Smiling and listening to Uncle Wallace, he knew he had had a good run. It was now time to settle down. Thankfully without having to sit every day in an office to provide for his children… He was thirty-seven years old.

  “I’ll even have to change my name back to Barrington Madgwick. Can’t have a son with a different surname to his father. Brett can keep her stage name but not me.”

  Uncle Wallace was smiling. He knew. Rosie Prescott was downcast. Christopher understood. In the end, sadly they all had to grow up with the facts of life.

  The boys’ bedroom was quiet, the night candle resting on the small table between the two eldest brothers. Ivy, Molly and the three other children were asleep in the room next door. Tina quietly closed the connecting door that stayed open once the children were asleep.

  “Won’t we wake them?” whispered Barnaby, not sure whether he wanted this after all.

  “Once they go to sleep a bomb going off won’t wake them.” Tina picked up the thick candle on its silver dish, relit it and held the light above Frank. The boy had his thumb in his mouth. Tina was smiling gently. “They are such angels asleep.”

  “Is that my son?”

  “Yes, Barnaby, though I want you to swear you will never tell him.”

  “Not even if he is in terrible trouble?”

  “You won’t know. We will be far away in Africa.”

  “It’s a strange feeling looking at your own flesh and blood… Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “How can we prove it?”

  “The way he looks. The way he behaves. The total difference between him and the rest of them. Maybe one day they will be able to tell. Anyway, to you it does not matter. You are going to have nothing to do with Frank. You owe that to Harry’s memory.”

  “That boy there removes any burden from my future. I don’t have to marry and give up my freedom. I understand now I have a son. I will go on when I’m dead. The reason for my life is right there in the bed. The only way a man can reincarnate himself is through his children. I was very clever. I’ve got what I need without having the responsibility of having to be a father.”

  “You’re a selfish bastard.”

  “Look after him, Tina. He’s my son. He’ll always be with me in my mind till the day I die.”

  “The taxi is waiting downstairs.”

  “You won’t let me stay?”

  “Not after what you just said… Why I cared about you so much, I don’t know.”

  “We play the perfect tune together, Tina. Never forget it. Very few people in life ever get to play the perfect tune. When they do, they stay together one way or the other. You’ll never be rid of me, Tina Pringle. Any more than I will be of you. Some call it fate. It’s much simpler. Sexually, we are the only two people on earth who can satisfy each other. Now and forever. Don’t forget about it. Even in Africa… He’s not a bad-looking boy when you come to think of it.”

  They were smiling at each other. They both understood.

  Tina stayed with her children as Barnaby left the house. In the still of the night she heard the front door click shut and the taxi drive away.

  Blowing out the candle, Tina opened the connecting door so Ivy could hear if the boys wanted something. Or something went wrong. Ivy or Molly liked to look at the children during the night. They were both light sleepers.

  Then she went to her own bedroom, undressed and got into bed. She was still awake when the dawn paled the sky over Berkeley Square. Only then did she fall into dreamless sleep.

  When Tina went aboard at the end of August it was not as bad as she imagined. The SS Corfe Castle was the same ship on which she had seduced Harry, half intentionally getting herself pregnant and leading to the chain of events that now led to herself and her five children sailing to Africa. Nothing had changed with the money. Colonial Shipping shares were still going down like everything else. America was in a depression with banks across the nation going broke. The percentage of workers unemployed had reached 20 per cent and Europe was not very much better according to Horatio Wakefield in the Daily Mail. Tina had bought the paper for something to read, not knowing if she would ever again see an English newspaper. A brass band had played them off as the tugs pulled the ship into the Southampton Solent on its way to Cape Town. All the old choke in the throat Tina told herself while wiping the unwelcome tears from her eyes. For Tina, it always took a ship too long to sail. For the hawsers to be released from the bollards, the tugs to get a grip and painfully, slowly, drag the ship from the jetty. ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. ‘Greensleeves’, for some reason. All the pomp and patriotism expected from the empire encapsulated in music. The longing for belonging. The longing for home as they turned their backs and headed out into the world from so small an island. The whole history of England slipping away with the notes of the music floating out on the water, reminding Tina what she was losing.

  To Tina’s surprise, the one thing she would not miss was all the obsequious fawning by the staff of Colonial Shipping, the captain, and the crew of the SS Corfe Castle. Once she had everything money could buy, including people’s deference, it seemed unimportant. There was no excitement in all the attention anymore. Only for a brief time had Tina’s ego been impressed. She had found through her life that once she had what she wanted, she didn’t want it anymore. She was still the same self whatever she possessed. It made no difference to her being. The only difference was the perception of the captain who in another life, when she spoke a broad Dorset accent and lived in a railway cottage with love, he would have ignored. She would have been too insignificant for him to be rude to. Her difference was the power of great wealth she was leaving behind which was fine by her… As she said to herself, looking over the side at the receding shores of England, there were some things in life she would never understand… One of them was why people were so impressed with the rich and famous.

