Soul Sisters Read online

  Soul Sisters

  LESLEY LOKKO

  Contents

  TIMELINE

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE: 1949: Twenty-eight years later

  1

  2

  3

  4

  PART TWO: 1978: Twenty-nine years later

  5

  6

  7

  PART THREE: 1987: Nine years later

  8

  PART FOUR: 1997: Ten years later

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  PART FIVE: 1998: Three months later

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  PART SIX: 1998: Two months later

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  PART SEVEN: 1998: Two months later

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  PART EIGHT: 2001: Three years later

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  PART NINE: 2004: Three years later

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  PART TEN: 2004: A month later

  74

  PART ELEVEN: 2005: A year later

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  PART TWELVE: 2008: Three years later

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  PART THIRTEEN: 2010: Two years later

  90

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  For Debs and Nic, who are always in my thoughts. And for Megs and Lois, who keep them – and me – so close.

  Some mistakes can never be undone.

  ‘The chameleon gets behind the fly, remains motionless for some time, then he advances very slowly and gently, first putting forward one leg and then another. At last, when well within reach, he darts his tongue and the fly disappears. England is the chameleon and I am that fly’

  LOBENGULA

  ‘[The British] happen to be the best people in the world, with the highest ideals of decency and justice and liberty and peace, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for humanity’

  CECIL RHODES

  TIMELINE

  Prologue

  Matabeleland, Southern Rhodesia

  1921

  George McFadden [23] b.1898

  Nozipho [17]

  Margaret [19] b.1902

  PART 1

  1949

  Chapters 1–4

  Edinburgh

  Robert [13] b.1936

  Aneni [16] b.1933

  Margaret [47]

  George [51]

  PART 2

  1978

  Chapters 5–7

  Edinburgh & Harare

  Jen [9] b.1969

  Robert [42]

  Kemi [9] b.1969

  Margaret [76]

  PART 3

  1987

  Chapter 8

  Edinburgh

  Jen [18]

  Kemi [18]

  Robert [51]

  PART 4

  1997

  Chapters 9–27

  London & Johannesburg

  Jen [28]

  Kemi [28]

  Solam [31] b.1966

  Robert [61]

  Oliver [58] b.1939

  Iketleng [55] b.1942

  PART 5

  1998

  Chapters 28–47

  Edinburgh/London/Johannesburg

  Jen [29]

  Kemi [29]

  Solam [32]

  Robert [62]

  Julian [52]

  Alice [late 50s]

  PART 6

  1998

  Chapters 48–53

  Johannesburg

  [same]

  PART 7

  1998

  Chapters 54–60

  Johannesburg

  [same]

  PART 8

  2001

  Chapters 61–66

  Johannesburg

  Jen [32]

  Kemi [32]

  Solam [36]

  Robert [65]

  Julian [55]

  PART 9

  2004

  Chapters 67–73

  Johannesburg

  Jen [35]

  Kemi [35]

  Solam [39]

  Robert [68]

  PART 10

  2004

  Chapter 74

  Almondsbury

  [same]

  PART 11

  2005

  Chapters 75–81

  Johannesburg

  Jen [36]

  Kemi [36]

  Solam [40]

  Robert [69]

  PART 12

  2008

  Chapters 82–89

  Johannesburg

  Jen [39]

  Kemi [39]

  Solam [43]

  Robert [72]

  PART 13

  2010

  Chapter 90

  Johannesburg

  Jen [41]

  Kemi [41]

  Solam [45]

  Epilogue

  Cape Town

  2010

  Jen [41]

  Kemi [41]

  Solam [45]

  PROLOGUE

  Matabeleland, Southern Rhodesia, 1921

  George McFadden listened intently as Reverend Grove outlined his plans for the new mission station at Marula, some sixty miles south-west of Bulawayo along the wavering, thinly tarred road that led to Bechuanaland. George gripped the back of the chair, his ruddy face screwed up as he struggled to suppress his rising panic at the pools of sweat forming under his armpits, sliding down his ribcage. His protruding knuckles showed white against his freckled skin, burned to an angry reddened stripe at the nape where the fierce African sun bore endlessly down upon him. He’d been instructed to wear a hat at all times, but no one had mentioned the wind. On his very first day, striding out confidently across one of the closely grazed fields, a breeze sprang up out of nowhere and whipped it off his head. He’d immediately given chase, but stopped after a few seconds, aware of himself as a figure of ridicule to the clutch of children squatting in a hollow in the sandy road running next to the fields. One of them stood up and pointed at him, covering his mouth with his hand in a universal gesture of amusement or amazement, hard to tell which. He was a strange sight in these parts. A tall, red-haired white man with a sparse, gingery beard and dark, close-together eyebrows . . . little wonder they stared. Apart from himself, Reverend Grove, Tim Bellingham and the occasional travelling salesman, there were no other white men within a hundred-mile radius of the little mission village.

