Prodigies

by Francis King

  ‘The source of the Congo.’

  ‘The Congo?’

  ‘Yes, the source of the Congo. You might say – or, better, I might say – who cares about its source? The river is there and all the riches – minerals, ivory, slaves – around it are there. What does it matter where the river originates? Human beings want to know where they originate – from the dust or from monkeys or from the hand of God. That’s natural enough. But a river, for heaven’s sake, a river! None the less … People are prepared to die to find it.’

  Alexine was hardly listening to him. The one word ‘Congo’ had been like the report of a rifle fired just over her head, deafening her to anything else. The Congo!

  She was eager to question him but, knowing how jealously explorers guarded their knowledge for fear that someone might steal a march on them (her father, she remembered, guarded his insider knowledge of the markets with equal jealousy), she hesitated. Might not he too be in secret search for this Holy Grail despite his contemptuous remarks about the ‘idiots’ who were obsessed with finding it?

  ‘Yes?’ As though guessing the reason for her hesitation, he abruptly prompted her.

  ‘That’s an idea,’ she said. ‘The source of the Congo. Why did I never think of it? Colonel Scott once spoke about it to me. But for some reason I hardly took it in.’

  ‘Well, if I’ve been of some help …’ His tone was sardonic.

  ‘Oh, you have, you have!’ Then an idea suddenly flashed at her. ‘Why don’t you join us?’

  ‘Me?’ He pointed to his narrow, emaciated chest, the long, yellowing, talon-like nails resting on a rib-cage of which every bone was distinct.

  ‘Why not? You know the country. Lucy told me that you spoke some of the languages. Arabic will be of little use, I imagine. You could be such a help to us. Yes, it’s a tremendous idea!’

  He was looking across at her, his hand still on his chest, his head tilted to one side and a mocking but not malign smile on his lips.

  ‘I’d pay you. Of course I’d pay you. Generously, I have the reputation for being generous. So that would be a solution to your financial problems. Of a kind. Oh, do say yes!’

  ‘If you wanted me to go on an expedition to find copper or gold or ivory, of course I’d say yes. But the sort of expedition that you have in mind – for me it’s pointless, absolutely pointless. Why risk our healths and even our lives for something so pointless? No, no.’ He shook his head. ‘Count me out.’

  ‘But think about it!’

  ‘I’ve often thought about it. Yours isn’t the first invitation of that kind. Far from it. Not long ago Pullar asked me to accompany him and his wife. I said no then. I must say no now.’

  Alexine was not used to being refused. ‘Think about it,’ she repeated. ‘Please. I promise I’d go along with anything you suggested. I know that people say that I’m far too obstinate and bossy but I promise … Please!’

  Again he shook his head.

  Alexine abandoned any further attempt to make him change his mind. Instead she began to press him for advice. Where did he himself believe that the source of the Congo was located? What route should they take?

  ‘A lot of what I say is only supposition. I may be wholly wrong. But my advice is to begin by sailing for Bahr-al-Ghazal. I’ve been there myself – trading. Not easy. From there I estimate a march of at least five hundred miles south by west. With luck you’ll then come on the watershed between the White Nile and the Congo. With luck! Well, unlike me, you’re clearly a lucky person. Anyone who inherits so much money can only be lucky.’

  She continued to question him. But he soon lay back on the bed, drawing the sheet up over his emaciated body, his eyelids fluttering as though in an effort to ward off sleep. His voice became almost inaudible, falling away at the end of every sentence and sometimes of every phrase.

  At last, taking pity on him, she got up from the chair. ‘ I’ve exhausted you. I’m sorry. When I get excited about something, I can think of nothing else. I must let you rest.’

  Again the eyelids fluttered. ‘Never mind. My wife told me that your aunt calls you the girl who always gets what she wants. Perhaps – who knows – you’ll get the Holy Grail. That would be something – a woman who found the Holy Grail!’

  ‘May we talk again? Soon?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘And meantime – tell me how much you need. Yes?’

