People of Heaven

by Beverley Harper

  Michael narrowed his eyes at her. ‘You haven’t been speaking to Jennifer by any chance?’

  Claire attempted wide-eyed innocence but Michael wasn’t fooled. ‘You know, don’t you? About the rhino project. Dammit, Mother, thanks a bunch . . .’

  ‘I needed to know how you felt about Jennifer. I wouldn’t even suggest selling if I thought you wanted to carry on here. When Jennifer first mentioned the project . . . well, we both agreed . . . Look, I’m sorry if you think I’m interfering but you do play things rather close to your chest.’ She was flustered, thinking he was cross.

  Michael decided it was her turn to stew but a traitorous smile betrayed him. ‘Did you ask her to marry me as well?’

  ‘Michael! Of course not.’

  He fixed eagle eyes on her.

  ‘Ah . . . April’s good.’

  ‘Good for what?’

  ‘Month,’ Claire babbled. ‘It’s a good month. Weather is wonderful. If we sell . . . I mean, you’d want the reception here . . . April is . . . oh shit!’

  Michael burst out laughing.

  ‘You’re not mad at me?’

  ‘How could I be? You suggest selling the farm out from under me, by the sounds of things the wedding is arranged right down to the carnation in my buttonhole, and, if that’s not enough, a career change seems to be down to you as well. Really, Mother. What makes you think I’m mad at you?’

  ‘Michael!’ she pleaded.

  He gave her an enormous hug. ‘Now scat out of my life. I’d appreciate the reins for a while. Anyway, what about you? If UBejane is sold, what will you do?’

  ‘Me?’ It was Claire’s turn to hide a smile. She failed. ‘I might go to England.’

  ‘Uh huh! England.’ He was grinning at her sudden embarrassment. ‘Well, well. You accuse me of not saying much. I don’t suppose this has anything to do with one Peter Dawson. Nah! Course not.’

  Claire blushed. ‘Do you mind, darling? You know we’ve stayed in touch all these years. He’s never married. He’s asked me to go to England often enough to see . . . well . . . if things could work out between us.’

  Michael hugged her again. ‘I think it’s wonderful. I always liked Peter.’

  ‘You do know, don’t you, that Gregor . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ Michael cut her off. Not because he didn’t want to hear her say it but because he knew how hard it would be for her to do so. ‘I know. Does Gregor?’

  ‘Not yet. But if I go to England he’ll obviously come with me. That would be the time.’

  ‘I should think the news would come as some relief to him. He hated Joe.’

  ‘I know,’ Claire said softly. ‘I’ve been tempted so often to tell him the truth.’

  ‘Peter knows, of course.’

  ‘Yes. He has met Gregor once or twice on visits. It’s been very difficult for him.’

  ‘Why don’t you put in a manager? You might want to come back here with Peter.’

  Claire shook her head. ‘I could never share this place, and all its unpleasant memories, with Peter. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us. We need a fresh start. Besides, the way this country is going . . .’

  ‘Not you too! It’s all I hear these days. People have been saying, “I give this country no more than five years” for the past ten years.’

  ‘You have to admit, South Africa is headed for a confrontation.’

  ‘I do agree. But a little bit of optimism wouldn’t go astray.’

  Claire smiled. ‘You’re young. You have time for optimism.’

  Michael could see she’d made up her mind. ‘I hope it comes right for you, Mother. God knows, you deserve some happiness.’

  Michael left instructions for the day with Balram, then went to find Wilson. ‘Any news?’

  Wilson knew what he meant. ‘No, nothing. I would tell you if I heard anything.’

  ‘Thanks. I have to admit though, I’m not sure I want to hear.’

  Wilson nodded gravely. ‘It is said by our people that bad news rides the winds of even worse news. I am like you, Nkosi. Even though I hunger to hear of my sons, my heart is heavy with fear. Even so, every day I ask Nandi if a letter has arrived.’

  ‘You think they’ll write? Can’t see that happening.’

  ‘No,’ Wilson agreed. ‘Jackson will not write. But Nandi’s sister who lives in Bechuanaland is aware of the situation. She will write. Each day we expect news.’

  ‘You’re convinced that’s where they went?’

