by Peter Rimmer
The morning after Byron arrived in his pre-war tourer, cold but invigorated, Josephine behaved charmingly. She had been to the hairdresser in London and even discarded the horn-rimmed glasses she had taken to wearing to make her look more severe and liberated. She was even polite to Fiona right through the morning. Christmas Day was to be on the Wednesday.
Before lunch, the family gathered in the lounge next to the fireplace. Red Langton had just shown Fiona the spreading oak tree on the terrace that he told her had been planted with an acorn by the first Langton of Langton Manor. Even Group Captain Red Langton was a little defensive in the presence of the daughter of a marquis of the realm and a little annoyed with himself for showing it.
“Ah, some sherry,” he overemphasised when he ushered the young lady in from the cold. Sherry before lunch was a winter tradition.
“I’m glad to see you’ve changed your politics,” began Josephine to her twin brother, putting a friendly hand on his arm. Byron was leaning his right elbow against the mantelpiece.
“What do you mean, sis?”
“Your newspaper has changed sides. Under Manningly it was true-blue Tory.”
“But what has that to do with me?”
“Didn’t you change the paper from staid conservative to wacky tit and bum?” With the last statement, Josephine took everyone’s attention. “And now you support Labour.”
“Yes but that doesn’t mean to say I’ve become a socialist.”
“Surely you use your paper to put across your views?”
Byron laughed out loud and his sister snapped away her hand.
“Look, Josephine, I’m in business to make money. Yes, you are going to win the next election according to our market research and by a landslide. By this time next year Harold Wilson will be Prime Minister of England and for a newspaperman what does that tell you?”
“That people want socialism.”
“Maybe. More likely they’ve swallowed Wilson’s wild promises to give them a socialist paradise on earth. Where he’s going to get the money from is another issue but let’s leave that aside. No, what it tells me as the owner of a daily paper is the majority want to believe his claptrap and I’m in the business of selling papers. When the majority want to be Tory, I’ll switch back again.”
“That’s immoral.”
“Sells newspapers. Oh, and congratulations, sis. You flattened the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Long live Zambia and Malawi.”
“And Zimbabwe. Nkomo says he’s going to call Rhodesia, Zimbabwe.”
“Probably. Not for a while. My information says the whites in Southern Rhodesia are going to tell us British to go to hell.”
“And whose side will you be on that time?”
“The side in England that has the majority. We don’t originate public opinion. All we do is follow and give the public what they want.”
“So your paper doesn’t have an opinion of its own?”
“Of course it does. It has the opinion of the majority of the people as told to our editor by our market research department. Give the man what he wants. But my word it doesn’t mean to say I’ve become a socialist. When you socialists run out of other people’s money to give away, as you will, as will the Russians, even my newspaper will be backing the other side. And more importantly, still making a profit. Darling sister, wealth has to be created before it can be given away. Democratic Socialism is a steal for a politician and a bloody disaster for the rest of us, rich and poor. You castrate a man when you give him something he has not earned. Worse, you make Jack a very dull boy.”
“You’re a hypocrite.”
“No, a pragmatic capitalist allowing the wind of change to make him rich.”
“We’ll take it all away from you.”
“I doubt it. Most of it is held in offshore companies. Socialism says that every person was born equal and therefore must have an equal share of the common wealth. No one is equal, sis, because we are all different, very different. Inability, dedication, physical power, brainpower, likes, dislikes. Until the world stops basing its politics on a fallacy, nothing will change permanently for the better and likely we’ll blow ourselves to pieces. It was not long ago the Church insisted the earth was the centre of the universe, that everything revolved around us, including the sun, but science proved them wrong. Similar dogma is putting the Church beyond the logic of the ordinary man. And that is a disaster. Now can I pour you some of Dad’s sherry? Mum, it’s good to be home… Everyone, a happy Christmas.”
3
Lindsay Healy lived with her boss during the weekends who lived with his wife and children during the week. She was long-legged and big busted with a finely crafted chiselled face. No man passed Lindsay in the street without turning back for a second look. There were any number of men in Sydney to choose from. Kevin Smith, her boss, suited her plans. She wanted a relationship without the responsibility, and during the week she was so tired from work she wanted to sleep at home without the snores and inconvenience.
Their offices were in Bligh House, next to the Wentworth Hotel in Bligh Street. Kevin Smith Publications was embossed on the glass door that opened into the small suite of offices on the third floor. Lindsay had the office next to Kevin’s and they could yell to each other through the thin partition. The month before, Lindsay had turned twenty-one and Kevin thirty-nine. Their birthdays were three days apart.
“Lindsay, you want to come in here?” shouted Kevin through the wall.
“Why?”
“’Cause I say so, darlin’… You want to go to Africa?”
“Sure. When do I leave?” said Lindsay, pulling open his door.
“Tomorrow if you want.”
“Thought you were pulling my leg.”
“Now why ever would I want to do that?” They both giggled.
The entire staff and Mrs Smith were aware of the relationship, Mrs Smith having made up her mind to compromise for the sake of the children, so she said, but it was more for herself. She was forty-three.
