The Governor's Lady (32 page)

When Mr. Talefwa explained it all, Mr. Ngono was first very angry, then distinctly flattered. He was also secretly rather pleased. There were, as it happened, several little matters which, on the side, he would be delighted to discuss with any lawyer who showed such a sound grasp of legal principles.

‘Then it is quite clearly understood that I shall be the one who steps forward personally to meet the eminent Mr. Das when he arrives at our terminus?' Mr. Ngono enquired. ‘No bloody jostling from behind, I mean, to get in the first big handshake.'

‘No one is going to greet Mr. Das personally,' Mr. Talefwa replied. ‘As he steps down onto the platform, there will be a stampede. It will be seen by the amazed authorities merely as a great rush of bodies, a human avalanche that is quite irresistible. I shall, of course, arrange to have my staff photographer present.'

The possibility of a photographer as well only made Mr. Ngono even more unhappy.

‘And even with my name on the telegram—a damn illegal forgery, by the way, carrying extremely enormous damages if I should choose to complain—I am still not to appear with special prominence anywhere in the whole picture ?' he demanded.

‘It would be most unjudicious,' Mr. Talefwa told him. ‘The police would immediately become suspicious.'

He took Mr. Ngono's hand while he was speaking, and pressed it hard.

‘Remember that you are to be the surprise witness,' he reminded him, ‘the key figure in the whole trial. Who else is there on whom we could rely for your scandalous revelations?'

Mr. Ngono withdrew his hand and sat there, head bowed, looking downwards. He was sulking.

‘Considering the occasion, and the exceptionally large number of keenly interested spectators, it is still a most keen anguish,' he said at last. ‘People not knowing the truth will look at me and say: “There is that idle, sight-seeing Mr. Ngono again, come here merely for the spectacle. He is no different in importance from all the rest of us.” ‘

This time, Mr. Talefwa put his arm right round Mr. Ngono's shoulder.

‘That is what people may say at the time,' he replied. ‘But what will they be saying later when all the facts come out into the open? Then those same people will point to you and say: “There goes the clever Mr. Ngono, the deep one, the man who knew everything and said nothing until the right moment!”'

Mr. Talefwa paused.

‘It will even be as “Mr. Ngono, the truth-teller” that I shall refer to you in all editorial articles,' he added.

Mr. Ngono was silent for so long that Mr. Talefwa became worried. He began to wonder what new arguments he could use.

‘I have not yet told you,' he said, ‘that I have booked the ticket for
Mr. Das to arrive on the same train as the new Governor. I shall give both items equal space in my newspaper.'

But Mr. Ngono interrupted him. He had jumped up and was smiling again.

‘I have,' he said, ‘already most fundamentally improved upon the whole idea. In my new plan, everyone on the platform will carry an extremely large banner. The banners will say “Welcome” and “Amimbo greets you”, and “Happy stay among us”—that kind of thing. The official party will think the banners are in honour of the new Governor and will allow us to approach very closely, quite intimately, in fact. But in plain truth the banners will bloody well be for Mr. Das.'

Mr. Talefwa held out his hand.

‘It shall be so,' he said.

‘But the banners?' Mr. Ngono asked. ‘Is not that a damn marvellous idea?'

‘Brilliant,' Mr. Talefwa replied. ‘Absolutely brilliant.'

Having been paid his compliment, Mr. Ngono was prepared to shrug if off.

‘It is nothing,' he said. ‘Simply the extremely remarkable quickness of my mind. Improvements occur to me with the utmost frequency. It is a sort of knack.'

Purely through the exchange of telegrams, Mr. Frith felt that he was getting to know the character of the new Governor pretty well. And it was obvious that Amimbo was in for something of a change.

The keynote of the message was restraint. Because of the impending trial, ceremony was to be cut down to a minimum, they said. The Regimental band was out; and the Reception Party at the Residency was to be postponed indefinitely. Reading between the lines, Mr. Frith formed the impression that Mr. Anthony Drawbridge, C.B.E., late of Kuala Lumpur, would probably prefer things that way even if there had been no crisis.

