Eighty Not Out (30 page)

On the other hand, the children had a hell of a good time, which would not have been the case had we stayed at Mwanza without Stephano to help (he had gone to Tanga, and the dogs were being looked after by our Dutch neighbours). A high point of the holiday was Michael excelling himself by learning (a) to dive, (b) to do the breast-stroke, and (c) to pick things off the bottom of the heated pool, all in one afternoon. He had just watched and waited till he was ready, which is what he always told us. Donald Gilchrist, now working at a mission hospital in Kenya, came for lunch during our stay, and told us that he had been appointed surgeon on the oil pipelines in Abu Dhabi: a lucrative post, undertaken to fund boarding school fees for the boys at Fort Augustus on Loch Ness. We had agreed to meet the McMahons for Christmas at the hotel, and their youngest, Andrew, developed viral pneumonia; he had to be hospitalised, so it was not the relaxing break we adults had anticipated. I was tested for typhoid and brucellosis, which proved negative, and after a few days, I was on the mend. But on our return home, a nasty cold developed – it must have been a judgement on me for having remarked to Fergus that we had all been remarkably healthy for almost a year.

We did not send Katharine back for the next term: a new headmaster was taking over, and many of her favourite teachers and friends were leaving. Isamilo Primary School agreed to take her for the few weeks remaining before it would break up for a five-week holiday at the beginning of February. As it turned out, it was fortuitous that she had not returned to Kaptagat, as she, too, developed viral pneumonia and was confined to bed for a full seven days. Response to drugs was minimal and recovery was slow, with a danger of relapse, so we had to discourage a tendency to get out of bed and horse around with a hula-hoop.

Now the packing began of the detritus we had accumulated over the last six years. Much would have to be sent to the United Nations Development Project storage unit in Dar until we heard where the next duty station would be. Very few things were worth taking to Ireland, though the meat grinder and mixer were still going strong after almost daily use. I warned my mother to await the next delivery of cockroach eggs. There was no trouble in off-loading any other electrical gadgets that were in working order. We were officially informed that each of us would be entitled to 25 kilograms of unaccompanied air freight, which meant that I would be able to bring home things such as the sewing machine, projector, carvings and better books, rather than have them stored in coastal climatic conditions, prior to going by sea to an, as yet unknown, destination. (Good news for the books, as any sent to Dar were badly foxed when we saw them again three years later in France.) While all this work was going on at home, Fergus was still churning out papers on mollusciciding, obligatory quarterly reports, as well as a few photographic requests. He now thought we should defer our departure until late March.

It was no surprise when Mary and I both developed a persistent cough, aches and pains, a high fluctuating fever, periods of shivering and heavy sweats: we were not as ill as Katharine had been, but it was untimely, and delayed my work programme. Mine took hold the night before the arrival of a professor from the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, who was accompanied by an eminent paediatrician, and his wife, a family planning consultant. In the morning, after preparing the first stages of the evening meal, I was forced to admit defeat and palmed them off on the Dutch doctor's wife. The next day I had recovered enough to have lunch ready when Fergus brought them back from a tour of the project area. Afterwards I took to bed again. Whatever the bug was, it was by far the most unpleasant we had suffered since coming to Mwanza in 1967. Mary was a cheerful, uncooperative patient who refused to remain long in bed despite having a temperature as high as 103 at times. The only thing that knocked her out was a paracetamol tablet plus a dose of Benylin – which we all referred to as Grannie's
dawa
(Swahili for any medical ‘cure' – Grannie became addicted to it).

Before our departure I had a final job to do for Fergus. A trip to the Misungwi project area was necessary to photograph all the ‘Wazee' (respected senior citizens, in our parlance), or ten-cell leaders of the
TANU
party organisation, which ensured that each ten houses or households appointed a leader whose job it was to bring any complaints to the right authority. It was pleasant to drive, very early in the morning, through the thirtynine miles of sporadically settled Sukumaland south of the lake to Misungwi and beyond. On arrival I was met by the most senior of Fergus's field team, who had done his best to assemble everyone involved in the photo-shoot; however, we had a three-quarter-hour wait before the latecomers put in an appearance. There ensued, with the aid of an interpreter – Sukuma is a separate language – protracted discussion as to how best to position them into a practical shape for the group picture. Much good-humoured banter accompanied the bringing of benches, stools, chairs and an odd assortment of stones, on which the youngest perched themselves. Failure to understand the concept of depth of focus led to further complications, such as not realising that if one lurks behind someone taller in the front row, one is not going to appear in the picture.

About a year previously,
WHO
had sent an official photographer to record the project. We had entertained him, but neither of us liked him, and I had predicted that he would not send copies of anything he had taken. This proved the case, so the only satisfactory pictures taken were by me; likewise, the only villagers to get copies of their photographs were my victims. This took up a lot of time, as I had to do all the processing, including mixing the chemicals. After such a long delay that I thought it had been lost, the Kodachrome film of pollution sites in and around Mwanza came back from processing. It shows the shades of shit, tan, yellowish white and purply brown effervescent contaminants that were being poured into the lake at Mwanza South; mainly by the detergent and textile factories, but some by the East African Railways and Harbours division. The level of pollution augured ill, for the local population as well as fish and other wildlife, and needed to be emphasised at a conference in Nairobi, which the regional office had refused Fergus permission to attend. The paper on pollution of the lake and other water-bodies was instead presented by the director, with slides by yours truly.

Inevitably Michael got a version of the super-bug, and was disappointed to miss the conjurer who visited the school: the girls said he did not miss much as his tricks had been limited, but he had eaten fire and wiped a piece of cow-hide across Mary's face – to what purpose, nobody knew. When Fergus felt a sore throat developing, he immediately began a course of the strongest drug then available, an experiment not tried on any other victim. Alone of us, he did not succumb. Michael's illness took three weeks, having had a relapse during which his temperature soared. We took him to a Danish paediatrician, whose X-ray showed a patch on his left lung, so he was put on tetracycline. His muscular little legs had become stick-like and his complexion pallid, but like Katharine, when he began to eat again, recovery was rapid.

Brazzaville had not replied to a cable Fergus had sent some weeks previously requesting travel authorisation for his dependants, without which no reservations could be made, but refused to let us buy our own tickets. We had made this request in order to use up some of the currency gained by the sale of household goods. The currency restrictions prevailing in Tanzania at that time could not have been better designed to frustrate the individual, complicate existence, create jobs for the boys, and generate maximum confusion. Wires were to-ing and fro-ing and, as our travel dates approached, the scene at home was one of total chaos, the house being littered with half-packed boxes, little heaps of as yet undesignated stuff, toys and books that suddenly became ‘favourites'. The poor dogs were not experienced enough to know what it all signalled, though they knew well enough what suitcases meant. Our Dutch neighbour had agreed to take them; they liked her and were very much at home in her house. But I did not know how the cats would take our disappearance. The Indian vet refused to put animals down, arguing, ‘You just leave it in the bush and someone will give it a home.' But I knew that the bush was full of starving cats and dogs, which had been abandoned by expatriates as the easiest thing to do.

Our travel authorisation came by wire on 12 March, and we made the final arrangements for our departure. Fergus had requested a two-day duty stopover in Geneva but was refused. He planned to go anyway, footing the per diem costs himself, with time deducted from home leave. He fulminated at the meanness, but as we had predicted refusal, I told him he was wasting his already depleted energy.

The children and I travelled ahead; Fergus left at the end of the month, driving the project car to the coast, to call at the lab in Tanga, say goodbye to the McMahons, thence to Dar to arrange for the storage of our heaviest boxes. He spent a few days in Geneva, before joining us at Craigavad.

