‘Bloody skivers,’ said this man, whom Rose knew was her enemy as a woman. ‘They think they can get away with murder.’
Rose did not know what he was complaining of, and only said, in an all-purpose formula, ‘They’re all the same.’
‘Right on. Nothing to choose between any of them.’
Now Rose saw two black men, who had been at the back of the plane, being waved forward by an attendant through to Club Class–or perhaps even First.
‘Look at that! Throwing their weight around, as usual.’
Ideology demanded that Rose should protest, but she refrained: yes, this was one of the unregenerate whites, but there were nine hours ahead of close proximity.
‘If they spent less time showing off and more on running the country then that would be something.’
His arm and shoulder now threatened to oppress Rose.
‘Excuse me, but these are small seats.’ And she vigorously shoved him back in his seat with her shoulder. He opened half-shut eyes to stare. ‘You are taking up too much room.’
‘You’re not exactly a lightweight yourself,’–but he withdrew his arm.
Here supper was served, but he waved it away–‘I’m spoiled for good grub on my farm.’
She accepted the little tray, and began eating. She was sitting next to a white farmer. No wonder she loathed him. Again she wondered if she should insist on changing her seat. No, she would make use of this opportunity and see if she could get an article out of it. He was openly watching her eat. She knew she ate too much and decided to reject the fancy pudding.
‘Here, I’ll have that if you don’t want it,’ he said reaching out for the little glass of cream goo. And he had it swallowed in a gulp. ‘Not up to much,’ he said. A boor, as well. ‘I’m used to good grub. My wife’s a zinger. And my cook boy’s another.’
Cookboy.
‘So you’re well served,’ she said, using the political jargon of the moment.
‘Pardon?’ He knew she was criticising him but not what for. She decided not to bother. ‘And what do you do with yourself when you’re at home? And by the way, where is home, are you going back to it or leaving it?’
‘I’m a journalist.’
‘Oh, Christ, that’s all I needed. So I suppose you are planning another little article about the joys of black government?’
Her professionalism switched in and she said, ‘All right then, you talk.’
And he did. He talked. All around them went on the bustle of the meal service and drinks and duty free, and then the lights were switched off and still he talked. His name was Barry Angleton. He had farmed in Zimlia all his life and his father before him. They had just as much right as . . . and so on. Rose was not listening to his words, because by now she had understood she fancied him, though she most certainly disliked him, and that hot grumbling voice made her feel as if she were being dissolved in warm treacle.
Rose’s relations with men had been geared to misfortune, because of the times. She was, of course, a strict feminist. She had married in the late Seventies, a comrade met while demonstrating outside the American Embassy. He agreed to everything she said about feminism, men, the lot of women: he matched her, smiling, with formulations as progressive as hers, but she knew this was merely surface compliance, and that he did not really understand women or his fatal inheritance. She criticised him for everything and he went along with her, agreeing that thousands of years of delinquency could not be put right in a day. ‘I daresay you’ve got a point there, Rosie,’ he’d say, equably, with a little air of judicious assessment, as she ended a harangue that took in everything from bride-price to female circumcision. And he smiled. He always smiled. His fair, plump eager-to-please face infuriated her. She loathed him while she told herself that he was essentially good material. She was confused because, since she disliked almost everything, disliking her husband was not ground enough for self-examination, though she did sometimes wonder if her habit of keeping up irritated admonitions when they were in bed might possibly account for his becoming impotent. But the more he agreed with her, the more he smiled and nodded and took the words out of her mouth, the more she despised him. And when she demanded a divorce, he said, ‘Fair enough. You’re too good for me, Rosie. I’ve always said so.’
This man Barry–now that would be a different matter.
On the steps outside the airport building she saw him give money to a porter in a way that made her seethe, so commanding and lordly was it. Now, observing her with her big suitcase, looking about her for the car she had ordered, he strode over and said, ‘I’ll drop you in town.’ He heaved his case to stand with hers, and went off to the car park. In a moment a big Buick stood before her, the front door open. She got in. A black man had materialised and put her cases and his into the car. Barry dispensed more money.
