Sing Like You Know the Words (21 page)

He turned and ran after his
companions. The police were not many minutes after, in greater
numbers. Some of them wanted to arrest Matthew. It was clear that
the state they were in, his press pass meant nothing to them. Lucky
that he had not tried to run. He’d been too frightened to try. In
the end they told him to piss off home before they stopped being
nice to him, and not to come back where he wasn’t wanted. He was
happy to oblige.

Matthew wrote up the story of
his day, only including what he’d seen and heard. The article was
rejected. Later he saw photographs of the main action that people
braver than him had been able to take. There were seventeen local
newspapers in the area and none of them ran the story or used the
pictures. Richard said that his piece was well written and did him
credit. Ralph said that he hoped Matthew had learned a valuable
lesson.

If there was a lesson, it was
wrapped in the sense of outrage and disgust that Matthew felt for
the next few weeks, even though he couldn’t exactly explain the
reason for it. He even fell out with his friends over it, when
Patricia started talking about being for the miners, but they were
not above the rule of law. Respect for the law was more important
than any one issue, she said.

They were meeting in a pub
called the Woolpack. It wasn’t exactly a local; more the place they
had used to get together in the college days. Patricia said it had
a good atmosphere, meaning that you could talk seriously about
subjects other than work or football without having to get blind
drunk first. David said it was a student bar. They didn’t really
fit with the company any more, but they hadn’t quite realized it
yet.

The pub was full of little
groups sharing earnest conversations about themselves and their
ideas, without any apparent sense of irony. It made them feel
nostalgic. Probably it was also the reason that they started
arguing about ideas between themselves. Matthew said that it was
stupid to trust in the rule of law if you were someone that the
laws were passed specifically to repress. David could see things
getting heated and suggested that they didn’t need to start a
debate when they had come out to relax with a quiet drink. Patricia
took exception.

-I understand that it’s normal
for English people to become too crippled with embarrassment to
talk seriously in public, but this is important David.

It was the first time that David
had noticed that she sometimes talked like her mother. She went on
to say that the papers were right about this at least. Without
respect for the law and honest lawyers to make sure the system
worked fairly, there wouldn´t even be a right to peaceful protest.
The only authority would be brute force. Then Matthew lost his
temper.

He said that the law was stuck
in eighteenth century constitutional theory that was even more
ridiculous in a country with no written constitution.

-You are talking absolute
bollocks Pat and you must know. Might is right; it is that simple.
If you don’t believe me, it’s a short drive to South Yorkshire. Go
ask the boys in blue what they make of your right to peaceful
protest. At least they don’t have any doubt it’s about sides and
which one they are on. They don’t imagine that their levels of pay
and their pension rights and their double time for bashing strikers
have anything to do with catching criminals.

-You talk about a rule of law as
if it came down from god, or has anything to do with justice. Laws
defend property and they depend on force. The state has to claim a
monopoly on violence to exist; that’s from one of your eighteenth
century philosophers. The only difference between us and the
Soviets is that in England we’re allowed to pretend that our
opinions matter. We can say what we like, so long as we do as we’re
told.

David decided to let the storm
run its course. They were as bad as each other. It was always the
same with Matthew, unfortunately. Too shy to speak when it was a
social situation, then someone would make a comment that he
disagreed with and he had to rise to it. And because life for him
was more about ideas than people, he didn´t know when to stop.
Before you knew where you were he’d fallen out with someone and
then he’d be mortified about it. Now he was sitting in silence,
slightly red in the face, and David could imagine his thoughts;
frustrated that he had not expressed himself well, anguished by his
missing social grace, embarrassed at making a fool of himself.

He could be so much happier if
he would just try to lighten up, David wanted to tell him. Talk
about serious things if you like, but without raging as if the
world depended on what you think about them.

