The Governor's Lady (45 page)

Putting two and two together, Native Affairs was able to hazard a pretty shrewd guess as to the identity of the new proprietor.

It was impossible, however, to put the question direct to Mr. Ngono. He was still absent from the capital. That was because he wanted to avoid all possibility of coming face to face with Mr. Das. From long experience, Mr. Ngono had learnt never to get entangled in arguments with Indians: they were endless, and they got you nowhere.

Not that Mr. Ngono need have worried. If there was one man who desperately wanted to get away from Amimbo, it was Mr. Das; and he had already made his plans.

It was on Wednesdays and Saturdays that the Coronation Flyer steamed out of the Terminus; and, after that first ugly threat of violence, Mr. Das had made no further attempt to board it.

But he still went along there. And he deliberately drew attention to
himself. He selected the most conspicuous position on the bench in the waiting-room exactly facing the doorway. He kept enquiring in a loud voice if the train would be leaving on time. He asked if it would be crowded. And he enquired about obstructions in the line.

The scheme worked perfectly. At first, all his creditors were ranged up once more around the barrier, noisy and threatening. And on the second and third occasions, too. But, by the fourth and fifth, they had begun to thin out. Those who were owed least, stayed away soonest.

Today, for instance, there was a mere handful—his enormous landlady, the laundress who still had possession of his one washable shirt; the café proprietor from just opposite; and one of the clerks from the post office who had already transmitted the first half of a telegram that Mr. Das had handed to him, and now refused to let the other half go out until he had received his full money.

And, all the time, Mr. Das simply sat on there, asking questions, and generally making a nuisance of himself. They were thus entirely unprepared when Mr. Das suddenly made a dash for it, climbed over the wooden gate which had already been closed against late-comers, and sprinted up the platform after the receding train.

He was compelled to wrench open the moving carriage door by sheer force, and fight his way like an animal into the already over-packed compartment. And it was not so much death beneath the wheels that he was fearing, as loss of face if he had failed to get onto the train. That would have made him cry.

As it was, he was miserable enough. It was the heart-rending nostalgia of it all that affected him. He remembered other similar departures from other railway stations—from Calcutta, from Bombay, from Lahore. From Lahore, in particular.

That had been when, just as he had thought that all the formalities were over, one of the creditor ladies who was seeing him off had suddenly pursed up her lips and squirted betel juice over his new white jacket.

It had happened.

The witch doctors having received their appropriate fees, the rains had come. All in all, they had been good rains, copious and long drawn out. More cattle had been drowned than usual. In places, bridges, railway lines, telegraph poles had been swept away. Whole settlements had vanished.

But, these were the short rains. A month later, it was all over, and things were back to normal: rebuilding began, and the villagers returned. Victoria Avenue was powdered from end to end with a fine, gritty dust, and the ventilating system in the Law Courts was blocked solid again.

It was during the drying-out period that the budget had finally been approved, and Harold was able to get time for rest. Shut up in his new office, with the fan still not working, he had lost nearly half-a-stone. Every time Mr. Frith sent for him, he had to hitch his trousers up round his waist before going out into the corridor.

It was now the Political Department that was getting it. The Representation of the People (Voting Qualifications) Bill had them all foxed. The Attorney-General was already on his fifth draft, and the proposed amendments were coming in like Christmas cards. For the first time in years native Chiefs and senior civil servants were standing shoulder to shoulder: they were united in opposing almost everything.

Nevertheless, within the Service, the plain truth had glumly been accepted: sooner or later, black men would be ruling other black men, drawing up impossible budgets, embarking on long-term schemes of infinite forlornness, punishing their brothers for not complying, creating new loyalties, enjoying themselves.

It was, as much as anything else, the domestic atmosphere up at the Residency that helped to keep things running so smoothly. Mrs. Draw-bridge,
after some trouble over getting her youngest satisfactorily settled in the right prep, school, had at last managed to join her husband; and, once more, the capital had its own chief lady.

