Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa (32 page)

     We passed the sign to Balla Balla,
and Jimmy for the umpteenth time told us about the English public school man he
met who called the place 'Blah-Blah'. We stopped at the hotel there for a
drink. Over the bar was a notice: 'FREE BEER TOMORROW'. After independence,
when the clientele broadened, the notice disappeared. Some humour is simply not
transcultural.

     At Essexvale we stopped for a bar
lunch, and Gareth got his first experience of the Lennon effect on the ladies.
When we left, they all kissed Jimmy good-bye, as if they had known him sixty
years instead of sixty minutes.

     Jimmy crackled with Liverpool
humour. 'That lot were all right, fellows,' he said. 'But I have noticed -
perhaps you can explain this, Warren - I have noticed that the older I get, the
younger are the women I am attracted to. Mind you, I suppose I'm like a dog
chasing a car: I wouldn't know what to do with it if I caught it!'

     It was not ofter Gareth wept, with
laughter or anything else: he was the phlegmatic Welsh type, which does exist,
after all; but he wept now.

     At Bulawayo we stayed at the old
Selborne Hotel. Jimmy retired early to bed: early to rise. Gareth and I took a
stroll in the quiet streets, had a night-cap, and followed him, long before
midnight.

Next day, we took the Falls road. Jimmy
took a turn at the wheel. We came to a cross-roads. The car stalled, and Jimmy
could not get it going again. He went red in the face and started cursing so
loud that a man in a car diametrically opposite, about fifty yards away, got
out and called: 'Who are you swearing at, mate?' Jimmy shouted back: 'I'm
swearing at this bloody car!' The man shrugged: 'O, that's all right, then,'
and got back into his seat. When shortly after, Jimmy stepped out for a packet
of cigarettes, Gareth remarked to me: 'He's a fiery old beggar, isn't he?'

     Indeed, Jimmy’s temper was
legendary, though when I knew him the legend was mostly in the past, as legends
would be. He had become teetotal, not because he was an alcoholic, but for the
same reason you don’t throw petrol on a fire. I believe a spectacular fight in a
Merseyside tavern, followed by a rueful confession, led to this decision many
years before.

     When he entered a water-hole with
us, he always ordered a pot of tea. In the five-star Montclair Hotel, on the
road to Inyanga, the waiter asked him if he was a resident. ‘A resident!’
retorted Jimmy, rather wasting his Liverpool humour on the waiter. ‘Do you
think I would stay in a crummy joint like this? I only come here for the tea.’

     We lunched at the Half-way House,
and stopped in the afternoon at the Baobab. The African barman told us about a
guerrilla who walked into the African bar (perhaps he wished to discourage his
fellows from patronising the white establishment), opened up on the line of
drinkers, missed everyone, and killed himself with his last bullet, which
bounced off the wall. 'It served him right,' commented the barman, in a Sunday
school tone of voice.

     Then, in the late afternoon, as the
wide, monotonous Matabeleland Bushveld begins to dip towards the Zambezi
valley, we saw the spray cloud of the Falls, rising in steam from the bush,
fifteen hundred feet:
Mosi oa Tunya,
the Smoke that Thunders. Soon we
were in the ambit of that thunder, which continues in the background, in the
pauses of the day, in the watches of the night, powerfully but unobtrusively,
like the engines of a great ship.

We put up at the Casino Hotel, and
walked to the Falls next day. Christmas is a good time to see them, just after
the rainy season has started. By April, the spray cloud is so dense, they are
practically invisible. In October, at the end of the dry season, they are at
their lowest and though always beautiful, not at their most impressive.
Livingstone first saw them in November, which is a good time after fair rains.
I have seen them a dozen times, at all seasons. Nothing can stale the hypnotic
power of the massive white waters, plunging for ever into the abyss.

At the hotel swimming pool, we met Japie
van Blerk, the cheeky DO cadet from Umvuma. He had since gone into the army and
was now demobbed. He was staying at the cheap chalets in the town. Then on
Christmas Day, a sad thing happened.

