by Peter Rimmer
“Daddy, Byron’s having an affair.”
“They all do. He’s over forty. First they get their tailor to let out their trousers round the waist, and then they find a young gal. Now, have a glass of sherry.”
“What do I do, Daddy?”
“Nothing, of course. Not flaunting it in public, is he?”
“No. It’s one of his singers.”
“Appearances, Fiona. All that counts. Must keep up appearances. If everything appears all right, it must be.”
“I want to divorce him.”
“Now, drink this sherry. We don’t have divorces in our family, young lady. The gamble of life is going through it and changing horses in midstream is never very wise. Now, does he provide for you and the children?”
“Of course he does.”
“Exactly. He’s a gentleman, so he would never lay a hand on you in anger.”
“No… No, he doesn’t.”
“The children love their father?”
“Yes, Daddy, but he’s having an affair.”
“You think he didn’t have one before he married you?”
“Probably, I never asked. We loved each other. If he’s going off with singers he doesn’t love me anymore.”
“Your job in life is to bring up your family. Your husband’s job is to provide security. Most men go astray and so do most women. No one will tell you that part of it. They don’t want to know it happens. The person who thinks the world is perfect is a fool. You keep up a good home and when he’s had enough of singers and actresses, he’ll be glad to come home. Eventually he will feel guilty and come back with his tail between his legs. Now, have another glass of sherry and forget all about a divorce. You have a perfectly good husband. You try what a lot of these young gals are doing these days and you’ll find the next one is a lot worse.”
“I feel so hurt.”
“Nothing’s ever easy… Tell him to get out of Lloyd’s… How about some giraffes? Do you think they’ll survive in Scotland? Probably not.” The Marquis of Bathurst disliked involving himself in other people’s lives. To him there was honour, duty and the love of God. The rest of life was incidental.
Fiona Langton had not heard one word her father had said about Lloyd’s of London.
Heathcliff Mortimer had rented himself a cottage in the hop fields of Kent. The small garden was overgrown with weeds and the house with climbing roses. He was seventy years old and the late summer weather suited him, the deckchair among the apple trees a place to think and snooze and think. A woman from the village came in twice a week to clean up his mess. The pub down the bottom of the carthorse road was refuge from the evenings. The flat in Chelsea stayed empty while he was away. Before he left, he had said goodbye to Will Langton and Shelley Lane, visiting their horrible little semi-detached in Wimbledon. He did not expect to see them ever again. At seventy, he decided, a man said goodbye with an element of certainty.
The cottage, they had told him, was four hundred years old, the doorways making him stoop to go into the house. Man, he concluded, had evolved to a larger size. Whether he had evolved in any other way successfully, Heathcliff Mortimer had his doubts. There was the progress of science that would, in his opinion, create more problems than it solved. And there was the rest of man trying to govern himself.
The book, The Journal of an Africa Reporter, was halfway through the third volume. In the first, Heath had written of hope for the new Africa, the post-colonial Third World, where he wrote at the moment he could only see despair. Three of the new dictators, so it was said, who had emerged from the triumph of freedom over colonialism, were reported to eat their opponents, one keeping the body parts in his refrigerator. Instead of hope and progress there was anarchy, fear and starvation as the reward for destroying colonial rule. The Russians and Americans fought each other for control of the carcass, backing any despot who would prattle their ideology. The twentieth century scramble for Africa was no different, he wrote, to the one that had taken place in the nineteenth century, except the two powers that had not taken part in the first one were fighting to kick out the old guard and control Africa for themselves.
The British had sent the missionary, with the chance to be saved by God; the Russians promised communism, the ultimate equality of man; the Americans, democracy, the chance of changing government without resort to arms. Heath was certain that if the men of God had failed to give the poor security and food, the men of communism and democracy would fail. All three philosophies were smokescreens for the greater greed of man. The powers of arms and money, he wrote, not the power of right over wrong, would be the power that would rule in Africa, would, indeed rule the world as it always had done. All the rest was words.
Heath pulled himself out of the deckchair in his apple orchard, the fruit and leaves guarding him from the afternoon sun. He walked the weed-run path into the house to find his desk and write the words of despair that circled in his mind. The Africa Josephine Langton wanted had been lost already.
For two hours, oblivious of sun or home, he wrote on his portable typewriter, the one he had used for twenty years. When he had finished, he left the five sheets of paper beside the typewriter to be read again with a fresh mind.
“Maybe it’s just old age,” he said out loud to himself. “Maybe every old man is pessimistic of the world… I hope so, Heath, old man.”
The summer evening beyond the house was soft with warmth and fragrance. The rich bed of stocks from an old man’s garden by the road was sweet perfume in the air, the old man’s back to him bent to the garden he tended with love; the last quiet years. The cart road wandered through the green fields and part hedgerows thick with bright red berries. The path was dry. Heath had his gnarled stick for dogs and predators. He walked on in the evening air, lightening his heart, drawing closer to the small village and his nightly destination.
