It was late one Friday night when my girlfriend of two months, Adrienne King,
called me up as I sat brooding over a Green Lantern comic, rubbing my brow in irritation at
the latest outfit-change they had foisted on poor Hal Jordan. I was seventeen, Ady nineteen – but then, I (usually) felt mature enough to handle the difference.
"Lyle! Having a good time? Listen, there's something I want to ask you."
I pushed away from the bed so I could hear Ady, Skid Row wharbling on the tape deck behind me.
"What’s up, Ady? going to try for the beach tomorrow…Umdloti?"
"Well…" she said, "I have another idea. You know I'm heading home for the varsity vac, for a week? So I'm going tomorrow, and...I know we haven’t been going out for long, but I want you to come. They're all keen to meet you down there." Swaying slightly, I considered. Home for Adrienne was a clutch of ramshackle houses on a river mouth somewhere south of Port St Johns, on South Africa’s ‘Wild Coast’. My only memories of that part of the country were banana trees swaying in the breeze above rich brown earth…I think my folks had taken me down there once. Ady’s "They" was the extended clan of family, friends and backpackers who headed for Kora Mouth every holiday, from all over the country, and some from the States.
"Yeah," I said, "but aren't there stacks of car-jackings down there? Crime? I read in a YOU magazine that-" She laughed. "Lyall, I've lived down there half my life, and I'm not missing this trip!
Anyway, who says it's safer in Durbs? Someone was stabbed at varsity res just last week."
I lit up a B & H and turned up the fan, eyeing the door. Safe. My parents were still deafening themselves with Phantom of the Opera on the far side of the house.
I had doubts about the ‘Wild Coast’. You heard such horror stories. Certainly in YOU magazine.
And now, in these times, everything was so unpredictable. Most whiteys I knew were holed up in their duplexes clutching passports and family contact numbers in Sydney and London. Everyone talked of leaving.
But then...imagine, me and Ady. In paradise. and if I didn't go, maybe she'd always see me as some kind of coward. This was a girl who had parachuted, climbed mountains, fixed her own car engine. What had I ever done? Read comics and listened to Radio 5. I needed to live a little. Ady’s place was only five hours away, not in the depths of the jungle. I shook off the symptoms of my National Anxiety Syndrome and took the plunge.
"OK, fine. Maths studies can wait! “At 4pm", she said, "from 'Maritzburg."
The next day found us clutching a variety of bags, fishing rods, dive gear and water bottles on the tarmac, next to a low hanger at Oribi Airport. In front of the hanger squatted a small plane that seemed to be made of tape, rust and glue. I eyed it dubiously. A tall man came round the side with a shock of orange hair and retro aviator shades.
I registered the electric cord holding up his shorts, as he proffered a
hand.
"Travis King, Ady's dad and your pilot. This is my plane, Jinx.
You must be Lynton." Ady laughed, throwing her arms around him.
"Lyall, Dad! Lynt was a year ago." That's nice, I thought. Great start.
Soon, we were jouncing along the runway and fluttering up into the hazy sky.
My stomach kept heaving and I had to wipe the sweat off my palms, while Ady
fell into a doze. She was like some sort of cat, able to sleep anywhere.
I tried to keep my mind off the creaking noises coming from the left wing.
" Mr King, will we fly right down to Kora Mouth today?" I yelled. He squinted out at the tumbling hills of cloud around us. "Nope. First we land at Umtata. Then you drive down to the coast!"
We wouldn't land until well past dusk. Then, drive down to the coast. At night? Probably about 100km of tar
and an hour’s worth of rutted dirt, in APLA territory. Quite possibly my girlfriend's father was a lunatic.
In any case, by 6pm we were transferring all our stuff into a rusty, low-slung '81 BMW, at a rambling house
outside Umtata. Sporadic gunfire echoed out from across the dam, and Travis laughed.
"Those guys knocked out two of my windows just last week!"
Wherever else we were going, I didn't want to spend another moment
here. Soon we were on the dark Port St Johns road, Ady's hand on my leg and the water-skis jabbing at my headrest. The BMW felt more like a giant, meandering ship with a dodgy rudder, than an actual car. I peered out into the dark. After three cigarettes, two deep potholes, and near collisions with
ambling cattle and goats, we reached a turn-off into the night.
We veered into a sludgy puddle on the first bend.
It had rained recently and parts of the road lay under water, while the rest was rocky and
hard-packed. Banana trees crowded the sides, and every now and then things blundered through the undergrowth.
