The White Giraffe Read online

  “You have the gift, chile,” she whispered. “Jus’ like the forefathers said.”

  “What gift?” Martine whispered back.

  But Grace just shook her head. “Be very careful. The gift can be a blessin’ or a curse. Make your decisions wisely.”

  5

  In the yard, Tendai had the engine running. As soon as Martine climbed into the jeep, he put his foot on the accelerator and they bounded over the potholed drive and onto the main road. Heat wavered like a watery mirage above the pavement.

  Tendai seemed agitated. “I’m sorry, Miss Martine. I shouldn’t have taken you there. Perhaps you would be kind enough not to mention it to your grandmother.”

  Martine barely heard him. Her forehead was still tingling from the pressure of Grace’s hand, and her mind was rushing like an express train through her past. She was trying to remember something, anything, that would explain what had just happened.

  “But what did Grace mean about my mum? Did she ever live at Sawubona?”

  “Please,” begged Tendai. “Those things you must ask your grandmother.”

  He drove on in silence for a few minutes, before turning right onto a sandy road lined with a high wire fence. Arching over the entrance and supported by two white pillars was a black wooden sign etched with the words Sawubona Game Reserve.

  The jeep stopped and Tendai pointed out of the window. “Can you see the buffalo?”

  Martine dragged herself reluctantly back to the present. She squinted into the sun, but could see nothing except an endless expanse of trees, dusty shrubs, and grass, sprawling under an electric-blue sky. On the horizon was a range of mauve mountains. A black eagle circled lazily overhead.

  “No,” she sighed. “I can’t.”

  “Don’t look through the bush,” instructed Tendai, “look into the bush.”

  Martine did and gradually the shrubs resolved themselves into the muscular black hides of around thirty buffalo. She could make out their curved horns and intense faces between the trees.

  Then she spotted the bull elephant. He was standing under an umbrella tree, his curved tusks and gray bulk almost completely camouflaged. Like the buffalo, he seemed as ancient as the land itself. But even from three hundred yards away, his deadly power was apparent.

  Martine stared at him in awe. She was beginning to feel overwhelmed by all she had seen and heard since leaving the airport. “Wow!” she said at last. “He’s huge and so . . . so still. I’ve only ever seen wild animals on television. What else do you have here?”

  “Twelve other elephants,” Tendai recited proudly, “eight ostriches, one hundred and fifty springboks, ten wildebeest, eighteen kudus, twenty zebras, six lions, four leopards, seven warthogs, a couple of troops of baboons, a few waterbucks, and a . . .” He stopped. “That’s all.”

  “And what? You were going to say something else.”

  “It’s nothing,” Tendai said. “The local tribes believe that a white giraffe has come to Sawubona. The Africans have a legend, which says that the child who can ride a white giraffe will have power over all the animals, but it is only a myth. We have had no giraffes, not even ordinary giraffes, at Sawubona for nearly two years now, but people keep coming to me to report that they’ve seen this white one. The tribesmen say that it’s an albino giraffe, as white as a snow leopard. If it’s true, that would make it one of the rarest animals in the world. There is no proof. I have never seen it, and I am in the game reserve every day.”

  Martine had an odd feeling of déjà vu, almost as if she’d had this conversation in another life. “But do you believe it exists?” she asked eagerly.

  Tendai shrugged. “From time to time, I have seen tracks, but they always disappear. I follow them for a few hundred yards and then they just vanish into thin air.”

  “So maybe it is true!”

  The Zulu laughed. “It is not always the one you follow who makes the tracks, little one. In the old times, some tribes would tie the hooves of animals to their feet to lead other hunters away from the herds, and your grandmother says that in the mountains of Asia people have tried to fake the footprints of the Abominable Snowman. Maybe this is what is happening here!” He grinned at Martine. “If the white giraffe does exist,” he said, “it must be very shy.”

