The Governor's Lady (16 page)

They drove on for a while in silence. It was getting dark, really dark, by now. Lady Anne switched on the headlights.

‘Any news from London?' Harold asked.

He didn't have to say what kind of news he had in mind.

‘Yes, and it's no news,' Lady Anne replied. ‘That's what's so marvellous. And there isn't going to be any. Not for weeks and weeks and weeks. Gardie had a letter this morning to say so. He's furious.'

In the rainless African night, the windscreen of the car began to mist over. There was the noise of thunder in the air. They turned the last of the horse-shoe bends in the road, and there it was, the Busimo river— wide, muddy and imperturbable—suddenly denied the solid ground it crawled upon, and launching itself aimlessly into space.

‘It's supposed to be a beauty-spot,' Lady Anne remarked. ‘But it's all wet and beastly really. You'll like it much better where we're going.'

She turned the nose of the Morris up the narrow winding track above the Falls, and Harold watched the steering-wheel joggle in her hands. Stones and pebbles from underneath the tyres went flying into the bushes on either side. Then, round the last bend, they came on the smooth grass of the plateau. They had climbed higher than the mist, and the stars appeared again. Lady Anne switched off the engine.

‘It's best with a full moon,' she said. ‘But you can't have everything.' She leant back in the driving-seat and gave a little sigh. ‘I've been promising myself this all day. Ever since I woke up this morning.'

She had taken off her scarf, and was shaking out her hair.

‘There's some drink in the back,' she added. ‘I asked Sybil to see about it before we left. And we don't just have to sit here in the car. There should be a rug or something.' She gave the same slightly husky little laugh. ‘I asked Sybil to see about that, too.'

Lady Anne sat watching him while he unpacked the wicker-hamper with the drink. As well as the bottle of Haig and the soda, there was a metal box with ice-cubes in it. The box had been carefully wrapped round with one of the Residency napkins.

‘That's right,' Lady Anne was saying. ‘We'll have a drink first. Then you can make love to me. Then we'll have lots more to drink. Then I shall feel sleepy. And you can drive back. I shan't mind by then.'

She spilt some of the whisky when he passed it to her because, instead of simply taking the glass, she tried to stroke his hand.

‘And there's one more thing we've got to do,' she said. ‘I told Sybil we'd go in and say good-night to her. She gets fussed when I'm away like this. Poor Sybil, she never gets any fun out of life herself. And she's rather a darling really.'

It was late when they got back to Amimbo. The native stalls had been packed-up and put away, and the row of Indian shops were all battened down until tomorrow. Only the cafes remained open. In them was still light, music, joy.

Lady Anne was asleep beside him in the car. Her head kept falling over on his shoulder. Harold was watching the road. Ahead of them a red light was showing. It was at the level crossing; somewhere, still miles away probably, the one night freight train of the week was slowly making for Amimbo.

As he stopped the car, Lady Anne woke up.

‘What's the matter?' she asked. ‘Where are we? Perhaps I
should
have driven after all.'

Then she went to sleep again.

It was while they were waiting that Harold heard the sound of the approaching motor-bicycle. It was a robust, full-throated sound, and whoever was driving kept turning the throttle up and down, evidently for the sense of sheer power that it gave him. The machine came round the corner, and the cone of the headlamp lit up the Morris. With a crunch of tyres in the dust road as the brakes were applied, it drew up alongside. In the saddle, goggles pulled down over his eyes, sat Mr. Ngono.

‘I told myself as you passed by that it was you,' he announced delightedly. ‘And you see that I was right. No mistake about it. Most remarkably quick-thinking, too. Because I did not even recognise the car.'

He had pushed his goggles up on to his forehead by now and was staring across at Lady Anne.

‘My most sincere forgiveness,' he said. ‘I had absolutely no wish of any kind to intrude. Entirely the contrary, in fact. It was the car I saw first. It is a model much advertised in all the best motoring papers. Absolutely the latest thing. 1930 to the very minute.'

Lady Anne was awake now.

‘Good evening, Mr. Ngono,' she said.

It was her best Residency voice that she was using: quiet, rather clipped and, to some ears, possibly even a trifle patronising.

