The Governor's Lady

by Norman Collins

  And, all the time, Mr. Das simply sat on there, asking questions, and generally making a nuisance of himself. They were thus entirely unprepared when Mr. Das suddenly made a dash for it, climbed over the wooden gate which had already been closed against late-comers, and sprinted up the platform after the receding train.

  He was compelled to wrench open the moving carriage door by sheer force, and fight his way like an animal into the already over-packed compartment. And it was not so much death beneath the wheels that he was fearing, as loss of face if he had failed to get onto the train. That would have made him cry.

  As it was, he was miserable enough. It was the heart-rending nostalgia of it all that affected him. He remembered other similar departures from other railway stations—from Calcutta, from Bombay, from Lahore. From Lahore, in particular.

  That had been when, just as he had thought that all the formalities were over, one of the creditor ladies who was seeing him off had suddenly pursed up her lips and squirted betel juice over his new white jacket.

  Chapter 51

  It had happened.

  The witch doctors having received their appropriate fees, the rains had come. All in all, they had been good rains, copious and long drawn out. More cattle had been drowned than usual. In places, bridges, railway lines, telegraph poles had been swept away. Whole settlements had vanished.

  But, these were the short rains. A month later, it was all over, and things were back to normal: rebuilding began, and the villagers returned. Victoria Avenue was powdered from end to end with a fine, gritty dust, and the ventilating system in the Law Courts was blocked solid again.

  It was during the drying-out period that the budget had finally been approved, and Harold was able to get time for rest. Shut up in his new office, with the fan still not working, he had lost nearly half-a-stone. Every time Mr. Frith sent for him, he had to hitch his trousers up round his waist before going out into the corridor.

  It was now the Political Department that was getting it. The Representation of the People (Voting Qualifications) Bill had them all foxed. The Attorney-General was already on his fifth draft, and the proposed amendments were coming in like Christmas cards. For the first time in years native Chiefs and senior civil servants were standing shoulder to shoulder: they were united in opposing almost everything.

  Nevertheless, within the Service, the plain truth had glumly been accepted: sooner or later, black men would be ruling other black men, drawing up impossible budgets, embarking on long-term schemes of infinite forlornness, punishing their brothers for not complying, creating new loyalties, enjoying themselves.

  It was, as much as anything else, the domestic atmosphere up at the Residency that helped to keep things running so smoothly. Mrs. Draw-bridge, after some trouble over getting her youngest satisfactorily settled in the right prep, school, had at last managed to join her husband; and, once more, the capital had its own chief lady.

  An unsmart, motherly sort of woman, she set a new fashion by going round without gloves. Usually, she simply didn’t wear any; and, on official occasions, when her lady-in-waiting trailed after her carrying them, she left them about on beds in new hospital wards, on the top of foundation stones, and on the balustrades of public buildings that the Governor had just opened.

  With the Drawbridges there, the Residency had assumed a more homely note. The plate was brought out less frequently, and Mrs. Drawbridge insisted on arranging the flowers herself. She even had the disconcerting habit of going to the telephone in person when she heard the bell ringing. And she wore the same jewellery all the time: a small diamond brooch during the day, and a string of imitation pearls in the evening.

  But she was undeniably a success. She liked the house, she liked the people, she liked looking after Mr. Drawbridge. In return, everybody liked her. There was a relaxed, easy feeling all round. The wives of senior civil servants stopped drawing comparisons, and Lady Anne’s name was hardly ever mentioned.

  The same relaxed feeling ran through the whole Colony.

  The monument to Sir Gardnor was very nearly ready behind the bamboo screen that had been erected in front of it, but nobody bothered to enquire how it was getting on. Mr. Ngono, rather proud by now of the Wellingtonian profile into which his nose had finally settled, was back in town and had selected a prominent site, two blocks down the road from the Royal Albert, for a new swimming pool. Crown Cottage was occupied by the recently married Finance Secretary, and the young couple—he was just on forty—were planning to convert the garden room into a nursery. Out in the bush, the police had given up and were no longer arresting every tall, bronze-coloured vagrant on suspicion that he might be the missing kitchen-boy. And, over in the prison hospital block, Old Moses had been provided with a ground floor room with french windows as his own private apartment.

  As for Harold, one week seemed very like another. They added up into months, and went by placid, uneventful, practically indistinguishable. He had plenty of work to do, and he had given up caring. He was even beginning to wear the same steady-going, composed expression as the rest of the department. Mr. Frith continued to be very pleased with him, and the Governor had already spoken of the next A.D.O. job that might fall vacant.

  Then, one afternoon when he got back to the bungalow after the office had closed, he found Sybil Prosser waiting for him.

  There she was in the chair he always sat in, over by the window. She had kicked her shoes off, and they were lying higgledy-piggledy on the rug beside her. It had been hot, very hot, all day; and her feet were swollen. Harold could see the pattern of the leather strap embossed across her instep.

  It was Sybil Prosser who was the first to speak.

  ‘You can give me another drink if you’d like to,’ she said. ‘I had one when I got here.’

  There was a pause; quite a long pause.

