by Peter Rimmer
There was no sign of the Goliath heron.
Will got back into the Land Rover and started the engine.
Three days later, alone, he crossed the high bridge over the Victoria Falls into Southern Rhodesia, leaving idealism and his youth behind in the bush of Barotseland. He was singing badly, out of tune, but louder than his diesel engine. The excitement of a new adventure had overcome his maudlin blues half a day out of Livingstone. There was going to be a new life with new people in a new country.
Maybe Lindsay Healy had done him a favour. Only the rest of his life would find out.
Part 4
1965 to 1967
1
Byron Langton adjusted the dove-grey cravat in the full-length mirror and was well satisfied with what he saw: the dove-grey spats, dove-grey morning suit with dove-grey top hat. At thirty-four, the body was lean and paunchless, the violet eyes, clear and inherently intellectual. He winked at himself. The Langtons of Langton Matravers in the county of Dorset were finally marrying the upper echelons of the aristocracy and his children would be related to the kings of England.
The ceremony was to take place downstairs in the private chapel of the Marquis of Bathurst, father of the bride, on the Bathurst estate seventy miles from Edinburgh. Randolph Langton, the eldest of the Langton boys, was best man.
Josephine, Byron’s twin sister, had at first refused the invitation.
“How can a junior minister in the Labour government be patronised by the aristocracy?” The quarrel had taken place in Josephine’s London flat.
“Easily, sis. You’re my twin sister. What you and I stand for can never alter the accident of our birth. And Fiona’s going to be your sister-in-law for the rest of your life and you will be aunty to her children. Now, have you found out anything about Will?”
“Not a word. Once the British resident commissioner was withdrawn from Mongu we have had no communication into the Colonial Office.”
“Wasn’t that a slip? Didn’t you mean Commonwealth Office?”
“Yes, I damn well did.”
“Don’t swear, sis. Doesn’t suit a junior minister in Her Majesty’s Government. Anyway, it’s a very small wedding as Bathurst, can’t hold any more.”
“What about the press?”
“Heathcliff Mortimer only, as a friend. He can take you up to Scotland. You know as well as I that publicity is not my bag. And certainly not with Harold Wilson in power. Even my own Daily Garnet will have no mention of the wedding. Now, are you coming?”
“All right.”
“There must be someone in the Foreign Office you can lean on to find out about Will. Not a word for over a year. Laurie Hall even had some Portuguese transport man making enquiries. Will’s home was swept away in the floods but they don’t think Will was there at the time. He has some girlfriend in Australia but she doesn’t know. I’ve told him before he vanished he can have a job with me.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want one.”
“Man’s twenty-eight with no career. Doesn’t make sense to me.”
“I’ll try again.”
“Thanks, sis. And please, you must be at my wedding.”
The guests were milling around in the old garden outside the chapel in the warm sun of summer waiting to be ushered into the old private church. The vicar had arrived from the village and was now resplendent in a white vestment, talking to members of the Bathurst family. The groom’s family were left out on their own.
Group Captain Red Langton was looking at the old house and mentally thanking his luck that Langton Manor was small and manageable. The cost of repairing the decaying mausoleum that spread out in four double-storey wings from the central point of the chapel was beyond his comprehension. Even the land was not properly farmed; he had noticed that on the drive through the estate on the way to the big house on the hill, more beautiful from a distance. The empire and Britain were decaying in front of his eyes.
“It took so long to create these estates,” he said to Adelaide his wife and Byron’s mother, “and so little time to fall apart.”
“The world changes, my dear.”
“It does. Indeed it does. My only question as I approach sixty is whether it changes for the better. That I question. Are people happier now than before the First World War?”
“Happiness is within.”
“Maybe. But malcontent in society affects us all. No one is ever satisfied anymore.”
“We are just getting old… You think Josephine will ever marry?”
“No. She’s married to politics like a nun to the Church.”
“I’d prefer to have been a bride of Christ than a bride of British socialism.” Adelaide Langton was irritated. “Bunch of bloodsuckers if you ask me. Parasites. They talk of doing good but the only good they do is for themselves.”
“A welfare state has many advantages. Now, promise neither of us will mention politics with Josephine.”
“Hope you told Byron the same thing?”
“I didn’t need to.”
“Do you think Will is dead?” asked Adelaide.
“No, of course he isn’t.”
“There are lots of wild animals in Africa.”
“Will is bright enough. Knows how to look after himself.”
“But he hasn’t written for over a year.”
“Africa is in something of a turmoil,” said Red Langton. “Since the British pulled out of Northern Rhodesia maybe the mail doesn’t work anymore. It was the Royal Mail, you remember. Months have gone by in the last ten years without hearing from Will. Stop worrying about your children, Adelaide.”
“I can’t help it. Never have been able… You think he loves her?”
“Why would he marry Fiona without being in love?”
“That’s why I asked. Byron is so clinical in everything he does.”
“What I want to know,” said his father, “is how the boy made so much money in ten years from scratch.”
“You don’t think the money’s been made honestly?”
