An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  ‘I was just about to go out to the fire.’ She poked her head around the door and saw that none of the others had emerged from their rooms yet. ‘All quiet. I’m ready, why don’t we go somewhere out the back of the rondavels and try and get a signal.’

  He nodded. ‘OK.’

  The darkness of the African night soon engulfed them as they moved away from the fire and the dull glow of the solar-powered lights in the rondavels. Alex turned on the phone, which resembled a clunky, old-fashioned mobile, and unfolded a similarly retro aerial and pointed it towards the sky.

  Instinctively, Emma looked up. ‘Wow.’ She had thought she was getting used to the spectacular night skies in Namibia, but every time she gazed up at the stars from somewhere remote, like this, the sheer number of stars and the volume of light took her breath away again.

  ‘I never get used to this sight,’ Alex said.

  ‘You just read my mind.’ His face was bathed in the light of the phone’s screen and she thought he looked unearthly, like a handsome ghost or a traveller from another galaxy. He was cute, and there was an innocence about him. Emma smiled as she remembered that he was worried he would be rapped over the knuckles for using a company phone for private purposes. Emma was no criminal, but she had partied pretty hard in Glasgow and been part of a few late-night pranks around town. ‘Do you ever cut loose?’

  He looked up from the phone’s screen. ‘What does this mean, cut loose?’

  She almost laughed at his formal pronunciation. ‘Have fun, go crazy, freak out.’

  He pursed his lips and she wondered if she had offended him. ‘I enjoy my work, my research.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. Have you ever, like, got really wasted and done something ridiculous that you later regretted, but at the time you couldn’t stop laughing about?’

  Alex’s face creased in thought. ‘No, I do not think so.’

  Emma exhaled then Alex started to laugh.

  ‘OK, you got me. So, spill. What did you do?’

  ‘I should not say. Besides, we have a satellite signal now. You may send your message to your mother.’

  Emma shook her head. ‘No, tell me, what happened?’

  Alex suppressed a little smile, then folded down the phone’s antenna. ‘Very well, if you do not want to send your SMS . . .’

  She grabbed his hand with hers, stopping him from shutting down the phone, wrapping her fingers around his. ‘Tell me,’ she said, not letting go. It was very dark, but Emma thought he may have been blushing. ‘Now.’

  He sighed. ‘It was when I was at university, on a year’s exchange, in Munich. I drink only beer here in Namibia, and even then not to excess. However, all the students in my class were drinking schnapps, and shooters. I became very drunk.’

  She didn’t want to let go of his hand, and he didn’t try to move her away. ‘And . . .’

  ‘And we were playing a drinking game – I forget now the rules – and I lost. I had to run through the campus, in the snow, naked.’

  Emma had to move her hand now, to cover her mouth. ‘Oh my God, that’s priceless. I would have died of the cold.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Not of embarrassment?’

  ‘No, just the cold,’ she laughed.

  ‘Anyway, it would have been fine,’ he continued, ‘except I was caught, by one of our professors.’

  ‘Oh, no. Was he hard on you?’

  ‘She.’

  Emma laughed out loud, then remembered they were trying to be discreet, and covered her mouth again. She still tittered when she tried to speak again. ‘Was she hard on you?’

  Alex coughed.

  ‘What? What happened?’

  He looked around, as if there were spies in the darkness. ‘She was, how would you say in English? The opposite. She was quite soft on me.’

  ‘No way! She liked you?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Emma, please, I don’t want to go into details. It’s not gentlemanly.’

  She knew she should drop it, she could tell he was definitely as red as a beetroot now, but she wanted him to open up, and, besides, she was curious about how his story ended. ‘Did your friends show up to rescue you?’

  He scoffed. ‘Hardly. They ran off, with my clothes.’

  Emma smothered another laugh. Poor guy. ‘So you were left there, naked, with one of your professors, in the snow.’

  ‘She ordered me inside the nearest building. She was angry with me, but told me I would die of exposure if I stayed outside.’

  ‘Well, that was decent of her. What happened next?’

