“I don’t know why you go gallivanting abroad,” my mother said, “when there’s all these grand places to visit round here!”
On Saturday nights, they joined their friends for drinks and Bingo at the North Vale Working Men’s Club. I went with them and sat staring in rueful wonder at the warm, jocular world to which I’d once belonged, and which now regarded me with good-natured respect as a sort of celebrity: Jack Crowther’s lad made good on the box. We played bingo and laughed at a comedian fallen on thin and boozy times, and the man in drag who impersonated an opera singer. Each time his falsetto voice hit a high note, the glass earrings he wore lit up with a fiendish green glow.
I drank too many pints of ale and lay on my bed that night, surrounded by the bits and pieces from my boyhood that my mother had decided to save when they moved: the hand-carved model of an Arab dhow brought back from Mombasa by my dad, the banjo I never learnt how to play, a shelf of children’s books. I felt unappeasably sad, as though each gesture of my parents’ affection was a reproach for which I had no answer. It seemed fraudulent either to speak their language these days or to refuse to do so. My voice sounded forced and alien in my ears. But I’d made up my mind to get away without arguing with my father or upsetting my mother, so next morning I agreed to stay for Sunday lunch, which meant going to the pub with my dad while my mother put the roast in the oven.
“I know she won’t have said owt about it,” he grumbled over his second pint, “but your Mam frets about you, you know. When you’re abroad, I mean. She’s worried you might get shot or wounded or summat. That’s what upsets her most, but it’s not just that. She goes on about what it’s doing to your nerves.”
“She shouldn’t worry. I’m used to it by now.”
“That’s what I tell her. Think on what it did for me during the war, I say. The real war, I mean. Made a man of me, it did.” Giving me a quick glance, he conceded grudgingly, “Happen this war might be doing the same for you.”
I took in his barely qualified approval, wondering how he would have reacted if I’d admitted that for much of my time in Vietnam I’d been stoned out of my mind, and that my dreams still frightened me.
“I know a bit about what it’s like under fire,” he said. “Just you remember to look after Number One, right? I don’t want to see your mother wearing black.”
When I told him that I liked my arse well enough not to put its welfare at risk, he smiled and then changed the subject. “The other thing she goes on about is wondering when you’re thinking of getting wed?”
I told him that the thought was nowhere on my mind.
Nodding, he said, “We always thought a lot of that Brigshaw lass. She were genuine enough in my opinion. No airs about her. You could a done a lot worse.”
“Like I said, I’m happy as I am.”
“Aye well, happen you’re right. You can make a mess of things if you wed too young. Look at me – if it weren’t for the war, I’d have had no life. I were glad enough to get out of your mam’s clutches for a time.”
“Who are you kidding?” I laughed. “She told me years ago that it was you who pestered her into getting wed.”
“Nay, she never did!”
“Aye, she did that.”
“Well, I couldn’t let some other bugger nab her, could I? She’s a good lass, your mam. I’ve got no grumbles there.” He glanced at my empty glass. “Are you having another then?”
“Better not. I’m driving. Anyway, she’ll be wanting to lift that roast.”
“Don’t worry about her. She’ll be all right. Come on, it’s my round this time.” He fished in his pocket for cash and signalled the barman. And then, almost as if in reparation for all the years of taciturn derision, he said, “It’s not that often we get a chance to chew the fat these days, thee and me, is it now?”
Later, after we’d eaten the roast and the rice pudding, I felt treacherous leaving my parents alone together in that small house, when I might have spent several more hours in their company. Their air of muted deference as I left seemed to acknowledge that I had more important things to do in the world than pass the time with them. To my shame, I left them believing it.
*
I found Hal relaxing on a sunbed in the garden. I’d last seen him three years before, and was troubled by the change in his appearance. He looked older than a man still in his early fifties. His hair was thinner: it straggled about his ears and neck in wisps as grey as beck water at a trough. His skin had a yellowish tinge, and he’d lost a worrying amount of weight.
