by Peter Rimmer
The trackers left them after the wine, carrying a bottle of whisky. Laughter carried with them down the stairs and out to the boma where they lit the fire. Hannes told his best joke about an Englishman who had fallen halfway down a long drop, bare arse first, and Will was forced to explain how he had escaped being raped by Polly and Cherry, seeing the funny side for the first time, finding a natural ability to embellish and keep them laughing. Melvin had more good jokes than Will had heard in his life and his stomach began to hurt from too much laughter. Quietly, he prompted Melvin from joke to joke, Hannes watching the performance with approval. The trackers were sent down a second bottle of whisky, Will nearly falling down the stairs in the process.
The lifestyle Melvin described in New York, with nightclub following restaurant, women at every table, music, laughter and success at every corner, sounded appealing to Will. There was a world out there Will had not seen. From the prison of Stanmore to the rural gentleness of Langton Manor to the excitement of the African bush, there was still much more to be seen and experienced. As the evening progressed, Will drank in every word about the good life in America and when Melvin gave him his New York address, he folded it away carefully and put it in his pocket. Melvin had sown the eternal seed of discontent. Even Melvin’s wife sounded amusing and the daughter very desirable. Will had never known there were so many parties in the world.
Careful to remain sober himself, Will left them alone to reminisce and sought his bed in the sleeping hut. The trackers had already turned in, the fire burnt to ashes, a soft red glow still visible.
For the first time in the bush it took Will a long time to fall asleep. When he woke late, undisturbed, a Land Rover had left for Mongu and with it the American, Melvin Raath. At lunchtime, to Will’s surprise, Hannes appeared from his bedroom, well-slept and clear-eyed.
“Melvin wanted to leave before he cried. You meet them all in the safari business. Fix us a Bloody Mary and cheer me up. Wine, women and song last a short time, Englishman, and then you have the rest of your life. Our Melvin never did know what he wanted and I’ve known him twenty years. Hell, man, it makes you tired all that listening… Poor old Melvin.”
After the seventh client of the hunting season had been returned to the airfield at Mongu, ten days of serious hunting that had culminated in Hannes shooting a buffalo wounded by the client, Will was surprised they drove straight back to the permanent bush camp in preference to going to the club.
“I’m getting too old,” was all Hannes said as he sat beside Will.
The journey took them two hours as Will carefully drove round the larger potholes in the track that wound through the mopani trees. Hannes took no notice of the game they passed, his bulk slumped in the seat.
“You all right, Hannes?”
“Tired, kerel. Blerry tired.”
They had almost arrived and the big thatch roof was visible between the trees.
“I’m sixty tomorrow, Englishman. Bloody sixty… What does a hunter do when he can’t walk anymore?”
Instinctively doing the right thing, Will stopped the Land Rover in good shade thirty metres from the river and turned off the engine. The cooler months of winter brought them a fresh wind from across the water. The bush was quiet in the afternoon sun.
“That buffalo nearly got me,” said Hannes. “Circled and waited for me to come back to camp and then it charged. Twenty years ago that would have been the highlight of the season. It’s the legs… They always said the legs give out first, not the eyes or the ears… A man needs sons to take over his business and keep him happy in his old age, asking his advice.”
They sat in silence for a while, Will knowing it was not the time to talk.
“Maybe that’s the way to go, gored by a buffalo… Melvin Raath was right. We are destroying Africa, killing the animals, cutting down the trees, overbreeding with all the good medicine and hygiene from your brother Hilary and his friends. This is the last frontier for new age man to conquer, or destroy as Melvin would have it. They never can leave well alone, always interfering, thinking the other man wants what should be for him… The black man is happier living his old ways, breeding children all his short life with only the very best surviving. Nature’s process of selection is far better than man’s medicine. Maybe my sons were better not being born. My people first ran away from the Dutch East India Company and then the British. The best of us don’t like cities. We like space and the bush and the world’s caught up with us again. Even the black man has been fooled into wanting a city life. Everyone wants more years than they should have on earth. A man should die when his strength has gone and when his feet won’t carry him anymore. When he is no longer any use. My Danika was the lucky one, bless her. She went at the right time. Sixty, kerel. It’s too many years for a hunter but what can a man do?”
Will looked at Hannes for a moment. “Have a good soak in the bath, a good meal and a bottle of wine and you’ll feel better. It was a long hunt and my legs feel just as weary as yours.”
“You’re a good lad, Englishman. You always say the right thing. One thing you got wrong. I’ll have a large whisky while I’m having my bath.”
Will found navigation the most difficult part of his training, Hannes deliberately letting him lose himself while he was following the spoor of a lion for a client. The lion were decimating the zebra and wildebeest and the culling operation was as necessary to the ecology as the lions killing the weaker animals in the herd to sustain a strong gene pool. Will had run on the spoor, moving around trees and thorn thickets, concentrating on the signs in the red dust. Hannes, holding back, had known the spoor was old. He and the client watched the young Will dash off through the mopani forest and quickly disappear from sight.
“The best way to teach a lad not to get lost is get him lost and frightened. Fear does wonders for the intelligence. Onepenny, we’ll make camp here and look for the lions in the morning.”