  The children were already running riot despite the best efforts of Ivy and Molly. Poor girls. For them, it was going to be a long trip before they reached the space of Elephant Walk where Anthony and Frank could shout their lungs out without anyone caring about the noise. The dogs would join in. The wild geese, now tame, would honk their way to the river… Only Harry would be missing.

  To Tina’s surprise, Barnaby had seen them off at the railway station in London. He was looking smug and rich. Barnaby liked to look rich. He liked what people thought of him in a condescending sort of way. He had laconically waved as the train pulled out of the station, quickly turning his back and going off somewhere in a hurry. Barnaby liked to look in a hurry. Tina had smiled and pulled up the window of her carriage. It was cold even in August… From that moment the children started their mayhem.

  By the time the ship sailed down the English Channel, Tina had found the first-class bar despite women not usually going to bars on their own. She needed a drink and she only had twelve more days of being the owner. Everyone knew who she was. Everyone left her alone. The children, bless them, were not allowed in the bar.

  “Money, old girl, does have some advantages,” she said, lifting her glass. She would make it up to Ivy and Molly when they reached Rhodesia by train from Cape Town… The children would have to make their own way through life. In September, the silver spoon was going to fall right out of their mouths.

  While Tina Brigandshaw was ordering her third gin and tonic on the SS Corfe Castle, in the heart of Africa, Tembo was drinking from a bowl of white maize beer in the shade of a tree on the shore of Lake Victoria. They had arrived at Mwanza on the southern shore of the lake a week earlier. The rains had been intense, locking them between rivers until the end of April when they broke out from their camp to continue the journey north. During the rainy season, Tembo had shot nothing but small game to feed them. The big game was always too far away. Never in one place. To shoot and wound an elephant was a sin likely to be paid for with the life of the next human being that came across the wounded elephant. Tembo had known an elephant to attack a village, rampaging through the mud huts years after being shot and wounded by a white hunter. When Tembo killed the elephant, he found a festering cyst in the shoulder behind the big ear that was years old, by the look of it, and still giving excruciating pain to the elephant. Hunting down the wounded beast to protect the villagers had taken Tembo a week.

  The two small carts bought in Ujiji by the Arab captain had caused most of the trouble in the wet. Loaded with the few tusks of elephant shot by Tembo before the rains came down, they had to be manhandled much of the way through the bush between the north shore of Lake Tanganyika and the south shore of Lake Victoria. Only a span of oxen would have done the job properly, something not for sale in Ujiji. The harnessed packhorses had tried their best. Anywhere wet in the low country, the carts sank into the mud. With all the men on the wheels, they could pull the carts from the suck of the mud. Their journey to Mwanza had been long, heavy work with little reward. Only once did the Arab trade his Western goods for rhino horn.

  When the Arab reached Mwanza he had hired a boat to take him up the lake, leaving Tembo to guard the small pile of ivory. The Arab thought it would be easier to trade for ivory and horn from a boat than hump the tusks through the bush without an ox wagon inspanned to eight powerful oxen.

  The British had built two spurs to their railway line out of Dar es Salaam to open up the heart and lungs of Africa to trade. The one spur had gone to Ujiji, the other to Mwanza where the Arab was going to entrain with his ivory and horn leaving Tembo and his Shona to go back to Rhodesia overland on horseback unencumbered by trade goods or tusks. They had blazed a trail. Going back would be easier. With gold for helping the Arab to accumulate his ivory and horn they would buy passages down Lake Tanganyika and Lake Nyasa, reaching Elephant Walk with money and the horses.

  Tembo, drinking the smooth white beer out of the old wooden bowl, was well pleased with himself. He was going to be rich. The open bar under the tree was to his liking. The woman who served him the beer when he wanted was big in the bottom and big in the breast. Young. Just as he liked his women. The man who called himself Parsons and spoke Chinyanga with a smattering of Shona had stayed with Tembo. He was going to take the train from Mwanza to Dar es Salaam. He also thought himself rich, a man following his whims through life, going where life took him without a care in the world. Mostly, the locals spoke Swahili in Mwanza so Parsons was of little use to Tembo’s quest for information other than as a companion with whom to drink beer and listen for any gossip they might understand. Many men came to the shade of the tree to drink beer.

  In the months on the journey, Tembo had learnt his own smattering of Chinyanga and Swahili. Some of the black people who worked for the British even spoke English. The British, Tembo understood from Rhodesia, liked to teach the blacks English rather than have to learn so many African languages, hoping one day English would be the common language over the territories they had colonised stretching all of the way up East Africa to Egypt.

  Drinking beer and listening, sitting comfortably in the shade of a great tree with a pretty young girl serving his beer, was all Tembo asked for from life, the nagging of his own wives far away in the back of his mind.

