by Peter Rimmer
“Unless they can make some kind of agreement to stop that,” said Melvin.
“Point is, Rhodesia was living in the colonial past; the whites with their proverbial heads in the sand. But not all the colonial past was bad. In those days an Englishman was honest as, if he wasn’t, they tossed him out of the club. These new refugees from Rhodesia have been trained to run an empire that no longer exists, so running a bar and restaurant will be small beer, if you’ll excuse the pun… If they sign the Lancaster House Agreement it will finally end the second empire and Britain will revert back four hundred years to being an insignificant island off the coast of Europe with arguably the worst climate in the world.”
“What was the first empire?” asked Mary-Lou.
“America and Canada… When I was born in 1937, the Union Jack flew over one-fifth of the world’s surface and one out of four on this earth were subjects of the King-Emperor. And that was the second empire. Africa and Asia, we’ll leave behind our language, maybe, and cricket.”
“What’s cricket?” asked Mary-Lou.
“A game played by Englishmen with a strict set of rules.”
After two hours of further conversation, Will was not sure whether they wanted him for the business, the daughter or for Melvin Raath to talk on about his few lost days in Africa.
England, so far as Will was concerned, was riding backwards into the dark. Maybe America would have a glowing sunset. Most importantly, he told himself, he had nothing better to do.
2
Three months later, Byron Langton, in December 1979, was invited to the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement which would end the rebellion in Rhodesia. Having given equal amounts of money to Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU, both parties wanted to know where his loyalties lay.
As a newspaper proprietor, Byron had kept a solid distance from his ‘clients’ who were often not sure whether the party funding was less important than the power of the Langton Press. Like the British at the height of the empire, Byron found fraternisation with his inferiors not only uncomfortable but bad policy. The more aloof, the more mystical the power. Heathcliff Mortimer was sent in his stead.
Byron had enjoyed telling his twin sister Josephine of the invitation, failing to say whence it came and certainly not telling her there were two of them. Josephine had spent considerable energy to resolve the problems of the last British colony in Africa but had not been invited to watch the resolution. She was no longer a minister of the Crown, not even a shadow minister. To complete her ignominy, she had lost her seat in Parliament at the general election won by Margaret Thatcher. She had a pension and a ticket into the wilderness. Her flat in Westminster was as cold as charity. No one even visited her anymore.
Byron chuckled to himself. Except for South Africa which would now feel the pressure, the Anglo-Saxon cabal had rid themselves of African responsibility and would now allow the price of base minerals to drop through the floor. The Africans had inherited a well-planned mess. Africa was to be marginalised and in Chicago, Byron sold short on copper, chrome, manganese and nickel. To add to his certainty of a price drop, the Russians were flooding the world market with anything they could sell in a last attempt to support the Soviet socialist system. Without the fear of Stalin or the incentive of capitalistic greed, Byron’s analysis told him that Russia’s economy was going to collapse. Switching his long-term investment plan, Byron began buying American stocks with the emphasis on technology. He was convinced that science would solve man’s problems, not politics or religion. If it blew them all up the problem would be solved in one big bang, but Byron had faith in the selfishness of men. There was no point in blowing up the competition if it blew you up as well.
At forty-eight, Byron was married to a woman of thirty-eight who no longer turned him on. For years Byron had understood that women over the age of twenty-five rarely caught his eye. The glorious age of women was nineteen to twenty-five, when they were confident and at the summit of their powers to sexually attract men. For Byron the aphrodisiac was money. Poor Fiona would have to understand. She had the beautiful home he rarely visited, three beautiful children that she brought up perfectly, a career in publishing that every career-orientated woman would die for and if she only saw her husband once a month, surely that was a bonus. For Byron, chuckling again to himself, not only was she the perfect wife for him but she also made him money. Most wives cost a fortune. His turned a profit.
During the week, Byron worked at his business without any play but when it came to Fridays and Saturdays, they belonged to the reason he had created so much power and wealth, his pursuit of sexual excitement with the most beautiful partner he could entice out to dinner. Byron Langton liked the chase. He liked women. He liked expensive restaurants. And best of all he loved enticing women into his bed. Never once in his life had he handed over money or a present apart from the best dinner money could buy. Sometimes he failed with his enticement which made the next challenge even more exciting. Even if he now had a paunch and his hair was really going grey, there was nothing a well-tailored suit could not hide and, as he told himself, every woman over thirty coloured her hair so why shouldn’t he?
Byron’s flat in Knightsbridge, at 47 Buckingham Court, was exactly the same as in the days of Virginia Stepping and Fanny Try except he now owned the building to avoid paying rent. Too many rich people flashed their wealth which from Byron’s perspective was quite unnecessary. The more visible a rich man made himself, the more he became a target and Byron had no wish to be a target. Maybe the flashers had inferiority complexes, something from which Byron considered he had never suffered.