     Jimmy became afraid at the expense
of our holiday. We proposed to go on to Kariba, down the great lake, and stay
at further expensive hotels there. Jimmy was now on an exiguous pension, but he
had, in fact, secured another post to go to at a Catholic boys' boarding
school, near Wankie. Nevertheless, he was afraid, and wished to turn back. He
was quite prepared to make his own way, and was not going to disturb us in any
way.

     We had planned to take Christmas
dinner in the evening at the Victoria Falls Hotel, no more expensive than the
Casino, but older, with its own Edwardian charm. Jimmy got cold feet and took
his Christmas dinner by himself at the Wimpey.

     Young Japie, whose heart was as
light as his pockets (but he was forty years younger than Jimmy), was glad to
join us for dinner and for the rest of our holiday. We had a merry supper, and
even made jokes about poor Jimmy. 'It was Christmas Day in the Wimpey. The
tears were falling fast.'

     Next day, Jimmy secured a lift to
Balla Balla. That still left him 80 miles to Shabani. He told me later, he
stood at the side of the road while car after European car drove past him.
Finally, one stopped and he was rescued from the boiling sun. I asked him if he
had had his hat on. 'Of course I had my hat on! D'you think I was going to give
myself sunstroke into the bargain?' I explained that under his broad hat, his
face was as dark as an African's. His limbs were burnt dark too. Not many Africans
wore shorts, but that was a minor point. Whites rarely stopped for Africans.
Prejudice apart, they left them to their own kind, who made a charge for the
service. Africans would rarely pick up a white man because they would not
expect a fee. At the lucky moment, perhaps, Jimmy took off his hat to expose
his famous 'eggy' head.

     But for ever after this incident,
Gareth, in his deep Welsh way (I mean an Englishman would not have taken it so
personally), felt profoundly disappointed in Jimmy: in a sense, never forgave
him, as if he had let him down in some way. Myself, I was indifferent. Jimmy
was an old friend, and I felt that somewhere in his life, in his Liverpool
childhood, perhaps, he had been infected with the deadly fear of poverty, which
men can harbour even when they have grown rich: something I have missed, and I
suppose Gareth too; although Gareth had never had life handed to him on a
silver platter.

We left the Falls and drove to the
Mlibisi ferry on Lake Kariba, 60 miles across some very wild country: a dirt
road. I must have seemed nervous, as that little devil, Japie, actually read my
thoughts: 'Are you worried about land mines, Warren? I wouldn't worry about
land mines: you won’t know anything about it if you
do
hit one.' The
confidence of youth!

     We stopped a couple of nights at
Mlibisi, and tried to catch tiger-fish. The African ghillie first caught two or
three bream, to use as bait, with an ease that astonished us and provoked our
envy after the many fishless afternoons we had spent beside the dams and rivers
of Umvuma. Then he drove a motorboat while we trawled for the fish. Japie
caught one wretched thing, barely half a pound: he must have foul-hooked it.
Later, I was to catch them easily off Fothergill Island from an anchored boat.

     One night we boarded the car ferry
and set sail down the 170 mile lake. Next afternoon, everyone was ordered below
decks as we went through Chete gorge, where a Canadian tourist had been shot
dead on the upper deck from the bank. When we came to the midmost part of the
lake, the boat stopped to let people jump into the sparkling clear water and
bathe. We old men, including that young old man, Japie, were too lazy. The crew
assured us the crocodiles never came into the middle of the lake. Later, I read
in the paper a letter from a Wild Life official who said this was a fond
illusion: crocodiles moved all over the lake - no doubt, when they saw the car
ferry coming!

     We spent two nights on the boat and
arrived at Kariba town in time for breakfast. The town and its situation rather
resemble the same in Switzerland or North Italy, except that, with a population
similar to say, Locarno, it is scattered over a much wider area, and Kariba
lake must be ten times bigger than Lake Maggiore.

