by Peter Rimmer
“I know that.”
The second bone of contention was Anna, the daughter of the accountant from Poole who had married Randolph Langton, the eldest son. Not once had she been pregnant even with a miscarriage.
Leaving the barrage of questions mostly unanswered, Will went out the back of the old ivy-covered house, through the dell and the apple orchard and up onto the Downs, taking the dogs. The sun had come out and Will needed the walk after the train journey from London.
England after Africa had looked so drab; even twenty years after the war there were still signs of the devastation caused by the German bombs. And everywhere he looked from the third-class carriage window, wet washing hung on the lines at the back of grey, dirty, semi-detached council houses. The countryside had been better but the mile after mile of houses had made him depressed.
Up on the Downs, the dogs chased the sheep with a merry cacophony of sound, the sheep running together in circles, their heads high and rigid. None of the dogs had recognised Will.
Reaching the edge of the cliff, he looked down on Dancing Ledge with the small rock pool cut out of the bare rock for the forgotten orphans of the Second World War. Across from the pool he could just make out the entrance to his childhood cave.
Leaving the dogs with the sheep, Will walked down the winding path, past short, tufted grass, out across the rocks and stood beside the pool that gave him so many memories. There were three holidaymakers on the Ledge, all from another part of the country and none of them took any notice of the young man with the deep suntan looking down into the depths of the pool, looking for the other half of his soul. After ten minutes Will realised she had gone. There was nothing there in the water except an old and distant memory. All the years of running away had come to nothing.
Will began to laugh with bitter sadness, building to the point of hysteria. Then he turned his back on the pool and ran across the rock ledge to the path which he took like a goat chased by a dog. At the top he carried on running, calling for the dogs who broke off their endless chase of the sheep for a different game to play.
Back at the orchard Will stopped, his lungs bursting from the run. For the first time since meeting the girl on Dancing Ledge he was free to lead his life without feeling her presence.
Circling the front of the house, Will touched the trunk of the great old oak tree as part of the superstition, the oak that old tales told had been planted by the first Langton of Langton Manor.
“Tomorrow I will write to Lindsay and find out if the photos made any money,” he said out loud.
“What photos?” asked Randolph Langton, coming out of the house. “Heard you were back, Will. Welcome home… You know something, I think it’s going to rain and I haven’t stacked the hay… What have you been doing with yourself, old son?”
“Nothing much, Randolph. How’s Anna?”
“She’s fine.”
Neither of them could think of anything else to say to each other so they went inside and joined their parents, the dogs going off on their own.
3
Six months later, Will met Heathcliff Mortimer for the first time. Will had gone to visit his sister in her Westminster flat and found the corpulent newspaperman sitting in a large armchair sipping Josephine’s whisky out of a cut crystal glass. Soon after his arrival, Josephine said she had to rush off to the Commons to vote on a bill to extend British social welfare.
“You two stay and have a chat. Heath’s spent time in Africa, Will. Got to rush. Back in an hour. Slam the door shut if you want to go.”
The thought of going back outside made the idea of drinking with a stranger more comfortable. Will watched his sister dress up in a long raincoat with an attached hood and pull rubber galoshes over her shoes. Outside Will knew the February east wind was howling down the streets of Westminster and whipping up the black waters of the Thames; the street and the pavements were puddled in water.
They both watched Josephine go off to face the elements. A taxi was waiting downstairs but even the few yards to the open door required the raincoat and the rubber boots. Heath got up and found a whisky glass, half filled it with ice cubes and poured on the amber liquid, handing the glass to Will.
“I’m writing a book on Africa,” said Heath. “Maybe you could help. Are you enjoying being back in England?”
“No.”
The silence stretched for a few moments.
“Not a man of many words,” said Heath, refilling his glass.
“Not on that subject.”
“Amazing how people love giving away other people’s money,” said Heath, looking at the newly closed front door of the flat. “It makes them feel so good. Almost like a drug. Totally unsustainable of course. By the time your children’s generation go on pension or get sick from old age there won’t be any money left and nothing to show for it. Such a pity. A nation of bums and parasites. Our ancestors who created the world’s greatest empire must be turning in their graves. I gather you miss your life in Africa?”
“Yes I do.”
“Why don’t you go back?”
“Sometimes people have to be realistic. I’m trying to be. They want the whites out of Africa. My parents always said you should never stay in another man’s house when you are not wanted. Maybe you have to be very thick-skinned to do that kind of thing… If I had never gone out in the first place it wouldn’t have mattered. My own fault. Running away from two years in the air force. I never liked taking orders. You obviously know Jo quite well.”
“We cry on each other’s shoulders on a regular basis with the help of a bottle of Scotch.”
“I’m glad she’s got a friend.”
“Byron says you’re not happy running his Africa desk.”
“Why would he tell you?… Sorry, that sounds rude.”
“I’m the conduit. Rather like the booze supplier during prohibition in the States; never had to advertise but everyone knew where to go. Newspaper reporting is only one of my talents. All those black customers your brother has in Africa first came through me.”
