She dropped her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly, ‘I really am.’
He sat down. He took a gulp of his beer and then he ran his fingers through his hair.
‘I’m sorry I shot my mouth off too,’ he said.
They sat in silence. The bare house was empty. The insects were singing in the night outside.
‘Why aren’t we married?’ she said softly to her lap. ‘I loved you so much. We should’ve got married in Rusape that time. We’d’ve had children by now to talk about. Other couples our age have children to hold them together, we have nothing except memories.’ She looked at him. ‘Why haven’t we had a baby?’ she said. ‘I’ve tried hard enough.’
He studied her. She was so goddam beautiful.
‘Why didn’t you marry me when I first came back to this desert?’ he said softly. ‘A trial period was your idea.’
She plucked at the stitching in the armchair, ‘I know, I’m a mug,’ she said sadly. God, she was beautiful. Her long golden hair hung straight down the sides of her face as she looked at the stitching she was picking at and her face was miserable and she had tears in her eyes.
‘I’m in such a pickle,’ she said.
‘Suzie?’
She looked up at him and sniffed. ‘What?’
‘Let’s get married then. Give it a bash.’ He got up and he went and sat down on the arm of her chair.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. What the hell. It couldn’t be worse than living like this. ‘We’ll buy some bloody furniture and get a decent cookboy and clear the goddam jungle from the front door—’
She looked up at him with a startled dreamy look. Then she put her fingers through his hair.
‘Don’t be daft, darling. What we need is a divorce.’
She looked at him. ‘You know that if we agreed now to get married tomorrow we’d both wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.’
She got up out of the chair and held her hand out to him. He took it and she bent and kissed him.
‘Come on, leave your book, it’s bed time. I’ve got a feeling tonight’s my night for getting a baby.’
She kissed him again.
‘That’d fix us,’ she said into his lips.
Later as they lay inert in the double bed she said into the darkness: ‘Maybe I just need a holiday at the seaside. I’m a bundle of nerves and so are you.’
Half-past four on a Sunday afternoon at the Que Que Hotel. Criminal Sessions starting tomorrow at ten a.m. sharp in Bulawayo and he had to be on the ball. One hundred and forty miles of flat dry Matabeleland bush to go to Bulawayo and he still had his goddam briefs to swot up when he got there. And in Bulawayo of all godforsaken places.
Hot. His skin was greasy as he sat at the round tin table on the hotel verandah. The sun beat on the tin roof of the hotel verandah. The tar road through the town was hot and dirty. Across the road in the bare brown park the natives sat in the sun chattering and picking their noses and the babies had snot encrusted on their lips and flies in their eyes.
They stood on the gravel sidewalks and chattered and laughed and shouted at each other. There were the town boys and women dressed in their Sunday best white man clothes and there were the rural natives in their white man’s tatters. The dull red cement of the hotel verandah was warm from the sun and his dented Vauxhall was hot and his shirt stuck to his back. Dogs had cocked their legs on the pillars of the verandah. There was a dartboard at one end of the verandah and there was a poster of a luscious black-haired woman with perfect teeth saying against a palm beach background: Things Go Better with Big Big Coke, and there was another poster of a lion sitting on a beer-barrel licking his chops and saying: Lion Cheers, Rhodesia is Lion Country. And outside the hot verandah of the hot hotel was the wide flat white-blue sky with nary a cloud over the vast flat bush.
The locals sat at the tin tables on the verandah drinking beer. Hot, strained, sweaty, unkempt faces red from the sun and the dust and the years of drinking beer under the sun. Unlovely women, heavy and hot and red and sweating at the armpits and thighs. Podgy, possibly flabby, possibly smelly, but thighs, thighs enclosing a crotch, a crotch to be splayed on a hot summer bed in a hot summer land, a bed that is used to sweat. What else is there to do? There is nothing else to do.
