He avoided the captain’s daughter for the rest of the journey with a resolution which was almost comical, but a Rhodesian woman, who was travelling without her husband, made it fairly clear she was available if he was interested.
‘It’s incredible,’ Kathy thought, ‘they don’t even try to hide it from me.’
Richard made sure he was always in sight of his wife if the Rhodesian woman was around; he had no intention of allowing any further misunderstandings. When she realised he was not going to take up her offer, the woman shrugged off her disappointment and became quite friendly to Kathy. When she learned that Richard planned to contact his uncle in Zululand and hoped to settle there, she talked to them of her own country. The depth of feeling in her voice, her obvious love for Rhodesia, and her belief in the future of that country, convinced both of them they should give Rhodesia a try, despite the safer option of a family connection further south.
A few years earlier, Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence had raised political eyebrows in Britain but, since it appeared to be more of a challenge to African nationalism than it was to British authority, it received very little attention in the press. Sanctions against Rhodesia were imposed but, at first, they appeared to be a token of mild disapproval, rather than a heavy-handed slap on the wrist. Richard had heard of UDI. At the time, working long hours in the hotel in Edinburgh, with Africa appearing to be beyond his grasp, he applauded the rebellious nature of the Smith regime and saw their determination to carry on, despite sanctions, as an embodiment of the spirit of Africa. He believed Smith when he said, ‘There will be no majority rule in my lifetime—or in my children’s lifetime.’
The Rhodesian woman on the boat told them about the Assisted Farms Scheme, whereby the Rhodesian Government offered financial help to prospective farmers to entice more settlers into the country. It was a further inducement to head north to Rhodesia.
They disembarked at Cape Town, an attractive and smallish city dominated by a flat-topped mountain. Richard purchased a second-hand Land Rover and they travelled by road to Johannesburg. The vehicle coughed and spluttered for the entire long, tiring trip through the flat, dry Karoo and died dramatically as they entered the outskirts of South Africa’s biggest city. He managed to tinker with the engine with enough success to drive it to a garage and, realising they would need a reliable vehicle, traded it for a new Ford F250 truck. This they booked onto a train which they also boarded, and headed for Bulawayo. At Bulawayo they took delivery of their truck, packed their suitcases into the open back, and drove north to Salisbury.
It took Richard three weeks to find his land, two and a half thousand hectares of good grazing country with excellent water. They did not qualify for government assistance, having the grand total of £35,000 in their bank account, so while they could afford the land, they could not afford to build a house. He and Kathy lived in tents, camped high on the escarpment where he would eventually build their home. Despite the hardships, they were happier during this period than any other. They were young, strong and in love, and their lifestyle seemed to both of them to be that which earlier explorers had experienced. Living in tents brought them closer to their land. They lived wild, like the creatures around them. They fell in love with Africa as a result.
Richard was not afraid of hard work. He employed a few black workers and he worked with them, toiling long and hard through scorching sun and driving rain, tearing down old fences and putting up new ones, building several dams with nothing more than picks and shovels, improving the pasture the hard way—with a hand-held plough which took two men to control, pulled behind one very old and dignified Clydesdale, one spirited and flighty skewbald mare and one lazy, stubborn and thoroughly cantankerous donkey. As a team, they were a laughing stock. However, they worked together more often than not which was good enough for him. What money they had left after paying for their land he used to buy the beginnings of what was to become the best Hereford herd in the whole of Rhodesia.
Richard had not even begun to consider building a house, preferring to give his attention to the farm first and personal comfort second, when Kathy told him she was pregnant. They had had spats before but nothing to match the verbal slanging match which ensued. The fight ended with Kathy hurling a pot of boiling stew at him and bursting into tears. Richard, ignoring his distressed wife, climbed into the truck and drove the twenty-two kilometres to the local village where he got horribly drunk out the back of the general store which also served as a drinking house. When the kindly wife of the storekeeper took him through to her kitchen for some black coffee, he promptly threw up all over the floor. Feeling somewhat better, with a complete about-face he reeled outside again to proudly announce that he was going to be a father. Topping up with half a bottle of scotch, he drove erratically and dangerously home to advise his wife he had forgiven her.
