by Peter Rimmer
“Go back to England, I suppose.”
“He called you Shelley,” said the small man butting into their conversation.
“Yes he did.”
“Are you Shelley Lane, the singer?”
“Would it make any difference to you if I was?”
“She’s my favourite singer.”
“Thank you. Why don’t you buy us a drink? Just imagine buying a drink for your favourite singer. Fact is, we’re damn near broke. Came out to buy some land and lover here keeps his hand firmly on the last bit of family capital. You can always pretend and so can I.”
Like many rumours started in jest, the word spread around the bar that the singer of the song playing over the sound system was sitting at the bar having a drink. People began turning their heads to look and stare. Shelley’s ‘Zambezi’ songs played along with the rumour and the small man bought them another round of drinks and Will lost control of the situation. The mention of his brother had once again made him wonder what he was doing with Shelley Lane. They were creatures of their own habits, both left behind, both remembering what they had wanted and both knowing it had gone forever with their age. Will looked at her properly for the first time in many years and saw some of what the small man had seen and was now hoping. The lack of three months’ drink had removed some of the lines of dissipation. He remembered the night she had felt his knee in the taxi, the time they had first met. She had been using him against Byron, he was as sure then as he was now… Will’s mind drifted away. Everyone, he thought, used everyone. There was always an ulterior motive except for his one brief look at truth on the rocks at Dancing Ledge.
A tall middle-aged man, half-bald with the look of a hawk, was making his way through the now crowded room towards the bar while Shelley was chatting to the small man who had bought them their drinks, the small man in love with the idea, however small the chance, that the lady drinking with him was the voice that had lived in his soul so many lonely nights.
Will was more alone in the crowded bar than any night alone at Hannes Potgieter’s base camp. Shelley was going to get drunk on someone else’s money and he was going to guide her home, his only use in the way of things. Did it matter, he asked himself? Did it matter if he bought the house money into the dying Rhodesia through Switzerland and together they drank it out with the last colonial death rattle? He had been in love with the idea Laurie Hall had written him, no less foolishly than the man at the bar in love with a phantom singer as the Shelley Lane in the song had died years ago… Then he thought again. He had run away three times to Africa, so what was the difference? Maybe they could take him for the Rhodesian army if the war grew worse.
“Shelley,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
“I’m enjoying myself. Come on, Will. We’re miserable as it is. Maybe I’ll sing for our supper and pretend for a night or two. Relax this once and try and enjoy yourself.”
The tall man with the hawk face had reached them at the bar.
“Are you Shelley Lane?” he asked. “I’m the owner of Bretts and a good friend of Laurie Hall. Which one of you is Will Langton?”
“I am,” said Will, coming out of his trance.
“Laurie said you were coming out. Will you be my guests for supper?”
“Can you do me a small favour?” said Shelley.
“Anything, Miss Lane.”
“My, they are formal in the colonies! This man has been buying us drinks. I’d like him to join us for the evening.”
“James,” said the owner to the barman. “Put everything Miss Lane orders on my bar account and I will sign it later. Shall we say seven-thirty in the nightclub?” he said to Shelley.
Two hours later, when the photographers were ready in the nightclub and the spotlight turned to Shelley sitting at her table, the owner of Bretts for the price of dinner had his nightclub on the front page of the Rhodesia Herald amid the speculation that Shelley Lane would sing at Bretts. As Will said when they were delivered home in a taxi later in the night, ‘it’s the way of the world’.
In bed, with the lights out, Will asked Shelley why she did not sing.
“Oh, I’m worth more than a dinner. You wait. Mr Bretts or whatever his name is, will pay. Did you note I was not drunk? Come here, lover, I want to make love.”
‘Who to?’ thought Will without making a sound.
Three days later when the landlady knocked on their door, they had decided to go back to England and face up to the rest of their lives. Will had no idea what he was going to do.
Shelley, thinking silently, had concluded a change in ‘live-in lover’ might improve her circumstances. Will Langton, unlike his brother, was a loser. Everything he had ever done had come to nothing, even the girl he had met by the sea and that story she was sick and tired of hearing. It was like a tap dripping, the reproach in his eyes that she was not the woman he really wanted her to be. She was sure that once they reached London, they would go their separate ways, taking with them a few memories. After three days and nothing from the nightclub she was sure she would never sing again: if they did not want her in the middle of Africa there would be no chance whatsoever in London.
The knock came again on the door. It was ten o’clock in the morning and they were still in bed.
“You got a visitor,” called the landlady and left it at that. They both heard her footsteps retreating down the corridor followed by the bang of the kitchen door. The woman had let out all the rooms in the flat, leaving herself the smallest bedroom and the kitchen. No one was allowed in the kitchen.
“Who knows we’re here?” said Will with little enthusiasm, pulling on his pants.
When he opened the door, a young boy in army camouflage was standing in the hallway not sure whether he should turn around and leave.
“Are you Will Langton?” asked Mike Barrow. The whole flat had the smell of stale cooking as if no one ever opened the windows and let in the air. It was not the kind of place he expected to find a world-famous singer but Laurie Hall had been specific with his instructions.
