The Governor's Lady

by Norman Collins

  The visit wasn’t quite so easy to arrange as he had expected. Boys could not be taken out except by their parents or guardians—unless, of course, one of them had written first; and, unfortunately, there had been no letter of any kind, the headmaster explained. He was sure, all the same, that Timothy would be most interested to talk to someone so recently back from Amimbo, he went on; and perhaps Harold would care to meet him over tea in the house.

  The school was set out in the countryside somewhere beyond Devizes. It did not seem to be near to anywhere; and, to make it more isolated still, it had its park spread all round it. The taxi took Harold up a long drive alongside rugger pitches with half-sized posts, past the swimming pool with its corrugated iron changing shed and brought him to the big front portico, with the row of fives courts built up against the side wall. Small boys, heads down, were hurrying from nowhere. Harold told the driver to be back for him at five o’clock.

  Tea, despite the trouble that the headmaster’s wife had taken, was hardly a success. Young Hackforth was a large, silent boy; so large, indeed, that his resemblance to his father was quite startling. It might have been the Governor himself who was sitting there in those light-looking grey shorts and the blazingly bright pink blazer. He had, too, the same rather condescending manner as he got up to shake hands: Harold felt that he should have apologised for disturbing him.

  And, either he was concealing his feelings or he really didn’t care. He ate his way steadily through the tomato sandwiches while Harold was telling him what a great man his father had been, that he was now a legend in the Service and how black as well as white had wanted to contribute towards the memorial that was going to be erected to him.

  Young Hackforth brightened a little at the story of the buffalo hunt, and even asked the make of gun that his father had been using. Then he turned to the Madeira cake and was silent again. When Harold spoke of Lady Anne, the boy did not seem to know even that she had been ill.

  The headmaster kept Harold behind after Timothy had left them. There wasn’t a train now until six-fifteen, he said, and it was warmer in his study than waiting about on the platform. He seemed anxious somehow to prolong the conversation.

  ‘I take it you’re a friend of the family,’ he said, answering himself in the same breath. ‘You must be, or you wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of coming down here.’

  ‘I thought someone ought to look him up,’ Harold replied,

  ‘Did… did Lady Anne ask you?’ he enquired.

  ‘Nobody asked me,’ Harold told him. ‘It’s just that I was over here, and I thought I would.’

  He got the feeling that the headmaster was rather relieved that Lady Anne hadn’t sent him. The feeling grew stronger with the headmaster’s next question.

  ‘You haven’t heard if she’s thinking of coming back to England, have you?’ he asked.

  Harold shook his head.

  ‘Not that I know of,’ he said. ‘She talked of setting up house out there.’

  A look of relief passed across the headmaster’s face again.

  ‘It would certainly make it easier,’ he said. ‘After all, it’s the boy’s future we’ve got to think about, isn’t it?’

  There was a pause while the headmaster blew out the spirit-lamp under the tea-kettle.

  ‘If you do see Lady Anne when you get back, you’ll tell her the boy’s all right, won’t you? He’s well up in his form. I’m not at all anxious about Eton entrance.’

  There was another pause.

  ‘Did Sir Gardnor ever discuss Timothy with you?’ he asked.

  The question rather amused Harold: it showed that the headmaster didn’t know Sir Gardnor.

  ‘He wasn’t that sort of man,’ he said. ‘He didn’t talk about his private affairs. He was just hard at it all the time being Governor.’

  The headmaster seemed restless: he was now pulling down the loose cover where Timothy had been sitting.

  ‘I gathered you admired him greatly?’ he asked looking up.

  ‘I did,’ Harold replied.

  The answer obviously pleased the headmaster. It made things easier for him. But he was still troubled.

  ‘Pity all the same,’ he said. ‘A boy ought to see something of his mother. It’s all so difficult having to deal through the solicitors.’

  ‘Through the solicitors?’

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ the headmaster asked, and then stopped himself. ‘Then perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But I take it you’re on Sir Gardnor’s side. You are, aren’t you?’

