One Big, Huge, Mountainous Thank You!!

Been nine short weeks since starting my blog thing – today I had my 1000^th visitor and that’s without selling a single copy of my book. ‘Cause it ain’t there to sell yet. No worries, your company’s more important; get a worthwhile buzz when people as far away as Singapore, South Africa, America, Oz and even Mother Russia drop in for a read. Glad it entertains. Don’t be shy about throwing in the odd message whenever the urge grabs you.

Having the cover of Sons of Africa re-designed; maybe the title as well – not sure yet, guess I’ll have to sell part of my body to pay for the changes – on second thoughts; wouldn’t get much, everything’s pretty well worn out. So keep an eye out for the new stuff – one of these days might even be an entire book for you to read. Got to make up ground now; trashed fifty thousand words with my last edit; working my proverbials off to make up for lost content, not many people go for two page novels.

No matter, thanks again for all your support; keep on reading the extracts. Ten years from now and who knows?  You might well have had the whole book; for free...

New house, new school and some very ‘different’ people...

... The company supplied housing for all its employees; the higher your job status, the better the house. We got sort of a middle of the road one – could have made reference to leafy suburbs but that would be a lie. There were hardly any leaves; just, as my Dad put it; red sour earth, an analogy that would in the future cause many problems with locals of long standing. The only plants that thrived were those that fed on asbestos. Mother managed to grow a cabbage once; think my old man had some replacement brake linings made from it and a pair of flame retardant fireman’s gloves.

My parents had, being blissfully unaware of the dangers, brought me to live on an asbestos mine. My entire world was covered in white dust. The cars were white, the dogs were white, not all the kids were white because that’s the way it was in Africa. Sometimes the black kids turned out kind of grey if the wind came down off the waste dumps.

Everything and I mean everything belonged to The Mine. There was a Mine Hospital, a Mine Store, Mine Club, so on and so forth. Reckon they cut that record here; ‘Owe my soul to the Company store’; employees daren’t change their socks without permission from the Mine Manager. Mashaba; the original microcosm, a far flung crack in Britain’s imperial wall to where unfortunates like my father were lured by offers of endless sunshine, a colonial drink-yourself-to-death pension plan and cheap golf.

My Dad upgraded; from Morris Minor to Zephyr Six, bought it off the barman at Gath’s Mine Club. I remember a large crack in the windscreen – top to bottom. The gear-change stuck out the side of the steering column, rather than out from the floor. Mother went all posh whenever we went out in it. Especially, on Friday nights.

‘Comb your hair Jeffrey we’re going to the club.’ Mother herded me towards the bathroom. ‘Brush your teeth and give your neck a wash.’

It was ‘Draw’ night. Metal drum between two bearings mounted on a trestle and plonked on the stage. The official draw-man would give it a spin and snatch his thumbs away for fear of amputation.

‘Number sixty-three!’

Mother glowered at her forty-nine, scrumpled it up and dropped it in the ashtray. The woman with sixty-three got my mother’s most venomous ‘going to kick your car look’. The waiter pitched up with a full tray of drinks. Mother gave him a ten shilling note and told him not to fiddle the change. Dad was in the bar playing darts and working on his Friday night word-slur. From across the room, the lady we met outside of the shop was staring at me. She’d swapped her dress with the blood splatters for a blood red Friday-nighter with plunging neck line and sleeves wide enough to hide a German wolf pack. She was looking hungry; couldn’t see her kids anywhere...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Mathew collected logs from the river’s high water mark and, on a bed of hot coals Catherine arranged a skillet and her three-legged iron pots. Magdel brought out sweet potatoes and the last of her Cape-grown pumpkins.

‘We shall make a feast!’ Magdel decided, ‘a feast to remember the crossing of a great river – a celebration.’ She looked about for Sannie. ‘Brandewyn my kind; a full bottle! Set an extra place for the meneer. Tonight is a special occasion – we have a guest. And your mother’s chair!’ Magdel boomed. ‘Or am I expected to get it myself?’

The iconic throne was set in the fullest part of the firelight and as usual, to its right hand, Sannie erected the trestle; setting it with glass and twinkling cutlery.

‘You will take a dop with us, meneer?’ Magdel smiled at Nathan, but she had already decided for him and poured his tumbler full to the brim with Cape Smoke. She shouted instructions for hurricane lamps to be hung high on the branches of sweet thorn and now they threw good light to the fireside. ‘Your wife already knows,’ she told him. ‘Always I look for snakes. I cannot bear those slithering creatures anywhere near me.’ With a deft flick she put the whip to a stone and sent her pretence spinning away beneath her wagon.

Jars of peach, apricot and watermelon conserve were spirited out, the extravagance warranted. Bread to go with them came up golden brown and mountainous from Sannie’s baking-pot, and in a skillet of hot fat, quartered guinea fowl were turned and spiced one last time. Magdel looked on and smiled appreciatively. God had shown them mercy – delivered them from the wilderness.

‘Sannie, my liefling. Bring out your father’s concertina for me to make some music with.’

Magdel settled herself in front of the fire and everyone listened. She sat with her eyes closed; in her mind’s eye were the social gatherings of her childhood. Trek Boers would come from a hundred miles and even further for the occasion of a wedding or birth of a child; gifts would be exchanged, roasted sheep, fat and juice-full were feasted on, still with them skewered to spits above the braai pits. Thanks would be given to The Almighty and when the wagons were properly laagered, lashed together with trek chains, men with a love for the wilderness burnt in their eyes would waltz their sweethearts to the strains of lamenting fiddles and concertinas. Later, where the firelight did not reach, they would roll out blankets made from soft Karoo wool and make love with only the stars to watch them.

‘So long ago,’ whispered Magdel and freed her mind for the music.

To Magdel, the past was more worthy of contemplation – people were happier, fearful of their God and without question or fore thought had always bowed to His rulings. Horses were faster and men were stronger with muscled backs and beards as black as thunder. Her countenance hardened, but the music went on. The Lord had given her children; all but one, He had taken away – without reason – without thought for a woman bereft of her sons and still with her time on earth strung as a lifeless road before her. Now, only her daughter, her music and her jars of Cape Smoke were left to comfort her. Where the road would lead it did not matter, one day the wagon tracks would peter out to nothingness and she, Anna Magdel Bowker, would be left to lie in the wilderness – merely another name carved into the heartwood of some gnarled and ancient hartekoel. She caught her daughter’s eye and without deliberation, Sannie rose from her stool and re-filled her mother’s glass with brandy.