  ‘How much I need? Oh – oh, you mean money.’ His mouth opened as though he were again going to emit another of his prodigious yawns, and the dry, rattling sound of laughter emerged from the back of his throat. ‘The root of all evil. Well, if you insist.’

  ‘I do insist.’ In gratitude for that one word ‘Congo’, she impulsively put out a hand and laid it over the one still resting on his rib-cage. ‘Get well soon. Please. Make an effort.’

  ‘Patient, heal thyself.’

  ‘Oh, yes, there was one other thing I wanted to ask you. Do you know what happened to Colonel Scott?’

  ‘Scott? That old mountebank! The last I heard he was somewhere in America. Married a rich widow. In Chicago, was it? Yes, that was it. She was the widow of some railway or meat baron. A wise move on Scott’s part. Every move in his life has been a wise one. He was finished, health ruined, no money, when he met her. No more Africa for him!’

  Lucy was behind her. ‘ I think he’s getting tired.’ Passing the door, she had halted and, with a feeling of shame, had begun to listen. She was sure that there had been an intimacy between her husband and Pullar’s wife. Perhaps a similar intimacy was now about to take place between him and this bossy, opinionated, intrepid girl – or had already done so. Although no longer in love with him, she could, much to her surprise and chagrin, still feel jealousy. ‘He tires so easily.’

  ‘Yes, I was just going to go.’

  ‘She’s going to bail us out,’ Warburton said. ‘Think of that! She’s going to bail us out.’

  Lucy turned in surprised questioning to Alexine.

  Alexine nodded. ‘Yes. I want to do what I can to get you both out of your troubles.’

  Lucy’s pale face suddenly flushed. For a moment she looked angry. Then, tugging straight the sheet under her husband’s body, she said: ‘ Well, that’s very generous of you. I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve such generosity.’ Irony gave her tone a dangerous edge.

  ‘You’ve been so kind and hospitable to us. And your husband has given me a wonderful idea.’

  ‘My husband’s wonderful ideas all too often end in disaster.’ Warburton might not have been present, his eyes moving back and forth between one of these commanding women and the other. ‘I hope that won’t happen in your case.’

  Chapter Ten

  SUNNY AND ALEXINE RODE OUT SIDE BY SIDE, as she and Sammy had so often done in a past that now often seemed to her to be no more than a smoke-like puff of dream, suddenly drifting across her mind and then, strand by strand, disintegrating.

  Like Sammy, Sunny had from the start been fearless on the pony bought for him by Alexine, with Osman as intermediary; but, unlike Sammy, he had no natural aptitude, so that it was fortunate that his shaggy, skinny mount, still to show the benefits of its change of ownership, was rarely to be coaxed into a trot, let alone a canter. When he did trot, Sunny gripped the pommel of the saddle and, legs dangling barefoot alongside the stirrups, bounced up and down, often giving a hiccoughing laugh as he did so. Alexine told him to put his feet in the stirrups and to raise himself as the pony rose. But he could not grasp something to her so simple, and in consequence, since he clearly felt no hardship, she soon gave up.

  ‘Look, missie, look!’

  They were riding through a grove of Palmyra palms when, letting go of the reins, Sunny pointed upwards. In the branches above him, bulbous fruit dangled like orange globes of light. He jumped off his pony and, without bothering to tether it, miraculously, prehensile toes to trunk and hands around it, shinned up the tree. ‘Take care! Take care!’ Alexine shouted. He answered with
a laugh. Had she not, when first setting eyes of him, been reprimanded by Harriet for calling him ‘Monkey’? He was now showing a monkey’s insouciant agility.

  When he descended, he had one of the fruit precariously clutched under an arm. He had flung another down, only for it to smash, spilling its pulp.

  ‘Smell.’ He held the undamaged fruit up to her.

  She lowered her head to smell. She breathed in deeply.

  ‘Wonderful! Like a melon!’ The smell, sharp and cool, even seemed to assuage her growing thirst.

