Just the Memory of Love

by Peter Rimmer

  “Tomorrow. Why would she want to meet me?”

  “I think she will when you mention my friend’s name. Where are you staying?”

  “The Wentworth.”

  “Her office is next door. What a nice coincidence. Her name is Lindsay Healy. Give me a ring when you come back.”

  The envelope Heath handed to the reporter had Lindsay’s address on the outside with inside a short letter from Will Langton.

  During Sunday lunch in Heath’s Chelsea flat prior to meeting the young reporter, he had asked Will if he wanted to make some money.

  “I can’t think how but of course. My brother doesn’t overpay and the bedsitter grates on my nerves.”

  “But I thought you had a lot of money?” said Heath, “Laurie Hall told me Byron had given you a substantial introductory fee for the crocodile skins.”

  “He was wrong. That was Laurie’s show. I didn’t want to be part of a massacre. Ivory from our safari operation was something I sold without thinking through the implications. When you first get to Africa, you think the wildlife is limitless, but it isn’t. The wilderness is shrinking in direct proportion to man’s population growth… Even my ivory nest egg seems to have disappeared. Byron won’t talk about it; my brother likes to talk about his successes, not his failures. He warned me that not all venture investments make money and I just assume I was unlucky. Everything in England is so expensive. In Africa if I wanted food I put a line in the river. Everything you do in London costs money and seventeen pounds eight shillings doesn’t go far. When did you get into journalism?”

  “When I was fifteen.”

  “That’s it, you see. What my mother always said, if I didn’t get a proper job and proper training I would end up in the poor house. Funny how mothers are often so right.”

  “I have a publisher interested in a wildlife photo-journal. Big colour, glossy. Twenty thousand print. Expensive.”

  “To take all my photographs again would take years. That one shot of the old leopard at the waterhole with the quail took me six months of patience. Leopard are mostly nocturnal. Those photographs I gave Lindsay were priceless.”

  “Did you sign anything?”

  “I think so. Yes. A sort of hire and release contract, I think. I don’t know. I always trust people. Mother says I’m stupid. She’s probably right… Do you think I could have a little more of the roast chicken? Can’t roast chicken on two gas rings. Last Sunday my sister-in-law gave me lunch which was very nice of her but I do feel like the poor relation.”

  “How’s the baby?”

  “Absolutely fine. Like everything else of Byron’s, absolutely fine. Boy’s healthy, will probably be good looking, go to Stanmore and take a First at Oxford and end up running his father’s bank. My mother is tickled pink with a grandson so that’s something. Tell me, Heath, how do you English put up with this weather? Month after month of miserable, cold, grey weather. Very depressing.”

  “But aren’t you English?” laughed Heath.

  “I’m African, I’m afraid.”

  “Why don’t you go back?”

  “Where to? Zambia won’t have me. Rhodesia’s in rebellion. Zaire is damn dangerous and South Africa is full of Afrikaners who hate the English. Hannes Potgieter warned me about South Africa. Anyway, I don’t like apartheid any more than liberation movements. Both of them kill for power. No, old Africa was just fine. But it’s gone.”

  “Do you think the colonial powers are wrong to pull out?”

  “Let history be the answer to that one. What I see is country after country throwing out the pariah system of colonialism and changing it for something ten times worse… Have you seen Josephine recently?”

  “Not for a month.”

  “She works too hard. She’s also not happy.”

  “You’re not happy?”

  “No I am not. I’m not cut out to live in a row of houses that all look the same. I never did like being part of the herd. I don’t want to be brainwashed by television and you journalists with your political correctness you think the public want to hear. I want to be an individual, my own man.”

  “Go out on your own in business.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin and I don’t have any money.”

  “You may with a book.”

  “Another pipe dream. I’ve had too many of those. No, the reality is a bedsitter, seventeen pounds eight shillings a week and filthy weather. Some people say I should be grateful. I have a job. Maybe they’re right. The worst thing in life is to be shown something better and then have it disappear.”

