The Governor's Lady (42 page)

The two letters that he had so far written had both been torn up again. Torn up very small, too. He had stood at the rail tossing the bits over, one by one, so that they could never be pieced together again. He was a rotten, bad letter-writer, he decided.

The musical chimes that announced dinner had already sounded, and Harold was in front of the mirror brushing down his hair. The image that stared back from the looking-glass rather amused him: it was as though the two of them had never met before. It wasn't simply the grotesque eye patch that made him look a stranger: it was everything about him. The fresh, pink-complexioned young man who had travelled out on the
Ancarses
was no longer there. He'd been replaced. This one was thinner, even sparse-looking. And his face had trimmed-down, too: the skin was drawn tight in places, and pitted with tiny scars where the rock splinters had entered. There were two lines, that hadn't been there before, running beside his mouth and beginning to drag the corners down.

‘I'll have another shot at it in the morning,' he was telling himself. ‘Perhaps I can do better after breakfast. In any case, I can always send a cable. Send a cable, and then write properly when I get back home. Really say what I want to.'

He reached out for his tie, and carefully drew the two ends down to the same length. It was Hong Kong silk, fresh from the European Emporium: one side was fraying open already. He bent forward to make sure that his collar was in place.

But it was not the starched, African-laundered shirt front that the mirror was reflecting. It was Lady Anne's face that confronted him; her face, with the dark hair loose over the temples and those remarkably fine eyes of hers looking back into his. The eyes, however, were scarcely at their brightest. They were sad and anxious-looking; even frightened. In another moment, there might have been tears in them.

But, as he stood there, she was fading, going away from him again. The Hong Kong tie and the two rolled gold studs were beginning to show through. The portrait frame had become an ordinary dressing-table mirror again, and he was standing in front of it.

‘In any case, she's bound to have written to me by now,' the thought came to him. ‘She'll have got hold of the address somehow. She's probably air mailed it. It'll be there waiting for me when I get home. I know it will.'

That had been nearly a month ago; a month, and still no letter from Lady Anne.

It was because he was in hospital, he told himself. Somebody hadn't re-addressed the envelope; it must simply be lying there at his bank, or at the Colonial Office, or on the tray in his aunt's front hall out at Reading; either that, or it had been stuck into the criss-cross tapes on the green baize board down below in the entrance hall.

She'd have had his letters by now: that much was certain. They must have been arriving in batches, too, the way the mail in Amimbo always came. He'd been writing every day. Or had been up to the time of his first operation. There'd been a break then; he'd missed five whole days in succession.

And it looked now as though there was going to be another break. It was the big operation that was coming up tomorrow: they warned him that he would have to take things easily after that one. That was why he had spent most of the afternoon writing. She wasn't to write a long letter back, he had ended up by telling her: he didn't want her to go tiring herself, or anything like that. Even a postcard would do, just so that he could know that she was all right.

As it was, the only news of Amimbo had come from Mr. Frith. There had been two letters. That, in itself, was rather disturbing because it showed that the mail was coming through all right: there wasn't any hold up on the line to Nucca. And Mr. Frith's were the kind of letters
that Harold would hardly have missed if they had gone astray somewhere.

The first had been about the reprieve. Mr. Drawbridge had acted promptly; and the act of sparing Old Moses's life had, Mr. Frith said, been well received by all communities, the Asian included.

The second letter dealt mostly with smaller matters. The budget looked like going through pretty much as they had presented it. Harold wasn't to worry about the state of the bungalow garden while he was away because Public Works would keep an eye on the boys to see that they didn't let up on the watering. Mrs. Drawbridge was expected out there as soon as she had fixed up about the children; and the staff in the Cottage Hospital had successfully re-set Mr. Ngono's nose that had been broken in the beating-up affair. There had been a fire in the marshalling-yard where a spark from the Coronation Flyer had landed on a consignment of copra; and Harold wasn't to go using that eye of his too much until he'd heard what the doctors had to say. Mr. Frith hoped that there were some good shows on in town; and, if it wasn't too much trouble, he'd be grateful if Harold could bring him back some HB refills for his propelling pencil.

The letters had been handwritten on his Telegraph Hill notepaper, and there was a lot of smudging and crossing-out towards the bottom of the second page. Harold got the impression that they must have been written late at night; the bit about the refills had been added as a postscript to both of them.

There had been no mention of Lady Anne or Sybil Prosser in either letter.

Now that the operation, the big one was all over, Harold rather admired himself for having taken the outcome so calmly. Not that it would make much difference to him: he'd been used for so long to going around in an eyeshade. And, in any case, he'd known what he was in for when the Sister had brought him the hospital form to sign. The only thing that he didn't fancy was going along to the place in Holborn so that they could match up the colour with the other one.

For the time being, he was resting. He was back with his aunt in the little villa in Reading, and she was looking after him. Large cups of milky coffee, and soft cakes with icing on them, were put down beside him when he least expected them; and there were fresh flowers in his
bedroom. It was all part of the process of building him up again, his aunt kept saying; and she was thoroughly enjoying it.

There was another three weeks of sick leave stretching ahead of him, and he spent the whole of it feeling ungrateful. It had been his idea to get out of England in the first place, he kept reminding himself; and he knew now that the only real life for him was back there in Africa. That was why he kept looking at the calendar, waiting until it could all start up again.

He'd got used to the idea that he might not be hearing from Lady Anne; no longer expected to, in fact. And, in a way, he was glad. It showed that she trusted him. Even if she was too ill to write, she knew that he was coming back to her; and on what terms. It had all been there in that long letter that he had sent from the hospital before the big operation. Perhaps the surgery had made him more apprehensive than he realised: whatever it was, he'd found it easier that afternoon to say what he really meant.