“Baas, you leave him out alone all night?” said Onepenny.
“He’s ready.”
After half an hour Will lost the trail completely, casting around without success. When he was unable to find the original spoor, he looked from tree to tree, all of them appearing the same. From being a friendly forest, the darkening trees had become a menace.
“Shit,” he said out loud. “I didn’t think my position before I ran out on the spoor.” Desperately, Will looked around for a familiar hill but it was the first time he had hunted the area. As the sun sank deeper into the trees, Will fired two shots into the air and waited. There was no return shot of recognition. With one bullet in the breach and four in the magazine Will knew better than to fire again. The spare ammunition was in Onepenny’s haversack. Every sound from the bush became a threat.
“Think, you idiot,” he again said out loud.
Slowly, deliberately, Will conquered the worst of his fear and began to gather wood for the fire to burn through the night. He had water in his bottle, a lighter sewn into his belt, and biltong. He would survive. In the morning, he would judge the position of the sun and strike for the river.
“Got himself lost,” said Hannes, taking careful direction of where the shots had been fired.
“Shouldn’t you fire one shot to let him know?” said the client.
“Maybe.”
Onepenny busied himself with the fire. He was not smiling. The night came down dark and moonless and Hannes deliberately kept the conversation away from the man alone in the forest.
“I’m worried, Hannes,” said the client before they hung the mosquito nets.
“Don’t be. He’s going to be good. Better to be lost for the first time when I know where he is. One day he’ll really be on his own.”
Onepenny was still sitting up when Hannes fell asleep.
Will stayed awake all night tending the fire, his mind alert. Deliberately, he identified each sound from the night. Fear drained away as the night became familiar. By the time the sun came up, giving him the direction of the river, he
had made up his mind. Covering the ashes of the fire, he made to begin the long journey through the trees to the permanent bush camp. The others could be anywhere within two miles but he had no idea in which direction. He fired two more shots in the air, heard the return shot far closer than he expected and smiled. Then he struck off away from the direction of the single shot, towards the Zambezi River, covering his tracks wherever possible.
Hannes found the dead fire an hour after answering the two-shot distress signal. They searched the area and found nothing. Two hours later they gave up. This time Hannes Potgieter was frightened.
“You think he teach us a lesson?” said Onepenny in Lozi, not to let the client know they were out of control.
“I’m an old fool,” said Hannes in the same language.
The first rule was to fire two shots if lost. The second was the one shot reply which Hannes had broken the night before. The third was to stay put after the answering shot which Will defied earlier in the morning. ‘Well,’ he said to himself, ‘now I really will find out if he has any bush sense.’
“We’ll turn back for base,” he said to the client lightly. “Will’s gone for the river. He’ll be all right. Find a lion for you on the way back.” For the rest of the day he avoided looking at Onepenny.
On the second morning alone, Will heard the call of a fish eagle and knew he had found the river. The water bottle was empty. Along the way all the waterholes had been dried up, and the game was sparse. The five sticks of biltong had been eaten and Will knew better than to use one of his last three bullets to shoot for food.
He reached the thorn-thicket sisal enclosure four days after firing the first two distress shots. He was hungry and happy. ‘Even an Englishman,’ he said to himself, ‘a pretty raw Englishman can find his way around in the bush.’ Will had conquered his fear of Africa.
Towards sunset on the same day, Hannes made it back to the permanent camp with the client and Onepenny. Will was sitting comfortably on the upper deck enjoying a strong cup of tea. He was quietly whistling ‘Marching to Pretoria’, the favourite song of the Brits in the Boer War. Will thanked Granda for the tune which he hoped would annoy Hannes Potgieter.
“Why the hell didn’t you stay put?” shouted Hannes in relief.
“Why didn’t you fire back the first time?” said Will and carried on whistling.
“And stop that blerry whistling.”
“Don’t you like the tune?” said Will with feigned surprise.
Hannes pulled him bodily out of the chair with one hand.
“You stupid blerry Englishman.”
For a moment Will thought he was going to be hit. They looked straight at each other.
“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” said Hannes.
“Yes,” said Will. “And so did you. Maybe we both proved our points. Now, can I have my arm back again?”
3
It is doubtful whether Byron Langton would have found himself in the music business had Shelley Lane gone to bed with him on the first or second date. They had met soon after Will turned twenty-one, far away in Central Africa. Will had received many letters over three years from the family asking when he was coming home to find himself a job, a professional hunter’s licence to Byron being as much use as a man’s tits, neither functional nor saleable. His young brother was an enigma; the world was full of people prepared to waste their lives.
Fanny Try with the long brown hair had surprised everyone by going broody and marrying a nice young man of good family who lived in the country. She had convinced her innocent young man that she was a virgin. Virginia Stepping had agreed that ‘what the eye did not see the heart would not grieve about’. Very slightly, she was jealous.
