A Good Man in Africa

by William Boyd

  As he thought about the options and courses open to him the answer came with a slow inevitability, like a tune in his head whose title he’d soon guess, given enough time. An efficient organisation, unaffected by the Shango cult—there was only one in and around Nkongsamba which fitted that description and was suitable for the delicate task in hand. Only one. Murray. Murray and his University Health Service. Murray, with his loyal, well-drilled staff and his gleaming white ambulance. They could drive here, pick up Innocence and whisk her away before anyone had a chance to get hot under the collar.

  The inevitability of the choice didn’t dispel all his doubts, however, nor the vaguely shaming irony of calling on the man he planned to bribe to help get him out of a sticky situation. As he strode through the dew-slicked grass back towards the Fanshawes’ house he tried to convince himself that he was doing the right thing, silence that warning bell which was persistently ringing somewhere at the back of his head. If you couldn’t ring a doctor about a death, he argued, what could you ring one about? And besides, Murray wasn’t just a doctor, he was his doctor. What was more he was a white man, and white men in black Africa helped other white men in need. Damn it, Murray was practically a friend he told himself; weren’t they playing golf next Thursday? He felt a sudden warm glow of friendship towards the doctor, which he assiduously stoked up. Murray was a firm, unbending sort of man but the remarkable thing about him was that you knew where you stood. You took him as he was and that was how he took you. Yes, for all his unyielding ways he was a decent honest man. All inconvenient thoughts of the impending bribe were banished from his head as, buoyant with fellow feeling and sympathy and happily confident that this dreadful state of affairs would soon be a thing of the past, he leapt up the front door steps and quietly let himself in to the Fanshawes’ sitting room. He leafed through the telephone directory until he found the university exchange’s number. He dialled.

  “Hello,” he said. “Will you put me through to Dr. Murray’s house, please?” He heard the clicks of the connection being made. The phone rang. And rang. He was about to ask the exchange to check if they had the right number when he heard the receiver being lifted.

  “Yes!” The gruff venom in the voice disturbed Morgan.

  “Erm, Dr. Murray?” he inquired tentatively.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh good. Morgan … Morgan Leafy here. From the Commission. I’ve got a problem here and I …”

  “Medical?” Murray’s terse Scottish voice had lost none of its hostility despite the fact that Morgan had identified himself. He was a little surprised at this and made a further effort to quell powerful second thoughts that suddenly rose up in his mind. It was too late for them now, he had to go on.

  “Why yes. You don’t think I’d ring you if I …”

  “Have you phoned the university clinic?” There was a note of resigned fatigue in Murray’s voice as he interrupted for the second time. It made Morgan feel a fool, cretinous.

  “Well no. But this is an emergency.”

  “The clinic is fully equipped to deal with an emergency,” Murray said patiently. “My staff then make the decision whether to call me or not—it allows me to get a full night’s sleep from time to time. Ask the switchboard for the number. Goodbye.”

  “Just a moment,” Morgan said, beginning to get angry himself at such peremptory treatment; the man was a doctor for God’s sake. “If you’d let me explain … I’ve got a dead woman on my hands and I … I need your help.” Morgan could swear he heard Murray’s muffled oaths in the background.

  “Did you say dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “I take it it’s not Mrs. or Miss Fanshawe.”

  “God no,” Morgan said, surprised. “It’s a Commission servant actually. Why do you ask?”

  “Because Mrs. Fanshawe and her daughter are the only women at the Commission entitled to call on the University Health Service. We are forbidden to treat non-members of staff. We are expressly forbidden to operate outside the university boundaries apart from the British members of the Deputy High Commission. The duty sister at my clinic could have told you that, Mr. Leafy. Now perhaps you’ll let me get some sleep.” Murray’s Scottish accent imparted real harshness into his last words.

