going to. And the farm, if I can get anything like a fair price.’
They all looked at him, except Lovelock. ‘Is this Shelagh speaking?’ Max said. ‘Are you getting married at last?’
‘No,’ Mahoney said grimly, ‘I’m going to Australia.’
Max glared at him. Then looked away in disgust. ‘Here we go again. He’s taking the Chicken Run again.’
It was a stilted, staccato argument, over the rasping headphones.
I am proud to be a rebel, said the T-shirts, I am fighting for my country. And by God they could fight! And the government told them, and they believed it, and it was almost all true, that they were fighting for the best of British values, for the impeccable British standards of justice and efficiency that had gone by the board everywhere else; the rest of the world had gone mad, soft, kow-towing to forces of darkness it had not the guts to withstand, and subversion of trade-unionism and communism that was rotting the world – the Rhodesians were the last bastion of decency and sense, the last of the good old Britishers of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, they alone would fight for decency and commonsense in this continent of black political persecution and incompetence, this rich continent that could not even feed itself any more since the white man left, this marvellous continent that had gone mad with One Man One Vote Once. And anybody who does not stay to fight is taking the Chicken Run.
‘Their fair share of the sun?’ Max echoed angrily over the headphones. ‘The African has his share of the sun but what does he do with it for Chrissakes? He lies in the shade and sleeps off his beer and watches his wives scratch a living! He doesn’t want to work for anything more – he’s incapable of anything more! How can you hand over the country to people like that? What was his share of the goddamn sun before the white man came? Tribal warfare and pillage!’
Mahoney rasped: ‘A whole new generation of blacks has grown up who wants more than that, and two guerilla armies are massing across the Zambesi to get it—’
‘And who’re these armies fighting for? A handful of wide-boy politicians, and if they win because people like you take the Chicken Run the poor bloody tribesmen will get even less of the sun because the country will sink back into chaos!’
‘And how the hell are you going to beat these armies—’
‘By blowing the living shit out of them!’
‘– if we don’t win the hearts and minds of the people?’
‘We’ve tried to win their hearts and minds for Chrissake! Schools and hospitals and agricultural services and diptanks – who paid for all that?’
‘But we didn’t give them Partnership!’
‘Partnership?’ Max shouted. ‘We gave them Partnership and Britain sold us down the river for thirty pieces of silver! We’ve still got Partnership here – the blacks have got fifteen seats in Parliament out of a total of sixty-five!’
Mahoney shouted, ‘Hearts-and-minds Partnership, Max! The educated ones can vote but do we pay the uneducated ones a decent wage, the factory workers and farmboys who’re the basis of the economy? Do we make the black man who’s got a tie and jacket and a few quid in his pocket and wants to take his girlfriend on the town? Do we make him feel like a Rhodesian? Do we hell! Do the black kids at school feel the sky’s the limit if they work hard? And do we make the poor bloody tribesman feel like a Rhodesian, that we’re doing everything to improve his lot?’
‘Oh Jesus!’ Max shouted. ‘How can a handful of whites do more? We do ten times more than the rest of Africa where their own black governments cannot even feed their people! Oh Jesus, somebody stop me from braining this bastard!’
‘I’m going to a better land, a better land by far,’ Lovelock’s mouth bellowed silently.
When you love somebody and she doesn’t love you anymore …
Mahoney tried to thrust Shelagh out of his mind as he drove into Salisbury from the airport, and he was almost successful because he was still angry from his shouting-match with Max, and he had had six weeks in the bush to get used to the idea, and few things unclutter a man’s mind so well as the constant prospect of sudden death: but when he saw the familiar outskirts, he was coming home home home, and every street shouted Shelagh at him; and, when he stopped at wide Jamieson Avenue, all he wanted to do was keep going, across the big intersection into the suburbs beyond, just swing his car under the jacaranda trees with a blast on the horn and go running up the steps and see her coming running down into his arms, a smile all over her handsome face, everything forgiven and forgotten.
But he crunched his heart and turned right, into central Salisbury.
The city rose up against the clear sky, the new buildings and the old Victorians, the streets wide enough to turn a wagon drawn by sixteen oxen, and all so clean. It was home time and the streets were busy, people hurrying back to their homes and clubs and pubs and cocktail parties. Many were carrying guns. There was the big old High Court where he earned his living, the prime minister’s office opposite, the Appeal Court beyond, Parliament and Cecil Square with the bank that kept his money – it was his hometown, and he loved it, and, oh God no, he did not want to give it away.
He parked outside Bude House, left his kit-bag but took his rifle. He took the lift to the seventh floor, to Advocates’ Chambers. The clerk’s back was turned; he hurried down the corridor, past the row of chambers, into his own.
His desk held a stack of court briefs, tied with red tape. He propped his rifle against the wall and started flicking through briefs.
‘I saw you dodging past me. Welcome back.’
He turned. It was the clerk. ‘Hello, Dolores,’ he smiled. ‘I’m in a hurry.’
‘Is Pomeroy all right?’ Pomeroy was her ex-husband.
‘Fine. I flew back with him.’
She relaxed, and turned to business.
‘Well, unhurry yourself, you’ve got lots of work there, first one Monday.’
He sighed. ‘But I’m not going to wake up till Monday! What is it?’ He scratched through the briefs.
‘Company Law,’ Dolores said.
‘But I’m no good at Company Law and I’m going to sleep till Monday!’
‘It’s a fat fee.’
‘What good is money I can’t take out of the country?’
Dolores leant against the door and smiled wearily. ‘Here we go again. Where to this time?’
‘Australia.’
She shook her head, then ambled into the room. ‘But only after you’ve run for parliament, huh?’ She sighed and sat down on the other side of the desk, and crossed her plump, sexy legs.
He was flicking through the briefs. ‘That’s right.’
She looked at him. ‘You’ll be a voice in the wilderness.’
‘I’ll at least do my duty. And make a hell of a noise while I lose.’
‘So we should just give up everything we’ve built? Just hand it to savages on a platter?’
‘There’s a middle course. And if we don’t take it, it’ll be our heads on that platter.’
She sighed bitterly. ‘How goes the war? Are we really losing?’
‘We’re thrashing them. But we can’t keep it up forever.’ He put down the briefs and crossed his chambers and closed his door. He sat down heavily. He dragged his hands down his face. ‘Dolores, we’re going to lose the war, this way. Not this year, not next, but soon. By sheer weight of numbers. And the rest of the world is against us, the whole United Nations.’