‘I love you, my meisie,’ Magdel whispered, and it was then she saw in her daughter’s eyes the first glimmer of another life – the first stirrings of some tiny spirit – from the falling of that first rain the seed had struck. God was sending to her wagon a grandchild, and with it, the strength for her to carry on.

‘Ja,’ mused Magdel, the way ahead had been shown to her; still there were hopes and dreams to be tended to, fields to till and the seeds from her buck-skin bag to be planted – and beyond all else, her man, Piet Bowker would be brought back to the fold, for it would not be right in the Lord’s eyes for a child to be raised without a grown man’s knee to ride upon. ‘A grandson,’ Magdel whispered. There was much to do – much to prepare for and she gave thanks for the blessing and now her fingers and feet were expectant, lively things in the firelight...

Spring Has Definitely Sprung!

Most people watch for buds and things – for me, the clocks go forward, then it’s Spring – when I lose an hours sleep and find the lawn mower’s back from hibernation; parked on the grass with a newly filled can of two-stroke mix alongside. Reckon there’s just a hint of a message in there. Then the fun starts...

Should have, but didn’t clean and sharpen the cutters so they’re all gunked up with last year’s old grass and dog-grunge. Meant to take out the spark plug and give it a de-carb, but didn’t. Hoping that the fairies have done it for me, I take a firm grip on the pull-start and with grim determination set up a first visit to my osteopath. The devilish machine grunts like a pig, coughs like a sixty-a-day smoker and gives me the finger. The kids are watching from their bedroom window; snorting like peevish leprechauns.

I try again; determined to deny my upstairs audience the pleasures of ‘I told you so’. Prime the carburettor, set the choke lever to max, glower at the maker’s nameplate just in case he’s watching. The kids are still at the window; I can hear them giggling. My wife is stood on the front step; arms folded and ready to take the mick.

With macho-inflated courage, again I reach for the pull-start, flex my bingo-wings and rip at the rope from hell.

Just before I hit the deck I saw the nylon cord, minus its handle, whip away inside the engine...

Back on the road...

From Bulawayo, took our little Morris three hours plus to reach Mashaba. First impressions were not good; Rhodesia’s Wild West. Mother stared through the window in abject horror, for the first time that day she was totally speechless.

‘I’ll find us something cold to drink,’ said Dad and parked in front of Mashaba’s hillbilly version of the Co-op. Had a big sign above the door; Gruber & Sager. Couple more cars parked alongside ours and the people stared; we were something new to look at – outsiders. Reckon they were sizing us up as stand-ins for their local ‘hoe-down pig-on-a-spit fest’.

‘You’re new here?’

Mother wound her window down; ‘Yes,’ she said, then, like some recumbent tortoise, drew in her head. The woman climbed out from her pick-up truck and the springs rejoiced. Twenty stone of small town woman took up the space between the cars.

‘You’ll like it here.’

‘We hope so.’

‘One big happy family. Lived here myself for five years now.’

‘That’s nice,’ Mother whimpered and reached for her cigarettes. I watched from my unreachable back seat. As long as the doors held I was safe. The woman’s head was wrapped inside a scarf; those curler things stuck out the front – end-on like spiky plastic pipes.

Mother opened the box and offered her cigarettes.

‘Thank you,’ the woman nodded. Four fat fingers scrabbled for a grip on a filter. ‘Got a match?’

Mother lit it for her. Dad came back with bottles of Coca-Cola and Mother breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Hello,’ the woman said to my Dad. She was bigger than him; broader across the shoulders. Her dress had red flowers on it. A bit like splatters of blood; when she smiled her teeth looked really big. I can remember thinking; ‘maybe she’s eaten her kids’.

My Dad nodded and smiled politely. ‘Is that the road to Gath’s Mine? I’m looking for the General Office.’

‘About four miles,’ the woman nodded, ‘the offices are on the right. Can’t miss them.’ Her eyeballs bulged with obsessive need-to-know right now syndrome. ‘Are you looking for a job?’

‘Got one,’ Dad said. ‘I start next Monday.’

She seemed disappointed, ‘I could have told you who to see. What do you do?’

‘Carpenter.’

‘That’s nice.’

Dad handed out the cokes and climbed inside. Mother pleaded with her eyes for him to start the engine.

‘We’ll be seeing you then,’ said Mother.

‘Friday night at the mine club,’ the woman held on to the door. ‘The company does a free draw for ten pounds, but you have to be there to win it.’

‘We’ll try to remember.’

Dad let out the clutch and the woman let go of our car...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Catherine wrenched back the lids. The boxes were filled to the brim with brass cartridges for the Mauser and paper-covered Peters buck-shot for Magdel’s big twelve bore double. She tore her eyes from them and ran for her own wagon; the fear that Mhlangana had left her with now scurried rat-like for her throat.

‘Kom nou, Katarina!’ Magdel shouted after her. ‘We must hurry. Bring out your guns or the kaffirs will kill us all!’

Catherine stripped the Mannlicher out from its scabbard. She struggled to hold her grip steady – her heart now a powerful beating drum inside her chest.

‘You can do this – stay calm, stay calm!’ She steadied the rifle across her legs and reached for ammunition – the five-round clips were all filled and ready for loading. She dropped the first clip into the Mannlicher’s breech and slammed the bolt forward. ‘Now we shall see how well you fight,’ she goaded, and she was no longer so afraid. For her son and for the others who had travelled with her she would fight with all her being, with all her soul.

‘Nathan’s twelve bore double,’ she remembered and reached between the wagon’s outer wall and her own cot – again, Mathew had oiled the weapon and wrapped it with calico. She tore back the covering, opened the breech and dropped in two fat, brass-cased cartridges. ‘Buckshot.’ Nathan had warned her. ‘At ten paces a single load will cut out a man’s stomach – at three it will take off his head.’ She left both hammers un-cocked and carried the shotgun forwards to where Magdel was waiting.

