2002 - Any human heart

by William Boyd

  ≡ The Biafran leader, an Ibo.

  He made the point that it’s all very well to secede but if you’re going to take 95 per cent of the nation’s oil with you there’s bound to be a fight. Scully became quite heated at this point—Nigeria was a false nation created by Victorian surveyors drawing arbitrary lines on a map; Biafra had tribal and ethnic integrity that justified its claim for independence. Here I threw in Simeon’s point about the other tribes not wanting to be the wives to the Ibo husband. This made Scully considerably more riled and he asked me, quite insultingly, just how long I’d been in Nigeria. When I said four years his belligerent tone modified somewhat—he’d been in the country for six weeks.

  Monday, 17 November

  I went with Zygmunt this morning to interview Colonel ‘Jack’ Okoli, the self-styled ‘Black Lion’ of the Nigerian Army who was leading the assault up the Aba-Owerri road. He was a handsome, fit-looking man with a thin matinee idol’s moustache who never removed his sunglasses. He wore two automatic pistols on his belt and suede knee boots and possessed the massive self-assurance of all military commanders on the brink of victory. I asked him if Ikot-Ekpene was under his control. ‘My boys are mopping up,’ he said. He was full of talk about the ‘chaps’, the ‘fellows’, the ‘guys’. Zygmunt told me that Okoli had shipped back enough consumer goods to fill a fair-sized department store. Colonel Jack predicted the war would be over by Christmas. I wonder how many military men have made that boast through the ages.

  Listless afternoon at the Roundabout Hotel sitting under the ceiling fan that worked, drinking beer and watching army vehicles negotiate the redundant roundabout. I spoke to a young prostitute whose name was Matilda. She suggested we go upstairs to my room. I said it was too hot and I was an old man. She told me she could provide me with a potion that would make me hard like a stick. I gave her a pound and bought her a Fanta. I asked her what would happen when the war was over. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Everything will be as it was before.’

  Scully told me that inside Biafra ‘Harold Wilson’↓ was a curse, a swear word.

  ≡ Harold Wilson was the then Prime Minister of Great Britain.

  He had heard a dying child muttering something familiar and had gone over to her to hear what was being said. She was mumbling ‘Harold Wilson Harold Wilson Harold Wilson’ again and again. Srife died with his name on her lips, Scully said, adding: can you imagine having that on your conscience? He had written personally to Wilson to let him know how hated he was. Not even Hitler achieved the status of being a swear word, Scully said. I was about to say you couldn’t equate Harold Wilson with Adolf Hitler but it was too hot for an argument. Scully is violently opposed to the UK government’s support for Nigeria, so much so that he’s writing a book about the war and Britain’s role, to be called Partners in Genocide. I wished him luck, I said, speaking as a fellow author. He was patently amazed to learn that I was a published novelist. ‘I even knew Hemingway,’ I threw in, to see if it would have any effect but he wasn’t impressed. That fraud, said Scully. He asked me if I’d ever met Camus. Alas, no, I had to say.

  Zygmunt said he was going up to the front with Okoli tomorrow and we were welcome to come, but Scully said he was returning to Lagos. He says he’s going to Abidjan in the Ivory Coast and is going to hitch a ride on one of the supply planes that fly into Biafra each night. You should come along, Mountstuart, he said, give you some decent material for your next novel. I begged off, said I was waiting for a friend to arrive.

  Tuesday, 18 November

  Zygmunt and I rode in Okoli’s jeep up the Aba-Owerri road. Colonel Jack was wearing a bush jacket and a beret with a scarlet cockade, and still resolutely sunglassed. We stopped at a battery of guns and watched them firing into the bush. Then we drove on past columns of troops plodding north up the road. We came to a village, which seemed deserted, but Colonel Jack sent his men in to flush out what remained of the population, mainly women and children. They seemed very nervous and ill-at-ease, standing with heads bowed as Colonel Jack lambasted the black devil Ojukwu and congratulated them on being liberated by the Nigerian Army. He pushed a young girl forward towards me and Zygmunt. She had a baby on her hip, big-bellied and moon-eyed, a dozen flies grazing on the snot that ran freely from its nose. She speaks English, Colonel Jack said. Zygmunt asked her if she was pleased that the Biafran Army had been expelled from her village. ‘Something must be done,’ she said, ‘to keep Nigeria one.’

