Thorough Bush … Thorough Fire

By Ruby A Thorne

This romance,about two sisters who both love the same man, opens in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, in September 1965.
The story weaves between a small Salisbury shop, an old Rhodesian gold mine,and the precarious career of a teenage fashion model in London.
After Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence
in November 1965, many of the characters who appeared in
Squares in a Grooved Circle are drawn together again but,
as the country braces itself to counteract the threat of retaliation from Britain, they are only concerned with U.D.I. inasmuch as it affects their own lives, loves and ambitions.
However, when one of their group goes missing in Southern Rhodesia, they all become involved in the ensuing search.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781326077310

Book preview

Thorough Bush … Thorough Fire

Thorough Bush … Thorough Fire

Ruby A Thorne

2014

Copyright © Ruby A Thorne 2014

All rights reserved.

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First printed 2014

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are a product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-326-07731-0

Typesetting by R A Thorne

Graphics by M B Thorne

Dedicated

to my husband

Martin

who grew the flame lily

(Gloriosa Superba)

and photographed it for me

Other Rhodesian-based books by Ruby A Thorne include

Squares In a Grooved Circle

set in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia 1964

CHAPTER ONE

Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia

September 1965

Beryl turned over drowsily and gazed at her husband. The rugged outlines of Henry’s face were blurred with sleep and, for the first time, she noticed traces of grey in his tousled brown hair. It was a long time since she had looked at him closely, and yet they had been married for less than two years.

She got out of bed and went into the bathroom, still wondering why she had got up so early on what promised to be a quiet day. Midweek was never very busy at the small beauty salon she ran with her friend Vanessa Milford, but the business was doing well. After only nine months, they had already been able to repay their husbands for the initial outlay.

Henry had always been opposed to the idea of Beryl working. During the first year of their marriage he had done his best to make her totally dependent on him. They had lived in a cottage several miles outside Lusaka where, day after day, she had been left alone in the bush with no telephone and no transport. Henry had introduced her to his friends, but she had only been able to see them at his convenience.

Beryl, having come to Africa from a busy life in England, had found her existence more and more intolerable as the weeks passed. She was convinced that life in Salisbury would have been just as unbearable, had they not moved there at the same time as the Milfords.

Vanessa had had no difficulty in persuading her husband, Mike, to help her start the business. When Henry learnt that his friend and colleague thought that the beauty salon was a good idea, Beryl had found it surprisingly easy to persuade him to finance her share. Yet she had been strangely worried and embarrassed by his sudden indulgence towards her. He had been good-humoured about the entire project, although somewhat doubtful about naming the shop The Cauldron. As he remarked, no two women could look less like witches.

Beryl was a slender twenty-seven-year-old honey-blonde with hazel eyes, lovely legs and a complexion that was better than any advertisement for the Carimor Cosmetics that she sold.

Vanessa, three years older, was an elegant brunette. Her sleek, shoulder-length hair was worn with a fringe, and her dark, arrogant, eyes glowed with the happiness of her second marriage.

The Cauldron had become the driving interest in Beryl’s life. It gave her a sense of independence, and even appeared to inspire Henry’s respect. She had been demonstrating Carimor Cosmetics’ products in Paris when he first met her. They’d married after a whirlwind courtship and, although it meant leaving her job as Assistant Manager of the London salon, the company had offered her the sole agency for Carimor in Southern Rhodesia.

Beryl, horrified by the high cost of importing the already expensive beauty preparations, had suggested to Vanessa that they should create a new brand of products themselves, to counteract the dryness caused by the Rhodesian climate. Her friend’s interest had immediately been captured by the idea. Vanessa, having spent several years working as a laboratory assistant in Northern Rhodesia, was keen to try making cosmetics; so they had set up shop in an old building in the city centre.

Although Vanessa was in the habit of rushing off to meet Mike at four-thirty each day, Beryl would often remain there long after the salon closed at five o’clock. She was happy to deal with last-minute customers, or do the accounts, or any other thing that would postpone her return to an empty flat.

Henry, as always, went to drink beer after work. Beryl suspected that the only reason he tolerated her business activities was because they diverted her attention from his drinking habits. There had been a time when she had begged him to come home and spend the evenings with her, but that had been while they were still living in Northern Rhodesia; and before she had fallen in love with Leonard Barton.

As Beryl prepared breakfast, she heard Henry go into the bathroom. The sound broke into her daydreams, and she experienced an all-too-familiar feeling of resentment against him for interrupting them. When he had first brought her to Africa she had craved his company, never having realized what it would be like to know only one person in a whole vast continent. But, since returning from Lusaka, she had felt as though Leonard Barton’s love had somehow placed her above her husband’s pettiness.

