THE house was a far more sensible purchase, as we had Corrie’s children to think about as well as ourselves.
The younger ones, Jacquie and Richard, would obviously remain with their mother in Rhodesia.
The two older ones, Paul and Penny, then sixteen and fifteen respectively, were given a choice and they opted to live with us.
In practice, this meant that they lived with me, because Corrie was away for weeks on end, commissioning chemical plants in Swaziland and Mozambique.
Swaziland was not too far away and we could drive down for a weekend, but I hated it when he was in Mozambique for a long period, not least because the political situation in that country in 1974 was anything but stable.
It was towards the end of one of his two-month stints there, that I got a phone call from Deborah. Was I any good at smuggling, she asked.
I didn’t know, because I’d never really tried. Apparently some small valves were urgently required on site and six consignments, sent through the normal channels, had been impounded by customs. Would I, in exchange for a free airline ticket, take them through?
I made it two tickets, so that Penny could come with me, and we duly took delivery of a box of assorted ironmongery.
Some of the parts were small enough to be packed among those items of a woman’s toiletries which embarrass customs officials. Others were rather bulky and could be neither hidden nor disguised.
We had to find a plausible reason why two women should be carrying valves across the border. In the end, we just shoved them in a bag, with a snorkel and a diving mask and declared them as scuba equipment.
That was my last visit to Mozambique. Although the riots were said to be over, the looting and burning continued. The roadsides were strewn with burnt-out cars and Corrie’s Volkswagen had already been used for target practice by both sides.
The Portuguese bore the main brunt of the animosity, but some of the angry mobs reckoned that any foreigner was fair game. Corrie had survived so far by being able to speak the language of the Frelimo, but the political situation soon deteriorated so much that even he had to make a run for the border.
Figuring that, if his number was up, he would rather have a bullet in the back of his head than be stoned to death by the rioting mob, he offered a lift to two Frelimo soldiers, who saw him safely through five road blocks and across the border into Swaziland.
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