‘Although Mr Mgwana and I did not speak a common language,’ Gonzalez went on, ‘I had great respect for him. He was very much a gentleman. I observed that he treated and loved Miss Manoli as a sister. It could be that he is protecting her.’
‘Where did he kill Livetti?’
‘On the beach, where he was taking a stroll after nightfall. Then he waded out to sea with the body.’
‘It sounds like the truth.’
‘Truth? When the hotel porters and that fellow Arizmendi swear that he never left the hotel? But say they are mistaken! We must then assume that Livetti was provided with sail or propellor, for only so could he have travelled round Cape Machichaco and Cape Ormenza against the set of wind and tide. And then into Pobeña! Perhaps to take on a cargo of iron ore, of which some pieces were found in his pockets? You dropped Livetti into the bay of Pobeña on the 22nd. When and where you killed him I do not know, but I advise you to tell me. If I had been there at the time, it might have been my duty to do the same.’
I was strongly tempted to accept the invitation. Given the faintest notion how, when and where Livetti had in fact been killed, I might have confessed to dealing with him in defence of Mgwana. But, as it was, I had no facts on which to base invention. Medical and scientific evidence would soon show that I was lying. And whatever I said must increase their prejudice towards assassination and strengthen the absurd suspicion of Olura.
A still easier way out was to admit that I had got rid of the body for Mgwana, and that I did not know why he had been compelled to kill. Well, but was it likely? Was it even conceivable that after meeting him only twenty-four hours earlier I would take such a risk? Together Mgwana and I might have cooked up some fairly credible story, but I had no means of getting in touch with him.
The third alternative before me was to tell the truth. That I could not bear, for it would leave Olura all alone in Maya, carrying the can for everybody and defenceless against the accusation that Livetti was a friend of hers. The scandal I no longer gave a damn about; nor, I expect, did she. The Law had become far more dangerous than the Press. She had no proof whatever that Livetti was dead when he appeared in her bathroom window—indeed, no proof that he had ever been there at all.
So I persisted in my denials and was pressed with question after question until I found myself denying what I had already admitted, and Gonzalez’s face became grimmer and grimmer, though always with a shade of contemptuous pity.
‘Listen,’ he said at last, ‘you are not any sort of agent! You are just a poor devil of a professor in love with Miss Manoli.’
Then with the gesture of an inquisitor handing over a relapsed heretic to the secular arm he permitted his companion to arrest me on a charge of murder.
* The body of a young girl had been found a week earlier. I learned the details afterwards when the arrest of her assailant—who, I am glad to say, was not a Basque—was reported in the local press. Sexual crime of this sort is much rarer than in northern countries.
MY INTERVENTION
Olura makes sufficient mention of my arrival in the village to which her movements were confined. As a prison without bars, it was at least picturesque; as a setting for Olura, it appeared to me inadequate and at first inexplicable.
The mannerisms of my dear ward were pitiably unfamiliar. She ignored her primitive living conditions—though I should not apply that adjective either to the kindness or the culinary skill of her hosts—and was inclined to spend her time staring out of her bedroom window at a dull waste of sand upon which it was generally raining.
I did not recognise her in the part of poor, little rich girl, nor in her mood of bewildered resignation. Perhaps I had always ascribed to her a self-confidence more aggressive than it really was. Yet I had long since observed that the true motive of her Prebendary and his friends in persuading her that she had political influence was to obtain the maximum publicity for their anti-social activities by ensuring that it was always Olura who should appear before the Bench.
Of her social function, so far as it could be disentangled from the political, I have always been secretly proud. Some fellow writing in a gossip column for his bread—a low and abject condition as John Cleland called it—described her as the uncrowned queen of Africa. If we reduce that statement to something nearer Truth than News, the correct title would be unpaid tea-provider for African students.
There, however, reacting against exaggeration, I may err by underestimating her value. When some poor devil has spent a humiliating day searching for lodgings in a district where it is extremely unlikely that he will find any, it is something to be treated like a prince in a Belgravia drawing-room and to meet—an improbable encounter under the palm leaves of his parents’ hut—the Prime Minister of his country.
After listening to Olura’s incoherencies I naturally visualised Dr Ardower as belonging to the academic fringe of her ungroomed and arrogantly emotional Group, but sufficiently in touch with reality to be after her money. Against this picture, however, was the fact that Leopold Mgwana had obviously liked and trusted him. Mgwana, whom I had several times met—not unprofitably—at Olura’s house, impressed me as an admirable judge of men, appreciating energy whether in a missionary or one of his own unprincipled and dynamic young administrators.
I wondered if Ardower himself might not possess these qualities, and with them the morality of an able gangster. That he was Fellow and Tutor of a reputable Oxford College meant nothing. The virtue which these worthy and doubtless indispensable citizens value most highly is meticulous scholarship. Who has more of it than the planner of an ingenious, successful and bloodless raid upon a bank?
