Shooting Butterflies (16 page)

She dropped her towel and flip-flops next to the cooler box Wayne had carried down, and grabbing Dela by the hand, she dragged her with her into the sea.

‘Cold,' Tara said as she ran in, and she stopped where the waves broke on the sand, only at waist height.

‘Told ya it was great!' he said as he struck out, swimming strongly for deeper water.

‘Hey Tara, Dela!' Tracey and Michelle both waved in greeting, before ducking under a wave then swimming after Wayne.

‘Come on, Tara,' Dela said.

Tara hesitated.

She could stand where they were, yet if she went deeper, she wouldn't be able to see the bottom, and she would need to tread water to keep afloat.

Dela swam off without her.

‘
Don't swim where you can't see the bottom
.' The words haunted her. Even though the man who had said them to her had been gunned down three years earlier, she still heard them clearly in her head. Wayne was out there beckoning, and Dela had reached him and looked like she was fine. Tara swallowed. She swam with a bit more caution than Dela as she didn't feel she was such a great swimmer. She was better than most her classmates at sport, but she knew that swimming was her one weakness. She heard her father's
voice in her head again: ‘
That's what you would expect from a land lover in a landlocked country.
'

She took a deep breath and finally followed the others in.

‘Hey you,' Wayne said as she reached him. ‘Glad you decided to join us. Look!' He pointed.

Just a few metres from where they all trod water, a school of dolphin dived through the waves. She watched as they surfaced, and she heard as they exhaled and then disappeared under the water. She could hear the clicking sounds they made as communications passed between them. She smiled as she watched a mother nudge her wayward calf to bring it back into the group.

The dolphin came closer, surfing along a wave towards them, then suddenly they were all around. Tara held her breath as the baby surfaced almost within touching distance and exhaled, its beautiful grey-blue body glistening in the sun. It appeared to her as if it was curious what she was doing in its ocean. Then it dived back under. She had wanted so much to reach out and try touch it.

Still treading water, she turned her body to follow the dolphin.

‘Come on,' Wayne said and she didn't need more urging as they swam, attempting to stay with the dolphin pod for as long as they could.

Just before sundown, everyone's mothers brought down food, and trestle tables were set up. Then, as the sun sank behind the trees to slide away in the west and the seawater turned pink in the fading light, someone set a match at the bottom of the fire. The small orange flame slowly crept towards the dry kindling of grass and newspaper, and took hold. It hungrily consumed the kindling and grew upwards from the bottom, edged in blue and green as it burnt through the driftwood piled high to make a bonfire. As the flames leapt upwards in a joyous dance, everyone cheered.

Maggie came down with their Hepcooler from the house, and sat with Wayne's dad in the circle watching the bonfire. Dela flopped on the sand next to her, and lay on her back with her eyes closed.

‘Would you like a walk, Tara?' Wayne asked, his hand already waiting for hers to help her up from her cross-legged position. He'd gone up to his house and pulled on some dry clothes, and a lightweight tracksuit top. The cool ocean breeze was picking up now that the sun was gone.

‘Sure,' she said putting her hand into his. It felt strange having her hand held by Wayne's bigger one.

‘Don't go too far, Wayne,' his father warned.

‘We won't, Dad, just to the other side of the rocks and back.'

‘Fine.'

‘Be safe,' Maggie added.

‘Will do, Mum,' Tara reassured her.

Wayne kept Tara's hand in his, threading his fingers through hers, as they started their walk away from the bonfire and the crowd. Tara tried to pull away, but he held tight.

‘Just let me hold your hand, Tara. That's all.'

‘Okay,' she said, suddenly unsure why she'd agreed to the moonlight walk in the first place, but her heart did a small flip all the same. ‘Your dad is as protective as my mum. I thought that maybe with a son, it would be different.'

Wayne nodded. ‘He worries. The war is being fought far away, on our borders, but there is still plenty of petty crime too. Always pays to be vigilant.'

Tara's heart thumped as she walked next to Wayne, only now her hand felt comfortable, with her fingers lightly entwined in his. He walked next to her on the rough path.

‘So, quite a day, huh?' he said.

‘Yeah, brilliant. Those dolphin, they were so great. I have never been so close before, they were amazing!'

