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‘Mr Senior, may we have permission to smoke?’
‘Shut up, Junior!’ ‘Louder, Junior!’ Mahoney put on his spectacles and looked at Mr Senior of the uppermost mess. He was sipping his port as if nothing was happening. Mahoney looked at Ms Junior, and he felt sorry for her. She was about thirty, ten years older than the youngsters ragging her, and Mahoney thought she was beautiful. She had tawny hair in a bun and her embarrassed smile was wide. Now she was clambering up on to the table. She was tall, with good legs.
‘Mr Senior!’ she bellowed – but Mahoney could only see her mouth moving. He sighed. This was supposed to teach law-students the art of public speaking? Mr Senior was looking up as if he had just noticed something.
‘I beg your pardon, Junior?’
Laughter and sudden silence. She started again: ‘May we’ – and the gleeful catcalls burst out again.
‘Smoke?’ Mr Senior said, looking puzzled. ‘Oh, very well.’
The woman climbed down off the table, and blew out her cheeks.
Mr Mahoney began to get up. ‘Well, Mrs Chan and gentlemen, excuse me …’
‘One moment, Mr Mahoney, please!’ Mr Fothergill said. He stood up. He bellowed: ‘Mr Senior in Hall!’ The hall fell silent. Fothergill shouted: ‘I have two serious charges to make against Mr Mahoney … Firstly, when proposing a toast to our mess, he first addressed Mrs Chan, who is Junior of our mess, instead of first addressing me. Secondly, he is wearing a grey pinstriped suit.’
Mr Fothergill sat down, grinning.
‘Mr Mahoney,’ Senior in Hall intoned, ‘how do you answer these weighty allegations?’
Mahoney stood up.
‘Mr Senior,’ he shouted, ‘they are as weightless as the area between Mr Fothergill’s ears.’ (Laughter.) ‘Surely it is customary, even in those dark corners of England which Mr Fothergill hails from, to address a lady first? If I am wrong, I am glad to be so, and my only regret is that I had to toast Mr Fothergill at all.’ (Laughter.) ‘As to the second charge, my suit is not grey pinstripe, but a white suit with a broad grey stripe in it. I am in the ice-cream business, you see.’
He sat down midst more laughter. Senior in Hall passed judgement.
‘On the first charge you are cautioned. On the second, you are fined a bottle of port.’
Mahoney signalled to the waiter … At the next table a young man was standing and shouting:
‘Mr Senior, I have a most weighty complaint. This gentleman – and I use that in the loosest possible sense of the word – stole my bread roll!’
‘Goodnight, everybody,’ Mahoney whispered to the mess. He turned, bowed to Senior in Hall, and hurried out. He handed his gown back. As he emerged from the robing room, the beautiful woman was coming out of the hall.
‘Well done,’ he smiled at her sympathetically.
She rolled her lovely eyes. ‘Isn’t it a laugh-a-minute?’ He caught a trace of an Australian accent.
Mahoney hurried on through the courtyard, out into Holborn. He half regretted that he had not struck up a conversation with the tawny Australian. But what was the point?
He got into his car, and sat there a minute, not relishing what he had to do now.
The house was in Hampstead, but the consulting-room was small. ‘It’s very good of you to see me so late, Dr Jacobson,’ Mahoney said.
‘The name’s Fred.’ He was unsmiling. ‘I don’t know what you expect of this meeting. Every patient’s problem is confidential, so I can’t tell you what’s wrong with Shelagh – if anything. You’re not really consulting me as a patient, so’ – he looked at his watch – ‘the quickest will be if I ask you questions, like you do in court. I warn you, some of them may be painful.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh? O.K. Why’s your marriage on the rocks?’
Mahoney was taken aback. On the rocks! This expert thought it was that bad?
‘Shelagh hates living in England,’ he said.
‘Why? And what can you do about it?’
Mahoney sighed. ‘The weather. The people. She feels they’re narrow. The cost of living … Our house. My job.’
‘And?’
