by Wilbur Smith
Craig stopped suddenly, struck by a particularly poignant composition, an orchard of bleached bones. She had used black and white to heighten the dramatic effect, and the bones shone in the brilliant African sunlight, acres of bones, great femur and tibia bleached like driftwood, huge rib-cages like the frames of stranded ocean clippers, and skulls the size of beer barrels with dark caves for eyesockets. Craig thought of the legendary elephant’s graveyard, the old hunters’ myth of the secret place where the elephants go to die.
‘Poachers,’ she said. ‘Two hundred and eighty-six carcasses,’ and now Craig looked up at her at last, startled by the number.
‘At one time?’ he asked, and she nodded.
‘They drove them into one of the old minefields.’
Involuntarily, Craig shuddered and looked down at the photograph again. Under the table-top his right hand ran down his thigh until he felt the neat strap that held his leg, and he experienced a choking empathy for the fate of those great pachyderms. He remembered his own minefield, and felt again the slamming impact of the explosion into his foot, as though he had been hit by the full swing of a sledgehammer.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘I know about your leg.’
‘She does her homework,’ Ashe said.
‘Shut up,’ Craig thought furiously. ‘Why don’t you both shut up.’ He hated anyone to mention the leg. If she had truly done her homework, she would have known that – but it was not only mention of the leg, it was the elephants also. Once Craig had worked as a ranger in the game department. He knew them, had come to love them, and the evidence of this slaughter sickened and appalled him. It increased his resentment of the girl; she had inflicted this upon him and he wanted to revenge himself; a childish urge to retaliate. But before he could do it, the late guest arrived, diverting them into a round of Ashe’s introductions.
‘Craig, I want you to meet a special sort of guy.’ All of Ashe’s introductions came with a built-in commercial. ‘This is Henry Pickering. Henry is a senior vice-president of the World Bank – listen and you’ll hear all those billions of dollars clashing around in his head. Henry, this is Craig Mellow, our boy genius. Not even excluding Karen Blixen, Craig is just one of the most important writers ever to come out of Africa, that’s all he is!’
‘I read the book,’ Henry nodded. He was very tall and thin and prematurely bald. He wore a dark banker’s suit and stark white shirt, with a little individual touch of colour in his necktie and twinkly blue eyes. ‘For once you are probably not exaggerating, Ashe.’
He kissed Sally-Anne’s cheek platonically, sat down, tasted the wine that Ashe poured for him and pushed the glass back an inch. Craig found himself admiring his style.
‘What do you think?’ Henry Pickering asked Craig, glancing down at the open portfolio of photographs.
‘He loves them, Henry,’ Ashe Levy cut in swiftly. ‘He’s ape over them – I wish you could have seen his face when he got his first look – loves them, man, loves them!’
‘Good,’ Henry said softly, watching Craig’s face. ‘Have you explained the concept?’
‘I wanted to serve it up hot.’ Ashe Levy shook his head. ‘I wanted to hit him with it.’
He turned to Craig.
‘A book,’ he said. ‘It’s about a book. The title of the book is “Craig Mellow’s Africa”. What happens is you write about the Africa of your ancestors, about what it was and what it has become. You go back and you do an in-depth assessment. You speak to the people—’
‘Excuse me,’ Henry interrupted him, ‘I understand that you speak one of the two major languages – Sindebele, isn’t it – of Zimbabwe?’
‘Fluently,’ Ashe answered for Craig. ‘Like one of them.’
‘Good,’ Henry nodded. ‘Is it true that you have many friends – some highly placed in government?’
Ashe fielded the question again. ‘Some of his old buddies are cabinet ministers in the Zimbabwe government. You can’t go much higher.’
Craig dropped his eyes to the photograph of the elephant graveyard. ‘Zimbabwe,’ he was not yet comfortable with the new name that the black victors had chosen. He still thought of it as Rhodesia. That was the country his ancestors had hacked out of the wilderness with pick and axe and Maxim machine-gun. Their land, once his land – by any name still his home.
