but it had hurt. It had hurt very badly. She felt the flame of her
urge to write wane and flutter in the chill winds of rejection.
Now when she sat at her desk with the microphone at her lips, the words
no longer tumbled and fought to escape, and the ideas no longer jostled
each other. Where before she had seen things happening as though she
were watching a play, seen her characters laugh and cry and sing, now
there was only the dark cloud banks rolling across her eyes, unrelieved
by colour or form.
For hours at a time she might sit at her desk and listen to the birds in
the garden below the window.
David sensed her despair, and he tried to help her through it. When the
hours at the desk proved fruitless he would insist she leave it and come
with him along the new fence lines, or to fish for the big blue
Mozambique bream.
in the deep water of the pools.
Now that she had completely learned the layout of the house and its
immediate environs, David began to teach her to find her way at large.
Each day they would walk down to the pools and Debra learned her
landmarks along the track; she would grope for them with the carved
walking-stick David had given her. Zulu soon realized his role in these
expeditions, and it was David's idea to clip a tiny silver bell on to
his collar so that Debra could follow him more readily. Soon she could
venture out without David, merely calling her destination to Zulu and
checking him against her own landmarks.
David was busy at this time with the removal of Conrad's game fence, as
he was still laid up with the leg, and with building his own fences to
enclose the three vulnerable boundaries of Jabulani. In addition there
was a force of African rangers to recruit and train in their duties.
David designed uniforms for them, and built outposts for them at all the
main access points to the estate.
He flew into Nelspruit at regular intervals to consult Conrad Berg on
these arrangements, and it was at his suggestion that David began a
water survey of the estate.
He wanted surface water on the areas of Jabulani that were remote from
the pools, and he began studying the feasibility of building catchment
dams of sinking boreholes. His days were full and active, and he became
hard and lean and sunbrowned. Yet always there were many hours spent in
Debra's company.
The 35-mm. colour slides that David had taken of the buffalo herd
before Johan Akkers had decimated it, were returned by the processing
laboratory and they were hopelessly inadequate. The huge animals seemed
to be standing on the horizon, and the ox-peckers on their bodies were
tiny grey specks. This failure spurred David, and he returned from one
trip to Nelspruit with a
600-mm. telescopic lens.
While Debra was meant to be working, David set up his camera beside her
and photographed the birds through her open window. The first results
were mixed.
Out of thirty-six exposures, thirty-five could be thrown away, but one
was beautiful, a grey-headed bush shrike at the moment of flight, poised