“Byron’s helping these men to rob their people blind. Makes me sick.”
“Funny. Being tossed out of Africa I’d have you enjoying the irony.”
“Byron thought that.”
“And he thought wrong. Interesting… The title of my book is The New Rape of Africa.”
“The British never raped Africa.”
“But the conventional wisdom says we did. The black leaders say we robbed the place, ah, hah. Most important, the wonderful liberal press of a wonderful liberal world says colonialism was an ogre. So we stole them blind, forget about the roads and railways and the invention of the wheel. Have a drink with me to the end of the white man’s garden.”
“Did you meet my friend Laurie Hall when he was in England?”
“More than once.”
“What happened? Why hasn’t anyone heard from him?”
“Spent his money. Thinks he made a fool of himself. Went back to Africa.”
“Where?”
“No one knows. I’ll let you know if I hear anything on my travels. There are whites in the Congo. Mercenaries for General Mobutu. Keep him in power, probably. No one really knows what happens when the colonial power moves out. Mostly Whitehall thinks it is good riddance to bad rubbish, to quote a phrase I heard as a schoolboy. You ask your brother. Knows more than most. He’s making money out of the mess. To businessmen that’s all that matters.”
Across in the West End of London, less than three miles away, Byron Langton was attending a cocktail party thrown by the chairman of Lloyd’s of London, the largest insurance market in the world. Byron had been surprised and pleased to receive the invitation which included his wife, Lady Fiona Langton, who was four months pregnant and happier than she had ever been in her life.
Casually, as if the chairman was doing an outsider a favour in inviting him into the club, it was suggested to Byron that if he approached the chairman again, he could become a ‘Name’ at Lloy
d’s and reap untold profits without laying out a penny.
“You just stand surety for the syndicate. Hundreds of years of experience. Safe as the Bank of England. Marvellous institution. Americans have been trying to create a Lloyd’s for half a century. Never succeed. Tradition. Once you get the hang of things, Langton, you can put your name on as many syndicates as you like. We account three years in arrears so you’ll have to wait for your first cheque. Your father-in-law has been a ‘Name’ for years. Give my secretary a ring on Monday and she’ll do the necessary. Welcome to Lloyd’s, Langton. Give my regards to your father, Lady Fiona.”
The man put his hand briefly on Byron’s shoulder. A king of old England would not have done it better.
Will’s first affair had ended with a cheque for ten pounds four shillings and sixpence, a note from Lindsay Healy in Australia wishing him a good life in England and a regret the photographs had not sold better. The Lady, Will surmised without a great deal of regret, had gone on to better things and he had been wise not to rely on other people to make him money. The last years in his twenties were proving that his young dreams had been nothing more than dreams and life’s reality was a more commercial world where success had nothing to do with heart and soul but a more mundane product of life called money. People in the world outside of the bush and Barotseland did everything for money and even the Chief had followed his cash over to England.
Sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, listening to the drill from the other side of the closed door with fear more real than any lion had ever been able to create, Will picked up a three-month-old copy of the National Geographic magazine from the coffee table, his eye caught by the front page with its quarter shot of a fish eagle taking a fish from a river in full flight. More conscious of the dentist’s drill than the magazine, he flipped the pages and found himself admiring page after page of animal photography. Some of the shots he wished he had taken himself so he turned back to the beginning of the article and instantly felt sick in his stomach. The writer was one Lindsay Healy, the story the Zambezi River. Will looked carefully from photograph to photograph, page to page, remembering mostly, exactly where he had been when the photograph had been taken. There was even a picture of his Goliath heron. Nowhere did he find mention of his name.
Some weeks later, casually, he asked Heathcliff Mortimer what a lead article of eleven pages with photographs in National Geographic would fetch for a freelance photographer and writer.
“Between ten and fifty thousand pounds, depending on the uniqueness of the location. Why, do you want me to write the copy round some of your photographs?”
“Somebody’s done it using my photographs.”
“Hope you got paid well?”
“Ten pounds four shillings and sixpence.”
“He must have seen you coming.”
“She.”
“Explains everything. Join the club, Will Langton. Women… It’s five o’clock. Let’s get out of here. You don’t by any luck feel like getting drunk?”
“I think I do.”
“Good. I like getting drunk. You think that secretary of Byron’s would like to join us?”
“No women, Heath. Seems I don’t have any luck with women.”
Outside on the pavement they turned left past Cox’s & King’s bank and walked to Johnny Pike’s bar in Soho. The pavements were wet and shiny from the street lights but it had stopped raining.
It was the same bar from which Josephine had gone for her abortion.
Will had taken a bedsitter in Holland Park which he knew looked like ten thousand others in the poorer parts of London. The floor was three-quarters covered in a threadbare carpet that could have been an imitation Persian when a long time ago it had been new. The single bed sat in the corner diagonally across from the alcove that served as the kitchen. Across the alcove hung an old curtain to hide the kitchen cupboard and the two-plate gas stove that worked off shillings in a meter. The two drawers to the kitchen cupboard stuck at an angle every time he tried to pull them open.