To conceal my shock, I turned my attention to the two dogs as they bounded out of the house in greeting – and there was Grace, not far behind them, wearing a faded lilac shirt hanging loose over her slacks. She carried a tray of glasses and a jug of barley water.
She offered her cheek to be kissed, and told me I was looking well. “So are you,” I lied, taking in the stresses left on her skin by the years in Equatoria. “And so’s the garden, and I see the dogs are still full of beans.” I looked back, smiling, at Hal. “Even this poor old thing seems to be on the mend.”
“Yes,” Grace sighed, “I suppose it can’t be long before he’s insufferable again.” She looked down at us wryly and decided against joining us. “You two must have a lot to talk about.” Glancing my way, she said, “I’ll catch up with you later.” Then she turned back to the house.
“A good woman that,” Hal said after she’d gone. “Haven’t treated her well, you know. Too preoccupied, I suppose.”
“And not only with politics,” I risked.
He eyed me suspiciously. For a moment I thought he was about to take offence, but then he sniffed out a smile. “The women, you mean? Well, what can I say? Guilty as charged, m’lud. But what the hell! A man has to have some pleasure, doesn’t he? We can’t be saintly all the damn time!”
“No,” I said, “I guess not.”
After a thoughtful silence, we began to talk more seriously, though I did most of the listening as he gave me an account of his last days in Equatoria. With the roads, ports and airports blocked by the military, Hal had been lucky to get out of the country at all. Helped by nervous old comrades, he was smuggled under a lorry load of Manchester cloths to a town near the eastern border. From there he had to walk through the forest. Over a week later, reduced from one of the most influential political figures in newly liberated Africa to a bedraggled refugee with a gastric infection, he turned up in England, having flown from Yaoundé via Algeria and Paris. He rang Grace at High Sugden, told her that he was ill and needed help and, with a meekness born of exhaustion and distress, asked her if he might come home.
“I didn’t even get to see Emmanuel buried,” Hal grieved. “Sometimes I think I should have stayed and got shot with him.”
“I can’t see what good that would have done,” I said. “I don’t understand why they killed him anyway. Why didn’t they just imprison him or send him into exile?”
“I’m not sure that they planned the assassination,” Hal frowned. “It was a young hotheaded colonel called Mouhatta who pulled the trigger. He claims it was to stop Emmanuel becoming a rallying point for resistance to the coup. But it wouldn’t surprise me if Mouhatta turned out to be some sort of psychopath.”
We talked about the military junta now ruling the country under martial law, those solemn young colonels whose politics amounted to no more than a military assumption that people should do as they were told.
“It can’t last,” Hal said. “The Equatorians will find their way round that staff-officer mentality, and when the soldier boys find they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, they’ll hand the country over to Fouda’s gang of crooks and opportunists. Either that or some half-crazed brute like Mouhatta will emerge from their ranks and turn the place into his personal fiefdom. That’s what really frightens me.”
Later we talked about Adam and Efwa, whom Hal had not seen since his return from Equatoria, though whether this was the way Adam wanted it, or the demands
of his work as a supply teacher in Dagenham prevented it, remained unclear. I guessed that the first was masquerading as the second, but decided not to say so.
“His mother misses him too,” Hal said. “I sometimes think you’re more of a son to us than he will ever be.” Shaking his head, he added, “He was a damn fool to marry that chirpy little looker, don’t you think?”
Less comfortably still, and rather more briefly, we talked about Marina, who was estranged from us all as she pursued her own increasingly dissident life. “She’s still living in my flat,” Hal grumbled, “but she seems to spend a lot of time going back and forth between there and a commune some friends have set up in a Somerset farmhouse. She won’t talk about it much, but as far as I can make out they claim to be some sort of anarcho-syndicalist outfit. Mind you, I rather doubt that many of them have read Kropotkin! This country’s changing all right,” he scowled, “but not in ways I’m sure I like. I hear a lot of talk among young people on the telly about freedom and love and revolution, but to me it looks like a feather-brained mix of self-indulgence and social irresponsibility. Or am I missing something?”
