Before the Poison (43 page)

The odds were good. I calculated that Billy would be close to eighty now, much the same age as Wilf and Sam, so he probably didn’t get out and about all that much. And I could also think of no reason why Billy should
not
want to tell me his story. If nothing else came of my trip, I would at least get a few days’ holiday in Cape Town. It was summer there, too, another reason I might find Billy Strang at home.

Because it’s an overnight flight, about twelve hours or so, and there’s only a two-hour time difference, I had hoped to arrive well rested and ready to go, but it didn’t seem to be turning out that way. After breakfast, we began our descent and landed without incident. I looked out of the window and saw that the sun was shining on the lush green hills, the light possessing that ineffable quality I had only ever seen in parts of Africa.

I could feel the heat as soon as the doors opened and I stepped on to the jetway. Cape Town is a busy airport, but the formalities didn’t take too long, and in no time I was in the Hertz office signing my life away for a cheap Japanese compact and asking for directions out of the airport.

It turned out not to be too difficult to get on to the N2 and then head north-west towards the city centre and the waterfront, where I was staying. It was still the morning rush hour, and there was plenty of traffic going both ways. Before long, I came to that stretch of highway, several kilometres long, which appears to the American or northern European eye to be one enormous shanty town, with row after row of flat-roofed leaning shacks of corrugated iron and cardboard and hardly a gap between them. The kind of place you see straggling down hillsides in Caracas, Rio or Buenos Aires. But people who knew better had assured me that there is some level of organisation within the communities, schools and health facilities, and the government is also building some decent brick houses to move families into.

Soon I could see Table Mountain ahead of me, and I began concentrating on the road as it neared the city. I could stay on the highway most of the way, the woman at Hertz had assured me, but I would have to negotiate one or two city streets at the end. It wasn’t so hard. At least they drove on the left, and I had got accustomed to that since moving back to Yorkshire. Soon I was telling the guard at the gate that I was a guest at the hotel, and he was waving me through. I parked by the waterfront, took my small travel bag and computer case from the back seat and went to check in.

I had booked two nights at the Cape Grace, both because its name sounded appropriate, and because I’d heard it was one of the best hotels in the city. That became pretty evident right from the start, when I was invited to sit down and enjoy a cup of tea as I checked in. In no time, I was in my room on the top floor, opening the French windows to the balcony and gazing out on Table Mountain to my left and Signal Hill straight ahead of me, across the marina and the downtown core. Though the rest of the sky was clear, there was a hint of cloud and mist on Table Mountain, which really did resemble a long, flat table, or anvil.

I leaned on the railings, breathed in the warm air and sighed. Laura and I had come here for our ‘second’ honeymoon in the late nineties, not long after apartheid was overthrown. I remembered South Africa then as a beautiful, blighted, haunted, hopeful, exciting country. It had fascinated us, from the tensions of Johannesburg to the beauty of the Cape Winelands and a three-day safari at a private game reserve near Kruger Park. I had so many memories, but that had been over ten years earlier, and the country had changed a great deal since then.

Laura had loved the markets, the craft shops and clothes stores with their unusual patterns and bright colours, colours that seemed to exist only here, greens or browns that somehow never looked the same anywhere else in the world. I also remembered a large record shop where I had bought a lot of CDs of South African jazz, and I wondered whether it was still in business.

But I wasn’t here to get maudlin over my loss, I told myself. I was here to find Billy Strang, and after a shower, over an early lunch on the waterfront, I would take out the road map the Hertz lady had given me and plot a route to Simon’s Town, where he was living.

I drove more or less straight south. Years ago, with Laura, I had driven down the peninsula as far as Cape Point, but I didn’t remember much very clearly, except for the rolling waves and the penguins and baboons. Simon’s Town wasn’t quite as far, but it was a good way down, and it seemed like a beautiful place to retire.

The house I was searching for stood high above the town, overlooking the harbour and the purplish-blue and green Indian Ocean beyond. Though the sun shone brightly and the sky was pure blue, a strong wind had sprung up, and I had to struggle to get out of the car. Below me, I could see thousands of whitecaps and larger waves crashing on the beach and the big rocks that reared out of the waters of the bay.

