Unfortunately for Mr Other, there was a connection - the UAC, which owned both companies. His application, in his best fifth-form French, landed on his own manager's desk a month later, with no more than a polite pour votre attention estimée and the stamp of the Société Heureuse to realise Mr Other's hopes of a French connection.
Needless to add, Mr Other's next and last journey, as far as West Africa was concerned, was to London; unless he ever returned on a sentimental journey at his own expense, which I rather doubt.)
I was saying that performance carried more weight with the company than qualifications, and this was never more true than of John Reith, a small Scot, who, though his financial attainments carried him no farther than two stripes in the Pay Corps, he nevertheless managed the entire accounts of the great West African Timber Company at Samreboi.
A charming miracle happened to the Reiths late in their marriage. They had practically reached the despair of Zacharias and Elizabeth, when they were similarly blessed by the Lord, not through an angel but through a small quantity of West African beer (for they were both practically teetotal), which they consumed one jolly night at the club. And the miracle did not end there, for the angel of the bottle went on to give John the managership of the great Lagos Brewery itself: in which the company recognised not only his competence but, no doubt, his fiscal and spirituous probity. They knew he would syphon off neither the profits nor the products.
Nevertheless, when John left, the company thought it had better join the twentieth century and engage a 'real' accountant - with a CA after his name - and duly found one in London. I know nothing of accountancy, but I understand it is no more a seamless robe than modern medicine; and, as one of my old professors might have said, has been as much ruined by specialisation. I don't know what kind of accountant Mr Flappering was, but I understand he felt himself as a skin specialist might if suddenly required to take over the entire functions of Harley Street: (a simile which I might say John Reith had been sustaining up to then, as I was sustaining the reality at the hospital; but neither John nor I was handicapped by specialisation, which an old friend of mine had described as like taking a razor to chop wood).
In short, in less than three months, Mr Flappering had a nervous breakdown, and was carried out of town, kicking and screaming and clutching a whisky bottle.
I have every sympathy with Mr Flappering. I know what a dreadful thing a nervous break-down is from both objective and subjective experience (though he never actually consulted me). And I too have been a funker; but managed to pick myself up again, as I hope he did.
Ghanaians, I have said, are a droll race; but their humour can take a sharper edge than what has been called (no doubt, by an Englishman) 'that purest of the metals, the English laugh'.
For some months after his departure, the locals took to using Mr Flappering's name as an enigmatic formula of their own.
One would throw up his hands and exclaim: 'Flappering!'
'What's dat mean, man?'
'Dat means, "I give up!"’
Les Cady had a sardonic, even cruel, sense of humour. He had fairish hair, but brown eyes, and once told me it was only people with brown eyes who had the real killer instinct. He told me proudly of a genuine Italian-type beffa (a word unknown to either of us at that time, or he would have made a lasting mental note of it) he played on a former GM.
The managers lived in one-, or two-storey, houses; the second, which are unusual in spacious Africa, for the senior managers, who included myself. My ground floor, besides the kitchen (which was nearly as big as James's house in the garden), comprised dining and sitting rooms, divided by a sliding screen, left permanently open, giving me a living space, between my sofa at the far window and my dinner table, as long as a cricket pitch. The GM lived in a palace, surrounded by a small English park, which would not have been despised by the Duke of Westminster.
Once a year the GM gave a party to senior management and ladies at the great house. This particular GM was an upwardly mobile type, in the social as well as other senses, before the practice had received the name: especially the social sense. Though his provenance did not equal his aspirations, he did not mean to end up half way. In the meantime, his life's study, apart from what the company paid him for, was the habits of the upper classes - and Les Cady had him sized up to a tee.
Needless to say, dinner jacket was the order of the annual party: (the GM might have gone as far as white tie). The ladies left the gentlemen when the port came on, etc; and in due course all were reunited, not only in the spacious drawing room, but on the even more spacious lawn.