‘You must come surfing in the morning, they surf right next to the board.'

‘Seriously?'

‘Yes, I'll come by your place and fetch you. It's really something. I love our beach cottage because I can just kick back and surf.'

‘Might I remind you that your beach cottage is bigger than your home on your farm.'

Wayne smiled. ‘Kujana will always be home, but this shack is a close second,' he said then lifted her hand and kissed it. ‘But the cottage and the beach are now so much better because you are here.'

Tara felt the blush rise up into her face.

‘Where is your mum, Wayne?'

He shifted his weight on his feet. ‘She hates the beach, the cottage is my dad's and my get away castle!'

For a while they navigated the rocks in silence. Then they reached the point, and they stood close together.

‘Wow, just look at that,' Tara said as she looked out into the ocean where the lights of a vessel out in the shipping channel twinkled brighter than the stars that had just started to appear in the sky. Then she looked to the right, along the coastline there was the darkened area of another beach with not many houses hugging it, but on the left, she could see the lights of so many buildings clinging onto the edge of the ocean, as if trying to be as close as possible to the magical waters.

‘It's so beautiful,' she said.

‘It's the beach,' Wayne said and he hugged her closer to him, and tightened his arms around her. He kissed the top of her hair.

She shivered.

‘You're cold!' he said and he took his tracksuit top off and helped her into it.

He touched her breast with the back of his fingers as he shimmied the top down into place, and she felt a frisson of pleasure, as if her body wanted him to touch her more. She was scared of the feeling, yet intrigued by her own body.

‘Thanks,' she said, choosing not to mention that he had touched her, because if it was just a mistake, she didn't want to embarrass him, not now. She rolled up the sleeves so that her hands didn't look like sock puppets. Then she leant back into his warmth, as she burrowed her nose into his top and inhaled his masculine scent.

‘Is it like this when you visit Durban?' he asked.

‘No, I hate Durban, I hate visiting there,' she said.

‘Why? It's a great city, so much to do. They have an ice-skating rink, and the aquarium, and their beachfront is beautiful. Except in the silly season, no white person goes there at Christmas and New Year – too many black people swamp the beach.'

‘I know, my granny wouldn't let us anywhere near the beach when we first got to South Africa for Christmas.'

‘She was right,' Wayne said, ‘they lose their own children, they swim in their underwear and many drown because they can't swim. It's sad really. The life guards can't keep up because there are just so many people.'

‘It is sad, because they are people too. Despite what the Apartheid government says, the colour of our skin doesn't make a difference, it's how someone conducts themselves and behaves that makes a person into what they are, and if they are worth knowing or not.'

‘I agree. My dad thinks that too. He says that Apartheid is in its last days, soon it will be gone and we'll have a black government. And he says that when the change comes he hopes that it's peaceful. Not like some of the other countries in Africa.'

Tara opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, thinking better about voicing her opinion outright. She kept silent for a few moments as they stood together, then Tara said, ‘You know what, there might have been a war in Zimbabwe, but at least our blacks were treated like people. They were fighting too, alongside the white people. We were a nation united together.'

‘I'm not judging you, or your views, I'm agreeing with you,' Wayne said as he ran his hand up her arm and back down, reassuringly.

‘Thank you,' she said and she smiled.

‘So, back to Durban. Why do you hate it so much?'

‘My aunty Marie-Ann and my grandmother live there.'

‘And that's bad?'

‘It's better to have them living there, than in Hluhluwe with us. When we first got to South Africa, my aunt was so bossy and my gran was so mean to Dela and I.'

‘Bossy? You have just one bossy aunty?' Wayne asked, his arms adjusting a little to settle around her waist.

‘Oh yes. My mum's only sister, Marie-Ann. When she used to visit us in Zimbabwe, she would shout at us and smack us, and Dela and I still have no idea why when my mum and dad never smacked us. And then when we moved here, and we drove Mum's car down from Pietermaritzburg into Durban, she insisted on driving, when my mum was quite capable of completing the journey. At least in South Africa she didn't have to avoid all the donkey carts like Mum always does … did. Aunty Marie-Ann flew down the pass at one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour, and spent the whole trip telling us that it had been many years since my mum was in South Africa, there had been a lot of changes, and Durban was a really busy city now. As if Bulawayo wasn't busy too. She tries to lord it over my mum the whole time.'