  Morgan felt his frayed nerves begin to send off sparks. “For God’s sake,” he exclaimed. “I don’t give a hoot about your rules and regulations; I’m asking you to help us out of a jam. This woman’s been struck by lightning; she’s quite dead but nobody’ll touch her because of some bloody mumbo-jumbo about some Shango-god or something.” Morgan paused, this new upset was too dreadful to contemplate. He saw his last option disappearing as a result of Murray’s ridiculous intransigence. He felt desperation building up inside him. “It’s an appalling problem. I need you to take the body away. No one else will.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he heard Murray expostulate. “(a) It’s five o’clock in the morning, (b) as I’ve told you I can do nothing for anyone who’s not a member of the university and (c) I do not run my health service on the basis of private favours. You’re asking me to violate the statutes of the University of Nkongsamba and betray official undertakings made to the City of Nkongsamba Health Authority on the grounds of so-called personal friendship. No, Mr. Leafy. It is your problem; there is no way you can make it mine. Contact the proper authorities; that’s what they are there for. Now kindly leave me alone!”

  Morgan sat shivering in his chair during this hectoring tirade. The enormous strains of the last twenty-four hours finally proved too much for him and without for a second thinking of the consequences he burst out, “And what about the fucking Hippocratic Oath, eh? You’re a fucking doctor, aren’t you, you sanctimonious Scottish bastard.…”

  Murray slammed the phone down. Morgan tailed off, still muttering racist imprecations. The unmoving, the stubborn, the beam-headed … He threw back his head and bared his teeth in a silent scream of pent-up anger, frustration and hostility at the universe.

  He staggered towards Fanshawe’s drinks cabinet and poured himself half a tumbler of gin. He walked out on to the back verandah and took a mouthful. His eyes streamed with tears and he shuddered as it went down. His view of the southern precincts of Nkongsamba bathed in a peachy matinal light shivered and went soft at the edges. He set down his glass with a rattle on the concrete balustrade at the edge of the stoop. He shook his head fiercely; a manic, berserk anger seemed to be rampaging there, like a lunatic in a padded cell. The bastard, he breathed out acid rancorous bile at the dawn, the dirty rotten filthy bastard! He went on, giving his imagination free rein. It seemed to help, at least minimally. He sensed overloaded systems responding to gentle tender hands at control. He felt like a skilled pilot nursing a grievously stricken airliner into a crash-landing. But as his anger began to subside and ratiocination asserted its dominance over the passions once more, the consequences of his fury slowly brought themselves to his shocked attention. Oh no, he said haltingly to himself, oh no, the golf. That was away now. Gone, irretrievable. And Adekunle, he thought too, what would Adekunle say? He contemplated Adekunle’s wrath and shivered. How could he bribe Murray now? he asked himself. And Fanshawe? The body was still there. What was Fanshawe going to do when he found Innocence baking in the morning sun?

  He threw the rest of the gin into a flowerbed. He felt sick, exhausted and grimy; it seemed as though some malicious person had prised apart his eyelids, lifted them up and emptied small phials of fine sand there. He’d handled everything so badly, misjudged and miscalculated all round. Par for the course, he thought cynically, no point in breaking the pattern. He knew in his heart that shit creek had claimed him this time. Full fathom five. He looked up through the brown water hoping for a flicker of sun. But it was all murk.

  The new day burst cool over Nkongsamba with its usual display of crisp breathtaking beauty. Motionless smoke-threads rose from a thousand charcoal fires into pale blue skies. The green of the trees tested the gold of the kind morning sun like a bride
discovering her trousseau. Ectoplasmic wisps of mist clung possessively to the meandering paths of creeks and streams and shrouded the taller hills. Africa at her most gloriously seductive.

  But Morgan knew that Innocence lay not two hundred yards away. The jelly of her eyeballs dry and opaque. Her pink tongue contracting in her gaping mouth, mites and insects patrolling her body for moisture, her blood stagnant and pooling, her muscles and limbs stiff and unpliant.