Mr. Ngono tried to stand up in the saddle and make a little bow.

‘You remember my name from the last garden party?' he asked. ‘How extremely gracious and most thoughtful. With over three hundred of your high and very eminent guests it is indeed a distinguished honour that I am by no means forgotten.'

‘You must come to our next one,' Lady Anne told him.

‘Absolutely the very moment the invitation comes,' he assured her, glancing towards the car again. ‘And may I be permitted,' he asked, ‘to say that this is the most sporting and up-to-date vehicle in the whole of Amimbo. It sets an altogether new and fashionable standard for these parts.'

Lady Anne gave him one of her approving smiles.

‘You won't be seeing it again for some time,' she told him. ‘I'm taking it on safari tomorrow.'

Mr. Ngono gave his biggest bow of all.

‘Then allow me most politely to wish you a very happy and contented safari. All big success to it. And to his Excellency, of course: that goes absolutely without saying. Good killing everywhere you go. Something tells me it will be quite terrific. A killing we shall all talk about, and remember.'

He broke off for a moment, and seemed suddenly to have become saddened and rather wistful.

‘It is difficult to see in this light,' he said, ‘but my motor-cycle is a new model, also. The very latest. It is an Indian twin-cylinder. Specially imported for my own pleasure. On your return, you will graciously permit me to run races with you.'

When it finally got under way, the safari caravan—all eleven vehicles— was nearly three quarters-of-an-hour behind schedule.

That was because Lady Anne up to the very moment of departure had told no one that the new Morris was coming along, too. And, small though it was, it disrupted everything.

For a start, it presented the most elementary problem of precedence. Immediately behind the Governor's Humber was where the A.D.C. recommended; but Major Mills, detailed by the G.O.C. to accompany the expedition, insisted that the truck immediately astern of Sir Gard-nor's car must contain his soldiery. How else in an emergency, he asked, could he be expected to give adequate protection? And, if Lady Anne was to fall in behind that, they'd need one more truck if they were to be able to protect her, too. As it was, the G.O.C.'s resources had been stretched to the limit by providing a scout-car to head the procession and a breakdown lorry, complete with machine-gun mounting, to follow up the rear.

In the end, solution was found by stripping down one of the service trucks containing the tents, and fixing up a makeshift seat for a corporal and private of the South Staffs to cling onto. That meant re-stowing the displaced canvas while the Transport Officer, head down over the Morris handbook, was trying to work out how much extra oil and petrol, let alone spares, would be required for one 10 h.p. car, not yet run in, over unmade roads, for a journey of unspecified duration, in tropical conditions.

There was more military show of force than on previous safaris because of the sudden rise in outrages. There had been another peculiarly objectionable demonstration by the Leopard Men at a small village less than sixty miles to the south; and the season's graph of stabbings had also risen sharply.

Only last night, a report had come through that a white supervisor
employed by Post and Telegraphs had been found half naked in a ditch with a six-inch wound in his back, and all his personal possessions— private papers, combined volt-and-amp meter, wrist watch, money even—intact. That made it much more sinister: it looked inevitably as though murder and not clean, straightforward robbery had been the motive.

All the South Staffs men had been told to travel with their rifles at the ready.

The column came to a halt, waved down by Sybil Prosser, two hours outside Amimbo. It was an unscheduled stop. But also unavoidable. Lady Anne, much as she loved the Morris, had to admit that in that heat, that dust, that sunlight, she could go no further. And Sybil Prosser, all swathed in white scarves like a cocoon, dismounted to ask what could be done about it.

Sir Gardnor immediately had room made in the Humber. It was where he had expected Lady Anne to drive anyway, and it was only when she had chosen to bring her own car that he had moved a lot of his own things—official boxes, binoculars, books, camera, gun-case— in beside him.

But re-storing the cargo was not Major Mill's only anxiety. They had been rounding a bluff of rock when Sybil Prosser had started her gesticulations, and the scout-car was already past it. Bristling with guns and all eyes front for hidden ambushes, it had gone hurtling on, oblivious of the fact that it had left its train behind it. What Major Mills, professionally trained to anticipate disaster, most wanted to avoid was a head-on collision with the Governor's Humber at the blind corner when the scout-car, flat-out and bewildered, came roaring back to see what had happened.