  ‘I needed it,’ she added.

  She was no longer even looking at him. The collar of her blouse was undone, and she was dabbing at herself with her handkerchief. There was the smell of eau-de-cologne all round her. The top of the bottle was sticking out of her open handbag, and she kept re-soaking the handkerchief so that she could apply it further and further down. Bending so far forward, she could not breathe properly. She gave a little gasp every time the spirit touched her.

  The first drink had brought some colour back into her face. But the flush had not spread itself. Sallow-complexioned as always, she had been left with two burning red patches just below her cheek bones.

  She lifted her head for a moment.

  ‘It’s whisky,’ she told him. ‘Just ice. No water.’

  Then she ignored him altogether, and went on dabbing.

  ‘You’re still wearing your eye-shade,’ she said. ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘How’s Anne?’ he asked.

  Sybil Prosser was re-buttoning her blouse.

  ‘It’s Anne I’ve come about,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  He was still standing, facing her. Sybil Prosser stretched herself out. She had got one of Harold’s cushions underneath her feet.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, man sit down, can’t you?’ she asked him. ‘Don’t hang over me. It’s like trying to talk to a waiter.’

  Harold took the other chair, the one he didn’t usually sit in.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  Sybil Prosser’s eyes were fixed on him now.

  ‘Why don’t you go to her?’ she asked.

  ‘What makes you think she wants to see me?’

  Sybil Prosser shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Hadn’t you better find out?’ she asked. ‘That is, if you still want to.’

  ‘Does… does she ever talk about me?’

  ‘She used to.’

  Harold began straightening the comer of the rug with his foot. ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said.

  The rug still wasn’t straight, when she had sat down, Sybil Prosser must simply have co
llapsed into the chair, dragging the rug along with it.

  ‘Then what are you waiting for?’ she demanded. ‘Is there someone else?’

  ‘There’ll never be anybody else.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She’s forgotten about me.’

  Sybil Prosser’s pale, empty-looking eyes were fixed on him again.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘If she’d wanted me, she could have answered my letters, couldn’t she?’

  ‘Not if she didn’t get them, she couldn’t.’

  Sybil Prosser had thrust her hand down into her handbag beside her. She brought out a flat packet, and threw it over to him. It was tied up with a length of narrow blue ribbon that might have been round the edge of a nightdress.

  ‘There they are,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve got them back. All of them.’

  ‘Did she give them to you?’

  Sybil Prosser smiled. It was a thin, rather pitying kind of smile.

  ‘She never had them.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Look for yourself, then. They’re not even opened.’

  The bundle smelt very strongly of the eau-de-cologne. He could see the notepaper, the handwriting. The top of one of the envelopes had been slit across with something blunt; a finger, possibly. The emblem of the shipping line had been ripped right through.

  ‘That one’s been opened,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the one I answered.’

  ‘Then you read it?’

  Sybil Prosser’s lips were drawn back again.

  ‘That’s why I stopped the others.’

  ‘D’you mean she doesn’t know I ever wrote to her?’

  Sybil Prosser nodded.

  ‘She thinks I went off without a word?’

  There was the same nod.

  ‘You did this deliberately?’

  Sybil Prosser seemed rather surprised at the question.

  ‘Naturally,’ she said. ‘I wanted her to forget about you.’

  ‘And now you expect me to go back?’

  ‘It’s entirely up to you.’ She paused. ‘But only if you feel you have to. Not if you just feel sorry for her.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ he asked.

  The pale eyes were still fixed on him.

  ‘Hers,’ she said. ‘I always have been.’

  There was a movement behind the bead screen in the doorway, and Harold turned. The houseboys had been listening again. He could hear their bare feet padding back along the passage towards the kitchen.

  ‘And what’s Anne going to say when I tell her?’

  Sybil Prosser’s eyes did not flicker.

  ‘I don’t know. I shan’t be there.’ She looked down at her watch for a moment. ‘Is there going to be anything to eat?’ she asked. ‘I can’t have another drink unless you give me something.’

  Sybil Prosser had crumpled up her napkin, and set it down upon her plate.

  ‘… and I’m not so young as I used to be,’ she was saying. Tm an old woman now. That’s what other people don’t seem to realise.’

  Now that her hat was off, he could see along the line of the parting: there was an half-inch wide band of white running right across her head. On either side of it, the familiar straw colour was still there. Not so bright as it had been, perhaps; but still distinctly straw.

  ‘There’s one comfort,’ she said. ‘I shan’t have to go on taking so much trouble about appearances. I only kept myself looking nice for her sake.’

  Sybil Prosser had brought her chin down as she said it: the creases in her throat spread out all round. She looked older than ever now. With her hands resting on the table top, he noticed how large the knuckles were.

  ‘Is Anne alone?’ he asked.

  ‘She was when I left her.’ Sybil Prosser ran her tongue across her lips: the lip-salve that she had been using came away with it. ‘How much longer,’ she added, ‘I wouldn’t like to say. She hasn’t changed any. That’s what the rows were about. You weren’t the first, remember.’

  Harold said nothing.

