by Peter Rimmer
“Now, to explain how I see the basic economic fact of the bill just paid. Your only correct argument is the amount and quality of the food we ate, not the size of the bill which would feed post-colonial impoverished Africa. By being stupid enough or lazy enough not to run my own cow and harvest my own oysters, I have created a flow of wealth right from the waiter to the cowhand and the man or woman who cut those delicious oysters from the rocks off France. I am the fool who paid the bill but all the oysters in the food chain benefited from my ability to afford this restaurant. You can’t give away money and create sustainable wealth. You have to make a man work for his living and the more people who work successfully in their particular fields, the richer we all become. In Africa, we have created nations of beggars shouting anti-colonialism in the hope we will feel guilty and give their top brass some money.”
“People must govern themselves.”
“If they know how. The old tribal Africa was a very different kettle of fish to run than a modern state.”
“You talk a lot of rubbish, of course everyone is equal to the next person. Sometimes I think you start these arguments just to make me annoyed. You personally rob Africa blind and then have the gall to sit there and tell me Africa’s poverty is my fault.”
“But it is, sis. The whole damn modern world was too big for them and you tossed them in the deep end without the wherewithal to swim. You think our brother Will could run Langton Merchant Bank or Randolph be a minister of the Crown? Will can’t add up and Randolph is embarrassing in company. But they both live good lives. Different lives. Someone has to breed the cows and someone has to serve drinks in a bar. We are all siblings but we are not all equal, thank heaven. Oh, and you and I should do this more often. I enjoyed the evening.”
“Better than you would have done with Marcia?”
“Funnily enough, yes. I’d forgotten the pleasure of good conversation.”
“Save your flattery for the gullible. Are you going down to East Horsley this weekend?”
“No.”
“Are you going to divorce Fiona?”
“No.”
“Suddenly we don’t have the words to express ourselves,” said Josephine sarcastically.
“Are you sad you never married?”
“Not when I see the mess my friends make. People have a short attention span. They don’t stick to anything. If the job isn’t right, the fault is the boss or the company and they resign. If they have an argument with their wife, they go off and screw someone else and then wonder how they got divorced.”
“Social democracy, darling. Everyone’s got it too good. There’s no financial fear anymore to keep people together.”
“You should know.”
“Maybe we weren’t meant to coop ourselves up in one house for life. I’ve had the kids. Done my duty to secure the future of my race. After that there’s only common interest in the children. Fiona has her own life. Once the sex is over, sis, there’s rarely very much left. No, I’ll stay married, Fiona suits me fine, we see little of each other and never fight. If she wants something she gives me a ring. Very civilised. Better than sitting head-to-head each night and boring each other stiff.”
“Maybe life after all was just an accident… Do you think Fiona’s happy?”
“I have not the slightest idea.”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“Sis, you, of all people! You’re a politician. Have you ever found a person who will tell you what is really in their mind? Either they answer in a way that suits their own purpose or they tell you what they think you want to hear. Man has never told the truth in his life unless it suited him. Only when they find a method of reading people’s minds will the shit stop. Only then will people stop telling lies. We compromise. Fiona has compromised. She has her children and her highly successful publishing house and if she doesn’t really have a husband in the process, does it matter? When we really get old, we’ll have to talk to each other as by then two out of three of the kids will be out of the country and the one that stays behind won’t like its parents. Law of averages. Otherwise we’ll end up in separate old-age establishments boring stiff a bunch of strangers… You want some more of this coffee?”
“Why not?… They’ve asked me to rejoin the committee of the anti-apartheid movement.”
“Why is it our family is so obsessed with Africa? All except Randolph. The world, my dear sister, is as crooked as a corkscrew. You happily support the AAM, which supports the ANC, which supports uMkhonto we Sizwe, the spear of the nation, whose avowed reason for life is terrorism in all its forms. But if Sinn Fein asked you to join you’d run a mile from them and their IRA, shouting you’d never deal with terrorists let alone support them.”
“You’re talking rubbish again. South Africa is totally different. Apartheid is morally disgusting and you know it.”
“Did you ever hear me say it wasn’t?”
“The IRA are a fringe group of murdering bastards. The majority in Northern Ireland is Protestant.”
“But not in all of Ireland. If you think the IRA lack popular support you are wrong. The Irish of Celtic descent think that any part of Ireland run by the British is just as morally disgusting as apartheid. You get a good government job in South Africa if you are white and a good government job in Northern Ireland if you are Protestant. In one breath you despise terrorism and in the next you are holding rallies to raise funds to help the ANC.”
“But apartheid is wrong.”
