The Governor's Lady (46 page)

‘Because I'm no use, that's why. She told me so herself.'

She had taken her grimy handkerchief out of her handbag, and was crying into it.

‘It's got to be a man,' she said. ‘She's made that way.'

She was a tall woman: in the ordinary way, she towered. But, crouched forward and with her face buried in her handkerchief, she seemed to have become much smaller. Harold suddenly felt sorry for her.

‘You do love her, don't you?' he said.

Sybil Prosser looked up defiantly.

‘Love her?' she replied. ‘If I could have done, I'd have married her.'

There was the sound of a car approaching; it drew up outside, and the driver turned off the engine.

Sybil Prosser began getting her things together: she took out her pocket mirror, and peered into it.

‘Not that it matters,' she remarked, almost as though talking to herself. ‘There's no one at the hotel to see me.'

She was just about to snap the clasp of the bag together again when she plunged her hand back inside.

‘You'd better have that,' she told him. ‘It's the address. I've written it down for you.'

He took the piece of paper, without glancing at it.

She was standing by now, and was pulling on the shapeless white sun hat that she had been wearing.

‘Well, there you are,' she said. ‘I've done all I can.'

She came nearer, as though she had just remembered something.

‘You can kiss me good-bye if you want to,' she told him. ‘Anne did. And you don't have to believe everything she says about me. She's an awful liar. You never know whether it's the truth she's telling you.'

Unless one of the tubes in the boiler were to burst, or the guard's van derail itself again, they looked like being in Nucca by midnight.

All in all, it had been a record run. They had kept up a steady forty-five miles an hour over even the roughest sections; and, in the restaurant-car, the diners had long ago given up any thought of actually eating or drinking anything. The last of the crockery had gone crashing from the tables as they had gone over the catch-points at Tibebwe hours before.

But he was on the train; and he was nearly there. That was all that mattered. It was the first train, too, out of Amimbo since Sybil Prosser had called on him. He had spoken to Mr. Frith next morning, saying as casually as he could manage that he felt that he could do with a day or two down on the coast; and Mr. Frith had raised no objections. Sea-level and sanity, in his view, was an essential for anyone who had done more than six uninterrupted months in the capital.

It was certainly pleasant enough in itself to be going down to Nucca. The Portuguese had made themselves very comfortable there.

The railway station, in particular, was a guide book feature. It had a broad verandah of ironwork pineapples and acanthus leaves running right across the front. The metal was painted bright blue; and the local Nuccaese, waiting for a tram to arrive, waiting for one to leave, or just waiting, could stand on the verandah, drinking an excellent light beer and looking down on the sun-bonnets of the horses in the little courtyard below.

It was twelve p.m. exactly when the train finally reached Nucca. But the hotel was still open. The manager and his wife were eating a late meal behind the reception desk, and they were delighted to see him. The manager congratulated him on having got there before daybreak; assured him that dinner had been kept waiting for him; and asked his wife to carry up the bags while he himself made a note of the number on
Harold's passport. Breakfast, he explained, was available in the dining-room from 7 a.m. until midday; or, with a small extra charge for room service, right on through the afternoon and early evening.

Harold spent longer than usual dressing next morning. He laid out his grey suit and his white one; sent them both down to be pressed; and then chose the grey. He looked at his ties, and wondered why he hadn't bought any new ones. He remembered that his brown shoes were new, but that his black went better with the grey suit.

It was his eye that chiefly worried him. He had got used to wearing it nowadays. He just popped it into place when he went through to the bathroom in the morning, and then forgot about it. Everyone knew that he had a glass eye. But not Lady Anne; not if Sybil Prosser had stopped his letters.

And, now that he looked at himself in the mirror he could see that it was a bit of a shiner. It caught the attention. If he went in wearing it, she wouldn't notice anything else about him. He decided on the eye-shade.

Harold took out the piece of paper that Sybil Prosser had given him. The driver recognised the address immediately: it was only the other day that he had driven the tall, agitated foreign lady away from it.

The house stood back from the road, and a semi-circular drive led up to it. There was a fountain in the middle of the front lawn, and the house itself was porticoed. It was a big house for two women to live in; ridiculously big for one.

His heart was thumping as he tugged at the bell-pull. He could hear the peal echoing into the distance. Inside, everything sounded hollow.

The coloured woman who opened the door was suspicious: she left the chain drawn across it. There was nobody in, she said. They had all gone away. She did not know where. She was merely the housekeeper. She had work to do. She was busy.

Harold gave her money.

It was only one of the ladies who had gone away. That had been last week. No one had seen her since. Naturally, they were anxious.

Harold gave her more money.

The other lady had not left the house since the disappearance. She was prostrate. Shut away in her bedroom, she was seeing no one. Only the doctor was allowed to call. Sometimes, he, too, had to be sent away again because she was too ill to see him.

Harold took out his note-case.

The coloured woman removed the chain, and stood back for him to pass.

A visitor, someone to amuse her mistress and make her laugh, was exactly what the lady needed, she said. She would tell the lady the good news immediately. Even if she had to break down the bedroom door, she would do it. Her hand went wandering out towards the note-case.

The room into which he had been shown was stifling. Behind the drawn curtains, the windows were all closed, and the jalousies fastened. The housekeeper gave a little tug to straighten the lace antimacassar on the nearest chairback, and said that she would be returning immediately.

He could hear the
slop-slop
of her shoes as she went away down the corridor. Then there was silence. It was broken only by the ticking of the gilt clock on the mantelpiece, and the sound of someone sweeping on the balcony outside.

Ten minutes later, when he could not breathe, he got up and opened one of the windows. Then he closed it again to keep out the dust. The sweeper himself was hidden in the midst of it, Harold undid his collar.