Half a mile from the village he heard the ‘chock’ of the bat on the ball, the sound coming from afar. There were oak trees over there in the distance and the roof of the white pavilion showing between the trees. It would be a Saturday, he told himself: cricket on the village green, the ultimate stability of England, a civilised game to play, bred by generations of men who claimed the name of civilised life; mad dogs and Englishmen but all of them very, very civilised. Heath smiled to himself and the ball was struck again, the sound from far away followed by the light patter of clapping.
The twenty-minute walk to the Oast House was the contract he made each night with himself, the price he offered for his drinking. The windows of the old stone building were wide open to the summer evening and drifting from inside came the perfect smell of generations of tap beer, the pints pulled from the cellar underneath the small oak bar.
Inside, the gaffer had already poured his pint of mild and bitter. On the old, dark-wood bar, dripping wetly from one side, the beer glass awaited his pleasure. Talking to the gaffer only with his eyes, Heath lifted the heavy glass and tipped it in his mouth, letting the soft gentleness of the beer run down his throat.
“My, but that was good,” he said, putting down the glass now a third empty.
“You say that every evening, Mr Mortimer.”
“Heath, please. I’ve been here a week. Heath for short. Now, give me a Southern Comfort to go with the beer, please.”
“A pleasure, Mr Mortimer.”
Heath shook his head and smiled; the gaffer was too old for first names. Smiling to himself, he took both drinks into the front garden and the bench and table that showed him the length of road he had walked and the small row of village cottages down on his left, window boxes rich in red and yellow nasturtiums.
The second pint with its chaser went down just as well as the first and by the time Heath was happily into his third set of drinks, some of the cricketers had arrived from the finished game dressed in sleeveless white sweaters to tell them apart. The sun had gone behind the oak trees at the back of the Oast House and the scent of flowers was stronger on the air. One man, he hea
rd, had scored fifty runs and was feeling very pleased with himself.
Mildly sad from the alcohol, Heath looked at his gnarled stick resting against the wooden table and mourned his lion-headed cane, left once too often in a bar he could no longer remember. There were no women brought in with the cricketers which also made him sad. Looking at what he had lost was one of the pleasures left in his life.
He guessed the cricketers had batted first and the man after his half-century had bought them drinks in the cricket pavilion. All three of them were approaching the crossroads of drunkenness.
“Well, I’m socialist,” said one of them loudly, “and I think we should have gone in with troops and hung Ian Smith for treason. Colonialism’s a disgrace.”
“Rot,” said the man of fifty runs. “Utter rot. Colonialism brought law and order.”
“And exploitation.”
“You think building a modern state is exploitation?”
“They were slaves. It’s the same with apartheid South Africa.”
“We provided our colonies with security, an administration free of corruption and vast sums of capital investment.”
“Capitalist exploitation, that’s what it was.”
“There can never be wealth in Africa again without proper management.”
“Management’s grossly overpaid.”
At this point, the fifty-run man got to his feet and began to shout. “You socialists have never done a productive day’s work in your bloody lives. You’re parasites sucking other people’s blood.”
“Without the workers your management couldn’t do a bloody thing. You don’t even know how to get your hands dirty.”
“Without us you’d starve.”
“Just ’cause you made fifty-three bloody runs for the first time in your bleeding life, doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about.”
Heath, watching with mild amusement, the possibility of a fight, thought about stopping the verbal dispute with a knowledgeable word or two but instead minded his own business, which was better.
“When the likes of you have bled the wealth creators to death, you’ll grovel on the floor to the last man of ability to get you out of your shit.”
The socialist brought the punch up with him from the bench and what had started to Heath like a grand game of cricket ended up with the star batsman flat on his back with the gaffer out the door of the Oast House to stop the fight and protect his furniture.
“Never talk no politics or religion in a pub,” he said between the socialist standing up and the batsman on the floor. “If you want to know about Africa ask Mr Heathcliff Mortimer over there.”
“Please, please,” said Heath almost squealing. “Don’t bring me into it.”
“You the journalist?” said the socialist, turning on Heath.
“Yes I am.”
“Well, what do you think about apartheid?”
“Not very much. Not very much. But I have an awful fear that after it is swept away, there will be hunger in post-apartheid South Africa. It would seem you can be free to starve and shoot each other out there or have to put up with colonialism. Now, be a good chap and give your friend a hand up from the floor.”
3
The letter Will Langton had written to Horst Kannberg at the Victoria Falls drew no response and Laurie Hall had ridden off into the bush. Through the Rhodesia Herald, Will and Shelley had found a cheap room to rent halfway up Second Street. They said they were married. They spent three months waiting for Laurie Hall to come out of the bush and tell them how to go about buying part of the land that had once been a Tate & Lyle sugar estate before the rebel government had taken control from the British government and before the war. They walked long distances around Salisbury where the war had had little effect while the grey streaks grew back into Shelley Lane’s hair. They both agreed they were getting on each other’s nerves.
