by Tony Park
‘Is this some troopie dive?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ he said, grinning. ‘Do you want to eat first?’
‘No, I ate at George and Susannah's already.’
‘Good, eating's cheating.’
‘Braedan,’ she said, running her fingers through her now dishevelled hair, ‘I'm not getting involved in any drinking games and I'm not flying to Kariba tomorrow with a babelaas.’ She wasn't a good flyer at the best of times, and the last thing she wanted to do was get on a Viscount with a hangover.
‘Sure. No problems. I'll pour you home safely.’
She laughed. ‘I'm serious, hey?’
‘I thought that, until you gave the finger to that oke in the Ford. Wait till I tell Tate.’
‘You wouldn't dare!’
He grinned, a wide streak of pure mischief. It made her laugh again.
He led her inside and as they walked down the stairs the music grew louder, until she could feel it throbbing in her chest. Inside the club smelled of cigarette smoke, sweat and perfume. The lights were low, but behind the cocktail bar was a long fish tank filled with cichlids. She'd had some of the little brightly coloured tropical fish when she was younger – they'd come from Lake Malawi and Lake Tanganyika. It seemed the place was aiming for an under-the-sea theme, but as they moved past the bar and the dining area, where no one seemed to be sitting, the music hit them full blast and destroyed any illusion of marine tranquillity. A crowd of guys were on the dance floor, in front of the stage, raising their fists in the air. The long-haired members of the band were doing a Queen cover, thrashing their heads as they sang, ‘We will, we will …’
‘Fuck you!’ yelled the guys in the unison.
Despite herself, Hope smiled. ‘I did warn you,’ Braedan said.
He pushed his way through the crowd back to the fish tank bar and ordered her a drink.
Braedan downed his beer in one long gulp. ‘Drink up.’
‘No,’ she yelled over the music.
He shrugged and went back to the bar and returned with another beer, which he drank as quickly as the first.
‘Are you trying to get drunk as quickly as possible?’
‘Yes.’
She shook her head. ‘Why?’
‘Because I'm with you.’
‘Thank you very much. Charming.’
He laughed. ‘No, you don't understand. You're beautiful, Hope.’
It hung there between them, and it was as if all the chatter and the music and the singing in the club had stopped. ‘Braedan, I'm –’
He held up his hands. ‘What I meant was that I can only dance when I've had a few drinks, and as I have to dance with you, I need more beer.’
She shook her head as he went back to the bar. When he was there he turned to look back at her. Hope drained her glass and held it over her head. He smiled and nodded, then threaded his way back with another beer and a glass of champagne for her.
The band were taking a break, after a loud round of applause and cheering, and a DJ stepped up to the stage and put on a record, which encouraged a few girls to move out onto the dance floor as the familiar opening riffs produced a few impromptu cheers.
Braedan handed her the champagne, and although he didn't finish this beer in one gulp, he downed half of it before he spoke again. ‘Come. Dance with me.’
‘No, caveman.’
‘Come.’
‘No!’
Braedan finished his third beer and strutted out towards the dance floor. The DJ had put on the Bee Gees' ‘Night Fever’. Braedan looked around and grabbed a man's sports jacket from the back of his chair as he passed. Before the man could stop him, Braedan was in the middle of the dance floor doing a John Travolta impersonation. He swung the jacket around over his head and as its owner stood and moved towards him, he flung the jacket back with a ‘Thanks, boet! Buy you a beer.’
Hope had followed Braedan to the edge of the seething crowd, which applauded and cheered on his moves. She'd worried his stunt with the jacket might degenerate into a fight, but now she was laughing, despite herself.
Braedan held out his hand to her and several pairs of eyes fixed on her. Hope felt her face flush and she shook her head vigorously.
‘Go on!’ the girl next to her yelled over the music. ‘He's gorgeous! If you don't want him, I'll have him.’