  The gears clanked and they moved off down the road. When they reached a high iron gate, Tendai jumped out to open it. On the other side was a driveway lined with huge red and orange flowers, an immaculate lawn, and a white-painted thatched house. Nerves bit into Martine’s stomach. In a few minutes, she would meet her grandmother for the first time. Would Gwyn Thomas be glad to see her? Would she be kind? Would she, even though she hadn’t really wanted her, learn to like Martine? And what if she didn’t? What then?

  6

  The door of the thatched house opened and out stepped a tall, slender woman in her early sixties, wearing jeans a and a short-sleeved khaki shirt with a symbol of a lion on the pocket. Her hair was tied back symbol of a lion on the pocket. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail. Martine was still taking in the fact that her grandmother was dressed in denim when Gwyn Thomas marched up to her and, without any introduction, took her face in both hands. Up close, Martine could see that her fair hair was streaked with white and that her chestnut-brown skin was etched with a million creases. She looked at Martine with an expression that was impossible to read.

  “You’re all grown up,” was all she said. She turned to Tendai. “You’re very late, my friend. You haven’t been visiting that crazy old magic woman, have you?”

  Martine realized with a shock that she was referring to Grace. “We got lost, Grandmother,” she said quickly. “We were driving all over Cape Town. I’ve seen the whole city!”

  In a flash, her grandmother turned on her. “In this house, we speak only when we are spoken to.” She wheeled around abruptly and stalked back inside.

  Tendai followed her with Martine’s suitcase. He didn’t look at Martine as he passed.

  Martine walked after them, her heart thumping. A ginger cat sat washing itself on the front step. It regarded her curiously as she approached.

  “Oh, boy, this is going to be fun,” Martine muttered under her breath. But the ginger cat simply yawned, closed its eyes, and lay down in the sun to sleep.

  Tendai appeared at the door. “Your grandmother is waiting for you,” he said.

  With Tendai gone, Martine felt more alone than ever. She stepped into the house and looked around. It was cool and peaceful inside, with polished stone floors and big, comfy, worn leather chairs. Another cat, this one black and white, was curled up on the lid of an old piano and there were oil paintings of cheetahs and elephants on the walls. The bare beams and thatch gave the room a sense of space and calmness.

  Her grandmother emerged from the kitchen with a glass of milk and a plate of egg sandwiches. She motioned for Martine to take a seat at the dining table. Martine hated egg sandwiches and she was still full of Grace’s delicious food, but she wasn’t about to say so. She began picking at the bread.

  “I don’t have fizzy drinks here,” her grandmother said. “Don’t believe in them.” She stood at the head of the table like a lioness, her blue eyes locked on Martine as if in challenge.

  “Okay,” Martine said warily.

  “The first things you need to know are the rules of my house. Please don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you, and that includes the piano. No running, no shouting, no cursing, no sweets. I don’t have a television. I go into Cape Town twice a year, so there’ll be no shopping for you. No fast food. We grow our own vegetables. You’ll be expected to make your own bed and help out around here. I can’t abide laziness. Any questions? ”

  “Can I breathe?” Martine asked cheekily.

  “No answering back!” her grandmother roared.

  Martine shrank into her chair. The egg sandwiches lay untouched.

  “Give them to me,” her grandmother said, snatching them up. “I should have known that craz
y old woman would be cooking for you. Well, you can eat them for dinner. I won’t tolerate waste.”

  The rest of the day went downhill from there. Martine was dizzy and a bit tearful after the long flight and the adventures of the morning, but after she’d showered, her grandmother insisted on driving her to the tiny town nearby—a single street of shops known as Storm Crossing—to buy a school uniform and some brown lace-up shoes. At the clothing store, where she was fitted with two white shirts, two navy blue skirts, a Windbreaker, a blazer that had a lynx cat with fur-tipped ears on the badge, and a gray tie, Martine discovered to her horror that she was expected to start school the very next day, without even the shortest break to adjust to her new surroundings.

  “There’ll be plenty of time for that,” her grandmother told her. “You’ve missed too much school already.”