Kathy could be as stubborn as he when she liked. She did not speak to him for six weeks, and it took a black mamba coiled up in her bedroll before she did. She screamed, ‘Kill the bloody thing!’ which, after six weeks of deafening silence, was music to his ears.
He built their home with his bare hands. It consisted of one main room, one bedroom and a verandah. A separate adjacent building was the cookhouse. Their bathroom was one of the tents. The baby, when it arrived, would have to sleep with them. Kathy was young and fit. Through her pregnancy, she toiled nearly as hard as her husband, clearing, levelling and planting a garden. She extended the vegetable patch and became extravagantly proud of it. She planted fruit trees, shrubs, flowers and trees. She developed a near pathological need to water everything. The garden flourished. By the time the house was habitable, nearly a half a hectare of ground around it had been tamed. Both Kathy and Richard came from privileged backgrounds in Scotland but, standing back and admiring their small stone and timber cottage surrounded by lush green grass and a garden where the tallest plant was the spinach, they felt a pride of ownership and achievement neither of them had ever felt before.
The plan was that Richard would drive Kathy to Salisbury two weeks before the baby was due. There, she would stay with friends until it was born. However, Penny, even at birth, showed she had a mind of her own and arrived in an unexpected rush three weeks early. Her father delivered her himself. The wife of one of his black farm workers acted as midwife. He then drove his weary wife and lusty daughter to Salisbury where they spent two days in hospital before their doctor released them, saying, ‘These two women are the healthiest I’ve seen in a long while. Get them out of here, they’re taking up valuable space.’
The arrival of Penny had a peculiar effect on him. The constant howling, dribbling and puking got on his nerves. Nappies the colour of saffron, the fact that Kathy was often too tired to make love, and the sight of a bald, toothless creature whose head wobbled and whose eyes were unfocused irritated him so much he often thundered and stormed there would never be another Dunn offspring. He never held his child—he barely looked at her. When Kathy told him of small personal milestones reached and conquered, he would grunt and say nothing. A baby was not part of his plan, he resented the intrusion into his life and he resented the time and attention this small being required of Kathy.
Yet something deep inside him made him add a bathroom and a second bedroom to his house. On one occasion, when Kathy was in the garden and Penny asleep in her crib, he crept into the room and stood staring down at this little being he had created with his loins. She made quiet snuffling sounds as she slept. The sweet smell of baby soap and talcum powder surrounded her. He bent lower to hear and smell her better. That was when Kathy caught him. Startled and embarrassed he growled, ‘The bloody kid sleeps like a jackal’s whelp,’ before stomping loudly from the room. The sound of his footsteps woke the baby and Kathy shushed her to sleep again, smiling in understanding.
Penny was as independent as her father, and just as strong-willed, and she crept slowly but ever so surely inside his heart. She became a source of secret delight an
d then open pride to him. When she stubbornly refused her vegetables two days in a row and was allowed no other food until they were eaten, Richard, admiring her will, sneaked tidbits into her room when Kathy was not looking. When she threw a tantrum of such monumental proportions that Richard worried she would hurt herself and was aghast when Kathy calmly said, ‘Good, it might teach her a lesson,’ he picked her up and—in a show of cowardly capitulation quite alien to his nature—gave in to her demands. Penny had her father hooked.
David never stood a chance. In the first place, his conception stood for unconditional surrender on Richard’s part. Kathy wanted another child. Richard did not. One was bad enough, two would have been impossible. Although he loved Penny there were times he would think wistfully of the days when she was not around. But Kathy said, ‘No baby, no sex.’ Richard said, ‘That’s fine with me, there are plenty of other women out there.’ However, life on the farm was a busy, time-consuming business and there were few enough moments left for play as it was, without having to woo and win other women for the purpose of a night’s pleasure. Richard knew he would never follow through with his threat but he also knew that Kathy sometimes doubted his fidelity. He did not reckon on his wife’s determination. David owed his existence to his father’s libido.