‘I have this surprise for the duiwels,’ Magdel gloated, and handed an ancient flintlock to Catherine. ‘Hold it steady while I make ready the powder and shot.’ A readiness to fight had stripped all fear from her face. God Himself was with them. ‘It was my father’s,’ she exulted, ‘and his father before him fought the Zulu savages at Inkanyana and Ulundi with this same Donderbus.’

Magdel took back the weapon from Catherine, half-cocked the striker then gripped a paper envelope with her teeth and tore it open. She ran a tiny pinch of black powder into the open flash-pan then re-seated the striker to hold the flash-pan closed. With the weapon pointing skywards, Magdel poured the rest of the powder down inside the barrel.

Catherine watched her labour. A nimble fingered armourer could not have done it better. With a quick and practiced eye, Magdel primed her evil flintlock blunderbuss for battle.

‘And now these,’ said Magdel, ‘as you English would say – the parts that do the business.’ A measured handful of shot – each separate piece of lead had been cast in her gang-mould and was the size of a single pea.  Finally, to hold the charge as a firm plug inside the barrel she drove in a strip of greased wadding with the flintlock’s ramrod.

‘Now it is ready,’ Magdel breathed, and sweat from her hairline ran as rivers across her brow. ‘Save only to draw the striker fully back and then pull the trigger.’ She leaned the weapon against the wagon and looked to the ashen faced woman standing next to her. ‘All we can do now is pray that Mhlangana will be the first to find our children...’

There's Something About Rivers?

Yesterday, we took our dogs down to their favourite swim for their spring splash-about. First salmon will soon be up from the Ribble estuary; back from whatever salmon do in the ocean. It’s time for them to re-start the cycle; thrash their way upstream to mate and spawn and for most, for their efforts, be allowed to die there. Anyway, that’s the way things are and short of Armageddon, ain’t nothing out there strong enough to alter them. Though sometimes, when it suits her, our misnamed Mother Nature decides to screw things up. Get in her way and you’ll get the ‘have that’ treatment.

We are here purely through the chance bonkings of some prehistoric amoebae, earth’s first life forms – not through a sprinkling of fairy dust or ‘Ms Nature’ doing us any favours. She will, without rancour, destroy, burn, maim, drown or infect thousands – all the tree-hugging in the world will not placate her. She has done it many times before; when she’s had enough, pretentious guardians against global warming et al will suffer the violent rigours of her next spring-clean.

My heart goes out to the people of Japan.

And on a lighter note...

... Down went our little car for what the Rhodesian authorities defined as a low-level bridge, which in reality meant the bridge was too small;  for that, read: ‘wide enough for one vehicle’.  And for chrissakes don’t be half-way across when a thirty-ton, trailer dragging Oshkosh is coming the other way – or when the river’s flooding. Neither of these would be good – especially if one is of a nervous disposition...

‘What in God’s name is that!’

‘A bridge, my darling.’

Mother waggled her fag at the windscreen. ‘I meant the name, dearest. Not the death trap we’re about to drive over.’

Dad got his lips around the pronunciation; ‘Umzingwani River.’

The bridge was a long one; a sort of tarred strip on concrete legs – trees wrapped round from the last flood – jammed underneath. The water was brown, not too much of it but deep enough to hide crocodiles and other boy-biting creatures. Mother stayed quiet. I think she held her breath all the way across. Then we rose up, phoenix-like and crested the far bank.

‘Goes all the way down to join up with the Limpopo,’ said Mother, with what was now her favourite map pressed against her knees. ‘And there’s another big river just before we reach Mashaba.’

I craned my neck and tried to read the names.

‘What is it called?’

‘The Lundi,’ mother chirruped, pleased with her map reading. Her cigarette wriggled south-eastwards over the paper. ‘Then it joins up with the Sabi down here in the corner.’ She folded the map and shoved it under the dashboard, for the time being satisfied with her discoveries.

The clouds had turned a sort of, ripe plum colour. I watched them boiling up in front. Outside our car nothing moved. Trees hung their leaves straight down and dead still. Just the drone of our little engine hummed through the quiet.

‘We’re coming into some rain.’

Mother thought it necessary to lean as far forward as possible and peer upwards through the top edge of the windscreen – just as sixty million gigawatts of lightning blatted the sky. For the second time that day mother screamed and bust her cigarette...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... ‘We will never make it across!’ Catherine shouted, and looked upstream to where the storm had blackened the skyline. The Lundi River, though at that moment almost empty, was wide enough to take a span of sixty oxen standing nose to tail – dry reaches of white sand strung between the shallows, but from the high carry of a north wind the first fat drops of rain slapped vindictively to the wagon-tents.

‘We have no choice,’ countered Magdel. ‘We cross now or wait for how many days or weeks it takes for the river to empty.’ She looked to her daughter. ‘We must lighten the load or sink to the axles. Carry what you can on the horses.’

She turned to Mhlangana. ‘Double span the first wagon. And hurry – our time is running out.’

Within the half-hour both wagons had been stripped of irreplaceable powder, shot and cartridges for the rifles and double-loaders. Sannie horse-backed their essential provisions across to the far bank and set them down where she knew the water could not reach, then covered the precious cache with a light canvas sail to keep powder and cartridges safe from the rain.

A sky the colour of black iron engulfed the wagon-drift – fingers of white, excited lightning crackled inside of it and like the African night, the rain came swiftly. It fell with violent disregard for everything in its way so that the once dry earth was thrashed to the colour of raw meat. As an ominous wall it moved across the landscape – deep ravines were flushed of debris and creatures slow to move were drowned in their burrows. Gullies that had seen no rain for those long dry winter months were filled beyond their banks, linking one to the other, rivulets to streams to hurrying glides amongst the trees so that everywhere the earth moved as a single expanse of living water. The air filled with smells released by the deluge and amongst them hung the acrid fizz of ozone from the nearness of lightning strikes. At the lowest point of the valley, the impotent riverbed waited; poised to take that first spate...

'Ford Fairlanes and Samuel Colt!'

