Legacy of War Page 19

  ‘ . . . of tickling!’

  Gerhard tapped his fingers into the side of Zander’s body, under his arms and down his ribcage, inducing fits of helpless, hysterical laughter, which persisted until he was lowered to the ground, where he lay for a few seconds, gathering his breath.

  ‘We are going to have one very overexcited boy on our hands,’ Saffron said. ‘And guess who’s going to be left to look after him . . .’

  Gerhard was saved from having to answer her by the arrival of another character on the scene, making her golden-haired way across the gravel with a determined stride, crying, ‘Daddy, Daddy, lift me too! Lift me, lift me!’

  Gerhard glanced at Saffron, who shook her head with a sign of resignation and said, ‘Oh, all right, then.’

  ‘Come here, liebchen,’ Gerhard said, holding out his arms for the plump apple of his eye.

  He took Kika in his hands and she beamed happily as he lifted her gently up and down and then, on the third time, surprised her by throwing her up in the air and catching her.

  ‘Again, again!’ she cried.

  ‘One more time . . .’ Gerhard said, throwing her again. ‘And one for luck.’

  Kika was still giggling happily as he replaced her on the ground and let her run to Saffron.

  Gerhard found that he was breathing quite heavily from the exertion. He was only in his early forties, but the suffering he had endured in the last months of the war could still leave him feeling like an old man. He looked at his family, at the landscape around them and the sky above and thought, Damn, it’s good to be alive!

  Leon and Harriet were coming to join them.

  ‘Hello, my darlings,’ Harriet said, hugging Saffron and exchanging kisses. ‘We thought we should let you have some time with your children before we barged in.’

  ‘Welcome back, Gerhard,’ said Leon, shaking his hand. ‘Good to have you.’

  ‘Thank you, Leon, it’s wonderful to be home again.’

  ‘You must tell me about your trip in due course. But I dare say you could use a drink.’

  ‘A cool beer would be very agreeable.’

  ‘Then you shall have it. Let me say hello to my little girl.’

  Leon hugged Saffron with a most un-English display of affection, to which she responded in kind. They talked for a few moments, while Gerhard and Harriet greeted one another less exuberantly but with warmth.

  Leon said, ‘Right, time we went in. I promised Gerhard a beer, and how about a stiff g-and-t for you, Saffy?’

  ‘I would absolutely say, yes,’ she replied.

  ‘Well, let’s go and get them.’

  The hall and staircase of the Estate House were both a celebration of the Courtneys’ lives in Kenya and a tribute to Harriet’s personality, in which common sense and emotional sensitivity were almost perfectly balanced.

  When Harriet had first arrived at the house as Leon’s second wife, the presence of her predecessor Eva was everywhere, from the worn and fading curtains and seat covers of rooms untouched since her death a decade earlier, to the large portrait of Eva which hung over the fireplace in Leon’s study. Some women might have been frightened to change a thing. Others would have insisted on sweeping away all trace of Eva’s existence. Harriet chose a dignified compromise.

  She redecorated the house, bringing colour, light and life back into the building. But while she was doing this, she was in touch with Leon’s mother, his cousins in South Africa and Britain, and his friends in Kenya. Harriet obtained a gallery of photographs, drawings and paintings from every stage of Leon’s life, including his first marriage and Saffron’s childhood. She added her own images of the time that she had spent with him, including their wedding and honeymoon. She took the portrait of Eva down from Leon’s study, but commissioned the artist who had painted it to produce a smaller copy, which she placed among the other pictures, in a position which neither hid Eva away, nor gave her undue prominence.

  Saffron had liked Harriet from the day they first met. She was thirteen, about to begin her first term at Roedean girls’ school in Johannesburg, when Leon took her to an outfitter to get her school uniform. Harriet was the saleswoman who served them. Saffron noticed right away that her father had become a happier, lighter spirit in Harriet’s company, but it had taken a few more years and a chance meeting in London to bring them together as lovers and then man and wife.

  Saffron was delighted by the marriage, but in the back of her mind there had always lurked the worry of what would happen when Harriet became mistress of the Lusima estate. She wanted her father and his new wife to be happy, but she could not bear the thought of her mother being forgotten. The moment she had seen the way Harriet had put up those pictures, she knew that the present had made peace with the past, and she loved Harriet for that.

