Edge of the Rain
Page 15
Slamming her front door he strode angrily into the night. It was a long walk back to the hotel. Her words, ‘you’re not good enough for me’ burned in him. He’d covered a quarter of the distance before it struck him that someone like Madison would hardly give herself to someone she felt was beneath her, that her angry words were a cover for hurt. He considered going back to apologise then discarded the idea. He’d blown it. He called himself a fool for the rest of the way back to the hotel.
TEN
His train from Francistown left at midday and so, in the morning he went back to see Madison. He had to. He could not live with the knowledge that she believed he had used her. He got two words out. ‘Madison, I. . .’
‘Nothing,’ she said coldly, ‘you could say is of any interest. Last night was a mistake. I intend to forget it.’ Her eyes glinted in anger. ‘Take some good advice, Alex Theron, and stick with your own class.’ She started to shut the door in his face then added, ‘Don’t kid yourself that last night meant anything. It didn’t. I never want to speak to you again.’ The door slammed shut, leaving him standing in speechless helplessness.
‘At least I tried,’ he thought as the train pulled out of Gaberones station. But he was saddened. Last night had shown him a different Madison Carter, or had it? Who was the real Madison Carter? He stared at the passing countryside as the train gathered speed. Whoever she was she hated him as much now as she ever did, that much was clear. He would never be able to get around that fact. ‘Put her out of your mind, boyo,’ Pat had once advised him. Slumped in his seat, with anger slowly replacing the bewilderment in him, Alex decided to do just that.
Shakawe was just as he remembered it: sleepy, flat, pale grey sand, an atmosphere as if time had somehow passed this way and decided not to stop. Wright’s trading store, however, was proudly sporting a new roof. The same African woman was behind the counter. ‘Dumela mma,’ he greeted her.
‘Duméla rra.’ She did not recognise him. Hardly surprising; last time he saw her he was still at school.
‘How is the grumpy old elephant you married?’ he asked in Setswana.
Once when he was too young to know better, she overheard him telling Pa that he liked the lady who worked in the shop but her husband, who was also employed there, was like a grumpy old elephant. He had been horrified when he realised she had heard his words, even though she had laughed so hard tears rolled down her cheeks. On his next visit to the trading store, while his mother discussed the purchase of some cloth with the woman, he had been down the back among the tiers of buckets, rolls of hosepipe and jumbled piles of boots when the most fearful apparition leapt out at him from behind a rack of dresses. Her husband, with a watering can on his head, a large dark-coloured raincoat draped over it so only the spout stuck out where his nose should be, and trumpeting in a fashion he supposed was like an elephant but in fact sounded more like a demented, adenoidal pig, chased him through the shop, out the door, off the verandah and into the dusty street.
Alex had not forgotten. As he stood quaking in the street he had watched the piggy-looking apparition remove the raincoat and watering can to reveal a grinning African face and his five-year-old heart swore revenge. The two of them had spent the next ten years trying to give each other a fright.
When Alex was fifteen and home for the holidays, he planned spectacular success with a bucket of water he’d rigged over the door of the outside toilet. The toilet, as everybody knew, was there for the convenience of customers but was used, almost exclusively, by Pig Face—as Alex now privately thought of him—and his wife. The only trouble was, old Mr Wright who owned the store had been caught short and used the toilet first. Alex was hanging around, dying for old Pig Face to take a leak before his mother finished her shopping, when he heard a bellow followed, minutes later, by the appearance of a very soggy and very angry Mr Wright at the door.
Pig Face knew the water was meant for him. Mr Wright was yelling blue murder about catching the little bastard who did this and Alex was trying to make himself invisible behind a heap of second-hand tyres. Pig Face opened a side door and ushered him out. ‘No more,’ he whispered. ‘We’re even.’
He had never given Alex away. The two of them had become firm friends.
The woman looked at him closely. ‘Ah, ah, ah, young Alex. My, how you’ve grown.’ She laughed and clapped her hands. ‘What a big man you have become. Just wait until my husband sees you. He would not be able to scare you now.’
