by Peter Rimmer
Byron was over fifty when he first met Penny and even his tailor was now unable to hide the paunch that started at his navel. His body was the shape of an avocado pear. Above the paunch were sagging breasts and above those appendages sagging jowls. The once thick brown hair was dirty white, what was left of it. The only resemblance to the good-looking young man who had joined Logan, Smith and Marjoribanks in 1948 was the violet eyes. The eyes, which once had charmed his way to success were calculating, some said ruthless. The only things going for Byron in 1985 were money and power and he was sensible enough to understand the problem. What the young girls looked at when they saw Byron Langton, particularly with his clothes off, was a debauched old man who had not seen his willy in years except through the reflection in a mirror. What Byron saw in young girls was exactly the same as he had always done. The flaw in his libido was that it never grew up, something his long-suffering wife found to her cost from two directions: after the children, he never touched her, and what he did touch stayed below the age of twenty-five. Young girls who had never been bought with more than the price of dinner were the target of his perversion and after the sister’s slamming of the door in his face, he always paid for what he was going to get before he got it. Rhodes of Africa, Byron remembered, had always said that every man had his price. For Byron, every young girl had her price if he could only find out what it was. The chase to find the price for his sexual gratification was equally exciting as the days of Stepping and Try, Virginia and Fanny and all their friends. The game was just the same, only the rules had changed, and what Byron had lost in good looks he made up for in knowledge, the real knowledge of people.
Two people had come into Penny’s life since she arrived in London four years earlier. In the reed bag she had packed on the mission were a cheque for five hundred pounds signed by Will, letters from Will introducing her to Heathcliff Mortimer, Josephine and the new owner of the Zambezi Bar, and a piece of paper with Adelaide Langton’s phone number. The first letter started her writing, the third got her a job as a waitress and the second she was too frightened to use: ex-cabinet ministers were rather impressive.
“What do you want to write, fact or fiction?” Heath had asked.
“Fiction. Definitely fiction.”
“Then you don’t want to join my newspaper even if I did have a chance in hell of getting you a job.” They were seated on Heath’s favourite bench overlooking the Thames in the garden of his favourite pub. The early May afternoon was mild and Heath was enjoying the first of his double Southern Comforts and Penny was drinking a lemonade. “You are lucky to find me in England. Your mentor’s brother is a hard taskmaster. Did Will give you an introduction to Byron?”
“No he didn’t.”
Heath thought about this for a moment. “Fiction is the quick way to starve as a writer. You’ll need a job. I have shares in a pub-cum-restaurant.”
“Zambezi Bar. Will gave me a letter.”
“Have you got any fiction of yours I can read?”
“Not yet.”
“You haven’t started writing?”
“No I haven’t.”
Heath looked at the sky, making his long mane of white hair flow free from his back. Why did people ask him to do the impossible? “Tell me what you’ve read in your very short life.” If there was a tone of sarcasm in his voice he had done his best to hide it. “Do you have an A level in either English language or English literature?”
“I never went to school. This is the first time I have been off the mission. But I have done some reading,” and she began to rattle off titles and authors as they came into her head. Heath had never heard a mix like it in his life. With the list still growing he got up and walked away from the bench into the pub for a refill to his drink. Penny turned to look at his receding back and thought the old man had walked out on her. With the resilience of youth she shrugged and turned back to enjoying the river and London. Some people were frightened of the bush. Some were frightened of the Big City. She was frightened of neither. She had taken full advantage of Hymie’s generosity in Lusaka, taken the paid-for ticket to London with a knowing smile and paid nothing more than the looks she gave the men to encourage their indulgence. Obviously, she now reflected, this old generation was past all hope.
When he sat down again with a new drink, she gave the old boy her best smile. Penny Bains liked being a young woman. Until Will had come into her life, she had had no idea of her power.
“Have you somewhere to stay?” asked Heath.
“Oh yes thank you. The man at the bar. Alex. You know him? Will said you own shares in the pub. Alex gave me his room until I find something. He’s sleeping on the couch. Don’t you drink in your own bar? Will had the flat before he went do-gooding in Mongu.”
