by William Boyd
3rd Day of Captivity
Interviewed by Scottish psychiatrist on Verschoyle’s instructions. Dr Gilzean: strong Invernesshire accent. Patently deranged. The interview keeps being interrupted as we both pause to make copious notes. Simple ingenuous tests:
Word Association
DR GILZEAN
ME
lighthouse
–
a small aunt
cave
–
tolerant grass
cigar
–
the neat power station
mouth
–
mild
kay
–
kind
lock
–
speedy vans
cucumber
–
public baths
midden
–
the wrinkling wrists of
Dr Gilzean pronounces me entirely sane. Verschoyle apologizes.
First Day of Freedom
Stone’s party in the mess. Verschoyle suggests the gymkhana game. A twisting course of beer bottles is laid out on the lawn. The women are blindfolded and driven in a harness of ribbons by the men. Stone steers Miss Bald into the briar hedge, trips and sprains his ankle. Randall and Rose are the winners. Rose trotting confidently, guided by Randall’s gentle tugs and ‘geeups!’ Her head back, showing her pale throat, her knees rising and falling smartly beneath her fresh summer frock, reminding me painfully of days on the beach, plunging into breakers.
At midnight Verschoyle rattles a spoon in a beer mug. Important news, he cries. There is to be a peace conference in the Azores. The squadron is finally returning to base at Bath. Randall has just got engaged to Rose.
Saint Jude’s Day
The squadron left today for the city. The mess cold and sad. Verschoyle, with uncharacteristic generosity, said I could keep the monoplane. There’s a ‘drome near Tomintoul in the Cairngorms which sounds ideal. Instructed Fielding to fit long-range fuel tanks.
First snows of winter. The Sow & Farrow closed for the season. A shivering Fielding brings news that the monoplane has developed a leak in the glycol system. I order him to work on through the night. I must leave tomorrow.
p.m. Brooding in the mess about Rose, wondering where I went wrong. Stroll outside, find the snow has stopped. Observation: when you’re alone for any length of time, you develop an annoying inclination to look in mirrors.
A cold sun shines through the empty beeches, casting a blue trellis of shadows on the immaculate white lawn.
Must write to Reggie about the strange temptation to stamp on smooth things. Snow on a lawn, sand at low tide. An overpowering urge to leave a mark?
I stand on the edge, overpoweringly tempted. It’s all so perfect, it seems a shame to spoil it. With an obscure sense of pleasure, I yield to the temptation and stride boldly across the unreal surface, my huge footprints thrown into high relief by the candid winter sun . . .
The Coup
Isaac knocked at his door at half past three in the morning. It took Morgan a few minutes to wake up, then he washed, shaved and put on his light-weight tropical suit. He was going home.
The verandah was cluttered with the trunks and packing cases that were being shipped back to England separately by sea. Morgan ate his breakfast among them in a mood of quite pleasant melancholy. He gazed across the empty sitting room and at the bare walls of his bungalow and thought about the three years he had spent in this stinking sweaty country. Three rotting years. Christ.
He was still thinking about how much he wouldn’t miss the place when the car from the High Commission arrived at half past four. Morgan registered a twinge of annoyance when he saw that, instead of the air-conditioned Mercedes he’d requested, he’d been issued with a cream Ford Consul. It was three-and-ahalf hours from Nkongsamba to the capital by road; three-anda-half hours of switchbacked, pot-holed hell through dense rainforest. It seemed that his last hours in this wretched country were destined to be spent in the same perspiring itching agony that so coloured his memories of the past three years. Typical of the bloody High Commissioner, thought Morgan, not bloody important enough for the Mere. Trust the little asthmatic bureaucrat to notice his transport application. He’d wanted the Merc desperately; to strap-hang in air-conditioned comfort, the Union Jack cracking on the bonnet. Go out in style, that had been the plan. He looked critically at the Consul; it needed a clean and one hub cap was missing, and they’d given him that imbecilic driver Peter. Morgan rolled his eyes heavenwards. He couldn’t wait to leave.