  That afternoon, Will wrote the brief letter asking for the return of the photographs.

  The telephone call came to Kevin Smith from National Geographic’s office in New York. The man on the line said he was vice-president of the legal department.

  “In your agreement with us you stated the photographs belonged to Kevin Smith Publications (Pty), 3rd Floor Bligh House, Bligh Street, Sydney, Australia. I want to see your agreement with the photographer who I understand is one William Edward Langton recently of Mongu in Zambia. If it is a royalty agreement, then we will require proof of payment to said W E Langton.”

  “Of course we paid him, Mr Lewerstein.”

  “Ten pounds four shillings and sixpence for thirty thousand pounds’ worth of photographs? Better check, Mr Smith, or you’ll be the one going to jail for stealing. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly, Mr Lewerstein.”

  “A normal royalty agreement would pay half the thirty thousand pounds allocated to the photographs to the photographer who must have spent years giving us those fine shots. We would like to have telegraphic confirmation from your bankers within fourteen days that the amount of fifteen thousand pounds has been paid to W E Langton. I presume you will have his address?”

  “I don’t think we do. That was our problem. The man left Africa.”

  “Then seeing I have his address and you have his money, we don’t have a problem.”

  The same day Kevin Smith received his phone call, Lindsay Healy received Will Langton’s letter.

  “You said he wasn’t interested in money,” stormed Kevin Smith.

  “He wasn’t. Someone else is behind all this.”

  “Well, whatever it is we don’t have fifteen thousand pounds now or in fourteen days. Running two homes is expensive, Lindsay. You know that. You better get your arse over to London on the cheapest flight you can find on the ‘fly now pay later’ scheme. Take him his photographs. Screw the man again for all I care but get him to sign for full and final payment and send the bloody letter to New York before real shit hits our fan. We owe a lot of other people money.”

  “If you had sent him five thousand pounds we’d have got away with it.”

  “I didn’t have five thousand pounds… I’ve promised to divorce Mahel but we can’t even do that without money. How the hell did you get yourself pregnant anyway?”

  “You know something, Kevin, you really are a sod.”

  “True. But you’re a bitch. Look what you did to Will Langton.”

  Lindsay found Will in his bedsitter the following Saturday morning and gave him the airway bill for the carton of photographs that were waiting at Heathrow airport.

  “You’d better come in, Lindsay. The gas heater is on but it doesn’t make much difference. Why I wear gloves and a balaclava helmet, even inside the room. In the last century they would call this living in reduced circumstances. I can offer you a glass of sweet sherry, or brown sherry as my mother prefers to call it. Among the English for some reason, drinking sweet sherry is thought to be rather common. I like the stuff. It’s also cheap. No, don’t take off your overcoat.”

  “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Now, the point is, having returned your photographs I need a signature cancelling the royalty agreement we both signed.”

  “First a drink, Lindsay… No, before we talk about the photographs let’s g
o down to the local pub instead. It’ll be warm and they have a good ploughman’s lunch, a euphemism for bread and cheese with pickled onions. Apart from Shelley Lane, you’re the only person in London who knew the base camp. You even knew my Goliath heron. Let’s have a few sherries and a pub lunch and talk about Africa. I don’t know which has been colder in England, my body or my soul.”

  “You haven’t found her?”

  “No I haven’t and I don’t think I ever will. People change, Lindsay. Maybe we had a chance those years ago to match our souls, that girl and I. Now it would be too late. Both of us will have been poisoned by life.”

  They spent the weekend together, Lindsay and Will, sleeping in the one small single bed but never making love.

