The little, withered-up locust of a butler came in to set out the tea table. Harold noticed that he did not allow the other servants anywhere near Lady Anne: there was an invisible line, and he stood on his side of it.
‘You’d better be prepared for it,’ Lady Anne was saying. ‘It’s no good searching for a decent bookshop in Amimbo because there isn’t one. The only thing is to write back home to The Times. It takes weeks, but at least you get what you ask for. Or sometimes you do. The last lot never got here at all.’
Miss Prosser took her cue.
‘They sent two copies of The Green Hat’ she said. ‘And we never sent the second one back,’ she added. ‘So they charged us for it. It’s still about here somewhere.’
‘Then I shall lend it to Mr. Stebbs,’ Lady Anne told her. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mr. Stebbs? It can be very dull here in the evenings if you haven’t got anything to read. And when you’ve finished it you can bring it back, and tell me what you think of it.’ She took a cigarette from the box that the butler was holding out to her. ‘We’re nearly always here, aren’t we, Sybil? All that Mr. Stebbs has to do is to telephone and come over.’
Miss Prosser did not answer immediately. She had been looking across at Harold. Whenever she thought that Lady Anne was not watching, she raised her sparse, straw-coloured eyebrows. But this time she was observed.
‘Oh yes,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Nearly always. In the evenings, that is. Almost any evening. Unless Lady Anne is doing anything, of course.’
Harold could smell the hair-oil again.
‘It’d be very nice,’ he heard his own voice answering. ‘Very nice indeed. I should enjoy that.’
‘Then you shall come,’ Lady Anne told him. ‘And we shall sit in here after dinner and pretend that we’re back in England again. We’ll send the servants away and put the big centre light out and drink highballs and just talk. If Sybil finds that she’s getting sleepy she can go to bed and leave us together. We shall be able to find plenty to talk about, shan’t we, Mr. Stebbs?’
‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘I shall look forward. But I really must be getting back now. It’s late. I’m afraid I’ve got things to do.’
Lady Anne did not even look at him as she answered. She was staring right over his shoulder into space.
‘It can’t have been any fun for you,’ she said. ‘Not this afternoon, I mean. But there’ll be plenty of other times. And Sybil is quite right. I haven’t been well, you know. I’m not really well now. I get tired so quickly.’
Miss Prosser had uncrossed her legs and got up. Harold noticed that she gave a little shooing motion as she approached him. He obeyed by holding out his hand to say good-bye.
Suddenly Lady Anne came to life again.
‘But he can’t go without seeing the photograph, can he?’ she asked. ‘He can’t go without seeing my Timothy.’
She went over to her desk and came back with one of the little silver frames.
‘That’s my Timothy,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think he’s adorable?’
The face that regarded him from the frame was that of a small boy of seven or eight years of age. It had the Governor’s high forehead and her enormous eyes.
‘He’s jolly good-looking, isn’t he?’ Harold said truthfully. ‘When can I meet him?’
Lady Anne reached out her hand for the photograph. Because she thought that he was slow in giving it to her she almost snatched it from him.
‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘That’s the whole point. And I can’t either. He’s in England, and I’m out here. Oh Timothy, Timothy darling, I do love you so. Some day, Timothy, I’ll make it all come right. I promise I will.’
She was still hugging the photograph up against her bosom as she was speaking and seemed temporarily to have forgotten that Harold was standing there. He was relieved when Sybil Prosser, awkward and angular as ever, went across to the bellpull to summon one of the servants to show him out.
The houseboy who opened the door of the bungalow was wearing an expression of idiotic self-importance. Harold recognised the expression immediately: it meant that someone had telephoned.
As it turned out, the telephone had rung more than once. Three times, in fact; and, each time it had been Mr. Frith who was at the other end. Harold, he said, was to ring back immediately, at once, no delay, now, straightaway, very top urgent.
More to impress the houseboy than for any other reason, Harold took his time. He went through to the bathroom, washed, combed his hair and, quite unnecessarily, changed his tie. Then he walked slowly back to the hall—sauntering deliberately when he was sure that the houseboy was still peering through the bead-curtain, and picked up the receiver.