“I don’t think Byron himself would go outside the law. Far too sharp for that. For instance, what’s he offered Bathurst in exchange for his daughter? A lot of very rich Americans would like to have a title in the family… Newspapers, music companies, investment trusts, shipping. Where did it all come from in ten years, I ask myself? None of it came from me. Must have either stolen a pile of money or found a backer.”
“Byron would never steal. He was brought up properly and he went to Stanmore. A sharp young man with his background is well sought after. I think you call it good management. Can’t run anything without good, honest management is what you say, Red. Always what you said.”
“I’ve heard the name Jack Pike mentioned a few times. King of the girlie magazines and Soho peep shows. Byron admits to being friendly with the man’s son.”
“Even peep show people need good financial advice. Not every one of Byron’s clients can be the Marquis of Bathurst.”
“Byron does business with Bathurst?” asked Red Langton in surprise.
“Yes. Byron said he’d formed something called an offshore company for his future father-in-law. All sounds double Dutch to me.”
“Offshore. Everything Byron seems to do is offshore.”
“Told me once,” said Adelaide, “it was the only way to keep the politicians’ hands off a man’s money. Now with Labour in power, Byron says he is doing better than ever before. Says if the government wants to introduce punitive taxation – I think those were his words – then it was his job to protect hard-earned money. Don’t ask me, Red. I don’t understand things like that. All I do know is Byron is not a thief. I did not give birth to a thief. We’d better go on into the church and have this wedding over with. Women are meant to like weddings but I don’t. It’s one big pretence that life lives happily ever after. You don’t just marry in a church and expect it all to be perfect. You and I still work at our marriage, Red. They look at us old fuddy-duddies and think it was all a bed of roses. The
re’s been give and take every day of our lives… Tried to talk to Byron but I could see he wasn’t listening. Young people never listen anymore. Quite infuriating.”
“Have we had such a bad marriage?” asked Red quizzically.
“Of course we haven’t. We consciously think about each other’s feelings. I’ve never taken you for granted and I don’t think you have me… What a mournful sound, a single church bell. Come on. The vicar’s gone inside which is always a good sign something’s happening. You know where they’re going for a honeymoon?”
“Byron wouldn’t say.”
Heathcliff Mortimer had no idea why he had been invited to the wedding now he saw so few guests making their way into the small church. He had put on a dark suit and even bought a new tie but the old suit was uncomfortably tight under the armpits and he was in need of a drink. The official car that went with Josephine Langton’s new job in the Labour government did not run to a cocktail cabinet pulled down from the back of the front seat.
Heath watched the woman with whom he had driven up from London and was sad. She now affected square, rimless glasses which for the life of him he did not know whether they corrected her vision or gave her the feminist appearance she strove to achieve. The square fringe of hair above the glasses, straight across her forehead, straight down over the ears and straight round the back, was matched by a pale face totally devoid of make-up. Any stranger asked to judge her age, Heath mused, might put it from forty through to fifty, and he knew the girl was only thirty-four. What people did for a cause, socialism or feminism, he chuckled sadly. The woman he had once found attractive had no femininity whatsoever.
They had talked little in the car, Josephine aware he was a journalist and he wanting to keep the long journey personal, devoid of politics. Looking at her as she strode through the archway of the church, he wondered what had gone wrong in her life to make her so sour.
The group captain had greeted him pleasantly, remembering their meetings during the war. Randolph, the eldest son, was pleasant if dull. Adelaide, the mother, would have been a good-looking woman in her day.
Something, he told himself, had gone very wrong for Josephine Langton and none of it would bring her any happiness.
He went on into the church.
Heath sat between strangers, Josephine sitting in the front pew with the groom’s family. He was faintly surprised to find the bride was beautiful. In Heath’s opinion, Bathurst was a rural ass, the type that would have best died out from natural incompetence, nature deciding it had taken a wrong turn in the ways of evolution. Maybe the old goat thought bringing some outside blood into the family, beneath itself no doubt, would rejuvenate the Bathurst species and let it go on living a few more generations. Byron’s motive escaped Heath unless the man was a snob. There were plenty of those still in the English woodwork. How often it was that a man never knew what was in another man’s head.
During the service, he stood up with the others and sat down with the others but most of the time his mind was far from the small, very beautiful church with its romantic memories of things long past. He had begun his book on Africa, mainly the end of British Africa, and though he was sad to see the era end and find himself writing about some of the most anachronistic characters left in a world where most people were trying to be the same as everyone else – boring, but the same – he was finally consumed with doing something that might just have a trace of importance in the way of things. The cynical side of him knew it was his one and only try for immortality, but whatever the truth he was enjoying himself, happy in his own company for the first time in his life. There was a certain peace coming into his daily routine and he found it comforting to know, as he put it to himself, that the last few years of his life would not be a complete degeneration into pain and depression.
The bridal exit woke him from his reverie and brought him instead the instant need for a large Southern Comfort on the rocks. Even the saliva in his mouth had begun to dribble.
