by Peter Rimmer
“I’d buy you a drink at the club but…”
“Why don’t I buy us all one? There was nothing but bush all the way from Lusaka. How far’s the club?”
“Five minutes.”
“You had a good night last night?”
“Not really.”
“Neither did I. I’ve one small bag and so has the Australian. You must be Laurie Hall. I’ve known William a long time.”
“We call him Will.”
“I know,” said Shelley Lane, “but I call him William.”
“He doesn’t know that anyone’s coming.”
“That was the whole idea.”
“You’re Shelley Lane,” said Laurie, understanding. “Will talks about you.”
When Byron Langton’s engagement to Lady Fiona Renwick was announced in the Times and the Telegraph, Shelley wanted to run away. Her concert tour had finished after Christmas and the new record deal with EMI was still in the talking stage. She had written two of the numbers and liked neither. Her first reaction to the engagement was not to sign the annual EMI renewal of her contract but that would be cutting off her nose to spite her face. Her need was to hurt Byron, not herself. She had finally moved from Mrs Page’s in Holland Park to a flat in Chelsea with its own small courtyard and tree. She had moved a bench under the tree, spent a fortune on furniture and curtains, and had never been so lonely in her life. There were people everywhere she went, invitations to this and that every day through her letter box, but all anybody wanted to meet was Shelley Lane the singer. She was heartsick to the point of death and the engagement, though nothing of a big surprise – Tatler had been full of them – came when there was nothing in her life but the lonely booze. She wanted to hurt him, make him feel a little of how she felt. It had been nearly five years since Byron had entered her life and left again, except for the business. Cold with fury, she had read of the engagement. Two days later she was booked on her journey to Africa. She was going to bring the young brother out of the African bush and flaunt him in front of his brother. She was going to use her looks, her well-tuned sex appeal, her money and her fame and with them she was going to bring home young Will. The girl on the plane from Australia was a minor inconvenience.
She was glad to hear Will talked about her to Laurie Hall. Byron had mentioned this Laurie Hall who was looking at the Australian from nose to toes.
“Hi. I’m Lindsay Healy. My boss sent me, Kevin Smith Publications, you know? Right. That bag’s mine. The airport manager, if you can call it an airport, said you’re the bloke to drive us downriver… You always look at a girl like that?”
“Not always,” said Laurie quietly.
“He needs a drink,” said Shelley.
“Don’t we all?… Many people at the camp?”
“Just the four of us now. Then there’s Sixpence, Fourpence and Onepenny. Trackers. You mind stopping off at the club?”
“Go for your life,” said Lindsay.
Lindsay took the back seat in the Land Rover, the singer and the man with the abundant hangover up front. Lindsay thought him quite good looking in a rugged, sun-scorched way. The crow’s feet were deep on either side of his face, stretching out for an inch from piercing blue eyes. The hair on the sideburns was brown with most of the hair on top bleached white by the sun. She was told to wear a wide-brimmed hat but Laurie Hall was bareheaded. The arms holding the steering wheel were hard and strongly muscled, the very British upper-class accent out of place. She felt safe with Laurie Hall. She wondered what he would do when the British were kicked out of Africa.
The drive to Mongu Club took five minutes, the canvas canopy over the Land Rover flapping in sharp, crisp bursts under pressure from their speed over the rutted road, Laurie missing the potholes with unerring accuracy while talking sideways to the singer.
Lindsay had been to a Shelley Lane concert in Melbourne while researching an article on the lack of dung beetles in Australia. Her article had spawned the first importation of dung beetles from Africa to counter the problem.
She had tried to talk to the singer on the plane but the noise from the engines limited their conversation to a shout of names. What the icon of swinging Britain was doing in the bush made no sense but her training in journalism told her here was a story. No one seemed to know she was coming.
