Roses Under the Miombo Trees (24 page)

he'd cup a tearful face between strong hands

and breathe, ‘I love you – you are all I need'.

Crunch of tyres on gravel, headlights rake

the curtains. Thank God. She spoons stew onto plates,

pictures a Saturday picnic by the lake

till he calls:
The golf match starts at eight
.

CHAPTER 11

Of high-kicking bunny girls, and a clarinet
unpacked

By now the pace of change was accelerating, with independence only a few months off. Soon after Africa Freedom Day came the company's demand that Mark organise a multi-racial cocktail party during a visit from the Chairman:
About 20 people, we are instructed. Trouble is there are v. few Africans here important or civilised enough to ask, but it is to keep the 2 clerks company, and one of the chaps from Tanganyika is I think Indian or something … the company's Tanganyika G.M. is also coming – they are obviously going to consult at Mpulungu on petrol supplies – M. is going to have to hire a bus to get them down there
. We racked our brains for local Africans to invite, and John Carlin at the Lake Press printed little invitations, offering to attend himself ‘as an ancient monument of local interest'. As I welcomed them – mostly men who had chosen to come without their wives – I felt awkward and inhibited, for I had never socialised with Africans. I could chat up the company chairman with ease, but these men, for me, came from some unknown world and I had no idea where to start. I watched friends whose daily lives in government service or in business involved mixing with Africans at all levels, saw them comfortably chatting and joking with them. I envied but did not know how to emulate them. Still, the party and the trip to Mpulungu seemed to go off well enough for Mark to feel he had earned some brownie points with the big boss.

In our local paper, ‘Cornelius' – the name always reminded me of the wise old elephant in the
Babar
children's books – now ruminated on issues such as the wisdom of a stand-alone currency for the country based only on copper and its unpredictable market fluctuations. My letters continued to grumble about deteriorating postal services (though not our local Post Office, run most efficiently by its new African manager), and of how shops no longer catered for Europeans. The Gamwell sisters had put their estate, Chilongolwelo, on the market – a great blow as they were such significant figures in our little community – and one by one, couples who were our good friends were selling off unwanted possessions and heading back to Europe or elsewhere. For many others there was the likelihood, or at least the possibility, of their jobs being ‘Zambianised'. We busied ourselves with sailing, bridge evenings, supper with friends, the respective sections of the club setting up competitions and tournaments. But change and uncertainty permeated all our conversations.

No matter: as if in a communal act of insouciance against all these winds of change, the yacht section of the club now planned its biggest fundraising event ever – the Commodore's Ball, for it needed funds for the upkeep of the boats. Someone had had the bright idea of writing an appeal to Lord Abercorn in Scotland, after whose forebear, the Chairman of the British South Africa Company who took over its administration in 1895, the town had been named. Not surprisingly this had been unsuccessful. Now we wanted to rival the tennis section's ‘grand weekend event' held the previous year, when record sums had been raised at a ball and cabaret.

The star attraction on that occasion had been ‘Miss Pamela the Tassel Tosser'. It was rare for a female entertainer to be prepared to come as far as Abercorn, let alone unaccompanied, and word had spread to the furthest outlying homestead, attracting large numbers of single men in the area. Male members not seen for years appeared. To the strains of her taped music (on ‘a tape-recording apparatus kindly provided by Mr Marbus of the Electricity Corporation', as our paper reported) Miss Pamela had swayed and twirled, tossing the four long silky tassels attached to her breasts and buttocks. A finale in which tassels fore and aft, right and left, spun in opposite directions had brought a standing ovation from the men, and left us women wondering how on earth she did it (or as our reporter had put it, had ‘greatly impressed … especially, it seems, the ladies who particularly appreciated the difficulties she so skilfully overcame'). On our way home Mark and I and Chris Roberts had dropped in at the Bowmakers for a nightcap. While Chris tried to remember his anatomical training and sketched diagrams trying to work out which muscle tweaked where, Jiff and I had shrugged our shoulders and clenched our buttocks and collapsed defeated in fits of laughter.

For the Commodore's Ball we were hoping to sell up to 80 tickets, with the hall and stage decorated
in the style of South Pacific, and supper of a paella – sort of – with salads made by me
I wrote home. The entertainment was to be provided in-house. It was to be a black tie and long frock affair and I got sewing immediately on a strappy number with a swirling long skirt.

