The dogs had jumped off the pickup and were ranging around in the field, noses to the ground and tails wagging high in the air. Hannah stood on the grass verge above the track with her hands in her back pockets, helpless and embarrassed.
While Alistair unwound the winch cable and set about attaching it to the towing eye of the Mazda, Neil came across to stand with Hannah.
‘So where are the donkeys?’ said Hannah, wanting to distract him from her flushed face.
He smiled at her. ‘There haven’t been donkeys here for fifty years, but the name stuck for some reason.’ Neil was quiet for a moment and then he glanced at her. ‘What’s this about a memorial?’
Hannah kicked the toe of her running shoe into the grass tufts on the verge. ‘I heard there was a concentration camp from the South African War on this farm.’
‘Where did you hear that?’ Neil’s brows had lifted in surprise.
‘I didn’t hear it exactly,’ she admitted. ‘I found a reference to it in the shop. I was clearing out some old stuff.’ She felt the need to explain, but couldn’t bring herself to mention Rachel’s journal with Dirty Harry in earshot. ‘I thought there might be a memorial to the camp,’ she said. ‘I suppose it piqued my interest enough to want to explore.’
‘You wasted your time,’ said Alistair, as he came back to the truck. ‘And a lot of ours. There’s nothing like that on the farm.’ Then, just as abruptly: ‘Dad, you get in the Mazda and reverse slowly when you feel the car starting to move.’
‘I can do that,’ said Hannah.
‘You stay where you are,’ said Alistair, leaning into the truck to manage the winch. ‘You’ve caused enough trouble.’
Neil shook his head at his son’s rudeness and, with a squeeze of Hannah’s arm, climbed into her car.
Hannah folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes. ‘“You’re a legend in your own mind, Harry,”’ she said under her breath.
The winch pulled and Neil slowly began to reverse. The tyres found traction on the strips of carpet, and the car slid out of the mud as easily as she had driven into it. This made her feel even more stupid. Alistair didn’t look her way as he approached her car again to unhook the winch cable.
Neil, still in Hannah’s driver’s seat, reversed the car up onto the opposite grass verge and swung it around, skirting Alistair’s truck. He leant out of the window. ‘I’ll drive this back to the house. See you there.’ Alistair and Hannah could only watch him make his way down the slope.
They drove in silence to the house. The tension was palpable between them and, as soon as he had parked the pickup at the back door of the farmhouse, Alistair disappeared inside without a word. Hannah, muttering curses, made her way across the yard to Neil, who was leaning against the bonnet of her mud-covered car. He smiled as he handed the keys back to her. ‘Don’t worry about him. He’s more comfortable with his dogs than with people.’
Hannah grimaced. ‘They’ve got him used to giving orders and being blindly obeyed.’
Neil laughed. ‘Not a whole lot of obedience in you, though.’
She coloured again. ‘Sorry I caused so much trouble for you today. I really appreciate the help.’
‘It was a pleasure, Hannah Harrison, made completely worthwhile by seeing my son knocked off his even keel. He’s been despondent lately, and that worries me more than seeing him angry.’ Neil looked to the kitchen door, his face suddenly older.
‘Okay then.’ Hannah awkwardly jingled her keys. ‘I’ll be off home. Thank you again, Neil.’
‘You don’t want to stay for lunch, as late as it is? I’ll introduce you to the other beautiful girl in Leliehoek.’
‘No, I’ve put you out enough for one day. Thanks for the offer though. Another time?’
‘I’ll hold you to it,’ he said, closing her car door firmly.
Neil found Alistair in the kitchen, peering into the fridge.
‘Your mother has lunch waiting for us. Come on over to the cottage. But leave the mood behind, please. I’ve seen enough of it for a day.’
Alistair closed the fridge door and gave Neil a filthy look.
‘What?’ Neil said. ‘Was I supposed to leave her walking down the road looking for help?’
‘Dad, you encouraged her, downright charmed her.’
‘She’s a pretty girl who needed help – why wouldn’t I?’
They left the farmhouse through the front door. Neil glanced at his son. ‘The real question is, why you wouldn’t help her? What are you holding against a girl you’ve hardly met?’
‘She irritated me.’
‘More like she got to you,’ Neil said, smiling.
‘Drop it, Dad.’
They reached the cottage where the kitchen was filled with the smell of bread fresh out the oven. Sarah was ladling thick brown soup into bowls.
‘It’s bacon and bean,’ she said. ‘I know it’s better in winter, but I just felt like making it today. Neil, please pick up the salad and take it out to the veranda. I thought we could eat there.’
Neil leant over to kiss Sarah’s cheek. ‘It looks wonderful, my girl.’
She smiled but didn’t look up from dishing up the soup. ‘Alistair, can you carry the bread? And you’ll need a bread knife.’
The table was set with cotton mats and flowered side plates. Alistair and Neil sat across from each other and were spreading butter on thick slices of hot bread.
‘Neil, you don’t need the butter,’ Sarah said, frowning at him.
‘Don’t put it out if you don’t want me to eat it.’
She ignored him and moved the salt out of his reach.
The soup was thick and fragrant, and there was silence at the table while the two men concentrated on their meal. ‘What have you been up to this morning?’ Sarah said, delicately spooning her soup from the opposite side of her bowl.
‘We met the girl who’s taken on Tim’s shop,’ Neil said. ‘We towed her bakkie out of the mud.’
‘Here?’ Sarah looked in surprise between Neil and Alistair.
‘She was trespassing,’ said Alistair curtly.
Neil rolled his eyes at his wife. ‘Alistair took exception to her being on the farm. She had heard somewhere that there was a Boer concentration camp site in the area. I liked her, actually. Seems sweet. Pretty too.’
Sarah’s brows crinkled. ‘How strange that those old stories should surface off the farm. I’ve only ever heard them here.’
Alistair put his spoon firmly down. ‘What stories, Mum? I’ve never heard anything like that?’
‘I haven’t heard them for years and years, not since I was a girl really.’ Sarah buttered her bread and neatly cut it in half with a knife. Alistair looked across at her in disbelief.
‘And?’ He had found this day disturbing on a number of levels. Riding in the truck next to Hannah had stirred emotions in him that he hadn’t felt in years. Despite her trying her hardest not to touch him, an accidental brush of her arm against his had scalded him. He put down his spoon and pushed his right arm under the table. The faraway look in his mother’s eyes did nothing to soothe his disquiet.
‘You know that, as a child, I used to play with Kobie and Lena? I was in and out of their house in the workers’ compound a lot. There were stories that their mother had told them, to scare them into behaving, I thought.’ Sarah put her spoon down. ‘She would say that the ghost woman from the camp was looking for her children, and that Kobie and Lena had better be good or the woman would come for them. Kobie and Lena swore that they saw the ghost woman on the plateau, but I never did. And then I forgot all about it, till now. How strange,’ she said again, before picking up her spoon quietly.
‘Come on, Mum, that’s superstitious nonsense. We would know, after all these years on the farm, if there had been a camp here. The camps are all documented and accounted for anyway. The closest one was at Winburg.’