The one thing that he wanted her to know was that he really loved her; loved her for ever, that was. That it hadn't just been one of those sudden affairs that flare up so often, simply because someone is lonely and there doesn't happen to be anybody else around.

If there had been a relapse, if she were really ill again, Mr. Frith would have been sure to mention it: even preoccupied as he was about the refills for his propelling pencil, he could hardly have overlooked a thing like that.

It was because he was living for the next meeting with Lady Anne, because he had already rehearsed it in his mind so many times, that he decided, before he went back, to go down and see young Timothy.

The visit wasn't quite so easy to arrange as he had expected. Boys could not be taken out except by their parents or guardians—unless, of course, one of them had written first; and, unfortunately, there had been no letter of any kind, the headmaster explained. He was sure, all the same, that Timothy would be most interested to talk to someone so recently back from Amimbo, he went on; and perhaps Harold would care to meet him over tea in the house.

The school was set out in the countryside somewhere beyond Devizes. It did not seem to be near to anywhere; and, to make it more isolated still, it had its park spread all round it. The taxi took Harold up a long drive alongside rugger pitches with half-sized posts, past the swimming pool with its corrugated iron changing shed and brought him to the big front portico, with the row of fives courts built up against the side wall. Small boys, heads down, were hurrying from nowhere. Harold told the driver to be back for him at five o'clock.

Tea, despite the trouble that the headmaster's wife had taken, was hardly a success. Young Hackforth was a large, silent boy; so large, indeed, that his resemblance to his father was quite startling. It might have been the Governor himself who was sitting there in those light-looking grey shorts and the blazingly bright pink blazer. He had, too, the same rather condescending manner as he got up to shake hands: Harold felt that he should have apologised for disturbing him.

And, either he was concealing his feelings or he really didn't care. He ate his way steadily through the tomato sandwiches while Harold was telling him what a great man his father had been, that he was now a legend in the Service and how black as well as white had wanted to contribute towards the memorial that was going to be erected to him.

Young Hackforth brightened a little at the story of the buffalo hunt, and even asked the make of gun that his father had been using. Then he turned to the Madeira cake and was silent again. When Harold spoke of Lady Anne, the boy did not seem to know even that she had been ill.

The headmaster kept Harold behind after Timothy had left them. There wasn't a train now until six-fifteen, he said, and it was warmer in his study than waiting about on the platform. He seemed anxious somehow to prolong the conversation.

‘I take it you're a friend of the family,' he said, answering himself in the same breath. ‘You must be, or you wouldn't have gone to the trouble of coming down here.'

‘I thought someone ought to look him up,' Harold replied,

‘Did… did Lady Anne ask you?' he enquired.

‘Nobody asked me,' Harold told him. ‘It's just that I was over here, and I thought I would.'

He got the feeling that the headmaster was rather relieved that Lady Anne hadn't sent him. The feeling grew stronger with the headmaster's next question.

‘You haven't heard if she's thinking of coming back to England, have you?' he asked.

Harold shook his head.

‘Not that I know of,' he said. ‘She talked of setting up house out there.'

A look of relief passed across the headmaster's face again.

‘It would certainly make it easier,' he said. ‘After all, it's the boy's future we've got to think about, isn't it?'

There was a pause while the headmaster blew out the spirit-lamp under the tea-kettle.

‘If you do see Lady Anne when you get back, you'll tell her the boy's all right, won't you? He's well up in his form. I'm not at all anxious about Eton entrance.'

There was another pause.

‘Did Sir Gardnor ever discuss Timothy with you?' he asked.

The question rather amused Harold: it showed that the headmaster didn't know Sir Gardnor.

‘He wasn't that sort of man,' he said. ‘He didn't talk about his private affairs. He was just hard at it all the time being Governor.'

The headmaster seemed restless: he was now pulling down the loose cover where Timothy had been sitting.

‘I gathered you admired him greatly?' he asked looking up.

‘I did,' Harold replied.

The answer obviously pleased the headmaster. It made things easier for him. But he was still troubled.

‘Pity all the same,' he said. ‘A boy ought to see something of his mother. It's all so difficult having to deal through the solicitors.'

‘Through the solicitors?'

‘Didn't you know?' the headmaster asked, and then stopped himself. ‘Then perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it. But I take it you're on Sir Gardnor's side. You are, aren't you?'

The headmaster tried to draw back. He saw suddenly what a risk he had taken. It wasn't until this moment that he'd realised that the young man with the funny shiny eye might be the one that all the questions had been about. Perhaps Lady Anne had sent him there to spy on them.

‘I don't think I'm on anybody's side,' he said. ‘I don't really see where I come into it.'

The headmaster had got up and stood with his back to the fireplace. It was his natural position, Harold suspected; the place where he usually stood when he was giving good advice to people.

‘No, no, of course,' he said, quickly. ‘I realise that now. It must all have been before your time. It's simply that Sir Gardnor gave instructions that Lady Anne wasn't to be allowed to see the boy.'

Harold remembered a conversation that he'd had long ago in the Residency when Lady Anne had first shown him Timothy's photograph; he hadn't believed what she had told him then.

But already the headmaster was glancing down at his watch. It was nearly five-thirty, and he didn't want his visitor to miss his train.

‘It's really the future I'm thinking about,' he said. ‘The legal position now that Sir Gardnor's dead, I mean. I suppose the solicitor will tell me.'

He broke off and began moving towards the door.

‘I had a letter from Sir Gardnor himself just before he went on that safari,' he added. ‘He told me that the solicitors would know exactly what his wishes were. Strange, isn't it, putting it that way? It's almost as if he'd had a premonition or something.'

The three weeks had used themselves up at last. Harold's bedroom, with
the open suitcases in it, already had the air of departure. Or of return, rather. Stained and battered-looking as they were, no one this time could mistake them for the baggage of a newcomer.