I turned and gazed at the house. It was a boxy sort of place, a modern design, all white stucco, large picture windows and hacienda-style open verandas. There were three storeys, each a different-sized cube stuck asymmetrically on top of the one below. It wouldn’t have been out of place in southern California. Laguna Niguel, say, or Huntington Beach. Whatever Billy Strang had done since he had left England, he had done very well for himself.

When I found what I thought to be the front door, I rang the bell. Nothing happened. I knocked, then rang it again. Still nothing. He was out, and I had no idea where or for how long. I only had myself to blame for coming on spec like this, assuming an eighty-year-old man would be pretty much housebound. Maybe he was off surfing somewhere, or having a tryst with his twenty-year-old lover. The only thing I could do was keep trying.

I drove down to Boulders Beach, parked and walked out to see the penguins. The wind was howling, blowing up sand everywhere and raising tears in my eyes. Even the penguins could barely stand up straight. I could hear the waves crashing and smell salt spray in the air, feel it in my hair, on my exposed skin. I hurried back to the car and drove farther down the coast as far as Castle Rock. The wind wasn’t so bad there, so I got out at a viewpoint and took a few photographs to show Heather. She had wanted to come with me, but decided in the end it wasn’t worth it for just three days. I promised I would take her for a proper holiday somewhere when all this was over. Before I left, I had given her a copy of Grace’s journal to read, and as I stood in this lonely spot at Castle Rock, it was an entry from that journal which came into my mind. I couldn’t help but think of Grace standing here that day in 1940 on her way to Singapore, of that stolen kiss with Stephen Fawley. It looked very much as if this was where one of the photographs had been taken, the one in which she was trying to hold her hair in place, not Cornwall, after all.

A number of baboons appeared on the rocks over to my right, eyeing me curiously. I knew to be careful around them, so I started heading slowly back to the car. They watched me as I went, then turned their backs and mooned me, as they must have done Grace and Stephen, though she had been too delicate to describe it in her journal. I drove back to Simon’s Town and tried Billy’s house again. Still nothing.

I decided I would give it one more try today, then come back again tomorrow. I would have one more whole day after that, as my flight didn’t leave until after ten at night the following evening. This time I found a sheltered café by the harbour and sat in a window seat sipping an espresso, reading
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
and watching the dance of the spray through the window. I seemed to be pinning a lot of hopes on this visit, I thought, not to mention spending a lot of money. But the money wasn’t a problem, and nor was my time at the moment. I just hoped I wouldn’t leave empty handed. I had come this far, and I needed to know the full story.

After about an hour and two strong coffees, I drove back up the hill to the white cubist house. The first thing that raised my spirits was the silver BMW in the driveway. The front door was also slightly ajar, and I could hear the sound of radio voices coming from inside. I rang the bell, the door opened and a head as brown and bald as a varnished banister knob and as pitted as a walnut shell peered out at me, a birthmark like a teardrop where his hairline used to be, a bristly grey goatee beard around his mouth.

‘William?’ I asked. ‘William Strang?’

He eyed me with suspicion. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘My name’s Chris Lowndes,’ I told him. ‘You don’t know me, but I live in Kilnsgate House.’

‘Then you’re a long way from home, aren’t you?’ he said, but his manner softened. ‘You’d better come in. Never let it be said that Billy Strang doesn’t know how to treat a visitor from the old country. And Billy’s the name. Always has been, always will be.’ There was little, if any, Geordie left in his accent, which had also taken on a hint of South African cadence. It wasn’t strong, though the result was a very unusual mix. Even Henry Higgins would have been hard pushed to guess where Billy Strang came from. He was a couple of inches shorter than me and seemed in good shape, whippet thin, sinewy and economic in his movements, as if he used just as much energy as he needed and was keeping plenty in reserve.

I followed him through a hall with a high white ceiling and a parquet floor. ‘I called earlier, but you were out,’ I said.

‘Tennis club.’

‘Do you play?’

‘Of course I play. Why shouldn’t I?’

‘No reason.’

