this flight. ‘More brandy?’ the steward inquired.
‘No thanks.’
‘Lived abroad before?’
‘Yes.’ He had a boring job, she supposed, and a right to people’s life-stories. ‘Zambia for a bit, then Botswana.’
‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ said the steward, animated now, but not impressed. ‘I’ve been to Botswana, the Holiday Inn, Gaborone. It’s a hole, Botswana. I went in the coffee shop and asked them for a toasted cheese sandwich, and do you know what they said?’
‘Cheese it is finished?’
‘Right on. You must have been there.’
‘Of course I’ve been there.’
‘But no cheese in the whole place? I ask you. They could have sent out for some.’
‘Look,’ Frances said, ‘there are two kinds of cheese in Botswana, Cheddar and Sweetmilk. They are imported from South Africa, which makes any number of kinds of cheese, but they only import two; they realize that people must have cheese, but to have too much of it might seem to condone apartheid. You’re with me?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Never mind. So what kind of sandwich did you have?’
‘I had ham.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘Where would the ham be from?’
‘Zimbabwe,’ she said. ‘Was it called that when you were there?’
‘I think it was still Rhodesia. They had sanctions.’
‘But the ham got through.’
‘Well, I take your word for it. But still, what a hole it is, Gaborone. Bunch of tarts sitting in the dust outside selling woolly hats. Sit by the pool, play the fruit machines, bugger all else to do.’ He paused, the tirade halted by a scruple of politeness. ‘Was that where you lived?’
‘Well no, actually, we lived in a much smaller place. We used to go up to Gaborone for a bit of excitement.’
‘You poor things, that’s all I can say. And you were in Zambia too? I’ve been to Lusaka, done a couple of stopovers. They’re thieves in Lusaka. They’ll take the wheels off your hire-car as soon as look at you. This friend of mine went into a pharmacy for a drop of penicillin, he was planning, you know, on being a bit naughty that night, and he believed in dosing himself first; and he came out, and no bloody wheels.’
She smiled. ‘My friend wasn’t amused,’ the steward said.
‘No, I’m sure. It was very trying when they took your wheels off. It was quite common though. You could never plan on being anywhere by a set time.’
‘And there was never any sugar. I take sugar, in coffee.’
‘It’s true, there were a lot of shortages.’
‘I’ve not been out that way for a while. They tell me it’s worse now.’
‘Oh, Africa’s always worse.’
‘Quite the cynic.’
‘No, not really,’ she said. ‘I think I was just there for too long. I liked it, in a way. At least, I’m glad I went there. I wouldn’t have missed it.’
‘I expect you’ll find your Saudi lifestyle very different.’
‘Yes, I expect I will.’
He was hovering, waiting to tell her some horror stories. There were always stories out of the Middle East, and no doubt Jeff Pollard would have told her some, if he had not been so anxious to recruit Andrew for his building project. But her tone wrapped up the conversation. ‘Sure on that brandy?’ the steward said; and moved away. The slightest encouragement, and he would have asked, ‘Do you remember that Helen Smith case?’
A dozen people had raised the question, in her two-month stay in England. It was strange how it had stuck in people’s minds, considering how little they usually remembered of what they read in the newspapers: young north-country girl, a nurse, found dead after an all-night party; nurse’s father, dogged ex-policeman, off out there to get at the truth. And then the inquests, and the coroner’s reports, and the hints of diplomatic cover-ups and skulduggery in high places; the pleasures of moral censure, the frisson of violent death in faraway places. The press reports had left an image in people’s minds, of lazy, glitzy, transient lives, of hard liquor and easy money, of amoral people turned scared and sour; so now when you were off to Jeddah, people said, ‘Don’t fall off any balconies, will you?’ It became monotonous. And their talk had left an image in her mind, which she did not like but could not now eradicate; the image of the broken body, still in its mortuary drawer.
A part of her, now, thought the persistence of the image sinister; a part of her said, things happen everywhere, and after all, she said, comforting herself, there’s only the world. Travel ends and routine begins and old habits which you thought you had left behind in one country catch up with you in the next, and old problems resurface, but if you are lucky you carry as part of your baggage the means of solving those problems and accommodating those habits, and you take with you an open mind, and discretion, and common sense; if you have those with you, you can manage anywhere. I make large claims for myself, she thought. She pushed up the window shade and looked out, into featureless darkness. There was no sensation of movement, no intimation that they were in flight. She closed her eyes. Sleep now, she coaxed herself. Tomorrow I will have people to meet and there will be a good deal to do. How pleased I will be, to do it; and to be there, at last.
It was at the Holiday Inn, Gaborone – but in the bar, not in the coffee shop – that Andrew had met Jeff Pollard. They had run into him once before, in Lusaka, and not liked him particularly; but now Pollard was offering a job, and Andrew needed one. His contract in Botswana was a month away from its termination date, and they were already packing and selling things off. The U K building trade had slumped into what seemed chronic recession; they didn’t know what they were going to do. They didn’t want to stay in Botswana, even if there had been the option. With the advent of the black-top road across the South African border, life had changed for the worse, their severe small-town isolation ended, the single street full of new faces. It was true that you could go as far as Johannesburg now without steeling yourself for the journey over dirt roads; it ought to have been an advantage, but in fact it made life too easy. They were a direct connection on the string of dorps that ran across the Transvaal and over the frontier; the day would come soon when they would feel like a suburb.
At this point – one morning over breakfast – Andrew had said, ‘What about the Middle East?’
‘Oh no,’ she’d said. ‘I’d have to go around with a headscarf on all day. I couldn’t put up with that.’
‘Fran,’ he said, ‘we have to make some money. We haven’t made any here. I thought we would, but it’s not worked out. We have to get something behind us.’
‘Yes. I suppose so.’
She had known he was serious; because he addressed her by her name. It had not escaped her notice that women were always using men’s christian names, but that men only
