by Peter Rimmer
The heavy water was constant in its flow, and the last light from the sunset picked out the clumps of weed floating downriver. Over on the Zambian bank four elephant were dousing themselves with water, filling their trunks and squirting the water over their backs, the big ears flapping in sympathy, the water sound reaching Laurie as he walked down the steep bank to the edge of the river, the steaks held out carefully in both hands. Two of the elephant were up to their bellies in the water.
Standing still, looking at the glory of the African night, Laurie watched an owl laboriously fly across the sunset. Then he bent down to the water’s edge, kneeling to flush the dust-caked dirt from the meat.
The blow from the crocodile’s tail knocked him senseless, sending the meat into the river and dropping the FN from his shoulder. When Laurie regained consciousness he was under water, pushed into a crevice below the bank, the crocodile holding him by the shoulder waiting for him to drown. As he drowned he saw nothing of the past or future, only the futility of the moment.
Part 6
1979 to 1980
1
Josephine Langton, five years later, in May 1979, was once more out of a job. Socialist Callaghan had been beaten at the polls by Tory Thatcher in the British general election. For thirty-seven months Josephine had been Minister for Commonwealth Aid and Welfare, praised in liberal circles as one of the great British ministers of all time. Her twin brother, Byron, was more candid. In one of his own newspapers he was quoted as saying his saintly sister had given away more of other people’s money than anyone else in history. He quoted his protégé, Heathcliff Mortimer’s new book, which likened aid to Africa to decanting money down a rathole. Heathcliff Mortimer’s latest book, a runaway bestseller, Byron quoted, had gone on to describe the beneficiaries of the minister’s largesse as mostly murderers, thieves and tinpot dictators and that every one of the new states, with barely an exception, had ignored their hard-won Westminster constitutions in favour of a one-party state where the looting of the fiscal would be more orderly and more complete with no chance of redress unless it came through the barrel of a gun.
Will Langton had not spoken to his brother or sister for three years. He read about his sister’s good deeds and felt proud of her, but they had little in common to talk about. So far as the family was concerned, Will was a failure. He had not spoken to Shelley Lane but heard from the newspapers about the birth of her daughter and the death of her husband. Young Mike Barrow had been shot dead by terrorists before he could report back to Ant Scott. The British and American newspapers said the singer’s husband had been a soldier in the rebel Rhodesian army, shot dead by freedom fighters. The press had turned on Shelley Lane and her singing career was over. The report of the marriage ceremony in Gaborone eight months earlier was corrected by the Daily Garnet but not before the re-release of Shelley’s records had sold out. Byron Langton had, in every sense of the word, ‘milked her dry’. As she was no longer of use to him, Byron forgot her as easily as he forgot his mistresses.
Will sold his guns, the guns given to him by Hannes Potgieter, and lived frugally from the proceeds, drifting around London as an itinerant barman. Two years later a further edition of his wildlife book was published, and the public bought more heavily than before. Africa, the Africa of the wild bush, was fast disappearing, along with the game. Elephant and rhinoceros had been decimated. Will’s book was a record of what had been and would never be again. Ten per cent of the retail price was donated by the publisher to the World Wildlife Fund. Damian Huntly, the publisher friend of Heathcliff Mortimer, had used the charity to treble his sales.
Heathcliff Mortimer had brought him the royalty cheque. With Heath’s drinking habits and Will working behind bars, it had only been a matter of time before they came face-to-face.
“What are you going to do with the money?” Heath asked.
“That’s quite a lot of money, Heath.”
“More exactly, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?”
“Live it out, I suppose, like everyone else.”
“You can start something with that cheque.”
“You have something in mind?” asked Will.
“Yes I have. The book sold on nostalgia. There are a lot of people in London who lived in Africa. Probably the ones who bought our book. Start a bar-restaurant with an African theme. Blow up some of your photographs and pitch them round the walls. Get hold of some spears and drums, hunting rifles, old zebra skins, a lion’s head. Make the old colonials and the new conservationists pay for their nostalgia in the company of like-minded folk.”
“What are you going to call it?” asked Will, trying to make the conversation into a joke.
“The Zambezi Bar, of course. Tell you what, I’ll even be your silent partner. We’ll find premises close enough to the Daily Garnet offices and for once I can make a profit out of my drinking… Will, you’re over forty. You really have to do something with your life.”
Heathcliff Mortimer’s part ownership of a bar was much to his satisfaction. He even continued to rationalise that by drinking he was making a profit. Most nights, instead of going home to his Chelsea flat, he walked down to the Soho bar where most of the conversation was Africa, all in the past, none in the future. As a celebrated Africa hand, Heath found himself the centre of many good conversations, and people who had come into the bar for a drink or two found themselves staying to closing time and going home in a taxi. Heath always went home in a taxi, ordered and paid for by Will who knew how much business his partner brought to the bar.