“Lover, we’ve got to get out and about. You don’t meet the right people tramping the streets and Laurie always was unreliable. Typical.”
“You mean we should spend the royalty cheque,” said Will. The cheque for that year’s sales of the coffee-table book from Damian Huntly came to twelve pounds seven shillings and eight pence. Once they had come to him every six months but not anymore. He was even surprised Damian Huntly had shipped fifty-three copies. The note with the cheque had also amused him. ‘Now you’re back in Africa, how about a new book?’
“We’ll go down to Bretts,” said Will on the spur of the moment. He too had reached the end of his patience.
They had asked the army twice a month for news of Laurie Hall and no amount of enquiries led them to any settlers of land once owned by Tate & Lyle. Everyone looked blank in the estate agents and told him the Zambezi Valley was a war zone.
Shelley did her best with the make-up but most of her energy had been lost in the walks after their arrival at Salisbury Airport from London. The house had been sold in Wimbledon but Will would not tell her the price.
Will had often noticed that when things are going wrong in life, the wrongs reach the very bottom before they start coming right again. When he took his English royalty cheque to the Standard Bank in Cecil Square where he had originally deposited his Swiss franc-denominated traveller’s cheques, he was told that due to United Nations mandatory sanctions the only foreign currencies negotiable in Rhodesia were Swiss francs, Portuguese escudos and South African rands.
“We were going to Bretts tonight,” he told the teller with a shrug of resignation.
“Best nightclub in Rhodesia,” said the teller, passing back the non-cashable cheque. “Too bad.”
“All right, lover,” said Shelley outside. “He called the place a nightclub. Chances are they have never heard of me but these are desperate times. I’ve worked myself up to a good night out and we’re going to have one. We’ve got enough for a couple of beers out of our tight-arse budget?”
“Okay, Shelley, but the bar only opens at five o’clock.”
“So we wait until five o’clock. I haven’t had a drink for three months so what’s another couple of hours?”
The bar and nightclub were downstairs in the basement. At the bottom of the red-carpeted staircase they looked into the nightclub with its bandstand and well-laid tables and turned into the long room with the L shape.
They were the first customers. The barman set up their drinks, two very cold Lion Lagers, in the total silence. The light was dim except at the bar. There were mirrors round the room making it look larger than it was. Every piece of upholstery was a plush red and for the first time in years, Shelley Lane felt at home. She caught her reflection in the mirror. Her face was out of the bright light and reminded her of a face she had known some years before. Part of the light had created the old sheen that had made her black head of hair so different. The smell of the place reminded her of other days. From nowhere, notes of new music played softly in her mind.
“You got a pen?” she asked the barman, and on the back of her cigarette box Shelley drew some lines and filled in the music.
“What’s that?” asked Will. His mind had wandered far away in the bush.
“I don’t know,” said Shelley. “You got any music in this place?” she said to the barman. “You got a show tonight?”
“An Italian singer.”
“Any good?”
“Of course. This is Bretts.” He pushed a tape into a machine under the bar and the sound of Frank Sinatra filled the empty room.
“Pretty old stuff,” said Shelley.
“Sanctions,” said the barman. “No foreign exchange. Someone in Bulawayo is re-recording the best of the music we had on record before UDI.”
The bar began to fill with people from their offices and Will and Shelley were lost in the swelling crowd, left to their own thoughts, sipping the cold beer and smoking cigarettes. Neither of them spoke to each other.
A small man sat next to Shelley and ordered himself a drink, a regular customer familiar with the barman, looki
ng first at Shelley’s reflection in the wall mirror behind the rows of bottles and then at her face still dim in shadow. Shelley, aware of the look, leant forward into the light which picked out the streaks of white hair that mingled with black.
“I’m sorry,” he said, laughing, sure of himself again. “For a moment you looked just like the singer Shelley Lane.”
“Wait till you hear me sing,” said Shelley, joining with his laughter.
A Dean Martin number crooned its way to a close.
“You got that Shelley Lane?” said the small man to the barman. The bar was full of conversation, the low tables around the small room occupied by groups of friends, some of them in uniform. The barman changed the tape and Shelley heard her own voice fill the room.
“Sounded good in those days,” she said, leaning across to Will.
“You were the one that stopped. They never threw you out.”
“Think this place would give me a job?” she asked.
“Provided you don’t go back on the booze.”
“Buy me a beer, lover… I can remember your brother that first time. Took to the floor, did Byron, ‘I give you Shelley Lane’. I was so in love with the bastard I sang like a canary.”
“What are we going to do, Shelley?” asked Will.