In a Free State Part 7

She didn't answer. And for some time she said nothing.

He felt he had been too aggressive. He said, 'Of course, they didn't allow Africans to live here.'

'They had their servants, Bobby.'

'Servants, yes.' She caught him unprepared. He hadn't expected her to be so provocative so early. He said, with the calm grim satisfaction of a man prophesying the racial holocaust, 'I suppose that is why someone like John Mubende-Mbarara has refused to move out of the native quarter.'

'How well you p.r.o.nounce those names.'

Bobby's sombreness turned to gloom. 'Well, he won't come to you. If you want to see his work you have to go to him. In the native quarter.'

Linda said, 'When Johnny M. began, he was a good primitive painter and we all loved his paintings of his family's lovely ribby cattle. But he churned out so many of those he got to be a little better than primitive. Now he's only bad. So I don't suppose it matters if he does continue to paint his cattle in the native quarter.'

'That's been said before.'

'About him living in the native quarter?'

'About his painting.' Bobby hated himself for answering.

'He's got awfully fat,' Linda said.

Bobby decided to say no more. He decided again to be sombre and this time not to be drawn.

Suburban gardens gave way to African urban allotments with fewer trees, and at the edge of the town the land felt open and the light was like the light that announces the nearness of the ocean. Here, serving both town and wilderness, weathered painted h.o.a.rdings on tall poles showed laughing Africans smoking cigarettes, drinking soft drinks and using sewing machines.

Allotments turned to smallholdings and secondary bush. A few Africans were about, most on foot, one or two on old bicycles. Their clothes were patched with large oblongs of red, blue, yellow, green; it was a local style. Bobby was on the point of saying something about the African colour-sense. But he held back; it was too close to the subject of the painter.

The land began to slope; the view became more extensive. The Indian-English town felt far away already. To one side of the road the land was hummocked, as with gra.s.sed-over ant-hills. Each hump marked the site of a tree that had been felled. Wasteland now, emptiness; but here, until just seventy years before, Africans like those on the road had lived, hidden from the world, in the shelter of their forests.

Yak-yak. At first only a distant drone, the helicopter was quickly overhead; and for a while it stayed, touched now with the morning light, killing the noise of the car and the feel of its engine. The road curved downhill, now in yellow light, now in damp shadow. The helicopter receded, the sound of wind and motor-car tyres returned.

From beside mounds of fruit and vegetables heavy-limbed African boys ran out into the road, holding up cauliflowers and cabbages. There had been accidents here; offending motorists had been manhandled by enraged crowds, gathering swiftly from the roadside bush. Bobby slowed down. He hunched over the wheel and gave a slow, low wave to the first boy. The boy didn't respond, but Bobby continued to smile and wave until he had pa.s.sed all the boys. Then, remembering Linda, he went sombre again.

She was serene, full of her own cheerfulness. And when she said, 'Did you notice the size of those cauliflowers?' it was as though she didn't know they were quarrelling.

He said, grimly, 'Yes, I noticed the size of the cauliflowers.'

'It's something that surprised me.'

'Oh?'

'It's foolish really, but I never thought they would have fields. I somehow imagined they would all be living in the jungle. When Martin said we were being posted to the Southern Collectorate I imagined the compound would be in a little clearing in the forest. I never thought there would be roads and houses and shops '

'And radios.'

'It was ridiculous. I knew it was ridiculous, but I sort of saw them leaning on their spears under a tree and standing around one of those big old-fashioned sets. His Master's Voice.'

Bobby said, 'Do you remember that American from the foundation who came out to encourage us to keep statistics or something? I took him out for a drive one day, and as soon as we were out of the town he was terrified. He kept on asking, "Where's the Congo? Is that the Congo?" He was absolutely terrified all the time.'

The road was now cut into a hill and the curves were sharp. A sign said: Beware of Fallen Rocks.

'That's one of my favourite road-signs,' Bobby said. 'I always look for it.'

'So precise.'

'Isn't it?'

His sombreness had gone; it would be hard now for him to rea.s.sume it. Already he and Linda had become travellers together, sensitive to the sights, finding conversation in everything.

'I love being out this early,' Linda said. 'It reminds me of summer mornings in England. Though in England I never liked the summer, I must say.'

'Oh?'

'I always felt I should be enjoying myself, but I never seemed to. The day would go on and on, and I could never find much to do. The summer always made me feel I was missing a lot. I preferred the autumn. I was much more in control then. To me autumn is the great season of renewal. All very girlish, I'm sure.'

'I wouldn't say girlish. I would say unusual. I once had a psychiatrist who thought we were all reminded of death in October. He said that as soon as he realized this he stopped being rheumatic in the winter. Of course at the same time he'd put in central heating.'

'I somehow thought, Bobby, that you would have a psychiatrist.' She was being bright again. 'Tell me exactly what was wrong.'

He said, calmly, 'I had a breakdown at Oxford.'

He had spoken too calmly. Linda remained bright. 'I've long wanted to ask someone who had one. Exactly what is a breakdown?'

It was something he had defined more than once. But he pretended to fumble for the words. 'A breakdown. It's like watching yourself die. Well, not die. It's like watching yourself become a ghost.'