  He gazed blankly at the progress of the new day, indifferent to its splendour. Murray could have helped him if he had wanted to, he realised; if he had an iota of concern, a jot of feeling for him. But he didn’t give a fuck, that much was plain; he was more worried about his rule book, observing the letter of the law. Morgan squinted at the landscape, watching its contours blur and elide. He was on his own as usual. He knew then that he wanted to bribe Murray, tarnish his gleaming image, foul his perfect reputation more than anything else in the world. More than he wanted to get rid of Innocence; more than he wanted to marry Priscilla; more than he wanted to sleep with any number of beautiful women. He felt quite weak with the power of his desire. Something drastic had to happen to that man’s conception of himself—it was long overdue, and he, Morgan Leafy, would make it his business to see that it occurred, especially now that Murray had deliberately struck him down in this way. So brutally—almost as Shango had felled Innocence.

  It was all Murray’s fault, he said to himself quietly and calmly. Everything was Murray’s fault.

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Morgan well remembered the first occasion he had met Dr. Murray. At the time he hardly knew him. Murray never came to the Commission cocktail parties, even though his name was often mentioned as most of the British in the university had fallen sick—or their children had at one time or another—and had therefore called on Murray’s services. Morgan had heard nothing but good: the three university clinics functioned more efficiently than ever, rabid dogs had been cleared from the campus thanks to the registration and inoculation schemes he had introduced, everyone was satisfied. Murray was held to be—despite a certain formality of manner—a fine doctor whose diagnoses were invariably correct and whose cures were effective. Morgan had taken scant notice of this sort of cocktail party chitchat. He was not interested in the doctor or his clinics; he had enjoyed robust good health since his arrival in Kinjanja, apart from the odd upset tummy or septic mosquito bite and had never needed to utilise the University Health Service, to which the white members of the Commission staff were officially attached.

  One morning, shortly after Morgan’s relationship with Hazel had begun, he was discussing the thorny problems of efficient contraception in Africa with Lee Wan at the bar of the university club. Lee Wan was sitting on a bar stool, a considerable portion of his brown leathery pot-belly visible through the straining gaps in his olive green shirt.

  “Listen, my boy,” he said, swirling the ice cubes in his pink gin with a brown finger. “You want to get that popsy on to these contraceptive pills, p.d.q. Forget your rubber johnnies, your FL’s—unless you can get a pal to bring you some out from the UK.” Lee Wan was a naturalised British citizen, and spiced his speech with a curious mixture of archaic slang and what he considered were bona fide English expressions. He had studiously lost all trace of a Malay accent. “Don’t use the local rubbish, for Christ’s sake,” he went on, dropping his voice for the sake of the two ladies sitting near the bar. “It’s like poking through a glove.” He wheezed with laughter at his simile and slapped Morgan on the arm. “A bloody sheepskin glove,” he choked. He wiped his eyes. “My God,” he gasped with hilarity, “my dear God … Simeon,” he called to the barman. “Let’s have another two gins here.”

  Morgan had smiled at Lee Wan’s joke but not too widely. Sometimes he thought the tubby Malay as vile and disgusting a creature as he had ever met and felt guilty for enjoying his company. He was mildly repulsed by the turn the conversation had taken and he looked out onto the bright pool terrace from the cool shade of the ground floor bar. Outside, water splashed over a modern cuboid fountain and two tiny children shrieked and played on the concrete surround. Nearby their mother took advantage of the burst of sunshine to augment her tan.

  It was mid-September. Most of Nkongsamba’s expatriates had been away in Europe on leave and were gradually returning to take up their work again after the summer’s break, which coincided with Kinjanja’s rainy season. Morgan had taken his last leave back in March, and with Fanshawe and Jones back in Britain, he had been alone in the Commission for the last two months. He had found time heavy on his hands, what with the slack volume of work, the daily steaming downpour and the clubs quiet and torpid. He had been fairly happy to renew his friendship with Lee Wan and had soon been roped in to bar-crawls round Nkongsamba, perilous boozing sessions in Lee Wan’s campus bungalow and gut-expanding curry lunches on Sundays. It had been, on reflection, an unpleasant period of debauch that left him buried for short periods under heaps of recriminations. Still, he thought, it had seen him through the rainy season, the worst part of the Kinjanjan year, and he had met Hazel.