There had been few trees along the road and the grass was brown, dry and short. All the way to the club, Lindsay looked for the lions and the elephants. The midday sun pressed everything down into silence and however far she looked from her game-viewing bench at the back of the Land Rover there was nothing but bush and the heat with the red dust billowing out behind. On all sides she looked the bush went on forever.
The club was a single-storey building with a wide veranda overlooking well-cut lawns and a swimming pool. There were two tennis courts to the right of the pool, silent in the heat. In the main room away from the bar, the focal point of the club, long side tables were set with white linen tablecloths and an abundance of side dishes next to the pile of plates and gleaming silver. ‘It doesn’t take a genius,’ Lindsay said to herself; ‘curry for lunch.’ Above, long-armed fans whirred round and round, three in the lounge-dining room and two over the bar; somewhere a generator beat a pulse that powered the fans. The waiters, barefoot, with white linen trousers and three-quarter jackets, red-fezzed and smiling, stood ready to serve the British. Lindsay thought it something out of a previous century, the same old empire plodding along as it had done for Queen Victoria. Time had not moved for one hundred years in Mongu.
There was something wrong with the money situation. First, they were signed in as guests of the club and Shelley Lane made an arrangement to run a card at the bar and pay for their lunch. Lindsay saw Shelley hand the club manager, a short, stout Englishman, a five-pound note. The man had given Laurie Hall a less than friendly look and a shake of his head when Laurie had asked to sign in.
“Photographic safaris are not very profitable,” he said after the new arrangement. “Maybe you could both talk sense to Will. We turn down a dozen hunting safaris a year and that’s money. I have a weekly allowance for Mongu and I spent it all last night. At the camp we don’t need money. Sorry about this. Damned embarrassing, I’d say. Five pounds, Shelley, was far too much.”
“What about the next time?” said the singer.
‘Ah, she drinks as well,’ thought Lindsay.
Over the biggest curry lunch Lindsay had ever seen she listened to the new resident talk to Shelley Lane. The old resident, Jonas Jones, had gone to Nyasaland as the last colonial governor. It was all coming apart.
“How many British in Barotseland?” she heard Shelley ask the resident.
“Well, now, if you include women and children about one hundred and fifty.”
“How big an area is your jurisdiction?”
“Size of Wales, I’d say. Not for long. Kaunda will be taking over.”
“You think it’ll work?” asked Shelley.
“Depends who for. Party officials, yes. Maybe even the people for a while. What they won’t have is honesty, I’m sure of that, as hereditary chiefs know they are around for life. These new politicians will use power to get rich. You buy and sell influence in the new Africa. We British maintained a disciplined honesty. That will go. Now, you say you are a singer. What do you sing?”
Lindsay smiled to herself, turning back to the food on her plate. It was obvious the British resident commissioner of Barotseland, an area the size of Wales, had never heard of Shelley Lane. The article she was going to write was forming nicely in her mind.
Will Langton knew the wind of political change blowing down Africa had reached his base camp. He watched the chief drive away in the government Land Rover that would soon be taken away from the old man. Right across Africa the colonial powers were dumping past agreements, writing Western-style constitutions for Iron Age peasantry, spawning a clutch of lip rants, cut-throats and tinpot dictators. From the spurious moral high ground of ‘one man one vote’
they left their responsibilities to starve with the peasantry, snug in the furtherance of democracy: it was a great occasion. Africa returned to tribalism with a vicious twist. Instead of the assegai, they used AK-47 automatic assault rifles, landmines by the millions, mortars that fired two kilometres and a disregard for human life not seen in Africa since the high days of the slave trade. The rule of British law was to give way to the rule of the gun and the old chief knew better than any politician in Whitehall that the days of peace, of law and order, were about to change.
Will’s dilemma was mixed with an overpowering sadness. From the first days of Hannes Potgieter, the concession to hunt on tribal land had been given by Paramount Chief Mwene Kandala III through his local chief, the old man whose dust trail was still visible to Will above the dry bush and the distant mopani trees.