  The headmaster tried to draw back. He saw suddenly what a risk he had taken. It wasn’t until this moment that he’d realised that the young man with the funny shiny eye might be the one that all the questions had been about. Perhaps Lady Anne had sent him there to spy on them.

  ‘I don’t think I’m on anybody’s side,’ he said. ‘I don’t really see where I come into it.’

  The headmaster had got up and stood with his back to the fireplace. It was his natural position, Harold suspected; the place where he usually stood when he was giving good advice to people.

  ‘No, no, of course,’ he said, quickly. ‘I realise that now. It must all have been before your time. It’s simply that Sir Gardnor gave instructions that Lady Anne wasn’t to be allowed to see the boy.’

  Harold remembered a conversation that he’d had long ago in the Residency when Lady Anne had first shown him Timothy’s photograph; he hadn’t believed what she had told him then.

  But already the headmaster was glancing down at his watch. It was nearly five-thirty, and he didn’t want his visitor to miss his train.

  ‘It’s really the future I’m thinking about,’ he said. ‘The legal position now that Sir Gardnor’s dead, I mean. I suppose the solicitor will tell me.’

  He broke off and began moving towards the door.

  ‘I had a letter from Sir Gardnor himself just before he went on that safari,’ he added. ‘He told me that the solicitors would know exactly what his wishes were. Strange, isn’t it, putting it that way? It’s almost as if he’d had a premonition or something.’

  The three weeks had used themselves up at last. Harold’s bedroom, with the open suitcases in it, already had the air of departure. Or of return, rather. Stained and battered-looking as they were, no one this time could mistake them for the baggage of a newcomer.

  His aunt was against the whole idea of his going back; in his present state, there must be a job for him here in Whitehall, she argued. And it was only natural she should be worried about him: she’d had the feeling ever since he had come back that there was something on his mind. If it was all those horrible things that had been said at the trial, he was simply to forget about it; and if he had any silly ideas that he could somehow have saved Sir Gardnor’s life he must remember that he’d been ill himself at the time, because of that eye of his.

  Sooner or later, he’d want to settle down, she kept reminding him. He wouldn’t find the right sort of girl, not out there in Africa; and by then someone else would have snapped up all the nice ones that he might have married if he’d been sensible and stayed at home.

  He spent the last afternoon buying his aunt a present. She liked little things about the house; and he knew that secretly she must have been disappointed that he hadn’t brought her any of those ebony elephants and ivory-tusk gong-holders and bits of beadwork that other African travellers usually carry back with them. She was, however, delighted— overawed almost—by the big radio set, with the carved sunset scene in the front of it, and pretended to be cross with him for having spent so much money on her.

  And then, on the last morning, the letter came.

  The cerise-coloured Amimbo stamp, with the impala in the corner, showed up on the breakfast table, long after he had told himself that he would never see it there.

  But the letter was not from Lady Anne. It was from Sybil Prosser and, big as her handwriting was, there were under two pages of it.

  She hoped that the operat
ion had passed off successfully, she said; and everyone had been asking after him. Anne, she was sorry to say, was still very far from well. The doctor had ordered complete rest, and said that she wasn’t to be bothered by anything. That’s why his letters had only upset her—they kept reminding her of what she’d been through. It would be better, therefore, if he didn’t write to her again; not until she was properly better, that was. She was sure that Harold would understand, and he’d know that it was only Anne’s health that she was thinking of. The letter was signed ‘Hurriedly, Sybil.’

  His aunt had been watching him carefully while he read the letter.

  ‘Does it make any difference?’ she asked. ‘About going back there, I mean.’

  He folded up the letter, and put it into his wallet. Then he patted his pocket down to make it go flat again.

  ‘Yes it does,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go back more than ever now.’

  Chapter 48

  They were back at the Milner Club together.

  Harold had just climbed onto one of the high stools beside the bar; it was the stool specially reserved for Mr. Frith’s personal guests. The stools were all entirely backless, and Mr. Frith himself made a point of occupying the corner seat, with the solid brick wall of the Club house behind him.

