African Laughter (8 page)

Next day Harry said he would take me to the Club some miles away. I knew he did not want to go, but he said it would do him good. Since his wife died he had got out of the habit of socializing. But I wasn’t to expect a good time. Because so many people had Taken the Gap, the Club was nearly empty these days. Once there were two hundred, three hundred people on Saturdays and Sundays, and people had to queue to use the tennis courts or to get drinks at the bar. Yes, yes, he would go, he felt he should: people kept insisting that he must go out to lunch, or to supper, or to the Club. They meant to be kind, he knew that.

When we got there, the Club was a low brick building in the bush, with tennis courts, a squash court, a bowling green. It seemed the weekend before several cars full of youngsters had come down from Harare for a party, and some were still here, lolling on the verandah. A couple slept flat on their backs under a tree, their arms flung out, faces scarlet. On one sun-inflamed forearm sat a contemplative green grasshopper. The cold-thinned musasa trees of winter laid shifting mottled shadow over them. There was a bleak and dusty wind.

‘Stupid to drink yourself into this state,’ said Harry authoritatively, and shouted: ‘Thomas. Thomas!’

A black man in a servant’s white uniform appeared on the verandah, said calmly to him, ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ and walked slowly over.

‘They shouldn’t be lying here like this, they’ll get pneumonia.’

Thomas looked down at the unconscious pair, and then at Harry, saying with his eyes that it was not part of his job to tell the two young whites how to behave.

‘Is there a blanket? Anything to put over them?’

The servant strolled off, and came back with his arms full of checked tablecloths, which he and my brother placed in layers over the sleepers.

Among the hungover youngsters, and in a quite different style, were the older people, the Club’s real users, mostly farmers. Not many now, and they were putting a good face on things, being brave. They were pitiable.

Harry and I played bowls. He has always been easily good at any physical thing…the first time he was put on a bicycle, the first time he took up a cricket ball…and he would shin up any tree as soon as look at it. It was not that I was bad, but the comparison with him made me the clumsy one, and so I was styled through my childhood. Later I realized I had been nothing of the kind. Such is family life.

When he had beaten me at bowls, someone challenged him, and I retired to the verandah, sat by myself and watched. The rooms of the Club were half empty, full of the ghosts of the departed whites. And would it fill soon with blacks?

At the next table sat a group of middle-aged farmers, talking about the Bush War. Among them sat a man who was silent while they went on about the iniquities of the blacks, and recited versions of The Monologue. He was a farmer of about forty. He was apart from them, just as I was. Yet he had been fighting in the Bush War. His silence was felt, and they began teasing him, trying to be pleasant, but sounding peevish, because he was not about to Take the Gap, as they were. He had decided to stay in Zimbabwe, to stick it out. He had made inner psychological adjustments, and was no longer uncritically one of them. He did not look too happy: these were his neighbours, his tribe.

As the sunset began to fire the sky, my brother took on another challenger: he had beaten the first.

The group at the next table broke up. The odd-man-out sat looking at me for a while, then came over. He knew I was my brother’s sister, and had funny ideas.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve been wondering what you’re making of it all.’

His manner was conditionally friendly. I decided not to choose my words. He listened, sitting back in his chair, nodding sometimes, but I could see from his eyes that he was matching what I said with scenes or events he was remembering and the words I used did not fit. ‘Everyone’s entitled to their opinion,’ he summed up. Then I said there were things I would like to ask my brother, but could not: the Bush War, for instance, for he simply clammed up.

‘You should remember there’s a difference between his generation and our lot.’

‘What difference?’

He shrugged.

‘Were you brought up in this country?’

‘Canada.’

‘Ah, I see.’

‘All right, what do you want to know?’

‘For instance why was it in the Bush War, the black civilian casualties were always so high when “incidents” were reported?’

He sat thinking for a while. Then: ‘All right, I’ll tell you the story of something that happened. In the
Rhodesia Herald
it said, “One member of the Security Forces killed, five civilians, eleven Terrorists.”’

THE BUSH WAR

He was with five others on patrol in the bush. They were travelling fifteen to twenty miles at night, and lying low in the day. He was patrol leader. They each carried food for eight days.