  Now he rode lopsided, bare feet still dangling and one arm cradling the fruit. Once back in the house, he would scamper off to the kitchen and, to the displeasure of the Egyptian cook, who was busy preparing dinner, take down a large, curved knife from a rack, and hack the fruit into pieces. Alexine, to whom he would offer a slice, would meditatively munch the orange flesh – ‘Not bad, not bad’ – but the others would refuse and Lucy would then jump up, take the plate from him and say that the servants could use it to make some flour for their bread.

  As they returned by way of a street flanked with white houses that made Alexine screw up her eyes at the glare reflected off them, a group of five mounted men, all in Arab costume, emerged from around a corner. They were talking in loud, vibrant voices, seemingly all at one and the same time, so that Alexine had difficulty in grasping what they were saying. At the sight of the tall, pale woman, her hair bleached almost white by the sun, and the small black boy, they reined in and turned their heads to stare. Sunny kicked at the sides of his pony. Alexine averted her eyes.

  Then, on an impulse, she looked at them. All the faces were almost wholly covered; but, with a shock, she was sure that she recognized one. Wasn’t it Fielding? When she had last spoken to him in Cairo he had said nothing of being in Khartoum when she was there. But that meeting had been a long time ago and perhaps it had only been after it that he had decided on the journey. Should she say something? But the eyes above the white cloth showed no recognition. She must have been mistaken! During the trek, she had often found that the heat and tiredness had tricked her mind into mistaking something for something else – so that, briefly, a distant tree had been transformed into a motionless figure, a drooping liana into a sleeping snake, a long shadow cast by one of the tents in the dusk into Osman’s waiting presence.

  Over long glasses of lemonade, she asked Lucy: ‘Do you know – is someone called Fielding – Tim Fielding – in Khartoum again?’

  ‘I hope not. I haven’t heard that he is.’

  ‘Why do you hope not? I met him in Cairo. I rather took to him.’

  ‘Most people do take to him. At first. But there’s always trouble where he goes. He’s partly – perhaps largely – responsible for what happened to my husband.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, it’s too complicated to go into it all. But they were once friends, partners. Then Fielding betrayed my husband.’

  Alexine persisted in trying to extract more details, but Lucy merely shook her head: ‘No, no. Let’s not talk about it. It’s too boring, it’s too painful. I don’t want to see him again, I don’t want to talk about him. I want to forget him.’

  For the first time since their arrival, Warburton came down to dinner that evening. They were all seated round the dining-room table, halfway through their meal, when suddenly there he was, in his night-shirt, feet bare.

  ‘I thought I’d join you.’

  Harriet jumped up, took his arm, and guided him over to her chair. She then signalled to one of the two servants, now dressed in white, starched uniforms that she had had the Greek tailor make for them, to bring her another chair. The day before she had at last been admitted into Warburton’s bedroom. Addy and Nanny Rose were now meeting him for the first time.

  ‘But this is your chair,’ he protested.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. They’ll fetch me another. Please. Sit.’

  He staggered to the chair and sat down.

  Lucy’s eyes were fixed on him. ‘Dear heart, I hardly think that you’re properly dressed for dinner with these ladies.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter!’ Harriet cried out, as she lowered herself into the chair brought by the servant. ‘ I must introduce you to my sister.’ Addy gave an abrupt nod of the head. Unlike Harriet, she was affronted by the sight of this unshaven, cadaverous, rheumy-eyed man in nothing but his nightshirt.

  ‘And this is our dear companion, Nanny Rose.’

  He made no response.

  Lucy leaned across the table. ‘Darling – please … Do go upstairs and put on –’

  ‘Oh, shut up, damn you!’

  Sunny put a hand up over his mouth and laughed behind it. He himself was wearing his newly purchased breeches and a white linen shirt and cravat.

  Lucy emerged, eyes stinging and arm aching from working at her book, to find Addy outstretched on a chaise-longue brought from The Hague and placed in the cavernous ante-room because Harriet had been unable to think of anywhere else for it. Addy looked up from her book.

  Lucy paused at the foot of the stairs, deliberated for a moment, then turned.