Still behind Will, the great waters of the Zambezi River flowed on and on, carrying the flotsam of the land: trees pulled down by the floods, grass islands washed into floating pieces riding the flow, dead animals waiting for the crocodiles. That afternoon was the first visit made by the old chief; before he had made contact through his young induna, the village headman nearest the base camp. The chief had been alone.
They had walked away from the house, along the northern bank of the great river, away from the trackers who had left the presence of the chief walking backwards and clapping their hands in front of them, the traditional show of not being armed. Sixpence, Fourpence and Onepenny were in awe of their chief. The chief spoke in English.
“The salary I receive from the British to administer my land in the name of the paramount chief will end with the new government rulers unless I join the party. Chiefs after the British leave will be subject to the whims of the party and their patronage. We will have lost our power. I must protect the last years of my old age and my family. I need money, Mr Langton, and you have the skill to provide me with that money.”
“Not the elephant,” Will had blurted.
“Not the elephant, no. The crocodiles. In the history of our people there have always been problems with the crocodiles and without a gun they are difficult to kill, which is why the river is infested with so many. I want you to shoot me two thousand crocodiles from the waters that are on my land. I want you to arrange for the skins to be sent to Umtali in Southern Rhodesia where they will be cured and sent on your behalf to London. Then you will sell those skins and pay eighty per cent of the proceeds into a London bank account on my behalf. I want to be sure the money is beyond the grasp of the party. I was educated in London, Mr Langton, for three years. As was my son and my grandson. Officially, I will have nothing to do with the crocodile hunt.”
“But I could keep all the money.”
“You could but you won’t, Mr Langton.”
“You think I will be able to stay under the new government? Will they renew my hunting concession?”
“No. It has been sold to someone else. The party needed funds. They have sold many concessions even before they take over. Two thousand crocodiles. You and Mr Potgieter owe me that much. Maybe both of us will once again be living in England. I will probably die in the first winter. The old order, Mr Langton, is being swept down the river. A man must protect himself and his family.”
Alone, Will walked away from the house with its open veranda watching silently, sick in his stomach; the ends of his fingers, the nerve ends, were hurting. After eight years in Africa, much of it on his own, he was not sure if he could exchange the animals of Africa for the people of Europe. The crocodiles he would leave to Laurie Hall and the trackers, carrying out the instruction, paying for the years of the hunting concession, himself having no part in the slaughter.
It had been a good eight years and Will smiled to himself. Even at the age of twenty-six Will understood that nothing went on forever. There was always change and rarely was the change for the better. People said it would be better for everyone but it never was. For ten minutes he watched the vervet monkeys watching lion from the tall acacia tree that dipped its roots in the big river.
“They call it the melancholy blues,” he said to the monkeys before slowly walking back to camp.
Ten miles down the road, Lindsay Healy wished she had drunk at lunchtime. To get into the Land Rover outside the club, Laurie Hall had walked his hands round the bonnet of the car to support himself before slumping into the driver’s seat where he was unable to find the keyhole to start the engine. The singer everyone raved about had leant across the front seat and together the two drunks had pushed home the key. No one in the street or from the club thought anything was out of the usual.
The sun was falling behind them with Laurie firmly driving a path that Lindsay would never recognise for a road. The tall-trunked mopani trees were thick on either side and the sinking sun glowed through the bush from the surface of a great river. The brown grass was shoulder high and the bush between the trees green-leafed and partly thick. Too frightened to look for game, Lindsay held on to the bucking back seat bench of the Land Rover watching two drunks singing at the tops of their voices, little concerned with the direction of the road that was more pothole than surface after the rains. Her adventure into Africa had become a nightmare and when the Land Rover ran out of petrol, stuttering its way to a halt in the almost dark, she was not sure whether the blanketing silence and menace of the bush was worse than the crazy drive feet away from the thick trunks of the trees. Their own red dust settled back on the car. Laurie opened the low door and fell out onto the road.
“Shit,” he said. “Sorry, ladies… Welcome to Africa.”