‘I ordered a car.’
‘Too bad. He’ll find someone else.’
On the plane he had ended a perforation with, ‘Why don’t you come to the farm and see for yourself?’ and she had refused and now she was sorry she had. At this moment he said, ‘Come out to the farm and have breakfast.’
Rose was familiar with the approaches to the city of Senga, and thought it a tedious little place and full of self-importance. In fact what she really thought about Zimlia was the opposite of what she wrote about it. Only Comrade President Matthew had justified it, and now . . .
She hesitated, and said, ‘Why not?’
‘Why not she says, and expects an answer.’
They did not drive through the town but past it and were in the bush in a moment. Not everybody loves Africa, and, having left it, longs only to go back to an eternally smiling and beckoning promise. Rose knew that such people existed: how could she not, when the lovers of the continent are so vociferous, always talking as if their love were proof of an inner virtue? It was too big, for a start. There was a disproportion between the town–which called itself a city–and cultivation, and the wildness. Too much bloody bush and disorderly hills, and always the threat of an untoward dislocation of order. Rose had scarcely been out of the towns except for brief walks in a park. She liked pavements and pubs and town halls with people making speeches in them, and restaurants. Now she told herself it was a good thing that she was actually experiencing a white farm and a white farmer, though she could not of course write down his complaints, which were nearly all about the blacks, and that was simply not on. She could say, truthfully, that she was broadening her mind.
When they stopped outside a big raw brick-house in a clump of gum trees that she thought ugly, he remarked that she must go around to the front and up the steps and in, while he went to the kitchen to order breakfast. It was still only half past seven, a time when normally she would expect to sleep another hour. The sun stood high, it was hot, the colours were too bright, all scarlets and purples and strong greens and a pinkish dust lay about everywhere. Her shoes almost disappeared into it.
As he went off she had heard, ‘My wife’s away this week. I’ve got to organise the bloody kitchen myself.’ This had not sounded like an invitation to get into bed and skip the preliminaries. As she reached the top of the steps, and was on a verandah open on three sides that at first she thought was a still unfinished room, he appeared briefly to say, ‘There’s a bloody crisis with the barns. Go in and the boy’ll give you your breakfast. I’ll be with you shortly.’
She did not eat breakfast. She did not want any now. But she went into a big room which made her think it could do with some softening up, nice cushions perhaps?–and through it to a room where a large table stood, with an old black man, smiling.
‘Sit down, please,’ said this servitor and she sat down and saw all around her plates of eggs, bacon, tomatoes, sausages.
‘Do you have any coffee?’ she said to this servant, it being the first time in her life she had addressed one–a black one, that is.
‘Oh yes, please, coffee. I have coffee for the missus,’ said the old man eagerly an
d poured coffee which she was agreeably surprised to see coming strong from the silver spout.
She served herself an egg, and a curl of bacon, and then in strode the master. He flung down some bit of metal on to a chair, pulled out a chair with a scrape and sat.
‘Is that all?’ said Barry, despising her plateful and piling his. ‘Go on, force yourself.’
She took another egg and asked, knowing she did not sound as casual as she had intended, ‘And where is your wife, did you say?’
‘Gadding. Woman gad, didn’t you know?’
She smiled politely: she had understood some hours ago that feminist revolution had not reached everywhere in the world.
