Книга - One Hundred and Four Horses

One Hundred and Four Horses
Mandy Retzlaff


‘A letter is handed to you. In broken English, it tells you that you must now vacate your farm; that this is no longer your home, for it now belongs to the crowd on your doorstep. Then the drums begin to beat.’As the land invasions gather pace, the Retzlaffs begin an epic journey across Zimbabwe, facing eviction after eviction, trying to save the group of animals with whom they feel a deep and enduring bond – the horses.When their neighbours flee to New Zealand, the Retzlaffs promise to look after their horses, and making similar promises to other farmers along their journey, not knowing whether they will be able to feed or save them, they amass an astonishing herd of over 300 animals. But the final journey to freedom will be arduous, and they can take only 104 horses.Each with a different personality and story, it is not just the family who rescue the horses, but the horses who rescue the family. Grey, the silver gelding: the leader. Brutus, the untamed colt. Princess, the temperamental mare.One Hundred and Four Horses is the story of an idyllic existence that falls apart at the seams, and a story of incredible bonds – a love of the land, the strength of a family, and of the connection between man and the most majestic of animals, the horse.







One Hundred and Four Horses

A family forced to run

The horses they had to save

An epic journey to freedom






MANDY RETZLAFF







William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain

by William Collins in 2013

Text © 104 Horses Ltd, 2013

The author asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover photographs (posed by a model) © Lara Wernet/NA/Novarc/Corbis (woman and horse); Panoramic Images/Getty Images (tree).

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at

www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Source ISBN: 9780007477555

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780007477579

Version: 2014-08-22


This book is dedicated to all our beautiful horses, and especially to those no longer with us— may their spirits run free.


Set a beggar on horseback, and he’ll outride the devil.

—GERMAN PROVERB




Contents


Cover (#u9d43c6db-c846-5a44-b55f-d09820ac8b22)

Title Page (#u7ca9595b-0b43-50b6-a211-059ddbbdd5af)

Copyright (#u0e92f6bc-a24d-5b80-ad61-8e86532ffae3)

Dedication (#u388c97a0-0787-5ae3-a930-d05b3c930cc3)

Epigraph (#u9cfe91b9-03a1-564d-8919-7119077d5673)

Prologue

Ten Years Earlier

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Mozambique

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Picture Sections

About the Publisher
















Prologue (#u9c733899-7e83-5c84-9f6c-5c07d2106e2c)


THEY SET OUT as night was falling, but it is almost dawn and there has been no sign of my husband or our horses.

I stand on the wide veranda of the old colonial farmhouse, trying to make out shapes in the early morning gloom. Before Pat left, he told me to get some sleep, but he has done this before—midnight missions to rustle our own horses off land we no longer own—and I know how it goes. Tonight, there is no way I can close my eyes. Whenever I do, all I see are images of the terrible things that might be happening, even now: my husband, so near to me, yet surrounded by men who might block the roads and build up barricades to stop him from getting out. Consumed by thoughts like that, I can do nothing but wait.

It is September 2002, and it has been only twelve hours since the Land Rover arrived at the gates of Biri Farm, our home in Zimbabwe, southern Africa, for the past nine months. Biri Farm stands ten kilometers across the veld from where I now stand, but it might as well be in another world.

Once the Land Rover was gone, Albert handed me a letter. We had, the letter said, only four hours to leave Biri Farm. If we dared to remain, we would lose everything: our horses, our worldly possessions, even our lives. By government decree, Biri Farm was no longer a safe haven.

Now I stand in the eerie chill before dawn, wondering what has taken my husband so long. The farmhouse behind me belongs to Nick Swanepoel, a good friend and neighbor. So far, his farm, Avalon, has been safe from the chaos spreading like cancer across our beautiful country of Zimbabwe. He has agreed to shelter us for the night, to take in our herd of horses until we can spirit them to a new home, and the farmhouse is piled high with all the boxes we managed to rescue from Biri. Somewhere in there, my mother is sleeping too, barely able to comprehend the madness that has become our lives.

There are ten kilometers between here and Biri Farm, but the mist is low and I can hardly see the end of the field in front of where I stand. Pat should have been back by now. I shift nervously. All he had to do was get back onto Biri, rope up the horses, and lead them to the safety of Avalon. There was never any question, I knew, of leaving our horses behind. They are the horses of our friends, the horses of our neighbors, horses we have promised to protect. Some of them have been with us since the very beginning. Others joined us along the way. Many have already been driven from their own homes, attacked with spears or pangas—knives—or abandoned on farms as their owners fled. They are our responsibility, and we are all that stands between them and long, drawn-out deaths from cruelty and neglect.

I hear movement behind me. Knowing that it is my mother, come out to make a fuss over her daughter—even though she is well into her seventies, she will always make a fuss—I turn around, preparing to tell her that everything is fine.

“Any sign?”

I shake my head.

“They won’t be long,” she promises, though she can hardly know. “It’s a long trek with seventy horses.”

I close my eyes. When I open them again, at last I sense movement. It seems only that there is something out there, yet everything around me is black. All the same, something tingles up and down my neck. I am certain now: there are different textures in the darkness.

“Mum?”

“What is it?”

“It’s them …” I whisper.

Slowly, the shapes appear out of the darkness. At first they are like ghosts. It is only when I move forward, willing the ghosts to come to life, that those shapes begin to have definition. First, a man, a groom, trailing a long rope behind him. Then, a horse, bobbing contentedly forward, wearing a halter but no saddle. Then, more horses alongside, each with a lead rope dangling from its halter. One, two, three, four, five … The procession continues into reaches of darkness I still cannot see.

“Is Pat with them?” asks my mother.

I cannot see my husband yet, but still I nod.

They weave along a track between fields of irrigated wheat, disappearing behind reefs of low gray mist and then coming back into sight. I know how many horses there will be, because I know them all by name. We have seventy-one now, but before long there will be more. Some days, the phone does not stop ringing. All across this once-proud nation, farms are being abandoned; farmers are fleeing, but in their wake are the animals they cannot take with them.

Then, at last, I see Pat. He is moving on the far side of the herd.

He is holding a lead rope in his hand—though, in truth, he does not even need that. The young mare he is leading, though a new addition to the herd, will do whatever he asks. The tallest and proudest of all our horses, she stands seventeen hands high, an aristocratic dun mare with beautiful black points and eyes that positively shimmer with keen intelligence. Shere Khan is the self-appointed queen of the herd and, like the queen that she is, helps Pat guide horses and grooms to safety.

There is an old German proverb, one I sometimes imagine Pat’s great-grandfather might have used. Set a beggar on horseback, they used to say, and he’ll outride the devil.

We have to outride the devil, that much is true—but watching the herd walk onto Avalon Farm, I wonder how long we can stay in the saddle.

“I see you’re back,” I say when Pat comes closer, not wanting to tell him how worried I’ve been.

“All of us.”

Damn him, but he is almost grinning.

“Well?” I ask. “What now?”

Pat makes as if he is thinking about it. Behind him, the half-Arabian Grey and our daughter’s mare, Deja-vous, are grazing the long grass, but even they must have some idea of what is going on all around us.

“We’ll do what we always do,” Pat says. “We’ll make a plan.”


TEN YEARS EARLIER (#u9c733899-7e83-5c84-9f6c-5c07d2106e2c)
















Chapter 1 (#u9c733899-7e83-5c84-9f6c-5c07d2106e2c)


I REMEMBER A place that was wild and filled with game. I remember a house with a giant mango tree in the garden and stables out back, where our horses grazed contentedly and waited to be ridden along dusty red tracks that wound their way into the bush. I remember picking up our children from school and driving home with the tsessebe—those powerful antelopes with chestnut hides, spiral horns, and strange, ridged bodies—flocking into the trees alongside us. The farm was called River Ranch, the farmhouse Crofton. The farm’s thick-forested hills and scrubby lowlands were held in the cradle of two rivers; its boundaries were patrolled by elephants tamed and trained to keep away poachers. Its soils held the promise of a new future, and on the day that my husband, Pat, and I took our children there for the very first time, in 1992, we thought it would be home forever.

That day, long ago and yet seemingly so near, we drove north on the Chinhoyi road, through fields of tall maize. Our car was laden with suitcases and packs, saddles and straps, and three squabbling children in the back. In the middle seat, our second son, Jay, was chattering animatedly about the game he might see. If there was one way of sparking the often taciturn Jay to life, it was to talk about the game he might track and hunt at our new home. The kudu, that large African antelope with its striped hide, huge horns, and powerful legs Pat and I had seen when we were first looking over the farm, had been one of the things that propelled us to go to the auction and place a bid; this wild place was where we would spend our lives.

We followed the winding, dusty road and could soon see the farmhouse of Two Tree Hill, the farm that bordered our own, looming above us, with big workshops and a water tank in front. Farther on, we saw the glistening waters of the dam. A herd of the enormous black antelopes known as sable looked curiously at us then turned and sped away, through the wheat and into the cover of the thick bush. Behind us, the truck that was following jarred on patches of uneven road, but the four horses inside were content. This, after all, was to be a new home for them as well.

We reached the farmhouse early in the afternoon, when the midday sun was at its hottest. The building had a broad white facade and a simple roof of corrugated iron. Pat pulled the car around, into the shade of the mango tree, and, even before we had ground to a halt, the children tumbled out.

Paul, our eldest, was fourteen years old, big and broad and the perfect image of his father. Jay, just turned nine, had a mop of wild blond hair that almost hid his searching green eyes. Our youngest, Kate, was three years Jay’s junior, a gorgeous girl who, surrounded by brothers and cousins, was growing up as tough as any of them and gave as good as she got.

“Is this it?” Kate asked.

“Your new home,” I replied. “The farmhouse is called Crofton. What do you think?”

As Paul, Jay, and Kate inched forward to investigate, Pat and I turned our attention to the truck that had followed us onto the farm. Pat undid the latches and let down the ramp. Inside the truck, he ran his hands up and down the four horses’ noses, promising them fresh air, clean water, and more grazing than they could wish for.

Frisky came first, her ears twitching inquisitively. An old skewbald mare, more than twenty years old, she barely needed leading. She simply followed the sound of Pat’s voice. It was the same voice she had been hearing for twenty-two years, since the days when they would race antelopes together at Enkeldoorn (now called Chivhu), where Pat grew up. She was his very first horse, perhaps his very first friend, and I sometimes wondered which one of us was the real love of Pat’s life.

After Frisky came her foal Mini, a bay mare with a wild temperament who had produced some very special foals. Once they were out, they turned to survey their new surroundings, while the other two horses, Sunny and Toffee, lingered in the shade of the horse trailer, unsure if they too should emerge.

While the children were looking up at the face of their new house, Pat ran his hands along Frisky’s flank and listened to her responsive snort. His old friend took a few steps forward and dropped her head to start pulling the strange new grass between her teeth. When next she looked up, her nostrils twitched and she rolled her eyes.

This will do, she seemed to be saying. If you say so, Patrick, this will do.

When I look back now, moving to Crofton was a new beginning. Crofton was a place in which we wanted to invest the whole of our lives. We were to be surrounded by rugged, virgin bush, and we had set our sights on opening up and forging a productive farm, one that we might one day hand down to our children. It would be a place for the generations to come, and Pat and I would found it while our children had the most amazing childhood they could, running wild in our beautiful Zimbabwe.

I did not know that nine years later, our world here at Crofton would end.

I had met Pat in 1976, when he was studying at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. I had not met many Rhodesians before, having been born in Ghana and brought up in South Africa, but as soon as I met him I knew that he was the man for me. I had taken temporary work as a barmaid at a hotel popular with the university’s students. Although I had never been to university myself, student life had become my life. My nights were filled with raucous laughter and parties, and I had become part of a big circle of friends, all of whom were studying at the university. Every year, the university held a fund-raiser they called Rag Day. On Rag Day, the students would build huge floats. Vast figures would be cast in plaster of paris, and garlands of flowers would cover trailers and cars. The students would climb on top of the floats and the procession would move along the streets of Pietermaritzburg, while we would all collect loose change for charities.

