by Peter Rimmer
“Is that another test?”
“You’ve passed the test. I wanted to see if you really needed your job. The people I have liked best in my business are those who need something badly. The ‘here today’ and ‘gone tomorrow’ are no good to anyone.”
“Bourbon. Learnt it from the Yanks during the war.”
“Anything with it, don’t want to ruin a good bourbon?”
“Just as it is, Mr Langton.”
“Byron, please. You’re old enough to be my father. And talking of fathers, my father sends his regards.”
Immediately, Heath thought of Josephine but that did not fit. He wanted to keep Josephine out of the conversation. Brothers were unpredictable and jumped to wrong conclusions. He took the drink, his hand shaking badly.
“Group Captain Red Langton,” said Byron, watching the drink shake all the way to the man’s lips.
“He’s your father?”
“Yes, he is.”
“I covered the dropping of the bomb!”
“After making up my mind, I found out your history and I apologise for my first impression of you which was wrong. You have quite a record as a war correspondent. Dad says you flew with him once on a raid over Germany. You said you couldn’t write about it, give your readers reality, without experience. Father’s crew were rather impressed. You’d better have another drink with me.”
Byron turned to the small bar next to his bookcase.
“I want you to be my roving ambassador in Africa, reporting to me first and then writing for the Garnet. There are a lot of wars in Africa and my information has it there will be a lot more. What I want you to tell me when you come back at regular intervals is who is going to win in each of these tinpot countries. Which politicians and which generals. And I want you to make up a file on each one of them. Better, I want you to get to know them and mention my name if they need any help in their pursuit of freedom.”
Outside in the street, Heath looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to six, and the pubs were open again at six, the idea of afternoon closing being to stop the likes of Heathcliff Mortimer drinking all day long. The sun was still warm and the rich smell of cooked tarmac underlay the fumes of London traffic. The rush hour had left the City for suburbia, only the wise taking a drink after work while the rabbits scuttled home to their burrows. It was a nice day to be in the country.
The walk to his favourite club in Greek Street, just far enough away from Fleet Street and the newspaper bars, brought him outside the Green Dolphin as the door swung open. Heath smiled. He believed in omens. The door to his life was still open. By the time he reached the bar, Francis the barman had poured a double Southern Comfort.
“You been sick, Heath?” asked the barman.
“Off the booze.”
The drinks in the Langton Merchant Bank had stopped his hands shaking, and the drink came off the glass smoothly to join his welcome lips.
“You got to be kidding,” said Francis. Francis had been a gentleman’s gentleman and Heath thought him probably queer but what the hell, he poured a good tot. Heath gave him a smile and finished the drink.
“Thirsty tonight,” said Francis.
The second drink was poured without asking and with Heath staring into space, the barman walked off down the duckboards to the far end of the bar where he began to polish the glasses. There was no one else in the pub. The drink had cleared his head. ‘Find out who’s backing him,’ the editor of the Evening Garnet had said. ‘What the hell does he want to see you for? Me, I could understand. No one has ever heard of Byron Langton. Came from nowhere but no one comes from nowhere. Find out. Didn’t you say you knew his twin sister?’
Heath sipped his drink and put it back on the bar. Red Langton had no money. Neither had Josephine. Josephine was thirty-two, so he knew the boy’s age. And why pick on Heathcliff Mortimer for special attention? There were plenty of old drunks in the newspaper business. Heath was sure the connection was not Red Langton, the Lancaster bomber pilot, or Josephine Langton, the social activist. He knew for certain, from years of writing people’s stories, that the interview just finished had nothing to do with Lord Manningly or what used to be his newspaper. Looking down the long bar at Francis polishing the glasses Heath had a flash of insight into what it would be like being a manservant and thought the job appealing. There was only one man to keep happy and little need to think. There was a lot to be said for not having to think in life.
