by Peter Rimmer
“Nonsense. I mentioned that to Paul Mwansa and he said it’s pure rubbish. Paul’s with the Zambian High Commission here in London.”
“Well, either your Paul Mwansa is a liar or the Reverend Hilary Bains. Take your pick.”
“Hilary’s been brainwashed by contact with the settlers. The whites left in Africa will say anything to denigrate the new order… Any news of Will?”
“Nothing.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“No. We’d have heard.”
“Why doesn’t he write?”
“Maybe he’s sick and tired of Mother telling him to come home and get a proper job.” They both laughed. “We should go home together one weekend,” said Byron.
“We should, but every time I have a little free time I want to just sit here and relax. But you’re right. We must make an effort. How is Fiona, by the way?”
“She’s fine.”
2
Horst Kannberg was a rolling stone who gathered very little moss. When he was born in Riga of white Russian parents in 1931, there were more servants in the big house than Kannbergs. Latvia, of which Riga was the capital, had been good to Horst’s grandfather. The block of flats overlooking the Gulf of Riga, owned without mortgage by the Kannbergs, were impressive and should have led Horst into a life of decadent sufficiency, a role he would have filled to perfection. His mother spoke German which was the reason for the German Christian name. Horst had remained in Riga during the German occupation but when Germany was defeated and the Russians conquered the Baltic States of which Latvia, the middle one, was the most prosperous, the Kannbergs fled to England and the communists confiscated their properties. From very rich to very poor had taken less than a week. Horst was fourteen, proficient in Latin and ancient Greek, with a passion for Russian literature but in practical terms of no use in a life that would require him to make a living for himself.
The Kannbergs applied for assisted passage to South Africa after three fruitless months in bleak, post-war England. Kannberg senior offered his considerable classical education to teach children in any one of three European languages he spoke fluently, French, Russian and German. The problem was his English, the guttural accent of Kannberg senior being so pronounced that few could understand what he said. But in South Africa, determined to flood South Africa with white immigrants, the impediment of the father and mother was outweighed by the four children who would quickly learn English and Afrikaans and be the material to build a strong, white South Africa, free of communism.
If Horst had been five years younger, like his brother and sister, he might have been saved. What he had was continental charm, good looks, and a cute accent from picking up fluent English during their three months in England by finding a very nice girl of seventeen to teach him the rudiments of language and entertain each other. School in England and South Africa was difficult. Maths had never been his subject but taught in English the process was unintelligible. Horst went through the motions of school but gravitated to the Cape Town beaches and the new sport of surfing. Horst Kannberg was always ready to try something new.
He never quite said that his family were Russian aristocrats, victims of the Bolshevik revolution, but he never squashed the rumours. Colonial Africa was impressed with old money and titles, something usually left behind in Europe. The charm and manners of an old-world aristocrat were the hallmark of Kannberg senior, well adopted by his eldest son. The Kannbergs were poor in money but rich in history.
After two fruitless years of South African schooling, Horst gave up the unnecessary trek to Rondebosch High School and concentrated his talents on Clifton Beach, where he bronzed to perfection as an amateur lifesaver. If there was a Saturday night party anywhere in the peninsula, Horst Kannberg allowed himself to be prevailed upon to accept the invitation and the offer of a lift. The small, rent-controlled flat of the Kannbergs in Green Point was not the right address but, being on the ground floor of an old house converted into three flats with trophies of Riga littered around the quaint old lounge, Horst was socially much in demand.
To become a waiter or barman, two jobs of which he might have been capable, would have destroyed the image built for him by the many people he acquainted himself with in Cape Town. Horst talked to everyone, charmingly, as if every word spoken to him gave his mind extreme pleasure. If the conversation led to a coffee house or, better still, one of the hotel bars where he was known by all the best barmen, he would say before his new friend drove off in the direction of coffee or beer that he was a ‘bit short’. After three or four beers at the new friend’s expense, Horst would ask the man how much money the man had in his pocket. If he had asked outright to borrow money, the man would have pleaded poverty but, caught in the trap of answering the question, Horst would extract five rands as a loan, noisily buy the man an expensive cocktail with the man’s own money and explain he had to tear himself away for a meeting. The man, a little drunk by then, was quite happy to see the remnants of his five rands walk out of the door. He had enjoyed himself and what a nice young man. All the barmen kept their mouths shut as with the exotic cocktail went a good tip.
The first meeting after a successful bar encounter was with the florist in Sea Point where Horst would buy his mother a bunch of flowers. Living at home for Horst was the price of a bunch of flowers. It was said later on in his life that if Horst Kannberg told you to go to hell, you knew you were going to enjoy the journey.
There is a limit to the number of gullible people in any one town and when his father’s hints at a job had reached the point of irritation, he left Cape Town and a weeping mother clutching her last bunch of flowers. He was twenty years old, and the world was his oyster. With a small but expensive bag packed with everything he owned and enough money sewn into the lining of his jacket to get him out of trouble, he took a bus out of Cape Town along the coast, getting out at the first small town.
