yours.”

My mother walked past with an empty bottle and put it in the bin.

“Yeah. I'll ask my mum,” I said, knowing I wouldn't. “Sounds like a plan.”

I put the phone down. Now my mother was out on the veranda again, sighing as she picked up the paperback I could tell she wasn't really reading. She caught me looking at her, and suddenly pretended not to be sad, and waved.

I waved back, then slipped away to my room because there was nothing else to do. I took out my atlas again and looked up Britain, and found comfort by running my finger over the names of places I knew.

Our second term
.

The counting of weeks started all over again. June arrived and autumn became winter.

It was another boring Sunday and we were sitting in our study room, drinking Milo for warmth. No one wanted to go out because a thick
guti
had been hanging around all morning and you could barely see twenty meters before the damp air turned everything gray.

“
Ja
, and do you remember the convoys?” Ivan talked toward the ceiling, tipping his chair right back and popping jelly babies into his mouth.

He and De Klomp were reminiscing about the war and they were letting me listen. Ivan let me do a lot of things these days. Nelson had been given special leave to go training almost every weekend, so he never seemed to be around anymore, plus I think even Ivan felt sympathy for the amount of attention Greet was still giving me.

“Whenever we went on dirt roads my old man would get the first black he saw and make him sit on the hood,
because he said they all knew where the land mines were. A lot of them didn't, but that didn't matter. Some of them shat themselves.”

He gave me a wink. Despite the cold, we were in good moods. It was hard not to get excited before half-term weekend, and this term seemed to be going so much quicker than the first.

At that moment Simpson-Prior came into the room. Normally I would have said “Howzit” but Ivan had warned us that some pictures of
Scope
babes had been found in his locker and so all the seniors were calling him “Prior the Wire-Puller” now. It wasn't good to get too close to someone branded with a nickname like that in case it rubbed off.

I decided now was a good time to venture out and make the phone call I had to make.

“
Masikati
, Weekend. Three six six five, please.”

“Ah, and good afternoon to you, Mastah Rhrob-ett. How are you today,
shamwari
?” The handset was light with Weekend's friendly voice.

“Good, thanks. Looking forward to going home. And how are
you
, my friend?”

He made a long, drawn-out tutting sound by sucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. I was smiling already.

“Well, you know, today my wife is ver-ry very unhappy with me, and my girlfriend is also talking no longer with me, either.”

“Really? You know how girls are.” I didn't. “Give them time.”

“You think so?”

“Did you do anything wrong?” I could practically hear the waft of innocence being thrown up into the air. “Then you've got nothing to worry about.”

“Thank you, Mastah Rhrob-ett. Perhaps you are right. I shall put you through.”

Click. Hum. Then a voice. It sounded as if it was on the other side of Africa.

“Hi. Dad? It's me. Hello?”

But for once it wasn't him who'd picked up, it was my mother. She garbled something incoherent then made a high, strangled noise. I closed my eyes. Had the drinking started this early now?

“Mum? It's Bobby. Can you hear me?”

“Bobby? Bobby! Oh my, thank goodness.” I could tell she'd been crying. “My little angel. Are you all right? Tell me. Are you?”

“Fine, Mum.”

“You can tell me. Is everything okay? Are you unhappy? Because if you are I can . . .”
Take you out of there?
Was that what she wanted to say? “Are you coming home?”

“Soon.”

“Good. Because I need to . . . I want to talk to you about . . .” She was weeping again. “I think we should have gone back. We should. Maybe none of this would have happened if . . .”

She wasn't making sense and I felt scared. “What do you mean?”

“We should have gone back!” she said again. “We shouldn't be here, and now it's too late.”

“Mum?” She disappeared. “Mum!”

The line crackled and then it was my father, voice snapping down the wire.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Oh. It's only you. What do you want?”

“It's half term, Dad.”

“Today?”

“Next weekend. Saturday, after the rugby.”

“For the whole weekend?”

“Saturday until Monday evening.” Just like the term before.

“I see.”

“We'll be free from one. Firsts are playing Prince Edward and the buses are taking us in to support so you won't have to come all the way here to pick me up. We don't get lunch,” I added, because last time he'd been over three hours late.

A faint crash. Perhaps a slamming door.

“Dad? What's happened?”

“Look, Robert, to be honest this isn't really a good time. Your mother's not well.”

My heart raced.

“What's wrong?”

“She's had a bit of bad . . .” The line dropped for an instant. “She needs rest, that's all. You know how she gets sometimes. You understand.” He coughed awkwardly. “And besides, the car's playing up a bugger and I can't get the spare parts. It's so difficult to get spare parts in this country! Perhaps you can make alternative arrangements.”

