by Peter Rimmer
Every word of disgust that flowed from Josephine’s mouth vilifying the racist oppression was reported in the Daily Garnet, and when she joined the anti-apartheid movement as an executive member, no one was surprised. She was lauded in all the newspapers as a modern crusader for the rights of the oppressed men and women of the world. With the help of the Daily Garnet in particular, Josephine raised tens of thousands of pounds for the anti-apartheid movement, often from Labour-dominated county councils who gave away chunks of their ratepayers’ money for the good cause, giving Labour a fillip in the opinion polls.
One headline in the Garnet, hoisted high on its own rhetoric, said all the whites should be kicked out of Africa. They had no right to be there. They were stealing the black man’s birthright. Apartheid and colonialism were a crime against humanity.
The anti-apartheid stance of the Garnet made its readers both indignant and righteous in their wholesale agreement. When pictures of smart homes with swimming pools were published showing the way of life of the average white in Africa, the indignation turned to screams. Everyone wanted to give a pound to smash such horrors.
Heathcliff Mortimer was sent off on a special mission to report on South Africa but was not allowed out of the airport at Jan Smuts, Johannesburg, being sent home on the next plane back to London, making him an international celebrity overnight.
Lady Fiona Langton, at her publisher’s desk, was delighted by the orders from the retailers for the second volume of the Mortimer journal on Africa which she published the week before.
To Heath’s enormous surprise he found himself, as he put it, ‘the flavour of the day’, a phrase that he was to use constantly in the future. Everywhere in black Africa he was welcomed with gratifying accord, giving him three more major contacts for Langton Merchant Bank.
“Do you agree with your sister’s anti-apartheid stance?” he asked Byron over a drink in Byron’s office.
“Of course. She needed the job.”
The letter from Laurie Hall reached Will Langton in 1973 at the end of a long winter. Laurie had been in the Rhodesian army for over a year and Will was in his third year of catching the nine-minutes-past-eight up to Waterloo every morning. Spring was reluctant and twice retreated under a flurry of snow and ice-cold east winds that found their way deep into the old semi-detached house despite all the precautions. Will had looked at the tatty piece of grass at the back and knew at some stage he would have to buy a lawn mower as both neighbours had complained at the poor state of Will Langton’s garden.
He had met both neighbours twice, once when they were invited to visit and once when the gesture of neighbourly goodwill was returned. Will tried the subject of Africa and failed; Shelley, the fact she used to be a singer. Both neighbours thought Will and Shelley were telling tall stories.
Shelley’s black hair, that had once had the sheen of a raven’s wing, was streaked with grey and her face was blotched from drink and the tablets she had swallowed to compensate for her depression. She was sleeping fourteen hours a day and went for days without getting dressed. They had long since stopped sharing a bedroom. The only rare visitor was Heathcliff Mortimer.
Since Josephine’s marriage to the anti-apartheid movement she had kept well clear of her younger brother because he had once lived in Africa as a colonist.
Byron Langton had never wanted to see the semi-detached house and Will’s parents in Dorset rarely left Langton Manor, Randolph Langton, the elder brother who ran the farm, even buying their food for them so they would not have to go to the village. Red Langton daily relived the horrors of night bombing and the atomic bomb he had watched fall on Japan. Adelaide waited patiently for the visits from her grandchildren. She was sixty-three years old and walked with great pain from arthritis, mostly sitting by the fire in winter painfully knitting for the grandchildren or sitting in the small conservatory when the sun came out in summer. Her mind dwelt in the years before the war when she was a young woman with a young family to bring up in a world that still knew the difference between right and wrong. She and Red sat for hours without speaking to each other. The ritual glass of sherry was the highlight of their day.
Laurie’s letter described the Rhodesian war as escalating but was so fill of bounce and excitement that it brought Will out of his trance. Will had not felt excited about anything for five years. Coming out of a clear blue sky after so many years of silence, the letter made Will think of a life he had once enjoyed, when getting up in the morning for a cold shower outside under the acacia tree was the first blast in a day full of happiness.