“So is terrorism, sis. Don’t you remember our mother saying two wrongs never made a right? When the new order takes power in South Africa, as I have no doubt it will, they will have gained power through killing people who disagreed with their policy. If you think the means justifies the end, that murder is acceptable as a last resort, go ahead with your crusade but don’t let your moral indignation become a gold mine for other people’s manipulation. With the end of colonialism in Africa, the one policy agreed upon by Russia and America, who unfortunately in the last century were unable to grab a part of Africa for themselves, the superpowers will turn black against black in their pursuit of hegemony. Russia wanted the colonial powers out and used your same moral indignation to achieve their purpose. Unfortunately for Africa, their purpose was not to uplift the poor of Africa and give them independence, but to gain power for Russia through communism, with a string of one-party puppet states answerable to Moscow. America, on the other hand, had two good reasons for kicking the colonial powers out of Africa and to achieve their ends climbed on top of your same moral high ground to shout their own brand of righteous indignation. And they were good, even making it seem like a crusading liberal America who believed in human rights and equal opportunity. The real reason, history will write, is they wanted the colonial markets of Africa for their own multinationals. Secondly, it gave the white holders of power in America the opportunity at no political cost to scream abuse at whites in Africa who treated their blacks badly, all the time nervously looking over their shoulders at the American civil rights movement. Now all I see in Africa, is America and Russia squaring off to each other through the same string of tinpot dictators that jumped into the power vacuum when the colonials ran out with their tails between their legs. The African leaders are having the party of all parties playing one off against the other… America and Russia are fighting each other right across the globe with surrogate armies because in a nuclear age they dare not fight each other for world hegemony. Everyone’s after money, sis. Not nice but how it is. They are all about as morally right as the devil.”
“You make everything that is trying to be good so dirty. South Africa has to be changed. No one in his right mind can defend separate development as made into law by South Africa. The laws are an insult to humanity and have to be changed by whatever means in the same way we had to destroy Hitler. You compare the ANC to the IRA. I compare apartheid to Nazi Germany.”
“You are right of course, sis. Throughout history the good man has always want
ed to fight the good fight. Civilisation against the hordes of Attila the Hun. The Christian followers of Christ against the hordes of Islam. The history of Europe is littered with nationalist uprisings against the conquerors. Strange thing is, both sides thought they were equally right. Rome thought it was right giving Britain a rule of incorruptible law, language, roads, peace, prosperity. The nationalists of Britain were indignant at their loss of power and privilege. And so it has gone on throughout recorded history with everyone chopping each other up, even more crazily in recent Europe, praying for help to the same God to give them deliverance. Fact is, it’s all about power and money. Socialism is all about giving the poor enough to stop them revolting. I know that and agree with the principle but I don’t run around saying that I’m the last gasp in altruism, everyone has the right to food, shelter, medicine and education whether they work or not, get it for free or pay through the bloody nose. If we had stopped right from the start of man killing each other and destroying everything in sight, there would have been more than enough for all of us centuries ago. Unfortunately, with all the fine words of all the fine people through history, we have not found an equitable way of governing ourselves, of finding our God, of distributing our wealth. We are a very stupid race of people and deserve to live in our permanent mess.”
“There has to be a better way,” said Josephine as Byron stood up to go. “And we socialists intend to find a way through the minefield of governance. You just can’t have such disparity of rich and poor in the same community side by side.”
“Then you must find a way of making all men and women exactly the same. Maybe television will make us all mindless and docile. The last big circus on earth. Only snag I can see is when you achieve your utopia, it will all be so boring people will wish they had never been born.”
The hand-wringing and sunshine smile began again at the door as they were both thanked profusely for their patronage. The owner had called a taxi and held a large umbrella ready for the moment he opened the front door.
“You’ll have to run,” said the owner, knowing what was on the other side of the door. Byron smiled to himself, hearing the first trace of the Irish brogue. Then the door came open, and they were running through the bucketing rain, the owner holding the big umbrella against the onslaught. Finally inside the taxi it was warm and Byron gave the driver Josephine’s address in Westminster.
“I have a theory,” said Byron. “If the English weather had not been so terrible there never would have been an empire. The only reason the likes of Will and Hilary got out of this country was to find a pleasant climate.”
“This island would be very full.”
“Like sheep in a drought, maybe they would have become infertile until nature balanced itself again… Do you miss Parliament?”
“Yes. Very much. My mind is so active, so much energy and nothing to do.”
“Politicians have a short shelf life. Try something else. You want a job? Your brains would work on anything. There’s a saying in the banking world that you can teach banking to an intelligent person but not intelligence to a banker. It’s meant to be one of those jokes to show how clever we bankers are as within the next twenty or thirty years we will have more power than anyone on earth.”
“That’s the most insidious thought.”
“Money can manipulate politicians whatever system you try.”
“You should know… Would you really offer me a job?”
“Would you accept?”
“I don’t know. Making money for the sake of money seems pointless.”
“Oh, sis, you really should hear yourself sometimes. Maybe you can even use some of the money to do some real good. In Africa, a project has to be started by the Langton Merchant Bank and controlled by the bank until it is finished and working. That way no one steals and the people you want to help get something tangible other than the sight of their friendly politicians running around in a top-of-the-range Mercedes-Benz.”
