Out of Shadows (2 page)

Nelson and his parents were watching me, and I looked away.

“Time to take your trunk in, Robert. Up you go.”

“Can Mum come?”

“Your mother isn't feeling well in this heat.”

“But can't she come up, please? Can't she come and see me before you . . .”

Go
was the word that wouldn't form.

My father stood solid, then eventually uncrossed his arms.

“I'll see what I can do.” He took his wallet and extracted two ten-dollar bills, thought about it, then put one of them back. “Here. And don't go spending it all on sweets in the first week.”

When I was little my father always insisted on covering any scrape, large or small, with a lock-tight tape because he said the city we lived in was filthy dirty and infection spread quickly in hot weather. I hated it because I knew when the time came to take it off again he was going to make me cry.

It was always the same: “Okay, Bobby, I want you to count to five. One, two . . .”

Not once did I ever get to five. Apparently it was for the best.

That's what it felt like the whole of that day—counting to five, waiting for the pain.

The dorm was big and open plan with about twenty beds—ten beds on each side of a chest-high wall. The floor was an ocean of grooved tiles the color of dried blood, and the walls were painted a stark white. Louvered glass filled the room with light. You could see right over the lower playing fields and across the bush, but it felt like looking out of a cage because all the windows still had grenade screens on them from the war.

We carried our trunks up one after the other. When we were done I sat on my bed and it pushed against me, a mere pancake of foam over a thin board on legs. Everyone had their own wooden locker next to them, and sheets and blankets had been folded and put on the top.

“You reckon we have to make them ourselves?” I asked.

“Guess,” said Nelson. “Do you know anyone here?”

I shook my head.

“Me neither,” he said. “I wish I did. Someone to look out for me, like an older brother. It wouldn't be nearly so bad with an older brother. We're from Town. And you?”

I told him, “Close to Town but just outside. It's really boring there sometimes. My dad doesn't like cities because of all the people. But we're British really, from England,” I added before I could stop myself. The words were suddenly guilty on my tongue, abrasive. They never had been before. “Does that mean you hate me?”

Nelson frowned. “Why should I hate you?”

“Because I'm British. And . . . you know . . . the war.”

“The war wasn't against Britain.”

“Oh.”

“I obviously didn't fight in the war, but even if I had been old enough and you'd been, too, I still wouldn't hate you.”

“Oh?” It was my turn to be confused. “Why not?”

“Because surely wars are about putting an end to a wrong, not making a new one?”

“I guess so.”

“Most black people don't hate white people, and most whites don't hate blacks.”

“So what
was
the war about, then?”

He fidgeted slightly.

“Some of the white people that first came loved Africa and everything in it, just not the Africans. They didn't understand us, so they treated us differently . . . badly . . . and that wasn't fair. That's what my dad says.”

“I didn't realize,” I said.

Nelson shrugged. “It's all over now, that's the main thing. Hey, at least your folks live close, it won't be difficult for them to visit.”

“My dad says it'll be worse for me if they come.”

“
Ja
, mine, too. Looks like it's just us, then. Maybe we should look out for each other, hey?”

“Like brothers?”

“
Ja
,” he said. “Like brothers.”

“Yeah,” I said, pleased. “You're on.”

We shook hands to cement the deal.

I flipped the catches on my trunk. Khaki shorts and shirts for classes, black trousers and white shirts for evenings and Sunday chapel, socks, shoes, sports whites, pajamas . . . Matilda, our maid, had ironed, folded, and packed my stuff immaculately. Postcards from my grandmother lay safely on top in a protective envelope.

The dorm was filling up. A boy came panting in toward us with flushed cheeks because he was carrying his trunk on his own. He dropped it too early and it clattered to the floor. The name on the lid said
Jeremy Simpson-Prior
.

“You want a hand with that?” I offered, but he shook his head and wiped snot.

Boys were looking over from the other side of the partition. One of them kept staring at me—or maybe at Nelson, I couldn't tell—and eventually he came around and tapped my shoulder.