  We lunched with Colonel Jack under an awning he had had erected by the side of the road. Folding garden furniture was set out and we ate curried beef and yam, washed down with Johnnie Walker whisky. Colonel Jack had been at Sandhurst and quizzed me about parts of London he had known, casinos and defunct nightclubs he had patronized as a cadet. He asked me if I had ever been in the army and I said, no, the navy, the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve—in the Second World War. ‘What rank?’ he asked. I told him and he referred to me as ‘Commander’ from then on.

  After lunch we motored on up a laterite road until we came upon two Saracen armoured vehicles and about a hundred soldiers sitting on the verges, all with bits of vegetation sticking out of their helmets and intertwined with their webbing. This was the furthest point of the Federal Army’s northward advance on the southern front, Colonel Jack said. Then he conferred some way off with a captain, who was accompanied by two machete-wielding civilians, after which he threw a temper-tantrum for our benefit, bellowing at his men, calling them bloody damn fools, terrified women, insects who deserved to be doused with pesticide. The Saracens started up, the men rose wearily to their feet and the column moved off up the road towards the rebel heartland once again.

  Colonel Jack told us that the civilians had reported that all Biafran resistance in this sector had collapsed because Ojukwu himself had ordered the execution of four local men on the charge of cannibalism. ‘He accused them of eating Biafran soldiers,’ Colonel Jack said. ‘What kind of bloody fool idiot is this man?’ The offence to the local tribe was huge, incalculable, and all logistical support in the locality had ceased immediately—no food, no water, no guides for the meandering bush paths. The local tribespeople were now actively helping the Federal Army.

  ‘And so this is how a war is won,’ Colonel Jack said as we drove back to the Roundabout Hotel. ‘A question of making a wrong insult at the wrong time. We’ve advanced twelve miles today.’ He clapped me on the shoulder: he was very pleased. ‘I tell you, Commander, I will be Brigadier Jack before Christmas.’

  Matilda has just knocked on my door; ‘Hello, sar. Love is calling.’ I’ve given her another pound and told her to buy herself another Fanta in the bar. No word from Simeon. I wonder how long I should stay.

  Wednesday, 19 November

  Spent the morning typing up my piece for Polity, called ‘A Day at the War with Colonel Jack’. Quite pleased with it. Zygmunt left for the northern front at Nsukka. He thinks it’ll be easier to infiltrate Biafra from there—he wants to meet Ojukwu before the war is over.

  I lunched on fried plantain and a genuinely cold bottle of Star Beer—quite delicious.

  This afternoon three Nigerian Air Force MiGs came over, very low. Matilda gestured contemptuously at them. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘they no be frighten now.’

  §

  Later. Simeon came back this afternoon. His parents’ house has been looted, cleared out of everything, but is still standing. His family continues to hide in the bush, however, very mistrustful of both armies. No sign of Isaac, but Simeon seemed unperturbed. The bush was full of deserters from the Biafran Army, he told me, and Isaac would be with them somewhere, safe and well. He was oddly exhilarated, so I suppose we can say the mission is sort of accomplished. We head back to U.C. Ikiri tomorrow. Matilda wants a lift to Benin: she’s sick of the meagre returns offered by the Roundabout Hotel.

  1970

  Saturday, 17 January

  Isaac is back from the war. I came out to breakfast on the veranda and there he was, beaming in
his khaki shorts and white t-shirt. He was thinner, his head was shaved, but apparently none the worse for his experiences. He had in fact only managed to desert a week before the war ended as he was part of a contingent of troops guarding the airstrip at Uli, where the relief flights came in. As the Federal Army drew ever closer he was deployed on the perimeter, given a hand grenade and five rounds of ammunition (as a guard he was provided with just a single round). Once in the bush he had slipped offhis uniform, thrown away his gun and had headed south, homewards.

