"I'll do it tomorrow," she promised herself, but deep in herself realized she had reached a crossroads in her life.
The prospect of flying about Africa alone with her only possessions a change of clothes and a camera, sleeping where she lay down and bathing when she could, was no longer as attractive as it had always been to her.
That night at dinner she looked around the huge almost bare dining-room, the new curtains its only glory, and touched the refectory table of Rhodesian teak that, under her guidance, Joseph's relative had fashioned and she anticipated the patina of use and care it would soon acquire. Then she looked past the burning candles to the man who sat opposite her and she was afraid and strangely elated. She knew she had made the decision.
They took their coffee onto the veranda and listened to the cicadas" whining in the jacaranda trees, and the squeak of the flying bats hunting below a yellow moon.
S he snuggled against his shoulder and said, "Craig, darling, it's time to tell you. I do love you so very dearly."
if raig wanted to rush into Bulawayo and take the magistrate's court by storm, but she restrained him laughingly.
"My God, you crazy man, it isn't like buying a pound of cheese. You can't just up and get married, just like that."
"Why not? Lots of people do."
"I don't," she said firmly. "I want it to be done properly." She did some counting on her fingers and pencilling on the calendar at the back of her notebook, and then decided, "February 16th."
"That's four months away," Craig groaned, but his protests were ridden down ruthlessly.
Joseph, on the other hand, was in full accord with Sally Anne plans for a formal wedding.
"You get married on Kingi Lingi, Nkosikazi." It was a statement rather than a question, and Sally Anne Sindebele was now good enough to recognize that she had been promoted from "little mistress" to 'great lady'.
"How many people?" Joseph demanded. "Two hundred, three hundred?" "I doubt we can raise that many," Sally-Anne demurred.
"When Nkosana Roly get married Kingi Lingi, we have four hundred, even Nkosi Smithy he come! "Joseph," she scolded him, you really are a frightful old snob, you know!" or Craig the pervading unhappiness that he had felt at Tungata's sentence slowly dissipated, swamped by all the excitement and activity at King's Lynn. In a few months he had all but put it from his mind, only at odd and unexpected moments his memory of his one-time friend barbed him. To the rest of the world, Tungata Zebiwe might have never existed. After the extravagant coverage by press and television of his trial, it seemed that a curtain of silence was drawn over him likea shroud.
Then abruptly, once again the name Tungata Zebiwe was blazed from every television screen and bannered on every front page across the entire continent.
Craig and Sally' Anne sat in front of the television set, appalled and disbelieving, as they listened to the first reports. When they ended, and the programme changed to a weather report, Craig stood up and crossed to the set. He switched it off and came back to her side, moving likea man who was still in deep shock from some terrible accident.
The two of them sat in silence in the darkened room, until Sally-Anne reached for his hand. She squeezed it hard, but her shudder was involuntary, it racked her whole body.
Those poor little girls they were babies. Can you imagine their terror?"
"I knew the Goodwins. They were fine people. They always treated their black people well, "Craig muttered.
"This proves as nothing else possibly could that they were right to lock him away likea dangerous animal." Her horror was beginning to turn to anger.
"I can't see what they could possibly hope to gain by this--2 Craig was still shaking his head incredulously, and Sally-Anne burst out.
"The whole country, the whole world must see them for what they are. Bloodthirsty, inhuman-'her voice cracked and became a sob. "Those babies oh Christ in heaven, I hate him. I wish him dead." "They used his name that doesn't mean Tungata ordered it, condoned it, or even knew about it." Craig tried to sound convincing.
"I hate him," she whispered. "I hate him for it." t's madness. All they can possibly achieve is to bring
_4 Shana troops sweeping through Matabeleland like the wrath of all the gods."
"The little one was only five years old." In her outrage and sorrow, Sally-Anne was repeating herself.
"Nigel Goodwin was a good man I knew him quite well, we were in the same special police unit during the war, I liked him." Craig went to the drinks table and poured two whiskies. "Please God, don't let it all start again. All the awfulness and cruelty and horror please God, spare us that." Ithough Nigel Goodwin was almost forty years of age, he had one of those beefy pink faces unaffected by the African sun that made him look likea lad.
His wife, Helen, was a thin, dark-haired girl, her plainness alleviated by her patent good nature and her sparkly, toffee-brown eyes.
The two girls were weekly boarders at the convent in Bulawayo. At eight years, Alice Goodwin had ginger hair and gingery freckles and, like her father, she was plump and pink. Stephanie, the baby, was five, really too young for boarding-school. However, because she had an elder sister at the convent, the Reverend Mother made an exception in her case. S4 was the pretty one, small and dark and chirpy as ajittle bird with her mother's bright eyes.
Each Friday morning, Nigel and Helen Goodwin drove in seventy-eight miles from the ranch to town. At one o'clock they picked up the girls from the convent, had lunch at the Selbourne Hotel, sharing a bottle of wine, and then spent the afternoon shopping. Helen restocked her groceries, chose material to make into dresses for herself and the girls, and then, while the girls went to F