Chapter 11
Senhor Doutor
Ed and Ção had fun decorating the baby’s room, erasing from it every last trace of Joséphine, its previous decorator. Ed had no colour scheme preference, so he asked Ção to choose.
“White! All white! So that our lovely little brat can learn to scrawl Maoist graffiti all over the walls. What, did you think I’d go for some stupid colour coding based on whether it’s a boy or a girl?”
“Well, er, no, of course not. You know that. But maybe we should decide on a name well in advance. Have you got any favourites?”
“Something revolutionary!”
“Perhaps we should wait until we know whether it’s a boy or a girl.”
“If we call it something revolutionary, that won’t matter.”
“Hmm. An English name or a Portuguese one? OK, I know your answer, but it had better be something revolutionary that sounds the same in both languages.”
Ção laughed and Ed kissed her, then surprised her with a swift move he had once learned in judo that threw her off balance. He eased her to the floor and hitched her skirt up. Later, when he had climaxed, emptying his seed deep inside her, he began to laugh.
“What is it?”
“Let’s call our baby after you, when you’ve had a few drinks: Çhão.”
“But that means floor!”
“Conceived on the floor. It also means ground, doesn’t it, and what could be more grassroots and Maoist than that?”
“And the way you ground into me! I like it!”
No matter how often Ed ground into her and emptied his seed, whether on the floor, on tables, in bed or anywhere else, signs of a revolutionary baby failed to materialise.
Ed embroiled himself in his work, both in the marijuana trade and at the University. He spent less and less time at home. When he was there, he focused his attention on procreative sex, when he could persuade his wife to cooperate, which he mostly could. In business, he was keen to expand his distribution network further and further from the capital, but Paulo held him back.
“The further out we go, the less protection I can guarantee. We mustn’t overstretch ourselves. I don’t want to tread on the big boys’ toes. They’re not boys, anyway, they’re snakes. Or alligators.”
Ed wanted to learn the security side of the business, too. Everything could be grist to his mill; but Paulo refused to teach him.
“It’s too dangerous, Ed. Besides, you’ve got enough on your plate as it is.”
That was true. Turnover kept growing, fast, so that storing the cash itself became an issue. Paulo warned Ed not to keep too much at home, and offered him several hopefully safer alternatives, which he accepted. Yet despite the risk, the joy of walking home with a cash-lined jacket kept its shine.
When he went to teach at the University, Ed felt he was entering another world. Academia had always struck him as an artificial place, its concerns unworldly and alien to his own practical focus. But his evening students were living in the real world and, what’s more, in many cases working to improve it. Increasingly, he came to identify with their individual and collective struggles, though he wished he, or someone else, could inject a dose of business efficiency into the University bureaucracy. They had yet to pay him his first salary.
The summer was heating up in more ways than one, and the students were keen to wrap up their classes and head off to make or break the revolution in the streets, to escape to a beach resort or to another country, or simply to spend more evenings with their families. Ed wished there was more time to teach them, to get their English up to a decent level, but he could use the extra free time himself, so he agreed to their request to finish everything in June.
Ed pushed open the huge double doors of the Department of Literatures, which his English-speaking colleagues dubbed “the Deli” , marvelling that such a monstrous example of fascist architecture had yet to be earmarked for physical destruction. Well, much of its interior was falling apart of its own accord. He looked for his group of forty or so students. Instead of them, he caught sight of the distinctive figure of Carolina Isfahan, her wavy red hair falling to her slim waist. She approached him, clutching a set of rolled scrolls.
“Peace, Ed. I was waiting for you. I thought you might need these.” She handed him the scrolls.
“Do you know what they’re for?” she asked.
Ed unrolled them. They were lined and embossed with the University crest. Nothing had been written on them.
“Is it a holy text that’s visible only to believers?”
Carolina’s smile froze.
“Ask your students.”
“Carolina, I didn’t mean –”
But she had pushed past him and out into the warm June evening.
Ed located his students, and together they found an empty classroom for their end-of-year assessment. Under the new dispensation, teachers and students assessed each other. Ed’s students were kind to him. They praised his commitment and his methods. Their only complaint was that he had dragged the classes on too far into the summer. Marks had been abolished, to avoid stigmatising less academic students: they could award either a pass or a fail, based on continuous assessment. Ed was at ease with continuous assessment. He had kept meticulous records and used them to report on each student’s performance on individual and group assignments, and on their participation in class. His students were taken aback: they had not expected such thoroughness.
“Look, Ed, thanks for all that, but just tell us whether you think each of us should pass or fail, and then we’ll discuss your suggestion and put it to a vote.”