Braedan had both his hands out, beckoning her. More and more people were clapping and cajoling her to join him. The girl who had offered to step in started swinging her hips and boogying out in Braedan's direction. Hope looked at the other woman, downed her glass of champagne and strode out onto the dance floor. The crowd roared.
Afterwards, hot and breathless, she told him to ask her properly next time if he wanted her to dance with him.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘Drink?’
‘Yes. Cane and coke this time, please.’
‘Ah, spook and diesel it is, then.’ He grinned his boyish, sexy, wicked grin again. Braedan led her back to the bar and they found a spot at the end, away from the crush of people ordering and where they could hold a conversation without having to yell over the music. Over their drinks he asked her about Cape Town, and university, and what she wanted to do with her life.
‘Travel, first,’ she said. ‘Before settling down. What about you?’
‘I've already done some travelling.’
‘Really? Where?’
‘I've been on a few day trips to Mozambique.’
She laughed, although she'd been trying not to talk about the war. ‘What will you do when it's over?’
He shrugged. ‘I don't know. Farm, maybe, if they'll let us white ouens keep some land. One thing's for sure, I'm not letting any gook kick me out of my own country, and I'm not taking the chicken run.’
Hope was surprised. ‘So you don't think we'll win?’
‘I might be a soldier, but I'm not stupid. Smithy's already sold us down the river by letting Muzorewa take over. The blacks won't be satisfied with the bishop, so it won't end until Mugabe or Nkomo are running the country. We're killing them by the hundreds – the gooks that is – out in the bush, but the men in suits will sign our lives away.’
‘But you keep on fighting? Why don't you leave … go to South Africa, or overseas?’
Braedan shook his head and drank some beer. ‘This is all I know. It's all I'm good at.’
‘I hate it … the killing, the suffering … What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
Braedan drained his drink. ‘You think they should win – kumbaya and all brotherhood of man bullshit.’
‘I think Smith is kidding himself if he thought the blacks were prepared to wait indefinitely for independence. They have right on their side, Braedan. They're the majority of the population and most of them don't have the right to vote.’
‘Right? Like the men that kidnapped Natalie. They were right, hey?’
She shook her head. ‘They were animals.’
‘You'll get no argument from me.’
Hope stared at her drink. Her head was feeling fuzzy. She looked up at him. There was something about him … something dangerous. He was staring at her. ‘What's it like … to kill a man?’
‘That's the question you're not supposed to ask and I'm not supposed to answer truthfully.’
‘Truthfully?’
‘When I shot the man who was holding Natalie, I was higher than anything this can give you,’ he held up his glass, ‘or morphine, or grass. What's it like?’ He set his glass down on the bar and leaned in closer to her. ‘I fucking loved it.’
Hope felt a chill run down from the top of her spine to the base. She could feel herself buzzing from the alcohol, but it was more than that. There was something fascinating about this man, something so different from his brother. Her chest felt constricted, almost as if it was hard for her to breathe, and she felt the chill supplanted by a warmth that radiated up to her face. She felt it down low, too, in her core, below the pit of her belly. He held out his hand
and slipped off his bar stool. She took it and followed him wordlessly back into the crush of sweating, swinging bodies.
They danced again, and then to the last song of the night. It was an old Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons hit that had been made popular by the Vietnam War movie, The Deer Hunter. Braedan held her tight and she rested her head on his shoulder. She could feel his erection. God, she thought to herself, this couldn't be happening.
They hardly spoke a word as they left the club. Hope climbed onto the bike and wrapped her arms around him. Braedan raced through the near-empty streets of Salisbury, but cut the engine to coast up to George and Susannah's home. The house was surrounded by a high wall that George had only recently built. Hope was sure he was scared of Natalie being abducted again, although the chance of that was virtually zero in the city.
Braedan pulled on the brakes and Hope climbed off, taking off her helmet. She knew she should just say goodnight and ring the buzzer to be let in. Instead, she stood there. Braedan kicked down the bike's stand and got off. He came to her and reached out, brushing a strand of hair from her face.