When I had spent a couple of days assuring Olura that she had little to fear—an occupation which I myself found more pleasant than plausible—I left for Madrid, recommending that during my short absence she should put down on paper a concise account of what had happened. I obtained little satisfaction from the Ministry of Justice in spite of my influence and my introductions. I was not surprised, for I did not know myself what or how much to believe. The Minister put off my enquiries by begging me to consider whether I might not be inconveniencing myself for the sake of a vulgar crime of passion. The only concession I could extract from him was permission to remain with Olura.
On my return to Maya the following narrative awaited me. I saw at once that there was no action I could usefully take—a position which, I have observed, exasperates most of my fellows into excitable follies. To accept impotence with equanimity one must be confident of the speed and unexpectedness of one’s attack whenever the opposing force is at last free of obfuscation.
Meanwhile I hired a villa for the pair of us—at ridiculous expense since there was none readily available—and rewarded Olura’s kind hosts by eating in their establishment at least once a day. I noticed that Dr Ardower, whatever his faults, had aroused in my dear goddaughter a latent sensuality—I refer of course only to the pleasures of the table—which had hitherto been sadly lacking.
For the rest, police surveillance was tactful. I had no more reason to object to it than to the temporary prohibition of all correspondence, for I had already warned my young partners in the firm that I did not desire for the time being to be bothered either with my own affairs or what they considered to be theirs.
NARRATIVE OF OLURA MANOLI
It cannot be as bad as you say. Philip’s story and Leopold’s and mine must all agree. These horrible police who will not let us see each other or write to each other know that we couldn’t all have invented it. But they will not tell me what either of them said. I do not even know what I am accused of. They never tell me anything outright. They treat me as if I was something very precious and very guilty.
I can hear you say: my dear Olura, I have not the least interest in your personal affairs, which is what you always say when you really are interested but disapprove. You have the caution of a wise, old eunuch in a harem. You would have liked to marry me off at nineteen to some grave young
man sure to succeed his father as Lord Lieutenant of the County or confine me in an ivory cage on a fairy-story glass mountain. But you haven’t had so much to throw stones at as you think.
Philip says I am like what he calls the three bloody monkeys. When you meet him … Oh, that when! Where shall we be? What will have happened? How old shall we be? … But when you meet him, you will love his dry voice with the ripple of laughter always underneath it. It’s not true that I don’t hear or see or speak any evil. I feel more than anyone the cowardice of humanity, which won’t act until somebody is sacrificed to show the way. I wish I had more than money with which to serve my generation.
I think Philip meant that I have stood too apart from life in spite of all I have done. It may be true. I knew what everyone would say when I took that genius, Hilaire Bomumba, to Rome. But I was right not to care. Let them say! I am to be judged by what I am seen to give. Why must they all assume that I give my body too?
It is not as if I had been without normal desires, but when one hears one’s friends continually talking about the unimportance of the sexual act, is it surprising that one believes them? And if the act is so unimportant, why allow it to complicate one’s life and work? They can’t have it both ways.
I have a feeling that this will not seem to your old-fashioned morality as crazy as it did to Philip. I tried to explain it to him, but he would not let me talk. He said that it was a crime against nature, and I could taste the salt of his tears. I suppose, traditionally, they ought to have been mine.
But I am always and only in love with him. He loves both me and something else that I represent for him. The beauty and fecundity of the earth. The tragedy and ecstasy of being alive. I, too, know that our love extends in space, but I want only to feel it, not to exclaim poetry about it.
I have to tell you about my emotional life, though I know that isn’t what you want me to write. Where was Olura on the night of July 22nd isn’t so important a question as why was she and what was she thinking, because those may explain things that we do not even know need explaining. The old me and the new me matter. The first was in the sort of muddle which only a psychiatrist could have straightened out. The second is very humble and very unhappy, but she doesn’t want to be changed at all.
If this holiday had not started as it did, I could have resisted Philip’s attraction. I might have denied it, or never realised it at all. It was a mixture of fascination and repulsion anyway. I do not think it would have been difficult to emphasise for myself his self-indulgence and conceit.
Philip, darling, that is what I am calling your vitality and your blessed self-confidence! How cruel that it is not to you I am writing in front of our window, instead of trying to explain why it is our window!
The facts. All right, you shall have them brutally. When the holiday started, I was prepared for whatever might happen. If Leopold wanted me, he could have me. I admired him greatly, and it was to be the final gesture of my trust. You are not to comment. The only person who has a right to, and to laugh, is Philip.
Those two long conferences with the Commonwealth Relations Office, keeping Leopold in London when he should have been at home leading his people to social democracy, had worn him out. I remember his saying that the real choice before a new country was whether to shoot all its lawyers or all its economists, and that neither of them was worth the trouble. Cyril Flanders was grieved by his bitterness.
It was that sort of cynicism which made Cyril feel that Leopold Mgwana had more in common with the Establishment than with us. Personally I did not think he had changed in anything essential. It stands to reason that Prime Ministers enjoy the society of Prime Ministers; or, if they don’t, at least they must have enough unspoken thoughts in common to be at ease. But I did notice that his interests had widened. And I saw more than anyone of the little leisure he had. Often he would telephone me when some official dinner was over, and ask if he might come round for an hour.
