The First Rule Of Survival (23 page)

De Vries looks up at her. She is trying not to smile. He thinks that she is rather beautiful; troubled perhaps, but elegant and physically fit. Her hair is dark blond, tied in a simple ponytail. She wears heavy, well-worn boots, slim jeans and a thick wide-check shirt. He discerns no make-up; just carved wooden beads around her neck. He feels infatuated, like a child.

‘You can tell I’m an urban animal?’

‘A day in the country will do you good. I have something to drink in here,’ she twists her thumb over her shoulder, ‘and some food; just sandwiches and biscuits. We can have them at the gorge. It’s about two kilometres over there.’ She points into the distance. Vaughn wonders how far two kilometres is; how far it will feel on foot. He is thankful that he has not smoked an entire pack this morning.

‘That’s nice, thank you.’

She starts to stroll forward, checking that he is following.

‘My father was called Hubert Steinhauer. As you can probably tell from the name, he was German, and Jewish. His family left Germany in 1938 and, I think because there was a family connection, they travelled to Kenya, where they made a home. My father became a doctor, and he met my mother, not Jewish, not anything; just a middle-class English girl, brought up on the outskirts of Happy Valley, and all that decadence. She bore him four children.’

‘Four?’

‘My brother Michael died when he was a teenager. And now Marc is dead, there is only Nicholas and me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thank you, but it’s not necessary. I think you will understand.’

‘I’m sorry that I interrupted you.’

‘No, you must. I am only telling you this because I think it’s what you want to know.’ She leaps a wide dry ditch, holds out her hand for de Vries. Vaughn takes it, and struggles over.

‘I was the youngest of the four, and I don’t remember much about growing up in Kenya. I was six when we moved to the Cape. My father bought a huge house in Constantia, with lots of land. This is before they sub-divided every plot to hell and built those horrible gated communities. It was a big old estate house, under ancient English oak trees, and the garden seemed to go on for ever. We had a roof tiled in slate, and that was very rare, very luxurious in those days. Stables with ponies, and stable boys to do all the hard work. It should have been an idyllic childhood.’

‘Why wasn’t it?’

‘My mother was very unhappy. I don’t think I knew it then, but in retrospect, it was obvious. He never took her out; they never seemed to entertain friends. She played bridge once a week, the same four women for years and years, but other than that I think she hardly met anyone. We children never socialized with other people at our home, or theirs. We would go to school, and the driver would be waiting at the gates to drive us straight home. My father worked in various hospitals and clinics in Cape Town, and I suppose the work was very demanding, but he was always in a filthy mood, always angry with my brothers. Most evenings, my mother and I would be in the parlour and we would hear him bawling at them. They became afraid of him. Sometimes, Michael would take Marc and they would hide in the garden. Nick was sent to find them, and then there would be even more trouble.’

‘Why was he so angry?’

‘I never really found out. Perhaps he was less angry and more just a very strict father, at least with the boys. I think he had a reputation for perfectionism at work. I know that he wasn’t very popular. I remember waiting in the car once when we were picking him up, and hearing two young doctors complaining about him, calling him a bully and a sadist. I had to look up the word in the dictionary, and I was shocked.’

She takes a deep breath, angles her face to the sun.

‘I suppose he was a Victorian father. He would take the boys out onto the mountain and walk them until they were dropping. They would come back complaining of aches and pains; their arms and legs would be scratched and bruised. But he never took me, even though I would have liked to go. And he was rarely angry with me.’

She stops, and de Vries trots up next to her, puts his hands on his knees and breathes deeply.

‘You are very unfit,’ she tells him. ‘Do you want water?’

‘Yes, please.’

She unhooks the rucksack, pulls out a plastic bottle, unscrews the cap and passes it to him. He gulps down about a quarter of it, hands it back to her, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Thank you.’

She takes one quick swig, and reseals the cap.

‘It’s hotter than I expected,’ de Vries says.

‘Are you happy to go on? We are halfway there now.’

‘Yes,’ de Vries tells her, clearing his throat of phlegm. ‘No problem.’

They set off again, and she continues speaking.

