him in Afrikaans. Seconds later he was speaking to Eric Parsons, at his hotel. It was the Carlton, he noted; Turadup did not penny-pinch.
He did not suggest making the drive to Johannesburg, but waited until Parsons said, “I’ll come to you then, shall I?” He knew how he would employ the time, as he drove to Gaborone to meet Parsons: he pictured himself at the wheel of his truck, the empty road and the low brown hills unwinding before him, while his practiced eye was half alert for cattle and children, and his inner will concentrated, mile after mile, upon making Parsons offer him more money than he had ever dreamed of earning in his life. This, in due course, Parsons did.
The details were fixed up, at the President Hotel this time (there being, in Gaborone, a choice of two) over a tough T-bone steak and a glass of Lion lager. Andrew Shore shook hands with Eric Parsons, the Saudi man; Jeff Pollard, talking, conducted him down from the terrace and out into the street. Across the road, the nation’s only cinema was showing a double bill: a kung fu drama, and Mary Poppins . Andrew stood in the dusty thoroughfare known as the Mall, gazing into the window of the President Hotel’s gift shop: crocodile handbags, skin rugs, complete bushmen kits with arrows and ostrich shells, direct from the small factory in Palapye which had recently started turning them out. “I can hardly believe I’m finished in Africa,” he said.
When he arrived home late that afternoon, Frances was on the
porch packing a tea chest, wrapping up their dinner service in pieces of the Mafeking Mail . “Well, did you do it?” she said. She straightened up and kissed his cheek.
“Yes, I did it, it’s all fixed. But we can’t go together—I have to be in the Kingdom before they’ll grant you a visa. When we finish up here I’m to fly to Nairobi, and pick up a businessman’s entry permit—then once I’m in, Turadup will fix it for me to stay. They’re in a hurry.”
“Why? Has someone quit without notice?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“I would have asked.”
“I didn’t think of it.”
“So you won’t even be coming to England first?”
“And stay with your mother?”
“It looks as if I’ll have to.”
“Well listen, Fran, we won’t be apart for long. And by the time you get out to Jeddah, we’ll be fixed up with a house, and everything will be ready for you.”
“I’d rather go with you. But I suppose they have their rules. Oh, look, am I to pack these?” She held out a candlestick, one of a pair from a local pottery, rough, heavy, unglazed.
“Sure,” he said. “Souvenir. Take those funny baskets as well, the ones that fall over.”
She began to wrap the candlestick, rolling it in her hands. “Are you sure that this is the right thing to do?” she said. “Is this what you want?”
“They’re doubling my salary,” he said flatly.
“What?”
“You heard.”
She turned away and bent over the tea chest again, cleanly stabbed by avarice, like a peach with a silver knife.
“We could be in and out within three years,” he said. “Your salary is paid in riyals, tax-free. All you need out of it is your day-to-day living expenses and you can bank the rest where you like, in any currency you like. Turadup are offering free housing, a car
allowance, paid utilities, yearly leave ticket, school fees—though of course—”
“That would be plain greedy,” she said, “having children so that you could get their school fees paid.”
“Pollard did say—” He looked at her in slight anxiety. “He said that his only reservation was how you’d settle in. As you’ve been a working woman.”
“I won’t be able to work?”
“Unlikely, he thinks.”
“Well, if you’re going to earn all that money, I’m sure I can occupy myself. After all, it’s not forever, is it?”
“No, it’s not for ever. We should think of it as a chance for us, to build up some security—”
“Will you pass me those salad
Terry Towers, Stella Noir