Paul and I stand together at the bar counter without speaking for a few moments. Now that I’ve got myself away from the table – away from Danny so I can think more rationally – I wish I’d stayed. Or that Paul had left. Or that I’d gone to the toilet. Now he’s here with me, at my invitation, and I’ve got my heart rising up my oesophagus and I have to find something to say and I’ll truly mess things up. Fan the flames. All I’ve done is jump out of the frying pan.
Seriously, how can a whole evening out fall over so spectacularly in the space of ten minutes?
In spite of my jitters, this silence is comfortable compared with the crackling one we just left, but then, inevitably, he breaks it. And, to be fair, his face tells me he doesn’t know whether to choose the pan or the fire either.
“Did Chipo not tell you anything about me?”
Now think this through. He could well have been a bank clerk or a car mechanic, so let’s try and imagine that being the case.
Of course I asked her what Paul did for a living. And she said, “He’s in the army.” So she might have said, “He’s a bank clerk” or “He’s a car mechanic” and my reaction would’ve been the same. I said, “Oh?” and we moved on to other things. Half the country’s in the bloody army anyway and has been for quite some time now. It was enough for me at the time and it’s never cropped up since.
I search his face for any signs of aggression or arrogance, or even amusement, and find none of the above.
“She told me you were in the army. It was…” I shrug and he finishes the sentence for me.
“Nothing unusual.”
He gets the picture.
Why did we have to start talking about work here, tonight? There shouldn’t be any need to go into ideals or politics either. People should be able to have an evening together without searching or controversial conversations. A nightclub isn’t exactly conducive to in-depth conversation anyway. Chipo and I can dance. Paul can drink beer, do whatever. Does he dance? But then there’s Danny.
The sigh that comes out of me is involuntary. It’s an effort not to put my head down on my forearms and avoid whatever’s coming next. I get a grip and trace a finger along the brass trim at the edge of the counter instead. Bizarre doesn’t come into it. I’m on a social outing with a man who, little more than a year ago, I would have classed as the Enemy with a capital E. I would’ve sworn I’d never do such a thing. What happened to that keen, all consuming sense of outrage that comes with having an Enemy? Now it’s just like it was a meaningless dream or a past life. Everyone in this country had Enemies, but in the end no-one won, we’re all still here and now no-one knows who’s who. There are no victors and no vanquished, like France and Prussia, the North and the South, Britain and Germany. Everyone in Zimbabwe has stepped sideways into a slightly different role and life is going on much as it did before. Three armies have combined – the Rhodesian Army, ZANLA and ZIPRA – and if you listen to the hype it’s an unprecedented success against all odds and pessimistic predictions.
So Paul was a terrorist. No, the Enemy was a terrorist. He has to be a guerrilla now, or a freedom fighter. My first impressions of him, earlier, before I knew? I met a quiet and unassuming human being with a pleasant disposition. He has so far treated me with the utmost courtesy and respect. It was he who pulled my chair out for me, at the same time as he seated Chipo, while Danny was faffing around with his shoelace.
Think in the here-and-now and forget the past for the minute. Just because he was in ZANLA doesn’t mean… What doesn’t it mean? Where was he when Nathan…? Don’t go there. Close that door. It’s okay. That bunch was ZIPRA anyway.
How would Charles Owen approach this? He would be curious, wouldn’t he? He likes to know what makes others tick. He would ask questions.
We’re both doing frantic brain work here; I can see my own dilemma reflected back at me. Is this equally bizarre to him? Questions. Right, here we go.
“How has everyone sorted themselves out in the new National Army? Has it been difficult?”
He’s taken slightly off balance, but he recovers and eyes me with what I want to interpret as approval. He smiles. A genuine smile, not a smirk.
“In some cases, yes. There are always some who can’t, or should I say won’t, accept change, but they are the ones who have left. I think they will all go down to South Africa now to join the Defence Force.”
He inclines his head towards our table.
“Your boyfriend – was he in the Rhodesian Army?”
“No. He’s just a bit too young to have been involved. He only left school at the end of last year.”
“Exactly with the ceasefire. He’s one of the lucky ones then.”
I didn’t see that one coming. There’s a barman with a quizzical face hovering and he’s not sure whether to catch my eye or Paul’s or if we’re together or not. I lift my bag onto the counter and Paul holds up a hand while groping in a back pocket.
“Allow me, please. Yes. We’ll have a brandy and Coke for my girl and a Shumba for me and whatever you and Danny want. Tessa?”
Say whatever comes to mind first. “Rum and Coke and a Castle please. Thank you very much.”
My Enemy is now offering to buy me a drink. I have absolutely no guidelines on how to play this. Is there a manual?