  The war ended so quickly, he said, because a spiritualist leader was executed for ‘vicarious murder’ (Isaac’s words). All the Biafran commanders relied totally on advice from spiritualists and so-called prophets—no military order or instruction was issued without the approval of the spiritualists—and when the leader of this sect was executed officers on the southern front simply refused to fight. The exhausted Biafran soldiers, seeing their officers so demoralized, just drifted away, leaving their positions unmanned. The Nigerian Army marched in singing, rifles slung. Another good day for Colonel Jack, no doubt.

  Friday, 27 February

  Sixty-four. My birthday passed in total and gratifying anonymity. It was marred only by the Desiccated Coconut who, at the departmental meeting, reminded everyone that I would be leaving at the end of the next academic year and that a new lecturer would be needed for the English Novel course. ‘Dear Logan is retiring, alas. We are losing our Oxford man.’ There were mutters of commiseration and congratulation. Polly glanced at me, a little shocked: I don’t think she had me down as an almost-old-age-pensioner. I don’t look too bad, I must say—I suit my sun tan and I only drink beer these days—well, most of the time—which has sleekened me and thickened my waistline.

  I played our usual nine holes with Kwaku this afternoon and told him I was obliged to leave next year and wondered vaguely if there was the likelihood of any other job being available to me out here. Candidly, he thought it would be almost impossible—you’d lose your house, he said, you’d get a quarter of your salary. You’d have to go to Ibadan, at least, if not Lagos.

  For some reason I don’t want to leave Africa—I’ve come to like my life here—and Britain and Europe seem strangely hostile, now.

  But I can see that the prospects of employment for a 65-year-old Englishman with a third-class degree from Oxford must be poor. So back to London it shall be, I suppose, back to Turpentine Lane—see what kind of living I can scrape with my pen.

  [July]

  After a swim at the dub pool I wandered back to Danfodio Road, feeling the sun hot upon my bare head. I opened a bottle of Star Beer and sat on the veranda, drinking. Then I went out into my garden and wandered around its perimeter touching the trees with the palms of my hand—the casuarinas, the guava, the cotton tree, the avocado, the frangipani—as if this last touch, this fleeting caress, was a way of saying goodbye to them, my trees, my African life. My ears were filled with the metallic static of the cicadas and the faint breeze raised the smell of dust from the bleached grass. I rested my forehead against the trunk of a papaya and closed my eyes. Then I heard Godspeed, my gardener, saying in anxious tones, ‘Sar—you go be all right?’ No, I wanted to say: I go fear I never go be all right never again.

  The Second London Journal

  Logan Mountstuart returned to London at the end of the summer term in July 1971 and took up residence once again in Turpentine Lane, Pimlico. He only had his old-age pension and his savings to sustain him financially (his few years’ contribution to the U.C. Ikiri pension plan was too short-lived to provide anything more than a pittance) so he applied himself to his former profession of freelance writer with diligence if not enthusiasm. Polity, his main source of income, folded in 1972,, and Sheila Adrar at Wallace Douglas Ltd was unsuccessful (or dilatory) in securing any advance from a publisher for the long-nurtured novel Octet. Udo Feuerbach retained him as London correspondent for revolver and Ben Leeping, ailing now from prostate cancer, paid him for occasional consultancy work for Leeping Freres. Slowly but surely, over the next few years, LMS became ever more impecunious. The Second London Journal opens in the spring of 1975.

  1975

  Wednesday, 23 April

  I sacked that bitch Adrar today. I went into the agency to photocopy a few magazine articles I needed for research on Octet. First of all, the girl on reception refused to believe I was a client of the firm—then she found my file somewhere. I said that Wallace Douglas himselfhad given me permission to use the office facilities whenever I pleased. Anyway, there I was, photocopying away, but quite aware of the whispered confusion and semi-panic in the office: who is that old man in the pinstriped suit? What does he think he’s doing? Should we call the police? Eventually, Sheila Adrar herself appeared, looking very well coiffed and prosperous in a blue suit with a short skirt. ‘Logan,’ she said with the widest and falsest smile, ‘how wonderful to see you.’ Then she offered to help, gathering up the loose leaves of paper and checking the counter on the machine. Sixty two copies she said, at twopence a copy, that’ll be £1.64. Most amusing, Sheila, I said, and took the copies from her and made my way to the door. I’d like the money please, Logan, she said, this is not a charity. Well, I just blew up. How dare you? I said. Have you any idea how much money I’ve made for this firm? And you have the nerve to charge me for a few copies. Shame on you. You’ve made nothing for this firm since the Second World War, she said. Right! I shouted, that’s it. You’re fucking sacked, the whole useless lot of you! I’m taking my business elsewhere—and I strode out.

