They had a lovely time, those four glorious days.
They had intended leaving that morning for Etosha National Park, but instead they stayed right there at Palmwag and that happened like this: she was singing in the shower when he got back and he could glimpse her nakedness through the reed partition. He stripped off his clothes and opened the door, and she took his breath away: she had her head back in the teeming water, her hands squeezing the shampoo out of her long sodden hair, her breasts uplifted, the water gushing down over her belly and her silken pubic triangle and golden legs in sensuous sheens. McQuade stood transfixed, eating her up with his eyes, then he seized her. It was a very sensuous shower, soaping each other languorously, the warm water teeming down. When they could both bear it no longer they walked to the bed, dripping, and collapsed onto it. And the soft warm deep secret of her was the most blissful thing he had ever known, and the whimperings and cries of her orgasms were the sweetest sounds he had ever heard.
Afterwards he said, ‘I thought you wanted to go to Etosha to see the animals.’
‘I’ve got my own animal today.’ She rocked him. ‘Very beautiful, very expensive …’
‘I ’m not expensive, I’m free.’
‘Ah, no.’ She sighed at the rafters. ‘The price is looking higher each day. It looks like it’s going to cost me my whole heart.’
‘I know the feeling,’ he whispered.
About noon they made it out of bed. They lay on the grass beside the swimming pool with an ice-bucket of champagne, and talked in the first quiet time they had had. They talked about themselves, wandering through the delightful courtship business of unfolding their lives, showing who they really were, telling their pasts, what they were going to do with their futures.
He told her about his days on the Antarctic whaling ships with the Kid and Elsie, about Australia and Sausmarine and about the passenger service they were going to start when they sold the fishing company.
‘Oh, wow, that is exciting. When will this be?’
‘Quite soon, I think.’
‘But how can you bear to leave this country?’
‘I can’t bear the South African government, that’s how.’
She prodded the grass with a hairpin as she told her own story. ‘My father was in the US Navy, a flyer, so I lived in naval bases all over the world, such as Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, Spain, and when I was a kid I wanted to join the Navy too, I felt part of the Navy and I longed to be one of those swashbuckling flyers. My parents wouldn’t hear of it, so journalism was my next choice – see the world and write about it. But it was the service I really wanted – Uncle Sam, the star-spangled banner and all that. So, my desire to be a hero got channelled into other causes; Civil Rights, Save-the-Whale, Ban-the-Bomb, and other things I felt strongly about. Anyway, I won the college essay prize two years running, which got me a job on the Washington Post. After a few years of hard living, I packed my knapsack and set off to see the world.’
‘What kind of hard living?’ he said jealously.
She smiled wanly. ‘Most newspapermen drink like hell, and I made my fair share of the usual mistakes, jumping into bed with the wrong people, falling in love – or so I thought – with married men. Finally I said to hell with it, and took off.’
McQuade was madly jealous, but then didn’t give a damn how many lovers she’d had as long as he was her last. ‘Where did your knapsack take you?’
‘Just about everywhere except South Africa, though I was such a smart-ass I knew all about the place, of course. I wrote articles about my travels and sent them home to various magazines, which paid good money. I was actually in east Africa, about to go down to South Africa when I got offered a good job on the Monitor – they’d published some of my stuff. I thought I’d better grab it – I’d been on the road two years – so, home I went. Now, five years later, here I am, picking up where I left off.’
He wanted to ask her if there was a lover back home, but didn’t. ‘What did you think of the rest of Africa?’ He added: ‘In one paragraph?’
She sighed. ‘It’s an unmentionable notion, totally unfashionable, absolute heresy, quite unacceptable to your average reader who hasn’t been to Africa, but it’s obvious to anyone who has that the rest of Africa is a misgoverned mess. Lovely country. Lovely people. But to a greater or lesser extent a corrupt, inefficient, non-democratic, bankrupt mess.’ She looked at him. ‘And? What do you think?’
McQuade shook his head. ‘If I were a black I think I’d find just about anything is preferable to Apartheid.’ He told her about his brief marriage to Victoria, his year in prison.
She was amazed, and very sympathetic. ‘No wonder you haven’t got much time for the South African government.’