“You want to read a letter from Laurie Hall?” he said to Shelley when he came home that night. The letter had been addressed to him through Byron at the bank.
“No… You got any drink?”
“Shelley, we can’t afford it.”
“This is a miserable fucking life.”
“Laurie’s in the Rhodesian army. Horse patrols. Fighting the war.”
“Can’t we go to the pub just for once? You know that brother of yours is a jerk. I sang him a fortune, and you made him another out of bloody crocodiles and we can’t buy a drink. Shit. Life stinks. We don’t even fuck anymore.”
“Shelley, please?”
Will heard her bedroom door slam shut and sat down to read through the letter once again. Laurie described the bush and the Zambezi Valley like a lover describing his mistress. The smell of wild sage mingled with the strong stench of a herd of buffalo. The splash of fish at night in the big river. The distant echo of game splashing the river water late in the quiet dusk while they drank. The call of so many birds. A dugout canoe poled by a black man standing in the bow. The smell of wood smoke. The cry of the fish eagle. A crimson sunset silhouetting the skyline of the river trees. Grunting hippo in the mud-pools. Flamingos touched in pink flocking up the river, shadowing the moving water with their wings… Africa.
Again he read the letter and again the same paragraph sprang out of the page.
“Will, most probably the war will drag on for years and come to an inconclusive end with both sides sick of fighting. The nationalists will win politically as history always tells us but when it is over they will need us more than ever before. Look to the north. Come independence the West loses interest. The troublesome child is on its own to sink or swim. Nearly all of them have sunk for lack of the knowledge to run a modern state. The communists only gave them guns. So back they go to savagery. The warlord tribes return and happiness is lost… They will try to run it themselves but in the end they will ask for help and the West won’t bother to listen. Africa has water round its shores. There will be no starving hordes pouring out of Africa into Europe. The starving will die at home, long before they are any nuisance to the West. The white tribe of Africa, we from Europe who settled here to live generation after generation, must stay dormant quietly, ignoring the insults so that when they turn to us, we will be ready to do our job again, to grow the food economically, manage business without corruption, repair the collapsed infrastructure, provide the security of law and order so an honest man can walk the streets without fear of his life. But it will happen only when the whole of Africa has fallen to its knees amid civil war and corruption, anarchy… With the guns at the walls of the citadel, property here, especially agricultural land in the remote areas, can be bought for very little as the white people fear for their lives. The sugar estate on the Zambezi downriver from Chirundu is no longer functioning. Once owned by Tate & Lyle it is dormant, the sugar mill silent. Some people have bought parts to grow bananas and failed. When the war is over, as all wars are eventually, and the part of man that is sanity prevails, a swathe of land along the river will make the perfect safari camp to show off the last remnants of African game. Will, whatever you have, sell and come back to Africa. The most difficult changes are usually the best.”
For seven days, Will made discreet enquiries. The value of the house had risen to compensate for inflation but the amount he borrowed had remained the same. Even afte
r estate agent fees he would double his money on a quick sale. The pension fund seemed a good proposition for Langton Merchant Bank and the insurance company but not for Will Langton unless he worked to the age of sixty-five in the same company. He would retrieve the money deducted from his pay each month but the sum paid on his behalf by the bank went back to the insurance company to reduce Langton Merchant Bank’s monthly premiums for the remaining staff. There was a small amount of money in a savings account kept away from Shelley Lane. The money would just be enough to buy a slice of the old sugar estate.
“How long do you want me to give you notice?” he asked his brother.
“Not very long.”
“Would today be enough?”
“I think so, Will… If you had wanted to, you could have been a director.”
“If I had wanted to. Not your fault, Byron. We all have our own lives to live.”
“You’re going back to Africa, I presume?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Where, for instance?”
“Rhodesia.”
“You must be mad. There’s a war going on. You don’t think Smith can win, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why?”