It was certainly an agitated Mr. Frith who answered.
‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘They’ve been looking every-where for you. The Governor wants you. Or, at least, he did. It’s too late now. Nothing you can do about it. But for God’s sake don’t let it happen again. H.E.’s furious. Wanted to get on with the book, or something …’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘That won’t help,’ Mr. Frith replied. ‘The harm’s done now.’
He paused.
‘Got anything on this evening?’ he asked.
‘Nothing in particular,’ Harold told him.
‘Better come across to the Club. Know where it is?’
‘I’ll find it, sir.’
‘Seven o’clock, then. In the bar. Give you time to think up something for me to tell Sir Gardnor.’
There was a sharp click in Harold’s ear, and Mr. Frith had rung off. He was still annoyed with him, Harold gathered.
The Milner Club was a handsome, one-storey building, with a raised roof to let the air in. It was approached by a long, dusty drive, bordered on either side by lawns of coarse, closely-cropped grass. A large notice, from which the paint was already flaking, read: ‘STRICTLY MEMBERS ONLY.’
The bar to which the steward showed him was certainly imposing. It extended the whole length of the clubhouse. And it was staffed for emergencies. Despite the fact that there were only two members lost somewhere in the distance up at the far end, there were three bar tenders all wearing clean white jackets, all standing to attention and all staring vacantly over the mahogany counter into space. Other black faces showed from behind the service hatch.
Harold sat down and waited for Mr. Frith. He was late; really late. It was nearly seven-thirty when he arrived. And he was perspiring. There was no sign of the tic any longer: the muscles around his mouth had already sagged. It was now an over-relaxed, imprecise kind of face that he was wearing.
‘Why aren’t you drinking anything?’ he asked. ‘Thought I told them to make you a member.’
‘I’ve sent my three guineas.’
‘Then you’re a member,’ Mr. Frith told him.
He was signalling to the steward while he was speaking.
‘What are you doing, boy?’ he demanded. ‘Come over here. We need you.’
It was not until Mr. Frith had composed himself, holding his glass in both hands in between the sips, that he seemed to remember why he had asked Harold to come over. Then he suddenly became very serious.
‘You’ve got some explaining to do,’ he said. ‘And not just to me. To H.E. Where were you, this afternoon? The whole bloody switchboard was trying to find you.’
‘I was about,’ Harold told him. ‘As a matter of fact, I was up there all the time. Having tea with Lady Anne.’
Mr. Frith slopped most of his whisky down his shirt front.
‘Don’t tell me that’s started up again,’ he said. ‘Not already.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ Harold asked.
But Mr. Frith ignored him. He was wiping himself down with one hand and, with the other, trying to call the boy over. He wanted his glass re-filled.
When he turned back to Harold, he had lowered his voice and drawn his stool up closer.
‘You don’t want to go blot
ting your copybook the first month out here, now do you?’ he said. ‘You’re the third of them, remember. H.E. got rid of Number One like that.’
Mr. Frith attempted to snap his fingers in the air, but the effect was only mildly dramatic because it was entirely soundless.
‘Slung him out,’ he went on, ‘before he’d even got his bags unpacked. Here today, gone tomorrow. H.E.’s like that.’
Harold leant back on his stool, and lit a cigarette.
‘What happened to the last one?’ he asked.
But Mr. Frith only shook his head.
‘Some other time. Not now,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough for one day.’
Chapter 6
The memorial service for the unhappy Henderson was, for reasons of Government policy, designed to be a really slap-up affair.
Ever since nine o’clock that morning, Queen Victoria Avenue had been posted by the South Shropshires, already sweating heavily beneath their close-fitting dress uniform; the native militia, carrying a black sash across their white jackets, were stationed at the side roads to cut off cross traffic; and the very go-ahead Bishop of Osimkwa and Amimbo had flown in by light plane the evening before, with his chaplain and his collapsible pastoral staff. All along the route to the Cathedral, there was a brisk trade going on in Union Jacks, small celluloid dolls, Boat Race trophies, models of the Lord Mayor’s coach in gilt, and various kinds of nut-toffees, lemonade-powders and cooked meats.