‘Really?' Wayne said.

‘Yes, and at one point she told me that I had to learn that in South Africa my attitude wouldn't be tolerated.'

‘What attitude? You don't have an attitude!' Wayne defended her.

‘Exactly. Just because I stand up to her she says I have an attitude,' Tara said, and it was as if a floodgate inside her had burst and she began to tell Wayne more. Things she would normally keep to herself.

‘Once she called my mother a “brick”, and when I told her my mother wasn't some piece of building equipment that will be broken down and thrown away she hit the steering wheel so hard, I thought she would break it.'

‘Oh I bet that went down well.'

‘No.'

‘I don't think I like your bossy aunty much.'

‘Me neither,' Tara said. ‘Do you have one like that?'

‘No, my dad was an only child, and my mum doesn't talk to her family. If I have them, I don't have contact with them.'

‘That's sad. He was an only child, and now you are too. Don't you get lonely? When we were younger, Dela and I would play together for ages. I know I was never lonely.'

‘No, I can't remember being lonely. I was usually with my dad on the farm, playing with the
piccaninnies.
There were always other kids to play with.'

‘We used do that too. Guess a Zimbabwe farm upbringing and a South African one have their similarities.'

‘So where exactly in Durban does your gran live? Durban is pretty big.'

‘Off Point Road.'

‘You kidding? Point Road is known for its hookers and being a rough dock area with lots of whorehouses.'

‘Very funny,' Tara said. Even though she knew of its reputation, the people she had met there hadn't seemed so bad. Like her family, they were just trying to make a living and get by. ‘She lives in a terrace house, and it shares walls with neighbours on two sides,' Tara said. ‘It's railway housing. Apparently my gran used to work for the railways, and she got to keep her house when she retired, because Aunty Marie-Ann's husband still works for them, so they say he and Aunty Marie-Ann live there with her, so it's technically his railway house now. But my uncle and aunty really live in Marie-Ann's flat on the Berea. And my gran lives alone at the Point.'

‘Wow, I never even knew there was housing down there. I thought it was all docks,' Wayne said.

‘When I first landed up there, I wondered what had happened to my life. I'd lived on a beautiful farm with horses, and wide open spaces, and friendly workers. Then in a decent enough town house in Bulawayo, with a pool, in a lovely neighbourhood, and suddenly there I was in that terraced house, in a slum. I didn't know life could get so bad.'

He hugged her tight again. ‘Hey, you got out of there, and now you have a nice house in Hluhluwe.'

‘And a nice warthog in the garden. But when I first got to South Africa, it was scary. My mother's family was scary. My gran took great pleasure in seeing exactly how much we couldn't do around the house.'

‘Meaning? Like what, make your bed?'

‘Yes, and more. We'd always had maids, and at boarding school you don't do a thing either, the school staff do everything. I had
never washed clothes before. Or peeled potatoes, or washed and dried dishes. My gran seemed to take great delight in torturing Dela and I by introducing us to all those things in the first few days of us living in South Africa.'

‘Wait a minute, you'd never washed a dish?'

‘No, our maid Emilie did that or our cook boy Yedwa. I never washed dishes!'

Wayne laughed. ‘I don't think I have either, but I think I could, it can't be that hard.'

‘It's not, once you are shown how to, and how to rinse them.' She shifted on her feet.

‘That's not the point, the point is that my gran seemed to take great pleasure in seeing how much we didn't know how to do around the house. Grans are supposed to be for loving and spoiling you. My dad's mum, my granny on his side, she was a real granny.' Tara smiled as she thought of her granny. She relaxed a little more into Wayne, pressing into his chest. ‘I don't remember her being the most demonstrative of people when she was alive, yet she always had a sweetie in her pocket for me and Dela, or a small present with a trinket of some sort, a new pencil for school, an eraser that had a smell. When she visited, she would always come into our room and tuck us into our beds tight so that you couldn't move.' Tara scowled, and she could feel her body tense. ‘My mother's mum is a slave driver.'