Henry often sensed her preoccupation, although he was ignorant of its cause. As he joined her for breakfast, he asked gruffly, ‘We’re early this morning, aren’t we?’

‘Yes, there’s something I want to do at the shop.’

‘You can take the car if you’re in a hurry. I don’t mind walking to work today.’

The big, rangy Rhodesian rarely inconvenienced himself by walking anywhere, and Beryl felt embarrassed by his offer.

‘No … I … I think I’ll walk as usual, thanks, darling.’

‘You’re doing too much, Berry,’ he told her. ‘You’ve been looking quite exhausted for the last few days. You ought to get a boy to do the cleaning and ironing. You can’t do everything yourself like this.’

‘Plenty of English women run jobs and homes without help, and many of them have children to cope with as well.’

‘Sure, honey, but you’re not in England now. You’re living in a subtropical climate at an altitude of nearly five thousand feet. Why can’t you be like everyone else and delegate your chores to a houseboy?’

‘They’re such a shupa[1], Henry. It’s useless employing an African unless one is there to watch him every moment of the day. Remember how that boy called Engine secretly made cakes and scones here, with our ingredients, and then sold them to his friends? And I’ve even heard of cooks straining the soup through their employer’s old socks! No, really darling, I prefer doing things myself; then I can concentrate on my work without wondering what they’re up to in my absence.’

‘Bugger your work!’ Henry told her. ‘We’re going to have a boy start by the end of the week.’

*   *   *

As Beryl walked to the Cauldron in the early morning sunshine, she suddenly thought ‘It’s spring!’

She remembered the day Leonard had said the same words to her. She recalled the moment so clearly that she could almost smell the sweet, dry grass and the dusty earth of the Northern Rhodesian bush. Was it really only a year since they had discovered their love for each other? She had asked him what spring was like in Southern Rhodesia. His reply, like everything about him, was engraved on her memory: ‘… the msasa trees turn red, like the foliage in an English autumn … and, after the first rains, the grass turns green again.’

She thought longingly of the big blond young man with his insolent blue eyes and the slow, intimate, yet tender, smile that had earnt him the nickname of Sexy. If only she had met him in England before she became irrevocably involved with Henry!

It seemed strange that she and Leonard had grown up so close to each other in Surrey, and yet they had had to travel all the way to Central Africa before they met.

Beryl fumbled with the shop keys, her eyes blurred with tears, as she wondered where he was and whether he still loved her. When she’d first met him he’d been having an affair with the green-eyed teenager, Meg Hoffman. Vanessa had described him as an impudent womanizer, so Beryl had never told her friend about the love that she and Leonard had for each other. He had wanted her to return to England with him, but she had resolutely stuck to her marriage vows and stayed with Henry.

The thought of her husband gave her an inexplicable feeling of guilt. Nobody, except she and the man she loved, knew how she had denied her desires and striven to keep her marriage inviolate. It would have been a relief to have been able to talk about Leonard, but Vanessa had always detested him. It astonished Beryl to remember that she had come close to disliking him herself at first.

She knew he had not become engaged or married to anyone else, because her younger sister, Crystal, saw him sometimes. The girl knew nothing of the love they had for each other, but she would have been sure to write if she had any special news of him.

Beryl sat down in the customer’s big reclining chair and looked at the traditional green and gold Carimor decor around her. It was a long, narrow shop with a curtained cubicle on one side and a counter displaying samples of the imported range opposite. At the back there was a glass partition, behind which Vanessa worked with her pots, tubes, pestle and mortar. It was that which had inspired the name of the shop and had also become its favourite attraction. The skin tonic and face cream that the girls produced sold even better than the Carimor products and, although their prices were considerably lower, the profits were much higher.

She closed her eyes, abandoning herself to a sudden rush of memories and daydreams. When Vanessa came in, at eight o’clock, she found her asleep.

Beryl woke with a start. ‘Heck! I must have got up too soon this morning. I don’t know why I came in so early, there’s nothing booked for today.’

‘You look tired,’ Vanessa told her.

‘Yes. To be honest, I’d like to get out of town for a few hours. Could you manage without me?’

‘I should think so. Where are you thinking of going?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go to Beatrice. Henry seems to have lost all interest in the house he was building us there, but it’s time one of us visited the plot, checked the firebreaks, etcetera. I’ll walk round to Henry’s office and ask for the Chev after all.’

