The Boy Next Door Page 17

  “You’re such a gentleman,” she exhales.

  Mr. Poll, the agency director, comes over and dumps a bag of gigantic prawns on my desk.

  “Have to clean the whole lot of those before four. Need them for the Bon Marché advert.”

  Another sigh coming from the usual direction, accompanied by the tip-tap of a pencil on a pad.

  Ian slides off the desk.

  “She’s got plans this afternoon,” he says, picking up the bag and dumping it on Leeann’s desk.

  “Ian, it’s fine.”

  “Lunch, Lindiwe.”

  And he pulls me along with him.

  We walk into town, up into Barbours department store to the restaurant on the terrace. We take a table right at the far end, away from the bustle of people coming in, going out.

  “Privacy,” says Ian. “I’ve got major news.”

  “And I thought you just wanted to take a girl out.”

  “Just wait for it.”

  The waiter comes, and I order a Coke and a cheese sandwich; Ian, a Castle and a steak roll.

  “So, what is it?”

  “I got a visit from someone today over at work.”

  “Yes.”

  I’ve only been up once to TV Sales and Hire since Ian’s been taken on full-time; I caught him in his office looking as though he had just woken up from a nap, and I could smell Listerine on his breath, which meant that he had been drinking.

  Despite his distinct lack of enthusiasm, he has been rapidly promoted to manager.

  “Yah, Lindiwe I know,” he said when he came home with the tag on his blue shirt. “What can I do? I’m just benefiting from the system; we need the dosh. What am I going to say, ‘No, thanks, please, please promote Charles there, your loyal black employee who’s been at his job for years and knows it like the back of his hand’?’ It’s how the world works. And anyway, I give Charles lots of time off, paid; I reckon he’s collecting two paychecks. I’m doing the bloke a favor, trust me.”

  “I’ll ask Charles next time I see him,” I said and regretted it as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Ian had finally managed to tap into the old boys’ network care of Heather.

  “Better than actually fixing the fridges,” he told me. “I supervise the fixing of the fricking fridges. To be honest, most of the time I’m bored shitless. It’s a job.”

  Ian gets through the Castle in a couple of dregs and signals the waiter for another one.

  “So this chap, he comes right up to me and starts on about my old man, the good old days, and he’s talking full blast. Anyway, he was reeking of booze, really down-and-out, and he kept swaggering about the shop, talking ‘your old man this, your old man that.’ You should have seen the blacks that were there, enjoying the sight like hell. So I’m trying to steer the guy through the door when he starts struggling, like I want to beat him up or something, but he just wants to take something out of his pocket. ‘Look, look,’ he keeps telling me. ‘For old times’ sake you must help me. Your father would be proud… ,’ and he shoves a picture in my hands, look.”

  Ian takes the picture from his pocket and gives it to me.

  “It’s a battalion, Lindiwe, my old man’s up front, second from left.”

  I find Ian’s father. His face is brutally serious, glaring into the camera. It looks chiseled in stone. It makes me want to drop the picture. I look up at Ian.

  “Yah, he looks like a scary shit all right. Your old man’s there, too, Lindiwe. Look, right at the back there, right at the end.”

  I look at Ian as if he’s talking gibberish, and then I look at the picture and he is right. My father is standing there his face turned to one side.

  “They had Coloreds and Indians serving in some of the white battalions of the Rhodesian Regiment.”

  “They were in the same unit, battalion…?” The words seem impossible in my mouth.

  “But I… I thought your father was a… a Scout.”

  “That’s what he says. Anyways, even if that was true, they used to select the Scouts from the regular regiments, the best of the crop. Funny how when you think about it, the Selous Scouts were the only fully integrated unit—black, whites, if you could do the job, you were in, end of story.”

  I look down at the picture again.

  “You think that’s why he sold the house to my father?”

  “What, for old times’ sake you mean?”

  I don’t answer him for a while. It’s as if I’m trying to grasp something just out of reach.

