by Peter Rimmer
“Hello, old girl… It’s me. The belted bloody earl. Back again. Fancy a cup of tea in my kombi? Guarantee the cups have not seen alcohol. You look positively wonderful, old girl.”
Sophia looked around to see to whom the man sitting on the shooting stick was talking to, while the tourists gaped at the caftan and the green hat with the feather. Then she dived into a wave and swam a little way out to sea. The feel of the warm water and salt was a soft caress.
In the trough between waves, she floated on her back, thinking of the boy she loved, mingling salt tears with the salt water. The pain was hopeless, her body and soul empty of everything but the loss of her love. He was not going to return to her but she hoped, would always hope; a hope she would take from her youth to the ugliness of her old age. That much was part of her forever. When she emerged from the water, he was still waiting.
“Please go away,” she said.
“I’ve come back to you.”
“You’re the wrong man, Charles, and you always will be.”
The cliffs above the Wild Coast in autumn were brown from the lack of rain, Port St Johns receiving most of its rainfall in the spring and the early summer. For Matt, May was the month for walking. Peace had just turned four and was able to walk some of the way, and for the rest she would view the majesty of the crashing waves on the rich black rocks from high up on the cliff path, sitting on the bare shoulders of her father, her favourite position from which to see the world,
Garlanded with wild flowers and with a banana frond for Peace to beat her father into a regular gallop, the family took its annual walk down the coast, with the dog following, chasing butterflies. Above, the red-winged starlings sang in the sky, trilling the pure sound of nature. The path wound down the gullies, where small streams joined waters with the sea, among the richer foliage, and the path made tunnels through the trees where the sun-birds lived. There the high cliffs faced the great ocean.
When the sun dipped into the sea each night, they found a cove and camped on the shore. Matt dived for crayfish and octopus, mussels and oysters, bringing with him the green seaweed that they stewed with the mussels, crayfish and the wild sage Lorna had picked on their journey. They carried blankets for the cold nights and dug their beds in the dry sand of the caves, small dugouts in the base of the cliffs made by the wildest seas.
The old man from his hut watched the fire down below on the beach. Peace’s shouts of joy floated up to his old ears and his old, wrinkled face smiled in the night. He joined with them in their happiness and was sad in the morning to find them gone. With a thousand-metre stare, he looked out over the empty ocean and remembered the joy of his own children. For the whole day he lived with them in his mind, and when he cooked a little of the maize meal brought to him regularly by Carel van Tonder he was happy.
For a week, Matt and Lorna lived off the sea, making love when the child was fast asleep. And under the cool stars and a waxing moon, Lorna conceived again. When the night was quiet of crickets, and frogs in the river near their camp had stopped the clicking of a thousand castanets, she leaned upon the rug-strewn earth and looked at her big bear of a husband bathed in the silvery light of the moon.
“Darling, I’m going to have another baby.”
“When?” His hand came out to touch her stomach.
“In nine months’ time.” She knew. She was absolutely positive.
The letter from Madge Holland came into Matt’s hands through a Zimbabwean tourist, as the Grays had no postal address. It was addressed to Matthew Gray in an educated hand.
Dear Mr Gray
I am going to worry you once again about Jonathan, as, ever since the war and the death of his friend James Bell, he has been unable to concentrate on anything, work or people. The bush war has left many scars. Raleen Urbach was brought to me after her children were murdered by terrorists. Her husband died in a landmine blast three months earlier. She writes to me, which is how I know where you are. Since many years ago, when you saved my husband’s insurance company and educated Jonathan, life has led us in the strangest paths. Who, then, would have thought I would be living in Central Africa?
I read that American’s articles that made you look like a monster. You should have fought the man. Why did you run away? People will think he is right, that you exploited the blacks in your pursuit of money. You must always fight for what you believe.
Half the whites have left this country. They have gone leaving behind their wealth (exchange control allows them $200 out of the country) but taking with them the skills that bring men out of the mud hut away from the flies, the disease and the poverty. When governments change so fundamentally, the poor people pay such a terrible price. Here, they all thought they were going to be rich like the white men but it is turning out so sadly different. Once again, the world is turning its back on Africa and it makes me very sad. As I grow older, I wonder how many of man’s dreams are not based on the whims of the greedy few. Everything is always going to be better if they knock down what is already there. For them, maybe, for the very few, some well-meaning, some the political predators who have stalked the long sad history of man.
Being alone, I have time to think. Too much time. I am fifty-eight and have had my life, and my only real concern is Jonathan. He is a young man who has seen too much of the truth too soon and finds the purpose of his life in question. He says the promises of happiness and peace are a figment of man’s warped imagination, that man is only interested in taking and all the promises are a smoke screen for that desire. He does not seem to like the world in which he lives and drifts aimlessly from job to job, person to person and worse, from bar to bar. I think he takes drugs, though I can’t be certain.
