William Boyd - A Good Man in Africa

‘Can’t what my darling?’

‘You can’t resign your job.’

He smiled at her tenderly. ‘I have to,’ he said. ‘I’m in a terrible fix. If you knew, you’d see it was the only way. There’s no alternative.’ In the dark of the room he saw her cheeks streaming with tears. He felt his heart swell. She was loyal: she cared for him.

‘No!’ she said in a mad tearful croak. ‘No. You can’t resign. You can’t,’ she repeated. ‘You can’t, not yet. I need you. I need you for the visa. You’re the only one who can get me the visa.’

‘Visa? What visa?’

She beat at his chest with her small fists. ‘You’ve got to get me a visa for Britain,’ she sobbed, her face contorted with grief and dismay. ‘I’m a Kinjanjan. I have a Kinjanjan passport. I can’t fly home without a visa. You’ve got to get me one. I need a visa to get home and only you can get me one.’ Slowly she fell to her knees on the floor.

Morgan stood there. It was as if everything in his body had stopped moving for a second. Brief suspended animation. His mind flashed back to his early meetings with her. He recalled now, how almost from the first there had been innocent inquiries about his job and responsibilities: the momentary alarm when Dalmire arrived, relief when she found out he was still in control. He let out a long quivering breath as the truth hit him with agonizing force: he had just been a part of her escape plan — an important one, but a part nonetheless. She couldn’t get free access to Britain with her Kinjanjan passport: she needed a visa. So she found somebody who could supply one without her husband knowing.

Morgan looked down at her crying on the floor. Used again Leafy, he said to himself. You bloody fool. He felt angry at his conceit, bitterly furious for convincing himself that there was something special here, something different. It was just like everything else, he said to himself with sad cynicism, exactly the same. But what did it matter to him, really? He was an aristocrat of pain and frustration, a prince of anguish and embarrassment. He moved to the door.

‘I’m sorry, Celia,’ he said. ‘But it’s too late now.’

Out on the landing he wiped his eyes, took a few deep breaths and flung wild knockout punches at some invisible opponent. Funnily enough, he found he didn’t hate or resent Celia. He just felt angry with himself for failing to see the facts. Murray was right: it was the old seeming⁄being trap again, and he fell into it every time. Where was that penetrating insight he prided himself on? he asked. Where’s the gimlet eye that strips away duplicity and pretension, that uncompromising assessor of human motives? He heard a dull roaring in his ears. He leant against the wall and shut his eyes but it didn’t go away. He opened his eyes and it dawned on him that it was coming from outside. He ran to a window and looked out. The crowd seemed suddenly enormous. A dark mass beyond the floodlit garden pressing up against the barbed wire fence and filling the road. They were chanting something rhythmically. He saw a small figure in black leading the shouts with a loudhailer. He listened. He couldn’t believe his ears. ‘FAN-SHAWE,’ the crowd roared. ‘FAN-SHAWE, FAN-SHAWE, FAN-SHAWE.’

Morgan dashed down the stairs. The guests had spontaneously backed up against the wall furthest away from the demonstration. There was a hum of uneasy discussion, but people were more occupied casting wary glances about them searching for emergency exits, as if in a basement night-club with a notoriously fallible sprinkler-system. The Commission staff stood to one side looking increasingly uncomfortable. Morgan joined them.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘We were just about to go,’ Fanshawe spoke up nervously. ‘Dickie and Pris had to drive down to the capital for their plane.’ He gulped. ‘Peter had brought round the car to the front door. We saw this huge crowd had turned up. We thought they were KNP supporters, but as soon as I stepped out they went mad. Shouting and jeering.’

‘Yer,’Jones chipped in. ‘Like some kind of signal. FAN-SHAWE,FAN-SHAWE.’

‘Thank you, Denzil,’ Fanshawe snapped. ‘We know what they’re saying.’ He turned to Morgan. ‘What’s it all about, Morgan?’ Everybody looked at him.

‘Why are you asking me?’ he protested. ‘I don’t know anything.’ But before another word could be said there was a crash of breaking glass from upstairs and screams from the women guests. There then followed a hail of stones directed at the house. The party broke up in confusion, people running, screaming, crawling under tables, huddling in terrified groups as stones and rocks came flying through the open French windows, thudding and skittering onto the carpet. Chairs and sofas were upturned to form flimsy barricades behind which terrified guests crouched.

Morgan rushed to the front door and opened it an inch. He was in time to see Peter abandon the Commission car and take to his heels. At the top of the drive some thirty yards away Morgan saw a line of Adekunle’s uniformed servants manning the firmly closed gates. And beyond them, clutching a megaphone, the small dark figure of Femi Robinson.

‘UK OUT,’he bellowed verbosely. ‘NO EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE WITH KINJANJAN AUTONOMY.’

Unable to chant this the crowd satisfied themselves with shouts of ‘FAN-SHAWE,FAN-SHAWE, FAN-SHAWE.’

A stone thudded into the door. Oh my Christ, Morgan thought, I told him we’d be here. Robinson must have convinced a good few of the demonstrating students that their protests would be more effectively directed at Fanshawe than at the university authorities. It must have seemed a golden opportunity: the conspirators caught celebrating. Morgan felt sick. He looked round and saw the object of the mob’s abuse equally whitefaced with fear.

‘How did they know I was coming here tonight?’ Fanshawe whimpered. ‘Morgan, this is ghastly. You’ve got to do something.’

‘Me?’ There were more wails and screams from the guests as another volley of missiles spattered against the house’s façade. Morgan saw Adekunle and Muller striding towards them.

‘Is this your doing, my friend?’ Adekunle hissed at Morgan.

‘Me?’ Morgan repeated, dumbfounded that he should be so singled out in this way. ‘For God’s sake no!’

‘ADEKUNLE IS A PUPPET OF UK,’ Robinson screamed outside.

‘FAN-SHAWE, FAN-SHAWE, FAN-SHAWE,’ agreed the crowd.

‘Students,’ Adekunle spat out the word. ‘Phone for the police,’ he ordered an aide.

Muller peered out of the door. ‘That gate is going to go soon,’ he observed calmly. ‘Look. They are burning a Union Jack now.’ Morgan looked over his shoulder and confirmed it.

‘FAN-SHAWE, FAN-SHAWE,’ the crowd chanted tirelessly. It was a very chantable name, Morgan thought.

‘My God, what if they break through?’ Fanshawe squeaked in terror to his wife, Jones, Dalmire and Priscilla, who had joined the group in the hall. They all ducked as another window shattered somewhere above them.

‘KNP IS A BRITISH POLITICAL PARTY,’ boomed Robinson’s amplified voice.

‘This is disgraceful, intolerable,’ Adekunle ranted. ‘My house is being destroyed. My reputation ruined. I am meant to be giving a victory speech. There will be journalists and TV here in an hour.’ His words were almost drowned by the thumping beat of FAN-SHAWE, FAN-SHAWE from hundreds of straining throats.

‘It seems to me that it’s only you British they want,’ Muller stated coldly. ‘They’ve no argument with the rest of us here. If you go maybe they’ll leave us alone.’

‘Well!’ Mrs Fanshawe expostulated, her eyes roasting Muller’s thin body.

‘Typical bloody Hun remark,’ yipped Fanshawe from her side.