Get A Life

Be

There is a place where the eagle he has not forgotten, its species, is free. That's a nearby outing for the children, the family, owed by this father who too often is absent; in his wilderness.

The Black Eagle, Aquila verreauxii, has been breeding at this cliff above a waterfall since 1940. These highly territorial birds, with a weight of approximately five kilogrammes and a wingspan of up to 2.3 metres are one of Africa 's largest and most majestic eagles. The Black Eagle pair in the Roodekrans territory can be seen all year round. They spend their days hunting, soaring, displaying, or perching on their favourite roosting spots, where they rest and preen. They live on the Rock Hyrax, hares, and guinea fowl. The breeding cycle commences in March/April, when one of the two nesting sites will be used in a specific breeding year. Sticks are placed to form a nest cup that will be completed with leafy twigs. This creates a soft lining in the cup prior to egg laying which normally occurs in May. The male performs spectacular courtship displays during the refurbishment. The pair mate for life and take a new mate only if one should die.

Paul read out from a leaflet picked up at the entrance to the park space, half botanical garden for indigenous African species, half wildlife protection habitat. The two small children neither listen nor understand, the information is for himself, Lyndsay and Be

Life-skills – that's the term she would understand. And he doesn't expect – or want – anyone to understand that what he's been able to say simply, without his kind of jargon is – simply – the principle of what he does, it's called ecology.

Lyndsay turns out to know more about the strange sculptural plants than he. It used to be said of such growths that they're like something from the moon, but now it's known there is no growth on the moon, there's no comparison with nothingness. She is able to name substitutes for leaves like buttocks; an elephantine lump of grey as a desert species from Namibia which stores water in its bulk for nourishment during the long dry years. In the period when Namibian independence was being negotiated she had been there as part of a legal team and Sam Nujoma himself had arranged for her to be taken into the desert – not that Paul or his wife would know or is likely to remember who the first president of the country's sovereignty was.

From every experience, professional or otherwise, there's always some aspect detached from the whole. The negotiating process subsumed by the history-that-is-memory; the identity of some weird growth is there, available, named.

While the family outing straggles along the paths to the waterfall you can hear but not see: in the susurration, I thought you were going to tell me you were leaving.

(The children chasing about each other or the butterflies butt against adult thighs as if these were tree trunks.)

That's all that comes out of that state of existence, and why not; so definitive as it was at the time. And it did not happen, the leaving. Mate for life. The affair is over. Case closed; it has not been reopened for long years. And now quite differently – no, come on, admit it – the same, has been reopened. I am sixty-five I never imagined this could happen it's happened to Hilde and me. The child chosen as black, defiled, infected, nameless – something else that has happened. One of the states of existence. Paul is taking up each child in turn to be swung round him as he walks; the son has come out of quarantine and seems to be in possession of a new state.

They arrive suddenly at the sight of a swag of silver down the dark of rock-face. The children did not appear to find it so striking, perhaps to them it was the bath water gushing from a giant tap. As they all drew nearer the cliff, rifted steeply in a narrow jagged cut beside the waterfall, rose to block the sky: go no farther. There was a grass plateau between bush-shaggy hills on either side, before the pool where the water fell and quietened. Now the plunge was white and in swift heavy strands, some leapt thinly to drop independently, chiffon of mist strayed, the water-voice volume turned up to an obliterating ringing in the ears. Klara danced with her hands over hers. Well it's not Niagara but it's pretty impressive. Be

He must find the eagle. Flights of small birds scattered the sky above the cliff. He sca