William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

‘She insisted on working,’ Mrs Fanshawe whispered guiltily as Maria left the room. ‘Wouldn’t take any more time off.’

‘Priscilla home?’ Morgan asked unconcernedly, trying to alter the images in his mind.

‘No,’ said Mrs Fanshawe. ‘She’s at the club. Consolidating her tan. She and Dickie are off on holiday, you know.’ He did know. Mrs Fanshawe paused to screw a cigarette into its holder. ‘I want you to come upstairs, Morgan,’ she said. ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

Morgan warily followed the large turquoise globes of her buttocks up the stairs wondering again what was going on. The ubiquitous chinoiserie of the house was more muted on the first floor, confined to pictures and curtain material. Mrs Fanshawe led him into a small room with a low divan, and a table, upon which stood a sewing machine. In the corner was a dressmaker’s dummy. Morgan took a spine-bracing gulp of the gin which he’d brought up the stairs with him. Mrs Fanshawe deposited her cigarette and holder in an ashtray and unhooked something from the back of the door. It was red. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

‘Looks suspiciously like a boiler suit to me,’ he ventured.

‘It is, or rather was. It’s an ordinary white one I dyed red. I’ve made the sleeves short too. I thought that would make a nice tropical Santa. Mmm? What do you say?’

‘Mmnng…sorry. I…’

‘Of course I’m going to put some spangly stuff on it. I picked some up in town.’ She beamed at him. ‘Thought I’d get you to try it on first though,’ she frowned, looking him up and down. ‘I didn’t know your size. We may have to let it out a bit here and there.’

‘Looks OK to me,’ Morgan said, offended at this casual reference to his bulk.

‘No,’ Mrs Fanshawe said firmly. ‘Try it on now, let’s make sure.’

‘Now?’ Morgan yelped. ‘Can’t I take it away? And tell you later?’

‘Of course not,’ Mrs Fanshawe said professionally. ‘Just step into it now.’

Morgan felt suddenly light-headed and giddy. With numb fingers he accepted the horrible red garment from Mrs Fanshawe. He took off his shoes and was about to insert his left foot into the appropriate leg hole when Mrs Fanshawe uttered a bright trill of laughter.

‘Don’t be so prim,’ she mocked. ‘You won’t be wearing shirt and trousers on the day. How on earth am I meant to get a proper fit?’

Unable to speak Morgan hesitantly removed his tie, shirt and trousers and stood motionless in his boxer shorts and socks, slightly bent over, his shoulders unnaturally rounded as though he had a bad back.

‘Come on then,’ Mrs Fanshawe ordered, like a hearty games mistress encouraging a flagging hockey team.

Inflating his chest Morgan stepped into the overalls, pulled them up, slipped his arms into the sleeves. He was trying not to think what he had looked like standing there in his loose baggy underwear and brown socks, trying to ignore the acid smell of fresh sweat that seemed to billow noxiously from his armpits. Mrs Fanshawe busied around him tugging and pulling as he slowly did up the buttons on the front.

‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘Not too bad at all. Might have to let it out around the tummy a little, that’s all. Want to see yourself in a mirror?’

Morgan shook his head emphatically.

‘Super,’ she enthused. ‘I’ll make a beard out of some cotton wool, I’ll attach a hood and that’ll be that. The kiddies’ll love it.’

Morgan thought he was going to be sick as he struggled to get out of the tight overalls. His nervousness, discomfort and profound embarrassment had caused sweat to pour forth and he had to wriggle and squirm his shoulders and hips free of the clinging material. Mrs Fanshawe was humming to herself as she rummaged through her sewing basket. Morgan bent down, picked up the boiler suit and handed it back to her. He avoided her eye but as she turned to take the suit from him her humming ceased abruptly and she said, ‘Oh!’ in a tone of perplexed surprise.

‘What about gum boots?’ Morgan said as though in a trance, his eyes fixed on a crack in the wall. ‘I suppose I’ll need those too.’ He groped for his shirt on the divan.

‘Oh…yes. Yes.’ Mrs Fanshawe said, suddenly confused, gathering the red suit up into a bundle and hugging it to her chest. ‘Um. Look…I’ll, erm, see to that. Yes yes. That’s what I’ll do.’ Morgan shot a glance at her. She’d suddenly gone most peculiar, he thought, seeing her gazing intently out of the window.

‘I’ve just remembered something,’ she blurted. ‘Something I must do at once,’ she said, scrambling for the door. ‘Let yourself out, won’t you?’ She was gone.

A very, very strange woman, Morgan thought, his churning addled brain beginning to return to normal. What an odd family the Fanshawes were, he considered, but what had got into her? He sat down on the divan. It was covered in a coarsely woven bedspread. He felt the rough tickle of the material on the back of his thighs and, he suddenly realized, on a portion of his anatomy that should have been unexposed. He mouthed a silent horror-struck ‘Oh no!’ and slowly looked down at his lap. From the simple slit in his boxer shorts that passed for a fly, his penis protruded, long, pale and flaccid. It must have popped out during his struggles to remove the boiler suit. Now he knew.

Morgan drove down to the club. There was a curious fixed smile on his face as though he was under deep hypnosis or, like some cartoon character, had been hit very hard on the head. With all the skill of a Zen master he had emptied his mind of thought. He was a bundle of reflexes driving down the road, a dazed refugee mindlessly fleeing the mushroom cloud of shame and embarrassment that towered over the Commission.

It was lunchtime and the pool was quiet. He changed, stepped out onto the rough concrete surround and with the zeal of a born-again baptist on the banks of the river Jordan hurled himself into the pool. He swam powerfully below the surface, thrusting himself through the cool blue water, his eyes mistily focused on the shifting dappled light patterns on the pool-bottom. He imagined the sweat, the dirt and disgrace sliding from his body like a slick of sun-tan oil.

He hauled himself from the pool, sat down in the shade of an umbrella and drank two icy bottles of beer in quick succession. Gently, patiently, he began to come round. After an hour of careful self-counselling and analysis, and a thorough survey and methodological setting-out of his problems, the jumbled perspectives of his life slowly reformed and sanity resumed something like its rightful place in the order of things.

Calmer and pleased with this massive act of self-discipline he changed back into his clothes and walked through the club on the way to his car. As he was passing the noticeboard in the vestibule his eye was caught by the red lettering of the GRAND BOXING DAY GOLF TOURNAMENT and he noticed — as instinctively as if it had been his own — Murray’s name among the list of those who wished to compete. Morgan was forcibly reminded of his aborted golf-match and he felt the millstone of his worries resettle itself comfortably around his neck.

♦

The childish idea came to Morgan that if he just sat still for long enough, if he didn’t trouble anyone, didn’t draw any attention to himself, all the hideous traumas currently rampaging through his life would get bored and rumble on past him like a marauding army off to lay waste to the next village up the road. Accordingly, he crept into his office and sat quietly at his desk for three quarters of an hour filling his blotting pad with tiny doodles of spirals and concentric circles. But then a wide jaw-cracking yawn made him realize that total quiescence, utter passivity, held out no hope and precious few charms. Besides, he just wasn’t that sort of person: he had to do something, even if it was only to cock things up further. He looked quizzically at his ink-darkened blotting pad, and wondered if, for the last couple of hours, he’d been having a minor nervous breakdown, if this was what it was like when you started to go mad.