The Angels Weep (58 page)

T
he Land-Rover
turned off the black-topped road, and as soon as it hit the dirt
track, the pale dust boiled out from under its back wheels. It
was an elderly vehicle, the desert-coloured paintwork was scored
and scratched by thorn and branch down to the bare metal. Rock
and sharp shale had bitten chunks of rubber out of the heavily
lugged tyres.

The doors and the top were off and the cracked windshield lay
flat on the bonnet, so that the wind swept over the two men in
the front seat. Behind their heads stood the gun-rack. The forks,
lined with foam rubber, held a formidable battery of weapons: two
semi-automatic FN rifles, sprayed with dun and green camouflage
paint, a short 9mm Uzi submachine-gun with the extra long
magazine clipped on ready for instant use, and, still in its
canvas slip-cover, a heavy Colt Sauer ‘Grand African’
whose .458 magnum cartridge could knock a bull elephant off its
feet. From the uprights of the gun-rack dangled haversacks
containing spare clips and magazines, and a damp canvas
waterbottle. They swung harmoniously with each jolt and lurch of
the Land-Rover.

Craig Mellow drove with his foot jamming the accelerator to
the floorboards. Though the vehicle’s body clattered and
banged loosely, he had always serviced and tuned the engine
himself, and the speedometer needle pressed against the stop pin
at the end of the dial. There is only one way to go into an
ambush, and that is flat out. Get through it as fast as possible,
remembering always that they usually laid it out at least half a
kilometre deep. Even at 150 K’s an hour, that meant
receiving fire for twelve seconds. In that time a good man with
an AK 47 can get off three magazines of thirty rounds each.

Yes, the way to go in was fast – but, of course, a
landmine was a beast of an entirely different colour. When they
boosted one of those sweethearts with ten kilos of plastic, it
kicked you and your vehicle fifty feet in the air and shot your
spine out through the top of your skull.

So although Craig lounged comfortably on the hard leather
seat, his eyes scoured the road ahead. This late in the day there
had been traffic through ahead of him, and he drove for the
diamond tracks in the dust, but he watched for an extraneous tuft
of grass, an old cigarette packet or even a pat of dried cow-dung
that could conceal the marks of a dig in the road. Of course,
this close to Bulawayo he was in more danger from a drunken
driver than from terrorist activity, but it was wise to nurture
the habit.

Craig glanced sideways at his passenger, and jerked his thumb
over his shoulder. The man swivelled in his seat and reached into
the cool box in the back. He brought out two cans of Lion beer
with the dew on them, and while he did so, Craig flicked his
attention back to the road.

Craig Mellow was twenty-nine years old, although the floppy
thatch of dark hair blowing all over his forehead, the innocent
candour of his hazel eyes, and the vulnerable slant to his wide
gentle mouth gave him the air of a small boy who expects to be
unjustly reprimanded at any moment. He still wore the embroidered
green shoulder flashes of a ranger in the Department of Wildlife
and Nature Conservation on his khaki bush-shirt.

Beside him Samson Kumalo pulled the tabs off the beer cans. He
wore the same uniform, but he was a tall Matabele with a deep
intelligent forehead and a hard smooth-shaven lantern jaw. He
ducked as a spurt of froth flew from the cans, and then handed
one of them to Craig and kept one for himself. Craig saluted him
with his can and swigged a mouthful, then licked the white
moustache from his upper lip, and put the Land-Rover to the
twisting road up the Khami hills.

Before they reached the crest, Craig dropped the empty can
into the plastic trash-bag that hung from the dash, and slowed
the Land-Rover, looking for the turn-off.

Tall yellow grass hid the small faded sign.

It was at least a year since Craig had last driven this road
and he almost missed it.

‘Here it is!’ Samson warned him, and he swung
sharply onto the secondary track. It jinked through the forest,
then came abruptly to the long straight avenue of spathodea trees
that led down to the staff village. The trunks were thicker than
a man’s chest, and the dark green branches met overhead. At
the head of the avenue, almost screened by the trees and the long
grass, was a low whitewashed wall with a rusty wrought-iron gate.
Craig pulled onto the verge and switched off the engine.