Beer, cigarettes and sex. What else is there to do? What else to do but lie wet upon each other with sweat like oil sealing and sucking and plopping bellies and loins together, hairy chests matted against wet flaccid breasts, the hair on the back of the neck in wet small ringlets, hot beer breaths and pants and heaves and up and down and thump and grind and faster and quick and deeper and more and if and now and guts and explosion: and then the sad sticky descent and the heavy disillusion, the waste, the emptiness, the roll off, the rich acrid smell, the lack, the slattern sleep. What else to do?
Even in the rich green of Salisbury.
That was all they had done together, all they could do: Suzie sitting in a clearing in the garden at Sunday noon in her bikini, peeling the potatoes, sipping cold wine, her full golden body glistening with tanning oil, her yellow hair long and shining in the sun, the demijohn of wine tucked into the shade of the tall grass: the portable radio singing out the request tunes, he sitting in the deckchair in his swimming trunks with his floppy blue Police Reserve hat on his head drinking cold beer and reading or maybe scribbling notes for his book on his lap, chain-smoking. Getting a little drunk in the Sunday sun together in the jungled garden before the big lunch. Sunday noon in the sun was a kind of half-holiday. They got mellow and fulsome in the sun. Then they could talk. They talked emotionally and nostalgically then about London and the States and they talked about the Club they belonged to, who was sleeping with who and what somebody at the office had said on Friday, and doesn’t this tune take you back to those glorious skating week-ends up in Vermont? And they were sorry for being so bitchy to each other last week and she asked him to read her bits aloud out of his book and maybe out of a book of poetry he had been reading. When they were half sloshed in the sun in the garden on Sunday they talked all right, mellow and excited at the knowledge of what they were going to do after lunch. Then at about two o’clock they went inside to cook lunch and sometimes he undressed her there and then in the kitchen that dwarfed the tiny electric stove and they cooked lunch happily together and sometimes they made a little love right there and standing up in the kitchen, just a little, enough to tantalise each other. Then she cleared his papers off the big table in the lounge and she laid it and bedecked it with the frangipani and the chrysanthemums that gloried in the garden and they sat down, very happily, and drank cold wine and ate the roast chicken – it was always roast chicken on Sundays – and her full breasts were white against the brown of the table and the gold of her shoulders and the gold of her hair and the yellow-pink frangipani she always wore behind her ear on Sundays and her red mouth was wide and loving and happy. And then afterwards they went to the big sultry bedroom and he lay down and she came on top of him with her hot sultry kisses and her long hair brushing his face and her breasts flattened against him and she wriggled and worked herself down on to him. And it was all the different ways on Sunday afternoons, revelling in each other’s beauty, and then at last the long soaring searing release: and then the panting, sweating sun- burned quiet, and then the long drugged sleep. And when they woke up it was already dark and quiet and the world was dull and empty and there was nothing to do or say and nothing to look forward to, not even each other for they had wrung and sucked everything out of each other. And another week gone.
Mahoney sat on the verandah of the Que Que Hotel. The sun was going down over the mauve bush in a flood of red. His eyes were a little red and he knew he had five beers inside him but he was steady enough. He snapped his fingers at the waiter and he bought two hot pies and a cold beer to take with him and he carried them to the car and he set off down the long dusty road into Matabeleland.
It was late as he drove into the wide dry familiar streets of Bul
awayo. Empty streets, empty windows, empty shops, empty flats. He tried not to look at old landmarks as he drove to his hotel, but every corner, every silent café, every closed bar shouted Suzie! at him.
Chapter Forty-Two
Lots of empty shops and flats with ‘To Let’ chalked over the windows, no new buildings, and a lot of the old ones looking more run down, fewer cars, more natives: but the tarred roads just as wide and black and dusty and hot and the sky just as mercilessly blue and the bush just as infinite and brown and flat. And the High Court just as deadly and much busier. The only joints that had plenty of business, indeed much too much, were the courts and the cops. But Mahoney had no time to brood. He had showered and shaved and taken two of his red buck-up pills and eaten breakfast with his briefs open on the table while he ate. Being Crown Counsel on the opening day of Criminal Session was as unpleasant, he reflected as he humped his robes and books and briefs up the familiar old stone steps of the High Court and down the bleak passage to the door labelled Crown Counsel at eight o’clock, as being director producer stage-manager prompter hero villain and noises-off in a badly casted unrehearsed under-propped play with a lousy plot on its opening night before a highly critical audience armed with slings and arrows. The harbinger of further alarm and despondency was the police orderly standing outside his office who now came forward with a cheery perspiring smile and immediately began to harbinge.