  ‘Jackson will head for Bechuanaland. He has talked of little else for years. He wishes to join the freedom fighters.’ Wilson’s eyes searched Michael’s. ‘But perhaps I tell the Nkosi too much.’

  ‘You know you do not,’ Michael reassured him quickly. ‘I do not think violence is the answer but there are many who believe that dialogue alone will never work. Dyson and I . . .’ he broke off at the sudden pain on Wilson’s face.

  ‘We fear he may be dead.’

  ‘He’s not.’ Michael was adamant. ‘If the police had recaptured or killed him they’d waste no time boasting about it. No, Wilson. In Dyson’s case, no news is good news.’

  ‘But even if he is alive, he can never come home.’

  ‘Not yet admittedly, but he’s my friend and I’d like to help him.’

  ‘How can you?’

  ‘Money. I’m as helpless as you because of the way things work in this country but cash is one thing I can provide. He should go to London, join someone like Oliver Tambo. Please tell him that if you hear from him.’

  ‘I will tell him. It would gladden our hearts to know that he was pursuing a peaceful solution from a safe distance.’ Wilson smiled suddenly and clapped his hands together softly. ‘Eh heh, but I am forgetting. It is being said that on this day the Nkosi is to raise the white flag outside his house.’

  Michael laughed. ‘I won’t ask how the hell you know. Is nothing private around here?’

  ‘Private!’ Wilson scoffed. ‘How can it be private when this thing is written on your face for all to see? But I am wondering, Nkosi, who will speak for you?’

  ‘I will speak for myself.’

  ‘Hau! What if she calls you a dog?’

  I’ll probably bark. ‘I have it on very good authority that the lady in question is more likely to call me a dog if I don’t speak for myself.’

  Wilson put a hand on Michael’s arm. ‘Come,’ he said, proud as any father. ‘If the Nkosi is to speak for himself he should do so with courage, a clever tongue and a wise head. I have the very thing.’

  Michael’s heart sank a little. He was not overly fond of African beer and knew, from experimenting once or twice with Dyson, that it could be awesomely potent. However, he would not insult Wilson by refusing.

  And so it was that when Michael proposed marriage to Jennifer Bailey, the girl he had gone to school with, the girl whose silky blonde locks and hazel eyes, whose infectious laugh and straightforward intelligence had captivated his heart, he was more than slightly drunk. Jennifer, a Zululand girl through and through, who spoke Zulu as fluently as Michael, who had practically lived in the kia of her nanny when she was little and who, when she was of a mind, could match the best of them drink for drink, accepted without hesitation. Having sealed the arrangement with a lusty, lingering kiss, she opened two quart bottles of Castle lager, and passed one to Michael saying, ‘Cheers. Here’s to us.’

  Michael drank. ‘I take it April will suit you?’ he asked.

  ‘Your mother is a blabber mouth.’ She grinned at him. ‘What took you so long?’

  Michael tipped his bottle and drank a quarter of its contents before responding. ‘Abject fear,’ he admitted candidly.

  Jennifer laughed and put down her bottle. ‘Enough booze for you, my lad. You’re already legless.’

  Michael put down his. ‘True.’

  ‘Not much point in suggesting you take me out to celebrate.’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘We could always stay here and, you know, honour the occasi
on.’

  ‘We could.’

  She wound her arms around his neck. ‘Your conversation is slipping.’

  He put his arms around her waist and kissed her. ‘I’m practising to be a husband.’

  Her hand found the zipper on his shorts. ‘I’m practising too.’

  He groaned as her fingers reached him. ‘Practise away. I’m all yours.’

  ‘Too bloody right and don’t you forget it!’ She grinned at him.

  Michael knew, with absolute certainty, that he would love this girl forever.

  Dyson knocked softly at the door of the darkened house on the outskirts of Gaberones. A few minutes went by before a voice called timidly, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Dyson Mpande. Your nephew.’

  The door opened immediately. ‘Come inside.’

  Dyson had never met his mother’s sister. She had married outside the Zulu tribe – a Tswana – and moved to his home in the British protectorate of Bechuanaland. Despite misgivings over their daughter’s defection to a different tribe, her parents were pleased that at least one of their children had escaped the repression of South Africa. Letters were frequent, so Dorcas Sobona was well aware of Nandi’s difficulties with two of her children.