On Rag Day of 1976, I clambered onto one of the floats and headed off with the other students. As the floats lumbered along, we leaped on and off, proffering our tins, and the crowds in the street cheered wildly as each float passed by.

From somewhere in the crowd, I heard somebody calling my name. Standing, pressed between two other students, was a good friend from the university called Charlie Bender. He had caught sight of me on the float and was trying to attract my attention. When I spotted Charlie I waved back enthusiastically.

I did not notice Charlie’s tall friend who was standing beside him. His name, I would later find out, was Patrick Hugo Retzlaff. It was much later in our relationship that I found out that Patrick had nudged Charlie and asked him who the waving girl was. When Charlie told him my name, Pat said, “Well, that is the girl I am going to marry. I have had a strange premonition.”

Some months later, I was introduced to Pat for the first time. In the crowded hallway of a mutual friend’s house party, we talked long into the night. As he told me about Rhodesia and his studies in animal science, he was, I decided, incredibly good-looking. Much taller than me, he had short-cropped hair and a fuzz of beard along the line of a deep-set jaw. At nineteen he was two years my junior. He had a delightful sense of humor that made me laugh out loud. As we parted ways that night, the party thinning out as dawn approached, he invited me to a birthday party the following week. I made no hesitation in saying yes and hurried out of the door before he could change his mind.

On the day of the party, Pat picked me up at the hotel lobby. When he arrived, I was in my room upstairs, blow-drying my hair. I checked myself in the mirror—I had spent two years living in London and I considered myself something of a fashionista—and, when I was satisfied, went down to meet him.

The figure waiting in the lobby did not look like the tall champion I had met at the party. I stopped dead on the staircase and simply stared. It was Patrick Retzlaff, all right, but surely not the Patrick Retzlaff who had asked me out. His suit was at least three sizes too small and seemed to constrict him in all the wrong places. His feet, meanwhile, were showing through a pair of oversize, scuffed cowboy boots that had clearly seen better days. I looked at him in horror and my instinct was to slowly inch away, but Pat had already caught my eye. Perhaps I could feign illness. A migraine. Food poisoning. Anything to let him down gently. I did not know if I could be seen with a man who was so badly dressed.

My mind was wheeling, grappling to come up with some excuse, when suddenly there was a commotion in the bar on the opposite side of the hotel reception area. Pat and I turned to see what was going on. At the bar, a drunken and abusive man was bearing down upon a student much smaller and slighter than himself. There was a sickening crunch as the man’s fist connected with the student’s face.

Before I knew what was happening, Patrick—constricted by his ugly, ill-fitting suit—was barreling into the bar. In seconds, he had put himself between the student and the overbearing man. Lifting a big hand, strangled by the cuff of his suit, he pushed the drunk off. The drunk reeled back against the bar, and, beneath him, the student scrabbled out of the way.

When he had made sure the student was all right, Pat turned and made his way back out of the bar. His hand was dripping with blood, his palm a scarlet swirl where fragments of broken glass had raked across it. He didn’t seem to notice until my eyes lingered on it and, when he did, he simply wiped himself clean up and down his suit.

Pat was wearing the biggest, broadest grin on his face.

“So,” he said, “are we still going to that party?”

All thoughts of migraines and food poisoning had evaporated. Already, I knew that this was the man for me.

It was a wonderful birthday party, but more wonderful for letting me get to know Pat. We spent most of the night simply talking. Pat had come to South Africa on a scholarship, but his heart belonged in the old British colony of Rhodesia, and it was to Rhodesia that he planned to return, to take up a position on an agricultural research station. At the time, Rhodesia was more than a decade deep into a civil war. Following the British prime minister Harold Macmillan’s famous “Wind of Change” speech in 1960, Britain had begun a process of granting independence to her African colonies—but, by 1965, it had become clear that Britain would not grant Rhodesia her independence with anything other than a universal franchise. A policy like that would mean that every man and woman had exactly the same right to vote, irrespective of color or level of education, and this was deemed unacceptable by the Rhodesian government, who wished to preserve its present order, with fifty seats in parliament reserved for whites and fourteen for blacks. That system would have maintained a largely white parliament, in direct contrast to the makeup of the country, in which only 10 percent of the population was white.

In 1965, Rhodesia’s prime minister Ian Smith made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence; Rhodesia became independent, yet was not acknowledged as such by Britain. The UDI triggered the onset of the bitter bush war that had been raging ever since. I could not imagine what it was like to grow up in a country at war with itself, but for Pat it was all he had known. The Rhodesian army was locked in conflict with black insurgents led by a man named Robert Mugabe, among others, and a guerrilla war was being fought across the country. This was not war as I recognized it, but a succession of sudden conflicts, terror attacks, and violent reprisals, and many men on both sides of the divide were losing their lives. Rhodesia was in a state of stalemate, and as soon as he graduated from university, Pat would have to take up a gun and join the fray.

He told me all about that, but most of all, he told me about his horses.

I had never met a man as in love with horses and animals as Pat. He came from a long line of horse lovers. His maternal great-grandfather was the Baron Moritz Hermann August von Münchausen, an officer in the Prussian army who married an American heiress and built an enormous castle in Bokstadt, Germany. It was there that he founded a stable for breeding Thoroughbreds and became famous across Europe for producing champions. The most famous horse the baron had owned was named Hannibal, which he had bought for a great deal of money in those days, and whose skeleton, Pat told me, could still be seen in a Frankfurt museum.

Pat had inherited his family’s ancestral love and skill with horses through his father, Godfrey, who had grown up in Tanzania and moved with his family to Rhodesia in 1965, just before UDI. In Rhodesia, Godfrey became the manager at a cattle ranch in the southwest of the country, and he would spend every day in the saddle, cantering around the eighty thousand acres of bush. His favorite horse—and the one that, even into his old age, he would always vividly remember—was an Arabian stallion named Paul, after both his grandfather and his eldest son. Paul the stallion liked nothing more than to drink beer and would let nobody except Godfrey ride him. Over the years, many bets were placed on this, with cocksure young horsemen eager to prove their worth by climbing into the saddle—but Godfrey always won. With a little help from his friends, Paul, it seemed, could make his own beer money.

With family like that, it was only too clear that Pat would devote his life to horses—and, even on that very first night, I knew that it was so. And there was one horse in particular who had changed Pat’s life, one horse who had been with him since he was a boy, one horse to whom he would always keep returning.

Her name, he told me, was Frisky.

In 1970, Rhodesia was five years into her civil war—but life, with all its loves, passions, and deaths, still went on. Pat was thirteen years old and on his way home from the school where he boarded. It was a year before his mother would tragically pass away from cancer, and he thought of nothing but running wild on the family farm. He had chickens and cattle of his very own, and would spend the holidays on horseback riding the farm horses, including his father’s chestnut gelding, Bridle.

Pat reached the farm and was racing up to the farmhouse, dropping his school bags along the way, when he saw his mother and father standing out front. At first, he wondered if something was wrong. Perhaps something had happened to the cattle, which were his pet project, or the few chickens he still kept from an earlier obsession. Yet, when he reached his mother and father, they were smiling.

They did not welcome him home. That could wait. They simply told him to follow and led him to the back of the farmhouse.

Here, Bridle was in his paddock with two of the family’s other horses. Pat ventured to greet his father’s old horse, but, before he got there, he saw a new mare, a stranger come to the farm. She was small, fifteen hands high, a skewbald mare with beautiful markings and a willful look in her eyes. Pat stopped short, looking between his mother and father.

“Her name’s Frisky,” his mother told him. “Well, go on!”

Pat rushed over, stopping a few yards away from the horse to approach her more gently. She had already been tacked up. He put a hand on her muzzle and let her nibble at his hands. Her ears twitched as she became accustomed to this strange boy. Pat draped his arms around her, threw a look at his parents.

“She isn’t saddled up for nothing,” his father intoned.

His left foot went into Frisky’s stirrup. Then, swinging his body over, his right found the stirrup on the opposite side. He lifted the reins in one hand, in the way he always rode, and started talking to her. It is a special moment, he knew, when a boy climbs into a horse’s saddle for the very first time, even more special when it is his very first horse. Frisky walked slowly forward, to the edge of the paddock, where Pat looked down on his mother and father.

“Be careful with her,” Pat’s mother began. She had a tone that verged on the ominous, and Pat wondered if there was a story hidden here, something buried in Frisky’s past of which he was not aware. He looked down at her, judged her to be ten or twelve years old. Hardly a foal, she must have had owners before, ­people who loved her like he knew he would.

“Well,” his father said, “what are you waiting for?”

Pat brought her around. Across the farm, there were antelopes such as the tiny duiker or huge kudu to chase. He ran a hand through Frisky’s mane. She was, he knew, going to love this.

Duiker on the left, kudu on the right. Frisky would rather chase the tiny duiker, but today she was happy to indulge Pat and they set off toward the kudu. Soon, the small herd scattered, and Pat and Frisky were through them, following a dirt track into the bush. The msasa trees were low here, and Frisky banked, first one way and then another. They were on the tail of some bushbuck when Pat ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch. He timed it badly, smashed into the bough. Beneath him, Frisky cantered on. Momentarily Pat grappled with the branch. Then, he fell. When he hit the ground, all the wind was expelled from his lungs. He lay there and heaved. Blackness came over him.

When Pat looked up, Frisky’s face was all that he could see. She was standing over him, nosing forward, as if to make sure he was all right. When he began to stir, she walked away and turned slightly, presenting her saddle.

Get up, Pat, she seemed to be saying. We haven’t got time for lounging around. That bushbuck’s already got away …

When they reached home, Pat tried to hide the fact that he had fallen off—but his mother had already raised two other sons, and somehow she just knew. It was time, she told him as she dusted him down, for a story.

Frisky had once belonged to the relation of a local farmer, a gift for their young daughter. She had been the daughter’s pride and joy, and she had spent long hours being ridden and groomed, doted on by all members of the family.

It was on a ride through the bush that tragedy had found Frisky. Startled by some smaller creature shooting out of the bush, she had shied away and the girl in her saddle had been thrown. Like Pat had done, the girl lay in the dust; but unlike Pat, she would never get back up. Stricken with grief, the girl’s parents could no longer look at Frisky. Their daughter’s death hung heavy about them, and Frisky was a symbol of it. She would have to be sent away, or else destroyed.

Two weeks later, she arrived at Pat’s father’s farm.

“So you must be careful,” Pat’s mother concluded.

After the story, Pat did not stop to get changed. Instead, he went back to the paddock, where Frisky was waiting. He spent the night checking over her hooves and grooming her. Whatever happened in Frisky’s old life, it was not her fault. In the years to come Pat would come off Frisky many times—a hole in the ground that she did not see, the assault of a low-hanging branch—but not once would he be thrown. All he ever had to do was remember the way she waited for him as he lay, winded, in the dust, and he knew: Frisky would look out for him just as much as he would look out for her.

That night in 1976, talking to this strange man in his ill-fitting and bloodstained suit, I was suddenly transported back to memories of my own childhood horse. I had longed for a horse like Frisky, one who would be my best friend and protector and in whose saddle I could lose myself for days at a time, but I was not as blessed as Pat. The horse I remembered was named Ticky. He was a fiery little piebald pony and threw me from the saddle more times than I can remember—but I loved him more than anything else.

I was eleven years old when Ticky entered my life. I was attending school in Johannesburg, and a new girl was enrolled in my class. Her name was Erica, and she lived on a small farm just outside the city, where her parents kept a whole herd of horses. When I was finally invited to stay with Erica for the weekend, it was a dream come true. We spent long hours brushing her horses’ manes and combing their tails. We would both jump onto her horse and canter bareback for hours around the farm. Every time I returned home from Erica’s, the only words that came out of my mouth had to do with horses.

On one of my weekends with Erica, we stopped fussing over her mare and watched as her father drove into the farmyard, pulling a horse box behind his truck. With a silent nod, he unloaded a small piebald gelding, perhaps only twelve hands high and with a very slight stature.

