CHAPTER NINETEEN - LEOPARD’S LEAP
Following the Sergeant’s instructions, we turned off the main highway about two miles from the town and onto a single strip of tarmac running down the centre of a wider unmade road. A couple of times, we had to pull over onto the dusty, red earth to avoid oncoming traffic, but apart from that we saw no one. Five miles along this road, there was a sign to the right that pointed to Leopard’s Leap Farm. This time, the luxury of Tarmac was left behind; instead, we found a rutted unmade track with arable fields closing in on either side. There were irrigation ditches along each side of the track and rows of trees in places, forming an avenue, shaded from the bright sun. These trees, I found out later were blue gum that were not native here, but planted for their fast growth and use for firewood. They were beautiful though, their pale trunks rising straight and true and topped by the blue-green canopy, which gives them their name.
We eventually rounded a bend and came to an open gate with a second sign that proclaimed that we had found the farm at last. The thing that struck us as we approached the entrance was the high fencing, topped with barbed wire that could be seen around the main house. I assumed that it was a relic from the war years of not that long ago, as there were gaps here and there where new developments had taken place.
I pulled the car into a yard of what looked like the back of the house and we both jumped out. There was a door open with a fly-shield over it and Tara politely knocked on the frame. A black face peered round the corner, seeming somewhat surprised to see us standing there and even a little unsure of what to do next. We later found out that visitors never came to the back door and the unwritten protocol being so obviously flouted had momentarily confused poor Michael, the houseboy. He soon recovered though and gestured for us to come in where we quickly explained who we were. He smiled uncertainly and led us down a corridor to a side door into what was obviously the farm office, with filing cabinets and bookshelves stood along one wall. A man sat with his back to us, pouring over paperwork spread over the surface of a magnificent desk made of what looked like oak. He was dressed in khaki coloured shirt and shorts, with woolly socks on his feet. He looked tall even when sitting down and his tanned skin showed through the thinning, greyish-brown hair on his head.
Michael coughed politely and said, ‘Boss, there is some family here for you.’ The man swung round in his chair, eyebrows raised in surprise. Again we explained who we were and instantly he jumped up and came over to shake our hands. His face was open and friendly, blue eyes twinkling as he smiled, tanned wrinkles accentuating the broad, white-toothed grin.
‘We just got your mother’s letter yesterday.’ He said, not obviously upset about the lack of warning. ‘God, when did you arrive here? Where have you been? What have you been doing?’
We laughed at the torrent of questions, but before we had a chance to reply, he headed for the door while calling his wife and gesturing for us to follow him. Michael backed away; now smiling broadly as he had obviously done the right thing by letting us in. We followed Albert through to a large living area that seemed to extend the whole depth of the house. It was cool and dark at the rear, but the sun streamed through the front section that opened to a manicured lawn, beyond which, a very English looking garden could be seen.
At the repeated calls from Albert, Katie appeared from a door on the far side of the room. She was a small, but obviously energetic woman, whose smile as she came towards us easily matched those of Albert and Michael. An attractive face was framed by light brown hair and her eyes twinkled as she smiled, a quick wit and intelligence shining from them like a beacon.
‘My word, we didn’t expect to see you so soon.’ She said, giving us both a hug and kiss and then standing back to assess her two guests.
‘We’re really sorry,’ Tara tried to explain, ‘we tried to phone from Harare, but we never managed to get through.’
‘Yes, well, the phones here are a little rustic,’ Katie smiled ruefully, indicating the wooden box fixed to the wall, with a winding handle firmly attached to one side. ‘We are on a party line here and we have to listen for our particular ring to know the call is for us. Unfortunately, with several others using the same line, it can often be engaged and that’s only when the line is working in the first place; the joys of rural Zimbabwe, I’m afraid.’
‘But, it’s absolutely not a problem that you’re here: we’re always delighted to have visitors, especially family we haven’t met before.’
‘Come and sit down: Michael, could you get us some tea and biscuits please out on the verandah?’
She led us towards the front of the room and we saw that part way across it went from being part of the original house to a wide verandah, with fold-back doors extending right across the front. The similarities to Acacia were striking, but when we saw the sofa sitting in the corner and the vast table in front of it, we both gasped with delight.
‘Wow, they are just like the ones at Acacia.’ We both chorused almost simultaneously.
‘Of course, Nellie had the other set, didn’t she? I’d quite forgotten.’ Katie said. ‘They were made nearly a hundred years ago by Nellie’s father and grandfather. I don’t know why they made two of each, but I think they were both here at one time, going by the old photo’s we have.’