Alex asked if anyone was going in the direction of the farm. Not that it was likely—the only people who travelled along that road were the occasional tourists who came to see the Tsodilo Hills. Alex had been lucky enough to get a lift with two African school teachers from Francis-town to Maun and then, after half a day hanging around Riley’s Hotel in Maun, a delivery truck had brought him all the way to Shakawe. But the driver was anxious to return to Maun now and not willing to go out of his way.
The woman clapped her hands, delighted she could help. ‘But your father will be here this morning. I am getting an order ready for him to pick up. He will be here soon.’
Alex felt a nervous flutter in his stomach. It would be so good to see his father again but he knew he had stayed away too long. He had considered letting his parents know he was coming but, in the end, decided against it; perhaps his mother would be so surprised she would forget to harp.
Alex sat on the verandah of the shop and waited for Pa. He thought of everything that had happened since he last sat there. The death of his friends at school, the friendships formed at Jeff Carter’s, the beating, !Ka and Be and their small clan, Jacob and Marv, and finally, of Madison. He was nineteen years old and, it seemed to him, his experiences over the past two and a half years were all intricately weaving his future. Then, shading his eyes, he looked along the deeply rutted track which ran through the village of Shakawe and saw . . . nothing.
His future was not here, of that he was certain.
The hippo were in full-throated bliss in the river. He didn’t hear the vehicle over their grunting arguments until it was nearly at the trading store. Alex did not recognise the truck but Pa was driving. He sat where he was, watching his father climb out. He seemed stiff, as though his back hurt. He had aged, there were lines on his face. He still wore the same old battered hat. Alex watched while Pa rummaged in his pocket for his pipe, stopping beside the truck to stuff it full of tobacco, jamming it between his teeth, lighting it with his hand cupped around the bowl. Every action seemed slower than Alex remembered. Satisfied the pipe was lit, Pa went up the steps past him, not even glancing in his direction.
‘Pa!’
His father slowed, stopped, turned. ‘Alex?’ He was incredulous. ‘Alex? Is that you?’
‘Yes, Pa.’ He stood. ‘It’s me at last.’
‘Son!’ It was a shout of pure joy.
They hugged and his father felt frail. Alex could feel the sobs Pa tried to suppress. For the first time, he realised what it must have been like for his parents. He felt deeply ashamed. ‘How’s Mum?’ He pulled away, not wanting to dwell on the hurt he must have caused.
‘Still the same.’ Pa was beaming at him, his face split in two in his happiness. ‘Where did you come from? How long have you got? Oh, son, there’s so much to tell you.’
‘No-one,’ Alex thought, ‘. . . should have their love for another rewarded this way. What a prick I’ve been.’ He pulled his father close again. ‘I’ve missed you, Pa.’
His father wiped his eyes. ‘Come on, son, let’s load up and get home. Mum will be thrilled to see you.’
They had to stop at Ndete’s tree for meat. Watching Pa fuss over the selection he wondered how many cattle had found their way to Ndete’s wooden table to be cut up and sold to the inhabitants of Shakawe. He knew it was the African way but, after the butcher shop in Gaberones, and the hygienically refrigerated coolroom at Jacob’s, and even the efficient distribution of meat among the clan, the sight of hundreds of flies clustered over the carcas
s and milling in the pools of blood on the ground made him feel slightly queasy.
Pa talked nonstop on the drive home. Familiar country passed and then they were on Pa’s land, and the roan-coloured cattle, skinny and desperate, were pulling at the unappetising grasses which grew in clumps in the sickly-looking sand. The Tsodilo Hills sat, squat and mysterious in the distance.
The house looked just the same except the verandah roof sagged a little in the middle. And then there was Mum, coming out of the door to help Pa with the groceries. Her blonde hair was a little duller, she was plumper, but she moved lightly on her feet with the same swinging walk he remembered. He jumped out and went towards her. ‘Oh Lord, thank you, Lord. My son. My son has returned. Thank you, Heavenly Father.’
