Vultures in the Wind

by Peter Rimmer

  “I miss him, too.”

  “You sentimental old boy. Have another whisky. I have three cases locked in the cupboard. When I was a boy scout they told us always to be prepared.”

  It was not often that Archie Fletcher-Wood had the chance of taking a drink in public on his own. He was still known as Archie, despite his mother’s insistence that he call himself Archibald to measure up to his wealth. It was his fiftieth birthday, a secret he kept with his mother, who now lived in South Africa, supported by her son. It was a situation with which Archie had no quarrel: it was a son’s responsibility and pleasure.

  The snag was she still treated him as a child and wanted to mother him. Her memory was going and, though he had sent her a bunch of flowers, a custom on his birthday started by his father to thank his mother for the pain she had suffered in giving him birth, she had not realised the significance. And Archie, turned fifty, wanted to be on his own to think back on his life and wonder where he had gone wrong and where he had gone right.

  He had chosen the small, dark bar in the old Rosebank Hotel on Oxford Road, a one-star establishment that would not expect to entertain the joint CEO of the seventeenth largest conglomerate in the country. He had gone home to his Sandown flat, changed into old clothes and sat at the bar without a tie to hamper his momentary freedom. It was a Friday night, and he was not going into the office in the morning; he was going to get a little drunk and enjoy himself like he had done in the old days before circumstances made him a big shot and it became a social and business crime to be found in a bar on his own. He had left his money on the bar for the barman to pick up.

  “Put in another, Mister Barman.”

  “You celebrating?”

  “Matter of fact, I am… You always so quiet in here?”

  “This old hotel’s going to fall down round my head.”

  “You been here a long time?”

  “Twenty-seven years. Since nineteen fifty. We were a smart place in those days. You visiting?”

  “Yes… It’s my birthday. You want to have a drink with a man of fifty?”

  “Why not? Let’s get started.” The man had a broad southern Irish accent, even after so many years. He was short, very short, but Archie suspected it would not be anyone’s good idea to pick a fight or misbehave in this man’s bar. “A touch of the Mist. Charge you the same as whisky. Irish Mist You want to try one?”

  “Why not?”

  “One Mist, one Scotch. Your good health.” The barman downed his drink that he had soaked in cubes of ice, and began to polish the bar. The third round, the barman announced, was on him, and Archie let it go, not wanting to break the spell. It was like drinking with a very old friend, the best kind of drinking companion who never had a memory the following morning, never told you how much rubbish you had been talking with so much affected wisdom.

  When a woman on her own walked into the bar, they were both disappointed, but the professional in the barman brightened up for the customer.

  “What’ll it be?” he asked her.

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Irish Mist and then a whisky. Kind of ring the changes.”

  “Then give me the same,” she ordered.

  “A Mist or a whisky?”

  “Both.” She was probably in her late forties; and might have been good looking in her youth. She had green eyes with yellow flecks in them, and she did not look as if she could afford a cheap drink, let alone the most expensive.

  “Have them on me,,,. it’s my birthday,” Archie offered. The woman was looking at him with soft eyes, the yellow flecks dull and warm.

  “That’ll be kind of you. Am I interrupting anything?”

  “I was thinking of getting a little drunk and the barman was helping me out. It’s my fiftieth birthday.”

  “Fifty must be a real bitch… Cheers. Two years and I’m forty.”

  Both the barman and Archie tried not to look surprised. The third member of the bar looked as if a few years had gone by since she had turned forty. Archie pushed himself round to give her a better look.

  “It may sound a silly line at fifty, but don’t I know you from somewhere?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Archie waited but the woman lifted her whisky glass. She had put down the Mist in three gulps. Looked as if she needed a drink.

  “I didn’t…”

  “No, you didn’t even take me out.”

  “Well; that’s something. A friend of a friend, so to speak.”

  “So to speak.” The woman was smiling at him – almost laughing it seemed to the barman.

