As the first yields of tomatoes were being harvested and packed into crates, Pat and I rode on horseback between the fields, with Frisky and a chestnut mare named Sunny. Tomatoes flourished on virgin land, and we knew how much they enriched the soil for different crops to come: tobacco, cotton, maize, and export vegetables and flowers.
Frisky whinnied softly underneath Pat.
“What next?” I began, watching the shadowed outlines of our workers move between the rows.
“I was thinking,” Pat joked, “that I might get some turkeys …”
It is a curious feeling when your heart swells and sinks all at once.
Years ago, when we had barely been married a year, I had come to understand the particular nature of Pat’s insanity, his desire to collect and hoard animals of just about every description. As Zimbabwe was being born out of the ruins of Rhodesia, Pat had worked at an agricultural research station called Grasslands, where company policy had been to slaughter the smallest lamb every time a sheep gave birth to triplets. Unwilling to accept this, Pat had taken to bringing them home, until our garden was heaving with his own private flock. While baby Paul crawled around the living room, he was surrounded by dozens of baby sheep, bleating out for their bottles. I became particularly skilled as a surrogate ewe, able to hold six bottles between my legs for the lambs to suckle while I fed another four out of my hands.
If this had been the limit of Pat’s madness, perhaps I could have written it off as a strange idiosyncrasy. Soon, however, Pat found himself the proud recipient of a gaggle of turkeys as well—and, as turkeys are usually very bad mothers, he insisted that each turkey have its own cage in which to lay her eggs.
Pat, of course, had to go to work during the day, so the management of the Retzlaff menagerie invariably fell to me. One of the most important of my duties was to move the turkey cages each day, so that they were on fresh ground and could be exposed to the very best sun and shade, dependent on which each needed. Often, I felt as if I was being watched over by Frisky, who would immediately report on my work to her beloved Pat when he came home from work. Those two, I had begun to understand, were as thick as thieves.
After grueling days of feeding lambs and horses—not to mention our very young son—perhaps I could be forgiven for forgetting to move the turkey cages in accordance with Pat’s regimen. One day, exhausted by the morning’s efforts, I decided that the turkey cages would have to wait. That evening, while I was cooking supper, Pat came home and conducted his evening inspection of all his beloved animals, the toddler Paul perched happily on his shoulders. I was stooped over the pot, breathing in the beautiful aromas of lamb—not our own, I hasten to add—when I heard Pat’s roar. In seconds, he appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face purpling in fury.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my thoughts turning to baby Paul.
Pat simply lifted an accusing finger.
“You,” he said, “haven’t moved a single turkey cage.”
At Crofton, as he brought up the subject of turkeys again, I looked away, trying not to acknowledge Pat’s wicked grin. I reined Sunny around, as if to make for home.
“This time,” I said, “Jay and Kate can look after them.”
In August the whole country would change color. These were the first stirrings of Zimbabwean spring. Across the farm, the msasa trees came into new leaf. Light pinks deepened into pinks and reds; reds softened into vivid mauves; mauves ebbed away, leaving a rich dark green in their wake. In the evenings we would ride from Crofton farmhouse and watch as the bush came alive in this new array of color.
On one particular morning, driving to pick up Paul at school, I was late. Even the traffic in the city of Harare seemed to know it, slowing down and jamming at every intersection I tried to drive through, as if deliberately trying to vex me. As I checked and rechecked the time, my only consolation was that Paul knew the kind of life we led too well; he wouldn’t be expecting me to be right on schedule.
He was waiting at the bus stop in a scuffed-up school uniform when I arrived, at five feet tall an image of his father in miniature. Like his father, he scowled at me, but, like his father, he didn’t mean it.
Also like his father, Paul loved all animals. My eye caught something squirming under the folds of his school blazer.
“His name’s Fuzzy,” Paul said, sliding into the front seat. The tiny head of a puppy, a Jack Russell crossed with a Maltese poodle, poked its head out of the top of his collar, inspected me with mischievous eyes, and then ducked back to wriggle against Paul’s chest. “He’s saying hello.”
“Darling, where …”
I had taken off into traffic, my eyes flitting between the road and this ball of fur that Paul was now feeding the end of an ice cream cone from his pocket. From somewhere, horns blared. I looked up, managing to correct my course just in time.
“Remember when school gave me Imprevu?”
Actually, we had paid a fortune for Imprevu. She was a beautiful bay mare, extremely eager, responsive, and exciting to ride, and she would be ridden by Paul and Pat regularly after Frisky died. She had belonged to the riding school, but they were only too pleased to send her to Crofton and receive a princely payment in return.
“Well, it was the same thing. My teacher gave him to me.”
“Just gave him to you?”
“He knows how much we like animals.”
I had to smile.
“Look over your shoulder, Paul.”
Paul looked over his shoulder, Fuzzy craning his neck the same way. On the backseat sat a crate with two little Scotties peeking out. Each of them wore a perfect little tartan bow, and their tiny black eyes considered Fuzzy carefully.
“I’ve just picked them up,” I said. “Aren’t they adorable?”
“Mum!” Paul exclaimed. “You’re just like Dad!”
“Don’t start on that. Your father’s much worse than me …”
Paul was fixated on the box of scrabbling pups. I had long been fascinated by Scotties. They looked perfectly adorable, with black eyes like the ones in the face of a teddy bear. Well, if Pat could go around collecting turkeys and horses and sheep, I had to be allowed a little indulgence of my own. Perhaps it was my husband’s madness rubbing off on me.
Fuzzy made a spirited squirm out of Paul’s arms and dropped into the backseat with the other pups.
“Have you told Dad?” asked Paul.
“Let’s keep it quiet for a while.” I grinned. “I’ve been promising him another Great Dane …”
Of all our children, Paul was the most eager to live a life in the saddle. Imprevu, the mare he had brought home from school, was similar to Frisky in many ways. She required an experienced hand and was ridden only by Paul and Pat. Paul experienced the same joy in saddling her up and exploring our farm as Pat had as a boy with Frisky.
Jay did not have the same passion for horses but loved the bush and spent his time roaming the farm with his best friend, Henry, hunting and birding—but I would often see Kate marveling at her father in Frisky’s saddle, or Paul as he took off on Imprevu, kicking up dust as they cantered along the winding farm tracks. Soon, it would come time for her to learn to ride, and she would do it with the very same partner with whom Pat had spent those idyllic years of his own childhood.
When Kate was on Frisky’s back, everything seemed to come together at Crofton. I would see her sitting in the saddle, her father just behind her, Kate’s hands