Through the gloom and muted flashing lights we both watch Chipo and Danny at opposite ends of our table, avoiding each other and staring fixedly at the gyrating humanity on the dance floor.
“You do realise,” I’m obliged to tell him, “that Danny is not going to accept this? I can’t offer any explanations or excuses, but I hope it doesn’t spoil the evening too much.”
Then I add, “Well, it will of course. But you and Chipo can leave us if you want to and whenever you want to. I’m sorry, but I don’t want any sort of altercation. I don’t want that to sound like I’m hoping you will leave us though. Please feel free to go and enjoy yourselves by yourselves. I won’t be offended.”
He collects up the bottles and glasses onto the stainless steel tray that the barman is offering and we shuffle along to allow a group of three girls some space.
“Well, we will if we have to, but I hope we don’t. I came out to help you and Chipo celebrate the end of your exams after all. You like Bacardi then?”
Tastes in alcohol. Excellent – a normal, harmless conversation. Must keep this going.
“I do. Only with Coke though.”
I give him a brief and pointless explanation of how Charles introduced me to the combination and can’t tell if he’s amused or not.
“Did you know Africans were not officially allowed to drink spirits before 1959?”
Okay, not so harmless then. What have I said wrong to inspire him to start dredging up racial gems from the past like this one?
“Oh? I didn’t. I wasn’t around then.”
The shock must show – perhaps he can hear the blood buzzing in my ears – because he’s put the tray on the counter and is holding up both hands in a surrender pose.
“Neither was I. So it wasn’t our problem then and it isn’t now, hey?”
“I… um, oh, a-ha, ha…” I try to laugh but it’s not like a laugh at all. More like a strangled donkey noise.
“Come on, Tessa. I don’t want to argue with you or make life difficult for you. You’re Chipo’s friend and she thinks so much of you and you seem to be trying hard to accept this situation. I don’t blame you for finding it difficult. I’m a career army guy. I’ve been doing it all my adult life, I’m good at it and I like it. I’m a military man. There are some of us out there who want this all to work. We fought for it and we want it to work. Some of us, well, they may make trouble. I don’t want trouble. It’s not that easy for me either and it won’t be for many ZANLA ex-combatants. Some of us, like me, as I said, want to develop our skills and be a part of Zimbabwe’s defence force and be proud of ourselves. Others will be de-mobbed and find themselves as civilians with no jobs. Some are still languishing in the Assembly Points because no-one knows what to do with them.”
None of the men coming out of this war are going to find it easy. In a stroke the unavoidable call-up routines and commitments and the causes that have driven their lives for so many years have gone away and they’re going to have to find replacements. Them and Us both.
He pours his lager into a glass while I gawk at him, then raises the glass.
“Yes?”
I reach out and take the glass of Bacardi and Coke, lift it hesitantly towards him, knowing I should be doing this, but knowing I shouldn’t, because I can feel the touch of eyes. There, to my left and a chilly distance away, is Danny, observing us.
We touch the glasses together and that sinking gut feeling tells me I’ve done something that’s going to bite me hard in the not too distant future. What was the alternative though?
“What do you want, Tessa?”
“I want us to have a good life. All of us in Zimbabwe. And I want us to start with this evening. Can we just, like, dance to the music? And I don’t want to sound patronising. I don’t want to be arrogant. I mean it.”
“None of us has any right to be arrogant.”
He picks up the tray and starts weaving around people and tables and chairs and I follow him. Well, my girl, you got through that one but the worst is yet to come.
*
Chipo is sorry – she whispers as much in my ear – but she can’t be nearly as sorry as me. I wanted to dance the night away in my new dress. When I was standing in front of the mirror earlier, admiring it, with Rosie in ecstasies behind me, I’d been so surprised and well pleased with myself. I have a Little Black Number. Me – horsey, tomboy Tessa. Short and glovelike it is, but it’s a perfect fit and I’m delighted I have no bulges to spoil the image. I pointed my stockinged feet out to either side while I tried to visualise Danny’s face when he saw me in it, ignoring Rosie’s pleas to tell her how much it cost because Mum was standing in the doorway. There’s no need for her to be in possession of that sort of information. My spending is my business and I’m fully aware I’ll have to be careful next month.
Mum didn’t ask how much it cost. Her concern was that she just couldn’t understand when I would get to wear it. How does she always manage to put me on the defensive? I asked her, “Don’t you think I’ll ever get to go to a function which calls for a fashionable evening dress? Maybe look grown up?”
“Yes – well – I know – maybe, but it’s not the sort of thing you usually wear.”