Hi. Mentioned earlier, my being impressed by first sightings of American cars in Africa – developed into a life-long love for powerful wheels. First time I rode in a Ford Fairlane thought I would bust a vein from grinning so hard. Everything was Texas ‘big’ and I fell in love; something about a V8 engine – the beat – the growl of a waking lion. Fairlanes flowed; on silk not wheels, smooth as a kid’s rocking horse. Ford Galaxies and Studebakers, finned like great whites. Mustangs; throaty, beautifully over-the-top testosterone with white upholstery, chrome and blood-red paintwork. The Chevrolet Impala, from the back end, like a Manta Ray winging it down the highway. All of them with big boots, big appetites and steering wheels big enough to sleep on. Reckon if I lived in America I would end up more American than John Wayne. Buy me a pick-up truck and tooled boots and eat at Diners where some local country and western band is banging out Don Williams on steel guitars. Wave to Tommy Lee and buy him another beer.

 Took my driving test in a Chev Apache pick-up truck; those you see in old movies – a real powerhouse. Her air filter hissed like a pissed-off snake... 

East of Bulawayo...

Our little Morris Minor took us into and out of Bulawayo without mishap. The streets were amazing; all of them really wide and straight as arrows – streets and avenues at right-angles to one another. All, from what we had been told were wide enough to turn a wagon and full span of oxen through one hundred and eighty degrees with space to spare. But that was in the old days. Now the middle bits are filled up with car-park spaces.

‘Turn left into Selborne Avenue,’ Mother instructed and father swung us in line with one hundred and sixty seven miles of road that would, all being well, take us into our new home town – Mashaba.

Mother had bought half a dozen steak and kidney pies from Downings’ Bakery. Her Thermos was un-stoppered and to go with the pies, everyone got their part-filled cup of lukewarm tea. Within twenty minutes Bulawayo had disappeared.

Mother unfolded a Caltex road map across her knees, her finger the non-stop seeker of unknown highways and new names. ‘Essexvale,’ she smiled to herself. ‘That’s the first town we come to. Then a place called Bala Bala?’ She looked sideways at my father. ‘What kind of name is that?’

‘Bit like Wagga Wagga in Australia,’ said my Dad and got glowered at.

‘Must be one of those native names?’

Dad said nothing. He was enjoying the drive. The road was wider now; full tar – no missing piece in the middle. But not for long.

‘Slow down there’s a sign.’ Mother craned her neck, bumped her head on the windscreen and bent her cigarette. ‘Detour?’ A line of forty-four gallon oil drums had been strung across the road. ‘Must be road works.’

We followed the arrows. The tar macadam disappeared. Now the road, like a giant wash-board threatened to shake our Noddy car to pieces – like driving over a corrugated iron roof but twice as bad. Then we hit a smooth patch and a single-decker, ‘Shu-Shine’ logoed juggernaut from Hades thundered past. I looked up from my little window and caught a glimpse of black faces staring down at me; white eyes and coloured headscarves – then the bus was gone. What dust there had been on the road was now in the air and stones the size of butter beans thrashed our windscreen. Mother screamed, my father cursed and I learned a string of new, exciting words...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... ‘Something tells me that it won’t be long before I see you again.’ Burnham sat uncomfortably in the saddle. He turned sideways on and lifted the flap to a leather saddle-bag. The telescope was just as Mathew remembered. ‘Bound to come in handy,’ said Burnham and saw Mathew flinch at the offer. ‘I would like you to have it. Belonged to my father.’

Mathew forced back the lump in his throat. His voice failed him. Burnham sensed his angst and again reached inside the saddlebag.

‘One more thing, then for sure I’ll be on my way.’

The casket had been fashioned from cedar and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Its double clasps were from raw, native silver mined in America’s high Sierra Nevada.

‘One of a pair, kept the other one for myself,’ said Burnham and gently freed the clasps from their fastenings. ‘Go ahead,’ Burnham urged him. ‘Lift her out – she belongs to you now.’

It was rested in blue velvet – bought by Burnham’s father from Samuel Colt’s renowned Armoury on the banks of the Connecticut River. The carved, steer head grips were made from white, iridescent mother-of-pearl and the metal parts were still that midnight blue of the unused weapon. The inscription, FRONTIER SIX SHOOTER had been factory etched along the barrel and Mathew sensed that faint familiar smell of its last oiling.

‘44 – 40 calibre,’ Burnham explained the weapon’s attributes, ‘still the old black powder cartridge but plenty powerful enough.’

Mathew lifted it clear of its velvet cushion.

‘Single-action Colt,’ Burnham went on, ‘means you have to cock the hammer for every shot.’ Lastly, he handed Mathew a waxed calico bag. ‘These will see you through until you find a trader; has to be upwards of a hundred bullets in there.’

Mathew swallowed hard to clear the constriction in his throat, but still he could not speak.

‘I’d best be going then,’ said Burnham. ‘Look after the telescope and keep the Colt handy.’

‘I will not forget,’ Mathew managed.

‘I’ll telegraph your father; once I reach the fort at the Tuli settlement’ He turned his horse about. Within minutes the haze had swallowed him up...

Exciting Times!

Just come out of the spare room – used to be a dining room; turned it into a small gym. Nothing posh; bench, weights, treadmill and multi-gym – all squeezed in amongst packing cases, computers and photography gear. Bit of a mess, but does the job. Can watch Roy Orbison and Bruce Springsteen on my Mac whilst busting a gut on the weight bench. Kids bought me Black and White Nights for Christmas, so it’s up with the volume and do nostalgia stuff with my air guitar. Got to take it easy with the weights though, hurt my shoulder chain-sawing logs in the forest.

 Like me, the Black and White Nights crew are all a lot older now; k.d. lang, Costello, James Burton and the rest. Enjoy watching the crowd watching Orbison – cigarette smoke swirling around the stage lights and amplifiers. Health and Safety would throw a fit. At least it gave the place an atmosphere. Good days. Reminds me of the sixties; Triumph Bonneville parked outside, Chelsea boots and leather bomber jacket to go with the spray-on jeans and white T-shirt. Girls with big skirts and bigger slaps if you stepped out of line. Exciting times, when the only coke I knew of came in a glass and smoking it up meant twenty Chesterfields and a hacking cough in the morning.