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, at dinner (thankfully, not the egg sandwiches, which weren’t mentioned) Martine slipped on the polished floor as she carried her grandmother’s favorite teapot back to the kitchen. It smashed to pieces.

  “Oh, what was Veronica thinking?” her grandmother ranted. “I knew this would happen. How can I be expected to look after a child?”

  She refused to allow Martine to help clean up the mess. Martine just crept quietly upstairs to bed with tears running down her face. She felt utterly bereft. She was in deepest, darkest Africa with no parents and no friends, living with a grandmother who plainly couldn’t stand the sight of her. Really, it couldn’t get any worse.

  As far as Martine could tell, there was only one positive in her new life, and that was Sawubona itself. She was already falling in love with it. The sun had been setting over the game reserve when they returned from the shops, and a herd of springboks was moving in a dusty column down to the water hole in front of the house. Martine had managed to escape from her grandmother’s clutches long enough to go down to the bottom of the garden and watch the springboks through the high game fence.

  She’d had to pinch herself several times. Yesterday she’d woken up shivering in gray, gloomy England and now, just a day later, she was sitting under a copper sky streaked with purple, with the evening sun warm on her skin. The young springboks were bouncing around the shallows as if they had mini-trampolines attached to their hooves, and the guinea fowl, which she’d earlier seen waddling along the roadside like plump, blue-speckled kings, were crying in the trees as they settled down to roost. Martine stretched out on the grass and let her nose fill with the heady smells of an African evening—cooking fires, wild animals, herby grass, and nature in abundance. She’d never experienced anything quite like it.

  Her bedroom, too, was something a bit special. It was up in the attic, with a window cut into the thatch. Although very tiny, it had plenty of character and charm. There was a bookcase crammed with books about animals and Africa against one wall and a bed made with crisp white sheets, a patchwork quilt, and large soft pillows. But the best part was that it overlooked the water hole, a brown dam surrounded by thorny bush. Tendai had told her that most of the reserve’s wildlife gathered there at dawn or at sunset.

  Now, however, it was nighttime. The mattress sank beneath Martine’s weight. She dried her eyes on her sleeve and wondered if it was really true that her mum had lived at Sawubona. It cheered her to imagine that this might once have been Veronica’s room; Veronica might have read these books or snuggled into this very quilt. But why on earth had she never told Martine about this place?

  So tired that she could barely put on her pajamas, Martine slid between the sheets, her head whirling with snapshots from the long day. The last thing she thought about before she went to sleep was the white giraffe.

  7

  The next morning Martine woke feeling as if she were going to the dentist. For a long time she lay there with her eyes screwed tightly shut, because that way she could pretend that none of it had happened. Her home had not burned down, and her mum and dad were not gone forever, and she had not been sent to the wilds of Africa to live with a total stranger. Finally, when she could avoid it no longer, she opened her eyes. A vast sky of the most incredible blue filled her vision. The clock on the bedside table said 6:05 A.M. Right on cue, an orange-breasted bird fluttered onto a thatch beam outside her window and began singing a song of pure happiness. Tirrootiree, tirrootiree.

  Propping herself up on one elbow, Martine gazed out over the game reserve. The water hole was draped with early-morning mist and streaked with gold from the sun. A dozen or so elephants were splashing around in it, wallowing in the mud and spraying each other with their trunks. Zebras were grazing nearby. She shook her head in wonder. The scene didn’t take away the anguish in her heart, but it definitely helped.

  Even so, she walked downstairs on leaden feet. Her grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a coffee mug. When Martine entered, she stood up quickly and said, “Good morning, Martine, I hope you slept well.” Her voice shook slightly, as though she was nervous. Before Martine could speak, she went on hurriedly, “There are boiled eggs in the pan and some bread in the toaster and anything else you might need on the kitchen table. On the counter over there, you’ll find a lunch box containing sunscreen, yellow cling peaches from the garden, and some cheese and chutney sandwiches. I have to go out now to feed the young elephant, but I’ll be back at seven thirty to take you to school.”

