‘Of course, there is no need to say,’ the man interrupted. ‘You perhaps could trace the mother. The money is to help look after it.’
‘It will help.’
‘If you need more…’
‘There is no need. It is enough.’ The man’s attitude was surly. He barely looked at Roy, Natalie noted.
The children had begun to crowd closer to Natalie, giggling and nervous. She smiled and reached out her hand, which made them run and duck for cover behind the women’s skirts with squeals of laughter. A girl, on the edge of adolescence, stepped lightly from one of the huts and came to take the children, chiding them and leading them over to sit beneath another tree. The children sat around her obediently. She held her head high, and in a clear voice began to count in English from one to ten. The children chanted after her, the sounds muddled and heavily accented.
‘That is Memories,’ one of the women said to Natalie as she gazed at the scene. ‘She would like to be a teacher. There was a school once, down beyond the village. But the teacher, he has gone now and there is nothing for her. She teaches the children what she can.’
As the Land Rover picked its way carefully back down the deeply rutted lane towards the main road, they sat in silence. Natalie gazed out through the window, at the dry grass and the stunted trees. The sun seemed to lay heavily upon the land, oppressive, hard and unforgiving. The metal of the car was blisteringly hot and the path in front of them shimmered as though dissolving.
‘The teacher was arrested,’ Roy said. ‘He was a supporter of the MDC, an activist. They came one day last year and took him away and nobody has heard from him since.’
‘The old man didn’t seem very friendly,’ Natalie said.
‘Moses?’ Roy laughed. ‘He’s always been like that. He’s a surly old bugger.’
Natalie was relieved when they got back to the farm. Its tidy, clipped lawns and the low farmhouse with its veranda covered with bougainvillea seemed safe and familiar after the poverty of the village. Roy’s dogs ran out to greet the car, barking. Natalie had been given a small cottage around at the back of the farm. It was a one bedroom chalet, with a small sitting room and a kitchen, and views across the back from the grilled patio of the descending hill and the woods on the far slope.
Stripping off her dust-caked clothes she got into the shower, luxuriating in the cool flow of the water. She washed the dust from her hair and wrapped it up in a towel.
Later she sat by the desk and pulled a photograph from her journal and gazed at it for some time. She was about to stand it up against the wall, but then thought better of it. She pulled out a sheet of paper and reached for the blue biro, chewing it thoughtfully. After some minutes, she put it down again and got up and walked over to the patio. Taking a glass of water, she went to sit in the shadow of the wall. Behind the cottage a flame tree blossomed, beautiful orange-red flowers. The lawn stretched down to a low wall; beyond that were Msasa trees and a tall baobab. The road from Bindura was just visible through the leaves.
It was as she was thinking of the girl, Memories, from the village, that she saw the police car approach slowly up the road.
4
It was mid-afternoon when the white men arrived at Tafara’s village.
Following the late arrival of the rains there had been a long month of heavy downfalls. The parched earth had been satisfied; the valley was lush and green and the hot, heavy air was alive with insects. The cattle had begun to fatten up in the fields. Tafara had felt the village slowly relax. Despite the uncomfortable weather, the heat and the humidity so intense that sometimes it felt as though you waded in soup, there was a feeling that the curse they had fallen under after the death of Chimukoko had been lifted, that the spirits had been appeased, that disaster had been averted.
The white men arrived on horseback, five of them in khaki uniforms, rifles slung on their backs and belts lined with cartridges, their great hats shading their eyes from the strong sunlight. On a smaller horse, inferior both in stature and health, their black guide rode. He wore an old khaki shirt, a little like that worn by the white men, but it was unbuttoned and beneath it he wore a nhembe, a loincloth made from the skin of a goat. It was this man who rushed forward first, as the white men dismounted and looked around the village.
Tafara went out to greet them. He recalled the white men that had visited the village when his father was alive, these men looked different; they were stiffer somehow, taller, proud like warriors.