Then David turned to his wife,
who was also sitting in silence. Was she offended at Matthew
attacking her life´s work? Not really, he decided. She seemed more
coolly amused. She had that same expression when she was telling
him how she had managed to provoke a hostile witness to an outburst
that betrayed their own case in cross examination.

But the two of them seemed to
like each other less and less these days. Why couldn´t his wife and
his best friend get on, he wondered? They were both good people in
their own ways. Matt needed to grow up. And Patricia? - for a
moment he worried that giving so much to her career was turning her
into a person who thought that the point of life was to win
arguments; but as soon as he realized he was having an ungenerous
thought about his wife he refused to allow that notion space in his
mind.

Chapter Five

It was a hot country in a dry
season.

When times were good, the
wealthy elite would drive out of the city at this time of year,
heading for their summer residences in the cooler hilly lands to
the east. Now times were anything but good. In this year the only
road still open led south. It seemed like anyone who could was
heading out of town on that road by any means possible, travelling
as fast as they could. It was a time of dust, and there was
disaster in the air.

But Ray Hawkins was sick of
hearing the Europeans complaining about the heat. This is Africa,
he wanted to say; if you can’t stand it what did you come here for?
So far as Ray was concerned, he’d felt cold enough, in enough
different parts of the world, to last for one lifetime. The weather
could stay as hot as it liked.

He was troubled by a different
kind of heat. The government of this country was his customer, and
the government was falling apart. That was a regular and
foreseeable situation: his difficulty right now was that this
regime was disintegrating even faster than was usual in this
volatile place. Faster than he’d allowed for. He’d needed to stay
on to make sure of being paid. Now he needed to get out as quickly
as possible before the real trouble started.

There’d been shelling already on
the outskirts of the city. It hadn’t caused much damage, but plenty
of panic. In a month or two the rebels would be settled in as the
new government and he´d return, discreetly and start to deal with
the new bosses. It was the transition times that were most
dangerous; the time of conflict and the period of gang rivalry and
tribal blood-letting that came after.

He knew that he’d stayed on far
too long. For the money involved it wasn’t worth the risk. It was
just good luck that Albert was there too and had been able to offer
him a ride to the airport. Now there was a man who had resources
inside him that you wouldn’t guess at, to look at him; both mental
and physical. Albert would always find a way. A little balding guy,
Indian looking, with a paunch that made him appear older than he
probably was. Comical really: he always wore a suit and tie as if
to say that heat could not get to him, nor dust nor the distance to
the nearest dry cleaners either. It seemed that he could disarm
even these people with a smile. Ray wasn’t even sure that he
carried a weapon.

Albert was waiting for him when
Ray paid the bill and walked out of the hotel carrying only a black
attaché case. He had left his luggage in the room, not bothering to
pack.

-What do you think of the car?
Albert asked.

Ray looked the battered Toyota
up and down.

-Did you get a warranty?

Albert shook his head,
laughing.

-And I had to pay cash.

-The paper money’s no good
anyway: I wouldn’t worry. I think it might take us as far as the
airport. It’s as well we’re not planning a return trip.

They got in the vehicle. The
passenger side door had clearly belonged to another car, of a
different colour and probably of a different type; but Ray managed
to shut it after a fashion. When they set off it was clear that the
suspension only existed as a memory, but the engine started first
time, or at least the cylinders that were still firing did.

-Nice, said Ray.

-I bought it from my driver
Michel. He’s been driving me around in it for a week so I think it
should be fine so long as we don’t run out of gas.

-Shouldn’t Michel be using this
heap to get as far away as possible from what is coming down the
line?

-I tried to tell him that. He
says that he can’t leave the family and his father in law is too
ill to travel.

-The money won’t be much good to
him.

-It might help. I gave him my
good watch as well. Told him not to let anyone see it unless he is
talking to someone worth bribing.

-That might do more harm than
good.

-Possibly; how can we know what
is for the best?