St. Stephen’s Cathedral itself was scarcely large enough for the ceremony. But, small as it was, it did at least look English. The Roman Catholic counterpart on the other side of the town, with its copper dome and campanile, suggested something of Italian or even Near Eastern origin, and was generally regarded as looking out of place there.
Harold’s own card, he found, entitled him to a pew in the eighth row. It was definitely behind the big shots, but appreciably in front of retail commerce, railway employees, postal workers, and other miscellaneous hangers-on.
As for Mr. Ngono, he was humiliatingly near the rear of the church. He had, however, managed to secure himself an aisle-side seat. In consequence there was rather a lot of waving and flapping of the printed Order of Service as he greeted mourners and friends alike as they passed by him. Harold noticed that Mr. Ngono was in a black tail coat and carrying a black topper and black gloves and was wearing a band of black crepe around his upper left arm. He also had an umbrella. Harold suddenly wondered whether the black tie with his own lounge suit was sufficient.
Despite the electric fans, the temperature inside the Cathedral was already nearing the eighty-mark, and the verger was going round spraying the banks of fast wilting flowers with a watering-can. Up in the loft, the organist had a glass of water beside him, and kept throwing back the loose sleeves of his surplice so that they should not cling to his wrists.
The Governor’s instructions for full ceremonial had been carried out to the letter. In front of the high altar stood a symbolic coffin draped in the Union Jack: the real interment had, of course, because of the temperature, taken place at the earliest possible moment up at Omtala. And in front of the empty coffin were arranged a couple of gold arm-chairs, thrones almost, on a square of the distinctive Residency blue carpet. There were two more chairs for the Household; still gold but without arms.
In that heat, the organ was inevitably a trifle flat. But the organist had grown accustomed to that. Sometimes for a three p.m. Children’s Service he had known the open diapason go down by as much as a semi-tone until it was just an incoherent rumble, and nothing more.
Today, however, he was too much intent upon keeping watch in his rear mirror to care very deeply. And, a moment later, he saw what he had been waiting for. At exactly eleven o’clock, the figure of Colonel Hudson of the Shropshires appeared in the little oblong of looking-glass. There was a crash of Army boots being brought down onto the hot gravel; arms came up to the Present with a rattle; and the blast of Regimental buglers signalled the arrival of the Governor.
The congregation rose. The Dean of St. Stephen’s who had been waiting at the top of the steps, descended; the Bishop of Osimkwa and Amimbo, his pastoral staff now assembled to its full height, emerged from behind a pillar; the Governor and the Governor’s lady got into position, with the A.D.C. and the Hon. Sybil Prosser one full pace behind; and the procession moved forward.
As the Governor went past him, it occurred to Harold that he had never before seen anyone quite so absolutely splendid. And more than splendid: Vice-regal at least.
Half a head taller than those around him, with his gold-braided uniform buttoned up to the neck in that suffocating heat, and with his plumed hat stuck under his arm, he dominated. His mere presence seemed to give a grandeur to death that would otherwise have been missing.
Lady Anne, dressed in black from head to foot and with a black veil that hid her face, was almost entirely obscured by him. Harold caught a brief glimpse of her; shoulders bowed, and eyes lowered to the ground. Then the Governor’s gold braid and medals and plumes got in the way, and he lost sight of her again.
With the entrance of the Governor, the West Door of the Cathedral had been closed, and the temperature inside began to mount steadily. Sweat drops started to run down the Bishop’s face, and he could see Sybil Prosser using the Order of Service as a fan.
Immediately in front of her, Lady Anne was sitting. Against the magnificence of the Governor’s uniform, the black that Lady Anne was wearing seemed blacker still. She was motionless, with her head bent forward, her hands folded in her lap.
‘My God, doesn’t she look like a widow,’ he suddenly found himself thinking.
