Despite the Darkness, page 25
‘It’s no reflection on you, William,’ Cameron answered, ‘you are a Canadian and there was never any reason for you to stay and put up with it, but if every white South African who didn’t like what the Nationalists are doing just packed and emigrated it would make life a whole lot easier for the government. Bizarre as it may seem, they like to think that South Africa is a democracy, regardless of the fact that anyone who isn’t white doesn’t have a vote. Having a vote is, of itself, completely useless when any party one might want to vote for is banned, but having a vote also means having a voice it isn’t quite so easy to silence. White South Africans who oppose what their government and its enforcers are doing need to stay and shout their protest from the rooftops. Apart from which, I’m damned if I’m going to leave just because they want me to.’
‘And how does Jules feel about that?’ William asked.
‘To be perfectly honest, William, I’m not sure about that any more,’ Cameron said, pausing for a few seconds before going on. ‘Jules is very strong and hates their obscene laws and the way they enforce them as much as I do. If it weren’t for Hilton and Nicky I’m sure she would tell them all to get stuffed and carry on as usual, but she is always anxious about the children now, as she is bound to be. And as, of course, am I. I think she feels very torn – she doesn’t want to give in, but she wants to protect Nicky and Hilton.’
‘Some of these holier-than-thou Brits with their po-faced self-righteousness really piss me off,’ William said, with unexpected vehemence. ‘Their generalisations about white South Africans are as racist as the apartheid discrimination they condemn. It is you and Jules who are on the receiving end of the death threats and harassment because you oppose apartheid, and yet they think it’s you and Jules who are the racists. If democracy ever does come to South Africa, you can be quite sure that they will think it is because they stood and waved Anti-Apartheid placards in the air from the safety of Trafalgar Square.’
‘If they don’t know any better I suppose it is our job to educate them,’ Cameron said. ‘After all, historians are supposed to be educators. But it is difficult to tell them what is happening on the ground if they don’t want to speak to us. And the Anti-Apartheid Movement is really important in building up external pressure. I need to go now to check that the overhead projector is working – if the ones at home are anything to go by it won’t be. Thanks very much for your support, William – I can’t tell you how much it means to me right now.’
‘My pleasure, Cameron,’ William said. ‘You are obviously right about how important the Anti-Apartheid Movement is, but people whose sanctimonious political pieties make them block their ears to what they need to hear are beyond infuriating.’
‘It’s good to see that five years back in the wintry wastes of Canada haven’t mellowed you, William,’ Cameron said. ‘I’ll see you later.’
The overhead projector in the main lecture theatre was working. Neither speaker at either of the first two plenaries had used it, and Cameron had been worried that, given the way his luck was running, he would find that the bulb had blown. All the pages of his notes were there in the right order, and his OHP slides were as they should be, so it was just a question of sitting quietly on the platform for a few minutes gathering himself before having to face a hostile audience. They were unlikely to heckle him during the presentation, but he could expect a rough ride in the half-hour set aside for questions afterwards.
The eminent historian who had been given the honour of chairing the plenary session arrived exactly five minutes before it was due to start, precisely as stipulated in the ‘Guidance for Chairs’ in the conference programme. He was a laid-back Australian, Brian Draper, who had written several books about the mining industry in Southern Africa. Cameron had chatted with him at African History conferences in the past and found him very likeable, so was pleased it was he who would be chairing the session.
‘Good afternoon, Cameron,’ he said by way of greeting. ‘I’ve been tasked with chairing this session, as you know. Please keep your presentation to the 30 minutes stipulated so that we can have a full half hour for questions.’
Brian’s formality was in stark contrast to his usual laid-back style.
‘Of course,’ Cameron replied.
‘Not that there will be enough questions to take up half an hour, by the look of it,’ Brain continued, scanning the still empty lecture theatre. ‘Incidentally, I’ve also been tasked with conveying a message to you from the organisers of the conference. They want you to meet them immediately after the last parallel session this evening, in the break-out room next to the common-room where we have tea.’
‘Thanks, Brian,’ Cameron said. ‘I’ll be there.’
There seemed to be a lot of tasking going on. Ever since he’d become aware that the police agent rumour had reached Brighton, Cameron had known that the conference organisers would want a meeting with him as soon as possible. Some of the delegates would almost certainly be putting pressure on the organisers to eject him from the conference. He should invite delegates to place bets on how long it would be before some bright spark in the meeting told him he needed to prove that he wasn’t a police agent. But right now his immediate concern wasn’t a meeting in several hours time, it was the rows and rows of empty seats in the lecture theatre. There must have been a lunchtime meeting at which a decision had been taken to boycott his presentation. He had come a very long way to give a plenary presentation to precisely nobody – so not so plenary after all.
Not quite nobody. A minute or so before the session was due to start, one of the side doors at the back of the hall opened and William came in. He looked around at the rows of empty seats before striding purposefully down the centre aisle and taking one of the aisle seats towards the front. He obviously hadn’t been party to whatever debate there had been about a boycott, but Cameron was confident he would have come anyway.
