It is all so different now. On the rare occasions that I visit the city almost every shop seems to have changed. Before the civil war we could buy Italian shoes, English dresses and Spanish handbags, but now my favourite department store seems to offer little but unbleached calico. And where is the Chinese family who fed my noisy tennis friends? It’s all because of that damned war.
As the hostilities dragged on most of the frightened population upped sticks and emigrated. Some went to the old world and some tried the new. Others were killed in battle or, like my mother, simply gave up and died. But they’ve all left traces of themselves. All around I see ghosts and the main one belongs to my husband, Nic, and he’s not even dead. Be careful if you let the past into your head because it can become more real than the present. Quite honestly I prefer the past.
I married the regulation handsome, alpha male, but almost from the altar he let me down. Nic was a career soldier who became madly excited when the civil war started. Real army people love action. It beats marching endlessly about in fancy formations. Fighting is what they’ve trained for and it gives them a glorious adrenalin rush. But day after boring day there is nothing to entertain soldiers in the bush; no television, no girls, no swimming pool and no drink, so it’s fight, eat and sleep and this is not easy if insurgents are taking pot-shots at you. During any lull the men came home to attend to their laundry, as well as other necessary comforts.
Right at the start Nic said, ‘Don’t worry your little head, Stella. This fracas will be over quickly. The Africans have no weapons, no money and certainly no expertise. They won't last the week'. Just because I’m blonde he thinks I’m stupid and is so, so patronising.
The Prime Minister also told us we were winning, when even I could see we weren’t. In fact the fighting went on for years because the guerrillas didn’t formally declare war but just caused trouble in remote and inaccessible areas, forcing our men to scurry from one side of the colony to the other.
‘The buggers just won’t be drawn into the open,’ Nic complained.
‘The Romans had the same trouble with the Ancient Britons,’ said my father.
What did Nic expect - the enemy advancing behind the band of the Coldstream Guards wearing bright red tunics? ‘You’re not going to lose are you?’ I asked.
'They’ve got the latest ground-to-air missiles from the Communists so our planes have to hedgehop to get up and corkscrew to get down. If we can't win soon its curtains. We haven’t the money to sustain a long engagement.’ He talks in this pompous, pedantic way. Soldiers can be very boring.
‘Sit down and talk to them then. This country’s big enough for all of us.’ You can tell I’m not cut out to be the wife of a conquering hero. If women were in charge we wouldn’t have wars. We’d have emotional talks every month.
‘Talk to the enemy? Are you mad, Stella? Give in to their ludicrous demands? We’d be replacing a trained bunch of first class chaps with undisciplined insurgents. I’m not standing for that.’
What was the conflict about? Well, our lot, ‘The Master Race’, were hell-bent on defending ‘Western Christian Civilisation’, but in reality they were just swapping one self-centred, myopic regime for an even worse one. Trouble in Africa is generally about land. Scarlett O’Hara was right when she said, “Do you mean to tell me that land doesn’t mean anything to you. Why land is the only thing in the world”.
Who should have won? The whites of course, but foreign powers weighed in on the black side, so we lost. Colonel Nic Forrester had never suffered defeat before and his familiar values were turned upside down. ‘What will the bastards do to me?’ he piteously moaned. ‘Drag me through the streets in shackles?’
‘It’s a pyrrhic victory,’ offered my father, who mostly speaks in Latin.
So His Royal Highness, Colonel-in-Chief, the Queen’s own Hander-over-of-Colonies, flew in. The bands played and the flags flew high as, resplendent in uniform and medals, hands clasped behind his back, he handed us over to the chief guerrilla, Comrade Premier Mpofu. And after the show was over the prince went to bed with his mistress while her husband, Comptroller of the Royal Polo Sticks, made do with our Regimental Tart, (legs up to her armpits and a double D-cup). You have only to mention her name for every officer’s wife to leap in front of her man. If you asked her how many husbands she’d had, apart from her own, I doubt she’d really know. Remember that woman because she plays an important role in my own story.
Guess what the defeated Nic said after the handover? ‘I’ll be winding up the Regiment most of this month so you could visit your father. I’ll drive you over at O.900 hours and then get your car serviced.’ Everything in the army has to done by the clock. It’s never, ‘we’ll leave at nineish’.
I should have smelt a rat as Nic’s never been solicitous, but I dutifully went home to Daddy and, after we’d had enough of one another, I borrowed his old Vauxhall to drive back home again. Through the gates of the Royal Mozepwe Army Barracks, past the playing fields, the enlisted men’s quarters and on to the officers’ compound. We had the second best house as befits number two in command. There were no cars in our drive, so Nic was not there, but where on earth was our veranda furniture?