Harold sat himself at the wheel beside Sybil Prosser, and looked across at Lady Anne in the official Humber. It was a big car with a wide back seat. In one corner was Lady Anne; and, in the other, the Governor. So far, they did not appear to have spoken.

‘Oh God,' Sybil Prosser asked suddenly, ‘why did she have to bring the damn thing? I told her not to.' Her voice was as ironed-out and expressionless as ever, but inside her white cotton gloves she kept clenching and unclenching her fingers. ‘I wish now she'd stayed back at the House. We're in for a packet, I can tell you. I feel it
here.'
She indicated
a point somewhere in the middle of her breastbone. Tm never wrong about that kind of thing.' Then she leant over in her seat to get a better look at the Humber. ‘Well, anyhow, we all know where she is for once,' she said cheerfully. ‘I suppose that's something.'

The first official stop, the one for the night, had been arranged for one hour before sundown. By then they should have been on the rolling grasslands of the Tibbuta plateau. But, with the late start, this was out of the question. Sir Gardnor was aware of this, and he and Major Mills went into conference.

It was a situation dear to Major Mills's heart. Comparatively new to Africa, but with a natural flair for terrain, contours and compass-readings were his speciality. He spread out his maps by the roadside and consulted them reverently like a priest. Section by section he opened them up, using little stones to keep the corners flat, until the whole verge looked like washing-day. Then the auguries told him something. It was something to do with water, Harold gathered.

They made for it. Major Mills, compass in hand, with his map spread across his knees and the Governor's guncase catching him in the groin every time they hit a particularly violent pot-hole, kept alternately glancing down at his wrist watch and then lifting his head to note the height of the declining sun.

What worried him was that the contour-maps belied the vegetation. The maps showed nicely wooded slopes. But already they had left he occasional shade-patches behind them and were heading into arid desert. It looked like the gateway to the Kalahari.

According to Major Mills's calculations, they should have made a shallow ford crossing of one of the tributaries of the Mirabillo about five miles back, and now be following the course of the great river itself. A second halt was called, and the native servants closely questioned. But it was useless. To a man, they were strangers to this part of the country; and after much sniffing, one and all agreed that they could not smell water in the air, not even the faintest white trace of it, in fact.

It was Sir Gardnor who made the decision. They would laager where they were, he said; and, looking hard at Major Mills, he added that they could start prospecting for rivers in the morning. He added also that they could see now why he had laid such stress on carrying adequate water-tanks with them. Anything less than a full hour before
sundown inevitably meant an unseemly scramble instead of a properly laid-out camping site.

Harold did not see Lady Anne again that evening. Together with Sybil Prosser, she had retired into the shelter of one of the big trucks while their tent was being erected; and, alongside, dwarfing it completely, the twin poles of the Governor's marquee had been dug into the ground by Major Mills's labour corps.

Already, the place was beginning to look like a small township. Smaller poles and awnings and guy-ropes were going up everywhere; and in front of one of the better tents—Major Mills's, Harold reckoned —someone had deposited two white stones, one on either side of the entrance flap, to make a formal doorway.

It was the catering and hotel-side that were at the moment in the lead. The field-kitchens had been unloaded, their long chimneys plugged into place, and one of the orderlies had got a fire going.

Alongside, the Governor's own catering department had been opened up. And here the military were excluded. This was Residency soil, with Old Moses in command. With a white cloth tied round him, he looked more knarled and withered-up than ever; beneath the cloth, his legs showed thin and scaly like a heron's. He was superintending the unwrapping of a side of meat from the blood-stained butter-muslin in which it had been travelling.

Beside him, one of the kitchen-boys was standing. He was a new boy whom Harold had not seen before; and he was distinct from all the others. He was bronze-coloured, pure bronze. He shone. He was finer boned, too; with slender wrists and ankles. From the way he held himself, he might have been a dancer. His lips were thinner: they were like European lips. When he saw that Harold was looking at him, he didn't hump his shoulders and stare down at his feet as the other boys would have done. Head held a little to one side and baring his magnificent white teeth, he simpered.