“His name,” Erica’s father told us, “is Ticky.”

Ticky looked at us balefully, but Erica and I were not deterred. We circled him, trying to get close enough to brush his hair and comb his tail as we had the rest of Erica’s horses, but he just stared at us with a malevolent twinkle in his eyes. Every time we came close, he swished his tail dismissively, shuffled away, and went back to grazing.

Nevertheless, I was obsessed.

When my father came to collect me, I squeezed his hand and begged him to ask Erica’s father if Ticky was for sale. Unconvinced, my father suggested I should try and ride Ticky first, before we made any rash decisions. At last, a date was made, and I returned to Erica’s farm, determined that Ticky should fall in love with me the same as I had fallen for him. Beautifully tacked up, Ticky awaited my arrival with that same baleful stare. All the same, I stroked his tangled mane and whispered sweet words to him. In reply, he bared his big yellow teeth, rolling his eyes.

Confident that as soon as we were riding we would form an unbreakable bond, I hoisted myself into the saddle, grinning at my father as I did so. Yet, before I could even grab the reins, Ticky took off, tearing down the driveway and out onto the open veld. In seconds, I had lost my balance, tumbled from the saddle, and landed flat on my back, all the wind knocked out of me.

By the time I looked up, Ticky was already headed for home. I trudged back alone. Once again, I hoisted myself into the saddle and, this time, was swift enough to snatch up the reins. I gave Ticky a gentle kick, and off we went.

Suddenly, Ticky put his head down and executed a buck. Unable to stop him, I soared through the air and landed headfirst on the road.

By the time the blurriness was fading, my father was standing over me. He looked down, his face swimming in and out of focus, and reached out to help me to my feet.

“Are you sure you want this horse?” he demanded, face creasing with anxiety. “It looks uncontrollable to me.”

Dazedly, I nodded. There was no going back, no matter how wicked this little pony really was.

All these years later, listening to Pat talk about his own childhood horses, I wondered if Ticky might have been the sort of horse he would have liked: strong, willful, but intelligent beyond measure. My parents quickly learned to detest Ticky. I spent my nights protesting, declaring my unwavering love for the nasty little horse who would pin me against his stable wall, lunging for his bucket, but somehow I knew they could not be convinced. No matter how many times he bit, no matter how many times he kicked out, my resolve only hardened: Ticky was the horse for me. He was going to love me like I loved him, or the world would surely end.

One day, some months into my struggle with Ticky, we entered ourselves into the bending race at a local gymkhana (an equestrian meet). At Erica’s farm, we cornered Ticky, fitted him with his bridle and saddle, and walked—or perhaps dragged—him to the club where the competition was to be held. As we approached, I could hear the cries of a huge crowd of excited children and eager parents and the neighing of all their horses.

I had already spent long hours brushing Ticky, and his coat gleamed in the morning sunlight. I was convinced: Today was going to be the day that Ticky would prove his true worth. Out there, on the track, we would come from behind to win, triumphant together; Ticky would know what we had achieved, and all of his nastiness would simply evaporate away.

At last, my name was called, and Ticky and I took our place along with six other riders. A red flag was waved, and Ticky and I were off.

We were not even halfway to the first bending pole when Ticky took flight. Making a dramatic turn, he charged at the fence, scattering spectators. Though we cleared it, somewhere in the air I lost my balance and toppled to the side, crashing down from Ticky’s back.

Indignant, Ticky came to a stop, gave a kick of his hooves, and, without a look at where I lay, headed for home.

On the grass, I lay alone, my riding hat askew.

“That’s it,” I heard my father cry. “We are selling that damn horse!”

It was the last time I ever saw Ticky.

“I have to admit,” I said to Pat, the sounds of the birthday party fading around us, “I haven’t ridden since.”

“Well, I suppose we’ll have to do something about that.”

He kissed me for the first time that night—and, one week later, I packed my bags, said good-bye to my little room in the hotel, and moved in with Pat.

We were married in 1978.

In Rhodesia, the bush war still raged. The country’s white farmers, isolated and not well protected, were targeted by the so-called freedom fighters. The rebels’ guerrilla tactics of attacking suddenly and then disappearing into the bush kept army patrols busy across the country. All the same, there was only one place in the world that Pat had ever wanted to get married: the town of Enkeldoorn, close to his childhood farm, a place that occupied so many of his memories and thoughts. I had heard so much about the town and the land across which Pat and his beloved Frisky had cantered that I felt as if I knew it already; now, it was time for the formal introduction.

Pat’s father’s farm was every bit the paradise he had told me about on that very first night. After the ser­vice, the wedding party moved there in convoy, and, not for the first time, I noticed that many members of our party were carrying weapons, their eyes fixed on the horizons and intersecting roads. Rhodesia, I had to tell myself, may have looked perfect, but it was still a country at war.

At the farmhouse, we were met with a feast fit for a king. I stepped down from the car and felt a little kicking in my belly; our firstborn son was already well on the way. I wondered what he would have made of all this. Tables dressed in white damask cloths groaned under cured hams and other delights. Champagne flowed. The laborers of the farm had decked themselves out to join in the festivities and kept glasses full. My mind whirred, seeing these same men who watched the horizons with such steely eyes throwing back champagne and roaring with laughter. There was something about Rhodesians, I decided, that made them look at joy and disaster with the same eyes. It must have had to do with living under the shadow of war for so long and still preserving all that is good about life. I found it exhilarating, I found it absurd, I found it frightening and life-affirming all at once. In the years to come, I would come to know this feeling by one simple word: Rhodesian. I felt the kicking again and the thought hit me: my son—he was going to be a Rhodesian as well.

It was time for the speeches. Happy under the effects of the champagne, Pat’s father stood and made his way to the center table.

“When Pat first introduced me to …” He hesitated, seemed to be wetting his lips. “I’ll start again,” he continued. “When my son Pat first introduced me to …”

“Amanda!” somebody shouted.

“Amanda,” Pat’s father repeated. “Of course. When Pat first introduced me to Aman—”

In that instant, the wedding party fell silent. Pat’s father’s eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance, and, as one, the men at the party turned to follow his gaze. I stood. Out there, a vehicle moved, thick, choking black exhaust fumes behind it. It seemed to shimmer in the heat, banking along the same farm roads over which the wedding convoy had come. It was, it appeared, heading straight for us.

Nobody said a word. Nobody had to. All the men at the wedding simply stood and hurtled for their cars.

“What is it?” I asked.

Pat stood. “Terrs …”

Terrorists: the Rhodesian name for the black insurgents making war on the ruling government. The vehicles we had traveled in were all wheeling around, sending up flurries of dust, as men piled inside and checked their weapons. Pat ran to join his father’s car, stopped, and hurried back to where I was standing.

“Here,” he said, “take this.”

I found a gun pressed into my hands. Though I took it, I had no idea how to hold it. Pat told me it was an LDP, a submachine gun that only Rhodesians ever wielded. After UDI there had been so many international sanctions against the country that importing almost anything had been impossible. This had given rise to industries in which Rhodesia had never before operated, and, with the outbreak of guerrilla warfare in 1966, one of those boom industries had been in weaponry like this. The gun I was holding was nothing less than a Rhodesian imitation of the infamous Uzi.

“What do I do with it?”

“You just point and shoot,” Pat said. He turned and began to lope after the other men. Then, absently, he looked over his shoulder. “But only at the terrs,” he added. “Don’t point it at us …”

I had never held a gun before—though, in the years to come, I would receive training in all kinds of weaponry, just as all Rhodesian women would, in case we too found ourselves caught up in war.

I was sitting, slumped over the bridal table with the submachine gun in my lap and an empty glass of champagne in my hand, when the men returned. Looking up, I saw Pat striding back to the wedding table.

“Terrorists?”

Pat shook his head. “It was only a bus.”

“Is this what life is going to be like?” I asked. “Too much drink, guns, chasing after terrorists through the bush …”

Pat could not have known what was in store for us twenty years from that day, when we would find ourselves having to leave the country I had come to love, but today he threw me a rakish grin and helped me to stand.

“Probably,” he said.

I put down the gun. If this was the man I was going to love, I supposed I had better love his absurd, wild country as well.

“Then we’d better get on with the speeches.”

Our first son, Paul, was born in Pietermaritzburg five months after the wedding. I was twenty-three years old, Pat twenty-one, and we were ready to start our family life together. As soon as Pat graduated from university we prepared to return to Rhodesia permanently and forge a life there. There was only one complication: like all men of fighting age, on his return Pat would be called up to join the army. Members of the South African government had tried to persuade him to remain and commit his new training in animal sciences to the nation in which he had studied, but Pat was Rhodesian at heart, and Rhodesians never die. His country needed him, and I followed him into a country at war. Like all young Rhodesian men, Pat joined the army and was stationed at a barracks in the capital, Salisbury (now called Harare), while Paul and I lived close by.

In 1980, the bush war drew to a bitter, negotiated end. Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party won a landslide election in March, and white Rhodesia began its transition into Zimbabwe. A sense of defeat hung over Pat and his compatriots, and across Rhodesia many families made preparations to leave and find some new corner of the world. For many, the thought of living in a country governed by one of the terrorists they had been fighting was too much to bear. Australia, South Africa, and Canada were richer countries for their leaving. Pat and I talked about finding a new life in Australia, somewhere for Paul and the brothers and sisters who might follow him, but I knew that, in his heart, Pat belonged in Rhodesia. And since Rhodesia was no more, Zimbabwe would have to do.

We sat together, late at night.

“I want him to have the life I had,” Pat said, bouncing baby Paul on his knee. “I want the same sort of childhood for him. Somewhere he can ride with game, go wild in the bush, be surrounded by dogs and cattle and duiker and baboons. If he can have just ten years of a life like that, it has to be worth it, doesn’t it?”

I looked at the way Paul gazed up at his father. That, I decided, was the life I wanted for my children as well. If they could look back on their childhoods with as much vivid nostalgia as Pat did his own, we would have given them the best possible start.

“What do you think, Paul? Do you want to be a Zimbabwean?”

Paul looked at me, then at his father. Stoutly, he nodded.

“The master has spoken,” I said.

So Zimbabwean we were, and Zimbabwean we would stay.

It was those thoughts that returned to me as, ten years later, we unloaded our packs at Crofton to begin our new lives. As I watched Pat swing into the elderly Frisky’s saddle, and Kate and Jay tumble out of the barren house that would soon become our beloved home, I was thinking of the baby Paul, of those first days after Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, of the hopes and dreams Pat and I had shared long into the night. We had spent the last ten years living in various places across Zimbabwe—the agricultural research station where Pat first worked, the rugged farm Lonely Park, where Pat’s brother kept one of the nation’s biggest dairy herds—but the land around us was finally ours. It was a place we could mold, a place we could pour ourselves into and live until our lives were done. Ten years before, in one of our earliest homes, we had buried a baby, Nicholas, only a few weeks old when he died, and the feeling of leaving him behind was not one we wanted to live through again. Here, this new land on which we now stood, could be a place to put down roots, a place to live a good life and never leave anything behind again. It was scrubby, untamed, with low jagged hills crowned in bush and red earth that seemed impenetrable to the eye—but Pat brought Frisky around and, as he gazed into the distance, I knew already what he was thinking. Here, he would build barns; here, he would build workshops; here, the irrigation channels; here, the grading sheds for our tobacco. Behind him, Jay’s eyes were on the hills. He listened for the sound of baboons and searched the shadows between the trees for antelope or signs of leopard. Kate reached up and wrapped one arm around a lower bough of the mango tree. She was scrabbling to pull herself up when Paul appeared behind her and gave her the lift that she needed.

In front of me, Frisky snorted softly. She turned her head against Pat’s reins, as if all she wanted to do was look me in the eye. She too must have been considering the land. It dawned on me that this would be her final home, just as I wished it would be mine.

The land was ours. One day it would belong to our children, and our children’s children. Our new life had finally begun.