‘You mean Nellie used to live here?’ Tara exclaimed, as surprised as I was by this revelation.
‘Why yes dear, didn’t you know? This was where she was born and she lived here until she eventually left for England back in the twenties. Then the farm was passed to her eldest sister, Emily, my grandmother, and so on through her daughter, my mother, and then to me.’
Isn’t it a bit strange that the daughters inherited the farm though?’ I asked, ‘Why didn’t the sons get a look in?’
Katie smiled and then explained. ‘Well, it would have I suppose, but Nellie’s only brother Albert went to live in the town to pursue a career in business, so that’s why she got it. Then when she left, there was only Emily left to inherit. She would have left it to her only son William, your Grandfather, James, but he also left for England, which is why his only sister Jane inherited. The same thing happened with Maurice, my brother, as he had no interest in farming and so Albert and I stepped into the family farming shoes, so to speak.’
This peek into the family history was fascinating and I was keen to know more, but for now we were peppered with questions about our trip and our lives, so we all chatted for the next hour, drank tea, and munched on some delicious homemade biscuits that Michael had whipped up that morning.
They were both horrified to hear of the theft of the case and Albert immediately went to his office to contact Sergeant Sibanda to ensure everything was being done to recover our things. ‘However,’ he warned, ‘the camera will almost certainly disappear for good, probably has already been sold in Harare if I know these rogues at all. They won’t have much use for the other stuff though, so you never know.’
We had elected to tell them very little about our reasons for being here by telling them a broad version of the truth, managing to leave out anything to do with hidden diamonds. We left them with the impression that we were simply retracing family movements into the country and the landscapes of the painting we had brought along.
When tea was over, Albert returned to his paperwork and Katie took us for a walk around the farm, pointing out the small kopje to the side of the house from which the leopard had leapt when Nellie’s father had originally found the place. That was the good luck sign for him to stop looking and set up shop,’ she explained, ‘as it jumped clear over his head and landed right where the house is now, then ran off without so much as touching him.’
The farm dealt predominantly in tobacco and we toured the various sheds where the cut crop was graded, dried, baled, and stored before it went off to the auction house. The sweet smell of wood smoke mingled with the equally sweet smell of drying tobacco, giving the place a pleasant aura and we passed the time away chatting and walking, smiling at the
workers who scurried around completing their chores.
Katie told us about the problems they faced living in Zimbabwe under a leader whose aims were not always entirely clear.
‘This is such a prosperous country,’ she said, ‘the farms are well run and the tobacco trading floors are the biggest in the world, turning over one million kilos a day. I love the atmosphere at the auctions, you know, the auctioneer’s chant and the hustle and bustle. It is as much a social occasion as a business one, a rare chance for us to meet up with old friends from all over the place. Zimbabwe actually sells surplus food to other countries as well; this is no basket case African economy like some of the others.
But Mugabe is starting to ruin things. In small ways at the moment, perhaps, but I can envision the day when all his birds will come home to roost and then we will be in big trouble. Prices are already starting to rise, inflation fuelled by government squandering mostly, as there seems to be little else forcing these prices up. To make things worse, the “Zim” dollar has been dropping like a stone recently, good for you guys, but terrible for us.
There has been talk of land reform too, mostly just talk for now, but he could stir things up for his own gains if he wanted and then many people could lose everything they have worked hard to achieve and own. Mugabe’s cronies are put into positions of power and that ethos has filtered down the ranks of public office until you have got situations where white policemen of many years experience are being sacked and replaced by new recruits who happen to be in favour with the right family somewhere up the line.’
‘Is Sergeant Sibanda one of those?’ I asked.
‘No, actually, he is all right. He’s been in the force for a long time and is a fair and intelligent man, if a little lazy at times. However, he has had others forced on him who know nothing of effective policing, who chose the stick every time as the best way to apply the law.’
She smiled a rueful smile and said, ‘But for all that, we love this land and will choose to stay here as long as we can, no matter what the trials and tribulations.’
We carried on walking and came to the workers’ village. This practice was common on farms out here, she told us.
‘The farmer builds the houses for all his workers and they live here on the farm with their families in a community. They often decide to build their own huts, though, as they have here and they have some land for crops and animals too. It works well for both sides as they have a secure job and a place to live, and we have the convenience of a workforce always on hand. They are paid well, even though some decide to leave and go to other farms or to the city, but most are more than happy to be here. There are some families here whose ancestors came to work for Frederick’s son when all this land was worthless bush. Now we have hundreds of acres of crop producing land, 250 acres irrigated, which is no mean feat out here, but a lifeline during the regular droughts we suffer from.’
