The Dhow House by Jean McNeil

Author:Jean McNeil
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785079450
Publisher: Legend Times Group

VI

AUGUR BUZZARD

‘She’s crazy to come at a time like this.’

‘Who?’

‘Delphine.’ Julia gave her an uncomprehending look, as if the bearer of the name were so famous it was a scandal she did not lurch at its sound. ‘Bill’s sister,’ Julia elaborated. ‘She lives in Mozambique.’

They were seated for breakfast. It was only eight o’clock, yet the morning heat gathered around them. She wanted to rip it apart, like drawing an invisible curtain, to get somewhere beyond it where she could think straight again.

‘Why does she want to come now?’ Storm said. ‘She’ll have to bribe her way through twenty road-blocks. That’s if they let her cross the border.’

‘It’s your father’s sixty-fifth. Anyway she’s a writer. They always go where the action is, don’t they?’ Julia asked, to no one in particular. ‘When I worked with those guys –’ she assumed Julia meant journalists – ‘I’d drive them to the airport. They’d be on their way to cover the latest atrocity. There would never be space on the plane – the army, the spies, the UN would have booked it out. You had to hand it to them, they always got a seat. Delphine’s like that,’ Julia said. ‘You can depend on her to always get a seat on the plane.’

‘What does she write?’ she asked.

‘Plains of the Serengeti, you must have heard of it. Lost Land of the Boroi. Big books with lots of photographs.’

‘I don’t read coffee table books.’

‘Well, nobody reads them, obviously.’ Julia scraped her chair out and rose from the table. ‘We don’t see much of Delphine. She finds it boring here. We’re not ambitious enough for her.’

She went to fetch one of Delphine’s books from the shelf. She pulled out the one with the thickest spine. The cover shot was of a vast agglomeration of wildebeest from above – a helicopter shot no doubt. It showed a knot of burly beasts, their distribution almost geometric. Around them were tawny clumps of stone. She peered closer to see the giant shoulder muscles of the cats, perfect and rounded as loaves of bread. The knot of wildebeest was surrounded not by stones but by lions.

She turned the book over. Delphine appeared, holding a spear with a spade-shaped tip. She was tall and thin and wore her grey hair in a loose braid over her shoulder. An outline of red lipstick was her only concession to makeup. She was dressed in a battered pair of brown trousers that had perhaps once been suede. She recognised her uncle’s startling blue eyes. They stared forthrightly, almost defiantly, at the camera.

‘She’s very beautiful,’ she offered.

‘She is.’ Julia’s voice was grim. She turned to Storm. ‘What are you doing tonight?’

‘I thought Rebecca and I might do something.’

She shot him a look, which he deflected.

‘That’s lovely, darling.’

She watched him cross the living room. His muscles seemed to have their own individual life. He had the rangy architecture of a creature that spent most of its life in anaerobic blasts of effort: cheetah or impala.

They’d had a straggly herd of impala around camp in Gariseb.

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