Roses Under the Miombo Trees (18 page)

Although Northern Rhodesia shared half its name with its southern neighbour, it was a very different country, ‘
a vast, scarcely developed, hardly populated area with a tiny metal spine
' as Doris Lessing described it in her 1957 memoir
Going Home,
the ‘metal spine' being the towns of its Copper Belt where two great mining companies extracted and exported its vast mineral wealth. South of the Copper Belt was the country's capital, Lusaka. The European population was concentrated in these urban areas which, to the Africans, were places to find work, from which they returned to their rural homes.

The country's nationalist movement had always opposed the idea of Federation, seeing it as a way for its southern neighbour, so close to South Africa and with its much larger white population, to take advantage of their country's mineral wealth and to draw it closer to a quasi-apartheid system and legislation they so detested. Northern Rhodesia's Africans wanted to keep their land, not be constrained within overcrowded Native Reserves. They wanted the independence their northern neighbours had already achieved.

With Harold Macmillan's Wind of Change speech during his visit to the African colonies in 1960/61, with the rapid gaining of independence of all France's colonies south of the Sahara, with Britain's West and East Africa colonies gaining theirs too, break-up of the Federation became inevitable. In October 1962 the final version of Northern Rhodesia's new constitution produced an African majority on its Legislative Council, as neighbouring Nyasaland's had. By the end of that year (just as we were to learn of our impending move from Gwelo to Abercorn) all support for the Federation was at an end. Nyasaland, under its nationalist leader Dr. Hastings Banda, back from England where he had practised as a G.P., was to secede. In March 1963, after continued wrangling between the parties, and the Southern Rhodesian elections that had brought in the Rhodesia Front, the British Government decided that Northern Rhodesia too must be allowed to secede. Independence was in sight at last and the Central African Federation would, by the end of 1963, be no more. Final elections to the legislative council in the coming January 1964 would lead to self-government.

At last we found a suitable house that we could afford – which meant that it was time to engage a servant and to get used to shopping in this new environment. In such a rural area, there was not a great pool of trained servants to choose from; I think we took on someone recommended by one of the families leaving as we arrived. So we took on Daudi, a tall, silent man with what I read as a slightly disdainful expression, which made me feel very uncomfortable. His first task was to rid all our furniture of the layers of dust that it had accumulated on its journey along hundreds of miles of dirt roads. I had established to my relief that he could bake bread. I had been very anxious about this, needlessly as it turned out, discovering that it was one of the routine skills servants learned for Abercorn's white households (the District Commissioner's cook, I recall, had been trained at a bakery and could whip up all sorts of breads from cottage loaves to plaits and poppy seed rolls).

Shopping needed a different routine from Gwelo. There were three general stores on the main street, Marshall Avenue, though as we had been warned they carried a limited range largely for the local African market. Our main port of call was Westwoods Stores – known to all as Westies – with its butchery next door for cheaper cuts and servants' ration meat, nothing fancy. However, if you wanted dairy products, or particular cuts of meat, you had to order them from Ndola, whence they were delivered once a fortnight in a refrigerated truck. Never having been a great planner, this took some getting used to, particularly as so much of the entertaining we did was at short notice, for if any company men were in the area, we would inevitably invite them round for a meal. I recall depending a great deal on tins, including ghee for butter and evaporated milk for cream in emergencies. I was longing to be installed in our permanent home and start up a vegetable garden too.

At last we were able to move in. It was another iron-roofed bungalow, this time with a wide entrance set back between its two front rooms, forming a sort of terrace. Oddly, there was no stoep. It was the last house on a small dirt road that meandered off into the bush, heading to nowhere we needed to go. I tried hard to become accustomed to Daudi, but wrote home ominously ‘
I don't care for him, he's not a patch on Daniel but there's no choice up here
.' I think now that, while Daniel was undoubtedly more skilled and with an easier temperament, the size of our Abercorn house did not help. In Gwelo we had had large rooms and an extensive garden too, with Daniel deployed in both. Here we had a much smaller bungalow and I felt oppressed by this constant looming presence, silently resistant to my attempts to get him to do things my way. Fortunately both Paul and I liked Uelo, our young and cheerful garden boy, who didn't mind being told how to work, and who played happily with Paul while I was at my sewing machine, initially altering curtains for our smaller rooms.

We had hardly settled in when we had news of our next house guests. My eldest brother Will was just coming down from Oxford and had some months to kill before writing exams for the Civil Service. He and Simon, now also at Oxford and with the long summer vac. before him, had hatched a plot to travel overland and visit us. ‘It's not that far, is it?' they said to each other over an atlas in the college library. Only around 6,000 miles, via Marseilles, Alexandria, Cairo, Khartoum, Nairobi and across Tanganyika to the border with Northern Rhodesia. The single communication we received from them en route was from Cairo, where they were trying to get visas for Sudan, and where Will learned of his law degree from a back number of the Times in the British Council's reading room. We could only hope they would turn up some time. I got busy with fresh curtains for the guest room.

Out of the blue I was approached by Dave Millar, who with his wife Dido ran the little primary school for white children, and who was to direct the next amateur dramatics production. This was an American comedy and suddenly they were short of a leading lady – would I please, please audition for the part? It didn't matter, apparently, that my last appearance on a stage had been as an extra in a school production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance; they would coach me, show me the ropes and I would have a very experienced leading man for my husband!

