‘Where were you?’ she demanded, her hands clamped to her hips. ‘You know I don’t like you being out after dark. I was worried.’

I told her that I had been with Mufaro and was perfectly safe. She stopped breathing for a moment and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she gave me a long look; her mouth had gone thin. She drew me inside without a word.

15 The Courtaulds, Rhodesia, 1950s

15

The Courtaulds, Rhodesia, 1950s

The longed-for rains were late. Day after day, Ginie and Stephen would stand on the veranda, shading their eyes with their hands as they watched great clouds banking up in the sky, piling and thickening, yet day after day, no rain came. Here and there, shafts of sun would break through the cloud, shedding light that was orange and sultry.

Ginie’s arms and legs sprouted a bumpy, itchy heat rash and she grew gloomy and out-of-sorts because of the feeling of waiting. Stephen was more silent than ever. On Christmas morning, they woke to the sound of thunder growling softly in the hills, like a waking beast. The sky was filled with heavy masses of cloud, its underbelly deepest purple, the upper reaches white as cotton. The air was charged and tense. A feverish wind blew thick and hot in their faces, coating their skin and clothes with a film of dust.

The dogs were splayed out on the veranda, tongues lolling. It was a day fit only for lounging on long chairs with iced drinks, but the Courtaulds clung to the traditions of an English Christmas. They exchanged gifts by the tree, which looked hot and overdressed in its tinted glass balls and wreaths of tinsel. Stephen gave Ginie an antique turquoise bracelet from Persia, shaped like a serpent, which she loved. She gave him a beautifully illustrated handbook on astronomy. He was difficult to buy for, as his tastes were so particular, but the look on his face told her that she had chosen well.

Neither of them felt like going to church. Instead, Ginie showed Gideon, their cook, how to make Christmas pudding. Stephen spent the morning in his study working on ‘The Huguenot Family of Courtauld,’ a compilation of letters and narratives about the lives of his ancestors. Drawing on memory and the many photographs, letters and reference books he had shipped from home, he was slowly filling volumes.

Ginie organised Christmas lunch and invited Guthrie because she wasn’t sure he had anyone to spend the holiday with. Guthrie never spoke of his private life, but once when Ginie was out walking early with the dogs, she had seen a slender copper-skinned young man slipping out of his house.