As William sat down, the door at the back on the other side opened and a man who looked vaguely familiar came in and took a seat on the side aisle in the back row. The bank of lights at the back of the hall had been turned off to make the viewing of OHP slides easier, so he couldn’t see the man very clearly. The only distinguishing feature he could make out on an otherwise wholly unremarkable face was a pair of dark sideburns extending below the earlobes – they looked as if they were being worn for the purposes of some kind of mating display.
‘I think we should wait a couple of minutes for late-comers to join us before starting,’ Brian announced for the benefit of the audience of two, which immediately halved to become an audience of one. The man at the back looked at his watch, stood up and disappeared out of the same door he had come in by.
‘There isn’t really any point in giving a plenary presentation to an audience of one is there?’ Cameron asked quietly, turning to Brian.
‘Your presentation is on the published conference programme,’ Brian replied, checking to make sure that the microphone on the table in front of him was switched off. ‘If you include me, you have an audience of two. In fact it is an audience of three as all the plenaries are being filmed for posterity, so there will be someone up in the projection box. I have been appointed as Chair of this plenary session and I think it should go ahead.’
‘But this is ridiculous, Brian,’ Cameron said. ‘I can give you and William, and whoever is in the projection box, copies of my paper – I’ve brought a dozen copies with me. You could read it during what remains of this session and we can discuss any questions you might have over coffee.’
‘Cameron,’ Brian said, ‘the Association paid for your fare to come over to deliver a plenary presentation as part of the conference programme. It didn’t pay for you to hand out a few copies of your paper and then wander off to have coffee. If you don’t give the paper they will claim the air-fare back from your university, which will no doubt be less than enthusiastic about paying it.’
‘Is this supposed to be some kind of punishment for something I am assumed to have done?’ Cameron asked. ‘Making someone give a presentation to a large hall with precisely one person in the audience sounds to me like a particularly perverse kind of academic torture.’
‘No, of course it isn’t,’ Brian replied sharply, then, switching on the microphone, he announced to the assembled company of one that it was time to begin.
With a pedantry Cameron wouldn’t have believed him capable of, Brian then went through the formalities of welcome and introduction as though he were performing in front of a full hall. As Brian spoke, Cameron felt his stomach knotting into a hard ball of mixed embarrassment and disappointment. This was the negative of his recurrent nightmare – instead of finding himself standing up in front of a large audience and suddenly realizing he had not had time to prepare anything to say, he found himself in the bizarre position of having a carefully prepared paper he was being expected to give to a non-existent audience. William was there, of course, but Cameron was sure he was there out of a mixture of cussedness and loyalty, not because he particularly wanted to hear what Cameron had to say.
As he sat looking at William sitting alone in the body of the hall, while the Chair of the session went self-importantly through the formal ritual of introducing him to the one person at the conference who actually knew him, Cameron was reminded of the story of a village priest conducting a service on a particularly stormy winter evening for the benefit of a congregation consisting of a solitary farmer. Having suggested to the farmer that he might like to give Evensong a miss and go back to the warmth of his fireside, the priest had been chastened by being told that when only one cow came out to be fed on a winter evening the farmer still fed that one cow. The priest had duly pulled out all the stops in conducting the service, delivering an extended tour de force of a sermon. When he asked the farmer at the end how he had enjoyed the service, the farmer had remarked that when he took his tractor and trailer out to feed the cows on a stormy night and only one cow turned up to be fed he tended not to unload the whole trailer-load of feed on top of it.
From the moment he stood up to deliver his paper to the moment he sat down, it seemed to Cameron that he was going through some kind of out-of-body experience. He watched himself speaking and projecting his slides – he heard every word he said as though someone else were saying it. It was as if he were part of the audience sitting somewhere above the platform where he could watch both himself and William. He had had moments of such acute consciousness of himself when he was lecturing in the past, but never for anything like an entire lecture or presentation – and the experience was made even more surreal by the need he felt to try not to sound like a priest.
As he listened to himself delivering his paper, Cameron was conscious both of the ritual surrounding conference presentations and the need to avoid too many priestly bells and whistles – he found himself hoping that he wasn’t going too far in the other direction and that the presentation wasn’t sounding dull. It was difficult to read an audience of one. There was no danger of unloading the whole trailer-load though, his presentation needed to be a summary of a much longer paper if it was going to fit into the allocated thirty minutes.
All through the presentation, Cameron was conscious of the need not to let himself be overwhelmed by the emptiness of the hall, which perfectly matched the emptiness he felt, and not to give up in despair at the sheer futility of the exercise. When he heard himself come to the end of the presentation he returned to his chair and sat down, totally drained.
Brian continued the ritual by inviting questions, but his invitation was met with silence. William would appreciate that Cameron wanted to get this ordeal over as quickly as possible.
‘There being no questions,’ Brian intoned after a few seconds, ‘I would like to end this session by thanking Dr Beaumont for his presentation.’
