John Davis - Seize the Reckless Wind

‘You haven’t a high regard for her opinion. Do you think you qualify as her soulmate?’

Mahoney sighed.

‘I like to read, but I haven’t much time. But Shelagh? – she writes poetry. She’s into long walks in the woods when it’s pissing with rain. Women’s Lib. Now she’s into meditation. I simply haven’t got the time .’

‘No, you’re the breadwinner, the Victorian husband who says: “ This is what we’re doing, here is where we’ll live, I’m the man in this house” …’

Mahoney stared at him. ‘You think I’m like that?’

‘I’m suggesting Shelagh sees you like that … So, you don’t like Australia, and Shelagh must accept your life here.’

Mahoney took a breath. ‘You may not appreciate this, but being a Rhodesian makes me British to the goddamn core. Rhodesians may be a bit slow off the mark making the reforms people like me wanted, but the Rhodesians – even including Ian Smith and most of his cowboys – the Rhodesians are the last of the British! The last custodians of the good old British values in Africa. Like hard work. Incorruptible public service. Good judges. Good police. Good health and education services. And’ – he held up a finger – ‘a Victorian civilizing mission.’

‘Victorian …’ the psychiatrist murmured.

Mahoney held up a hand. ‘Ah yes, those good old values are old-fashioned in today’s milk-and-water egalitarianism and the world-owes-us-a-living ethic. But I was brought up to think and feel British – I feel like an Englishman. I don’t want to be Australian or American – so if Rhodesia is finished, I’ll come back to the land of my forebears.’ He added, with a bleak smile: ‘In fact, God is an Englishman.’

‘And you want to run an airline instead of being a lawyer.’

Mahoney sighed. ‘In Rhodesia I was a big fish in a small pond. But here there’d be many lean years before I built up a reputation. And I don’t know much Law, never did. A seat-of-the-pants barrister, that’s me. And now I have to make that airline work because all our capital’s in it. And it is working. All around airlines go bankrupt, but we’re making it! Because we’re lean and work hard. O.K., we only get housekeeping money, because we’ve got to pay off mortgages on our aircraft, and homes. Do you know what our aviation fuel-bill is? One and half million pounds a year! Cash on fill-up. No credit. Our pilots carry five thousand pounds with them on each trip, to fill up. And the banks that lend us that kind of money want it back at the end of each week. How do we do it? By working hard … Once our mortgages are paid we’re going to be well off. But right now we’re two weeks away from bankruptcy at any given moment. It only needs those OPEC bastards to hike the price of oil unexpectedly, or we lose two engines, or we’ve got an empty plane, and we’re broke. So we have to work …’

He massaged his brow. ‘And’, he said ‘it’s worthwhile work! Britain has to export. We’re helping British goods go worldwide, at cheaper rates. And we specialize in out-of-the-way places the big airlines refuse to serve, and we bring back products that otherwise wouldn’t be sold! Shelagh sees us as a trucking company, but aren’t we helping the economy? And isn’t economics the key to Africa’s backwardness – a man will never grow more than he needs to eat unless he can sell his surplus and buy something else with his money.’ He sat back. ‘Isn’t that better than arguing Carlyle versus The Carbolic Smokeball Company, which any fool lawyer can do?’

‘So you haven’t washed your hands of Africa – but Shelagh must! And now, far from going back to Law, you’re talking about airships.’

Mahoney slumped back.

‘Airships … ,’ he sighed. ‘Airships don’t even exist , except these mickey-mouse Goodyear blimps.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m very interested in the principle of airships, because they would revolutionize the Third World economies. But’, he smiled wearily, ‘all I’ve done is lent a tumble-down cottage to a guy called Malcolm Todd. That’s a far cry from spending Shelagh’s housekeeping money on an airship.’

The psychiatrist put his hands together. ‘So what are you going to do to get her back? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, at forty quid an hour, which you can ill afford?’

Get her back? Oh God! And Cathy …

‘Well,’ the psychiatrist demanded, ‘do you love her?’ He answered himself. ‘Of course, you adore her, don’t you?’

Mahoney breathed deep. ‘Yes.’

‘And does Shelagh love you?’ He answered again: ‘Yes, when you were the young big-wheel lawyer around town? Then she realized you were also a dictatorial Victorian bastard who didn’t go too much for transcendental meditation, so she began to cool off you? Tell me, what did you love about her? Her mind? Didn’t you find her a little way-out for you, a bit too arty, undergraduate? She didn’t even like to get drunk with you.’ He leant forward. ‘It’s her body , isn’t it?’

Mahoney shifted.

The psychiatrist said, ‘You’re hooked on her body. Her loins … And Joe Mahoney had never been rejected before, he’d always been the one to love ’em and leave ’em. And you couldn’t bear the thought of her screwing somebody else, could you?’

‘Is that unusual?’

‘So when she comes back to you the last time, you marry her. Why? Because she’s pregnant? Did you think that marriage would change your relationship? Is that the advice you would have given a client?’

‘Probably not,’ Mahoney sighed.

‘Exactly. But your heart ruled your head – as always, I suspect.’ He added: ‘And now you’re being illogical. You’re the Victorian, but instead of kicking her out, as a Victorian would – or giving her a hiding and taking on a mistress for good measure – you’re a supplicant.’

Mahoney stared at him. ‘ Me? A supplicant? ’

‘Oh, you don’t walk around with a hang-dog expression begging her favours – in fact the opposite, you doggedly lay down the law – but mentally you’re trying to figure out how to get her love back, and you badly want to make love to her. Right? Tell me – how’s your sex life?’

Mahoney didn’t answer.

‘Exactly,’ the psychiatrist sighed. ‘How can you be a confident lover with all that? And remember the old rule-of-thumb: a woman who’s getting well laid will forgive her man anything. But if she isn’t …’

The summer went that way. Afterwards, he did not remember much about the days. They were all work work work, chasing cargo, juggling overdrafts, worrying about engines, schedules. It was the nights he would remember. Redcoat preferred to fly out at night because there was less time waiting on the runway for permission to take off, burning fuel, and it allowed Mahoney to do some office work during the day. You have plenty of time to think and feel, flying through the nights.

And he remembered the Africa at the other end. Redcoat always tried to arrive after sunrise, in case they had forgotten to switch on the runway lights, or they were off at a beer drink. They parked on the apron and let the warm, fertile air of Africa flood in, and the swarm of cargo handlers, and they broke out the beer while they talked to their agent, changed money at blackmarket rates, got the good news or the bad news about the cargo that had or had not shown up; then went bumping into town over broken roads to another run-down hotel. If Mahoney didn’t have to buy twenty-five tons of bananas or pineapples as his cargo, he usually walked downtown through the broken-down shops and chickens and derelict cars and children with flies around their nostrils, and went to a pub and drank beer which would have cost three pounds a bottle if he had changed money at the official rates but cost thirty pence at the blackmarket rates, and he watched Africa go by. And he loved these people, and he despaired. He thought: in ten years Rhodesia is going to be like this. And he thought: I wish Shelagh were here … Twelve hours later they took off again, into the African night.