Ed was happy to pass most of them, but a few had made little effort or progress, and he thought they should be made to repeat the course, and try a bit harder next time. That was not a popular idea, especially to those he named and who had shown up for the assessment. Ed thought of the interminable student and faculty meetings, and decided to impose democracy.
“OK, I think we’ve discussed things long enough. Let’s put the assessments to the vote.”
Everyone present was voted a pass, which was denied to those who had officially dropped out during the year, and to two of those whom Ed had deemed inadequate and who had not turned up that evening.
Before they left, Ed asked them about the scrolls Carolina had given him.
“Those? Those are official forms on which you have to register our end-of-year results, in triplicate. And don’t make any spelling mistakes in the names, or else you’ll have to do them all again. How come you didn’t know?”
Ed’s spoken Portuguese was now excellent, but he didn’t have much cause to write it often. Portuguese surnames were relatively few, but most people seemed to have at least four of them. Getting over forty such names right, down to the last accent, three times for each of his three classes was a daunting prospect. A couple of students saw him turn even paler than normal, took pity on him and offered to help. By the time they finished, his next class had located the room and filed in. This time, Ed got help with preparing the official record sheets before starting the assessment. These students were more interested in the details of his evaluation of their learning, and more critical yet more appreciative of his own performance, but the result of the assessment was the same, as indeed it was two days later, when Ed wrapped up his third and final class. This was the class to whom he taught business English, and he was pleased when they told him how much they had come to appreciate its usefulness.
The next day, Ed took a taxi up to the University to hand in the assessment record sheets. The clerk accepted them with thanks and without demur.
Now let them tell me I’m not on the staff!
Ed felt that he had unloaded a weight from his shoulders. He strolled across the campus to celebrate with a beer in the café where he had met Patrick Harte. The café was less full now that classes were ending, but Carolina and Rupert were there, drinking milky coffees together over a stack of forms. Ed queued to pay, queued for his beer, then took the bottle over to join them.
“Carolina, you saved my life! That was really kind of you! Whenever you need a favour ... Right now, would you both like a real drink?”
They each asked for more milky coffee, with a brandy chaser. Ed put down his beer bottle and went to queue again.
Rupert gestured to the pile beside him when Ed came back.
“Thank you. How come they never told you about these things?”
“They just assume you know,” said Carolina. “They know, and you’re a teacher, so you must know, too.”
“They assume their way is the universal way, and dead obvious,” said Rupert.
“That’s the same in any organisation. There are always things it’s assumed that you know. You just don’t know that you don’t know them. What I needed was a proper induction.”
“Induction courses for new teachers?” Rupert looked at Ed with a raised eyebrow. “In fifty years’ time, maybe.”
“Anyway, cheers!”
They shared a taxi into the city centre. Ed insisted on paying for it. He wanted to take them somewhere posh for a few more drinks, but they both had more work to do on their student records. Instead, he went up the hill to the English Council and had a quick bevvy with Mark between his friend’s classes. Mark was happy to be earning a regular salary, but he resented Ed’s long and early holiday.
“You lazy, work-shy so-and-sos! No wonder there’s an economic crisis. I’ve got to work all bloody summer, special courses and all that. Even though it’s only part-time. They don’t think I’m good enough to teach full-time!”
Ed was unsure how far Mark was joking. After he had left for his next class, Ed ordered a snack of spicy sausage with bread, olives and goat’s cheese. He washed it down with a single glass of red wine from the barrel. His taste buds told him that the wine had been doctored with local firewater, and he resolved to stick to bottled wine in future, whenever he had the choice.
To get home, Ed walked across town in the clear, warm evening. He relished the mixed scents of the flowers, both temperate and tropical, that were abundant in the city’s many small parks and public gardens. By the time he reached home, his shirt was wet with sweat and clinging uncomfortably to his torso. Even so, he took the stairs two at a time, eager to see his wife. Her keys were on the hall table, but she was not where he expected, in the party room, nor in the kitchen, the study or the baby room. The bathroom, too, was empty. Ed took off his drenched shirt and rinsed his upper body, then went quietly to their bedroom. Ção was in the bed, asleep. A T-shirt and a pair of trousers lay draped across a chair. Ed preferred his wife to wear skirts because he found them sexier and they gave him easier access to what was underneath. These trousers were not even of the thin, bottom-hugging kind that could look so enticing. Ed bent over his wife to kiss her neck. She stirred.
“Is that you, Ed? You smell of wine.”
As he kissed her neck, Ed noted that the citrus aroma that had replaced Ção’s scent of cinnamon was no longer on her. He removed the rest of his clothes, eased his naked body between the sheets and snuggled up to Ção, cupping her smooth, firm breasts in his hands and moving her legs apart with his own.
“Oh no, Ed, please, not now. I’m so ... tired. I’m just ... exhausted, really exhausted. The baby can wait. She’ll come when she’s ready.”