They had all heard about Laurie Hall and Shelley Lane and no one in the unit believed a word of what he said. In the bush they respected Laurie Hall but round the campfire the stories the man told were so tall no one, including Ant Scott, believed one word. Their unit of Horse Scouts had been stood down for ten days the previous afternoon. The night before they had all gone to Bretts as was their custom on the first night of leave where the owner told Laurie Hall his old flame, Shelley Lane, was in town. Apparently, and as quoted by the nightclub owner, ‘the singer is on the bones of her arse’. Mike Barrow had first heard Shelley Lane singing on the radio when he was at school and she was still singing on the radio five years later and people who did that, in Mike Barrow’s mind, did not end up ‘on the bones of their arse’.
Ant Scott thought the chance of laying to rest the Shelley Lane tall stories was too good to be lost. He had bet Laurie Hall the price of a lunch for the whole unit. By then all nine of them were drunk, and it was agreed that Meikles Hotel would be the venue where the food was some of the best in town. Laurie had gone off into a world of his own, which all of them put down to the embarrassment of facing his own lie. Ant Scott had to throw down the challenge again before Laurie Hall asked him to repeat what he had said.
“If this woman is really Shelley Lane, invite her to lunch. If it’s Shelley Lane, I’ll pay for everyone and if it’s not, you pick up the bill and never mention her name again.”
“Sounds a good idea to me,” Laurie had answered with little enthusiasm.
“Better still, make it supper tomorrow night here in Bretts and include the cover charge in the bill.”
By the time Will Langton appeared at his bedroom door, Mike Barrow was already feeling Laurie Hall’s embarrassment. They had ridden thousands of miles together and Mike had no wish to see his friend made to look a fool. In the army, there was no place to run and the war, they all knew but did not even admit to themselves, was going to last a ve
ry long time.
Even when Will Langton took the note from Laurie Hall and seemed to be pleased with what he read, Mike Barrow was sure there was no Shelley Lane among the smell of stale cooking oil cooked too many times. With the note delivered, Mike wanted to get far away from the embarrassment as quickly as possible.
“Hey, where’s Laurie?” called Will after reading the note and looking up to see the soldier down the end of the corridor letting himself out of the door to the flat.
“Oh, he’s with Lieutenant Scott.”
“Who’s he?”
“Our CO. Now look, I’ve delivered the message.”
“What time tonight?”
“Didn’t it say? I don’t know. Whatever time people eat supper in nightclubs.” The front door opened and closed and the soldier’s footfalls were silent in the corridor, as if the messenger had never even been.
Shelley, reading the note sitting up in bed, agreed the handwriting belonged to Laurie Hall.
“Why the hell didn’t he come here?” she asked.
“Don’t ask me but then I’ve never been in the army.”
By nine-thirty that night, Bretts was full of drunken laughter and loud voices trying to talk over each other. The only blacks in the place were serving food or drink or cooking in the kitchen and most of the patrons were young men with tans from fighting in the bush. The few young women were sucked up by the crackle of danger that lived at every table, the laughter a little more false than it would have been in peacetime. At the Horse Scouts’ table, two tables joined together, there were no women: the word had gone round the room that one of the spare table settings was for Shelley Lane the singer, the singer who had featured on the front page of the Rhodesia Herald the previous day.
There had been many hoaxes in Rhodesia during the war and by ten o’clock everyone in the room except Laurie Hall was certain the Shelley Lane story was a management hoax to fill the nightclub which was five deep at the bar. The Italian singer had done her first show to mild applause and gone off miffed. The owner of Bretts, the man with the hawk face and the partially bald head, was seen to look at the bottom of the outside stairs too often. Mike Barrow had sunk into himself in his embarrassment for Laurie Hall who was taking no notice of the looks and comments from the men in his unit. He was staring far away from the smoke and the noise, oblivious to his surroundings.
If Laurie had been asked to voice his last wish before execution it would have been to keep Shelley Lane and his memories out of Bretts nightclub. He had no wish to shatter his dream and cursed his weakness that months before had had him thinking of a tourist camp beside the river and all of them back together again.
At half-past ten the hope that his wish had been fulfilled was shattered by a stir at the reception desk tucked against the bottom of the stairs and the owner moving quickly to greet his new guest. Laurie did not even see Ant look up in surprise and then she was coming towards him between the tables led by the owner and somehow holding Will Langton’s hand. She swept towards him like a queen, her make-up perfect, her black hair the perfect sheen he had remembered and lost along with his money, the smile the same, the dark brown eyes set in their almond cases, the white skin tinged with the down of orange-red, the large inviting mouth, the ears like seashells, the long strides filling the skirt like a ship in full sail. In the dim light and cigarette smoke she was quite magnificent.
Shelley watched Laurie Hall stand up from the table and saw the white hunter she had met at Mongu. The army had honed away the surplus fat, the sun had tanned his skin and the crow’s feet his smile made were like the devil’s wings, the sky-blue eyes springing a host of memories to make her know her power again. For the first time in five years she felt like singing. She let go the protection of Will’s hand and felt the power of the strong arms crushing her against his chest.
