William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

As for Murray, Adekunle told Morgan that he wanted him to become an acquaintance, a friend if possible, but, failing that, someone who had social contact with him, moved in the same circles.

‘That’s all I’m asking you to do,’ Adekunle had said, the creeping onset of drawn revealing the pale gleam of his teeth as he smiled. ‘Not a very onerous task in return for an error as potentially damaging as yours. Starting from tomorrow I want you to…to cultivate Dr Murray, get to know him, let him get to know you. I don’t think that will be such a difficult job.’

Good God, thought Morgan, if only you knew. ‘But why?’ he had asked wretchedly. ‘Why Murray? What’s he got to do with you?’

‘Let us say that at this stage, it is a precautionary matter,’ Adekunle had replied. ‘I will tell you in good time.’ He tapped the bonnet of Morgan’s car to emphasize his words. ‘What you do not know cannot hurt you, as the saying goes. And believe me, Mr Leafy, I do not want you to be hurt in any way.’

Morgan smiled edgily. He didn’t believe him at all. What, to him, was just about as worrying as hearing that Murray was the target was the almost complete absence of cuckolded rage on Adekunle’s part. It crossed his mind for a moment that the whole thing had been allowed to develop — with him and Celia unwitting players — precisely with this contingency plan in mind. Adekunle was behaving more like a man disputing a reserved parking place than an irate husband confronting his wife’s lover, and Morgan found this reasonableness, this lack of justifiable wrath most disturbing. What did it all signify? he wondered, searching Adekunle’s features for a clue. Either he didn’t give a damn about Celia’s extra-marital flings or else his pressganging of Morgan as temporary ally for purposes unknown greatly outweighed in importance any injured pride or anger which he might feel like giving vent to. Both might be true of course, but Morgan came down heavily in favour of the last explanation. He felt sure that if he couldn’t have served any purpose Adekunle’s revenge would have been swift, no-nonsense and severe. He felt his chest seemingly fill up with something hard and solid — like quick-setting cement — as he contemplated this and the testing time that surely lay ahead.

♦

That had been ten days ago. Stricken with cowardice he wrote a brief note to Celia informing her about the bales of paperwork that had suddenly appeared on his desk. He had Kojo and Friday intercept all his calls at home and office with stories of Herculean busyness and endeavour and soon Celia stopped trying to get through. He became wary of seeing Hazel too, suspecting Adekunle’s agents in every passer-by, and only visited her twice. Hazel didn’t seem put out by this neglect: there was a new sleekness and confidence in her, he thought, no doubt fostered by the move to her own apartment. He suspected she was entertaining her own friends there — against his strict instructions — but was too preoccupied to do anything about it.

Half-heartedly he set about trying to follow Adekunle’s directives. He made some surreptitious inquiries amongst his university acquaintances about Murray and it soon became clear that, as he had instinctively sensed, Murray was not a social man, seldom visiting the university club. He did have some close friends but saw them privately. Short of bearding him at the clinic, ambushing his car as he drove home from work or gatecrashing his dinner parties Morgan could see no way of easing himself into Murray’s life. He would sit and fret about his task at home woefully conscious that time was running out. Adekunle was due back from London in a matter of days and would be expecting him to have made progress. What, he kept asking himself all the time, could be the link between Adekunle and Murray? They seemed about as far apart as it was possible for two people to be.

He became a subdued solitary figure at work, dutifully adding charts, graphs and tables of statistics to the Project Kingpin file, restricting his discussions with his colleagues to business matters. He spent quiet lonely nights at home, aimlessly flicking through his paperbacks, watching egregious Kinjanjan TV, steadily depleting his drinks trolley. He caught concerned glances from Friday and Moses over this untypical melancholia and careworn brooding. Friday even went so far as to approach him one evening and ask him what was wrong.

‘Masta ‘e nevah well,’ Friday stated.

‘No,’ Morgan admitted.

‘Wetin dis trouble? Make you tell me.’

Morgan thought of ways he could explain the nature of his problem. ‘ C’est cafard ,’ he said finally, the French word summing everything up admirably.

‘ Ah bon ,’ Friday said. ‘ Maintenant je comprends .’

As his problems continued and he found he was powerless to alleviate them he turned to alcohol in dire need of its amnesiac properties. For the last three nights since his confession to Friday he’d drunk himself into a whimpering blob of self-pity, crouching in the corner of his sitting room, from time to time dragging himself across the floor to his drinks trolley to make lethal cocktails which he gulped down with all the relish of a Socrates draining his cup of hemlock. Occasionally he would break out into short periods of intense vein-popping rage. His face volcanic with fury, bellowing foul curses at all those who were conspiring to ruin his life, he would prance and fume around his house for a minute or two before it subsided, passing with the suddenness of a tropical storm.

With the dim logic of nauseous, gunge-encrusted mornings he would offer himself sound advice, tell himself to calm down, get back in control, and utter stern warnings about the possibility of cracking up.

Slowly but surely his own brand of aversion therapy seemed to be having some effect. He was sitting in his office one such bleary afternoon asking himself if he’d finally hit the bottom and could perhaps now contemplate the long climb back up, and wondering whether to get Kojo to make him another Alka-Seltzer to help him on his way, when there was a tentative knock on his door.

‘Come in,’ he said.

It was Dalmire.

‘Have you got a minute, Morgan?’ he said. ‘There’s something, ah, I’d sort of like you to know.’

‘Sit down,’ Morgan said, trying to keep the weariness from his voice. He massaged his temples. Dalmire was wearing his old-colonial outfit of white shorts and beige knee socks. Morgan thought he looked slightly apprehensive.

‘I wanted you to be the first to know,’ he said. Then, correcting himself, ‘among the first to know.’

‘Mmm? Know what?’ Morgan said, raising his eyebrows politely, wondering why it was he could taste every filling in his head.

‘Last night,’ Dalmire said. ‘I know that once…well, that at one time you and she…’ he paused. ‘It was just that I particularly wanted to tell you myself, wouldn’t have liked you to hear it from someone else.’

What is he wittering on about? Morgan thought. ‘I’m sorry, Richard,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got a rather lax grip on things today and I’m just not with you. Do you think you could spell it out in words of one syllable?’ He pointed to his head. ‘Touch of the morning afters.’

‘Oh sorry,’ Dalmire said with a prudent smile. ‘Must say I feel a bit that way myself.’ He illustrated a rapidly expanding and contracting head with his hands. ‘All that champagne. Stronger than you think.’

‘Champagne, you said?’

‘Yes. For me and Priscilla.’

‘You. And. Priscilla.’

‘Yes,’ Dalmire smiled modestly. ‘We got engaged last night.’

There was a long pause. A car tooted on the Nkongsamba road.

Morgan rose unsteadily to his feet, his face set. He wasn’t allowing himself to think. He’d switched on to remote control, automatic pilot. He wound his lips back from his furred teeth in what he hoped was the semblance of a congratulatory smile and cranked his arm across the desk.