Once, a green and black snake actually dropped from a tree branch onto the bonnet, before slithering off in a tangle. This was all a bad idea, I thought. But Ady's hand on my leg gave me a sense of false bravado.
It was kind of fun. A bit of adventure for the wimpy dork who had always dreamed of being Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway would have laughed at danger!
Then the headlights died.
"Damn, this always happens", said Ady, as she rooted under the dash. "But, it's fine." She came up holding a dive torch triumphantly. "If we go slowly, this will get us the last 20km".
So we inched along like a giant, blind beetle - it's either that or die in the bush, my hysterical mind shouted.
After an hour of cursing at the stubborn car, I shot it up a long steep hill, out of the greenery and onto a grassy knoll. The dust settled. The car sank gratefully onto its springs.
And then all I could hear was the crashing surf. We fell out of the car, dragging assorted debris with us, and I nearly caught my breath. Across the horizon stretched dark water, lit down the middle
by a pendulous yellow moon. We were high above the sea, waves smacking the jagged rocks somewhere far below.
I turned on my heel to take in the garland of lights dotted over the next rise.
Those would be the cottages, sandwiched on a spit of land that jutted out between the sea and the wide dark spread of a river mouth. We just stood there for a while, Ady humming to herself.
"Wow, it’s so awesome Ady. And you have lights. Electricity!” I suddenly felt more confident.
This was not, after all, the isolated asshole of the world.
“Ja, lover boy” said Ady, turning to me. "Had lights for a year now. We're starting to get things sorted out.
Uncle Bruce even has a helipad on his roof. He made millions in the beef industry. Flies down every holiday.
Let's go. We leave the cars here, and carry all the stuff down. Road's hectic."
I was astonished by the landscape that glowed in the moonlight around us, and by the small citadel that watched over it. Did she say a helipad? It felt like we were perched on some wind-buffeted eyrie, around
which all the waters of the world broke. We were six hours and yet a million miles away from Durban.
As we walked down the hill lugging scuba gear, water bottles and what have you,
silhouetted figures yelled out in greeting from the porches of surrounding cottages. People streamed up the hill to help unload the car. There were dogs and children running about, the smell of smoke, and everywhere the sound of crashing waves. Soon I was face down on a giant musty pink bed, the sounds of the sea
mingling with shouts and music, until I slept, deeply.
Sunday. I prayed I wasn't about to break my neck, as I clung to the ski rope stretching out ahead of me.
It was high tide on the Kora River. Adrienne's sister, Jo, gunned the speedboat’s Yamahas and shouted back
"Three, two, one-GO". The line snapped taught in my hands.
I jerked out of the water and shot forward between muddy banks. Somehow I kept my feet, as we flashed up the river. What a rush! Somehow I had got my feet on top of the water. I was doing something I had never done before.
"Hey", I yelled, "this is not too"- the thought went unsaid as I ploughed into the river, legs pinwheeling.
I felt my back creaking and the air went out of me. I came up gasping, to see the silvery belly of some fishy beast
rolling in the water off to my left. Shark?? I thought wildly, as the boat swung around to fetch me.
Soon I was hauled onto the deck, the King sisters cackling.
Clearly my face had a very worried look on it. "Yeah, there's sharks, bru", shouted Jo. "Mostly sandies, but a couple Zambo's too! That one was just a baby. They haven’t eaten anyone since 1986.”
I failed to feel comforted but nevertheless, I would ski again. I was determined to show Ady I could ‘hack it’ out here.
The days just flowed. We hiked for miles up and down the coast.
At night, we drank ourselves silly in a shebeen on the hill, listening to the head man tell us old stories about creatures said to prowl the mangrove swamps, or recount how hapless victims of the local chief’s wrath,
back in the 19th century, had been thrown alive from the top of nearby Executioner’s Rock.
We helped the locals rebuild a clinic that had blown down and whiled away the days and nights without ever looking at a clock. Travis King came hurtling in one morning, driving a battered Alpha all the way to his front door.
Ady took photos. I sketched. We basked in the peace of it all.
The world was happening in an alternate reality.
One morning we took the speedboat across the river, ran it up a sandbar, and found a secluded cove to tan in.
Me, Ady, her sister. As I lay in the shade reading a dog-eared Stephen King, I suddenly
remembered the fat wad of tobacco in my rucksack, secured from a Norwegian weirdo traveler at the jetties the night before.
