William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

‘Oh no it’s not,’ he said.

♦

‘Most impressive,’ Fanshawe said. ‘They were most impressed in the High Commission. Most impressed.’ He handed back the Project Kingpin file. Morgan tucked it under his arm. Fanshawe had just returned from an important meeting in the capital. He settled back in his chair. ‘We’ve done well, Morgan,’ he said. ‘Exactly the results I hoped this little…exercise would bring. I can tell you that as a result of our assessment of the political future in Kinjanja there’s talk of substantially increasing UK investment here. Going to buy more oil from them too.’ He held his hand out across the table. ‘Pat on the back time, I think.’ Morgan shook his hand, feeling a little foolish. ‘It’s not over yet though,’ Fanshawe went on, wagging a cautionary finger. ‘Let’s hope they don’t lose the election.’ He laughed ‘Mwah. Mwah-hwah-hwah.’ He was joking.

Morgan managed a cheesy grin, a chill dispersing the brief warmth of self-congratulation. He wished in a way that Fanshawe took him along to these meetings he had at the High Commission in the capital; without that check, there was no telling what lies and embellishments he passed on. Fanshawe was still talking. Morgan heard the word ‘ambition’.

‘Sorry, Arthur,’ he redirected his attention. ‘What was that?’

Fanshawe frowned. ‘I was saying that the one thing we want to know a bit more about is Adekunle’s personal ambitions. Apparently there’s some feeling that he’s got his sights set higher than Foreign Minister. What do you think?’

‘I’ll see what I can dig up,’ Morgan said efficiently. He would ask Celia. He was seeing her again at six in the teak forest. Adekunle was out of town for a couple of days. The thought crossed his mind that this was using her rather. It crossed his mind and kept on going.

‘I hear you’ve got a source very close to our Mr Kingpin,’ Fanshawe said slyly. His wife must have been talking, Morgan thought.

Morgan put on a stagily innocent look. ‘Oh, I just keep my ear to the ground you know.’

Fanshawe chuckled, ‘Good man,’ he said and stood up. ‘Well, I’m off to lunch.’ Morgan deposited the file in his office and walked down the main stairs with him. They passed Dalmire’s office on the ground floor. Eight document-clutching visa supplicants sat outside the door on wooden benches.

Morgan and Fanshawe stood in the shade of the portico and gazed down the drive like a couple of squires surveying their property.

‘I see Kingpin hasn’t got round to making his trip yet,’ Fanshawe commented.

‘No,’ Morgan said. ‘I sent him the tickets a couple of days ago. He wanted the dates left open.’

‘I know,’ Fanshawe said. ‘It’s just that I keep getting asked when he’s coming. Trouble with the hotel apparently. Can’t you tell him to get his skates on?’

‘He’s not that sort of a person,’ Morgan explained. ‘But it must be soon, what with the elections being so close.’

‘Beats me,’ Fanshawe said: ‘I’d have thought these fellas would have jumped at the chance of a few days in London…’ He paused for a few seconds, as if pondering the natives’ curious behaviour. ‘Young Dalmire seems to have settled in well,’ he said, changing tack.

‘Yes,’ Morgan agreed. Now they were a couple of housemasters discussing a new appointee to prefect. ‘Pleasant chap,’ he added. He found the implied status and importance conferred by their conversation not at all unpleasant. For an instant he understood what it must have been like in the old days, as they scrunched onto the gravel on the driveway. The uniformed doorman saluted, the sweating gardeners in their tattered shorts stopped their hoeing and weeding to greet them with wide subservient smiles.

‘We’ve got this official visit coming up soon too,’ Fanshawe reminded him, gazing imperiously across the dusty brown lawn. ‘Duchess of Ripon. It seems she’ll be with us for Christmas now. Bit of a stop over before going down to the capital for the Independence celebrations at New Year.’

‘Ah. Yes. I see,’ Morgan nodded importantly; Fanshawe had already told him about this and he wondered what he could be leading up to.

‘Thought it could be Dickie’s pigeon.’

‘Sorry? Who?’

‘Dalmire, Dickie Dalmire, man.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Thought I’d let him handle the arrangements. Turns out his mother knows the Duchess quite well.’

‘Right.’ Morgan was surprised and a little resentful. ‘Best to keep it in the family I suppose. I didn’t know there was this connection.’

‘Neither did I,’ Fanshawe said. ‘He told us all about it at dinner last night.’

♦

Morgan walked round the flat with Hazel. It was sparsely furnished but it would do for her. It was in a good part of town too, as far as he was concerned. It wasn’t a slum, nor near one, and there were some shops around, which could explain his presence if he was ever seen in the street. And it was a district only rarely visited by expatriates. Their neighbours were the Lebanese landlord’s brother with his fat monog-lot wife, and an assistant producer from the KTV studios. If he was discreet — or more importantly if Hazel was — there should be no problems, and it would in any event be better than the sordid hotel she had been staying in.

Mr Selim, the landlord, was downstairs in his boutique and fabric shop waiting while Morgan looked over the premises. He wandered into the bedroom. There was an iron frame bed with a thin, pink and dubiously stained Dunlopillo mattress on it. Hazel came in and bounced up and down on the bed setting up a cacophony of shouting metal.

‘Ah-ah,’ she said in pidgin. ‘Dis bed ‘e done need oilo.’ This allusion to the main purpose of establishing her in the flat was another example of her compulsive tactlessness, Morgan thought. There was a kind of recalcitrant primitive innocence beneath the European clothes and make-up;, a sort of happy fatalism. She contracted gonorrhoea, she was unfaithful, she cajoled him into renting her a flat: it was all the same to her. He could fume and rant, posture and pontificate, her attitude seemed to say, but pretty soon he’d calm down — the next time he felt like getting into bed. Lately he’d been finding this refusal to pretend, this satisfaction with brute facts intensely annoying, but, at the same time, he rather envied it. He suspected that life might possibly appear a lot less complicated that way.

Hazel came over and put her arms round his neck. She was wearing a short orange dress and white-rimmed sunglasses. ‘What do you think of it, Morgan?’ she asked. She accentuated the second syllable when she pronounced his name. ‘It will be good. Don’t you think so?’

‘Take those bloody sunglasses off,’ he ordered crossly. She meekly complied. He looked around. ‘It’s a bit of a dump,’ he said, ‘but it’ll do, I suppose.’ Hazel gave a squeal of pleasure and kissed him. Morgan returned it. She took his bottom lip between her teeth and nibbled it gently.

Morgan broke away. He had not made love with Hazel since their quarantine period had ended. Something about the brazen health of her body was holding him back, also the obscure idea that he still had to punish her somehow, show he was maintaining his displeasure at her earlier conduct. He wondered if she appreciated the subtle vindictive motives behind his behaviour. No, bethought, she probably considered him an idiot. In compensation he reminded himself of Celia’s worn, flawed body: the small sagging breasts, the dull over-tanned skin, the appendix scar, her accommodating thighs. At least there was somebody who — however amazing it seemed — liked him for himself.

He looked at Hazel’s buttocks straining the orange fabric of her dress, her thin legs in their high heels, the false luxury of her wig. But he needed Hazel too, he conceded. The last time he’d met Celia she’d reminded him of the impending arrival of her two boys for their Christmas holidays; it would be hard to meet then, she’d told him, if not impossible.