right there were too many guns. But ships? He waited, pent. But the man shook his head. He opened his eyes, and got up. Mahoney stared at him.
‘Nganga,’ he demanded, ‘what have you not told me?’
The man shook his head. He hesitated, then said: ‘The Nkosi must heed the spirits.’
And he raised his hand in a salute, and walked away in the moonlight.
Mahoney sat on his verandah, with a new glass of whisky, trying to stop turning over in his mind what the witchdoctor had said. But he was still under the man’s spell ‘This woman you must not marry …’
Suddenly he glimpsed a flash of car lights, coming over the hill, and he jerked. He watched them coming, half-obscured by the trees, and his heart was pounding in hope. They swung on to his gates a hundred yards away, and stopped. He got up. The car door opened and a woman got out.
Mahoney came bounding down the steps and down the drive.
She stood by the car, hands on her hips, a smile on her beautiful face. He strode up to the gates, grinning. ‘Hullo, stranger,’ Shelagh said. He unlocked the gate shakily. She held her hand out flat, to halt him. ‘Why didn’t you come to see me?’
‘You know why.’
She smiled. ‘Very well … What do you want first? The bad news or the terrible news?’
He grinned at her: ‘What news?’
She took a breath. ‘The bad news is I’m pregnant.’
Mahoney stared at her; and he felt his heart turn over. He took a step towards her, a smile breaking all over his face, but she stepped backwards.
‘The very bad news is: I’ve decided not to have an abortion.’
And, oh God, the joy of her in his arms, the feel of her lovely body against him again, and the taste and smell of her, and the laughter and the kissing.
Later, lying deep in the big double bed, she whispered: ‘Ask me again.’
He said again, ‘Now will you marry me?’
She lay quite still in his arms for a long moment.
‘Yes.’
The moon had gone. He could not see the storm clouds gathering. They were deep asleep when the first claps of thunder came, and the rain.
And so it was that Joe Mahoney got married, stood for parliament, and bought a Britannia cargo aeroplane.
The wedding was the following Friday, before the District Commissioner in Umtali, a hundred and fifty miles from Salisbury. The bride wore red. Nobody was present except the Clerk of Court, as witness, and Mahoney had such a ringing in his ears that he went temporarily deaf. Afterwards they drove up into the Inyanga mountains, to the Troutbeck Inn, where they spent a dazed weekend. On Monday Mahoney got rid of all his cases to other counsel, and started his short political career.
He was standing as an independent. He had posters printed, bought radio and television time. He chose the most prestigious constituency to contest, so he would make the most noise. He made many speeches, visited over a thousand homes, had countless arguments. Not in his wildest dreams did he expect to win; his only interest was the opportunity to tell people the truth. He didn’t expect his message to make him popular. ‘Let’s make it a grand slam!’ the government propaganda cried. ‘Let’s show the world we are a united people!’ Let us BE a united people!’ Mahoney bellowed. ‘White and Black united to fight the enemy!’ He drew good crowds, much heckling, and few votes. On polling day the government won every white seat, and there was cheering.
Thus Joseph Mahoney did his duty, then washed his hands of Africa and prepared to emigrate to Australia; but ended up buying a big cargo aeroplane instead, which happened like this.
In those days there were many sanction-busters, men who made their living by exporting Rhodesian products to the outside world in defiance of the United Nations sanctions against Rhodesia, and Tex Weston was one. He was a swashbuckling American with prematurely grey hair, a perfect smile, and a Texan drawl that he could change to an English accent in mid-word; he owned a number of large freight airplanes which plied worldwide, changing their registration documents like chameleons. Tex Weston made a great deal of money by dealing in everything from butter to arms, with anybody. Today it might be ten million eggs, tomorrow hand-grenades. Tex Weston talked a good, quiet game, and claimed he owned a ‘consultancy company’ in Lichtenstein which devised plans for clandestine military operations for client states and put together the team to do the job. In the Quill Bar, where Mahoney did most of his drinking with the foreign correspondents, they called Tex Weston ‘The Vulture’, and nobody knew whether to believe him, although it was suspected that occasionally the government employed foreign professionals to carry out operations against the enemy in other countries. But it was undeniable that Tex Weston was once a major in the American Green Berets, that he was a supplier of arms to Rhodesia, that he knew all about aircargo, and that the Rhodesian government sorely needed the likes of him to bust the sanctions.
Now, on the day after the election, a Portuguese sanction-busting aeroplane was shot up by terrorists as it took off from a bush airstrip, and made an emergency landing in Salisbury. The next day Mahoney was in the Quill Bar, waiting for his wife to finish school and trying hard to spend some of the money he could not take with him to Australia, when Tex Weston sauntered up to him. ‘I hear you’re leaving us for Sydney. I fly Down Under a bit, and sometimes need an understanding lawyer.’
Mahoney smiled wanly. He wondered whether Tex Weston didn’t find it a disadvantage being so good-looking. Men distrusted him for it. But he was one of the few people who quite liked the man.
‘You’d better get one who understands some Australian law. I’ve got to re-qualify first.’
Weston shook his head sympathetically. ‘How long will that take?’
‘A couple of years. Of pure fun.’
Weston smiled. ‘What about money? You’re only allowed to take a thousand dollars, aren’t you?’
Mahoney wondered whether Weston was about to offer to do a bit of smuggling. ‘Shelagh’ll get a job teaching. And we’ll buy a bit of jewellery here and flog it there.’
‘You never get your money back on that sort of thing.’
‘As long as I get some money back.’
Tex said, ‘Tell you what. There’s this Portuguese cargo plane that got shot up. The owner’s lost his nerve, he’s selling her cheap: twenty-five thousand pounds, payable in Rhodesian dollars. She’s in good condition.’
Mahoney looked at him, taken aback.
‘What do I do with a bloody great aeroplane? I’ve just sold my little one.’
Weston said, ‘Fly her to Europe, sell her there. You should
make a profit. But even if you lose a bit, you’ll have got twenty-odd thousand pounds out. Which is better than it sitting here in the bank until the communists