For Horst there was nothing so vulgar as hitching a lift by standing on the side of the road. He waited across from the petrol station, checking the cars and their occupants heading away from the Cape. He knew his type to perfection and when a man or woman driving alone with the right registration plate on the car and the right body language pulled up for petrol, Horst would wander across the road and start a conversation.
“Nice place, Knysna,” he would say, translating the CX number plate to be Knysna or Plettenberg Bay, the richest villages on the Garden Route.
If there was no positive reaction, he would move on to the toilet and try again.
He was the right size, not too big to intimidate and not too small to be thought of as short. Once the conversation began, Horst would have in his memory bank the name of an acquaintance in Knysna. The diary he kept was full of names and addresses with careful notes about each person. He always did his homework. If the driver knew his acquaintance Horst would ask to be dropped off at the house, having first casually asked for a lift. Most often, Horst was in the passenger seat, his bag on the back seat, chatting away before the car was filled up with petrol. By the time they reached the destination they were firm friends with the driver wanting to boast to friends of the young Russian aristocrat. The longest Horst managed to stay with a lift was a month.
As it was a large country, Horst was able to spend fourteen years travelling round and round.
By the time he reached thirty-four, he had run out of options in South Africa, his credit having reached an unacceptable low. With the last of his money, he took the train north to Southern Rhodesia, arriving at the railway station opposite the Victoria Falls Hotel on the same day Will Langton rolled across the bridge in his Land Rover, Barotseland left behind. It took Horst Kannberg less than sixty seconds to recognise Will as the perfect target.
Betty Gulliver had heard there were four men for every woman in Rhodesia and the very idea had consumed her for six months. She was neither plain nor pretty and competition in swinging London had reduced her sex life to a dribble. She was twenty-eight, never
even engaged and trying to compete with fresh young things ten years her junior. After the six months she went to Rhodesia House in the Strand and made friends with one of the Rhodesian girls who worked at the High Commission. When the subject was Rhodesia, Betty was a good listener and as the girl was homesick for her family, the family farm and the bush. She was ready to talk to her new friend and eventually confirm the four-to-one statistic.
“That’s including Salisbury and Bulawayo, the two cities,” the girl had explained. “You go to a small village like Victoria Falls where they operate safaris and likely there are no single girls at all and probably forty young men… What’s the matter, Betty? You thinking of leaving England?”
“Yes,” said Betty Gulliver in a tight voice that almost squeaked.
When Will walked through the quadrangle of the magnificent Victoria Falls colonial hotel, having first cut across the sights of Horst Kannberg, Betty Gulliver, having her afternoon tea in the shade of a thirty-foot mango tree, had been at the Falls for a year, the best year of her life. Not only was she Queen of the Ball, she was the only single girl at the Falls and a film star could not have received more attention from men. Betty was sure at least three men were in love with her and she was working on the fourth. To Betty’s disgust, Will Langton did not even look at her when he sat down at the next table which was also in the shade, and ordered himself a hot tea. He then studied the view of the bridge, the cataract and the great power of Victoria Falls pounding the air with sound, crashing spray three hundred metres up into the clear blue sky.
The second insult in Betty’s afternoon came shortly afterwards when Horst Kannberg sat down at Will’s table, explaining it was too hot out of the shade at the other empty tables. Horst was exactly Betty’s type and her table was also in the shade. Why had he not chosen her, was the indignant question in her mind. When Will did turn his gaze in her direction, the violet eyes were focused just right of her left ear. He was taking no more notice of her than of the man who had just sat at his table. His mind was not even sitting with him at the table but far off somewhere that had nothing to do with either of them. She guessed rightly he had just come out of the bush. She took Horst for a tourist, the paler skin talking to her of a cooler climate far away from the Victoria Falls.
Betty watched the tourist try to talk to the man from the bush and felt better herself for his lack of success. The man in the bush jacket had not snubbed her after all: he just wanted his tea on his own.
“Are you from these parts?” insisted Horst to Will.
“Not sure really,” answered Will.
“Where are you from?”
“That depends on when.”
“You staying at the Falls?”
“That depends as well.”
Over at the other table, Betty Gulliver was having a good smile to herself, confident that once she opened the conversation, the tourist would be more interested in her than the man with the unfocused stare. First she caught his eye and then waited for the conversation at the next table to peter out.
When the man finally got up and went across to the other table Will barely registered he had even been and gone. He was trying hard to think what to do with the rest of his life.
Will sat for an hour not listening to one word of the animated conversation going on at the next table. He heard neither the words ‘bit short’ nor ‘if you insist, a Lion Larger’. When the small band came out onto the terrace for cocktail music, the same band that had backed Shelley Lane, Will decided a cold beer would be better than another pot of tea. He had still not made up his mind where he was going to spend the night.
Horst, out of the corner of his eye, watched Will switch to beer and, while giving his full attention to the lady who was buying him drinks and talking volubly about her new job, he was sure the man was a target who could prove successful. The man had a Land Rover and was probably local, the girl who said she was twenty-four was to Horst’s mind nearer thirty and she wasn’t even his type.
