Harold put his glass down with a jolt.
‘Why won’t you let me kiss you?’ he asked.
‘Because I’m not ready.’
‘And what about me?’
She began stroking his face again.
‘You are funny,’ she said. ‘Five minutes ago you didn’t even know I’d be here.’ Then her voice hardened. ‘But you can’t behave like that. It’s no use. I’m not made that way.’
She had dropped her hand and moved further away from him.
‘If you’re not going to finish your drink, give it to me,’ she said.
‘I’ll get you another one.’
‘No. I don’t like being left in the dark. Besides, you’ve had enough already. You’ll just go offto sleep.’
‘I’m not a bit sleepy.’
She gave a little laugh, and reached out so that she could touch him.
‘But you may have to stay awake for a long, long time. You can’t tell, can you? You can kiss me now, if you like. That’s if you really want to,’ she said. ‘Only this time you’ll have to let me show you how.’
The storm, which all day had been muttering around the outskirts, had now closed in on them. The noise of the thunder rose above the rain; and, through the closed shutters, the lightning flashes lit up the room in streaks and patches of pale, flickering blue.
‘Hold me tighter than that,’ she said. ‘Much tighter. I’m terrified of thunder. I always have been. Ever since I was a little girl.’ He could feel her trembling again. ‘Hold me as tight as you can,’ she said. ‘Show me how tight you can hold me.’
It was the sound of her crying that woke him in the night. He slid his arm under her, and pulled her towards him.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘It’s nothing,’ she told him. ‘Nothing that you’d ever understand.’ She began kissing him. ‘I’m furious with myself for crying. It spoils everything. And it’s not your fault, darling. You must know that. You were wonderful. You don’t know how wonderful. I should be so grateful.’
‘Grateful?’
‘Is that what I said?’ she asked. Her voice sounded drowsy now, and she had stopped crying. ‘ Well, if I said it I suppose I must have meant it. Meant every word of it.’
A moment later, he could tell from her breathing that she was asleep again.
He lay there with his arms still around her. He was sober, completely sober by now.
‘She trusts me,’ he thought. ‘Oh my God, how she trusts me.’
Next morning, when the boy brought in his tea and opened up the shutters, she had gone. There was only the second pillow beside him to show that she had ever been there.
Outside, the sun was shining. It was usually like that at the beginning of the rains: a real downpour one day, and perfectly fine the next.
Chapter 10
Three days later, the Governor’s return—already delayed by the rains —was rendered positively ridiculous when he reached Amimbo.
That was because the King Edward VII sewer (no one except the City Surveyor even knew of its magnificent name) first overflowed and then, under increasing pressure of the deluge, burst its concrete piping and completely disintegrated. In consequence, the whole of central Amimbo was awash, and Queen Victoria Avenue was closed to traffic.
The Governor’s car and the two escort vehicles had to make the big detour round the stockyards and enter the Residency grounds through the farm gate by the native compound. The last quarter of a mile was covered in total darkness on foot, trudging through the mud under umbrellas, mackintoshes, spare tarpaulins from the estate-car, anything waterproof that could be grabbed hold of.
Not that the return was by any means inauspicious. On the contrary, ever since 4 p.m. the telegrams from London had begun pouring in. They reported that The Times and the Manchester Guardian had both, and on the same day, carried stories from their diplomatic correspondents, quoting well-informed sources to the effect that Sir Gardnor was to be the next Viceroy.
Travel-stained and aching for a bath as he was, Sir Gardnor found time to read all of them. When he had finished, he turned to the A.D.C.
‘Has Acting Chief Secretary had copies?’
‘Yes, sir. He telephoned about half-an-hour ago. He said he’d be there if you want him.’
‘Want him?’ Sir Gardnor asked. ‘I don’t see why. There’s nothing he can do about it. These things must simply be allowed to take their course.’ He paused. ‘After dinner perhaps. We’ll see. He’s probably anxious. He would be, wouldn’t he?’
‘And the other telegrams, sir.’