Kathy soon realised that her headstrong husband had no intention of getting close to his son. So she drew closer herself. The bond between Kathy and David was already strong but, by trying to make up for his father’s indifference, Kathy developed a closeness with her son which was unassailable and rock steady in times of family dissension. For his part, David loved his mother with unwavering sincerity. He saw his father as a larger-than-life character to whom he gave respect and from whom he constantly tried to win approval. But it seemed the harder he tried the more distant his father became.
Penny and David virtually ignored each other. In addition to a five-year age difference which made friendship between them unlikely, the diversity of their personalities made it impossible.
One day, just after Penny’s tenth birthday, Richard overheard his son and daughter arguing over who was going to ride the new saddle pony. Penny pointed out passionately that, as David was only five, it was her privilege, and even her right, to choose which horse to ride. David stuck to his guns: ‘I want to ride him.’ Mustering all her powers of persuasion, Penny claimed that as the pony was new and untried she felt it her duty to test the horse in case it bolted with David. This did not impress him at all: ‘I want to ride him.’ Just as Penny was all puffed up for a hysterical outburst and Richard was about to step forward and tell David he was too young for the horse, David backed down and walked away. When Richard looked at his daughter he was amazed to see the same disgust on her face as he felt inside over his son’s lack of conviction. It was then that Richard realised just how much like him his daughter was.
Neither Penny nor Richard guessed that David’s acquiescence was a sign of strength, not weakness. At five, David knew what Kathy knew: that the way to deal with the flamboyant, headstrong, aggressive personalities of his father and sister was to let them think they had won. In the matter of the new pony, having no-one to fight for possession, Penny soon lost interest and David was able to ride the horse to his heart’s content.
Richard firmly believed his son was a weakling and a sissy. He disliked what he called David’s lack of gumption. But deep down at the very root of Richard’s emotions—so intimately buried that the thought remained unformed—was the knowledge that, for all his gentleness, David was a stronger person than he. He would never have admitted it, but he held grudging respect for his son.
Kathy knew the truth. Wisely, she kept it to herself. She knew how volatile her husband was, understood his restlessness, and was aware that his social butterfly mother and distant, stern father had not equipped him to deal with gentleness and sensitivity. His thoughtlessness often hurt her feelings. When he forgot her birthday she felt betrayed and unloved. Her belief that he had a wandering eye caused her pain. His apparent lack of interest in his children, especially David, infuriated her. But at night, in bed, when he held her in his arms and told her he loved her, when his daytime hardness was cushioned and softened by the darkness of their room and the closeness of their bodies, when his voice shook with the strength of his love for her, she understood that she had married a man who could never expose his real feelings in the cold light of day.
Kathy knew Richard better than he knew himself. And she loved him deeply and honestly for the man hidden inside, the man who could say hoarsely during their lovemaking, ‘Kath, Kath, you are my life.’ She loved the man who held her after making love and talked of his dreams, his fears and his plans. She loved the man who kissed her tenderly on the mouth just before going to sleep and told her, ‘Sleep well, my darling.’ And she still loved him in the morning when his mind went into overdrive and he forgot the niceties in his impatience to be off and doing things. When he snapped because breakfast held him back, when he was irritable with the children because they wanted his attention and he wanted to get to work, Kathy loved him still because she, and only she, knew the other side of him.
THREE
David was still asleep when Richard turned off the main road and onto the graded dirt one which led to Pentland Park. The bumping soon woke him, however, and he stretched and yawned, then stared with interest at the passing country. It was the middle of December, the rains had started early—five weeks ago—and the grass, burned dry and white during winter, was lush and green. Those few native trees which had lost their leaves were now resplendent in their full summer uniform. Even the evergreens seemed glossier and thicker foliaged. David appeared to be hungrily devouring the familiar sights, breathing deeply to catch the smells, head thrown back to let the warmth blow over his face.
