Seafood Restaurant or the dads would grill fresh prawns on the barbecue and dip them in peri peri, a sauce so hot it burnt the tongue.
Nigel was aware that his father was different from other dads. It was not so much his British accent-only 40.71 per cent of whites at that time were Rhodesian-born. Around half had entered the country like John Hough since the Second World War, largely from Britain but also from former colonies in East Africa and India, as well as Greeks, Afrikaners and a considerable Jewish community. Between 1946 and 1960, the number of whites rose from 82,000 to more than 220,000 attracted by the high standard of living, sustained as it was by the inequalities between blacks and whites. Even Ian Smith was only second generation-his father had been a Scottish butcher who moved to Rhodesia in search of a better life.
But John Hough had always seemed more interested in birds than children, particularly crows, which he said had ‘amazing characters’. Paradise for Dad was listening to Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto while watching eagles in flight and eating a smidgen of Mum's lemon meringue pie. As he grew older he even began to resemble a bird. Nigel's school friend Larry Norton found him alarming. ‘He looked exactly like a falcon. He was balding with long grey hair round the edges, a big nose and a big moustache.’
Nigel and his elder brother Edwin would take advantage of their father's eccentricity to tease him mercilessly. Once on holiday in Ballito Bay on South Africa's northern Natal coast, John could not understand why every time he went into the local shop he was treated extremely rudely by the shopkeeper who would follow him around snatching things from him as he picked them up. The boys had whispered to the shopkeeper, ‘That's our dad. He's an alcoholic and a shoplifter and often takes naughty magazines from the shelf.’
Shortly after one of their holidays, Nigel's parents purchased their first LP player, prompting great excitement when it was unloaded at the farm. The sanctions imposed by the West after UDI meant most things were locally assembled, and the ‘Supersonic’ radiogram was no exception. Apart from John's beloved Beethoven, the family record collection soon featured Cat Stevens, Sandy Shaw, Gary Glitter and Mick Jagger. Later they bought a television, a Philips set built in socialist Yugoslavia. The Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation (RBC) had a monopoly and evening viewing largely consisted of old American comedy series like The Ed Sullivan Show and I Love Lucy. The Smith government was obsessed with protecting the country against encroachment of the so-called permissive society corrupting the outside world, so there was strict censorship. Penthouse and Playboy magazines were not allowed into the country, while the RBC even banned Olivia Newton-John and Gene Pitney.
Every Thursday, the family would drive to Rusape Club. It was only 30 miles away, but on unmetalled strip roads in their light green Ford Cortina station wagon that felt like a real trek. John Hough was not a gifted driver and it was a squash to fit all six children in, two always having to sit in the boot. Their parents were always telling them to keep quiet. Once my sister Tess fell out on the way to the club. When we tried to tell Mum and Dad they told us to mind our manners and wait till they finished talking. Afterwards when they realized what had happened they were more favourably disposed to us butting in.
Everything in the community revolved round the Club. There was cricket, tennis and golf and on weekend afternoons it would be crowded with farmers dressed in their uniform of khaki shirts with tight shorts and long socks with combs tucked in the top. They would gather for braais, grilling thick boerewors sausage and slabs of meat, and downing Lion or Castle beers from the bar as they conversed loudly in the flat vowels similar to the Boers'.
The topics were usually the same-commodity prices, the prospects of rain, hunting and guns, and complaints about workers – ‘the Affs’ or munts as they called them. It was rarely long before discussion turned to Ian Smith and the ramifications of his decision to secede from Britain. There were close relations between Smith's Rhodesian Front and the Commercial Farmers' Union and most farmers supported UDI, fearing that the British government had been about to ‘sell them down the river and hand the country over to the blacks’. Before entering politics Smith had been a farmer like them, and they referred to him as ‘good ol' Smithy’. Despite his long-winded speeches delivered in that nasal burr with a finger jabbing the air, he had come to be seen as the true Rhodesian, born and bred in a land he would never leave and guarding his country from an outside world full of evil. His lack of facial expression, the result of plastic surgery on his war injuries, gave him a heroic status.
The farmers liked to see themselves in the front line, feeding the nation, and finding innovative ways to keep selling their tobacco, the country's biggest foreign exchange earner. Undeterred by attempts by MI6 agents to tail the perpetrators, the Rhodesians had become adept at sanction busting and a nightly meat run flew around Africa delivering cargoes of Rhodesian beef.
The children liked the club because they could drink Coca-Colas with ice-cream floats and eat chips in greasy paper and sometimes there would be movies on the bioscope like Jungle Book or Alice in Wonderland. Every so often there were dances or gymkhanas, and at Christmas one of the farmers would dress up as Santa Claus to distribute presents. Occasionally a farmer with a plane would fly in, like their uncle Noel Waller, and might even be prevailed on to take some children up for a spin.
The whole family was in the car returning from the club one evening when they rounded a bend and found themselves heading straight into a tractor and trailer parked on the road without lights. A car was coming the other way, and as the bulk of it filled the windscreen it was too late to swerve. One minute the children were all chattering and arguing, their mother telling them to keep quiet, then there was a tremendous searing crash. The doors burst open with showers of glass as the car hit the oncoming vehicle and rolled over and over, then it was ground underneath the tractor. Nigel, who was only two at the time, was thrown straight out of the windscreen and initially presumed dead. His father was also thrown out and his mother's head smashed straight through the glass. The other driver was killed. Everyone had cuts, bruises and broken limbs, and as they started coming round groaning, his mother saw her nine-year-old son Terry lying inert on the roadside, literally cut in half. Those who heard her scream never forgot it. ‘It was horrible, devastating,’ she recalls, ‘but it also brought us closer together as a family.’
For a long time after Terry's death, once they were all back from hospital, the farmhouse was a hushed place. Terry's bed remained made and ready from the night he had never come home. Mary stayed in her room, and the children sometimes crept up to the door and could hear muffled crying, though never in front of them. Their father spent even longer periods out in the bush or up trees with his binoculars, leaving the children to be looked after by the nanny. The nightly drinking on the terrace took on a more relentless nature. Neighbours came with homemade pies and hushed condolences and averted their eyes as they spoke. For once it was a relief for the children to go back to school.
*According to the 1969 official census the population of Rhodesia was 228,296 Europeans, 15,153 coloureds, 8,965 Asians and 4,846,930 blacks (Rhodesia Central Statistical Office).
AQUI STOOD IMPATIENTLY, holding the donkey and shifting from foot to foot, as her mother stopped and exchanged the traditional Shona greetings with people along the way.
‘Mangwanani.’ (Good morning.)
‘Mangwananu’
‘Marara here’? (How did you sleep?)
‘Ndarara kana mararawo’ (I have slept well if you did.)
‘Ndarara’?