  ‘You must eat.’ She was horrified by Dyson’s condition. Gaunt, haunted eyes, clothes in tatters, he appeared to be on the brink of collapse. The way he wolfed down her hastily prepared meal told Dorcas how desperate he must have been.

  Her husband, having greeted his hitherto unknown relation, left them in the kitchen and returned to bed saying only, ‘Don’t Zulus ever sleep?’

  ‘He is tired,’ Dorcas excused him. ‘You are safe now. The South Africans cannot reach you here.’

  Dyson shook his head. ‘They can request extradition. I have to get further away.’

  ‘Nobody knows you are here. Stay with us a while. Get your strength back. Now come. I will prepare a bed for you. Take off those filthy rags. You can wear something of my husband’s until we get some new clothes.’ As she quickly made up a bed on the floor using cushions from the sofa, she spoke softly and reassuringly, seeming to sense how wound up and frightened he was. She wasn’t his mother but she was the next best thing and Dyson felt himself relax. ‘There.’ She patted the blankets and fluffed up the pillow. ‘Sleep now, Dyson. Sleep deep and well. You are among your own family.’

  How good it felt. Food in his belly, pyjamas, a roof over his head, people who cared for him.

  He had been on the run for nine weeks, coming close to capture three times. When they brought in the helicopters he thought he was done for. How they missed seeing him as he dived for cover was nothing short of a miracle. He’d been on the edge of the small town of Underberg, heading north towards Sani Pass, the only road into Basutoland in the whole of Natal, when two helicopters swept up from behind a hill. Had the men in them been looking his way they would most certainly have seen him. Perhaps their attention had been momentarily diverted as the towering peaks of the Drakensberg came into view, the full majestic vista unfolding as the choppers rose clear of the Umkomaas valley. They wouldn’t be the first to lose their breath at the sight of a seemingly endless escarpment rising from a sea of grass, an impenetrable wall of basalt climbing to 3500 metres above sea level, dramatically sculptured by centuries of erosion, snow capped over high green plateaus swept smooth in an ancient ice age, water tumbling clear into deep dark gorges.

  Watching the helicopters, Dyson realised that they too were heading towards Sani Pass, obviously expecting he would do the same. The single track dirt road, climbing, twisting, snake-like for twenty heart-pounding kilometres to the mountain sanctuary of Basutoland, was his only way up. Experienced climbers might tackle the cliffs and crevices but Dyson knew he could not. Resigned, frightened, hungry and alone, he swung northwards, skirting below the high peaks. There was no alternative. He’d have preferred to lie low for a while, until the manhunt had been scaled down, but now the only choice was to head as quickly as possible for Bechuanaland.

  Twice more, on that seemingly endless journey, he’d nearly blundered into discovery. In an African township just outside a place called Heilbron he’d been unlucky enough to get caught when the police, in a routine ‘let’s hassle the locals’, arrested a group of people drinking at a shebeen. Dyson had been passing the illegal but usually tolerated drinking house, his steps slowing as he listened wistfully to the merry-making inside, wishing he had the money to join in. Lost in his longing, by the time he realised the vehicle that pulled up behind him was the police, it was too late to get away. Rounded up with the people from inside, just before being bundled into the wagon he felt something being pushed into his hand. ‘Bring it back when you can,’ a woman whispered and was gone. Dyson knew what it was, a passbook. He hoped the photograph looked sufficiently like him. There was no way to examine the document, even to register a name. He could not assume he was among friends. If someone saw him studying the passbook, they could very well inform on him in order to save their own skin.

  ‘Where did you steal this from hey, kaffir?’ the policeman asked in Afrikaans, staring at Dyson. He had pale blue eyes, full of ice. ‘Do not try to tell me this is your passbook.’

  ‘Yes, sir, it is my passbook, sir.’ Dyson deliberately spoke in broken and badly accented English.

  ‘Speak Afrikaans, boy. This is not your photograph. What do you take me for?’

  ‘Ah, sir. But I have been very sick.’ Dyson responded in Afrikaans. His heart sank when he saw the photograph. The man in it was twice his weight and looked nothing like him.

