by Wilbur Smith
When David’s photographs were published in Wild Life accompanied with Debra’s text they reaped an unexpected harvest of letters from persons of similar interest all over the world, and a request from the editors for a full-length, illustrated article on Jabulani, and the Morgans’ plans for turning it into a game sanctuary.
Debra made a lovely model for David’s photographs that he compiled for the article, and she also worked with care on the text – while David fed her ideas and criticism.
Debra’s new book lay abandoned, but her disappointment was forgotten in the pleasure of working together.
Their correspondence with other conservationists provided them with sufficient intellectual stimulus, and the occasional company of Conrad Berg and Jane satisfied their need for human contact. They were still both sensitive about being with other people, and this way they could avoid it.
The Wild Life article was almost complete and ready for posting, when a letter arrived from Bobby Dugan in New York. The editor of Cosmopolitan magazine had chanced upon one of the few copies of A Place of Our Own in circulation. She had liked it, and the magazine was considering serialization of the book – possibly linked with a feature article on Debra. Bobby wanted Debra to let him have a selection of photographs of herself, and four thousand words of autobiographical notes.
The photographs were there, ready to go to Cosmopolitan , and Debra ran through the four thousand words in three hours with David making suggestions, some helpful and some bawdy.
They sent off the tape and pictures in the same post as the article to Wild Life. For nearly a month they heard nothing more about it and then something happened to drive it from their minds.
They were in the small thatch and daub hide beside the main pool, sitting quietly and companionably during a lull in the evening activity. David had his camera tripod set up in one of the viewing windows and Debra’s reflector was raised above the roof of the hide, daubed with camouflage paint and operated by a handle above her head.
The water was still and black, except where a surface-feeding bream was rising near the far reed banks. A flock of laughing doves was lining up with a chittering troop of spotted guinea fowl at the water’s edge, sipping water and then pointing their beaks to the sky as they let it run down their throats.
Suddenly David took her wrist as a cautionary signal, and by the intensity of his grip she knew that he had seen something unusual and she leaned close against him so that she could hear his whispered descriptions, and with her right hand she switched on the recorder and then reached up to aim the reflector.
A herd of the rare and shy nyala antelope were approaching the drinking place timidly, clinging until the last possible moment to the security of the forests. Their ears were spread, and their nostrils quivered and sucked at the air, huge dark eyes glowing like lamps in the gloom.
There were nine hornless females, delicate chestnut in colours, striped with white, dainty-stepping and suspicious, as they followed the two herd bulls. These were so dissimilar from their females as though to belong to a different species. Purplish black, and shaggy with a rough mane extending from between the ears to the crupper, their horns were thick and corkscrewed, tipped with cream, and between their eyes was a vivid white chevron marking.
Advancing only a step at a time, and then pausing to stare with the limitless patience of the wild, searching for a hint of danger, they came slowly down the bank.
They passed the hide so closely that David was afraid to press the trigger of his camera lest the click of the shutter frighten them away.
He and Debra sat frozen as they reached the water; Debra smiled happily as she picked up the soft snort with which the lead bull blew the surface before drinking, and the liquid slurping with which he drew his first mouthful.
Once they were all drinking, David aimed and focused with care, but at the click of the shutter the bull nearest him leapt about and uttered a hoarse, throbbing alarm bark. Instantly the entire herd whirled and raced away like pale ghosts through the dark trees.
‘I got it! I got it!’ exulted Debra. ‘Wow! He was so close, he nearly burst my eardrums.’
The excitement on Jabulani was feverish. Nyala antelope had never been seen on the estate before, not even in David’s father’s time, and all steps were taken to encourage them to remain. The pools were immediately placed out of bounds to all the rangers and servants, lest the human presence frighten the herd off before they had a chance to settle down and stabilize their territory.
Conrad Berg arrived, still using a stick and limping heavily as he would for the rest of his life. From the hide he watched the herd with David and Debra, and then back at the homestead he sat before the log fire, eating prime beef steak and drinking Old Buck while he gave his opinion.
‘They aren’t from the Park, I shouldn’t think. I would have recognized a big old bull like that if I’d ever seen him before – they have probably sneaked in from one of the other estates – you haven’t got the south fence up yet, have you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, that’s where they have moved from – probably sick of being stared at by all the tourists. Come up here for a bit of peace.’ He took a swallow of his gin. ‘You’re getting a nice bit of stuff together here, Davey – another few years and it will be real show-place. Have you got any plans for visitors – you could make a good thing out of this place, like they have at Mala-Mala. Five-star safaris at economy prices—’
‘Connie, I’m just too damn selfish to want to share this with anybody else.’
The distractions and the time had given Debra an opportunity to recover from the American failure of A Place of Our Own, and one morning she sat down at her desk and began working again on her second novel. That evening she told David:
‘One of the blocks I have had is that I hadn’t a name for it. It’s like a baby – you have to give it a name or it’s not really a person.’
‘You have got a name for it?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Would you like to tell me?’