The sun began to go down and Horst was on his fourth free beer, resigned to spending the night with the lady, when Will, bored with his own company, decided to join the couple at the next table and buy them a drink. For more than an hour he had them thinking in circles, getting absolutely nowhere.
“Mind if I join you two? Seems silly only three of us on the terrace and sitting at separate tables. My name’s Will Langton, lately from Mongu in Barotseland. Can I buy you two a drink?”
For Horst, the offer of another free drink was music to his ears and there was even a chance at this rate he would be able to get himself thoroughly drunk at other people’s expense and by then, surely, the girl would be more than acceptable.
“Come and join us please,” said Horst in his best German-Russian accent that had taken him so far in his life.
“Sorry I wasn’t saying much earlier. Lots to think about.”
“This is Betty Gulliver from England and I’m Horst Kannberg. My family are white Russians. We were chased out by the Bolsheviks.”
“What’ll it be?”
“Would you mind if I changed my drink to a large whisky and maybe a nice cocktail for Betty here? Something like a Pimm’s No. 1. I’m sure the famous Victoria Falls Hotel will know how to make a very good Pimm’s. My great-uncle used to travel from Saint Petersburg to England every summer and he said Pimm’s was the very thing for the summer.”
“What did your uncle do in Saint Petersburg?” asked Betty with dewy eyes, the idea of a Pimm’s from this Russian aristocrat almost overwhelming.
“Diplomatic service. For the tsar, of course. They were very large landowners on my mother’s side, before it was stolen. Of course, after that we went to Latvia and owned half the beach front before that all went as well.”
“What a terrible shame,” said Betty.
Will by then had caught the eye of the wine steward, ordered the large whisky, which he took to be a double, a Pimm’s No. 1, which he knew came with all the fruit, mint and cucumber in a tall glass frosted at the rim with sugar, and thought he had better count his money before he was carried too far away.
“Make mine a Dimple Haig,” said Horst imperiously to the waiter, briefly interrupting his monologue to Betty Gulliver.
Will gave a wry smile as he waited for a round of drinks that was to cost him the price of ten beers. ‘Bet he hasn’t got a penny to his name’ he thought, and mentally wrote it all down to the price of looking for a new life. Already he was missing his home on the river, even the painful tricks of the Goliath heron.
Having bought the drinks, Will was obliged to sit through their drinking while he tried to interest himself in the one-sided conversation now being oiled by the Dimple Haig whisky. The man was a braggart and a bore, something he had seen many times when Hannes Potgieter was running the hunting safaris. Then the customer was paying for his own whisky, which was some kind of comfort. Will smiled at Hannes’s usual comment when the likes of Horst Kannberg had left the base camp. ‘Englishman, they may be phoney but they’re rich.’
Will was trying to finish his beer and get back to the Land Rover that he would drive upriver a kilometre or two and find a level spot to stop and spend the night. Over the boxes, gun cases and camera equipment, Will had laid a mattress. His head would be a foot and a half from the ceiling but with the small windows covered with gauze to keep out the mosquitoes he would be comfortable enough. For breakfast he would catch himself a bream and cook it over an open fire and brew a good pot of black coffee ladled with sugar. Will had enough money in the Livingstone bank to last six months. Then he would make decisions.
Downing the last of his beer, warm already from the heat, Will started to get up from his chair.
“Please,” said Betty, “have a drink with me. Horst explained when he first sat down he was a ‘bit short’ and I know how bad that can feel. I don’t think I’ll be able to run to Pimm’s and Dimple Haig but how about three cold beers?” She smiled warmly at Will. The girl was not so stupid af
ter all. Will smiled back. Suddenly he liked Betty Gulliver.
When the new beers had arrived at the table, the conversation turned around to Will and he told them of his home on the banks of the river and the floods that had swept it away.
“What are you going to do next?” asked Betty.
“That’s the point. I don’t know. My brother wants me to go back to England and join his firm in London, but after so many years in Africa I don’t see myself wearing a bowler hat and riding the train up to London every day. I know nothing about Byron’s business, so the offer looks like charity to me, probably a favour to my mother. The other suggestion was going to Australia but the girl has a boyfriend she lives with. He would be the source of my income. So here I am with the guns and the cameras, a few pounds left in the bank and no idea what to do next. Somehow, that’s quite exciting. There’s nothing worse than knowing the rest of your life. You see, younger sons in the old days went out to run the colonies but we’re running out of colonies fast. This one’s going.”
“Not Rhodesia,” said Betty, emphatically. “We’ll declare UDI and tell the British government to go to hell.”
“That’s as it may be but it won’t last,” said Will, sadly. “The Americans have a racial problem with their civil rights movement. They won’t allow a few whites to retain power in Africa. They’ll use them as a whipping horse to take the pressure off the American government at home. Make their white government look anti-racist. What Hilary says. Brother of mine who’s a missionary in Zambia. Says he’s staying. Can’t leave the flock. That sort of thing. But Hilary knows. He reads. He says in the end it will be a total disaster for Africa, that the building of a modern world in Africa will have to start all over again when the new revolutionaries have destroyed the place and stolen its money… What do you do here for a living, Betty?”