‘You're beautiful.’
‘Don't, Braedan … don't say that.’
‘I –’
She put a finger to his lips and he understood. He took her and kissed her, hard, and she opened her mouth to him. She'd felt it since they stopped talking, since he held her on the dance floor. She knew it was wrong, but she was overcome with greed for him.
They moved to the wall and he continued kissing her as he undid the button of her jeans. The zip came down as he slid his hand into her pants. She was embarrassed at how ready she was for him. He found her and she ground against him as he rubbed and rolled her clitoris between his fingers. His lips on hers muffled the sound of her orgasm.
Hope was breathing hard, unsteady on her feet as he turned her around. She put one hand out, her palm flat on the rough stucco. She reached back with her other as he was pulling his cock out of his jeans. She guided him into her from behind and grunted as he slid inside her.
She reached around her back, wanting to touch him, but at the same time not wanting to see him. He was rough with her, but she didn't care, even as her arm bent and she felt her face pressed against the wall. She needed it to be like this. She wanted to feel as though he had forced her into this, but at the same time she couldn't get enough of him. It was so wrong. Hope felt her second orgasm building inside her and bit her lip to stifle her cry as he grabbed her hips and forced himself deeper inside her.
*
The Viscount lurched as it hit another updraft, then settled with a screech of rubber on tarmac. Hope opened her eyes. The businessman with the hairpiece was grinning at her.
‘See, nothing to worry about. Are you here on holidays?’
She ignored him and stared out the round window. The aircraft slewed around and she could see Tate, in his national parks khakis, standing at the low fence. He had a bouquet of flowers in one hand. He was waving with the other.
Oh God.
Everyone else on the aircraft was eager to get out and start their holiday on the Rhodesian Riviera. There was the promise of waterskiing and sailing on the lake, game viewing, and gambling and partying at the Carribea Bay casino. Hope was the last one to get up and shuffle down the aisle. The heat hit her and sucked the air from her lungs. She felt as though she couldn't breathe.
She walked down the stairs, holding the railing for support, and ignored the hostess's practised smile. Tate high-stepped over the fence and ran across the tarmac and folded her in his arms. Hope started to cry.
‘What is it, my girl?’
I'm not your girl, she thought. She'd gone through all the options on the plane. She would say nothing; she would confess all; she would break it off with Tate; she would ask his forgiveness. She still had no idea which one to choose.
‘What's wrong?’ he asked again as he shepherded her inside the small terminal. The other passengers were milling about, waiting for their bags to be brought in on a trolley pushed by an African porter.
‘Nothing. It's just …’
‘What? Why the tears?’
She would hate herself forever if she kept it a secret from him and she would hate herself more if she told him and it crushed him.
Why had she done it? It was more than the sheer animal attraction of the brother, the pure badness of him. She knew some women fell for the wrong men for whatever self-destructive reason, but it was more than that. It was more than the sex, though God knew it was the most intense couple of orgasms she'd had in her life. She knew, standing there in the stuffy, airless little building that she could not live the life Tate had planned for her.
‘Tate, I'm sorry.’
The baggage trolley had just been wheeled in and Tate, recognising her bag, was reaching for it. ‘Sorry, what was that?’
She started to cry again and he led her by the hand out into the afternoon sun. ‘What's wrong? Tell me?’
‘Tate … I saw Braedan last night.’
He put her bag down, straightened and just stared at her. She knew she didn't have to say more.
Tate put his hands up to his head and clutched at his hair. ‘No.’
‘Tate …’
‘No, no, no … this can't be happening.’
She changed her mind again. She could make this work. She did want to spend the rest of her life with this beautiful, gentle man. He would be a kind, selfless lover and she would want to make love to him every day until they died, to atone for her sin. ‘It was nothing, Tate … I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.’
He would, she was sure of it. He would be angry. He might cry. She would be ashamed, but he would forgive her.