  Martine was still stammering a thank you when the door banged behind her grandmother and a gust of cool air blew in. It wasn’t an apology, but Martine already knew that it was all she was going to get.

  The dentist feeling returned on the fifteen-minute drive to school, most of which Martine spent squirming in her new uniform, hating the skirt and not knowing what to say to her grandmother. And it didn’t diminish when Gwyn Thomas drove her through the gates of Caracal School and she saw the hordes of healthy, confident children who were to be her new schoolmates. They were every shade of honey, cappuccino, and chocolate. None were the color of Martine—that is to say, a sort of unhealthy gray white. After her grandmother had left her at the door of the headmistress’s office with a gruff but kindly “Have a good day. Tendai or I will collect you at four,” she stood pressed against the wall, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.

  “Be with you in a mo,” called a voice when she knocked. Martine could hear someone speaking on the phone. While she waited, she took in her surroundings. Her old school, Bodley Brook, had resembled a concrete prison, with a blacktop playground and peeling beige corridors reeking of disinfectant. The bathrooms had been covered in graffiti. This place didn’t even look like a school. It was more like a lovely campsite. Log buildings made from glowing chestnut timber were scattered about grounds laid with emerald lawns and huge trees. Behind a wooden fence, a swimming pool sparkled.

  “You can close your mouth now. We still have the same boring old lessons you had back home. You know, long division, dead kings, punctuation!”

  The expression on Martine’s face must have said it all, because the Cleopatra-haired vision standing in the doorway wearing wooden parrot earrings and a long purple dress laughed merrily and, pulling her into the room, added, “Only joking. Our lessons are, of course, extremely interesting. I’m Elaine Rathmore, the headmistress, and you must be Martine. Welcome to Caracal.”

  Once she’d gotten used to Mrs. Rathmore’s sense of humor, Martine couldn’t help liking the headmistress, who was very down-to-earth. Mrs. Rathmore explained that despite appearances, Caracal was a school like any other, but it did have a strong focus on the environment. All the buildings were heated with solar energy, many school projects concerned conservation, and the cafeteria served only organic meals. They went through a copy of the rules together and Mrs. Rathmore explained the schedule. Then they went for a tour of the grounds. Apparently sports were a “big deal” at Caracal School, which had produced many champions. There was a gym with a climbing wall, and the sports fields stretched for several acres.

 
; “If you have a gift for sports—or anything else, for that matter—we’ll find it,” Mrs. Rathmore promised.

  Martine, who knew perfectly well that she didn’t have a gift for sports—had in fact been hopeless at every sport she ever tried—thought back to Grace’s words: You have the gift, just like the forefathers said. What was the gift? Was it to do with science, math, art, or even music? Or something she couldn’t even guess at? Be careful, Grace had cautioned her. The gift can be a blessing or a curse. Make your decisions wisely.

  What kind of gift came with a warning?

  “Lucy van Heerden . . . one of our talented prefects,” Mrs. Rathmore was saying. “Lucy is in Miss Volkner’s class with you, Martine. Martine? We haven’t sent you to sleep already, have we?”

  Martine blinked.

  An elegant blond girl was standing in front of her holding out her hand. Martine shook it and was surprised to find that it was ice cold. Judging by Lucy’s caramel tan, she spent every spare hour surfing or sunning herself on the beach.

  After asking Lucy to take Martine under her wing, show her the ropes, and give her a “very special Caracal School welcome,” Mrs. Rathmore went on her way in a billowing cloud of purple, leaving Martine with her glamorous new classmate.

  “Jeesh, but you’re white,” Lucy commented as soon as the headmistress was out of earshot. “Where are you from? Iceland?”

  “England,” mumbled Martine. If she was awkward and self-conscious to begin with, she now felt a million times worse.

  Lucy giggled. “I’m kidding,” she said, giving Martine a friendly punch that almost knocked her over. “Come on, we’re late for Miss Volkner’s class, but at break I’ll introduce you to the rest of the gang.”