by Ruth Hartley
Lara wiggled her fingers by her ears as she said “picture” and they both smiled.
Tim had made no secret of the fact that he wanted to interview her father, Brian, about his job. “Do you think your Dad could get me introductions to the big-wigs here? The important Chambeshians who are in the mining business? My special field of research this trip is mining and economics and how that pans out politically.”
Lara liked Tim’s open acknowledgement of his own motives for what he did and want he wanted. She hadn’t encountered many people who were that frank and fewer people who had much insight into their own personalities. Liseli tried to be honest but she was so complex that she often confused Lara by her self-analysis. With Tim, Lara felt that she didn’t have to pretend that she was a nice person. Even while he understood how selfish her personal artistic ambitions were he would still remain a friend.
Tim’s conversations with her father taught Lara facts about her father’s life and work that she had never known or been told. She also discovered that Brian and Jane had once known Oscar socially though it was clear that they didn’t have anything to do with him now.
“Interesting man, Oscar,” Tim said, “Self-made. Arrived here in Chambeshi from South Africa, had a job in the Rand mines there, served a short time with the Police Force over the Independence period, worked here for a chap who imported cars and ran an upmarket garage. Took it over in a very short space of time, made it even more successful, became good friends with Marcus Chona, the current president of Chambeshi, got these mining rights and does ‘Business’ of a rather nebulous sort. Entertaining and charming though – don’t you think Lara? And very cultured – likes music and art.”
Lara put her head on one side and considered the idea of Oscar and culture.
“Cultured! What does that mean? I don’t think I am very ‘cultured’ even though I paint. I don’t know all that much about art and music really. How is Oscar cultured? It kind-of sounds as if he has been all smoothed over in a tasteful way and always does the right thing.”
Tim shook his head at Lara.
“Wow – you sound defensive! Yes I guess it’s sloppy of me to use such a cliché to describe Oscar. I suppose I meant that Oscar is a discriminating person and appears to really enjoy beautiful things – he is definitely not smooth though – suave – I don’t know – likeable – yes – manipulative – maybe.”
Lara wished she could think of Oscar in the same detached fashion that everyone seemed to judge him by. She felt as if he had put a special mark on her that connected the two of them. Did she think him attractive? No, she didn’t – yes, she did – he was an old man – as old as her parents – but he wasn’t creepy like James, the operations manager in her father’s office. Oscar was just too old and too experienced for her somehow. She felt he knew things about herself that she didn’t know and that she didn’t want him to tell her either. She had liked Oscar when she met him and he had not singled her out from her friends on that evening. Nevertheless something very tiny stirred just below her breastbone when she thought of him – a soft almost imperceptible moth-like flutter under her heart. The light touch of his hand on her back had left an imprint that had seeped through her skin and entered her bloodstream. She was glad he had vanished so suddenly and that she could relax in Tim’s company. She could see that Tim liked her and found her attractive. That was flattering, but she felt safe with Tim. He was so unselfconscious and indifferent to his very ordinary appearance. He was also very outspoken about his hopeless inability to make relationships last because his work did not let him stay in one place for very long.
“I’m a travelling man.” he said, his eyes alight, his grin wide. “Will you be my girlfriend when I’m here Lara?” “Got a girlfriend in every city in Africa. You can be mine here in Chambeshi City if you like Lara – but I wouldn’t advise it – we journalists are heartless people.”
“I’ll make a decision on your next visit, Tim.” Lara offered Tim lightly. “In the meantime you can take me out to the club barbecue tonight. There will be lots of interesting people there to give you the low-down on Chambeshi politics.”
So their relationship continued. Tim came around for lunch and a swim fairly regularly but he worked hard writing up his many interviews and filing his reports for his editor back in London. Lara spent time in her studio working for the one-person show in the Umodzi Gallery that Helen had promised to give her. She was not working on any commissions so she was free to develop her own ideas for her paintings. Helen pursed her lips a little at Lara’s plans to make fewer paintings of wild-life.
“No and yes.” she said. “It will be lovely to have original work that’s different and good if it is a bit more challenging but also promise me some drawings that are easy to sell. I still have to pay rent and staff salaries from the sales, you know.”
Tim took Lara round to Oscar’s home for lunch one day.
“You should see Oscar’s Kasenga Ranch, Lara. He has quite a collection of paintings – some German expressionists and a couple of naïve Yugoslav artists as well as a good selection of local artists. It’s a beautiful house – I think that architect, Patel or whatever, designed it. He has a small farm. He also has his own runway and his own light aircraft.”
“He won’t be there, will he?” Lara asked, and was both relieved and disappointed to hear that Oscar was now in Berlin.
“East Berlin, would you believe!” Tim grinned. Lara needed to be reminded of what that meant.
“Communist East Berlin,” she repeated, “Why? What possible business can he have there? Isn’t he a really successful capitalist businessman?”
That much she understood about the difference between East and West Germany.
“No idea,” replied Tim, “I mean to find out, though! Come to his place and you can get to know his partner and business manager – Enoch Njobvu – he’s a really good bloke. You’ll like him.”
