Just the Memory of Love

by Peter Rimmer

“Would you like me to get a cheque for you from Byron? Save you and your brother the embarrassment.”

  “I’m not sure if I want the money. Do you know how much I have?”

  “Over a million. Quite a bit over a million.”

  “And he was never going to say?”

  “Not a word.”

  “How can a man steal from his brother?”

  “To him it was a legitimate business deal. The profit was hidden, and he was the only one who knew the hiding place.”

  “He’ll have to live with himself.”

  “He doesn’t consider anything wrong. Byron had one hell of a row with the chief executive at the Union Bank of Switzerland. Those Swiss banks are getting nervous about their secrecy laws…hiding drug and terrorist money. The man from UBS said yours and Shelley’s had a non-British resident trust account number and only the beneficiaries of the trust, both nominated by your brother for tax purposes when he opened the accounts, could receive the money. You will have to talk to the tax lawyer yourself. Shelley’s new bankers are working on that one.”

  “Even now the problems start.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “As I said before, when I make up my mind I’ll let you know… The man must have a twisted mind.”

  “Who?”

  “My brother, Byron. What does he want from all this money? He never goes down to East Horsley. Stays in London with his whores. Had a phone call from Fiona wanting to see me. Don’t know how she found out about the bar. The worst thing you can ever do is interfere in other people’s private affairs. Said we could talk if we met at Langton Manor but I don’t go home anymore. My father is on his knees most of the time praying to God for forgiveness. Thinks the bomb on Japan was all his fault. I could get no sense out of him at all and when Mother went on and on about all the money they had skimped and scraped to send me to Stanmore and what had I done with it and how could she have a son who made a living as a common publican. I love my mother but that was the final straw. Well, not quite. The permanent comparison to one minister of the Crown and one pillar of the city of London drove me out of Dorset and I’ve not been back. As usual, I send her a bunch of flowers on my birthday for the pain she suffered giving me life and I phone them both on their birthdays… Why do families grow apart? We used to be so close growing up as children. There was always so much family at Langton Manor, especially at Christmas time. Randolph’s still all right, but he thinks he’s a failure in our mother’s eyes by not siring a son. He’s the eldest. Langton Manor goes to Randolph and after that it will be Byron and then Gregory, Byron’s son. Gregory’s eleven now, boarding school at Stanmore prep, and if he saw his father in the street they probably wouldn’t recognise each other. And the younger girls, despite living at home, see their grandfather more often than their father. Anyway, Fiona’s got her career which is what these women seem to want these days. God knows what it will do to the next generation. There just isn’t any family life anymore.”

  “Man is adaptable,” said Heath, draining his glass. “How we evolved from the swamps to living in a concrete box in the sky. Pour me another Southern Comfort. I’ve got a bit of a thirst tonight.”

  Three months later, Heathcliff Mortimer was sitting on the same bar stool thinking back on his life and keeping it to himself. Will understood Heath’s evenings of solitude, quiet in a crowd, drinking Southern Comfort, and left him alone.

  The day’s special was poached cod with a tarragon sauce, both fresh that morning from the market, the cod plentiful and cheap by comparison to meat and poultry. Neither of the waitresses had arrived. The few customers were sitting at the bar. Outside on the street it was broad daylight but inside the lights were on. The same switch that lit up the bush scenes that covered the walls turned on the tape recorder, engulfing the early drinkers in the sounds of Christmas beetles and cicadas with the intermittent bay of a black-backed jackal.

  An old man and a much younger woman sat down at one of the tables. The man Will guessed was in his mid-sixties and the woman her mid-thirties. Other customers came to the bar, and he lost sight of them and then Milly the waitress arrived and he put them out of his mind. Old men with young women were common in London but the expression on the man’s face looking at the murals was so rapt that Will knew the man had experienced the real bush. Another nostalgia freak, but it was the way he made his living. Soon the bar sounds of man overcame the night sounds of insects and animals. It was going to be a good night for business. Still Heath ignored the company and Will filled his glass when it was empty without being asked and without saying a word. One raised finger from the level of the wooden bar counter acknowledged the service and like any long friendship they were perfectly at ease without words. The old man’s ability to consume Southern Comfort never failed to amaze Will Langton. He could count on one hand the number of times he had seen Heathcliff Mortimer drunk and never in public.