Well, some things never change.
Within ten minutes he felt he had never left. Pa was still planning to fix the old shed. Mum pottered in the kitchen blessing the Lord and supervising whatever maid she currently employed. Alex went to open the door of his room. ‘Don’t go in there.’ Mum was behind him. ‘We have a guest. She’s using your room. You’ll have to use Paulie’s. Still, if you’d let us know you were coming . . .’
‘Who?’ He cut her off.
‘You don’t know her. Chrissy Cameron. Remember Reverend Frith? He’s back in England now but he suggested she contact us. Apparently they’re cousins. She’s renting the room.’
‘Why?’ He was intrigued. Why would someone rent a room out here?
‘She’s working here.’
‘Here! On the farm?’
Mum smiled grimly. ‘Don’t be silly, Ali, where would we find that kind of money?’
‘Where is she now?’
‘She goes to the Hills every day. She’s an anthropologist out from England. She’s cataloguing the cave paintings.’
‘On her own!’ The Tsodilo Hills were the centre of much folklore and superstition. The Kung had told Alex how the spirits of the dead whispered through the crevices and caves, trying to trick the living into joining them. He had heard the sound once. The low moaning and rustle as a breeze went scurrying to places too small for any human to follow. It had given him goose bumps when he was twelve. It probably still would.
He lost interest in the intrepid anthropologist. ‘I saw Paul in Gaberones.’
‘He’s doing well. With independence coming he expects to be offered a job in Gabs when they set up the new Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Of course he has to get through university first.’ She spoke as though she hadn’t heard him.
‘I know, Mum. I saw him.’
‘Can you stay, Ali? Your father . . .’
‘Mum,’ he said as gently as he could. ‘I love you and Pa very much but I can’t stay.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her. He had always thought her beautiful. She was still beautiful but her eyes seemed somehow empty. ‘Please try to understand. My life is for me to decide.’
‘The Lord decides, Ali,’ she said primly.
‘Old ones know so much more than you and me,’ !Ka had said. ‘And that is why, when the old ones speak, we listen. They are giving us the gift of their years. If we do not listen then they might as well not have lived and that, my son, would be a tragedy because, if they had not lived tell me, where would that leave us?’
‘Oh !Ka,’ Alex thought. ‘What would your wisdom make of my mother?’ But he kissed the top of her head and said, ‘Of course He does, Mum, but I think He has other plans for me.’
‘I’ll go and see to dinner.’ Her strangely empty eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
‘I wonder what it’s like . . .’ he thought sadly, ‘. . . to live with a heart filled with disappointment and a head which believes the only truth to be had is that which you read in the Bible.’
He was sitting outside with Pa when the anthropologist returned. He had expected a stumpy old lady with a hearty personality. The willowy girl with the short-cropped bright red hair, amber eyes, tip-tilted nose and quite the most kissable mouth he had ever seen took him by surprise. When Pa introduced them she stuck out her hand and gave him an unexpectedly firm handshake. ‘Hi there. The prodigal returns I see.’
Chrissy Cameron was actually Scottish. She had a lilting accent which went up and down at odd times. It was very attractive and so was she. When she smiled her eyes crinkled at the corners. When she laughed, which she did often, she threw back her head revealing a long white neck. Her carroty-coloured hair was too bright to be anything other than natural. Besides, her brows were a darker version, and the hairs on her arms were too. Her skin was finely freckled, or as much of it as he could see. She was liberally smeared with zinc cream. He liked her immediately.
Over dinner she talked about her work. ‘I’ve nearly finished. Only a couple of weeks to go. I’ll be sorry to leave here, it’s so peaceful.’
‘Where will you go, back to the UK?’ Alex put a fork of beef stew into his mouth, savouring the taste. His mother’s cooking was as excellent as he remembered.
‘No, I’m based in Gabs. I’m on secondment from the Natural History Museum in London. My specialty is primitive art. When this country gets independence they intend to have a combined museum and art gallery. My job is to list and photograph the rock paintings and then come up with some sort of display. The field work is nearly finished but I still have about two years’ work ahead of me to put it all together.’ She grinned across the table at him. ‘Finding the stuff is one thing. Researching it takes forever.’