“Have we got any booze on board?” asked Shelley.
“Nope… Nearest bottle twenty miles down this road. I say, what, could you give me a hand, Lindsay?”
“Get up yourself.”
“Ah, the Australian is not amused,” said Laurie, pushing himself up the vehicle onto his feet.
“No, she isn’t.”
“If I pour petrol from the can it will go all over the Landy and blow it up. Be a nice girl.”
“You’ve spare petrol?”
“My dear lady, if I may call you so, today I am drunk but yesterday I was sober and mindful of my own bad habits. Anyway, you never run around in this neck of the woods without water, petrol and oil in that order. Better be quick, Lindsay darling. The light goes in five minutes and then the lions come out and the tigers.”
“You don’t have tigers in Africa.”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“Do you have a gun?” said Lindsay, her mouth dry.
“Yes I do.”
By the time Lindsay had emptied the five-gallon jerry can down the funnel into the petrol tank the light had gone, leaving a red glow deep behind the mopani trees that went from blood red to crimson to yellow to white. The frogs from the river were loud, filling the night. There were grunts from the river through the trees. Lindsay could see the first trees away from the last of the light but the rest of the bush was black.
“Can we go?” she said to Laurie, giving him the empty can.
“At your service.”
“How long?”
“An hour if we don’t hit a buffalo or a tree. At night it’s more difficult to pick out the track through the trees.”
“You want to sober up first?”
“Then I get the shakes. Worry not, young lady. Alone I do this every week. In Africa it sometimes doesn’t matter if you get to the other end. Then I sleep in the car.”
“Don’t the lions eat you?”
“Not yet. See for yourself.”
“May I drive?” asked Lindsay.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because drunk I’ll do better in the bush than you. Make yourself comfortable in the back there and Laurie will get you round the boma before Onepenny serves up supper.”
On the other side of the Land Rover, Shelley Lane was being sick into the long grass.
When finally the dark shape of the camp showed in their head
lights Lindsay thought her nightmare over. The camp was as silent as a ghost.
“Where the hell is everyone?” shouted Laurie. In the seat next to him Shelley was quiet and still. There had been no singing on the last leg of the journey, just the drum of the engine and the fierce lights probing the black bush shining up trees that quickly disappeared. The gate into the compound was open. There was no answer. The lamps in the house were unlit and the fire at the centre of the boma dead. Leaving the headlights on, shining on the house, Laurie, comparatively sober, followed the beam to the wooden stairs that led up to the big open room under the thick black thatch. Going round the deck, Laurie lit the paraffin lamps.
“Come on up,” he called. “Will’s gone some place with the trackers. Lindsay, will you bring my gun?… Shelley, what will you drink? No ice for the while… What’s the matter? Just watch for the bloody heron. Bill’s as sharp as a razor. Bloody bird doesn’t even sleep at night.”
“A heron?” called Shelley. “Where’s Will?”
“Don’t know. A Goliath heron. Head stands high as your shoulder… All right, I’ll come down.”
The trackers came back alone at half-past eight and made the fire in the boma. Lindsay had drunk three shots of brandy but she was unable to stop shivering. She had been left alone in the bar with the hurricane lamps guttering in the breeze off the river, casting shadows into the night. A hyena had cackled from across the river. Every sound from the night was a deadly menace. She heard them making love from a bedroom behind the bar, the animal thrashing and grunts part of the primeval night. Moths, small and large, hurled themselves at the paraffin lamps, incinerated when they caught the heat from the top of the glass. Crickets screeched at the calling frogs and an owl hooted mournfully from a tree she could not see. The river plopped with fat fish and slowly the stars came out. The moon would not wax until the following night. The constellations appeared in the great universe of heaven and still the shivers raked her body. Too frightened to get off the bar stool, she poured a fourth drink from the brandy bottle Laurie had left by her side. The grunts of copulation had silenced and Lindsay missed the reassuring human sounds.