      At Makuti, we picked up a young
Englishman who had joined the Rhodesian army: a mad type with ideas about the
Master Race and the survival of the fittest. Even the Afrikaner, Japie, thought
him barmy. A number of outsiders joined the Rhodesian forces, mostly Americans
who had been in Vietnam, and very strange people some of them were: not all,
but definitely some.

     We dropped him at Sinoia, where we
spent the night. We dropped Japie in Salisbury, next day, and went on to
Umvuma, where we arrived in time for the DC's New Year party. The early-nighter,
Gareth, gave this a miss and went home to his farm. Ted, the stationmaster, had
accompanied him to Shabani and brought his pick-up back to Umvuma.

Jimmy stayed with me about three months
and in the New Year went to Wankie to take up his new post. In April, I got a
message from a friend that he had died - suddenly, according to the friend, who
was in the house at the time. Jimmy was singing in the bathroom. Suddenly the
singing stopped. The house fell very silent. When the friend went to investigate,
Jimmy was dead on the mat.

     He was cremated, and a memorial
service held in the Catholic cathedral at Umtali. I attended. I had to travel
from Shabani the day before to catch the dawn convoy from Fort Victoria. (No
convoys out of Shabani then, but soon after.) I was surprised that few people
attended the service: Jimmy was so out-going. I realised that essentially he
was a very private person: the few friends he had were true friends, and what
man can say more?

     I wrote to his sister in England:
'Jimmy was one of the life-givers. He was like nine o' clock in the morning. He
was like the first day of the holidays.' And he was.

I suppose the cliche, ‘gay bachelor’,
refers to men under thirty: there may be gay bachelors over that age, but they
never included me. After the age of thirty, until I met my wife, my life was a
grey desert, relieved by the occasional oasis, which invariably turned out to
be a mirage - as the Irishman said. However, a mirage is better than nothing:
‘tis better to have loved and lost...! Indeed, it is more than nothing, for any
love, even unrequited, is a treasure and advances us in spirit.

     I first saw Katie across a crowded
floor - in the cricket club, in fact. I had been in Shabani a year. I asked the
man I was with: ‘Who is that beautiful woman, over there?’

     He smiled. ‘That’s Katie Woolfson.
She’s a widow. Her husband was killed by a land mine two years ago.’

     I did not lose time in introducing
myself. ‘I don’t think we have met...’

     ‘Yes, we have. You gave my baby
second prize in the baby show last year.’

     ‘Only second prize!’

     She was tall and slender, she was
blonde and green-eyed. She had a face of classical beauty. She was alive and
intelligent. She was as strong as steel and as soft as honey. And I believe I
saw it all in the first ten minutes.

     I don’t mean she was superficial. A
diamond is not superficial: it is clear and true to its depths, and a lifetime
will not exhaust its interest. And that was Katie.

     Next day I said to a woman in the
office: ‘I met a lovely woman last night, Katie Woolfson. What do you know
about her?’

     Sue was excited. ‘Yes, she is
lovely; and she is a super person. But I must warn you: she has a boy-friend,
and I think they are pretty steady.’

     Well, they all have boy-friends. I
made it a principle to ignore them.

     The day after, Sue was standing on
the steps, waiting for me.

     ‘Good news! No. Good news/bad news!
Katie Woolfson’s boy-friend was killed in an ambush last night.’

     Well, reader, how would you have
taken that news? I leave my feelings to your imagination.

     I thought I had better give it a
decent interval before approaching her. Six months? Someone else might approach
her before then. After two months I rang her up and asked her round to supper.
She put me off with some excuse. I rang her once or twice later. She accepted
once but discovered a PTA meeting at the last minute: she was a teacher at the
local white primary school. She had five children of her own.

     Then I sent her a book for her
birthday, with a gushing letter, like any schoolboy. She wrote back a serious
letter, saying she did not want to disappoint me, but she had resolved to form
no further romantic relationships with men. She dreaded another tragedy - her
heart just could not take it.

     So I bided my time.

     I saw her occasionally about the
town: the clubs, at the hospital, and we chatted in a friendly way. I would not
say we had nothing in common: we had plenty. But it was plain, on some
fundamental level, I was not her type.