LAKE OF MY HEART – CHAPTER 8

LAKE OF MY HEART – CHAPTER 8

She had the cheek to tell him not to drink. Her Glen Norah A side was almost close to a row of flats that marked the end of Glen Norah. It was some point walking from there to Machipisa in Highfield where he wanted to go.

He turned back taking a commuter omnibus towards his home. He stopped at an array of shops to buy a litter or two of ale which he consumed there before walking home singing Trevor Mapfumo‘s Pfumvu paruzevha. This was a risky enterprise. Consumption of liquor in public was an offense. Many a time, a reveller had been chased by the police up and down the streets.

One time he and other drinkers had seen a team of police officers coming. They had started walking in the opposite direction, turning a corner and there were about ten uniformed policemen! He thought he had had enough of paying public drinking fines. He had to be cautious. That ate into his finances.

Opaque or clear beer taken in a beer hall was okay. These were segregated from the eyes of the public. However need for speed and need to be near the other shops made him and his crew buy clear beer from bottle stores. These had no sitting capacity within hence they were supposed to consume the alcohol at home. Sitting capacity turned bottle stores into night clubs which the owners didn’t afford.

His fellow workmates were chiding him that drinking opaque beer was below his status. But then the beer had sound economics. It was brewed using starch and sorghum. It made it a food beverage though it got him drunk. The worst was when one threw up. The smell and mess were just horrible. It had been blamed for pot bellies in men and hoarse voice in women. The joke was one required a filter to keep the residue out.

His single room awaited him with its double base and mattress, 3-door 4-drawer wardrobe, table and six chairs, a single hot plate stove and other paraphernalia.

He had to pick her up for a matinee at the exact time he had mentioned. With time he had learnt a valuable lesson as an estate agent in training. You were never late for a client, it was the reverse. It was him who had to wait five minutes earlier than the time the client had suggested. He waited for her at Chitubu Tavern, shortly outside the gates making sure that he did not take a sip of the frothy brew though he was tempted.

His duties now were varied including conclusion of sell, letting and valuing of residential and commercial properties that senior agents had started. He liaised with banks and building societies and the buyers where mortgage bonds were required. He talked to surveyors whose signature was a requirement in appraising the true value of a property before a bank or building society, on rare occasion insurance companies released funds. He worked with photographers to provide pictorial displays to hook prospective buyers.

The tavern had good shades however he bothered not to be tempted too much. On those shades were drinking partners that he didn’t know. Beer had a habit of making friends of everyone including pickpockets and those bent on getting a free drink especially with the frothy local opaque brew drunk in huge pails. ‘Friends’ always appeared out of nowhere to help lift and empty these pails of beer.

It was the same with smokers. A single person could buy a cigarette and nicotine would be exchanged by three.

She came seventeen minutes late. Rain was threatening to come. She had an umbrella. He had none. He didn’t like carrying umbrellas. He just bought more and more of them investing them in emergency taxis, buses, lecture halls or bus stops. He thought it thrift now not to use an umbrella which he didn’t have any more. Raincoats required extra space in bags that did not extend. She wore tight skin hugging jeans skirts cut slightly below the knees. Her hair was made in gathers at the back.

She wore a black V neck t-shirt shaping her bosom out. The cleavage was impressive, bouncing up and down. He was wearing denim blue jeans trousers, light blue short sleeve cotton shirt with three buttons towards the neck.

“Better late than never,” he said as soon as he sighted her.

She was looking very beautiful. He knew when he was falling in love. He knew when he could not prevent it. He had not meant it to be like this. Failing to pay the fare for the emergency taxi had certainly brought him a good female friend.

“A man waits for a woman or a girl all the same” she whispered.

“Lunch first in town if you prefer”, he suggested. “A man waiting for a girl is at risk of being taken over by single girls making it to town.”

“No risk, I wouldn’t pick a date I don’t know,” she replied.

“A man will patiently wait for his lady is he is in wedlock,” he said.

“Or his girl. Once married you won’t have time for going out, there will be kids, the in laws and the arguments to deal with,” she replied. “Do you like red or black pepper and those sorts of arguments make married couples less and less inclined to go out. Then there will be counter arguments when the husband wants six children to compensate for his six siblings and the wife, like me requires three and full stop.”

“Then why get married at all?” he asked.

“It’s a lottery, if you can give me a proper recipe for marriage you have to be in it for 50-years,” she suggested. “But then in your sunset years the best you can have is if you are a couple. It makes sense for two people to be in unity, when one errs, the other corrects. Grandchildren find it easier to visit a couple of oldies than single grannies.”

“It’s all instinct which says, find a girl and marry, why I can’t really explain because you can have all the pleasures of marriages outside of marriage,” he suggested.

“And their disease attachments too and the stigma,” she replied. “When young men and women abandon their children on divorce or birth for the pleasures of the world, they have social problems when they reach retirement age. You become parasites to relatives because your children won’t ever want to see you as you will have disowned them early.”

He flagged an emergency taxi which took them to the city for lunch and a matinee. They sat in the back. Lunch was a snack, a mineral drink and pie for him while she preferred hot chips with vinegar and tomato sauce and a mineral drink. He bought a cone for her and a yogurt for himself. They watched a matinee in Avondale before hitch hiking back to the city.

They walked hand in hand in the streets. Her hands were soft though she had her share of kitchen chores. He led her to Harare Kopje where he sought a photographer. Four of five prints of them close together, holding hands, hugging, necking or sitting close where memories for the future. He led her to the apex of the Kopje from where he chose to kiss and fondle her. She was a good kisser who responded well to his advances though she kept telling him to apply brakes. He had never proposed love to her!

“We are in the public glare”, she pushed him away.

“We could find a secluded spot,” he offered.