“Where’ve you been?” he said to her and then, a too-long pause afterwards, “Will, good to see you. Come and sit down. These are my friends. Everyone, meet Shelley Lane and Will Langton.”
Will sat at a chair between two soldiers he had never met before and found himself alone in a room full of people. Food was set in front of him that he had never ordered and a full glass of wine appeared beside his plate. The local Rhodesian wine, the product of sanctions, tasted more like paraffin than alcohol but none of the waiters would take his order for a bottle of beer, the whole nightclub concentrated on Shelley Lane. The woman who in bed that morning had looked her thirty-five years of age had been transformed by the hairdresser and the most expensive dress shop Will had ever entered. After an hour of pleading that followed the letter from Laurie Hall, Will had opened up the capital account, the one that was going to buy his life back on the banks of the Zambezi River. Fascinated and sick to his stomach, Will watched the old magnetism return to the lady he had lived with for five years. She captivated everyone in the room, except Will.
They had fallen together more out of habit than any love or lust, out of mutual protection, two lonely, lost people, lost in a world that for them had fallen apart, shattered by her alcohol and by his loss of Africa. They had tried to force their lives to work together. There had been moments of peace and understanding, the comfort of familiar lives, the need they had for each other made up from their fear of living alone. Shelley Lane had loved his brother, had made love to Laurie Hall. He was her comforter.
Pushing the piece of raw steak around his plate, he ate some of the chips and some of the soggy vegetables and swallowed his glass of wine in two large gulps only to find it full again a moment later. After four glasses, without speaking a word to anyone or anyone speaking a word to him, the roof of his palate was numb and the alcohol from his glass had gone to his head and he watched the people around him as if from a great distance. He was only there to watch. One after the other, the soldiers danced with Shelley Lane but all the time he saw her eyes looking for Laurie Hall. Never once did she even smile his way and sadly, it did not matter.
By midnight the Italian singer had come and gone again. The nightclub was waiting. By one o’clock they were still waiting, and no one had even left the bar. Mostly she danced with Laurie Hall. As he watched them, oblivious to the crowded room, any last idea Will had of living by the Zambezi River disappeared, the dream lost in the reality of Laurie Hall’s letter: the man wanted the girl to come back to Africa.
Back at the table Will watched Laurie pick up both of her hands from the table and looked into her eyes.
“Shelley, you remember Victoria Falls? Will you sing for us? The guys would appreciate it. We lost one of our troopers last week. War is ugly. You can make it softer, take them into your world while you sing.”
Will watched his lady get up from the table as Laurie signalled the man with the hawk face, the band faded out its number and the couples stood motionless on the dance floor as the owner took the microphone and told the quiet nightclub what they wanted to hear.
The first song she sang was the song she had first sang in public for Byron Langton, and Will more than anyone understood the meaning of ‘If You Want To Be Mine’. After the third number from her first album, when the clapping was furious, Will got out of his chair and left the table. At reception, he borrowed a pen from the cloakroom attendant and wrote down his note to Shelley Lane, wishing her a lovely evening but he was tired and going home.
It was the end of March and the main rains were over and outside, when he reached the top of the stairs, the night was warm and clear. There was no one on the streets and he walked to Cecil Square where Laurie Hall, unbeknown to Will Langton, had tried to kill himself. Will turned up Second Street towards the Avenues. Away from the street lights he looked at the heavens; he could see the Southern Cross and hear the voice of Hannes Potgieter telling him how to find south.
Will walked alone, free from human eyes; the jacaranda trees canopied his head. For a brief moment he thought he was going to cry but the wave of sadness passed him by and left him walking in the street.
By
lunchtime the following day, Will was still alone in the room. He waited the whole day and the night and the following morning before the note came from Laurie Hall.
“The only apology I can think of is to say Shelley and I were lovers first. I am too pathetic to tell you to your face. You will always be my friend.”
Quietly, Will packed his bags and paid the landlady for the extra month. There were two flights a day from Salisbury Airport to Johannesburg in South Africa which was the way Will went home alone.
With the rebuilding of their youth and Shelley Lane’s singing career, Laurie Hall and Shelley Lane agreed to marry and, despite what Will thought on his long flight back to London, the two ex-lovers had not shared the same bed. There had been an argument which was won by Laurie Hall.
“Whether you like it or not, under common law you are married to one of the best men I have ever called a friend. To sleep with you now would be an insult to Will Langton.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” asked Shelley. They had left Bretts nightclub at three in the morning and gone back to the small flat Laurie kept in Baker Avenue, Shelley not wishing to end her evening. She could still hear the wild applause.
“First, we will get married and then make love,” said Laurie emphatically.
“Are you proposing to me?” asked Shelly, incredulously.
“Yes. Will you marry me?”
“Do you know you’re the first man to actually propose? And when do you intend getting married?”
“As soon as possible. There are licences. Things like that. Tomorrow we’ll go and find out.”
“Then I’m not going back to Will?”
“No. If he loved you, he would have married you years ago.”
“True. So why can’t we make love?”
“Because I’m a stupid old romantic.”
“Why didn’t you ask me before? In London?”
“Because you were the great singer. Rich. I had a little money but no job. Certainly no prospects other than going back into the bush.”
