William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

The family at the table were all wearing their best clothes. The husband sported yellow and purple robes, the young wife, her face paled with powder, was in silvery lace, a massive knotted head-scarf towering on her head, the two little boys in scarlet pyjama-suits. They were probably meeting an important relative. The little boys were noisily draining soft drinks. It seemed like a good idea to Morgan, especially as above the front of the bar it enticingly advertised ‘Coca-Cola. Ice Cold.’

Morgan looked over the bar. A sulky girl in a tight faded dress sat on a beer crate. ‘I’ll have a Coke, please,’ Morgan said. She slowly rose to her feet and walked across to the bottle cooler. Lassitude certainly ruled here, he remarked to himself, wiping a bead of sweat from his eyebrow. He knew that his pale blue shirt, fresh this morning, would now have two soup-plate sized dark navy stains at either armpit, and possibly an intermittent streak down his spine. He should have worn a white one, he thought angrily, it was going to look marvellous when he greeted the Fanshawes’ daughter, as if he were the ‘before’ sequence of an underarm deodorant advert. He’d just have to keep his hands pinned to his sides.

The girl behind the bar idly searched through the bottles in the cooler. She had powerfully muscled buttocks that caused the dress to bunch in tight creases across the small of her back.

She selected a bottle and brought it over to the bar. Her eyes were blank with boredom and fatigue. She was about to lever the top from the bottle when Morgan noticed it was a Fanta Orange. ‘Hold it,’ he said. ‘Wait. I ask for Coca-Cola,’ he dropped naturally into pidgin English, unconsciously adopting its thick-tongued, nasal accents.

‘No Coke,’ the girl said, and flipped the top off the bottle with her opener. She chose a straw and dropped it in. ‘One shilling,’ she demanded.

Morgan felt the ribbed bottle. Warm. ‘Why he nevah cold?’ he asked.

‘Machine done broke,’ she said, shuffling back to her seat with the shilling.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Make you give me one Seven-Up instead.’ Warm lemonade would be more bearable than warm sweet orange, just.

The girl looked at him as if to say don’t fight it, mac. ‘Only Fanta,’ she flatly pronounced.

Bloody typical, Morgan thought as he took a reluctant sip at the cloying warm liquid, bloody typical. His headache was getting worse.

The Fanshawes’ plane — a Fokker Friendship — proved to be forty-five minutes late. Morgan watched it turn and bank over Nkongsamba, the sun flashing on its wings, and straighten up for its approach to the runway. He called Peter into the arrivals hall to help carry the luggage. The plane landed and taxi-ed onto the apron, coming to a halt beside the Dakota. The sleeping mechanics did not stir. Steps were wheeled out and a trolley trundled over to collect the cases. The Fanshawes were first to appear: Mrs in a creased pink dress and matching turban, Fanshawe himself looking hot in a brown suit. But it was the daughter that engaged Morgan’s attention. She was far more attractive than a knowledge of her parents could have ever led him to expect: mid-twenties, he calculated, wearing a short white dress with a pattern of red dice all over it, her face shadowed by a white straw hat with a very large floppy brim. Morgan informed the sleepy MP that this was the Deputy High Commissioner arriving and he snapped out a salute as Fanshawe came through the door.

‘Morgan,’ Fanshawe said. ‘Glad to see you. Been waiting long?’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ Morgan lied, anxious to please. ‘Enjoy your leave?’ he asked Mrs Fanshawe, who looked tired and sweaty. Morgan noticed she was limping, her feet, swollen from the flight, bulging out of high-heeled shoes. She managed a weak smile of assent.

‘Priscilla darling,’ she called to her daughter who was selecting a red vanity case from the pile of luggage that had been deposited in the arrivals hall. ‘Come and meet Mr Leafy.’

Priscilla came over, taking off her stupid hat. Morgan saw firm legs, a trace of hockey-player’s calves, slimmish body and unimaginably sharply pointed breasts, or sharply pointed bra, perk beneath the cotton material. He looked into the face below the fringe and saw the supercilious plucked eyebrows and privileged, lazy eyes. He saw too the unfortunate ski-jump nose. But he ignored all this, he didn’t care, he was thinking elatedly: she is for me, she is more than I could have hoped for, beyond my wildest dreams, this girl is the one I have been waiting for.