‘And’, Mahoney said, ‘she misses her job in African Education.’
‘The last thing you mention. Because you consider it unimportant? And why aren’t you living in Australia, like you promised?’
Mahoney had to control his irritation with the man.
‘Look, I couldn’t sell the Britannia, so I set up the cargo company as insurance and went to Australia and had a good look. And I decided against the place. They’re nice people but they’ve got nothing to worry about except keeping up with the Joneses.’
‘And why haven’t you re-qualified as a lawyer?’
‘Because’, Mahoney said wearily, ‘I’m in the airline business whether I like it or not. I have to make it work. Look, I’m pretty bright, but I had to go to aviation school to get my commercial pilot’s licence – as well as run the airline.’
‘It’s a big undertaking, to become a pilot.’
‘It’s not. There’re a lot of exams, but any fool can learn to fly; some people fly solo after eight hours! On the big ones you just got to remember which bloody buttons to press.’ He added, ‘I only fly as co-pilot anyway.’
‘To save a pilot’s salary. Away half the time. What kind of life is that for a woman?’
‘But most pilots’ wives survive. Look, I’m not flying for fun. They’re bloody dangerous machines. And boring.’
‘Why haven’t you sat any of the law exams yet? Shelagh says they’re easy.’
‘Shelagh’s not a lawyer, to my knowledge.’ He shifted. ‘No, they’re not hard, and I’m exempted a lot of the exams. But it’s still a pain and I’m tired out when I get home. Listen, I’ll re-qualify. But I’m not a steam-driven genius.’
‘How much did you earn in Rhodesia?’
Mahoney sighed. ‘Sixty thousand dollars a year. A hundred thousand, if I worked my ass off.’
‘And it’s all sitting in the bank back home?’
‘I spent most of it.’
‘What on?’
He shrugged. ‘The farm. A boat. I don’t know. Booze. Women. I was a bachelor.’
‘And now you only earn housekeeping money. Is that fair? Why don’t you at least take your family home to Rhodesia where you can earn a decent living?’
Mahoney sat forward. ‘Rhodesia is finished. The whites have lost their chance to make it a multi-racial society, there’s no point defending a doomed situation just to earn money which you can’t take out when the blacks turn the country into an intolerable mess.’
‘And you’re not a racist?’
Mahoney shook his head. ‘No, I am a realist. Is there one African country which isn’t misgoverned? That’s not prejudice, it’s fact. Look, Shelagh taught in the Department of African Education, so all she met were nice black children eager to learn. And she’s British, brought up here; she doesn’t know about the vast mass of primitive ignorance out in the bush. She thinks they’re noble savages who just need a bit of education and one-man-one-vote to turn them into western democrats. She thinks the Russians are sincere people, that we’re all the victims of American propaganda.’
‘You haven’t a high regard for her opinion. Do you think you qualify as her soulmate?’
Mahoney sighed.
‘I like to read, but I haven’t much time. But Shelagh? – she writes poetry. She’s into long walks in the woods when it’s pissing with rain. Women’s Lib. Now she’s into meditation. I simply haven’t got the time.’
‘No, you’re the breadwinner, the Victorian husband who says: “This is what we’re doing, here is where we’ll live, I’m the man in this house” …’
Mahoney stared at him. ‘You think I’m like that?’
‘I’m suggesting Shelagh sees you like that … So, you don’t like Australia, and Shelagh must accept your life here.’
Mahoney took a breath. ‘You may not appreciate this, but being a Rhodesian makes me British to the goddamn core. Rhodesians may be a bit slow off the mark making the reforms people like me wanted, but the Rhodesians – even including Ian Smith and most of his cowboys – the Rhodesians are the last of the British! The last custodians of the good old British values in Africa. Like hard work. Incorruptible public service. Good judges. Good police. Good health and education services. And’ – he held up a finger – ‘a Victorian civilizing mission.’
‘Victorian …’ the psychiatrist murmured.