  I went into a pub to calm myself down and found my hands were shaking—with sheer rage, not embarrassment, I hasten to add. I’ll call Wallace in the morning and explain what happened. Perhaps he can recommend someone new.

  Pleased to have taken up this journal again even if its purpose is more sinister. I fear it will become a documentation of one writer’s decline; a commentary on the London literary scene from the point of view of a superannuated scribbler. These final acts in a writer’s life usually go unrecorded because the reality is too shaming, too sad, too banal. But, on the contrary, it seems to me to be even more important now, after everything that has gone before, to set down the facts as I experience them. No country house, here; no honour-heaped twilight years, no proper respect from a grateful nation or recompense from a profession I’ve served for decades. When some insincere bloodsucker like Adrar dares to claim £1.64 off someone like me then I look at it as a genuine watershed—not because of her temerity, but because I actually couldn’t afford to pay her. £1.64, judiciously spent, can provide me with food for three days. This is the level to which I have descended.

  So here is the reckoning. Assets: I own my basement flat in Turpentine Lane, Pimlico. I own its furnishings. I possess about a thousand books, some increasingly threadbare clothes, a watch, cufflinks, etc. Income: my published books are all out of print, thus income from royalties is nil. I have the standard old-age pension provided by the state with an insignificant addition of almost £3 a week from my U.C. Ikiri pension fund. Freelance work; very erratic.

  Expenditure: rates, gas, electricity, water, telephone, food, clothing, transport. I have no car—I travel by bus or tube. I have no television (hire and licence fee too expensive—I listen to the radio and play my gramophone records). My only indulgences, the luxuries in my life, are alcohol and cigarettes and the occasional visit to a cinema or pub. I read newspapers that I find discarded on buses and tube trains.

  My head is just kept above water by occasional journalism and consultancy work for Leeping Freres. Last year I earned approximately £650. So far this year I’ve written a long piece on Rothko (£50), reviewed a book on Bloomsbury (£25) and assessed a private collection of pictures for Ben (£200).

  I eat frugal meals of corned beef (the culinary leitmotif in my life), baked beans and potatoes. A tin of condensed soup, well diluted, can be eked out to four or five servings. A tea bag, properly utilized, can make three cups of weakish te
a. And so on. Thank God I had a good tailor. My last set of suits from Byrne & Milner will last many more years with careful maintenance. Underwear, socks and shirts are rare purchases. I wash my clothes by hand and dry them in front of the gas fire in winter or on a rack set out in the basement well in the summer. Foreign travel is out of the question unless wholly subsidized by others. For example, Gloria asked me to La Fucina for ‘as long as I liked’ this summer. I told her I couldn’t afford the fare and since she didn’t offer to pay I assume she’s similarly strapped for cash herself.

  I still drink- cider, beer and the cheapest wine—and I have taken to rolling my own cigarettes.

  In the day I go to a public library to continue my research on Octet or to write my rare articles. I type them up at home in the evening. Then I listen to the radio or gramophone records and read. I might go to my local pub, the Cornwallis, for a half pint of bitter two or three times a week I have my health, I am independent, I owe no money. I am—just—surviving. This is the life of an elderly man of letters, here in London, in 1975.

  §

  [NOTE IN RETROSPECT. 1982. I never noted it at the time but, during these years when I was truly on my uppers, I used occasionally to recall what Mr Schmidt had screamed at me that morning in New York when Monday⁄Laura had made her dash for freedom. LOSER! You English loser…I suppose he thought it was the most grievous insult he could hurl. But such a curse doesn’t really have any effect on an English person—or a European—it seems to me. We know we’re all going to lose in the end so it is deprived of any force as a slur. But not in the USA. Perhaps this is the great difference between the two worlds, this concept of Loserdom. In the New World it is the ultimate mark of shame—in the Old it prompts only a wry sympathy. I wonder what Titus Fitch would have to say.]