The A.D.C. had pushed the red box forward as he was speaking, but the Governor ignored it.
‘In the morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve glanced through them. There’s nothing there.’ He sat back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Give me another whisky, would you. I feel as though I may have a chill coming. It’s quite as easy, you know, to catch a chill in a hot climate as in a cold one. One should always be careful. And pass me the text of what the Manchester Guardian said. I take it it’s in full.’
He was completely unhurried as he sat there sipping at his whisky. He appeared to be sipping at the telegram, too. Then he turned again towards his A.D.C.
‘It’s really most remarkable, isn’t it? I’ve never known the Manchester Guardian so friendly towards me. They’ve always seemed hostile before. But they’re quite right this time. India does need someone who…’
He broke off, and fixed his tired, pale eyes on the A.D.C.
‘You should have reminded me,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see Lady Anne before dinner. It may be that side of the house doesn’t even know that I’m back. But it’s too late now. I should have been in my bath ten minutes ago. Send a message over to Lady Anne that dinner is put back to 8.30 in the small dining-room. And get hold of Acting Chief Secretary. We can talk over the table. He’s bound to be on tenterhooks. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d found him waiting here. And when do we get the originals—the actual copies of the papers, I mean? There’s bound to be further press comment.’
Sir Gardnor did not have so long to wait. The further press comment was all there next morning in the Amimbo Mirror. And because Sir Gardnor did not himself read the paper, Mr. Frith paid a special visit to the Residency so that he could show him personally.
By then, the Governor was fully prepared. Native Affairs had already sent through a Minute saying that he was genuinely concerned about the effect upon any of the Mirror’s African readers who happened to be bilingual; the Chief of Police stated confidently that, given the necessary authority, he and his men could ensure all circulating copies would be immediately impounded and that no further editions would appear until the Order was lifted; and the Postmaster-General still favoured applying the Obscene Publications Act of 1912.
As soon as Mr. Frith arrived, the Governor had him shown in.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘how good of you to come. How very good. You’re well? We didn’t keep you up too late, I hope?’
Mr. Frith began fumbling with his official dispatch-case, stamped with the letters ‘G.R.’ on the flap.
‘I’ve got it here, sir,’ he explained. ‘I’ve brought three extra copies in case …’
The Governor smiled. It was his best smile, quizzical, benign and pontifical.
‘ Three extra copies? Four in all? Mr. Talefwa should be delighted.’
‘I only thought
‘Quite so. Quite so.’ He paused. ‘I often wonder, Acting Chief Secretary’—Mr. Frith winced: this formality, even when they were alone, only went to show how wide the gulf between them really was, how normal human intimacy had never quite sprung up—’I often wonder how these journalists get their facts.’
‘By telegram, sir,’ Mr. Frith explained. ‘Mr. Talefwa would have had his last night. Along with ours, sir. Reuter’s and Exchange Telegraph, and that kind of thing.’
Sir Gardnor looked hard at him. There was no trace of the smile this time.
> ‘I was referring to the London newspapers,’ he said. ‘I can understand about The Times. There’s always been a special relationship there. The Editor of The Times is, I believe, the only journalist ever allowed inside No. 10. It’s a tradition. But the Manchester Guardian. Right up in the North, remember. People in office don’t exactly confide to the Manchester Guardian. They wouldn’t, would they?’
Mr. Frith, life-long Liberal as he was—shaken a little by the mystery of Mr. Lloyd George and the Party Fund, but still loyal, still steadfast became defensive.
‘It’s one of the world’s great newspapers, sir.’
‘You see it regularly?’
‘Not out here, sir. Only when I go back home.’
‘Ah.’ Sir Gardnor smiled again; less benevolently this time. ‘But I hear that their attitude has changed a great deal recently. For the worse, I’m afraid. Germany, you know. In fact,’ here Sir Gardnor dropped his voice almost to a whisper, ‘I’m told that at the moment they’re quite— how shall I put it?—unreliable.’