Late in the proceedings, when people were thinking of drifting away, Les came up with a jolly proposal, restricted to the gentlemen. 'Let's all go for a swim in our dinner clothes!'
He knew this would chime in with some weird superstition in the aspiring mind of the GM: the sort of thing that might wind up a jolly Guards officers' evening in Birdcage Walk. The GM was not a man of reckless outgoing temperament, but while the idea would never have naturally occurred to him, he was driven by his devil.
With a joyless smile on his undistinguished face, he said, in a strangled voice: 'Er, yes. What a jolly idea!' and Les went ahead enthusiastically with his plan. He seemed to whip up an amount of enthusiasm in the others which should have made the GM suspicious, but didn't; for Les disclosed rather more of his plan to the others than he did to his superior.
Drinks were laid aside and the male section (or a sufficient number of them; the more sober members remaining behind to look after the ladies, who must have wondered what was going on) piled into cars and led by Les (who, of course, assumed the privilege of driving his leader), drove uncertainly along the laterite roads to the club. Here they lined up on the long side of the pool. At the usual signal from Les - 'One, two, three, jump!' - nobody jumped except the GM.
After he had sat on the throne about three years, President Ankrah decided that the country had behaved itself well enough to deserve a little 'democracy'. Elections were held and the people chose as their new president, Dr Busia, a nice little man with an Oxford degree or a dog collar or something or all three, who inspired the sanguine people who lend money to places like Ghana with rather more confidence of getting some of it back than his erratic predecessor bar one.
The GM, who had some conversation with him when he came to Samreboi shortly after his election, predicted that he was too nice to last more than six months in African politics. I cannot remember how accurate his prediction was, which doesn’t sound optimistic.
The UAC also thought it might be a good thing to encourage the nation to believe that it ruled itself, and the GM was instructed to make preparations for the forthcoming elections at Samreboi. The job was delegated to Amos.
I remember attending a meeting which comprised such local dignitaries as a troubled-looking Father Adeloye, and Mr Sackey, who might have been wearing a tribal mask for all his face gave away. Politics, as Amos had hinted, was viewed by most people in West Africa rather as rock-climbing is by people without a special enthusiasm for it.
Amos, who had at any rate a genuine theoretical interest in the subject, tried to strike a spark from the stony faces around the large committee table. For this was the election committee, designed to educate the people as to their rights. As most of those present seemed content to listen to him without comment or the suggestions he called for, Amos finally burst out: 'Good God! What's the matter with you people? This is our country we are talking about. We are its rulers now. What are you? Ghanaians or Gold Coasters?' The obstinate silence which prevailed failed to answer his question - or perhaps Amos thought it did.
(As I did not have the vote myself, I am not sure what I was doing at this meeting. So simple a creature as myself was not there to represent the company as a disinterested observer: even in a token sense I might have put my foot in it. Perhaps I was there to stand by against any cases of psepholophobia - or election fright - in which case I might have added not only
a new name to the medical dictionaries but my own to a new eponymous syndrome.)
As I said, the new President Busia came to Samreboi where he made a speech. And Ralph Philipp, with his usual cheek, pinched my seat on the HOD row to which he had no right. Now I am a pretty lamb-like fellow, as my secret nick-name among the people (finally confided to me by Amos) testifies. Modesty forbids my revealing it to the reader; though it could be a back-handed compliment in a continent where the lion is more usually admired as an object for imitation. But I had half a mind to turn Ralph out, except I anticipated some insulting reference to 'British stuffiness' or something.
I was consoled and refreshed, after the usual protracted experience in the hot open air, not greatly improved by the awning provided, by Yao in a local bar. 'Have a beer, doc!' he invited. I said, 'I would like to try an akpoteshie for once, if I may.' This is palm gin, the local fire-water, also known as 'VC10' for the airborne experience it commonly gives you. Yao looked doubtful. I remembered the saying: 'everything the white man says is OK', or perhaps he thought 'on your head be it!' (in more ways than one). At any rate, I had my akpoteshie.