  As always at seven-thirty, Will handed over the bar to Milly and went on a round of his tables to ask if everything was all right. The cod was selling fast which was no surprise as the clarity of the eyes of each dead fish had been checked and the skin smelt, with the cook knowing how to poach out the flesh colour in the middle of the cod without overcooking. The tarragon sauce was one of her minor masterpieces.

  The old man and his young wife were still at their same table and Will bent to pick up their well-cleaned fish plates and found himself surprised that both his guests, by the sound of their accents, were American. There had been very few Americans in British Colonial Africa and Will wondered if he had come in off the streets by mistake until he remembered the look he had seen the old man give the massively blown-up shots of the Zambezi River at sundown.

  “I know that place,” said the man, pointing at the wall behind their table. “I recognise that Goliath heron. Belonged to a man called Hannes Potgieter.”

  Faces change, covered up by age and the drain of colour from skin and hair, but the one thing that mostly never changed was the voice.

  “Melvin Raath! What a coincidence… You remember me? I’m Will Langton. You even gave me your address in America. Have it upstairs as a matter of fact. You remember that trip to base camp? That was my first safari with a client. You’re in newspapers. Something like that. Hannes said you were the best of all his clients as you truly loved the bush and not just the idea of a trophy on your wall back home.”

  “Good God, is that really you? What happened, Will?”

  “Why? What do you mean? Oh, all this.”

  “Why aren’t you in Africa?”

  “They kicked us out, don’t you remember? Hannes is dead many years back.”

  “I know. Why I didn’t go back. He left it to you, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Well, me and the trackers I suppose.”

  “This is my daughter, Mary-Lou. She’s my youngest. We’re going to watch a show in the West End. What time you put up the shutter?”

  “Eleven.”

  “We’ll call back after the show. Sounds like you live on the premises. You can buy us a cup of coffee for old times’ sake and let an old man talk about the only place he ever felt really at home. Bore my Mary-Lou to shreds but that’s a small price for her trip to London.”

  Will thought of Melvin Raath the rest of the evening, the man who came to Africa and the bush instead of seeking a shrink. Will had been eighteen and the impression the newspaperman left had stayed with Will for twenty-four years. The picture of modern America drawn by Melvin Raath all those years ago had struck the chord which stopped Melvin Raath from being the conventional, educated modern man. There had been something about too many sidewalks, not enough grass and a world that had lost sight of how to make itself happy. Quite a few African hands after spreading their meal or drinks thick with nostalgia had said they would be back but never came. Only the ones close to Soho made it their place to drink. He had barely noticed the girl before going back to take over the bar from Milly. The book of his photographs, d
escribed in words by Heathcliff Mortimer, had sold well in London and people talked. Many a barman in the top London hotels knew the photographer owned the Zambezi Bar in Soho. They liked the idea of a fellow barman publishing books and they talked about it to their stray customers who sat at their bars with nothing better to do. London was really a very small place.

  The surprise came when Will was cashing up and the Raaths, father and daughter, arrived to claim their cup of coffee.

  “What did you see?”

  “You won’t believe it but that show by your Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap. Been running nearly thirty years and the house was sold right out.”

  “You want to come upstairs for some coffee, Mr Raath? This place is weird when there’s only me, I have to turn the lights out on the panels or I feel creepy.”

  “Homesick, more likely.”

  “There’s nothing worse than feeling homesick for a place you can’t go back to, a place that no longer exists. You read about people in history being banished into exile and now I know what they must have felt. Let me put this money in the safe and we’ll go upstairs.”

