The Governor's Lady

by Norman Collins

  The Governor’s Lady

  Norman Collins

  Contents

  Epilogue Part one A Case of Conscience

  Book I THE RESIDENCY

  Book II DEATH ON SAFARI

  Book III THE TRIAL

  Book IV TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

  Epilogue Part two Absolution, almost:

  Foreword

  Look in the atlas, and you won’t find Amimbo there. Consult the Colonial List of the ’twenties and ’thirties, and you will see nothing about Sir Gardnor Hackforth, C.V.O.; or Mr. Arthur Drawbridge, C.B.E.; or Mr. Harold Stebbs, for that matter. Debrett’s contains no mention of Lady Anne; and even the Telephone Directory does not give a line to Sybil Prosser. African reference works are similarly unrevealing on the subject of Prince Ngono, once of Sidney Sussex, and Mr. Talefwa, B.Sc.Econ.(Lond.). Again, no Legal Register along the entire West Coast gives any entry for Mr. Chabundra Das, Barrister-at-law.

  Nor are these omissions surprising. The place and all the characters are entirely fictitious. Some of the birds and animals are, however, taken direct from nature, and I am happy to acknowledge my debt to them.

  Epilogue

  Part One

  A Case of Conscience

  The fan, badly worn at its bearings through incessant use, kept up an unpleasant jarring sound in the darkness overhead. Sooner or later, the Chief Magistrate assumed, it would come down, scattering things, breaking bottles and glasses, possibly killing somebody.

  In the meantime, the heat demanded it. All day the temperature had been away up in the top nineties. And so had the humidity. In consequence, everything in the room was sticky; misted over as though it had been sprayed with something. The red binding of The Times Book Club novel that he had finished earlier that evening had left him with a broad strawberry-coloured stain right across his thumb and forefinger.

  With the coming on of night, it was cooler. Much cooler. But, all during the day, the wooden walls had simply been absorbing the sunlight. Devouring it. Now they were giving it out again. They were like radiators.

  Even out there on the verandah, the air was still tepid; heavy and stagnant with the sour-sweet, dungheapy smell of the tropics. The whole atmosphere seemed in need of stirring. Indoors, so long as it lasted, the fan did at least achieve that. And there was always the chance that the next train from Motamba would bring the new fan that Stores had ordered. Or, if not, the next train, the one after; or the one after that.

  The Chief Magistrate reached out his hand automatically to thrust the yellow-labelled gin bottle in the direction of the man sitting opposite. They had been there, simply the two of them, for a long time. Ever since ten o’clock, in fact. And it was well past midnight by now.

  If they needed another bottle of Gordon’s, the CM. would have to go in search of it himself. That was because quite early on, when the houseboy had come through on his bare feet, his white gown flapping sloppily around his enormous ankles, the CM. had sent him away again; told him to go to bed and not squat at the bottom of the steps as he usually did.

  The CM. felt that the fewer people who might overhear the conversation the better. He didn’t want it to go circulating all round Kubunda tomorrow; didn’t want it to go circulating at all, in fact. Already, he had the distinctly distasteful feeling that he, the sole listener to these confidences, had somehow been one too many.

  But he could hardly be rude to the Governor. He couldn’t simply refuse to listen. Not just snub him like that. He had warned him, of course; had asked rather pointedly whether it was in his private or his official capacity that the Governor, Harold Stebbs was addressing him. And the Governor had evaded the point. He had merely said something to the effect that they had rung up from the House, hadn’t they, to say that he might be coming over? Rather deliberately, it seemed, H.E. had left it in the air, like that.

  Not that the visit itself was so unusual. Or rather, not so unusual as it would have been even a few months ago. The fact was that the Governor had been growing increasingly restless of late. Only last night at the Club, the Financial Secretary had remarked on it. From being practically a recluse, the Governor, he observed, seemed suddenly to have developed a strong taste for human company; and it was particularly in the evenings that H.E. seemed most anxious not to find himself alone.