Heath thought about the new job some more. What the hell, he thought again. If the young man’s a crook, old farts like Heathcliff Mortimer should not be worrying. The trip to the old Belgian Congo might be dangerous but at his age nobody wanted to live forever. The only friends left were Southern Comfort and the odd bottle of good red wine when his liver felt patient. Everything else was a memory. Women were gone and there were no children he knew about. It was fun to be out with a reporter on the town but both of his wives had grown bored with his lifestyle of odd hours and too much booze. Life, he thought, never did come to any conclusion and Africa would give him something to do. Byron Langton would pick up his expenses. Maybe he would lose some weight in the tropics. He hadn’t seen his best friend for ten years, except in the mirror. ‘Shit, what a life’ he thought, and raised his glass. The glass, as usual, was empty.
The bar had filled up while he was thinking.
“Used to know your new boss when he was a kid,” said Francis. “You want another drink, Mr Mortimer?”
“Which boss are you talking about?”
“Mr Langton. Came in here often with the gaffer’s son.”
“What do you know about him?” asked Heath, his mind quickly clear and professional.
“Ask Mr Johnny. He and Mr Langton have been friends a long time.”
“Does young Mr Langton know Jack Pike?”
“Of course… You want to pay now or are you having another one?… What’s the matter, Mr Mortimer? Did I say something funny?”
“You ever seen a penny drop?”
“Sometimes off the bar.”
“Give me another drink.”
“You talk to Johnny often when he’s in the bar,” said Francis.
“I know, Francis… You ever hear of Léopoldville?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Or the Republic of the Congo?”
“No.”
“They’re in Africa.”
“I’ve heard of Africa,” said the barman.
The Continental Hotel in the city centre of Léopoldville had been built by the Belgians in colonial days. Even then the mosquitoes were the size of a half-crown. Since independence three years before, when the whites had run for their lives, not very much had been done outside of fighting. The Soviet-backed President Lumumba had been killed and replaced by the general backed by the Americans. The Cold War was being fought right across Africa with no regard for the Africans. The prize was strategic minerals and the argument between Russia and America, both dirty and vicious. All the ideological claptrap was as misleading in its purpose as the Christian mission in the previous century. The two big powers wanted once again to come up Africa, this time in the name of communism or democracy. Heath, having done his homework before leaving London, saw the same pursuit of spheres of influence that had motivated the old colonial powers. Nothing had ever changed in the world and Heath was not sure it ever would. Only the quicksand shifted position.
Having pulled the chain in his upstairs room and activated a rat the size of a cat that had fallen with a soggy thud at his feet and shot out the bathroom door, Heath had chased the rodent from under his bed and into the corridor. Having checked the skirting boards for rat holes he had taken a shower, put on a clean shirt and taken the stairs down to the bar, the idea of being trapped in a confined lift less appealing than the rat. ‘Welcome to Africa,’ he said to himself, running the rules back through his mind. Water out of sealed bottles. Anti-malaria pills every day. A big hat for the sun. Salt pills to counter the heat. Not to pa
ddle in the bilharzia-riddled rivers or what was left of his liver would be eaten away by the parasites that lived in the river snails and climbed through a man’s skin down to his liver or up to his brain. Never walk anywhere after dark. All wild animals are dangerous.
The bar was down seven steps from the lifts on the left. Fans revolved under the ceiling and the bar was full. The whores, long-legged and delicious to look at, sat at the tables one step down from the bar. One girl wearing a pair of tiny shorts looked particularly beautiful, and Heath sighed for his old age. The girl caught his eye, hers smouldering with a mixture of resentment and commercial need. He would not have embarrassed her with the fat around his body or the whisky breath that soured his mouth. He would have liked to have sat and talked, maybe. There was nothing else left any more, only the memories. She got his eye-spoken message, tucked her long black legs back under the table and turned to her friend, boredom shuttering her eyes. Heath eased his fat backside up onto a stool, adjusting his position for maximum long-term comfort, and ordered a drink. Three of the white men were in mercenary uniforms and speaking French to each other. They were all over forty. The bar was well stocked and the downward draft from the fan pleasant on his shirt, drying the sweat he had made walking down the stairs.