17

From Drumlins to Alps via Congo Brazzaville

S
ybil, now returned from West Africa and living in London, had offered to accommodate me and the children at her home in Mill Hill for a few nights before we flew to Ireland. This was a magnificent gesture, and would allow me to stock up with Marks & Spencer clothing, and take the children to visit museums and galleries. Sybil had a part-time teaching job, and we had even more shared interests now that she had completed two tours at the Medical Research Council centre at Fajara in the Gambia.

By 1973 street violence in the
UK
was on the increase, and one might be mugged even in Mill Hill. I found the London scene radically changed from when I had stayed in 1966: now there were more black faces, more elegantly dressed Asian ladies, and for the first time entourages of affluent Arabs in flowing djerbahs cruising Cromwell Road, Knightsbridge and Harrods. I was, and remain, inefficient and apprehensive where bus, train and tube transport are concerned, so it is hard to believe that alone I took five children (mine and Sybil's two, Angus and Dougal) into central London, where they enjoyed the Science Museum, and in particular an expensive visit to the top floor restaurant.

Back home in Craigavad, it never ceased to astonish me how Michael and the girls adapted within days to the change, trotting regularly between the two houses to visit Grannie, and renew friendships made two years ago. The primary school accepted all three for the summer term, so one of the first things to be done was fit them out in the uniform, thankfully an unpretentious one. There was no need to go to Belfast, because Holywood had an excellent store which stocked all the local school uniforms, in addition to the latest fashion range from Ladybird. There were at least two greengrocers, two fish shops, two butchers, two home bakeries, two chemists, a hardware shop, two antique shops, two small cafés serving home-made food, two Chinese restaurants, at least three off-licences, and several pubs which served palatable food. The Palace Army Barracks was situated on the outskirts of the town, churches of every denomination were represented, and the train station was within walking distance of the maypole at the town centre.

The main reminders of what was going on throughout Northern Ireland were the sandbags and coils of wire around the
RUC
barracks. This peaceful town was only six miles from battle-scarred central Belfast, with its security gates and armed patrols, but the fear was of a different order from that in areas where warring factions terrorized all citizens irrespective of race or religion – Falls Road, Shankill Road, Andersonstown, parts of the Antrim Road, Ligoniel and Ardoyne were zones one entered only when there was no alternative choice. Prior to the opening of motorways, the route to what is now Belfast International Airport went through Ligoniel and past Ardoyne, up a steep tortuous road past Divis, before it joined the main road to Antrim near Templepatrick.

I registered with the medical practice in Holywood which my mother attended. One of the first subjects I raised was unease about my drinking. The avuncular doctor asked how much I drank, and I gave a truthful estimate. His reply was jocular: ‘Sure I drink as much as that myself, you've nothing to worry about.' But intuitively, I knew that I
had
. An
RUC
night patrol later found him asleep in his car in central Holywood. At the trial he pleaded guilty of being ‘drunk in charge of a motor vehicle', with the excuse that he thought it preferable to driving under the influence. Not long afterwards he retired, still a well-respected, much-loved family doctor.

Nothing concrete emerged from the talks Fergus had at headquarters, so prospects for the next year were bleak. The only post on offer was for a specialist on schistosomiasis based in Brazzaville. From a family viewpoint this was unacceptable: the climate was debilitating, the French schools unsuitable, and staff housing inadequate – a characterless concrete apartment block, in which Roger Lyonnet, now in a situation not unlike our own, had a two-bedroom flat. Fergus had his suspicions about what had provoked Ansari's change of attitude. At a party during one of his visits to Geneva, he had been propositioned by Ansari's mistress, a notoriously rapacious woman, with a yen for tall, good-looking, fair-haired men. The incident had not gone unobserved, and shortly afterwards the vacancy notice within Ansari's unit was withdrawn, effectively ‘freezing' the post.