Even if he had wished to commute daily to East Horsley, it would have been impractical and the flat at number forty-seven was certainly too small for the whole family. Byron mostly worked fourteen hours every day which left him no time to travel up and down to London. Over the months and years he had simply moved away from his family. Some of his friends commuted and never saw their children awake during the week. Then sometimes he had gone into the office on a Saturday and after that it never seemed worthwhile taking the Tube, standing at Victoria Station and eventually finding his way home to discover the children were going to a party and Fiona had another of her dreary writers staying for the weekend who either fawned over him as the proprietor of the Garnet or treated him like an intellectual pygmy. He had far better have stayed in London. He hoped for her sake that Fiona was getting a bit on the side as when it came to sex, neither of them were interested in each other. Familiarity had finally bred a total lack of motivation. So, mostly, he left them alone, retaining his family ties by phone.
The first Friday of the new year had been a tiresome day and only the thought of that night’s delicious prospect took him happily back to Buckingham Court for a bath and change. By half-past eight he was standing in front of his mirror in the flat: a man of forty-eight, looking older than he should have been with the shirt tight across his belly and grey hairs definitely showing at his temples. For the umpteenth time a tinge of guilt registered with his age, and then he was telling himself ‘what the hell, if you can get away with it’, and he went downstairs to look for a cab which the doorman found for his usual pound note in double-quick time. He gave the girl’s address and sat back in the taxi, highly content with the prospect of his evening.
“Hello,” he said when the door to the communal flat opened ten minutes later. “I’m Byron Langton. Is Marcia ready to go?”
“No, she isn’t,” said a girl he had never seen before.
“May I come in?”
“No, you can’t.”
“Marcia does live here? She gave me the address.”
“She’s eighteen. You’re too old. Fact is, you’re a dirty old married man. Go and perve around somewhere else. Marcia’s my sister.”
With what appeared to be an act of moral indignation, the sister slammed the door of the flat and left Byron standing on the mat with a bunch of flowers for which he no longer ha
d a use. Not since he was a boy just out of Stanmore had a door been slammed in his face. Quietly, as he retraced his steps, he gave himself the answer. ‘It’s over, I’m too old. All that bloody money and I’m too old. What a bloody waste of time.’ Being called a dirty old man had hurt because he knew it was the truth. A new, unexpected feeling spread through the melancholy in his mind. He was lonely. For the first time he was lonely. He had never been lonely before.
To his surprise, when he climbed back into his waiting taxi, he gave the driver an address in Westminster. and when he sat back in the seat waiting for the journey to reach its end, he undid two buttons of his shirt front and let out a sigh.
“It had to end sometime,” he said out loud. “Eighteen. Shit! She told me she was twenty-four.”
Byron rang the second front door that night and waited. He had paid off the taxi downstairs. He could hear someone inside coming to the door and when it opened he smiled.
“You know, sis, we do have the same colour eyes.”
“What do you want?”
“To make peace. Maybe to apologise.”
“You’ve been stood up?”
“Matter of fact I have. Turned out to be eighteen and not twenty-four. She lied. Her very righteous sister slammed the door in my face. I brought you some flowers.”
“Disgusting.”
“The flowers, Jo?”
“You. You’re disgusting.”
“She said she was the sister but you never know these days.”
“Oh what the hell! You’d better come in and I’ll put the poor girl’s flowers in water.”
“How did you know the flowers were for Marcia? You know, I really feel old. Do you feel old, sis? We’re exactly the same age.”
“That’s the second time tonight you’ve said ‘you know’.”
“We are ratty tonight. Don’t you have any company?”
“Frankly, Byron, I never have company anymore. Men don’t find me attractive and after your comment of ‘decanting money down a rathole’ which the Tories picked up to crucify me in the election, my erstwhile political friends don’t call either.”
“It wasn’t me. The quote was Heath. You have any booze in this flat?”
“That I do. That I do… Would you really have printed those photographs?”
“No. But would you have gone for me for helping your black friends to make some money? I’m sorry Paul Mwansa was assassinated but he really couldn’t go on changing sides and get away with it… I’ll have a nice big Scotch if you don’t mind.”
“You deserve to be locked up!”
“It’s the system, Josephine. You moralists just don’t understand the system. All the political claptrap is just another means of getting the hands on the money.”
“Taking those photographs really hurt.”
“Johnny Pike had the photographs taken. It was illegal, remember? Still is. Johnny was protecting himself.”
“Against whom?”
“Against you.”
“I’m sure it was a boy.”
“Sis, don’t let’s go back on that one again.”
“You brought it all back with those damn photographs.”
“And you were going to ask questions in Parliament about one Langton Merchant Bank. Did one of your African friends try to blackmail you when he found out we were twins?”
“It was Paul Mwansa. Did you have him killed?”
“Not me, sis. Maybe the people I do business with. It’s a jungle out there, if you’ll excuse the pun. Cheers! Nice Scotch. Are you happy that Britain has given back her last colony in Africa?”
“She hasn’t yet. There still has to be a free and fair election. The freedom fighters have to come in to the assembly points and the ceasefire has to hold.”
“Oh, it will. My information is both parties have had enough of shooting at each other. They’re exhausted. And the election will be free and fair if Robert Mugabe wins. Which he will.”
“Why?”
