Читать книгу Rambles on the Edge - Wendy Maitland - Страница 9

CHAPTER 2

Adam had driven down to Johannesburg to meet us and was standing at the arrival gate with a nervous smile and big bouquet of red roses.

That was a tender moment as the children ran to him and we all stood clutching each other in a huddle among our motley assortment of bags and baggage. We had a long drive ahead, but Adam had booked comfortable places to stay along the several hundred mile route, going north through the Transvaal to the Limpopo border and home.

None of the Transvaal shopkeepers or hotel people we met on the way seemed able or willing to speak English on the long dusty trail, until at last we reached a beautifully cool and refreshing mountain retreat called Louis Trichardt, on the South African side of the border. We spent the night there gratefully, looking forward to a hot bath, stiff drink and good dinner, after putting the children to bed. Locating the hotel bar I went in with Adam for that urgent gin and tonic, to be told that ladies were not allowed to drink with men and there was a cocktail bar where I could have a drink with other ‘ladies’. This was a surprising restriction: like an apartheid against women, in an otherwise friendly hotel. In the cocktail bar I took the opportunity to introduce myself to those women who had no objection to speaking English, and find out what they thought about the rule. ‘It’s lekker (great) getting away from the men,’ they laughed. ‘We don’t want them with their guns and rugby bullshit. Keep them out!’ Apartheid was on the other foot here it seemed.

Gwelo was another three hundred miles north from the border driving via Bulawayo where we spent the next night and then, when we were nearly home, Adam delivered a piece of news that was deeply unsettling. ‘I didn’t want to tell you while we were enjoying ourselves, and I didn’t want to depress you when you had only just arrived,’ he began in the same ominous tone that Fa used when about to deliver a torpedo into the conversation. If any kind of disaster was about to be announced I wanted to hear it fast and straight. ‘Yes?’

‘The Macleans suddenly decided they want their son to take over the dairy, so I haven’t got a job any more, which means we’re on the move again. It’s a bit of bind, but luckily they have fixed me up with a friend of theirs who is a director of the Dairy Board and has a big herd at Hartley. I’ve been waiting for you to get back so we can pack up and do the move.’ He was trying to sound matter of fact and break it gently, but it was bad news coming so unexpectedly and so soon after arriving back. I took a deep breath and steadied myself, trying to see this as a new opportunity instead of a setback.

‘It’s a step up for you, darling, working for a big dairy chief, and the Macleans must have recommended you highly to have got you the job.’ I wanted to sound up-beat, and it worked as Adam replied enthusiastically, ‘Yes, sweetheart, you’re right, it’s a leg-up in the dairy world, and comes with more pay as well.’

Repacking tea boxes with all the possessions we had brought from Kenya hardly more than a year before, I thought of Muz repeatedly doing the same. Perpetually moving, taking down and folding curtains to put into boxes along with her Singer as I was now doing with my own sewing machine. I didn’t want it to become a symbol of curtain-making for an everlasting series of different-sized windows, and remembered promising myself during the early days at Glanjoro that my own family would never be subjected to the same upheavals. Now, here we were on the road again, with another change of school for Louise. But Hartley, a small farming town further north on the road to Salisbury, was more our sort of place I consoled myself, more like Nakuru, and we would make a proper home there.

‘Remember to pack the dogs’ beds, and their bowls when we go,’ Louise reminded me. ‘If they’ve got their own things with their own smell on them, they won’t mind being in a new place. And when we get there, remember you promised we can have cats, one for each of us. I’m already thinking of names. And you said we can have chickens too, for laying eggs. Mum – are you listening?’

The district of Hartley with its rich agricultural land lay almost in the dead centre of the country where the main arterial road from the capital, Salisbury, ran south to the border, bisecting the town. For shopkeepers and cafés the passing trade was a bonus. The town itself was very much smaller than Gwelo, having just one main street of shops serving a farming community that radiated from this rural hub into pastoral countryside, where the climate was considerably less harsh than further south. This is where we arrived with our boxes and dogs and furniture at the start of 1971. I had not seen either the farm or the house where we would live before moving and it had been a scramble to relocate ourselves, since Adam had been given only a month’s notice and this was almost at an end by the time I got back from England. He had been to see the new farm, Rogate, and the manager’s house which he described as hardly luxurious but adequate. What he failed to mention was that the house wasn’t really a house at all but a converted grain shed, standing all by itself in the middle of a bean field. It was a large field, which I noted was just as well since on one side traffic thundered past on the main Salisbury road after leaving the town speed limits. We were five miles from the town, so that shops and school were conveniently close – similar to the situation we had left behind in Nakuru – a positive feature that could be used to make us feel more at home I decided.