The barman spoke English, which was a blessing. Most of the mercenaries in the Congo, he learnt, were from South Africa. To the white South Africans, they were on a real mission, holding back the tide of communism. The Americans used them when they thought it necessary.
After the second drink he turned round from his bar stool. The beautiful whore had gone. Looking down the bar, so had one of the French-speaking mercenaries.
“What are you doing here, you fat old bastard?”
Turning back the other way, he was confronted by a Fleet Street writer from the London Times.
They got drunk together, having a good time talking about old times.
When Heath went up to his room to sleep he had forgotten the girl in the bar and the rat drinking from his toilet cistern.
In every bar in Léopoldville that was safe for a white man, Heath spread the word. His friend from the Times took him on the rounds, day and night. Everybody, including the mercenaries, were waiting for something to happen.
The thin, tall black man was smooth, well dressed, and fluent in French with discordant notes. He had tribal scars on his face and a missing pinkie from his left hand. The man was too casual in his approach to be a coincidence. Heath had spoken to strangers in bars for forty years and knew the lonely conversationalist, the drunk wanting company, the whore, young and old. He also knew when a man wanted something.
They got over the preliminaries, buying each other drinks, which was a red flag in post-colonial Africa. The tall, thin man was the first indigenous acquaintance to buy Heath a drink.
Byron had told Heath to tell everyone who would listen that Byron Langton, owner of the Evening Garnet with columns syndicated around the free world, and founder of Langton Merchant Bank that specialised in helping the Third World, was a dedicated socialist who abhorred colonialism and was ready to help the new emergent Africa.
Within half an hour the black man was offering Heath uncut diamonds provided the proceeds were paid into a European bank.
“Look,” Heath said in French, “I don’t know who you are. I expect uncut diamonds are illegal. How do you know the money will be yours to collect in Europe?”
“Merchant banks have ways to guarantee payment.”
“Who are you?”
“We have heard Mr Langton is doing business in Zambia.”
“Who do you represent?”
“The people who will control the future government. There is no point capturing the diamond mines, the copper mines in Katanga if we are unable to control the flow of money the mines generate. Will you set up a meeting in London with your Mr Langton and our mining commissar?”
“Are you a communist?” asked Heath, casually but very quietly.
“Does it matter?”
“Not really.”
Heath stayed on in Léopoldville for two more weeks but no one outside the world of journalism made any contact. He had given the tall, thin man Byron’s home phone number and left it at that. Feeling distinctly like a pimp, Heath caught an aircraft to Johannesburg and London, reporting to Byron the following Monday morning.
When Heath bought his copy of the Evening Garnet that night he did not recognise his own newspaper. The headline, trivial and of little consequence, was four inches high and right across the page.
TORY SEX SCANDAL.
There was little else on the subject in the smaller print and the photograph of a half-nude buxom lady on the same page had nothing to do with the main story.
The following week advertising rates went up twenty-five per cent: the circulation had doubled. At the end of the week, the editor announced the paper would be published as a morning tabloid. Heath never knew there were so many buxom ladies in all of England.
By the time the Christmas lights went up in Regent Street, Langton Newspapers were out of the red and Heath Mortimer had made two more visits to Africa while none of his articles had appeared in the newly named Daily Garnet.
“Forget about newspaper articles,” Byron snapped. “You and I are in a much bigger league. You have analysed Africa as a cesspool of war, corruption and genocide. You say the turmoil will last well into the next century and may never stop without a form of recolonisation. You tell me the only secure places you visited were the producing mines. If I printed what is probably the truth, I’d be accused of being so out of touch the opposition would ridicule my newspaper. The fact that everyone in the world is running in the wrong direction is not my problem. Money is made from the facts, the truth, not wishful thinking. Except when it comes to newspapers. Then you tell the readers what they want to hear and everyone runs off joyously in the wrong direction. Maybe someday when we have used up all your knowledge to our advantage, we will put these articles into a book. You could even write yourself a novel. Oh, and happy Christmas.”