“Because it is Africa and my Federal residence permit allows me to live in Rhodesia. You do remember the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland?”
“No one else does… When are you leaving?”
“Friday. Tomorrow I go down to Dorset. The house is on the market. I’ve signed acceptance forms at a low price.”
“You should have asked me.”
“Probably not.”
“Is Shelley going with you?”
“I haven’t told her.”
“You’ll have to do that.”
The brothers shook hands, and that was an end to it. For a split second, Byron wanted to tell his brother. Then his business sense took control. The Swiss bank account, 2759464, was under Byron’s control and it was better that it stayed that way. The problem pigeonholed in the right place, Byron was never to think about the matter ever again. Anyway, he had done all the work. He had made the money. He had been stupid to imagine any of the money belonged to his brother or Laurie Hall. Most important of all, all the money in 2759464 was tax-free, out of sight and free of any government’s restrictions.
“You’re walking out on me! Selling the roof over my head!” shouted Shelley Lane.
“Shelley, we haven’t lived together in that sense for years. Come with me. London has nothing for either of us.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Buy a safari camp… I can’t go back to Zambia. Build another base camp in Rhodesia. It’s the same river just further down.”
“You won’t find tourists coming to a war.”
“I can live for nothing until it’s over.”
“Or they shoot you.”
“Then I really won’t have to worry.”
“You are mad, Will Langton… When do we leave?”
“Friday. By air.”
“Do you have me on the flight?”
“I had made a reservation for two.”
“All right, lover. One more try. You’re right, we’re both dead here. Whatever happened to all those songs I was going to sing?”
“There’s never been anything stopping you.”
“Africa… I did enjoy that one trip… You think they’d pay for a few gigs out there?”
“With all the sanctions thrown at them, you’ll be a sensation.”
“You think I should dye my hair?”
“Yes I do… Try some make-up again, Shelley, you’re only thirty-four.”
“Am I really?”
Will had to take his eyes from her face. “I’m going down to my folks tomorrow. Back on Wednesday.”
“Maybe I’ll get myself together for a change. Africa! Has a nice ring to it. I’m going to Africa! You think Laurie will be surprised to see me?”
Josephine Langton knew the date better than her own birthday. Twenty-three years before, she had aborted the only child she had ever carried in her womb. She tried to imagine her life with a daughter or a son, even with grandchildren, a family that truly belonged to her. The barren prospects that made up her life were no consolation for a family. The feminist movement of which she was stridently a part had given women all the rights, given them the money and careers to live an independent life. Soon half of them would be so independent they would be living on their own for the rest of their independent lives, husbands divorced or never married, children brought up as strangers by other strangers in day care, the life of family, the family life she had belonged to in Dorset, thrown out on the garbage heap of history, a victory for the suffragettes.
At forty-two, Josephine was no longer certain of the meaning of her life. She had maintained the flat in Westminster, hoping for a by-election she could win for Labour but none had come along. Even the platitudes of her fellow social preachers were ringing hollow in her ears, the substance of her hopes lost in the reality of man and woman, mostly destroyed by their own dishonesty and greed. There were too many lies.
Maybe she should have told Wolfgang Baumann, her teacher and the father of her child, that she was pregnant those many lonely years ago. At eighteen she had been so sure of herself. Everybody told her they could change the world, make it a better place. They never said there was a chance they would make it worse. Josephine shuddered in the mild, evening air as she walked home over Westminster Bridge; someone had walked over her grave.
The journey from Sussex to Edinburgh was taken on her own. Lady Fiona Langton, daughter of the Marquis of Bathurst, was going home to look for answers to her life. The three children had been left on the two thousand-acre estate outside East Horsley in the capable hands of an elderly nurse, just as she herself had been left as a child. She had not seen her husband for ten days and there was more chance of him staying in London at 47 Buckingham Court for the weekend than coming down to Surrey. She was thirty-two years old and saw the ravages of multiple childbirth every morning when she looked in the mirror. The children had come upon her so quickly there had been little time to regain her figure. With the children constantly demanding her attention she was constantly tired and running a business publishing books compounded that problem in her life.