At first Will had hung his guns on the walls to remind himself of better times, but after a week he had taken them down and locked them in their cases which he pushed under the bed. There were no photographs to frame and hang on the bare walls as they had all been shipped to Australia. Will had thought of writing to Lindsay to ask about the article but it had never been in his nature to complain or make a scene. The room had a gas heater, and the bed was warm and any thought of Africa made him crave for the bush so he put it out of his mind.
He was paid seventeen pounds and eight shillings every week and gave just under a third to his landlady for the rent. He worked hard in the office to keep his mind away from the big river, staying as late as possible to avoid the Tube train back to the room and a miserable kind of solitude so different to that which he had enjoyed in Africa, the one open and full of space up to the stars, the other cramped and with a view as far as the ceiling.
Twice Will had brought up the subject of the ivory but Byron had a knack of changing the subject so well, they always ended up talking about something else. Vaguely, Will knew he was a disappointment to his brother but as hard as he tried he could find no comfort in diverting millions of pounds of African money into bank accounts that did not even have a name. Bills of lading and certified invoices of origin became second nature along with back-to-back letters of credit and all the other paraphernalia that went with the paperwork of shipping and commerce. He was sure his brother was growing richer by the day but it mattered nothing to him.
There was enough money to drink three pints of beer in the pub down the road from his bedsitter before going home and turning off the lights and shutting tight his eyes to see the animals of Africa and not the squalor in which he lived, both physical and mental. There was no escape for a man of almost thirty without any skills and the days went by one after the other and with them the days of his life.
It was as if his life had finished before it had begun. Even the image in his mind of the girl on the Ledge had begun to fade, slipping higher up into the sky between the fleece-white clouds to disappear, his arms stretched to heaven and all eternity, for no purpose, the reason for his life gone away with his dreams.
And at night, when he was lucky, he would dream again he was back in the bush with his love for all eternity and he was happy in his dreams, floating up through the clouds with the great bush of Africa spread out below with all its animals and birds. There were many mornings when on waking he wished the waking had never been. Then he wondered if heaven was like his dreams and hell his bedsitter.
There was something wrong with ten pounds four shillings and sixpence and Heathcliff Mortimer was going to find out what and why. He also had an idea. Armed with a copy of National Geographic, he talked to some of his many friends in the newspaper and magazine business. Everyone said the wildlife photography was superb.
Heath could see the problem with wildlife photography in a small-size magazine was the miniaturisation of the picture, giving some but not all the feeling evoked by the bush. Mostly the animals dominated the frame and the background was lost to the readers’ imagination. Four of his friends had made the same comment. ‘Pity the pictures aren’t bigger.’
Damian Huntly was a magazine publisher who also specialised in coffee-table books where the size of the animals would be seen together with their backgrounds. The leopard at a waterhole would be clear down to the last spot, but so would the colours of the harlequin quails that drank alongside the cat, their trail of tiny footprints visible in the mud.
“Can you imagine those photographs the size of one of your books?” asked Heath, sitting across from Damian Huntly in the publisher’s Regent Street office.
“Yes I can but what’s the point?” asked Damian Huntly, handing back the three-month-old copy of National Geographic and tapping it at the same time. “These people will have bought exclusive rights to those pictures forever. They own them, not your friend. Anyway, how can you prov
e he took the photographs? The byline is Lindsay Healy.”
“Will says he took them and he’s not a person to tell a lie. He’s lived in the bush for years.”
The smile that spread across Damian Huntly’s face told Heath the man did not believe anyone ever told the truth, especially when it was to the liar’s advantage.
“We don’t have to use those actual photographs. Will has thousands.”
“Where are they? Show me.”
“He gave them to Lindsay Healy.”
“So she probably owns them legally. National Geographic would not print photographs without being certain they had bought them from a legal source. But what are you talking about?”
“A glossy book with photographs as good if not better than these, in full colour, with a brief, backup story written by me. Call it Zambezi River. Shelley Lane’s made enough money with her Zambezi album just singing about Africa. She’s a friend of Will Langton’s, the photographer.”
“Would she write a foreword?”
“Probably. Though she’s not in the best shape right now.”
“So the rumours tell. Booze can be a terrible thing.”
“Or a pleasure,” smiled Heath. “If I can regain the rights to the unpublished photographs will you consider a book?”
“Probably.”
Over lunchtime drinks a week later, Heath was pleased to find a young reporter about to go out to Australia to cover the referendum on whether Aboriginals should be included in the census. The reporter had a reputation in Fleet Street of being a stud.
“Can I put you onto something in Sydney?” asked Heath of the young stud.
“If it’s good, why won’t your paper cover the story?”
“It’s a girl. A very pretty girl, from all reports. She likes men I’m told.”
“You’re putting me on, Heath.”
“No, actually. But I want a favour in return. She has some photographs belonging to another young friend of mine and I want them back again. When are you leaving?”