  “Maybe. I mean, no one else would sell to my dad once they found about Mummy being black. Maybe your father…”

  “Had a soft spot? Not happening. He’d have accepted cash from the devil. Your dad must have offered him a good deal, that’s all.”

  “I feel like I’m missing something important, like, I don’t know, it’s crazy, your father and my…”

  “Yah, I gave the old drunk some change for the picture, as happy as… you know, I reckon the guy was drinking homegrown brew.”

  I look down at my father again, at his head turned to one side. I wonder if he was embarrassed, angry to be there, ashamed. I look at Ian’s father. At his steely expression and the gun so firm in his hand, and I go over to my father again and look at how the gun rests in his hands and I think it’s as if he were holding Roxy. The gun doesn’t belong there.

  “I need some air, Ian.”

  We take a detour to Africa Unity Square. Sitting on the bench looking out at the fountain, Ian beside me, I am brought back to Ian and me at Centenary Park, leg wrestling.

  On this bench, in this city, Ian takes my hand.

  “You’re quiet.”

  “I’m shocked. I keep thinking of what my father must be carrying inside himself because of the war. You know, your father looks like he was meant for war, I don’t…”

  “What? You’re right.”

  “Daddy, my father, whenever he came back from his call-ups, the first couple of weeks, he would be really talkative, about anything, you know, as if he was trying to fill up the space… and sometimes when I would wake up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, I would find him in the kitchen in the dark, sitting there wide awake.”

  “My old man drank. But I reckon he was drinking because he was bored of the home life. He wanted to go back to the bush.”

  “Then he would become argumentative. Anything would work on his nerves. The arguments he would have with my mother. He would accuse her of spending too much money—who was she trying to impress? what was she doing when he was not there?—and you know, once he actually told her to pack her bags and get out of the house.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes. I don’t know where she went, but she was gone for a week. We were living in Thorngrove and Rosanna had just arrived.”

  “Picture, picture, for the lovebirds.”

  I look up at the young photographer whose hopes have leapt up at the sight of this murungu with his black girlfriend.

  “Twenty-four hour delivery,” he says, adjusting his camera.

  “No, it’s okay, shamwari. I also take pictures.”

  The photographer’s eyes widen at Ian’s accent, his Shona.

  “But I will take an excellent one, of you and the pretty lady, shamwari yangu, door-to-door, express delivery.”

  I get up from the bench.

  “Sorry, my friend, next time,” says Ian. “But you are right, she is a pretty lady and I’m a lucky bastard.”

  The photographer beams him a smile and wanders off towards the Meikles Hotel to try his luck with the five-star guests.

  “I am a lucky bastard,” Ian says, bending to kiss me.

  We walk along the pavement, and the flower vendors who’ve been sitting about arranging their wares leap into action. They start gesticulating to Ian and holding out flowers. Ian stops and picks out a bunch of yellow roses.

  “Very good choice!” cries the vendor who looks much older than the others.

  “Thirty-five d
ollars. A very good price for you, sir.”

  Ian bargains the price right down from thirty-five dollars to eleven dollars (“Look, man, I’m a local. No ways I’m forking out that much, daylight robbery. Come on, be reasonable now…”) “How very dashing, Ian” is on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow hard.

  I take in the rows and rows of wreaths and crosses: colored tissue paper mounted by wire on polystyrene “kaylite” boards. The brisk economy of AIDS has swiped away any African taboos and superstitions about selling such items in the open. I wonder what the foreign businessmen staying across the road make of this when they venture out.

  I take the flowers back to the office and arrange them in a chipped jug while Leeann looks on.

  “You know,” she says finally, “we’re ordering orchids and long-stemmed roses for the wedding from a proper florist, Interflora, no expenses spared.”

  Of course not, I think. Not with the groom being a tobacco farmer’s son and the farm having what, two or more lakes, and the bride’s head filled with ideas of the beauty parlor that she is going to set up on the farmhouse veranda that will bring the finesses of make-up application and hairdressing to the farmers’ wives stuck out there since: “They don’t have to look so frumpy. I’ll show them how to apply foundation…”

  “And the prawns are waiting in the fridge, you better hurry.”