  ‘And if no one’s around, she’ll start drinking too much. She always does when she’s miserable. I’m the only one who could ever stop her.’

  ‘Then why don’t you go back to her?’

  ‘Because I’m no use, that’s why. She told me so herself.’

  She had taken her grimy handkerchief out of her handbag, and was crying into it.

  ‘It’s got to be a man,’ she said. ‘She’s made that way.’

  She was a tall woman: in the ordinary way, she towered. But, crouched forward and with her face buried in her handkerchief, she seemed to have become much smaller. Harold suddenly felt sorry for her.

  ‘You do love her, don’t you?’ he said.

  Sybil Prosser looked up defiantly.

  ‘Love her?’ she replied. ‘If I could have done, I’d have married her.’

  There was the sound of a car approaching; it drew up outside, and the driver turned off the engine.

  Sybil Prosser began getting her things together: she took out her pocket mirror, and peered into it.

  ‘Not that it matters,’ she remarked, almost as though talking to herself. ‘There’s no one at the hotel to see me.’

  She was just about to snap the clasp of the bag together again when she plunged her hand back inside.

  ‘You’d better have that,’ she told him. ‘It’s the address. I’ve written it down for you.’

  He took the piece of paper, without glancing at it.

  She was standing by now, and was pulling on the shapeless white sun hat that she had been wearing.

  ‘Well, there you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve done all I can.’

  She came nearer, as though she had just remembered something.

  ‘You can kiss me good-bye if you want to,’ she told him. ‘Anne did. And you don’t have to believe everything she says about me. She’s an awful liar. You never know whether it’s the truth she’s telling you.’

  Chapter 52

  Unless one of the tubes in the boiler were to burst, or the guard’s van derail itself again, they looked like being in Nucca by midnight.

  All in all, it had been a record run. They had kept up a steady forty-five miles an hour over even the roughest sections; and, in the restaurant-car, the diners had long ago given up any thought of actually eating or drinking anything. The last of the crockery had gone crashing from the tables as they had gone over the catch-points at Tibebwe hours before.

  But he was on the train; and he was nearly there. That was all that mattered. It was the first train, too, out of Amimbo since Sybil Prosser had called on him. He had spoken to Mr. Frith next morning, saying as casually as he could manage that he felt that he could do with a day or two down on the coast; and Mr. Frith had raised no objections. Sea-level and sanity, in his view, was an essential for anyone who had done more than six uninterrupted months in the capital.

  It was certainly pleasant enough in itself to be going down to Nucca. The Portuguese had made themselves very comfortable there.

  The railway station, in particular, was a guide book feature. It had a broad verandah of ironwork pineapples and acanthus leaves running right across the front. The metal was painted bright blue; and the local Nuccaese, waiting for a tram to arrive, waiting for one to leave, or just waiting, could stand on the verandah, drinking an excellent light beer and looking down on the sun-bonnets of the horses in the little courtyard below.

  It was twelve p.m. exactly when the train finally reached Nucca. But the hotel was still open. The manager and his wife were eating a late meal behind the reception desk, and they were delighted to see him. The manager congratulated him on having got there before daybreak; assured him that dinner had been kept waiting for him; and asked his wife to carry up the bags while he himself made a note of the number on Harold’s passport. Breakfast, he explained, was available in the dining-room from 7 a.m. until midday; or, with a small extra charge for room service, right on through
the afternoon and early evening.

  Harold spent longer than usual dressing next morning. He laid out his grey suit and his white one; sent them both down to be pressed; and then chose the grey. He looked at his ties, and wondered why he hadn’t bought any new ones. He remembered that his brown shoes were new, but that his black went better with the grey suit.

  It was his eye that chiefly worried him. He had got used to wearing it nowadays. He just popped it into place when he went through to the bathroom in the morning, and then forgot about it. Everyone knew that he had a glass eye. But not Lady Anne; not if Sybil Prosser had stopped his letters.

  And, now that he looked at himself in the mirror he could see that it was a bit of a shiner. It caught the attention. If he went in wearing it, she wouldn’t notice anything else about him. He decided on the eye-shade.

  Harold took out the piece of paper that Sybil Prosser had given him. The driver recognised the address immediately: it was only the other day that he had driven the tall, agitated foreign lady away from it.

  The house stood back from the road, and a semi-circular drive led up to it. There was a fountain in the middle of the front lawn, and the house itself was porticoed. It was a big house for two women to live in; ridiculously big for one.

  His heart was thumping as he tugged at the bell-pull. He could hear the peal echoing into the distance. Inside, everything sounded hollow.

  The coloured woman who opened the door was suspicious: she left the chain drawn across it. There was nobody in, she said. They had all gone away. She did not know where. She was merely the housekeeper. She had work to do. She was busy.

  Harold gave her money.

  It was only one of the ladies who had gone away. That had been last week. No one had seen her since. Naturally, they were anxious.

  Harold gave her more money.

  The other lady had not left the house since the disappearance. She was prostrate. Shut away in her bedroom, she was seeing no one. Only the doctor was allowed to call. Sometimes, he, too, had to be sent away again because she was too ill to see him.