  He had even taken to inviting people up to Government House for drinks before dinner; quite unimportant people, very often, with no influence of any kind in the whole Colony. Naturally enough they had been flattered, but left a little bewildered. The more intelligent of them had come away half suspecting that anyone else would have done as well. Some of them, taken entirely by surprise and with their wives left unexpectedly high and dry at the bungalow down below somewhere, had even been asked, almost begged, to stay on afterwards for a meal in the long blue dining-room with the slanting white shutters and the bad highly-varnished portrait of The Queen, with only the very small talk of the A.D.C to keep the conversation going.

  The darkness on the verandah opened for a moment. The Governor was lighting another of the mild, meaningless Dutch cigars that he always smoked. The CM. could see him framed in the little circle of the match-light. It was certainly not a strong face that was revealed there. Ordinary, rather. Neat regular features, with thin greying hair, and an over-clipped moustache like a small white butterfly resting insecurely on his upper lip.

  There was nothing in the least remarkable about his appearance, except for the black silk eyeshade; and even that was worn unassumingly. His expression, too, was retiring rather than assertive. He shared it with a lot of other senior Colonial Servants—that resigned, rather withdrawn look of habitual authority: it was the price that had to be paid for a lifetime spent resisting the blandishments of coloured politicians on the spot, while trying to educate some distant, apparently disinterested, Assistant Secretary in Whitehall.

  ‘So you see my position,’ the Governor reminded him.

  His accent was as precise and over-clipped as his moustache. It was a voice that had never really made itself heard in any but quite small assemblies.

  The CM. did not reply immediately. He hated unprofessional confidences. Disliked being drawn into other people’s private lives. He was the lawyer, not the father-confessor, of the Colony. Quite different in nature from the Governor. That was because the CM. was a bachelor. He was entirely self-sufficient. Whereas the Governor was the marrying kind; or had been. He needed the company of women, and had been forced to deny himself, ever since his wife had gone back so soon after the wedding.

  It was really the climate that was to blame, the CM. supposed. Temperature and humidity have ruined quite as many marriages as unfaithfulness or incompatibility. The CM. had often wondered why the Governor hadn’t simply thrown his hand in long ago and returned to Worcestershire, or Salop, or wherever it was, while there was still time to enjoy their two lives together.

  ‘I see that it’s preyed on your mind if that’s what you mean,’ he said.

  He slapped his hand to his cheek as he said it. Despite the mosquito-netting that ran all round the verandah, he had been bitten twice as he sat there. He would put one of the houseboys onto the job of checking things tomorrow. Probably the present lot of netting had gone rotten. There was another roll of the stuff on order. It was due to arrive any moment now. Along with the fan, possibly.

  ‘That’s scarcely surprising after more than thirty years,’ the Governor reminded him.

  The tone irritated the CM. It reminded him of a prisoner he had once tried in a crime passionnel. The man had ignored his counsel altogether and had sought—deliberately it seemed—to convict himself. It had been wilful and exhibitionist. The CM. did not like people who tried to take the law into their own
hands. He wished now that, instead of making things harder for him, the Governor would finish his last drink and go home.

  ‘I still don’t see the point of raking it all up again,’ he told him. ‘It isn’t even as though there’s any fresh evidence.’

  The rattan chair in which the Governor was sitting creaked sharply.

  ‘Oh, but there is, you know. That’s why I came over.’

  The CM. could hear the crackle of paper while the Governor was speaking. Then something flat, one of the Government House envelopes it looked like, was pushed towards him across the table.

  The CM. made no move. This was the very last thing he wanted. He was determined at all costs to keep his hands off the document, whatever it was. Talk was one thing. But documents were a damn nuisance: they had an awkward way of turning up again afterwards.

  ‘Perhaps you could put the light up,’ the Governor suggested.

  The CM. still did not move.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said.

  There was no reply for a moment. Only the faint, unmistakeable, long drawn-out sound of a sigh coming out of the darkness opposite.