“There's a spare bed next to mine,” he said.

His eyes were a sharp, intense green. I glanced away to Nelson, who I think was only pretending not to listen as he started to unpack.

“I'm okay here,” I said.

“Are you serious? Next to stinking chocolate-face here?”

Simpson-Prior barked out a laugh. If it was a joke I didn't get it.

“Take the bed.”

“Really, I'm fine where I am,” I replied, feeling a whole new sensation of nervousness.

To my relief, the boy shrugged. “Your choice,” he said, but then he gave Nelson a push against the wall.

I had to do something. Nelson was doing his best not to look at anybody, as if he wanted everyone to go away, but we'd just made a promise.

“Hey! Leave him alone,” I said, not quite knowing what would happen.

The boy with the green eyes blazed at me, and I thought maybe he'd hit me. Instead, he simply pointed at my face.

“Don't say I didn't give you a chance.”

“I'll come,” Simpson-Prior stood eagerly. “I'll sleep over on your side.”

The boy didn't even pause to think about it and turned Simpson-Prior's trunk right over, spilling everything.

“Why would I want a poof like you next to me? Your breath stinks.”

That was my first encounter with Ivan Hascott. It wasn't going to be my last. Not by a long shot.

We continued unpacking our stuff. I checked my watch and glanced at the door but couldn't hear my father coming, and as the minutes went by I realized he wasn't coming back at all, that this time he hadn't even let me start counting before ripping off this particular tape.

Nelson kept himself busy, taking his time over everything.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

He nodded. “
Ja
. Fine. Thanks for helping.”

“Anytime. See? We're like brothers already.”

And if someone had told me then how badly I would actually come to let him down—and in the way I did it—I would never, ever have believed them.

Our official introduction
to the house involved us being herded into the common room where Mr. Craven, our housemaster, was waiting.

I can't recall exactly what he said that night, though. A greeting. A welcome. Some acknowledgment that as the third years, the youngest in the school, we might be feeling homesick but that wasn't anything to dwell on because we'd get over it, there was a lot to take in and a lot to find out so if we didn't know anything we mustn't hide in a corner; we should ask.

Then he left and a senior called Taylor took over. He was tall with wide shoulders, a strong jaw, and sandy hair. Handsome. Stern yet fair. Matter-of-fact without menace. Everything about him said Head of House. His tie was different from anyone else's. In fact, the two other sixth formers behind him—Greet and Leboule—weren't like him at all. They just eyed us in a way that made us feel like intruders while Taylor welcomed us new boys to Selous in a smooth and controlled voice.

“Forbes, Heyman, Burnett, Willoughby . . . Those are the other houses, each named after an important person”—I straightened my back, strangely pleased with my father for telling me that—“and I daresay the boys in those houses might try and kid you that theirs is the best. But they'd be wrong. Selous House is the best house in the school, in the best school in the country. No one can take that away from us, so take pride and don't let the house down.”

He went on to read out the study room list. There were only ten boys to each room, and Simpson-Prior was already frantically wetting his lips because our names had been read out with Ivan's, while Nelson escaped and was placed in the next study along the corridor.

The parquet floor reeked of polish, instantly establishing itself as the smell of New Term. Simpson-Prior pushed past and grabbed the best cubicle and pointed me to the one in front.

“Go there! Go there!” What Ivan had said about his breath was true, it was as if he had rotting meat in his teeth, plus he followed certain words with a fine spray of spit. But I felt sorry for him because he seemed more afraid than anyone else. I'd thought I was going to be that person, being in a new school
and
a new country, but I wasn't. “We can swap prep easily,” he said.

I put my tuck box onto the desk, which made a loud creak.

Ivan came in and sneered at us before taking a cubicle on the other side of the room. He had a red mark on his cheek as if he'd been hit.

“Shit. Not you two,” he said.

Before I had a chance to react, a more senior boy—the only black boy in the house I'd seen other than Nelson—suddenly rushed in and twisted Ivan around. Ivan lost his balance and fell to the floor.

