Sing Like You Know the Words (22 page)

Outside the car there was only
still air, dust and heat. If the taxi had once boasted air
conditioning, it was not working now, and the open windows gave
them no relief. He was soaked with sweat. The hot air was thick
with the promise of a storm. Certainly more than one kind of storm
was coming after them.

Two armed and uniformed guards
were stationed at the perimeter gate, whether they were military or
private, who could say. It was surprising enough that they had
chosen to remain at their posts, either way. The crumpled wreck of
the cab aroused their attention, but once they spotted a European
inside, they waved the vehicle on thorough the checkpoint.

- We are going to make the
flight after all, Hawkins promised himself.

It was one of those
international airports where a man is paid to keep goats off the
landing strip. Albert parked the car neatly outside the airport
offices, which comprised of various portacabins, and a more
permanent structure that served as an arrivals and departures hall.
It had even boasted a sliding glass door, which had ceased to slide
for want of maintenance. Now it was wedged open giving the flies
and everyone else ready access.

-Decent enough wheels as it
turned out. Your boy didn’t rob you.

-Yes, it would be nice to think
he’ll be okay.

Inside the hall, another kind of
disorder, raised voices at the edge of panic: angry, demanding,
frightened voices. Through the crowd they caught sight of Johnson,
the man from the embassy. Hawkins pushed his way through the mob
towards him. Albert followed. People were jostling one another,
stumbling against luggage that was piled everywhere, or staggering
under the weight of their own belongings. Families guarded baggage
trolleys obtained from who knows where, awaiting husbands who had
set off to demand or plead on their behalf. Airline functionaries
tried to disengage themselves from the grip of travellers, or would
be travellers. People had begun to argue among themselves, and
generally violence seemed to be lurking not far under the surface
of things.

Johnson was relatively
unobtrusive, in a lightweight suit, with no mark of office. He was
talking in the local dialect to a well-dressed and very excited
man, who was clearly insisting that something should be done for
him. The conversation was hard to make out, but the man was
gesturing repeatedly, making signs that indicated clearly enough an
offer of cash. He must be trying to buy tickets for this last
flight out, maybe if some other unfortunate could be bumped off the
flight. Eventually Johnson resorted to English.

-I’m afraid you don’t understand
sir; it’s not a question of whether you can pay. There is simply no
room on this plane. All the places are taken, and in any case you
do not have a passport with a European country of origin. Only
Europeans. I have no authority to help anyone else to leave the
country.

It was not clear whether the man
understood the words, but for some reason, he accepted that being
addressed in English meant that the discussion was at an end. At
any rate, the man stopped talking for a moment, and Johnson took
the opportunity to turn away from him and greet the newcomers. He
nodded to them both and in the same motion took Albert’s arm,
propelling him towards the departures desk, ignoring the crowd
milling around it. They marched straight past the official
controls. Everyone knew Mr Johnson.

-Poor devil, I wish I could help
him, but there’s no end to that if you once start. Glad to see that
you chaps made it anyway. No time to chat. Your seats are reserved
but that won’t count for much until you’re sitting on them. Still
got your British passports? Good: some nasty stories about those in
the last few days, although I suppose you boys may have spares.
You’re the last of my people so I’ll walk out to the plane with
you. Just a stroll across here. What me, no, I’m staying on. Of
course the ambassador’s been unavoidably called back to London:
call it a tactical withdrawal. Just me and a few other of the
expendables left to mind the store.

Johnson was one of those lean,
prematurely balding men who are burned red by the sun without ever
tanning. Five years in Africa and this was his third state of
emergency. He was an incessant talker, though he always spoke in
the clipped style of an official telegram, as if words were
precious. It was a pattern of speech that suited him, as if saying
that here was a man who never had a moment to spare. He made it his
business to know everyone, and had seldom been heard to make an
overtly critical comment about anyone.

Still it was unusual for a
career diplomat to show such respect to a pair of notorious arms
dealers, especially in times that had become as messy as this.
Hawkins found himself wondering whether it was only professionalism
that made Johnson so polite, or did the man have his own singular
view on the causes of these upheavals that afflicted the region to
regularly. Probably he was just an old fashioned Englishman, of a
particular class, and the politeness was ingrained. In any case,
Hawkins had noticed that at times like these, the Europeans tended
to behave, temporarily, as if they were all in the shit
together.

As they walked across the
tarmac, Johnson explained that he was optimistic that the embassy
might be left alone this time around, barring stray artillery fire,
which of course could not be ruled out, given the levels of
accuracy of the gunners on both sides. For all his talk of
punishing the foreigners and taking the land back for the people,
the new man would not want to cut off the flow of foreign aid into
his treasury before he had even begun to rob it. His present
concern would be to gain personal control of as much of the
nation’s wealth as he could grab before the soon to be exiled
President was able to divert more funds into his various Swiss
accounts. Johnson continued, barely pausing for breath.

-The President was an idiot of
course. The new man was the hero of the army and saviour of the
nation. He even fought in the battle that saw off the last regime,
unlike most saviours of the nation, who only get the title through
bullying and murder. Then they made him Supreme Head of the Armed
Forces, but that was never going to keep him quiet. The President
should have sent him abroad or had him quietly shot. And then for
the President to leave the country when he did, only to attend
another of those idiotic conferences of African leaders that they
all love so much; that cost a fortune and never achieve anything.
He might as well have left the keys to the national bank behind.
But I suppose you boys knew it was coming.

Albert admitted that he’d been
approached by the General to supply certain equipment, and that it
had been pointed out that the General was a man who did not forget
his friends.