  ‘Thought I’d get you to come along,’ Mr. Frith explained. ‘Bound to be feeling a bit down the first night you’re back. Change of climate, and all that.’

  While he was speaking, he had been scrutinising Harold very closely. He had narrowed his eyes up as he did so, and now leant forward so that he could add something in the strictest confidence.

  ‘Damn good match,’ he said at last. ‘Not sure it isn’t a better colour than the real one.’

  Harold twisted his head round so that Mr. Frith could not see his eye. He had already decided that he would go back to the pink celluloid shade tomorrow.

  But Mr. Frith was still fascinated.

  ‘Can’t imagine how they do it,’ he went on. ‘Never have told you were wearing one if I hadn’t been in the know.’

  ‘I think it’s bloody awful.’

  The reply seemed to shock Mr. Frith: he evidently felt strongly about it.

  ‘You’re wrong there,’ he told him. ‘Quite wrong. I’ll show you.’

  He broke off for a moment and beckoned the bar-boy over. The boy had already reached out for the cork of the Johnnie Walker bottle, but Mr. Frith stopped him.

  ‘Come here, boy,’ he said.

  The boy grinned back at him: he liked being obliging to important Club members.

  ‘Yassah,’ he said.

  ‘Now, put your thinking cap on,’ Mr. Frith told him. ‘Take a good look at Mr. Stebbs here, and then tell me if you notice anything different about him.’

  The grin disappeared. It was all very embarrassing. The first thing that the steward had taught the boy was never to stare at anyone: it was a pronounced Mimbo trait, staring. But Mr. Frith was First Secretary now, and he supposed that it would be all right for him.

  ‘Yassah,’ he repeated.

  The boy took a half pace to one side so that he could get a better view. He rocked back on his heels. He tilted his head a little. Then the grin returned. It widened into a broad triumphant smile.

  ‘Yassah, sir,’ he reported. ‘Fresh eye, sah.’

  He was secretly very glad of the opportunity to examine the eye at really close quarters. It was the first thing that he had noticed about Harold when he came in, and he had been staring at it ever since. That was because it was so much the brighter of the two. Caught in the proper light, it sparkled. The boy admired it enormously: he envied Harold.

  Mr. Frith nudged Harold.

  ‘Anyhow, no point in drawing attention to it,’ he said. ‘Just go on wearing it, and people’ll forget you’ve got it in. Soon get used to anything here, you know.’

  Harold was glad when Mr. Frith suggested, at last, that they should move over to the table.

  On some nights, he left it so late before he asked for the menu that the kitchen side had entirely closed down and the bar-boy had to fix some sandwiches: and some nights Mr. Frith simply cut out dinner altogether: those were the occasions when he felt so out-of-sorts and fidgety next morning, and kept complaining about Colonial Office indifference.

  Harold waited until they were both seated. There were other things that he wanted to talk about besides his eye; one in particular. But he didn’t want to rush it, didn’t want Mr. Frith to know how much it mattered.

  Mr. Frith was busy shaking out his napkin.

  ‘Remembered to thank you for the refills, didn’t I?’ he asked.

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Can’t think where the last lot got to,’ he said. ‘Brought back a whole easeful. Stolen probably.’

  He broke off, because he had run into difficulties. One of the corners of the napkin had been starched down, and he was trying to prise the hem open with his knife.

  ‘Steal anything,’ he added. ‘Doesn’t matter how useless it is.’

  The knife slipped suddenly and Mr. Frith uttered a loud ‘Damn’: he had managed somehow to cut the napkin. There was now a little triangular flap hanging down from it. He ripped it off, and let it drop on the floor beside him.

  Then he folded the napkin up again, and replaced it carefully on the table. He just wasn’t feeling like food, he said. But that wasn’t to worry Harold: he’d be perfectly happy watching him do the eating while he brought him up-to-date on what had been happening.

  It was a commentary, rather than straight history, that Mr. Frith provided.

  ‘Didn’t know he had the guts,’ he began. ‘Never thought he’d do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ Harold asked.

