The Governor's Lady (12 page)

As soon as Mr. Frith arrived, the Governor had him shown in.

‘Ah,' he said, ‘how good of you to come. How very good. You're well? We didn't keep you up too late, I hope?'

Mr. Frith began fumbling with his official dispatch-case, stamped with the letters ‘G.R.' on the flap.

‘I've got it here, sir,' he explained. ‘I've brought three extra copies in case …'

The Governor smiled. It was his best smile, quizzical, benign and pontifical.

‘ Three
extra copies?
Four
in all? Mr. Talefwa should be delighted.'

‘I only thought

‘Quite so. Quite so.' He paused. ‘I often wonder, Acting Chief Secretary'—Mr. Frith winced: this formality, even when they were alone, only went to show how wide the gulf between them really was, how normal human intimacy had never quite sprung up—'I often wonder how these journalists get their facts.'

‘By telegram, sir,' Mr. Frith explained. ‘Mr. Talefwa would have had his last night. Along with ours, sir. Reuter's and Exchange Telegraph, and that kind of thing.'

Sir Gardnor looked hard at him. There was no trace of the smile this time.

‘I was referring to the London newspapers,' he said. ‘I can understand about
The Times
. There's always been a special relationship there. The Editor of
The Times
is, I believe, the only journalist ever allowed inside No. 10. It's a tradition. But the
Manchester Guardian
. Right up in the North, remember. People in office don't exactly confide to the
Manchester Guardian
. They wouldn't, would they?'

Mr. Frith, life-long Liberal as he was—shaken a little by the mystery of Mr. Lloyd George and the Party Fund, but still loyal, still steadfast became defensive.

‘It's one of the world's great newspapers, sir.'

‘You see it regularly?'

‘Not out here, sir. Only when I go back home.'

‘Ah.' Sir Gardnor smiled again; less benevolently this time. ‘But I hear that their attitude has changed a great deal recently. For the worse, I'm afraid. Germany, you know. In fact,' here Sir Gardnor dropped his voice almost to a whisper, ‘I'm told that at the moment they're quite— how shall I put it?—unreliable.'

Mr. Frith opened out the top copy of the
Amimbo Mirror
and placed it conspicuously on Sir Gardnor's desk. Sir Gardnor ignored it.

‘And if these things should come to pass, Acting Chief Secretary,' he asked, ‘how would you feel about it? What would you say if I were to move on to Delhi?'

‘I would offer you my most sincere congratulations, sir. I can't think of anyone…'

‘How kind. How very kind. But what I really had in mind was Amimbo. My work here can hardly be said to be complete, now can it? I was wondering what a new man out here would get up to. We must think of the future, Acting Chief Secretary, mustn't we?'

Sir Gardnor broke off, and temporarily became a ceiling-gazer. Then he glanced down at his desk. ‘Oh,' he said, in a tone of surprise, almost of astonishment, ‘so this is it, is it? This is what our local Editor has to say. I must read it, mustn't I?'

Mr. Frith studied Sir Gardnor's face as he was reading. But there was not one particle of expression. It might have been the local bus timetable that he was holding in his hands.

Under the headline, ‘india beware‘, it led straight into the attack. ‘Our Iron Governor,' it ran, ‘under whom we have for so long been living under conditions of Martial Law and police coercion, is soon to be sitting astride the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort and the lice-infested, cholera-stricken slums of Calcutta. Hindus and Moslems be on your guard. Famine, not arms, is the weapon by which you will be destroyed. Consider carefully the terrible facts assembled by the
Mirror
staff of truth-seekers…'—Mr. Frith could see that the Governor was beginning to skip—. . in the memorable drought of 1917 twenty-three villages were denied all water supply upon the Governor's orders… the demand of empty, swollen bellies was met by an unparalleled display of military force.' And, finally, in the heaviest type that his compositors could muster, Mr. Talefwa delivered himself of his peroration: ‘Indians, free your country: spare your wives and remember your children. The Iron Governor threatens.'

Mr. Frith had been following the passage of Sir Gardnor's eyes down the page. At what he judged to be the appropriate moment, he gave a little laugh.