He piled on eggs and bacon, he drank cup after cup of coffee, then said he had to go around the farm to see what the kaffs had got up to while he was away. She should come too, and see for herself. At first she said no, but then yes, at his frowning stare. ‘Always hard to get,’ was his comment, but apparently without anything behind it. She would have liked it if he had said, Go into that room, you’ll find a bed, get into it and I’ll be along. Instead she spent some hours bumping in an old lorry from one point on the farm to another, where a group of blacks, or some mechanic or overalled person waited for him, and where he gave orders, argued, disagreed, gave in with, ‘Yeah, okay, you may be right, we’ll try it your way,’ or ‘For Christ’s sake look what you’ve done, I told you, I told you, didn’t I? Now do it again and get it right this time.’ She had no idea what she was seeing, what everyone was doing, and while smelly cows did appear, which she knew was to be expected on a farm, she did not understand anything at all and her head ached. Back at the house tea appeared when he clapped his hands. He was sweaty, his face was red and wet, he had grease on his sleeve: she was finding him irresistible, but he said he would bloody well have to go and do some paperwork, this government was killing them with paper, and could she look after herself until lunchtime. She sat on the verandah that was closed in around her by glare, on some reassuringly recognisable cretonne, and looked at magazines, from South Africa. Presumably his wife’s world: and hers, too.
An hour passed. Lunch. Meat, a lot of it. Rose did know that meat was politically incorrect, but she adored it and ate a lot.
Then she was sleepy. He was giving her looks that she thought might be interpreted as a come on but it seemed not, for he said, ‘I’m for a kip. Your room’s through there.’
With this he strode off in one direction, and she found her case standing on a stone floor beside a bed on which she fell and slept until she heard a loud clap of hands and the shout of ‘Tea’. She tumbled off the bed, and found Barry on the verandah, his long brown legs stretched out in front of him for what seemed like yards, in front of a tea tray.
‘I could sleep for a week,’ she said.
‘Oh, go on, you didn’t do too badly last night, snoring away on my shoulder.’
‘Oh, I didn’t . . .’
‘Yes, you did. Go on, pour. You be mother.’
Outside spread the African afternoon, all yellow glare and the songs of birds. There was dust on her hands, and on the floor of the verandah.
‘Bloody drought. It hasn’t rained properly on this farm for three years. The cattle aren’t going to last out if it doesn’t rain soon.’
‘Why this farm?’
‘Rain shadow. Didn’t know that when I bought it.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well, I hope you’re beginning to get the hang of it. Well, at least if you’re going to go back and write that we are a lot of Simon Legrees you’ll have taken the trouble to see for yourself.’
She did not know who Simon Legree was, but supposed that, logically, he must be a bit of a white racist. ‘I’m doing my best.’
‘And no one can do better than that.’
He was fidgeting again, and up he jumped. ‘I’m going to have a look at the calves. Want to come?’
She knew she should say yes, but said she would stay and sit.
‘Pity my better half isn’t here. You’d have someone to gossip with.’
Off he went, and returned as the dark came down. Supper. Then there was the radio news where he swore at the black announcer for mispronouncing a word, and then said, ‘Sorry, I’ve got to get my head down. I’m all in.’ And off he went to bed.
And that was how a stay of what turned out to be five days went on. Rose lay awake in her bed and hoped that the sounds she heard were his feet moving stealthily towards her, but no such luck. And she did go around the farm with him, and did try to take in what she could. During the course of conversations which always seemed to be too brief and curtailed by some urgency or other, all of them dramatic in a way that seemed–surely?–excessive–a broken-down tractor, a bush fire, a gored cow–she had learned that her old pal Franklin was ‘one of the worst of that gang of thieves’, and that her idol Comrade Matthew was as corrupt as they come, and had as much idea of running a country as he, Barry Angleton, had of running the Bank of England. She dropped the name Sylvia Lennox, but while he had heard of her, all he knew was that she was with the missionaries in Kwadere. He added that once, when he was a kid, no one had a good word for the missionaries, who were educating the kaffs above their station, but now people were beginning to think, and he agreed with them, mind you, that it was a pity they hadn’t been educated all the way, because a few properly educated kaffs were what the country needed. Well, you live and learn.
His wife did not return while Rose was there, though she telephoned with a message for her husband.
‘Good thing you’re there,’ said this complacent wife, ‘give him something to think about beside himself and the farm. Well, men are all the same.’