“What’s this for?” said Heath, taking the cheque.
“Your Christmas bonus. Haven’t you lost some weight?”
“Twenty pounds.”
“There you are.”
Byron drove the car with the hood down. Once past the built-up area of London the Bentley 3 Litre built up speed, the deep-throated roar of the engine vibrating the steering wheel. The Saturday morning before Christmas was crisp and cold, a thin sun washing the grass and trees of Box Hill. The car was the original from which the miniature on Byron’s desk had been modelled. Once on the Dorking bypass, the car picked up speed to ninety miles an hour. Byron felt good and put his leather-gloved hand on the knee of the girl in the passenger seat. They were both dressed in thick clothes, only their mouths and noses exposed to the elements.
Lady Fiona Renwick was the second daughter of the Marquis of Bathurst and the fifth cousin of the Queen of England. Through her mother she was related to the King of Norway, the future King of Spain and the last Tsar of all Russia. Her pedigree was exemplary and her father was still rich. She was twenty-two years old, ten years younger than Byron. She had been launched into society four years earlier without any subsequent success. To look at she was a very ordinary girl with an ordinary round face, straight hair to shoulder length that was neither blonde nor brown but, depending on the light, somewhere in between. To her mother and father’s mild surprise, Fiona had finished her A levels and, after the season that had seen her coming out at a ball given by her father at their country seat in Scotland, she had taken a degree in English literature at Edinburgh University where she had obtained a First. She had met Byron through his newspaper before it was changed to a tabloid. Lord Manningly had been at Harrow with her father and the job interview had been arranged a week before the company was sold. Manningly, remembering his obligation to an old school friend, had made a telephone call to Byron, recommending the girl for a job.
“Do you know the young lady, Lord Manningly?” Byron had asked.
“Not really but I went to school with her father. First-class chap. Knew her mother before she married Bathurst. She was quite a gal, I recall. If the blood’s right, everything else is right, young man.”
Byron had smiled, put down the phone and called for her curriculum vitae which gave the girl’s pedigree in full detail. The job interview was set with a sub-editor and Byron made sure he was in the building when the girl arrived, watching her at reception through the glass partition. She was what he had hoped to look at, neither pretty nor ugly. No one could ever have guessed her bloodline. Byron made his move.
“Hello. My name’s Byron Langton. Your father gave Lord Manningly a call and he passed on the message. Why don’t we go out and have some coffee?”
“What on earth for?”
“Because I own the newspaper.”
They had stared hard at each other for a brief moment before she laughed. The laugh was pleasant.
The Bentley drove through the Surrey countryside into Hampshire where they stopped for lunch before driving on to Dorset and Langton Manor. For the first time in his life, Byron was taking a girl home to meet his mother and father. It was one of the few things in his life for which he required not only his mother’s approval but her judgement. To Byron, a man marrying a woman for life that he temporarily lusted over was plain stupid.
Josephine had arrived at Corfe Castle the previous night, alone much to her mother’s dismay. Randolph and Anna had met her at the station. All except Hilary’s family and Will would be at Langton Manor for Christmas.
Red Langton watched his wife waiting for her prospective daughter-in-law and wanted to laugh. He was fifty-six years old and not unhappy with his life, the horror of the war years sometimes keeping him awake in the night. Adelaide, his wife, wanted grandchildren. It was an obsession. She wanted something more to do than run the house and watch him go to sleep in front of the evening fire, or outside under the oak tree in the twilight of a hot summer day. They were content with each other, deep in a comfortable rut. Red left it to his wife to worry about a generation of grandchildren. The farm was running smoothly, the farmhouse roof did not leak. His favourite bitch had given birth to seven pups. Randolph, his eldest son, was easy to work with and Anna had never created a discordant note from the day she came to live at Langton Manor. Red Langton was at peace with himself.