Half-an-hour went by. The housekeeper came back to say that the lady was still sleeping. She slept very badly nowadays. Sometimes she was awake all night. It would not be right to rouse her, even to say that a gentleman was there. But it should not be long now. Any moment, in fact. Who could say? She shrugged her shoulders, and left him.

Harold tried opening the window again. The sweeper had moved away, but one of the garden-boys had taken over. He was changing the earth in a row of flower pots along the balcony. Dead petals lay all round him, and the newly sifted soil rose up into the air like smoke. Harold took his coat off.

This time the housekeeper was already shrugging her shoulders as she entered the room. The lady was awake, she said. She could hear her moving about. But she refused to answer. She would try again later. It was all a question of selecting the right moment. She asked if Harold would like coffee.

When she brought the tray to him, she said that it was now only a matter of time. In any case, the lady had not yet had her breakfast. Then there would be the bath, and choosing what she should wear. It could not all happen in an instant. She begged him to be patient.

The delay was even longer now. Harold could hear the dragging feet of the housekeeper as she went back and forth along the corridor, but each time she went straight past his room. He began to wonder if she had forgotten about him.

Then, breathless and excited, the housekeeper burst in. She had delivered the message. Its effect on the lady had been tremendous. She had never seen anyone so deeply moved. There had been both smiles and tears. No doubt, she was dressing at this very moment. The housekeeper could not stay any longer, in case the lady needed her.

There was silence again. He could no longer even hear footsteps. Out in the front of the house the endless sound of sweeping continued. But that was all. Even the tick of the gilt clock had grown so familiar that he had ceased to be aware of it. Pulling up a stool, he thrust out his legs and lay back. He was wondering if he ought to have brought flowers.

That was how Lady Anne found him, all slumped down in his chair, when she came in. It was the sound of the door opening that woke him. He scrambled to his feet, and stood there, staring at her.

He thought that he had never seen her look so beautiful. She was wearing one of those plain schoolgirl dresses that she used to go about in, back in the Residency garden; and her hair was loose over her shoulders the way she knew he liked it.

Her eyes were on him, and her lips were parted.

‘I saw you arrive,' she said. ‘You've waited quite long enough. You can go now.'

It was late when the messenger arrived.

In the dining-room, the solitary waiter was already going round folding back the corners of the striped table-cloths, so that the floor underneath could be scrubbed properly.

It was, the manager and his wife agreed afterwards, almost as though Harold had been reluctant to touch the envelope, let alone open it and read what was inside. He simply sat there, not moving, looking down at the pink notepaper with the big excited handwriting that he knew so well.

The manager's wife had to repeat, quite loudly the second time, that it was for him, that it was urgent, that it had only just arrived, and that the boy who had brought it was, even now, recovering on the porch so that he could run all the way back with the reply. Then, and only then, did Harold begin to understand.

He reached out for it, and the manager's wife noticed that his hand was shaking. He could hardly insert the knife to slit it open. But she could make out nothing from his expression while he was reading. Pink and scented and obviously feminine as the letter was, it might simply have been a trade circular for all the emotion he was showing.

‘There's no answer,' he said quietly. ‘Just no answer at all.'

‘But it's not exactly the centre of the world, remember. I knew that there wasn't another train out of here until tomorrow,' Lady Anne was saying. ‘Otherwise I might have been really worried that you wouldn't come.'

She broke off for a moment to stir the ice in the glass that she was holding; in that heat it was necessary to keep adding fresh lumps all the time.

‘But I knew you would. I was sure of it. I didn't see how you couldn't.'

Harold drew in his lips.

‘We've wasted nearly one whole day,' he said.

‘Whose fault was that? I wrote to you, didn't I? I said I was sorry.' She paused.
‘And
I sat up all night waiting for the answer. I didn't go to bed at all. I was here in this chair by the window so that I could see you if you did come.'

She had left her chair while she was speaking, and gone over to the side table where the bottles were. On the way, she paused long enough to stroke the backs of her fingers down along his cheek.

‘Just to feel that you're really here,' she said.

Behind him, he could hear the sound of the whisky splashing into the glass.

‘It's only to make it taste of something,' she told him. ‘I mustn't start stirring this one.'

Again, there was the feel of her fingers brushing across his cheek as she passed. He tried to catch her hand, but already she had drawn away from him.

‘And don't go on sulking because I wouldn't see you,' she said, as she sat down. ‘It didn't mean anything.'

She was smiling at him. It was an extremely possessive kind of smile.

‘Anyhow. None of it matters now. You're back again. That's all that counts.'

‘And you do believe about the letters?' he asked. ‘About Sybil Prosser stopping them, I mean?'

Lady Anne shrugged her shoulders.

‘It's just the sort of thing she would do,' she said.

‘She obviously had it on her conscience,' Harold replied. ‘Otherwise she wouldn't have come and told me.'

Lady Anne gave a little laugh.

‘She's got a lot more than that on her conscience.'

There was the little catch in her voice as she said it. Harold wondered how long she had been sitting there drinking before he had arrived; how long she had sat on all those other nights.

‘Why don't you get away from here?' he asked. ‘What's the point of staying on like this?'

‘What's the point of doing anything—now?'

He sat back, and looked at her. The lines under her eyes were new: they were deep lines. And the corners of her mouth had begun to drag downwards.

‘Don't… don't you even want to see Timothy?'

‘Not any more. He reminds me too much of Gardie.'

‘I went to see him,' he told her. ‘I wrote all about it in one of those letters.'

She did not answer for a moment.

‘You're very sweet,' she said. ‘Really you are. But you shouldn't have bothered. I don't want to see him.'

‘He may want to see you.'

‘Not Timothy. He's learnt to get along without me. He's like Gardie.'

He noticed again this mixture of bitterness and the pet name.

‘You can't just bury yourself here.'