Recoil

1

We flew round Table Mountain, then north along wide, sandy beaches before circling back inland across vast stretches of vineyard. The city nestled between the lower slopes and the Atlantic.

Thank fuck the flight was over. I’d been jammed in cattle class for the best part of twenty hours. It hadn’t been direct: we’d had two dropo-ffs on the way. I could picture the grin on Crazy Dave’s face, once he’d managed to crawl back to his desk. The bastard must have bought the cheapest ticket going.

I looked for taxi signs as I wandered towards the exit, checking my empty voicemail. Then I punched in Lex’s airfield office number. It was a mass of sevens and fives and I kept getting the little fuckers in the wrong order.

The woman who answered had such a strong accent I felt she was beating me over the head with it.

‘Hello, it’s Nick Stone again. I called last night for Lex. Is he there?’ I carried on through acres of glass and concrete, past Vodafone stalls hiring out mobiles and dozens of businessmen poring over their laptops in the hot zone.

‘You’re late, man. Didn’t you leave last night?’

‘We stopped off in Jo’burg and Port Elizabeth.’ My mouth tasted like a rat’s arse and I could only just peel open my eyes.

‘It’s Saturday afternoon, man. He said he’ll meet you at the bar.’ The way Mrs Bring-Back-Apartheid pronounced it, it sounded like something you’d do if you were looking for an oilfield.

‘Which bar? And what’s his last name?’

‘You coming by car?’ She started spouting roads and exits.

‘Whoa, I’ll find a pen and paper. I’ll call you back.’

I closed down the mobile and went over to a Nescafé stall masquerading as a street barrow. I got the loan of a pencil while the vendor made me a very bad cup of instant coffee. Granules lapped against the rim of the cup as she handed it to me because the water wasn’t hot enough.

Lex being in a bar wasn’t good news. Bars meant alcohol, and where I came from, it was ten hours from bottle to throttle. Well, sometimes.

I called the number again, and had to keep slowing her down until I had the details. ‘OK, the False Bay bar. Where’s that?’

‘Erinvale. He’ll be there all night.’

‘His surname?’

‘Kallembosch.’ She said it like I was stupid and should have known, but I tried to sign off pleasantly.

‘And what’s your name?’ Nice to be nice, and all that.

‘Hendrika.’ She sounded as if she had done resistance-to-interrogation training.

‘Thanks, Hendrika.’ I couldn’t help myself. ‘Have a nice day.’

As I crunched my way through the Nescafé, I checked my balance at an ATM. I knew Crazy Dave wouldn’t have given me a penny, but I lived in hope.

Even in my current state of frustration, I was still struck by the two things that got me every time I came to Africa: the quality of the light and the brilliant blue of the sky. It was like they’d passed a law banning clouds.

I didn’t hold the thought for long. As the taxi turned east out of the airport on to the N2, I resisted the temptation to tell the driver to put his foot down. I wouldn’t get back in the air any quicker. I had to grip myself and calm down. I was making as much progress as I could.

The driver seemed a nice enough guy, but this place was full of horror stories about passengers being driven out to the townships, drilled in the head with a 9mm and robbed. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Give us a look at your road atlas, mate.’ I pushed myself forward between the two front seats so I was level with him. ‘I’d like to check out the area. See how the land lies . . .’

He passed it back to me. Erinvale was the other side of Somerset West, some forty Ks east of Cape Town. The estate lay between two mountain ranges and the coastline of False Bay.

I handed the map back. ‘Looks just like Switzerland.’

‘Mediterranean climate, man.’ He beamed proudly. ‘Rain in winter. That’s why we make great wine.’

Sweat was pooling at the base of my spine. I opened the window. My sunglasses were in the holdall, in the boot, so I had to squint against the light. My eyes were still stinging, and my body had developed the layer of grease that comes with long flights and the constant battering of the hot, stale air they pump out to stop you getting too energetic with the flight crew. The last thing I was looking forward to was a night in a smoky bar with a grizzled old bush pilot swinging the lamp while he told me his war stories, but if he ended up flying me into DRC as soon as he could focus on his instruments, I’d have to lump it and smile a lot.

I checked my mobile again. The signal was good, but the display was still empty.