She hesitated, shy at saying it to some other person for the first time. ‘I thought I’d call it – A Bright and Holy Thing,’ she said, and he thought about it for a few moments, repeating it softly.
‘You like it?’ she asked anxiously.
‘It’s great,’ he said ‘I like it. I really do.’
With Debra once more busy on her novel it seemed each day was too short for the love and laughter and industry which filled it.
The call came through while David and Debra were sitting around the barbecue in the front garden. David ran up to the house when the telephone bell insisted.
‘Miss Mordecai?’ David was puzzled, the name was vaguely familiar.
‘Yes. I have a person-to-person call from New York, for Miss Debra Mordecai,’ the operator repeated impatiently, and David realized who she was talking about.
‘She’ll take it,’ he said, and yelled for Debra. It was Bobby Dugan, and the first time she had heard his voice.
‘Wonder girl,’ he shouted over the line. ‘Sit down, so you don’t fall down. Big Daddy has got news for you that will blow your mind! Cosmopolitan ran the article on you two weeks ago. They did you real proud, darling, full-page photograph – God, you looked good enough to eat—’
Debra laughed nervously and signalled David to put his ear against hers to listen.
‘– the mag hit the stands Saturday, and Monday morning was a riot at the book stores. They were beating the doors down. You’ve caught the imagination of everybody here, darling. They sold seventeen thousand hardback in five days, you jumped straight into the number five slot on the New York Times bestseller list – it’s a freak, a phenomenon, a mad crazy runner – darling, we are going to sell half a million copies of this book standing on our heads. All the big papers and mags are screaming for review copies – they’ve lost the ones we sent them three months ago. Doubleday are reprinting fifty thousand – and I told them they were crazy
– it should have been a hundred thousand – it’s only just starting – next week will see the West Coast catch fire and they’ll be screaming for copies across the whole country—’ There was much more, Bobby Dugan riding high, shouting his plans and his hopes, while Debra laughed weakly and kept saying, ‘No! I can’t believe it!’ and ‘It’s not true!’
They drank three bottles of Veuve Clicquot that night, and a little before midnight Debra fell pregnant to David Morgan.
Miss Mordecai combines superb use of language and a sure literary touch with the readability of a popular bestseller,’ said the New York Times.
‘Who says good literature has to be dull?’ asked Time. ‘Debra Mordecai’s talent burns like a clean white flame.’
‘Miss Mordecai takes you by the throat, slams you against the wall, throws you on the floor and kicks you in the guts. She leaves you as shaken and weak as if you had been in a car smash,’ added the Free Press.
Proudly David presented Conrad Berg with a signed copy of A Place of Our Own. Conrad had finally been prevailed upon to drop the ‘Mrs Morgan’ and call Debra by her given name. He was so impressed with the book that he had an immediate relapse.
‘How do you think of those things, Mrs Morgan?’ he asked with awe.
‘Debra,’ Debra prompted him.
‘She doesn’t think of them,’ Jane Berg explained helpfully. ‘It just comes to her – it’s called inspiration.’
Bobby Dugan was correct, they had to reprint another fifty thousand copies.
It seemed as though the fates, ashamed of the cruel pranks they had played upon them, were determined to shower Debra and David with gifts.
As Debra sat at her olive-wood table, growing daily bigger with her child, once again the words flowed as strongly and as clearly as the spring waters of the String of Pearls. However, there was still time to help David with the illustrated publication he was compiling on the birds of prey of the bushveld, and to accompany him on the daily expeditions to different areas of Jabulani, and to plan the furnishings and the layout of the empty nursery.
Conrad Berg came to her secretly to enlist her aid in his plan to have David nominated to the Board of the National Parks Committee. They discussed it in length and great detail. A seat on the Board carried prestige and was usually reserved for men of greater age and influence than David. However, Conrad was confident that the dignity of the Morgan name combined with David’s wealth, ownership of Jabulani, demonstrated interest in conservation and his ability to devote much time to the affairs of the Board would prevail.
‘Yes,’ Debra decided. ‘It will be good for him to meet people and get out a little more. We are in danger of becoming recluses here.’
‘Will he do it?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Debra assured him. ‘I’ll see to it.’
Debra was right. After the initial uneasiness of the first meeting of the Board, and once the other members became accustomed to that dreadful face and realized that behind it was a warm and forceful person, David gathered increasing confidence with each subsequent journey to Pretoria where the Board met. Debra would fly up with him and while they were at their deliberations she and Jane Berg shopped for the baby and the other items of luxury and necessity that were not readily come by in Nelspruit.
However, by November Debra was carrying low and she felt too big and uncomfortable to make the long flight in the cockpit of the Navajo, especially as the rains were about to break and the air was turbulent with storm cloud and static and heavy thermals. It would be a bumpy trip, and she was deeply involved in the last chapters of the new book.
‘I’ll be perfectly all right here,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve got a telephone and I have also got six game rangers, four servants and a fierce hound to guard me.’
David argued and protested for five days before the meeting and agreed only after he had worked out a timetable.
