The Writers' Circle

Zimbabwe Rhodesia, December1980 -Poppet

At the back of the farm house my grandfather had built a large, deep swimming pool. During the war years my Dad built a three metre brick wall all around it, so that William and I could swim safely, unobserved by any passing terrorists. Some children had been shot, while swimming at the Country Club in Centenary.
On Christmas Day 1980 I paddled back and forth on my Lilo, carefully saving struggling beetles  and Stick Insects from a watery grave. I fished them out with a leaf from the rubber plant, and dropped them onto the concrete pavers at the side of the pool. They lay as though drugged, until the sun warmed and dried them, and then they took off to continue their restored lives. Because of the sanctions there were no chemicals for the pool. When it went green, Dad tipped weed killer in, and it seemed to kill the algae. The pool was a brilliant blue.
Millie watched me from the verandah that ran the length of the house. I could hardly see her, so dark was she in the shade. She was repairing my only dress, and letting down the hem. When she smiled at me, I could see her white teeth gleaming out from the darkness. The dress was needed for Christmas lunch. Dad had invited the British soldiers stationed at Cranbourne Barracks for lunch, and the house was in an uproar; cooking, cleaning and decorating.
Suddenly Mathias, the chicken-keeper, came running around from the side of the house. 
'Nyorka! Millie! Hamba! Makulu nyoka pagati lo chicken kia!' he screamed, flailing his brown arms.
Millie leapt to her feet. She and I shared a horror of snakes. 
'Snake? In the chicken house? Mathias you must kill it. The Baas and William have gone to fetch the soldiers.'
Mathias shook his head, 'Aikona Millie! Ena makulu maningi!' No, Millie. It is very big.
I knew where William's gun was; safe under his bed. I'd watched him learning to shoot it. I knew how to load it, take aim and fire. 
I fetched the gun, and shoved two cartridges of buckshot into the breech, running all the time, to the chicken house outside the back door, with Millie running after me. 
'No, Poppet!' she screamed. 'No! Wait for your father!'
'The chicks will all be dead by then!' I replied.
The chicken house was being used to raise new chicks. There was a wire enclosure in the front, and a small hut at the back, with a corrugated iron roof. Mathias pointed, with a quivering finger, to the hut at the back. The fluffy, yellow chicks were running in circles, shrieking and pecking each other in their anxiety.
'Mathias,' I said as calmly as I could. 'Fetch a long stick, and open the door.' 
'How!' said Mathias. He scowled and shook his hands, back and forth in despair. I suppose he did not like being told what to do by a small girl.
When the wire door was opened, I could see the creature coiled into the space between the sloping corrugated iron roof and the red brick pillar supporting it. I couldn't see its head, only coil upon coil of shiny greyish-green scaled flesh. The fluffy yellow chicks fled between my legs, and I had the feeling that I was looking at the devil himself. Millie had gone quiet, apart from what I knew to be her muttered prayers. Small things caught my eye; a nail sticking out of the wall, feathers on the floor, and I tried to focus on the snake. Sweat dripped into my eyes and stung, and I knew I had to get on with it.
With my heart in my mouth I pulled back the breach, slammed it into place, and took aim at the repulsive coils. I took care to sink the gun into my shoulder, and squeezed the trigger. The noise of the shot was amplified in the small space, scaring me half to death, and then the diamond-shaped head of the giant snake slid down the brick pillar. I was paralysed for a split second, and then I pulled back the hammer again, took aim for the head and . squeezed the trigger a final time. 
I heard Millie, loud in my right ear,' Ai eeeeeeeeee! How, How! How!' and still the coils kept coming down the pillar. For what felt like a very long time, the snake fell from the roof, thudded on the floor, and piled up in the loose straw and feathers below. It twitched and thrashed, and then, thank God, it lay still. I let out the breath I'd been holding.
I was trembling from the shock, the fear of the snake and the report of the gun, but I stood just inside the chicken house, and watched the snake as its life seeped out of a hundred gaping wounds. The mouth yawned in a yellow diamond shape, and its fangs dripped with unspent poison. Its eyes stared straight ahead, and I felt a moment of regret for the magnificent creature it really was. Its death diminished me in some strange way, as though by killing it, I had surrendered to fear and superstition. I had done the deed so unthinkingly, so spontaneously, and afterwards I wished there had been another way. Dead, the snake seemed pitiful. He was only doing what snakes do.