At the long drinks table, Heath stood next to Josephine’s Uncle Clifford Critchley, the reformed socialist who had done so well with the money inherited from Great-Aunt Eve. The man was portly, bald, prosperous and no resemblance to the cloth-hatted Uncle Cliff who had inflamed so much passionate zeal in the young Josephine Langton. Heath was told afterwards about the metamorphosis of Uncle Clifford, his antiques and property business, the second mistress in Pimlico and the shattering effect he had on the life of his niece.
After a search, to Heath’s delight he found a full bottle of Southern Comfort. Picking up the bottle where sensibly the guests were able to pour their own drinks, he looked up to catch Byron looking at him from across the room, wearing an enigmatic smile. They both nodded their respect to the bottle in Heath’s right hand.
“American liquor in whisky country,” said Uncle Clifford, the only words he was ever to say to Heathcliff Mortimer.
Heath, in the habit of having silent conversations with himself at the age of sixty-two, said, ‘No wonder that Byron makes so much money. Knew I drank Southern Comfort and took the time to have a bottle on the table. A man could be a slave to such detail. Better still, Heath my lad, what a memory. You only remembered your own birthday last week after lunch when you were half-drunk and once again thinking back over your life. Shut up and pour yourself a drink.’
Guiltily, Heath looked around the reception to see if he had spoken out loud. No one was taking any notice of a fat old man so he poured half a tumbler, dropped in four lumps of ice using his fingers and causing the attendant in a white coat to look disapprovingly. Heath looked up at the ceiling and drank. It was a loft of a ceiling with cherubs chasing round the centrepiece in a dull cream colour aged over time.
Looking round he could see two or three good-looking young girls but nothing high on the scale of ten. He finished the drink and hefted the bottle for the second time. By the time he got to meet the bride the bottle was half empty and life was looking better, the girls prettier and the conversation not quite so dull.
The bride and groom went and came back again, ready to go on their way into life, the place of the honeymoon still unknown to anyone but the groom. Heath sadly put his hand out to pour the last of his tipple only to find the bottle miraculously full again. He was more than a little drunk and more than a little happy. All the bridegroom’s family were to stay the night in the old house if they could find their allocated rooms. Now knowing there was life after death, he poured himself a gentler tot, pacing himself. The hard-core partymakers moved out onto the great terrace.
It was a summer’s evening of soft, warm perfection washed by the sweet smell of stocks in full bloom.
The row started at the other end of the terrace to where Heath was happily sitting alone on a stone bench next to the bottle. At first he took no notice and continued to enjoy the rare beauty of the Scottish summer evening. He would probably have left it all alone if the word Africa, his Africa for goodness’ sake, had not snapped at him from the heart of what had now become a quarrel. When he heard Josephine answer in her newly acquired north London accent that merged better with her political colleagues, he pushed himself off the bench, though not before tucking the bottle into safety underneath.
They had her surrounded.
“The Rhodesians will proclaim their own independence,” someone was insisting.
“If they do, my government will retaliate,” said Josephine.
“But you promised Southern Rhodesia independence,” argued the same man.
“Macmillan may have done that but not the British Labour Party.”
Heath had Josephine by the elbow out of the circle and down the terrace away from the drunk with the big mouth who, Heath thought, had temporally forgotten he was a gentleman in the heat of his bigoted argument.
“They just don’t listen,” protested Josephine.
“People never do. ’Specially drunk… Not you, Jo. Them.”
“The whites can’t rule in Southern Rhodesia. That kind of
thing is dead and buried.”
“Obviously not quite. For what it’s worth,” he said, sitting her on the stone bench, “my information is Smith will declare his unilateral independence and tell Wilson to do his worst.”
“He’d be damn stupid. Going full-face against the force of history.”
“Maybe. But he’s still going to do it. What I hear… Lovely wedding. Have a Southern Comfort?”
“You brought your own?”
“No. Your twin brother. Remembered what I drank. That’s what singles out the real leaders in this world. I’ll drink to Byron.”
“Heath, you’re drunk.”
“There wasn’t much else to do.”
Josephine giggled, took the one glass and sipped his drink on the rocks.
“What went wrong, Jo?” he asked.
The reply came after a long pregnant silence. “None of your business,” she said, but softly.
“You ever want to talk, you know where to come.”
“Thank you, Heath.”
“You can’t always be the hard-arsed politician.”
“I know… Weddings have funny effects on people.”
Shelley Lane’s Zambezi River album went on sale ten days after the wedding, creating music that would be alive long after the lady finished her career. The affair with Laurie Hall had lasted just long enough to complete the record.
Byron had cut short his honeymoon on the Isle of Skye to gather up the pieces in the wake of Shelley’s path of alcoholic destruction. Byron himself knew there was nothing more pleasant for the tabloids than to rejoice in the self-destruction of a popular figure. The album topped the charts within the week, fuelled by pictures of a black-haired drunken Shelley mingled with the golden sounds of her voice lamenting the tragedy unfolding in Africa.
