A Good Man in Africa (31 page)

“So what do you think?” he said. “About skiing?”

“Sounds great,” Morgan said, thinking: maybe he’ll break his leg. Maybe he’ll break his back. An evil idea edged its way into his mind. “By the way, Richard,” he asked, “did you hear what happened to Innocence?”

Three little boys watched as Dalmire sat down heavily on the verandah. He had turned quite pale. “Oh my God,” he said dully, holding the back of his hand up to his mouth. Morgan blanched himself and threw the cloth back over Innocence’s body, disturbing the cloud of flies that hovered above it.

“Pretty gruesome, isn’t it,” Morgan said.

Dalmire swallowed and puffed out his cheeks. “My God,” he said again. “That’s repulsive. Revolting. To think …” he paused and then added in explanation, “It’s the first dead body I’ve seen.”

A small fire had been lit near Innocence in a little charcoal brazier onto which leaves and green twigs were occasionally flung. A smudge of bluey smoke hung about this end of the
compound, meant, Morgan assumed, to drive away flies and overlay any smell.

Dalmire got to his feet and walked unsteadily away. Morgan felt a little sorry for him; it was a mean sort of revenge but it was intensely satisfying nonetheless to see him so shaken up.

“Oyibo, oyibo,” a little naked girl shouted in delight, dancing on the verandah and pointing a stubby plump finger at the trembling Dalmire.

“The kids,” Dalmire said. “What about these kids just running about? It’s unreal.”

“Yes,” Morgan agreed, walking over to join him and looking back at the scene: Innocence’s covered body, the wash-place, the juju spells, the smoking fire, the wandering semi-nude children, hens pecking in the dust. He didn’t feel as mature and dispassionate as he was trying to sound. “But it’s Africa.”

They were walking slowly back to the Commission in thoughtful silence, when a shrill call came across the lawn.

“Morgan. Oh, Morgan.” It was Mrs. Fanshawe. She was standing by the edge of her drive beckoning him over.

“Bloody hell,” he said crossly. “What does she want?” Then, remembering she was Dalmire’s future mother-in-law, added apologetically “Sorry, Richard. Bit unsettled.” Dalmire, however, was too preoccupied with intimations of mortality to take offence and waved his excuses away.

“Morning, Chloe,” Morgan said as he approached. Mrs. Fanshawe was wearing a tight-waisted, sleeveless dress in a brilliant ultramarine that contrasted strongly with her almost ethereally pale skin and raven hair. It also made her look twice her normal size, somehow.

“Just been over to see Innocence,” he said, like some charitable WRVS helper. “Unfortunately, no one’ll move her.”

“She’s still there?” exclaimed Mrs. Fanshawe, raising her hands to her temples. “Oh, it’s too ghastly.”

“Yes, it’s been quite a day so far,” he said ruefully, “what with our demonstration. Did you see it?”

“It’s still going on,” she said scornfully, “if you can call it a demonstration. I’ve just come back from town and there are still three of them loitering by the gate. This funny little man with some sort of beard and a huge head of hair shouted at me as I drove in.” They walked towards the house. “He was
wearing a black polo-neck and leather gloves. Looked miserably hot.”

Morgan was wary about the friendly chatter—she wanted something. “That’ll be Femi Robinson, urban guerrilla,” he said. “Got to wear the authentic anarchist gear, you know.” They chortled together patronisingly over this as they entered the sitting room.

“Drink?” Mrs. Fanshawe asked. “You must need one. Surely you’re not still on orange juice.”

“No, no,” he laughed falsely. “I’ll have a gin and tonic if I may.” Anything Dalmire can do, he thought.

Mrs. Fanshawe looked at him appraisingly. “Always thought G and T was more your drink, you know? Could never understand your lust for sherry.”

Morgan was startled. What had come over the woman? he wondered; she’d never been so familiar. He was asking himself what could be behind it all when he was served a gin and tonic by a red-eyed Maria. He thought suddenly of her mother cooking slowly in the hot sun.

“She insisted on working,” Mrs. Fanshawe whispered guiltily as Maria left the room. “Wouldn’t take any more time off.”

“Priscilla home?” Morgan asked unconcernedly, trying to alter the images in his mind.

