William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

Morgan said nothing. Since he’d started sleeping regularly with Hazel miscegenation had become a sensitive topic.

‘I was wondering if,’ Fanshawe cleared his throat, ‘if you could perhaps pop round from time to time. Show her round the place maybe. Cheer her up if you can as she’s naturally been down in the dumps rather since it all fell apart. I’d be most grateful.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ Morgan said. ‘I’d be glad to. My pleasure entirely.’

Morgan tried to thrust his tongue into Priscilla Fanshawe’s mouth, but its flickering tip met only the immovable enamel barrier of her teeth. Resignedly he contented himself with another lingering dry Hollywood-style kiss until his lips began to hurt from their being continually pursed. He allowed his hand to drop from her forearm onto her hip and felt her body stiffen. He let it rest there for a couple of seconds before obligingly returning it to her unerogenous arm. He hadn’t indulged in such discreet inoffensive foreplay, such diffident tactical petting since the early days of his adolescence, but the nostalgic Proustian memory-glow had soon worn off and he was rapidly becoming bored with the game.

They were sitting in the front seat of Morgan’s Peugeot which was parked in a dark corner of the Ambassador Hotel’s car park. It was about half past ten at night. The Ambassador was Nkongsamba’s most exclusive and elite hotel. It sat proudly on a hill about two miles north of the city. It was a modern six-storey block with a reputedly international restaurant, a swimming pool and a casino. The food in the restaurant was appalling, the service disgracefully slovenly and the swimming pool grew green algae despite being so heavily chlorinated that you could practically see the gas rising from its surface. The casino, on the other hand, was the one place in Nkong-samba where tacky mediocrity wasn’t the watchword and a dash of sophistication had gained a precarious foothold. It was run by a Syrian entrepreneur who had imported two plump girl croupiers from Beirut and was patronized almost exclusively by fellow Middle-Easterners. Morgan and Priscilla hadjust passed a giddy hour in its dimly plush interior at the roulette and baccarat tables and Morgan had steadily lost twenty-three pounds, before prudence told him that Priscilla was unlikely to be impressed by a flawless capacity to back the wrong numbers.

It was turning out to be an expensive evening — the second he had spent in Priscilla’s company. They had started out at the university club’s restaurant, where Morgan had bought their priciest wine, a sweetish highly-scented Piesporter, and from there had proceeded to drinks in the ‘Embassy’ bar at the Ambassador where they had shared a joke at the curious aptness of the venue. When Priscilla informed him that she’d never been in a casino, Morgan offered to show her how one functioned.

He had planned that the evening should end this way. He had sought her hand as they sauntered from the casino entrance towards the car park. It was accepted, fingers were linked, they both turned wordlessly to face each other, smiled and squeezed. They sat in the car, maintaining the silence, looking out at the view of Nkongsamba’s glimmering lights before commenting huskily on its magnificence. Steadily a ‘mood’ was established, a tingling awareness of their warm breathing bodies close to one another in the enclosed unobserved darkness of the car. Priscilla had run both hands through her hair causing her sharp breasts to rise beneath the cream satin blouse she was wearing.

‘It’s been a marvellous evening,’ she had breathed. Morgan had leant across, his left elbow on the back of the car seat and whispered’Priscilla…’her head turned and their lips touched, exactly as they knew they would.

And here they still were.

Now Morgan applied his mouth to Priscilla’s again; gently at first, tenderly, sensitively — she had nice soft lips. Then he started breathing quickly through his nose — in-out, in-out — in simulated passion, wriggling his head around energetically as if their lips were stuck fast and he was trying, vainly, to wrench them apart. Priscilla responded in muted kind, eyes shut, shoulders alternately heaving. Thus encouraged, Morgan slid his hand off her upper arm and on to her left breast. Priscilla’s eyes immediately shot open and she clawed herself upright with the help of the dashboard.

‘Morgan, please,’ she said in half-hurt reproach.

He almost burst out in uproarious laughter at this display of coy restraint. Here he was, he said scornfully to himself, with a highly-sexed compliant black mistress in a down-town hotel — and he was putting himself through this obstacle course. Patience, he thought to himself, and said ‘I’m…I’m sorry, Priscilla,’ sticking manfully to the required formula. ‘I shouldn’t have, but, well, you’re to blame,’ he touched her face as though to emblematize her provocative beauty, smiling at her helplessly. She smiled too and lowered her gaze. He started the car engine. ‘We’d better get you home,’ he said.

During the silent drive back he asked himself why he was bothering, and offer up as he might reasons of boredom, masculine challenge, sex and so forth, he knew instinctively it was really because he had always wanted to — he searched for a word — go out, be linked, associated with, wanted by, even married to a girl like Priscilla Fanshawe. He had never ever so much as been acquainted with anyone like her before, so even a chaste and tiring ten-minute embrace and the millisecond’s impression of an impossibly firm breast beneath his palm represented a considerable triumph in the deprived scale of his life, a positive move up in his impoverished world. And although he felt a little ashamed to admit it he knew that if he could keep things as they were, gradually work on improving them, immense gains in self-esteem and personal kudos would ensue. Perhaps even a giant leap in social mobility, leaving his tawdry past unrecognized far behind him.

The ruthlessness of this desire for Priscilla, and the things she represented for him, surprised him rather when he objectively considered that aspects of her physiognomy and character were off-putting to say the least. There was her voice and her nose and the attitudes they seemed to embody: a profound incuriosity about any world other than her own, a bland superficiality in all her personal relations: always pleasant and charming — as if an evil, bitchy or hurtful thought never passed through her largely empty head — or, if it did, it was dressed up in rib-digging, simpering innuendo. Paradoxically, for they were attitudes he otherwise affected to loathe and deprecate, he found he slotted himself into those brainless behaviour patterns with a quisling’s ease. Everything became super or dreadful, shades of grey were not admitted. People were either ‘sweet’, ‘really sweet’ or ‘awfully sweet’ unless they overtly conspired against you. Human endeavour and general amiability were held to be in plentiful supply among the right sort of people, and with pluck, courage and good fellowship all sorts of grubby little problems could be seen off.

Accordingly, Morgan moved his birthplace nearer the Thames to Kingston, gave himself a scholarship to a minor public school, promoted his father to personnel manager, provided his mother with a private income and, to his surprise, even found himself saying ‘yah’ instead of yes.

They drove past the saw mill and he shot a glance at Priscilla. ‘Nearly there,’ he said. But as the gates of the Commission approached Priscilla suddenly called out ‘Stop!’ and Morgan obligingly pulled into the verge.

‘I don’t feel like going home yet,’ Priscilla said turning to face him. ‘It’s early, can we go somewhere else?’