He was glad she was not leaving the country.
He changed the subject. ‘Everyone’s talking about independence. I thought Britain was going to hand this country over to the South Africans.’
‘The South Africans thought so too,’ Pa said. ‘But the people here don’t want that and neither does Britain. Seretse Khama is the man to watch, you mark my words. He’s got a lot of support, and not only from the Bamangwato. The other tribes like him too.’
‘A black man running the country. Never heard such rubbish. What does he know?’ Mum was still smarting from Alex’s request that she keep the grace short.
‘I met him once,’ Pa said. ‘He’s a moderate. Very committed to a peaceful handover. He and that farmer fellow, Quett Masire, apparently put forward a very detailed plan of action. They want elections next year. Elections! That’s almost unheard of in Africa.’ Pa shook his head. ‘He’s got my vote that’s for sure.’
‘How does he feel about South Africa?’ Chrissy was taking note of Pa’s words. Alex liked that. Pa had a lot to say when he cared to say it.
‘He’s against apartheid. He has no time for Verwoerd and his policies. He’s also against Ian Smith and his plans for a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. But he’s treading a fine line. He can’t be seen to be actively against them. He’s too reliant on South Africa and Rhodesia for food.’
‘What’s the future for whites?’ Chrissy asked.
‘We shouldn’t have to worry. As you know Seretse Khama has an English wife. Okay, the British messed him around horribly but that’s in the past. Seretse knows he must work with the current administration, not confront it. He’s already said he will honour existing freehold land ownership. Residents will be invited to take citizenship when we become Botswana.’ Pa put down his knife and fork. ‘Lovely meal, Pets.’
‘Botswana? That makes more sense.’ Alex liked the name. After all, a person living in Bechuanaland was known as a Motswana, the people collectively were Batswana and their language was Setswana.
‘You talk about elections,’ Chrissy said. ‘Will they be fair?’
‘As far as I can tell,’ Pa answered. ‘There are three main players. The People’s Party, the Independence Party and Khama’s Democratic Party. Dr Motsete is also expected to run as an independent but he doesn’t stand a chance. He’s Malawian for starters.’
Chrissy sipped at her glass of water. ‘What’s Seretse Khama’s background?’ She put down the glass. ‘Is he qualified to run the country?’
‘Why, because she’s white?’
‘Yes. His uncle, Tshekedi Khama, was acting chief of the Ngwato until Seretse could complete his studies. He felt that tribal customs had been compromised. After all, any son Seretse had would inherit the chieftainship. That’s the custom. If that son were half white would the Ngwato accept him?’
‘Would a half white son accept the Ngwato?’ Alex commented.
‘I see the problem,’ Chrissy said.
‘That’s not all. Back then, South Africa was asking for Bechuanaland to be absorbed into the Union. They couldn’t possibly accept a marriage like Seretse and Ruth’s.’ Pa smiled sadly at Peta but she looked down at her plate. ‘With their apartheid policies and rules, Seretse and Ruth were breaking the law. The only course of action left to South Africa, if Bechuanaland became theirs, would have been to throw the two of them into prison. Imagine the outcry from around the world?’
‘How did the problem get resolved?’
Pa got a twinkle in his eye. ‘Britain did what the British do best. They exiled Seretse. They figured if he were out of sight the problem would go away.’
‘But it didn’t,’ Chrissy said.
‘Seretse solved it himself. He renounced his rights to chieftainship which reconciled him with his uncle. He worked tirelessly to convince the British not to hand Bechuanaland over to the South Africans. As soon as Britain made it plain that they would administer this country the problem of Seretse’s marriage went away. Seretse came back here and now serves as vice-chairman of the Ngwato Council.’
‘He’s obviously cut out for public life.’ Chrissy handed her plate to the servant with a smile of thanks. ‘I wonder what motivates him; the quest for power or a sense of duty?’