Any other plus factors to be found in this latest move were hard to identify. The house itself was so dismal in every possible way that it surpassed even Fa’s worst excesses during the periods of his crazed purchases and building schemes. I consoled myself in thinking about the laughs I could have when describing it to Ros, and how outraged she would be that I was reliving the travesties of our childhood. Adam tried to be encouraging about the house. ‘At least it has three bedrooms so Louise can have her own instead of sharing with the boys, and there are neighbours quite close on the next-door farm with a daughter the same age as Louise, so they will be going to Hartley School together and you can share school runs.’

I contemplated these assets while introducing Louise to her own private bedroom, and when she pointed out that the window had no glass, only chicken wire stretched across the open space, I reminded her that Grandpa and Grandma’s dining room window at Glanjoro was the same and she hadn’t complained about that. ‘Well, I wasn’t sleeping in the dining room, and rain never came in that window, but here it will come right onto my bed. And mozzies will come in too. Look, you can already see where there have been puddles on the floor. Look, Mum, you must show Dad.’

‘We’ll screen the window somehow, don’t worry about that, just be glad to have your own room.’

There was no time to think about screens or anything else at that stage while unloading our furniture and boxes into the house before any rain did arrive. The rainy season had started and we were lucky that the furniture van had been able to ford a small river that looked a bit too close to the house for safety if it overflowed. I wondered if that factor had been a reason for abandoning the use of the building as a grain shed. The dogs, freed from the back of the car where they had been piled in with suitcases, ran around getting in the way, so the first unpacking was to bring out their bowls, and a kettle to make tea for ourselves and the removal men.

Our furniture was a sparse collection of essentials hastily assembled when we first arrived in Gwelo and now looked even more dreary as the assorted pieces became dispersed among rooms, but I was glad to see that we did have electricity and a telephone.

Simon stood outside dangling Peter’s pot by its handle in one hand, while the other hand held Peter’s reassuringly as, side by side, they looked up at the sky where dark clouds were rolling in. ‘When we went in Grandpa’s plane it could go really high,’ Simon was telling Peter earnestly, ‘and it could go inside clouds, but only white ones, not black ones like these. Grandpa said they were too bumpy and the plane had to go round them.’ Peter listened but said nothing in reply. At two years old he was not yet talking, having no need to while Simon anticipated every need and looked after him so attentively that I began to think it might lead to arrested development. Simon himself was only four, but had already become a commanding presence with assumed responsibilities that included taking charge of Peter and the pot. This was carried around like a trophy to be flourished at any moment of indication. Peter had just one word of speech: ‘Wa-wa,’ his name for Simon. Instant attention would follow whenever Peter spoke this word. It was endearing in a way, but not if normal speech became permanently delayed. In addition he was still very small for his age, but Muz pointed out that her family were all petite and small-boned, including her father, and this went with handsome features she assured me.

I longed for her to visit, or Fa, or Ros; especially Ros who was a great ally in converting any setback into a cause for merriment and parody. We had found this was a good way of defusing all kinds of stresses and weirdness as we grew up clinging onto our madly spinning family carousel. The laughter remedy probably saved us from joining poor Spindle in mental oblivion.

There was little chance of Muz visiting, as she explained she could not contemplate coming without Andy, but that he had no inclination to accompany her and risk encountering savage animals and deadly African diseases. Instead they were enjoying frequent forays into the civilised and charming territory of France to explore its great motorways, with Andy hugging the highroad like Mr Toad. Once he was behind the wheel in the redoubtable Austin Princess he was unstoppable. ‘Now that your father has got his divorce,’ Muz wrote, ‘I am free to marry again, and it will no doubt help to ease any guilt he might feel in having abandoned me if I am safely married off to someone else. Andy continues to press proposals of marriage at every opportunity and I can see no reason to go on refusing, despite Mary’s opposition. I don’t love him in the sense of being in love, but he incessantly declares his love for me most sincerely, and we have a loving friendship. At my age I can’t really ask for more, so I will accept him the next time he asks.’

