1981 - A Good Man in Africa

by William Boyd; Prefers to remain anonymous

  CHAPTER 5

  When Morgan arrived home the first fat heavy drops of rain were spattering on his windscreen. He drove the Peugeot into the garage and got out. The pale grey dust of his driveway turned to black mud in front of his eyes as the torrent from the swollen clouds in the darkness above him unleashed itself upon the earth. He watched the force of the rain battering down, clattering tinnily on the corrugated iron of the garage roof, drowning the sound of the strong wind that thrashed through the bushes and trees in the garden.

  The light was on above his front door but there was no other sign of life in the house. Where the hell were Friday and Moses? he wondered angrily. It was only a matter of thirty yards from the garage to the front door but in this rain he’d be soaked in seconds.

  ‘UMBRELLA!’ he bellowed in the direction of the house, hoping his voice would carry above the noise of the downpour. There was a brilliant flash of lightning, as if in sarcastic response to his faint cry, illuminating his garden in harsh monochrome for a brief instant, followed some moments later by a hill-cracking peal of thunder. Morgan restrained himself from shaking his fist at the dark sky as he sprinted splashily towards his house, leaping over the burbling stream that already gushed around the doorstep, and flinging himself panting onto the verandah.

  His house was a long squat bungalow, set in a generous garden dotted with small groves of frangjpani and avocado trees and presided over by several towering casuerina pines. Only half the house—the two bedrooms and his study—was mosquito proofed. The other half, consisting of an airy dining⁄sitting room, kitchen and pantry, was fronted by the usual wide verandah upon which he now damply paced. The inundating rainstorm thundered on the roof and poured off the eaves in an extended sheet of water, turning the gravel gutters that surrounded the house into rushing streams that flowed across the wasted grass of the lawn to collect in an ever-widening pool at the bottom of the garden near the perimeter hedge of poinsettia. In the frequent flashes of sheet lightning Morgan could clearly see the silently expanding mini-lake, its surface tin-tacked by the heavy raindrops.

  He slowly regained his breath, mildly alarmed that a thirty yard dash should leave him panting this way, kicked off his sodden shoes and went through to the kitchen in search of his servants. There, he found Friday asleep, sitting with his head pillowed on his arms at the scrubbed wooden table in the centre of the room. Leaving the light off he walked past him silently and looked out of the open kitchen door at the back garden. Beside the steps that led down from the kitchen stood an old table and, as he had expected, he saw his aged cook Moses sitting upon it—quite protected from the downpour by the eaves that projected a good six feet. Moses was sitting with his long shanks drawn up beneath him staring out at the curtain of rain. He was puffing away on his foul-smelling pipe and by his side there was a grimy calabash and a glass full of cloudy, pale green palm wine. Thunder barrages bracketed the sky overhead and the scene again flickered into ghostly life from the lightning. The weight of water falling on the earth seemed to have transformed the surface of the garden into a slow-moving, treacle-like tide. Water flowed, stopped, inched forward again; pools formed and broke, leaves and grass were transported short distances and dumped, and still the rain came down. It was a hell of a storm, Morgan thought.

  Moses belched softly, turned to top up his glass and saw Morgan standing there with his hands on his hips. He threw down his pipe and leapt to his feet.

  ‘Ah-ah. De rain sah. I nevah go hear you one time, masta,’ he said and ducked up the steps past Morgan, switching on the kitchen light and shaking Friday awake who immediately began a long explanation of his extreme tiredness.

  ‘Shut up, Friday,’ Morgan ordered. ‘One cheese omelette please, Moses. And Friday, switch on my air-conditioner and bring me one bottle of beer.’ He went into the sitting room and switched on the lights and the roof fan, happy to have caught his servants napping.

  He was halfway through his bottle of beer when Friday brought him his omelette and placed it on a side-table in front of him.

  ‘Ça va, masta?’ he asked cheerfully.

  ‘No it doesn’t,’ Morgan said. ‘I need a bloody fourchette and bloody couteau, don’t I?’ He shouted after Friday who’d dashed back to the kitchen, ‘Salt and pepper too!’