  ‘Sick,’ the policeman sneered, his long bony nose turning down.

  Dyson, frantically trying to read the upside-down name, nodded. ‘Yes, sir. I am having the shitting sickness.’

  ‘Heh! You bloody kaffirs.’ The policeman was not amused.

  ‘Yes, sir. All day I am shitting and all day I am vomiting.’

  The passbook was pushed across the desk. ‘Get out of here, you dirty bugger. Go on. Out. Jesus!’ The policeman’s distaste was palpable. He turned to a colleague. ‘Probably got cholera. Better have a good scrub when you get home, Dirk.’

  Dyson had been tempted to keep the pass but, in the end, returned to the shebeen. As it happened, the woman who gave it to him was the owner. ‘How did you know?’ he asked, handing the book back.

  She shrugged. ‘I saw you standing in the street. You have the look of a desperate man. I have seen it many times.’

  Dyson thanked her for helping him and turned to leave.

  ‘Wait, Zulu.’ She handed him a bottle of Carling black label. ‘You are an honest man. Many would have kept that pass.’

  ‘Who does it belong to?’ The beer was probably the best he had ever tasted.

  ‘Hau, Zulu! You drink like a man dying of thirst.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Or fear perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He put the bottle down. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.

  The compassion in her eyes as he left the bar would have made him weep had he seen it. As he made his way through the township he realised she had not answered his question. Whoever owned that passbook would remain a mystery. Dyson thought that strange, the man had probably saved his life.

  At Zeerust, not far from the Bechuanaland border, he was, once again, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fortunately for Dyson the entire white police force, all six of them, had been celebrating the birth of the sergeant’s fourth child. After some vigorous questioning about why he wasn’t carrying his pass . . . ‘Please, sir. It is in my home. Very sorry, sir’. . . and some rough handling . . . ‘This is just a warning, kaffir. Don’t let us catch you without it again’ . . . he was driven fifteen kilometres along a bush track and told to walk back. The police drove off in high humour, chortling about ‘Teaching these cheeky kaffirs a lesson.’ As the vehicle was swallowed up by its own dust, Dyson threw the men a sardonic salute. They had taken him closer to Gaberones. ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ He left the sandy road and was
soon out of sight in the bush.

  That was two days ago. Now, in the relative safety of his aunt’s house, he reviewed his options. Rhodesia was out of the question. He could try to reach Zambia, join the freedom fighters possibly, but Dyson had little taste for some of their methods which often caused more problems than they solved. He could just forget the whole South African mess, change his name, and make a life somewhere. Maybe go to Nyasaland, which was heading towards independence. He could . . .

  Dyson fell asleep.

  Driving back to UBejane, Michael’s thoughts were of practical things. Such as buying an engagement ring, who to invite to the wedding, joining the rhino project. Good thoughts, all to do with Jennifer and the rest of his life. He pulled up in front of the house and got out, whistling softly. Wilson materialised out of the darkness. ‘I see you, Nkosi.’

  ‘I see you, Wilson.’ His good mood evaporated. For Wilson to be waiting up for him at this hour could only mean bad news.

  ‘Will you be raising the white flag?’

  ‘First thing tomorrow.’

  ‘That is good. Nkosi has spoken well for himself.’

  Michael swallowed his impatience. To hurry Wilson would be very rude. However, no harm in a slight nudge. ‘It is a fine night but the hour is late.’

  ‘Indeed. A very fine night but it will rain in the morning.’

  ‘We need rain.’

  Silence stretched between them. Wilson broke it reluctantly. ‘There is a letter. It is not good news.’

  ‘Are they in Bechuanaland?’

  ‘By now, only Miss Tessa will be there. Jackson has gone to Zambia.’

  ‘So he dumped her.’ Michael was not surprised.

  ‘It was always going to be. They were not destined to stay together.’ It was the closest Wilson could come to censuring Tessa, even though he was probably aware that Michael agreed with him.

  ‘Where is she? I suppose she expects someone to fetch her?’

  Michael heard Wilson sigh. ‘It is not as simple as that. You will be very angry.’

  ‘Try me. I do not know if my anger can get any worse.’

  Wilson said softly, ‘I think it can get much worse, Nkosi. It is very bad.’