He said good-bye to Isaac, and Moses his cook, and Moses’s young wife Abigail, who helped with the washing and ironing. He’d given them all a sizeable farewell dash the previous evening and he noticed they were smiling hugely as they energetically pumped his hands. Bloody gang of Old Testament refugees, he thought, slightly put out at the absence of any sadness or solemnity, they’d never had it so good. He cast his eye fondly over Abigail’s plump sleek body. Yes, he’d miss the women, he admitted, and the beer.
It was still quite black outside and a couple of toads burped at each other in the darkness of the garden as he eased himself on to the shiny plastic rear seat, gave a final wave, and told Peter to get going. They sped off through the deserted roads of the commercial reservation and passed quickly through the narrow empty streets of Nkongsamba before striking what was laughingly known as the trans-national highway.
This particular road was a crumbling, two-lane, Tarmacadam death trap that meandered through the jungle between Nkongsamba and the capital. A skilfully designed route of blind corners, uncambered Z-bends and savage gradients, it annually claimed hundreds of lives as the worst drivers in the world sought to negotiate its bizarre geometry. The small hours of the morning were the only time when it was anything like safe to travel – hence Morgan’s early rise, even though his plane left at half past eleven.
As a citron light spread over the jungle Morgan reflected that they hadn’t made such bad progress. With the windows wound full down the speeding car had been filled with a cool breeze and Morgan barely sweated at all. As expected, the roads had been quiet. They had passed the still-guttering remains of a crashed petrol tanker and once had been forced off the road by a criminally overloaded articulated lorry, its two huge trailers towering with sacks of groundnuts, as its bonus-hunting driver, high on kola-nuts, barrelled down the middle of the road en route for the capital and its busy port.
All in all a remarkably uneventful journey, thought Morgan as they raced through a town called Shagamu which marked the halfway stage. But then it was only a matter of a few miles further on, the sun’s heat concentrating, Morgan’s buttocks and the backs of his ample thighs beginning to chafe and fret on the plastic seats, that they had a puncture. The car veered suddenly, Morgan threw up his arms, Peter shouted ‘Good Lord!’, and he pulled on to the laterite verge.
After the steady rumble of their passage on the Tarmac it was very quiet. The road stretched empty before and behind them, the avenue of jungle rearing up on either side like high green walls.
Peter got out and looked at the tyre, sucking in air through the prodigious gaps in his teeth. He grinned.
‘Dis be poncture, sah,’ he explained through the window.
Morgan didn’t budge. ‘Well bloody fix it then,’ he growled. ‘I’ve got a plane to catch, you know.’
Peter went round to the back of the car and threw open the boot. Morgan sat scowling, the absence of breeze through the car windows reminding him pointedly of the high humidity and the unrelenting heat of the early morning sun. He had a sudden agonizing itch on his perineum. He scratched at it furiously.
Then Peter was back at the window.
‘Ah-ah! Sah, dey never give us one spear.’
‘Spear? Spear? What bloody spear?’
‘Spear tyre, sah. Dere is no spear tyre for boot.’
Morgan climbed out of the car swearing. Sure enough, n
o spare. He felt an intolerable explosive frustration building up in him. This bloody country just wasn’t going to give up, was it? Oh no, far too much to expect to catch a plane unhindered. He gazed wildly around at the green jungle before telling himself to calm down.
‘You’d better take the wheel back to Shagamu.’ He thrust some notes into Peter’s hand. ‘Try and get it fixed. And hurry!’
Peter jacked up the Consul, removed the wheel and trundled it back down the road to Shagamu. It was too hot to sit in the car so Morgan crouched on the verge in what little shade it offered and watched the sun climb the sky.
A few cars whizzed past but nobody stopped. The highway, Morgan grimly noted, was particularly quiet today.
Two-and-a-half hours later Peter returned with a repaired and newly inflated tyre. It took another ten minutes to replace it before they were on their way once more. Morgan’s plane was due to leave in just over an hour. They would never make it. His face was taut and expressionless as they roared down the road to the airport.