“No,” said Mrs. Fanshawe. “She’s at the club. Consolidating her tan. She and Dickie are off on holiday, you know.” He did know. Mrs. Fanshawe paused to screw a cigarette into its holder. “I want you to come upstairs, Morgan,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

Morgan warily followed the large turquoise globes of her buttocks up the stairs, wondering again what was going on. The ubiquitous chinoiserie of the house was more muted on the first floor, confined to pictures and curtain material. Mrs. Fanshawe led him into a small room with a low divan and a table, upon which stood a sewing machine. In the corner was a dress-maker’s dummy. Morgan took a spine-bracing gulp of the gin which he’d brought up the stairs with him. Mrs. Fanshawe deposited her cigarette and holder in an ashtray and unhooked something from the back of the door. It was red. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Looks suspiciously like a boiler-suit to me,” he ventured.

“It is, or rather was. It’s an ordinary white one I dyed red. I’ve made the sleeves short too. I thought that would make a nice tropical Santa. Mmm? What do you say?”

“Mmnng … sorry. I …”

“Of course I’m going to put some spangly stuff on it. I picked some up in town.” She beamed at him. “Thought I’d get you to try it on first though,” she frowned, looking him up and down. “I didn’t know your size. We may have to let it out a bit here and there.”

“Looks OK to me,” Morgan said, offended at this casual reference to his bulk.

“No,” Mrs. Fanshawe said firmly. “Try it on now; let’s make sure.”

“
Now
?” Morgan yelped. “Can’t I take it away? And tell you later?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Fanshawe said professionally. “Just step into it now.”

Morgan felt suddenly light-headed and giddy. With numb fingers he accepted the horrible red garment from Mrs. Fanshawe. He took off his shoes and was about to insert his left foot into the appropriate leg hole when Mrs. Fanshawe uttered a bright trill of laughter.

“Don’t be so prim,” she mocked. “You won’t be wearing shirt and trousers on the day. How on earth am I meant to get a proper fit?”

Unable to speak, Morgan hesitantly removed his tie, shirt and trousers and stood motionless in his boxer shorts and socks, slightly bent over, his shoulders unnaturally rounded as though he had a bad back.

“Come on then,” Mrs. Fanshawe ordered, like a hearty games mistress encouraging a flagging hockey team.

Inflating his chest, Morgan stepped into the overalls, pulled them up, slipped his arms into the sleeves. He was trying not to think what he had looked like standing there in his loose baggy underwear and brown socks, trying to ignore the acid smell of fresh sweat that seemed to billow noxiously from his armpits. Mrs. Fanshawe busied around him, tugging and pulling as he slowly did up the buttons on the front.

“Not bad,” she said. “Not too bad at all. Might have to let it out around the tummy a little, that’s all. Want to see yourself in a mirror?”

Morgan shook his head emphatically.

“Super,” she enthused. “I’ll make a beard out of some cotton wool, I’ll attach a hood and that’ll be that. The kiddies’ll love it.”

Morgan thought he was going to be sick as he struggled to get out of the tight overalls. His nervousness, discomfort and profound embarrassment had caused sweat to pour forth and he had to wriggle and squirm his shoulders and hips free of the clinging material. Mrs. Fanshawe was humming to herself as she rummaged through her sewing-basket. Morgan bent down, picked up the boiler-suit and handed it back to her. He avoided her eye but as she turned to take the suit from him her humming ceased abruptly and she said, “Oh!” in a tone of perplexed surprise.

“What about gumboots?” Morgan said as though in a trance, his eyes fixed on a crack in the wall. “I suppose I’ll need those too.” He groped for his shirt on the divan.

“Oh … yes. Yes,” Mrs. Fanshawe said, suddenly confused, gathering the red suit up into a bundle and hugging it to her chest. “Um. Look … I’ll, erm, see to that. Yes, yes. That’s what I’ll do.” Morgan shot a glance at her. She’d suddenly gone most peculiar, he thought, seeing her gazing intently out of the window.

“I’ve just remembered something,” she blurted. “Something I must do at once,” she said, scrambling for the door. “Let yourself out, won’t you?” She was gone.

A very, very strange woman, Morgan thought, his churning addled brain beginning to return to normal. What an odd family the Fanshawes were, he considered, but what had got into her? He sat down on the divan. It was covered in a coarsely woven bedspread. He felt the rough tickle of the material on the back of his thighs and, he suddenly realised, on a portion of his anatomy that should have been unexposed. He mouthed a silent horror-struck “Oh no!” and slowly looked down at his lap. From the simple slit in his boxer shorts that passed for a fly, his penis protruded, long, pale and flaccid. It must have popped out during his struggles to remove the boiler-suit. Now he knew.