  A one-syllable word starting with B flashes red in my head.

  8.

  “This is it. Sikato Bay Camp.” Ian turns round and whistles to David, who’s asleep at the back. “Wake up, my boy. We’ve landed.”

  I get out of the car, stretch out my legs. What I wouldn’t give for a nice, firm bed, clean sheets, a duvet, a warm bubble bath. I look at the dirt clearing before us, the campsite. A few meters back, the ablutions block. There are three tents pitched and a group unloading from a minivan. I can smell boerewors on a braai.

  Ian sniffs.

  “Great, huh?”

  I look around me, buttoning up my jersey.

  Ian’s been building this trip up, going with David to the National Parks office, then off to an odds and ends shop downtown to get a secondhand tent, army-style sleeping bags, gas cookers, torches, fishing rods. Back to his Boy Scout days. He’s been showing David how to fit the gas cylinder under the burner; he caught me with my wry smile. “Relax now, wait till you have to cook on this thing, girl,” he said. He teased me about black chicks and camping, and then he must have remembered my postcards and his face tightened and he said, “Yah well, it’ll be lekker.”

  I don’t know how I can let him know, see, that I’m not comparing him with anyone or keeping tab of things.

  I found him this morning, sitting outside on the veranda, putting some pictures away in a cardboard box. When he heard me, he got up, the box in his hands, kissed me, and asked me what I was doing up so early. I said, “I missed you in my sleep.” “You’re a poet,” he said. He put the box on the crate we’re using as a side table, and he lifted his T-shirt, that I was wearing, off me. Later, when I looked, the box was gone.

  “Are you sure it’s safe out here, Ian? It looks so open.”

  What I mean to say is that I’m cold and would like to get back in the car and go home.

  “Man Lindiwe, relax, there’s maybe a rhino or two, tops.”

  David wakes up and Ian gets busy working on the tent. One of the men from the minivan comes over.

  “Hi mate, need some help?”

  “No, cheers, thanks for the offer.”

  “We’re setting up a braai. When you’re ready, join us, plenty of beers. We’ve got some kids, the boy can muck around. You can bring your girl if you want her to keep an eye. Where’s the old lady?”

  “What, yah, thanks.”

  When he’s left, I look at Ian.

  “What?”

  “‘The girl,’ Ian, the girl.”

  “What, oh that. Lindiwe, I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t get what he was going on about…”

  “Ian, you just let him. He assumed I was the maid, of course.”

  “Lindiwe, I’ve been on the road for what, close to five hours? I’m knackered, I wasn’t listening to the guy… why do you have to always suppose the worst from me? You want me to go there and tell him you’re my chick? Fine. You want me to shout it out? Okay. ‘She’s my chick!’ Happy now? Oh and ‘she’s not my fricking house girl!’”

  And he hits me with a kiss right there.

  “There goes the fricking beers,” he says when he finally lets go of me.

  I hit him on his side.

  “Do you think we should stay here?”

  “What now?”

  “Vibes, Ian.”

  “Lindiwe, just get the food out the back. Make sure it’s covered, otherwise we’ll really be attacked by monkeys.”

  “Ian, where’s David?”

  I have a moment of panic until I find him by the toilets.

  As Ian puts the last peg on the tent, the minibus guy comes over.

  “Invitation still stands,” he says. “It would be an honor to have you and your chick over.”

  Ian looks at me. I look at him.

  “Ian McKenzie,” he says, holding out his hand. “This is Lindiwe Bishop and my, our son, David.”

  “Clive Jenkins. We’re here with my brother from England. He’s pissed off with yours truly, putting my foot in it, my uncultured bushman self.”

  He takes a bow and despite myself I find him rather engagingly silly.

  Ian smiles, looks at me, gives me a little prod with his eyes.

  “Thank you for the invite. We’ll come later,” I hear myself say.