There was no danger of Brian being accused of being an apartheid collaborator by virtue of an over-effusive vote of thanks. As he left the platform, Brian reminded Cameron that he was expected at the meeting with the conference organisers after the last session of the day. He then walked quickly out of the hall, as though anxious to avoid contamination.
‘Thanks for sitting through that charade, William,’ Cameron said as they walked out of the hall together, ‘you didn’t have to.’
‘I know, but I wanted to,’ William replied. ‘That was a very good presentation, and it wasn’t even a question of being a good presentation in the circumstances – it was a good presentation full-stop. It deserved a full hall. You wouldn’t think academic historians could be such ass-holes.’
‘Where have you been all your life, William?’ Cameron asked. ‘You need to get out more. If you want to know just how much bullshit they can produce you want to be a fly on the wall at the meeting they are requiring me to attend after the last session of the day.’
‘What makes them think they are in any position to require you to do anything?’ William asked.
‘They aren’t,’ Cameron replied, ‘but I can’t go on like this all week. I need to try to clear the air. I can’t believe that the whole bloody lot of our historian colleagues were prepared to go along with a boycott of my presentation without anyone even going to the elementary trouble of talking to me. So much for historical research – so much for natural justice – and so much for being innocent until proved guilty.’
Cameron half expected to find a placard-waving demonstration waiting for them outside the hall, but there was nobody. The conference delegates were obviously taking their boycott of him very literally.
‘I can’t face their hostility at the parallel sessions after tea,’ Cameron said. ‘I’ll go and find somewhere quiet before my meeting with the commissars. Everyone will assume I’ve gone to be ostracized at one of the parallel sessions they aren’t attending themselves, so nobody will know I’m ducking out.’
‘After those sessions I’ll go back to the pub where we had lunch,’ William said. ‘I’ll wait for you there. I’ll be interested to hear about it. Good luck.’
‘Thanks again, William,’ Cameron said. ‘I’ll see you there.’
Chapter 20
If you were looking for a space for temporary sanctuary where you could be sure that rationality would shape the ethos and atmosphere, the first place you would seek out would be a university library – or so you might have thought, Cameron reflected bitterly as he made his way across to the periodicals section.
As his luck would have it, one of the delegates from the conference had been standing talking to two of the librarians at the issue desk just inside the main door when he walked in. The man was wearing a regimental-type tie and a loudly striped blazer that fell marginally short of being garish. As if he wasn’t noticeable enough already, he had made a point at one of the morning sessions of sitting down near Cameron and then, pretending suddenly to recognize him, ostentatiously standing up and moving away.
As Cameron walked into the library the man had spotted him and immediately turned and spoken to the librarians in plummy tones just loud enough for Cameron to pick up the word ‘spy’. Cameron had felt the same violent surge of anger that had taken him storming across the road to confront Venter. That had not ended well, and he had managed this time to retain enough control to pause momentarily to consider the possible consequences before confronting blazer-man. He wouldn’t have a gun, and going around telling people that Cameron was a police spy was a damn sight worse than littering the pavement with paper bags – so what the hell.
‘Good afternoon,’ Cameron said, walking up to the desk and addressing the two librarians. ‘I’m Cameron Beaumont. Would you mind telling me what this gentleman has just been saying about me?’
One of the librarians looked down at the desk, obviously embarrassed; the other looked questioningly at blazer-man. Neither said anything.
‘I was telling them,’ the man said, ‘that you are a white South African who has come to the African History conference and that your presentation has just been boycotted because the conference organisers have been informed not only that you are a police spy but also that you recently turned one of your students over to the Security Police because he was a member of the African Nationalist Convention.’
‘ANC stands for African National Congress, not African Nationalist Convention,’ Cameron said. ‘And who exactly are you, and what was your purpose in telling them that? Given that neither of these ladies appears to be blind, I am sure they didn’t need to be told that I am white – or, more accurately, pink – even if they didn’t know that I am a South African.’
‘I’m Robin Renfrew, and I abhor apartheid,’ the man replied. ‘I support the Anti-Apartheid Movement and if there is a South African police agent on campus I think everyone needs to be told about it.’
‘You are, I presume, a historian?’ Cameron asked.
‘Yes, of course, that is why I am attending this conference,’ Renfrew said. ‘I teach at George Washington College in London.’
‘Now there’s an irony,’ Cameron said.
‘What do you mean “there’s an irony”?’ Renfrew asked, bristling. ‘What is so ironic about that?’
‘You are a historian, yet you apparently feel no inclination to interrogate your sources,’ Cameron replied, keeping his voice as even as possible. ‘You accept hearsay and gossip as gospel, and don’t even bother to try to talk to the victim of the gossip. As it happens, I am not a police spy, and the rumour that I am has been circulated by members of the Special Branch in South Africa. They want to get me out of their hair by discrediting me and making life so difficult for me that I will emigrate. So they circulate a rumour, and you betray your calling as a historian by spreading the rumour without attempting to find out where it comes from or whether there is any truth in it. You are obviously quite happy to go around telling lies about me. That’s why it seems to me to be ironic that you teach history in a College named after a man who was supposed not to have been able to tell lies.’