It was easier, however, for Whitehall to advocate restraint than it was for the Superintendent of Police in Amimbo to enforce it.

The Coronation Flyer, with Mr. Drawbridge on board, was due to pull into the terminus at 8.15 p.m.; and already by 6 o'clock, the scale of the demonstration had become alarming. At the sight of organised groups of people, all chattering excitedly and carrying long bamboo poles with slogans wrapped round them, the Superintendent began to wish that he had ignored the order to keep things normal, and had called for the usual riot-barriers to be erected.

As a last minute precaution, therefore, and acting solely upon his own initiative, he closed the station approach and instructed the Station Master to keep the main doors shut.

Meanwhile, the Station Master's wife's party at the top of Platform 2 had been getting nicely under way. The Station Master had got two of the porters to place the family settee and two easy chairs up alongside the ticket collector's booth; a trestle table with cakes and tea and iced drinks had been arranged conveniently in the middle; and, around a large crate marked ‘PERISHABLE IMMEDIATE', the Station Master's wife and three of her friends were now seated.

Their numerous children, all in their best clothes and heartily fed up with waiting, were either swarming over the coal bunkers or sitting disconsolately on the points, casting dice among the railway sleepers.

And, all the time, through the marshalling-yards, the demonstrators with their banners had been pouring in. What at 7.15 had been no more than a desultory sprinkling had, by 7.30, become a host. The bottom end of Platform 2 was packed solid; and, as the late-comers arrived, those in front were irresistibly thrust forward onto the track.

In the mêlée some of the poles became entangled; some snapped; and those of the banners left with only one support had to be waved aloft like flags.

By 7.45, the suspense was becoming intolerable. The Station Master had removed the crate, and asked for the points to be cleared. His wife's friends and their children were arranged in a prim double row as though they were having their photograph taken, and the Station Master himself had moved over to the reception side.

When Mr. Frith arrived at ten minutes to eight just to make sure that everything was in order, he was hysterically and tumultuously cheered.

He had, in point of fact, only just been able to get there at all. That was because the Superintendent—preoccupied by his immediate problem of cordoning off the station—had omitted to tell Mr. Frith's chauffeur. In consequence, the poor man found himself confronted by a palisade of park benches and litter bins placed across the roadway and, when he had cleared a channel for the car, he was astonished to find the waiting-room and booking hall, where the reception party was to assemble, barred and bolted against him.

The next moment of excitement came precisely at 8 o'clock when the Station Master, looking vaguely apprehensive, walked down the platform to the Signal Box. The crowd all turned to watch. They saw the Station Master mount the steps, enter the little glass box and go into close conference with the signalman.

A moment later both men came out onto the observation platform and, shading their eyes with their hands, stood there staring out along the single track that dwindled away into the distance.

So far, the reason for the inspection was a secret shared only between the two of them. But the Station Master did not see how it could remain
so for much longer. The plain truth was that they had lost the train. And, what was worse, they had no means of finding it.

When everything was working smoothly, three pings on the electric telegraph in the signal box indicated that Amimbo-bound rolling-stock had just passed Ketebebe inspection point, and was in the twenty-five mile home stretch. The gradient was gentle and downhill all the way, and forty to forty-five minutes was usually all that was needed for the train to complete the journey.

This evening, however, there had been no pings. Either the train had not yet reached Ketebebe, or the duty officer had forgotten to report it. The Station Master—by now to the shouts of encouragement of the spectators—hurried back to his own office. Afraid that it might be taken as somehow reflecting on his own efficiency, he did not immediately break the news to Mr. Frith. He simply sat, helplessly staring at his watch, wondering how long it would take to get steam up on the shunting engine so that he could go out in search of the missing express.

On the platform opposite, Mr. Ngono was going round to make sure that everyone understood the night's battle orders.

‘First, you will raise your banners above your heads, all shouting out most loudly “Welcome” or “God bless” or simply “Hurrah”. That will be as the train draws in. Then I will fire my starting pistol which gives off an extremely loud report. That will be after the train has stopped. At the signal, you will immediately rush pell-mell onto the platform, still calling out your greetings in shrill voices, and tear past the Governor, not even pausing to glance once in his unimportant direction. It is Mr. Das who is the hero remember, not this new man.'