Lara found it strange to be shown around Oscar’s living room. She felt as if she was an intruder into a private space. At the same time she had a curious feeling that she was being given a preview of a future life connected with Oscar and she gave herself a quick admonishing shrug.
Stupid Lara! she told herself, surprised.
She had as yet no ambition to marry and had never thought about being rich and living in a big house with designer furniture and art everywhere even though that was her mother’s deepest desire. Jane was always planning makeovers for her home and exclaiming over home and garden magazines. Odd, but seeing Oscar’s house made Lara feel closer to him in a way that she couldn’t understand. Was it his taste in art that made her feel sympathetic to him? At the same time she resented the feeling of being manipulated by something outside her experience and control.
Tim, Lara and Enoch Njobvu had a lunch of salads and cold meats outside on the big veranda overlooking the pool. They could see in the far distance to the north-west the first swelling slopes of the lower escarpment riding up into a ridge of rugged hills before it fell away into the great river valley and the Chambeshi nature reserve.
“You can’t see so far to the escarpment in the winter months when it is dusty and hazy,” Enoch said, “Beautiful now though, isn’t it – and so green.”
Enoch turned politely to Lara.
“You must meet my wife, Inonge – you would like each other. She’s on a shopping trip in London right now. My son is at medical school there.”
Enoch was a quietly spoken man with a gentle manner. His skin was so dark that it seemed to absorb light. When he sat on the veranda with his back to the sun it was hard to distinguish his features but Lara noticed that he had the heavy brows, straight nose and thin lips more common in the north of Chambeshi. Lara found him very likeable. He spoke of Oscar as his friend rather than his partner.
“You have known Oscar a long time?” probed Tim.
“Yes,” Enoch answered, “We served together in the 1966 emergency just after Independence. We became friends then. Oscar saved my life.”
“Oscar told me you saved his life – what actually did happen?” Tim asked.
Enoch smiled. “It was perhaps mutual – one good turn deserved another. The two of us were on a reconnaissance mission and were ambushed and cut off from our unit. I suffered a spear wound in my leg and Oscar refused to leave me. The people who surrounded us were poor rural people armed with traditional weapons but they were a very numerous group. We could not have shot our way out of that situation and in we were trying to negotiate a peaceful solution by traditional methods. We had to do much talking –“Enoch shook his head and his voice went higher as he did so. “Much, much talking and only I spoke the language. It was a very complicated situation. Since those days I know I can trust Oscar with my life.”
“What was that fighting about?” Lara asked, “My family wasn’t in Chambeshi then.”
“It was a religious sect led by a woman priestess with a large tribal following that threatened to disrupt the handover from Britain to President Chona. It was a messy business – a compromise couldn’t be reached. Religious fanaticism made it impossible. I don’t know what else could have been done.” Enoch shook his head again slowly and sadly.
“That kind of unrest is long gone, isn’t it?” Lara asked.
“It seems so.” Enoch said, “Since independence Chambeshi is not so troubled by those kinds of tribal rivalry. Further north in the Congo there is still a lot of fear and conflict.”
“Impossible to exploit the mines there as a result.” Tim said, “I understand they have much richer resources of precious gems there as well as cobalt, caesium and platinum.”
Lara raised her eyebrows intelligently and bit her tongue in case she said anything silly. She might learn by listening. This was Tim’s area of special interest. She had never been told anything by her father about the mining industry in Africa and didn’t think her mother had been either.
Tim, with his engaging interest in everyone, was good at drawing out confidences from the people he met. He loved to gossip and laugh about what he learnt from them too. He would give long amused and amusing explanations but he never seemed to dislike his sources or to judge them very harshly. Lara was fascinated and intrigued. As they drove back to Lara’s home after their visit to Oscar’s ranch Lara asked him about the risks that gathering such knowledge posed for Tim.
“Ought you to say that, Tim? Isn’t it also dangerous to write about it? Won’t you be sued for libel – or barred from coming back to Chambeshi?”
“Oh – don’t worry.” Tim replied, “I do censor what I write – and so does my editor. I have a personal interest in leaving every country I visit alive, but then one day – who knows – I’ll write that book – or that history – or that memoir. I’m not employed to write personal stories – I just enjoy knowing them. I am supposed to write about economics and politics, you know, mines and banks and how in Africa everything fails.”
“Does it really – always? Is it so bad here?”
“Right now the West has a vested interest in Africa either failing or staying as their allies. They would rather have failing allies than successful enemies obviously – but with Africa’s immense problems and lack of infrastructure, who knows if it isn’t all down to chance? Journalists, I am ashamed to say, get more approval for reporting the negative stories than the positive ones. It’s safer to do that in this cynical world.”
Tim shrugged, then ventured, “Oscar is rumoured to have been a very influential person during the early days of President Chona’s government but no one will say exactly how or what it was he did. Maybe they were just friends? President Chona is a sociable sort of chap.”
“You should go to Tin Heart Camp, Lara, and have a look around – invite me too; I would love to see it. Do you know that it is actually like a little separate state inside Chambeshi?”
“What on earth do you mean?” Lara demanded. Oscar sounded more and more interesting to her.