‘One day in the school holidays, when all the boys were teenagers, he took them to the Orange River. You can traverse a long section, canoeing and wading, camping on the banks. It was an eight-day trip. None of my brothers wanted to go; they pleaded with my mother to talk to their father. But he took them anyway. When they returned, they were black and blue: bitten all over their bodies, bruised and scratched. They couldn’t stand up straight, they couldn’t sit down. I tried to ask them about it, but they wouldn’t speak to me. I think they were in shock. They didn’t want to talk to my mother either. I knew something was very wrong, but I was only about eleven or twelve: I didn’t know what it could be.’

‘But later?’

‘I think my father was a very cruel man. He turned Nicholas – he is the oldest – into his lieutenant. He would bully Marc and Michael. He went through all the motions of being a good father, but he seemed to hate his sons.’

‘But he never threatened you?’

‘Never. But I think he drove my mother to an early grave. She went into hospital – we thought for exhaustion and depression more than anything else – and she never came home. The doctors said she just faded away before them. I think maybe she wanted to die.’

‘What happened to your brother?’

She turns to him. ‘It was in the winter. I think I was about fourteen or fifteen, so Nicholas would have been in his early twenties. I think Michael was just nineteen. I know that they had been arguing for days; Michael looked drained by it. The two of them went for a hike across the mountains, up onto Silvermine. It’s pretty bleak up there – like a rocky moonscape. What trees there are, are crippled, blown on their sides, but still struggling to survive. It’s rough hiking at the best of times, but in midwinter it must have been treacherous. I can’t imagine that Michael would have wanted to go but, for whatever reason, he did.’

Caroline Montague looks far into the distance. ‘I must have been at school when they left, but by the time I returned, it had happened. Nick was back at home, in tears, screaming at Marc, trying to find his father. They had been climbing one of the tors at the apex and Michael had fallen. Nick had scrambled down after him, but he said that Michael’s body was crumpled in a heap, that his neck was broken. He was sure that he was dead. By the time my father returned home, it was dark, and it wasn’t until dawn the next morning that they went back up with a search-party. They said Michael must have died straight away, but we’ll never know. He may have been out there all night, alone, terribly injured.’

She walks on in silence, de Vries almost trotting to keep up, panting. She stops a little further on, realizing that she has lost him again. When he makes up the ground, she continues.

‘After that, there was a disturbing atmosphere at home, quite different from the way it should have been. Marc and I were grieving for Michael, but it did not seem that the other two were. My father spent more and more time with Nicholas, comforting him, supporting him, telling us angrily that it wasn’t his fault. Then, one day, there was a fire in the garage. It was a wooden building with a thatched roof and it went up so quickly and burnt to the ground. I remember that Nicholas and my father blamed Marc, but he told me he had done nothing. They seemed to ostracize him after that. Marc then left for university, and didn’t come home during the holidays. I learnt to enjoy my own company, and started taking extra courses, going on school trips – anything to avoid being at home.’

‘Did you think that the fire was not an accident?’

‘After the fire, I watched Nicholas very carefully. I became convinced he had set it, then tried to blame Marc, but I couldn’t for the life of me think why. As for Michael . . . I don’t know if, then, I ever consciously thought that his death was not an accident. I probably did without distilling it down to that simple thought, but later, I wondered. More from the reaction afterwards.’

‘Did you ever discuss it with Nicholas or Marc?’

‘Nicholas, no. He ignored me. With Marc, I tried, but he would never engage with me. Maybe he was afraid that his own fears were so bizarre, I would take against him. Little by little, Marc broke off contact with his father and with me. I think that Nicholas made a point of visiting him, helped him avoid the Army afterwards. As soon as I left school, I enrolled at university in Durban. My father didn’t seem to care, and I made a new life there.’

‘And did you see anything of your family after that?’

‘Almost nothing. Nicholas tried calling me a few times but he always sounded strange. Frankly, I didn’t want him in my life. I didn’t trust him, and the more I considered the thoughts I harboured about him, the less I wanted to face him. Besides, I had made friends for the first time, had learned that life needn’t consist of round after round of fear and apprehension. I enjoyed myself, became an adult, and realized that it suited me. There was no way I wanted to go back. When our father died, just over seven years ago, I saw Nicholas and Marc at the funeral. I attended the service at the graveside, and then I got back in my car and came home.’