“And get arrested for public indecency? Imagine the police telling my parents they found us in a compromising situation,” she said.

“Not that low,” he complained.

She felt so warm and vulnerable in his arms. She kept breaking off engagements with him. Other couples were using the scenic spot to look around the city and yonder. If love was a disease then the Kopje was a major cause for the disease judging by the couples coming in. Here the couples could view most of the capital city from atop the hill including the sprawling mass of Workington industrial area, Belvedere, Rugare and parts of Southerton industrial area. With a binoculars one could see further.

They read how Sir John Borrow had been involved in a Rhodesia act of bravery that had his name given to an area that later became a very affluent suburb, Borrowdale. Residential areas unlike cities, towns, streets and roads had escaped renaming with African centric names of heroes.

“Why don’t you come to see me at my digs?” he asked.

“Kissing, necking and fondling are not kosher,” she replied. “It's worse still when male hands get inside a girl’s blouse, skirts or dress. You end up unleashing him or her demons that escape the moment you have a baby growing inside you for us females. Suddenly you wake up and realise you hate the guy that made you pregnant. He in turn says it wasn’t him, it was Knox whom you never kissed.”

“But at times we need agree that both men and women do double dating, you sleep with Mark and Tony at the same time maybe same day like a casual sex worker.”

“And the same for you men,” she replied. “You get a decent girl while you are working close quarters with a shop assistant somewhere who elopes for you when the decent girl had given you 100% of her heart.”

“Are we very religious?” he asked.

“Even traditional African religion has the same value.”

She was side stepping his question like a doctor doing a biopsy.

“And it allowed polygamy”, he advised her. “Good advice but the same culture will allow me to marry you, your brother’s daughter and your female cousin or strangers if I choose. The same culture used to give your father the right to marry you off at fifteen or older to a man of his choice, usually an elder man to you. Your father’s age group almost.”

“Just that I did rather not have hands all over my blouse or under my clothes”, she replied. “It is next to heaven. Then when you are not married and you let it go, that touch of heaven can become a maternity ward. After which months later you will be at Fourth Street corner Samora Machel, Harare Magistrates Court infamous for handling maintenance cases.”

“How do we progress in an association without that?” he asked.

“Just friends,” she replied. “Depending on what ‘that’ is? I thought you were a well groomed gentleman who didn’t waste time smashing me to pieces with platitudes of love.”

He wrapped his arms around her with her back hard against his front. She pulled out a few minutes later.

“Where does your father work?” he asked.

“Circle Cement,” she had replied. “He works at their Mabvuku cement factory as an assistant to a fitter and turner. This is a position he was trained into by the Rhodesian Caucasian class before his bosses emigrated to Australia and South Africa.”

“Then he is just as good as a fitter and turner.”

“Without the relevant papers but with more than the required experience,” she had replied. “At his age I don’t think he would like to undergo a skills aptitude test with the department of Manpower Planning or Apprenticeship Board. Theory would be hard on his old brains but practical touch that is asking a genius like Albert Einstein to demonstrate.”

“And your brothers?”

“One is at Churchill. He plays cricket while in the second form. The other two are journeymen at Circle cement,” she had replied. “Don’t ask if I am going to join them there?”

“Are you?” he asked.

“No, it’s downsizing due to the economic challenges in production. Production costs for most manufacturers have risen above selling prices. With the state having a grip on prices, the only solution is scale down on production.”

“Maybe there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Who knows?”

“Where do your brothers live?”

“One is at home the other is married. He lives in Waterfalls, Powell Street as a tenant there. His wife is a student teacher on teaching practice at Waterfalls Junior School. It makes it easier on her.”

He walked her back to Market Square from where they availed their emergency taxis as the sun was going down. With the rush hour far behind, boarding was not a problem. Waiting was a problem but not for a couple who had time to make up talking together.

__________________________________________

They had spent the day at the OK Grand Challenge in early June on a Saturday watching about nine horse races. It was a large gathering of people hoping to win various prizes including vehicles. Trevor was in between examinations. He was going through Real Estate Development II, Urban Planning II, Valuation III and Property & Facility Management II before the middle of the month.

He and she made bets on seven races, she won two, and he won one.

“Gotcha,” she had said with a wide bodied smile. “Two wins for one.”

“At this rate there will be no need to go to college. You would just do punting,” he had replied. Their earnings were slightly more than their expenditure. They had teas because it was cold. “I will have French toasts.”

”Queen cakes will do for me,” she replied. “I knew it was cold. I didn’t know the temperatures would drop like this.”

“I read the forecast. Remember I told you that your jersey was not enough.”

“You insisted on a jacket beside the jersey, how right you were. How do you drink in this weather?” she asked.

“Beer warms the belly and later clouds the mind,” he had replied.

“Then why do you drink?” she asked.

“It helps me with company,” he replied.

“We could go to church,” she replied. “There is a lot of company there, smarter and of one mind unlike a beer hall. Some come to have free drinks and others to parade their bums for a few. At church, everybody comes to enjoy the praise, word and worship.”

“I am not good at praying in public,” he had replied.

“Today you are a teetotaller,” she declared.

For lunch he found something hot for them, fresh chips, drumsticks and some soup to which they added salt and tomato source. Hey, this was digging roads into his pockets leaving widening gaps.

He had taken her on another day where they spent it at Harare Sports club watching cricket. He was in tow with one of his Caucasian bosses who loved the sport of cricket. In February her results came out, she freaked because she had flunked. He comforted her on the phone when he contacted her.

“Trevor,” she said. “Listen!”

“I’m listening.”

“I want us, you and me, it’s over,” she suggested. “You are the reason why I flunked my examinations.”

“But, but, but ________,” he stammered.

“But what? I want to concentrate on my life without you. It’s’ over!” She banged the phone against his ear.

© Copyright tmagorimbo 2014