We looked on at the village scene in front of us that could have been seen at any time in the past couple of hundred years and immediately saw that change came very slowly to these country people. The round, thatched huts were decorated with natural pigments that blended into the surrounding bush, giving the impression that it was all part and parcel of the same creation.
Women and children milled around, some cooking over open fires and the children shyly approaching us, intrigued by the new visitors to their homes. That smell of wood smoke again filled my nostrils and I knew that this aroma, out of all others, would be an instant trigger to transport me back to Africa, no matter where in the world I found myself in the future. The scene was so similar to the one depicted in Frederick’s watercolour that for a moment I found myself assessing the angles and the positions of the huts, trying to fit the images with the one in my mind. I looked across at Tara who just laughed, knowing exactly what it was I had been trying to do.
That evening we sat on the verandah once again, gin and tonics in our hands, and the sounds of a scratchy old 45 record playing on an ancient wind-up gramophone. Animals chirped and rustled outside and the gentle breeze wafted the warm fragrant smells of magnolia and honeysuckle into the room. This was how I had imagined colonial Africa to be and I smiled to myself at the thought that this scene had been virtually unchanged for the past hundred years. I hunched down in my chair a little more and took another sip from my glass.
Albert had had no luck with the police and our stolen goods and so we had to decide what to do next. We had an invitation to stay here at the farm for as long as we wished, but we didn’t want to outstay our welcome and there was a lot of country to see, with or without the choice of hunting down the diamonds.
The enormity of the loss hadn’t hit either of us until we got the chance to relax, but then it occurred to me that there was more at stake here than just the waste of our time, coming here and not being able to search properly. This was to do with the whole family, including the two people whose home we were sharing at this moment. We were probably letting Nellie down in a big way too, as she had entrusted us with the task of solving the mystery once and for all and we had basically blown it. I thought back over the generations of Braughtons who had wondered about the treasure, who had dreamed of it, and some even who had come looking for it. Tara had gone very quiet as well and as I looked at her nursing her drink, her eyes cast downward, long hair shielding her face from the room, I realised that she must be thinking about her parents and their aborted attempt to find their fortunes with the attendant misery their search had caused. I reached over and grasped her hand, giving it a little shake and trying to bring her back to the room. She looked up at me and smiled briefly uncertainly before her eyes dropped once more.
Katie and Albert obviously sensed that something was wrong and tactfully went to bed, leaving the two of us on the verandah alone with the sounds and scents of the African night.
‘What are we going to do now, James?’ she almost pleaded with me for an answer.
‘I’m not sure, but we can’t give up yet, can we? There would be so many people we would be letting down if we did.’
She looked up and smiled again, glad I think, that I had read her mind and understood her misery.
‘Thanks, I’m glad you’re here with me in this.’ She said softly.
‘Ah, it’s nothing; I didn’t have anything else to do this month.’ I tried to lighten the mood somewhat; suddenly scared that Tara’s mood could change again to the darker version of her I really wasn’t that keen on.
‘Don’t joke about it,’ She was having none of it, ‘it isn’t nothing at all; it’s very much something. I think you and I are something special and we should always stick together.’
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, not sure how to respond. Before I had a chance to say anything, I felt her warm lips on mine. She drew sharply back as I opened my eyes in shock.
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that!’ She exclaimed as her hand flew to her mouth, and she sat back in her seat, just watching me for my reaction.
My mind really was reeling now, I was struck dumb and so sat stock still, just staring back.
‘I don’t know how to feel about this,’ I heard my voice say words I can’t remember thinking, ‘This can’t happen.’
‘Because we are cousins?’ she asked.
‘Yes, because we’re cousins. But also because I have a girlfriend, remember? The girlfriend that you were trying to get me to commit to...until recently that is.
I stuttered and stumbled over my words, unable to explain the inexplicable. I thought she had never looked so beautiful, but we were both emotional and upset and I worried that all this raw emotion could destroy the bonds we shared and I longed for us to be just Tara and James, cousins, friends, and nothing more than that.
Instead of saying all that of course, I just said, ‘I’m sorry Tara, this can’t happen.’ And that was that.
There was a silence for a few minutes and then she simply nodded, smiled a quick nervous smile, and then asked aga
in what we should do next about finding the diamonds.
‘I think we should sleep on it and see what we come up with in the morning.’ I avoided the question neatly and brought a close to the day all in one sentence and so rose from my seat and closed the doors to the garden.
‘Time for bed I think and then we can talk again tomorrow.’
Acacia - Secrets of an African Painting Page 20