The airport was situated on flat land about ten miles from the capital and was quite cut off, surrounded by a large lightindustrial estate. As they drove past the small factories, freight depots and vehicle pools, Morgan again commented on the lack of traffic, everybody seemed to be staying away. Small groups of people gathered in the villages at the roadside and stared curiously at the cream Consul as it went by. Probably some bloody holiday, reasoned Morgan thankfully, as he saw the sign posts directing them to the airport, at least something was working in his favour.
Soon he saw the familiar roadside billboards advertising airlines and the exotic places they visited, and Morgan felt the first thrill of excitement at the thought of flying off home; the wellmodulated chill of the aircraft, the crisp stewardesses and the duty-free liquor. He was straightening his tie as they rounded a corner and almost ran down a road-block.
The road-block consisted of three fifty-gallon oil drums surmounted by planks of wood. Parked to one side was a chubby armoured car, surrounded by at least two dozen soldiers wearing camouflaged uniforms and armed with sub-machine guns with sickle-shaped magazines.
Morgan stared in open-mouthed astonishment about him and at the airport buildings 200 yards ahead. Four huge tanks were parked in front of the arrivals hall. Morgan noticed with alarm that several of the soldiers had levelled their guns at the car. Peter’s face was positively grey with fear. A young officer approached with a red cockade in his peaked cap. He politely asked Morgan to get out and produce his documents.
‘What’s going on?’ Morgan asked impatiently. ‘Is this some kind of an exercise? Terrorists? Or what? Look here,’ he pointed to his identity card, ‘I’m a member of the British Diplomatic Corps and I’ve got a plane to catch.’
The young officer returned the documents.
‘This airport is now under the command of the military government . . .’ he began, as if reading prompt-cards behind Morgan’s head.
‘What military government?’ Morgan interrupted, then, as realization dawned, ‘Oh no, oh my God no. A coup, it’s a coup. Don’t tell me. That’s all I need, a bloody coup. ‘He raised his right hand to his forehead in an unconsciously dramatic gesture of despair. He felt he was getting a migraine. A bad one.
Just then a BOAC staff car drove up from the airport buildings and a harassed official got out. After some conferring with the young officer he hurried over to Morgan.
‘What on earth are you doing here, man?’ he asked irritatedly. ‘Haven’t you heard about the coup? This place has been like an armed camp since six o’clock this morning.’
Morgan explained about his early start and the puncture. ‘Listen;’ he went on agitatedly, ‘my plane. Have I missed my plane? When can I get out of here?’
‘Sorry, old chap. The last plane left here at midnight. The airport’s closed to civil traffic. As you can see there’s not a thing here. This is what usually happens I believe. Nobody flies in or out for a few days until things have sorted themselves out. You know, until the radio blackout’s lifted, the fighting stops and the new government’s officially recognized.’
‘But look here,’ Morgan insisted, ‘I’m from the Commission at Nkongsamba. I’ve got diplomatic immunity, all that sort of stuff.’
‘I’m afraid that doesn’t carry any weight at all at the moment,’ said the airlines official in an annoyingly good-humoured manner. ‘Britain hasn’t recognized the new government yet. I’d hang on for a few days before you start claiming any privileges.’
‘Hang on! Good God, man, where do you suggest I hang on?’
‘Well you can’t get back to Nkongsamba. They’ll have roadblocks on the highway now for sure. And there’s a twenty-fourhour curfew on in the capital as well. So if I were you I’d go to the airport hotel down the road. Show them your ticket. I suppose you’re in our care now, after a fashion, and they’ll bill the airline. I should think they’ll be glad of the custom. Everyone else has kept well away, stayed at home. In fact you’re the only person who’s turned up to catch a flight today. I suppose you were just unlucky.’
Morgan turned away. Unlucky. Just unlucky. Story of his life. He climbed morosely into the car and told Peter to take him to the airport hotel. Peter backed up with alacrity and they drove off.
The airport hotel was a mile away. They were stopped by a patrol on the road and Morgan again explained his predicament flourishing his passport and ticket. He was sunk in a profound depression; the final bizarre revenge of a hostile country. The magnitude of his ill-fortune left him feeling weak and exhausted.
