The music is so loud she has to snuggle up and place her mouth right next to my ear. I don’t mind. She smells of coconut. Her warm breath along the side of my neck elicits a few faint chills. The argument has become a side show.
Elizabeth is the eldest of seven children. Her mother died when she was thirteen, leaving her as a surrogate matriarch. ‘My father is a plumber,’ she says. ‘He was always either working or drinking. He didn’t know how to cope with a home full of children.’ Elizabeth only started college when she was twenty-seven. Eight years later she’s finishing a PhD. She doesn’t look like an older woman.
‘My father is so proud,’ she says. ‘No Routledge ever went to university before. He even joined the anti-apartheid movement when I explained to him that blacks in South Africa couldn’t vote or live in the same areas as whites. He idolises Nelson Mandela.’
I tell her about my own adulation of Mugabe and reconciliation.
‘Are you a Christian?’ she asks.
‘No. But my parents are. Big time Christians. We barely speak. They’re fanatics.’
‘Lots of them in America,’ she says.
I don’t mind her criticism of my parents this time. We’ve moved on from the exchange over tea at the archives. Besides, the fundamentalism my parents have imbibed is incomprehensible to me, let alone to someone from another country.
When the Mapfumo record ends, Joy picks up Gary who’s just woken up from a nap. ‘We have to go,’ she says. ‘If Gary’s sleep routine gets disturbed, our household goes into a tailspin.’
It sounds like an excuse to escape Colin. How could a tiny baby disrupt the life of two adults? The few times I saw her after Hilary was born, Janet used to moan about the same thing, searching for pity. I didn’t give her any.
Elizabeth walks the Americans to their car.
‘Sorry,’ Colin says. ‘Sometimes I do get a little emotional about my politics.’
‘A little emotional?’ says Lisa. ‘When have you ever been a little emotional?’
Lisa looks a bit like Janet – short, thick, black hair, and a small yet intense body. She wears a gold stud through one side of her nose. She might come from Indian ancestry, but given the complicated racial categories of South Africa I definitely won’t ask.
‘I didn’t mean to tar you with the same brush as Chuck and Joy,’ Colin tells me. ‘Those are real Americans. Our struggles here are life and death matters. Not silly games.’
‘Whenever you drink it ends up like this,’ says Lisa. She’s sitting alone in the middle of the carpet.
‘I hope we didn’t ruin your evening,’ she adds, looking at me.
Colin goes to the bathroom.
‘I think it’s because of his brother,’ Lisa says. ‘They sentenced him to five years this week for refusing military service. That’s a lot of time for a white person.’
She goes on to tell me how the police have harassed her family members, hunting for Colin. ‘Our family name is Abrahams. It’s a very common name in South Africa. Most of the people the police have bothered aren’t even related to me.’
Colin comes back with his hair and beard soaking wet. When Elizabeth returns, he promises to be ‘more polite the next time no matter how ugly the Americans are’. Elizabeth finds a diplomatic reply, adding she didn’t know Chuck and Joy were so conservative. ‘You should have heard them outside carrying on about communists,’ she says.
Elizabeth summons me to the kitchen. ‘I’ll get rid of them,’ she says. ‘Don’t leave just yet.’
She pours me a shot of j&b. ‘The night is still young,’ she adds. She’s drinking peppermint schnapps.
After they leave, Elizabeth tells me she’s in Harare on an exchange with a local academic. ‘He gets my one-bedroom flat in dreary London. I get this three-bedroom house with a swimming pool and Georgia, the maid.’
I’m not really listening. Between surges of sexual tension, I’m considering the prospect that the Mozambicans killed Tichasara. Sounds feasible given Mozambique’s Marxist government. While Elizabeth trails her finger along the back of my ear, a flurry of dates comes on: 1809, the birth of Abraham Lincoln; 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation.
I stop the flow there. She’s already led me to the bedroom.
‘The bed came with the house,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Not my choice.’
It’s a four-poster with canopy. The cover and spread are purple, with gold frills.
Elizabeth wears a long light blue t-shirt to bed. She likes to rub my tummy, which is embarrassing. It’s grown too large. At least she also has a little baby fat.
Her kisses taste of mint. She seems more at ease than I am, even after two more shots of j&b. I’m not sure she’s satisfied in the end, but I’ve never figured out how to ask that question.
The roots of her hair still have a trace of the coconut smell.
In the morning we shower together, but the hot water runs out before we get past playfully washing each other’s backs. Afterwards, she makes Jamaican blend coffee by draining it through paper filters. Georgia brings fresh bread from the Italian bakery.
I leave before noon. We promise to meet again and share more ideas about research. The night with Elizabeth was so comfortable – buttery green beans, fried mint kisses. It’s been many months since a woman’s head rested on my shoulder.
On my way home, I buy the Sunday paper. It details how some ‘agents of apartheid’ blew up four planes belonging to the Zimbabwean air force the previous day. The planes were parked at an airfield in Gweru.
Though the news is disturbing, my mind quickly shifts elsewhere. I can’t stop thinking about Florence tending to the wounds on Geoff Gilbert’s forehead. That’s genuine reconciliation.
Chapter 11
For a couple of months Elizabeth and I become inseparable. We drive to the archives in her blue Mazda, drink Mr Murehwa’s tea, return to her house for dinner, conversation and cosy lovemaking in the four-poster bed. I’m not sure if we have a future and I don’t ask. The relationship meets our needs in this exciting, decidedly slow-paced and foreign country.
I still don’t mention my research about Tichasara. The day I go to inform Dlamini I’ll take up his offer, I tell Elizabeth I have a doctor’s appointment. I am an infrequent visitor to my granny flat. Mrs van Zyl may be lonely but I must be the least troublesome tenant she’s ever had.
Elizabeth is more than a lover; she’s my connection to the world of researchers. She knows them all: historians, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists. Nearly all are, in the local parlance, expatriate, ‘expats’ for short, meaning they come from outside Zimbabwe. This country has become a fashionable venue for British academics, in particular, to do fieldwork.
Elizabeth Routledge’s sprawling house has earned the status of compulsory stop on the expat’s tour of duty. The dinner table overflows with inquisitive visitors who
