Richardson grinned. They both accepted another glass from the steward. ‘It must be difficult for you when you make your annual trip to Tchaikovsky,’ he suggested.
‘Sheer and utter terror,’ admitted Snow. ‘My love of Tchaikovsky fighting my fear of flying.’ He brightened again briefly. ‘But now it’s easier, now the Iron Curtain is no more,’ he said. ‘I’ll go by train.’
They passed over the broad, deep green snake of the Nile Valley, curling between fawn deserts. In a couple of hours the great heads of the mountains of Africa were reduced to an exhibition: peaks embroidered by clouds, smudges of ice smitten by the sun. The stupendous Rift Valley, stretching in a swathe, had shrunk to a tyre track. Edward Richardson looked at the doctor who was still asleep, his lips palpitating with a snore. They had changed seats and Snow was now on the aisle. Edward thought he might wake him and show him how things were diminished; so he could realise how wonderfully arrogant the aeroplane was, crooning above it all, high and mighty, beyond everything. But another snore rippled from his companion. Richardson left him to sleep.
An hour later they had tacked away from the mountains and were cruising over a serpentine river. From their initial altitude it appeared as a thread but towards the conclusion of the journey as the plane lost height, it thickened to a brook, then a stream, and then became a great waterway, spreading itself across half the visible land, its sinews brown and glossy. At a touch from the steward Snow awoke and adjusted his seat. As the plane descended further, villages came into view along the river banks, boats and logs floating on the flow; then the cobwebs of more habitations until they were low and roaring above thatched huts and yards. Snow sat up as a herd of goats scampered under the plane’s shadow. People waved from the ground. The lights of the runway appeared, streaming alongside. The aircraft flattened and bumped down as though onto a cushion. ‘Welcome to Africa,’ said Richardson.
‘We made it,’ said Snow fully waking. ‘Amazing isn’t it.’ He stretched towards the window, beyond Richardson’s shoulder, and grinned ‘Well, well,’ as though he had never believed it was really there.
Mombasa Airport was renowned for chaos; pyramids of luggage confronting puzzled officials running with dockets. An Indian customs officer shrugged at the delay: ‘One of the conveyor belts out of action,’ he sighed. ‘For past two years.’
They carried only hand baggage but it took almost an hour before they were clear of complex immigration. The passport officer studied Snow’s photograph intently and then transferred his examination to the doctor’s face. ‘Not a good likeness,’ he commented handing it back. ‘Not for a doctor.’
They emerged eventually into the airport’s fetid forecourt where a man in a red singlet and shorts was struggling to start a bus with a cranking handle; two buffalo grazed on the verge; balancing women passed them with suitcases and bundles, their hands gesticulating, conversing as they padded by, showing no awareness of the burdens on their heads. A spare young girl followed with a bundle hovering above her straight face. Her opal eyes shyly, fearfully, turned on the two men.
They went first to the company’s airport office. It was brown and hot inside the room, a single fan, turning tiredly, like a fighter weary of taking on all-comers. Flies droned across the ceiling. There was only a nervous clerk there. He knew nothing.
Richardson was unsurprised. He asked Snow: ‘Do you want to check into the hotel or go straight to the patients?’
‘Go and see them,’ said Snow decisively. ‘The sooner the better.’ He had taken off his heavy jacket and was sweating in his flannel shirt and tweed trousers. Richardson directed the driver of the dusty car to the American Mission Clinic. The man did not know where it was. Getting out he went to other drivers and the Englishmen watched them arguing. He came back cheerfully and said: ‘These men know nothing. I find it.’ He restarted the engine.
‘I suppose in a place like this a hospital is a luxury,’ observed Snow viewing the passing town. He wiped his sweating face with a red handkerchief. There were huts and shanties and ranks of black-mouthed workshops with cannibalised cars piled outside and half-naked men who swung blow torches. Chickens, goats and dogs scavenged through debris. Men sat cross-legged beside dilapidated walls and clogged waterways. One was kicking a donkey which wearily tried to kick him back. There were stalls and cooking fires upon which lumps of flesh smoked and massive pots boiled. Scarcely clothed children sat scraping the dust. A dignified man occupied a stool below a tattered sunshade engrossed in a ledger, a counting frame beside him. A youthful woman, handsomely black, stared arrogantly at them as the limousine passed her. The windows were shut so that the air-conditioning could function and few sounds penetrated, so the exterior drama was in dumbshow. A clutch of ragged men toothlessly shouted and waved arms like bones in a greeting or a threat.