Fond farewells to Wankie Coalfields.

... Not a lot happened with Gloria; guess I just wasn’t old enough. Never forgot her though – that sort of puppy smell when she pulled my head inside her cardigan. Anyway, things moved on. Mother fell out with her sister-in-law and we left Wankie. The mango trees, swimming pool and first love faded behind. Our sun-bleached Morris Minor went bravely into the heat and onto a road we had never seen before. Mother sat with her fifty-box of Matinee cigarettes clutched to her bosom and an austere stare for everything beyond the windscreen. She had the quarter window fully open to suck out her smoke and fag ash. The back seat, piled up like some pawn shop counter, left just enough space for me.

‘What in God’s name have they done to the middle out of the road?’

‘It was built that way on purpose.’ My father did his best.

‘Without a middle?’ Mother retorted.

Dad nodded and I leaned between the two front seats for a better view. Two, single strips of tar macadam stretched away to the front like wobbly liquorice sticks in the heat haze.

‘Called a strip road. Built during the recession. Saved the government a fortune.’

‘And what happens when we meet a car coming the other way?’ She grabbed at her seat. ‘Like right now!’

The car bombed towards us, whipping up dust from the missing bit in the middle. A black Chevrolet; all chrome and leering headlamps – the car from Hell.

‘For God’s sake pull over before we all die!’

We closed to within a hundred yards of the Chevy before both cars gave up their respective ‘right hand strip’; with barely the length of an outstretched arm between us, we passed as stately ships in the night. The Chevy driver waved and smiled and mother retrieved her cigarette from its neat little burn in the carpet. For the next fifty miles no one spoke...

Sons of Africa; a slightly raunchy extract:

... Sannie waded out to where the water ran fast against her legs. Mathew lay on his side, the heel of his hand to his chin and watched her dip the bucket beneath the surface. Her dress was wet to a foot above her knees and Mathew stared at the transparency of the cloth, tipping the brim of his hat to hide his eyes.

‘Do you not swim, meneer?’

‘I do swim,’ he told her, ‘if I were of a mind to. What about you?’ he flinched at a sudden tightness in his stomach.

‘Sometimes,’ she told him. ‘Sometimes when the sun is hot I swim for the water to keep me cool.’ She set down the bucket. ‘And now the sun is hot, but that is not why we came here. Is that not so, meneer?’

Mathew shook his head. The words stuck in his throat. Sannie had already loosened the buttons of her bodice, on tiptoe she lifted away her dress – then let it fall to the ground; a fragile wisp of cotton.

Without speaking, Sannie moved away from him and found a ridge of soft sand just beneath the stream’s surface – she followed it out to where the water swirled at its deepest – dark, forbidding eddies about the juncture of her legs.

‘Am I not to your liking, meneer?’  Now her breasts were tipped to a dark and trembling pink by the stroke of fast water.

‘More than anything,’ Mathew croaked, and not for a second could he tear his eyes from her.

‘Then I would like it very much if you were to stand beside me.’

Mathew stood up and looked back at the way they had come – the canvas tops of the wagons were barely visible through the trees and he could still hear the solid strike of an axe to the base of a sweet thorn.

‘I will turn my back for you,’ she encouraged. ‘Then I will count to ten.’

He hesitated a moment longer.

‘Three, four, five, six…’

He dropped the Colt on a tussock of grass and stripped off his shirt and boots.

‘…seven, eight…’

He reached her on the count of ten – her hair a black and gleaming cloak about her shoulders. ‘You can touch me if you wish,’ breathed Sannie, her voice soft but now unsteady – trembling like reeds to deep running currents.

Mathew wrapped his arms about her waist so that she could lean against him, her head against his chest and with her hands behind her back she reached for him inside the water. She felt him waken, slowly at first, then turned to face him and still her fingers worked their magic so that his eyes rolled in their sockets like those of a lovesick bull for a field of heifers.

‘Past those reeds,’ she whispered into his open mouth and led him with the current to where the stream shallowed. The bank, by that last seasonal flood had been spread with a white arc of virgin sand.

Sannie pushed him down, still with her face to his and with her tongue so very much alive inside his mouth that he was forced to hold her off to catch his breath.

‘Lie still!’ she laughed, and pinned his arms against the sand. ‘Now you are mine and I will have whatever I wish from you.’

Mathew closed his eyes, but not completely so that he was still able to make out the exquisite shape of her mouth whenever she lifted her face from his – and when she moved over him her breasts brushed against his chest and left whatever he tried to say stuck fast in his throat.

‘Be quiet,’ she whispered, and smiled at him through a halo of sunlight, ‘the time for talking is long past.’ She was so very clearly in control and delighted his senses in ways that he had never imagined – taking him on thunderous wings to the very brink of ecstatic vistas, then expertly brought him back with a sudden, experienced releasing of those slender, wicked fingertips. ‘Do you like what I am doing for you, meneer?’

‘Oh yes,’ whispered Mathew, ‘I surely like what you’re doing to me, miss Sannie.’

‘And what if my hand does this?’ she drew her nails across the muscled flat of his stomach and laughed delightedly when it twitched from her teasing. ‘Then again,’ she whispered close to his ear, ‘this might be even better?’ She lowered her face to chest, deliberately taking one hard nipple between her teeth so that he shuddered beneath her.

‘Someone might hear you,’ she admonished and laughed with him, but with a wicked edge to her voice. ‘Your mother would kill me for what I am doing to her son.’

‘She would kill us both,’ grinned Mathew, and now there was softness in her eyes.

 ‘You are more handsome than all the others. Stronger – and bigger down here,’ she giggled, and reached for him.

Now her hand rolled back and forth, brushing between them, coaxing the heat she had kindled from a warm, quiescent flame to a towering inferno, firmly filling her hand until her girlish, slender fingers could no longer encompass the girth of him. Again, Sannie leaned forwards and put her lips to his ear so that her voice was a hot and roaring wind.

‘For this you will remember well of me, meneer’ – then with an expert angling of her wrist she guided him between her legs and loosed the stallion free for its first unhindered run at the open veld...