There was nothing I could do about this, so I tried to be glad that she had found a solution to her loneliness, hoping that somehow it would turn out all right despite Mary’s warning.

Our new employer, Eric Hornby, was well known in Rhodesian farming circles with a Friesian herd of 380 milking cows on several thousand acres of prime land that produced a variety of crops, including cotton. The rich flat fields were ideal for crops or cattle raising, but did not provide a very arresting landscape. Looking out from our house in the bean field there were no scenic landmarks and most of the trees had been cleared. A few of these had been left to indicate a boundary between us and the smallholding of Thornby Farm next door, where Eric’s sister Hazel lived very frugally with her husband and five children. They ran a small market garden and farm store that struggled to generate an income, in contrast to Eric’s prosperous acres. Hazel and I became good friends as we combined what resources we had to help each other in these mutually barren circumstances.

There were compensations as life was peaceful and well-ordered in terms of government services like health, security and administration. We could not have imagined, just then, that our unremarkable district of Hartley would find itself in the front line of a brutal war within seven years, and that poor Hazel’s family would be decimated.

For now, our first day at Rogate was ominous in its own way as the glowering rain clouds that Simon and Peter had been watching from outside soon burst in a violent storm. A deluge fell onto the house and surrounding bean field while we were still moving in. Adam had just unrolled carpets and rugs to disguise the effect of concrete floors, and Louise was arranging her bedroom having made her bed and unpacked toys and clothes, when the storm erupted. There was no time to cover her chicken-wire window against incoming rain when she shouted, ‘My bed is getting soaked, and the carpet is floating away.’ It wasn’t just her bedside rug that had become waterborne; all the others, newly laid, were bobbing about in a tide of muddy water surging in under the front and back doors. The construction of the building had not included obvious essentials to avoid this problem. Were we expected to bring duck-boards with us I wondered in this new situation which was several notches down from the Maclean’s superior housing. All we could do was wait for the rain to stop, which it usually does abruptly in Africa, and then get to work with brooms and mops.

Milking times were at 3.30 am, 10 am and 3 pm. This intensive routine was designed for maximum milk production, but was punishing for the dairy workers, and for the cows as they got worn out and had shorter lives than when they were milked twice a day. After each milking there was the cooling process to supervise, sick animals to treat, cows lined up for AI, cows calving, outside herds of followers (young animals) for checking, bulls to be visited in their pens and calves in theirs, and then a good deal of office work. Adam would come home for breakfast at 9 am, and later for lunch, then not until 7.30 pm when the boys were in bed, but Louise was allowed to stay up to say goodnight to him. It was a demanding life, but there is a particular type of satisfaction in dairy farming that is difficult to explain to anyone who has not lived it. Cows have personalities and even in a big herd there are misfits and rebels: the canny ones looking to see how they can beat the system; others that are gently affectionate and charming; the younger ones who are curious and friendly, their noses outstretched enquiringly. The warm smell of these animals is comforting; the soft neck and flank of a cow at close quarters with the feel and scent of its body and that of hay or fresh grass has a soothing intimacy. Cows are vegetarians so their pats are nothing more obnoxious than chewed and digested plants. The relationship which develops between man, woman and beast in the steamy environment of milk production is a close and committed one. It can border on addiction, I used to think, as Adam’s dedication to this relentless routine had its frustrating times, such as weekends and Christmas in addition to the long working hours each day. He was supposed to have regular days off, but these were often spent catching up on office work. If it was an addiction then there was little hope that he might consider a change, I thought.

The children took all this as normal since they had known no other life, and the boys quickly made friends among the children of African workers on the farm, where they roamed free and came home looking as dirty and ragged as any other scamps met along the way. It would have shocked Muz, so I consoled myself that she had not come to view our fall from grace. Louise did not join the boys, preferring the friendship of Hazel’s daughters whom she joined at Hartley School and settled there without a qualm. It was a popular school, famed for its academic and sporting excellence, so this helped us to feel better about the various shortcomings in our situation. Rugby was almost a religion in Rhodesia and training for boys started at age five in the first form, which made Simon very impatient to start school and go off with Louise each morning. Meeting other parents was my own passport to making new friends and now that we were living close to a town, I thought the Anglican church might offer some opportunities for socialising.

