Fairness

by Ferdinand Mount

  We followed Mrs Brinscombe in her pale green Ford Anglia with the rear window that looked as if someone had taken a bite out of it. Quite soon we turned off the tarmac road up a steep track. At the junction a clutch of little signs stuck in the raw earth: MISSENDEN LODGE, JACKS HIGH, MR AND MRS R.B. LOFTHOUSE, DAVE-AND-DI, and, hard to read on a weathered wooden oval, BRINSCOMBE. The bungalow, half the size of the D.O.’s, stuck out on a tawny ridge with a couple of straggly gums behind it. When we got closer, I could see how narrow and precarious its perch was. Not twenty feet beyond it was the high wire fence and then nothing but mild endless sky.

  ‘What a view.’

  ‘You can’t eat the view,’ Mrs Brinscombe said. ‘Roy was crazy to settle up here but it was all we could afford.’

  She gave a despairing wave in the direction of the stony paddocks the other side of the track. A little further up the track there were some straw huts surrounded by a low hedge of dry thorn branches. Overhead a large bird of prey was gliding idly on the thermals.

  ‘Isn’t that great?’ Dodo Wilmot said.

  ‘Oh you get used to it,’ Mrs Brinscombe said, but quite fondly, seeming to know what he was referring to and being grateful.

  ‘Ah there he is now the scamp, he hasn’t even bothered to get cleaned up,’ she said pointing to a dusty figure coming down the track from the huts. But even this she said indulgently, as though Dodo’s general praise had tinged Black’s escapade too with a kind of magic.

  Black was a forlorn figure covered with brown dust from his scalp down to his ragged cotton trousers.

  ‘Sorry one and all,’ he said.

  We were standing on Mrs Brinscombe’s dark verandah which faced away from the view on to the track. And as he came up to us making a lopsided bow of apology as he spoke, Helen ran forward and embraced him in a fierce, wordless embrace, then stood side by side with him and patted him on the back as though he had just completed a marathon.

  ‘Come inside and have a glass of sherry,’ Mrs Brinscombe said, going back to her frigid voice.

  It was even darker in the sitting-room and there was a smell of damp, odd and depressing after the dry bright air outside. We stood awkwardly, waiting for our eyes to focus after the dazzle. Mrs Brinscombe’s knees cracked as she squatted at the polished dark cocktail cabinet with its little gilt railing round the top, guarding a photograph of an angry-looking man with a moustache, who had a spaniel on his knee. Helen handed round the little schooners brimming with the brown liquid which tasted dusty and sweet and made me sad as I gulped it. The other side of the flyblown french windows I could see Black waiting like a candidate outside an interview room. Besmeared with the mud of the mine, obviously he couldn’t come in, yet somehow the situation was not satisfactory.

  ‘Could I take Black something?’

  ‘I think he’s had enough, Helen, don’t you?’

  ‘Something soft perhaps. He looks thirsty.’

  Reluctantly Mrs Brinscombe resumed her knee-cracking squat and dribbled out some ancient orange squash into a glass not much bigger than the sherry glasses. Helen took it out to him. For some reason, this simple exercise paralysed us into silence. It was not until Black raised the glass in salutation to us through the windows and gave his great grin that we felt licensed to break out into feverish chatter.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ I said afterwards in the Land-Rover.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About Mrs Brinscombe being a cow.’

  ‘Well, it must be tough for her up there on her own, hells tough,’ Dodo said, although I wasn’t talking to him. ‘That land ain’t worth a pitcher of warm piss. And she’s good to her people, isn’t that right, Black? Mrs Brinscombe looks after her boys.’

  ‘Miss Brinscombe very good to me. She always take me home.’

  ‘You see, Gus, out here folks have to rely on one another. As far as their women go, why, they may not always see eye to eye. But when it comes to helping their neighbour out of the ditch, well, they just lend a hand.’

  ‘I see that.’

  ‘The truth is, you’re just a snob,’ Helen said. ‘You don’t like Mrs Brinscombe because she comes from Bexleyheath.’