They drove on without speaking
for a time, listening to the wounded rattle of the engine. Every
few blocks the traffic became heavier, until they were moving at
walking pace. The road was jammed with every kind of transport,
overloaded with people and possessions. Now and then they passed
carts being drawn by animals, or dragged along by straining humans;
all of them inching forward only a little slower than the motorized
traffic. Horns were sounding everywhere, to no obvious effect.

The drivers leaned on their
horns, but there was no sense of rage. The people were past
impatience and too exhausted to be angry. A few days earlier there
had been an ugly, fearful mood sweeping through the city, making
everyone suspicious of each other. Now the violence of that time
had given way to a mood of resignation and defeat. At one or two of
the bigger junctions, a few uniformed figures were attempting,
half-heartedly, to regulate the traffic; blowing whistles and
gesticulating with pantomime exaggeration. Their orders were
ignored. It seemed that even the officers no longer minded if they
were ignored. Some of the military had joined the file of refugees;
beaten men walking with shoulders drooping, wearing tunics over
jeans, or combat pants topped by T-shirts; weapons and pack
gone.

Now and then a light motorcycle
would weave through the traffic, carrying two, or sometimes three
passengers. Riders of all ages, some with infants nestling on their
laps: the whine of their engines rising above the deeper coughing
of the other vehicles as they approached and fading as they passed
on up the road. Under the noise of engines and horns, the road was
strangely empty of human voices. No one seemed to have anything
left to say.

Hawkins checked his watch again,
uselessly as he knew. Occasionally Albert would make up some time
by passing the slow moving traffic on the inside; on what passed
for a pavement, or by cutting through little used back streets,
where they could make reasonable progress, but always had to rejoin
the main flow at some point.

Perhaps they would not make the
flight, Hawkins thought. He cursed himself for not leaving days
ago. He’d known it would come to this. It wasn’t as if it was his
first regime change.

At one point, they passed by
some buildings where shells had fallen. It seemed that at least one
had exploded directly on top of some of the houses or offices,
which were more or less obliterated. Water was flowing from a pipe
that protruded from the ruin, and women were collecting it
patiently in pails, whilst black skinned kids, with white teeth and
pink palms, stared and pointed at the scene of destruction and at
the line of cars and trucks moving slowly past them.

In another place, shop fronts
had been smashed and the blackened walls showed that the stores had
been burnt out. It was obvious that this damage was not the result
of shelling. Some shops had been left alone and others completely
emptied out. The tribal rivalries that normally lay under the
surface were emerging.

Clear of the city proper now,
they started to make slightly better progress. The traffic was
moving almost continuously, though at a painfully slow pace. Beyond
the road and the ditch that lined it, they started to see the
savannah scrub: dusty grass with the colour bleached out. Here and
there a man of indeterminable age peacefully watching a cow or two;
a scene that repeated itself like the motif of a pattern; the
dozing man untroubled by the exodus from the city, since it did not
disturb his cow.

Most of the roads in the city
were badly broken up; just collections of holes punctuated by
mounds of tarmac shovelled indiscriminately from the backs of
lorries in a futile attempt at repair. Here on the outskirts, the
surface was a little better, outside of the rainy season, but there
was still the occasional reminder of the violence that was tearing
the country apart. They passed a body, halfway in the drainage
ditch, torso bent unnaturally, shirt riding up over a swollen
belly. Fortunately the face was pointed away from them, but matted
hair and blood from an exit wound made a sticky mess on the road
beside the head. Flies had come to claim the corpse, but it seemed
that no-one else would.

Now Hawkins could make out the
perimeter fence of the airfield in the distance, and yet their
progress remained maddeningly slow. He realized that they were not
actually travelling slower than before. It was just that being so
near, and feeling the time slipping away from them, was
intolerable. He could almost sense the jet engines warming for
take-off. I could run it from here, he thought. But then, the
airport buildings were a couple of kilometres beyond the gate and
once they were through that, there should be no more traffic to
delay them.