Finally we talked about me and my work. I told him about what I’d seen and learnt in Vietnam, and he ranted for a time against the dangerous stupidity of America’s foreign policy. “I’ve watched some of your reports,” he said, “and you’re doing really well. In fact, I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Can’t do much else but think these days! Anyway, however badly I may have cocked it up in Equatoria, I did make a lot of contacts on the world stage – politicians, diplomats, bankers, UN officials, aid workers with their noses to the ground, influential academics, military men, energy and health experts, not to mention various international wheeler-dealers and a few assorted spies. They’re all contacts that might prove useful to you if you want them. Are you interested?”
Yes, I was interested. I was very interested.
“Good,” he grinned. “Glad to see I might still be of some use in the world.”
Later, Grace came to keep me company while Hal telephoned a few people on my behalf. Dryly she asked whether the two of us had put the world back to rights. I answered as dryly that these things take a little time. We exchanged uneasy small talk for a while, I fending off the possibility of closer communication, she not concealing her awareness that I was doing so. To fill a silence I said that I was glad to see her and Hal back together again.
“Together?” she answered. “Is that what you think? Well, it’s true we’re living under the same roof.” Grace looked away, speaking more to herself than to me. “He was in such a woeful state when he came out of Africa that someone had to look after him, and in the generally unjust scheme of things I suppose it had to be me. But Hal’s not really here you know – here with me, I mean. Yes, he’s grateful to me for being the dutiful wife and taking care of him. He’s even been apologetic about his mistresses and all the rest. But that’s about as deep into feelings as he’s willing to go. And there’s no point asking for more. I only get upset, and he remains impervious. The truth is that his soul’s in Africa still.”
“Hal doesn’t believe in souls,” I said.
“No,” Grace gave a rueful smile. “Perhaps that’s the problem.”
I didn’t know what to make of that, so we talked about Emmanuel for a time, and I could see her biting her lip as she recalled their times together and the shock and pain of his loss. “For Hal,” she said, stroking the ear of the dog that lay across the couch with its head in her lap, “it was like losing a son and a brother and a friend all at once. I doubt he’ll ever get over it.” She drew in a heavy breath and pulled herself back to the present. “He’s also missing the children. Did he ask you to try and persuade them to visit us?”
When I shook my head, she said, “No, I might have guessed he wouldn’t. The stupid man’s too proud even to use a go-between. But I’m not. Did you know he’s got a birthday coming up on the sixteenth of next month? I’m sure if you gave Adam a prod, he’d come and celebrate with us, especially if he knew you were going to be here. Can you come?”
“The sixteenth?” I checked my diary. “I can’t make that, I’m afraid.”
“Oh dear, that’s a pity. But you could speak to Adam, couldn’t you? The two of you together might be able to get Marina here. Would you do that for us?”
“Of course I’ll try.”
“You could tell her that if she doesn’t make some sort of effort to cheer us up, sooner or later they’ll find two mouldering corpses in this house, each with a dagger in the other’s heart. Mind you, I don’t suppose that would upset her very much.”
“That’s a bit harsh,” I protested. “She cares about both of you.”
Grace shrugged with cool, remote deliberation. “Marina’s always been angry with Hal, of course, but that’s only because she’s been half in love with him since she was a little girl – just as he’s always been besotted with her. But she’s been cold with me for years. I feel sure she blames me for everything that’s gone wrong. Certainly she’s holding on to something unresolved between us… Something I really don’t understand. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether…” Grace turned to face me, her eyes forbidding mine to shift away as she said, “Did you ever tell her what happened between you and me all those years ago?”
“Hell no,” I exclaimed, “I’d never do that.”
For a long time Grace stared at me. Resolutely I held her severe gaze.
“Oh I rather doubt that,” she sighed. “She’s sure to get it out of you one day.”
Once back in London, I decided it would be less difficult to talk separately to Adam and Marina, and more likely to succeed. So I phoned Adam first and offered to take him and Efwa out to dinner. I was worried that he might be overly conscious of the current discrepancy in our circumstances, and perhaps resentful of my success. But when they turned up in the Charlotte Street restaurant he was cheerful enough, evidently glad to see me, and tenderly solicitous with his wife.