‘Good morning, sir, you the prosecutor? Inspector Goodman, sir, your orderly. Hot enough for you, sir—?’
‘Come in,’ Mahoney said, ‘and tell me what’s gone wrong.’
He sat down in the hard chair and put his hand to his head and looked at the inspector.
‘Now, about case number two, sir, the witness Dlijah is missing, just couldn’t find him at his kraal, sir. Tribesmen in the area haven’t seen him for three weeks, rumour that he’s gone to Bechuanaland. Case number four, the witchcraft merchant, the woman Nxquashe is in hospital having a Caesarian. Case five, the doctor is going on overseas leave, ship passage booked and everything, must hold the case before next Tuesday. Also, none of the exhibits have arrived here yet. We’ll find them, don’t worry, sir, but it takes three days to get them in here by bus. Also, in that case Constable Porter is getting married, next Saturday, says can we please please please hold the trial before then so he can go on honeymoon. Case six, everything in order. No, I’m not kidding, sir. Case seven, only trouble is that Inspector Jones is on a refresher course in Salisbury and says can we please not bring the case on until three weeks time, after his exam, sir. Number nine, the schoolteacher is away visiting his sick mother. They’re expecting him back any moment but nobody knows quite where his mother lives. Number eleven, three witnesses missing. We sent a truck out to find them and they just disappeared. We think they’ve been got at by relatives of the accused. Number fourteen, the accused has escaped. Yes, perhaps that is the first piece of good news, sir. Now, in number fifteen there are three doctors involved. One is on transfer, the other quitting his job at the end of the month and the other is the only doctor at the hospital and cannot come unless a relief is sent out to his bush hospital because he’s got an epidemic in his district. I’m trying to arrange for a relief with the central hospital but they can’t spare a doctor until the end of the month. They’ve got an epidemic too. Sixteen, the defence counsel phoned me day before yesterday and says he’ll be out of town for a fortnight, can we please postpone his cases, that is number six, ten, thirteen and twenty until he comes back. He has already left, sir. Difficulty is in case number twenty, the farmer who had his barn burned down is going to start reaping his crop and it’s going to last for the next month and says for God’s sake he just can’t leave his reaping in the hands of his native labour for two days because they’ll ruin it. It’ll take him almost a day to get into town and a day to get back. Can’t you do without his evidence, sir? Number nineteen, the witness Sixpence has died, sir, somebody chopped his head open at a beerdrink. Same in number twenty-four – the old girl Soquomasi died last week of natural causes. Was she a very important witness? Twenty-eight everything okay. Twenty-nine everything okay except that African Constable Mprofiti was stabbed in the chest last night trying to arrest a thug. We can hold court in the hospital, just for his evidence. Thirty-four one of the petrol bombing cases, Inspector McGladdery will be phoning you. He’s having a hell of a job keeping the witnesses away from the political thugs who’ll intimidate them and says can you please hold the trial early …
‘Otherwise, everything okay, sir. What case do you want to bring on first, sir?’
‘Situation normal,’ Mahoney said.
Then the registrar telephoned from upstairs: The Chief Justice wants to know what cases you’re bringing in front of him and when. He can only sit for three days this week because he’s going to Salisbury for five days on Thursday. So don’t start anything in front of him which you can’t finish before Wednesday night. You’ll have the other judge while the C.J.’s away but when he comes back next Tuesday he’ll take over your Court again, so try not to start anything before the judge which you can’t finish by Monday next. Then the following week both are sitting on appeals so I’m flying a judge from Salisbury for you, but only for five days, so for God’s sake—
‘For God’s sake,’ Mahoney said.
He stripped the cellophane off his third packet of cigarettes since Que Que, lit one and began to cough.
‘First we’ll take the pleas. Then lay on Edward and whatsisname for trial,’ he coughed to the inspector.