No, it’s not, but here I am, in my perfect dress and I can’t have the perfect evening I wanted. Trying to play the diplomat to both sides of a conflict is exhausting and not worth the effort. Conversation was unsustainable, which is why me, Chipo and Paul ended up dancing in a threesome with an agitated Danny hovering nearby. I thought this might just work, but I was wrong.
She clings to my left hand while Paul shakes my right, solemn and stiff with some emotion – embarrassment?
I like him, but this is just doing my head in. Now I know exactly how Alice must have felt in Wonderland.
Danny all but marches me towards the car, a firm grip on my left hand like he thinks he should be holding it but doesn’t want to. Anything I say will be taken and used as evidence against me, as the cops on TV would say, so I keep my lips clamped together. He won’t look at me trotting along next to him in my heels. My mind bounces around between making a mental note that a fast walk in a narrow skirt is impossible and wondering why I don’t just pull away and ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing?
The air is hot and humid and heavy, soaking up the grumble of the Friday night traffic. Only when we reach the car does he release my hand – throws it away in fact – and asks me if I knew Paul was a sodding gook.
His tone is brutal and my mouth is like a mini Sahara. Come on, I’m not in any physical danger. Not from Danny. One hundred percent for sure. But I never dreamed he’d ever talk to me like that. Or be so angry.
I grip the handle of the locked passenger door and shake it ineffectually.
“No. Chipo didn’t tell me. It never occurred to me to ask how her boyfriend came to choose his career. She said he was in the army. So what? I’d never met him and I never expected to meet him so it didn’t matter. I kind of assumed he’d been in the RAR or something. I don’t know. I never stopped to analyse it. It’s not like I’m short of things to think about in my life.”
“But he’s a Captain, Tessa. And she said he’s just joined. Even in our black regiments all commissioned officers are white. You know that. How could he have been an officer in our army?”
Well now, why did I never think to ask what rank he holds?
“Our army is gone, Danny. It’s the Zimbabwe National Army now so maybe some of those black guys who were in our army will get promoted in this one.”
“Well it was obvious to me immediately that he was One Of Them. You seemed very pally with him I must say. Didn’t you mind?”
I picture Chipo, queen of the table, formally introducing us to ourselves, bursting with pride, then the strange transformation in her pretty, round face as the crinkled grin fled for, I thought at the time, no apparent reason. The reason came to me probably a fraction of a second after it came to Danny. She must have clocked it in his face like it had been scribbled there with a marker pen.
“No.”
He stares at me over the roof of the car for a few moments. I watch the headlights and tail-lights of passing vehicles, drifting along Baker Avenue in blissful ignorance of our state of tension. Baker Avenue. Gordon Baker. What a long, long time ago it was that I first saw him hauling Jess by the hand across the church hall grounds, when I was barely aware my country was at war with itself. Now that war’s over and I’ve just been socialising with someone who, at the time, was likely planning attacks on us, the Rhodesians. On me, in a way. What was he up to while these two teenage white girls preened themselves at a disco, never knowing their way of life would come to an end?
Danny dives into the car and flicks up the button on the passenger door. I slide in sideways but I can’t pretend I’m not here. He drives. He’s calm. The calmness is stretched almost to tearing point by the physical tension in the space between us.
I force my focus onto very specific things. Pleasant things. Like every detail of Gill’s last dress fitting. The conversations we had, the feel of the heavy satin against my body and the girlish delight of posing in front of the mirror to watch its sheening rainbow colours. The sight of Sally trying to cross the room in Gill’s pearly three-inch heels and ending up in a giggling heap. Keep replaying this scene.
We’re nearly at my road when he breaks the mute barrier. He still wants to know why I just ignored the fact that that man is a gook. He can’t let go of this. He doesn’t understand me. He wanted to walk straight out as soon as he knew but he got stuck there with me. I put him in a horribly difficult place. Why did I want to stay?
I have no answer, or none he’ll accept anyway, so I offer nothing. He clicks his tongue and stands on the brake, scattering stones at the gate.
When I lean across to kiss him and murmur goodnight, his lips are pressed together in a hard line and the effort of persuading him to soften them is a step too far. He’ll come round. We can talk, and things will be back to normal soon. This shouldn’t make any difference to our relationship, should it? He could’ve stormed out of the nightclub but he didn’t because he’s too well mannered and polite. There’s no need for him to ever set eyes on Paul again if he doesn’t want to. This shouldn’t make any difference to our relationship, should it?
Tessa, girl, you know there is no relationship left. Give it up.
He’s staring out of the side window, waiting for me to go.
“I’ll phone you tomorrow, shall I?”
“Okay. If you want.”