‘Why are we stopping here?’ Samson asked.

They always spoke English when they were alone; just as they
always spoke Sindebele when anyone else was listening; just as
Samson called him ‘Craig’ in private and
‘Nkosi’ or ‘Mambo’ at all other times. It
was a tacit understanding between them, for in this tortured
war-torn land, there were those who had taken Samson’s
fluent English as the mark of a ‘cheeky mission boy’,
and recognized by the easy intimacy between the two men that
Craig was that thing of doubtful loyalties, a
kaffir-lover
¹
.

‘Why are we stopping at the old cemetery?’ Samson
repeated.

‘All that beer.’ Craig climbed out of the
Land-Rover and stretched. ‘I have to pump ship.’

He relieved himself against the battered front wheel, then
went to sit on the low wall of the graveyard, swinging his long
bare sun-browned legs. He wore khaki shorts and suede desert
boots without socks, for the barbed seeds of arrow grass stick in
knitted wool.

Craig looked down onto the roofs of Khami Mission Station that
lay below the wooded hills. Some of the older buildings, dating
back to before the turn of the century, were thatched, although
the new school and hospital were tiled with red terracotta.
However, the rows of low-cost housing in the compound were
covered with unpainted corrugated asbestos. They made an
unsightly grey huddle beside the lovely green of the irrigated
fields. They offended Craig’s aesthetic sense, and he
looked away.

‘Come on, Sam, let’s get cracking—’
Craig broke off and frowned. ‘What the hell are you
doing?’

Samson had gone through the wrought-iron gate into the walled
cemetery and was urinating casually on one of the
gravestones.

‘Jesus, Sam, that’s desecration.’

‘An old family custom.’ Samson shook himself and
zipped up. ‘My Grandpa Gideon taught it to me,’ he
explained, and then switched into Sindebele. ‘Giving water
to make the flower grow again,’ he said.

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘The man that lies down there killed a Matabele girl
called Imbali, the Flower,’ said Samson. ‘My
grandfather always pees on his grave whenever he passes this
way.’

Craig’s shock was gradually replaced by curiosity. He
swung his legs over the wall, and went to stand beside
Samson.

‘Sacred to the memory of General Mungo St John, Killed
during the Matabele Rebellion of 1896.’

Craig read the inscription aloud:

Craig combed the hair out of his eyes with his fingers,
‘Judging by his advertising, he was one hell of a
guy.’

‘He was a bloody murderer – he, as much as any one
man could, provoked the rebellion.’

‘Is that so?’

Craig passed on to the next grave, and read that
inscription.

He glanced back at Samson. ‘Do you know who she
was?’

‘My grandfather calls her Nomusa, the Girl-Child of
Mercy. She was one of the most beautiful people who ever
lived.’

‘Never heard of her either.’

‘You should have, she was your
great-great-grandmother.’

‘I have never bothered much with the family history.

Mother and father were second cousins, that’s all I
know.

Mellows and Ballantynes for generations back –
I’ve never

sorted them all out.’

‘“A man without a past, is a man without a
future”,’ Samson quoted.

‘You know, Sam, sometimes you get up my nose.’
Craig grinned at him. ‘You’ve got an answer for
everything.’

He walked on down the row of old graves, some of them with
elaborate headstones, doves and groups of mourning angles, and
they were decked with faded artificial flowers in domes of clear
glass. Others were covered with simple concrete slabs in which
the lettering had eroded to the point of illegibility. Craig read
those he could.

And then he stopped as he saw his own surname.

‘Hey Sam, if you were right about the others, then this
must have been my great-grandmother.’

There was a tuft of grass growing out of a crack through the
slab, and Craig stooped and plucked it out. And as he did so, he
felt a bond of affinity with the dust beneath that stone. It had
laughed and loved and given birth that he might live.

‘Hi there, Gran,’ he whispered. ‘I wonder
what you were really like?’

