Thriller uncovers mystery at the heart of human relationships
• Craig Higginson explores love, life and darkness in the battlefields of KwaZulu-Natal
Awoman’s body has been seen floating in the Buffalo River in KwaZulu-Natal. “The river turns her this way and that, worrying at her like an unwanted thought.” Her face a blank, she will be identified as 17-year-old Sam Webster, the daughter of Bruce Webster. A famous historian, he owns the luxury Webster Lodge in Zululand near the battlefields of iSandlwana, where he enacts the story of that famous battle of 1879 for lodge tourists.
Hearing about the death of Webster’s daughter, and eager to do research on an ancestor that fought in the Battle of iSandlwana, writer Daniel returns to the lodge, where he has stayed previously and had met Sam, as well as other members of her family.
These include Caroline, trapped in a frustrated marriage to Bruce, seeking a way out through her infidelities, and Matthew, their younger son. Both Sam and Matthew attend prestigious boarding schools in the Midlands.
All is not what it seems. There’s an air of menace: the family is both in shock, and in thrall to Tim, an Englishman who has been staying in the lodge as an assistant, taking over the talks of the battlefield, worming his handsome way into the lives of this family that was drifting apart even before Sam’s disappearance. There is also a land claim on the land that the lodge is built on — and this other menace will thread its way through the narrative too.
At the lodge Daniel will encounter the shattered family, and become absorbed and a little obsessed with the reasons for Sam’s disappearance. But he is also there to get back to his writing and to conduct research on his disgraced ancestor, the lepidopterist Lt Charles Hawthorne, who came to SA and fought in the 1879 battle.
And while at the lodge, Daniel starts writing again. The story of Hawthorne is more or less novella-length, a story within the story of this book, titled “The Butterfly Collector” and is as compelling as the story set in present-day Zululand. It is the story of a man who fought, though reluctantly, and the battle scenes are compellingly told, the horror of it coming alive under the hot December sun of long ago. But there is also love (and love is another thread in this fine novel). How Hawthorne loves is part of what leads to his disgrace.
Interwoven through the present day is the story of Daniel encountering Sam a year ago, and Sam’s story of growing up, having a boyfriend, discovering her place in this world. There are many strands to the novel, and interweaving timelines, but Higginson masterfully keeps these all on track.
The opening reads like a thriller story: a dead body found in the river. But this novel goes beyond that central motif. Yes there is a mystery, a mystery that may or may not be solved, but the deeper mystery that Higginson explores in The Ghost of Sam Webster is that of human relationships. How we end up where we do, how a relationship can sour on unstable beginnings or a glance that is resentfully received. How we are shaped by where we live. How the fissures that run in all of us can let the darkness in.
It is also, in the novellalength ‘The Butterfly Collector’, the story of the futility of war and the losses of the battlefield, as well as an exploration of how each era practises and regards the way we love. And it is about love in its many forms: from the teenage, searching love of Sam, dangerously flitting between two men, to Caroline and Bruce’s dehydrated form of it, to Daniel’s search for it despite himself.
The novel hums with philosophy too, and this is expressed in some of the passages on love. While dining with a woman, Daniel asks: “Do you believe you can ever know anyone?” asks Daniel. “I mean — Sartre said that love was impossible, didn’t he? We either turn ourselves or we turn the loved one into an object of desire. We can’t both be free at the same time. He said that all love is a kind of bad faith. An exercise in objectifying yourself or objectifying the other person. It is a series of lies, of misrepresentations, a hall of mirrors in which you will only ever have access to yourself.”
The woman answers: “Who’s to say that loving and being loved has to be about freedom? Or the giving up of freedom? Who’s to say that loving someone has to be a debate about who has the most or the least power?”
Meanwhile, the teenage Sam has other concerns and asks her boyfriend: “I read somewhere ... that you only really know a person once you’ve made love to them. Do you think that’s true?”
There is also some exploration of belief or spirituality, of whether, as Daniel ponders, “we are nothing but stardust with the light of God passing through us. That God’s intelligence is inseparable from our intelligence”.
At the heart of this highly recommended novel, too, is a sense of place. The landscape of the region is caught in a few brushstrokes: “The land deepens and steepens as he approaches Zululand. The mountain road is shining with rainwater. As the sunlight strengthens, a violet haze rises up from the earth, turning gold as it reaches the light. He sees bony cattle standing idly among the pond-sized puddles.”
iSandlwana, with its mountain that looks down on the ghosts of the past, broods through the novel. The white cairns dot the bare landscape, pointers of the bodies that lie there still.
Higginson has achieved something remarkable in this story — it is full of lyricism and beauty, of exploration of love, life, as well as darkness. He holds this all in such an assured and masterful way that as a reader you are led effortlessly through this compelling and gripping book.
Higginson pares away at the ghosts in our lives, from Sam Webster, to the slain men of 1879, to the portrayal of Hawthorne, to the less tangible ghosts of our past that shape us, despite ourselves.
THERE ARE MANY STRANDS AND INTERWEAVING TIMELINES, BUT HIGGINSON MASTERFULLY KEEPS THESE ALL ON TRACK
AT THE HEART OF THIS NOVEL, TOO, IS A SENSE OF PLACE. THE LANDSCAPE OF THE REGION IS CAUGHT IN A FEW BRUSHSTROKES