William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

He switched out the bedside lamp and settled himself down, trying to get to sleep. He took uneasy, faltering stock of his day. Had he done anything he could be remotely proud of? Had he done anything good? Had he done anything thoughtful, unselfish or unmotivated? Had there been any event that wasn’t directed towards the sole end of furthering the material, physical and spiritual well-being of Morgan Leafy Esq.? Well…no. He had to admit it: a definite, unqualified no. Thinking back he ruefully acknowledged that he’d been rude, sulky, bullying, selfish, unpleasant, hypocritical, cowardly, conceited, fascist etc. etc. A normal sort of day. But, he thought. Yes, but. Was he any different from anyone else in this stinking country, in this wide swarming world? Again, as far as he could see, as far as his experience had dictated, no. No was the only honest answer. As usual this brutal analysis did not bring with it much comfort. Unsettled and unhappy he turned over, closed his eyes and called on sleep.

The phone rang. It was beside his bed and its ring was, at this hour, loud and brain-curdling. As he picked up the receiver he glanced at the alarm clock. Twenty past twelve. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than ten minutes.

‘Hullo, Leafy here,’ he mumbled into the mouthpiece.

‘Hello, Morgan? Sorry to bother you at this hour. It’s Arthur Fanshawe here.’ Fanshawe’s voice was tense but solicitous.

‘Arthur,’ Morgan said. ‘Anything wrong?’

‘Yes,’ Fanshawe replied straightforwardly. ‘Something of a bugger actually. Can you get out here?’

‘What? Now?’ Morgan allowed more protest to creep into his tone than was wise.

‘If you don’t mind.’ Fanshawe was suddenly clipped, offended.

Morgan sat hunched on the edge of his bed. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Look, can you tell me what it is? I mean…are you sure I…?’ Fanshawe’s tingling silence on the other end was eloquent. ‘I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. ‘Bye.’ Morgan put the phone down. The stupid mad shit, he thought wrath-fully, what the hell’s going on? As far as he could remember he wasn’t even on standby duty. It was Dalmire tonight: had they disturbed Dickie’s beauty sleep?

Grumbling his doubt about this to himself, Morgan pulled on the clothes he had been wearing that day and splashed his face with water. Outside the rain had stopped and the dark moist night was dyspeptic with noises and mumblings. Toads burped, crickets trilled, bats swooped and beeped. As he walked across his verandah he saw squadrons of moths and flying ants battering around the front door light. Underfoot, his shoes crunched on the twitching drifts of myriads of exhausted insects, who had unfolded new wings at the onset of the rain and taken to the air for a brief joyous flight, lured by the glow of the hot bulb. His feet squelched on the mud of his garden path and driveway as he walked out towards his garage. Overhead the sky had cleared and the familiar wide canopy of stars shone down. You always saw more stars in Africa than you did back home, he thought.

The road to the Commission was quiet, a few taxis returning, late-night revellers and one enormous articulated lorry thundering heedlessly down the road south, piled high with ground-nut sacks. As he turned into the Commission’s car park he was annoyed to find it empty. Dalmire had clearly not been disturbed. If this problem was so all-fired important, he asked himself testily, where were the other members of staff? The Commission building appeared deserted too, with no lights shining.

Morgan parked his car and headed briskly across the dark garden to the Fanshawes’ residence which, as he approached, he could see was lit up like a liner on both floors. He guessed the problem was a domestic one and rolled his eyes heavenwards. Again he noticed no other cars in the driveway. Morgan ascended the steps and rapped on the glass door of the sitting room. Through it he could see Mrs Fanshawe and Priscilla sitting on one of the sofas. Priscilla had her arm round her mother’s broad shoulders. At Morgan’s cheery knock they both looked up in alarm, and Priscilla jumped to her feet and skipped across the room to open the door.

‘Oh Morgan,’ she said with relief in her voice, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come.’

The genuineness of her expression so astonished him that he almost failed to appreciate her trim beauty, her ruffled hair and the skimpiness of the Japanese housecoat she was wearing, the bottom of which stopped halfway down her thighs.

‘Hello, Morgan.’ It was Mrs Fanshawe. Morgan noticed that her eyes were red. Had she been crying? he wondered, never having seen her face register any of the softer emotions. ‘It’s so dreadful,’ she whimpered, remaining hunched on the sofa, a handkerchief balled in her hand, her large body quite disguised by a massive pale blue candlewick dressing-gown.

‘Drink?’ Priscilla asked.

‘Well…’ Morgan spun on his heel to survey the bottles on a shiny mahogany cabinet, rubbing his hands together as if he were cold.

‘The coffee will be ready now,’ Mrs Fanshawe intoned listlessly.

‘Coffee will be lovely,’ he said, a grin stamped across his face. ‘Milk and three sugars, please.’ He looked admiringly at Priscilla’s legs as she walked out of the sitting room to the kitchen.’Where’s Arthur?’ he asked, conscious ofhis superior’s absence. ‘Nothing’s happened to Arthur, has it?’ he asked again, realizing too late how unconcerned he sounded.

‘Of course not,’ Mrs Fanshawe snapped back in irritation.

That’s more like it, Morgan observed to himself, she’s coming round. ‘No,’ Mrs Fanshawe went on, ‘he’s outside,’ she waved at the darkness, ‘seeing if there’s anything he can do.’

The mystery was beginning to get on Morgan’s nerves. What in Christ’s name had they pulled him out of his bed for? ‘Urn, what exactly’s happened?’ he inquired politely.

‘It’s Innocence,’ Mrs Fanshawe said sadly.

‘Innocence?’ Morgan was frankly puzzled. Was this some obscure jibe at him because of his failure to divine what the problem was?

‘My maid,’ she explained crabbily. ‘My maid Innocence. She’s dead.’

‘Oh.’ Is that all? he screamed inwardly at her. Why am I bloody here then? He was about to pursue this line of enquiry with more vigour when he saw Fanshawe climbing the front steps.

‘Morgan,’ Fanshawe said wearily. ‘Glad you’re here.’ He looked most strange, Morgan thought. He was wearing a green silk Chinese dressing-gown with large orange lotus-type blossoms on it. A pair of striped Viyella pyjama bottoms clashed uneasily with this opulence. Fanshawe’s face was pale and his normally sleek grey hair stood up in fine wispy tufts.

‘Bloody awful problem we’ve got here,’ he admitted, shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘Thought you’d be the chap to deal with it.’ He looked Morgan in the eye. ‘Can’t understand these Africans at all,’ he said hopelessly, like a criminal confessing his guilt. ‘Just can’t make head nor tail of them, can’t figure out how the Kinjanjan mind works. Closed book to me. Now, if this were the East…’ he let the implied comment go unfinished. Morgan wondered why Fanshawe thought he’d be the ‘chap’ to deal with these unfathomable mysteries. Meanwhile Mrs Fanshawe had risen to her feet and was belting her dressing-gown tightly about her waist, thereby crudely accentuating the bodyforms which bulked beneath the candlewick shroud. Morgan inwardly remarked on the prodigious humps that defined her chest and how, curiously, they wobbled transversely as she marched over to her husband.

‘Come on, Arthur,’ she commanded. ‘Leave it to Morgan. He knows these people better than we.’