‘Craig, it’s almost one o’clock,’ Sam
interrupted him.

‘Okay, I’m coming.’ But Craig lingered a few
moments longer, held by that unaccustomed nostalgia.
‘I’ll ask Bawu,’ he decided and went back to
the Land-Rover.

He stopped again outside the first cottage of the village. The
small yard was freshly raked and there were petunias in tubs on
the veranda.

‘Look here, Sam,’ Craig began awkwardly. ‘I
don’t know what you’re going to do now. You could
join the police, like I am doing. Perhaps we could work it that
we were together again.’

‘Perhaps,’ Sam agreed expressionlessly.

‘Or I could talk to Bawu about getting you a job at
King’s Lynn.’

‘Clerk in the pay office?’ Sam asked.

‘Yea! I know.’ Craig scratched his ear.
‘Still, it’s something.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Sam murmured.

‘Hell, I feel bad, but you didn’t have to come
with me, you know. You could have stayed in the
department.’

‘Not after what they did to you.’ Sam shook his
head.

‘Thanks, Sam.’

They sat silently for a while, then Sam climbed down and
lugged his bag out of the back of the Land-Rover.

‘I’ll come out and see you as soon as I’m
fixed up. We’ll work something out,’ Craig promised.
‘Keep in touch, Sam.’

‘Sure.’ Sam held out his hand, and they shook
briefly.

‘
Hamba gashle
, go in peace,’ Sam said.

‘
Shala gashle
. Stay in peace.’

Craig started the Land-Rover and swung back the way they had
come. As he drove up the avenue of spathodea, he glanced in the
rear-view mirror. Sam was standing in the centre of the road with
his bag on one shoulder, watching him go. There was a hollow
feeling of bereavement in Craig’s chest. The two of them
had been together for so long.

‘I’ll work something out,’ he repeated
determinedly.

C
raig slowed at
the top of the rise as he always did here, anticipating his first
glimpse of the homestead, but when it came it was with that
little shock of disappointment.

Bawu had stripped the thatch off the room and replaced it with
dull grey corrugated asbestos sheet. It had to be done, of
course, an RPG-7 rocket fired into the thatch from outside the
perimeter – and the whole building would have gone up like
the fifth of November. Still Craig resented the change, just as
he did the loss of the beautiful jacaranda trees. They had been
planted by Bawu’s grandfather, old Zouga Ballantyne who
built King’s Lynn back in the early 1890s. In spring their
gentle rain of blue petals had carpeted the lawns, but they had
been cut down to open a field of defensive fire around the house,
and in their place now stood the ten-foot security fence of
diamond mesh and barbed wire.

Craig drove down into the shallow dip below the main homestead
towards the complex of offices, storerooms and tractor workshops
which were the heart of the vast sprawling ranch. Before he was
halfway down, a lanky figure appeared in the high doorway of the
workshop, and stood with arms akimbo watching him approach.

‘Hello, Grandpa.’ Craig climbed out of the
Land-Rover, and the old man frowned to cover his pleasure.

‘How many times have I got to tell you,
“Don’t call me that!” You want people to think
I’m old?’ Jonathan Ballantyne was burned and
dessicated by the sun to the consistency of biltong, the dark
strips of dried venison that were such a Rhodesian delicacy.

It seemed that if you were to cut him, dust and not blood
would pour from the wound, but his eyes were still a brilliant
twinkling green and his hair was a dense white shock that fell to
his collar at the back of his neck. It was one of his many
conceits. He shampooed it every day, and brushed it with a pair
of silver-backed brushes that stood on the table beside his
bed.

‘Sorry, Bawu.’ Craig reverted to his Matabele
name, the Gadfly, and seized the old man’s hand. It was
mere bone covered by cool dry skin, but the grip was startlingly
strong.

‘So you got yourself fired again,’ Jonathan
accused. Although his teeth were artificial, they were a neat
fit, filling out the wizened cheeks, and he kept them so
sparkling white as to match his hair and silvery moustache.
Another of his conceits.