William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

While they roared up the main road north Morgan plotted unspeakably crude and violent acts of revenge which he intended personally and lingeringly to visit on her corrupt body, but as they steadily approached his house his more immediate problems began to reoccupy his mind. As he turned into his driveway and parked his car in the garage the options that were available to him presented themselves and were discarded. One: be honest, tell her the truth, or as much of it as was necessary. But no, he thought almost at once, that was impossible. What if it got back to her mother? And also it would rule out any hope of marriage — people just didn’t get these afflictions in her world. Two: forget it, simply go ahead as if nothing were wrong. He almost passed out as he considered the possible consequences of this course of action. Priscilla would get it, he’d infect his future wife, and then…he stopped thinking about that one. Three: lie. His old friend Mendacity, or its siblings Delay and Prevarication, however unlikely they might seem. He saw now that in reality his only hope lay in keeping himself and Priscilla out of the same bed…He thought suddenly and maniacally of a self-inflicted wound: perhaps he could slice his hand while making sandwiches, or trip on the way back into the house and crack his head on the doorstep. But he knew he just didn’t have the guts to carry it off. Maybe he could simulate some other more sympathetic disease, like epilepsy, dropsy or sleeping sickness…

‘Come on, slowcoach,’ Priscilla’s voice was a little woozy. ‘I’m not going to wait all night.’ Morgan got out of the car and walked back to the house with her, his arm round her shoulders. She hugged herself to him and in this way they awkwardly shuffled to the door.

Fifteen minutes later Morgan fought himself free of Priscilla’s embrace and stumbled over to his drinks trolley where, despite Murray’s warning, he poured himself a huge measure of whisky. He hoped the alcohol would somehow inspire him, lend whatever feeble excuse he managed to dream up authenticity. He contemplated the idea of drinking himself unconscious but he realized with renewed despair that it would only postpone the inevitable crunch. Tomorrow would bring no escape: the problem would still be there as it was clear that, although Priscilla might accept drunken senselessness for one night, she was generally behaving in a way that suggested she saw sexual congress with him as a desirable thing in principle. This was no one — night stand, after all, and there was no telling how long he might have to abstain. ‘Let abstinence be your watchword,’ Murray had said in typical fashion, like some doom-laden sybil or prophetic crone in a morality play. Recalling his words, Murray’s features swam into his mind: the unsmiling blue eyes, the stern accent. Morgan felt positively light-headed with hatred: it was Murray’s fault, he accused with passionate illogicality — Murray’s intervention had landed him in this wickedly, poignantly ironic situation. He’d been trying to get into Priscilla’s pants ever since she had arrived, and, now that she was actively encouraging this move, he was the one who had to advocate restraint.

‘What are you doing, Morgie?’ he heard Priscilla ask. He wasn’t sure now that he liked the effect alcohol had on her: it made her winsome, lewdly coy, like some depraved child-prostitute.

‘Nothing, darling,’ he said, putting down his glass and turning round. She had risen from the couch, her mouth bruised from their kissing, her dress rumpled. She held out her arms towards him. Reluctantly he took her hands in his. She tugged him in the direction of the bedroom.

‘Let’s go, Morgie.’

He applied gentle braking pressure. He willed the alcohol to percolate through his system. ‘Darling,’ he said, trying to imbue his voice with subtle gradations of regret, prudence and reluctant moral wisdom. ‘Let’s not. I think we…Well, we should just stay here…’

Simultaneously he tried to mould his features into a complementary amalgam of love, respect and sage sincerity. Somewhere along the line his conception of facial expressions and tones of voice and Priscilla’s refused to coincide. A look of delighted sly adventure came into her eyes. He watched this transmogrification with all the horror of a scientist observing the first stirrings of a monster he’s unwittingly created.

‘Here?’ she said. ‘On the floor, Morgie? Oh Morgie.’ In front of his dumbfounded face she turned to the sofa and with a vandal’s relish flung its cushions on the floor, hastily piling them into a makeshift harem-bed. She quickly switched off all the lights but one, running around excitedly, paying no heed to Morgan’s beseeching rejoinders of’Priscilla, wait. No, I didn’t mean…Priscilla, please.’ She kicked off her shoes and slid onto the cushion pile, giggling tipsily as she stretched and pouted in cinematic sensual abandon. ‘Come on, Morgan,’ she simpered. ‘Don’t keep a girl waiting.’

Morgan felt he couldn’t go on much longer. What had happened to her? He had always suspected she was something of a goer — she had hinted as much herself — but it could only be drink that was producing this ghastly parody of a Hollywood vamp. Of course, he thought, remembering Olokomeji, she had no reason to believe that he wouldn’t be highly stimulated by these sexy cavortings. He groaned softly, looking wildly around his room as if the Medici Gallery prints on its wall held some encoded inspiration. His eyes swivelled reluctantly back to Priscilla and he almost screamed when he saw she was wriggling out of her pants. She slipped them over her ankles and flung them playfully at him. She smiled in his direction, her eyes a little glazed. She reached up and undid the bows of her dress. The front flap dropped forward to reveal a lacy strapless bra that needlessly supported her small breasts. Morgan’s mouth opened wordlessly as she reached behind her to unclasp it, the joints in her shoulders bulging roundly, her bottom lip caught in her teeth in exaggerated concentration. The bra fell away and for a brief moment he saw the pink nipples, before, in mad spontaneity, doing the only thing that came into his mind, he leapt across the room, dropped to his knees beside her and frenziedly replaced the bra over her breasts, like some fervent sexual reformer at a burlesque show.

‘No!’ he gasped. ‘Don’t, Priscilla. For God’s sake don’t go on.’

Astonishment registered for a second in her eyes before she giggled again, drunkenly enjoying the game. He looked in appalled consternation as she tried to wriggle free, one breast pinging out of its ill-applied cup, and grabbed at Morgan’s crutch.

‘No!’ he yelped, attempting to fend her off with one hand while still using the other to keep her bra roughly clamped to some portion of her body above the waist. Her dress had rucked up to her thighs in the struggle and Morgan caught a flash of her dark triangle which he promptly tried to cover up, maintaining his fight against nudity, with his one unencumbered hand, hoping to flip the skirt back in place. Suddenly unimpeded now, Priscilla’s fingers fastened on his fly-zip and before he knew it the zip was down and her right hand was thrust energetically into the gap. Morgan felt her sharp nails on his thighs, felt her fingers slip beneath his underpants and close round his infected organ.

‘Don’t touch it!’ he shrieked violently, as though to an innocent child about to pet an adder, and leapt immediately to his feet, backing away from the cushions, his hand groping along the wall behind him. He switched on the main light and stood panting in aghast dismay by the door to the front verandah.

The sudden illumination from the twin ceiling lights dazzled Priscilla and for a moment she looked about her uncompre-hendingly, before the harshness of her exposure dawned on her: the knowledge that in fact it hadn’t been a game, that, after all, there was no fun involved slowly penetrated her drink-befuddled mind.