  He was suddenly aware of a deepening silence. He looked up. Reverend Grove had finished talking and
was looking expectantly at George, waiting for an answer. The sweat now pooled against his waist. He pressed his arms against his sides. It was the heat; the damned heat. He moved about it in a dazed torpor all day long, unable to think clearly. ‘I . . . I beg pardon, sir,’ he stammered, reaching for a handkerchief to mop his perspiring face. ‘I . . . I’m afraid I didnae catch . . .’

  Reverend Grove winced. George’s heart sank. He knew how much his thick Scots burr offended him. Reverend Grove’s carefully modulated accent spoke of a very different background to the Glasgow tenement where George had sprung from. George was one of thirteen children left penniless when his father, a dockyard worker, was hit by a swinging boom and thrown, already lifeless, into the murky waters of the Clyde. His mother wasted no time in presenting George, one of the brighter of her sons, to a distant cousin of hers, Alistair Corcoran, who somewhat reluctantly offered to pay for George’s education. George rarely saw his uncle after that first visit. In due course, however, aged twenty-three with his degree firmly in hand, he was able to call upon his uncle in his elegant home on Law Crescent, in the shadow of the Dundee Law. He was shown into the dining room and his benefactor got up and embraced him. The lad had done well for himself, yes, indeed, it was clear. The investment had paid off. Emboldened by the warm reception and the glass of sherry pressed into his large hands, George hurriedly launched into further plans. He’d been thinking of something in the legal profession . . . perhaps even a barrister? His benefactor took off his glasses and stared at him. There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence, during which George began to panic. Had he said something wrong? His uncle cleared his throat. Had George perhaps considered Africa? Well, no, he had not. Africa? He remembered growing breathless. He’d tried to keep the panic out of his voice, much as he was doing now. Africa?

  ‘George, I asked if you’ve any carpentry skills?’ Reverend Grove’s voice broke into George’s painful recollections. The Reverend’s weary expression gave him away. He already knew George’s feeble answer.

  ‘No, er, no . . . I have not,’ George admitted. ‘It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t on the, er, curriculum.’

  Reverend Grove sighed. ‘What do they teach you fellows these days?’ he muttered. ‘Well, we’ll just have to make the best of it.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll—’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you’ll—’

  Both men spoke quickly, not wishing to linger. George paused; the right of way was the Reverend’s.

  ‘It was a gift from Rhodes,’ the Reverend said, fumbling in his waistcoat for his pipe. He lit it carefully, a thin plume of smoke rising vertically towards the thatched roof of the hut that had served for the past five years as the mission school. It was the hut’s replacement with a brick-and-stone building they were now discussing.

  ‘That . . . that was very kind of him,’ George murmured, not knowing quite what to say. Carpentry? He’d never held a hammer in his life.

  ‘Indeed.’

  The two men stood for a moment in the deepening silence. There didn’t seem to be anything further to say.

  ‘Well, you’d best be getting along,’ Reverend Grove said finally. ‘Darkness falls quickly in these parts.’

  ‘Aye, that it does,’ George agreed. He got up hurriedly and moved towards the doorway. Outside, the shadows were already long on the ground, dancing where the wind stirred the trees, sending their leaves into a whispering flurry. He crossed the patch of bare ground behind the mission, his feet biting into the warm sandy red soil, sending up little clouds of ochre-coloured dust. The sweet, thick after-taste of sorghum beer was in his mouth and throat – his mind, too – as he walked unsteadily towards the cluster of thatched huts that marked the beginning of the village. Hamlet? Settlement? Township? Even after eighteen months he found it hard to name it. Less than a village, more than a clearing . . . what was it?