Colour transparencies had been made of the best African sunsets, blown up to the size of the walls and lit from behind. The result was sundowners in the bush with the sounds of Africa played through loudspeakers. With a boma in the middle of the floor and the smell of roasting impala, no one would have known the difference. Will had drawn the line at a fire and spit roast, but the rest was easily authentic and pure nostalgia for the white Zambians thrown out of their country by a government that had nationalised their farms and businesses. The words had been Africanised to ‘indigenisation’, ‘Africanisation’, ‘retribution for colonialism’, but the result was the same. Along with the ex-Zambians were the ex-Kenyans, the ex-Ugandans and a few old hands from Tanganyika. The war in Rhodesia was reaching a deadly climax and many of the whites were fleeing the country, leaving behind everything they once owned.
For the brief hours these people spent in the Zambezi Bar they were among friends and the cold and sleet outside were driven from their minds as they stared at Will Langton’s magnificent photography and listened to the screech of the cicadas and the call of the frogs, heard the familiar bird calls they thought they would never hear again, the night laugh of hyena and the roar of the lion.
Shelley Lane no longer sang in public and he wondered how she was paying her bills but the hurt of sitting in that room in Salisbury waiting for her to come home, the note from Laurie, the lonely journey back to England, were too strong to spark his sympathy. Even with the bar making a financial success he told himself if she had survived so far with the kid, she no longer needed his help and, anyway, she would have long ago found another lover. As best he could, Will put the past women in his life out of his mind and concentrated on the fantasy of his bar and the brief spells of nostalgic happiness he was bringing to so many lonely people.
Heathcliff Mortimer came into the bar half an hour after James Callaghan conceded victory to Margaret Thatcher. The place was full as usual and before he sat down at the bar, three people had asked him if Thatcher would now be able to solve the Rhodesian crisis. He was overweight, drank too much, ate the wrong food, worked long, irregular hours and at the age of seventy-six to his wild surprise there appeared nothing wrong with his health. It was not the result of the general election that made him brush past the questions without giving an answer but a conversation he had overheard in the offices of Langton Merchant Bank between a top executive of the Union Bank of Switzerland and Byron Langto
n. Part of Heath’s training as a journalist had been to stop, wait and listen when something was being said that he or anyone else was not meant to hear.
The babble of conversation in the bar drowned out the insects, the animals and birds, and no one was looking at the stationary sunsets over the Zambezi River. Only the first-time customers looked and listened in awe.
“You want to come and talk to me at the table in the corner?” said Heath to Will.
“Okay, but why, Heath? What’s the matter?”
“You remember bringing back a horde of ivory when you first came back to England from Barotseland?”
“Yes. Some belonged to me and some to Hannes. Byron sold it for us. Hell, that was years ago.”
“What happened to the proceeds?”
“Nothing much. Byron said that windfall money like that should be gambled on risk investment. I asked him quite a few times what happened to the investment, but he was paying me a good salary, more than I was worth I can tell you that, and when he said that some investments were better than others for the fourth or fifth time, I don’t remember really, I assumed he had gambled and lost my money and was too embarrassed to admit his investment eye had gone wrong. Money has never been a big thing with me, you know that.”
“You remember all those crocodile skins you shipped across with Laurie Hall before independence?”
“I think that’s my point. The money Byron paid Laurie did Laurie more harm than good and when he had spent the lot, no one wanted to know his troubles. Money attracts the wrong kind of people.”
“Aside from that, did you know how much money your brother made out of the skins once he had turned them into shoes and handbags?”
“I never asked him. My concern was for the chief to be paid. I didn’t want anything to do with the slaughter.”
“The chief did very well. Your brother invested his money and made him a rich man. His children went to the best private schools in England and are now proper Englishmen with very proper accents.”
“I’m glad to hear some good came out of the slaughter.”
“Did you know that when the final profit was calculated by Byron, he gave Laurie a substantial bonus?”
“Nonsense. He would have told Laurie. Laurie was on the bones of his arse until he joined the Rhodesian army.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something. In August 1965, your brother awarded Laurie a bonus of ten thousand pounds and for your introduction to the business he allocated you thirty thousand pounds.”
“Shit. That’s a lot of money.”
“The money was invested in gold bullion with the Union Bank of Switzerland and sold for an eight hundred per cent profit a few years later. The proceeds were then invested in very difficult to buy German equity stock before the Deutsche Mark made its historic bull run against the pound. At that point the well-invested proceeds of the ivory, yours and Hannes Potgieter’s, was added to the equation and far from losing your money, your brother made you a fortune. Because the money was in your name and that of Laurie Hall, but under the signature of your brother to move the investment wherever he wished, he saw the rise in capital and decided to keep quiet, thinking he could take back a bonus he never mentioned and an investment you thought had gone bust. This morning I overheard a conversation between your brother and the bank when they told him the money belonged to one William Edward Langton and the estate of one Laurie Makepeace Hall. Your brother, apparently, was trying to take back the money for himself.”
“How did you find out all the detail?”
“I’m a reporter… No, that wasn’t the only way. After the man from the UBS had left on a waft of self-righteousness, I confronted your brother. I said I was going to tell you and Shelley Lane, the widow of Laurie Hall. He said I could go to hell.”
