House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe. Christina Lamb
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one of the boys would poke in a stick then run. Once we saw the python just after it had swallowed a big duiker and it couldn't move it was so full.
After checking their boots for scorpions or baboon spiders, the children would set off hunting with a retinue of black boys to carry their things, track animal spoors and collect any kills. The black were good trackers and would carry whatever we shot and were always keen to come because afterwards we'd give them whatever we'd bagged so they might get a guinea fowl or something for their suppers. We knew so little about blacks that once, when we were about eight years old, my cousin saw one of the black guys doing a wee and she rushed back saying, ‘Jeez, you can't believe how big this guy's willy is!’ So we asked to see it and he was quite indignant. He charged us all a penny. I don't remember how big it was but we felt it was worth paying.
Nigel and his brothers and sisters were almost entirely ignorant of the black majority all around them, even though the most recent official census showed blacks outnumbered whites by 21 to i.* To Nigel the blacks were just a kind of supporting cast that did his family's washing and cooking or laboured in the fields then melted away back into the bush or their kraals. He and his siblings sometimes played pranks on them, like placing a dead cobra on the watchman's chest when he fell asleep on duty.
When Nigel was not hunting or fishing, he spent his time playing sport. The farm had a swimming pool and a tennis court and at weekends the Houghs often held tennis parties with local farming families coming over for some of Mary's lemon meringue pie and their cook Robert's famous piripiri chicken. Robert was very small and round and most of his cooking was stodgy and forgettable but so good was his piripiri chicken that Nigel's father always said he would ‘put up with any amount of nonsense from Robert’ because of it. The children knew better than to interrupt their father while eating it for his level of concentration exceeded a lioness honing in on her prey.
Nigel was extremely competitive, as was his eldest sister Shirley, and his other sister Tess often had to act as peacemaker between the two after a showdown over tennis. If none of Nigel's siblings or white friends were around, he would play football or cricket with the workers' children. It was kind of one-sided because when we played cricket I would do all the batting and with soccer they would never tackle me hard and they would always let me win as I was the baas's son.
He also developed a passion for squash. Father had got a loan from the Land Bank to build a tobacco-grading barn, which he had built to the exact dimensions of a squash court so it was a grading shed during grading season and a squash court for the rest of the year. Nigel played with their maid Maria. I used to make her play me for hours and hours each day A large, fat woman, who would puff and sweat as Nigel made her run around, Maria was the only one of the workers who dared venture into the sweet tobacco-smelling barn. There were two owls in the rafters and most Shona are scared of owls, believing if one lands on a building and hoots, someone inside will die.
From a young age, Nigel would often trot round after his father to inspect the progress of the tobacco or maize. I was soon aware that farming was extremely hard work and that without endless supervision the munts would do nothing. Every morning at 5 a.m., John Hough set off for the fields in his long khaki shorts, safari shirts with folded-up sleeves, and long stockings with boots, all topped off with a grubby white floppy hat that his wife would long have liked to dispose of. A man of strict routine and firm principle, he came back to the house at 8 a.m. sharp for a cooked breakfast, often lambasting Robert for his ‘miserable’ eggs, and at 8.30 a.m. would disappear into the bathroom for half an hour to ‘contact his stockbroker’, chiding his children that ‘good plumbing is the secret to good health’. He came home again at half past midday for lunch, after which he would sleep for exactly thirty minutes before returning to the fields until late afternoon.
Sometimes he would let Nigel sit with him as he distributed the fortnightly wages to the workers, entering the amounts in black ink in his big ledger. All had stories of woe, leading them to beg for an advance for the funeral of a relative or to buy medicine for a sick child. Mother said they would just fritter it on beer and that he should pay the wages to the women to make sure the children got fed, but the munts would never accept that But his father often gave in to their requests, admonishing Nigel not to let his mother in on the secret.
The only time John Hough ever took off was for their twice-yearly holidays. In August the family always decamped to Nyanga dam near Rhodes's old stone cottage in its English gardens, and would sleep in tents under the fir trees, while every April they spent a month in Beira on the Mozambique coast. This was usually in a group with other families, renting chalets on the beachfront, and it was Nigel's favourite time of year. Mozambique seemed very exotic. We children would play all day in the Indian Ocean, diving through the huge rolling waves and trying to catch jellyfish on sticks. There was a zoo where they laughed to see animals in cages instead of running free in the bush or in game reserves like back home, and a funfair. In the evening, they might go to their favourite Johnnie's Seafood Restaurant or the dads would grill fresh prawns on the barbecue and dip them in peri peri, a sauce so hot it burnt the tongue.
Nigel was aware that his father was different from other dads. It was not so much his British accent-only 40.71 per cent of whites at that time were Rhodesian-born. Around half had entered the country like John Hough since the Second World War, largely from Britain but also from former colonies in East Africa and India, as well as Greeks, Afrikaners and a considerable Jewish community. Between 1946 and 1960, the number of whites rose from 82,000 to more than 220,000 attracted by the high standard of living, sustained as it was by the inequalities between blacks and whites. Even Ian Smith was only second generation-his father had been a Scottish butcher who moved to Rhodesia in search of a better life.
But John Hough had always seemed more interested in birds than children, particularly crows, which he said had ‘amazing characters’. Paradise for Dad was listening to Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto while watching eagles in flight and eating a smidgen of Mum's lemon meringue pie. As he grew older he even began to resemble a bird. Nigel's school friend Larry Norton found him alarming. ‘He looked exactly like a falcon. He was balding with long grey hair round the edges, a big nose and a big moustache.’
Nigel and his elder brother Edwin would take advantage of their father's eccentricity to tease him mercilessly. Once on holiday in Ballito Bay on South Africa's northern Natal coast, John could not understand why every time he went into the local shop he was treated extremely rudely by the shopkeeper who would follow him around snatching things from him as he picked them up. The boys had whispered to the shopkeeper, ‘That's our dad. He's an alcoholic and a shoplifter and often takes naughty magazines from the shelf.’
Shortly after one of their holidays, Nigel's parents purchased their first LP player, prompting great excitement when it was unloaded at the farm. The sanctions imposed by the West after UDI meant most things were locally assembled, and the ‘Supersonic’ radiogram was no exception. Apart from John's beloved Beethoven, the family record collection soon featured Cat Stevens, Sandy Shaw, Gary Glitter and Mick Jagger. Later they bought a television, a Philips set built in socialist Yugoslavia. The Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation (RBC) had a monopoly and evening viewing largely consisted of old American comedy series like The Ed Sullivan Show and I Love Lucy. The Smith government was obsessed with protecting the country against encroachment of the so-called permissive society corrupting the outside world, so there was strict censorship. Penthouse and Playboy magazines were not allowed into the country, while the RBC even banned Olivia Newton-John and Gene Pitney.
Every Thursday, the family would drive to Rusape Club. It was only 30 miles away, but on unmetalled strip roads in their light green Ford Cortina station wagon that felt like a real trek. John Hough was not a gifted driver and it was a squash to fit all six children in, two always having to sit in the boot. Their parents were always telling them to keep quiet. Once my sister Tess fell out on the way to the club. When we tried to tell Mum and Dad they told us to mind our manners and wait till they finished talking. Afterwards when they realized what had happened they were more favourably disposed to us butting in.
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