That First Romance!

Hi everyone – got a tough weekend coming up. Being abandoned. Not to the Seychelles or the Maldives with two-grand spenders in my pocket; no sirree, just left at home, wifeless and clueless and there’s no way I’ll get out of it. Matters feminine have lassoed my life. Phones are ringing at funny hours, parcels are wrapped, stamped and posted and my wife is in a perpetual state of wide grins – she has just become an auntie! Anyway, I’m being left with the kids the dogs and relevant feeding instructions – cheese for me, health-giving pizzas and pasties for two teenage boys, biscuits and leftovers for the dogs, and nuts, seeds and scrubbled up toast for the birds. Don’t think I’ve left anyone out? Oh, our resident barn owl; forgot about him, keeps eying up our littlest dog, but he’ll have to pass on that – Jones, our Jack Russell has other ideas.

Two years later; deep inside the jungles of Rhodesia something stirred!

... The following two years flew by. They were sort of ‘settling in’ years and not a lot happened; then a girl came down to stay with her Gran for the school holidays. Gloria. I liked her, made me feel sort of hot all over, but she said that was okay because she felt the same. Gloria was nearly thirteen, so a bit older than me. Mother said she worried about me; heard her telling my Dad; said our relationship was ‘unhealthy’. Not really sure what she meant. Anyway, Gloria was still my friend and I saw her every night, under the infamous mango trees – next to the Wankie Club bowling green. Got a bit dark sometimes, before the moon came up, but Gloria had inquisitive hands and worked hard on distracting me. I soon forgot the dark.

Had to wait for mother to fall asleep in her chair with her third brandy and coke before I could sneak out. Once her eyes were closed I was over the fence and away across the Bowling Green; at this stage, totally besotted.

 Gloria always waved her arms about so I could find her in the dark. She always wore white and her hair was long, blonde and smelled of flowers. She went to boarding school in Bulawayo. When she stood up her head was higher than mine and the top of her dress was really tight at the front; sort of pushed out.

Mother scrutinised me from across the dinner table; ‘This Gloria girl, Jeffrey, she looks older than you?’

‘Just a bit. She’s really nice, though – I really like her.’

Mother huffed into her coffee cup and lit up another Matinee. I think she was angry about something because her eyes were thin.

‘She’s down from Bulawayo?’

I nodded. ‘Staying with her Gran; going back home tomorrow morning.’

Mother visibly relaxed and her eyes went back to normal; not like a lizard’s anymore. The matinee flared and her eyelids did their thing.

‘We’ll be going to the club tonight.’

It was Saturday. Movie night, or as everyone in Wankie Called it; bioscope night. Gloria’s Gran said she could go. Once the interval lights went down we would still have more than an hour before anyone missed us.

The moon was out that night. The buttons on Gloria’s blouse turned silver when the moonlight came through the mango trees. Her eyes were big – glittering – I could smell the sweet aroma of a Sunga Springs, cream soda on her breath.

‘You can touch them if you like...’

Sons of Africa; an extract:

... Catherine turned Magdel’s attention to fleeting glimpses of a young girl some sixty yards out from where they were sitting.

‘Your daughter moves so quickly.’

‘Like a klipspringer bokkie,’ Magdel agreed, ‘and always without shoes. One day that verdwaalde daughter of mine will tramp the back of a snake and that will be the end of her.’

Catherine watched the girl’s progress, mesmerised by her agility. The sun was to the girl’s side and sometimes threw her outline against the granite; catching up with her between the shadows, then, again she was away, jinking from rock to rock like a hyrax fleeing the attentions of a wild cat. The targets were of pale-coloured sapwood, Sannie positioned them with varying degrees of difficulty by her clever use of shadows and swaying grasses. She finished her task and in the winking of an eye was down on level ground, unashamedly barefooted and with a lightness of step that caught at Mathew’s breathing before he had chance to dismount.

Her hair though midnight black, flared with an aura of pure gold and held the light about her as though she were an angel and had just set foot upon the earth. She had seen the Englishman before, but only momentarily.  Now he was there in front of her, standing with one foot still in the stirrup and it was then Sannie knew that she had caught his eye – that he was watching her. With her head high and with that long, infective stride of the young lioness, she walked towards him. Mathew found himself staring. Like an emergent butterfly, Sannie’s youthful body strained to be free. A hundred washes had left her garment gossamer thin, so that now it clung to her skin, a fine mist shot through with sunlight. Mathew could not help dropping his eyes to the outline of her breasts, to her waist and beyond; down to the sway and roll of her hips.

‘Sannie.’ She smiled at Mathew and held out her hand for him; though out of kilter with the timbre of her own language, her voice was mellifluous, softer than a summer breeze.

‘My name, meneer, is Sannie Louisa Bowker...’



Women - The Ultimate Pioneers!

There are many accomplished writers out there; my desk is filled with their work. Ruark, Cloete, Smith and Brett Young, to name but a few; all, through their chosen genre, are linked indomitably to the continent of Africa. Some were/are loners, others were nurtured, driven and held to their literary straights and narrows by the foresight of highly intelligent, though hardly mentioned women, without whose unflagging insight, editing skills and general common sense would have left many of our manly writers floundering. I for one would never have made it this far.

Time for schools and pools!

No more than a week after our arrival I was steered towards what was, by locals, lovingly referred to as Wankie Old School. I supposed it was built before the snottier, Wankie New School on the other side of town. Those of us who were sons of carpenters and miners were financially fenced off, held at arm’s length by the size of our pocket money allowance. Fraternising with girls who were driven to school in Opel Kapitäns and Plymouth Plazas was sort of frowned upon; our girls rode in Zephyrs and Standard Vanguards; Old School girls; girls with jam on their sandwiches. And they all spoke English – not African.

Another week and I ate my first mango. Came back home with yellow all over my face. Gave me a sore belly; guess I wasn’t used to it. The ‘squirts’ I think my father called it. I had the squirts quite often and then one day they stopped – I was mango-proof. That Sunday night it rained, I mean ‘really rained’. Not like English rain; this was like getting slapped all over – drops the size of plate pies. Three would have filled a fish bowl. Half a dozen would ‘drown the dog’ my Dad said, and I believed him.

