‘Please just go, Mum. I’m not up to going around and around this with you today.’
‘Alistair, I’m your mother. I can’t help loving you.’
‘Is it loving or suffocating, Mum?’ he said sharply.
He heard her intake of breath and he winced inside. There was no satisfaction in hearing her footsteps retreat down the passage and the front door slam shut behind her.
In the kitchen, he moved the kettle onto the gas hob. Leaning back against the counter, he scrubbed his face with his hands, willing his head to clear. He opened the fridge for milk and saw, stacked in a neat pile, five plastic ice-cream containers. Each was neatly labelled in his mother’s handwriting. Chicken curry, bolognaise, oxtail stew, cottage pie, sweet-and-sour chicken.
‘Dammit!’ he said, as guilt rose.
Back in his office, his coffee stood untouched, the surface wrinkling into a cold skin. The view from the window looked across the farmyard to the old stables where ploughs and water tank trailers now lined up with two tractors. His thoughts saw a different view, though. Eight years ago, horses had dominated the yard. The ring of hooves, soft snorts and grumbles, and that sweet, dank smell were as much part of the house as the stones themselves.
Alistair sighed, pulling himself back to the present, and trying to see through the past to the work open in front of him. He laid his head down on the desk instead, his cheek pressed to the old wood. His gaze came to rest on a carved frame. The glass in the frame caught the sun, and he shifted it slightly. His smooth face was grinning down at Marilie, one arm pulling her towards him. Her wedding gown trailed in the dust of the farm road, but her eyes and smile were serene as she looked directly through the camera to the present. Alistair grabbed the frame and, opening the bottom drawer of his desk, stuffed the picture beneath a pile of scrap paper. Enough. He pushed himself out of his chair and headed out the house, sliding his keys off the hallstand at the back door.
The dogs sped around the side of the house like a tornado at his whistle. The diesel engine of his Toyota Hilux roared to life, and the dogs went mad at his door, jumping and play-biting at one another. Once out the yard, he turned off onto a track that would take him to the higher pastures of the farm.
As he drove, he noted the small herd of blesbok grazing on the hillside and counted four calves. He had lost a few last year to predators. Jackals had obviously been at the carcasses but he had wondered, and secretly hoped, that a leopard might’ve been responsible. He had looked for tracks, but knew that leopards living wild in the ravines and pockets of forest would never be seen.
Alistair was passionate about rehabilitating the land. He’d researched shifting farming practice to imitate the natural grazing patterns of the old herds that used to move through the Free State in their thousands. Years of eliminating the use of insecticides and other poisons had made a visible difference in the landscape. Veld flowers and bulbs had appeared this past spring like had never been seen in his family’s memory. The hillsides had been a pink wash of Watsonias, the cooler folds of land filled with the flash of white arum lilies.
Hunting and trapping were forbidden on the farm, and they were seeing the results. Animals that had not been seen on the farm for generations were returning, and with them came the ecological knock-on of plants and insects and birds.
He had had many arguments with his father in the beginning but, slowly, as Alistair was given more leeway with the farm, his father had seen the changes and relented. Now, as his dad withdrew from the active running of the farm, Alistair saw him enjoying the farm more than ever. He walked every day with his binoculars, came home excited he had seen something new.
Thinking about his parents snagged something in Alistair. He and his sisters had grown up secure and much loved. Their childhood had been idyllic, dreamlike even, he thought now. It had done absolutely nothing to prepare Alistair for the brutality that life was to throw him.
The dogs caught up with the pickup and overtook Alistair as he slowed to handle the uneven, rolling track. Hugging the side of the hill, the track wound steeply to meet a wire fence gate at the top. Alistair left the engine idling as he unhooked the loop which pulled the wire-and-pole gate taut. He dragged the gate across and dropped it on the grass. The Toyota crested a rise, and a wide plateau opened up in front of him. A steel wind pump towered over a round concrete reservoir. Leaving his door open, Alistair crossed to it and stood up on his toes to peer into the dam. The end of a black rubber pipe jutted out into the reservoir, dripping into the deep green water. As Alistair sank back onto his heels, his boots squelched into mud. A concrete trough lay to one side, filled from the reservoir by a pipe with a shut-off valve controlling flow. Today, the water in the trough overflowed, leaking down and pooling on the ground. Alistair squatted, reaching into the water to examine the valve. The surface had been warmed by the day’s sun but, below the surface, his arm slid into smooth cool water. The orange plastic float controlling the water flow looked cracked. Kobie would have to come up with some tools and repair it.
Alistair stood, wiping wet hands on the back of his jeans. The sun was low in the sky now, and the light bent the wind pump’s long shadow to the east. It was silent. No wind stirred in the line of eucalyptus trees and there were no animals about – there never were. The water was good, and so Alistair and his father kept the water trough filled, but it had a desolate feel, this part of the farm. It was stony, the vegetation growing in sparse patches rather than the thick cover of grass which grew elsewhere.
He hadn’t liked this place as a child, and still found it strangely unsettling, creepy even. It was only as an adult, when he could override the irrationality of his deeper feelings, that he came up here. In fact, like today, he came as an obstinate show he could override emotion with logic; that the deeper currents could be pushed back by will.
He turned back to his vehicle to find all three dogs sitting in the cab, watching him. The dogs’ tongues lolled out the sides of their mouths, their tails thumping the plastic upholstery. ‘Out! Lee, Jackson, out!’ The black and cream Labradors jumped out the car, leaving the biggest dog of them all, the Rhodesian ridgeback, sitting in the cab. He sat resolutely looking out the front windscreen. ‘Grant! Out, you mopey mutt!’ said Alistair, leaning on the open door.
The dogs trotted behind the Toyota, their exuberance exercised out of them for the day. Back on the gravel road, Alistair gunned the engine and the Toyota leapt forwards. Grant, with his long loping stride, gave a last push of energy and came bulleting past the cab. No doubt he would already be grinning on the step when the truck pulled into the yard. Alistair smiled for the first time that day.
CHAPTER FOUR
Hannah surfaced through kilometres of sleep, pulled by desperate yowls coming from the bathroom. Grey light seeped from beneath her curtains. She stretched to turn off the bedside light, surprised at how deeply she had slept. Usually, she lay awake for ages, needing the light to keep the darkness at bay. But now she had no memory of anything after climbing into bed and pulling the quilt up. It was a first.
In just her sleep shorts and T-shirt, she carried Patch out into the garden. Her bare feet sank into the wet grass, the dew chilling her toes. She watched as the cat, with wild wide eyes, slunk slowly across the lawn into a flowerbed, looking for a toilet spot. Hannah averted her eyes, feeling ridiculous as she did so. A few minutes later, Hannah scooped up the cat and retreated into the kitchen. ‘Patch, a week inside for you, I think. Just until it feels like home.’