Rambles on the Edge. Wendy Maitland

in that window, but here it will come right onto my bed. And mozzies will come in too. Look, you can already see where there have been puddles on the floor. Look, Mum, you must show Dad.’

      ‘We’ll screen the window somehow, don’t worry about that, just be glad to have your own room.’

      There was no time to think about screens or anything else at that stage while unloading our furniture and boxes into the house before any rain did arrive. The rainy season had started and we were lucky that the furniture van had been able to ford a small river that looked a bit too close to the house for safety if it overflowed. I wondered if that factor had been a reason for abandoning the use of the building as a grain shed. The dogs, freed from the back of the car where they had been piled in with suitcases, ran around getting in the way, so the first unpacking was to bring out their bowls, and a kettle to make tea for ourselves and the removal men.

      Our furniture was a sparse collection of essentials hastily assembled when we first arrived in Gwelo and now looked even more dreary as the assorted pieces became dispersed among rooms, but I was glad to see that we did have electricity and a telephone.

      Simon stood outside dangling Peter’s pot by its handle in one hand, while the other hand held Peter’s reassuringly as, side by side, they looked up at the sky where dark clouds were rolling in. ‘When we went in Grandpa’s plane it could go really high,’ Simon was telling Peter earnestly, ‘and it could go inside clouds, but only white ones, not black ones like these. Grandpa said they were too bumpy and the plane had to go round them.’ Peter listened but said nothing in reply. At two years old he was not yet talking, having no need to while Simon anticipated every need and looked after him so attentively that I began to think it might lead to arrested development. Simon himself was only four, but had already become a commanding presence with assumed responsibilities that included taking charge of Peter and the pot. This was carried around like a trophy to be flourished at any moment of indication. Peter had just one word of speech: ‘Wa-wa,’ his name for Simon. Instant attention would follow whenever Peter spoke this word. It was endearing in a way, but not if normal speech became permanently delayed. In addition he was still very small for his age, but Muz pointed out that her family were all petite and small-boned, including her father, and this went with handsome features she assured me.

      I longed for her to visit, or Fa, or Ros; especially Ros who was a great ally in converting any setback into a cause for merriment and parody. We had found this was a good way of defusing all kinds of stresses and weirdness as we grew up clinging onto our madly spinning family carousel. The laughter remedy probably saved us from joining poor Spindle in mental oblivion.

      There was little chance of Muz visiting, as she explained she could not contemplate coming without Andy, but that he had no inclination to accompany her and risk encountering savage animals and deadly African diseases. Instead they were enjoying frequent forays into the civilised and charming territory of France to explore its great motorways, with Andy hugging the highroad like Mr Toad. Once he was behind the wheel in the redoubtable Austin Princess he was unstoppable. ‘Now that your father has got his divorce,’ Muz wrote, ‘I am free to marry again, and it will no doubt help to ease any guilt he might feel in having abandoned me if I am safely married off to someone else. Andy continues to press proposals of marriage at every opportunity and I can see no reason to go on refusing, despite Mary’s opposition. I don’t love him in the sense of being in love, but he incessantly declares his love for me most sincerely, and we have a loving friendship. At my age I can’t really ask for more, so I will accept him the next time he asks.’

      There was nothing I could do about this, so I tried to be glad that she had found a solution to her loneliness, hoping that somehow it would turn out all right despite Mary’s warning.

      Our new employer, Eric Hornby, was well known in Rhodesian farming circles with a Friesian herd of 380 milking cows on several thousand acres of prime land that produced a variety of crops, including cotton. The rich flat fields were ideal for crops or cattle raising, but did not provide a very arresting landscape. Looking out from our house in the bean field there were no scenic landmarks and most of the trees had been cleared. A few of these had been left to indicate a boundary between us and the smallholding of Thornby Farm next door, where Eric’s sister Hazel lived very frugally with her husband and five children. They ran a small market garden and farm store that struggled to generate an income, in contrast to Eric’s prosperous acres. Hazel and I became good friends as we combined what resources we had to help each other in these mutually barren circumstances.

      There were compensations as life was peaceful and well-ordered in terms of government services like health, security and administration. We could not have imagined, just then, that our unremarkable district of Hartley would find itself in the front line of a brutal war within seven years, and that poor Hazel’s family would be decimated.

      For now, our first day at Rogate was ominous in its own way as the glowering rain clouds that Simon and Peter had been watching from outside soon burst in a violent storm. A deluge fell onto the house and surrounding bean field while we were still moving in. Adam had just unrolled carpets and rugs to disguise the effect of concrete floors, and Louise was arranging her bedroom having made her bed and unpacked toys and clothes, when the storm erupted. There was no time to cover her chicken-wire window against incoming rain when she shouted, ‘My bed is getting soaked, and the carpet is floating away.’ It wasn’t just her bedside rug that had become waterborne; all the others, newly laid, were bobbing about in a tide of muddy water surging in under the front and back doors. The construction of the building had not included obvious essentials to avoid this problem. Were we expected to bring duck-boards with us I wondered in this new situation which was several notches down from the Maclean’s superior housing. All we could do was wait for the rain to stop, which it usually does abruptly in Africa, and then get to work with brooms and mops.

      Milking times were at 3.30 am, 10 am and 3 pm. This intensive routine was designed for maximum milk production, but was punishing for the dairy workers, and for the cows as they got worn out and had shorter lives than when they were milked twice a day. After each milking there was the cooling process to supervise, sick animals to treat, cows lined up for AI, cows calving, outside herds of followers (young animals) for checking, bulls to be visited in their pens and calves in theirs, and then a good deal of office work. Adam would come home for breakfast at 9 am, and later for lunch, then not until 7.30 pm when the boys were in bed, but Louise was allowed to stay up to say goodnight to him. It was a demanding life, but there is a particular type of satisfaction in dairy farming that is difficult to explain to anyone who has not lived it. Cows have personalities and even in a big herd there are misfits and rebels: the canny ones looking to see how they can beat the system; others that are gently affectionate and charming; the younger ones who are curious and friendly, their noses outstretched enquiringly. The warm smell of these animals is comforting; the soft neck and flank of a cow at close quarters with the feel and scent of its body and that of hay or fresh grass has a soothing intimacy. Cows are vegetarians so their pats are nothing more obnoxious than chewed and digested plants. The relationship which develops between man, woman and beast in the steamy environment of milk production is a close and committed one. It can border on addiction, I used to think, as Adam’s dedication to this relentless routine had its frustrating times, such as weekends and Christmas in addition to the long working hours each day. He was supposed to have regular days off, but these were often spent catching up on office work. If it was an addiction then there was little hope that he might consider a change, I thought.

      The children took all this as normal since they had known no other life, and the boys quickly made friends among the children of African workers on the farm, where they roamed free and came home looking as dirty and ragged as any other scamps met along the way. It would have shocked Muz, so I consoled myself that she had not come to view our fall from grace. Louise did not join the boys, preferring the friendship of Hazel’s daughters whom she joined at Hartley School and settled there without a qualm. It was a popular school, famed for its academic and sporting excellence, so this helped us to feel better about the various shortcomings in our situation. Rugby was almost a religion in Rhodesia and training for boys started at age five in the first form, which made Simon very impatient to start school and go off with Louise each morning. Meeting other parents was my own passport to making