  Morgan looked at his watch. The Fanshawes were arriving after lunch at Nkongsamba’s small airport, flying up from the capital, and he was due to meet them there with the official Commission car. An advance letter from Fanshawe had informed him that their daughter was coming out with them to stay for a while. Morgan wondered vaguely what the daughter of Arthur and Chloe Fanshawe would look like. Jones had returned a week ago from his holiday in Swansea or Aberystwyth or somewhere Welsh; the rains had finished too. Life, he thought, would perhaps crank itself to its feet and try to be a little more tolerable.

  Morgan accepted a new gin from Simeon and topped it up with tonic. He decided to make this his last: it wouldn’t do to turn up at the airport and breathe alcohol all over the Fanshawes. He leant back against the bar and idly enjoyed the sparkle of sun on the pool water, finding the splashing of the fountain pleasantly soothing. It wasn’t such a bad life, he thought, sipping the chill drink—the weather was fine, he had status in the community, a reasonable salary, big house, servants and, he smiled with self-satisfaction, he had a black girlfriend with fabulous breasts. This brought him back to the recent topic under discussion.

  “It’s all very well for you,” he remarked to Lee Wan, “but I can hardly ask for a gross of Durex Fetherlite to be brought in with the diplomatic bag.” Lee Wan spluttered into his gin and pounded his knee with mirth. Morgan smiled; he wasn’t such a bad old chap was old Lee, he thought, revising his earlier uncharitable opinion. Real colonial character, good value, good man to have around.

  “Anyway,” Morgan said, “where do you get these contraceptive pills from?”

  “Send her to a doctor,” Lee Wan advised.

  “Mmm …” he countered, “but how much is that going to set me back? Can’t you get them at a chemist?”

  Lee Wan found this funny too. “God, you lazy crumpet-merchant,” he said admiringly to Morgan. “You’re shafting yourself stupid and you don’t want to spend a penny. Christ Almighty, man.” He thought for a moment and then suggested, “You could try Murray perhaps. He might let you have some. All the white wives out here are on oral contraceptives and Librium. Ha-ha,” he gave a little laugh. “That’s Africa for you, eh? trouble-free sex and tranquilizers. What do they call it? Post-pill paradise or something. Load of nonsense. Never seen a more neurotic, glum bunch in my life.”

  “Do you think that Murray might give me some?” Morgan mused. “I mean, do you know him well? Is he that sort of chap?”

  “Oh yes,” Lee Wan said expansively. “My old friend Alex Murray? Tell him you’re a chum of mine.”

  “Might just do that,” Morgan said. “I’ll drop into his clinic on the way to the airport. Here,” he said, clinking his glass against Lee Wan’s, “drink up. I’ve just got time for another before lunch. Simeon? Two gins here, chop-chop.”

  Morgan drove through the university
campus, following Lee Wan’s directions to Murray’s clinic. The Federal University of Nkongsamba was the largest in the country and was set in an expansive, well-appointed campus on which everything was contained including houses for the senior staff and a village for the junior staff and servants. All told there were upward of twenty thousand people within its boundaries. Morgan drove easily along pretty tree-lined roads towards the administrative centre of the university. On either side of him were the fecund gardens and sprawling bungalows inhabited by the senior staff. The pale asbestos roofs seemed to be flattened under the weight of the midday sun, driving the walls inch by inch into the hard ground. Morgan had eaten at the club restaurant: a rather stringy roast chicken and half a bottle of wine which, on top of the gins, had combined to give him a slight nagging headache.

  He passed the new and splendid university bookshop. A workman was painting out a graffito which read OTE KNP. Ah yes, Morgan smiled to himself, the elections—they should be good for a laugh. Beyond the bookshop lay the university administrative offices, the central assembly hall, the arts theatre, the senate building and a wide piazza dominated by a high clocktower. Between this complex and the main gate a mile off was a broad straight swathe of tree-lined dual carriageway. It was an impressive piece of landscaping and was known to the expatriate university staff as the Champs Elysées. Morgan turned off it and drove down a narrow road to Murray’s clinic. It was composed of two senior staff bungalows linked into one. Behind it stood a square two-storey sick-bay containing two wards with a dozen beds in total. Serious cases had to be despatched to the capital where there was a large American-financed teaching hospital.