Peter has told me many times of how difficult he found it to “lose” both his brother and his sister within the space of a year or two. John had won a scholarship and had left for university in England, and I had gone off to university, and subsequently to France for a year. Peter particularly missed my presence in the family, because he claims that I was more like a mother to him than a sister. To this day he maintains that without me, he would, and I quote his words, “never have survived his childhood”. Apparently, although I can’t remember this, I even taught him how to study for examinations at school. He was six years younger than me, and we were emotionally close. We still are even now, although we are both past 70, and he lives in England whilst I live in Canada. We have regular video calls, to keep up with one another.
One day when I was living and working in Marandellas 50 miles from Salisbury, Peter decided that he would pay me a surprise visit. He set off on the motorbike. It was a long and dusty ride because the one and only road to Marandellas consisted of two strips of tarmac cutting a straight path through the bush. The rest of the road was nothing but bumpy, corrugated, hardened red dust, the colour of the soil in Southern Rhodesia. Fortunately, traffic was usually very light.
According to my brother, he was happily riding along in the sunshine, when unbeknownst to him the exhaust pipe of the motorbike had begun to work itself loose. He was travelling quite fast and could see an approaching car in the distance, which didn’t worry him, since the routine on strip roads was well-established. Both vehicles would move over to only one strip of tarmac and pass each other before moving back again to take up both strips.
However, on this occasion, the bumpy transition caused the exhaust pipe to come away completely just as the two vehicles were passing each other at speed and in clouds of dust. It was enough to send the exhaust pipe flying through the front windshield of the approaching car and, as he discovered later, exiting through the rear windshield. Peter screeched to a halt, terrified that he had just killed or severely injured the driver of the other vehicle. He could hardly function, he said. He knew that they were in the middle of nowhere, miles from any emergency help, too. He was in a state of shock, incapable of thinking straight, as he was staggered to see the driver of the other vehicle emerge in one piece. The man was unscathed, but muttering repeatedly to himself, “It was an act of God. It was an act of God!” It turned out that he was an Afrikaaner minister of the church, and it was he who took control of the situation, calming Peter by telling him that yes, it was a miracle no-one had been hurt and that this was a testament to the power of the Almighty. It was an act of God, obviously. No other explanation was possible. Looking at the two circular holes in the windscreens of the minister’s car, Peter didn’t know what to say. He was so glad that the driver had not been hurt, act of God or not.