Storms Over Africa (50 page)

Drink up, you bastards. The more pissed you get, the easier it will be.

Neither man was falling down drunk by the time they finished the decanter but they both had a fixed look about their eyes. The liquor had fired their imagination and made them bold. They were staring at Penny in open lust.

Tshuma saw their intent and cut the ropes tethering Richard, Steve and Penny. He also released their ankles. ‘Before we deal with the business end of this little visit, I think we should have some fun.' He jerked his head at Penny. ‘We'll go upstairs now, my little dove. I think your father might enjoy watching.'

‘Daddy!' It was a scream of terror.

He was helpless. His hands were still roped together behind his back. Tshuma held the rifle fifteen centimetres from his chest. If he moved so much as an eyelid Tshuma would pull the trigger. He was no use to Penny dead.

Elizabeth had tears flowing from her eyes. ‘Go with the spirits, my daughter,' she called in Shona. ‘Fly with the spirits.'

But Penny, with fear hammering into her brain, did not hear her.

As they passed through the hall to go upstairs Richard looked frantically through the kitchen window for the hedge but he saw
nothing. ‘Now,' he thought fiercely. ‘Now, Whatever you're going to do, do it
now
.'

They were herded into Penny's room. Richard and Steve were forced to sit on the floor and, by elaborately trying to find a comfortable spot, Richard placed himself where he thought he had hidden the knife.

Penny was pleading with Tshuma. She was sobbing and begging. Joseph Tshuma watched her impassively. Finally, and lazily, he hit her just as he had hit Steve earlier. With her hands still tied, she lost her balance and went crashing to the floor. Tshuma went to her and, in one swift movement, ripped her nightdress from her body. The other two moved forward for a better look.

‘Put her on the bed.' Tshuma had more rope in his hand. Penny was spread-eagled, tied to the four corners of the bed, her womanhood open for the men in her room to touch, stare at, abuse.

Richard's fingers scrabbled under the carpet. It was difficult with his hands tied but he finally felt the bone handle of the knife under his fingers. His relief at finding it almost made him call out in elation. He had not expected it to be there. Steve edged closer, shielding his actions. Nobody was watching them. They were all looking at Penny. He prised the knife out and, by pressing his back hard into the wall and using his leather belt to shield himself
from its sharply honed cutting edge, he jammed it, blade up, against the wall. Then he began to saw at the ropes around his wrists.

Penny screamed. Richard ignored her. He had to. He cut his thumb down to the bone. But the pain of it did not stop him hearing the squeak of bedsprings as one of the men climbed up next to her. He sawed frantically. He heard Steve next to him gasp in horror. Heard Penny begging. Heard the bedsprings squawk and squeak as Penny fought and fought as best she could. Heard the other man cry, ‘Hurry, hurry, give it to her. My turn, my turn.' Heard Penny sobbing. Heard the man on the bed gasp, ‘Untie her legs, get her legs up, I can't get in.' Heard Penny crying. Heard the animal grunting and ragged breath of the cowardly dung-heap, maggoty animal bastard trying to rape her. Heard Tshuma laughing.

The ropes cut through and he was on his feet. As he sprang at the man fighting his daughter he knew he should have gone for the rifle. But blood was in his head, thumping, pounding, red-hot blood and he did not care about the rifle. All he cared about was Penny. He heard a shot but felt nothing. The man on his daughter, the pilot, fell on his back to the floor with Richard on top of him. He saw the man's phallus, swollen, purple with lust. He still held the knife. Anticipating pain, death, bullets at any moment, Richard cut off that
foul part of the man's body which had dared to threaten his daughter. The pilot's scream of pain, then of horrible realisation, was music to his ears. He drowned in it. He embraced it. He embraced death. He did not care any more.

‘Richard!' Steve's scream brought him out of it. He sat astride the pilot, the man's blood pumping from between his legs, Richard's own breath coming in ragged gasps and he realised she was at his side.

‘Steve!' The blood was pounding, pounding in his head. She did not look real.

‘It's over, darling.' She was sobbing and holding him, her own hands free. ‘It's over.'

