Michael Ridpath: See No Evil

Up to his waist. It was still only May, and the sea was numbingly cold, especially once it passed his groin. Todd’s weight had become unbearable, and Calder slung him off his shoulder, lay his body in the water and cradled his head above the gentle waves. The man was still unconscious.

Up to his chest. This was hopeless. Perhaps he should strike out for the shore with Todd. Or without him. Without him, Calder would survive. It was pointless them both drowning. At some point it would be reasonable for Calder to abandon Todd and save himself, wouldn’t it? Calder looked down at Todd’s slack, pale features. He thought of Kim. He thought of what it would be like living with the knowledge that he had abandoned her husband to his death. He could never explain that away to her or to himself. When it came to the time, he would try to swim off with Todd and see what happened.

Then he heard it, a roar to the east. Within seconds a Tornado appeared, flying along the coastline. Calder could tell it was moving slowly, for a fast jet. Although Calder would be virtually invisible, the upended tail of the Yak was still just above the waves. The Tornado flew low overhead and waggled its wings. It had seen them. As the aircraft disappeared over the land to the south-east, Calder heard another sound, the rapid beat of a helicopter to the west. The Tornado would have called in their precise position.

The sea was up to his neck, and the current was tugging at him, but he managed to keep Todd’s face out of the water. Within a minute the yellow Sea King was overhead and a crewman was swinging down towards them.

June 20, 1988

Well, I’ll try again after that junk I wrote a couple of days ago. It did make me feel slightly better: I’m calmer now. Still angry, but definitely calmer.

They say that a diary shows a future you the person you used to be. I wish I had written one nearly twenty years ago when I first came to South Africa. Then I was an idealist prepared to be appalled by this country. Somehow I fell in love with it, and with Neels. Together I thought we could play our own part in changing it. Instead, it seems to have changed us.

So maybe writing this will help me figure out who I am. Why I’m here. What I’m going to do next.

It’s been three days since we had that fight. It was the worst of our marriage so far, shouting, screaming, swearing at each other: at one point I thought Neels was going to hit me. He’s seemed so much more violent recently, since Hennie was killed. It scares me. He got in a fistfight last week with a stranger in the street, some drunken Boer who recognized him and called him a Kaffir lover. Neels hit him so hard he knocked him out. Three months ago he would have smiled and walked away.

Somehow I think there are going to be many more arguments. He told me he plans to close down the Cape Daily Mail and sell the rest of his South African properties. By “properties” he means newspapers. Apparently American investors are uncomfortable dealing with someone who has South African business interests. So Cornelius van Zyl plans to reinvent himself as a non-South African so that he can buy companies in the States and Britain and all over the rest of the world.

I asked him why he couldn’t just sell the Mail to a friendly proprietor. There are more and more businessmen who are critical of the regime these days. He says the paper is losing money hand over fist and no one would buy it. Although the readership is high, an increasing number of those readers are blacks and the advertisers don’t like that. Blacks don’t have any money to spend. He says he can’t go on subsidizing it for ever.

He’s even selling the family paper, the Oudtshoorn Rekord, that his father started sixty years ago. However many English-language newspapers he bought in South Africa he always said he would hold on to that Afrikaans one, in memory of his father. He clearly didn’t mean it.

Actually, he did mean it then. The point is he doesn’t mean it now. Why? What has changed?

I can’t help thinking that if he abandons the Mail and the other papers, and if he abandons South Africa, then he is abandoning me. I know I’m American, but he’s running away from me, not toward me. He spends more and more time in Philadelphia at the Intelligencer ’s offices. He never asks me to come with him. Why not?

I’m losing him.

June 21

It’s a wonderful morning. After I got back from taking Caroline to school I went out for a walk, up to the picnic spot above our house. That’s where I’m sitting now as I write this. Above me is the Hondekop, the craggy outcrop of rock in the shape of the head of a great hound that gave its name to our house. To the right I can see the white cluster of buildings that is the town of Stellenbosch, and beyond that, thirty miles away, is a corner of Table Mountain. The narrow valley stretches up to the left, into the Hottentots Holland mountains. It’s cold this morning, cold and clear, with no wind. The vines are heavy with dew, and the morning sun is touching the tops of the crags on the other side of the valley, turning the gray rock yellow and gold.

Hondehoek is half a mile down into the valley. I love it. It is a classic Cape Dutch farmhouse built of white stone with a thatched roof, a single gable in the center, and the figures 1815 painted in black above the window. Inside, beautiful yellowwood beams frame the high-ceilinged rooms; the floorboards are also made of well-worn yellow-wood, except in the kitchen where the floor tiles are from Batavia. Actually, the original farm was built much earlier than the present building, by a Huguenot called François de Villiers who arrived from Lille in 1694. When Simon van der Stel ventured out of the confines of Cape Town to found Stel-en-bosch, he granted this land to de Villiers, who planted the first vines here, and the oak tree that still stands beside the front door. At about the same time, the first van Zyl arrived in South Africa on a boat from Amsterdam and established his own farm just on the other side of the mountain.

I’m so glad we bought this place. Neels wanted somewhere bigger. He and Penelope lived in a very grand house in Constantia; in fact Penelope still rattles around in there. But when I saw Hondehoek, I fell in love with it. We don’t need somewhere huge, and Neels has to admit that the sheer beauty of the place impresses his guests as much as a mansion would. It also means we don’t need a domestic army to look after it, just Doris and the new maid Tuesday for the house, and Finneas and some casual labor for the garden. I much prefer it that way, I would hate to be the mistress of a huge domestic establishment. We don’t manage the vines either; our neighbor down the valley does that, and does a very good job of it too. But we have retained the Hondehoek label, its Pinotage is renowned. Neels loves to show it off and actually I kind of like it too.

Doris must have lit a fire; a twist of wood smoke is winding its way up into the cold air of the valley.

The winters here are lovely. It’s the equivalent of December in the northern hemisphere: at home in Minnesota the ground would already be under a foot of snow, but here the leaves are not even off the trees. The vines are russet and brown, and the leaves on the oaks which line the drive up to our house are still a golden yellow. There is a good view of the garden from up here. A small lawn slopes down to a pond in front of the house, and beside it lies a formal rose garden. Most of the roses are blooming, as are the magnolia trees. I’ve planted a bed of fynbos, the strange indigenous plants of the Cape, on the other side of the lawn, next to the twin white pillars which hold the bell that used to call the slaves in from the fields. Most of them won’t bloom until the spring, but when they do, they’ll be gorgeous bulbous flowers of yellow, blue and red, nestling in those spiky green leaves. I have to admit, Finneas and I have done a good job.