My hand was gripping the handset tight enough to hurt.

Yes, I can make alternative arrangements
, I thought.
And so will Mum. And we'll go back to England without you
.

Now, more than ever, that's where I wanted to be.

“Yes, Dad.”

Alternative arrangements
.

I felt like crying.

Ivan spotted my face as soon as I went back into the house, and he came and stood by my cubicle.

“What's up?”

As vaguely as I could, I told him. He actually seemed concerned.

“So what will you do?”

What
would
I do? Boys who stayed in school over half terms were the handful that lived abroad, like the Shekiro brothers who came from Kenya, or weirdos like Button, whose mother ignored him most of the time and was shacking up with a businessman somewhere in Zambia. For someone who lived less than an hour away, there was no reason.

“I don't know. Maybe ask someone if I can stay with them.”

My first thought was Nelson, of course, though I didn't dare mention that. Ivan had hardly been angry with me all term and I didn't want that to change now.

Maybe he could read minds.

“Who? That Nelson Ndube?”

I didn't reply. I thought he'd walk off with a huff but instead he simply said, “Have you ever thought about how he gets to go home all the bloody time while the rest of us only get three weekends a term?”

“To go training.”

“But do you know
why
? I'll tell you why. Because he's special.”

“You mean, because he's a good runner?”

“No,
special
. He's black. And he's got Mr. Bullman wrapped around his little finger because of it.”

“You reckon?”

“For sure. Bully's paranoid that if he refuses permission then the government will come after him and accuse him of being racist, maybe put him in prison. Those lot do that to people. But if anyone's being racist it's Nelson.”

“How do you mean?”

“If he wasn't black, would he get special treatment?”

I didn't know and shook my head. Ivan read it the wrong way.

“That's right. He wouldn't. And you know what? That's not fair. He's using his color to his advantage. Whatever you
think of me, or of the country we used to have, it's just not fair.” He patted my shoulder with each word. “Just. Not. Fair. Is it?”

“I . . . I guess not,” I said.

In his own cubicle, Simpson-Prior turned briefly around, looking like he maybe wanted to ask if I wanted to stay at his, but Ivan snarled and he shut up before he'd even started.

“And you don't want to stay with that poof, either,” Ivan added quietly, still chewing on jelly babies. “He'll be dribbling over the babes in his magazine and pulling his chain all weekend.”

We laughed at the thought; it was funny. Then Ivan became more serious.

“Besides, he's two-faced. He was the one who put your tie in the piss trough last term. I know you think it was me but it wasn't. I swear.”

“Did he?” I said. I looked at Simpson-Prior, who was grinning and making his lips wet with his tongue as he resumed his hunched position at his desk, feverishly scribbling in an exercise book. I'd let him check out my English prep for one tricky question but it looked like he was copying the whole lot word for word. “I've got nowhere, then; I'll have to come back here after the rugby on my own.”

“Come to mine.”

I looked at him, doubtful. Surely another trick . . .

“Me? To your farm?”

“No, up my ring-piece. Of course the farm, where'd you think? It's boring on my own now my
boet
's not there, and if there's two of us my old man will let us go shooting.”

“Wow. I mean, lekker.” I found it hard to be casual. “You have a brother?”

“Had. He was killed in the war,” he said.

My mouth opened and closed.

“Jeez, man, I'm
joking
.” He punched my arm, though only
lightly. “Don't be so gullible. He gapped it to Jo'burg before the war ended.” He leaned in to inspect all the postcards stuck to my wall. “What's the deal?”

“They're from my grandmother.”

“From Pommieland?”

“
Ja
.” I paused, still wary. “She sends them all the time.”

I hid the disappointment from my voice at only having received one so far this term. Had she got bored? Maybe I didn't write back enough, but my pocket money couldn't afford many dollar-each airmails.

“Broadway. Chipping Camden. Snowshill,” he read. These were alien worlds. “Lower . . . 
Swell
? Jeez, are they serious? Reckon the chicks all want to live there, hey?”

“I know. Stupid names,” I said, blushing, but Ivan nodded approvingly as he tore the head off another sweet—and I was eight feet tall.

“Can't be any worse than the Kaffir names this country's being forced to use.”

The towns had been changing steadily since independence: Gwelo had become “Gweru,” Umtali “Mutare,” Marandellas “Marondera” . . . The most significant change happened when Salisbury ceased to exist, although most of the boys refused to accept “Harare” and just called it “Berg” or “Town.”

“Have you been?” he asked.

“We used to visit my grandmother all the time before my dad decided it would be better to work abroad. I'm going to go back one day, though. Maybe soon.”

“You should, if you want to. You should always do what you want.” He chuckled. “Lower Swell. Man! Jelly baby?”