On opening the front door I saw nothing but army-issue fittings. All our belongings had disappeared; no clothes in my wardrobe, no make-up in my drawer and no photographs of John on my dressing table. A tour of the house yielded nothing but an old sewing machine. Nic must have missed that. Had he put our effects into storage? Perhaps a new army was taking over?
Next-door my neighbour opened the door. ‘Hi Stell, settled in all right? I hear your new house is lovely,’ said the silly woman. Through a mist I heard about the farewell party that Nic had hosted in the Officers’ Mess. Slowly, ever so slowly, it dawned on me. I’d been dumped. Nineteen years of marriage down the drain. I’d had it - no home, no car, no money and no clothes. How could Nic do this after all I’d been through? I broke down and the poor woman had to phone Jane. She’s my best friend and tells me I’m too thin. In return I pretend that she’s a natural blonde.
‘The bastard must have sold the lot,’ said Jane, who divides men into rats and super rats. ‘Nic expected to make brigadier didn’t he? So he just couldn’t face life as plain Mr Nobody. I bet he took the Tart with him.’
She was absolutely right. Nic had auctioned off all of our worldly goods, including my car. He’d also cashed in our joint bank accounts and bought illicit diamonds with the proceeds. Now, as I wasn’t actually on the spot, the following story comes courtesy of my ‘friends’, who positively seemed to relish their moment.
Nic didn't even say goodbye to his father before he and the Tart set off for the airport, ready to hightail it out of Mozepwe.
‘I booked the last flight,’ he told her. ‘Let’s hope the Customs have had a tiring day.’ Taking the Tart by the arm, he added, ‘Keep going girl, but act casual.’
‘How can I with a fortune stuffed up my insides?’ she demanded.
But they were out of luck. At the x-ray gates they heard, ‘please go into the first cubicle and Colonel Forrester, perhaps you could go into the other - just a formality.'
The Tart started to cry. ‘Nic stop them.'
'Shut up. Just shut up,' said Nic, who has an awful temper.
A uniformed officer, flexing her rubbery fingers, told the Tart to undress. Then each orifice was explored until a small haul of diamonds was laid triumphantly, if somewhat messily, upon the table and off they went to prison.
The thought of ‘The Good Time That Was Had By All’ sewing mail bags pleases me a lot, but I always imagined that Nic would leave the regiment dressed in a suit, not in convict’s stripes.
So, with no home to call my own, it was back to Daddy, at 46, Livingstone Avenue. Hurtled from my familiar world I lay awake in my solitary bed feeling as if I’d been run over. No more days of shopping, tennis and tanning by the officers’ pool. After eighteen years as a kept woman I’d have to work. When my friends were splitting up we’d hear cries of, "I’m taking him to the cleaners" and substantial settlements would follow. My divorce won’t take long as Nic’s earning power will be the ‘cigarette money’ he’ll earn in prison.
As for those diamonds … as every one of my belongings went into their purchase, aren’t half rightfully mine? I would employ a lawyer if I had any money. What if I auctioned Nic’s sword of honour and medals. See how he likes that. As dawn broke I was still awake, wishing I was a widow, because then I might be in line for a pension.
All night long I’d been reviewing our nineteen years together. After the wedding, in my ivory gown and line of fluttering bridesmaids, we lived in barracks, where I did try to be the perfect officer’s wife. Oh, there was much to learn. If the Brigadier wished to press himself up against me I should let him. I wanted to raise my knee but I would simper prettily.
Nic was desperate to hurtle up the career ladder as fast as possible … when I think back to the number of courses he volunteered for. As the most advanced form of warfare seems to be Marriage he should have taken a course or two in that.
Soon after our wedding I heard him telling his father, 'It's difficult for Stella, stuck in the barracks and not knowing anyone. I guess she's not enjoying it too much, especially as she's pregnant and pretty sick. But she’ll get over it. I know the other girls are showing her how the Army works.’
I had to befriend the officers’ wives at the one coffee party after another, when all we had in common was the biological urge to procreate.
But soon I had my beloved John. One day I overheard Mrs Brigadier saying, “I think Stella has fallen in love with her baby. Women who do that leave their husbands out in the cold”. Maybe the failure of our marriage was entirely my fault. Perhaps Nic was so humiliated that he simply had to run away with someone new.