  Alex turned away. ‘You should send your message, Emma, the others will be looking for us soon. Benjie will be starting the braai.’

  He was right, she knew, but she was enjoying this. It wasn’t his discomfort that amused her, but the story was weirder – and more exciting in a strange way – than any of the antics she’d got up to at Glasgow University. ‘Was she attractive?’

  He swallowed. ‘Please, Emma . . .’

  ‘She was, wasn’t she? Did you fancy her?’

  He looked away again, towards the fire, then back into her eyes. ‘She was beautiful. Many of the male students talked about her, fantasised about her.’

  Emma felt a stab of jealousy but, perversely, she still wanted to hear the rest of the story. ‘What did she do, what did you do, Alex?’

  He held her gaze. ‘She said she wanted to warm me up, and I agreed that would be the sensible course of action.’

  Emma had stopped laughing. She didn’t want to think of sweet, innocent Alex, the man devoted to his research and his lions, involved in hot, furious, illicit sex with an older woman, or anyone – at least anyone other than her. To her own personal immediate embarrassment, which she hoped didn’t show, she felt herself becoming aroused. Emma had flirted with Alex, keeping her hand on his when he was threatening to turn off the phone, teasing out his story, but now she didn’t know what to do or say. She felt as though the physical gap between them, just a few centimetres, was like a force field.

  Emma moistened her lips with her tongue. ‘What did she do, get you a coat, wrap you in a blanket?’

  He swallowed and she watched his Adam’s apple bob, wanted to touch it. ‘No.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Only thirty-four, just thirteen years older than me.’

  Emma saw something other than lust or a jocular memory of a fling in his eye. There was pain there. Emma hoped she hadn’t hurt Alex. She was going to tell him she didn’t need to know any more, but he beat her to it.

  ‘We had an affair, Emma. It was wrong, but we were in love, at least I thought we were. Andrea, my professor, tried to end it, but we could not stay away from each other. It lasted another three months but in the end her husband caught us out.’

  ‘My gosh.’

  Alex looked away, shamefaced. ‘He threatened to report her to the university. She would have been dismissed, the scandal was too great. He wanted her back. She didn’t want that; she wanted to live with me. I left Munich the next day, and flew back to Windhoek from Frankfurt. I never heard from her again.’

  Emma put a hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Alex.’

  He looked at her again, back into her eyes. ‘I’m not the virgin you thought I was. I slept with my teacher, a married woman. I broke my own personal code of honour. It’s why I like living out here, in the desert, away from people.’

  Now he’s just being maudlin, Emma thought. She gripped him harder. ‘We all make mistakes. I have, and my mother certainly has, but we all have to move on, Alex.’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe I don’t want to move on. Maybe I’m happy out here, with the solitude and the wildlife. Did you ever consider that?’

  ‘Emma? Are you out here?’ It was Sutton, ca
lling from the direction of the fire.

  ‘Yes, Professor?’

  ‘Ah, there you are.’ He appeared, silhouetted against the fire. ‘Farmer Van der Westhuizen is on his own, his wife is away visiting her mother and he gave his maid the night off, he was not expecting company. He’s asking for help in the kitchen and I’m afraid I haven’t cooked anything other than sausage and eggs, and that was when I was your age.’

  And what, I’m supposed to know how to cook because I’m a woman? Emma thought to herself. The old man was insufferable. ‘OK, Prof, I’ll be there in a minute.’

  ‘He’s already burning the cooking oil. I fear we have a disaster in the making.’

  Alex folded the antenna down on the phone. ‘We can do this later,’ he said, zipping the phone back into its case.

  ‘OK,’ Emma said. ‘Prof, I’m all yours, but I must warn you I’m no gourmet.’ Emma walked towards Sutton and the fire. She cast a glance over her shoulder and saw Alex staring up at the stars.

  Emma strode past the fire, where Dorset had returned to his seat and was drinking what looked like a scotch and ice next to Andre Horsman, who also had a drink.