“At the start of the new Chambeshi Republic there was a small working goldmine there. The owner, a really unusual Afrikaner called Jannie Oosthuizen, was totally committed to African independence, and he financed Chona during the Freedom Struggle – as they like to call it. Actually, after relatively minimal resistance the colonial powers were desperate to hand back power they couldn’t exploit or control. After Independence Chona rewarded him with full land rights and exemption from tax in perpetuity, a tiny tax haven if you like, a mini-Andorra in Africa. It didn’t mean anything in real terms – the mine was failing – you couldn’t run casinos in the middle of nowhere when life itself is a gamble, but it was what traditional Afrikaners have always dreamed of – a stateless state answerable to no one but God.”
“What an incredible story!” Lara squeezed her eyes shut and opened them wide again. “How did Oscar get to own it then?”
“Murder probably,” said Tim, then seeing Lara’s shock, he laughed, “No. I made that up! I don’t know, but I do mean to find out!”
Turning to Lara and momentarily serious, he said, “Lara – do be careful of Oscar – really careful! He is so likeable and you can see Enoch trusts him but there are stories – many stories. I think a lot of the stories may be jealousy – or because he is the apocryphal outsider – he has a German name and in a community of British expats that makes him an object of interest. That bitchy woman who runs the Sports Club says things about him and his sister that you wouldn’t believe.”
“His sister! I didn’t know he has a sister. What things?” Lara knew Jacqueline, the Sports Club manager so appropriately described as a bitch by Tim. Jacqueline had implied things about Lara and Jason and the Safari camp clients that had caused a row between Lara and her mother.
“It’s sad,” Tim said, no longer smiling, “Oscar’s sister died of cancer about 13 years ago. She never got rid of her German accent and she seems to have been very reclusive. Jacqueline implied that her relationship with Oscar was too close by half by which I suppose she meant incestuous – Jacqueline is very poisonous.”
Lara was silent.
As time passed by, Lara could not help but think of Oscar. She was often at his house with Tim. By the end of a month she knew where in his kitchen Oscar kept both the local coffee beans and grinder and the imported leaf tea and teapot. Both she and Tim counted Enoch as a friend and Lara had spent some hours studying the paintings in Oscar’s collection and she knew which ones she liked and why. Lara had also gained an education from both Enoch and Tim about Chambeshi’s history and its current political situation. Tim said there was increasing discontent with the economic situation and cost of the staple food. President Chona was being blamed for the corruption rife among Chambeshi’s bureaucrats.
She wanted to return to the story about Oscar’s sister but learnt little from Tim and did have enough courtesy not to ask Enoch about her. That would have seemed like prying and she would have been ashamed.
Chapter Four
Friends
“Tim is so intelligent.” Jane said to Lara one day over breakfast. “You do like him more than Jason, Lara, don’t you?”
“Mum!” Lara was mildly exasperated, “They are such different people – you can’t make a comparison.” She knew what Jane wanted to know and had no intention of telling her. Jane persisted, this time more directly.
“So is he your boyfriend then, Lara?”
“Mum!” Lara was irritated. “Tim is only here for a few more months. He spends his whole life travelling to quite dangerous places and he doesn’t even have a place of his own – he stays with friends all the time even when he is in London! We are not getting engaged! We are not girlfriend and boyfriend – we are just friends! That’s all!” Then she added sarcastically, “I am surprised that you think he is right for me!”
“Oh!” Jane was hurt and angry, “You are old enough to settle into a proper relationship, Lara – you are almost 25 now.” Jane pushed her plate of toast aside then suddenly she was shrieking at Lara and stuttering. “Don’t – Don’t – don’t ever get involved with Oscar Mynhardt – just don’t!”
Lara stood up, picked up her cup of coffee, and, without looking back at Jane, she stamped off to her studio in the garage. Of course she could not settle down to paint after that exchange. What was it about anyway? Was Jane jealous of her? Was that really likely? Was it about Oscar? Her parents didn’t seem to know him that well so why?
What did she want from her life?
She knew that if she gave Tim any encouragement they would end up sleeping together. She missed having sex. It had been such exciting and satisfying fun with Jason and she had been so blind and so in love with him and with the bush. Jason wasn’t an experienced or subtle lover, but mutual desire, sexual energy and physical stamina had been all that they needed for pleasure. Lara had felt humiliated by the end of the relationship but hindsight taught her that it would not have lasted. If Jason wasn’t talking about wild-life and conservation he was rather uninteresting. She had grown up and grown out of the relationship before it ended.
At school and art school her contemporaries had discussed marriage and sex and decided that the two didn’t necessarily go together. Children might be another thing, but no one could imagine what it would be like to have a family and to be responsible for it. Though her girlfriends said they were feminists, most of them secretly hoped to get married to someone decent and stable so that they could bring up children who would be ‘better’ and ‘happier’ than they felt they were. None of the boys planned on settling down while sex was apparently so easy to come by. Well – easy for their friends, if not for themselves. If a boy had a girlfriend, he felt possessive about her while their sex was new. Then he felt uncertain about her as soon as the balance between the emotional relationship and sexual desire altered. At least it seemed to Lara that that was how men and boys behaved in their relationships.