Mahoney held up a hand. ‘Ah yes, those good old values are old-fashioned in today’s milk-and-water egalitarianism and the world-owes-us-a-living ethic. But I was brought up to think and feel British – I feel like an Englishman. I don’t want to be Australian or American – so if Rhodesia is finished, I’ll come back to the land of my forebears.’ He added, with a bleak smile: ‘In fact, God is an Englishman.’
‘And you want to run an airline instead of being a lawyer.’
Mahoney sighed. ‘In Rhodesia I was a big fish in a small pond. But here there’d be many lean years before I built up a reputation. And I don’t know much Law, never did. A seat-of-the-pants barrister, that’s me. And now I have to make that airline work because all our capital’s in it. And it is working. All around airlines go bankrupt, but we’re making it! Because we’re lean and work hard. O.K., we only get housekeeping money, because we’ve got to pay off mortgages on our aircraft, and homes. Do you know what our aviation fuel-bill is? One and half million pounds a year! Cash on fill-up. No credit. Our pilots carry five thousand pounds with them on each trip, to fill up. And the banks that lend us that kind of money want it back at the end of each week. How do we do it? By working hard … Once our mortgages are paid we’re going to be well off. But right now we’re two weeks away from bankruptcy at any given moment. It only needs those OPEC bastards to hike the price of oil unexpectedly, or we lose two engines, or we’ve got an empty plane, and we’re broke. So we have to work …’
He massaged his brow. ‘And’, he said ‘it’s worthwhile work! Britain has to export. We’re helping British goods go worldwide, at cheaper rates. And we specialize in out-of-the-way places the big airlines refuse to serve, and we bring back products that otherwise wouldn’t be sold! Shelagh sees us as a trucking company, but aren’t we helping the economy? And isn’t economics the key to Africa’s backwardness – a man will never grow more than he needs to eat unless he can sell his surplus and buy something else with his money.’ He sat back. ‘Isn’t that better than arguing Carlyle versus The Carbolic Smokeball Company, which any fool lawyer can do?’
‘So you haven’t washed your hands of Africa – but Shelagh must! And now, far from going back to Law, you’re talking about airships.’
Mahoney slumped back.
‘Airships … ,’ he sighed. ‘Airships don’t even exist, except these mickey-mouse Goodyear blimps.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m very interested in the principle of airships, because they would revolutionize the Third World economies. But’, he smiled wearily, ‘all I’ve done is lent a tumble-down cottage to a guy called Malcolm Todd. That’s a far cry from spending Shelagh’s housekeeping money on an airship.’
The psychiatrist put his hands together. ‘So what are you going to do to get her back? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, at forty quid an hour, which you can ill afford?’
Get her back? Oh God! And Cathy …
‘Well,’ the psychiatrist demanded, ‘do you love her?’ He answered himself. ‘Of course, you adore her, don’t you?’
Mahoney breathed deep. ‘Yes.’
‘And does Shelagh love you?’ He answered again: ‘Yes, when you were the young big-wheel lawyer around town? Then she realized you were also a dictatorial Victorian bastard who didn’t go too much for transcendental meditation, so she began to cool off you? Tell me, what did you love about her? Her mind? Didn’t you find her a little way-out for you, a bit too arty, undergraduate? She didn’t even like to get drunk with you.’ He leant forward. ‘It’s her body, isn’t it?’
Mahoney shifted.
The psychiatrist said, ‘You’re hooked on her body. Her loins … And Joe Mahoney had never been rejected before, he’d always been the one to love ’em and leave ’em. And you couldn’t bear the thought of her screwing somebody else, could you?’
‘Is that unusual?’
‘So when she comes back to you the last time, you marry her. Why? Because she’s pregnant? Did you think that marriage would change your relationship? Is that the advice you would have given a client?’
‘Probably not,’ Mahoney sighed.
‘Exactly. But your heart ruled your head – as always, I suspect.’ He added: ‘And now you’re being illogical. You’re the Victorian, but instead of kicking her out, as a Victorian would – or giving her a hiding and taking on a mistress for good measure – you’re a supplicant.’