An unsmart, motherly sort of woman, she set a new fashion by going round without gloves. Usually, she simply didn't wear any; and, on official occasions, when her lady-in-waiting trailed after her carrying them, she left them about on beds in new hospital wards, on the top of foundation stones, and on the balustrades of public buildings that the Governor had just opened.

With the Drawbridges there, the Residency had assumed a more homely note. The plate was brought out less frequently, and Mrs. Drawbridge insisted on arranging the flowers herself. She even had the disconcerting habit of going to the telephone in person when she heard the bell ringing. And she wore the same jewellery all the time: a small diamond brooch during the day, and a string of imitation pearls in the evening.

But she was undeniably a success. She liked the house, she liked the people, she liked looking after Mr. Drawbridge. In return, everybody liked her. There was a relaxed, easy feeling all round. The wives of senior civil servants stopped drawing comparisons, and Lady Anne's name was hardly ever mentioned.

The same relaxed feeling ran through the whole Colony.

The monument to Sir Gardnor was very nearly ready behind the bamboo screen that had been erected in front of it, but nobody bothered to enquire how it was getting on. Mr. Ngono, rather proud by now of the Wellingtonian profile into which his nose had finally settled, was back in town and had selected a prominent site, two blocks down the road from the Royal Albert, for a new swimming pool. Crown Cottage was occupied by the recently married Finance Secretary, and the young couple—he was just on forty—were planning to convert the garden room into a nursery. Out in the bush, the police had given up and were no longer arresting every tall, bronze-coloured vagrant on suspicion that he might be the missing kitchen-boy. And, over in the prison hospital block, Old Moses had been provided with a ground floor room with french windows as his own private apartment.

As for Harold, one week seemed very like another. They added up into months, and went by placid, uneventful, practically indistinguishable. He had plenty of work to do, and he had given up caring. He was
even beginning to wear the same steady-going, composed expression as the rest of the department. Mr. Frith continued to be very pleased with him, and the Governor had already spoken of the next A.D.O. job that might fall vacant.

Then, one afternoon when he got back to the bungalow after the office had closed, he found Sybil Prosser waiting for him.

There she was in the chair he always sat in, over by the window. She had kicked her shoes off, and they were lying higgledy-piggledy on the rug beside her. It had been hot, very hot, all day; and her feet were swollen. Harold could see the pattern of the leather strap embossed across her instep.

It was Sybil Prosser who was the first to speak.

‘You can give me another drink if you'd like to,' she said. ‘I had one when I got here.'

There was a pause; quite a long pause.

‘I needed it,' she added.

She was no longer even looking at him. The collar of her blouse was undone, and she was dabbing at herself with her handkerchief. There was the smell of
eau-de-cologne
all round her. The top of the bottle was sticking out of her open handbag, and she kept re-soaking the handkerchief so that she could apply it further and further down. Bending so far forward, she could not breathe properly. She gave a little gasp every time the spirit touched her.

The first drink had brought some colour back into her face. But the flush had not spread itself. Sallow-complexioned as always, she had been left with two burning red patches just below her cheek bones.

She lifted her head for a moment.

‘It's whisky,' she told him. ‘Just ice. No water.'

Then she ignored him altogether, and went on dabbing.

‘You're still wearing your eye-shade,' she said. ‘You can't say I didn't warn you.'

‘How's Anne?' he asked.

Sybil Prosser was re-buttoning her blouse.

‘It's Anne I've come about,' she said. ‘That's why I'm here.'

‘Then tell me.'

He was still standing, facing her. Sybil Prosser stretched herself out. She had got one of Harold's cushions underneath her feet.

‘Oh, for heaven's sake, man sit down, can't you?' she asked him. ‘Don't hang over me. It's like trying to talk to a waiter.'

Harold took the other chair, the one he didn't usually sit in.

‘Go on,' he said.

