“Mum?”
“What is it?”
“It’s them …” I whisper.
Slowly, the shapes appear out of the darkness. At first they are like ghosts. It is only when I move forward, willing the ghosts to come to life, that those shapes begin to have definition. First, a man, a groom, trailing a long rope behind him. Then, a horse, bobbing contentedly forward, wearing a halter but no saddle. Then, more horses alongside, each with a lead rope dangling from its halter. One, two, three, four, five … The procession continues into reaches of darkness I still cannot see.
“Is Pat with them?” asks my mother.
I cannot see my husband yet, but still I nod.
They weave along a track between fields of irrigated wheat, disappearing behind reefs of low gray mist and then coming back into sight. I know how many horses there will be, because I know them all by name. We have seventy-one now, but before long there will be more. Some days, the phone does not stop ringing. All across this once-proud nation, farms are being abandoned; farmers are fleeing, but in their wake are the animals they cannot take with them.
Then, at last, I see Pat. He is moving on the far side of the herd.
He is holding a lead rope in his hand—though, in truth, he does not even need that. The young mare he is leading, though a new addition to the herd, will do whatever he asks. The tallest and proudest of all our horses, she stands seventeen hands high, an aristocratic dun mare with beautiful black points and eyes that positively shimmer with keen intelligence. Shere Khan is the self-appointed queen of the herd and, like the queen that she is, helps Pat guide horses and grooms to safety.
There is an old German proverb, one I sometimes imagine Pat’s great-grandfather might have used. Set a beggar on horseback, they used to say, and he’ll outride the devil.
We have to outride the devil, that much is true—but watching the herd walk onto Avalon Farm, I wonder how long we can stay in the saddle.
“I see you’re back,” I say when Pat comes closer, not wanting to tell him how worried I’ve been.
“All of us.”
Damn him, but he is almost grinning.
“Well?” I ask. “What now?”
Pat makes as if he is thinking about it. Behind him, the half-Arabian Grey and our daughter’s mare, Deja-vous, are grazing the long grass, but even they must have some idea of what is going on all around us.
“We’ll do what we always do,” Pat says. “We’ll make a plan.”
I REMEMBER A place that was wild and filled with game. I remember a house with a giant mango tree in the garden and stables out back, where our horses grazed contentedly and waited to be ridden along dusty red tracks that wound their way into the bush. I remember picking up our children from school and driving home with the tsessebe—those powerful antelopes with chestnut hides, spiral horns, and strange, ridged bodies—flocking into the trees alongside us. The farm was called River Ranch, the farmhouse Crofton. The farm’s thick-forested hills and scrubby lowlands were held in the cradle of two rivers; its boundaries were patrolled by elephants tamed and trained to keep away poachers. Its soils held the promise of a new future, and on the day that my husband, Pat, and I took our children there for the very first time, in 1992, we thought it would be home forever.
That day, long ago and yet seemingly so near, we drove north on the Chinhoyi road, through fields of tall maize. Our car was laden with suitcases and packs, saddles and straps, and three squabbling children in the back. In the middle seat, our second son, Jay, was chattering animatedly about the game he might see. If there was one way of sparking the often taciturn Jay to life, it was to talk about the game he might track and hunt at our new home. The kudu, that large African antelope with its striped hide, huge horns, and powerful legs Pat and I had seen when we were first looking over the farm, had been one of the things that propelled us to go to the auction and place a bid; this wild place was where we would spend our lives.
We followed the winding, dusty road and could soon see the farmhouse of Two Tree Hill, the farm that bordered our own, looming above us, with big workshops and a water tank in front. Farther on, we saw the glistening waters of the dam. A herd of the enormous black antelopes known as sable looked curiously at us then turned and sped away, through the wheat and into the cover of the thick bush. Behind us, the truck that was following jarred on patches of uneven road, but the four horses inside were content. This, after all, was to be a new home for them as well.
We reached the farmhouse early in the afternoon, when the midday sun was at its hottest. The building had a broad white facade and a simple roof of corrugated iron. Pat pulled the car around, into the shade of the mango tree, and, even before we had ground to a halt, the children tumbled out.
Paul, our eldest, was fourteen years old, big and broad and the perfect image of his father. Jay, just turned nine, had a mop of wild blond hair that almost hid his searching green eyes. Our youngest, Kate, was three years Jay’s junior, a gorgeous girl who, surrounded by brothers and cousins, was growing up as tough as any of them and gave as good as she got.
“Is this it?” Kate asked.
“Your new home,” I replied. “The farmhouse is called Crofton. What do you think?”
As Paul, Jay, and Kate inched forward to investigate, Pat and I turned our attention to the truck that had followed us onto the farm. Pat undid the latches and let down the ramp. Inside the truck, he ran his hands up and down the four horses’ noses, promising them fresh air, clean water, and more grazing than they could wish for.
Frisky came first, her ears twitching inquisitively. An old skewbald mare, more than twenty years old, she barely needed leading. She simply followed the sound of Pat’s voice. It was the same voice she had been hearing for twenty-two years, since the days when they would race antelopes together at Enkeldoorn (now called Chivhu), where Pat grew up. She was his very first horse, perhaps his very first friend, and I sometimes wondered which one of us was the real love of Pat’s life.
After Frisky came her foal Mini, a bay mare with a wild temperament who had produced some very special foals. Once they were out, they turned to survey their new surroundings, while the other two horses, Sunny and Toffee, lingered in the shade of the horse trailer, unsure if they too should emerge.
While the children were looking up at the face of their new house, Pat ran his hands along Frisky’s flank and listened to her responsive snort. His old friend took a few steps forward and dropped her head to start pulling the strange new grass between her teeth. When next she looked up, her nostrils twitched and she rolled her eyes.
This will do, she seemed to be saying. If you say so, Patrick, this will do.
When I look back now, moving to Crofton was a new beginning. Crofton was a place in which we wanted to invest the whole of our lives. We were to be surrounded by rugged, virgin bush, and we had set our sights on opening up and forging a productive farm, one that we might one day hand down to our children. It would be a place for the generations to come, and Pat and I would found it while our children had the most amazing childhood they could, running wild in our beautiful Zimbabwe.
I did not know that nine years later, our world here at Crofton would end.
I had met Pat in 1976, when he was studying at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg,