Any Human Heart (51 page)

Colonel Jack told us that the civilians had reported that all Biafran resistance in this sector had collapsed because Ojukwu himself had ordered the execution of four local men on the charge of cannibalism. ‘He accused them of eating Biafran soldiers,’ Colonel Jack said. ‘What kind of bloody fool idiot is this man?’ The offence to the local tribe was huge, incalculable, and all logistical support in the locality had ceased immediately — no food, no water, no guides for the meandering bush paths. The local tribespeople were now actively helping the Federal Army.

‘And so this is how a war is won,’ Colonel Jack said as we drove back to the Roundabout Hotel. ‘A question of making a wrong insult at the wrong time. We’ve advanced twelve miles today.’ He clapped me on the shoulder: he was very pleased. ‘I tell you, Commander, I will be Brigadier Jack before Christmas.’

Matilda has just knocked on my door; ‘Hello, sar. Love is calling.’ I’ve given her another pound and told her to buy herself another Fanta in the bar. No word from Simeon. I wonder how long I should stay.

Spent the morning typing up my piece for
Polity,
called ‘A Day at the War with Colonel Jack’. Quite pleased with it. Zygmunt left for the northern front at Nsukka. He thinks it’ll be easier to infiltrate Biafra from there — he wants to meet Ojukwu before the war is over.

I lunched on fried plantain and a genuinely cold bottle of Star Beer — quite delicious.

This afternoon three Nigerian Air Force MiGs came over, very low. Matilda gestured contemptuously at them. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘they no be frighten now.’

Later. Simeon came back this afternoon. His parents’ house has been looted, cleared out of everything, but is still standing. His family continues to hide in the bush, however, very mistrustful of both armies. No sign of Isaac, but Simeon seemed unperturbed. The bush was full of deserters from the Biafran Army, he told me, and Isaac would be with them somewhere, safe and well. He was oddly exhilarated, so I suppose we can say the mission is sort of accomplished. We head back to U.C. Ikiri tomorrow. Matilda wants a lift to Benin: she’s sick of the meagre returns offered by the Roundabout Hotel.

Isaac is back from the war. I came out to breakfast on the veranda and there he was, beaming in his khaki shorts and white t-shirt. He was thinner, his head was shaved, but apparently none the worse for his experiences. He had in fact only managed to desert a week before the war ended as he was part of a contingent of troops guarding the airstrip at Uli, where the relief flights came in. As the Federal Army drew ever closer he was deployed on the perimeter, given a hand grenade and five rounds of ammunition (as a guard he was provided with just a single round). Once in the bush he had slipped off his uniform, thrown away his gun and had headed south, homewards.

The war ended so quickly, he said, because a spiritualist leader was executed for Vicarious murder’ (Isaac’s words). All the Biafran commanders relied totally on advice from spiritualists and so-called prophets — no military order or instruction was issued without the approval of the spiritualists — and when the leader of this sect was executed officers on the southern front simply refused to fight. The exhausted Biafran soldiers, seeing their officers so demoralized, just drifted away, leaving their positions unmanned. The Nigerian Army marched in singing, rifles slung. Another good day for Colonel Jack, no doubt.

Sixty-four. My birthday passed in total and gratifying anonymity. It was marred only by the Desiccated Coconut who, at the departmental meeting, reminded everyone that I would be leaving at the end of the next academic year and that a new lecturer would be needed for the English Novel course. ‘Dear Logan is retiring, alas. We are losing our Oxford man.’ There were mutters of commiseration and congratulation. Polly glanced at me, a little shocked: I don’t think she had me down as an almost-old-age-pensioner. I don’t look too bad, I must say — I suit my sun tan and I only drink beer these days — well, most of the time — which has sleekened me and thickened my waistline.

I played our usual nine holes with Kwaku this afternoon and told him I was obliged to leave next year and wondered vaguely if there was the likelihood of any other job being available to me out here. Candidly, he thought it would be almost impossible — you’d lose your house, he said, you’d get a quarter of your salary. You’d have to go to Ibadan, at least, if not Lagos.

For some reason I don’t want to leave Africa — I’ve come to like my life here — and Britain and Europe seem strangely hostile, now. But I can see that the prospects of employment for a 65-year-old Englishman with a third-class degree from Oxford must be poor. So back to London it shall be, I suppose, back to Turpentine Lane — see what kind of living I can scrape with my pen.

After a swim at the club pool I wandered back to Danfodio Road, feeling the sun hot upon my bare head. I opened a bottle of Star Beer and sat on the veranda, drinking. Then I went out into my garden and wandered around its perimeter touching the trees with the palms of my hand — the casuarinas, the guava, the cotton tree, the avocado, the frangipani — as if this last touch, this fleeting caress, was a way of saying goodbye to them, my trees, my African life. My ears were filled with the metallic static of the cicadas and the faint breeze raised the smell of dust from the bleached grass. I rested my forehead against the trunk of a papaya and closed my eyes. Then I heard Godspeed, my gardener, saying in anxious tones, ‘Sar — you go be all right?’ No, I wanted to say: I go fear I never go be all right never again.

1 David Gascoyne (1916-2001), poet and translator.

2 Dr Kwaku Okafor, LMS’s next-door neighbour.

3 The Nigerian Civil War — the Biafran war — had begun in 1967 when the eastern states of Nigeria unilaterally seceded from the republic, taking most of Nigeria’s oil reserves with them.

4 Cesare di Cordato died in 1965, aged seventy-seven.

5 A colleague in the English Literature Department.

6 The nickname of the entirely bald Professor of English at Ikiri, Prof. Donald Camrose.

7 LMS had bought his predecessor’s car when he arrived in 1965 — an Austin 1100.

8 The Biafran leader, an Ibo.

9 Harold Wilson was the then Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Logan Mountstuart returned to London at the end of the summer term in July 1971 and took up residence once again in Turpentine Lane, Pimlico. He only had his old-age pension and his savings to sustain him financially (his few years’ contribution to the U.C. Ikiri pension plan was too short-lived to provide anything more than a pittance) so he applied himself to his former profession of freelance writer with diligence if not enthusiasm.
Polity,
his main source of income, folded in 1972, and Sheila Adrar at Wallace Douglas Ltd was unsuccessful (or dilatory) in securing any advance from a publisher for the long-nurtured novel
Octet.
Udo Feuerbach retained him as London correspondent for
revolver
and Ben Leeping, ailing now from prostate cancer, paid him for occasional consultancy work for Leeping Frères. Slowly but surely, over the next few years, LMS became ever more impecunious. The Second London Journal opens in the spring of 1975.

I sacked that bitch Adrar today. I went into the agency to photocopy a few magazine articles I needed for research on
Octet.
First of all, the girl on reception refused to believe I was a client of the firm — then she found my file somewhere. I said that Wallace Douglas himself had given me permission to use the office facilities whenever I pleased. Anyway, there I was, photocopying away, but quite aware of the whispered confusion and semi-panic in the office: who is that old man in the pinstriped suit? What does he think he’s doing? Should we call the police? Eventually, Sheila Adrar herself appeared, looking very well coiffed and prosperous in a blue suit with a short skirt. ‘Logan,’ she said with the widest and falsest smile, ‘how wonderful to see you.’ Then she offered to help, gathering up the loose leaves of paper and checking the counter on the machine. Sixty two copies she said, at twopence a copy, that’ll be £1.64. Most amusing, Sheila, I said, and took the copies from her and made my way to the door. I’d like the money please, Logan, she said, this is not a charity. Well, I just blew up. How dare you? I said. Have you any idea how much money I’ve made for this firm? And you have the nerve to charge me for a few copies. Shame on you. You’ve made nothing for this firm since the Second World War, she said. Right! I shouted, that’s it. You’re fucking sacked, the whole useless lot of you! I’m taking my business elsewhere — and I strode out.

I went into a pub to calm myself down and found my hands were shaking — with sheer rage, not embarrassment, I hasten to add. I’ll call Wallace in the morning and explain what happened. Perhaps he can recommend someone new.

Pleased to have taken up this journal again even if its purpose is more sinister. I fear it will become a documentation of one writer’s decline; a commentary on the London literary scene from the point of view of a superannuated scribbler. These final acts in a writer’s life usually go unrecorded because the reality is too shaming, too sad, too banal. But, on the contrary, it seems to me to be even more important now, after everything that has gone before, to set down the facts as I experience them. No country house, here; no honour-heaped twilight years, no proper respect from a grateful nation or recompense from a profession I’ve served for decades. When some insincere bloodsucker like Adrar dares to claim £1.64 off someone like me then I look at it as a genuine watershed — not because of her temerity, but because I actually couldn’t afford to pay her. £1.64, judiciously spent, can provide me with food for three days. This is the level to which I have descended.

So here is the reckoning. Assets: I own my basement flat in Turpentine Lane, Pimlico. I own its furnishings. I possess about a thousand books, some increasingly threadbare clothes, a watch, cufflinks, etc. Income: my published books are all out of print, thus income from royalties is nil. I have the standard old-age pension provided by the state with an insignificant addition of almost £3 a week from my U.C. Ikiri pension fund. Freelance work: very erratic.

Expenditure: rates, gas, electricity, water, telephone, food, clothing, transport. I have no car — I travel by bus or tube. I have no television (hire and licence fee too expensive — I listen to the radio and play my gramophone records). My only indulgences, the luxuries in my life, are alcohol and cigarettes and the occasional visit to a cinema or pub. I read newspapers that I find discarded on buses and tube trains.

My head is just kept above water by occasional journalism and consultancy work for Leeping Frères. Last year I earned approximately £650. So far this year I’ve written a long piece on Rothko (£50), reviewed a book on Bloomsbury (£25) and assessed a private collection of pictures for Ben (£200).

I eat frugal meals of corned beef (the culinary leitmotif in my life), baked beans and potatoes. A tin of condensed soup, well diluted, can be eked out to four or five servings. A tea bag, properly utilized, can make three cups of weakish tea. And so on. Thank God I had a good tailor. My last set of suits from Byrne & Milner will last many more years with careful maintenance. Underwear, socks and shirts are rare purchases. I wash my clothes by hand and dry them in front of the gas fire in winter or on a rack set out in the basement well in the summer. Foreign travel is out of the question unless wholly subsidized by others. For example, Gloria asked me to La Fucina for ‘as long as I liked’ this summer. I told her I couldn’t afford the fare and since she didn’t offer to pay I assume she’s similarly strapped for cash herself.

I still drink — cider, beer and the cheapest wine — and I have taken to rolling my own cigarettes.

In the day I go to a public library to continue my research on
Octet
or to write my rare articles. I type them up at home in the evening. Then I listen to the radio or gramophone records and read. I might go to my local pub, the Cornwallis, for a half pint of bitter two or three times a week. I have my health, I am independent, I owe no money. I am — just — surviving. This is the life of an elderly man of letters, here in London, in 1975.

[NOTE IN RETROSPECT. 1982. I never noted it at the time but, during these years when I was truly on my uppers, I used occasionally to recall what Mr Schmidt had screamed at me that morning in New York when Monday/Laura had made her dash for freedom. LOSER! You English loser… I suppose he thought it was the most grievous insult he could hurl. But such a curse doesn’t really have any effect on an English person — or a European — it seems to me. We know we’re all going to lose in the end so it is deprived of any force as a slur. But not in the USA. Perhaps this is the great difference between the two worlds, this concept of Loserdom. In the New World it is the ultimate mark of shame — in the Old it prompts only a wry sympathy. I wonder what Titus Fitch would have to say.]

To the Travellers’ Club for lunch with Peter [Scabius]. I buy a new shirt from a market stall (price 80 pence) and with my dark blue suit and my RNVR tie I think I pass muster. Put some oil on my hair and comb it flat. My shoes still look suspect — a little busted — even after a vigorous polish, but I think I look pretty smart.

Peter has become portly, flushed, with many tedious complaints: his blood pressure, his ghastly children, the unmitigated boredom of life in the Channel Islands. I say: what’s the point of having all this money if the money forces you to live somewhere you dislike? He rebukes me: I don’t understand — his accountants are immovable. I take the opportunity to eat heartily — three bread rolls with my mulligatawny soup, three veg. with my roast lamb, then apple crumble and cream and a wedge of Wensleydale from the cheese board. Peter is currently banned from drinking (incipient diabetes, he thinks) so I enjoy a half bottle of claret and a large port on my own. He sees me to the door and I notice he’s limping. For the first time in our encounter he asks me a question about myself: what’re you up to, Logan? Working on a novel, I say. Marvellous, marvellous, he replies vaguely, then asks me if I still read novels. He confesses he can’t get on with novels, these days, he only reads newspapers and magazines. I tell him I’m re-reading Smollett, just to make him feel bad, then step out into Pall Mall and flag down a taxi. We shake hands, promise to stay in touch. I climb into the taxi and as soon as it’s turned the corner into the Mall I order it to stop and get out. 65 pence for three hundred yards, but worth every penny not to let the side down.