Mr. Frith opened out the top copy of the Amimbo Mirror and placed it conspicuously on Sir Gardnor’s desk. Sir Gardnor ignored it.
‘And if these things should come to pass, Acting Chief Secretary,’ he asked, ‘how would you feel about it? What would you say if I were to move on to Delhi?’
‘I would offer you my most sincere congratulations, sir. I can’t think of anyone…’
‘How kind. How very kind. But what I really had in mind was Amimbo. My work here can hardly be said to be complete, now can it? I was wondering what a new man out here would get up to. We must think of the future, Acting Chief Secretary, mustn’t we?’
Sir Gardnor broke off, and temporarily became a ceiling-gazer. Then he glanced down at his desk. ‘Oh,’ he said, in a tone of surprise, almost of astonishment, ‘so this is it, is it? This is what our local Editor has to say. I must read it, mustn’t I?’
Mr. Frith studied Sir Gardnor’s face as he was reading. But there was not one particle of expression. It might have been the local bus timetable that he was holding in his hands.
Under the headline, ‘india beware‘, it led straight into the attack. ‘Our Iron Governor,’ it ran, ‘under whom we have for so long been living under conditions of Martial Law and police coercion, is soon to be sitting astride the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort and the lice-infested, cholera-stricken slums of Calcutta. Hindus and Moslems be on your guard. Famine, not arms, is the weapon by which you will be destroyed. Consider carefully the terrible facts assembled by the Mirror staff of truth-seekers…’—Mr. Frith could see that the Governor was beginning to skip—. . in the memorable drought of 1917 twenty-three villages were denied all water supply upon the Governor’s orders… the demand of empty, swollen bellies was met by an unparalleled display of military force.’ And, finally, in the heaviest type that his compositors could muster, Mr. Talefwa delivered himself of his peroration: ‘Indians, free your country: spare your wives and remember your children. The Iron Governor threatens.’
Mr. Frith had been following the passage of Sir Gardnor’s eyes down the page. At what he judged to be the appropriate moment, he gave a little laugh.
‘And to think, sir,’ he said, ‘that only last week he was lunching here at your own table. It’s really quite inconceivable.’
Sir Gardnor had slid back in his chair and was intent again upon the same spot on the ceiling. He remained silent and transfixed.
‘Do you know,’ he asked at last, ‘whom I blame for the whole of this? One man and one man only.’
‘And who would that be, sir?’
‘Our Bishop,’ Sir Gardnor told him. ‘The damn fellow specially asked to come, and then he wouldn’t stop talking. Just like his sermons. If I’d had Mr. Talefwa to myself, this disgraceful article would never have appeared.’ He broke off. ‘We’ll ignore it, of course. Ignore it completely. I don’t think we tremble do we, Acting Chief Secretary, when Mr. Talefwa speaks?’
Chapter 11
There was a message left on the pad beside the telephone to say that Miss Prosser would be coming over to the bungalow after tea. And, through the rain, the wheels of her car churning up the red mud, Miss Prosser came.
‘I guessed I’d find you here,’ she said, as she stripped off her streaming oilskin. ‘After all, there isn’t much to do in Amimbo on a Saturday afternoon, is there? Not when it’s like this, I mean.’
She had brought a spare pair of shoes with her in a waterproof bag, and began thrusting her overlarge feet into them while she was still talking.
‘You’ve heard the news?’ she asked. ‘He’s been sent for. It came through just as I was leaving.’
‘You mean about India?’
‘It looks like it. That’s why I’m here.’
They had gone through into the drawing-room by now, and Miss Prosser sat herself down in Harold’s chair. She reached out and took one of the cigarettes from the open box beside her.
‘I’m sorry,’ Harold said, as he brought out Ins lighter. ‘I thought you didn’t smoke.’
‘Only sometimes,’ she told him. ‘Like now, for instance.’
He stood there, looking at her. On any showing, she certainly was an extraordinarily unattractive woman. And today her thin, sallow neck seemed longer than ever. It seemed to rise endlessly out of the collar of her dress. Also, she didn’t know what to do with the hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette. She kept trying in vain to find somewhere to put it.