It sounds fun, I thought. Flattered, curious and unable to resist the challenge, I agreed to audition – was immediately offered the part and, ignoring my pregnancy and the obvious heavy commitments on my time, accepted. The play was
The Gazebo
and had been on in London's West End a few years before, then made into a film. The plot swirled with deception, intrigue, blackmail and mistaken identity, yet was amusing and light and of course all ended happily. I was to play Nell, television actress and loving wife of successful playwright Elliott, living on Long Island. His was the biggest part, played by an experienced amdram actor, an older man who worked in local government. The third large part, of the couple's neighbour, a district attorney, was taken by Chris Roberts, the medical officer, and there were a number of smaller character parts. I was on stage a good deal of the time and had seven costume changes over the three acts.

I was immediately swept into the hard work of line-learning and a routine of endless rehearsals over four weeks, while Mark, when he was not away, helped to construct the set. We started with dialogue, moved on to movement and gestures and dovetailing our parts. I was fortunate in having my leading man – we'll call him Roy – to show me the ropes. Fortunate, that is, until, thrown together in frequent rehearsals as an affectionate couple, he suddenly decided that he had fallen in love with me. Roy himself did not really attract me, I think I was mainly seduced by the flattery of being so desired by an older, married man (in his late 30's I would guess). Nothing happened between us other than a few clandestine, relatively chaste meetings and, naïve and simplistic as I was, I was sure that the whole thing would die down without anyone knowing about it. Perhaps it would have, had it not been for his wife discovering that Roy's attentions were elsewhere. She demanded he pull out and end it (which would also have meant the end of the production). When he refused she took their several children and departed to the bush camp down at Mpulungu, whereupon the news was around the community in a trice. Someone broke it to Mark as he returned from a business trip; he, poor man, was devastated, whilst I, faced with the reality of what I had allowed to happen, was horrified and embarrassed. My defensive wail of ‘but we haven't
done
anything!' was of course only of limited comfort to him. Deep down I felt very bad about it, both for him and for our relationship, but also for myself, wondering what people would think of me, in such a small community where I was as yet hardly known. Mark was also under great pressure from his new job, which did not help either of us. Somehow we patched things up, managing to have some quiet weekend time together with golf, bridge with our new neighbours the Crosse-Upcotts, and Sunday sailing. However, Mark must continue to travel, spending nights away from home, and I to rehearse, practising my portrayal of a successful actress and affectionate wife whilst in private fending off Roy's pleas for time alone together. Of course none of this reached my letters home, merely:
It still seems to need hours more rehearsal but I suppose it will work out. Bookings are going well anyway. Today I must gather my wardrobe of seven outfits together! I was getting rather tired
, [by now I was 3 ½ months pregnant]
with late rehearsals and too much other activity as well, so I am now taking things easier during the day (no golf etc.) and feel a lot better.

On the Tuesday before the big night, while Mark was away in Kasama, I received a telegram from Will and Simon: they planned to be at Tunduma, about 100 miles away on the Tanganyika/Northern Rhodesia border, by sundown on Thursday. Could Mark meet them? I phoned him in Kasama and he decided that he could fit this detour into his schedule, though we were by no means certain that they would make it, for they were dependent on lifts along a little used bush road for this last stage. Nonetheless, in mid-dress rehearsal on Thursday, someone whispered to me that they had arrived, and there at the back of the hall I could make out the three shadowy figures. It was all I could do not to leap off the stage and run to greet them.

My goodness, but they were thin! They had had a very tough time and had spent much of their four weeks on survival rations, as their travellers' tales soon revealed. As Will summarises it now:
We had spent about six weeks, one hundred pounds, on four different boats over 15 days, five days on four different trains, arranged lifts in cars for 1500 miles over three days (the lengths of France and later of Tanzania), hitchhiking too many cars and lorries to count, and now we had made it!

On the day of the performance, a totally unexpected and tragic event nearly caused it to be cancelled. A farmer, John Macrae, from a prominent and popular local family, had returned from a bush trip seriously ill, and had been diagnosed with acute poliomyelitis. The government surgeon flew up by special plane and he and Chris Roberts would have flown John down to hospital on the Copper Belt, had he not been too ill to move. Chris gallantly stuck with his part in the play, and it went ahead, although everyone in the cast was very conscious of the anxiety and dismay among the audience. After all those rehearsals, I suddenly felt daunted as I peeped through the curtains at the packed hall, but once the house lights lowered, shadowy faces looking up at the stage, the adrenaline kicked in and I was into the swing of it. I loved every minute of it, secretly revelling in all that attention, even managing my many changes without mishap. After our curtain calls, Chris reverted to his medical officer role and stepped forward to advise us all to take strict hygiene precautions, but that as polio vaccine would take six weeks to be effective, there was no purpose in urgent immunisation. Fortunately Mark, Paul and I had all had the sugar lump in Gwelo. There was a post-show party at someone's house and we were very late to bed, while Chris sat up with John. He was subsequently flown to Ndola and an iron lung, where tragically he died, leaving a wife and very young family.