‘Goddam Hairybacks. But,’ he added grudgingly, ‘they are improving. Albeit at the speed of the ox-wagon.’
‘Do you want to see One Man One Vote tomorrow?’
McQuade sighed. ‘The big question,’ he said. ‘The tragedy of African politics in general, and South African in particular, is that it drives people into extremes. The solutions lie in the middle, in compromise, but the extremists don’t want the middle, nor does the outside world – the world wants One Man One Vote.’ He shook his head. ‘I want to see Apartheid abolished tomorrow. Apartheid stinks. It’s unjust. Every person, black, white or brown should have his dignity and the right to work, live, marry et cetera where he likes and where he can afford. But if the country is handed over to One Man One Vote at the same time, tomorrow, there is no doubt that South Africa will rapidly degenerate into a non-democratic, inter-tribal mess. So? So abolish Apartheid tomorrow, but don’t bring in One Man One Vote overnight, like the British did when they pulled out of Africa. We must devise a specialized constitution to suit the particular needs of South Africa with all its different tribes and attitudes – with a Bill of Rights and elaborate checks and balances to protect minorities. Maybe something like the Swiss have, with their cantonments. Maybe we should start with a limited franchise, or proportional representation and keep that system going for a decade or two while we acclimatize the people to new political responsibility – in other words, finish the job the British abandoned when they so hastily folded their tents.’
‘But will the South African government do it?’
‘They’ll have to soon. They can’t sit on the lid of the boiling pot for ever. It’s getting damn hot. Sanctions are hurting, and Apartheid is an obvious failure, it’s breaking down under the weight of its own impracticability. At long last, after ruling us with a rod of iron for forty years, the Afrikaner government has realized it must reform and share power in some form.’
‘But can they sit on the lid for a decade?’
McQuade sighed. ‘They’ve got the army and police force to do the job, but how long can they afford the expense? Especially with sanctions?’ He waved a finger northwards. ‘Up there on the border the army is costing the government one million rand a day fighting the Cubans and SWAPO. How long can South Africa keep it up – winning the battles but losing the war?’ He shook his head again. ‘The rest of the world will never let up their sanctions until we have One Man One Vote, and the communists will never be satisfied until we have a one-party Marxist state where no man has a vote.’
‘And the ANC?’ she said pensively. ‘What about Nelson Mandela? Do you think he should be freed?’
He said emphatically, ‘Yes. We’ve got to talk realistically to the ANC some time, as a major political force, and the sooner we get down to the negotiating table the better. It’s common sense to do it while we have the upper hand and can drive strong bargains with them – to ensure they renounce violence, to ensure everybody’s good political behaviour and cooperation with the new constitution, et cetera.’
‘And here in Namibia – ideally, what do you want to see happen?’
McQuade sloshed more champagne into their glasses. It wasn’t his problem any more: in a week he’d have cracked that submarine and would be a multi-millionaire.
‘I want the Cubans to go home. Then I want the South Africans to do our dirty work for us and thrash SWAPO, and impose a peace on them. And meanwhile we should work flat out towards preparing the country for democracy – as the government is belatedly trying to do – encouraging black middle-class political parties, et cetera. Then – with SWAPO disarmed and discredited as the terrorist Marxist outfit it is – give us independence on 435. Then I’d take my chances on a chastened SWAPO behaving in a tolerable manner.’ He shrugged. ‘Risky, but worth the risk in exchange for getting rid of South Africa. And that’s how most of us here feel.’
She plucked at the grass pensively, the sun a sheen on her golden body.
‘And how do you feel about Victoria now?’
He snorted softly.
‘It’s a long time ago now,’ he said.
Lunch was long and very boozy. They were still the only guests. He told her about the Kid’s new teeth, and when he got to the bit about ‘I meant the bottom ones,’ she threw back her head and laughed until the tears ran down her face. That established him as a raconteur and when he started telling her a story she started to giggle, just in anticipation, before he got to the funny bits, and when he got to the punchline she was convulsed. She thought he was a scream, and it is lovely to be madly in love with somebody who thinks you’re a laugh-a-minute. And their lovemaking that afternoon was the happiest and wildest either of them had ever known, desperately trying to get more and more of each other until simultaneously their world exploded in a magnificent crescendo.