Chapter 2 (#u9c733899-7e83-5c84-9f6c-5c07d2106e2c)


OPENING UP THE bush to set up a farm is like riding a horse; you cannot command the land to do your bidding—you can only ask it. Like a horse, the land has its own character. It can be willful. It can be defiant. But it can give great joy as well, unveiling its secrets for you as you come closer and learn to work together for a greater good.

As we gazed out over virgin bush, Pat and I shared a daunted look. The land was rugged, scrubby lowlands out of which grew the wild, rocky hills we called koppies. Though the farm was bordered by two rivers, one a perennial stream and the other flowing north into the great Zambezi, the soil on which we meant to farm was fertile yet difficult to handle, being very hard and compacted, the kind of land that was impossible to cultivate without heavy machinery and careful management. The thought of driving back the bush and seeing fields of green tobacco, acres of tomatoes, and the rich glow of Mexican marigolds was enough to buoy us for the moment, but there was no use denying it: this was land into which only somebody as determined as Pat would dare to pour his life. There is no doubt that my husband is the most determined and optimistic man I have ever met. Were he not that way, our lives today would be very different.

The land we had bought had been a farm once before, during the Rhodesian tobacco boom of the early 1960s. For decades, though, no crops had been cultivated here; only cattle had roamed from river to river. In their fields, the mfuti trees with their long feathered leaves grew tall again, and the bush had crept down from the hillsides. For all its wildness, the farm was exactly what Pat had been dreaming of: a place where we might test ourselves like the first African pioneers, somewhere he could use all his years of study, a place we could shape and leave for our children.

All the history books had the same wisdom to share. It was not the pioneers who benefited from the years they did battle with the land; it was those who came after: their children.

“Where to begin?” I asked. Paul, Jay, and Kate gathered behind us.

“It begins,” said Pat, “with tomatoes.”

This land could not be tamed by Retzlaffs alone. In the days that followed, we hired more than 250 workers, who began to build their homes here, too. Never and his wife, Mai Never; our driver, Charles; our gardener, Oliver; and Kate’s nanny, Celia—only once we were all together could we begin. Farms in Zimbabwe often had whole villages of workers living on the land, with their own farm schools and medical clinics, and our farm was to be no different. We would have a core of workers who lived here, and, with the harvests, more would join us as seasonal contractors.

All over Crofton the rooms were dominated by big contour maps and plans Pat had drawn up: where best to build the grading sheds for some future crop of tobacco; how best the roads might run so that they were protected from natural erosion; how much of the land could be irrigated without resorting to building a dam. It was a broad, holistic approach to farming, a scheme Pat had been dreaming of since the first years of our marriage. To see it come to fruition was the culmination not only of a dream, but of decades of hard work.

Those first months were spent driving back the bush. It would take a man four days to carve a crater and fell one of the giant mfuti trees that flourished here, and four more to chop that tree into cords for shipping away. Even then the work was not done, for half the tree remained underground and would not truly leave the land until five or six seasons had passed.

Some days it was imperceptible, the farm changing only as slowly as a glacier melts. Other days, the bush had visibly receded between dawn and dusk, and we would go to bed on a farm different from the one on which we had awakened. The children would go off to boarding school during the weeks and return for weekends to a farm that was never the same: only the same sheltering sky, the same herds of tsessebe, the same mother and father warning them about the dangers of the bush.

As the first yields of tomatoes were being harvested and packed into crates, Pat and I rode on horseback between the fields, with Frisky and a chestnut mare named Sunny. Tomatoes flourished on virgin land, and we knew how much they enriched the soil for different crops to come: tobacco, cotton, maize, and export vegetables and flowers.

Frisky whinnied softly underneath Pat.

“What next?” I began, watching the shadowed outlines of our workers move between the rows.

“I was thinking,” Pat joked, “that I might get some turkeys …”

It is a curious feeling when your heart swells and sinks all at once.

Years ago, when we had barely been married a year, I had come to understand the particular nature of Pat’s insanity, his desire to collect and hoard animals of just about every description. As Zimbabwe was being born out of the ruins of Rhodesia, Pat had worked at an agricultural research station called Grasslands, where company policy had been to slaughter the smallest lamb every time a sheep gave birth to triplets. Unwilling to accept this, Pat had taken to bringing them home, until our garden was heaving with his own private flock. While baby Paul crawled around the living room, he was surrounded by dozens of baby sheep, bleating out for their bottles. I became particularly skilled as a surrogate ewe, able to hold six bottles between my legs for the lambs to suckle while I fed another four out of my hands.

If this had been the limit of Pat’s madness, perhaps I could have written it off as a strange idiosyncrasy. Soon, however, Pat found himself the proud recipient of a gaggle of turkeys as well—and, as turkeys are usually very bad mothers, he insisted that each turkey have its own cage in which to lay her eggs.

Pat, of course, had to go to work during the day, so the management of the Retzlaff menagerie invariably fell to me. One of the most important of my duties was to move the turkey cages each day, so that they were on fresh ground and could be exposed to the very best sun and shade, dependent on which each needed. Often, I felt as if I was being watched over by Frisky, who would immediately report on my work to her beloved Pat when he came home from work. Those two, I had begun to understand, were as thick as thieves.

After grueling days of feeding lambs and horses—not to mention our very young son—perhaps I could be forgiven for forgetting to move the turkey cages in accordance with Pat’s regimen. One day, exhausted by the morning’s efforts, I decided that the turkey cages would have to wait. That evening, while I was cooking supper, Pat came home and conducted his evening inspection of all his beloved animals, the toddler Paul perched happily on his shoulders. I was stooped over the pot, breathing in the beautiful aromas of lamb—not our own, I hasten to add—when I heard Pat’s roar. In seconds, he appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face purpling in fury.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, my thoughts turning to baby Paul.

Pat simply lifted an accusing finger.

“You,” he said, “haven’t moved a single turkey cage.”

At Crofton, as he brought up the subject of turkeys again, I looked away, trying not to acknowledge Pat’s wicked grin. I reined Sunny around, as if to make for home.

“This time,” I said, “Jay and Kate can look after them.”

In August the whole country would change color. These were the first stirrings of Zimbabwean spring. Across the farm, the msasa trees came into new leaf. Light pinks deepened into pinks and reds; reds softened into vivid mauves; mauves ebbed away, leaving a rich dark green in their wake. In the evenings we would ride from Crofton farmhouse and watch as the bush came alive in this new array of color.

On one particular morning, driving to pick up Paul at school, I was late. Even the traffic in the city of Harare seemed to know it, slowing down and jamming at every intersection I tried to drive through, as if deliberately trying to vex me. As I checked and rechecked the time, my only consolation was that Paul knew the kind of life we led too well; he wouldn’t be expecting me to be right on schedule.

He was waiting at the bus stop in a scuffed-up school uniform when I arrived, at five feet tall an image of his father in miniature. Like his father, he scowled at me, but, like his father, he didn’t mean it.

Also like his father, Paul loved all animals. My eye caught something squirming under the folds of his school blazer.

“His name’s Fuzzy,” Paul said, sliding into the front seat. The tiny head of a puppy, a Jack Russell crossed with a Maltese poodle, poked its head out of the top of his collar, inspected me with mischievous eyes, and then ducked back to wriggle against Paul’s chest. “He’s saying hello.”

“Darling, where …”

I had taken off into traffic, my eyes flitting between the road and this ball of fur that Paul was now feeding the end of an ice cream cone from his pocket. From somewhere, horns blared. I looked up, managing to correct my course just in time.

“Remember when school gave me Imprevu?”

Actually, we had paid a fortune for Imprevu. She was a beautiful bay mare, extremely eager, responsive, and exciting to ride, and she would be ridden by Paul and Pat regularly after Frisky died. She had belonged to the riding school, but they were only too pleased to send her to Crofton and receive a princely payment in return.

“Well, it was the same thing. My teacher gave him to me.”

“Just gave him to you?”

“He knows how much we like animals.”

I had to smile.

“Look over your shoulder, Paul.”

Paul looked over his shoulder, Fuzzy craning his neck the same way. On the backseat sat a crate with two little Scotties peeking out. Each of them wore a perfect little tartan bow, and their tiny black eyes considered Fuzzy carefully.

“I’ve just picked them up,” I said. “Aren’t they adorable?”

“Mum!” Paul exclaimed. “You’re just like Dad!”

“Don’t start on that. Your father’s much worse than me …”

Paul was fixated on the box of scrabbling pups. I had long been fascinated by Scotties. They looked perfectly adorable, with black eyes like the ones in the face of a teddy bear. Well, if Pat could go around collecting turkeys and horses and sheep, I had to be allowed a little indulgence of my own. Perhaps it was my husband’s madness rubbing off on me.

Fuzzy made a spirited squirm out of Paul’s arms and dropped into the backseat with the other pups.

“Have you told Dad?” asked Paul.

“Let’s keep it quiet for a while.” I grinned. “I’ve been promising him another Great Dane …”

Of all our children, Paul was the most eager to live a life in the saddle. Imprevu, the mare he had brought home from school, was similar to Frisky in many ways. She required an experienced hand and was ridden only by Paul and Pat. Paul experienced the same joy in saddling her up and exploring our farm as Pat had as a boy with Frisky.

Jay did not have the same passion for horses but loved the bush and spent his time roaming the farm with his best friend, Henry, hunting and birding—but I would often see Kate marveling at her father in Frisky’s saddle, or Paul as he took off on Imprevu, kicking up dust as they cantered along the winding farm tracks. Soon, it would come time for her to learn to ride, and she would do it with the very same partner with whom Pat had spent those idyllic years of his own childhood.

When Kate was on Frisky’s back, everything seemed to come together at Crofton. I would see her sitting in the saddle, her father just behind her, Kate’s hands nestled inside his, with the reins folded up in between. She would tug and tease at the reins and, in return, Frisky would obey the simplest commands. Somehow, she seemed to know that this was Pat’s daughter on her back, and she treated her with such kindness, such simple charity, that it pulled at my heartstrings to see it. In her old age, Frisky had lost the mischievous, flighty temperament of her earlier days—but there wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t do for Pat, or in turn for little Kate.

Kate took to riding like her father and eldest brother before her. She was a natural, and soon she would join Paul and Pat at the local equestrian events and paper chases. Seeing her in Frisky’s saddle, I often thought back to that cheeky little pony Ticky and how he had put me off horses when I was a girl. I wondered what I might have been like if I had had the same childhood as Pat, running wild on a Rhodesian farm with a beloved horse underneath me.

One morning, Pat and I saddled up Frisky and three other horses and set out with Jay and Kate to check the fences around the farm. The ride was long, and the sun was blistering overhead. As we approached the Munwa River, Jay reined in and gestured for Kate to do the same. They were looking, almost longingly, at the crystal waters. Jay gave me the same pleading look I’d seen before.

“Can we go for a swim?”

The horses, too, looked as if they needed a rest, so we dismounted and Pat held the reins of all the horses while I helped Jay and Kate undress.

As the children were preparing to run into the waters, Pat loosened his hold on the reins—but Frisky, covered in a sheen of glistening sweat, only looked nervously at the riverbank, refusing to go near. Pat and I exchanged a curious look and no sooner had we done so than Frisky released a desperate whinny and began to stamp her feet.

Pat, as he had done ever since he was a young boy, put his arms around Frisky, patting her neck and rubbing her flank, whispering to her so that she might calm down. Yet, no matter how much he consoled her, Frisky could not be calmed. As Jay and Kate scrambled out of their socks and headed for the water, she picked up her front hooves and smashed them back down. There was something desperate, almost pleading, rolling in the back of her throat.

I turned to Jay and Kate. They were almost at the water’s edge. Only then did I see what Frisky had seen. The dark eyes of a crocodile glimmered menacingly, just above the surface of the water.

Yelling for Pat, I hurtled down to the riverbank and grabbed Jay and Kate to drag them back. From the water, the croc looked at us, shifting its malevolent eyes.