  “Give us all another round, Mister Barman,” requested Archie.

  “Let’s get started,” said the barman, for the second time.

  Archie was halfway to being nicely drunk and he stopped exercising his brain to work out when he had seen the lady before… What did it matter?

  It was his birthday and he did not have to stand on ceremony. He and the barman continued their reminiscences and new drinks, by which time both Archie and the barman were drunk but did not show it. The woman broke into their confidences.

  “I’d buy you both a drink but I don’t have no money.” With the drink inside the woman, Archie made out a strong cockney accent but was too drunk to give it a care in the world. More interestingly, the woman was beginning to look pretty.

  “My name’s Archie.”

  “I know,” she replied.

  “Then you know who I am?”

  “If you mean, I know you can afford to buy drinks… You can afford to buy the hotel, for that matter, but I don’t see anyone wanting to do that with two customers, even if they are drinking two at a time.”

  “Mister Barman, be kind enough to order me a taxi.” Archie turned back to the woman. “Would you care to have dinner with me?”

  “Where do you wish to dine, sir?” asked the barman, enjoying the joke.

  “I think the Balalaika. The food isn’t what it was in Firth’s day, but it’ll do. And it’s close to my flat and I can walk home. My good buddy, please keep the keys to my car and take off the Yale so I can get in to my flat…” He turned to the woman again. “What is your name?”

  “Poppy.”

  “Well, Poppy. How about celebrating a birthday with an old man of fifty?”

  The barman chipped in again. “They won’t let you in without a tie.”

  “Then lend me a tie and look after my car.”

  “Which one is your car, sir?”

  “It’s the Rolls Royce parked outside your front door in the loading zone. Better move it in the morning before the cops give it a ticket,” Archie added.

  “You mean the one parked next to my Cadillac?”

  “Didn’t see a Caddy when I came in. You always park in the loading zone?”

  “Always. Now let’s all have one on me,” smiled the barman.

  “You are a gentleman and a scholar.”

  “Make mine a single,” said the woman. “I’ve got out of the drinking habit… You don’t know who I am, do you, Archie? Have I really changed that much?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Archie assured her. “We’ll have a night on the town. You won’t have to worry if you don’t want to worry… Mister Barman, why don’t you close the bar and come with us? It’s been a wonderful evening, wonderful.”

  “Two’s company… You can watch the bar while I go to the John.”

  “Will be my pleasure… And hurry up with the taxi. I’ve decided I’m hungry.”

  The woman was now looking at him with sad eyes. “You sure you can make it, Archie? Don’t want me to take you home?”

  “Have it your own way.”

  “Be Jesus,” said the barman, coming back into the bar.

  “There’s a bloody great roller parked outside the front door.”

  “I told you. It’s my car. You’ve got the keys in your pocket.”

  “Who wants a taxi?” called a man from reception.

  “Come along, Poppy. The night is
but a pup.”

  When the barman closed his mouth and his two customers had left his bar, he found a fifty rand note tucked under his glass. It made him feel sad, old and lonely. He waited another half an hour but no one else came into the bar.

  It was only in the morning when the sun was streaming through his bedroom window, waking him up, that Archie realised who was lying naked in the bed next to him, fast asleep.

  “Sunny. Sunny Tupper. Poppit Tupper. I’ll be damned. And I haven’t enjoyed an evening as much for years.”

  “Neither have I,” said the lady next to him. She was smiling, the yellow flecks in her green eyes less prominent in the sunlight.

  “Do you have anywhere else to stay?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’d better stay here.”

  “I’d like that, Archie. And not just ’cause you drive a roller.”

  “You didn’t even mention Matt all evening.”

  “He’s dead?” A vacant look came over Poppy’s face, as if she were trying to forget.

  “I’m not so sure. Not so sure. Fact is I think I know where he is. Have for some months. But I don’t see why I should blow his cover if that’s how he wants it. I’ve had to come to terms with my own life… You want some coffee? Then you can tell me what really happened after Matt walked out on you, and I’ll tell you what happened after he walked out on me and Lucky. Do you miss him?”