  Friday was a very small, powerfully-built man in his early twenties who had come over from his French colony in search of work. Morgan had felt smart and cosmopolitan when he’d employed him—the nearest thing to a French maid in Kinjanja he’d wittily bragged—but the little man was hopelessly inept, had never got to grips with the English language, and was cordially detested by Moses, Morgan’s cook. Moses, in contrast, was thin and lanky and really quite old. No one knew his exact age—including Moses—but he had a wrinkled grizzled face and there were many grey spirals in his hair which probably meant he was well over sixty. He was a sly old man who filched professionally from Morgan and refused to let the demands of his job interfere unduly with his easy-going life. He could cook omelettes, fish cakes, a kind of stew, chicken curry, make rhubarb crumble and sherry trifle and that was it. Everyday the palm wine seller called at the kitchen door and Moses would buy a pint or two of the powerful drink. He cut up his own strong tobacco which he bought in moist strips like blackened bacon rinds and which he smoked in a tiny-bowled pipe that he always produced whenever he sat down to a tumbler of cloudy palm wine. What he could cook he cooked well however, and Morgan found that he tired of the diet less frequently than he might have supposed. It was enlivened from time to time by dinner invitations and, whenever the mood took him or whenever the prospect of fish cakes palled, he would eat at one of the clubs, in town or at the university, or at some of the Lebanese or Syrian restaurants whose kitchens were generally held to conform to minimal standards of hygiene.

  When he had finished his omelette Morgan walked out to the verandah and peered into the night. The rain seemed to be abating, the thunder and lightning heading eastwards. He could hear the croaking of frogs and toads coming from trie blackness.

  He decided to go to bed. He knew what it was like after rain: every insect sprouted wings and took to the air in mad untrained flight. He told Friday and Moses to lock up and go home. He snibbed the corridor door behind him, hearing as he did so the rumble of the glass doors of the living room being slid shut, and walked up the passageway to his bedroom.

  He had a quick shower and dried himself off. He sat on the edge of the bath and thought about Murray. How would he approach the man? How would he introduce the idea of the bribe? How would Murray react? He suddenly felt appalled that he, an official of Her Majesty’s Government’s Diplomatic Service, should be casually plotting in such a corrupt and criminal way, that his filthy luck had placed him in such vile and unhappy circumstances. In search of some solace he switched his mind to the sex he had enjoyed with Hazel earlier that evening. It distracted him for a minute or two, but slowly and inevitably a not wholly unpleasant sense of melancholy began to descend on him as it often did at such times. The house was quiet apart from the comforting hum of his air-conditioner, the rain appeared to have stopped, only the eaves still dripped into the gravel gutter-beds. He fancied he could hear the crickets starting up outside, brr-brr, brrr-brrr, telling the world how cold they felt.

  His thoughts turned, appropriately for a moody exile, to home. He thought about his mother in Feltham, a kindly fun-loving widow who, so she had hinted in her last letter, might really, finally, be marrying Reg, her boyfriend of many years. Reg was a newsagent, a nice man; Morgan had known him all his life. He was quite bald but was one of that deluded crew who think that a damp lock of hair bisecting the gleaming pate from ear to ear will effectively persuade people otherwise. Reg was all right, Morgan thought warmly: he was friendly, liked a drink, got on well with his mother. So were Jill and Tony, he added, his sister and brother-in-law. Yes, they were all nice; they rubbed along very happily whenever he went back home on leave.

  But then a sudden ang
er flared up. They were all so bloody ordinary, he told himself ruthlessly, so depressingly unremarkable, so inoffensive. He thought of his father—an indistinct enigmatic figure to him now—who had died when Morgan was fifteen. Keeled over from a coronary while helping a workman install a new dishwashing unit in a Heathrow cafeteria. Morgan occasionally gazed at his parents’ smiling posed faces in the family snapshot album and wondered how on earth he had developed the way he had: selfish, fat and misanthropic.

  He gloomily heaved himself to his feet, his backside sore from the unyielding bath-edge. He went disconsolately through to the bedroom and flung himself on the bed. Everything was going wrong. He shut his eyes and thought about his day: averagely disastrous. First Priscilla’s engagement, next the Father Christmas fiasco underway, then Adekunle’s ‘bad news’. Now all he had to do was bribe Murray: he was doing well. He turned round abruptly and pulled a pillow over his head. Good God, he thought, what a can of worms, what a fucking snake pit. Murray too. Somehow everything came back to Murray. The man had marched into his life with all the tact of an invading army. Three months ago he hardly knew him, was only barely aware of what he looked hke, and now he had to bribe him to help a devious politician pay for a crooked campaign. For an awful moment he thought he was going to cry mawkish, vinegary tears of self-pity, so he rudely sat himself upright, pounding pillows into shape with angry fists and snatched up a paperback. He glanced at the title. Hell comes Tomorrow! it screamed at him in vulgar red capitals. In a wave of premonitory disgust he flung it at the wall.