-By which he means of course,
that he remembers his enemies, and his enemies are all those who
are not his friends.

-Quite.

-Well I suppose you must have
told him no, for whatever reason, given that you are leaving us now
in something of a hurry. Rather strange that. In this country the
odds generally favour the rebels rather than the incumbents. I
would have expected you to know which way the wind was blowing.

-But the government pays cash,
and maybe I had other reasons. In any case, it’s true that if I’m
not on this flight, my life is not worth much more than those
unfortunate citizens who happen not to be members of the General’s
tribe.

-Don’t worry, plenty of time for
you now

-But you do know there is going
to be a bloodbath when the General gets here?

Johnson shrugged.

-What can I do? When it starts,
we’ll give them official notice that Her Majesty’s government
deplores excessive violence directed against civilian populations.
We shan’t use the genocide word of course. They’ve had harsh words
from us before, and they know what they’re worth. I’ve engaged as
many gardeners, cooks and waiters as I can decently hire, a lot
more than we can find work for, and I’ve told them to bring their
families into the compound till it’s over. I shall probably be in
trouble even for that, but it’s little enough. You know how it is,
there’s a line you can’t cross. If you do, you find yourself
outside looking in.

-We crossed the line when we
started giving these people aid and telling them to develop their
countries, Albert replied. Before that they grew their own food and
the worst they had to fear was a dry year. Now their rulers have a
treasury to fight over and governments that steal their land for
imaginary businesses to impress foreigners.

-Possibly you´re right, Johnson
admitted. All beyond my pay grade. But at least, you know, the new
man couldn’t really care less about tribal differences. He just
rants about it to get his people fired up so he can get his own
hands on the loot. Hopefully the blood-letting will wear itself out
in a few days. The trouble is that once the ordinary people start
killing each other, they seem to get a taste for it, until finally
no-one is in control.

-Well, here we are. The plane is
a bit antique, but the best we could do at short notice, not too
many pilots eager to land here just at the moment. It’ll get you as
far as Nairobi at least: I’m confident of it.

The jet was small, ancient and
seemingly overcrowded. There was information for passengers printed
in Cyrillic script on the backs of the seats. Johnson had assured
the passengers in his charge that all their baggage, however
weighty, would be loaded directly they were on board: it was the
easiest way to get everyone onto the aircraft: but now it seemed
that there were no baggage handlers attending the flight at all.
Hawkins thought about the belongings he’d abandoned at the hotel
and smiled.

He considered the battered and
ancient state of the aeroplane, reflecting that it was better not
to know what maintenance and fuelling programmes had been applied
to it. Even so, as the engines strained at take off and they
struggled to gain altitude, looking down on the arid landscape, he
felt safe for the first time in many days.

He kept watching. From the air
the country seemed greener, and as you got further away from the
bitter and pointless struggles between the humans below, you felt
calmer.

If you flew around the world at
altitude, he thought, not in space, but high enough in the sky so
that you didn’t have to see the actual people, then it would look
as if most of the world that wasn’t water was busy growing food.
You’d be looking down on fields mostly, with just the occasional
urban sprawl, and you might never realize how many people were
crammed into those urban areas, or with what ferocity they competed
with each other and shaped the lives of all the rest.

Albert was in the middle seat.
The man sitting next to the aisle was British too. Albert was
talking to him and Hawkins listened with half an ear to the
conversation. Their neighbour was a red faced engineer with a
Scottish sounding name. He’d come to build a dam, that would
probably now never be built, even though what sounded like a
serious amount of money had already been spent on the project. The
engineer was most indignant, for the wasted money and for his dam.
He was sure that the revolution was a bad thing, because it was the
end of his dam. As to the causes of the unrest, or the violence
that might follow it, he knew and cared nothing.

Albert asked the engineer, quite
gently, what good the dam would have done for the people, most of
who lived on small farms that weren’t supplied with water. His
companion did not follow the argument, it was evident that the dam
was a good thing, or else the engineer would not have been sent to
build it.

Hawkins could see that Albert
was amused by the conversation. Later, as the engineer occupied
himself with trying to secure a decent gin and tonic, the little
guy gave him a big smile and whispered.

Ray, that is so British. They
need a dam because he has to build a dam. It’s that unselfish
egoism. Whatever you happen to be doing is the most important thing
and it’s always for the general good.

Hawkins nodded. He was grateful
to Albert and he liked the man, even if you couldn’t always make
out what he was talking about.

Chapter Six

As time went by, Matthew found
that he was no longer certain that he cared for journalism.
Unfortunately, he could think of nothing else that he cared for
more. It seemed that the fixed points in his life were the job and
his friendship with David and Patricia.

He’d married Carol eventually,
but for both of them the marriage had not seemed to take. They
drifted into and out of it over the course of a few years, without
the process seeming to make much impression on either of them.
Matthew only registered the death of some illusions that for him
had never really come to life in the first place.

Looking back, the word that
seemed to apply most to his marriage was lacklustre. In fact, he
thought, he could apply that description to his life in
general.

Without enthusiasms, he seemed
only to be waiting for life to begin. After the divorce, his
consolation was the discovery that there was a type of woman who
was drawn to his prematurely world weary pessimism. His face was
getting older, starting to match his temperament, and it surprised
him that a succession of these women found their way into his bed.
The languid pursuit of them gave him comfort and a hiding place
from the unspecified sense of disappointment that haunted his
days.

He knew that David did not
approve of this way of life: Patricia also he supposed. Neither of
them said anything to him about it except to make the occasional
joke at his expense. And now, he reflected, I´m the dissolute
friend as well as the failure.