  “Yes.”

  “So do I,” admitted Archie. “He was quite a man, Matthew Gray. Maybe he still is.”

  “Why don t we go and ask him?”

  “He’s married, Sunny. Has a daughter: They called her Peace.”

  “Does he love his wife?” asked Poppy unable to keep the wistfulness from her voice.

  “Very much so.”

  “Then we’d better leave all of them in peace. We can’t always rely on Matt to make us happy.” She gently pulled him down to her and kissed him on the lips.

  “You knew I was in that bar.”

  “I followed you. My last few rands went into an old mini.”

  “It’s twenty years since you walked into Gray’s. We had some real laughs in those days.” Now it was Archie’s turn to look wistful.

  “We will again.”

  “Maybe. But not the same. Youth is very special.” Archie’s eyes were looking a long way back into the past.

  Frikkie Swart found out about his wife’s sexual habits six weeks after they were married. Unlike her first husband he did not take kindly to his wife screwing around. He beat her up.

  “This marriage (BANG!) was a marriage (BANG!) of your father’s convenience (BANG!), but it also included me (BANG!).” The slaps had turned to fists and the pain had increased with each successive blow releasing in Helena a sexual excitement far greater than she had ever felt before.

  “Make love to me Frik. Do it for God s sake.” Between blows she pulled off his trousers and grabbed at his genitals. When she got off her own pants, it was too much for Frik and he gave it to her with all the pent-up frustration of too many years. When he had finished, she lay bleeding from the nose and mouth, but she was satisfied for the first time in her life.

  “Frik darling that was marvellous.”

  “You’d better go and wash up in the bathroom.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I catch you screwing that tennis player, I’ll kill you.”

  “Please,” gasped Helena, shuddering in masochistic delight.

  “I mean it.”

  “That’s what’s so exciting.”

  Whilst Helena was washing up in the bathroom Hector was looking at his ex-wife’s handwriting. The letter reached him at his office in Maputo delivered to the mail box and collected by a member of his staff. The envelope was thick and had been registered in Pretoria.

  “What does the bitch want now? She’s not getting any money out of me.” He took the letter opener off his desk and ripped open the envelope causing his desk to explode and making his right hand come away from his arm. The blast shattered the windows in the office across the road. Hector stared at the stump of his arm, blood gushing.

  “The bitch tried to kill me.” They were the last words he spoke for a week, and would have been his last on earth without the genius of an East German surgeon who operated on the stump of his arm half an hour after the blast. The effects of the letter bomb were devastating.

  The agric-alert went off in the police station, but there was no one left to react. The army were eighty kilometres away at Sipolilo; the elderly sergeant cranked the hand phone and ten minutes later got a call through to Major Calucci at the army base.

  “Eleven contacts tonight. Can’t cope. Latest Horseshoe Block,” and he gave the major the co-ordinates. “They’re still calling for help.”

  “Take an hour but we go… Lieutenant Holland, get your arse into gear. Farm attack. Take two trucks and ten men. Go. The farmer’s kept them off so far. Dawn light in seven hours. Someone’s co-ordinating these bastards.”

  They could hear the gunfire half an hour later and see the enemy tracer. The farm’s compound was on fire and a row of tobacco barns were burning with the farmer’s bulk shed and half his tobacco crop. At full speed, Jonathan took his men down the dirt road that led off the tar. Corporal James Bell was driving the lead Land Rover, and the friends were racing each other.

  “Get ahead of him,” ordered Jonathan.

  “I can’t,” said his driver. “He won’t let me.”

  “Faster, man.”

  “This bloody road’s got more potholes than road.” They were bouncing half out of the open vehicle. “Farmhouse is still returning fire. Someone’s firing back from the compound.”