When Fergus joined us early in May, the shadow of imminent separation detracted from enjoyment of home leave. However, the province is at its best during May and June, so we went to Inishowen, this time renting a chalet near Goorey Lodge. Sunny blissful days passed for the children, who tobogganed once more down the slopes of fine sand at Lagg, flew their kites, and at a small cove near Malin Head, collected pebbles of quartz and carnelian, for polishing in the stone tumbler I had bought. Katharine and Mary were avid collectors, but on one of the few drizzly days Michael was heard muttering, ‘I don't see the point in all this' – he was suffering withdrawal symptoms from
TV
. Fergus also was in withdrawal, finding little pleasure in a pipe, on which he argued he would not become dependent, because he could neither inhale nor keep it alight for long. Attacks of bronchitis had become more frequent, and of such severity that doctors were unanimous in warning that if he did not stop smoking cigarettes, the next attack might well be his last. Parallels with Alcoholics Anonymous philosophy are clear: ‘Some of us tried easier, softer ways, but the result was nil till we let go absolutely.'

We were on holiday, therefore it was normal to relax in the evenings in front of the peat fire, with a glass or two of whiskey. Doherty's stores in Malin, where I bought groceries, would have a replacement bottle if necessary – it wouldn't do to run low when visitors dropped in. All quite normal, responsible drinking, on which nobody had occasion to remark, but a furtive element had infiltrated our marriage; I would unload the shopping so that Fergus would not see the bottle, and store it in an inconspicuous place. At home it would just go in the drinks cupboard, modestly stocked compared to the variety we had kept at Mwanza, where the constant stream of visitors demanded all tastes be catered for. Bristol Cream sherry was popular with the north Down ladies; Amontillado for the more sophisticated among them. I had worked on my mother's well-founded distrust of drink to the extent that, at social functions, she would now accept a token glass of sherry, though she said it had an immediate effect on her, and she dreaded being in any sense out of control. San, too, regarded drink with caution: one of the reasons for the failure of Murray's garage business had been his ‘getting into bad company' in the York Street pubs. Now she enjoyed a glass of Bristol Cream when she came to visit for the day, or sometimes to stay overnight. I would drive over the Craigantlet hills to Dundonald, collect her from the flat to which she had become resigned, and take her for lunch and shopping in Newtownards, Holywood or Bangor, getting home in advance of the children's return from school.

November 14 of that year is memorable, because I collected San early on the day Princess Anne married Captain Mark Phillips. San had long revelled in the pageantry surrounding royalty, while my attitude to the princess, who had entered ‘the hearts and minds' of the great British public, was not uncritical. We sat, San, my mother and I, in front of the screen, watching the footage, listening to Richard Dimbleby's comfortable commentary. Before our lunch, which I served on trays, I gave them both a glass of sherry, while, out of sight in the kitchen, I drank two or three. I was still eating normally, had abundant energy, and had not yet begun to gain weight; nor was I drinking in the morning. Notwithstanding, the insidious disease was making a classic relentless progression towards the next stage.

Fergus had no choice but to accept the job in Brazzaville, but he contrived to negotiate a two-month course in Geneva to improve his French. This coincided with school summer holidays, so we rented a top-floor apartment near the InterContinental Hotel from a colleague who was going on leave. There was a swimming pool on the roof and a shopping mall nearby; the
WHO
headquarters, the
UN
building and other international organisations were within walking distance and public transport regular, clean and efficient. So much could be done on foot or by tram, that we did not really miss having a car. We visited the old town, the Bauer museum of oriental ceramics, jade and lacquer, the Russian Orthodox Church with its golden onion dome, the National Gallery and the Jet d'Eau. We found an excellent Italian family restaurant, inexpensive by Geneva standards, where the waiters were friendly and the children could watch their pizza of choice being prepared.

When we returned to Ireland, the children settled well in Glencraig Primary School, and despite household chores, I found time to join a pressure group fighting successive planning applications from developers to build on an unofficial greenbelt adjacent to the foreshore and what is now the North Down Coastal Path, directly in front of our house. The Reverend Ian Paisley, though remote, was behind a proposal to build a reform school beside Rockport Preparatory School. I also made contacts within the Alliance Party, and our car was covered with electoral stickers; a Catholic labourer working on our house remarked: ‘Sure, yer wasting yer time, dear' – in many ways he was right. I met some congenial people such as Jack Calvert, his wife, Anne, and Bertie McConnell, all of whom did sterling work within the Down County Council, and a group of us formed a delegation to meet the minister appointed by Westminster to the Northern Ireland Office to explain our misgivings about the threat developers, including Paisley, posed to the coast, and the suspicion that hardline unionists backed repeated applications to the chief planning officer in Downpatrick.