  ‘I have a special treat for the children,’ Harriet announced as they made their way into the house. ‘You can have lunch with the grown-ups today.’

  Amid high-pitched cries of ‘Hooray!’ and ‘Yippee!’, Zander and Kika were placed at one end of the table under the watchful eye of their nanny Loiyan, who was one of Manyoro’s myriad grandchildren. The cook, Mpishi, who had worked at the house for as long as Saffron could remember, outdid himself and the meal ended with cups of heavenly coffee made from beans grown on the Lusima estate.

  For Gerhard, that coffee was almost the greatest of all the many wonders that this private paradise had to offer. He had spent six years drinking the ersatz coffee, made from chicory and brown boot polish, with which Germans in wartime had been forced to make do.

  ‘Ah, what a fine end to a delicious meal,’ he sighed. ‘Thank you, Leon, for your hospitality. Thank you, Harriet, for running your beautiful house with such admirable efficiency.’

  ‘Coming from a German, I take that as quite a compliment,’ she said.

  ‘Ach, but it’s true. Mpishi is a great chef. Your staff all work hard. But it would not happen without you. I am sure you chose the food for our meal, as you had these beautiful flowers placed in that particular vase on the table in front of us. So, you see, out of efficiency comes beauty and love . . . and all because of you.’

  ‘That’s very sweet of you, dear,’ said Harriet.

  ‘He never thanks me like that,’ Saffron said, with a smile.

  ‘I thank you in other ways,’ Gerhard replied.

  ‘Honestly, darling, really! Pas devant les enfants . . .’

  Leon looked on, pleased to see his daughter and son-in-law flirting. It showed him that they were still interested in one another as lovers as well as spouses. And that, as his own experience had twice taught him, was one of the most important keys to a happy marriage. Actually liking one another helps too, of course, which those two patently do.

  Leon proposed to reward his son-in-law for his kindness to Harriet with a small, postprandial expedition.

  ‘You know, Gerhard, it occurred to me the other day that in all the years you’ve been living at Lusima, I’ve never shown you my gunroom,’ Leon said.

  ‘Oh, this is a rare honour, darling,’ Saffron said. ‘Only Father’s most valued guests are shown the gunroom. I’m not sure I’ve ever been allowed down there.’

  ‘Strictly gentlemen only, my dear,’ Leon said. ‘Not even a markswoman as fine as you may set foot in there. Has to be somewhere a chap can have a brandy and a cigar without any danger of the ladies barging in.’

  ‘Meet my father, Gerhard,’ said Saffron. ‘Still not entirely reconciled to women having the vote or the right to wear trousers. Isn’t that right, Papa?’

  As Leon harrumphed, Harriet played the diplomat.

  ‘To be fair, Saffron, I wouldn’t like a man, your father included, coming into my dressing room. I’d feel like a magician letting the audience see how his tricks were performed.’

  ‘I would be delighted to see your gunroom, Leon,’ Gerhard said.

  ‘Thank God for that. Pour yourself a drink on the way.’

  Leaving the women
to look after Zander and Kika, Leon led Gerhard along the hall to a door under the stairs which opened onto stone steps that led down into the basement. The walls were unplastered brick, covered by dirty white paint that was littered with marks, scratches and pockmarks of various kinds. A corridor ran the full length of the house, with a number of open storage bays and locked rooms on either side. A further set of steps led up to a wooden hatch that could be opened to provide access to the outside of the house.

  ‘That’s the wine cellar,’ Leon said, pointing to a final door that faced back down the corridor at the far end of the basement. ‘Take a look in there, too, if you like, once we’ve given the guns the once-over. Picked up some pretty decent vintages over the years.’

  ‘I’d like that very much,’ Gerhard replied.

  Leon opened a door to the right of the corridor and led Gerhard into the gunroom. Suddenly, the scruffy practicality of the rest of the basement gave way to décor worthy of a gentleman’s club. The weapons were stored in glass-fronted cabinets that stood against wood-panelled walls. There were Turkish rugs underfoot, a leather Chesterfield sofa and a large mahogany table on which to lay out the weapons for inspection.