‘And to think, sir,' he said, ‘that only last week he was lunching here at your own table. It's really quite inconceivable.'

Sir Gardnor had slid back in his chair and was intent again upon the same spot on the ceiling. He remained silent and transfixed.

‘Do you know,' he asked at last, ‘whom I blame for the whole of this? One man and one man only.'

‘And who would that be, sir?'

‘Our Bishop,' Sir Gardnor told him. ‘The damn fellow specially asked to come, and then he wouldn't stop talking. Just like his sermons. If I'd had Mr. Talefwa to myself, this disgraceful article would never have appeared.' He broke off. ‘We'll ignore it, of course. Ignore it completely. I don't think we tremble do we, Acting Chief Secretary, when Mr. Talefwa speaks?'

There was a message left on the pad beside the telephone to say that Miss Prosser would be coming over to the bungalow after tea. And, through the rain, the wheels of her car churning up the red mud, Miss Prosser came.

‘I guessed I'd find you here,' she said, as she stripped off her streaming oilskin. ‘After all, there isn't much to do in Amimbo on a Saturday afternoon, is there? Not when it's like this, I mean.'

She had brought a spare pair of shoes with her in a waterproof bag, and began thrusting her overlarge feet into them while she was still talking.

‘You've heard the news?' she asked. ‘He's been sent for. It came through just as I was leaving.'

‘You mean about India?'

‘It looks like it. That's why I'm here.'

They had gone through into the drawing-room by now, and Miss Prosser sat herself down in Harold's chair. She reached out and took one of the cigarettes from the open box beside her.

‘I'm sorry,' Harold said, as he brought out Ins lighter. ‘I thought you didn't smoke.'

‘Only sometimes,' she told him. ‘Like now, for instance.'

He stood there, looking at her. On any showing, she certainly was an extraordinarily unattractive woman. And today her thin, sallow neck seemed longer than ever. It seemed to rise endlessly out of the collar of her dress. Also, she didn't know what to do with the hand that wasn't holding the cigarette. She kept trying in vain to find somewhere to put it.

‘Would… would you like a cup of tea?' he asked.

She did not reply immediately because, in an awkward, amateur kind of way, she was still sucking hard at her cigarette. Then she blew the smoke out slowly, through deliberately rounded lips, as though it were opium.

‘I'd rather have a drink', she said. ‘I need it.'

‘But I thought you didn't drink, either.'

‘I don't. Not when she's around. It only encourages her.'

Sybil Prosser made the statement quite casually, in that flat, expressionless voice of hers; and then added as an equally casual after-thought: ‘She drinks too much. It's not good for her.'

‘What'll you have?' he asked.

‘Whisky,' she answered. ‘Make it a short one.'

When he came back, Sybil Prosser had settled herself. She was sitting bolt upright in the chair, and her hands were together as though she had just gathered up invisible reins.

She took the drink, without even thanking him.

‘I've got something on my mind,' she said.

‘What is it?'

‘It's Anne.'

‘What about her?'

‘We've got to stop her coming here.'

‘I didn't …' Harold started to say, but Sybil Prosser interrupted him.

‘That's what makes it so difficult,' she said. She sat back as though she had finished, and then suddenly leant forward again. ‘It's not safe, you know. Really, it isn't.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

Sybil Prosser ignored him.

‘The houseboys,' she explained. ‘They're always around somewhere, even when you think they aren't watching.' There was another pause. ‘And they talk.'

Harold took her glass to refill it.

‘What have they got to talk about?' he asked.

He turned his back on her as he said it, and walked slowly—very slowly and deliberately—across the room. He wanted time to think things out; wanted time to decide just how much she knew.

‘Like the other night,' she said. ‘I don't know if they saw her when she got here. But they certainly did when she got back. I know, because I was watching, too.' She was silent for a moment, and then added petulantly: ‘It's not fair on me, either. I didn't get one wink of sleep all through the storm. I was half dead all next day.'

‘Well?'

‘That's why I came over. H.E.'s off on Friday. Back home, and he's
not taking her with him. It's all too easy. I don't like the look of it.' There was a long silence this time; so long, in fact, that Harold thought that the conversation must be over. Then Sybil Prosser resumed. It wouldn't be the first time he's had her followed,' she said.

