Just the Memory of Love

by Peter Rimmer

  “Four days. Maybe five. Depends on how many skins Laurie and the trackers think they can get away with for themselves. Maybe five hundred skins after the chief’s.”

  “Are they worth a lot of money?”

  “BNT. Umtali. That’s Barotse National Transport, Octavio Goncalves’s outfit. They run the skins lightly salted to Livingstone. From there by train to Bulawayo and up to Umtali. Skins don’t weigh much. Umtali Leather will pay between seventy and a hundred and thirty pounds sterling a skin but we won’t sell, just have them cure the underbelly and Manica Trading will ship them down to the port of Beira, sold to one of my brother’s offshore companies. With that number of skins, Byron will probably start a factory making shoes and handbags. That’s his style. Hates anyone to make a profit along the way. Don’t ask me the end returns for the chief or Laurie and the trackers.”

  “The bigger the crocodile, the more money?”

  “No. The best quality skin comes from a six-to seven-foot croc. The very big ones Laurie will leave alone.”

  “They’re going to be rich from five hundred crocodiles.”

  “Yes they are. Fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money just for skins.”

  “Who will make the rest?”

  “Byron with what he calls a finder’s fee for me. I don’t like making money out of the animals anymore. Hannes and I did it once before with the ivory. Byron reinvests the money. What do I need out here?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “With the money?”

  “No, with your life, Zambia’s almost born. Your concession cancelled.”

  “I’ve been in Africa nine years. All I know is guns and game photography and this river. I don’t want to go back to England despite Byron’s offer, wants me to join him in the City of London. You imagine that, Lindsay?”

  “Not right now.”

  “Maybe drift down south. Southern Rhodesia is a colony, not a protectorate like Barotseland, and it’s been self-governing since 1923. The British have promised independence but with strings. There’s rumours of the white government declaring unilateral independence if the British government doesn’t hand over full power to the white government… I don’t know politics. Don’t want to. I just want to stay in Africa, preferably near this river.”

  “What are you running away from?”

  “What gives you that idea?”

  “You.”

  “Women always try and read in something that isn’t there.”

  “And we’re usually right… That sunset makes my heart bleed.”

  The fire took quickly, spreading new light between the clean trunks of the ilala palms, the limp mosquito net testament to the coming night. They sat round the flames in camp chairs. Half-burnt dry leaves pushed upwards with the heat and smoke, dropping back into the fire. There was no wind. The river smell was sweet mud and water, the sound a constant flow past their island, movement felt more than it was heard. The .22 Hornet rested easily on the ground next to Will’s chair and the small camp table. The table and chairs were low to the ground. The silver corkscrew with a cork attached reflected the firelight which penetrated the red wine bottle, showing the third that had poured into their glasses. At the foot of the table, half underneath, was the hamper basket Will had carried from the dugout canoe.

  “Are there lion on the island?” asked Lindsay, excited by Will’s protection.

  “No. Not today.”

  “But cats can’t swim?”

  “Oh, a lion can swim all right. Don’t like to. They had one up at Mombasa in Kenya that played in the surf. Right there in the Indian Ocean.”

  “Leopard?”

  “They like rocky terrain where they can rest up during the day.”

  “Snakes?”

  “There are always snakes in Africa but they get out of the way.”

  To the right of the fire, Will had set up a small spit Laurie had made from aluminium tube into two tripods supporting the thin rod welded to a turning handle, three bars welded at the centre to impale the meat. With the small trenching tool, Will moved hot coals under the waiting saddle of impala. Crickets and frogs screeched all around them. From far upriver came the single bark of a .375 Brno rifle and the bush went silent for a moment as everything listened to the intrusion.

  “One of the scavengers going for the skins,” said Will. “Jackal or hyena. Lion kills its own.”

  “You think Shelley will be all right?”

  “She wanted to go with them.”

  “What’s she running away from?”

