CHAPTER 3
There was military transport to Salisbury, but Mahoney and Bomber Brown and Lovelock and Max and Pomeroy flew back to the city in Mahoney’s Piper Comanche, with a crate of cold beers. Bomber did the flying because he did not drink and because Mahoney did not like piloting any more. In fact he downright disliked it. He had asked Lovelock to fly the aeroplane, but Lovelock had shown up at the aerodrome brandishing a brandy bottle and singing, so Mahoney had asked Bomber along. It was a squeeze in the Comanche with five of them, and there were only four sets of headphones, but they made Lovelock do without so that they could not hear him singing, only see his mouth moving. Pomeroy could have flown the plane, for he was an aircraft engineer who also had a commercial pilot’s licence, but Pomeroy was accident-prone and tonight he was throwing one of his back-from-the-bush parties and he had already started warming up for it. Pomeroy was a sweet man but when he drank he tended to quarrel with senior officers. Mahoney had represented him at several courts martial. ‘But Pomeroy,’ he had sighed the last time, ‘why did you make it worse by assaulting the police who came to arrest you on this comparatively minor charge?’
‘I didn’t,’ Pomeroy protested – ‘they assaulted me. They send six policemen to arrest me? An’ they say, “Are you coming voluntary?” An’ I said, “Voluntary? Nobody goes with coppers voluntary – you’ll ’ave to take me.” An’ they tried. Six police? That’s downright provocation, that is …’
But the army put up with Pomeroy because he was such a good aircraft engineer, like they put up with Lovelock because he was such a good flier. Lovelock always looked the same, even when he was sober; amiable and lanky and blonde and pink, not a hard thought in his head. He was one of those English gentlemen who had never done a day’s work in his life because all flying was sport to Lovelock, like golf. The Royal Air Force had finally had enough of him. The story was that he was bringing in this screaming jet for an emergency landing and he had the choice of two airfields: ‘For God’s sake, man, which one are you going for?’ his wing commander had bellowed over the radio. ‘Which one has the pub open, sir?’ Lovelock had asked earnestly. The RAF had fired him. So he got a job with British Airways, and the story was that when he was getting his licence on 747s he rolled the jumbo over and flew her along upside down for a bit, for the hell of it, and got fired again. Now he flew helicopters for the Rhodesian army, and the terrorists fired at him. It was said Lovelock may look like a long drink of water but he had nerves of steel. Mahoney’s view was that he had no nerves at all. He had been flown into combat only once by Lovelock, and that was enough: goddamn Lovelock peering with deep interest into a hail of terrorist gunfire, looking for a nice place to put his helicopter down to discharge his troops, had given Mahoney such heebie-jeebies that he had threatened to brain him then and there. Now Lovelock’s head was thrown back, his mouth moving in lusty silent song:
‘Oh Death where is thy sting-ting-a-ling …
‘The bells of Hell may ring, ting-a-ling …
‘For thee, but not for me-e-e— …’
Max shouted in his ear: ‘Louder, Lovelock, we can’t lip-read.’
‘I can’t hear you,’ Lovelock shouted apologetically, ‘I’m not a lip-reader, you know.’ But they couldn’t hear him.
Mahoney smiled. He had a lot of time for Max. Max was a Selous Scout, one of those brave, tough men who painted themselves black, dressed in terrorist uniform and went into the bush for months spying on them, directing the helicopters in by radio for the kill. Max still had blacking in his hairline and he was going to Pomeroy’s sauna party tonight to sweat it out and run around bare-assed. Bomber said to Mahoney over the headphones: ‘Do you want to fly her for a bit?’
‘No thanks,’ Mahoney said, ‘I don’t like heights.’ And he heard Shelagh say: ‘I don’t know why you bought the wretched thing. As soon as we’re airborne you say “Have you had enough, shall we go back now?” Why don’t you sell it? But no, it’s like that Noah’s Ark, and your safari lodge – you just like to have them.’
‘What else is there to do with money? You can’t take any out of the country.’
‘You could buy a decent house in the suburbs, like a successful lawyer, instead of living behind barbed wire on that farm.’
Oh, he could buy a lovely house in the suburbs for next to nothing these days, he could have lovely tennis courts and clipped lawns and hedges in the suburbs instead of his security fence; and he could also go right up the fucking wall. Mahoney took a swallow of beer to stop himself thinking about Shelagh as the aeroplane droned on across the vast bush, and Pomeroy said: ‘Why don’t you sell the bleedin’ thing if you don’t like flying?’
‘But I do love you,’ he heard Shelagh say. ‘It’s just that you’re so stubborn …’ He said to Pomeroy: ‘I’m 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?’