  He switched out the bedside lamp and settled himself down, trying to get to sleep. He took uneasy, faltering stock of his day. Had he done anything he could be remotely proud of? Had he done anything good? Had he done anything thoughtful, unselfish or unmotivated? Had there been any event that wasn’t directed towards the sole end of furthering the material, physical and spiritual well-being of Morgan Leafy Esq.? Well…no. He had to admit it: a definite, unqualified no. Thinking back he ruefully acknowledged that he’d been rude, sulky, bullying, selfish, unpleasant, hypocritical, cowardly, conceited, fascist etc. etc. A normal sort of day. But, he thought. Yes, but. Was he any different from anyone else in this stinking country, in this wide swarming world? Again, as far as he could see, as far as his experience had dictated, no. No was the only honest answer. As usual this brutal analysis did not bring with it much comfort. Unsettled and unhappy he turned over, closed his eyes and called on sleep.

  CHAPTER 6

  The phone rang. It was beside his bed and its ring was, at this hour, loud and brain-curdling. As he picked up the receiver he glanced at the alarm clock. Twenty past twelve. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than ten minutes.

  ‘Hullo, Leafy here,’ he mumbled into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Hello, Morgan? Sorry to bother you at this hour. It’s Arthur Fanshawe here.’ Fanshawe’s voice was tense but solicitous.

  ‘Arthur,’ Morgan said. ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fanshawe replied straightforwardly. ‘Something of a bugger actually. Can you get out here?’

  ‘What? Now?’ Morgan allowed more protest to creep into his tone than was wise.

  ‘If you don’t mind.’ Fanshawe was suddenly clipped, offended.

  Morgan sat hunched on the edge of his bed. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Look, can you tell me what it is? I mean…are you sure I…?’ Fanshawe’s tingling silence on the other end was eloquent. ‘I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. ‘Bye.’ Morgan put the phone down. The stupid mad shit, he thought wrath-fully, what the hell’s going on? As far as he could remember he wasn’t even on standby duty. It was Dalmire tonight: had they disturbed Dickie’s beauty sleep?

  Grumbling his doubt about this to himself, Morgan pulled on the clothes he had been wearing that day and splashed his face with water. Outside the rain had stopped and the dark moist night was dyspeptic with noises and mumblings. Toads burped, crickets trilled, bats swooped and beeped. As he walked across his verandah he saw squadrons of moths and flying ants battering around the front door light. Underfoot, his shoes crunched on the twitching drifts of myriads of exhausted insects, who had unfolded new wings at the onset of the rain and taken to the air for a brief joyous flight, lured by the glow of the hot bulb. His feet squelched on the mud of his garden path and driveway as he walked out towards his garage. Overhead the sky had cleared and the familiar wide canopy of stars shone down. You always saw more stars in Africa than you did back home, he thought.

  The road to the Commission was quiet, a few taxis returning, late-night revellers and one enormous articulated lorry thundering heedlessly down the road south, piled high with ground-nut sacks. As he turned into the Commission’s car park he was annoyed to find it empty. Dalmire had clearly not been disturbed. If this problem was so all-fired important, he asked himself testily, where were the other members of staff? The Commission building appeared deserted too, with no lights shining.

  Morgan parked his car and headed briskly across the dark garden to the Fanshawes’ residence which, as he approached, he could see was lit up like a liner on both floors. He guessed the problem was a domestic one and rolled his eyes heavenwards. Again he noticed no other cars in the driveway. Morgan ascended the steps and rapped on the glass door of the sitting room. Through it he could see Mrs Fanshawe and Priscilla sitting on one of the sofas. Priscilla had her arm round her mother’s broad shoulders. At Morgan’s cheery knock they both looked up in alarm, and Priscilla jumped to her feet and skipped across the room to open the door.

  ‘Oh Morgan,’ she said with relief in her voice, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come.’

  The genuineness of her expression so astonished him that he almost failed to appreciate her trim beauty, her ruffled hair and the skimpiness of the Japanese housecoat she was wearing, the bottom of which stopped halfway down her thighs.