  “My brother. He’s either getting married or got himself married. No one tells me much. She’s top-drawer aristocracy, the bride. My brother Byron always has more than one reason for everything he does. She’ll make a good hostess and breed him the right children. She may even be attractive, good company, that sort of thing… You want some more wine?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I think Shelley came out here to get her own back on Byron through me but it didn’t work as she fell for Laurie.”

  “Would you have fallen for Shelley Lane?”

  “No.”

  “Have you fallen for anyone, Will?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want to tell me?”

  “No.”

  Will got up from his canvas stool and turned the meat, shovelling coals from the main fire under the spit. He stood with his back to the fires and looked up to the night sky, still faintly blushed by the last of the dying sun. Automatically, Will crossed the pointer stars with the cross of the Southern Cross, finding south even though he knew exactly where to walk for south.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lindsay. “It was none of my business… Just… Maybe I would like it to be.”

  “Oh, leave me out of that,” said Will, louder than he intended.

  “Don’t you like women?”

  “Of course I do… I find it easier to live with a memory than have someone mess up my life. Oh, don’t get me wrong,” said Will, turning round. “I’ve seen enough women out here to understand. In the old days when hunters came out with their wives or whatever they called them they thought I came with the package. A few of the lady photographers thought they could cart me back to New York or London. None of them said they wanted to stay by the river… I’m sorry. That sounds rude.”

  “Didn’t you sleep with them?”

  “I’ve never slept with a woman in my life.”

  “Shit.”

  “No, it’s not. I don’t fancy rutting for the sake of it.”

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  “To show you the bush. You’re my client, remember.”

  The second bottle of red wine went down with the roast saddle of impala and the jacket potatoes that had been cooked deep in the fire covered in clay. Will had made the salad dressing and tossed the lettuce with tomato and cucumber. The coffee pot hung from the meatless spit. The night sounds of Africa were loud. Fish plopped from the river and wild pig snuffled for food not twenty metres from the fire, the firelight not penetrating five metres into the river-fed bush. There was an owl at the end of the island calling to its mate on the mainland. The air was soft and free of mosquitoes around the fire.

  “Brandy. I always have brandy with my coffee,” said Will, opening the hamper.

  “You always treat your clients this well?”

  They had not spoken for half an hour.

  “I have a theory, Lindsay. Maybe I have thought about it too long alone in the bush. I think we come to the earth to find our soulmate, the other half of ourselves, without which we are eternally miserable. If we don’t find that person among all the people and all the lives we are doomed to be born again, time and time again. The rest we call love and satisfaction is only procreation making bodies for the transmigration of souls. We exist on two levels. The physical that eats, drinks, fights and ruts, and the mental that makes us search for the meaning of Soul and God that reaches out for eternal peace. When we find the lost part of our soul, h
idden in that other body, we are released from our physical body that gives us pain and unhappiness, that kills and lies and pursues the selfish pleasures. We are eternally free in the ether of our minds. And then we don’t have to come back again.”

  “You found her and let her go?”

  “No. I was only allowed a glimpse. Then it was taken away forever. Forever in this life, anyway.”

  “Then I guess the single mosquito net won’t help.”

  “I saw you put the other one back.”

  “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “It didn’t matter.”

  “Can I still market your photographs?”

  “Be my guest, using your words. We’ll be friends for a long time, Lindsay. Let me keep my celibacy. The Catholic priests have their reasons. I have mine.”

  “I’ll have some of the brandy.”

  “KWV ten-year-old.”

  “Africa does something to people.”

  “Let’s enjoy the island. It may be the last time for both of us.”

  “Don’t you think people are ever happy in their lives?”

  “Only for very brief moments. It’s a trick of nature with the strongest trick the act of procreation.”

  “How do you know? You never tried it.”

  Lindsay woke with the screeching down alone under the mosquito net, the vervet monkeys fighting in the jackalberry tree to her right. Will was tending a three-legged pot at the cooking fire and the smell of coffee was rich on the morning air. Below the jackalberry tree a family of warthog were feeding from the ripe berries, spitting out the hard, black pips and the skin.