  On the other side of the fire pit from the rondavels was a rectangular building with a thatched roof that housed the communal kitchen for the camp and an inside dining area, whose open sides were enclosed with mosquito mesh and chicken wire. Sutton, the silly old fool, had been exaggerating. As Emma walked in she was greeted with the mouth-watering smell of fried onions. Benjie was dropping fist-sized chunks of meat on the bone into a heavy steel pot, browning each piece in the onions. ‘Smells good.’

  He looked to her and grinned. ‘Just my personal specialty potjie. The meat is gemsbok neck. It’s going to be delicious.’

  ‘If you do say so yourself.’

  He laughed. ‘Modesty is not one of my strong points.’

  Emma leaned against the door frame. The farmer was relaxed and friendly and clearly in his element. He didn’t seem to be missing his wife or his maid. He began adding a selection of spices and condiments to his one-pot stew.

  ‘How do you know Andre?’

  Benjie added chopped tomatoes and white wine to the pot, then took a sip. She wondered if he hadn’t heard her question, but after licking his lips, he said, ‘The war.’

  ‘Were you in the air force as well?’

  ‘Yes. It hurts any military person, be they army or air force, if you leave men unclaimed on the battlefield. I was a part of the initial search for that missing Dakota. Truth was we didn’t really know where to start looking.’

  ‘Do you think we’ve got a chance now?’

  Benjie put the lid on his pot and wiped his hands, finally satisfied with his potjie, which was simmering away. ‘This is the best chance Andre’s going to get to find that plane. Until you found that man in the ground no one knew where the start point was. If the Dakota crashed in a rocky part of the desert there will still be pieces of it visible; if it crashed in the dunes it might have been swallowed by the sand, but if it ditched in the Atlantic it’s long gone. In any case, it’s worth trying. Now, whatever your professor may have said to you, I don’t need a woman in the kitchen, but you can pour yourself a glass of sauvignon blanc from the fridge if you really want to make yourself useful.’

  Emma smiled. ‘Best idea I’ve heard all day.’

  Emma walked out of the kitchen only to find the path blocked by Sebastian Lord. He held a dewy bottle of white wine in one hand and two glasses in the other. ‘I was just bringing the sous chef some sustenance.’

  She smiled. ‘Well, Gordon Ramsay has just politely ordered me out of his kitchen so I’m unemployed.’

  ‘Sauvignon blanc?’

  ‘Sure. You’re a mind-reader.’

  He passed her a glass. ‘Here, hold this.’ Sebastian filled her glass then his. ‘Andre’s got fingers in everything, including the wine industry. He’s got a small vineyard outside Franschhoek and for some reason I find myself having to give them a lot of legal advice.’

  She laughed and sipped the wine. ‘Yum.’

  ‘You want to join the party, or just chill for a bit?’ Sebastian nodded to a bench made of an old railway sleeper perched on brick piles, outside the kitchen hut.

  ‘Chilling sounds great. I’ve been spending all my time with the professor and Natangwe the last few days, but it seems like longer.’

  Sebastian laughed. ‘And your friend Alex?’

  Emma shrugged. ‘He comes and goes. He’s a bit of a nomad. He researches lions and cheetahs so he’s always on the move.’

  Sebastian looked into her eyes. ‘It must have been such a buzz, finding that guy in the ground.’

  ‘It was.’ She recounted the moment when she had realised she’d discovered a body, and liked the way she seemed to command Sebastian’s full attention. ‘Sorry, I don’t want to bore you.’

  ‘Impossible,’ he said.

  Emma thought she should ask Sebastian something about himself. ‘So, you like to travel?’

  He nodded. ‘Lots of businesspeople will tell you how much they hate being away from home and travelling for work, but I say, what’s not to like? I get to see the world, stay in nice places and meet plenty of different people. I was an air force kid and I spent my time growing up in places such as Bloemfontein and Louis Trichardt, so I think it makes me appreciate Paris and Rome more.’

  He was funny and sexy and interesting, she thought. Emma cast an eye back to the fire.

  ‘Sorry, I’m monopolising you,’ Sebastian said.

