Last Survivor

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2 London, EnglandBy force of habit Joanne Flack looked around her.

In the bush in Mana Pools National Park in the country of her birth, Zimbabwe, she kept an eye out for elephants which, unless they were snapping off branches, were so quiet that one could walk into them before they made their presence felt. In Johannesburg, her home for the last third of her life, she watched the roadside hawkers for signs of anything other than acute sales acumen. Joanne was always amazed how the man selling the sunglasses at William Nicol could see the tiniest movement of her head or eyes that might indicate she was interested in a new pair of knock-off D&Gs.

Not that she had any money.

Now, in London, she watched the people. It wasn’t that she was scared, just out of her natural environment. In Africa there was danger, for sure, and it could be random and horrible, but one could take measures, Joanne reasoned. Avoid the bad areas, keep the nine-millimetre Glock clean, try not to drive at night, keep the windows wound up, but not all the way as it was harder for a thief to smash a partially open window than a fully closed one. In Hwange National Park she didn’t walk around the camp at night because she knew the hyena would be out and the snakes more active, and if she ever came across a lion on foot she knew to stand still.

There were Africans on the streets of London, which at first gave her some measure of comfort, but when she heard their voices they were speaking French, or Nigerian, or some other tongue she couldn’t understand. Her people were the Ndebele, first and foremost. These people in their overcoats and beanies might be from the same continent as her, but that was as much as they had in common. She didn’t understand them, didn’t understand England.

There were six policemen in her field of view as she exited Kings Cross station, dispersed in three pairs, armed and wearing yellow high-visibility jackets. Cops with guns were part of her life in South Africa, but these ones in England were different from the smiling, ambling officers she was familiar with, the ones whose waistlines reflected their skill at fleecing speeding tourists with ‘on-the-spot’ traffic fines. She went down the escalators into the tube station.

The first time Joanne had been to London, with Peter, back in the early nineties when things had still been good for them and their country, none of the bobbies had been armed. The world had changed since then. The policemen above ground, with the sides of their heads shaved, looked like soldiers, and she wondered if some of them had been. They reminded her of her childhood, when the threat of attack had been very real and everyone seemed to carry a gun, even her own mother.

Joanne’s fondest memories of her mother were of the two of them in the garden, tending to her mother’s plants. She remembered going to her first Cycad Society annual general meeting in Mount Pleasant in 1979. Members will please check firearms at the door, the program had said. Her mother carried an Israeli-made Uzi submachine gun – ‘handbag-size, darling, the ultimate fashion accessory’. Joanne smiled to herself.

How odd to have good memories of a war, she thought. A week after that meeting Joanne had shot and killed two men. While there was a terrorist threat in the United Kingdom most of these people passing her by, she realised, would never see a body oozing blood from a bullet wound or know the almost paralysing terror of an armed man coming through the night towards one’s home with an AK-47. These people did not know what it was to feel the kick of the rifle in the shoulder, to smell the cordite and to know that in that instant a life had been taken and another saved. They did not have the nightmares nor feel the pats on the back in the morning from well-intentioned adults for a job well done, for taking two lives; they did not know that wine and beer could dull the pain as one got older, and bring on the tears in the same night. These people knew nothing of death and little of life. People in Africa knew these things and it shaped them, this shared experience of war and trauma, even as it chipped away at them, little by little.

She took a deep breath and hopped on the Northern Line to Embankment, then changed to the District Line and took a westbound train towards Richmond. The morning commuters had given way to tourists, mums with babies, and a noisy group of schoolchildren on an excursion. As usual everyone, apart from the kids, kept to themselves. That suited Joanne.

Kew Gardens was one stop from the end of the line, about where she felt in her life right now, she mused. She knew the route from her previous trips to the UK and wondered if this would be her last mini pilgrimage to the Botanic Gardens. The train was above ground here, and the drab outer suburbs had given way to leafier streets and old red-brick houses. Joanne exited the station and walked the five hundred metres to the Victoria Gate.

She was a member of the Gardens, a gift from Peta that no doubt could not be renewed this year, and showed her card at the entry booth. She couldn’t afford to stay long – her flight left that night – but even though it had only been days since her previous visit she knew she couldn’t leave England without seeing Woody again, possibly for the last time. She needed to leave this country. Extending her return ticket was not just a matter of neither she nor Peta having the money to pay the change-of-booking fee; if the events she had put in place played out as she thought they would, then it might not be safe for her daughter and her family if Joanne continued to stay with them.

When whomever stole the cycad from the society’s lock-up realised what they had then there would be hell to pay. She needed to get back to Africa where she knew where and how to hide, but if she failed and her actions resulted in a loss of life, then she was determined it would not be her child or grandchild. And if that lost life was her own, she would leave this world having seen Woody once more and in the knowledge she had done her best to ensure he would not be the last of his kind.

Once through the gate she turned left. The bitumen pathway shone with dew in between the camouflage pattern of autumn leaves, but the grey sky did nothing to lift her spirits. She zipped up her imitation leather jacket and quickened her pace to ward off the cold.