I was about half way through it when a policewoman entered the bar, who looked like Bessie Braddock painted black for Africa: a large pistol on her hip for use, I suppose, against subjects beyond the reach of her hambone fist, which otherwise might have served her purpose better by the look of it. Yao brightly said, 'I want you to meet this lady, doc, who is a friend of mine.' (Lucky Yao!) 'She is the chief policewoman of Ghana.'
In preparation for taking the lady's formidable hand, I passed my glass from my right hand to my left. I deduced this from subsequent events, for at the time I discovered I could feel nothing from the neck down. Thereafter I might have been watching a film. Yao and I moved forward together (it being improbable that our surroundings moved backwards) until some invisible railway-type buffers brought me to a halt a foot before the lady. The music of three voices (as Jeeves would say) speaking in English and Ghanaian was heard from the sound track which accompanied the film. The lady's hand advanced, and I observed my own do the same and take it. After a little more on the sound track, I found us returning to our former places.
Akpoteshie! I started having thoughts about what the profession calls 'recent advances in anaesthesia'.
As great an institution among the populace as the wandering griots or story tellers were the village letter-writers. No application for job or loan went except through their skilful hands. They performed on paper torn from school exercise books, and used long envelopes whose source had better be overlooked, and charged half a dollar a time. They used a Victorian copperplate hand, and expressed themselves in formulae as hallowed by tradition as those of the law itself, if rather more colourful. The finest example retailed to me was received by a manager of the Standard Bank, which began: 'Dear Master, I lie at your feet and wait for you to open your bowels of compassion.'
Amos (who lacked the true spirit of the connoisseur) treated these creations with contempt, casting them unopened into the waste paper basket and commanding the applicant to state his business: a degree of confidence (or something) I never achieved.
For one day I found such a one outside my house: a young man waiting for me to come home, with a long brown envelope in his hand.
The contents expressed a modest request to be adopted as my son and sent to Oxford University.
While I was wondering how to deal with this with kindness and firmness, we were joined by Braimah. Braimah was the little old man who had requested the lease of the Wendy house and become my gardener. And he was an 'NT'. He was wearing a solar topee as sole garment besides his usual ragged shorts, which proclaimed that he was on his way out to the tavern. This topee had been given him by the Reverend Alec, and his title to it once questioned, to Braimah's annoyance, by my jocular neighbour, Andy Astle.
This was not the sole insult Braimah had received from the same quarter. One evening I heard a great palaver at the back door, involving James and Braimah. Braimah had been taking his usual way home from the tavern past the sawmill of which Andy was manager. This was strictly illegal, as 'access to the industrial area was restricted to employees of the Company, etc'. Standing at the door of his office, in a moment and spirit of idleness, Andy had challenged Braimah.
'Mistah Assell say, "Who be you?" I say, "O, massa! You savvy me proper." Mistah Assell say, "You lie! I nebba savvy you. What you doin' here for workside?" Den what you tink Mistah Assell say? He say, "You be tiefman. You baggaroff!"' At which point I found Braimah fairly hopping up and down on his bare feet.
Now seeing me with the young man he came up, either through curiosity or to render assistance. He peered over my arm at the letter, which of course meant nothing to him. I questioned the young man.
'You want to go to college?'
'Yessah,' answered the youth.
Braimah seemed to think some interpretation was called for, or perhaps the services of a 'linguist'.
He echoed my question. 'You wanna go for college?'
The youth looked doubtfully at Braimah for a few seconds, trying to 'place' him - an exercise as important to the African as it was to Dr F R Leavis. Some connection with myself seemed probable, but Braimah's appearance did not inspire the same confidence.
At last he gave Braimah the benefit of the doubt and replied: 'Yessah.'
Now this was the first time Braimah had been called anything but 'old man' - and not in the chummy British sense either. His chest expanded: he decided to make the most of the opportunity.
At the head of the letter was the address of the electrical department. I took up the conversation from there.
'I see you work for the electrical department.'