On my first visit I took the children who had been scrubbed and put into decent clothes, but not decent enough for us to be ushered into pews near the front where the children could see what was going on. Ladies in hats and gloves showed us where we should sit, but when I noticed that the back rows were filled with Africans I decided to go and sit with them. ‘No, you can’t go there,’ the hat ladies said. ‘You can’t sit with blacks,’ and went on to insist that I accept the pew offered. Later, when communion was served, I saw that the Africans waited until everyone else had been served before they left their seats and came up to receive communion themselves. When I asked about this I was told that whites could not drink from the communion cup after blacks, so whites went first. This made me decide to make a point of joining the Africans for communion next time. This is the church of Christ where we are all one body, I thought. What is going on here?

Despite this form of apartheid practised at the church I wanted to persevere because the hat ladies were all passionate cooks who gave phenomenal tea parties organised by a large bouncy woman called Elsa. She might easily have been a model for Beryl Cook postcards if she had not ended up in the obscurity of Hartley, where her tiny short-sighted husband worked for the local cotton ginnery. Elsa had a refreshing view of Christianity in which any occasion that encouraged the eating of vast quantities of food could be counted as an a blessing received from above. ‘I don’t have to worry about dieting,’ Elsa explained, ‘because I say a prayer with each meal asking Jesus to take away the calories.’ I looked at her generous bulk overflowing the chair as she reached for another slice of cake. ‘Does it work?’ I asked, making the question sound innocent. ‘Of course it does – if you have faith,’ Elsa said. ‘Maybe not straight away. You have to be patient. Jesus works in mysterious ways. It’s a promise from the Bible.’

Another of these prodigious tea parties was given by a church member whose husband was a senior manager at the ginnery, with the kind of salary that allowed his wife to indulge her tastes in home décor. At the party I was admiring her new curtains, which clearly had not come from the local textile factory, when she said she would be glad to tell me how to find the best ones as her method never failed. I was curious to hear it, and she went on: ‘When I’m in a curtain shop in Salisbury looking at all the designs on display, I ask God to choose.’

‘How does he do that?’ I asked, riveted.

‘I walk slowly along the rolls of fabric and when one catches my eye, I take that as a sign and say a prayer. It is the most amazing thing – God always chooses the best ones however expensive they are.’

Such a novel way of choosing curtains left me with much to contemplate as I surveyed the drab assortment in my new home and how I might involve God in locating better ones. When it was my turn to host one of the tea parties, I invited Eric’s wife to join us. She had never visited the converted shed where we lived and neither had any of the other church women, so I decided this was a good opportunity to show them the kind of accommodation that Eric thought suitable for his farm manager and family to live in. When the first guests arrived, surprised to find themselves in a bean field where tea was to be served in a shack, they were clearly taken aback, and when Eric’s wife arrived there were enough disapproving murmurs and remarks made that guaranteed the degree of embarrassment I had intended. She was not an uncaring person and apologised, explaining that she and Eric were planning to move to Salisbury and we would have their house when this happened.

I was impatient to tell Adam this unexpected good news and thought he would welcome it, but when I told him, he had his own entirely surprising announcement to make. ‘I’ve decided to give up dairy,’ he said. ‘It’s a mug’s game. No sort of life for any of us. I want to have a complete change, no longer sculling about on frigging dairy farms where I’m working half the night as well as the day. I’ve always liked the idea of being a city slicker, wearing a suit, going to work with a briefcase instead of a rubber glove. Leading a civilised life, earning proper money. What do you think?’

We were just beginning to settle to life in Hartley and this was a complete turnaround, but I didn’t want him to burn himself out with dairy work if there was a good alternative.

‘What sort of city-slicker job could you get without any of the qualifications or background they would be looking for?’

‘I’ve already heard of something from one of the sales reps who comes round all the time. It’s with Bowmaker, which is a finance company based in Salisbury. They need a cattle specialist to head up their beef-stock department. It would mean travelling around the country, appraising herds and negotiating loans. Right up my alley.’

‘Living in Salisbury?’

‘Yes. Then you’ll be happy because you can get a job as well. Several hospitals to choose from, or doctors’ surgeries. It’s a golden opportunity. I’ve already written to Bowmaker and they’re going to give me an interview. I didn’t want to tell you until there was something more definite to go on.’