He looked slowly around the room, his vision clearing. There were his men, the men from the village, his workers, his friends, his saviours. They were holding golf clubs.
Golf clubs for God's sake!
They had gone against a gun and machetes with golf clubs. Someone had cut Penny's bonds and thrown a blanket over her. She lay, curled into a foetal position, not moving.

He staggered up and went to her, lying next to her, putting his arms around her hurt and bruised, abused and terrified little person. She went absolutely stiff until he whispered, ‘It's me, Penny-farthing. It's me. It will always be me.' And he held her and rocked her.

Steve herded the others from the room.
‘Now,' she thought. ‘I have to leave now. Now, while he's occupied, needed. Later I will not have the strength.'

They took the pilot, held by the feet so his head bumped down the stairs. Blood left a thick snaking line along the green carpet. He was tossed off the verandah and left to bleed to death. They took the other man, naked and ready for his turn. His screams as they cut off his manhood were wild and agony-filled. Steve put her hands over her ears. Then she took them away. This was a wild land. These were wild people. And this was justice if she had ever seen it done.

Tshuma had been hit with a seven iron and a thin stream of blood trickled down his face and onto his shirt. They would have treated him to the same punishment but she stopped them. ‘He will rot in prison,' she told the men from the village. ‘He will be as a bird in a cage which is too small. He will go slowly mad in his boredom.'

Tshuma looked wildly around. ‘No,' he screamed at the men. ‘Kill me now.'

And the men from the village looked from Steve to Joseph Tshuma and they realised that the punishment she spoke of would be far greater than the punishment they had intended.

‘I can't think of a nicer person for it to happen to,' Steve said to the men from the village.

They laughed with her.

She looked at Joseph. ‘What a pity you have the mind of a caveman.'

She laughed at him. She had touched the wild herself and the wild had reached out and touched her back. Vengeance was sweet. An eye for an eye. She knew the feeling would pass. She went inside and telephoned the Security Forces.

While she waited she wrote Richard a note.

I love you. I will love you forever.

She would have written more but, when she looked at the words, realised she had said it all.

She hitched a lift to Harare with the helicopter. Tshuma, grey and old-looking, saw the face of the white helicopter pilot and realised the end had truly come. The black pilot died on the way back to Harare. ‘His death,' said a grim-faced soldier, ‘would be put down to a mysterious virus.' The other man lived. His life, once he was well enough to go to prison, would be a misery.

Much later that day Richard stood on the verandah and watched the doctor's car drive away. The good man had come all the way from Harare when Richard explained that he was too scared to move his daughter. The doctor had examined her thoroughly and sedated her. He pronounced her physically well. He was not so sure about her mental condition.
He recommended a clinic in Switzerland, far away from Africa, far away from the wildness and the danger. Richard promised to consider it. When the doctor left, he took Moses with him for a short stay in hospital. Tshuma's shot had creased his skull and knocked him out briefly. He had been concussed but it had not stopped him running for help. The silent and stoic man had looked startled, then embarrassed, when Richard hugged him. ‘Please, master, I am not a woman.' But he got into the doctor's car grinning.

Richard knew why Steve had gone. He found her note and understood her pain. He knew he could find her if he wanted to. But he knew it would be no use. Love needed clean air.

Penny was moved to the guest room downstairs. She was groggy, weepy and clingy. Her strength, her stubborn will, had flown. He prayed it would come back. She would need it in the forthcoming days, weeks, months, maybe years. For now, he freely gave her his own.

Wellington brought them soup. ‘Go to your house, old one,' Richard told him in Shona. ‘It has been too big a day for such an old man.'

‘I am not such an old man. I am well.'

Richard looked at him, really looked at him. In the twenty years he had known him the man had aged and become grey. His slight
body was a little stooped. But his brown eyes were clear and fine and his smile was real and loving. ‘I have not seen you too often,' he said in Shona, ‘but I see you now, my friend. Thank you.'

‘It is easy to look through someone who is always there, master.'

‘Yes it is.' Richard looked at the man, loving him. ‘But I will not do it again.'

Wellington smiled. ‘Yes you will, master.'

Richard smiled back, nodding. ‘Yes, I probably will, my friend.'