The Temperate House loomed ahead, the largest surviving Victorian-era greenhouse. It sheltered plants from Africa and Asia which otherwise wouldn’t have survived in the cold, dank English air. Inside, the heady, earthy smell of life calmed her a little.

Joanne went left, heading straight to the Africa section. There were cycads as soon as she entered this wing, but she bypassed them and walked purposefully to the far end, where Woody waited for her.

Joanne looked around, making sure none of the garden staff were watching, then reached out and ever so gently touched him. ‘Goodbye, Woody, my old friend.’

At more than two metres in height Woody, as Joanne called him, was tall for a cycad, which was important, because anything that made him stand out from the other plants – certainly the rest of the cycads – was good, as it might make people stop and read the interpretive panel, where they would learn about the great tragedy of his story. His real name was Encephalartos woodii and the species part of his name was actually pronounced ‘woody-eye’. He was named after John Medley Wood, an English botanist who found the plant in the Ngoye Forest in Zululand in 1895.

A little girl, perhaps nine or ten and wearing the uniform of the group Joanne had seen on the train, came wandering through the Temperate House on her own. Joanne looked past her and saw that the other children were climbing the stairs to the upper viewing level.

The girl stopped in front of Woody. ‘Is this plant very rare?’

‘Yes, he is.’

The girl looked up at her and brushed a strand of golden blonde hair out of her eyes. ‘You call it a he. It’s a plant, not a person.’

Joanne nodded and smiled. ‘You’re very clever, and you’re right, but this plant is, in fact, a male.’

‘Like a boy.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are there girl plants, then?’

Joanne had to be careful with her answer, in case anyone overheard them. ‘Female, yes, or at least there were, once upon a time, but not for more than a hundred years. When this plant was found he was the last of his kind, and no more have ever been seen in the wild.’

‘So is he the only one in the world, then?’

‘Not quite,’ Joanne said. ‘There are a hundred and ten other cycads like this one, all related to him, and all male. They were grown from suckers, little versions of himself that he produced.’

‘Like clones?’

Joanne smiled, her mood momentarily lightened. ‘Yes, exactly.’

‘If there are no girl plants, does that mean this plant won’t ever make babies? I know you need a mummy and a daddy. I’ve got a little brother on the way, and my mummy said she and daddy made him, like they made me.’

Joanne drew a breath, fighting the urge to gather everyone in the Temperate House to her and blurt out the truth. ‘I’m afraid that’s right. This plant will never make a real baby. They’re called pups, in fact.’

‘Pups, like puppies?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s cute, but it’s also very sad.’

‘It is.’ Joanne swallowed. ‘Very.’

‘Liza?’ a teacher called from the end of the hall. ‘Come here, please. Stay with the group.’

Liza looked up at Joanne. ‘Bye, then. Don’t be sad. Maybe one day your funny spiky plant will get a wife and make proper babies.’

Joanne took a tissue out of her bag and dabbed her eye. She used her phone to take a picture of Woody, made sure no one was looking, then touched one of his leaves again. She checked her watch, turned, and walked through the Temperate House and back out into the cold.

Yes, she thought to herself, one day Woody would make babies, if both she and the plant lived long enough to make that happen. If Encephalartos woodii was to survive and thrive into the future, then he needed to reproduce naturally. Clones took ages to grow and they lacked the genetic diversity a species needed to ensure longevity and survival. The enormity of what she had done weighed heavily on her as she retraced her steps.

From the Kew Gardens station she took the District Line to Victoria then a 170 bus through Chelsea. She had in her mind to visit the Physic Garden, a historic collection of medicinal plants, but first she needed something to eat.

She used the map app on her iPhone to find the way past the rows of beautiful Georgian townhouses. On her phone was a string of missed calls and unanswered SMS and w******p messages from her friends in the society back in South Africa. She missed them, now, but she hardened her heart and tried to concentrate on her surroundings.

London fascinated her, especially the way areas of depressed poverty existed side by side with those of unimaginable wealth. The buildings were the same, but the interiors were where the money was. That and the cars on the road. On this street the Range Rovers and convertible Minis, even a Ferrari, were mirrors held up to the souls of the people who lived here.

Joanne looked up from her phone. Her son-in-law, Phillip, had warned her that on the streets where he and Peta lived in Tufnell Park she should not walk about with her phone in her hand, otherwise a mugger on a moped might grab it. Joanne figured she was safer here, in Chelsea, but kept a watchful eye out nonetheless.

As she walked, Joanne felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘Stop it.’

Her admonitions to herself didn’t work and she wiped her eyes as she stabbed the button at the traffic lights to summon a ‘walk’ sign. She had turned her back on the people closest to her in South Africa and she could not speak to the other person who had been calling her and messaging her: Faisal. Joanne was burning bridges and losing friends, but she firmly believed that her means justified the end she was hoping for. Though it was the hardest decision she’d ever made, she was confident she’d done the right thing by deceiving those who trusted her in order to reverse something the botanical world thought was inevitable.