“Mate of mine in advertising, John Daly, just come back,” said Kevin. “Went on a photographic safari for a client. There’s a bird in Africa that talks to us humans. Tells us to follow and then goes off through the bush. Waits for you to catch up. They call it the honeybird. For us finding the hive is difficult and getting at the honey for the bird is impossible. Over the centuries the black men out there have followed the call of the honeybird and when they break open the hive after smoking out the bees they leave a piece of the honeycomb for the bird. Now my mate’s client sells honey right across Australia and the new campaign will centre around the Legend of the African honeybird. There’s a bloke out there, an Englishman, drifted out after school who John says is the best wildlife photographer ever. John tried to get pics of the honeybird in the week and gave up. This bloke gave him half a dozen prints of the bird, with the negatives. I want you to go out to Barotseland and sign up this Englishman on an exclusive. Royalty every time we sell the use of his pictures. Get his story.”
“How old is he?” asked Lindsay.
“Didn’t ask.”
“Don’t give me that shit.”
“Well if I did I don’t remember. Africa’s blowing apart so we want those negatives out of the country fast. By the time they’ve finished kicking out the colonials and carving each other up there won’t be any game to photograph and if there is, no man in his right mind will step into that bloody mess to try. Those pics are worth money. Why the bloody English went into Africa in the first place beats me. Now they’ve got to run for it.”
“Same reason they went to America and Australia. Lucky for us they killed off our locals with guns, booze and disease.”
“Colonialism stinks. Our blokes are citizens. Take that bloody apartheid in South Africa. Keeps the blacks out of the white areas. Pass laws. You name it. Bloody not right.”
“And the white Australia policy?”
“That’s different. This is our country.”
At
five o’clock on the dot the office closed, and the staff went next door to the Wentworth Hotel. Kevin bought the first shout as was the Friday night custom. The bar was downstairs in the basement and crowded. After four drinks Kevin ordered a taxi from the reception desk upstairs. His car was left at home for his wife. Lindsay smiled. The routine never changed. At Double Bay the taxi dropped them outside a house in a tree-lined lane. Eliza’s Restaurant occupied the entire house.
They sat at the small bar to the left of the L-shaped restaurant with doors out onto the patio showing tables under the trees. The food display centre of the first leg of the room was sensational, along with the prices. A long glass canopy, well lighted, covered the cold cuts and uncooked fish on ice, the red snappers and oysters, the lobsters and Queensland mud crabs, the biggest crabs in the world.
“Don’t think I’m flying in and straight out,” said Lindsay. They were seated at a table just inside the glass patio windows. “Two weeks minimum. Africa. If your mate couldn’t buy this Will Langton in a week, I’ll need two, probably more… Don’t look crestfallen, Kevin. You’ve got your wife.” She smiled at him sweetly and sucked an oyster into her mouth.
“You want me to divorce Mahel?”
“Not particularly.” Lindsay sipped her wine, a dry white from South Australia. Kevin believed everything was better from Australia. She had booked the flight on Ansett from Sydney to Perth with a two-hour delay before flying South African Airways to Johannesburg. After a night stop she would fly to Lusaka and catch the weekly flight to Mongu. Three days.
“You don’t travel for three days to come straight back again. Mahel doesn’t want a divorce, she told me so.”
“When?”
“Oh, weeks ago.”
“I don’t understand women.”
“People don’t understand people. What we think and say are very different.” She was excited at the prospect of the trip.
After two bottles of wine and the most expensive meal in Sydney they went home to her flat in Elizabeth Bay. The flat was high up and overlooked the yacht basin and Kevin Smith paid half the rent.
Half an hour away by car in North Sydney, Mahel Smith was lying in bed reading a good book. Two of her children were out at a party and the ten-year-old girl was fast asleep in the next room. Mahel smiled to herself. Most of her friends would be waiting for the pubs to close and their drunken husbands to come home. She was comfortable alone and spared the foul breath and fumbling hands. Mahel had always been sensible. She needed a man to give her the children she enjoyed, the home she enjoyed with the garden her pride and joy: a man with a good income who paid the bills on time. Sex once a month was more than enough for Mahel and if she never succumbed again in her life, it would mostly be a pleasure. She had fulfilled her role and when Kevin recovered from the fact that he was almost too old to attract the young girls, they would settle down to a normal suburban life. When the kids left home, they would keep each other company in front of the television and sometimes remember the good times they had had in the past. Life had its moments. She picked up the book and carried on reading. Regency England; in those days the men were romantic.
By the time Kevin and Lindsay were making love she was fast asleep, content with her own world.
Laurie Hall, the ex-airport manager of Mongu, was hungover and depressed. His scheme to make a fortune out of crocodile skins was not working and time was running out for the white man in Africa. His need to get rich quickly was an obsession.