‘I had a self-invented muesli, of milk powder, oats, wheatgerm, raisins, and bits of salami. I ate one pound of this a day, with half an onion. We sucked dew off the grass in the morning, if we didn’t come on any decent water. The muesli was in a plastic bag and that was good because it didn’t make a noise: tins clash, and give you away. Everybody made up their own rations. Biltong came into its own, I can tell you. We saw two men lurking about outside a village. We thought they looked suspicious, probably spies for the ‘terrs’. You acquire an instinct, after a bit of practice. We took them prisoner. So there were eight of us. They didn’t mind going along with us. We didn’t even have to tie their hands. They had no spirit, those chaps, poor buggers, government forces or the ‘terrs’, they got it in the neck either way. Then we heard the ‘terrs’ singing their freedom songs in a village we didn’t know was there. It was just luck. We knew they didn’t know we were there. All the different groups of ‘terrs’ told each other of their whereabouts, or where we were, through their talking drums. We usually had some Aff with us who could tell us what the drums were saying, but not that trip. But the ‘terrs’ wouldn’t have been singing their heads off if they knew we were half a mile away. We left the two prisoners with two guards. One was shitting in his pants with fear. That is what is meant by the smell of fear.’

The four crawled up to the edge of the village in the dark. It was cold. They lay in the grass just far enough away from the firelight. There was no moon. ‘It was the usual thing. A song, and then a speech. Then a song and another speech.’

One of the ‘terrs’ was sitting on a scotch cart, its wheels within touching distance of the four watchers, who lay as still as they could, trying to breathe quietly.

‘Luckily he was drunk. We were watching the leaders going in and out of a hut where we were sure a girl was. They were having a good time with her. We could hear her laugh. The ones who made the longest and most fiery speeches got most time in the hut. I had given orders no one should open fire until I did. I knew they were itching to let go, with all those drunk ‘terrs’ reeling about. I waited until the girl came out of the hut to have a pee. Then we all threw our bombs into the hut. Girls were screaming, and I realized there were other girls in there. There was general firing for about a minute. The ‘terrs’ ran away into the bush. They didn’t know how many soldiers were out there in the dark. We could have been a whole battalion, not just four. One of us was hit by a ricochetting bullet. He died later.’

The four went on lying in the grass, waiting. They did not know one of them was badly wounded.

‘He did feel blood trickling, but he thought it was just a scratch. We were listening to the groans of the wounded. We had no idea how many there were. Several times grenades went off. The usual trick, a grenade put under a corpse, or held under him by a wounded man–kamikaze stuff, the idea was we would get it, when we moved him. But sometimes the grenades went off when they weren’t supposed to. When the light came, there were several dead, including civilians, lying on the earth between the huts, and in the huts where I thought there was only one girl, were several dead ‘terrs’ and three dead girls. The girl who had come out to have a pee had a smashed hip. We gave her morphine and called in the choppers, and they took the girl and our wounded chap, but he was as good as dead by then, to the hospital. I followed the girl’s progress. It turned out she was three months’ pregnant. We gave her a new hip, and she kept the baby. I visited her in hospital. She was a pretty girl all right. She had already got herself engaged and she’s had another baby since. When we got back to where the prisoners were waiting for us, we sent them for interrogation. Then, we went on with our patrol. There were no more incidents that trip. Next week I read two lines in the
Herald
: “One member of the Security Forces killed, five civilians, eleven Terrorists. Does that answer your question?’ He was brisk, and businesslike, and unemotional, telling his tale.

Then a group of fifteen or so were sitting around a table, joking how, when the election was being prepared, the Security Forces were sent to get evidence that the ‘terrs’ were contravening Lancaster House rules, with the aid of the Australians ‘who distrusted the Brits as much as we did.’ The Security Forces were able to wriggle to the edge of clearings where the ‘terrs’’ meetings went on, and made recordings. ‘We got all this evidence they were cheating, but of course the Brits didn’t do anything.’