There is always truth in what Cyril says, and he is so appreciative of all I do. He explained that the reason why Leopold gave less importance to our advice and guidance was that we allowed him to feel that we had less admiration for him. Above all he needed rest, and to be persuaded all over again that what mattered was not authority, but our ideals of brotherhood and democracy. It was my duty, Cyril thought, to take him away from London and try to break down his growing reserve.
I thought at first of Italy or France, but the hotels are so alike—all with the same routine and little hope of privacy. Cyril suggested the Hostal de las Olas where he stayed last year. He was sure we should not be bothered by any publicity.
So it was I who invited Leopold. He was at first uncertain, and said that for my sake he did not think we should leave together. I told him that was ridiculous: that no intelligent person paid any attention to such nonsense. But if he preferred it, I would drive down some days beforehand and arrange his holiday like any private secretary. That would not arouse any comment, and if it did I didn’t care.
When I arrived and booked our rooms, I did not mention the name of Mgwana to the desk. Cyril might think the hotel too remote for publicity, but I knew from experience that we should have the news hawks round at once. So I simply told the management that a friend of mine would shortly join me, and let them believe that he was some distinguished American of colour.
While I waited for him I was lonely. I felt that people thought I had no right to be there. There were Frenchmen who looked away from me, and people who could not understand why I was there alone, why I had chosen that hotel instead of some international palace for the rich. I couldn’t help feeling that I was offering myself like the beautiful spies of fiction. And then I would ask myself why not? They too, if they actually exist, serve something bigger than themselves.
Once away from the Group, this whole thing seemed to me artificial. It was real enough in one sense, for I knew very well that Leopold was physically attracted by me; but in another sense it was not real at all. He had a curious, fierce sentimentalism which was too purely African to understand. Our deep and affectionate friendship was potentially critical—a silly word which I use in the sense of the heat and silence of an atomic plant—but never looked like getting out of control.
So there I was, alone, forced to introspection, persuading myself that I hadn’t any exaggerated worth and that anyway what Leopold needed from me was work and time and sympathy. But I couldn’t be calm about it. It was I who had gone critical. That ought to be a humiliating confession and yet I am not in the least ashamed of it.
When I first noticed Philip he aroused my curiosity. He was very English—tall and sandy-haired with a face which was bumpy rather than craggy and an eagerness to go forward which made him look as if his shoulders stooped, though they didn’t. He too seemed out of place in the hotel. Very subtly. One would never have guessed it by watching him, for he was always swinging about the bar and the dining-room, chatting to everybody with an unusual command of foreign languages.
He made no special effort to talk to me. That annoyed me. I knew I had made an impression on him, but he didn’t take the trouble to follow it up. He was behaving just as if he had been snubbed, and decided that I was too difficult. One might have thought he was only interested in his Basque peasant girls.
It was July 20th at 11.45 precisely—there’s a time and a date for you, and does it matter to anyone but me?—and I was coming back from a long, weary walk during most of which I had been worrying and worrying about Cyril’s extrordinary innocence. I had never confided anything about my private life to him; he probably thought that I was discreetly promiscuous. Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to understand the relationship between Leopold and me. But didn’t he have a dirty mind? I mean by that a conventional mind, not clean thinking, prejudiced. Did he, could he believe that Africans were so strongly sexed that they behaved like animals? No more true of them than of healthy men anywhere! Didn’t all this talking round the point of love and admiration im
ply that he thought, like some wretched, poor white in the southern states, that Leopold would jump at an affair with any moderately attractive white woman? Cyril is a saint, of course, but I saw it as revolting. If there was one thing certain about Leopold it was that he had complete command over his own actions and emotions.
We were the only two people—Philip and I, I mean—on miles of windswept beach. The wind was tearing at my cloak and the seas were like green and white dinosaurs, hungry after their long journey and leaping at me because I was the first vulnerable, lonely thing to be tortured. And this man was going to pass me without a word.
I made him cross the river with me to this inn. He had absurd false modesty and did not like the precious Basque villagers to see him without his trousers. So I lent him my red cloak. I thought that would embarrass him even more, but it didn’t. He is quite uninhibited whenever he sees a richness of humour.
Since the curiosity of each had been at work on the other, we reached at once a strange, challenging sort of intimacy. My impression was that he had had little experience of women of character—leaving out philologists, of course, as I think it is fair to do. Philip would say that I am generalising on insufficient evidence. But it stands to reason.
I had not forgiven him for ignoring me, and I thought him too self-satisfied to be really likeable. He sat there stuffing grilled prawns and swilling white wine as if he were wholeheartedly content with the world as he found it. His eyes were intolerable. I felt that if he made love to me I should be enjoyed rather like the prawns. No more and no less. And yet when he paid some attention to what I was saying instead of the way I was made, he showed an amused tenderness as if he were trying to tell me that philologists didn’t do that kind of thing to little girls. I said to myself that he was academic and limited and patronising, but now and then he reminded me of my father. The same sort of dry, outrageous humour. He did not fit into any of the monotonous pigeon-holes where I kept my admirers.
Olura Page 11