Mahoney stared at him. ‘Me? A supplicant?’
‘Oh, you don’t walk around with a hang-dog expression begging her favours – in fact the opposite, you doggedly lay down the law – but mentally you’re trying to figure out how to get her love back, and you badly want to make love to her. Right? Tell me – how’s your sex life?’
Mahoney didn’t answer.
‘Exactly,’ the psychiatrist sighed. ‘How can you be a confident lover with all that? And remember the old rule-of-thumb: a woman who’s getting well laid will forgive her man anything. But if she isn’t …’
CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_c08585fb-b891-5eb7-bab5-ca91ff596ee0)
The summer went that way. Afterwards, he did not remember much about the days. They were all work work work, chasing cargo, juggling overdrafts, worrying about engines, schedules. It was the nights he would remember. Redcoat preferred to fly out at night because there was less time waiting on the runway for permission to take off, burning fuel, and it allowed Mahoney to do some office work during the day. You have plenty of time to think and feel, flying through the nights.
And he remembered the Africa at the other end. Redcoat always tried to arrive after sunrise, in case they had forgotten to switch on the runway lights, or they were off at a beer drink. They parked on the apron and let the warm, fertile air of Africa flood in, and the swarm of cargo handlers, and they broke out the beer while they talked to their agent, changed money at blackmarket rates, got the good news or the bad news about the cargo that had or had not shown up; then went bumping into town over broken roads to another run-down hotel. If Mahoney didn’t have to buy twenty-five tons of bananas or pineapples as his cargo, he usually walked downtown through the broken-down shops and chickens and derelict cars and children with flies around their nostrils, and went to a pub and drank beer which would have cost three pounds a bottle if he had changed money at the official rates but cost thirty pence at the blackmarket rates, and he watched Africa go by. And he loved these people, and he despaired. He thought: in ten years Rhodesia is going to be like this. And he thought: I wish Shelagh were here … Twelve hours later they took off again, into the African night.
And maybe it was because of the droning beauty of the night, flying home, home, home, but when he saw the desert begin to change down there, and then the coastal mountains of the Mediterranean begin, and then faraway lights, and just a few hours ahead was the Channel and England – every time it seemed that all the pain and anger had been purged by those two days away, that none of that was important, all that mattered was love and life, and in a few hours he would be bouncing up the track to his home, and he wanted to walk in the door and shout:
‘Hey, I love you! What’s all this nonsense? Life is beautiful and you’re beautiful and our daughter’s beautiful and this house is beautiful!’
And she was running down the stairs, her hair flying, and she flung her arms around him, and told him that she had come to terms with herself and she was going to live with him happily ever after.
She said: ‘Please sit down. I want to say something.’ She was standing at the kitchen window, her back to him.
He sat down slowly at the table. She took a breath.
‘While you were away, I made up my mind. About my life.’
He started to say, Your life is with me – then stopped himself.
She said: ‘I’m going back to Rhodesia, Joe. You know my reasons …’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t like England. I don’t like this business you’re into. I want my work – my real work, teaching Africans. My own money—’ She paused. ‘I’ve written to the Education Department and asked for my job back. They’ve agreed, though I forfeited all my seniority because I left. I’ve also written to the university, enrolling in a part-time arts course.’
His heart was knocking. It was unreal.
‘You’re not taking Cathy away.’
She said, ‘I am. I’ve taken legal advice. A court will always give custody of an infant to the mother. You obviously couldn’t look after her.’ She turned around and faced him.
His heart was hammering, but he also felt a numbed, deadly calm. He did not think she had seen a lawyer, but she was right about Cathy. Time, he still had time to work on this. He said, ‘Rhodesia is not a safe place for Catherine.’
‘Nonsense, people are having babies out there all the time. The war is not in Salisbury. It’ll be over long before the fighting gets near town, you said that yourself. And why should anybody hurt me, I’ll be teaching their people …’ She dismissed that, then added uncomfortably: ‘We have to discuss money.’
He stared at her.