  ‘I don’t know where she comes from, or care.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Dodo intervened, ‘she’s from Keynsham which is a small town near Bristol, it’s her late husband who was from Bexleyheath, he was in cement before he came out here.’

  ‘Cement?’ I said weakly.

  ‘Top Grade, he was regional manager for Top Grade before they were taken over. Great little firm.’

  There seemed no way to explain how none of this mattered because wherever she came from and whatever had happened to her or to the late Mr Brinscombe she could never have been a lovable person, for that too they would have thought mean-spirited, even as I thought she was. And it was hard to argue that they weren’t right, because how could you know what she would have been like as a dark slender girl being wooed by a coming young man in Top Grade Cement? The little mole high on her right cheekbone might have lent her a Margaret-Lockwood air of mystery and that voice which now sounded so peevish might have been one of those low far-off-sounding voices which are attractive though it’s hard to say why.

  ‘You look hot and bothered, my friend,’ said Dodo. ‘This afternoon we’ll take a swim, after I’ve had my presidential nap. There’s a great swimming-hole a couple of miles downriver.’

  ‘What’s a presidential nap?’

  ‘It’s the nap the president takes when the other guys are still working their butts off. That’s why he always looks fresher than they do.’

  The sun was still high as we came over the stony bluff to the little pool kept brimming by a great tawny rock blocking the river. There were willowy branches growing out from the bluff and dipping in and out of the bright water. Helen threw off her shirt and shorts, and walked along the tawny rock. It was hard to pull my gaze away from the white shiver of her bottom and the sway of her whole body as she picked her way flexing her toes on the sharp edges of the rock. As she was slowly lowering herself into the water, the sky was suddenly full of Dodo, planing down from the bluff, huge and clumsy like his non-flying namesake, but also magnificent as his great blunt head crashed into the water, his balls swinging as long and free in the sunlight as a medieval purse of gold. In that brief moment he transcended fatness. He struck out across the pool in an easy crawl – there was not room for more than four or five strokes – and I slipped into the cold water as unobtrusively as a butler refilling the glasses, then hung on to a willow to watch Dodo bob and dive and splash like a porpoise in an aqua show. Even when he hoicked himself out of the pool and stood on the rock shaking the water out of his ears, he still looked – the only word was magnificent. His swelling thigh muscles with the great furry scrotum dandling between them nearly down to his knees reduced his enormous belly to a decent proportion, so he looked not much fatter than a carthorse or a seal, and when he turned to shout something at Helen his furry back, repellent when glimpsed sprouting over his shirt, seemed quite natural. What had happened to the gigantic heap of blubber which had been comic to the point of obscenity back at the Ville? Perhaps he hadn’t really lost that much weight but possessed some weird sort of energy, which allowed him to transform his body at will, like an animal that can change shape or colour when it scents danger or opportunity.

  ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ he said to me as we lay side by side watching Helen clamber up on to the scree the far side of the pool. ‘You ought to get yourself a girl like that,’ he added, turning over on to his back, his amazing genitals spilling across him like coins that had fallen out of his pocket.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Tomorrow you better take Hel on a trip. I’ve got the bankers flying up from Jo’burg.’

  ‘Won’t you need her to explain what’s going on?’

  ‘No, no, this is money talk, not rock music.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘They came up with
the first tranche like lambs, but I always knew they’d take some convincing to go the whole way.’

  ‘What will you do? Show them some crystals?’

  ‘Oh they’re beyond that stage. They want to see us shovelling the shit. I’m going to have every one of the BTs cutting away like there was no tomorrow and the dumpers going back and forth like yo-yos. Then when their eyes are full of dust, we show them the figures.’

  He laughed and his great seal belly convulsed in time to his laughter.’

  The sun had gone behind the bluff and I shivered instead of laughing back.

  ‘Better get some clothes on. It cools quick in these latitudes.’

  He was still lying on his back and seemed to be looking straight up at the sky. How had he spotted my shiver? Those strange glassy eyes must see sideways, backwards too perhaps. Odd that he didn’t want Helen there to show the bankers round. She would look so reliable in a crisp shirt and tailored shorts (she made everything look tailored, even if she couldn’t sing or swim).