  “You have to give people a chance,” Ian says when we’re alone, and I’m fully expecting him to add his seal of approval: “well done, Lindiwe, good girl.”

  “Ian, he still calls black women girls, okay, and don’t tell me there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s the tone, it’s what he meant by it.”

  “It only hurts if you feel it. Chill.”

  * * *

  The braai is in full swing when we get there. Beer flowing freely. Ian’s brought along a crate and two packets of boerewors and some steaks. There are some boys fishing over by the lake.

  “Heh Ian, good to see you.”

  I stand there next to him feeling like a lightie.

  Clive does the introductions.

  “Lindiwe, the girls are over there, setting the table.”

  “The women,” says Ian, “as in, the wives and girlfriends.”

  Clive throws up his hands in either self-defense or defeat.

  “Yes, those girls.”

  I make myself walk over towards the trestle table.

  And I stand there like an idiot.

  There are four of them arranging plastic plates and cups.

  “Hi,” I finally squeak out.

  Four pairs of eyes latch on me.

  “Oh hi, Lin, Lindiwe, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice to meet you. Heard about Clive’s cock-up. Sorry, Meryl, but your husband can be really thick sometimes.”

  “You, telling me. Didn’t I tell you that he walked into the Meikles Hotel to pick up a client, and he gets booted out for tracking mud and horse manure onto the carpet? I keep telling him he has to stop acting like the whole of the country is one big bush.”

  “You have a lovely son. He’s a real sweetie. Oh, I’m Sandra.”

  “Thanks.”

  “He’s got really lovely hair, where did he—?”

  “Sandra.”

  “I hope you didn’t get offended,” says Meryl. “He doesn’t mean to be so rough. Just that he was brought up on a farm. You should have heard some of the things that came out of his mouth, I mean for a city girl…”

  “Oh please, Meryl, what city girl? You grew up in Marondera, not exactly—”

  “Talking about farms, did you hear what Muga—?”

  “No, Marge, don’t even start with the politics—”

  An
d it’s as if I’ve come across Geraldine, Tracey, Dawn… all those classmates of mine as grown women, in their inner sanctum.

  I pick up the plastic plates, spoons, serviettes and help while the men are out braaing, fishing, and beer drinking, and I think to myself, what the heck. Chill.

  We’re snug full of sausages and steaks and drink in our tent, David between us. Ian reaches his hand across David and I turn, put my hand across David on Ian’s, and we go to sleep like this.

  “Great Zimbabwe Ruins, heh.”

  David is already running, scrambling into the conical structures as if something inside him has been sprung loose.

  Ian is in sixth heaven, what with the angles and backdrops, the shading, and the lighting.

  He wants to climb up to the Hill Complex into the Eastern Enclosure.

  “The view must be breathtaking from up there, Lindiwe. The Shonas really knew what they were doing.”

  I woke up with a sore back and a splitting headache; the last thing I feel like doing is climbing hundreds of steps, no matter the view.

  Going up and down the Great Enclosure has been quite enough for me. I didn’t tell Ian, but walking through the very narrow passageway that leads off from the Conical Tower, the walls of stone rising relentlessly on either side of me, I’d felt a rush of claustrophobia, panic. I was overcome with thoughts of Maphosa, spirits, ancestors, and for the first time in a long while of Mrs. McKenzie burning. The screech and cawing of an eagle flying overhead seemed to me like her crazed screams.

  There is something about this place that’s getting under my skin.

  Out in the open, looking over the undulating land with its pockets of ruins, my eyes wandering up over the hills dotted with trees, I think of these ancient people, hauling the stones from the hills, setting them on the earth, guided by their gods, it seems to me, for how did they manage this feat without using cement or any binding substance between the stones? There they are artfully constructing their settlement, their homes, creating their kingdom, its fortifications. The work of it. The stones gathering sweat, blood. The children running across the open grassland, getting under the feet of their toiling fathers, the mothers off to collect water, ever wary of wildlife.

  Where did they come from? How did they get here, choose this place to settle in, call home?