Efwa was wearing a thick roll-neck sweater and a jolly, cherry-red beret which she refused to take off. “Is cold in this country,” she explained. “This red hat is good for me here.”
“It looks very good on you,” I smiled, lightening the compliment by adding at once, “You should wear it everywhere – even to bed. Now what are we going to eat?”
I brought up the subject of Hal’s birthday early, assuring Adam that his father had been chastened and mellowed by the catastrophe in Equatoria. “But he’s not in a good way.” I said. “The stomach bug he brought back with him hasn’t cleared up: he’s lost weight and his spirits are low. Seeing you might give him just the lift he needs. Grace tells me how much he misses you, but I could see it for myself.”
“Our last conversation wasn’t exactly amicable,” Adam frowned.
“I know, and Hal regrets it. He must have been under a hell of a strain at the time. But he wants to put it behind him now – if you’ll let him, that is. What do you say? It is the poor old bugger’s birthday after all.”
“I suppose it can’t make things much worse to give it a try.” Adam reached out to touch his wife’s hand. “What do you think, Efwa?”
“I think is better we try. Maybe is good for all of us. Maybe it makes us happy again?”
“We’re happy anyway,” Adam answered, “but I guess we can give it a go.”
The conversation moved on. He questioned me about my time in Vietnam, and I answered at length until I saw Efwa growing restless. When I asked about their life together, Adam spoke without enthusiasm about his supply teaching, through which he was financing a much more satisfying involvement with a community-theatre project in Hackney. Efwa worked with him there, using her skills in music and dance. He talked eagerly about the role of imagination in grass-roots politics as opposed to the top-heavy ideological socialism that his father had tried to impose on Equatoria.
“That was bound to fail,” he insisted, “right from the start.”
“Only
because the whole system of international capital was against it.”
“Also because the whole concept had nothing to do with traditional culture,” he came back emphatically. “It was an alien system. It had no roots there. Nothing that spoke to local needs in the way that the tribal councils of elders did, with their built-in checks against any chief who got the will of the community wrong.”
I suggested that tribalism didn’t offer much hope for the future, but when he countered with a reminder of the wretched condition in which Hal’s policies had left the country, Efwa began to air her personal anxieties.
“I am worrying too much about my family in Adouada,” she said. “Now even the price of yam and cassava is too dear. Also is hard for them to get kerosene and petrol. As for Adam and me, we don’t get money to send for them. Sometimes I am feeling too too bad about it all.”
The mood around the table had changed. Adam and I averted a political dispute which had nowhere to go, but now tensions between him and Efwa surfaced as she went on to complain about how hard-up they were.
“Soon I would like to have baby,” she finally admitted, “but Adam says we don’t get enough money yet.”
“We just have to be patient, love,” he reassured her. “It won’t always be like this. When the grant proposal gets accepted, the project will take off. Then anything can happen, you’ll see. Once we’re better off, you can have seven babies if you like – one for each day of the week.”
Efwa grunted dubiously, and he pulled a face at her. She put out her tongue at him, then burst into loud contagious laughter. I ordered more wine.
At least Adam had agreed to go to High Sugden. I felt sure I could use that as leverage on Marina, but our meeting was baffled on my part and distanced on hers. I scarcely recognized the stark, monochrome figure who came into the Brewer Street bar she’d suggested. Her hair was cropped short and dyed black. She wore a black leather jacket with black trousers, and was now wearing glasses with severe black frames. In the old days I might have teased her about such drastic changes, but her manner discouraged me. Even so, I tried to reach out to her, but our exchanges seemed fenced with razor wire. She asked about my work only to dismiss television as “a toxin for the public imagination”. For the first time in my life I began to feel hostile towards her, and decided to get quickly to the point before we teetered into some stupid argument that might wreck any chance of persuading her to visit High Sugden.
Water Theatre Page 33