He did not see Lady Anne again until the Service was over. Then she came down the aisle on the near side of the Governor. Against the blackness of her dress, her face showed paler than ever. It seemed to be quite drained of blood; of life almost. As she passed his pew, she momentarily pushed back her veil as though gasping for breath in that asphyxiating air. It was a tired, pathetic gesture. If the service had gone on any longer, he doubted if she could have survived it.
Then he looked across at Sir Gardnor. He was still as upright and tightly buttoned-up as ever. The gold braid and the medals shone in the light from the West doorway, and his plumed hat was being carried at exactly the correct angle.
He had, however, been weeping: his eyes were still red and moist-looking. After all, Henderson had been one of his men. He had picked and promoted him. And it was only natural that the service should have moved the Governor deeply; so deeply, in fact, that he seemed scarcely to be aware that Lady Anne was beside him.
When she faltered for a moment and put out her hand instinctively for some support, it was Sybil Prosser who caught hold of her. Sir Gardnor was already half a pace ahead, chin up and staring out into the distance.
The final gesture of respect to the dead man—it was a volley of blanks fired into the air by the exhausted Shropshires—sent the kites, that had been monotonously wheeling overhead, into a sudden pattern of power-dives and spirals, and raised a black and white cloud of all the crows in Amimbo which took off with a noise like surf, and made helter-skelter for the peace and safety of the marshalling-yards.
As the last echo of the volley was still dying away, Harold saw that Mr. Frith was beckoning. He seemed to be agitated and Harold noticed that his tic had grown worse again.
‘It’s H.E.,’ Mr. Frith said as soon as Harold had managed to reach him through the dispersing crowd. ‘He wants you back at the House. Straightaway. And he wants me to come along, too. You’d better be ready for it. This may be your return ticket.’
The tone of voice and Mr. Frith’s state of nerves annoyed him. If the Governor felt like being bloody-minded, Harold was perfectly ready to be equally bloody-minded in return.
‘Okay,’ he told him. ‘Let’s go along together.’ He paused, and then added: ‘I shouldn’t think there’s any particular hurry. From the way he was looking just now he can’t be exactly ready for r
eceiving visitors.’
But Mr. Frith was not so sure.
‘You don’t know H.E.,’ he said. ‘Wants us round as soon as we can get there. A.D.C. said so.’
Even with the flag on the front of Mr. Frith’s car, it was a little difficult to get through the crowd. The path for the Residency Rolls had been kept wide open but, by now, the sightseers had surged forward again. Mr. Frith kept glancing at his watch, and telling the driver to hurry.
There was certainly no delay when they reached the House. The A.D.C. had already miraculously changed back into his plain white, and was waiting for them. He agreed with Mr. Frith that it had been a simple and beautiful Service.
‘Rather good singing, I thought.’
‘Full turn-out, too.’
‘Henderson was Methodist, actually.’
‘Really?’
And with that, they passed through into the Governor’s suite. The Governor himself appeared to have been caught unprepared. Still wearing his blue dress trousers, he had removed his scarlet jacket altogether and undone the stud of his collarband. But he was at his most cordial. He was standing with his back to the empty fireplace, glass in his hand.
‘Ah, come in, Mr. Frith. Come in. And you, too, Mr. Stebbs. You’ll join me in a drink, I hope. Very hot in the Cathedral. Very hot indeed.’ He looked over to the A.D.C. ‘Remind me to have a word with the Dean about it. It’s really quite intolerable. There must be something they can do.’ He had swung round again. ‘You enjoyed the ceremony, Mr. Stebbs?’
‘I thought it was very moving,’ Harold told him. The Governor seemed pleased.
‘It was, wasn’t it,’ he replied. ‘Pity there were no relatives. And the Bishop was too long again. He knows: he saw me looking at him. You don’t want a sermon on an occasion of that kind. You simply want a tribute.’
‘I agree,’ Harold said politely.
But he had spoken too soon; spoken when there had been no need to speak at all, in fact. The Governor immediately turned on him.
The Governor's Lady Page 6