The children scattered from their games in the centre of the village and hid in the dark shadows of the entrance to the huts, peering out at these pale warriors from between the legs of the women.
The guide spoke Shona with a strange accent, as though he came from some valley far away, down to the south, closer to the Ndebele. He was an interpreter for the British South African Police, he told Tafara, who were scouting the region. The police greeted Tafara with friendly, relaxed smiles and he invited them into the larger hut. The interpreter settled comfortably, happily drinking the beer that was offered him. The white men seemed more uncomfortable, crossing their legs, their backs stiff like rods. One of the white men remained standing by the door to the hut, his rifle resting on the ground. They glanced around with dull curiosity.
The leader of these men seemed to be the broadest of the group. His chest and stomach bulged beneath the khaki uniform. His hair was cut very short, but he had a large beard and moustache that obscured the whole lower part of his face. He glanced into the gourd of beer that had been presented to him and mumbled something to the man beside him and then lay it before his feet. Pulling out a white cloth from his pocket he wiped his face and then began to address Tafara and Kamba who was sat beside him.
He spoke for some time and occasionally their African guide translated, throwing out the odd explanation of the white man’s words as he ate and drank.
‘Her majesty, the big queen of England… charter… this land, part of the district of Salisbury…’
It meant little to Tafara and he sat quietly contemplating the visitors. The gold prospectors that had visited his father had not been uniformed; they had been armed certainly, but had carried themselves in a different manner. These men made Tafara nervous. They walked with assurance and they spoke to him and to the elders with a familiarity and authority that Tafara did not understand. They did not seem to be petitioning as the previous whites had been.
‘Security… stability… ’ the translator droned on, between swigs of beer and a mouthful of sadza. He spoke Shona as though it was not his mother tongue. It was stilted and ungainly with words in a dialect Tafara did not understand. He speaks like an animal wearing clothes, Tafara thought, he can do it, but it does not seem natural or comfortable. Sometimes, seemingly at a loss as to how he should translate a phrase tossed out by the white man, the translator threw in a word that was not Shona at all.
‘The hut tax will be ten shillings. For the elderly and the infirm you do not have to pay -’
‘I don’t understand,’ Tafara interrupted.
‘It is payable as you have the means,’ the interpreter explained, glancing around the hut, taking it all in. ‘You can pay in cattle, or grain, or if these are not available to you then it is possible for you to send somebody from your village to pay in labour.’
‘For what am I paying?’ Tafara asked, bewildered.
‘For the good governance of the region, for the protection offered by the British South African Police and because it is the law.’ The interpreter’s voice descended from high minded argument to contemptuous statement of fact.
The white men had risen. They left the interpreter with one thin, pale, young policeman who had taken out a pad and noted down the names of each person who lived in the village, while the rest of the group walked around noting the amount of buildings, the grain in the storage and the head of cattle corralled at the edge of the village.
The villagers had gathered and stood gazing at the men suspiciously. Though they
did not understand what was going on, the assertive behaviour of the white men worried them. The freedom with which they walked around the village and took note of their possessions, their cattle and defences startled them; and yet they did not seem to be threatening violence. Often they smiled and waved and patted the heads of the children. And then they were gone, their horses ambling off down the track, the interpreter trailing behind them.
The elders of the village gathered at dusk and the mood was dark. Kamba sat to the right of Tafara. He was angry, his face furrowed with deep creases, sharp lines across the fat. Beside him was Ngunzi, who had been a friend of Tafara’s father, a thin man with a stooped back, slow of speech, but wise and kind. Mhuru and Mbudzi, younger men, sat further back.
‘I have heard of this from other villages,’ Kamba growled. ‘They demand this tax and take it by force if it is not given willingly.’
‘Better to offer a head of cattle and live in peace,’ Ngunzi offered quietly.
‘And then next time? Another? And another? They will swallow us with their greed. First they came and offered to buy pieces of land. Now, more of them have come, they have arrived in large numbers with their guns and their soldiers and no longer do they want to buy things, they simply come to take them.’