‘It’s going to be top quality, Craig, no expense spared. You can go where you want to, speak to anybody, the World Bank will see to that, and pay for it.’ Ashe Levy was running on enthusiastically, and Craig looked up at Henry Pickering.
‘The World Bank – publishing?’ Craig asked sardonically, and when Ashe would have replied again, Henry Pickering laid a restraining hand on his forearm.
‘I’ll take the ball a while, Ashe,’ he said. He had sensed Craig’s mood; his tone was gentle and placatory. ‘The main part of our business is loans to underdeveloped countries. We have almost a billion invested in Zimbabwe. We want to protect our investment. Think of it as a prospectus, we want the world to know about the little African state that we would like to turn into a showpiece, an example of how a black government can succeed. We think your book could help do that for us.’
‘And these?’ Craig touched the pile of photographs.
‘We want the book to have visual as well as intellectual impact. We think Sally-Anne can provide that.’
Craig was quiet for many seconds while he felt the terror slither around deep inside him, like some loathsome reptile. The terror of failure. Then he thought about having to compete with these photographs, of having to provide a text that would not be swamped by the awesome view through this girl’s lens. He had a reputation at stake, and she had nothing to lose. The odds were all with her. She was not an ally but an adversary, and his resentment came back in full force, so strong that it was a kind of hatred.
She was leaning towards him across the table, the spotlight catching her long eyelashes and framing those green-flecked eyes. Her mouth was quivering with eagerness, and a tiny bubble of saliva like a seed pearl sparkled on her lower lip. Even in his anger and fear, Craig wondered what it would be like to kiss that mouth.
‘Craig,’ she said. ‘I can do better than those if I have the chance. I can go all the way, if you give me the chance. Please!’
‘You like elephants?’ Craig asked her. ‘I’ll tell you an elephant story. This big old bull elephant had a flea that lived in his left ear. One day the elephant crossed a rickety bridge, and when he got to the other side, the flea said in his ear, “Hoo boy! We sure rocked that bridge!”’
Sally-Anne’s lips closed slowly and then paled. Her eyelids fluttered, the dark lashes beating like butterflies’ wings, and as the tears began to sparkle behind them she leaned back out of the light.
There was a silence, and in it Craig felt a rush of remorse. He felt sickened by his own cruelty and pettiness. He had expected her to be tough and resilient, to come back with a barbed retort. He had not expected the tears. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her that he didn’t mean it the way it sounded. He wanted to explain his own fear and insecurity, but she was rising and picking up the folio of photographs.
‘Parts of your book were so understanding, so compassionate, I wanted so badly to work with you,’ she said softly. ‘I guess it was dumb to expect you to be like your book.’ She looked at Ashe. ‘I’m sorry, Ashe, I’m just not hungry any more.’
Ashe Levy stood quickly. ‘We’ll share a cab,’ he said. Then softly to Craig, ‘Well done, hero, call me when you’ve got the new typescript finished,’ and he hurried after Sally-Anne. As she went through the door the sunlight back-lit her and Craig saw the shape of her legs through her skirt. They were long and lovely, and then she was gone.
Henry Pickering was fiddling with his glass, studying the wine thoughtfully.
‘It’s pasteurized Roman goat urine,’ Craig said. He found his voice was uneven. He signalled the wine waiter and ordered a Meursault.
‘That’s better,’ Henry un
derstated it. ‘Well, perhaps the book wasn’t such a great idea after all, was it?’ He glanced at his wrist-watch. ‘We’d better order.’
They talked of other things – the Mexican loan default, Reagan’s mid-term assessment, the gold price – Henry preferred silver for a quick appreciation and thought diamonds would soon be looking good again. ‘I’d buy De Beers to hold,’ he advised.
A svelte young blonde from one of the other tables came across while they were taking coffee.
‘You’re Craig Mellow,’ she accused him. ‘I saw you on TV. I loved your book. Please, please, sign this for me.’
