John Simpson - Change of Course

I wanted to tell her something, but my mind was awash with disjointed snippets: not a single coherent fact. It could only give her a jumble of half-remembered half-truths, and I wanted to do better than that. I also needed to think about why I had chosen to forget that time. Did I have something to hide? I felt physically and psychologically drained. I needed time to rest and time to read and remember.

‘Okay,’ I said finally, ‘but can you come back tomorrow? I’ve been on the go for hours; I need get myself together. Thirty years … it’s a long time.’

She looked disappointed. ‘I was hoping …’

I stifled a yawn.

She nodded reluctantly.

‘At about three o’clock?’ I suggested. I had to go into the office in the morning to report back and sort a few things out. We agreed on that and I offered to phone for a taxi. She shook her head and extracted a Mercedes-Benz key from her handbag.

***

The weather worsened to a storm as the evening progressed into night. Doors and windows rattled; the house seemed to shake. Broken branches, rubbish bins and other loose items clattered disturbingly. I had gone to bed early but could not sleep. I needed peace and a clear conscience, but I had neither. My mind was active but not analytical; memories hashed and rehashed, fact and fabrication merged and blurred. What had really happened? Had anything? Why was I so worried and why was I hesitating to root out the facts? I knew I had taken notes, but I had no idea why I had chosen to set it down: maybe there would be nothing useful. Images of Jim Lodge flickered around in my mind in a fruitless, frustrating loop. I could not trust my memory and I needed to do something about it if I was going to get any sleep. I got up. It was two in the morning. I started my research.

An old travel trunk in the attic was my repository for stuff I could neither throw away nor bring myself to look at again. The last time I had raised the lid was to put away the paperwork from my divorce and, before that, my father’s death certificate. It was a catalogue of failure and melancholy.

I knew exactly where to find what I needed. The shoebox labelled ‘Angola 1985-6’ sent a shudder through me every time I saw it. I had not opened it since the day I put it away in the trunk thirty years ago, and I doubted if Rachel, my ex-wife, had ever pried; she was not the kind.

I steeled myself and took the lid off the shoebox. Its contents were unremarkable; some photographs and press clippings; a wad of Kwanzas, the local currency; another wad of permits for travel and work; and there were two notebooks; one for each of the two six-month contracts I completed in Angola. I have never kept a formal diary, but I have always made arbitrary notes about my work contracts just in case I ever have to refer back to something. I guessed I would have written plenty about Jim Lodge as his death had been a rite of passage for me; the first dead body I had ever seen. I wondered to what extent my recollection of events had been, or would be, coloured by that.

The first notebook was a disappointment. A quick skim told me little about Lodge. He was mentioned as a geologist, but he barely registered as a personality. I put it back in the shoebox and hoped for more from the second book, my second contract, during which Lodge had died. I took it, along with the press clippings and some photographs, down to the living room where I settled into my favourite armchair to read. My notes were a hangover from university, economical on sentences but rich on trigger words, a style that had always worked for me, making revision easy: Nocredo – Hercules – rains. Morgan – Thys Gerber – chopper – garimpeiros – Txicaca. It would have meant nothing to anyone else but me …

***

I looked out from the window of the Hercules. It had begun its steep descent into Nocredo where the airstrip appeared as a bloody gash in the Angolan bush. The lushness and the lack of dust told me the rainy season had started while I had been away on leave.

The Hercules taxied to a corrugated steel shed that served as the airport building and workers swarmed around its tail, waiting for the door to drop. I saw two old men struggling towards us with some rickety steps, manhandling them to the front door so that I, the only passenger, could disembark, along with the crew.

I got up from my seat in the cargo hold and stretched; I was stiff. I adjusted my sweaty clothes and lugged my bags to the now open door where I stopped to look around for any faces I might recognise, to give me a lift to the mine. There was only one and he was a surprise.

A stocky, pugnacious-looking man detached himself from a small group and swaggered over, dragging another man in his wake. He grinned and offered his hand.

‘Welcome back, lad. Good leave?’ His accent betrayed his roots in the Rhondda valley.

‘Great! Thanks Geoff. I wasn’t expecting you. I can’t believe you’re my taxi.’

Geoff Morgan was the Mumbulo Mine Manager. ‘Don’t start,’ he laughed, ‘I had to come anyway … with the chopper. I’ve got Jan’s replacement with me. I’m showing him some of the illegal mining in the area.’ A sly smile creased his face as he nodded towards his companion. I sensed I was convenient to his plan; that I was going to have to work for my lift back to the mine. ‘Did you meet Thys before you went on leave?’ he continued.

I shook my head. ‘I knew you had someone lined up, but …’

‘Thys has joined us from the South African Police. He’s going to give us a policing approach to diamond security.’

The other man, tall and khaki-clad, with a terracotta tan, stepped forward and we shook hands; his grip was firm, but it tightened to a crush just before he released my hand. Was that a show of strength or a warning, I wondered.

Morgan glanced at his watch and gestured towards the helipad. The Alouette helicopter, a Perspex bubble on a flimsy steel skeleton, did not inspire confidence, nor did the pilot who leaned languidly against the fuel bowser smoking and chatting while refuelling took place.

As we approached, the pilot stubbed out his cigarette. He gave my smart new suitcase a contemptuous look before he snatched it from me and chucked it carelessly into the back of the cockpit. He then eyed the grubby, canvas bag that was slung over my shoulder. I hefted it to him and watched as he eased it carefully into a space behind the seats. That was a duty almost done. All that was left was for me to do was to sign in the bag at the mine office. I had picked it up at the company’s office near Hatton Garden in London before getting a taxi to Heathrow. It was an inconvenience but one that no one would refuse to do. The bag contained not only all the business mail for the Mumbulo Mine but also all the personal mail. Without that bag, and similar ones, passing in and out with employees taking leave, the mine would not function. There was no telephone connection between the mine and its Head Office and, for personnel away from home for up to six months at a time, the weekly mail bag was the only link to home.

‘É tudo?’ he asked.

‘That’s all.’ I nodded.

Morgan checked his watch again. ‘Combustível? Have we enough fuel for the journey yet?’

‘Sim chefe.’ The pilot shrugged then set about getting his passengers strapped in and fitted with headsets.

We ascended vertically before heading towards the river, a fast-flowing torrent that etched a profound story into the landscape. It told, in a ratio of green to brown, where it ran and how it had been tamed. Huge blocky brown areas testified to man’s interference as a diamond miner – ugly eyesores.

The racket from the rotors was deafening and I hated having to bellow to be understood. Even using the intercom, I had to shout and repeat myself several times, but Morgan felt no such reticence – he enjoyed shouting. He explained that he wanted my help to familiarize Thys with the activities of illegal miners: their numbers, their operations and their methods.