When Fergus returned to Brazzaville, he was sent on a succession of short-term assignments to Gabon, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. The plus point was total immersion in an all-French-speaking society, but it was a punishing schedule under enervating climatic conditions, living in a series of run-down ex-French colonial hotels and
pensions
. I cannot recall if he came home for Christmas, as few letters from that period survive, but it would not have been surprising had it been Fergus who turned to drink. The only person in our family to profit from the situation was my mother. She enjoyed having the children so near, and either joined us for meals or I would take a helping of our meal through to her. Like many elderly people living alone, her diet lacked variety and I suspected she was anaemic. She suffered from eye spasms, which affected her eyesight, but she drove well into her eighties, when the condition became so bad she was forced to admit defeat and sell the Austin A40 to which she was very attached. This was a major psychological blow for someone accustomed to driving some sort of vehicle from 1914 onwards.

As a special dispensation, Fergus was allowed to take his local leave in ‘the country of origin', rather than the Congo, so in the spring of 1974 we took the car via the Larne–Stranraer ferry to Galloway, and thence by a winding route through Moffat, Edinburgh and the Borders, to visit a Quaker school in Yorkshire, which we had shortlisted as a possibility for Katharine, who would be eleven plus at the start of the autumn term.

Roger, still in limbo and also waiting for a transfer from the African region, offered us his flat for July and August, when he would be on leave in France. So it was agreed that I would fly to Brazzaville with the children via Charles de Gaulle Airport. Of all the airports I had been through, this was by far the largest, noisiest and most confusing. At the check-in desk an inscrutable, heavily made-up woman, in a shiny red plastic jumpsuit, acknowledged me in ultra-rapid French. After scrutinising our tickets with obvious suspicion, she checked the passenger list and informed me that we were not on the list for the midnight flight, which was fully booked. Our ‘chariot', piled high with luggage, blocked the baggage conveyor, beside which the children stood in a defensive clump. That we were unwelcome to Air France, and the growing queue behind, was only too evident. I stood my ground, brandishing
WHO
documents, my British passport, and a letter from the
UN
representative who would accompany Fergus to meet us. She told the other passengers to join another queue, as she was closing the desk. I gathered she had decided to consult her supervisor. After a long interval, she returned, gesturing at us, saying: ‘Vous restez ici.' No apology, no explanation. We were the last group to board the throbbing aircraft a few minutes before midnight.

The flight was indeed fully booked: this was West Africa again. The women were heavily built market-mammy types, many wearing long dresses in the missionary-inspired style with a little frill above the waistline. Their gold earrings and bangles indicated status, as they swayed up and down the centre aisle searching for space in the overhead lockers for their duty-free purchases. The majority of the men were dressed in sharply tailored suits, worn with flashy ties and Mobutu-style sunglasses. Among them was a scattering of dignified Muslims in flowing white robes and intricately embroidered headgear. At first nobody took the slightest notice when told to return to their seat and fasten seat belts, but eventually all settled. As we roared down the runway, I counted to nearly sixty buttockclenching seconds before the plane was airborne; the children were already almost asleep.

At six-thirty in the morning Fergus and the
WHO
representative, both freshly shaven and crisply dressed, met a crumpled, blearyeyed, grubby and underslept group of four. They ‘facilitated' us and our baggage – which, to my relief, came through quickly – to a chauffeur-driven
UN
limousine, in which we arrived at the residential compound and Roger's flat. The air was hot and humid, the sky sunless, and we were not to see the famous River Congo until some days later.