Byron had made the move to Surrey sound like the beginning of a great dynasty: the Byron Langton’s country seat. She suspected somewhere in his heart he was jealous of his elder brother, Randolph, for being heir to Langton Manor with all its history. Joyously, she had moved the family into the new house thinking her and Byron’s offices would now be next to her home. Within a few months she realised the office part of Headling Park was for the tax authorities. Some of the accounts department had been sent down from the Pall Mall offices along with the publishing division, neither of which, according to Byron when she asked, required constant contact with the hub of business in the City of London.
The end of summer was showing dark green in the fields when she arrived at the small railway station on the Bathurst estate, seventy miles from Edinburgh. She had telephoned the Hall from Edinburgh and was pleased to see her father waiting for her at the station. He was alone and hatless and looking at the flowers that were bursting with colour along the side of the platform.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, turning round only when the train came to a rackety halt. “Flowers on railway stations make all the difference, don’t you think? Nothing like flowers to cheer a man up. Women as well, I believe.”
“Daddy, you’re wearing different coloured socks again.”
“Am I really? Difficult to feel the difference… All you got, gal?” he said, looking at her suitcase. “Better give it to me. Doesn’t look right for a woman to be carrying a suitcase. See it a lot these days. Not right, you see. Come along. You can drive the car, Fiona. Never did like driving. You can talk to the horses but you can’t talk to cars. Your mother said the same thing.”
Halfway d
own the platform, the Marquis of Bathurst stopped and turned in surprise.
“Where are the children?” he demanded.
“I told you, Daddy, I was coming alone.”
“That explains it then. Come along… Did you know my great-grandfather made them put in this railway station?”
“Yes, I did, Daddy.”
“Whole branch line from Edinburgh, matter of fact.”
Fiona drove them to the Hall in the old Austin following the path of her childhood. Nothing had changed and yet everything had changed.
“Lucky it’s not a public holiday.” Her father was holding onto the handle of his shooting stick which was standing upright between his legs, the clashing socks now more visible. “Show you what we’ve done tomorrow. Punch and Judy show. Pony rides. Thinking of a wild animal zoo. Tigers. That sort of thing. Damned if I haven’t turned the old Hall into a circus but it pays. Can’t afford to keep up a property these days without all those tax deductions. There has to be income to write them off against, what Byron told me and he was right. How is Byron and why isn’t he here?”
“I want to talk to you about Byron.”
“Don’t ask me, gal. You know him far better than I. By the bye, tell him from me. Get out of Lloyd’s. Resigned from all my syndicates but it’ll take three years to be free of ’em. Claims, you know. Some claims take years to settle. Well, I heard in my club they’ll let any Tom, Dick or Harry in as a ‘Name’. Foreigners. First, any old colonial which included the Americans which was bad enough. Now any damn foreigner. Didn’t like the sound of it. Resigned the lot of ’em. Lately the cheques have been getting less and less but the liability stays the same. Everything I own backs those syndicates. In the days it was an old boys’ club we knew what we were doing. You tell Byron from me to get out. Get right out. Now, here we are. Here we are. Don’t ask me what’s for dinner. Never know. Never knew when your mother was alive. Fact is, didn’t ever know. My mother said it didn’t matter what you ate but frankly I’m rather fond of cottage pie. We’ll take a glass of sherry on the terrace and see if you can’t see the new fawn. Born last week he was or is it a she? Can’t get close enough, you know. No children, no Byron. Now what is this all about? You think we could keep tigers in Scotland? Leave the suitcase in the car. McKay will put it in your room. Do you know he’s been with the family fifty-seven years, or isn’t it fifty-eight? Not too heavy. He’ll be all right. Now look at that. He’s put the sherry glasses out with the decanter. Wherever would we be without a good servant? You had better have two glasses of sherry before you tell me.”