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Dad and Bo

Dad says, “I understand you took Bobo camping.”

“That’s right,” says Charlie pleasantly. He is tall and lean, with a thick beard and tousled, dark hair. He is too tall to see into the mirror in African bathrooms, he told me. So he has no idea how his hair looks. It looks like the hair of a passionate man. A man of lust.

Dad puts down his teacup and lights a cigarette, eyeing Charlie through the smoke. He says, “And how many tents, exactly, were there?”

“One,” says Charlie, blindsided by the question.

Dad clears his throat, inhales a deep breath of smoke. “One tent,” he says.

“That’s right.”

“I see.”

There is a pause, during which the dogs get into a scrap over a saucer of milk and the malonda comes noisily around the back of the house to stoke the Rhodesian boiler with wood, so that there will be hot water for the baths tonight.

“There’s a very good bishop,” Dad says suddenly, “up in the Copperbelt. The Right Reverend Clement H. Shaba. Anglican chap.”

It takes Charlie a moment or two for the implications of this statement to sink in. He says, “Huh.”

“My God, Dad!”

“One tent,” says Dad and puts down his teacup with crashing finality.

Mum says, “I think we’d all better have a drink, don’t you?”

“Dad!”

“End of story,” says Dad. “One tent. Hm?”

We are married in the horses’ paddock eleven months after we first meet. Bishop the Right Reverend Clement H. Shaba presiding. Mum is wearing a vibrant skirt suit of tiny flowers on a black background, with hat to match. Vanessa is billowing and mauve, pregnant with her second son. Trevor, her first son, is in a sailor suit. Dad is dignified in a navy blue suit, beautifully cut. He could be anywhere. He comes to fetch me in a Mercedes-Benz borrowed from the neighbors, where I have spent the night before the wedding. He says, “All right, Chooks?”

I’ve had a dose of hard-to-shake-off malaria for the last two weeks. “A bit queasy,” I tell him.

It’s ten-thirty in the morning. Dad says, “A gin and tonic might buck you up.” He has brought a gin and tonic on ice with a slice of lemon in a thick glass tumbler from the farm. It’s in a cardboard box on the passenger side of the car.

“Cheers.” I drink.

“Cheers,” he says, and lights a cigarette, shaking a spare stick to the surface of the packet. “Want one?”

“I quit. Remember?”

“Oh, sorry.”

“ ‘S okay.”

We drive together in silence for a while. It’s June, midwinter: a cool, high, clear day.

“Pierre’s cattle are holding up nicely,” my father says.

“Nice and fat.”

“Wonder what he’s feeding?”

“Cottonseed cake, I bet.”

“Hm.”

We slow down to allow a man on a bike, carrying a woman and child over the handlebars, to wobble up and over the railway tracks.

“Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do . . .”

Dad looks at me and laughs. Now we’re close to the farm.

“Oh, God,” I say.

“What?”

“Nerves.”

“You’ll be all right,” says Dad.

“I know.”

“He’s a good one.”

“I know.”

I pull down the mirror on the passenger side and fiddle with the flower arrangement on my head. “I think this flowery thing looks silly, don’t you?”

“Nope.”

“You sure?”

“You’re not bad-looking once they scrape the mud off you and put you in a dress.”

I make a face at him.

“All right, Chooks.” He leans over and squeezes my hand. “Drink up, we’re almost there.”

I swallow the rest of my gin and tonic as we rock up the uneven driveway, and there is the sea of faces waiting for me. They turn to see Dad and me climb out of the car. There are farmers from the Burma Valley and Malawi, in too-short brown nylon suits. There are farmers’ wives in shoulder-biting sundresses, already pink-faced from drinking. Children are running in and out of the hay bales that have been set up for the congregation. Old friends from high school wave and laugh at me. Farm laborers stand; they are quiet and respectful.

Bobo’s wedding. It is a big day for all the farm. Dad has brought drums and drums of beer to the compound, enough for a huge farm-wide celebration after the wedding. We feed hundreds of people; the entire front lawn is converted into a massive walk-through