“He’ll fire you.”
“He won’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got enough dirt on your brother laundering money out of Africa to put him in jail for the rest of his life.”
“You say his money is made through crookedness?”
“The seed money, yes. His mentor was the notorious Jack Pike who made the bulk of his money out of prostitution and soft porn.”
“What’s Johnny Pike to Jack Pike?”
“Father and son. They own forty per cent of Langton Merchant Bank through nominees. Your brother made the second generation legitimate.”
“Why hasn’t someone done something about it?”
“Don’t look at me, Will. I like my Chelsea flat too much and my interest in Southern Comfort is very expensive. If he goes out of business, someone else will help the Mobutus of this world buy their villas in the South of France. Your sister tried a few years back when she finally worked out what was happening to her aid for Africa. She said the blacks could be forgiven but not your brother. She threatened to expose him if he did not stop financing imports to and exports from Africa, the word ‘financing’ being a nice way to take ten per cent and hide the money in Switzerland. Your brother laughed in her face and she was a minister in the British government. Josephine came to me after that nasty little row with her twin and wanted to know what she could do. I told her nothing. That there was nothing she could do but find a better way of sending aid into Africa that would bypass the crooked politicians and the predators like her brother. You see, your sister when she was very young had an illegal abortion and the Tory Party would have had a field day tearing apart the sanctimonious Labour Party if they had found out. Your brother not only had proof, he had photographs, seeing he organised the abortion with the help of the Pikes. Your brother has a file on just about everyone who might get in his way.”
“Josephine was pregnant? By whom?”
“A man called Wolfgang Baumann.”
“I remember him. He was her tutor. We had a Christmas together at Langton Manor.”
“He never knew. Only Byron.”
“Poor Josephine. She’ll be so lonely now. Out of office. No husband. No kids.”
“That’s the point, Will. Everyone has to live with themselves. But if I were you, I’d go and ask your brother for your money.”
“And Shelley?”
“I’ll tell Shelley,” said Heathcliff Mortimer. “You know she never made a penny out of the re-release of her records? She’d sold her share in Music Lane Limited to Byron and Music Lane owns the royalties to her music.”
“What’s she doing, Heath?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Will lived in a small flat above the bar and restaurant. Every morning at six he went out to buy fresh vegetables for the restaurant. The dark, cold mornings of winter were giving way to the light of summer and the walk along wet streets more comfortable. In the bad days he forced the images of Africa away from his mind and concentrated on the present. With the help of Heathcliff Mortimer spreading the word, the bar and twelve-table, alcove restaurant had made a profit in the sixth month and presently he was three months ahead with the rent and all the bills had been paid as everything was bought for cash, making Will highly conscious of the price of food. Will did all the buying and handled the meal receipts at the bar. There were two waitresses for the lunch trade and another two for the supper, with a cook preparing both meals. Will did the washing up and a cleaner service came in to do the floors. The rhythm of work and sleep, six days a week, suited Will’s mood and the familiar faces that became his regular customers were his friends. He was comfortable and mostly content and with his forty-second birthday coming up later in the month had resigned himself to spending the rest of his life on his own. Wife and children had passed him by.
For a week, Will avoided the issue of confronting his brother as he thought through the result of finding his ownership of so much wealth. Half the fun of the Zambezi Bar was keeping it ticking, making enough to pay the staff an above-average wage with fifteen per cent of all profit split between the cook and the waitresses at the end of each month. Will had good company, a drink when he chose, a mea
l when he was hungry and a comfortable bed. He had the certain awareness that his graph of happiness would fall with so much money in the bank. The small excitement of cashing up each night to tell the others how the bonus looked would be taken away. The whole point of his own business would be drowned in a flood of wealth. Maybe Shelley needed the money, she had a child, but he had no use for more than he earned from the bar. Every night Heathcliff Mortimer asked if he had seen his brother and every night he shook his head.
“Have you seen Shelley?” Will asked at the end of the first week.
“Yes I have.”
“How is she, Heath?”
“Better now. She needed money badly.”
“What did you do with the money?”
“Your brother transferred all the money from Switzerland and gave me a cheque made out to Shelley. Fortunately Laurie had made a will so Shelley would get a widow’s pension should anything happen to him in the war. Living in England, she was not able to receive the pension from Rhodesia. United Nations mandatory sanctions.”
“How much was it, Heath?”
“A little over two hundred thousand pounds.”
“Shelley can’t control money.”
“I know. She agreed to put it all in trust for the girl and only touch the income.”
“What was she doing?”
“Forget it, Will. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I want to know.”
“Then ask Shelley Lane… Do you still love her?”
“I don’t think I ever loved her, Heath. We needed each other for a time.”
“She needed you after Laurie died.”
“You ever been left in a room where you lived with a woman as the days went while she’d gone off with your best friend? That hurt. Not the love or sex but the crass inability of both of them to think of another person.”