‘You’re going to learn how to swim, Jeffrey.’

‘Why?’

My mother lit a cigarette. When she sucked in the smoke her eyelids trembled.

‘Because drowning won’t be good, Jeffrey; people will stare.’

She bought me a yellow costume, I would have preferred a blue one. Took a month for me to rid myself of the nickname ‘mango-arse’. Once the yellow had faded, wasn’t so bad.

‘Out one – two to the side,’ my mother warbled. ‘Out one – two to the side.’

All my friends were watching. The bottom looked good. I could drown down there quite comfortably with the chewing-gum wrappers and dead ants.

‘Breaststroke, Jeffrey! For God’s sakes stop waving your arms! Out one – two to the side!’ Apparently, my father realised I wasn’t floating anymore and dived in. From then on mother was sent to sit with her brandy and coke and Matinee cigarettes under one of the beer garden umbrellas. My dad persevered and eventually, I touched on the art of staying afloat...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

‘You have equipped yourself well, young man.’

Mathew looked up from checking the wagon’s offside brake-block.

‘Like mister Burnham told me, sir. Leave nothing to chance.’

Rhodes nodded agreeably. ‘Sound advice. There are no suppliers to call on once you have cleared the town’s limits. It would take a foolish man indeed to leave Kimberley without adequate preparation.’

Rhodes sat his horse with quiet authority, deep into the saddle and long into the stirrups – collar turned up for the wind. He drew out his watch and flicked back the lid.

‘You have less than an hour before Burnham takes the column out on the north road. Make sure you have accounted for every need and that your chattels are well battened down. The road is a rough one and knowing our mister Burnham, he will not take kindly to anyone rattling along like a tinker’s workshop.’

‘Everything is in order – double checked and enough provisions to last the journey out – all the way to Mashonaland.’

Rhodes kneed his horse into a slow walk alongside the oxen. All sixteen were bright-eyed, their flanks well muscled from lavish attention, but he knew that in two month’s time the tortuous journey would have taken its toll. At least one of them would have died from a broken limb or snake bite; others struck down by the infectious, bloodsucking bite of the tsetse fly – that tiny, winged insect no bigger than the English housefly. He turned back to where Mathew was shouldering a hundredweight bag of maize meal, up over the wagon’s tailboard.

‘Who will lead your oxen?’

‘Mathew will.’ Catherine shot the answer back. ‘That is if you have no objections, Mister Rhodes.’ She swung herself onto the wagon box. She remembered Rhodes from their first meeting on that cold morning next to the diggings; this time she was prepared. Her hair was tied with a ribbon of silk and it hung defiantly to one shoulder – an auburn battle flag. ‘Or you could, if you wished, take on the task yourself. Though the pay, I’m sure would not be to your liking.’

Rhodes’ expression hardened, his itinerary spared nothing for argumentative women. He stood the gelding into the bit; with its neck arched the beast stamped and trembled; a show of masculine temperance.

‘Then would I be right in thinking, Ma’am, that if your wagon is under threat your son will lead and you, a woman of half his weight, will take up the whip?’

‘That would be my intention,’ said Catherine, suspicious of Rhodes’ implication.

‘Then let us hope for both your sakes your ability will prove adequate...’ he paused mid sentence, openly amused by the way Catherine had dressed herself in shirt and britches. ‘Though your dressing in manly attire does not necessarily guarantee manly results.’

‘And who perhaps, would be a better judge of that than you, Mister Rhodes?’

The remark angered him. The woman had overstepped her mark but he discarded the incident on the acceptance of her leaving Kimberley within the hour.

‘I do not believe you have the strength, Ma’am. Call it as you will, that is the way I see your predicament.’

‘Then take up my wager.’

 Mathew gave up on loading the meal. There was trouble brewing. His mother had just squared up to the most powerful man in Kimberley. She scowled down at Rhodes, strutty as a bantam cock.

‘Five English pounds says I will put the lead animal hard to its yoke with a single stroke of the whip.’ She looked around her, aggravated by a growing crowd. All of them men, opportunist scavengers were gathering for the kill; little boys in mute support of their playground bully. Her eyes glittered; her anger had risen up, but her voice she kept diminutive, deceptively ladylike. ‘I will match any wager, gentlemen – pound for pound.’

Within minutes, Mathew had collected upwards of forty pounds; a small fortune. Rhodes reached inside his jacket pocket.

‘And my twenty to your five, Ma’am. Like the gentlemen behind me, I say you do not have the brawn for it.’ Rhodes’ presence alone had swelled the crowd. They watched with jewelled eyes, waiting for Catherine’s attempts to flounder.

She drew out the stock from behind the wagon-box and attached the leather; its tapered voorslag a slender riem of supple giraffe hide.

 ‘Come on sweetheart! Let’s see you put up the lash instead of your kitchen curtains.’ 

Rhodes recognised the futility in what Catherine was trying to prove. He saw her cheeks colour and raised his hand for the attention of those behind him.

 ‘Afford the lady a fair chance, gentlemen – take your time Ma’am. Give it your best shot or lay down the whip and save yourself any further embarrassment.’

Catherine waited for a lull in the trailing wind and prayed for its return at the right moment to give the leather its full flight, anything less and the lash would unfurl with a feeble, impotent slap at the air, her credibility and contents of her purse destroyed in the winking of an eye. The whip had to be put back along the side of the wagon with a single, fluid roll of the arms; her timing was critical.

 Catherine locked her leg against the tent frame and stood at first with her chest and outstretched arms to the front, then, with a prayer on her lips put every ounce of her strength into putting back the lash.

As a fisherman’s weighted salmon line the lash curled up and away from the ground in a single, rolling loop; Catherine waited, shoulders tensed for that tell-tale drag on her arms, only then did she know that the lash was fully out. She reversed her stance; shifted her weight. The wind she had prayed for sprang from the South West and when coupled to all her strength took the lash away on a shallow, hissing arc.