While he signed her menu, she leaned over him and pressed one hard hot little breast against his shoulder.
‘I work at the cosmetics counter in Saks Fifth Ave,’ she breathed. ‘You can find me there any time.’ The odour of expensive, pilfered perfumes lingered after she had left.
‘Do you always turn them away?’ Henry asked a little wistfully.
‘Man is only flesh and blood,’ Craig laughed, and Henry insisted on paying the tab.
‘I have a limo,’ he offered. ‘I could drop you.’
‘I’ll walk off the pasta,’ Craig said.
‘Do you know, Craig, I think you’ll go back to Africa. I saw the way you looked at those photographs. Like a hungry man.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘The book. Our interest in it. There was more to it than Ashe understood. You know the top blacks there. That interests me. The ideas you expressed in the book fit into our thinking. If you do decide to go back, call me before you do. You and I could do each other a favour.’
Henry climbed into the back seat of the black Cadillac, and then with the door still open he said, ‘I thought her pictures were rather good, actually.’ He closed the door and nodded to the chauffeur.
Bawu was moored between two new commercially built yachts, a forty-five-foot Camper and Nicholson and a Hatteras convertible, and she stood the comparison well enough, although she was almost five years old. Craig had put in every screw with his own hands. He paused at the gates of the marina to look at her, but somehow today he did not derive as much pleasure as usual from her lines.
‘Been a couple of calls for you, Craig,’ the girl behind the reception desk in the marina office called out to him as he went in. ‘You can use this phone,’ she offered.
He checked the slips she handed him, one from his broker marked ‘urgent’, another from the literary editor of a mid-western daily. There hadn’t been too many of those recently.
He phoned the broker first. They had sold the Mocatta gold certificates that he had bought for three hundred and twenty dollars an ounce at five hundred and two dollars. He instructed them to put the money on call deposit.
Then he dialled the second number. While he waited to be connected, the girl behind the desk moved around more than was really necessary, bending over the lowest drawers of the filing-cabinet to give Craig a good look at what she had in her white Bermudas and pink halter-top.
When Craig connected with the literary editor, she wanted to know when they were publishing his new book.
‘What book?’ Craig thought bitterly, but he answered, ‘We haven’t got a firm date yet – but it’s in the pipeline. Do you want to do an interview in the meantime?’
‘Thanks, but we will wait until publication, Mr Mellow.’
‘Long wait, my darling,’ Craig thought, and when he hung up the girl looked up brightly.
‘The party is on Firewater tonight.’
There was a party on one of the yachts every single night of the year.
‘Are you coming across?’
She had a flat tight belly between the shorts and top. Without the glasses, she might be quite pretty – and what the hell, he had just made a quarter of a million dollars on the gold certificates and a fool of himself at the lunch table.
‘I’m having a private party on Bawu,’ he said, ‘for two.’ She had been a good patient girl and her time had come.
Her face lit up so he saw he had been right. She really was quite pretty. ‘I finish in here at five.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Come straight down.’
Wipe one out and make another happy, he thought. It should even out, but of course it didn’t.
Craig lay on his back under a single sheet in the wide bunk with both hands behind his head and listened to the small sounds in the night, the creak of the rudder in its restrainer, the tap of a halyard against the mast and the slap of wavelets under the hull. Across the basin the party on Firewater was still in full swing, there was a faint splash and a distant burst of drunken laughter as they threw somebody overboard, and beside him the girl made regular little wet fluttering sounds through her lips as she slept.
She had been eager and very practised, but nevertheless Craig felt unrequited and restless. He wanted to go up on deck, but that would have disturbed the girl and he knew she would still be eager and he could not be bothered further. So he lay and let the images from Sally-Anne’s portfolio run through his head like a magic-lantern show, and they triggered others that had long lain dormant but now came back to him fresh and vivid, accompanied by the smells and tastes and sounds of Africa, so that instead of the revels of drunken yachties, he heard again the beat of native drums along the Chobe river in the night; instead of the sour waters of the East river he smelled tropical raindrops on baked earth, and he began to ache with the bitter-sweet melancholy of nostalgia and he did not sleep again that night.