Sybil Prosser's eyes were fixed on him now.

‘Why don't you go to her?' she asked.

‘What makes you think she wants to see me?'

Sybil Prosser shrugged her shoulders.

‘Hadn't you better find out?' she asked. ‘That is, if you still want to.'

‘Does… does she ever talk about me?'

‘She used to.'

Harold began straightening the comer of the rug with his foot. ‘It's been a long time,' he said.

The rug still wasn't straight, when she had sat down, Sybil Prosser must simply have collapsed into the chair, dragging the rug along with it.

‘Then what are you waiting for?' she demanded. ‘Is there someone else?'

‘There'll never be anybody else.'

‘Well?'

‘She's forgotten about me.'

Sybil Prosser's pale, empty-looking eyes were fixed on him again.

‘How do you know?'

‘If she'd wanted me, she could have answered my letters, couldn't she?'

‘Not if she didn't get them, she couldn't.'

Sybil Prosser had thrust her hand down into her handbag beside her. She brought out a flat packet, and threw it over to him. It was tied up with a length of narrow blue ribbon that might have been round the edge of a nightdress.

‘There they are,' she said. ‘Now you've got them back. All of them.'

‘Did she give them to you?'

Sybil Prosser smiled. It was a thin, rather pitying kind of smile.

‘She never had them.'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘Look for yourself, then. They're not even opened.'

The bundle smelt very strongly of the
eau-de-cologne
. He could see the notepaper, the handwriting. The top of one of the envelopes had been
slit across with something blunt; a finger, possibly. The emblem of the shipping line had been ripped right through.

‘That one's been opened,' he said.

‘That's the one I answered.'

‘Then you read it?'

Sybil Prosser's lips were drawn back again.

‘That's why I stopped the others.'

‘D'you mean she doesn't know I ever wrote to her?'

Sybil Prosser nodded.

‘She thinks I went off without a word?'

There was the same nod.

‘You did this deliberately?'

Sybil Prosser seemed rather surprised at the question.

‘Naturally,' she said. ‘I
wanted
her to forget about you.'

‘And now you expect me to go back?'

‘It's entirely up to you.' She paused. ‘But only if you feel you have to. Not if you just feel sorry for her.'

‘Whose side are you on?' he asked.

The pale eyes were still fixed on him.

‘Hers,' she said. ‘I always have been.'

There was a movement behind the bead screen in the doorway, and Harold turned. The houseboys had been listening again. He could hear their bare feet padding back along the passage towards the kitchen.

‘And what's Anne going to say when I tell her?'

Sybil Prosser's eyes did not flicker.

‘I don't know. I shan't be there.' She looked down at her watch for a moment. ‘Is there going to be anything to eat?' she asked. ‘I can't have another drink unless you give me something.'

Sybil Prosser had crumpled up her napkin, and set it down upon her plate.

‘… and
I'm not so young as I used to be,' she was saying. Tm an old woman now. That's what other people don't seem to realise.'

Now that her hat was off, he could see along the line of the parting: there was an half-inch wide band of white running right across her head. On either side of it, the familiar straw colour was still there. Not so bright as it had been, perhaps; but still distinctly straw.

‘There's one comfort,' she said. ‘I shan't have to go on taking so
much trouble about appearances. I only kept myself looking nice for her sake.'

Sybil Prosser had brought her chin down as she said it: the creases in her throat spread out all round. She looked older than ever now. With her hands resting on the table top, he noticed how large the knuckles were.

‘Is Anne alone?' he asked.

‘She was when I left her.' Sybil Prosser ran her tongue across her lips: the lip-salve that she had been using came away with it. ‘How much longer,' she added, ‘I wouldn't like to say. She hasn't changed any. That's what the rows were about. You weren't the first, remember.'

Harold said nothing.

‘And if no one's around, she'll start drinking too much. She always does when she's miserable. I'm the only one who could ever stop her.'

‘Then why don't you go back to her?'