He knows Raleen is living in a colony on the coast and talks of joining her, away from the crowd. I have told him you have withdrawn from society and live with your wife and child in the simplest way. That sparkled his eye for the first time since James was killed. I have told Jonathan to go down to Port St Johns and see if he can make some sense out of his life. He is twenty-seven and should be married with a good job. Maybe you and Raleen can help.
I always remember you as such a wise, sensible man.
Yours sincerely,
Madge Holland.
Anita Hylan was admitted to one of the best equipped maternity hospitals in the world, everything paid for by the benevolent Swedish government. The fact that there was no husband waiting in reception made no difference to the Swedes, some of whom were convinced that children should be brought up by the state, which was better equipped for the job than young and often unstable parents. The fact that she was with child came as a surprise, as she was four months into her pregnancy before she realised the pill she had taken so faithfully had let her down.
“Anita, my dear,” said her doctor, “this time, if you abort, it will be the last. Do you know the father?” She had never known before, so the doctor was on safe ground to ask such an unprofessional question. Anita laughed and gave him a quizzical smile, one of speculation mixed with mild amusement. She shook her pretty head.
“I’m going to have this one. It might be fun. Something new. Tell me what I have to do.”
“I think you have done what was necessary.” They both laughed.
If Anita had known that she would be in labour for sixteen hours, she would have aborted her little bastard without another thought. But by the time the agony began, it was too late, and the doctors could see no reason to perform a Caesarean section. When the young man finally fought his way into the world, he instantly howled at the cold air and the doctor’s slap on the bottom.
Anita was too exhausted to pay any attention, and the child was cleaned and checked by the doctors. The quiet surprise in the delivery room quickly overcome and all the right clichés were spoken for the benefit of the mother. Then the child was brought to Anita and laid in the crook of her right arm.
Smiling, she brought her face round to look at the child, the pain of giving birth drifting aw
ay as it was overwhelmed by the tenderness of motherhood. As her eyes rested on the child, she screamed, and went on screaming until the doctors removed the child.
The child was black.
2
By 1982, the power of apartheid was at its greatest. The surrounding countries of Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe were destabilised by the intrigues of the South African defence force, Doctor Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA in Angola, Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU dissidents in Zimbabwe and the warlords of Renamo in Mozambique.
The total onslaught of communism was being met with the same methods used so successfully by the communists around the world themselves. In Pretoria, Hector Fortescue-Smythe’s old employers, Armscor, had developed a gun capable of knocking the handle from a door at a distance of forty-four kilometres, The G5, a 155 mm howitzer, was the best artillery piece in the world, and it was one of the many high-technology weapons perfected by South African scientists under the pressure of the world aims embargo, along with the Olifant main battle tank, the Seeker anti-tank missile and the cactus SAM.
The P W Botha nationalist government totally ignored world opinion, locking up anyone, with or without trial, who disagreed with their policy of separate development. The pass laws kept every black in his kraal, trade unions were illegal and every fit young white man was trained efficiently to maintain the status quo. There was not an army in Africa that could match the power of the South Africans.
Russia poured Cuban troops into Angola and South Africa armed Savimbi, helped, curiously, by the Americans, who could not make up their minds whether it was better to fight their old bete noire, Cuba, or to keep the South Africans as something to beat to satisfy the local civil rights movement. Savimbi received the most sophisticated ground-to-air missiles to counter the Cuban flown Russian jets. Minister Kloss was well satisfied with the way in which the Americans squirmed, and Savimbi, after power like every other leader in Africa, accepted guns and help from wherever it came.
The bureau of state security had changed its name on a regular basis, but the intention was always the same. White rule or, more exactly, white Afrikaner rule, was to be maintained. Having shot the minister’s daughter to death for a crime the minister considered worse than treason, Frikkie Swart was in charge of all clandestine operation, which included the elimination of people living outside South Africa who were working to overthrow the apartheid government. Many young activists disappeared, lost between leaving and arriving, and what appealed to Frikkie Swart most was his lack of accountability. The funds to run the operations were freely available, but no one in the government had any wish to know how they were being spent.
Being one of the few people in the country with a true oversight, Frikkie was convinced the days of the Afrikaner nationalists were numbered, with Rhodesia gone and the pressure building up in South West Africa. So he did the sensible thing and channelled some of the funds into bank accounts around the world, upon which he would draw when the ANC came to power. With money, Frikkie Swart had learnt he could do whatever he chose. He was a man well content with his life. He, unlike so many others, knew exactly where he was going.
Hector Fortescue-Smythe dined regularly at the Cavalry Club, 126 Piccadilly, finding the food very much to his liking. It was the perfect haven for him when he wished for peace and quiet, as women were not allowed in the club and there was not a communist with whom he did business who would have the slightest chance of getting past the doorman.
In the club, members rarely spoke to each other. The claw hand was an obvious testimony to his military service and, at forty-five, Hector looked like any other retired tank colonel in his dark, pin-striped suit. The club staff were good at cutting up his meat and making sure that no one from the outside penetrated his sanctuary. It gave him time to think and contemplate the culmination of his life’s work, the collapse of capitalism, America in particular, and the organised worldwide rule of a communist government, creating the perfect society where energy was channelled into progress rather than the constant bickering that made up the present world.