‘Just because I’m eighty doesn’t mean I can’t still give these young whippersnappers of seventy or so a good run for their money.’ He grinned. ‘Besides, the widow Cholmondeley’s always there on a Tuesday, and I fancy my chances there. Lovely arse on her. Come on. Sit down.’ He pointed towards a huge sofa with matching armchairs upholstered in zebra skin. I thought that was probably as illegal as it was tasteless, but maybe it was fake. A tiger-skin rug lay on the hardwood floor in front of the huge fireplace. No fire burned. Instead, I heard the hum of a central air-conditioner and felt the artificial chill. A ceiling fan whirred above, distributing the coolness. ‘Drink?’ he offered. ‘I don’t indulge any more, myself, but there’s pretty much anything you want.’

‘I’d better not,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to drive back to Cape Town later.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He went to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself a squirt of soda. ‘I suppose you’d better tell me why you’re here, then,’ he said. ‘But first you can tell me how Kilnsgate is. It’s been a bloody long time.’

As I told him, I saw a wistful expression pass across his lined and tanned face, and his eyes seemed fixed on a point somewhere way beyond me.

‘I haven’t really thought about those days in years,’ he said.

‘Why did you leave?’

‘England? Because it was fucked. They sent me off to kill Mau Maus in Kenya for two years, and when I got back I couldn’t think of a thing I wanted to do in the old country. Not a thing. Kenya gave me a yen for adventure, for Africa. There were a lot of opportunities for private soldiering back then, if you weren’t too fussy who you worked for. I did a few things I’m not proud of, then I met a bloke from Southampton who ran a tobacco farm in Rhodesia, as it then was. Hard work, but what a life. All there for the taking. Until the troubles started, of course. He said I was welcome to come and work for him any time, so I did. Twenty pounds in my pocket. I soon had a few acres of my own and a well-bred English lady for a wife. I lasted until 1980 through sheer stubbornness, but it was clear long before then the way things were going, and that the stubbornness would be the death of me if I didn’t get out soon. I’d already seen my neighbours butchered. It was a bad situation all round. And a dangerous one. Luckily, I’d been smart with my money, put most of it in bank accounts in Jo’burg or London. It wasn’t hard to arrange a quick move over the border before the natives came and hacked us to pieces like they did my friends and neighbours. My well-bred English lady had already left me by then and gone back to her family in England. Didn’t have the stomach for it. I got involved in the wine business here on the Cape. Did very well at it, too. Retired ten years ago. That’s it. Potted life story so far. And now you’re here. But I’m sure you didn’t come all this way just to hear about me.’

‘Partly. It’s an interesting story. I went to America. Los Angeles. It was a bit safer there.’

He laughed. ‘That’s arguable. Still . . . we’re both alive to tell the tale.’

‘Yes. Look, I’ll get to the point. When you were seven, you were evacuated to Richmond, and you spent some time up at Kilnsgate House, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right. About four months in all. Some of the happiest days of my childhood. It was a funny time, though. As if the earth was standing still. People were expecting bombing raids and poison gas attacks every day, but nothing happened.’

Now I was approaching the true purpose of my visit, I was beginning to feel apprehensive about broaching the subject. After all, perhaps at the age of eighty, after a successful life, a man might not appreciate talking about being abused at the age of seven, might not even remember it, if he believed that those same months were the best of his childhood. I would have to edge my way there gently, if I possibly could. ‘How did you take to it? It must have made quite a change for you?’

‘Oh, yes. I was a city boy through and through. Not a slum kid, mind you, my dad had a decent job in a shoe shop, then later in a department store, but I certainly wasn’t well versed in the ways of country life, outside a few books I’d read. Still, I wasn’t as daft as some of the kids who thought apples grew in boxes and cows were no bigger than dogs.’

‘So how was your time at Kilnsgate?’

Billy thought for a moment. ‘Happy, as I told you, for the most part. That first month the weather was marvellous, and school was out till late September because of the war, so I got to explore the area. It was like an extended holiday. Are the lime kilns still there?’

‘Indeed they are.’

‘I used to hide in them if I wanted to disappear for a while.’