  Beneath the gun cabinets were drawers for ammunition, spare parts and other accessories. Cartridge-belts hung from hooks on the wall. And then there were the guns.

  ‘You’ve got quite an arsenal,’ Gerhard said, running his eyes along the neatly racked weapons.

  ‘I suppose it built up over the years,’ Leon said, gently swirling the glass of brandy in his hand. ‘I led hunting parties, back in my youth. That’s how I met your father.’

  ‘And Eva?’ Gerhard asked.

  ‘Yah . . .’ Leon gave a sigh that seemed to express both his wonder at his good fortune and deep sorrow at his loss. ‘I still remember the first time I laid eyes on her, can picture the scene as if it happened yesterday. My God, what a woman . . . Words can’t describe how lovely she was.’

  ‘I understand . . . I felt like that when I saw Saffron for the first time.’

  ‘Mind you, I thank my lucky stars every day for giving me Harriet.’ Leon studied his brandy in the glass, and said, ‘I was a goner, you know. I got through every day – had to, for Saffy’s sake – but I was dead inside. Then Hatty brought me back to life, made a new man of me. God alone knows what I did to deserve such good fortune.’

  ‘I’m sure she feels the same about you. Think of everything you’ve given her, the life you have here. Who wouldn’t feel blessed by that?’

  ‘I suppose. But do you know, Gerhard, in all the time that Harriet and I have been together, I have never for a single second thought that my money, or my land, had the slightest thing to do with why she wanted to be with me. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, with your background, what a rare and marvellous thing that is.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Gerhard agreed, thinking of the girls he had known in the past for whom the name von Meerbach, with the wealth and prestige it conveyed, had been such a powerful aphrodisiac. ‘But about the guns,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Tell me about this one . . .’

  He pointed to a gun that appeared older than the rest. It was a stunning example of the gunsmith’s art, a double-barrelled rifle with a walnut butt. Leon smiled as if he’d bumped into an old friend.

  ‘Ah, that takes us back to the subject of beautiful women.’ He opened a glass door and removed the rifle from its mounting. ‘It’s a Holland and Holland Royal .470 Nitro Express, fifty years old but still as good a hunting rifle as any on the planet.’ He tilted the rifle to show Gerhard a gold oval inlay set into the end of the butt. ‘D’you see those initials, “PO’H”? They stand for Patrick O’Hearne. He was a coffee farmer, in the Ngong hills. He was killed by a lion, poor beggar, leaving a very beautiful, very lonely widow called Verity. I got to know her when I was a foolish, headstrong, randy young subaltern of nineteen and, God bless her, she gave me a much-needed education in the art of pleasing a woman. They ran her out of town, of course—’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The usual gang of hypocrites and bullies. There was one particularly nasty piece of work, a major by the name of Snell. He’d got the wife he deserved, a haggard old shrew, and I’ve always believed he was jealous of me for succeeding with Verity where he had not. He got his revenge on me by having me court-martialled for desertion. Totally trumped-up charge, I might add. Anyway, I was in my quarters, feeling damn sorry for myself, when this gun appeared, out of the blue, in a very fine, but much used case. Inside was a note from Verity, testifying to the receipt of £25 from me for the purchase of the gun. Of course, I’d never paid her a penny, I’d never seen the damn thing in my life before that day. It was just her parting gift.’

  Leon picked up the gun and swung it up to his right shoulder with a relaxed, easy grace that made him look like a man half his age.

  ‘Bang!’ he said, aiming at an imaginary target. ‘You could say it made my fortune, this .470,’ he said, bringing the gun down. ‘Without it, I could never have started my hunting business.’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘I miss being young. God, what it was to be fit, strong, with so much energy. I miss the innocence of it all. Africa was wilder in those days. One felt as free as a bird. I think it was the war – the first show, I mean – that changed everything for me. I saw some pretty hard fighting, chasing von Lettow-Vorbeck and his forces across East Africa. You know how war is, you can’t help seeing a bellyful of death. And afterwards, Kenya seemed to attract every ne’er-do-well, chancer and remittance man that Blighty had to offer. I’m lucky I’ve got enough land that none of that sort come anywhere near me.’