  There was a small fire under an iron grille that was kept burning all day giving off the pleasant smell of woodsmoke and making coals always ready to cook. At the bar counter at the trunk of the old tree were trays of butchered meat and fillets of Nile perch. On the side of the fire stood two three-legged iron pots with domed lids. In one, slowly cooking in their own juices, were dried beans now turned soft by the slow cooking. In the other large pot, maize meal was cooking, occasionally stirred with a long spoon by the young girl who always leaned over the pot showing Tembo her large black bottom and white knickers. Tembo hoped she was doing it on purpose… There was plenty of time. The Arab and the porters first recruited by Keppel Howland were going to be away a long time… Or so he hoped. Even in the day, by the great lake that had no end in sight, the temperature was pleasant under the tree… Cool at night with a soft breeze off the lake.

  When Tembo was hungry he went to the counter. In the mornings he ate fish. In the day and evening, a piece of meat: all were cooked as he liked them over the hot coals on the iron grid, sipping beer. Added to the beans and sudza, his food was just right. Tembo’s days and nights were perfect. There was nothing a man could want more. Most nights he and Parsons slept under the tree next to the fire covered in blankets, listening to the wild animals before they fell into dreams satiated by good food and beer. Drinking beer all day was an art that required slow drinking and good stories. Tales to be told and tales to be heard. Sometimes Tembo told a long story in Shona which no one understood. Everyone smiled and drank their beer, listening to every word, savouring the day under the big tree by the great lake whose shores none of them could see across, the great stretch of clean blue water, the one great lung of Africa that helped them breathe the pure clean air. It was good to be alive by the side of the lake with his friends.

  The days folded gently into each other. Tembo was so lazy he just looked at the young girl with appreciation, not bothering to take it any further… Sometimes he knew it was better not to eat what was in front of him. Fulfilment was always too short. Once a woman was taken she was rarely as exciting anymore… Something Tembo reflected on sadly as he thought back over his life in the shade of the big tree.

  The best part of Tembo’s day was the sleep after lunch. Half an hour under the tree settled the morning beer and made room for the rest of the day. It was part of the drinking ritual passed down through the generations. A hut near water, fat cattle, three wives to work the fields and bring the brewed beer and a sleep after lunch was in Tembo’s mind the attainable pursuit of every man’s life… A long, lazy life of luxury and pure contentment.

  Tembo was half-asleep when the two black men came to the tree and bought themselves each a beer. They were well dressed and looked important. The young girl in her rush to serve the men spilt beer from the bowls of white brew, receiving a frown from the older of the men. It was none of Tembo’s business so he went off to sleep where he dreamt of the great ocean that had no end. In the dream, people were speaking to the part of the dream that was himself making Tembo wake up with a start. Never before had he dreamt in the white man’s language. Being awake too early annoyed him. The ray of sun through the boughs of the tree rested on the same spot in front of his foot. He had slept not a minute despite his dream being much longer, which was always the case… A dream was all in one picture, he was told. An instant event with all the sequences coming in one, which the brain formatted when the sleeper woke up. When Tembo first became a man he had asked the sangoma about dreams, the wise man who lived far from Elephant Walk. When Tembo wanted something, he always went to see the same wise old man. The sangoma could talk to the ancestors, which was why he knew so much… All the knowledge of all the ancestors in all their lives long. It was important to listen to such a man.

  When Tembo was wide awake, still lying under the tree in the shade except for the one shaft of sunlight that had not moved, nothing happened. The dream did not take on a life of its own showing him everything. Instead, a different story was going on that had nothing to do with what was spoken in the dream. Tembo lifted his head from the ground to make sure he was awake. The man who called himself Parsons for a reason Tembo never understood, was sleeping soundly, fluting through his open mouth, making sounds like a whimpering dog, a sure sign he was having a good dream… Tembo sat up and looked around to see what was going on.

  To Tembo’s astonishment, the two well-dressed black men seated on high stools at the bar were speaking to each other in English. Not very good English, Tembo could hear, but still having a conversation that both appeared to understand. They looked very different from each other, which probably explained why they were speaking English. The one who was younger had a coal-black skin and a small neat-looking nose with small nostrils. The older, the more arrogant of the two, who was pretending not to look at the young girl who was stirring the pot of maize meal with the long spoon, leaning over and showing the old man her big bottom and the knickers she had probably bought in the Mwanza bazaar, had a nose squashed all over his ugly face with nostrils so big Tembo was sure the man could stick two of his fingers right up to the top. The coal-black man with a kind of face Tembo had never seen before was telling the story while the older man looked at the young girl’s bottom, making Tembo jealous, as was his right, having spent days and a large sum of money looking at the girl while he made up his mind what to do. The man was talking about white gods who lived with a tribe in the jungle on the far side of the great lake. The gods had fallen out of the sky, little nose was telling big nose, which made Tembo sit up straight.

  The older man, bored with a tall story, got up. He went over and patted the young girl’s bottom, which she seemed to like. The girl must have seen by the old man’s clothes, big nose was rich. Every old rich man took young wives when the others grew old and ugly. When she saw Tembo looking at what was going on, she tossed her head, telling Tembo without words to mind his own business.

  Tembo stood up.

  When Tembo reached the bar the younger man was still talking, telling his story.

 

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