Travel Light, Move Fast by Alexandra Fuller

Author:Alexandra Fuller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

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IT’S NOT A LONG FLIGHT from Johannesburg to Lusaka, three hours or so, a little more if there’s weather. It can be bumpy; wind shears in the dry season, stormy in the rains. It’s impressive, those thunderheads stacking up and up, towering like gigantic fists into the blazing clear-blue sky above. The pastor in the exit row was praying loudly and sweating on all our behalves. “So thoughtful of him,” Mum said. “Meantime, we can keep enjoying ourselves.” She waved Kitty down the aisle. “I couldn’t have another one of those sweet little miniatures, could I, please, darling?” she said. “It’s been a stressful couple of weeks.”

“You’re telling me,” Kitty said, resting for a moment on the back of Mum’s chair. “It’s one bloody thing after the other, isn’t it?” He slipped Mum a couple of little bottles, a can of mix, a fresh glass of ice.

“Kenneth,” Mum said, glancing at me significantly. “You’re very tactful.”

Kitty smiled and swanned back up the aisle, riding the turbulence like a dancer. Mum took a sip of her drink, licked her lips, and looked out the window; it’s a straight shot north from O. R. Tambo to Kenneth Kaunda International Airport. It’s arid, the towns tiny and spread out, Zimbabwe blameless and placid at this distance. “From here,” Mum said, “you’d never know the place was run by a bloody dictator, would you?” The plane gave a stomach-lurching plunge. The pastor upped his prayer volume. We laughed. “What fun,” Mum said. “It’s not bad, is it, Bobo?”

However, the closer our plane got to Lusaka the more Mum’s attitude solidified from hilarious joie de vivre to dignified Dowager Duchess, a BBC widow, say, played by Dame Judi Dench or Helen Mirren. It was as if the initial joy of getting close to home was beginning to settle into something more serious for Mum. And after all the travel, the exhaustion was wearing in, the adrenaline wearing off.

“I’m returning to a widow’s farm,” Mum said, as the unmistakable Brachystegia forests of Zambia’s up-country rushed to meet us. “I can’t be seen to be soft, Bobo. People pounce on widows in this part of the world; I’ve seen it. They think you’re feeble without a man. But they’re not going to pounce on me. I’m going to mark my boundaries, and hold them.” She sniffed. “Anyone who tries any funny business with me is going to rue the day. I’m a widow, but I am not a feeble widow.”

She downed her drink then and waved her glass at Kitty. Kitty had given up with the miniatures somewhere over Botswana. He tore down the aisle now with a proper bottle, ignoring the pilot’s warning we were in for a bumpy landing. He sloshed a final tot in Mum’s cup. The pastor was praying in tongues. I held Dad on my lap. It was comforting in many ways to know that he wouldn’t have said much more if he were alive than he did now he was dead.

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