William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

‘So he assures me,’ Morgan said. ‘He says that he’s not prepared to sell Kinjanja round the globe at this stage.’ Morgan went on, trying to reassure him, ‘I mean, Adekunle apart, it makes sense. Kinjanja was a British colony: it’s natural for him to come to us. And I think he’s bluffing to a certain extent. He doesn’t want the French influence to spread any more in West Africa, and the Americans are tied up in Vietnam.’

Fanshawe looked at him. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But it wouldn’t do at all for him to go swanning off to these other countries. Especially if we give him what he asks for — I mean, that has to be a condition we lay down. Wouldn’t do at all,’ he repeated, ‘he hasn’t even been elected yet.’

‘I don’t think he could even if he wanted to. If he’s going to be in the UK for two weeks it doesn’t leave him much time for electioneering. He’s got to be on the scene here: polling day’s getting closer all the time and he’s a big man in the party.’

Fanshawe brightened at this. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘You’re right.’ Morgan felt pleased with himself: he liked talking about the French and Americans in this way, enjoyed his confident analyses of the political situation. Fanshawe was putting a lot of faith in him, it was obvious.

‘I’ll see what I can do about his various requests,’ Fanshawe said, frowning with concentration. ‘They’re getting awfully important these elections,’ he said. ‘There are more oil finds in the river delta. Lots of British money in there now. New refinery being built.’ He spread his palms on the blotter and smiled weakly at Morgan. ‘Your reports have confirmed Adekunle as our man. The High Commissioner’s most impressed with your work, but there’s a lot riding on it, you know. More than a couple of weeks in Claridges. Oh yes, much more now.’ He paused, his frown still buckling his forehead. Morgan began to sense worry in the atmosphere, it seeped in through his pores. He wondered for a moment if Fanshawe was trying to put the wind up him — but then he realized he wasn’t that good an actor.

‘I’m sure we’ve made the right choice, Arthur,’ he said.

‘Oh yes,’ Fanshawe said, waving his hand-as if to disperse a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘I’m sure you have.’

♦

Morgan walked out of the men’s changing room into the glare of the morning sun, suddenly conscious of the coruscating dazzle of his surfing shorts. Around his neck he had casually slung a towel, the ends of which hung down over his broad chest. He wasn’t too enamoured of public swimming, it made him hyper-aware of the inadequacy of his tan, the considerable size of his body and the countless millions of freckles that were sprinkled over it. Standing in front of the waist-high mirror in the changing room, inspecting himself before venturing outside, he had been alarmed, on presenting a profile of his torso, to see how far his breasts projected and vowed again to resume dieting and exercise.

He strode with false confidence out onto the terrace, acutely aware of his breasts juddering beneath the slung towel. At the tables and loungers around the poolside sat the usual quota of bored wives, some with children too young for nursery school. There were no men apart from an old white-haired fellow who was relaxing in the water at the deep end, his elbows hooked over the guttering, his feet idly kicking beneath the surface. Morgan looked closely at him: he always and immediately suspected such immobile contentment to be a sign of a covert subaquatic piss, but on reflection decided that the old chap just seemed to be enjoying the sun. Morgan found two unoccupied loungers and removed his towel and watch. Celia Adekunle had said she would be at the pool by half past ten. She was usually prompt.

He walked over to the shallow end and dived into the cool blue water. He glided beneath the surface enjoying the sensation of the water flowing over his skin, then broke through into the sunlight and set off down the length of the pool in a powerful and splashy crawl, driving the old man away from his comfortable perch. One of Morgan’s flailing arms thwacked him across a retreating leg.

‘So sorry,’ Morgan called, enjoying himself, ‘can’t seem to change course once I’ve started.’

♦

‘Aaagh! Christ!’ Morgan shouted as a spatter of cold water landed on his hot back. He turned round and squinted into the sun and saw Celia Adekunle leaning above him wringing out her wet hair over his body.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, flopping onto the lounger and flinging her arms wide as she faced the sun. ‘Whew,’ she gasped, ‘Water’s lovely.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Morgan said, drying his back. ‘You could give someone a heart attack like that.’ He smiled. This was their third meeting by the pool in as many days. One morning he had been driving across Nkongsamba en route for the Commission and had spontaneously decided to call into the club. As she had told him he would, he found Celia there. They met again the following day, Morgan equipped with his swimming trunks this time, and they had swum, sunbathed and talked. She had left just after midday, but not before setting up this third meeting. Morgan found he enjoyed being with her. As he had noticed at their first encounter there was an implied intimacy in their exchanges, an unspoken familiarity, as if they possessed some private knowledge about each other, sensed instinctively the shared motives beneath the banter, but enjoyed the subterfuge nonetheless. He couldn’t define it any more coherently than that, or even explain why it should have arisen in the first place.

He watched her settle on the lounger. Her eyes were closed against the sun, so he could observe her openly. She was wearing a yellow bikini, her body was thin and very brown. Her breasts were small and her legs thin with prominent boney knees. One puckered inch of appendectomy scar showed above the top of her bikini pants. The skin on her stomach was loose, leathery, almost, from the sun and creased as the result of her two children, he suspected. Looking at her this dispassionately he had to admit that there was nothing that physically really attracted him to her, and this perplexed him somewhat.

He lay back on his towel, shielding his eyes with a forearm. This being the case, he wondered, why was he spending so much time with her? Well, he told himself, she was potentially a prime source for information on Adekunle and the KNP — which was the explanation he would offer if Fanshawe ever saw fit to question him about his mornings at the pool. He had, certainly, learned that a considerable portion of Adekunle’s private fortune had gone to buy certain influential figures very expensive gifts, and had ascertained that Ussman Danda Ltd was becoming dangerously overdrawn at the bank. But otherwise he had discovered little that he didn’t know already: Adekunle, it appeared, didn’t talk much about his political business; in- fact, so Celia said, he hardly spoke to her at all. It was, she stressed, virtually a token marriage now. This information had been supplied the day before. Morgan had accompanied her to her car after their swim. After she told him this there had been a pause. Morgan had said, ‘Oh I see.’

‘You know,’ she had said abruptly, looking at him with disturbing directness, ‘we needn’t meet here. We could go somewhere else.’

‘Somewhere else?’ he had said artlessly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.’

She had made a small grimace, as though it was a response she had expected. She hunched her shoulders. ‘One afternoon,’ she said frankly, ‘we could go for a drive.’

He had felt touched and flattered by the candour of her approach, sensing vaguely the emotional effort required to make it. He was flattered because it was the first time this had happened to him — at least in daylight and under conditions of sobriety. He thought of his quarantine period, still with several days to run, and said with as much respect and gentlemanly understanding as he could marshal, laying his hand on her arm, ‘No, Celia, I don’t really think we should go for a drive, not now anyway.’