‘Phew,’ she said. ‘Terribly hot!’ The accent was gratingly posh. Morgan wondered if this was oblique comment on the widening stains beneath his armpits. For a panicky moment he debated whether — not daring to look down — the damp circles had spread across his chest to meet beneath his tie.

‘Priscilla,’ said her mother, putting an end to further speculation. ‘This is Mr Leafy, our First Secretary.’

‘How do you do, Mr Leafy,’ she said, shaking hands with him.

‘Morgan, please.’ He smiled his most winning smile.

The ladies were shortly ensconced in the oven of the waiting car. There were yelps of discomfort as thighs and buttocks made contact with the burning leather upholstery.

‘Good Lord, it’s hot,’ Fanshawe exclaimed, as he and Morgan stood supervising Peter loading luggage into the boot. ‘Nothing but heavy frost and fog our last week home.’

‘Sounds sublime,’ Morgan ventured enviously.

Fanshawe rubbed his hands together, looking speculatively around the airport car park. ‘Very interesting few months ahead, Morgan, very. Bags to discuss,’ he added keenly.

‘Have we?’ Morgan said. He couldn’t think what Fanshawe was referring to.

‘The elections,’ he enthused. ‘At Christmas. Oh yes yes. Very important.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been briefed of course. Unofficially mind you, but its clear what has to be done.’ His eyes were alight with excitement. ‘It’s a golden opportunity.’

Morgan, still baffled, raised his eyebrows. ‘Really?’ he said.

‘Oh yes. Astonishing stroke of luck. For us that is.’ He laughed to himself quietly. ‘They’re even flying us out a new expat, staff member, take over routine duties, leave our hands more free. Should be here in a couple of weeks.’

‘Our hands?’

Before Fanshawe could enlarge on his cryptic fervour his wife stuck her pink moist face out of the rear window. ‘Arthur,’ she exclaimed angrily, ‘we’re roasting in here.’

As Fanshawe climbed into the car he said conspiratorially over his shoulder, ‘see you tomorrow. We’ve got a Royal visit too, well, semi-Royal. Christmas, it’s all happening then.’

As the car drove off Morgan thought the girl gave him a little wave. Just in case she had, he waved back.

Fanshawe called Morgan into his office the next day and explained matters in greater detail. It seemed that some people he had seen at the Foreign Office while he was on leave were concerned about the coming elections in Kinjanja. Kinjanja’s recently discovered oil reserves showed every sign of being more substantial than was at first estimated, and as a result the question of who won the next election had assumed a far greater importance within the unstable sphere of West African politics. Some preliminary sounding-out had already been done on the major parties in the country and one had emerged as being potentially more pro-British than the others. This party also stood a reasonable chance of unseating the present unpopular government and accordingly all four Deputy High Commissioners had been enjoined by the FO cautiously to evaluate the regional power bases of this party, calculate its true motives and alliances and assess its potential as a possible friend to Britain, one who would secure, maintain or even encourage her interests. Fanshawe related this quickly as if it were official gospel. But then his agitation became noticeably more visible. ‘The party in question,’ he said, ‘as you’ve probably guessed, is the Kinjanjan National Party, the KNP.’ Morgan hadn’t guessed; he had made a big effort to learn as little as possible about the coming elections. But he nodded sagely all the same. ‘Anyway,’ Fanshawe continued, ‘its nominal leader is some old Emir from the north — an established religious and tribal figurehead, but who’s respected and has a loyal following. What’s more important as far as we are concerned are its two young Turks — so to speak.’ Morgan forced, then wedged, his slackening features into a semblance of passionate interest, which involved knitting his brow into a gnarled frown and taking his bottom lip between his teeth. ‘Yes,’ Fanshawe went on, ‘one of them is a lawyer — Gunlayo or something — based in the capital, who’s their legal brain and constitutional expert but the other one, the one with responsibility for foreign policy and international affairs is…guess who?’