‘When did you move here?’

‘When I met Franz. He lived in the village. When we got married, he built this house for us, and we’ve been here ever since. Nearly thirteen years now.’

‘That’s fantastic. He treat you well?’

She stops, turns to him, curious. ‘Yes. Why?’

He shrugs, embarrassed. ‘You are all alone here – kilometres from anywhere.’

She smiles. ‘I can look after myself.’

‘I’m sure you can. You haven’t children?’

‘No – no. I told Franz that I didn’t want children. He didn’t seem to mind. He is very supportive, very loving, but he is an independent thinker. He spends all his time in his study writing, or walking with me.’

‘You’re not lonely?’

‘Not at all. We have friends in the village who visit. I love cooking. I help out on the farm. We lease the land to local farmers, and I enjoy the harvests, sheep-shearing, helping with the lambing. I have been teaching myself to paint too, just watercolours. The light here is so amazing; trying to catch it is a lifetime’s work.’ She points ahead. ‘Look, you’ll be able to see the view soon.’

They push on until they start walking on flat rock, laid on the ground like giant paving-stones, tiny mossy plants struggling up through the cracks. When they climb some natural steps in the rock, they suddenly see the landscape opening out in front of them, an almost 360-degree vista. Ahead, sunken into the landscape, is a vast canyon, its sides steep, sprouting outcrops of shrubby green. To Vaughn’s left, he sees a waterfall, a thin sliver of water trickling down maybe 200 metres, turning to glitter before it disappears in shadow and the dark pool at its base.

‘In the winter and spring, the falls are amazing, but now, they are nothing,’ Caroline tells him. She stops, unhooks the rucksack and sits on a cube of rock; gestures Vaughn to sit across from her on a similar outcrop.

He stands in awe at the magnitude of the view, letting the breeze cool his forehead and under his arms. She takes out some fruit juice, the water, and a bottle of beer.

‘I didn’t know whether you would be drinking on duty?’

Vaughn eyes the bottle. ‘You know?’ he says. ‘I think I will.’

She cracks off the top against the side of the rock and hands it to him. She then pulls out a foil-wrapped bundle of sandwiches, squashed and battered.

‘They don’t look much, but they are ewes’ cheese – from the sheep you saw – and homemade pickle. I imagine you’ve worked up an appetite?’

‘I have.’

They each take one and munch silently, Vaughn listening to the breeze whispering hoarsely in the shrubs, still taking in the enormity of the gorge, which curls lazily away into the distance, narrowing until he cannot see where it ends. As they eat a second sandwich, they hear a deep series of barking staccato roars which echo down the sunken valley. Caroline jumps up, peers down the canyon sides.

‘What is it?’ Vaughn asks, following her, standing just a pace behind her.

‘Baboon,’ she replies, not turning around. ‘Probably the dominant male calling all his women to him. There was fighting in the spring, and the outcast males are at the other end, probably plotting his downfall.’

‘It’s a remarkable sound.’

‘It’s wonderful,’ Caroline agrees. She turns round. ‘I can’t see him, but he’s down there somewhere. You can get down to the bottom; sometimes I swim there, and I am always afraid that when I get out, he’ll be waiting for me.’

‘That’s a worrying thought.’

‘Well, not really. He has enough women.’ She chuckles. ‘In any case, when you’re in the water, you’re quite safe.’ She gazes down into the canyon again. ‘I’m sorry. There’s probably more you want to know.’

‘I don’t know. I came to find out about your family, your brothers. If Marc was involved, then I wondered whether Nicholas might be also.’

‘You must ask them.’

‘I was enjoying the moment,’ Vaughn replies. ‘Whatever happened in your childhood, you seem to have made a good life for yourself. Living here must make you appreciate all that nature has to offer.’

‘It does. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else now.’

They share the water bottle again, finish a last sandwich each.

‘And what about you,Vaughn? You have a wife and family?’

‘Me? Two daughters – both at university now. My wife and I are . . . well, I think our marriage ended some time ago. We both have our careers, and they are demanding, time-consuming jobs. They tend to exclude relationships, and we’ve kind of . . . I guess we’ve let it happen.’