William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

‘Nothing else must go wrong, Leafy,’ Fanshawe threatened. ‘Everything must be settled by tomorrow. I’m warning you,’ he added grimly. ‘Your future depends on it.’

♦

Morgan watched the last lights go out in the servants’ quarters. He sat in his car hugging the gallon-can of petrol to his chest trying to stop the car’s interior tilting and swaying like a boat on a rough sea, attempting to get his eyes to focus on objects for more than two seconds at a time. He had stood at the club bar and had drunk steadily all evening, still clad in his Santa costume, looking like some cheap dictator from a banana republic with his rubber jack-boots and tinsel epaulettes. He had been the butt of much good-humoured ribbing and had smiled emptily through it all, happily allowing people to buy him drinks. Around eleven o’clock his pickled brain had finally come up with an idea, a way of replacing Innocence’s body, and he was now waiting to put the first phase into effect.

At ten past twelve he finally grew tired of sitting around so he left his car and stumbled across the road, correcting his course several times, and made his way in a series of diagonals towards the servants’ quarters. He was approaching them from the main road side. Between the road and the first block of the quarters lay a ditch, a patch of scrub waste-land and the sizeable mound of the quarters’ rubbish heap. Morgan fell into the ditch, hauled himself out and crossed through the scrub patch as quietly as he could, holding the petrol can in both hands. He was glad he was wearing gumboots as they would protect him from any snake or scorpion he might encounter. He awkwardly scaled the crumbling gamey slope of the dump. He heard things scuttling away from his feet but he tried not to think about them. When he reached the first of the old car-hulks that rested on the top he stopped and crouched down beside it to get his breath back. He was about thirty or forty feet away from the first block of the servants’ quarters. All the windows facing him were shuttered. To his left he could just make out the tin roof of the wash-place. The moon obligingly cast the same light as it had done just twenty-four hours or so before. Morgan thought wryly that he had not expected to be back quite so soon. He sat down carefully and listened for any noises. He suspected that Isaac, Joseph and Ezekiel would be far more vigilant tonight, hence the need for the diversion he’d planned. He heard nothing unusual. The moon shone down on the corrugated-iron roofs of the quarters, the smell of rotting vegetables and stale shite rose up sluggishly all about him. Unthinkingly, he unscrewed the cap from the petrol can and poured its contents over the floor of the rusty chassis and across the torn and gaping upholstery of the seats. Stepping back he struck a match and tossed it into the car. Nothing happened. He inched closer, struck another, threw. Nothing happened. Tiring of this game he went up to the car and dropped a match directly onto the remains of the back seat. With a soft whoomph the car seemed to explode in a ball of fire before his face. He felt the flames scald his eyeballs and he fell back in fearful horror. The car blazed away furiously, touching everything with orange. Morgan forgot about his face.

‘ FAYAH! ’ he yelled with hoarse abandon at the servants’ quarters. ‘YOU GET FAYAH FOR HEAH!’

As he scramble-sprinted back to his car he could hear doors slamming and the first shrill screams of alarm. He jumped into his car and drove speedily up the road a hundred yards before flinging it round in a sharp right-hand turn onto the laterite track up which he and Friday had laboriously pushed it the previous night. He roared up to the end of the track, throwing caution to the winds, assuming that everyone’s attention would by now be fully concentrated on the fire. Switching off the lights and crashing the gears, he reversed as far as he could into the allotment grove. Through the trees he could see a tall column of flame shooting up from the blazing car and see dark shapes of rushing figures silhouetted against the glow. Fumbling with his keys he opened the boot and flung it open.

The smell leapt out and hit him with almost palpable force, as if it were some powerful genie suddenly released from the dark recesses of his car. Morgan thought he was going to faint: he gagged and spat several times on the ground. Then with the strength and singlemindedness of a drunk and demonically-inspired man he levered and hauled Innocence’s body from the boot. The cloying smells seemed to seize his throat like boney fingers as she thumped heavily to the ground. He grabbed her rigid arms and dragged her along the path. He felt his face tense and contort into a twisted sobbing grimace as he heaved and strained at his ghastly burden. He stopped for a moment behind a tree to wipe his sweating hands on his overalls, sour vomit in his throat, his heart thumping timpanically in his ears. He darted into the gable-shadow of the nearest block. People wailed and ran across the laterite square, some carrying buckets of water but most seemed to be around at the back of the far building fighting or observing the blaze. Morgan dashed back to Innocence’s body, seized it for the last time and dragged it down the path and into the shadow, leaving it only a few yards from where she had originally been struck down. He glanced at her inflated shapeless corpse.

‘Here we are again,’ he said with a mad note in his voice, then, like some nameless fiend or apprentice devil, he scurried back from tree to tree to his car.

♦

Morgan stopped the Peugeot some distance up the road and watched the wreck quickly burn itself out. He felt tears trickling from his eyes but put that down to the searing they had received when the car went up. His hands were caked with dust from the verge where he’d rubbed them in a demented Lady-Macbethian attempt to drive the clinging feel of Innocence’s skin from his palms. He felt very odd indeed, he decided: a freakish macedoine of moods and sensations, still high from the alcohol, his nostrils reeking with the smell of putrefaction, a fist of outraged sadness lodged somewhere in the back of his head, his body quivering from the massive adrenalin dose that had flooded its muscles and tissues. He resolved not to move an inch until everything had calmed down.

A short while later he heard the astonished shout and clamour of excited voices as the body was discovered. And when he drove by after a further ten minutes he saw briefly a cluster of lanterns beyond the wash-place. He drove a couple of hundred yards past the Commission gate then parked his car at the side of the road and walked cautiously back. He wanted to change out of his ridiculously festive Santa uniform and he was also desperately keen to wash his hands. He was glad to see the Commission itself was completely dark, though he noticed Fanshawe’s house was brightly lit. He assumed the Duchess was being entertained there as he saw several cars parked in its drive. He wondered if they had been aware of the blaze on the dump.

He quietly let himself into the Commission and crept through the hall and up the stairs. On the landing he decided to clean up first before he changed back into his clothes. He tiptoed into the guest bathroom and softly closed the door behind him. He switched on the light and gave a gasp of horror-struck astonishment when he saw his reflection in the mirror. His face was black with dirt and smoke and scored by tear-tracks. One eyebrow had been singed away leaving a shiny rose stripe and the sparse hair of his widow’s peak had been heat-blasted into a frizzy blond quiff, like an atrocious candy-floss perm. His startled eyes stared blearily back at him in angry albino pinkness.

‘Oh Sweet bloody Jesus,’ he wailed in dismay. ‘You poor bloody idiot.’ Was it worth it, he asked himself, was it worth it?