Back at Frisky’s side, listening to her gather her composure, I shuddered.

“No swimming today,” I said.

Terrified at what might have happened, we hastily turned the horses from the Munwa River to make the ride back home, but for days afterward I could not stop imagining the look of terror in Frisky’s eyes: not that anything might happen to her, but that something terrible might befall one of our children. It is not for nothing that ­people say they can see keen intelligence shimmering in a horse’s eyes. If I had never seen it before, Frisky was the one to teach me that lesson: the horse sees, the horse knows, the horse cares and remembers. We think we are their guardians, but sometimes—just sometimes—they turn out to be our guardians as well.

It was a lesson we would keep coming back to throughout our lives, for reasons none of us could begin to imagine.

The lands were cleared, plowed, and treated. The irrigation pipes stretched for long kilometers from the rivers that encircled us. The grading sheds were ready, the curing barns waiting eagerly for their first crop; the tobacco seeds were germinating in the seed beds, waiting to be transplanted to the land.

All we needed was the rain, but the rain wouldn’t come.

Between 1993 and 1995 only fourteen inches of rain fell. The rivers disappeared, the game looked emaciated, and the waters in our neighboring Two Tree Hill Dam fell imperceptibly each day, until they were only a brown shimmer in the bottom of the basin, the dam wall standing high and exposed.

In those droughts, tomatoes were all that we had. The farm was telling us that she could do no more. They grew in the fields all year round, so all that year I was setting out after dark to sell them, running long circuits around Harare and, now, into the villages and townships, too. Along the way I could see other Zimbabweans selling tomatoes, maize, and bush fruits on the sides of the road. It did not come to this for us, but as I looked into the grading sheds and saw the poor, wilted leaves of tobacco we had managed to harvest, I wondered what we had done. Had we sacrificed our children’s future by gambling on clouds in the sky?

Those skies were endless expanses of blue, cruel in their blank simplicity. Beneath them, Crofton baked. I walked along the narrow channels between the tomato vines, lifting leaves and cupping each green fruit in my hand, turning them gently to look for signs of infestation or disease. Along the edge of the field, Pat and Frisky followed one of the trails, calling out to workers in the opposite fields. Every time I saw a mottled leaf or serrated edge showing the telltale signs of some hungry insect, I called out. Pat turned to acknowledge me. When he did not hear, I shouted louder. Here, I said. Here, and here. In silent fury, he swung from the saddle. He wanted nothing more than to ignore me, to go back to wrestling with blighted tobacco in the fields or opening another stretch of bush in the deranged belief that the rains would shortly come. Instead, he strode over to lift the same leaves I had lifted, to see the early signs of disease. He exhaled, his face breaking into a muted grin as he realized how full of fire he had been, and called over one of our workers. In minutes they were there to spray the vines.

Opening up a farm, I constantly reminded him, was not only about driving back the bush. There were smaller, more insidious enemies to beat back as well.

“I’m sorry, Pat. There’s nothing else for it. It really would be the kindest thing.”

We stood in the garden of Crofton farmhouse. Dave, one of our local vets, crouched beside me. In front of us, the little foal Deja-vous, only recently born to Paul’s mare Imprevu, lay with her head in ten-year-old Kate’s lap.

“It’s deep, Dave,” I said, “but isn’t there anything you could do?”

“With an injury like this, it’s often better to put them to sleep,” Dave said.

Pat bristled. “No, David. Let’s give her a chance and see.”

As the vet said his good-byes, promising to come back if we needed him, Kate nuzzled Deja-vous. The little foal’s eyes revolved in their orbits and fixed on her. For a moment, the foal seemed to want to stand. Then, realizing the pain in her leg was too great, she simply laid her head back down.

She had been in the paddock with her mother when she had become entangled in a length of wire fence. By the time her panic had roused the attention of a passing worker, she had struggled against the wire so much that it had tightened around her front leg, cutting her so that the bone was exposed. When Pat arrived, Deja-vous was in a weak, depleted state. Her mother stood guard over the trapped foal, and when Pat got near, it was to find the foal spent from her exertions, torn muscle glistening where the wire constricted her leg.

After cutting her free, Pat had carried the tiny foal into the garden at Crofton, where Kate attentively lay down with her. When I called for the vet, I knew already what he would say. Deja-vous, I thought as I put down the phone, didn’t stand a chance.

Back in the garden, I saw Pat crouching over the ailing foal, dressing the wound.

“You wouldn’t let him, would you, Dad?”

“Sometimes it is the kindest thing.” Pat stroked the little foal’s head. “But not this time, Kate. Not for this little thing …”

“What do we do for her?”

Pat was silent for only a second. “We don’t give up on her,” he said. “You don’t give up on her, Kate. The bone isn’t broken. She’ll walk again. But the cut’s deep. Her leg’s torn up. She’ll get infected. She’ll get a fever. She’ll need us. Need you.”

Kate’s eyes were open wide, but her arm lay along the length of Deja-vous’s back. They both seemed so tiny together, shadowed by the mango tree.

“Dad,” she whispered with a defiance I had never heard in her voice, “where do we start?”

I opened the cupboard at the top of the stairs. Two eyes glimmered out, a round, feathered face looming in the darkness.

I simply placed the folded sheets inside and closed the cupboard. This wasn’t the first time that one of Jay’s birds had found its way into one of the cupboards and decided to take up residence there. In fact, I was so used to seeing one of his hawks or owls lurking in some crevice at Crofton that I barely registered any surprise. Ours, you see, was not just a family home; it was positively a zoo as well, and Jay was in love with birds.

“It’s your turn to take Jay out tonight,” said Pat, tramping up the stairs behind me.

As I followed Pat into our bedroom, I caught sight of another pair of eyes, these hidden behind Jay’s long blond mop, shining at me from the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t yet dark, and our thirteen-year-old son was already waiting. He had become a keen falconer since starting high school, and he plagued us incessantly to take him and his falcon Buffy out on night drives so that he could practice hunting with her. Buffy only hunted at night, and without this practice Jay was apt to become disgruntled, mischievous, and more taciturn than ever. And Pat or I had to go with them. But I really didn’t want to go out tonight.

I snatched up a deck of cards.

“I’ll play you for it.”

When we were at loggerheads like this, sometimes there was nothing for it but to play a hand of cards. The one who pitched the high card would get to sleep in the warm comfort of our bed, while the loser would have to drive Jay and Buffy out into the bush to go hunting. Sensing no other way out, Pat nodded.

I cut the deck and cut it again. I passed it to Pat, who shuffled it in his big hands. He cut it, I recut it, he cut it again, then he fanned it out and offered it up.

“Just deal it,” I said. The tension was unbearable.

Pat picked a card from the top of the deck: the seven of hearts. My hand hovered over the deck. I cut it again and lifted the top card.

The three of spades.

“Sorry, darling,” Pat said.

Two hours later, I set out behind the wheel of our truck, swinging out of Crofton and up into the bush. The night was close around us, the stars hanging high above the mfuti and msasa. In the back of the truck, Jay stood upright, his falcon Buffy blinkered and leashed to his wrist. Eagerly, he urged me on.

I could never resent these midnight trips—Jay had never been a boy suited to school like his brother, and it was only out here in the bush that he had found real confidence—but I had been awake for eighteen hours already. At a high ridge Jay unleashed Buffy; she turned and dived in the headlights of the truck, her talons sinking into one of the tiny nightjars that made their home here.

Jay looked at me. “Let’s go higher.”

“Darling, aren’t we finished yet?”

Jay frowned. “I think we should go higher.”

This, I thought, must have been how Patrick’s father used to feel.

Though Pat refused to admit it, Jay had certainly inherited his demanding stubbornness from the Retzlaff side of the family. As a boy, Pat had built up a flock of more than one thousand chickens. He had known every last one of them by name, kept meticulous records, and even co-opted several of his father’s workers to oversee the chicken project while he was away at school. The young Patrick Retzlaff would run his father ragged, demanding feed and materials for the chickens at every available opportunity, and, over the years, cost the family a small fortune in the process.

Whenever Pat left for boarding school, the farm would breathe a sigh of relief not to be under his tyrannical chicken gaze for a few weeks. Yet, one day, they made a mistake that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. While Pat was away, they decided to slaughter a few chickens for the deep freeze, convinced that, upon his return, Pat would never know. The cook was dispatched with a large ax and selected a few of the plumpest specimens. Grisly business done, he returned with a brace of big birds for a banquet.

A few months later, Pat returned home for the school holidays and headed straight to the chicken house. In minutes, he had zoned in on the missing chickens and promptly thundered into the farmhouse to confront his father. The young Pat was so distraught that, at last, his father had to confess: son, he intoned with an air of genuine solemnity, they have been eaten.

It was the very last time that anybody touched any of Pat’s chickens.

Tonight, at the wheel of the car, I opened my eyes, realizing too late I had fallen asleep. The moon hung, beached in a reef of cloud, above the line of the bush, and I was thankful I had not driven us both off the road.

“Darling, are we finished yet?”

“Just once more,” Jay insisted, feeding a scrap of some suspicious meat to Buffy.

I could have sworn her eyes turned on me with a keen, knowing air.

“Once more,” I insisted. I knew it would mean at least three more flights.

It was hours later when I drove the truck back into Crofton, heavy bags under my eyes. I roused Jay, who had fallen asleep, careful to avoid Buffy, who pierced me with her stare.

We were tramping past the stables where Frisky slept when I saw Pat striding out of the darkness between the barns. The tomatoes were packed, the trucks loaded, and he looked exhausted.

“Just an hour until you have to deliver these tomatoes, darling,” he said.

I could have killed that man and his animal genes.

From Crofton’s window I watched Kate. She had spent the morning doting on Deja-vous. The foal’s leg was healing only slowly, for infection kept setting in, reopening the wound. Now, the wound was dressed and she was gamboling in the garden. Her scarred leg was stiff and she would always carry it heavily, but the sparkle in the young foal’s eyes told me she did not mind, and the sparkle in my daughter’s told me it had all been worth it.

As an exhausted Deja-vous settled in the garden to sleep, Kate sat in the shadow of the mango tree with her schoolwork spread around. Oliver, our gardener, kept calling to her from where he was working on the edges of the garden, and each time, Kate returned his call with a smile that, like Pat’s, took over her face.

When I looked up next, her schoolwork was abandoned, loose pages caught up by the wind and only rescued from disappearing into the bush by Oliver’s quickly flicking pitchfork. Now Kate was up in the leaves of the mango, hauling herself from branch to branch with the agility of any of the monkeys that made daring raids on Crofton to take the tree’s fruit.

I remembered standing in this same place only days after we came to Crofton, watching as Paul and Jay swung from the same branches. That day, Kate stood beneath, marveling at her brothers, forbidden herself from following. Now she could climb faster and higher than they ever would. That was the thing about Kate: she saw what braveries her brothers could accomplish, and she always went one better.

In the highest branches, she stopped dead. Then, from the corner of Crofton, came Jay and his friend Henry, the son of a neighboring farmer. Both of them were holding their pellet guns.

In a sudden scramble of limbs, Kate jumped down from the tree just as Jay and Henry were disappearing into the first fringe of the bush. Quickly, she made to follow.

From the kitchen window, I watched her go. Jay, I knew, was going to be furious. I had seen her do this before. Jay and his friend were going to take potshots at birds in the bush, but it distressed Kate so much that she simply had to do something about it. Rather than run and hide, she had taken to sabotaging their hunts by frightening off the birds they were stalking. She would clap her hands and sing loud songs—and it had been a long time since Jay had proudly brought back a feathery carcass to Crofton farmhouse.

Kate followed him from deepest gully to highest ridge, along winding game trails and farm tracks, down to the tall reeds on the shores of Two Tree Hill Dam and up along the rivers that held our home in their cradle. With every step that she took, she clapped her hands wildly, oblivious to her brother’s orders, his threats, his pleading looks. Every time she clapped her hands, the birds on which Jay had trained his pellet gun took off, a chaos of flapping wings and cries of alarm.