‘Well,’ I paused, caught unawares. ‘It’s a bit sudden. You could have given me some advance warning of this latest change of plan. But I won’t mind having a proper house instead of living in a field with all these beans, I can tell you. It isn’t so good for Louise, though, having another change of school.’

‘The schools in Salisbury are far superior to any out in the countryside. It will be a great move. I’m confident about Bowmaker. The rep has put in a good word for me.’

It didn’t take long for a reply. The letter from Bowmaker gave details of the position and invited Adam to meet them. It all happened very quickly when he drove the eighty miles to Salisbury on his next day off for the interview, and came back the same day, elated.

‘It went even better than expected,’ he said as he took off his shoes and socks to walk barefoot on the cool floor after a hot day in the city, and went to the drinks cupboard to pour each of us a gin and tonic. Settling himself into an armchair, he said, ‘I hit it off straight away with the boss who seems an easy-going sort of chap. As soon as we’d got the formalities out of the way he took me for lunch at Meikles which was very civilised of him. I can see how city life is going to suit us.’

‘What about the pay?’

‘That’s still under discussion, but will be a lot better than what I’m getting here. On my next day off we can go and look at houses to rent. Let’s drink to a whole new life, my love. City life!’

Adam’s new boss suggested we should go to the government housing agency for one of their subsidised houses, which sounded to me like council housing reserved for impoverished tenants. This would not be improving our lifestyle in the way Adam had described, but anything would be better than the bean house. It was a considerable surprise, then, to find that we were offered a rather grand house which had lately been an ambassador’s residence. When UDI was declared a number of ambassadors were recalled to their own countries, leaving their big houses unoccupied, so these needed suitable tenants to look after them. The one offered to us was close to a good school in a select neighbourhood of leafy streets and trim gardens, where big shiny cars stood in gravelled drives – a very different community from the one we were leaving behind. As if this was not enough of a leg-up in terms of social elevation, the house stood in its own grounds with a walled garden, for privacy as well as security we were told. The entrance gate opened onto a short driveway with parking for several cars beside an imposing house where a flight of steps led to a porch embellished with pillars – allowing no entry for rainwater, I noted.

There was a woman caretaker currently in residence making sure the house was kept safe until tenants moved in, the agent told us, but she was not at home on the day that he showed us round. Beyond the front door, the house was a rambling pile of a place with a central courtyard almost like a cloister with numerous rooms around it, while the kitchen was located discreetly at the back among a warren of sculleries and pantries, There was even a butler’s pantry and a meat larder with its own cooling system. Going from one extreme to the other, I wondered how I would cope with all this. But the drawing room was a clincher: forty foot in length with a fireplace at each end and, crucially, a television set which was a fixture so I knew the children would be instantly won over. The walled garden would please them too, with a spacious play area and even a swing and climbing ropes. At its centre a mature avocado tree had grown so tall that it was higher than the house and heavy with fruit. I imagined the parties we could have in the big drawing room with guests spilling into the garden, and friends from country areas would come to stay when shopping in Salisbury, just as others had done when we lived in Kenya conveniently close to a town.

Adam was impatient to start his new job and the children were excited about the move, especially Simon who would be starting school the next term. I was excited too, but sad to leave Hazel and her family as well as the many new friends we had made in Hartley. The hat ladies had blossomed in friendship once they discovered that my tea parties met their standards, with my cakes and sandwiches almost as good as theirs. Elsa was famed for her salad sandwiches and no one else was allowed to copy them, but everyone had their own specialities rolled out on each occasion. Mine were paté sandwiches with a good slug of brandy mixed in, giving me a sense of triumph when those ladies who were ultra-orthodox Christian teetotallers took big bites and exclaimed on the excellence of the paté.

Moving house is seldom a soothing experience and flood water had damaged our furniture and carpets to such an extent that very few of these were worth keeping, so there was minimal packing up this time. We would be virtually camping in the big Salisbury house until we could re-equip ourselves more usefully from a second-hand shop or auction. The caretaker at the house was due to move out with her dogs the day before we moved in, and said she would leave the keys with the agent.