  Will finished sucking the sweet pith from his handful of berries and with a piece of stick, lifted the iron lid from the pot. The smell reached Lindsay propped up on her elbows in her sleeping bag, the rich smell of game mingled with herbs.

  “Where did you sleep?” she asked.

  “Round the fire.”

  Will stirred the pot with a wooden spoon. “When I put more wood on the fire, I added water to the stew. Been cooking all night.”

  “You get bitten?”

  “Not really. Couple of angry tsetse at the first flush of dawn… There they go again. Laurie’s been very active this morning.”

  “How long?”

  “The rate he’s going there won’t be a live crocodile for fifty miles up and downriver.”

  “That smells very good,” she said.

  “It’s meant to. Better get up and eat. We’re going downriver with the cameras.”

  They left their small island with the yellow sun of morning bathing the trees on both riverbanks. A flight of pink-touched greater flamingos flew low over the centre of the ever-flowing river. Branches of trees bobbed and flowed. Will’s camera caught the birds and their reflection with one shot. He smiled his pleasure and picked up the paddle to steer the log canoe back into the current. The reeds were thick by the bank and small weaver birds, rich yellow with black stripes on their wings, clutched the stems. A honeyguide bird called with great agitation from the top of a fever tree and Will caught the bird in all its frustration through his telephoto lens. They drifted on into the day.

  “Do we paddle back upriver?” asked Lindsay.

  “No, we walk. Cover the canoe in the reeds and walk. I have six canoes hidden up and down the river. Hannes Potgieter brought them years ago… Hilary says he’s going to stay. You remember me talking of Hilary? His father was my father’s tail gunner during the war. The Missionary Society don’t want him anymore but he says he will stay. Says we British are running away from our responsibilities, that a few blacks will monopolise a dwindling wealth and the rest will be left to fend for themselves without enough land to go back to their old ways. He doesn’t think much of politicians. Told his bishop the same. The bishop is a great believer in liberation theology. Hilary says bad government by the people will benefit a very few. That good government by a benevolent colonial power creates wealth and a future free from poverty. He talks of Africa being marginalised by the rich countries of the world so they can plunder the minerals without responsibilities. Poor Hilary. The worst thing you can ever tell a man with a new idea is the truth, especially the bishop. The words sound good, you see. The new words. Freedom. Democracy. Every man equal… Hilary says it’s just a new way in Africa to grab power. He also says the snake mesmerises its prey.”

  Most of the stories told to Lindsay Healy by men were designed to get her into bed for a brief, mutual moment of satisfaction. The men were either going to be rich or famous or both and the charade of words was understood by both of them.

  The man with the paddle, expertly sending the half-waterlogged canoe through the waters of the Zambezi River, was a new experience in her pursuit of men, each one a challenge, like Kevin Smith, to be conquered and, if possible, enjoyed. To come all the way to Africa and find a man on his own who did not wish to take her to bed was an insult. The man was bush-happy, no doubt of it: too much sun and loneliness had cooked his brain.

  The guns were still going off upriver, sending messages to her hormones. The slap of the wet paddle on water also sounded erotic.

  “You don’t think we should get back to your house and see it’s all right with nobody there?” she said, trying to change the subject. Politics bored Lindsay to distraction.

  “They won’t come back tonight.”

  “The sun’s burning my skin.”

  “You need patience for wildlife photography.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “You’re the customer.”

  Will paddled into shore and tied the canoe to a root of a tree that jutted from the bank. They walked back three miles to the Land Rover along the bank of the river, drove back to collect the hamper, the cooking pot and the bedding, and were back at the empty base camp by eleven o’clock with Will wondering what he had done wrong. The girl was looking at him in a way that made him nervous.

  “There’s a plane out this afternoon if you want to leave,” he said, picking up the hamper basket.