  That evening, every time Will turned his attention away from Melvin Raath he found the daughter’s eyes boring into him. She never spoke and never took her eyes off Will Langton. Even the father noticed.

  “You’re the first live white hunter my Mary-Lou’s met, Will. Have to forgive her. Ever since a toddler, I told Mary-Lou about Africa and to Mary-Lou a white hunter is a whole lot better than a knight in shining armour, don’t you say, Mary-Lou?”

  To Will’s consternation, Mary-Lou said not a word but continued to bore into his brain with her eyes. She had this disconcerting habit of flicking the underneath of the thumbnail with the nail of her second finger. A gun in her hand would have been no less disconcerting. The girl was not unattractive physically, with big breasts pushing firmly into a silk blouse, distinctly showing him the shape of large, round nipples. Will guessed her age as thirty-five or thirty-six.

  The father retold story after story of his great days on safari with Hannes Potgieter and the daughter went on clicking her thumbnail. It took an open yawn to send the message that six o’clock in the morning was the time he started work.

  “Sorry. I’ve been talking too much,” said Melvin Raath. “Come, Mary-Lou. Will told us he has to do the shopping early in the morning.”

  “What time do you open?” asked Mary-Lou, the first words she had spoken.

  “Eleven-thirty like all other pubs but one around here. The Green Dolphin in Greek Street opens at ten.”

  She gave him a last look deep into his eyes before going down the stairs in front of her father. Will saw them out of the front door of the restaurant. It was two o’clock in the morning and raining. Luck brought a taxi with the ‘For Hire’ sign lit within a minute of them standing in the doorway and Will’s late-night guests went on their way to Claridge’s Hotel.

  ‘Must be richer than ever before,’ thought Will, going inside and locking the door. Within minutes of finding his bed he was sound asleep. He had been careful to drink two cups of coffee. For old times’ sake and the memory of Hannes Potgieter, he had let the American talk for two hours. The last thought he had before sleep was that the world was very strange.

  At eleven the following morning when Will opened the front door to the public, Mary-Lou Raath was standing on the pavement, a dry pavement bathed in sunshine.

  “Sorry about Melvin last night. He just likes to talk about Africa.”

  Having smiled, made the right sounds and overcome the strangeness of a daughter calling her father by his Christian name, Will moved back inside and took up his customary position behind the bar. Cook would not arrive for half an hour but a clean kitchen was ready and waiting, Will finding it easier to clean the place himself rather than relying on outside help. Dishwashers were notoriously late or did not come at all. The dole was a much simpler source of income.

  “You got some of that coffee?” asked the girl who had followed him to the bar. “Melvin’s coming later.”

  The only other words she said for an hour were, ‘You got a customer,’ while he was in the kitchen making her coffee. She sat and watched him and only drank her coffee when it was cold.

  Will had three regular single women coming into the bar on their own and all of them had given him the look of availability but none of them had made him awkward. She was still on the same bar stool at half-past two when he closed up for the afternoon.

  “When do you open again?” she asked.

  “What happened to your dad?” he said, ignoring the question.

  At half-past five they both arrived at the same time.

  “You ever think of moving to the States?” asked Melvin Raath. “Mary-Lou wants to open a restaurant and says you run the best restaurant she ever saw. What we think is, making a Zambezi Bar in New York only much, much bigger with waiters dressed like askaris with red fez hats and black tassels, a man on the door wearing a lion skin, black man of course, punkahs up in the ceiling. Real Colonial Africa. Get the first one up and running in New York and then we franchise right across the States. Got a whole pile of money waiting to invest and you got the right idea here, Will. Be nice for me, sitting in my own bar thinking I’m back in those good old days in Africa.”

  “Colonial rule isn’t exactly the flavour of the month.”

  “People say one thing, do another. No one minds anything in America so long as it makes money. Take my word. Instead of scratching a living for the rest of your life I’ll make you a rich man. Bet apart from this bar you don’t have a cent to your name.”