“Don't walk away from me,” the senior barked. “I know it was you. If you ever push Nelson around again . . .”

Maybe he didn't know it yet, but clearly Nelson had someone else looking out for him. I felt strangely jealous, and a little bit alone again.

Ivan was belligerent.

“So what if I did? Why do you care?”

The senior boy glared. His tongue—bright pink against his deep brown skin—darted like a snake's to lick his lips.

“Things are different now. You lost the war. It's not how it used to be, remember? So I'm warning you, white boy.”

And he stole a packet of Chappies bubblegum from Ivan's tuck before heading out.

Ivan got up and pushed his shirt back into his trousers.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” his voice growled. He marched right up to me, blocking the light from the window while Simpson-Prior slipped back out of the room.

For the first time I consciously registered the murky tanned color of Ivan's face, which somehow made him look older, and his curling brown hair that was thick and rich and tinted by the sun conversely giving him boyish appeal. But then camouflage and contradictions were one of the dangers of Ivan, something I wouldn't realize until it was much too late.

He was waiting, so I asked, “Who was that?”

For a moment I thought he was going to get me for earlier.

“Told me his name is Ngoni Kasanka.” He smiled instead. “Remember it. He's a bastard. I'm telling you, he's going to be trouble.”

“Why was he picking on you? Does he know you?”

“No.”

“Do you know him?”

“No. He's more senior than us and that's just the way shit rolls in a school like this, seniors can do what they like to
us. We're just squacks. Bottom of the heap. Don't you know anything?”

Then the smile disappeared.

“But I know he's only doing it because I picked on that Nelson. And I bet he's already dreaming of being Head of House one day, Head of School if he can—I can tell he's that sort—and God help us the day
that
happens.”

“How come?”

Ivan shrugged in a
well-it's-obvious-isn't-it?
kind of way.

“You can't have a Kaffir running things. It isn't right. Don't you see?”

I blushed and shuffled my feet. My father had warned me the merest mention of the K-word was illegal and could send you to prison now.

“Yeah,” I said. Anything to make him go away.

“Don't say ‘Yeah,' you sound like a Pom. Open up.” Ivan pointed at my tuck box and hovered. I did as I was told. “Jeez, you haven't got much, have you? Your folks must be tight.”

He grabbed the packet of biscuits, the tin of condensed milk, and the only two bars of chocolate I had.

The school ate all its meals together. Simpson-Prior and I sat with the other eight boys from our study room, and Ivan made sure we were at the bottom two places. No one spoke to us so I spent much of the time gazing around the hall and at the lines of tables with mostly white faces.

Up on one expanse of wall there were wooden plaques with gold lettering displaying lists of Haven old boys, while another roll of honor was headed
BRAVE BOYS WHO HAVE FALLEN
:
Banatar, F.G., Burnett House 1973; Fearnhead, T.E., Forbes House 1974; de Beer, W.S., Heyman House 1976
 . . . In total I counted thirty-seven old boys who'd fallen and never got up again.

As far away as possible from this list was a framed
photograph of Robert Mugabe, because all schools and public buildings had to have the new prime minister on display. His black face beamed like he'd been caught at the end of a joke.

A spoon came clattering to our end of the table.

“Hey!” It was Ivan. “What are you two gawping at? We need more bread.”

“
Ja
, more bread, stupid,” the boy next to him echoed, spraying crumbs from his mouth. His name was Derek De Klomp, and he hung on Ivan's every word like a new best friend. He looked to me like a gorilla, with thick black eyebrows hanging like weights and swollen lips that never quite managed to meet.

“Put some spoof into it, Simpson-Prior.
Jislaaik!
You are one ugly baboon.”

The table laughed as Simpson-Prior consciously or subconsciously concealed his buckteeth, his small, sproutlike ears burning pink. So I went, but in the steamy kitchen the African workers stared like I was coming to steal, and then one started shouting something I couldn't understand and waved me away.