  ‘Hello, Morgan.’ It was Mrs Fanshawe. Morgan noticed that her. eyes were red. Had she been crying? he wondered, never having seen her face register any of the softer emotions. ‘It’s so dreadful,’ she whimpered, remaining hunched on the sofa, a handkerchief balled in her hand, her large body quite disguised by a massive pale blue candlewick dressing-gown.

  ‘Drink?’ Priscilla asked.

  ‘Well…’ Morgan spun on his heel to survey the bottles on a shiny mahogany cabinet, rubbing his hands together as if he were cold.

  ‘The coffee will be ready now,’ Mrs Fanshawe intoned listlessly.

  ‘Coffee will be lovely,’ he said, a grin stamped across his face. ‘Milk and three sugars, please.’ He looked admiringly at Priscilla’s legs as she walked out of the sitting room to the kitchen.’Where’s Arthur?’ he asked, conscious ofhis superior’s absence. ‘Nothing’s happened to Arthur, has it?’ he asked again, realizing too late how unconcerned he sounded.

  ‘Of course not,’ Mrs Fanshawe snapped back in irritation.

  That’s more like it, Morgan observed to himself, she’s coming round. ‘No,’ Mrs Fanshawe went on, ‘he’s outside,’ she waved at the darkness, ‘seeing if there’s anything he can do.’

  The mystery was beginning to get on Morgan’s nerves. What in Christ’s name had they pulled him out of his bed for? ‘Urn, what exactly’s happened?’ he inquired politely.

  ‘It’s Innocence,’ Mrs Fanshawe said sadly.

  ‘Innocence?’ Morgan was frankly puzzled. Was this some obscure jibe at him because of his failure to divine what the problem was?

  ‘My maid,’ she explained crabbily. ‘My maid Innocence. She’s dead.’

  ‘Oh.’ Is that all? he screamed inwardly at her. Why am I bloody here then? He was about to pursue this line of enquiry with more vigour when he saw Fanshawe climbing the front steps.

  ‘Morgan,’ Fanshawe said wearily. ‘Glad you’re here.’ He looked most strange, Morgan thought. He was wearing a green silk Chinese dressing-gown with large orange lotus-type blossoms on it. A pair of striped Viyella pyjama bottoms clashed uneasily with this opulence. Fanshawe’s fac
e was pale and his normally sleek grey hair stood up in fine wispy tufts.

  ‘Bloody awful problem we’ve got here,’ he admitted, shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘Thought you’d be the chap to deal with it.’ He looked Morgan in the eye. ‘Can’t understand these Africans at all,’ he said hopelessly, like a criminal confessing his guilt. ‘Just can’t make head nor tail of them, can’t figure out how the Kinjanjan mind works. Closed book to me. Now, if this were the East…’ he let the implied comment go unfinished. Morgan wondered why Fanshawe thought he’d be the ‘chap’ to deal with these unfathomable mysteries. Meanwhile Mrs Fanshawe had risen to her feet and was belting her dressing-gown tightly about her waist, thereby crudely accentuating the bodyforms which bulked beneath the candlewick shroud. Morgan inwardly remarked on the prodigious humps that defined her chest and how, curiously, they wobbled transversely as she marched over to her husband.

  ‘Come on, Arthur,’ she commanded. ‘Leave it to Morgan. He knows these people better than we.’

  ‘Just a sec,’ Morgan interrupted, before Fanshawe could be led off to bed. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t quite got the full picture yet. Innocence is dead, sure, but I don’t see where I fit in.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Fanshawe brushed his forehead absentmindedly with his palm. ‘Sorry I didn’t explain, it’s all been a bit of a shock. Innocence’s over at the servants’ quarters. She was struck by lightning during the storm, died instantly I believe. I called the police—a constable’s just arrived—but apparently there’s some ghastly mystical, what do they call it? juju problem. Magical hocus pocus, you know, couldn’t work out what they were talking about. Thought you were the man for that.’ He paused. ‘Can’t tell you anything else, I’m afraid. You’ll have to see if you can make any more sense of it. See if you can get the whole thing sorted out tonight.’ The Fanshawes moved to the foot of the stairs. ‘I think,’ said Fanshawe wearily, ‘it’s something to do with disposing of the body, I don’t know. Anyway Morgan, do your best, see you in the morning.’