‘Would… would you like a cup of tea?’ he asked.
She did not reply immediately because, in an awkward, amateur kind of way, she was still sucking hard at her cigarette. Then she blew the smoke out slowly, through deliberately rounded lips, as though it were opium.
‘I’d rather have a drink’, she said. ‘I need it.’
‘But I thought you didn’t drink, either.’
‘I don’t. Not when she’s around. It only encourages her.’
Sybil Prosser made the statement quite casually, in that flat, expressionless voice of hers; and then added as an equally casual after-thought: ‘She drinks too much. It’s not good for her.’
‘What’ll you have?’ he asked.
‘Whisky,’ she answered. ‘Make it a short one.’
When he came back, Sybil Prosser had settled herself. She was sitting bolt upright in the chair, and her hands were together as though she had just gathered up invisible reins.
She took the drink, without even thanking him.
‘I’ve got something on my mind,’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s Anne.’
‘What about her?’
‘We’ve got to stop her coming here.’
‘I didn’t …’ Harold started to say, but Sybil Prosser interrupted him.
‘That’s what makes it so difficult,’ she said. She sat back as though she had finished, and then suddenly leant forward again. ‘It’s not safe, you know. Really, it isn’t.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Sybil Prosser ignored him.
‘The houseboys,’ she explained. ‘They’re always around somewhere, even when you think they aren’t watching.’ There was another pause. ‘And they talk.’
Harold took her glass to refill it.
‘What have they got to talk about?’ he asked.
He turned his back on her as he said it, and walked slowly—very slowly and deliberately—across the room. He wanted time to think things out; wanted time to decide just how much she knew.
‘Like the other night,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if they saw her when she got here. But they certainly did when she got back. I know, because I was watching, too.’ She was silent for a moment, and then added petulantly: ‘It’s not fair on me, either. I didn’t get one wink of sleep all through the storm. I was half dead all next day.’
‘Well?’
‘That’s why I came over. H.E.’s off on Friday. Back home, and he’s not taking her with him. It’s all t
oo easy. I don’t like the look of it.’ There was a long silence this time; so long, in fact, that Harold thought that the conversation must be over. Then Sybil Prosser resumed. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s had her followed,’ she said.
The last remark was delivered quite quietly and without emotion. It seemed simply an observation that had happened to come into her mind.
‘But how can I stop her?’
‘You can’t. She’s made that way.’ She paused again. ‘That’s why you’ve got to come over to us.’
‘And suppose I don’t choose to?’
Sybil Prosser gave a little irritated wriggle.
‘What’s the alternative?’ she asked. ‘If you don’t come over to us, she’ll go on coming over to you. Then there’ll be all hell let loose.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘The difference’ Sybil Prosser said firmly, ‘is that our apartments are private. Yours aren’t. There’s nobody around once we close the door.’ The pause again. ‘I know enough to keep out of the way.’
Harold got up and stood facing her.
‘Aren’t you taking rather a lot for granted?’ he asked.
Sybil Prosser’s pale, straw-coloured eyes stared back at him.
‘I have to,’ she said. ‘I’m her friend.’
Chapter 12
The Governor’s impending departure had thrown all Government Departments into complete disorder.
Mr. Frith’s life, in particular, had been reduced to the lowest level of human misery. That was because of H.E.’s fondness for running-over-everything-once-again-shall-we? And as Mr. Frith grew daily more exhausted—his tic was appreciably worse, and kept puckering up his left eye even at breakfast-time—the Governor himself seemed more than ever serene and proconsular.
‘After all, Acting Chief Secretary,’ he had said as they had broken up their last meeting around midnight, ‘it isn’t as if I shall be away for long—a fortnight, at the utmost. And there’s always the telephone or a telegram, isn’t there? You won’t be completely cut off, you know. And tomorrow perhaps we could look over the Estimates. We don’t want things to go wrong at this stage, do we?’
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