Every week he came into the village to collect mail and cables and pick up the week’s newspapers. Sometimes Will also made the journey from the base camp on the river but more often than not he drove in alone the night before and stayed in the club where he drank himself into oblivion. He only received a little money from the photographic safari business. He was fed and housed and clothes were a pair of khaki shorts and shirt. He had been wearing the same boots for three years and long ago discarded the luxury of socks. His feet were as hard as the horn on a rhinoceros. To add insult to his depression, it was his birthday. He was twenty-nine, penniless and next year he would be thirty, a milestone in age that boggled his mind.
The rains were over for the year at the end of March and the sky was blue from one horizon to the other with small fluffy white clouds that had forgotten the message of rain. Laurie looked up from the open Land Rover on his way to his old airport. It was going to be a long dry season, the year the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland ended and Zambia was born in the hot bush of Central Africa. There was little point going to meet the weekly flight from Lusaka but those were his instructions. ‘Sometimes the cables don’t get through in time,’ Will said every week: it was difficult to make a living without killing the animals. ‘There’ll be requests for hunting safaris,’ he would tell Will. ‘There always are.’ On the question of all-important money the two men were far apart. Laurie put it down to the younger age and the security of Langton Manor. Moral high ground was easier when the family was rich.
The two beers he had taken at the club before driving to the airport were wearing off, replaced by a raging hangover thirst. The herd of wildebeest were out on the grass runway and the Central African Airways plane would be late as usual. Even the airline was breaking up with the Federation. He was glad to be out of the airline business and one way or another he would go back to England with big money in the bank. All the national service dodgers had been exempted, according to Will, so there was no impediment to his return.
“Bugger,” he said out loud as he drove up to the lone shed building that made up the airport complex at Mongu. There was a small churn of nostalgia at the sight of his work for so many years, the nostalgia for the loss of youth. There was nobody at the one desk next to the window which did not augur well for the plane’s prompt arrival, but the door was open and he went inside and took some water from the drum and sat down at his old desk. He took off his boots and looked at his feet; both big toes were slightly nobbled.
“You could be the last bloody white in Africa and no one would care.” He had been talking to himself in the bush for years. “The last bloody Englishman to become a colonial.” Laurie shivered in the heat at the thought of the rest of his life and looked at his watch to take his mind off the problem. Half an hour and back to camp. He had run out of money for booze. His head fell forward, and he was soon snoring, fast asleep to the world.
He was woken by the pilot stampeding the wildebeest off the airstrip. The bitter taste of gall parched his mouth from the night before, the foul residue of one and a half bottles of club whisky and a bottle of South African red wine. He could never remember after a binge whether he had eaten or not. Professionally, Laurie watched the pilot bring the twin-engined Beechcraft up and around for his approach. The windsock next to the thin-roofed shed, now burning hot from the noonday sun, was limp and Laurie’s watch told him he had slept in his old chair for two hours, his discarded boots under the table. A small truck was rattling down the rutted road, pitted by the rains, the ruts baked into iron by the sun. The plane’s landing gear dropped as the plane straightened, pointing down the centre of the open piece of veld. Dust puffed three times and then the Beechcraft ran in fast down the grass until the propellers reversed sending Laurie’s hands to his ears to block out the noise. The engines made the whole shed shake before they were cut fifty feet from Laurie’s old desk.
“Morning, Laurie,” said a cheerful voice. “Two pax. Probably for you.”
“Probably missionaries come to do some good.”
“Hilary would be waiting. Or someone else. Will’s right to always meet the plane. Good night in the club last night?”
“Don’t remember the end.”
“Who cares?” said the new airport manager as he walked over to the stationary aeroplane to do his job.
First a woman with big dark glasses that covered half her face stepped down the steps that had been let down from inside the aircraft. When she reached the dusty grass, cropped short by the herd
of wildebeest, she walked with a long, sure stride. Her hair was black, the shiny colour of a raven’s wing.
Over to the right of the airfield, the wildebeest were coming back onto the airfield and a crowned eagle called high in the African sky, soaring up on a thermal of hot air, searching the bush below with telescopic eyes.
Laurie’s hormones had jumped as he watched the woman walking across to the shed. The airport manager was still at the foot of the steps, waiting for the second passenger. Laurie guessed the dark-haired girl with the large inviting mouth and the small shell-shaped ears to be in her middle twenties. Somehow, Laurie thought he knew the woman. His eyes moved back to the Beechcraft and a young girl with the longest legs and largest bust Laurie had ever seen since running away to Africa came down the steps, her chiselled, clean-cut face free of dark glasses, her eyes almost shut against the glare of the sun. Laurie stood up on reflex and leant forward at the open window to have a better look.
“I’m looking for Mr William Langton,” said a voice from the open doorway.
“I’m sorry, I was just…”
“I can see what you are doing.” The woman was smiling and when she took off the big dark glasses Laurie was certain he had seen her somewhere before. “She really is rather pretty.”
“Yes,” said Laurie stopping himself from saying ‘and so are you’. It was the kind of day for Laurie that had never happened before in Mongu and not a penny in his pocket and credit at the club a thing of the past. “Will’s not here. We always meet the plane.”
“They said so. I came on the spur of the moment. The other lady is also looking for Mr Langton. Can you drive us both to his camp on the river?”