He was feeling dizzy.
‘Now let me go and pay the Attorney General’s respects to their Lordships,’ he said, ‘before the bun fight starts.’
At nine o’clock the black crowds began to collect outside the High Court. They came from the African townships of Mzilikazi and Tshabaala and Mpopoma in their Sunday best and they gathered in the sun outside the locked gates of the public entrance and round the side where they could see the prisoners arriving. There were the sullen-faced youths and the fur-hatted gentlemen with their carved walking sticks moving about among the crowd.
At nine-fifteen the two prison trucks arrived, heavy blue Ford monsters with stout wire mesh over the windows and black woolly faces peering through and grinning and waving and the black prison corporals in their khaki and green uniforms scowling. You heard the prison trucks coming as they turned into Lobengula Street behind the High Court two blocks away. The prisoners were chanting, deep-chested melodious thumps that rose and fell, rose and fell: ‘Zapu pu-za! Za-pu pu-za! We are going to have the Country.’ It was loud and deep and clear as the trucks rumbled into the yard at the side of the Court and the crowds sent up a shout of cheers and waves and laughs and the answering chant.
‘Za-pu pu-za—’
The police were in a gauntlet from the trucks into the cells. ‘Quiet – Toola – Toola—’
The prisoners climbed out and walked down the gauntlet waving and smiling but still chanting. The heavy metal doors clanged shut behind them in the dark cell corridor but the chanting rose deep and muffled, ringing up from below and reverberated through the Courthouse and the chattering rose like a cloud of bees from the crowd.
The gates of the public entrance were unlocked and the crowd filed in a thick stream up the steps and along the corridor and up the steps to the gallery as excitedly as a circus crowd. Two white constables and a policewoman stood at the top of the steps frisking them for weapons.
At twenty to ten Mahoney pulled off his tie and clipped on his high white collar and his white cravat and pulled on his gown and shoved his wig on his head. He picked up his stack of briefs and walked down the corridor and into the Criminal Court.
The big panelled courtroom was crowded. Policemen, clerks, lawyers, press, witnesses, public. There was an expectant buzz, the chanting rang up from the cells below and from the gallery the wall of black faces staring down. Mahoney turned and looked up at the gallery. Then he called the inspector.
&n
bsp; ‘Inspector, tell those gentlemen up there to take their goddam fur hats off. Tell them it’s bad manners to wear hats in a building let alone in a Court—’
Wish we could throw the bastards out, Mahoney thought. They’re only here to intimidate my witnesses.
The inspector came back. He nodded his head and Mahoney followed him outside into the corridor. One of the black gentlemen was standing handcuffed between two constables and he was trembling. The policeman held out his hand.
‘Look what I’ve found.’
‘Christ,’ Mahoney said.
It was a khaki chunk of metal the size of a tennis ball.
‘Hand-grenade,’ the inspector said. ‘Russian made.’
‘Where?’
‘Under our friend’s fur hat.’
Mahoney looked at the object and then he turned to the black man.
‘Please, sir,’ the black man jibbered – ‘I didn’t know, sir—’
‘The hell you didn’t! You were going to lob that thing into a crowded Court. That’s going to cost you twenty years, chum. And—’ he lifted his finger and jabbed him in the chest, ‘you’re going to tell us where you got it from and who else has got ‘em, you bloody murderer—’
‘Take him away,’ the inspector snapped.
‘We’re not starting Court,’ Mahoney said, ‘until you’ve searched every man-jack of them again.’
‘Sabotage Section are already on their way here,’ the inspector said.
‘The inconvenience of being blown to bits is considerable.’
The chanting from the cells rose to a crescendo.
‘And look,’ Mahoney said irritably – ‘we can’t hold court with that din. Who’s making it, just the political hoods or everybody?’
‘Everybody,’ the inspector said, ‘even the nice wholesome non-political rape artists.’
‘Well we can’t hold court with that din. We’ll have to bring ’em up from the prison one at a time.’
‘Leave it to me. I’ve just had a brainstorm,’ the inspector said.
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