Monday evening, 19 August 1982, found Hector alone in the dining room. It being a week after the opening of the grouse season, he had ordered the game bird stuffed and broiled, then grilled for three minutes and covered in rashers of thick, well-cured bacon. Plain roast grouse he found tough and dry. The side dish was a well tossed salad for which he had made the dressing himself, liking one part vinegar to four parts olive oil, mixed with salt, pepper, sugar and dry Colman’s mustard. For once his left hand did not hurt.
His mind compassed the day and came back, as it usually did when he was alone, to Gilly Bowles. They had been seeing each other for four years and, under normal circumstances, Hector would have considered a second marriage. The girl satisfied his physical needs and was almost as good at sexual excitement as Helena Kloss, but a second mental effort in living with someone who thought he was somebody else was no longer possible as the party took up most of his working day. He and his mother had finally left the daily running of Smythe-Wilberforce to professional managers.
To give the curious a handle by which to understand what he did with his days, he had bought a small estate in the Surrey countryside where he purported to breed Sussex cows that would provide the best beef in the country. There was a price to pay for everything, and the comfort of a good wife and children was the one he had to pay; until the revolution, and then all the subterfuge would joyfully come to an end. Smiling to himself, he wondered what Gilly Bowles would think of him as an arch-communist rather than a pillar of the conservative establishment. One day, he was going to enjoy her look of shock and, with the Americans plunged into a vast deficit to fund their star wars and the burgeoning arms race, he was sure that day was close.
While Hector was enjoying his grouse, Gilly Bowles was on a Pan-Am flight to New York with the careful research of four years filling the large briefcase she had pushed under the seat, not even trusting the airline to look after the dynamite contained in the neatly typed pages. They were all there in catalogued order, with Hector, her erstwhile lover, heading the list. With the decision taken and her own by-line in Newsweek assured, she was content to sacrifice any feeling she might have had for Hector to further her career.
She was twenty-seven, and there were a lot of men in the world to satisfy a news woman of fame. She would probably move to America, take an apartment in Manhattan, survey the scene and take her pick. Thirty was a good time for marriage, when her career was assured, and nobody would be able to dictate to Gilly Bowles for the rest of her life. Her ‘get lost’ money was in the briefcase under the seat in front and her stocking feet had a comforting toe on the handle.
She had wired Ben Munroe to meet her at the airport. For the first big one, she still needed Ben. She might still have to sleep with him to get what she wanted, but after that she would be on her own, her own woman, and they could all take a running jump at themselves. With her large mouth slightly apart, she considered the joys of living, the excitement to come. There was a lot of living to be done in Gilly Bowles’ life. Her excitement was physically tangible.
Ben Munroe’s hormones had given a sharp lurch when he opened the cable. Gilly Bowles had been one of the few women to get away from Ben before he was satisfied, before he was finished with her. Some women took a night, some a week, but Gilly had taken a lot longer. She had always kept something back; she was not available every time he wanted her and, had he not been such a male chauvinist, he would have realised that the girl was using him.
When Gilly met him after passing through immigration, she saw the lust in his eyes, and decided that sex came first and business afterwards when the man was still panting for more. With the kinky side of Hector to draw from, she had some tricks to show Ben that he had never even dreamt of.
“Ben, you look wonderful.”
“Where are you staying?”
“With you, I hope.” The slightly open mouth, the long legs cased in white stockings, the short black h
air with the hint of blue and her blouse just open enough to flash brought Ben’s hormones to a peak.
“Are you going to carry my bag?” she asked sweetly. “This one’s mine,” and she picked up her briefcase.
Even in the cab, he had his hand up her leg. For three hours she kept him at bay and, when she let him take her from behind while she held on to the back of the couch, her feet splayed, her mouth open and her eyes lasciviously watching him in the mirror, it was all over in seconds, leaving her as high as a kite with nowhere to go. Gilly Bowles remembered. Ben Munroe was a lousy selfish lover. When he wanted it again in half an hour, she told him once a day was more than enough and changed the subject. When Ben finally fell asleep, he was more frustrated than when he had started, and Gilly was content with her power.
Gilly Bowles had come from a family which believed that achievement was the only reason for coming into the world. Success. You had to be a visible success. If behind the facade you beat your wife, that was your business and, provided it remained in the family, it did not matter.
Her brother was two years older and a sportsman of promise from an early age. Her father basked in the boy’s success which culminated in his opening the batting for Surrey and proceeding to make his debut memorable by scoring a century. Her younger sister had married into the minor aristocracy when she was eighteen, and was now the mother in a family that stretched back gloriously for three hundred years to a freebooter who had sold his sword to Charles I. Whenever Gilly went home to the stockbroker belt, thirty kilometres south of London, something she did as little as possible and only if she had something to show, her mother gave her the look which said quite clearly that it was a pity she could not be like her brother and sister. It had begun when she changed her degree from English literature to journalism and proposed the move from Oxford to London University.