In this way, Jay was deprived time and again of his kills. At dusk, he tramped back into Crofton, dejected, his pellet gun still full. When he threw it down in disgust, Kate clapped again.

“Don’t worry, Jay. If Dad found you, you know what you’d have to do …”

Jay had been under strict orders ever since he unwrapped his prized pellet gun that he could shoot a bird only if he planned to eat it.

Jay looked at Kate.

“You’re just jealous,” he said, “that you can’t shoot, too.”

But when they lined up tin cans in the garden and took potshots at them, Kate won every time.

She took after her mother, you see.

In later years, Frisky began to wither. Pat had never known her true age, but the lines deepened in her face, she lost weight that she would never regain, and when she and Pat set out across the farm, driving what few cattle we had left into their crush for dipping or simply reliving the days of their youth, she lived up to her name less and less often. No longer was she frisky; now, she was stately, quiet, reserved. A gentle horse in her dotage, slowly winding down.

In 1998, she left the paddocks and moved into our garden. She liked to lie down on the grass, and Kate nestled contentedly between her legs, our daughter and our horse breathing in unison. She ate from our hands but was hidden away when guests came to Crofton. She was too old, now, skin and bones. Questions were asked when those who did not know her laid eyes on her: Wouldn’t her passing, they wondered, be considered a kindness?

It would not be the first time Pat had lifted his gun to shoot an old friend. Children on farms learn, very early on, that death is a part of life. Livestock are culled, poachers’ dogs are shot, horses with tumors and disease might need their master’s mercy. But, every evening, Pat went into our garden to put his arms around his oldest friend, and I knew he would not, could not do it. Frisky just grew older and older. Neither one of them would let go.

Pat was away from the farm on business when I stood in the kitchen window and saw Frisky lying in the shadow of the mango tree, her chest barely rising or falling. I left what I was doing and went out to see her. Kate and Jay followed, but instinctively they knew and hung at a distance. For the briefest moment, Frisky lifted her head, eyes rolling as if to search Pat out; then she laid her head down, and the only movement was the twitching of her nostrils. I sat with her for hours, her head in my lap, teasing her ears, whispering to her. I knew there was no coming back; her time had come. Her breathing grew low and ragged. It slowed. Then it was no more.

Kate and Jay sat with her for the longest time, but Pat would not be back until after dark. I was putting Kate to bed when I heard the telltale stutter of an engine that told me he had returned. I left Kate half tucked-in and went to meet him as he climbed out of the car.

Hanging above us, in a frame of lantern light, Kate watched from behind the bedroom curtains. Perhaps she had that old childhood terror of seeing your parents crumple, revealing themselves as mere mortals. She was watching, but she did not want to see.

I told Pat that Frisky was gone and he did not breathe a word.

When he went to her, Oliver and some of the other workers were trying to lift her from where she had lain. One by one, Pat waved them away. And then, almost thirty years after she first came cantering into his life, Pat knelt down beside her and put his arms around her for the final time.

He did not come to bed until late that night. He laid Frisky in the ground himself, gave her to Crofton. It is what she would have wanted.

The morning after Frisky left us, I woke early to find that the bed beside me was empty. Reeling downstairs and out into the morning sun, I saw Pat and Kate tending to Deja-vous at the bottom of the garden. Her leg was healed now, and Kate led her gently up and down on a lead rope. Her dark eyes glimmered.

I went to Pat and put my hand in his.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

It is a terrible thing to lose a beloved horse. Pat had known Frisky longer than I had known him. They had grown together, changed together. She had taught him to ride, and she taught our children, too. And, as we rode out onto the farm that day, I had the inalienable feeling that she was still there, cantering alongside us. She would be here forever. She was part of Crofton now.

In a way, I felt as if Frisky had entrusted Pat to me. I would be with him for the rest of his life, while Frisky cantered on alone.

I did not mean to let her down.











Chapter 3 (#u9c733899-7e83-5c84-9f6c-5c07d2106e2c)


SOON AFTER WE came to Crofton, we drove over to the neighboring Two Tree Hill Farm to see trucks being unloaded at the farmhouse on top of the hill. The new neighbors, it seemed, had finally arrived. Our lives—and the lives of our horses—were about to become richer than ever, as we welcomed long-lasting, genuine friends into our world.

We had heard that new managers were moving into Two Tree from the farm’s owner, a middle-aged South African named Les De Jager. During the bush war, Les had fought with a unit of the SAP, the South African Police, who were supporting the Rhodesian army. On patrol deep in virgin bush, he and his unit had set up camp along the banks of a river. That night, Les had an epiphany: this was the perfect site to build a dam wall, opening the river for the irrigation of all the untamed land that stretched around. When he closed his eyes, he could see it: the bush driven back, the land opened up with tobacco, soybeans, wheat, and more. It was an image so vivid that, when the bush war came to its conclusion, Les left his native South Africa and came here to see the dream fulfilled. Two Tree Hill now stood, testament to the nocturnal visions of a soldier too long away from home.

As we reached Two Tree, we saw a slim man, perhaps the same age as Pat, rolling up his sleeves and stepping into the back of one of his trucks. He had the most wonderful smile, vivid blue eyes, and curly blond hair. He stepped into the darkness of the truck. He was out of sight for only a few moments before he reemerged, leading behind him a beautiful bay mare.

It was while he was turning to lead a second horse out of the box that he first saw us.

“You must be Pat and Mandy,” he began. “My name’s Charl. Charl Geldenhuys.” He took a step back, his eye line almost level with Kate’s. “And this must be …”

“Her name’s Frisky,” Pat cut in.

Charl stepped back, admiring the old mare that Pat and Kate were riding. Then, he turned, ambling back to the horse he had already offloaded.

“This is Lady Richmond,” he said, laying his hands on her flank.

Charl, it transpired, had been the manager on Two Tree some years before. He had spent five years managing the farm before meeting and falling in love with the woman who was to be his wife, Tertia. They had been married in South Africa and spent two blissful years there, Tertia giving birth to a wonderful daughter, Resje, who was only a little younger than Kate. Charl had talked so nostalgically about his time on Two Tree that he had convinced Tertia to visit it as a holiday—and it was then that Tertia, a city girl at heart, had fallen in love with the wild, open spaces of Two Tree Hill. The farm, she saw, was a paradise, its wild places teeming with reedbuck, tsessebe, kudu, and sable. Charl could do nothing other than petition Les De Jager for his old job.

When Charl introduced us, I liked Tertia immediately: small, with dark hair, and the most expressive brown eyes I had ever seen. Resje clung to her as she introduced herself. She had the same warm brown eyes as her mother and, we were to learn, had been born with a birthmark that covered almost all of her body. As a result, the brave little girl had to spend many months in hospitals across the course of her young life, and Tertia was the most devoted and caring mother.

Having managed Two Tree once before, Charl was familiar with its every hill and outcrop of bush, the bream in the dam, and the contours of the land. Tertia seemed to take to the country life with brave aplomb, playing the role of the perfect hostess. We began to spend many weekends with the Geldenhuyses at Two Tree farmhouse. Tertia would host lunches or preside over a braai (barbecue), and while we swapped stories long into the night, Pat and Charl would talk about the land, the game—and, most of all, their horses.

Charl was as avid a horseman as Pat, and countless were the days that were lost as they rode together, from one end of Two Tree to the farthest side of Crofton, taking in the sweeping bush and fields full of crops. As Frisky was to Pat, so was Lady Richmond to Charl—and when she came into foal, there could not have been a cause for a greater celebration on Two Tree.

Lady Richmond gave birth to a chestnut filly with a flaxen mane and a stately, self-assured look about her. The foal was so striking that Charl decided to name her Lady, after her mother. But in the first few hours after Lady was born, Charl knew that something was wrong. He had been around horses all his life, and instinct told him that this was bad. That night, Pat arrived at Two Tree to see for himself. In her paddock, Lady Richmond lay, weak and exhausted, seemingly not having recovered from giving birth. There was very little to say, for both men understood what had happened. In giving birth, Lady Richmond had torn herself inside; her foal, Lady, was strong and healthy, but Lady Richmond herself was rapidly fading away.

Come the morning, Lady Richmond’s eyes were closed, her breathing shallow and ragged. Come the evening, she was gone, leaving behind her day-old foal.

Lady Richmond was buried on Two Tree, but her foal needed Charl and Tertia now. They would have to act as surrogates to the orphaned horse. Now, when Pat and I took the children to visit Two Tree farmhouse on a weekend, we would find Tertia and Resje sitting on the lawn with the dainty little foal greedily sucking on her bottle. Once she was full, Lady would race around the lawn, cutting circles around her adoptive family, kicking out with her hooves.

Watching the tiny creature hurtle around the garden, seeing how Resje delighted in watching her tumble, I knew that our new neighbors were the very best kind of ­people: the kind who would reach out to a creature in need and step up to whatever challenge life threw at them. Without Charl and Tertia, Lady would have perished at her mother’s side. Now, watching as Kate was allowed to hold out a bottle and let Lady suckle from its tip, I was reminded more than ever of the trust that our horses, and indeed all our animals, put in us. It was a thought that would come back to me time and again over the following years as, too often to mention, I would look into a helpless horse’s eyes and, though I knew we did not truly have the means to help, promise them we would never let them go.

As the months and years passed, Pat and Charl sat up long into the nights, reminiscing and dreaming of the things they could do with this land. I had always known that my husband was a very specific kind of dreamer: the kind of man who could concoct an elaborate, wild scheme and actually see it to fruition. He had been that type ever since he was a boy, building great chicken empires or collecting his own herds of cattle, and I began to see now how our new life on Crofton was the natural conclusion. He and Charl would ride the boundaries and talk about which corners of bush might be conquered next. They would dream of new dams and roads, irrigation schemes so ambitious they might bring greenery to deserts. But most of all, they dreamed about their horses, and how they might breed something very special into their herds.

The opportunity for something a little special came soon after Lady was orphaned. When a fellow farmer was looking to transport one of his Arabian stallions to its new owners in Zambia, Charl agreed to provide a temporary home for the stallion on its journey north. This, Pat and Charl both agreed, was an opportunity too perfect to miss, a chance to add something of the Arabian’s natural versatility into the bloodline on Two Tree. Arabian horses are one of the most recognizable of all horse breeds and date back almost five millennia, to when they were first bred by the Bedouin ­people on the Arabian peninsula. Selectively bred for the strength of the bond they develop with their riders, as well as their high spirits and endurance, Arabians have a distinctive head shape and high tail carriage—and the thought of letting this opportunity pass by was more than any avid horseman could bear.

The Arabian stallion, then, would not only be fed and watered during his stay at Two Tree; he would be catered to in other ways as well. The day after he arrived, Charl led him into the paddock where Charl’s mares were grazing and let nature run its course.

I had never seen Pat and Charl more delighted when the news came back about two months later: several of the Two Tree mares were coming into foal. A new dynasty was about to be born.

Almost a year later, the stallion long gone to his new home in Zambia, Two Tree was home to a fantastic new generation of half-Arabians. Grey was a silvery male, his half sister a bay whom Resje named Princess. As we stood in their paddock and fussed over them, we didn’t know how well we’d get to know them over the years.

I would always look back on one particular moment in the lives of those foals.

Princess had grown to be a delightful little mare, the kind without any natural instinct to fear or mistrust humans. Most horses need gentle teaching on how to have their hind feet handled, to rein in that instinct to kick out at what they cannot see, but Princess loved being handled from the very start. She was gentle, she was patient, she delighted in having a saddle on her back and a girth fit around her—and, as she grew into adulthood, she loved nothing more than venturing out onto the farm, a rider in her saddle, to explore the bush.

The new horses of Two Tree had become as familiar to us as the horses of Crofton. One herd mingled with the other, so that soon I would more often find myself in the half-Arabian Grey’s saddle than in the saddle of any other horse. When Frisky was still with us, she would nose around Princess, Grey, and a little foal named Fleur as if they were her very own offspring. So, as the Retzlaffs and Geldenhuyses became such strong friends, so too did our horses.

