in train, or egged life on; instead he waited for what he wanted, with a powerful, active patience which seemed to surround him, like an aura: an aura of forbearance, of self-control. His patience was not like other people’s, a rather feeble virtue, which had, by its nature, to be its own reward; it was a virtue like a strong magnet, which drew solutions to problems. And now drew Jeff Pollard.
Jeff Pollard was a sometime employee of Turadup, William and Schaper, a firm known throughout the construction business as Throw’em Up, Bill’em, and Scarper. Since the European Development Fund had decided to finance the building of the black-top road, he had been in and out of southern Africa, weighing up prospects and buying people drinks. He was a man of thirty-five, unmarried, with a loose and dusty appearance and shifting eyes; he had a grey-white skin, but the back of his neck was at all times mysteriously and painfully sunburned. He had an unsparing fund of anecdote, a knowing, dirty laugh; a British passport, and a vaguely Australian accent. He wore his shirt open, and around his neck on a chain a small block of gold incised with the legend CREDIT SUISSE. When the Shores were leaving Africa there had been a lot of people like Jeff around, doing their recruiting in golf-club bars. They were cowboys, headhunters, entrepreneurs; anywhere they hung their hat was their domicile, for fiscal purposes.
Turadup had got a toe-hold in Zambia before the bottom dropped out of copper, putting up expatriate housing in Kabwe, the mining town that had once been known as Broken Hill; then when Zambia went down the drain they moved south a bit, putting in an unsuccessful tender for work on the new international airport at Gaborone; then picking up work around that city, piping water and building a clinic for a shanty town that had become permanent faute de mieux. They operated over the South African border too, putting up a much-needed casino in a bantustan. But since the early 1970s the Middle East had been what they called their major theatre of operations. It happened that at the time when Andrew Shore was ready to move on, Turadup’s Saudi Arabian manager, a man called Eric Parsons, was in Johannesburg trawling for expertise; and on that day – always described by Andrew as ‘the day I ran slap-bang into Pollard’ – the relevant phone number was handed over, and their future was set in train. ‘Give old Eric a call,’ Jeff said. ‘You can’t lose by it.’
Andrew first poured himself a brandy; then he sat for some time, and regarded the phone in their bungalow, like a man in a trance, or a man praying. Then he picked up the receiver; the lines were not down that day, and it was a mere ten minutes before he got an answer from the operator in Gaborone. He told her what he wanted: Johannesburg. There seemed to be a party going on in the background. He could hear women laughing, and what was perhaps crockery being smashed. The operator came back once or twice, bellowing in his ear, but she didn’t forget him entirely; in time she came up with what might be her best offer, a line to Mafeking. He took it. A guttural voice answered him in Afrikaans. Seconds later he was speaking to Eric Parsons, at his hotel. It was the Carlton, he noted; Turadup did not penny-pinch.
He did not suggest making the drive to Johannesburg, but waited until Parsons said, ‘I’ll come to you then, shall I?’ He knew how he would employ the time, as he drove to Gaborone to meet Parsons; he pictured himself at the wheel of his truck, the empty road and the low brown hills unwinding before him, while his practised eye was half-alert for cattle and children, and his inner will concentrated, mile after mile, upon making Parsons offer him more money than he had ever dreamed of earning in his life. This, in due course, Parsons did.
The details were fixed up, at the President Hotel this time (there being, in Gaborone, a choice of two) over a tough T-bone steak and a glass of Lion lager. Andrew Shore shook hands with Eric Parsons, the Saudi man; Jeff Pollard, talking, conducted him down from the terrace and out into the street. Across the road, the nation’s only cinema was showing a double bill: a kung fu drama, and Mary Poppins. Andrew stood in the dusty thoroughfare known as the Mall, gazing into the window of the President Hotel’s gift shop; crocodile handbags, skin rugs, complete bushmen kits with arrows and ostrich shells, direct from the small factory in Palapye which had recently started turning them out. ‘I can hardly believe I’m finished in Africa,’ he said.
When he arrived home late that afternoon, Frances was on the stoep packing a tea-chest, wrapping up their dinner service in pieces of the Mafeking Mail. ‘Well, did you do it?’ she said. She straightened up and kissed his cheek.
‘Yes, I did it, it’s all fixed. But we can’t go together – I have to be in the Kingdom before they’ll grant you a visa. When we finish up here I’m to fly to Nairobi, and pick up a businessman’s entry permit – then once I’m in, Turadup will fix it for me to stay. They’re in a hurry.’
‘Why? Has someone quit without notice?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘I would have asked.’
‘I didn’t think of it.’
‘So you won’t even be coming to England first?’
‘And stay with your mother?’
‘It looks as if I’ll have to.’
‘Well listen, Fran, we won’t be apart for long. And by the time you get out to Jeddah, we’ll be fixed up with a house, and everything will be ready for you.’
‘I’d rather go with you. But I suppose they have their rules. Oh, look, am I to pack these?’ She held out a candlestick, one of a pair from a local pottery, rough, heavy, unglazed.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Souvenir. Take those funny baskets as well, the ones that fall over.’
She began to wrap the candlestick, rolling it in her hands. ‘Are you sure that this is the right thing to do?’ she said. ‘Is this what you want?’
‘They’re doubling my salary,’ he said flatly.
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
She turned away and bent over the tea-chest again, cleanly stabbed by avarice, like a peach with a silver knife.
‘We could be in and out within three years,’ he said. ‘Your salary is paid in riyals, tax-free. All you need out of it is your day-to-day living expenses and you can bank the rest where you like, in any currency you like. Turadup are offering free housing, a car allowance, paid utilities, yearly leave ticket, school fees – though of course –’
‘That would be plain greedy,’ she said, ‘having children so that you could get their school fees paid.’
‘Pollard did say –’ He looked at her in slight anxiety. ‘He said that his only reservation was how you’d settle in. As you’ve been a working woman.’
‘I won’t be able to work?’
‘Unlikely, he thinks.’
‘Well, if you’re going to earn all that money, I’m sure I can occupy myself. After all, it’s not for ever, is it?’
‘No, it’s not for ever. We should think of it as a chance for us, to build up some security—’
‘Will you pass me those salad bowls?’
Andrew was silent. He passed them, one by one. Why, really, should she share his vision of their future? She had come to Africa at her own behest, a single woman, one of the few recruited for her line of work. She had lived alone before they met; for three nights in succession, he had sat by himself, seemingly disconsolate, on a corner stool in the bar of an expatriate club, not even