  ‘Ban it,’ Mr. Frith told him.

  Harold had seen a paragraph in one of the London papers about the shutting-down of War Drum: it was the side heading, ‘Police Pounce on Paper’, that had caught his eye. It had been printed as the third item in a ‘News in Brief column, with a double ‘m’ in Amimbo.

  ‘Can’t say I’m surprised,’ Mr. Frith went on. ‘Fairly been asking for it.’

  ‘What’s become of Talefwa?’ Harold asked.

  Mr. Frith took a sip of his whisky. He had brought the glass over to the table with him.

  ‘Gone to ground,’ he replied. ‘Hiding somewhere. Heard he’s trying to sell off the paper. Germans’ll probably be after it.’

  ‘And Ngono?’

  The question was automatic. After eighteen months out there, Mr. Talefwa and Mr. Ngono were the only two Africans of Harold’s acquaintance.

  Mr. Frith put his glass down rather carelessly. He spilt a little. A broad smile had spread across his face.

  ‘You should see him,’ he said. ‘He’s a proper sight, I can tell you. That nose of his.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Gone all sideways.’

  Mr. Frith put his thumb up against his nose, and pressed hard.

  ‘Like that,’ he said. ‘Would keep taking the plaster off to see how it was getting on. Drove the nurses nearly mad. Now he’s paying for it.’

  ‘Did they arrest anyone?’

  Mr. Frith shook his head.

  ‘Everybody in bed at the time. Not a soul around. Just happened.’ He bent forward, and beckoned Harold towards him. ‘Got a boot in his face,’ he confided. ‘That’s what did it. But wassitmatter?’

  His voice, Harold noticed, was beginning to soften and become blurred at the edges. One by one, the consonants were being decapitated: at this rate, later in the evening it would become a massacre.

  But, for the time being, Mr. Frith was lively enough. Twisted right round in his chair, he was signalling for the drinks boy to come over. There was no point, he told him, in having to interrupt himself every time he needed something: he’d better just bring the bottle and leave it there.

  ‘You’ve heard about the A.D.C.?’ he asked. ‘Never could stand the fellow. Got it written all over him.’

 
‘Bad luck if you’re born that way.’

  ‘Mind you,’ Mr. Frith said, ‘there was another side of him all together. Behaved like one of us when it came to it. Simply packed his bags and cleared out. No good-byes. No scenes. No excuses. Just vanished in the night, like that.’

  He tried to snap his fingers to show the suddenness of it all, but found that he could not produce the click that he had expected.

  ‘Left a pile of letters behind him,’ he added. ‘Had ‘em sent round by hand next morning. That’s what I call good manners. Wanted to spare other people’s feelings.’

  He wiped his eyes for a moment as though moved by the recollection of such thoughtfulness. Then he looked down at his watch. It showed eleven-thirty; and this was remarkable because it seemed that Harold had only just finished dinner: he must be a slow eater, he supposed.

  Mr. Frith poured himself another drink. There were lots more pieces of news that he wanted to pass on.

  ‘Wouldn’t know him if you saw Old Moses now,’ he said at last. ‘Different man. Got his speech back.’

  It was the first mention there had been of Old Moses all the evening: Harold hadn’t even liked to ask after him. He didn’t care to think of him now, shut up in a cell somewhere in the prison hospital block.

  ‘Is he… is he still on hunger strike?’ he asked.

  Mr. Frith did not answer immediately. He was preoccupied, looking at the level of the whisky. It was lower than he had expected. Taking hold of the bottle, he began tilting it to make sure that he was reading it correctly.

  ‘What was that you said?’

  ‘I asked if he was still on hunger strike.’

  ‘Dead by now if he had been,’ Mr. Frith replied. ‘You’ve been away a long time, remember.’

  ‘What made him change his mind?’

  Mr. Frith was finding Harold downright obtuse this evening.

  ‘Hungry, I suppose,’ he answered.

  He pushed his chair back from the table as he was speaking. It was clear to him that it was time for Harold to go to bed.