‘You can borrow my car, so long as you’re back by four-thirty.’ Vanessa handed her the keys, telling her where the 1100 was parked.

Beryl thanked her, glad that she had refused Henry’s loan of their Chevrolet. She felt a sudden need to be free of him, and everything connected with him, for a few hours. For the same reason she found herself on the Bulawayo road instead of heading for Beatrice. She hadn’t taken a day off since The Cauldron opened, and she felt the time had come to take stock of her life.

When Henry had brought her back to Salisbury, almost a year before, she had not dared to think about her love for Leonard Barton. Their parting was too fresh and poignant to bear close examination. Beryl, emotionally paralysed, had left it to Henry to find them a furnished flat, agreeing to his choice with unusual indifference. She had been too introspective to notice his surprise. Once settled, she had channelled her thoughts into the business, accepting her husband’s unexpected acquiescence with more gratitude than curiosity.

As she drove, she became aware of the brown dryness of the countryside. It had been like that in Northern Rhodesia too. She remembered the day Leonard had driven her out into the bush and they had lain in each other’s arms in the coarse grass. He had borrowed Mike’s Land Rover to take her on that secret outing. Mike had married Vanessa shortly afterwards, so it seemed appropriate that she should have borrowed the brunette’s car for her day of remembering.

She wondered what Leonard was doing. Did he live with his parents at Byfleet and travel in and out of London each day? Crystal never told her things like that. Beryl had considered asking her sister carefully worded questions in her letters, but decided it would be too risky. Crystal had regarded him as her own boyfriend at the time, so it was better to let her believe that.

Before Leonard left Lusaka, Beryl had told him she intended to try and make a success of her marriage to Henry. They had agreed that there should be no further contact between them, but he had left her his parents’ telephone number in case she ever changed her mind.

On many occasions Beryl had longed to phone him. She’d thought of secretly booking a call to the Byfleet number, but she knew that would only make Leonard fear that something terrible had happened to her. She couldn’t just say that she wanted to hear his voice again; even that would be distorted across thousands of miles. And what if he had found somebody to replace her? Beryl couldn’t imagine him living a monkish existence for a month, let alone a year. Telephoning Byfleet was out of the question.

Almost without thinking, she turned off the main road and headed towards Lake McIlwaine. She parked the car and walked down to the waterside with all the joy of an islander living in a landlocked country. Looking at the lake in its pretty setting amongst the kopjes[2], she wished that Leonard could have been there to share her pleasure. She sat down in the shade of a tree, closed her eyes and imagined him beside her.

When she woke up she still felt drowsy, and a little queasy too. She gazed at the sparkling water and then shut her eyes to relieve a slight feeling of vertigo, which passed as swiftly as it had come. Her watch said nearly ten-thirty and she reflected that, at the shop, she and Vanessa would already have drunk several cups of coffee. She decided to stop at the Hunyani Hills Hotel for a snack. Then she would head back towards Salisbury and drive out to Beatrice after all.

---

[1]annoyance (annoy)

[2]kopje (pronounced kopee) = hill

CHAPTER TWO

Beatrice held different memories. It was there that Beryl and Henry had started to build their dream home when they were first married. They hadn’t visited the place for almost a year, as Henry had been depressed by the overgrown state of the building site. Beryl was not surprised to find everything in an even greater state of deterioration. The walls and foundations of the half-completed, roofless, house were still intact, but white ants had attacked whatever they could. The kias, which had been broken into the previous year, needed re-thatching; and the unused bricks had all been stolen.

Beryl could understand Henry’s reluctance to resume building. To try and construct a home from the empty shell of a past dream was a heartless task. She wondered, for the first time, whether he was aware of the emptiness of their marriage. He had always been remarkably unimaginative; yet he had made no effort to sell the plot, merely grumbling a little every month when he had to make repayments on it.

Beryl seldom discussed money with her husband anymore. He had not attempted to reimburse her for the cash she had provided for his car, the deposit on the land at Beatrice, or any of the other things she had paid for during his weeks of unemployment. When she had repaid his investment in The Cauldron, Henry had been visibly astonished. At first she had thought he was going to refuse the money but, after a moment’s hesitation, he had taken her cheque and blundered out to the nearest pub.

That evening, when Beryl told him she had driven Vanessa’s car to Beatrice, it seemed to Henry as though she was trying to be deliberately difficult. ‘I told you that you could have the Chev today,’ he said.

‘I didn’t think of going until after eight o’clock.’

‘I thought you were so busy you had to get to work early.’

‘There was something I wanted to do before the shop opened.’