She matched his tone. 'Did it last long?'

'Eighteen months.'

She was impressed. He could tell.

With a chuckle, as though speaking to a child, he said, 'Look at that lovely tree.' She obeyed. And when the tree had been looked at, he said, solemnly again, 'Africa saved my life.' As though it was a complete statement, explaining everything; as though he was at once punishing and forgiving all who misunderstood him.

She was stilled. She could find nothing to say.

This was the famous view. This was the openness the sky had been promising. The land dropped and dropped. The continent here was gigantically flawed. The eye lost itself in the colourless distances of the wide valley, dissolving in every direction in cloud and haze.

Linda said, 'Africa, Africa.'

'Shall we stop and have a look?'

He pulled in where the verge widened. They got out of the car.

'So cool,' Linda said.

'You wouldn't believe you were almost on the Equator.'

They had both seen the view many times and neither of them wanted to say anything that the other might have heard before or anything that was too fanciful.

'It's the clouds that do it,' Linda said at last. 'When we first came out Martin took photographs of clouds all the time.'

'I never knew Martin was a photographer.'

'He wasn't. He'd just got himself a camera. He used to use my name when he sent the film off to be processed, so that no one at Kodak would think he'd taken the pictures. I suppose they must get an awful lot of junk. After he got tired of clouds he began crawling about on his hands and knees snapping toadstools and the tiniest wildflowers he could find. The camera wasn't built for that. All he got were greeny-brown blurs. The people at Kodak dutifully sent every blur back, addressed to me.'

They were in danger of forgetting the view.

'So cool here,' Bobby said.

A white Volkswagen went past, travelling out of the town. A white man was at the wheel. He blew his horn long and hard when he saw Bobby and Linda, and accelerated down the hill.

'I wonder who he's showing off to,' Bobby said.

Linda found this very funny.

'It's absurd,' Bobby said, when they were sitting in the car again, 'but I feel all this' he indicated the great valley 'belongs to me.'

She had been close to laughter. Now she leaned forward and laughed. 'It is absurd, Bobby. When you say it like that.'

'But you know what I mean. I couldn't bear looking at this if I didn't know that I was going to look at it again. You know,' he said, sitting up, as stiff as a driving pupil, looking left and right, driving off, 'I never knew a place like Africa existed. I wasn't interested. I suppose, like you, I thought of tribesmen and spears. And of course I knew about South Africa.'

'I've just thought. We haven't heard the helicopter for some time.'

'Helicopters don't have much of a range. It's almost the only thing I learned in the Air Force.'

'Bobby!'

'Just National Service.'

'Do you think they've got the king?'

'It must be awful for him,' Bobby said, 'having to run from the wogs. I am in a minority on this, I know, but I always found him embarra.s.sing. He was far too English for me. We'll see what his smart London friends do for him now. Such a foolish man. I feel sure some of them put him up to all this talk of secession and so on.'

' "I say, awfully stuffy here, with all these wogs, what?" '

'And they found it very charming and funny. I never did, I must say. You know, there's going to be an awful lot of ill-informed criticism. And we won't be exempt. Serving dictatorial African regimes and so on.'

'It's something that worries Martin,' Linda said.

'Oh?'

'The criticism.'

'I am here to serve,' Bobby said. 'I'm not here to tell them how to run their country. There's been too much of that. What sort of government the Africans choose to have is none of my business. It doesn't alter the fact that they need food and schools and hospitals. People who don't want to serve have no business here. That sounds brutal, but that's how I see it.'

She didn't respond.

'It isn't a popular att.i.tude, I know,' he said. 'What is it our d.u.c.h.ess says?'

'd.u.c.h.ess?'

'That's how I call her.'

'You mean Doris Marshall?'

'I bend over "black-wards". Isn't that what she says?'

Linda smiled.

'Very original,' Bobby said. 'But I don't know why we think the Africans don't have eyes. You think the Africans don't know that the Marshalls are on the old South African railroad?'

'She's South African.'

'As she tells everybody,' Bobby said.

' "And proud of it, my dear." '

' "When I was steddying ittykit in Suffafrica " '

'That's it,' Linda said. 'You've got it exactly. And there's this thing about "glove-box". Do you know about that?'

'You mean you don't say glove-compartment.'

'You always say glove-box.'

' "Because it's ittykit in Suffafrica, my dear." '

'That's it, that's it,' Linda said.

'I think the sooner they finish putting the screws on Denis Marshall and send the two of them packing to South Africa, the better for everybody.'

She rearranged the scarf around her hair and rolled down the window a little.

'It's almost cold,' she said, and took a deep breath. 'That's the nice thing about the capital. The open fires.'

After the way they had just been talking, this expatriate commonplace disappointed him. He said, 'The nicest thing about the capital is this. This drive back. I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.'

'Stop it. You'll make me sad.'

'There's a splendid thing I read by Somerset Maugham somewhere. He's not much admired now, I know. But he said that if you wanted only the best and held out for it, really held out, you usually got it. I must say I've begun to feel like that. I feel we can always do what we really want to do.'

'It's easy for you now, Bobby. But you were saying there was a time when you didn't even know a place like Africa existed.'

'I know now.'