  Across town in the offices of Langton Merchant Bank, Byron Langton was thinking. Years ago he had discovered the only person he could talk to properly was himself. The conversation going on in his mind was trying to fuse his brain. He had flown in from Switzerland that afternoon without the one and a half million pounds. The Swiss bank was adamant. The money belonged to his brother.

  “It was a tax opportunity,” he had shouted. “My brother hasn’t ever heard of the money. He was overseas, and I used his name to invest thirty thousand pounds in gold.”

  “What about the ivory money? That certainly belonged to William Langton. We had to see the will of his partner to combine the money.”

  “There didn’t seem any point in two accounts.”

  “Swiss law is Swiss law. You gave your brother thirty thousand pounds. Why or for what reason is none of our business. Mr Langton, if everyone who gave anyone money in this world wanted it back again where would we be? My goodness, where would we be?”

  “I may have given him thirty thousand pounds. I don’t remember. But it was me that made the rest of it.”

  “I’m sure your brother will appreciate the skill. And Mr Langton, as your overseas bankers, the amount of one and a half million pounds set against your personal assets is rather small. You have become a very wealthy man.”

  “It’s the principle. He didn’t make the money, I did.”

  “We agree, Mr Langton. It’s the principle. The money was invested in the name of William Edward Langton and if any money is taken from the trust account, it must be done with his written approval.”

  “There is absolutely no justice in this world.”

  “From my experience in Swiss banking I must heartily agree with you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Mr Langton, we even banked for the Nazis. We would even bank for the devil if he gave us money to invest.”

  Sitting at his London desk, the thoughts and arguments swirled in Byron’s mind and always he was right and everyone else was wrong: he was the one that made the money; no one else; without the likes of himself there would be no wealth in the world.

  Having berated himself for half an hour, Byron rationalised the reality. The money was gone. He would make the best of a bad job. It was six o’clock and his secretary, who had been with him for more years than he could remember, had gone home. Finding the right
telephone directory outside at reception, he went back into his office and dialled the Zambezi Bar in Soho.

  “Will, old chap, how are you?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Byron, you bloody fool. Can you come over to the office?”

  “Not now, Byron. What’s the matter?”

  “We have to talk about your investments?”

  “What investments, Byron?”

  “Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid. That old fox Mortimer must have told you. Pickles what’s left of his liver most nights at your bar so they tell me.”

  “Maybe this time, Byron, if you want to see me you come over here. I believe you know the Green Dolphin in Greek Street. We’re just around the corner.”

  “What do you know about the Green Dolphin?”

  “I believe it was owned by your partner, Jack Pike. But what you do with your life is up to you provided it doesn’t interfere with other people. You might as well bring a cheque.”

  “Just forms for the bank. Then you deal direct.”

  “Why not put the forms in the mail?”

  “Right. I’ll do that.”

  “By the way, thank you, Byron.”

  “Oh go and fuck yourself.”

  “They didn’t teach you that at Stanmore.”

  The receiver was slammed down at the other end and the phone went dead in Will’s ear. ‘Money does awful things to people,’ was all he thought. Three people were looking to order drinks, all of them slightly agitated. Will smiled to himself. A man without a drink when he wanted one was an equally sad thing. “Shit,” he said quietly to the row of bottles as he turned to the optic with a glass for a shot of brandy. “What do I do with all that money?”

  Finished with the drinks, he went back to Melvin Raath and his daughter at the end of the bar. He carried a double whisky for himself, a double bourbon for Melvin Raath and a Coke for the daughter.

  “Cheers,” he said. “This one’s on me.”

  “Could you find a reliable manager to run this place?” asked Melvin Raath.

  “Probably,” said Will. “There are so many ex-Rhodesians coming into London without a job or a penny to their name. Even if they could sell their farms and businesses back home, they can’t bring out the money. Everything goes to the war effort. Maybe the Lancaster House talks will bring that to an end but chances are the new government will confiscate white property as they have done everywhere else in Africa.”