This remark, in the time-honoured words of the feminist complaint, but so far from the sophistications of Rose’s women’s group, allowed her to reply that men were the same the whole world over.
‘Anyway, tell my old man that I’m going over to Betty’s this afternoon and I’m bringing back one of her puppies.’ She added: ‘And now you just be fair to us for once and write something nice.’
Barry received this news with, ‘Well, she’d better not think that dog is going to sleep on our bed the way the last one did.’
The next stop on Rose’s itinerary, which had been planned to be the first, had not Fate and Barry Angleton intervened, was an old friend of Comrade Johnny’s, Bill Case, who had been a South African communist, had been in jail, had fled to take refuge in Zimlia, and to continue his career in law, speaking for the underdog, the poor, the maltreated who were turning out to be more or less the same under a black government as under a white one. Bill Case was famous, and a hero. Rose was looking forward to hearing from him at last, ‘the truth’ about Zimlia.
As for Barry, for whom she would have parted her legs any time, the most she got out of him in that way was his remark when he dropped her in town that if he wasn’t a married man he would ask her out to lunch. But she recognised it as a gallantry as routine as his, ‘So long. Be seeing you.’
Bill Case . . . about the South African communists under apartheid it has to be said first that few people have ever been as brave, few have fought oppression more wholeheartedly–wait, though: at the very same time the dissidents in the Soviet Union were confronting the communist tyranny with equal dedication. Rose had dealt with the problem of how the Soviet Union was turning out by not thinking about it: it wasn’t her responsibility, was it? And she had not been in Bill Case’s house an hour before she learned this was his attitude too. For years he had claimed that the Soviet Union was a new civilisation which had for ever abolished the old inequalities, race prejudice for the present purpose being the most relevant. And now even in the provinces, which is where Senga was situated, capital city or not, it was being admitted that the Soviet Union was not what it had been cracked up to be. Not admitted of course by the black government, committed to the glories of communism. But Bill was not talking about that great failed dream, but a local one: Rose w
as hearing from him what she had been listening to for days from Barry Angleton. At first she thought Bill was amusing himself and her by parodying what he must know she had been hearing, but no, his complaints were as real and as detailed and angry as the farmer’s. The white farmers were badly treated, they were the scapegoat for every government failure, and yet they had to provide the foreign currency, they were being taxed unfairly, what a pity this country had allowed itself to become the little arselicker and lackey of the World Bank and the IMF and Global Money!
During those days Rose finally understood something painful: she had backed the wrong horse with Comrade Matthew. She was going to have to climb down, retrack, do something to recover her reputation. It was too soon for her to write an article describing the Comrade Leader as he deserved: after all her last eulogy had been only three months ago. No, she would sidetrack, find a little diversion, use another target.
From Bill Case’s house she moved to Frank Diddy’s, the amiable editor of The Zimlia Post, a friend of Bill’s. The easy hospitality of Africa appealed to her: it was winter in London, and she was living free. The Post, she knew, was despised by anyone of intelligence–well, most of the country citizens. Its editorials all went something like this: ‘Our great country has successfully overcome another minor difficulty. The power station failed last week, due to the demands of our rapidly growing economy, and, it is being said, to the efforts of South African secret agents. We must never relax our vigilance against our enemies. We must never forget that our Zimlia is the focus for attempts at de-stabilisation of our successful socialist country. Viva Zimlia.’
Frank Diddy, she discovered, regarded this kind of thing as a sop thrown out to appease the government watchdogs who suspected him and his colleagues of ‘writing lies’ about the country’s progress. The journalists of The Post had not had an easy time of it since Liberation. They had been arrested, kept without charges, released, rearrested, threatened, and the heavies of the secret police, known in the offices of The Post simply as ‘The Boys’, dropped in to the newspaper’s offices and the journalists’ homes threatening arrest and imprisonment at the slightest signs of recalcitrance. As for the rest, the truth about Zimlia, she heard the same as at Barry Angleton’s and at Bill Case’s.
The Sweetest Dream Page 41