Morgan drove down to the club. There was a curious fixed smile on his face as though he was under deep hypnosis or, like some cartoon character, had been hit very hard on the head. With all the skill of a Zen master he had emptied his mind of thought. He was a bundle of reflexes driving down the road, a dazed refugee mindlessly fleeing the mushroom cloud of shame and embarrassment that towered over the Commission.

It was lunchtime and the pool was quiet. He changed, stepped out onto the rough concrete surround and with the zeal of a born-again Baptist on the banks of the river Jordan hurled himself into the pool. He swam powerfully below the surface, thrusting himself through the cool blue water, his eyes mistily focussed on the shifting dappled light patterns on the pool-bottom. He imagined the sweat, the dirt and disgrace sliding from his body like a slick of sun-tan oil.

He hauled himself from the pool, sat down in the shade of an umbrella and drank two icy bottles of beer in quick succession. Gently, patiently, he began to come round. After an hour of careful self-counselling and analysis, and a thorough survey and methodological setting-out of his problems, the jumbled perspectives of his life slowly reformed and sanity resumed something like its rightful place in the order of things.

Calmer and pleased with this massive act of self-discipline he changed back into his clothes and walked through the club on the way to his car. As he was passing the noticeboard in the vestibule his eye was caught by the red lettering of the GRAND BOXING DAY GOLF TOURNAMENT and he noticed—as instinctively as if it had been his own—Murray’s name among the list of those who wished to compete. Morgan was forcibly reminded of his aborted golf-match and he felt the millstone of his worries resettle itself comfortably around his neck.

The childish idea came to Morgan that if he just sat still for long enough, if he didn’t trouble anyone, didn’t draw any attention to himself, all the hideous traumas currently rampaging through his life would get bored and rumble on past him like a marauding army off to lay waste to the next village up the road. Accordingly, he crept into his office and sat quietly at his desk for three quarters of an hour, filling his blotting pad with tiny doodles of spirals and concentric circles. But then a wide jaw-cracking yawn made him realise that total quiescence, utter passivity, held out no hope and precious few charms. Besides, he just wasn’t that sort of person: he
had
to do something, even if it was only to cock things up further. He looked quizzically at his ink-darkened blotting pad, and wondered if, for the last couple of hours, he’d been having a minor nervous breakdown, if this was what it was like when you started to go mad.

“Hey man,” he said in a fruity drawl, “when the going gets tough the tough gets going. Right?” He thumped his desk with his fist, his face breaking out into a piratical leer. “
Damn
right,” he told himself. “It’s not the size of the man in the fight, it’s the size of fight in the man.” His gung-ho homilies elated him for a moment but then his spirits collapsed with the suddenness of a fountain being switched off. He picked up his pen and fitted a minute spiral into a gap at the corner of his blotting pad.

Kojo’s face appeared round the door.

“It’s all right, Kojo,” Morgan said sadly. “I was talking to myself.”

“Excuse, sah. There is a man on the phone. He will not give his name and he is abusin’ me because I will not connect him to you. He says to tell Mr. Leafy it is Sam.”

“Oh Christ,” Morgan said gloomily. There was no respite. “Put him through.”

Adekunle came on the line. “Good afternoon, my friend. I thought, as the saying goes, discretion was better than valour, under the circumstances.”

Morgan was getting tired of Adekunle’s bloody sayings. “We’re all very annoyed with you here,” he said boldly. “To put it mildly, as the saying goes.”

Adekunle’s hearty laugh echoed tinnily in his ear. “Is that so?” he said. “As I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr. Leafy, all is fair in love and politics. But,” he said, the levity gone from his voice, “I’ve not called to discuss these matters. You have your ‘meeting’ with Dr. Murray tomorrow. I must speak with you about it before then.”

“Ah well,” Morgan said, suddenly not caring. “There’s a bit of a problem there. I’m afraid …”

“There is no problem,” Adekunle said harshly. “For your own sake, I hope not.” Morgan swallowed, his mouth dry. “Do you know the fish-pond on the university campus?” Adekunle asked. Morgan said he did. “Then let us meet there at half past five this afternoon. Yes?”

The fish-pond was another example of Kinjanjan literalness, but this time so extreme that it almost returned to metaphor. There were doubtless fish in it and it was, just, in the general class of ponds, but, more truthfully, it was a large and impressive artificial lake at the south-western edge of the university campus. Morgan sat in his car looking at it, waiting for Adekunle. Normally a tranquil scene of great beauty, today Morgan’s half-creating mind saw only stark primitive nature, hostile and unwelcoming, feral and unsafe.