Tate turned away from her and walked towards a green open-topped Land Rover. He opened the door, got in and started the engine. Hope picked up her bag and walked slowly towards the vehicle. She began lifting her suitcase to put it in the back, but Tate just stared straight ahead, over the windscreen, which was folded flat on the truck's bonnet. Hope couldn't blame him for being angry and sad, and for not helping. Just as she was about to lower her luggage into the rear of the Land Rover Tate let out the clutch and drove off, out of the airport car park.
*
Hope sat on her suitcase in the shade of a mopane tree for two hours. She didn't know where or how to contact Tate. She'd never called him: all their communication had been by letter. She knew he was working in the Kuburi wilderness area around Kariba, but that was it.
She cried until there were no more tears. When she was done, and she realised he wasn't coming back to fetch her, Hope went into the terminal to the Air Rhodesia booking desk and asked if there were any seats on the return flight to Salisbury.
The girl checked some paperwork. ‘It's busy, but we've got two flights this afternoon – there are some bigwigs in town so they've put on another Viscount. I can get you a seat.’ Hope nodded and the reservations clerk handed her a green boarding pass.
Hope went to the payphone in the terminal and fed it some coins. She fished the scrap of paper from her handbag and dialled the number.
‘Ja,’ said the voice on the other end. It was husky from too much drink and too many cigarettes.
‘It's me,’ she said.
‘Izzit? Oh, right. Howzit? This is a surprise.’
‘Yes, well … I'll be on the five o'clock flight back to Salisbury. Air Rhodesia, flight 825.’
‘I'll be there,’ Braedan said.
Hope said nothing more and hung up. She sat in the terminal and watched it fill with sunburned holiday-makers in shorts and sandals, as well as a growing group of military men – some in uniform and others in the neatly pressed, slightly unfashionable clothes of soldiers in civvies.
Two armed soldiers walked in and several others got to their feet as Lieutenant-General Peter Walls entered the building. Hope looked up. The jowly features of the General, the chief of the Rhodesian defence forces, were instantly recognisable from his appearances on TV and
in the newspapers. Hope hated him and everything he stood for.
The woman who had served Hope at the ticketing counter made an announcement over a tinny-sounding tannoy calling all passengers with green boarding passes to the gate. Hope checked hers and stood. She saw the General and his aides chatting. He held up a red pass. Hope wondered if he might bully his way onto the first flight, but he and his entourage found themselves seats in the terminal instead.
Hope joined the queue of mostly homeward-bound passengers and looked back over her shoulder, hoping against hope that she might see Tate's national parks Land Rover pull up to the terminal entrance. But he wasn't there. The young couple in front of her were holding hands. Honeymooners, she guessed. The man had a small pistol, a .38 she thought, in a holster on the belt threaded through his shorts. She needed to get out of this screwed-up, self-destructive country of hers. South Africa might be home to one of the world's great evils – apartheid – but at least you didn't need to carry a gun to protect yourself.
Hope handed her boarding pass to the same woman who'd issued it to her.
‘Your lucky day, hey? Getting a seat and then getting on the first plane.’
Hope said nothing. She didn't feel very lucky at all.
13
A young man sat in the bush, in the hills near the tiny settlement of Makuti, seventy kilometres from Kariba. He heard the drone of aero engines and lifted the binoculars to his eyes.
One could see forever, up here on the edge of the escarpment, overlooking the giant lake and the Zambezi Valley. It was little wonder the hotel up the road was named the Clouds' End.
He found the aircraft and saw its four engines. He lowered his binoculars and double-checked the torn page from the Air Rhodesia inflight magazine. It was definitely a Viscount. From his canvas satchel he took the marine distress flare, which had been bought in the boating shop at the Carribea Bay marina. He removed the cap, placed it on the base so the pin was in contact with the striker, then pointed it skywards and slapped the cap hard down on the palm of his left hand.