‘It’s like Hogarth,’ said Snow wonderingly. ‘Like Rowlandson.’
‘These are the people who can’t get any bribes,’ Richardson told him. ‘They have no money, no power, nothing to give. Everyone else is on the make. From the politicians to the police, with doctors, teachers, and a whole ladder of people in between, each one taking and giving backhanders. And the ones at the top of the ladder. They just take. What you see out there are the unnecessary people, bottom of the heap.’
The car went over a flimsy bridge spanning a creek of muddy mauve water.
‘They can’t get out of it,’ Richardson continued. ‘They buy candles to read books if they can get the books, and if they can read, just in the hope of getting some job an inch above the rest. Any village shop here sells pathetic pencils and bits of paper and candles and copies of The Power of Positive Thinking.’
The driver called back. ‘Bwana, I think I find the place.’
They turned off the dust-clouded road into a gateway between glaring white walls. Two black boys were painting the stones that led up to the door of a low building with shuttered windows. The driver pulled up and opened the door. At once the buzzing heat of the day closed like a trap around them. Snow’s handkerchief was wet. ‘God, but my legs are hot,’ he muttered. The boys painting the stones looked up with large, dumb eyes. A black woman in a bright white nurse’s uniform came to the open lobby.
‘The three men we have here are much improved,’ she said rubbing her hands like someone satisfied with a job accomplished. Richardson sighed his relief.
‘There were four patients,’ said Snow. He had now, naturally, taken charge, a suburban man in a strange, heated country.
‘One man, Mr Allsop, would not come.’ The woman rolled her heavy shoulders in a shrug. ‘Wanted to stay at home. Maybe he’ll die there.’
At her invitation Snow followed her into the clinic leaving Richardson outside. ‘They may have something that you haven’t had a jab for,’ he suggested. ‘If you get it, that will be big trouble.’
‘What about you?’ asked Richardson.
‘My blood is like kerosene, laced with Famous Grouse,’ said Snow solemnly. ‘Nothing will touch it.’
Richardson walked into the forceful sun of the garden. Flame trees bordered the road. The sky hung hard blue over shrubs lolling in the heat. Brilliant flowers lay across the stone path. It must have been a private garden at one time, some colonial nabob making it his home from home, with penny labourers, and twopenny gardeners. There he would sit on African evenings dreaming of Sussex.
There was a teak seat below a brilliant jacaranda and he sat and looked down a lawn of tufted grass, dense as a rug, to the overwhelming colours of the flame trees and the native shrubs. His flying fatigue, which in years he had never conquered, lay on him. He felt his eyes droop.
He remained there for half an hour, almost asleep, before Snow reappeared, and came along the path. ‘They’re on the mend,’ he said gratefully. ‘Some sort of amoebic infection. Very nasty indeed, but the clinic people did a good job.’ He looked at Richardson quizzically. ‘But Allsop wouldn’t be admitted. Flatly refused. I don’t like the sound of that. W
e should go and see what his situation is.’
‘He’s a funny chap,’ said Richardson. ‘A bit lonely. He’s an Aussie but he’s lived in England for years.’ They drove out of the town, below two triumphal arches erected over hopelessness.
‘Is he married?’
‘Yes, but his wife stays home.’
They were abruptly engulfed in traffic, trucks, buses, rickety cars and shoals of cyclists. African life eddied about them. Along the roadside were oily workshops, open cooking places. A man cut through a metal drum. Another was lying under his bicycle with three engrossed children standing over him. ‘He’s been knocked down by the look of it,’ said Snow. He glanced at the driver in front. ‘I’d better take a look.’
‘Only drunk,’ the driver called casually over his shoulder. ‘Drunk so he fall off bike. See, they take him.’
Two men were carrying the man to the side of the road. One of the children, a boy, had mounted the fallen bicycle and was joyfully riding away.
Over his shoulder the driver continued: ‘No special time for drunk in Mombasa,’ he said. ‘He eat when he can get, he drink when he can get. Sometimes he get, sometimes not.’