  ‘I’m sorry about that unedifying scene over dinner. But, as you know, my husband has been ill. And I suppose that for the ill – for people who are ill in their minds – one has to make allowances.’

  ‘Of course one must. I was once ill like that myself. Fortunately I found this wonderful man in Slovenia, by a lake called Bled. People said terrible things about him – that he was a quack and a crook and a pervert and so on – but he cured me. I wish your husband could go to him. But he’s getting better anyway, isn’t he?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘ Yes, I think that your niece has begun to bring about a cure.’

  ‘Alexine?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘She seems to have the key to the door of his cell.’

  What key was she talking about? Addy wanted to ask but was embarrassed to do so. Had he fallen in love with the girl? Might they even be having an affair? Lucy’s tone was so bitter. She decided to change the subject.

  ‘Forgive my asking, but what exactly is it that you do when you go into your – your den?’ By now she had got used to Lucy using that word (‘Well, I’m going to disappear into my den for a little’, ‘My den summons me’, ‘ I must put in an hour or two in my den’).

  ‘I write.’

  ‘Write? You mean, letters?’

  ‘No. Not letters. I have none of your sister’s enthusiasm for receiving and sending letters. Which is just as well, since I so rarely have occasion to do either.’

  ‘In that case –?’

  ‘I’m attempting to write a book.’

  ‘A book? How interesting!’

  ‘I doubt if it is.’

  ‘Perhaps one day I’ll be able to read it. As you must have realized by now, I’m a tremendous reader.’

  ‘Even a tremendous reader might not be attracted by my book.’

  ‘What – what sort of book is it?’

  Lucy had been looking out of the window at the dangling fruit bats at which Alexine had stared the day before. Now she turned. ‘A novel.’

  ‘A novel! But that’s my favourite kind of reading. I’ve read everything written by Dickens and Thackeray, and I’m now on my second journey through La Comédie Humaine. How exciting!’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s little excitement in my novel.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  Lucy considered, as though she were trying to sum up the contents of a novel by someone else, read years before. ‘Well, let me see. What’s it about? It’s about a girl whose father is an impoverished rector in Norfolk. He keeps losing what little money he has – and what little faith he has. She goes as governess to the family of her father’s widowed patron. He lives in a grand house on a hill, in a park of several acres. Designed by Repton. Well, she suffers all sorts of humiliations but then, in the end, he notices her and falls in love with her. His domineering mother and his sister are against any marriage, since they don’t t
hink her worthy of him – socially, I mean. But in the end – as always in the end in novels – true love conquers and the little governess becomes mistress of the grand house and all those acres.’ She looked sardonically over at Addy. ‘How’s that for a story?’

  ‘It sounds fascinating.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a kind of cross between Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre.’

  ‘Yes, yes, it sounds fascinating.’

  Lucy leapt up from her seat. ‘No, I’m only joking with you. That’s not it, not it at all.’ Again she went to the French windows and peered out. Damp strands of hair were sticking to her wide, low forehead.

  ‘When you mentioned Jane Eyre, I was thinking that you looked rather like Charlotte Bronte.’

  ‘Is that a compliment?’ Then Lucy took pity on Addy, so eager to. be friendly and sympathetic and so much puzzled by all that she had heard. ‘I suppose that mine is really a Gothic novel.’

  ‘Oh!’ Addy’s disappointment was plain. ‘I don’t know why, I don’t really take to –’

  ‘It’s a Gothic novel of an unusual kind. It’s not set in some castle in the Alps or the Highlands of Scotland, but here, here in Africa, here in Khartoum.’

  ‘Well …’ Addy was bewildered and flustered. ‘Well, that seems a very – very original idea.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that the idea is original. The only question is – is the execution any good?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it is.’

  ‘You’re so encouraging. Thank you.’

  Lucy began to mount the stairs. With a pang, she realized that Alexine was once again in her husband’s room. She could hear them talking to each other and then, as she put her hand on the handle of the door, he gave a clear, joyous laugh, such as she had not heard from him for many months.

  She pushed the door open.

  ‘Oh!’ She stared coldly at Alexine. ‘What a surprise!’