Free Zulu Hart by Saul David Page B

wanted me to tell you. He didn’t want you to grow up with the stigma of having African blood. I suppose he wanted to make it as easy as possible for people in the army to accept your Mediterranean looks. But you’re not in the army now and it’s as well you know the truth. You were bound to find out from your uncle, in any event.’

    George slowly shook his head. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. It’s just too much to take in. Forgive me, I need some air.’

    ‘Georgie, wait!’ said his mother, plaintively.

    He ignored her and left the house. For an hour he wandered the streets, trying to make sense of these latest revelations. Why didn’t she tell me before? he asked himself, again and again. How could she bring me up as a Christian gentleman, educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, when in truth I’m nothing more than an illegitimate half-breed who’s been abandoned by his father? What was she thinking of? And where does that leave me? Am I civilized or a savage? Desperate for answers, he returned to Connaught Square.

    He found his mother where he had left her, tears streaking her face. For a long time he just stared in silent reproach. At last he spoke: ‘I wish you’d told me all this before.’

    ‘I was trying to protect you.’

    ‘Well you failed. Look at me, brought up a gent, wearing the latest fashions.’ He gestured towards his stylish double- breasted Cambridge coat and dark blue whipcord trousers. ‘But it’s all a sham. I’ve obviously got foreign blood and everyone knows it.’

    His mother was angry now. ‘So you have. But don’t you dare feel sorry for yourself. Can you imagine how hard it was for me growing up in Dublin with brown skin and no mother? And yet I survived and made a living. So must you.’

    ‘You think I don’t know that? Why do you think I raised the subject of Africa in the first place?’

    ‘I know. I’m sorry. But you must admit it’s quite a coincidence you choosing to seek your fortune in the country of my birth.’

    ‘I don’t believe in coincidence,’ said George, calmer now. ‘It must be fate.’

    ‘Possibly.’

    ‘So tell me about your mother.’

    ‘Her name was Ngqumbazi. She was the daughter of a Zulu chief called Xongo kaMuziwento. You have heard of the Zulus?’

    ‘I think so. Wasn’t King Shaka a Zulu?’

    ‘He was.’

    George remembered back to long, drowsy summer afternoons at Sandhurst, listening to the history lecturer drone on about the early nineteenth-century military genius who, in less than a decade, had revolutionized tribal warfare and transformed an insignificant Bantu tribe into the dominant power in southeast Africa. ‘So where does your mother fit in?’

    ‘I’m coming to that. As you probably know, Shaka was murdered in eighteen twenty-eight by his half-brother Dingane, who was toppled in turn by another brother, Mpande. My mother’s family were followers of Mpande and were with him during his brief exile in Natal in eighteen thirty-nine. While there she met my father, who was stationed with his regiment in Durban. By the time Mpande returned to Zulu- land to defeat his brother Dingane, early the following year, Ngqumbazi was already pregnant with me. Her family would never have accepted her back with a half-white baby. So she stayed in Natal until I was born, handed me over to my father and then left. I never saw her again.’

    ‘What about my uncle? Is he part Zulu too?’

    ‘No. Patrick’s the son of a Basuto servant girl who worked for us until my father returned to Ireland with his regiment in forty-six.’

    ‘Taking you but leaving your brother?’

    ‘Yes. I had no mother; he did. We left them on the farm.’

    ‘Do you know what happened to your mother? Could she still be alive?’

    ‘It’s possible, though we heard nothing after she returned to Zululand. If she is still alive, she’d be in her sixties.’

    ‘Well, if I do make it to Natal, I’ll try and find out.’

    ‘So you’ve