‘But we were cheating too,’ said the farmer who had told me his story. ‘Everyone knew that. Our cheating and theirs cancelled each other out.’ He laughed. After a moment the others laughed with him.

As Harry and I went to the car, the two youngsters from Harare were still sprawled under their tree in the dark. It was cold. Another youth bent over them, trying to shake them awake, while they groaned and complained but on a facetious note.

‘Never was anything like that in the old days,’ said Harry. ‘How can you say that!’ I demanded.

‘We kept up standards, then.’

‘Harry, I was part of the old days, have you forgotten? It was only when I got to England I realized how much we all drank. And you must have seen that too, when you got to England.’

But he was not going to admit anything of the kind. Back there, in the old days,
then
, was paradise, a shangri-la, a lost perfection.

At the security fence, he could not find the keys. I said, why not go to the neighbour’s house a mile away and get wirecutters. He did not like to think that a pair of wirecutters was all that had been between them and the ‘terrs’. No, he was going to climb it. Derring-do. There was I, a small girl again, watching my brother performing impossible physical feats, while I thought, intending the thought to show, Well, what’s the point of
that
!

He did not find it easy. The fence was not only high, but at the top there was a three-stranded leaning-out section. It was this that stopped him. Down he slid, a heavy man, out of temper, out of breath, and locked out of his safe place. He banged at the gate and shouted for the servant–who was asleep–while handsome Sparta, elegant Sheba, defenders of the lager, barked and bounded and whined inside. Just as we were off to borrow the wirecutters, he found the key. At once he became humorous and laughed at himself as the big gate swung in, and the dogs overwhelmed us with love. Then the gate was locked, and we looked out through the wire from inside the lager.

That evening, he asked what I had been talking about with Hugh. The fact there had been this long conversation had been reported to him. I told him, we were talking about the Bush War.

‘What did you want to do that for?’

‘Well, you don’t seem to want to talk about it.’

‘Nonsense.’ And he began on a careful statement, like a formal briefing. ‘The men of my age couldn’t do the real fighting, worse luck. We did police duties. We visited farms, to make sure everything was all right. Or we investigated villages that were supposed to be sympathetic to the ‘terrs’. Sometimes we just drove up and down the roads in army lorries. Showing our teeth, you know. Often we slept out in the bush. Yes of course I enjoyed it, wouldn’t you? The bush, you know. Anyway, you people don’t understand anything about it. We were fighting for you, against communism. And now look at what’s happened.’

Soon, he poured himself another brandy, and another–carefully, as usual–and then he was talking about
his
war, not the Bush War, but the Second World War, how he was in the
Repulse
when it was sunk, and then the fighting in the Mediterranean. His tone changed. I recognized it. What he wanted to tell me was terrible, but he wasn’t going to make much of it. How could he? He had been trained not to.

‘Did I ever tell you about the
Repulse?
’

‘You wouldn’t talk about it.’

‘Wouldn’t I? That’s funny. I think about it all a good bit.’

And now that was it, we were off, never mind about the Affs and the ‘terrs’, the Bush War and the inglorious Brits. This is what he wanted to talk about.
His
war.

‘I was down at the bottom of the ship. That’s where I was when the Jap bombs hit. We knew there were only a few minutes before the ship went down. The water was pouring in…did you know the
Repulse
and the
Prince of Wales
were supposed to be unsinkable?’

‘Yes, like the
Titanic
.’

‘Yes. Funny, the way we go on believing…I was standing at the bottom of the companionway, while the men climbed up past me…the stairs were already perpendicular. I just stood there. Someone said to me, “Aren’t you going to go up, Tayler? You’d better get a move on.” I went up those stairs like a monkey, and I walked down the slanting deck straight into the sea and I swam away as fast as I could. Lucky for me I’m a good swimmer. Some of the chaps couldn’t swim fast enough. We were in the water for hours. It was full of oil and rubbish from the ship and dead men floating. I trod water. I used as little energy as I could and I kept my nose and mouth above the oil. Then they came to pick us up out of the water. They said there were sharks but I couldn’t see any. They were probably keeping clear of the oil too. Wouldn’t want to be a shark in that mess.’