Allsop’s house stood back from a wild beach where palms lay prostrate, there were miles of empty sand and waves came in blue and white and fierce from the Indian Ocean. It was a wooden bungalow, its paint peeling in the salt wind. There was no garden, only a track running from the beach. A dog was tied below a tree and it barked hysterically at them. The driver had been there before. ‘He had a boy,’ he said as he pulled up. He searched about him. ‘But not now.’
‘I’ll go in first,’ cautioned Snow again.
‘But I know Bill Allsop well,’ said Richardson.
‘You don’t know what he’s got though, do you?’ returned Snow getting out of the car. He walked along the path to the shabby door. The dog, choking on its rope, tried to reach him.
Richardson left the car by the other door and walked down towards the sea. The breakers came in like empty grins. The driver followed him and loped at his side. ‘This man good and sick,’ he confided. ‘He go crazy when they want him go to hospital. I saw. Won’t go. Tell everybody fuck off.’
A shout came from behind and they turned and saw Snow at the door in the distance. He beckoned and Richardson hurried up the beach and through the legs of the palms. The driver stayed and began to throw pebbles at the breakers. Snow looked suddenly haggard. ‘He’s not up to much,’ he reported. ‘He’s very poorly indeed.’
‘I must see him,’ said Richardson. Turning his eyes sharply at Snow, he said: ‘What do you think it is?’
‘He’s told me what it is,’ said the doctor. ‘According to him he’s got Aids.’
Shocked, Richardson said: ‘How … how the hell did he get that … them?’
‘In this part of the world there is a selection of ways,’ said Snow sombrely. ‘He found one. I’d say he’s dying.’
The doctor closed the latticed shutters and Allsop thanked him. He had been a big man, now sprawled, shadowed and helpless, in the unkempt bed. Richardson tried to fix his expression for he had known Allsop a long time. ‘The birds kept flying in and crapping everywhere,’ said Allsop apologetically about the shutters. ‘I just couldn’t get out to do it. The houseboys have buggered off. They have a sixth sense. Even at night the bastard birds got in and there was a monkey too. Came under the shutters. I chucked a bottle at him.’
The discourse exhausted him. ‘Haven’t said that much for God knows how long,’ he muttered lying back on the stained pillow. ‘Haven’t had any sod to talk to.’ Richardson realised he was talking quickly only to cover his embarrassment. He casually touched the narrow hand.
‘You should have had some proper attention, Bill,’ he said. Allsop’s great gaunt eyes looked at him. Even the effort of lifting the lids seemed almost too much. ‘We’ll get you fixed up, don’t worry.’
‘Too late, Edward, old mate,’ muttered Allsop. He glanced at Snow. ‘Ask the doctor. He knows.’
Snow regarded him gravely. ‘It’s never too late.’ It was inadequate and he knew it.
‘It is with this lot,’ said Allsop. ‘A lot too bloody late.’
‘You should have come home right away,’ said Richardson. He sat on the cane chair at the side of the bed. He remembered how Allsop’s face used to be, broad, big nosed, and a zig-zag grin.
The Australian assembled part of the zig-zag. ‘What would my missus have said? “I’ve just come home, darling, because I’ve got a sexually transmitted disease.” That would go down a treat. She thinks STD has something to do with telephones.’ He moved with difficulty in the greasy bed. Together Snow and Richardson helped him. Snow said: ‘We’ll get some clean linen here. You should really be in hospital.’
‘What about our other blokes?’ asked Allsop. ‘I wouldn’t want to be with them in that clinic. There’s enough on their plates with whatever they’ve got without having a bloke who’s pegging out from Aids in the next bed.’ He glanced at Snow. ‘They’re on the mend, then.’ It was wistful.
‘They should be all right,’ said Snow. ‘A wee local virus. It’s you I’m concerned about.’
‘Ah, what’s a life? It’s over sooner or later anyway.’ He regarded Snow solemnly. ‘You’ll sweat your balls off in those trousers, Doctor.’
‘I am,’ said Snow. ‘I thought it would be like Bournemouth.’
They all laughed and Allsop looked at each of them, one each side of the bed. ‘I didn’t know I had it until I got taken with this other thing, the lurgi the rest of them have. One of the local quacks, who’s not a bad bloke, gave me a blood test and he told me. Then, with this new infection, it started to gallop. And it’s galloping all the way home now. Straight for the line.’ He lifted his sparse arms. ‘As you can see.’