He had literally melted out of the mangroves and thrust this thing
on me, refusing payment, and then buggered off again, trailing whisky
fumes. I didn't even know what the stuff was. Could have been banana leaves.
I had been too hammered to argue. The whole episode seemed like a dream now, but what he had given me was real. I grinned as I brought out the stuff. A big green wad of leaves rolled in a reddish paper.
It felt dense. Hell...we were on holiday. Life felt bloody great. When in Rome...
"Come on..." . I arched my eyebrows in a devilish manner I knew she thought was 'cute'. I could see Jo was keen. She was always up for anything, no concept of 'sensible' whatsoever. This was something new, and we were on holiday dammit. Ady giggled. The battle was won.
A couple of hours or an eternity later, me and Adrienne were swinging from a mangrove branch, feet dangling in the shallows, and yelling hysterically about giant squid and where they might still exist. Clouds had begun to glower down over the valley, but inside our heads, the sun shone brightly. Through the happy fuzz of my awareness, two things happened. Firstly, I dimly saw a white crescent bobbing in the breakers out
beyond the river mouth. Secondly, a figure came leaping and falling over the brow of the dunes, down towards the river, like some wild jungle creature. It was Jo. "The boat! The boat! It's out to sea. Anchor came loose!"
We barreled up over the sand and raced towards the sea. The waves looked furious, and wind whipped spray off the
rapidly departing, very expensive boat. We had to swim. If "Gen" sank because of us, it would be unforgivable. We had got too lax. Too damn comfortable. With my dopey mind on Ady’s green bikini I had forgotten everything else. Stupid. Stupid! The two girls were good swimmers, but I just flailed madly at the water lungs heaving. My pulse was off the chart. We reached the overturned hull and immediately began retching on the petrol spreading out from the twin Yamahas.
"Turn it!" yelled Jo, "before it swamps!"
We heaved down on the boat, and all we got for it was palms scraped raw on the asbestos siding. Blood began to flow down my arms. Not good. This water was teeming with sharks. The current battered us, and I worried we'd grow too tired to do anything but cling to the boat.
Through the spray I saw people running down from the cottages, yelling.
Jo's head banged sharply against the pitching boat, and within seconds, our new battle became one to just keep
her afloat. My eyes were raw and stinging from the dope, the salt and the petrol. Frightened, I threw my arm out and seized on what I thought was one of the emergency oars. As another wave rammed us side-on, my arm came up out of the water, and I just had time to hear Ady yell "Don't, the trigger guard's off!", before a bolt shot out of the spear gun I had seized on. It whispered over Jo's lolling head and ricocheted off the boat. What a fool! I thought.
Then I heard a steady thud-thud-thud as "Uncle Bruce’s chopper loomed over us. A lifebelt smacked up water next to me, two more hitting nearby, and as I choked on a mouth full of petrol, I felt myself hauled from behind.
People had swum out to us. I saw Jo being dragged away from the boat. My head was leaden, my arms were cramping up. The last thing I saw before blackness hit was the boat dipping gently down into the grey sea.
I came around on the beach, my face full of wet sand. As people swarmed around us with towels and blankets,
I turned back, retching seawater, to look at the marching rows of grey swells, and out beyond
them, more and more. No boat.
A few hours later, Jo lay sleeping in Doc Jackson's cottage.
A vet by trade, he seemed quite capable of putting five stitches in her head. Ady and me sat looking out of the windows of her Dad's place, as sheets of rain came drifting off the sea. Conversation was minimal.
Combination of a dope hangover and the misery of realising we had just thrown R90 000's
worth of boat away. I had a feeling that when we got back to civilisation, things would be different.
I was right - It's been about five years now since I last spoke to Ady.
Travis King's entry into the room was accompanied, almost comically, by rolling thunder.
"You kids are going back to Umtata. In the chopper. Once this rain sets in, you can get stuck down here for weeks. So get packed. Ady, I'll talk to you later. Jo's staying for now." He tramped out, clearly not the sunny pilot who had flown us down. As water tumbled from the sky, we hastily packed our scattered things, and ran up to the cottage on top of the hill, where the chopper was already beginning to rumble.
We lifted off in a spray of water, the nose dipping as we headed out over the delta, towards Umtata.
Ady looked over at me and smiled, but I felt that my time in the sun was probably over. It was time for me to go back to school in any case. To my room. To my comics. Too much reality, all this.
I looked back once, to see the river unwinding towards the sea, and the cottage lights winking through the grey.
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