Over a four-day bank holiday weekend I had plenty of time, for not only was Mark leading the Abercorn golf team in Kasama, but there was no sailing – at least not in Abercorn. The Bowmakers, Colin C and three other couples had taken four of the dinghies to Broken Hill on the Copper Belt for the national sailing championships. I felt very frustrated that we were not free to go, though much less so when they returned, with accounts of terrific gales, capsizings and two broken masts, not to mention the hardships of chilly, wet camping with young children. But meanwhile a lonely bank holiday weekend loomed for me, till William Winterton suggested I and the children join a party to Lake Tanganyika for the Sunday. William, known as Willum in our household, where Paul was devoted to him, was one of the agreeable young bachelors about the place, on a gap year with V.S.O. and based at Mpulungu, where he spent much of his time building a catamaran out of two canoes. He and others – Colin Tait in Fisheries, Colin Carlin – were all very pleasant though quite proper company for us young wives whose husbands' jobs took them away, and I suppose we were ‘eye candy' for them in the absence of any young single women. When on a couple of occasions Mark and I were hosts to visiting eligible females, we were immediately besieged by eager callers.

Our day out was to be on the government launch the Dame des Iles, which slept five and was comfortable and fast. For once it was not too hot down at the lake level, and eight of us and our children set out for a day of fishing round the islands and a picnic. We even went out to meet the S.S. Liemba as she steamed in, towing her barge of oil products – it was the one and only time that Mark had delegated the task of unloading the barge to his Mpulungu clerk. The word ‘lake' is not, for me, adequate to describe that expanse of water so vast as to feel more like a sea. Swimming from the boat in open water was something I never got used to, always aware of the immense depths beneath me, the thousands of feet of ‘dead water' far below, filling the bottom of the Great Rift Valley. We did believe, however, that its waters, which tasted sulphurous, were good for bleaching our hair, so I conscientiously wetted and sun-dried mine whenever we were there; never mind the straw texture, the blonder the better. It could be nerve-racking with small children on board, as there often were, for you had to be vigilant every second. So when Colin invited us to go out on the Nancol, an open boat he had bought from the Gamwell sisters, and rigged with a mast and two sails, ‘
we took advantage of a new Abercorn arrival Jo Bailes, who does babysitting for money: we dropped the kids off, went down to Mpulungu and sailed with a picnic lunch on Lake Tanganyika, swam from the boat, then put on the outboard and followed the Liemba into port … it all made a fine change from Lake Chila
.

The lake could be dangerous too, with sudden storms and gales whipping up huge waves. For the holiday Tuesday I had planned a curry lunch for twelve and ten children, spending Monday cooking ahead. Half of our guests, though, had gone on another government launch up the lake to a tourist camp, Kasaba Bay, where ‘
by early Tuesday a terrific gale was blowing – the ‘Kapata', a 3-day affair peculiar to July, and due to immense waves they couldn't come back. We didn't realise this till 1 p.m., by which time we had slaved all morning … what a waste! … They only finally returned two days later.'

On Lake Tanganyika: Colin Carlin on the Nancol, seeing in the Liemba

On Lake Tanganyika: William Winterton (‘Willum') and local fishing boat

Once the Bowmakers had returned from leave in Salisbury, during which time I was kept busy checking on rabbits and hens, walking dogs and deepfreezing their beans, the committee started preparations for the ball in earnest. It was decided that the cabaret would consist of selected numbers from South Pacific mimed by a male chorus to the soundtrack of the musical, followed by a high-kick routine by a chorus of six bunny girls (‘
and if you don't know what they are, ask Will!
' I wrote). I have said in an earlier chapter that Playboy would get another mention: it seems strange to me now, after all the changes in awareness wrought by feminism in the intervening decades, that Playboy magazine was passed around as regular household reading. While I felt vaguely uncomfortable at the pneumatic centrefolds, our husbands enjoyed it for what it was, and I for one, as a good wife, was not going to object and be accused of being a spoilsport. I rationalised madly about its good fiction and other features (witness the meat fondue recipe). And, well, the event and in particular the cabaret turned out to be enormous fun.

A team of six of us wives set to work on our costumes. We were, as you had to be, solution-focussed:

- We've all got Merry Widows, for a start, haven't we? (Of course we did.)

- Hardly decent though, are they?

- But we could add a bit of lacy skirt where the suspenders go…

- Mine's white though, too underwear-ish for a floorshow!

- So's mine – but we can trim the seams with black velvet ribbon …

- What about collars and cuffs?

- That stiff stuff you use for lining collars and things will do… I've got some.

- … and very thin foam sheeting to cut ears from, pinched onto alice bands!

- Tails…? I know, big pom-poms made with wool on two circles of cardboard, you know, like we used to make when we were kids!

I should explain for younger readers that a ‘Merry Widow' was a ‘corselet' produced by Warner lingerie and named after the Strauss operetta – so, think wasp waist and pushed-up bosom, but also metal zip, hooks and eyes, wires and unyielding nylon voile. Lana Turner is quoted as saying: ‘I'm telling you, the Merry Widow was designed by a man. A woman would never do that to another woman'.

The all-important white bunny tails were finally sewn on behind – though not too firmly, for we had decided that each bunny would award her tail to a male member who had made a particular contribution to the yacht club, and he would have to snip it off in a prize-giving ceremony to conclude our performance.