  She looked back at him. ‘No, no. I love travelling, too, though I haven’t done enough of it. And I’d like to see Bloemfontein and Louis Trichardt as well.’

  Sebastian laughed. ‘I’d be happy to show you.’

  ‘Is your father a pilot?’

  Sebastian looked up at the night sky and took a breath. ‘Was. He flew Bosboks, bushbucks, small observation aircraft. He was shot down over Angola and killed.’

  ‘Oh my God, Sebastian, I’m so sorry.’

  He looked at her with his dark eyes and blinked. ‘It’s OK. I was a baby. My mom remarried and my stepdad, who was also in the air force, was a good guy, but Uncle Andre kind of looked after me like I was his own kid. Your folks?’

  ‘Now that’s complicated. But the short story is that I lost my dad as well. And my mom kills people for a living.’

  Sebastian’s eyes widened. ‘Serious?’

  Emma sipped her wine and Sebastian topped her up. ‘I kind of wish I wasn’t, but yes. She’s, like, a military contractor, security and stuff.’

  ‘Cool. A hot chick with a gun; doesn’t get much better than that.’

  ‘And how would you know what my mum looks like?’

  Sebastian smiled. ‘I’m guessing you take after her.’

  Emma felt herself blush, and gulped down some more wine. She was getting tipsy, but she didn’t care. She asked Sebastian about Paris and Rome and Hong Kong and New York, and other places she wanted to visit one day. In turn, he wanted to know why she was interested in conflict archaeology and what brought her to Namibia. By the time he opened the second bottle of white wine Emma had taken him up on an offer to visit the vineyard where it had come from, when she came to Cape Town after spending time with her mother.

  Time passed quickly and Emma was a little unsteady when Benjie ordered them all to carry the tables and chairs out of the indoor dining room and set them up by the fire for dinner.

  Emma made a conscious effort not to appear as though she was devoting all her attention to Sebastian, but every time she looked across the fire to Alex he seemed to look away.

  Alex stood up as soon as he had finished eating. ‘Excuse me. I’m tired, I’m going to turn in. Goodnight.’

  The group said their goodnights and Emma started to feel bad about the way she had teased Alex, and about
Sebastian, but Sebastian distracted her by asking her where in the world she would most like to work as an archaeologist. Unlike Alex, he was actually interested in her, and could hold a conversation.

  ‘Hey,’ Alex yelled as he re-emerged from his room, ‘I’ve been robbed.’

  Chapter 18

  Hudson Brand saw the woman walk into reception at Etosha National Park’s Okaukuejo Camp, and while he immediately knew he had seen her before it took him a few seconds to realise who she was.

  She joined the queue for accommodation just as Brand finished paying the daily park entry fees to a woman in national parks uniform at the second queue. He went to the woman and removed his baseball cap. ‘Mrs Chapman, isn’t it?’

  She looked at him, startled, and he noticed that her blue eyes were bloodshot. Her blonde hair – that was what had thrown him at first; he remembered it being auburn – was long, tied back in a ponytail, and looked like it needed a wash. There were perspiration stains on her bush shirt. ‘Who? No,’ and then Brand saw a flicker of recognition in her eyes before she looked down at the ground. ‘Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person.’

  Brand was used to hunting people as a private investigator; he could look at a photograph and memorise the features, even picture the person with different hair, or glasses, or some other minor disguise. There was the strong jawline, the high cheekbones; she was prettier in the flesh, though unkempt now, as though she hadn’t slept and had been in the same clothes for days. He smelled her body odour, plus stale alcohol. ‘Sonja.’

  She looked up at him instinctively, though he’d doubted she would fall for such a simple trick. Her eyes tried to ward him off. ‘Sorry, I thought you were Sam Chapman’s wife. I was with him, the day before he died.’

  She opened her mouth as if to speak but no words came out. He saw her defiance crumble, her lip start to tremble. She turned on her heel and walked out of the air-conditioned reception building, into the midday glare. Brand followed her outside. He caught up with her and she turned to face him when she heard the door close behind him.

  ‘It’s Sonja Kurtz. Sam and I never married.’