“I do. I’ve just come back from Africa… That’s how you look at him? A do-gooder?”
“My parents have been do-gooding all their lives and look where that got them. Now they’re too scared to come back to England and live with normal people. People in Africa only say they want the missionaries. What they really want is what they can get out of them. Most of the time they’re laughing behind their backs at someone born on earth being the son of God. They talk to God through their ancestors. To them it makes more sense as the ancestors have gone on ahead.”
“Did you hear much about African folklore? Their history, that kind of thing?”
“For ten years of my life I spoke Lozi better than English. The very young didn’t mind my white skin. Then they changed and left me with no friends and nothing else to do but read. I know more about them than they think. I grew up with them, for God’s sake, I was ten before I stopped swimming with them bare arse in the Zambezi.”
“What about the crocs and bilharzia?”
“We knew where to swim. If the water flows, you won’t get bilharzia. One of the kids stood guard on a rock. You can see a bloody crocodile metres away in shallow water… Now that’s one thing I do miss. Wouldn’t like to swim in that river,” she said, pointing ahead. “It’s filthy and you can’t see the bottom.”
“Write me an African story and post it or bring it to my office.”
“Don’t you have a home?” said Penny, using her eyes.
“Of course.”
“Can’t I bring it to your home?”
“If you wish to.” Then he thought: ‘You silly old bugger, Mortimer. The girl’s flirting with a septuagenarian and you fell for it. There’s no fool like an old fool.’ And then he smiled at Penny and wrote out the address of his Chelsea flat.
That evening Alex made a pass at her and she knew that staying in his flat and not in his bed was not going to be a proposition but she needed the job and somewhere to stay. Alex, she guessed, was nearer forty than thirty. ‘Ugh!’ she thought. ‘Why do old men chase after young girls?’ The problem was going to be to get rid of her virginity without him realising. Her virginity had to go, that much she knew from books. No woman in literary history had ever had any fun staying a virgin. If she had to close her eyes the first time it was only a small price to pay for a free flat, a job and three meals a day. Surprisingly, the first time with Alex was less painful than she expected and far more fun. She had kept him waiting a month while she went on the pill, learning another good lesson in life: a man kept waiting was easier to manipulate. By the time she let him get into her pants he had bought her clothes, taken her to the theatre and even proposed. She was on a high the day she finished the ten-page story and that was how it happened. The second time Heath met the girl she was no longer a virgin, and it showed. Heath had smiled to himself.
“Sit down and don’t talk while I read,” said Heath. “You’ll have to learn to type.” Taking out a red pen, Heath sat at the desk in his small lounge and began to read and correct as he went along. When he had finished, there was more red ink than black and Penny was white in the face. “Your English is dreadful,” he said. “There are twenty or more clichés and you can’t spell. The grammar is quite funny i
n parts.”
“So what do I do? Give it up?”
“You can see in your mind the pictures you write?”
“Of course.”
“Then we will have to teach you English, Penny Bains. You see, you are one of the rare born writers. I can teach you English, that’s easy, but I could never have taught you how to write. You can either see those pictures in your mind or you can’t. I can’t. Why I write flat journalism. Fact rather than fiction. Once you know how to use all the words, you’ll paint pictures like a painter.”
“You mean you’ll help me?” she said, giving him her best smile.
“Yes. And you don’t have to look at me like that. Even old men have memories. If we can develop your talent, that will be payment. Take this home and see what I’ve done with it and then write me another.”
That weekend he told Fiona Langton he had found a young girl who could write fiction. They were at the East Horsley estate where he spent one weekend a month when back in England. Byron had stayed in London as usual. Gregory was at boarding school and the two girls were somewhere riding on the estate.
“She’s got the same name as your eldest daughter. Penny.”
“We call ours Penelope. Byron thinks Penny’s a bit common.”
“Who else is coming for the weekend?”