  They could see the tracer from automatic FN rifle fire. A rocket exploded somewhere inside the house and blew off a part of the roof, sending the thatch into a gush of white flames. “Shit!”

  They drove on at full speed, the lead vehicle thirty metres ahead and kicking up a wall of dust as it slewed into the road leading to the farm buildings. Then a violent explosion shot the Land Rover into the air, scattering pieces into the farmer’s ploughed land through the avenue of jacaranda trees, and Jonathan’s driver careered from side to side before slamming sideways into one of the tree trunks.

  “Driver! Look to Jim’s landy. Come on. Open the door. The terrs are on this side.” Heading his five men, three of his own and two from the destroyed Land Rover, Jonathan went on the attack across the ploughed field. They worked their way forward under darkness, picking out the flashpoints of the terrorists attacking the house.

  Nearer the house, Jonathan shot off a Very light, turning the night into day. “RLI!” he shouted to the farmer, and opened fire. The terrorists were caught between the farmhouse and the road, and were shot down as they ran. All the time, Jonathan was desperate to get back to the Land Rover, hoping against hope that Jim had somehow survived. But he had his duties to do first.

  By the time the flare went out, the contact was over. The farmer, his wife and their ten-year-old daughter were alive and unhurt inside the burning house. There were two dead terrorists on the wire, blown up by a claymore, exploded by the farmer from inside the farmhouse in the initial attack. Two more were dead on the lawn next to the swimming pool.

  Back in the avenue of jacaranda trees, James Bell was dead, killed instantly by the land mine that had been triggered by the right-hand wheel just in front of him. In the compound, the guard force of blacks armed by the farmer to protect themselves had killed a fifth terrorist.

  Inside the compound of thatched huts, most of them burning, it was carnage. The terrorists had vent most of their firepower on their fellow blacks, the sell-outs who worked for whites. The young and innocent had taken the brunt of the agony.

  Jonathan waited with his friend until dawn, when a helicopter arrived to take the body to Salisbury for burial. He felt a lot older than his twenty-three years, and utterly hollow inside. Maybe, he thought, they should have stayed in England. During a brief
moment in the middle of the night, he had lost his friend and his youth.

  “Ground control, this is green leader. Do not allow aircraft to take off or land. I repeat: do not allow aircraft to take off or land. We are in control of your air space.” The air traffic controller at Lusaka airport stared at his radar console control that was showing more bleeps on the screen than it had ever done before, when no aircraft were scheduled for landing. Above, the scream of jets could be heard outside the tower and helicopters were landing on the runway, troops disgorging before the choppers had touched the tarmac. Then the land phones began to ring.

  “Ground control, this is green leader. Do you hear me?’

  “I hear you, green leader. There’s an aircraft due from Luanda in half an hour. What do I do?”

  “Send him back or we will shoot down the aircraft. I repeat no aircraft to take off or land. Do I make myself clear?”

  Luke heard the aircraft in the night sky from the flat he had shared with Chelsea for so many years and went to the window, throwing it wide. Two storeys below, cars were being stopped by men in military uniform, and armoured cars were parked alongside the road, with more military vehicles turning into the road. Taking three big strides, he was back in the room with the phone in his hand, dialling the police station, cold fear clearing his brain with the surge of adrenalin.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he asked when the phone was answered.

  “This is Luke Mbeki.”

  “Rhodesian air force have taken the airport, that we do know.”

  “There are troops in the street outside my window.”

  “Not ours, sir. Must be Rhodesian.”

  “What the hell are you doing about them?”

  “Nothing, sir. What can we do? They have helicopter gunships. Armoured cars. You do something.” Luke put down the phone. Back at the window, he looked down on an armoured car parked outside the entrance to the block of flats. Then he understood.

  Back at the phone, he dialled another number, the number known only to the Zambian president, the ZIPRA commander and himself. “Mister Nkomo. Get out of your house. Through the back. The Rhodesian army have invaded to take out our leaders. GET OUT!”