“Because Africa is tribal not political, despite your democratic constitutions. One man one vote, the biggest tribe wins, loots the fiscal, shoots the opposition and makes sure it stays in power for fear of retribution. It’s a balls-up and will be for a long time and the people you, Josephine Langton, want to help will be the ones to suffer most. A few will get rich and the rest will starve.”
“With your help.”
“Don’t blame me, sis. Do you really think a man or a woman who can’t read, doesn’t have a radio and only sees life as it relates to crops and the weather, is going to understand a vote? All you’ve done is taken away fairly good, mostly uncorrupt colonial management and replaced it with a few politicians whose only purpose in life is to steal. Maybe a few of the top men are honest, but the rest! Sir Roy Welensky, the prime minister of the old federation of the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland, was going to turn Central Africa into a dominion as powerful as Canada. Everything was there. Minerals, a good system of roads and railways, superb farmland that only needed a network of dams to irrigate the crops, a hard-working though illiterate indigenous population and the last generation of Englishmen who were prepared to leave home to become permanent white Africans and provide the management to make the dream come true. Darling sis, you can have all the minerals, the manpower, the money and the markets but if you don’t have the fifth ‘M’, management, it doesn’t work. You’ve taken the management out of Africa and without it, and until it’s put back again, it won’t work. By your wish to make everyone equal you’ve starved a whole continent. The problem’s not the likes of me making a living according to the free-market system but people like you who made the tragic mistake of believing that everyone in Africa is as good as you. You are a good person, sis, I know that. But I also know that the true likes of you are as rare as hen’s teeth. Now, did you hear Will’s going to America to go into big business, which he will hate? That young brother of mine has a passion for Africa. Nothing else matters. And he can’t go back. Not anymore and not for a long time… Any news of Hilary?”
“As usual not a word… When are you going to stop taking out young girls?”
“As from now. May I have another Scotch?”
“Help yourself.”
“Then we’re going out to dinner. I have a table booked, remember?”
“The head waiter will never believe his eyes.”
“Are you happy, sis?”
“No I am not.”
“What can we do about it?”
“I’ve not the slightest idea but a good meal might be a start. I’m sick of cooking for myself. And the trouble is I’m a lousy cook.”
The small French restaurant in Hay Street was the place Byron favoured to impress young girls. It was intimate, warm, and the tables were far enough apart from each other for his conversation not to be overheard. Byron knew that seduction started at the ring of the doorbell which is why he had carried the flowers. Women liked to feel very good about themselves before they went to bed with a man the first time. Byron tried to make them feel for an evening that they were the only woman in the world, believing flattery was a power tool.
The owner of the restaurant was an equally good confidence trickster and made his regular customers feel they were so welcome it broke his heart to leave his guests alone at their tables. Byron had a strong suspicion the man was an Irishman masquerading as a Frenchman but it really did not matter: the young girls were all most impressed, having never had a chair moved back for them to sit on in their lives. In a moment of surprise when the man saw Josephine the mask fell but very briefly.
“So nice, Mr Langton, to see you and your wife.”
“My twin sister.”
“The Honourable Josephine Langton,” smiled the proprietor, recovering his full stride. Smiling the sunshine of good favour, he left them with a waiter to take their order.
“That man’s good,” said Josephine. “Did you see his first impression?”
“I’m afraid I did.”
“So di
d I. Rather depressing.” She picked up the foot-wide piece of cardboard given her by the waiter. “Now that’s what I call a menu. Seeing you’re so bloody rich, Byron, I’ll have a dozen Brittany oysters on their little bed of seaweed and crushed ice. And please, just this once, don’t put me down as a tax deduction. Oh, and a nice dry German hock. The German whites are better than the French.”
The bill when it came later was for two hundred and eleven pounds. Byron never added up bills in restaurants. Taking out his wallet he counted the notes with a ten per cent tip and gave the money to the waiter.
“Maybe another cup of coffee?” he said to the waiter, showing the palm of his hand to Josephine for her agreement.
“Why not?” said Josephine. “After that they can afford an extra cup of coffee. Do you know how many families that would’ve fed in Africa?”
“The perfect statement of a socialist but the trouble with socialism is it only understands the pursuit of power, never the fundamentals of creating wealth.”
“Rubbish.”
“The modern favourite is every man was born equal which is just as ludicrous as saying the world is flat. However equal people like to think I am, I would not survive one blow in a boxing ring from Muhammad Ali. Why? He’s bigger than me and he has a great boxing talent. The American Declaration of Independence states that all men are born equal before the law. Everyone with a mind less sharp than his neighbour prefers to leave off the last three words and as most of us in this world are stupid, social democracy has used a wrong statement to gain power without being questioned. I do believe a lot of people now think they are just as good as the next man. In America they have tried to legislate such equality. All affirmative action has done for the blacks is piss off the good blacks who are capable of holding down their good jobs through their own ability as everyone now knows they only got the job because they are black. Like the Church with its dogma, socialism can never succeed when it is based on an incorrect premise that every man is equal. Fortunately we are all very different and the insides of our heads are just as different as the outside appearances of our bodies.