Frisky had been gentle and patient in teaching Kate to ride, and Princess was just as gentle and patient in teaching Charl and Tertia’s daughter, Resje. Princess had developed into a beautiful horse, with the temperament of her Arabian sire and the stature of her dam, Chiquita. Now, when Pat and I took the children out on rides, we could see Charl and Resje following the same trails. Sometimes they were just small silhouettes on a distant contour, a fleeting glimpse between the fields of crops, Charl on another Arabian stallion named Outlaw or the silvery shimmer that was Grey, Resje trotting on Princess in his wake. Sometimes our rides converged, and we cantered with them alongside the herds of tsessebe.

There is one particular day that will forever stick in my mind. We had been riding down by the dam, and as the afternoon light waned we turned to follow the tracks up, out of the bush, and toward Crofton. We saw Charl long before he saw us, riding a trail deep between fields of tall wheat. Behind him, Resje sat proudly in Princess’s saddle. As we got near, I could see her hands loose around the reins. Princess, so gentle and patient with her riders, simply followed Grey and Charl, seemingly pleased to be out in the fresh African air.

We called out to Charl, but we were too far away for him to hear us. In her saddle, Kate started waving her arms, as if to catch Resje’s attention. Resje must have seen Kate, for she lifted one hand to wave back. Then she took hold of her reins and carried on riding. Soon the tracks would snake together, and we would meet Charl and Resje in a clearing of red dirt between the fields.

Suddenly, something changed. Princess, normally so sedate and calm, reared up. In the still afternoon air, we could hear her whinnying, even at this distance. She brought her two rear hooves up from the ground, scrabbled at the air, kicked and then bucked. In the saddle, Resje clung to the reins. The buck tore them from her hands. I saw her little hands grappling out to catch them again, but the reins flew free. She was about to fly out of the saddle when something caught her. She snapped, taut, in the air, and seemed to be snatched around Princess. Too late, I understood what had happened: one of her feet was held in the stirrups; she could not be thrown free.

In panic, Princess crashed down and began to hurtle forward. Up ahead, Charl turned Grey to see the commotion—but it was too late. Princess cantered past, with Resje dangling beside her, one foot still in its stirrup, the whole of her body being dragged across the ground.

I looked at Pat. Pat looked at me. In that same second, he dug his heels into Frisky’s flank and drove her on. Princess was cantering in our direction. Perhaps he could head her off before Charl.

Moments later, we took off too, cantering in Frisky’s wake. Though Pat and Frisky surged ahead, we tried to keep up. For a moment, they disappeared over a ridge in the track, obscured by the undulating wheat. When we caught them again, they had reined down. Frisky was standing contentedly by, while Pat knelt at her side. When I got close, I could see Princess standing at a distance, seemingly calmed down. Pat was cradling Resje in his arms. She was battered, bruised, shaken beyond measure, but mercifully she did not appear to be seriously hurt.

Soon, Charl appeared through the maize. He brought Grey to a sudden halt and leaped out of the saddle.

“She’s okay, Charl,” Pat said, gently lifting Resje toward him. “What happened?”

“It wasn’t her fault. Something came out of the bush, a duiker or a … I don’t know. But it spooked Princess.”

“We saw her buck.”

Charl nodded, running a finger along Resje’s brow.

“Thank God nothing’s broken.”

Princess, startled at whatever had hurtled out of the bush, had panicked, shying away. In the saddle, the reins had whipped from Resje’s hands. Though she grappled out to take them again, it was too late. She flew up and out of the saddle, and would have crashed into the ground at Princess’s flank had her foot not caught in the stirrup.

We accompanied Charl and Resje back to Two Tree farmhouse. I watched Resje, finally able to breathe again, following Tertia into the farmhouse and remembered vividly my weekends trying to climb into Ticky’s saddle and stay there, my father’s face swimming in and out of focus that afternoon at the gymkhana when Ticky had thrown me off and wandered, dispassionately, away.

That, I remembered now, was the last time I rode until Pat walked into my life, in his undersize suit and battered cowboy boots. A fright like the one Resje had had today was enough to drive somebody away from the riding life forever.

While Tertia tended to Resje, Charl led Princess back into her paddock, along with Grey and all the other horses of Two Tree. In the garden at the back of the house, Lady was aware that something had happened and turned in little circles, as if demanding attention.

That was the very last day that Resje ever rode. She loved horses and would always love horses, but the thought of being thrown from the saddle and snaring her foot in the stirrup would live with her forever.

At last, it was decided that Princess could not remain on Two Tree. The memory was too fresh, and though Resje would always love Lady, Grey, Fleur, and the other Two Tree horses, the thought of Princess spooked her. Like Frisky long ago, Princess would have to be sent to a new home, to find a new family to love her, without the shadow of that one terrible moment in her past.

Charl did not have to look far to find a new home for Princess. Les De Jager’s son farmed at Ormeston, in the district of Lion’s Den, and agreed to take Princess on board. As well as being a strong working mare, Princess had her Arabian ancestry, and with careful management might add a little of her Arabian strength and endurance to the bloodline in Lion’s Den.

I will always remember the day that Princess walked up the ramp into Charl’s truck and left Two Tree Hill Farm. We thought we would not see her again—but the world has a strange way of subverting your expectations. Princess had left Two Tree, but she had not left our lives for long. When she returned, it was to be under the most terrible circumstances. More change was about to come to our beloved Zimbabwe, and devastation as well to the new world we had tried to create at Crofton and Two Tree.

Everything was about to change—for our families and our horses.

In the early evening dark, Pat sat outside Crofton, working through the books in which we inscribed the farm’s history: its seasons and yields, our cropping loans, the details of the workers who had stayed with us through the years. His head was buried in the books when he heard footsteps, a soft knocking at the door. He looked up to see Charles, one of our drivers, approach.

“Boss?”

“Charles …”

“It’s about tomorrow, boss.”

Pat shuffled back. “What’s tomorrow?”

“I was hoping we can use the tractor tomorrow. To take everybody to the voting.”

“Voting?”

Charles nodded, and as Pat questioned him further, things began to stir in the back of his mind, half-forgotten conversations and fragments of news items. Only a few months before, in November 1999, Mugabe’s government had published the draft of a new constitution, which would be ratified in an upcoming referendum. The draft constitution effectively rewrote the constitution first created when Zimbabwe achieved independence, through the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979. It would, it dawned on Pat as Charles continued to speak, give Mugabe the right to serve an unlimited time in office, and even the right to appoint his own successor. What hit even closer to home, however, was the idea that, under the rules of the new constitution, the government would be able to forcibly acquire lands, even those that the government itself had sold since independence, without the owners having any legal right to be compensated for their loss. There was still inequality in the way in which land was held in Zimbabwe, even these twenty years after the coming of independence and the end of old Rhodesia, and we had always known something had to change. Yet, we had bought our farm in good faith; its sale had been sanctioned by the very same government whose efforts now seemed to threaten to take it away. I had the horrible feeling that the land reform program, which was not being handled properly by the government, would now be used by Mugabe for his own political gains.

In the weeks and months to come, Pat and I would think long and hard about this moment. That we had not properly recognized the importance of the upcoming referendum would one day come to sadden us. Were we really living so separately, out here in the corner of Africa we had pioneered for ourselves, that we had blinded ourselves to the path our country was traveling?

After Pat had promised Charles the use of the farm vehicles to ship all our workers off to vote, he found me at the back of the farmhouse, wearily preparing crates of tomatoes.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Did you know,” Pat began, “about this referendum?”

I knew about it, of course, but not in the same way as I knew about how low the water table was, or how weak our yields had been in the last harvest, or how quickly the bank interest was gathering on our cropping loan. The referendum was a thing that was happening somewhere out there. There were problems enough at Crofton to dominate the day.

“It’s tomorrow,” said Pat. “A whole new constitution.”

When he put it like that, it seemed suddenly to loom a lot larger in my mind. Behind us, in the darkness, the horses nickered in their stalls.

Things had become increasingly unstable in Zimbabwe over the past several years. We had thought things might improve once our drought years were over, but instead they seemed to get worse. Mugabe had been supporting the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ostensibly sending troops to support the president there, but really hoping to be able to exploit the DRC’s mineral deposits in return—and, in response, the World Bank and various European countries had suspended all funding with Zimbabwe and placed various embargoes upon us. All this contributed to an economy rife with unrest—but nothing more so than when the government, under pressure from the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association, led by the aptly named Chenjerai “Hitler” Hunzvi, agreed to hand out massive payouts and pensions to all the association’s fifty thousand members. The Zimbabwean dollar had plummeted in value; inflation had soared, with a loaf of bread leaping in price from seventy cents to more than ten dollars; and the first voices of political opposition had begun to be heard.

“Are you worried?” I asked.

A wind lifted the tobacco and ghosted across us, bringing on it a fragrant scent.

“Not yet,” Pat whispered—but, as he turned back to the farmhouse, I wondered whether he believed it or not.











Chapter 4 (#ulink_60bc44ac-117e-55c8-9bcf-a071ccc45b47)


THE REFERENDUM WAS lost.

The ­people had spoken. By a large margin, they rebutted Mugabe’s attempts at consolidating his power. They told him, in no uncertain terms, that they did not approve of his attempts to forcibly acquire land that was legally held. They told him they did not approve of him staying in power for endless terms and appointing a natural successor, like any warlord of old. They put their trust, instead, in a newly formed political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, which had been formed in the trade unions and was led by a man named Morgan Tsvangirai. The MDC had been campaigning for a no vote in the referendum, and suddenly the ­people seemed to be able to voice their opposition to Mugabe.

But in the end, it was to mean nothing.

On the surface the outcome was good for farmers like Pat and me. Questions of government and land reform had simmered, just below the surface, ever since the bush war ended in 1980. We had spent our entire married lives with those unanswered questions lying in wait, just like the crocodiles down at the river, and perhaps Mugabe’s attempt at changing things was just another blip, just another one of those moments in which the crocodile surfaces to study the riverbank with cold, reptilian eyes.

It was only a few days, however, before we heard the first murmurs of discontent. The same War Veterans’ Association that had compelled the government to give unprecedented monetary handouts to its fifty thousand members, crippling the economy, had suddenly been mobilized. We heard stories of its members—some claiming to be veterans of the bush war in which Pat too had fought, even though they could not have been born at the time—amassing on the farms of white landowners, beating drums, chanting slogans, and confronting farmers and their families on the very steps of their homes. Already, some farmers had abandoned their farms out of fear for their children.

Charl and Tertia had always had trouble with itinerant poachers, as they were at the edge of a resettlement area, a former commercial farm that had been bought for redistribution to landless peasants. But after the referendum was lost, they began to see more and more settlers moving through Two Tree. Charl confided in Pat that he had found a note, skewered on a stick outside their farmhouse, instructing him that they would have to leave, that Two Tree and all its neighboring farms would soon revert to their “rightful owners.”

The referendum had been lost, but Mugabe could still exact his will.

It was early in the new millennium, and our oldest, Paul, had returned from studying at college in South Africa to help run the farm. We had been struggling at Crofton, a hangover from the droughts that had plagued us in the 1990s as we fought to open up the farm, and instead of returning here, he and Pat had leased some land at a farm between us and the town of Chinhoyi, a place called Palmerston Estates where we were growing yet more tomatoes. Jay, meanwhile, had taken up a hunting apprenticeship that took him all across the northwest region of Zimbabwe. Only Kate remained with us at Crofton, though often her brothers would return on the weekends to join her and run wild as they had done when they were small.

Soon after the referendum was lost, Jay returned to Crofton to spend the week with us. The whispers of what was happening on Zimbabwe’s farms had reached the hunting areas too, and Jay—who knew every inch of the land, in a way much deeper even than Pat and I did—was keen to know what was happening on our own farm. We told him of the settlers we had seen drifting through, the tension in the air on Two Tree, but it was not until Jay was about to leave us again that we had the first indication that we, as a family, were in the firing line as well.