The girl insisted on making breakfast for him. She did so with not nearly the same expertise as she had made love, and after she had gone ashore it took him nearly an hour to clean up the galley. Then he went up to the saloon.
He drew the curtain across the porthole above his navigation and writing desk, so as not to be distracted by the activities of the marina, and settled down to work. He re-read the last batch of ten pages, and realized he would be lucky if he could salvage two of them. He set to it grimly and the characters baulked and said trite asinine things. After an hour he reached up for his thesaurus from the shelf beside his desk to find an alternative word.
‘Good Lord, even I know that people don’t say “pusillanimous” in real conversation,’ he muttered as he brought down the volume, and then paused as a slim sheaf of folded writing-paper fluttered out from between the pages.
Secretly welcoming the excuse to break off the struggle, he unfolded it, and with a little jolt discovered it was a letter from a girl called Janine – a girl who had shared with him the agonies of their war wounds, who had travelled with him the long slow road to recovery, had been at his side when he walked again for the first time after losing the leg, had spelled him at the helm when they sailed Bawu through her first Atlantic gale. A girl whom he had loved and almost married, and whose face he now had the greatest difficulty recalling.
Janine had written the letter from her home in Yorkshire, three days before she married the veterinary surgeon who was a junior partner in her father’s practice. He re-read the letter slowly, all ten pages of it, and realized why he had hidden it away from himself. Janine was only bitter in patches, but some of the other things she wrote cut deeply.
‘– You had been a failure so often and for so long that your sudden success clean bowled you—’
He checked at that. What else had he ever done besides the book – that one single book? And she had given him the answer.
‘– You were so innocent and gentle, Craig, so lovable in a gawky boyish way. I wanted to live with that, but after we left Africa it dried up slowly, you started becoming hard and cynical—’
‘– Do you remember the very first day we met, or almost the very first, I said to you, “You are a spoilt little boy, and you just give up on everything worthwhile”? Well, it’s true, Craig. You gave up on our relationship. I don’t just mean the other little dolly-birds, the literary scalp-hunters with no elastic in their drawers, I mean you gave up on the caring. Let me give you a litt
le advice for free, don’t give up on the only thing that you’ve ever done well, don’t give up on the writing, Craig. That would be truly sinful—’
He remembered how haughtily he had scoffed at that notion when he had first read it. He didn’t scoff now – he was too afraid. It was happening to him, just as she had predicted.
‘I truly came to love you, Craig, not all at once, but little by little. You had to work very hard to destroy that. I don’t love you any more, Craig, I doubt I’ll ever love another man, not even the one I’ll marry on Saturday – but I like you, and I always will. I wish you well, but beware of your most implacable enemy – yourself.’
Craig refolded the letter, and he wanted a drink. He went down to the galley and poured a Bacardi – a large one, easy on the lime. While he drank it he re-read the letter and this time a single phrase struck him.
‘After we left Africa it seemed to dry up inside you – the understanding, the genius.’
‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘It dried up. It all dried up.’
Suddenly his nostalgia became the unbearable ache of homesickness. He had lost his way, the fountain in him had dried up, and he wanted to go back to the source.
He tore the letter to tiny pieces and dropped them into the scummy waters of the basin, left the empty glass on the coamings of the hatch and crossed the gangplank to the jetty.
He didn’t want to have to talk to the girl, so he used the pay phone at the gate of the marina.
It was easier than he expected. The girl on the switchboard put him through to Henry Pickering’s secretary.
‘I’m not sure that Mr Pickering is available. Who is calling, please?’
‘Craig Mellow.’ Pickering came on almost immediately.
‘There is an old Matabele saying, “The man who drinks Zambezi waters must always return to drink again”,’ Craig told him.