'Yessah,' answered the youth.
Braimah intervened. 'You dey for 'lectical depar'ment?'
The youth looked at him again. 'Yessah.' Braimah's chest expanded further.
I saw my chance. 'I think you had better consult your own manager.'
'Yessah.'
'You berra go for you same manaja,' from Braimah.
'Yessah.'
At this point the conference broke up. Braimah proceeded on his way, by far the most satisfied of the participants.
I was resting on my couch one Sunday afternoon when there came a tap on the french window. Outside was a small boy in a body cloth. When I opened the window, he announced:
'Ee dey concert tonight for Mpeasam village.'
This meant that a folk play was to be put on at the village named. The boy knew of my interest in these events. I got in touch with Ralph, who was a fellow connoisseur, and at sun-down we drove out to the forest village.
When we arrived it was night, and the village looked charming in the moonlight, which blazed on the polished earth and streamed down the thatched roofs. The play was to be enacted at the headman's house, which lay within a stockade.
At the entrance we paid our fees at a desk. A group of little boys collected round us, chanting softly in small reptilian voices: 'Docketa! Docketa! Docketa! Mistah Fee-leep!' and, 'Mastah, please give me a penny.'
If we had been so foolish as to accede to this request, the small boys would have vanished and been replaced by a mass of furious protoplasm.
As we entered we were seen by the headman and invited to join him in his awning.
'You know me?' he asked. 'You dun my hennia.'
The play was to take place in a central space. A hut provided the dressing room and wing. The mass of the audience sat on benches, or the ground in front of us, and all around the rest of the enclosure.
As I have said, all Africans are born actors. Even a village of a hundred souls can put on a little play, based on a well-known story, and acted out ad lib with great fluency and perfect timing. There is a certain sameness about the stories, in which the villain is always a woman, as evidenced by their titles: The Bad Woman. The Wicked Aunt. (Perhaps there is a Freudian explanation.) Tonight it was The Wicked Aunt.
; A small boy called Kwasi attached himself to us to interpret (as the play was in the vernacular) and explain the action.
The entertainment began with the beat of a drum, and an almost naked man with a skeleton painted on his body performed a dance.
Then the story started. There are a number of stock characters. First we saw the Wicked Aunt with the Daughter and the Orphan. The Daughter was dressed up like a Takoradi tart to indicate her special status. (All the characters are men, as in Elizabethan times.) The Aunt was built up with aggressive cassava breasts and a pumpkin rump. The Orphan was dressed in rags.
The Aunt and the Daughter are jealous of the Orphan, who stands to inherit the farm from the Uncle, a benevolent if somewhat ineffectual figure. The Orphan is watched over by the Boy, a 'Buttons' character who does good, nor looks for any reward, and gets none. He wears a schoolboy's cap with the peak turned up and THE BOY written on it.
In the first scene the Aunt and the Daughter were expressing their feelings about the Orphan. The Aunt struck her across the shoulders with a stick. The Daughter kicked her food bowl out of her hands.
'Dey doan' like her,' explained little Kwasi.
When it gets too much, the Boy intervenes and gives the Aunt a drubbing. While she lies crippled on the ground, the Doctor enters with an enormous syringe, with which he proceeds to bayonet her in the rump, to the huge delight of the audience.
On his way out he adds: 'And chop nkuntumbre!'
This is coco yam leaf, a rich source of vegetable protein, which I recommended daily to my patients, especially for the children. The reference is not lost on the audience, and I rise to take a bow.
The plot thickens when the Aunt takes the Orphan's blanket to the witch doctor to put a spell on it, observed by the Boy from behind an imaginary bush.
At bedtime all lie down to sleep, in African fashion, with their blankets over their heads against mosquitoes. All except the watchful Boy, who changes the blankets of the Daughter and the Orphan. Next morning the Orphan gets up and goes to work, while the Daughter lies motionless.
Across the Wide Zambezi: A Doctor's Life in Africa Page 10