Jay and Pat had been talking with Charl about the problems he was having with war vets at Two Tree. There was a sudden influx of settlers he had seen on his land from the nearby resettlement areas. Poaching was also getting out of hand as they moved over with their hunting dogs. As the afternoon waned, Charl, Pat, and Jay climbed back into the Land Rover to begin the slow crawl back to Crofton. Dusk was gathering, and the dying light set the bush to brilliant color: crimsons and reds burst through the wooded foliage; the red dirt tracks looked like licks of flames between fields of tall wheat.

Then, a gunshot cleaved the silence.

Pat and Jay immediately recognized the gunshot for what it was. A crack, like concentrated thunder, had split the air. Instinctively, Pat slammed his foot on the gas pedal. The Land Rover slewed wildly in the dust. Pat craned to look through the back windshield—but, all about, the farm seemed still. He wrestled with the wheel, brought the Land Rover back into line, and, with his foot still pressed hard to the floor, thundered back toward Crofton.

In the back, Jay reached instinctively for the shotgun hidden underneath the seat. He ducked at the window, the gun tight to his chest, keen eyes surveying the bushy koppie all around, in case he might see some figure lurking in the brush. Pat was proud to see how Jay reacted, so suddenly and so decisively. His months of training in Zimbabwe’s hunting areas seemed to have given him even more steel.

At the farmhouse, Kate and I were waiting. When the Land Rover appeared, kicking up clods of earth, we knew that something was wrong. Pat wrenched the vehicle around, and he and Jay tumbled out, their faces lined in a strange mixture of bewilderment and fury.

“What happened?” I asked.

Already, Jay was on his hands and knees, running his hands along the doors and rims of the Land Rover, as if searching for a tick in one of the horses’ flanks.

He looked up, eyes screwed shut as he squinted back the way they had come.

“Somebody shot at us,” Jay breathed.

I looked at Pat. “Shot at you?”

“From somewhere, up in the bush.”

I fell silent.

I breathed and said, “They’re already here, aren’t they?”

Without words, Pat nodded. Finally, he said, “There could be war vets”—he said it with a strange lilt, because really they were not war veterans at all, only thugs in Mugabe’s employ—“all over the farm and we just wouldn’t know it.”

“What’s happening here, Mum?” Jay had some of his father’s grit in his voice. It was a shock to understand, in that moment, how grown-up my second son had become.

I didn’t know how to respond, how to explain. There was so much to think about—how our nation had come to this, how we had found ourselves in such a perilous position, how we had walked blindly—even willingly—into such a confrontation. Issues of land reform in Britain’s old colonies were complex and often evoked great passions, as our neighbors in Kenya could testify to only too well. In the 1960s, they had gone through their own process of reform. In Zimbabwe, the interests of landowners had been protected in 1979 by the Lancaster House Agreement, which paved the way for the end of the bush war and Rhodesia’s transition to Zimbabwe. The agreement protected the rights of those who had owned, or been given, lands under the old government for ten years, guaranteeing that their land could be acquired by the government only on a willing seller, willing buyer basis—and that, even in those circumstances, adequate compensation would be paid. On top of this, before any farms were purchased or land bought to be opened up for agriculture, the government had the right to veto the sale, or else provide a certificate declaring it had “no objection” to the sale. It was in this climate that we had become the owners of our farm. We owned the land legally and legitimately. Yet, now, as I watched Jay run his hands across the bullet hole scored into the Land Rover, I felt a terrible foreboding: all of the old guarantees, on which we had built our lives, to which we had pledged our children’s futures, were already gone.

That night, we returned to Two Tree for dinner. In the farmhouse, Tertia poured us drinks. Like me, she didn’t seem to want to hear the conversation flowing at the other end of the table.

“It won’t come to that,” Pat said, his voice unfaltering. “It would be the end if they did. Agriculture’s all this country has …”

He had said the same as we rode to Two Tree, our eyes on the hills for fear of more shots. Zimbabwe was not a country rich in mineral resources like so many other nations in Africa. Our only real resource was the land itself: rich and verdant and fertile for farming. It was not for nothing that we were called the “breadbasket of Africa.” Ours was a country that did not go hungry, and one that could afford to pour grain and other crops into its neighboring nations. Without agriculture, we were nothing. The country’s economy was already in tatters; the idea that the government would exacerbate that by systematically destroying the agriculture on which it depended seemed, to Pat, absolute nonsense.

The way Charl was looking at Pat, I could tell he did not feel the same.

“It’s just not the way Mugabe’s thinking. Mugabe doesn’t think about the economy. It’s as if he still thinks there’s a war. He isn’t thinking about five, ten years … He isn’t thinking about next year, even. He’s”—Charl paused, as if weighing up the thought—“thinking about votes,” he concluded. “It isn’t even money. It’s power.”

If the reports we had heard were even fractionally true, Charl had a point. It wasn’t only the farms held by white landowners that were being targeted. Since the referendum was lost, thugs and soldiers in the government’s employ had stepped up their tactics against members of the MDC—and, perhaps more important, against those members of the electorate who had dared to voice opposition by voting with the MDC in the referendum. There was a parliamentary election on the horizon, too, and with the support the populace had shown for the MDC in the referendum, we expected the MDC to claim a record number of seats. The fact that Mugabe and his ZANU-PF government were reacting with such aggression could easily have been, as Charl contended, a deeply political move.

“It still doesn’t make sense,” Pat returned. “The economy is politics. The economy is the votes. If they ruin agriculture, they ruin it all. They’re not stupid. They have to see that.”

Lay waste to the economy, Pat argued, and they laid waste to their chances of winning even a single seat in the next election. It was, he said, 1960s politicking—but we were living, now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century. To Pat, it was too preposterous to believe.

“It’s worse than that,” Charl added. “It’s … personal insult. He can’t understand why he lost. He still thinks he’s the liberator, the proud black hope … How could a country he saved not vote with him?” He paused. “He has to blame somebody for that. Why not us?”

As Charl and Pat became more deeply embroiled in their discussion of Mugabe’s strategy—if it was anything so clearly thought-out as a strategy—Tertia fussed around Resje and cupped a hand around her swollen belly. It would only be a few short weeks until her son, Charl-Emil, would be born. I could see it etched onto her face: she wanted him born into the Two Tree of three, four years ago, not into the place of constant apprehension that Two Tree was about to become.

I kept my eyes fixed on her face, heard Charl and Pat’s heated debate fade in and out, and felt the first twinge of a very real fear.

A few days later, before he returned to the hunting area to continue his apprenticeship, Jay reported seeing strangers in the bush. Saddling up Imprevu, Pat set out to investigate what Jay had seen: in the hills above the farm, where the bush was dense and men might remain hidden for days, huts made out of sticks had been hastily erected. Rings of black earth marked the places where campfires had been built, and the bush was thinned where men with pangas had taken to the trees. Pat and Imprevu made long circuits of the farm, moving in tightening circles, trying to scout out where the men were coming to settle and from which vantage points they could spy on our house.

I was glad to see Jay returning to his apprenticeship, and happier still when Kate could go back to school for the week. Though Paul and Jay had often been away at school for a term at a time, Kate was boarding during the weeks and returning to Crofton for her weekends—but, now, any time that she could spend away relieved a great welter of fear. Home had always been a place of safety for our children, a place to come and hide away from the world, but now it was beginning to feel as if they were better off staying far away. On Palmerston Estates, the situation was no better. Paul reported the same scraggly grass huts growing up near the railway crossing, with groups of ­people gathering around them, often drunk, seemingly stoned, raising their fists and chanting every time he rode along one of the winding farm tracks.

One morning, Pat, Kate, and I were eating breakfast in the Crofton dining room. The bright sun of early morning filtered through the curtains, and, as I helped Kate to eggs from a pan, Pat stood up to draw back the curtains.

On the grounds outside, twenty men were gathered, twenty stran­gers outside our gate.

If they did not look violent, if they were not drunk or stoned like the men we had been hearing about, they still inspired fear. Quickly, Pat pulled the curtains back into place. But it was too late; Kate had already seen.

Looking back, I believe that the only reason I did not panic was that I was thinking about Kate. For weeks now I had been making her do drills in how to respond if the war vets ever came to Crofton. She hated the drills—perhaps hated me for it too—but at least she was prepared. There was a hallway inside Crofton, a place with narrow walls that Jay and Kate had often made a game of shimmying up, one foot braced on either wall like mountaineers scaling a sheer crevice. If they got to the top of the passage, they could reach an attic crawl space there. It was in this hole that Kate was to hide should the worst ever happen. I turned to tell her to go, but before I could hustle her away, Pat was already striding out the farmhouse door.

Hanging back, I watched as Pat approached the men. This was not a baying horde of the type we had heard about. Pat stood, only yards away from them, and asked them what they were doing on the farm.

“It isn’t what we want to do, boss,” one of the men finally said. He shrugged, almost apologetically, and refused to meet Pat’s eyes. “But we’ve been told not to leave. They told us to make some noise. Shout a lot, cause some trouble …”

I ushered Kate back into the farmhouse, where she could not see. Outside, Pat continued to talk to the men. When, at last, he turned to come back inside, his face was set hard. I remembered how he had looked, all those years ago, as he walked into the brawl in the hotel bar, decked out in his ill-fitting suit and shoddy cowboy boots.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well,” was all he could reply.

It took some hours for the men to dissipate that day—but dissipate they did. Once they were gone, we ventured back out of the farmhouse. Their trails were clearly visible, as they had cut a path away from the farmhouse and back into the bush. Where they had come from, we did not know; why they were here was only too plain.

We were at Two Tree farmhouse with Charl and Tertia when we heard the news that the first white farmer had died. Charl and Tertia had had their own experience with war vets settling around their farmhouse—and though that crowd, like ours, had dissipated without violence, it had propelled Charl to thinking about their future. Tertia had just given birth to their son, baby Charl-Emil, and foremost in Charl’s mind was how he might protect his wife and children. Some farmers had already sent their families away, anticipating worse to come, and at Two Tree that day Charl admitted that he was thinking of doing the same—not just for his family, but for his horses as well.

Lady, Fleur, Grey, and the rest were loose in their paddock when we walked through the farm. Lady hurtled over as we approached, responding to the quiet burr of Charl’s voice. There was only one other animal that responded to him in the same way, an eland brought to Two Tree during the droughts. Em was perhaps the tamest of all wild creatures I had ever known. Fifty inches tall at her shoulder, with the eland’s two distinctive spiral horns, she seemed to have fallen in love with Charl. Whenever he was out on the farm, Em would somehow know where he was and canter over. Tertia was of the opinion that Charl, too, was a little bit in love with the eland. She had caught him, more than once, with Em’s head lying contentedly on his shoulder, Charl rubbing her gently between the eyes—and, whenever Tertia approached, Em would come to attention and push her aside, as if to say: Charl is mine; this is my time with him now.

“Where would you send them to?” I asked, my hands pressed against Grey’s flank.

“Do you know Rob Flanagan?”

I nodded. Rob Flanagan was a mutual friend, a horseman who also farmed outside Chinhoyi about thirty kilometers away. A polo player, he belonged to the same club where we would often go to watch matches. Charl had run into him only recently, at a farmers’ meeting in Chinhoyi. So far, Rob’s farm had not been affected by the roaming bands of war vets—and Charl, mindful that Two Tree was so close to the resettlement area, had begun to wonder: might there be room with Rob for some of his horses, if the worst came to the worst?

“There’s too many of them,” Charl said, looking into the distant bush where the war vets had begun to assemble their traditional huts. “And …”

Charl had cause to worry for his horses for, in the past, he had not spared the animals belonging to the men who came poaching on Two Tree land. Often, having chased the poachers away, he found himself compelled to shoot their dogs. It was a grisly business, for it was not the dogs’ fault that they were being used to kill game, but there was often no other choice. The idea of these men returning to Two Tree in force and meting out their revenge was all too easy to imagine.





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