  She clambered out of the water and stood on one of the smaller rocks to the side, briskly rubbing her hair. It was as though she were alone. She had grown thin out here, she couldn’t eat the mealie porridge the chuckwagon served at the mine, and at the bungalow she ate mostly fruit and vegetables from the garden when she was by herself. I could hardly bear to watch her, she looked so desirable and so sad. No sooner had I thought this than it seemed a peculiar thing to float into my head. Why sad? Thoughts of mortality I suppose, but something more than that, something special to her or special to her for me. I still had little clue what she was thinking at any one moment, least of all now. Although she talked in such a down-to-earth style, she remained a mystery, or rather I wanted to keep her as a mystery, quiet and still like an angel in the background of a painting by Piero, which of course she would have rightly ridiculed if I had been silly enough to confide it to her. If she had known what I was thinking, she would have said Haven’t you ever seen a woman with no clothes on before.

  Dodo chuckled as he pulled on his scarlet boxer shorts, at last tucking away his appalling scrotum.

  ‘Your girlfriend’s old man’s coming up tomorrow.’

  ‘My girlfriend?’

  ‘John R. Stilwell. He’ll be there representing Stilwell Jackson, they’re only in for 5 per cent, but their name is bringing a couple of the bigger houses in on their coat-tails.’

  ‘She’s not –’

  ‘Seemed to me you and Jane were getting along pretty damn fine.’

  ‘There were no –’

  ‘Don’t take it so hard, John won’t do anything. He don’t care for scandal.’

  They must have taken off well before dawn because the sun was still a blood-orange spilling stealthy rays over the grey veld, mist still hanging in the trees and wrapping itself around the great rocks, when their little plane skittered in over the bluff.

  ‘Hey, you guys slumming it today. What’s with the Gulfstream, you trade it for a few beads?’

  ‘We didn’t like to risk the bigger plane on your dirt track,’ said one of the large untidy men clambering down on to the runway.

  Behind these Dodo lookalikes, but after a short interval, as though he had been a President waiting for the cameras to get into position, came my former employer, neat as ever, lips pursed tight in his little moue, more reflective than disapproving, as though he couldn’t let you have his opinion right away but if you would sit quietly a well-pondered judgement would soon be delivered.

  ‘Two hours ten minutes,’ he said. ‘There was a slight headwind. Great to see you again, Gus. And Helen, hi, how are you?’

  The way he used our names in his tight voice, which was quiet at the best of times and with the noise of the mechanic working on the plane almost inaudible now, sounded curiously intimate, affectionate even, although anyone else would have done the same meeting us again, what was it, seven, eight years after the summer at the Ville. He didn’t look older, but I was somehow more conscious of his physical presence, the tanned skin of his narrow cheeks and his dimity little chin, the bony fingers clasped round the handle of his square oxblood briefcase, the long black hairs on his skinny forearm – he was wearing a blue short-sleeved office shirt and as a concession to Africa had his dark jacket hung over his other arm.

  ‘You guys had breakfast?’ Dodo asked.

  ‘We brought our own.’ One of the large untidy men jerked a finger at the pilot who was handing down large silver metal boxes from the cabin.

  Helen brought out our basket of melons and oranges and we sat down under the tin-roofed verandah of the hut which had EGERTON E. on it. The pilot spread a white cloth on the trestle table and unpacked hot croissants and thermoses of coffee.

  ‘Kenya beans, from the company farm. With the losses they’re making, it’s the least they could do to give us a decent cup of coffee. Honey or marmalade? You Brits just love marmalade, don’t you.’

  Under its flaky brown outside the croissant seemed almost to tremble as I dolloped on the chunky bitter-sweet marmalade and my nostrils inhaled the fierce aroma of the Kenya coffee. I caught Helen’s eye across the table and we nodded in unison together, this time hitting the interval just right as Dodo said, ‘Well, isn’t this great?’