Morgan had stayed at the airport hotel several times before. He remembered it as a lively cosmopolitan place with two restaurants, several bars, an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a small casino. It was usually populated by a mixed crowd of jet-lagged transit passengers, air-crew and stewardesses and a somewhat raffish and frontier collection of bushcharter pilots, oil company troubleshooters and indeterminate tanned and brassy females whom Morgan imaginatively took to be the mistresses of African politicians, part-time nightclub singers, croupiers, hostesses, expensive whores and bored wives. It was as close as Morgan ever came to being a member of the jet-set and a stay there always made him feel vaguely mysterious and highly sexed. As they approached, he recalled how only last year he had almost successfully bedded a strong-shouldered female helicopter pilot and his heart thumped in anticipation. Every cloud, he reminded himself, silver lining and all that. This had to be the one consolation of a truly awful day.
The airport hotel was large. A low-slung old colonial edifice at the centre was lined by shaded concrete pathways to more modern bedroom blocks, the pool, the hair-dressing salon and other amenities. As they swept up the drive Morgan looked about him with something approaching eagerness.
The large car park, however, was unsettlingly empty and Morgan noticed that the familiar troupe of hawkers who spread their thorn carvings, their ithyphallic ebony statuary and ropes of ceramic beads on the steps up to the front door were absent. Also there was an unnatural hush and tranquillity in the foyer, as if Morgan had arrived at the dead of night rather than midday. Sitting on squeaky cane chairs in front of the reception desk were two bored soldiers with small aluminium machine pistols in their laps. The clerk behind the long desk was asleep, his head resting on the register. One of the soldiers shook him awake and as Morgan signed in he noticed that only a few names were registered along with his own.
‘Are you busy?’ he asked with faint hope.
The receptionist smiled. ‘Oh no, sah. Everybody gone. Only eight people staying since last night. No planes,’ he added, ‘no guests.’
An aged bellhop with bare feet and a faded blue uniform showed Morgan to his room in one of the new blocks. Morgan was glad to find the air-conditioning still functioned.
The day’s frustrations were not over. Morgan tried to phone the Commission in Nkongsamba but was informed that all the lines had been closed down by the army. He then went back outside and in
structed Peter – who had elected to stay and live in the car in the car park – to drive to the embassy in the capital and report Morgan’s plight.
Peter shook his head with a convincing display of bitter disappointment.
‘You can never go dere,’ he lamented. ‘Dey done build one big road-block for here,’ he gestured at a point a few yards up from the end of the hotel drive. ‘Plenty soldier. Dey are never lettin’ you pass.’
So that was it. Morgan looked at his watch. By rights he should be high over Europe now, a stewardess handing him his meal on a tray, an hour or so from an early evening touchdown at Heathrow airport. Instead he was marooned in a deserted hotel complex while a military coup raged outside the gate.
He walked sadly back to his room through the afternoon heat. Lizards basked on stones in the sun, idly doing press-ups as he approached, reverting to glazed immobility once more as he walked on by. To his left he saw the tall diving board of the swimming pool and some asterisks of light flashed off the blue water he could glimpse through the perforated concrete screen that surrounded the pool area. Normally it would be lively with bathers, the bars crowded with sun-reddened guests, the nearby tennis courts resounding to the pock-pock of couples knocking up. Where were the other people who were staying here? Morgan wondered. What were they like? He felt like some mad dictator, or eccentric millionaire recluse, alone in an entire multi-bedroomed block with only his taciturn guards for company.
His second question was answered that evening when he went down to the restaurant. There was a table of four Syrians or Lebanese men, and an ancient wrinkled American couple. The Lebanese ignored him; the Americans said ‘Hello there’ and looked anxious to exchange grumbles about their common predicament. Morgan sat as far away as he could. Pretend nothing has happened, he told himself; as soon as we start behaving like victims of a siege – sharing resources, privations and anecdotes – this enforced stay really will become a nightmare.