‘If I leave here before dawn I’ll be at the meeting by nine, we’ll be finished by three and I can be back here by six-thirty at the latest,’ he muttered. ‘If it wasn’t the budget and financial affairs vote, I would cut it – tell them I was sick.’
‘It’s important, darling. You go.’
‘You sure now?’
‘I won’t even notice you’re not here.’
‘Don’t get too carried away by it,’ he told her ruefully. ‘I might stay just to punish you.’
In the dawn the thunderheads were the colour of wine and flame and ripe fruit, fuming and magnificent, towering high above the tiny aircraft, high above the utmost ceiling of which it was capable.
David flew the corridors of open sky alone and at peace, wrapped in the euphoria of flight which never failed for him. He altered course at intervals to avoid the mountainous upsurges of cloud; within them lurked death and disaster, great winds that would tear the wings from his machine and send the pieces whirling on high, up into the heights where a man would perish from lack of oxygen.
He landed at Grand Central where a hire car was waiting for him, and spent the journey into Pretoria reading through the morning papers. It was only when he saw the meteorological prediction of a storm front moving in steadily from the Mozambique channel that he felt a little uneasy.
Before he entered the conference-room he asked the receptionist to place a telephone call to Jabulani.
‘Two-hour delay, Mr Morgan.’
‘Okay, call me when it comes through.’
When they broke for lunch he asked her again.
‘What happened to my call?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Morgan. I was going tell you. The lines are down. They are having very heavy rainfull in the low veld.’
His vague uneasiness became mild alarm.
‘Would you call the meteorological office for me, please?’
The weather was down solid. From Barberton to Mpunda Milia and from Lourenço Marques to Machadodorp, the rain was heavy and unrelenting. The cloud ceiling was above twenty thousand feet and it was right down on the ground. The Navajo had no oxygen or electronic navigational equipment.
‘How long?’ David demanded of the meteorological officer. ‘How long until it clears?’
‘Hard to tell, sir. Two or three days.’
‘Damn! Damn!’ said David bitterly, and went down to the canteen on the ground floor of the government building. Conrad Berg was at a corner table with two other members of the Board, but when he saw David he jumped up and limped heavily but urgently across the room.
‘David,’ he took his arm, and his round face was deadly serious. ‘I’ve just heard – Johann Akkers broke jail last night. He killed a guard and got clean away. He’s been loose for seventeen hours.’
David stared at him, unable to speak with the shock of it.
‘Is Debra alone?’
David nodded, his face stiff with scar tissue, but his eyes dark and afraid.
‘You’d better fly down right away to be with her.’
‘The weather – they’ve grounded all aircraft in the area.’
‘Use my truck!’ said Conrad urgently.
‘I need something faster than that.’
‘Do you want me to come with your
‘No,’ said David. ‘If you aren’t there this afternoon, they won’t approve the new fencing allocations. I’ll go on my own.’
Debra was working at her desk when she heard the wind coming. She switched off her tape recorder and went out on to the veranda with the dog following her closely.
She stood listening, not sure of what she was hearing. It was a soughing and sighing, a far-off rushing like that of a wave upon a pebble beach.
The dog pressed against her leg and she squatted beside him, placing one arm around his neck, listening to the gathering rush of the wind, hearing the roar of it building up swiftly, the branches of the marula forest beginning to thrash and rattle.
Zulu whimpered, and she hugged him a little closer.
There, boy. Gently. Gently,’ she whispered and the wind struck in a might
y squalling blast, crashing through the tree-tops, tearing and cracking the upper branches.
It banged into the insect screen of the veranda with a snap like a mainsail filling, and unsecured windows and doors slammed like cannon shots.
Debra sprang up and ran back into her workroom, the window was swinging and slamming, dust and debris boiling in through it. She put her shoulder to it, closing it and securing the latch, then she ran to do the same to the other windows and bumped into one of the house servants.
Between them they battened down all the doors and windows.
‘Madam, the rain will come now. Very much rain.’
‘Go to your families now,’ Debra told them.
‘The dinner, madam?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll make that,’ and thankfully they streamed away through the swirling dust to their hutments beyond the kopje.
The wind blew for fifteen minutes, and Debra stood by the wire screen and felt it tugging and whipping her body. Its wildness was infectious, and she laughed aloud, elated and excited.
Then suddenly the wind was passed, as swiftly as it had come, and she heard it tearing and clawing its way over the hills above the pools.
In the utter silence that followed the whole world waited, tensed for the next onslaught of the elements. Debra felt the cold, the sudden fall in temperature as though the door to a great ice-box had opened, and she hugged her arms and shivered; she could not see the dark cloud banks that rolled across Jabulani, but somehow she sensed their menace and their majesty in the coldness that swamped her.
The first lightning bolt struck with a crackling electric explosion that seemed to singe the air about her, and Debra was taken so unawares that she cried out aloud. The thunder broke, and seemed to shake the sky and rock the earth’s very foundations.