‘It is not their land, they will show respect,’ Mhuru said.
‘What are the others doing?’ Tafara asked. ‘Those from the other villages you have heard from?’
‘What can they do?’
‘If we acted together, then the whites would not trouble us. Not just one village, but all the villages united.’
‘What you say is right,’ Ngunzi said. ‘But who could bring this about?’
‘I will go up to Nehanda,’ Tafara said.
Around him the heads nodded. Kamba slapped a hand on his shoulder and poured out for him a jug of beer.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let us go up to Nehanda.’
5
The police car slowed as it approached Roy Drew’s farm. At first Natalie thought it was going to continue, but it turned off the metalled road into the dusty drive and in through the gates, pulling up out of her line of sight, before the farmhouse. The farm was quiet. The afternoon sun lay heavy upon the hills, making movement difficult. The air was still and the blossom on the flame tree was static. As she was watching, a flower fell from the tree and drifted, as if in slow motion, to the dry grass.
She had just picked up a book and was settling in one of the worn armchairs when she heard a timid knock on the cottage door. Bhekinkosi stood outside, stooped slightly, as though embarrassed. He indicated with a flick of his thumb to the main house.
‘You are wanted up at the house, Miss.’ A bead of perspiration stood out on his forehead and dripped slowly down into the pit of his eye.
Bhekinkosi’s nervousness infected Natalie.
‘What is it?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Miss.’
She put the novel down on the table and followed the young man up the path to the main house. The garden was quiet; the dogs had found refuge in the shade and were sleeping, or lying panting. Pushing open the door, Natalie entered the house, while Bhekinkosi slipped off eagerly around the back towards the barn. From the entrance hall came the sound of voices.
Two policemen in khaki shirts and blue trousers were stood in the hallway. Both wore peaked caps and stood stony-faced. From their belts hung holstered pistols and batons. One of the policemen had been sweating and dark circles spread from beneath his arms. His shirt stuck to a large belly.
Roy had been speaking, but he stopped as Natalie walked in. For a moment there was silence as Natalie surveyed the tableau. Kristine had been crying; the rims of her eyes were red. The blood eased slowly back into Roy’s face, so that it was its normal colour by the time he spoke again.
‘Natalie,’ he said, glancing down at the clean, tiled floor, ‘we’re going to have to go down to the police station in Bindura to make a statement.’
‘Okay,’ she replied, feeling her heart thump. ‘About what?’
‘About the child,’ the policeman said, enunciating each word carefully and deliberately.
As Roy indicated for them to move towards the door, clearly eager to see them out of the house, the policemen drew out a pair of handcuffs.
‘That’s not necessary,’ Roy said.
‘I decide what is necessary, Mr Drew.’
‘For goodness sake, man, what am I going to do? Run away? Assault you?’
Kristine stood stiffly, her back against the wall, her face pale. Natalie felt an icy current run across her skin. The policeman reached out and took hold of Roy’s arm, deftly flicking the handcuff closed on his wrist. As he grabbed for the other arm, Roy stood back resisting. Instinctively, Natalie drew her own arms behind her. The second policeman stepped in, grabbing hold of Roy, and for a moment they tussled as Roy fought against the hand being cuffed. The second policeman had begun to sweat and both looked unhappy. As Roy was marched out through the front door, the policeman took hold of Natalie’s arm and pulled her after her uncle.
The sudden heat of the sun, after the cool of the large, open entrance hall of the farm, was blistering and seemed to radiate from the patrol car squatted on the gravel in front of the house. Some of the farm workers had come out and lingered at a distance as Natalie and Roy were pushed into the back of the car.
Inside the car seemed hotter than it had been outside. When Natalie rested her bare arm against the metal of the door, it burned her skin, leaving an angry red line. As the car turned, Natalie saw Kristine stood in the darkness, just inside the door. Roy saw her too and attempted a smile. The car did a sharp turn, driving up over the neat lawn, and accelerated hard so that dust and grit clouded the entrance to the farm.