After an early start from Hartley with an easy drive to Salisbury, we called at the agent’s office to collect the keys, but he said the caretaker was waiting for us at the house so we should go straight there. When we arrived with our van and the car filled with children and dogs, we found the caretaker inside, sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by empty boxes and her own dogs, showing no sign of any imminent move. Having expected a middle-aged caretaker, a government employee perhaps, I was startled to see instead a young woman who introduced herself without getting up from the table. ‘I’m lovely Lulu,’ she announced with a mocking smile and provocative wriggle that completely demolished any illusions I might have had about the kind of person I imagined meeting. I looked in wonder at her curvy body and complexion the colour of golden syrup, suddenly finding myself lost for words. She was wearing silk pyjamas of a similar colour that clung to her figure, and I noticed Adam’s eyes widening.

‘I’ve been a bit held up,’ she went on, ‘but I’ll be gone by tomorrow and meanwhile you can bring all your stuff in and make yourselves at home. I’m cooking mealie-meal for my dogs,’ she said, getting up to stir a pot on the stove.’

We stood uncertainly watching her and the dogs that stared back at us menacingly. We needed to let our dogs out of the car where they had been confined during the entire journey, jammed in with the children and pieces of luggage, so we asked if she would keep her dogs inside while ours were allowed out. She turned from the mealie pot in alarm, ‘I didn’t know you were bringing dogs. No one said you were bringing dogs.’ She sounded affronted, as if we were guests in her house instead of the new tenants, and that it was highly inconvenient for us to be there at all, but she offered to put her dogs on chains outside.

As soon as our dogs were let out, Lulu’s dogs went into a frenzy, barking hysterically and straining at their chains, enraged to have other dogs invading their territory. Ours, seeing that hers were tied up, felt empowered to bark back at them with such fury it led to uproar and we had to take them for a walk to get them out of the way. The children, as glad as the dogs to be released from the car, came too, all of us feeling relieved to escape the frantic scene, but shaken to find ourselves in this unexpected situation.

‘What are we going to do about the dogs?’ Louise asked as soon as we were out of the gate.

‘It isn’t the dogs we need to worry about so much as finding that our new house is still occupied, so we can’t move in properly until that woman Lulu moves out,’ Adam said, sounding thoroughly rattled.

‘She did say we could move our stuff inside, and there are enough bedrooms for all of us to sleep there tonight, and then tomorrow she’ll be gone,’ I said, wanting to sound practical and reassuring.

‘What about Roger and Ruin with all those horrible dogs?’ Louise persisted.

‘The dogs can stay on their chains and we’ll tie ours up on the veranda on the other side of the house. We’ll put their beds there. They won’t be able to see Lulu’s dogs, and hers won’t be able to see ours. Then tomorrow they’ll be gone.’

‘Can I choose a room for Peter and me?’ Simon asked, excited at the prospect that we would be moving in after all.

‘Yes, of course. There are lots of bedrooms. The agent wasn’t even sure how many there are, so the first thing you can do is count them, and make sure you find out where the bathrooms are.’

That first night was the kind of camping experience which all of us were used to, except that when we started exploring the bedrooms we found that several of them were occupied by Lulu’s relatives who were unaware of any plan to move. At supper, all of them gathered to sit around a refectory table in the dining room and everyone brought their own food. I had ours in a cool bag ready for the evening when I thought we would be celebrating our first supper in the new house, so we had something for ourselves, including a bottle of wine, which was immediately seized and passed round. The children had no qualms about the unexpected dining arrangements, thinking it was all rather jolly, but my own concern grew as I looked around, thinking that we had inadvertently joined a commune. Lulu gave no impression that any move was planned for either the next day or perhaps ever, despite the presence of packing cases in the kitchen. She invited Adam to sit next to her at the table where, I noticed, she leaned her silky curves towards him and he became quite animated in response, showing none of his usual distaste for mammary hyperplasia.

Afterwards, when he and I had retreated to the empty bedroom into which our double bed had been decanted and now stood looking forlorn among scattered suitcases, I confronted him, feeling too tired and stressed to be tactful. ‘We’ve got to get rid of Lulu and her motley family. Please don’t get friendly with her, encouraging her to think we can all live happily together.’

‘Please, darling, all I need just now is peace and quiet for starting my new job, without any bust-ups on the home front. Lulu has given her word that they are leaving tomorrow. You can see all the proof you need with her packing cases everywhere. It’s just that one of her brothers has nowhere else to go, so he might have to stay for a bit.’

‘What do you mean – her brother?’ I asked in alarm. ‘Have you agreed to that?’