  “What else can I do?” Lindsay said on the Sunday afternoon, her small bag packed and ready for the flight back to Australia. “He’s what I know. We’re similar. Probably both dishonest. He’ll cheat on me as he cheated on her, whether we marry or not, which I doubt. I’ll have my affairs when he grows too old to care a lot. I’ll have his kid. People don’t take marriage seriously anymore. I can go back now and resign and leave him and look for someone else and where will that get me? Another Kevin Smith? I’ll be twenty-five next year, the age women begin to lose their power over men, even the good-looking women. If the business goes bang, it’s a limited liability company so we will start again. Kevin hasn’t signed surety for the company debts. Mahel might have to work which would be a laugh… You think this book deal will make you money?”

  “Enough to get out of England, maybe. Some of these deals fade away before you get to them. You want me to come to the airport?”

  “No point wasting money.”

  “Have a good life, Lindsay Healy.”

  “Don’t say that. This time I do want to keep in touch. We had something for a few brief moments beside your big river. At least, I did, I think. You’re not sore about the money?”

  “Not much point if the company’s bankrupt. Can’t have what’s spent. Maybe without your article I wouldn’t have a chance of a book deal… It’s possible to rationalise about everything. We can find tears or laughter. Just depends on the way we look at it.”

  “Thanks, Will.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The following day, while Lindsay was flying back to Australia with a signed, full release from Will Langton witnessed by the girl from the next door bedsitter and her friend, Byron Langton was sitting at his office desk reviewing the six-monthly report from his Swiss bankers. The boom in commodity prices had made him richer than even he had imagined. All his suppliers for copper, chrome and iron ore had signed fixed-priced contracts and his buyers paid the London spot metal price on the day of shipment, the difference, sometimes forty per cent, accruing to Langton Merchant Bank. The newly nationalised Zambian copper mines had been caught on the way down and the way up. Some people in London even said the market had been deliberately manipulated. Whichever the reality, the real wealth flowed into Europe and America, away from newly decolonised Africa.

  The only mistake Byron had made was to only buy his brother and Laurie Hall gold bullion when the price had risen from thirty-five US dollars an ounce to three hundred and twelve. Some of the financial papers predicted gold could rise to three thousand dollars due to the growth of inflation in Europe and North America. The figure standing to Will was over two hundred and ten thousand pounds and Laurie seventy thousand, two hundred pounds, this after the Swiss bank had deducted one per cent of the capital sum for storing the gold.

  Byron swivelled his chair round to face the back wall. The amount of money would make his brother independent for life and probably unhappy. Laurie Hall would spend it in a couple of years and die of liver failure brought on by alcohol poisoning. More importantly, he had told neither Laurie nor his brother they owned the gold. Quietly, in his mind, he transferred the proceeds back to his own account, postponing, probably forever, the time he would tell his brother.

  Byron dismissed the gold and thought about his brother. Despite Will’s lack of enthusiasm, the man was honest and certainly intelligent. The transfer from the African commodities desk to London Town Music Limited, and particularly the management of Shelley Lane, would make his brother’s life more interesting. To make his conscience less uncomfortable he would increase Will’s wage to twenty-six pounds a week.

  On the Tuesday evening, Will carried the heavy carton of photographs onto a trolley and outside to a taxi he could not afford, giving the man Heathcliff Mortimer’s address in Chelsea.

  “Bring them to my flat, old boy,” Heath had said on the phone. “And if you want my advice, don’t mention any of this to your brother.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Employers like their staff to be beholden to them. Your brother has big ideas for you, Will, but he wants to be in control.”

  On the other side of the world, Lindsay Healy caught a taxi to the flat half-paid for by Kevin Smith who met her at the door.

  “Let’s have a look,” he said without looking at Lindsay. “You sent the original to New York?”

  “Yes… In exchange for the photographs, Will agreed to forget the money from National Geographic. They’re going to bring out a glossy hardcover. Damian Huntly will publish it.”

  “How soon?”

  “Probably take them a year to reach the shops.”

  “Good. We can have one out in six months. It’ll save our business. I’ve talked to the shops here and our distributors in Europe and America. That article in National Geographic has put us on the map.”

  “But we don’t have the photographs.”