Resignedly he collapsed back on his pillows. Through the shutters came the drone of the ocean. ‘That’s all I hear all day,’ he grumbled half shutting his eyes, as if the action would block the sound. His thick eyebrows and the rings below his eyes formed complete black ovals. ‘Been driving me mad, those waves, breakers. I’m Robinson Crusoe but with complications.’
‘We’ll make arrangements to get you back as soon as possible,’ said Richardson realising the hollowness of the promise.
‘In a long box, you mean,’ said Allsop. He closed his eyes completely then a quarter opened them. ‘That will be simpler.’ His purple tongue licked around his lips. ‘The whole bloody thing’s a bit futile, isn’t it, anyway. All the whole show. I used to play golf once, you remember, Edward.’
Richardson nodded. ‘We had some good times,’ he said.
Allsop said quietly: ‘I played on the edge of the Sahara once. Fourball. Right on the side of the desert. And there was I trying to tap in an eighteen-inch putt, for a win and a tenner. You know, concentrating. Then I realised I had an audience. Some Bedouins on their camels. They’d stopped and were watching me putting. I can see them now, looking at me with a sort of pity. Disdain. Fancy spending your life knocking a ball into a hole.’
Richardson said: ‘You were a good putter, Bill.’
‘I suppose you want to know how I got it,’ said Allsop. He laughed in a cackle. ‘Not the putt, the Aids,’ he said.
‘There’s no need,’ said Richardson.
‘It happens,’ muttered Snow. ‘As we know.’
‘I’ve got to tell you,’ persisted Allsop. ‘I wouldn’t like you to think I’d picked it up from another bloke. I wouldn’t want Brenda to think that either. We’ve been apart most of our marriage, but that’s our business. Because one of us had to live in some of these awful holes it doesn’t mean that both of us needed to. Have you got a cigarette?’
Neither Richardson nor Snow had. ‘There might be some in the kitchen,’ Allsop pointed. ‘I can’t remember. In the knife drawer.’ He laughed sourly. ‘I used to keep them there like a warning. By the carving knife. That represented death, you see, and I could see it if I was ever temp
ted to smoke again. But it looks like we’ve got around that little problem. I could do with one now.’
Snow went into the kitchen. Once he had gone Allsop began to cry quietly. ‘Oh, Ted, what a fucking state I’m in.’ Richardson leaned forward in a clumsy embrace.
‘It’ll be all right, Bill,’ he said helplessly. ‘We’ve just got to get you out of here.’
Allsop dried his eyes like a child and suddenly asked: ‘How’s the company?’
It took Richardson by surprise. He said: ‘All right, I suppose, considering the general situation,’ he said. ‘They keep threatening us with economies and redundancies, rationalisation they call it. Cuts for this and that. A lot of the time I’m out of the way.’
‘Watch them, mate,’ said Allsop as if he knew something. ‘That Grainger, he’d piss in paradise.’
Snow came back. ‘Found them,’ he said holding out a packet of cigarettes. Shakily Allsop took them. ‘And a lighter,’ added Snow. He lit a cigarette for Allsop.
‘Nobody else?’ asked Allsop. Neither of them smoked but they each took a cigarette and lit it, Richardson awkwardly. ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said.
‘Getting you into bad habits,’ said Allsop with his cackle again. ‘There’s a bottle of scotch in there too, Doctor. Let’s have a snort, shall we. Make it a party. Get a few willing women in.’
Snow had seen the scotch. He brought the bottle in and three glasses. ‘They’re new, never used,’ said Allsop nodding at the glasses. ‘So don’t worry.’
Richardson, muttering that he should not think like that, poured the scotch. ‘Don’t be so sure,’ said Allsop. ‘You can get Aids from any bloody thing in Africa. From the air even. This lot was from a nice girl in Dar Es Salaam.’ He glanced at them through the smoke of his cigarette. Snow began coughing over his. ‘Takes a while to get used to it again,’ he apologised.
‘Knew her for years,’ said Allsop thoughtfully. He sighed. ‘It’s better than biting your knuckles. She was fun. Knew the missionary position upside down and inside out.’
Arrivals & Departures Page 16