Mr. Ngono paused because he was breathless.

‘And have no unwholesome fears whatsoever about the consequences,' he added. ‘Throughout the whole stampede from start to finish, I shall be standing right at the very back directing everything. Like a good General in his headquarters I shall be there, leading you from behind.'

While Mr. Ngono was still addressing his supporters, the Coronation Flyer, in a cocoon of escaping steam, was standing motionless, six miles on the other side of Ketebebe.

Having kept close to schedule all the way from Nucca, the extra weight of the Governor's coach had at last proved too much for it.
With a noise like a bomb explosion six feet of copper tubing had suddenly burst open, sending nuts, bolts, splinters, and rivets flying off into the gloom of the surrounding jungle.

Heads were now thrust out of every carriage window, and the guard was going down the entire length of the train patiently explaining that it was nothing. No one, of course, believed him, but it was nice all the same to find someone who behaved as if he cared.

And the guard did more than merely reassure. He brought the whole of the Company's emergency drill into operation. This meant climbing the nearest telegraph pole so that he could tap the wires. The passengers watched fascinated as the guard—a large, brightly uniformed man— re-emerged on the track carrying crampons, lengths of wire, a canvas seat-belt to support his weight once he was up there, insulators, pliers, bull-dog clips and a hand-telephone complete with earphones.

And as the guard mounted slowly, inserting his footsteps one by one before him as he went, the passengers gazed admiringly. Somewhere above them, invisible in all that steam, were the wires. It was like being spectators at the Indian rope-trick seeing their companion disappearing into the darkness above.

Nor in the ordinary way would there have been any special cause for anxiety. The guard had, many times, done it all before: indeed, he rather enjoyed the moment when at last the distant voice answered and, having got his breath back, he was able to begin his rigmarole with the words: ‘Guard Boku, No. 37, here. I have the honour to report a breakdown at …'

But on this occasion it was different.

The telegraph pole was already slanting inwards slightly, like a palm tree bending over a lagoon. Also, despite the creosote, the white ants had been at work upon it: they had fed, penetrated and feasted there: a six-inch cavity on the far side might have been carved out of a bath sponge. Also, since his recent promotion, the guard had been putting on weight: he was appreciably heavier than at the time of his last ascent, and not so nimble.

At first, everything in the exercise went well. The pole sagged a little as he mounted it; but, as he was suitably slow and cautious, there seemed no cause for alarm. It was not, indeed, until, still buttoned-up in his railway uniform, he had reached the very summit that he was conscious of how far the pole was already tilting over. It was like the escape ladder
on a fire engine. And, as he thrust out his hand to grasp the wire his centre of gravity shifted. The pole could stand no more of him. With a wrenching sound like cloth tearing, it snapped off about three feet from the ground. That was when the equipment failed in the signal box, and Ketebebe was cut off from Amimbo terminus.

Now, nearly three hours later, things were looking brighter. The guard had been recovered from the bushes on the far side, dusted-down, consoled and made comfortable on a mattress of mailbags and the softer kind of parcels piled up in a corner of his van. The engine driver had hammered down and sealed off the steam-pipe connected to the starboard cylinder, and his fireman was now stoking up the engine again to see if anything else had been shattered in the explosion.

At twelve-fifteen a.m., the Coronation Flyer got moving on one cylinder; and, feebly assisted by its own traction-power, it freewheeled into Amimbo.

By then the platforms were deserted. The Station Master's wife's party had broken up early because of the children; and by midnight the last of Mr. Ngono's supporters had thrown down their banners and gone away in search of what bars and night-spots might still be open.

Mr. Drawbridge, grateful for the extra hours of sleep upon the train, arrived thoroughly fresh and rested. He apologised to Mr. Frith for having kept him waiting, and added that it was all just the way he had hoped it would be—no fuss, no formality, no native demonstrations, nothing.