  ‘Lusima is its own, private world. I love that about it,’ Gerhard said. ‘But I know what you mean about war. I shot down over one hundred enemy aircraft. That was enough killing for me. I haven’t fired a gun since my last flying mission.’

  ‘You take one with you when you’re out in the bush, I trust. You never know when there might be a dangerous animal about. Look at poor Paddy O’Hearne.’

  ‘Yes, I do, but I’ve not had to use it yet. I would do to protect myself and certainly to protect my family. I just can’t shoot for sport.’

  ‘Well, that’s your prerogative,’ Leon said. ‘I take a slightly different view. The grimness of war made me appreciate the nobility of hunting. It’s the oldest battle of all, man against beast. There’s a purity to it, if you ask me, a nobility, even. Mind you, I can’t spend days on end trekking across country in pursuit of a lion or a bull elephant, the way I used to. Getting shot up by your Luftwaffe chums when they sank the Star of Khartoum put paid to that.’ Leon took a swig of brandy that injected some fire into his belly. ‘Bloody Stukas!’ he hissed. ‘Damn near lost my right leg. One smug so-and-so even gave us a fly-past, when we were sitting in the lifeboat, just to have a good gloat.’

  Gerhard wondered whether there would ever come a day when he could reveal that he had been that ‘smug so-and-so’, and he had not flown over the lifeboat to gloat, but to catch sight of Saffron.

  ‘For a man who’s not the huntsman he once was, you’re not doing badly when it comes to weaponry,’ he said.

  ‘That comes with running a hundred thousand acres of nature reserve,’ Leon replied. My boys have to be armed if they’re out in the bush with half-a-dozen tourists. Our standard rifle here is the Winchester 70, chambered for the .300 Holland and Holland Magnum cartridge, though I’ve got a couple of H&H double-barrelled rifles for my own use.’

  ‘And Saffron’s use too – I’ve seen her shoot one of those rifles.’

  ‘Always had an eye like a hawk, that girl,’ said Leon, with the pride of a doting father. He gave a grin and added, ‘Even if I don’t let her down in the gunroom, eh?’

  ‘And the shotguns?’

  ‘They’re for duck shoots on our lakes. I’ve got half a dozen 12-bores of various makes.’

  ‘I pity the man who tries to attack you here, that’s for
sure.’

  ‘I sincerely hope that never happens. I constantly get people calling me a black-lover because I treat the Africans on my land fairly. But it’s a matter of self-preservation. I keep my people contented because I don’t want any of them trying to bump me off in the night. But, one can’t be too careful. And, as you say, anyone who tries is in for a nasty surprise.’

  There was a knocking on the door. Before Leon could say a word, Harriet walked in, her eyes twinkling as she wagged a finger at the two men and said, ‘That’s enough gun talk. It’s time you two came upstairs. Zander and Kika have something to say and they’re adamant that their father has to hear it.’

  Harriet led Leon and Gerhard to the garden room, where Saffron was waiting for them. Zander and Kika were standing opposite her with Loiyan beside them. Saffron smiled as she saw her husband come in.

  ‘Apparently our son and daughter are about to deliver their first public speech.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Gerhard replied. He looked at the two children, who were practically bouncing up and down with pent-up excitement, barely restrained by Loiyan’s attempts to calm them. ‘Well, in that case we had all better listen, because I’m sure they have something very important to say.’

  ‘We do!’ Zander piped up.

  The adults stood in a row and assumed suitably serious expressions as Loiyan said, ‘Now then, children, remember your message. You won’t be getting your shillings unless you do.’

  Kika looked at her nervously, so Loiyan got down on her haunches and whispered in the little girl’s ear.

  ‘While you were away . . .’ Kika began, before stopping and looking at Loiyan for help.

  ‘A nice man . . .’ Loiyan whispered.

  ‘A nice man came to see us . . .’

  Harriet and Leon looked at one another, as if asking themselves who Kika was talking about.

  ‘And he had orange hair,’ Kika continued, ‘like . . . like . . . like an orange!’

  Saffron laughed and applauded. With her concentration entirely on her children, she didn’t notice the frown that briefly fell upon Gerhard’s face, nor the tension in his body. Leon too, had failed to join in the fun. His expression was frozen in shock, the colour draining from his skin.