The last remark was delivered quite quietly and without emotion. It seemed simply an observation that had happened to come into her mind.

‘But how can I stop her?'

‘You can't. She's made that way.' She paused again. ‘That's why you've got to come over to us.'

‘And suppose I don't choose to?'

Sybil Prosser gave a little irritated wriggle.

‘What's the alternative?' she asked. ‘If you don't come over to us, she'll go on coming over to you. Then there'll be all hell let loose.'

‘What's the difference?'

‘The difference' Sybil Prosser said firmly, ‘is that our apartments are private. Yours aren't. There's nobody around once we close the door.' The pause again. ‘I know enough to keep out of the way.'

Harold got up and stood facing her.

‘Aren't you taking rather a lot for granted?' he asked.

Sybil Prosser's pale, straw-coloured eyes stared back at him.

‘I have to,' she said. ‘I'm her friend.'

The Governor's impending departure had thrown all Government Departments into complete disorder.

Mr. Frith's life, in particular, had been reduced to the lowest level of human misery. That was because of H.E.'s fondness for running-over-everything-once-again-shall-we? And as Mr. Frith grew daily more exhausted—his tic was appreciably worse, and kept puckering up his left eye even at breakfast-time—the Governor himself seemed more than ever serene and proconsular.

‘After all, Acting Chief Secretary,' he had said as they had broken up their last meeting around midnight, ‘it isn't as if I shall be away for long—a fortnight, at the utmost. And there's always the telephone or a telegram, isn't there? You won't be completely cut off, you know. And tomorrow perhaps we could look over the Estimates. We don't want things to go wrong at this stage, do we?'

That was why it was so absolutely maddening for Mr. Frith to find that his idiotic secretary had made an appointment for him to see—of all people—Mr. Ngono. And, by the time Mr. Frith had discovered the blunder, it was too late. Already he could hear Mr. Ngono outside explaining to one of the native clerks the reason for his sudden and unwelcome visit.

‘It is most extremely urgent otherwise I would have been altogether unwilling to disturb anyone so decidedly busy. It is also most extremely delicate and confidential. Entirely private, in fact. Also, most timely. When the nature of my call is known everyone will be exceedingly grateful and happy.'

Mr. Ngono had left nothing to chance, and was dressed specially for the occasion. His new silk shirt had his initials embroidered on the vest pocket, and over his arm he was carrying his blazer, carefully folded so that the badge was showing over his forearm.

Because of Mr. Frith's abruptness he came to the point at once.

It is the attacks upon our Governor that bring me here,' he said. ‘The quite disloyal attacks which Mr. Talefwa makes in his newspaper. He is a remarkably proud and obstinate man, Mr. Talefwa. But he is not by any means rich. Most pressed for money, indeed.'

‘And you want the Governor to bribe him?'

Ngono showed his teeth in a white, glittering smile.

‘An altogether different idea entirely sir, and most engagingly attractive in every respect,' Mr. Ngono assured him. ‘It is upon importing in the most modern sense that it depends. A Government Trading Corporation is highly sophisticated, extremely modern and right up to date to the very minute. Also highly profitable for all concerned. I would free myself completely to manage it—with a distinguished and highly influential Board, of course. It would all be most democratic'

‘And Mr. Talefwa?'

Mr. Ngono bared his teeth again.

‘It is in his paper that we should solely, exclusively advertise. Full and attractive pages of advertisement every day. All at the utmost top rate. Most generously paid for.' Here Mr. Ngono stopped smiling. ‘Provided, it goes necessarily without saying, that there are no more reprehensible attacks upon our Governor. The least hint of criticism, even a joke in poor taste, and all advertising stops like'—Mr. Ngono pursed his lips and blew rudely into the air. ‘You see how at once clear the present proposal all will be from the point of view and general aspect of Mr. Talefwa? It is happiness or ruin. Great financial happiness and power, or extremely sad ruin.'

It was entirely Sir Gardnor's idea to hold a farewell party; and all on the spur of the moment, too.