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he answered. ‘It wouldn’t mean anything. Not just by itself, it wouldn’t. You’d have to know the people.’

  He paused, and went on almost as though speaking to himself.

  ‘Him. My wife. Me; as I was then, that is. Everyone. Then you’d understand. You’d see what I’m driving at.’

  He leant forward, nearly upsetting the bottle that was in front of him.

  ‘If you could go right back to the beginning, you’d realise how it happened. It’s all like yesterday to me.’

  Book I

  The Residency

  Chapter 1

  Even before the Ancarses had dropped anchor, the boat was already halfway from the shore.

  She came out in the clear light of the pearly dawn more like a seabird than a boat, dipping behind the breakers one moment, skimming air-borne over the crest of them at the next.

  The young man with the bright English complexion who was leaning over the rail reflected that he would probably be sea-sick all over again—just the way he had been those first few days out of Tilbury—as soon as he had climbed down into the shore boat.

  He was a very clean-looking young man. His new white ducks were spotless. And they were only a trifle too close-fitting. As soon as the sun was properly up and it got really hot, they would cling to him; go into folds like towelling. He would regret the extra inches that a better tailor would have provided. There hadn’t, in fact, been any tailor; the clothes were simply an off-the-peg job. He was a pretty standard-size young man.

  Ever since first light he had been up there, wedged in between the ventilator and the rail, staring out at the gradually emerging coastline. Feeding his eyes on it; gulping down Africa; knowing that his future lay there and wondering what it had in store for him.

  The steward, getting worried about his tip, had already carried the young man’s second cup of coffee all the way up to him on the boat-deck, and was ready to go on being nice right up to the minute when he finally lost him.

  The only other passenger to go ashore was a clergyman. A Presbyterian from Walthamstow. He was spectacled and rather anxious-looking, wearing an expression of dismayed surprise, if not astonishment, at finding himself at all in such surroundings.

  He was on his way, he explained, to the Central United Mission at Bangu. To take charge, in fact. The Mission had fallen on evil days, it seemed. But all that would soon be over. The moment he had got things properly organised, his wife would be coming out to join him. A mixed partnership was, in his opinion, essential. That was because—here the missionary dropped his voice and spoke out of the corner of his mouth— of the peculiar initiation and other ceremonies, of the natives of those parts. ‘Totally misguided hygiene measures’ was how the missionary described them. His wife had been a nurse in Liverpool, he went on, and would be able to put things into their proper medical perspective.

  The young man avoided the missionary’s pale, shining eyes and wished him—and his wife, too, for that matter—the very best of British luck: he had a feeling that they might be in need of it.

  Conversation was impossible in the shore boat because the waves were too high. Even there in the shelter of the Ancarses, they were going up and down as though on a see-saw. The boat was an open one, with hot wooden seats. And there was a lot of water slopping around their feet in the bottom. The young man saw his two suitcases, very new and inexperienced-looking, swung out from the deck and placed by one of the boatmen in the centre of a dark, slimy patch where somebody had been cleaning fish or oiling something. They were light-coloured suitcases. Pale-fawn, from the Army and Navy. And, as he watched, he saw them begin to suck up the wet like lumps of sugar in a messy saucer. He would have moved them somewhere else if he had not felt so sea-sick. Not that it would have made any difference. They were shipping water continuously. Soon the suitcases would be wet all over.

  In the meantime, the entire crew had gone down to the stern for a conference because the engine wouldn’t start. There were five of them. Very black, and mechanics to a man. With bottoms up and heads down inside the small engine-house, they uttered shrill screams of pain and rage as they cut themselves or touched something painful. There were the sounds of banging and hammering. And more screams. One of them got his fingers crushed in a wrench. Then the graduate of the party, one-eyed and practically naked, thought of fuel. He poured a can of kerosene into the tank. A moment later, with a belching grey thundercloud from the exhaust and a noise like machme-gunning, they were on their way to the shore. In the confusion, the rest of the kerosene had gone over the missionary’s hold-all.