The sound it made was that of a goose’s wings skimming the surface of a lake – then, like the shot from a hunter’s rifle, the voorslag cracked just inches away from splitting the cupped ear of the lead ox. Wide-eyed the beast lunged forward and snatched its trek chain cleanly from the earth. The rest followed suit and Mathew was forced to run to the span’s head to prevent sixteen, half-ton trek oxen lumbering away with the wagon.

As quickly as it had gathered, the crowd dispersed. Rhodes shook his head, momentarily stunned by what he had witnessed.

‘Whatever our differences, madam...’ he tipped his hat to Catherine, reined his horse about and nodded to Mathew.

‘Put the winnings to good use, young man – perhaps some embrocation for your mother’s shoulder...’



Matabele Gold!

Talked with an old friend yesterday; via the internet. Gold miner, same as I used to be. Difference is, he’s still digging for gold and I’m just writing about it. He’s a little younger than me; by about twenty years and still sharp as a razor – lives in Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) with his son, his woman and his motorbikes. Good man. Haven’t seen him for near on eighteen years. Must make a plan to get out there.

Gold mining gets in your blood and looking for it goes even deeper; an obsession – guess that’s why the old timers called it ‘gold fever’. Now that it’s late and everyone else in our house is asleep, an hour with some of my old books would be good; books about gold and the men who mined it, but reckon you worked that one out for yourselves.  Matabeleland is full of the stuff.

First though, before any more of my ramblings about lost mines and gold fever – time to pick up where we left off from our boy on the train...

... The sun was up; not quite half past six and already I could feel the heat. A corrugated iron sign said Thompson’s Junction – stuck on two iron poles so the termites couldn’t eat its legs off. The train had slowed down – I leaned out from my top bunk and craned my neck for a better view of outside. The bush had changed; everything looked dry and really thirsty. A flat-topped hill, like the one I had seen in Cape Town, but much smaller. The colours were all yellows and browns, the colours of Africa, colours that reached away as far as my scrunched up eyes could see.

‘Thought you were asleep?’

Shook my head and grinned at my mother. My Dad was snoring.

‘Too excited. Want to be first in our family to see Wankie. The man said seven o’clock so we can’t be far away from the station.’

‘Your aunt and uncle will be waiting for us. A friend of theirs is bringing his car; a shooting-brake I think?

The carriages rocked against their couplings; slowly now, a temperate, hinging snake between the cuttings – looking for somewhere to sleep the heat away. I looked down – at the ground alongside the train. Maybe I would see some animals.

‘Are there schools in Wankie?’

‘I should imagine so.’

‘What if they all speak African?’

‘What if you start making sense, Jeffrey.’

It was sense to me. African kids, seeing as they were from Africa would speak and write in African.

‘They might.’ How would my mother know?  Outside, there were no more trees now; just short bushes. The train had started to click and clack over points and joints in the rails. There was a road running alongside the railway line with a black Morris Minor on it; sunlight flashed off its chrome bumper. In England, our doctor had one just like it. On the ground all the rocks were black. The soil, if that’s what it was, was black as well. A black man on a bike smiled and waved to me...

Sons of Africa; an extract:

‘What about transport?’ Rhodes asked.

‘I can bring in a wagon,’ said Mathew.

‘Strong enough to carry your mill?’

Mathew nodded; ‘Piecemeal, that won’t be a problem,’

‘Then our Mister Morrish here will help you load. Now that the installation of the Sandycroft is complete, we have more men in our employ than is needed.’ He looked up at Mathew. Like all builders of great empires he was always one step ahead of whatever game had been set in motion.

‘You could do worse than taking some of our native labour for your Empress Deep – good workers; most of them.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘How do you stand financially?’

‘Low in the water,’ Mathew admitted.

Rhodes’ eyes glittered.

‘Then we will talk again, young man.’ He stood up from the table. ‘Now you must excuse us, there is urgent business in need of our attention.’

*

Alongside the wagon, Mathew rode Luke at a slow walk. He recalled the long trip up from Kimberley, loaded with chattels, guns and hundred-weight bags of maize-meal. Now the wagon was empty – stripped of its canvas tent and cots it was the bared bones of a transporter’s flat-bed. It took only eight muscled oxen to pull it the five mile distance to the Cotapaxi. Mhlangana, in khaki breeches and barefooted, coaxed his span with gentle words, for the strain on their yokes was light and the whip was seldom needed.

‘We need labour,’ Mathew called across to him.

‘There are many to pick from,’ answered Mhlangana. ‘Choose wisely – I have watched them. Some have only the worth of old baboons.’

‘There are good men amongst your baboons. Find me ten. Those who can use their brains as well as they swing their hammers.’

They reached the mine by mid afternoon; as before, the first sounds were those from iron stamps – men’s voices and the ring of hammers to rock and steel – that ubiquitous voice of the Sandycroft mill-site.

As some pagan idol, on concrete altars it towered above the ground – men on wooden platforms shovelled rock into the crusher’s iron jaws so that it fed and disgorged constantly. Against the skyline it was a monster; at its side its iron cohort – a hissing bitch of an engine, excited by flaming, waist-thick logs in her firebox. Through her power and gearing down of giant pulleys, inexorably, she turned the mammoth cam-shaft, imparting the strength of thirty Shire horses, all of them working in unison.

‘We’ve upped her tonnage!’ Morrish expounded, forced to shout above the din. ‘Twenty tons, yesterday – should be more today!’

Like a child to fire or running water, Mathew was drawn to the base of the giant crusher. Imprisoned by concrete and thick bolts the mill shook and thundered; a colossus – each of the ten stamps weighing in well over a thousand pounds. One by one they were lifted, then, disengaged in turn from rotating, cast iron cams they would free-fall, pounding the rock to gold-laden slurry.

From that constant beat of the crusher’s heart, a trained ear, even at a distance could gauge the prowess of his work force; whether or not the operators were slacking or overzealous with their shovels – to increase or reduce the feed, slacken or turn up the supply of water, rock or both to the mortar-box. If the iron shoes or dies were wearing down, when, to within a half day they would need replacing. Mathew knew it would take time; for him to grasp control of his own machines would take months of dedication. It made no difference. He relished the challenge; eager for his acquisitions to be loaded he shouted across to Morrish...