Eventually the twitching body lay still. Mathias, standing on tip-toe, pulled the body out of the chicken house with the end of a very long stick. Sakere, who had been watching from the back door with a dishcloth in his hand, came over and pushed Mathias out of the way, impatiently. He lifted the snake's body, and hung it over the rod that poked out from the front of the water boiler. Millie offered him her dress-makers tape, and he measured the snake. It was seven foot and six inches long. 
Sakere smiled at me, 'Well done, little Motohuma! You have shown them that you are strong! You are like your mother - a firehead! They will not shoot you in the back!'
I went and sat on the back doorstep, paralysed. My breath was coming in sobs, but inside me was the beginning of a belief that I was a real someone after all. I felt like throwing up, and Millie sat beside me.
 	'You are like your mother, Motohuma; brave and strong. You'll be fine. And she did have red hair, no matter what William says.'
When the pick-up truck roared into the courtyard at the back of the house, I had recovered, although I was still unable to move. William ran over to me, and snatched the gun from my hands, checking it for damage. Dad helped the soldiers in their smart uniforms, to get off the back of the truck, and then came over to Millie and me. 
'Millie! What are you thinking allowing Poppet to play with a gun?' he started. 
Millie silently pointed to the tattered remains of the snake.
The soldiers turned to where she pointed. 'Oh my God!', 'It's enormous!'  and 'fucking 'ell!' they said.
Dad looked at me. 'You shot it, Poppet?' 
I nodded, grinning shakily. I wasn't sure if I'd wet my pants, so I stayed sitting down.
'My God!' he said. 'It's a cobra. Biggest one I've ever seen! It was eating the chicks, Mathias?'
Mathias nodded dumbly. I could smell the sweat of him from where I sat.
Dad turned to the soldiers.
 'I'd like you to meet my daughter, gentlemen. Let's go inside and murder a couple of Castles. You want one, Poppet?'
 He laughed, but I could tell he was proud. I let the men step around me, and stood up only when they were all inside. There was a wet patch on the stone step behind me.
 'You were wet from the pool,' Millie said kindly.
 I ran off to change into my Christmas dress. Millie had let the hem down by four inches, and it was still a bit short. In those days I was like the garden; I just grew and grew unbidden.
The soldiers sat on the basket-weave chairs on the verandah, and Milton brought them Castle beer in tall glasses. I sat with them and sipped a Coke. This was a real Christmas treat. Coke was not on the regular shopping list.
'What's that bloody, great plant wrapped around the tree in the middle?' asked one of the soldiers.
'It's a Delicious Monster,' said Dad.
'My God! Those things only grow indoors at home, and they're about a quarter of the size!'
'And what's that?' said another, pointing at a giant Daddy-long-legs spider.
'That's a baby mosquito,' said William.
'Its mother must be the size of a chopper!' 
They laughed, and I laughed with them - the snake forgotten. Sakere called us for lunch and we moved through to the dining room. The table had a crisp, white table cloth along the whole length and each place was set out with silver cutlery and crystal glasses. I didn't even know we had such things. There were crackers at each place, and Sakere had placed a low vase of Flame Lillies in the centre of the table. The giant fan swung in the hot air above us, and disturbed the usual flies. The windows were closed to stop more flies from swarming to the delicious smells, as Sakere and Milton, with tinsel threaded through his woolly hair, served course after course of wonderful food: Prawn cocktails (that weren't really prawns at all, but tiny local fish -prawns had not been seen since UDI and the sanctions), Potato and Leek soup, Turkey and vegetables from the garden, and finally; a steaming Christmas pudding with brandy-butter sauce. 
'Just like home, but without the rain!' said one soldier. He pulled his cracker, read the joke out loud, and put the paper hat on his head. I'd never seen grown-ups behave like this. They didn't speak about politics, or crops or any serious thing. They laughed, and slapped each other on the back and enjoyed their food. The South African wine went down, and the music on the old record-player went up.
'Where do you live?' I asked Eddie, the soldier seated nearest to me. He was young - maybe only nineteen or twenty. He was very sun-burned and his short, blonde hair stood straight up on top of his head.