  “The best of them, we do. Had them copied. One lion looks much like another. We gave him back his damn photographs.”

  “He’ll have the original to compare.”

  “By then we will be out of the financial shit and a good lawyer can argue for years… You did a bloody good job, Lindsay. Did you have to screw him to get him to sign?”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “He didn’t want to.”

  “Wasn’t he any good the first time?”

  “Kevin, you really are a bastard.”

  “Come on. We’re going out to dinner. Told Mahel I’d be back Monday. Deals that come down like this make me horny.”

  Shelley Lane woke with a hangover that hurt every joint in her body. She lay awake unable to get out of bed and pour herself a drink. The accumulation of alcohol mixed in her blood had poisoned her system, swelling the joints of her knees and feet.

  “Better suffer, baby. This one’s bad,” she said in her mind.

  The pills were in bottles on the small table next to her bed. After three attempts she found what she wanted, swallowed two pills without water and waited for some of the pain to seep out of her body. There was nothing she remembered of the day before, not even the first drink. She had no idea of the time or the day. After the sedative began to calm her body she took two more pills from a smaller bottle and lay back on her bed. For the first time she noticed that outside her window the sun was shining. Far away she heard the loudhailer from a tourist boat on the Thames. Then her doorbell rang like a sound of thunder.

  “Fuck off!” she screamed, jarring her jangled brains to the point of agony. She waited, breathless. Then the bell thundered again into her brain and she lurched out of bed and staggered down the corridor to the horrible door.

  “Go to hell!” she screamed again.

  “Please, Shelley. I want to talk to someone.”

  “Who the hell’s that?”

  “Will Langton.”

  “Go and screw yourself.”

  “I need help, Shelley.”

  “You need help! What the fuck do you think I need?”

  “Then open the door.”

  Pulling back the catches, Shelley flung open the door.

  “Shelley, you’re naked.”

  “You think I sleep in my overcoat?… Hell, I feel terrible.
Get inside before I really do die; though that wouldn’t worry me. Now, what’s your bloody problem?”

  Will made the coffee while Shelly put on slacks and a sweater. The second lot of pills had taken effect, the upper making her feel a small part better.

  “What do you want to talk about?” shouted Shelley rudely in the direction of her kitchen.

  “Africa… You’re the only one in London who’s seen my Africa.”

  “You got me out of bed to talk about Africa, not about music?”

  “Quite frankly, Shelley,” said Will, coming back with two cups of coffee and a smile, “I couldn’t care a tinker’s cuss about music.”

  “But you’re my bloody manager.”

  “By the way, you look quite cute with nothing on.”

  “I look like hell and feel like hell… Do you ever drink too much?”

  “Sometimes. Shelley, you remember Lindsay Healy?” and he told her the story.

  Two hours later, and with the help of more pills from the line of bottles on the side table by her bed, Shelley called a taxi. Together they went to Holland Park and the bedsitter. Shelley found the suitcase under the bed with the guns and pulled them out.

  “Come on, lover, you can help.”

  “What are you doing?” asked Will.

  “Packing. You’re getting out of this dungeon.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Back to live with me and you can take that one whichever way you damn well like, Will Langton. Crazily enough, it looks like you need me more than I need you. And if my memory of Africa is right, you can cook.”

  “I don’t think my brother will like this.”

  “I don’t think your brother is getting the offer… You can leave a note for your landlady to keep the deposit. No way we’re coming back here.”

  Part 5

  1972 to 1974

  1

  Five years later a destitute Laurie Hall was sitting in a chair in the lounge of Meikles Hotel, his crossed legs pushed under the low coffee table to hide the holes in the soles of his shoes. Next to him a small green canvas bag, that had once held his squash racket, clean white shorts and shirt and expensive gym shoes, contained his only worldly possessions: three pairs of well-washed underpants, a change of khaki shorts, shirt and an old toothbrush without any toothpaste. Over the top of his clothes rested a large plastic raincoat made from a flimsy, see-through material.