  “Oh, I wasn’t thinking of leaving,” chuckled Lindsay. “Now we are near to ice we can have a proper drink… Shall we go upstairs to the bar? You lead the way, Will.”

  As she walked up behind him, two wooden steps down, she pinched his bum.

  “Hey, don’t do that, it hurt.”

  “Couldn’t resist… Were any of your other customers as young as me?”

  “I don’t know how old you are,” said Will, putting the hamper on top of the bar.

  “Twenty-one. Must ’ave told you.”

  “I’ll get the ice from downstairs. We make it in blocks.”

  “Don’t be long. I’m very thirsty.”

  When Will’s head had disappeared down the stairs, the first thing Lindsay did was take off her bra and the second was to unbutton the top of her shorts. She heard Will downstairs breaking up the ice while she found the Booth’s Gin bottle and two bottles of Indian tonic. She poured in equal tots of gin, half topped up with tonic in anticipation of the ice and cut off two slices of lemon. She thought of taking off her panties but decided there was not enough time. By the time Will came up with the ice, Lindsay Healy was very much enjoying herself. She was young, in the prime of her life, good looking, sexy, and on the pill. What more did she want, she asked herself, handing Will his drink.

  “Here’s to us,” she said, raising her glass.

  Will hesitated, not sure of the toast.

  “Photographs,” said Lindsay. “Money. That sort of thing.” Lindsay looked direct into his eyes, winked and smiled gently. Then she saw his eyes drop to the missing button and inwardly sighed with relief. Another celibate night listening to Shelley Lane and Laurie Hall, even from Laurie Hall’s small house a few metres down from the main house, was intolerable. Sounds at night travelled in Africa. Most importantly, she had never bedded a virgin in her life before.

  While Lindsay was trying to seduce Will before lunch, Shelley Lane was having the best time of her life. Her black
hair and brown eyes were now matched by a well-tanned skin that had gone from copper to brown in the African sun without peeling. She had touched her large mouth with shell pink. The almond-shaped eyes were touched with dark eyeshadow. She wore a tight, half-shirt and short shorts and was singing. Byron Langton was the last thought in her mind.

  The rule at what Laurie Hall had called Crocodile Camp was no booze. The first three days had been difficult but Shelley now felt better than she could remember.

  “Booze and guns, old girl, don’t mix,” he had said when they packed the Land Rover in Mongu with provisions.

  Her job at Crocodile Camp was to keep the books. First she packed like-sized skins into bundles of ten, neatly attached a label with a number and wrote it down in a journal. The bundles were then packed in hessian, one hundred skins to the bag, and made ready with an individual waybill for Octavio Goncalves to transport to Livingstone.

  At Will’s suggestion, Laurie had telephoned Byron Langton’s office in London before the big shoot, using the telephone in the Mongu Club. The overseas call had taken two hours to make, person-to-person, Laurie using Will’s name as the caller. Byron, always quick on the uptake when there was money to be made, agreed to cover the cost of tanning the skins in Umtali through Manica Trading at the port of Beira.

  “There may be an import permit problem into England, Mr Hall,” Byron had told him from a voice halfway round the world. “My problem. I will pay you the market price FOB Beira, all transport costs from Mongu for my account. I can recommend a Swiss holding account for your money and this chief’s. From my experience of Africa, Mr Hall, the less known about your money the better.”

  “We’ll need cash for my trackers.”

  “Does anyone else know about your crocodile hunt?”

  “Not the numbers.”

  “On your documents, we may eventually remove a nought from every package on the certified invoice.”

  “And if customs counts?”

  “We made a mistake. I presume Will said I was trustworthy?”

  “He did.”

  “And the chief considers Will trustworthy?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Laurie, if I may call you Laurie. So long as we trust each other then the circumvention of government is incidental. Give my brother my best regards. You can also give him a laugh. Our sister Josephine won a by-election for Labour and now sits in the House of Commons. When’s he coming home? Africa’s a mess … You just ship your skins to Umtali Leather and Tanning and we will do the rest.”