'London,' he said. 'In the East End.'
'What do they do for Christmas there?'
Eddie laughed, 'Exactly this, strangely enough! Family comes round, we have a big meal, watch the Queen on the telly - okay, well we probably won't do there here -but everything else is the same; presents, decorations, games. Oh, and it rains of course - or snows if we're lucky.'
'What does snow feel like? What does it smell like? Can you sit on it?'
'You can sit on it if you don't mind a cold bum. It feels crunchy and very cold -like ice cream but not so sloppy. I don't think it smells at all. 'Ere, Martin! What's snow smell like? Little girl wants to know.'
'Depends where it is, love,' said Martin in a deep, Scottish accent. 'Where I come from it smells clean, like nothing- it smells like nothing. Where your friend Eddie comes from, it's called slush, and it smells of cars and tarmac and dirt.' Eddie hit him on the shoulder. 
'Don't speak ill of home,' he said.
There was a lot of laughter and, for once, the grown-ups didn't talk about politics. These soldiers didn't know anything about politics or the country they were helping to 'free'. They had just come to do their duty. As one of them said, 'Another war, another day!'
Dad listened to the stories of England, with a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other. '"As a rule a man's a fool, when it's hot he wants it cool. When it's cool he wants it hot. He always wants what he ain't got ",' he quoted.
I received a bicycle of my own, and I sat on my father's lap in the evening after he'd taken the soldiers back to their barracks. I fell asleep in his arms, safe for once.  
On Boxing Day, at daybreak, I was woken by a whisper, 'Poppet? Wake up! Do you want to come out to the lands with me?'
I kicked off the sheet and crawled out from under the mosquito net, to join my Dad. I stretched and yawned and he tickled me under my arms.
'Come on! Rise and shine, the morning's fine! Heave ho, heave ho, lash up and stow. The sun's burning your eyes out!' Adrian told me that his father had woken him up with that old Navy ditty, every morning when he was a child.
William was sleeping next door but we didn't disturb him. 'One of you 'orrible 'erberts is enough,' Dad said.
 I threw on shorts and a tee shirt and hurried out in the cool, wet dawn. Up in the Msasas the birds were singing so loud, I couldn't believe I'd ever slept through it. Something in the air was magical and beautiful, and I felt like skipping and singing, so happy to be alive.
Dad reversed the old pick-up out of the garage. He leant over to the passenger side, and opened the door for me. I jumped in, and we drove out of the gates and down the road, over dusty tracks, stopping here and there to pick a cob of corn, check a fence, and talk to anyone he found wandering about. 
In the distance I saw the figure of a man, wrapped in a blanket, with a woman and children around him. Dad pulled up next to his old foreman, Wilbur, who was walking with his family near the dam. Wilbur's wife had a huge pile of sticks on her head, and a baby, tied up in a towel, on her back. 
'Morning, Baas,' said Wilbur.
'How are things Wilbur? Did you have a good Christmas?'
Wilbur looked at his wife, and waving his arm tiredly, indicated to her to take the children over to the shade of a tree, and wait. He leant on his stick in the road, and talked to Dad. Dad placed his elbow on the open window of the pick-up and looked up at Wilbur.
'Last night the boys from the bush came to the compound, Baas,' said Wilbur, his wrinkled old face working hard. 'They took Sakere's cockerel and tied him to a stick, boppered him by his legs, like this.' He indicated a tied fowl with his wrists. 'They danced around our fire with the cockerel, and they told us that if ZANU PF does not win this election in this whole area, they will kill us all.'
'The vote's secret Wilbur,' said Dad.
'What does that matter, Baas?'
'The English soldiers will make sure that everything is peaceful.'
'The English will go home and it will be our problem, Baas.'
I remember that day as the beginning of the end of hope. 
Millie knew the story too, as her kia was on the edges of the compound. On Boxing Day she went about her duties without a smile, and I tried to cheer her up. Usually, if I spoke about London to her she would laugh and chat. Not that day. I told her about the English soldiers, and their tales of Christmas at home in the snow. She knew about snow from the pictures in Country Life magazine in her suitcase, but that day she told me to go and read a book, and not bother her.