The confrontation with Logan, Smith and Marjoribanks had been avoided before Will’s birthday by Byron offering his resignation. Someone with a grudge had tipped off Maxwell Marjoribanks, the chairman of the company and father of Lionel, Byron’s schoolchum, that the origin of the portfolio they managed for one Jack Pike was suspect. By then, Byron was ready to go out on his own and Langton Portfolio Management Limited was formed the day after he handed in his resignation with a very nice letter thanking the chairman for all the wonderful advice, encouragement and training that he, Byron, had received over the nine years of his apprenticeship. Everybody parted friends. Never to make an enemy was another of Byron’s rules of life.
Shelley was nineteen years old and pretty with a figure that matched her face. She wanted above everything else to be a singer, and was realistic enough to know her body was a better product than her voice. If she wanted to hear herself singing on record, she would have to use her more obvious chorus. Her first approaches had been sexually satisfying with a few nights’ singing in Soho nightclubs and a few more nights spent in beds that failed to bring a recording contract. She was going around the whole business the wrong way round and by the time she met Byron, through Johnny Pike, she was trying the don’t touch first approach.
The gigs brought her enough money to rent a two-roomed apartment in leafy Holland Park where the Victorian houses were falling into decay but the traffic noise was minimal and the rent three guineas a week. Josephine Langton, Byron’s twin sister, had known the same lane with the leafy plane trees when she was visiting Wolfgang Baumann in the summer of ’49. Nothing had changed in the nine years since Josephine had had her abortion. Shelley’s apartment was on the ground floor and French windows led out onto a small patio with its own plane tree and wooden bench with weeds growing through the old crazy paving. High walls protected her arbour of peace from the prying eyes of the world. There was birdsong and butterflies.
Most summer evenings found Shelley in the garden. Her nightclub gigs were at eleven o’clock at night, sandwiched between the strippers, itinerant singers being one behind the strippers who were one behind the whores. In London, there were a lot of good-looking girls trying to make a living.
Byron had tried the restaurant and vodka routine on four occasions without any return on his money. The challenge was more interesting than he had imagined, the girl having something about her sexuality Byron had not found before. Byron had enjoyed being teased for the first time in many years.
The old front door needed painting, like most of post-war London, but the brass knocker echoed its message down the corridor while Byron waited, two bottles of ice-cold Chablis in his duffle bag wrapped in newspaper to keep them cold. Next to the bottles was a leather case containing two fluted Waterford crystal glasses, and an ivory-handled corkscrew with the Langton monogram. Byron believed in being prepared. Most women hated disorganised men.
The old landlady, whose family had seen much better days, answered the door.
“Your young lady is in the garden, under the tree,” she said.
“I found these for you in the Portobello Road,” said Byron, giving her the small posy of summer violets he had intended for Shelley. The old woman reminded him of his great-aunt Eve who had died in the spring, fifty years a widow.
“Surely, they’re for…” began the old lady.
“They are for you, Mrs Page.”
The violet eyes were looking deep into her past, matching the flowers he put into her old, gnarled hands. For a moment, the day, the week, the whole year had been worth living.
“You know the way.”
As Byron moved into the corridor of the house, Mrs Page was smelling the violets. He heard the front door click closed as he followed the open back door into the small courtyard. Shelley, in high-waisted tight shorts and a loose white top, was sitting on the bench. She was not wearing shoes or a bra. Shelley giggled.
“What’s that for?” asked Byron, putting the duffle bag on the bench next to the girl.
“The flowers… They were for me.”
“They most certainly were not.”
“She’s very lonely.”
“Granda said we all get lonely in the end. Part of life. I hope you missed me.”
“Why would I miss you
, Mr Langton? I hope you haven’t come to try to spend the night with that bag? Mrs Page would never approve, even if you brought her a bucket of flowers.”
“Are you singing tonight?”
“Maybe, maybe not… I have to pay the rent. Did you speak to Johnny Pike?”
“They are more into whores than singers. You say you want to be a singer.”
“He won’t help?”
Byron ignored the question and opened the bag, took out the tooled leather case and put it on the wooden table with the ivory corkscrew.
“Did I tell you my brother is a professional big-game hunter? He sent me the ivory. Asprey’s found me a carver.”
“You mean he shot the elephant? Ugh!”
“I believe so. He turned twenty-one the other day. Maybe you’d prefer my younger brother?”
“What does that imply?”
“That I am too old for you… You don’t like me. You don’t seem very pleased…”
“Oh, shut up, Byron, and open the wine. We’ve been through…”
“What do you want?” He took the bottle out of the wet paper. “Still ice-cold.” Little tricks pleased Byron.
“You could manage my career,” she said, pouting.
“First you need a career to manage.”
“First, I need a manager. Open the damn wine.”
Byron thought for a while. “Maybe. Just maybe. I’d need a lawyer’s contract and you would need a band… So this was what it was all about?”
“Yes,” said Shelley at the same time the cork came out of the bottle.
At last the girl is honest, thought Byron.
The summer evening was warm and behind the high walls, far away, muted, came the sound of London’s traffic. From the tangle of weeds and flowers along the bottom of the red brick walls that were crumbling with age came the sound of bees moving the pollen, pursuing their life cycle and producing the seeds of future growth. Puffed-up pigeons cooed from the slate rooftops and chimney stacks. Byron opened the leather case and put the glasses on the rickety table. He was smiling to himself. Gently, he poured the white wine.