  Brainerd was planning to go to Cornell, majoring in archaeology and entomology. He had had a little trouble in high school, he was not a good mixer, he got that from his father, he took a keen interest in the stock market, well, he got that from his father too, but that didn’t make you too popular when you were sixteen years old. Timmy was fine, just fine. And Jane? Jane? Her health had been uncertain, but she was improving all the time.

  Just as I was thinking how to probe further without being so inquisitive as to stir up Mr Stilwell’s suspicion, Dodo said: ‘Right, gentlemen, let’s go see some rocks. And you young people go off and enjoy yourselves.’

  Helen made a mock-angry face to hide her real-angry face, and she and I helped the pilot put the silver boxes back into the plane. They still seemed very heavy. The pilot said that was because of the cold salmon and the Krug and the Pavlova cake and the other lunch stuff which they were going to have on the way back. Dodo and the bankers walked to the little convoy of Land-Rovers parked behind the hut where the chief geologist, now recovered from tick-bite fever, was waiting for them. John Stilwell, last of the group to cross the stony ground, seemed pitifully slight. Just before he disappeared behind the hut, he gave us a brave little wave like an innocent man being led off to execution by thugs from Security.

  After they had gone, we drove off in the other direction, south, to look at rock paintings.

  ‘I expect you’ll think they’re naff.’

  ‘Why should I, I’ve never seen any rock paintings.’

  ‘They’re not Botticelli, you know.’

  ‘Didn’t think they were.’

  Her annoyance at being kept out of the mine inspection was still scratching her like barbed wire. When we came up to the place and walked through black-eyed daisies and some other tall flower with fluffy yellow petals and edged round the huge giant’s cannon-ball of a rock, and found on the underside the slinky skeletal drawings of elephant and antelope, in rust and black and orange, and as we crouched under the great rock the warm breeze from the enormous plain behind us nuzzling our bare legs, then I thought her sour mood might have lifted but it didn’t.

  ‘What are they called, these big round rocks?’

  ‘Dombas, I told you.’

  ‘So you did, sorry.’

  ‘He’s a bastard, sometimes you think he isn’t, but he is. We’re sleeping together, you know. I expect you knew that.’

  ‘Sort of,’ I said.

  ‘You know everything, don’t you, because you’re so bloody sensitive. I expect you’re wondering how she could possibly and all that.’

  ‘No,’ I lied, ‘I hadn’t got that far.’

  ‘Well, I’m wondering, I can tell you.’

  ‘It’s not a compulsory exe
rcise, is it?’

  ‘I don’t do things because they’re compulsory. I do them because I want to, but sometimes I just can’t see why I ever wanted to.’

  She turned away from the paintings, and sat down with her back to them. Even though she was so slight, she still had to bend her head under the overhanging rock. I lay in front of her at the edge of the ledge looking out over the endless veld, listening to her snuffles.

  Perhaps she just liked to be obliging, was the thought which occurred to me and which after some hesitation I offered out loud. Not a good decision.

  ‘Obliging? You make me sound like, oh, a hotel manager or something – we aim to oblige, madam – that’s a disgusting thing to say.’

  I tried to explain that it wasn’t meant to be offensive. All right, she was a sort of manager if that was the word she wanted, a manager in life’s grand hotel and she was merely trying to keep the guests happy, and what was wrong with that?

  ‘So what you think is that I go out with people in a patronising sort of way, because I think they’re really cases who need looking after.’

  ‘No, not exactly,’ I said, meaning yes exactly, or something pretty close to it.

  ‘Well, I don’t think I need your amateur psychoanalysis, thank you very much. In fact, I don’t need your advice at all and I don’t remember asking for it.’

  ‘All right, I’ll just utter sympathetic grunts instead.’

  ‘You do that,’ she said.

  So I lay quiet, feeling the breeze hump and ruffle the back of my shirt. The position became too uncomfortable and I turned over on to my back with the shadow of the rock keeping the sun off my eyes. We had got up early to meet the plane, early for me anyway, and I began to feel dozy as the sun crept in under the rock and inched up my face.