“You really think the banks will control the world?”
“The people with money, yes. They always have. That’s what the political fight’s about. Getting hands on the money to patronise the rest.”
“You want to come up for a drink? I’m so full of coffee my eyes are pinging.”
“We’re both lonely, aren’t we?” said Byron after a moment of silence.
“I think so.”
The taxi pulled up under the canopy outside Josephine’s block of flats. Her key let them into the building. Upstairs in her flat the central heating had the rooms warm and friendly.
“Put your coat in the closet, Byron. I’m going to get out of this bloody dress and feel comfortable. Thank goodness there has never been incest in the family, if you know what I mean! Decanter’s on the sideboard in the sitting room. You really think the Americans are hypocrites?… We can go on talking through open doors.”
“A nation with thirty-five per cent of the world’s gross national product, the world’s income that is, and five per cent of its population, can’t be a saint. We were no better in the last century, advocating free trade the way the Americans talk about a free-market economy. The trick in our day was all the free trade had to be transported on British ships. Rule Britannia and all that shit. With free markets and no exchange controls, the American multinationals can set up shop to sell to the local market and better still, manufacture with cheap labour, and ship a brand name back to the States which their public buys without the least idea of the sweatshop that made it in Bangladesh. The clothes sell at normal American prices and the profit is outrageous. The real wealth stays in America not Bangladesh, as the American system would never allow a Bangladesh company to market their product in America. With the wealth, America can afford research and development that keeps them ahead in technology so that when the Third World wants a sophisticated product like an aeroplane, they have to save up their dollars and buy American. It’s the same old exploitation with a different shine to the ball. In the early nineteenth century we British talked about the spread of Christianity to the heathens and then hoisted the Union Jack when they were all kneeling down with their eyes shut. The Americans learnt fast, or maybe they are the third British Empire. Same people, same language, different accent. The British are just as much a mix of all the European races, starting with the Italians, then the Saxons, Angles, Vikings, Danes, Normans with a sprinkling of Celts to give it the flair. And I’ll tell you something else about Africa. The last thing the Americans want is a viable white tribe that in the end sides with the black tribes of Africa and shows them how to screw the West. Kissinger said white Rhodesia was a minor refugee problem and if they asked nicely, lots of them would get green cards; the best, naturally, and the rest could go home to England. Any well-educated white Afrikaner is welcome in America. The theory is a few white dregs left behind in South Africa will marry into the blacks and leave the rest of the population easy prey to Western manipulation. If there hadn’t been colonialism and apartheid the Americans would have invented something else to get the whites out of Africa.”
“Now that is rot,” said Josephine, coming into the room wearing slacks and a sweater.
“Any generalisation is a lot of rot, sis.”
“You can change the direction of an argument in mid-sentence. Did you know that? Ever since you read Plato’s dialogues. You were fourteen.”
“Was I really? How precocious.”
“First, we have to get Nelson Mandela out of jail and hold a free and fair election in South Africa. Then, maybe, we start worrying about the likes of Botha cosying up to the ANC in a cabal to rouse the Third World against the West! The Afrikaners hate the blacks and vice versa.”
“Another generation, sis. Just be careful in your quest for justice you don’t crash the South African economy and start a real race war… You know I read somewhere the apartheid government has built an electric fence halfway across their Mozambique border and unlike the Berlin Wall, which was built to keep the communists insid
e the Soviet Empire because the lifestyle was so much better on the other side, the electric fence is to stop the herds in newly independent black Africa wanting to get into white apartheid Africa to get a better life. Somehow there’s a contradiction. Could there ever have been wealth in South Africa without apartheid? Has there been any wealth created elsewhere in Africa? An interesting thought. Well, I don’t know. I’m just a simple banker. You and lots like you, Jo, genuinely mean well for Africa. Just be careful you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. If I was a black man, I would prefer apartheid Vorster and his ilk to Idi Amin, freedom or no bloody freedom.”
“They are both horrible.”
“On that we both agree. I talk to Heath a lot when he’s not trying to make young brother Will rich. He says a lot of ordinary people are going to die in Africa while the world looks on, saying it’s no longer their problem.”
“I heard about Will. You want to tell me the truth?”
“I credited him with thirty thousand pounds from the crocodile skins. Turned it into one and a half million. Thought the bugger didn’t deserve that kind of money.”
“What about the ivory?”
“Same thing. Most of the money came from me.”
“Isn’t that what good financial advice is all about?”
“There was a tax angle.”
“There always is. Not only do you extort silence but you steal money. And you want me to work for you?”
“As I said, businessmen were never angels. We take any deal as far as it will go. Johnny Pike took out insurance and Heath and the Swiss bank made me pay over the profits to Will. Poor man has no idea what to do with it.”