“Two writers and an agent. One of them’s bringing his wife. When’s the next volume of African Journal ready, Heath?”
“Soon. Very soon.”
The second person that came into Penny’s life played a guitar and seduced her on Alex’s bed when Alex had gone shopping for the restaurant. The guitar player had been employed to sing songs in the restaurant. His favourite numbers were from an old Shelley Lane album, Zambezi. With Will Langton’s blown up photographs lighting up the walls and Shelley Lane’s haunting music and words, any African hand trying to eat his supper found a lump in his throat that choked on the food. Penny fell in love with Jonathan Christie during his first song. He was twenty years old, thin as a rake, long black hair down to his shoulders, a nose that any predator bird would have been proud of, a voice like silk that evoked the primal urge to procreate, eyes pale blue and far away gone to the roots of his song, a clean, square jaw and a mouth more sensual than anything Penny had conjured in her mind. The dash for the bedroom was done without a word from either of them.
Jonathan Christie was a travelling singer who sang for a few coins, a place to sleep and sometimes a pint of beer. Alex had made up a bed for him on a bench seat, moving away the restaurant table. The man-boy was so thin he fitted the small width of the leather-covered bench and slept without turning in his sleep, the guitar and a plastic bag of clothes, his only possessions, under the bench. He rose when Alex came down in the morning with the big wicker basket ready for the vegetable market.
“You can go upstairs and take a bath, Penny’s still asleep,” Alex said to his guitar player. “I’ll be gone an hour. Growing tobacco in the old days was easier than running a restaurant, even getting up three times in the night to check the barns in the curing season. Make yourself at home. The customers thought you were great so stay as long as you like.”
Which was all very well for Penny in the weeks ahead, servicing one man at night and the one in the morning and all the time writing stories about an African mission. Penny and Jonathan were born for each other; Alex paid the bills. It would have remained the perfect ménage à trois if Alex had not dropped the vegetable basket and had it run over by a growler taxi forcing him back to the Zambezi Bar before Jonathan and Penny had finished with his bed. The noise going on upstairs was unmistakable for what it was as Penny was telling God in a loud voice she was coming. By the time Alex ran up the stairs into the flat they were a spent force with no fight left in either of them.
“Get out!” were the two words they understood and by nine o’clock in the morning they were standing outside on the pavement with a guitar in its case, a plastic bag containing male personal effects, the reed basket containing the minimum Penny had been able to salvage amid the barrage of verbal abuse, and just under fifty pence in their pockets. They were both giggling like children. Arm in arm they walked off in the morning sun to face the next part of their lives. Under a lime tree where the scent from the flowers was so strong they could reach out and touch it, they kissed, oblivious to anything except the exquisite scent of the lime flowers. Breaking away, the pale blue eyes looked into the smiling brown of Penny’s and they laughed again.
“Did you put your writing in the basket?” he asked.
“I left him the clothes, poor man. Jonathan, we were wicked. Alex was nice.”
“And old enough to be your father. Later, you can write him a note thanking him for having you.” They laughed again.
“I have an idea,” said Penny. “I have a friend who’s very old, the one teaching me to write. We’ll ask Heath what to do. All we have to do is walk from here to Chelsea. He doesn’t get up before noon.”
“What do we tell him?” asked Jonathan.
“The truth.”
For the first two days Penny sat at the small dining room table writing her story. Heath went about his business, which Penny suspected included a friendly bar, and Jonathan took his guitar round the restaurants looking for work. They slept on the couch in the Chelsea flat where there was always a reserve case of Southern Comfort but very little food. Penny ate cream crackers and cheese she found in the kitchen and drank tea. After a search she found an old bottle of tomato ketchup which she small-dolloped on the crackers. She presumed Jonathan ate on his travels as the money Will had given her in Lusaka had been spent on their nights off at the Zambezi Bar. Alex was tied to his cash business so Jonathan suggested he show Penny more of London than the inside of a bar that reminded her of home. Each day Jonathan went off with his guitar and when Penny had made certain the plastic bag with his clothes was behind the couch, she relaxed and got on with her writing. Her man would get a good job and together they would find a crash pad and be out from under Heathcliff Mortimer’s feet.