‘Yes, but it’s only temporary. He’s blind and they haven’t got anywhere else for him yet. Someone comes in every day to look after him. He won’t be any trouble. You can sort out the house tomorrow after Lulu and the rest of them have left. Just try to keep things sweet. You’re good at that. I’m relying on you, sweetheart. I need to be at the office early to get briefed and pick up a company car so we can have independent transport. Now we’re paying rent we have to get my job underway smartish. It’s still “kazi kwanza” (work first). Nothing has changed where that is concerned.’ I was too tired to think of a riposte to that mantra, and preferred to remember a verse we had sung as children at Nakuru School when facing yet another wearisome task, driven like mules by the teachers: ‘Take your pack and trek, forever, take your pack and trek.’ So there we were, lifting our packs again, but all I wanted at that moment was a cool bed and deep sleep.

Adam wanted an early breakfast, and all the others were still in their rooms when I went to the kitchen next morning to make toast and coffee from supplies unpacked from our own boxes. It was a relief to have the kitchen to ourselves and the children still asleep while I was impatient to check on Roger and Ruin and take them for a walk out of sight of Lulu’s dogs. When I got back from the walk, there were two vans in the drive and packers had arrived, so that was a welcome sight. Lulu herself was still in her room, asleep I was told, because she worked nights at a strip club. After hearing that I was ready for almost anything.

Louise and Simon were impatient later to go and buy school uniforms, and see the school itself, which was only minutes away. We took the dogs with us, exploring such civilised amenities as a botanical park and avenues lined with jacaranda and flamboyant trees. ‘Can we have bikes?’ the children wanted to know, seeing other children riding past. ‘Peter will have to start on a tricycle because his legs are too short for a bike,’ Louise pointed out.

Back at the house, boxes were being loaded into the vans, Lulu was still in bed, and I went to fill water bowls for the dogs, get drinks for the children and make a cup of tea for myself. In the kitchen I was just in time to rescue my kettle, teapot, mugs and other crockery from being packed up with Lulu’s things. She was not there supervising the packers or any other activity, and family members were drifting about in a daze. I asked about the blind brother and was told that he never came out of his room, but the helper would be there with him.

‘Where is Lulu moving to?’ I asked, ‘and all of you? Where are you going to live now?’

‘Lulu is going back to her husband, and we are going to our farm at Mazoe.’

It was a confusing picture and the best I could do was make sure that no more household goods of ours were packed up with Lulu’s by mistake, while trying to keep things calm and controlled during the process of getting her and the others moved out. When Lulu had finished sleeping she didn’t hang about, and without a goodbye went off to her husband’s house with the van and the dogs, where she was refused entry. It appeared that he had changed his mind about having her back, but I was beginning to suspect that all her promises were a sham. The only consolation when she returned was that her husband had kept the dogs. I didn’t want Adam to be confronted with any domestic turmoil after his first day at work, so I had a drink ready for him with a welcoming kiss and his own armchair when he got back, tired but pleased to show off his new company car, and pleased with his new job.

Lulu’s boxes came back with her, but during her absence I had unpacked our own things into empty cupboards and drawers so there was no room for any of hers if she tried to unpack. I told her that she must find somewhere else immediately, having no patience now that I suspected her of prevaricating. If there was a problem then I would ask the housing agent for an eviction order, I said. At the mention of the housing agent she became conciliatory. ‘I can’t go to the farm where the others have gone, because of my job,’ she said.

‘What about your brother?’

‘He doesn’t like the farm.’

‘You will have to take him with you wherever you go. He can’t stay here with us.’

‘My friends will help out. I can get a flat. I just need to get on the phone to fix something.’ The phone was in the hall and she padded off towards it, still wearing the silk pyjamas which seemed to be her daytime wear.

The house had resident staff who occupied what was referred to as servants’ quarters on site and we were to take them on, but since Lulu was still giving an appearance of being in charge they quite naturally thought they were working for her rather than us. I needed to see each one to learn their names and explain the situation before it became too confusing for everyone. Once the children had been fed and were watching television, I set about identifying who was there and what job they did. It was impressive to find that all of them spoke English. I had not learnt any Shona, which was the language of this region, as Ndebele had been the language spoken by most rural people further south. I was impatient to settle all the various household demands so that I could sit quietly reading letters from Muz and Ros and write back to them. There had been sudden startling news from each of them and with no other means of communication, letters were our only lifeline.