The next morning, Ed sent Carolina an enormous orchid, with a note explaining precisely why, lest her husband misconstrue his gesture of thanks.
The political scene to which the University’s students and staff of a political persuasion could now devote their attention was as hot as the streets on which it was played out. The mass media were a battleground, with a Church-owned radio station occupied by dissident staff, and a top newspaper editor forced out by the paper’s workers, who claimed he was a mouthpiece for the centre-left Socialist Party. The Socialist Party did not take kindly to that, and launched a series of well-attended rallies in his support. In July, as the revolutionaries sought to consolidate their grip on power, flying in the face of popular support for a more moderate approach, the far right came out of hiding, orchestrating violent attacks on left-wing party offices, a break-out by imprisoned former secret policemen and thefts of weapons from Army warehouses. It was also reputedly behind the formation of an Azores Liberation Front on a series of wind-swept islands under Portuguese jurisdiction in the mid-Atlantic. Meanwhile, another wind-swept mid-Atlantic archipelago, the Cape Verde Islands, officially became independent of Portugal, as did tiny São Tomé e Príncipe and the vast territory of Mozambique.
Ed got away from the heat and pressures of Lisbon. He went to London for an Open University summer school. Paulo assured him that Ed had set up his distribution networks and procedures so well that they could withstand a month without his direct supervision.
Ed hoped to get through his course as fast as possible, in case his lack of a degree was the undeclared reason why the University authorities in Lisbon had yet to ratify his appointment. Back home, his teaching, business and reproductive duties took up most of his time, but in London he was free to study as much as he liked. Those who needed accommodation, as he did, were housed in a student residence in Camden Town, a lively and central location. He found the courses interesting, well taught and far from onerous. His fellow students were a disparate and engaging bunch, as eager to socialise as Ed was to study. He received a lot of personal attention from female students, most of them older than him. At their social gatherings, when his wedding ring failed to dissuade them, he took to praising his wife’s many virtues and talking about babies, which a few of them were there to get away from, before leaving the company with an abrupt “My books are calling!”
In truth, Ed missed his wife desperately. Ção had refused to accompany him. Although her Maoist rhetoric had faded, she was ever ready to denounce “the imperialist powers”, which still included England, in her opinion. She had enjoyed the shops and sights of London, but she scorned the country as a whole.
“England! Hah! Too expensive and no food! And such a male chauvinist culture.”
Whenever he could do so without interfering with his studies, Ed invited a group of his fellow students for meals or drinks. He did not want to act like Lord Bountiful, but he knew that most of them were making sacrifices to be there which he no longer had to face. He explained his cash-happiness with the lie that he had played the foreign exchange markets and won, backed up with the refrain “Easy come, easy go!”
Ed’s days were full, but they passed slowly. He was happiest when Ção was on the other end of the phone line, chatting about how wonderful the weather was, or her boss, Fernando, and colleagues at the travel agency, or the quickest way to overthrow the military oligarchy, the patriarchy or the university hierarchy. Ed tried to make her hear the love in his voice, and strained to hear it in hers. Even when she was too distracted to let it be evident, he relished the lilt of her words in his ear.
Ed had left Portugal with rather more dollars than he was allowed to take out. Luckily, neither he nor his luggage had been searched, and Heathrow did not live up to its nickname of Thiefrow. On his first weekend visit to Stevenage, he paid his mother back the money she had lent him, and added a good deal more beside.
“For you both. For a rainy day.”
He explained how now that he had a regular job at Lisbon University, his financial problems were a thing of the past. He could not tell whether his mother believed him, but she accepted the cash, and for once Ed felt dutiful rather than prodigal.
England seemed unusually colourless to Ed, though he welcomed its coolness. The start of the English summer had been marked by a cricket match between Derbyshire and Lancashire falling victim to two inches of snow. By the time Ed arrived, it had turned into one of Britain’s hottest, driest summers of the century. There were so many baking hot days that the tabloid press had to find alternatives to “Phew! What a Scorcher!” as their lead headline. In Lisbon, Ed kept out of the sun; here, he could enjoy walking in it. Yet those around him wilted in the heat, and complained bitterly. They also complained bitterly about double-digit inflation and interest rates, and a double-dip recession. Unlike Portugal, no-one had any great plans or vision for making things better. Outside wartime, they had always muddled on through, and until the next war, they would continue to do so. The flurry of interest in the overthrow of fascism on the edge of Western Europe had long since dissipated, and to get news of events in his adopted country – Ed caught himself using that expression – he called Paulo regularly. Sometimes Lourdes answered, coldly, rebutted Ed’s attempts to make friendly small-talk and passed him over to Paulo at once. His friend and business partner let Ed know what was happening in the country, as he saw things, and also assured him, though not in so many words, that the business was carrying on just fine. It occurred to Ed that Paulo’s pessimism as to the longevity of their joint venture might be unjustified.