‘So, how was Beatrice?’

‘Even worse than before; but I found a boy to clear the firebreaks. I told him I’ll go there again next Wednesday and pay him if the work is done properly.’

Henry nodded, ‘You’d better take the Chev next week.’ Something gave him the idea that the suggestion disappointed her.

*   *   *

When Beryl had returned the money he’d given her for The Cauldron, Henry felt that she was trying to cut one of the links that bound them. For a moment he regretted making her venture possible in the first place, but he remembered how worried he had been about her when they returned to Salisbury. She was so listless and disinterested, even his parents had remarked on it. Only when discussing plans for the resumption of her career had she shown any of her former animation. Henry had thought that, by gratifying her, he might restore her spirits and redeem himself in her eyes.

He knew his faults, but seemed unable to do anything to cure them. He drank; and what was unforgivable in Beryl’s eyes was that he enjoyed drinking. It was, to him, a complete form of recreation; not the solitary, furtive, drinking of an alcoholic but the pleasant relaxation found in the friendly atmosphere of the bars he frequented. At first it had not occurred to him that anyone as intelligent as Beryl could fail to understand that. He’d thought she was being deliberately obtuse. Since their last fight in Lusaka, Henry felt she wasn’t even interested in understanding.

His violent treatment of her at that time had shocked even himself. What had surprised him was her apparent forgiveness. It was only a few weeks later that he had actually noticed a withdrawal on her part, a reluctance to accept his lovemaking — and yet an even greater reluctance to refuse him outright. Nevertheless, she had managed to keep him at arm’s length often enough for him to make a habit of staying out later, drinking more, and returning home too blissfully drunk to desire anything but sleep.

Henry had wondered if she was homesick. He would have offered to pay for her to have a holiday in England had he not been afraid that she would never return. She was all he wanted in a wife, and he would have done anything to put things right between them — anything except ask her what was wrong.

*   *   *

Every Thursday Georgina Hanley drove an old farm truck into Salisbury. On frequent occasions it broke down somewhere between Norton and the city; but that seldom caused her much delay as she possessed considerable strength and a good knowledge of mechanics. By five o’clock she had usually delivered her farm produce, and was ready for a drink before driving home.

Henry knew her by sight only. Her khaki trousers and bush jacket would have been banned in the city’s cocktail lounges, but Georgina preferred the comparative austerity of the Mukwa Bar, which was rarely frequented by women. There one paid for the drink, and not for unnecessary trimmings. She was well known at her favourite haunt, and respected too, being able to discuss the finer points of farming with sound common sense whilst downing drink for drink with her companions.

As Henry watched her enter the bar, he reflected that she even walked like a farmer. It seemed fantastic that the word ‘woman’ could describe both her and Beryl. Nevertheless, they had some features in common.

His mouth twisted in amusement. Beryl would be really upset by such a comparison. Both were of medium height with short fair hair but, whereas his wife had a lithe figure and a creamy glow to her skin, Georgina was altogether more earthy. The woman was probably in her early thirties, like himself. Her body, though well proportioned, was thickset and her hair was tow-like and straw coloured. The only make-up she wore on her round, weathered face was some coppery pink lipstick that drew attention to her wide, sensual mouth.

She sensed Henry’s gaze and looked back at him. There was nothing coquettish in her grey eyes, and he realized he was being summed up with an interest similar to that which he had shown in her.

The after-work crowd usually started thinning around five-thirty and there would be a lull before the first of the after-supper crowd arrived. Henry invariably found himself with a glass full of beer just as the last of his colleagues went home and, by the time he had finished it, he would already be involved in the late session.

There was always a good crowd on Thursdays and Henry wondered whether Georgina might have something to do with that. She was the sort of woman married men could enjoy talking to without fearing reprisals from jealous wives. Her presence didn’t inhibit them; they could share the latest bawdy jokes without fear of offending or embarrassing her. She had even been known to add to their repertoire. They were glad to buy her a drink, and she was the only woman Henry had ever seen who could buy a round herself without looking gawkish.

As the early crowd drifted homewards, he found himself separated from the woman by three empty bar stools. She was just finishing a whisky and rummaging among the loose change in her pocket for her truck keys.

Henry, feeling he should perhaps make amends for having scrutinized her with such obvious curiosity, asked ‘Can I buy you one for the road?’

Georgina hesitated and ran another appraising glance over him. ‘Thanks, I’ll have a whisky,’ she said. Over the weeks she had had several opportunities to observe his height, breadth and ruggedness, and she wondered whether the constant boozing had had