The lovers were asleep on the couch when Heath came home from his last appointment. Alex was a nice man, but he never had time to talk to his regular customers: the man was more interested in the money than the people. For Heath a good bar owner or barman had to talk and talk well. After the second night he barely noticed the kids fast asleep on the couch, fitted together like a perfect jigsaw puzzle.
On the fourth night he came home thinking he would pour himself a last Southern Comfort to find Penny sitting up alone on the couch.
“He’s not coming back, is he, Heath?”
“I brought you some snacks from my last bar. The toast’s a bit soggy but the anchovies are nice.”
“He’s left the plastic bag. It’s still behind your couch. It’s one o’clock in the morning. There’s nothing much in the bag and it all needs washing… His toothbrush has gone.”
Heath quietly went to his small cocktail cabinet to the side of the couch, glancing at the plastic bag on the floor. It had the look about it of being left on its own.
“You’ve spent all Will’s money, haven’t you?” he asked.
“Every penny. He showed me the theatres. I knew he had no money, so I paid. It didn’t seem to matter.”
“He made you feel like the only woman in the world?”
“I was the love of his life.”
“For the time you were together I’m sure you were.”
“You don’t think he’s coming back.” It was a statement more than a question.
“No, Penny, I don’t think he’s coming back. There are many people in this world who use their charm to get them through life. They are wonderfully pleasant people to have in our lives, but they are usually rather expensive and never reliable. Simply, they live off other people.”
“He seemed so sincere.”
“The good ones do. Like everything else in life, if you are good at your job, you succeed. Jonathan is good at his job.”
“
You think he knows what he’s doing?”
“Probably. Many I have known like him hone their craft like any other professional. They make people feel good about themselves when they are in the room. They make people feel special. I never heard him sing but I doubt he’ll ever be a good singer. The guitar is a prop. The type of clothes, part of the image he wants people to see. He’ll go through most of his life like that, having a wonderful time and helping other people too. The good ones know when to move on. Penny Bains, this earth is not the beautiful place we would like it to be. Now, having lost the first but not last great love of your life, I recommend a touch of Southern Comfort. Probably how the drink took its name in the first place. Now, more importantly believe it or not, how was the day’s writing?”
“Not bad at first. After I looked in his bag and found the toothbrush missing, not very good. Do you want to read?”
“Not till you’ve finished.”
“You think he’s found another woman?”
“Certainly not,” lied Heath, handing her the drink he had topped up with water.
Three days later the plastic bag was still untouched behind the sofa and Penny was hungry. A diet of stale crackers, cheese and old bar snacks was not sufficient. For the first time since arriving in England, she sat down and wrote her parents a letter. How long it would take to reach Mongu was beyond her knowledge: they were certainly too far away to give her any help. To go back to Alex never even crossed her mind. The problem was her clothes, as in her rush to avoid physical confrontation, she had left the new clothes bought for her by Alex and the snappy wardrobe bought out of Will’s five hundred pounds in the cupboard, snatching at the reed bag in her panic. Being naked on a bed with another man while the owner screamed at her made her mind concentrate. She had managed to zip up her jeans without catching her pubic hairs as her panties had long fallen off the end of the double bed. She was still buttoning up her top outside on the pavement with the reed bag clutched between her knees. Underneath she was braless too, barefoot as usual but otherwise unharmed. All that was left in the reed bag was the remnants of the charity bundles that she had meant to throw away. Her nipples showed through her one and only top, but this she hoped would be a plus rather than a minus in her quest for a job. Luckily, dirty jeans with knee holes were still in fashion in laid-back London. With a rumbling stomach that needed food, her clothes, hair and face fixed as best she could, Penny stepped out of the foyer of Heathcliff Mortimer’s Chelsea flat into a summer’s morning in search of her first real job, her conscience telling her the previous job had had more to do with bed than being a waitress.