  A bird called out and a dog barked somewhere beyond the clearing where clumps of mealies were bunched together, desperate for rain. He glanced up at the sky. Not a cloud in sight. Clear and high, the blue of it – azure, cerulean, Prussian, cobalt, turquoise – stretched to infinity, beyond infinity. It made his eyes ache, dizzy to the point of collapse. It wasn’t a blue he could recall ever seeing before. He was a Scotsman. His whole being was finely and permanently attuned to the quicksilver changes in weather that were a feature of his homeland. Clear skies in Scotland were a rare occasion. Usually the weather was thick and hanging, always threatening rain. Not here. Not a spit of rain in days, weeks, months. Oh, how he longed for it, and for the taste of something other than the sour, ferment-smelling pap they made from corn, a tasteless porridge with none of the gritty snap and bite of Scottish oats. Pap and wild spinach – that seemed to be the extent of their diet. No wonder the men, women and children were listless to the point of apathy. Out here, sixty miles from the nearest town and life beyond the near-futile scratching out of an existence for their daily food, there was nothing to sustain them nutritionally, materially or spiritually. He brought himself up abruptly. His thoughts were veering dangerously again. It was on account of the latter – spirituality – that they were here. Grove, Bellingham and himself. At the thought of Tim Bellingham, his gut tightened. Twenty years old, golden-haired, tanned and boyishly enthusiastic, he’d come out recently from Cambridge with his head full of new ideas, most – nay, all – of which filled George McFadden with dread. Dread because he hadn’t thought of them. Dread because everything that came out of Timothy Bellingham’s mouth seemed so . . . clever, so reasonable, so thoughtful . . . so right. The frightfully clever-sounding words tripped off his tongue. Latin, Greek, a touch of ancient Hebrew, when he was so inclined. And unlike George, afflicted with both a stammer and a burr, the natives appeared to have no trouble understanding him. In addition to his perfectly modulated Etonian English, in six weeks he’d mastered more Shona – an unforgiving, illogical tongue if George had ever heard one – than George had in eighteen months. ‘Sawubona, nkosi.’ That was what the elders called him. ‘Nkosi’. ‘The learned one’, a term reserved for the most respected amongst them. Even Reverend Grove wasn’t an ‘nkosi’. No, only Timothy Bellingham with his easy, loping walk and charming manner was that.

  Suddenly a movement in the bushes to his left caught his eye. He stopped abruptly. Although the low scrub that surrounded the village could hardly be called jungle – not enough rain for that – he was still fearful. Here in the heart of Africa, a harmless-looking spider could inject enough venom into a man’s hand to kill him in seconds. And it wasn’t just the spiders. Although rarely glimpsed, snakes the size of yam tubers slumbered in the warm cracks of rocks, just waiting to be trodden upon. He’d seen what happened to a goat or a donkey bitten by one of those. Half an hour; that was all it took.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called out. His skin tingled unnervingly. There was a scuffling noise and then the unmistakable sound of giggling. He stared into the deepening gloom. Darkness fell so swiftly here, close to the tropics. The mealie stalks rustled. His fingers closed around the Bible in his left hand. ‘Who goes there?’ he all but shouted.

  The stalks parted to reveal two faces. He almost let go of the Bible in relief. Two young girls, identical in their unspecified features. He still hadn’t learned to distinguish between them, unable to recall who was who, in spite of Reverend Grove’s masterful attempts to Anglicize their dreadfully long and complex names. He could scarcely tell the difference between boys and girls. If it wasn’t for the fact that the men sported ragged beards and the women went bare-breasted, he wasn’t sure he’d know which was which amongst his own age group, truth be told. But the two in front of him were girls. It was clear. Their pubescent breasts with thick, dark, puffy nipples were right in front of him. He cast his eyes downwards, his whole body being flooded with hot, awkward embarrassment. Would they not learn? It was so unseemly. So un-Christian.

  ‘Sawubona, bwana,’ they both sang in unison. His eyes fluttered upwards momentarily. He thought he recogni
zed one of them, though he’d be damned if he could remember her name. The darker of the two. She was the Chief’s daughter, or so he’d surmised. Hard to tell, what with their multiple women and everything. Who belonged to whom? They lived in compounds, not homes, and their language, such as he’d come to understand it, was no help. Everyone was a ‘sister’ or a ‘brother’, and the word for ‘woman’ could mean anything – wife, concubine, mother, sister, grandmother, aunt. It was all so loose and unfettered, so unstructured. Yes, the natives were unstructured in their ways.