  It was Sir Gardnor’s idea, this ridiculous disembarkation at Kiku of all places. Less than five hundred miles further to the south the Ancarses would ride into the sheltered natural harbourage of Nucca; and the passengers, politely waited on by the white-uniformed staff of the Royal West African Railroad, could travel by the chocolate-and-cream Coronation Flyer straight through to Amimbo.

  By rail, the whole journey, from quayside to terminus, took only thirty-six hours. Unless, of course, there were elephants on the track; or a bridge, weakened by the rains, had collapsed into the mud-bath beneath it; or ants had eaten away too many of the sleepers.

  Sometimes, too, the locomotive—of the 1902 class, and with as much polished brasswork as a fair-ground roundabout—would burst one of its tubes, or plough enthusiastically through the points at the only junction. Even allowing for all reasonable hazards, however, the journey by train was still three or four days quicker than by road.

  That was because the road was not really a road at all. It started off all right. With lamp-posts; six of them. And flower-beds of pointsettia and bougainvillaea. And a glass-sided traffic control-box, complete with an umbrella over the top. This part of the road was fully metalled, and passed the new Post Office in one magnificent sweep. Then, when it reached the suburbs, the surface ceased abruptly. The contractor was still in prison.

  The first section of the highway was Portuguese, and very unhealthy. It ran, mostly at sea-level, across a mangrove-swamp. And, in places, it disappeared completely.

  The Minister of Highways was the brother-in-law of the unhappy contractor. In consequence, the Department tried to put the best possible face on things. Whenever a fresh submergence occurred, gangs of convict labourers were detailed to put down bundles of reeds to form a new foundation. It was not an easy task. The reeds simply floated away as soon as they were laid. Heavy stones and pieces of rock had to be placed on top of them. Then more reeds were added to cover up the rocks. Then rocks again to hold down the reeds. It was a life’s work, this kind of road-building. The gangs toiled away day after day in the endless sunlight with nothing whatsoever to show for their labours. In sheer contentment, they chanted as they worked.

  Every so often, the level of the piled-up rubbish would
break the black, brackish surface of the water. Then a Mammy lorry would attempt to pass. After hitting one or two of the larger concealed rocks, it would begin to settle. Soon the axles would be covered. Then the springs. There would be a scramble to unload. Finally, more boat than lorry, it would be half-floated, half-towed away, with the ruined cargo carefully packed inside again.

  A little further inland, things got better. The road began to climb. It spiralled up and up through the red hills, getting cooler with every hairpin bend. Even here, however, there were difficulties. Every week or so, large portions of the sandstone, baked dry and flaky like pastry, detached themselves and went slithering down into the valley. Sometimes they carried the road with them, sometimes they merely lay across it, smothering the surface. Either way, it called for giant-size gardening to get things going again.

  On the map, this portion of the road was still shown as a continuous thick black line, Thirty miles ahead, the thick black line gave way to a succession of little dots.

  There things really began to grow desperate. The road-builders had given up trying. Or succumbed to sunstroke. The road simply went mad. It followed river-beds that flooded without warning. It tried to climb water-falls. It nosed its way into mountain culs-de-sac. It led to the edge of precipices. It went straight as an arrow across wide plains and then turned at right-angles because no one had remembered the lake on the other side. It plunged into forests. It ended. Only the larger kinds of American cars ever attempted the journey.

  But Sir Gardnor insisted. It was part of his faith. He believed in that road. Even though at some point in its course from Amimbo, the nationality of the landscape invisibly changed—this thorn-bush British, that one Portuguese—it was undeniably, so the Governor said, God’s intended passageway towards the open sea. The Arab slave-traders had used it for centuries.

  The railway, on the other hand, was entirely artificial. It came thrusting through from the wrong direction. It was political, rather than natural. Only British Colonialism at its most obstinate would ever have thought of building it at all; or have succeeded.