Paulo told him that in Portugal things were coming to a head. The two biggest political parties, in electoral terms, had left the government, which they had become unable to control, and a fifth provisional government had taken power. It was pushing through a series of measures dear to the Communists and the revolutionary left, as though it might have the time and the means to implement them, while the soldiers who really ran the show were themselves divided between extreme revolutionaries and moderate revolutionaries, divisions which were becoming sharper and more bitter. Meanwhile, said Paulo, those nostalgic for a return to the bad old days bided their time and collected weapons.
“What about the Maoists?” Ed asked him.
“What Maoists?” Paulo laughed and said goodbye.
Ed’s diligence at the summer school paid off, in part. He got very high marks. However, everyone who had made the slightest effort, between sessions in the pub and rocking the night away, passed.
Bloody hell, he thought, it’s just like Lisbon. Well, I’ve learned a lot. I’m just no nearer to getting that damned degree than any of the others.
It was raining when Ed returned to Lisbon. The rain took the dust out of the air, and as he stepped out of the plane, he breathed in the reassuringly familiar mixture of maritime and chemical breeze that wafted up from the estuary.
Ed hoped Ção would meet him at the airport. Instead, he found Paulo waiting for him, in the company of a tall, thin African man a bit older than them, wearing a bright green shirt and tailored red trousers, and carrying a leather briefcase. Paulo gave Ed a long, brotherly hug, took his suitcase and introduced the man as Moisés. Lourdes’ battered white Renault, minus Lourdes, was parked right outside the Arrivals entrance. Paulo slipped a ten-dollar bill to the squat, ruddy-faced man looking after it and opened the back-seat door for Ed.
“I know you can’t wait to see your wife, but honestly, Ed, we have some business to attend to first. You’ll both be glad we did, believe me.”
They drove into the city centre and Paulo parked outside a self-proclaimed luxury restaurant. The head waiter gave Ed and Moisés a disdainful look as they entered, but became effusive as soon as he saw Paulo behind them. The delicate taste of the fresh lobster and the smoothness of the white wine from nearby Colares on his palate helped Ed, who had forgotten such treats, to put up with the chilly air-conditioning. Their business, Paulo said, was steady. He coaxed Moisés into talking at length about his home country, Mozambique. Ed complimented Moisés on his English.
“Thanks. I’ve spent some time in South Africa.”
That accounts for the accent.
“In Africa, you know, we pick up languages easily. We learn our mother tongue, then a colonial language, maybe a couple of our neighbours’ languages. It’s normal for us to be multilingual.”
Ed thought of his Lisbon University students and the trouble they had with English, and the problems he and his fellow-countrymen had learning anyone’s language but their own.
A waiter came to clear their coffee cups. Paulo asked him to put a clean tablecloth on. When he had done so, Paulo gestured to Moisés, who carefully placed his briefcase on it.
“Now,” said Paulo, “we come to the main business of the evening. It’s your birthday soon, Ed, right?”
“November the First.”
“I have a little early present for you, then.”
Moisés opened his briefcase, drew out a sheet of parchment, smoothed it, turned it in Ed’s direction and pushed it across the table to him.
Ed read the embossed lettering: Universidade de Lourenço Marques. Below it: Edward Clement Scripps.
“Congratulations, Senhor Doutor Scripps, you now have a degree in Economics!”
“Wow! This thing looks genuine.”
“As far as anyone here can tell, it is entirely authentic. Now, shall we have some fine malt whisky to celebrate?”
Paulo dropped Ed off outside his flat and roared away with Moisés. Ed felt stone-cold sober, but his heart was beating fast as he went up the stairs, and not just because he had done little physical exercise in London.
The flat was empty. Ed’s head swam. He sat on the floor, let his head clear, got up, went to the phone. Beside it was a note from Ção.
Staying with Mummy. She needs me. See you soon. xxxxxxxx Your little Conception xxxxxxxx.
Ed reached for the phone, then thought better of it. He unpacked the clothes, shoes, cosmetics and trinkets he had bought for Ção in London and arranged them where she would see them if she came home while he was out. Next, he put his papers in order. Then he phoned Xavier, who told him that the University would not be starting classes until the following month, October, at the earliest. After that, he called Mark, whose classes at the English Council had started, and arranged to meet him for a few drinks after Mark finished work the next day. He was sweating, so he went around the flat, opening windows. The rain had long since stopped; the wind had died. Exotic flowers and petrol fumes fought for control of the night air. Ed took deep draughts of it and wished the moment could last for ever.