The windscreen of the police car was cracked, a jagged fork rising from the driver’s corner right to the middle. The springs seemed to have gone in the back seat, so that at every pothole Natalie’s teeth rattled and her whole body jarred. Beside her Roy was silent, gazing out across the neat fields of the farm as they drove down the road towards Bindura.
Neither of the policemen spoke and the only sound was an occasional crackly message on the radio. Once the policeman in the passenger seat picked up the receiver and began to speak. Twice he repeated himself, the second time with irritation, before slamming it back into its holder and muttering something before he too turned to gaze out across the passing country.
When they had left the Drew farm behind, the country to each side of the road became less cultivated. Overgrown fields and orchards, rotting farmyards, and redundant machinery rusting away among the weeds.
‘This farm here,’ Roy said, loudly, indicating the plain to the north, ‘used to belong to my friend Nigel Heseltine. Two hundred acres given over to coffee and tobacco. He employed one hundred locals. Look at it now.’ The fields were thick with brush, saplings grew in a spindly fashion along with bushes and thick, dry grass. He shook his head.
‘What are they doing now?’ Roy addressed the two policemen. ‘Those families? What are they doing now?’
‘They have found better jobs,’ the policeman said.
‘Better jobs?’ Roy laughed. ‘Rubbish. There are no jobs. They’re starving, that’s what’s happening to them now.’
‘They have much better jobs now,’ the policeman in the passenger seat asserted. He half turned, grinning. ‘Before they were oppressed, they were treated no better than cattle. Now they are free and have good jobs that pay them well and treat them like decent humans.’
‘Is that why they come up to my farm begging then?’ Roy Drew’s face was growing red. A vein throbbed at his temple. ‘Is that why they come up imploring me for any work I can give them?’
The policeman turned back to stare through the windscreen.
‘Nigel ran a good farm,’ Roy continued, ‘it was profitable. He paid taxes to the government. His workers had jobs and were paid decent wages and could feed their families.�
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The policeman whipped around, his arm shooting out, pressing the pistol into Roy’s chest. Roy leaned forward, his handcuffed hands raised, his cheeks tight and almost purple. Natalie grabbed hold of her uncle’s arm. The blood had drained from her own face, and she could feel her heart pumping hard somewhere up near her throat.
‘Uncle Roy…’
The two men stared at each other, loathing etched deeply in their faces, eyes sharp with bitterness. Spittle flecked Roy’s lips. The policeman’s eyes narrowed and slowly he withdrew the pistol and put it back into its holster on his hip. He laughed and shook his head. Roy fell back against the seat and closed his eyes. Natalie could see her uncle’s chest rising and falling as he attempted to control his anger. Natalie withdrew her hand and found that it was shaking. She clasped her hands together and leaned her head against the dirty padding behind the window and watched as the desolate country rolled past.
The police station was a basic building, divided into a number of unattractive rooms, sparsely furnished. Tattered curtains hung between the main reception area and a side office. They were seated on a low bench against the wall and told to wait. Roy leaned back, his head against the wall, his hands still secured with the handcuffs.
‘I’m sorry about the outburst,’ he said.
Natalie nodded. She kept her eyes down. A number of policemen wandered around, occasionally glancing down at the two of them. The two arresting officers had disappeared. The police station smelled of sweat and dust and something more acrid that Natalie couldn’t place.
‘Just tell them what happened,’ Roy said to her.
‘About what?’ Natalie asked desperately.
‘About the child. The baby. Don’t try to hide anything. Somebody has obviously reported it already anyway so there’d no point in pretending.’
‘Who do you think reported it?’
Roy shook his head. ‘Who knows? Somebody from the village? Unlikely I would think, so that would mean somebody from the farm.’
‘One of your employees?’
A Child Called Happiness Page 3