He made Penny swallow another sedative and, once he was sure she was asleep, went outside and picked up the body of the puppy. He would bury the animal where the hedge had been. He would replant the hedge. He would replace the smashed furniture upstairs, rip out the carpets, repaint, cleanse the house of the stench of fear. ‘David will be upset over the dog.'

When did David say he was coming back?

‘Tomorrow,' he had said. So much had happened.

He spent the night on the floor beside Penny. She woke often, calling out to him, calling out to her mother. She had not put two cohesive words together since her ordeal. ‘No, not ordeal,' he thought savagely as he comforted her again. ‘Attempted rape. Let's not pretend it was anything else. Use my anger, Penny, use
it. Fight it.' He smoothed her hot brow.
What would you do, Kath? You would be gentle, understanding, loving. But Penny told me not to change. She needs this anger.

And he held his daughter and smouldered in impotent rage.

In the morning she smiled at him. ‘Hello, Daddy.'

‘Hello, my darling.'

‘You look like hell.'

‘Gee thanks, you're no oil painting yourself.'

‘Up yours.'

‘Charming.' He was smiling, delighted with her.

‘Where's Steve?'

‘Gone.' He could add nothing. It hurt too much.

‘I'll miss her.'

‘It was all she could do.'

‘Is David back?'

‘No, he'll be back later.'

‘Daddy?' She looked confused. ‘What's been happening. Why am I in the guest room?'

God! She doesn't remember.

‘Tshuma trashed upstairs.'
Oh great, Dunn, ram it down her throat why don't you. Poor little bugger.

Memory returned. Her eyes filled with tears.

He went to her and held her. ‘They didn't
touch your heart, Pen. They didn't dirty your soul. You haven't changed, darling.'

‘But I have,' she sobbed. ‘I feel filthy.' She put her face in her hands.

Where the hell are you, Kath?

‘Pen, look at me.' She shook her head. ‘I love you, Penny. I love your heart and your mind and your funny face. I love your spirit and your soul. You are my little girl. They didn't take that. You're as perfect now as you were the day you were born. You're as unblemished now as you were then.'
Fuck it, Kath, where are you? I need your words.

‘When you were eighteen months old you climbed into the contents of your nappy. You had shit from head to toe and spread from one end of your cot to the other. We threw you into a bath and it all came off.'

Jesus Christ, well done.

But Penny was shaking. It took a little while for him to realise she was laughing.

‘Why are you laughing?' he growled, horribly aware of his shortcomings.

She took her hands away from her face, threw her head back and roared.

He grinned at her. Pleased.

The tears on her cheeks were tears of mirth.

He joined her.

They laughed for nearly five minutes, belly muscles aching, unable to stop.

Penny was on the way back.

Itchy from inactivity he decided to go and look for David. He needed to do something, anything. He left Penny deeply asleep, the lines of pain and fear smoothed away. He went looking for Philamon. He had not seen the man since he returned home. But Philamon's wife said she had not seen him either. She appeared to be worried.

‘At least David's in good company,' Richard thought, driving down the escarpment towards the valley. It often worried him when his son went out on his own, his imagination sometimes ran riot with visions of bandits, rogue elephants or snakes. He never conjured up anything as mundane as mechanical breakdown. He went straight to Adam Robinson's camp. ‘But David left here last night around six.' ‘He said he was spending the night here.' ‘He said nothing about it to me.' Panic blew a gale in his head. ‘Where the hell is he then?' ‘Hang on. I'll help you look.' They followed the Land Rover tracks easily enough. They found where David had stopped and, looking around, discovered the dismantled and broken traps piled against a tree. ‘Christ, David's been tampering with the traps.' He grinned. How like his son. The boy's quiet determination was beginning to earn more of his respect.

He found more traps further into the reserve. ‘Had a busy night, I see,' he thought wryly. Then, an hour later, still following the tracks, he found the Land Rover.
Where the hell is David?

Panic turned to fear. Some instinct, some inner voice, was sounding a warning. The forest had a stillness which was abnormal, even though it was the middle of the afternoon and most animals were resting. Usually something rustled in the undergrowth, birds sang, there was always some noise. Richard scouted the area. He found a couple of traps but, unlike the others, they had not been collected and piled together, simply discarded on the ground.