‘Looks good, doesn’t it?’ Richard commented proudly as they crossed the cattle grid which took them onto their own land. Pentland Park was the last farm along the road. Beyond it was a vast game reserve which, before the War of Independence, had been tribal trust land for the Shona.
‘Yep.’
‘Do you miss it when you’re at school?’ Richard was making conversation to fill the silences.
‘Most of the time I’m too busy to miss it. Sometimes, though, when I have a free afternoon, I take off on my own. There’s no doubt about it, Dad, the country in Scotland is beautiful. It’s picture book stuff, know what I mean? There’s nothing gutsy about it, though, is there?’
He glanced at his son, surprised. Rarely did David string more than a few words together when speaking with him. ‘So what are you saying?’
David shrugged. ‘I guess I’m saying that, although Scotland is beautiful, I prefer Africa.’
‘Why is that?’ He found himself interested in David’s answer. He never once speculated on his son’s preference, believing that, given the choice, he would opt for Scotland over the harsher environment of Africa.
David stared out through the open window as if the answer to his father’s question was out there, rather than inside him. ‘There’s magic here,’ he said finally. ‘It’s in the colours. It’s in the history of the Africans. But more than anything else, it’s in the animals. They make Africa special.’ He turned to his father.
‘Do you know, Dad, that unless something is done to stop it, hunting and poaching will clean us out of several important species of animals within the next ten years?’
Richard snorted. ‘What rot!’
‘It’s not rot, Dad. It’s true.’
‘Where did you get that idea?’
‘It’s common knowledge.’
He snorted again. One of these damned days he would like to meet this mythical ‘common knowledge’ who seemed to have an answer for everything, especially for the young. ‘And does common knowledge tell you what to do when the animals overrun the farms?’ he asked sarcastically.
‘The Africans managed to coexist for centuries with the animals. As soon as the white man came a
long there were problems. It’s our greed. We take more than we need.’ David’s voice had strengthened and Richard suspected he was quoting verbatim something he had seen on television, or something he had heard someone else say. He did not believe David, experienced in the ways of Africa as he was, could be so naive as to think up such an argument himself.
‘These wonderful Africans you’re talking about. I suppose they didn’t kill animals?’
‘They did,’ David was nodding, sure of his next point, ‘but only for meat, clothing and shelter. Not for profit, or because they thought it made them better in bed, or . . . or because . . . or to wear as an adornment.’ David was blushing and starting to stutter. He had never discussed sex with his father and his reference to it unnerved him.
Richard took advantage of David’s embarrassment to press home his point and end the discussion. ‘Let me tell you something about hunting, young man. Most of the animals killed in Zimbabwe are part of a government-controlled culling program. Game Department know, almost to the last beast, just how many elephants, rhino, buffalo or anything else for that matter there are at any one time in any one area. They only issue licences if the numbers get too large. It’s tightly managed and it keeps animals and man at a workable ratio.’ He shot David a look. The boy’s jaw had tightened, a sure sign he disagreed. ‘There’s just no way Game Department would allow an overkill situation to develop, no way at all.’ He lit a cigarette and blew smoke upwards to indicate the conversation was, as far as he was concerned, over.
Although he had deliberately avoided mentioning poaching, part of Richard’s vehemence was due to a guilty conscience.
After Kathy died, Richard tried to pick up the threads of his old life. The farm had suffered some neglect during the War of Independence and he had virtually ignored it towards the end of her illness. But with Kathy not there he lacked the will to roll up his sleeves and make an effort. Penny and David were away at boarding school most of the time and the house rang out with emptiness. Kathy’s feminine touches were gone. While Wellington, the old family cook, kept the house clean, it seemed bare. While the gardener faithfully maintained the garden, the colourful splashes of petunia and pansy, alyssum and aster, sweet William and portulaca were missing. Richard felt emotionally dead. His normally strong will had deserted him. The impetus which had carried him through before, which had produced some of the best breeding stock and grazing land in the country, had faltered.
Storms Over Africa Page 4
