In the morning, of course, a man from the company rang, and then came round to collect him: with a superhuman effort David pulled himself to his feet, put on some clothes (he had lain there all night naked like a corpse, covered with a wet towel) and managed to stagger across the exposed glare of the pavement to a waiting car, from which he was delivered into the unimaginable relief of a cold air-conditioned building. It had been quite an experience, and Frances was right: it was the psychological shock that destroyed one so completely. He had been through, since then, far worse conditions, but none had ever so alarmed him. It had been so mysterious, the sense of total weakness, when all around seemed normal, active, busy. But it only happens to one once in a lifetime. One can train the body to accept all kinds of trials. In the end, there weren’t many trials left.
And it wasn’t as though he could quite bring himself to believe in the trial for the trial’s sake. He believed in an end product: he prided himself on the solidarity of his end products. A valley of tin. Secretly, he thought archaeologists and anthropologists were a frivolous lot: interesting, but frivolous, after the wrong thing, as were missionaries and mountaineers. Oil, zinc, tin, bauxite: they were real, they were needed. I have harnessed my neuroses to a useful end, thought David, staring out at the dark night, and the rather theatrical stars. This was the way he had learned to consider his own behaviour. A psychiatrist might have agreed with him, but he had long since given up consulting psychiatrists. He was a man who believed in self-help.
At least, thought David Ollerenshaw, I don’t get in anybody else’s way. (This was a thought that would arise in his mind in the most remote places: I’m not in anyone’s way here, he would think, with satisfaction, alone in the Sahara, alone on a rocky shore.)
The conference quickly settled into its own pattern, a curious pattern in a curious limbo, of papers, discussions, meals, drinks, swimming. They inspected every aspect of the Adran economy, its resources and its prospects: they listened to long-range weather predictions over the Sahel, and the possibility of future droughts. They did not, of course, see the real Adra: they stayed marooned in the hotel, and watched film of the outside world. An expedition had been planned for the end of the conference: they were to be flown in a light aircraft to look at the tin mine and the new excavations in the north. It appeared that there had indeed been some exciting new archaeological discoveries, in a tin mine, as in Nigeria: Frances’s wild conjectures, at her lecture, in response to David’s question, had not been so wide of the mark. It wasn’t exactly as though they were going to sink an oil well through an ancient site: there was no real reason why tin and figurines should not be harmoniously and jointly extracted—no real reason, that is, apart from the ancient reasons of the Sahara, lack of water, and lack of funds. The tin miners were already up there, extracting tin: there wasn’t enough water left over for a team of archaeologists. An appeal would be made for funds. Frances would be asked to sign it, to agitate for it. (Her paper, which she delivered with aplomb, would be quoted, she realized, in this case.) Indeed, she rather hoped she might be invited to play a more active role: one of the figurines that had been discovered was of a quite unexpected character, unlike anything that one might hope to find in Adra, and Frances, asked her opinion, and staring at its old enigmatic face, had felt such strong and sudden attraction, such a desire to stop messing about and return to some real work, that the thought of a hot and waterless tin plateau had begun to shimmer for her like an oasis.
Meanwhile, she swam in the pool, ate too much, and worried about her figure, and watched how other people behaved. The original group of late swimmers and late talkers had, as Frances had predicted, solidified and become yet more distinct, and, as she had also predicted without admitting it to herself, Spirelli was proving rather a problem. Randy, grey and wiry, he seemed determined to avenge the honour of his country, and the ghost of rejected Galletti. With no Hunter to protect her, Frances turned, not wholly in self-defence, to David, and forced upon them all many a late foursome: for Patsy was as determined to forestall Spirelli’s advances to Frances as Frances was herself. Many strange little games they played, by the pool side, in the bar, over a game of cards: looks, smiles, nods, manoeuvres. Frances liked Spirelli: she couldn’t help it. He was an interesting man, an intelligent and original man, with a reliable air of confidence: you’ll be all right with me, he hourly implied, and she was sure that in his sense it would be true. Luckily, she also liked David, though in quite a different way.
She did not understand David. He talked a lot, which led one to tell him a lot, but at the end of the day he had given away nothing, the others all. She wondered about his solitary life, and why he had chosen it: was he a homosexual, perhaps? He told them once, in a way that told nothing, that he had had a complete nervous collapse when ten years younger: any of her friends she would have questioned more closely—was it sex? was it family? she would happily have asked—but it didn’t seem quite right to interrogate him, for some reason. And yet he wasn’t withdrawn, far from it. He had an amiable, sociable, communicative manner: he got excited when talking about quite abstract matters (to hear him on geology reminded her of her brother Hugh on the subject of money). She liked his face and his freckles and his bare English knees. She was pleased, childishly, to find a scientist who would talk to her, a scientist that she found interesting. ‘I’m not a very pure scientist,’ David would say, when she expressed this view.
He was capable, at times, of the most extraordinary public behaviour: a little dancing took place, one evening, to the music of a juke box, and David had leapt around in a most uninhibited fashion, all by himself. She liked that, though she was faintly embarrassed by it. And on one occasion, when they were all sitting by the poo!, he had grabbed the Polish engineer (who was fully dressed) and slung her over his shoulder and wandered perilously with her to the end of the diving board, where he held her over the luminous water, threatening to drop her in. The Polish engineer, usually reserved and silent, had taken this in surprisingly good part, laughing and struggling as her black hair came loose from its bun, and finally tripping back along the diving board to dry land with a look of dishevelled gaiety. Frances noted that the next night she came down for the first time in a severe dark blue swimming suit, and swam powerfully and expertly around the pool with the rest of them.
Amusing though these diversions were, after ten days they began to pall slightly, and a feeling of claustrophobia set in. People began to talk of what they would do when they got home again, of jobs, of wives and children, of future conferences and expeditions. There was a feeling of not unpleasurable tedium, on the penultimate night of the conference, as Patsy, Frances, David and Spirelli met for their customary drink before dinner: a mood not unlike the end of term, at a boarding school, where the prospect of release mingles with a faint sense of imminent loss of familiar companions and a desire for some final, reckless action. Patsy, demonstrating her response to the mood was wearing a dress she had not produced before, a white dress which showed a great deal of brown and gleaming arm and bosom and thigh, and Spirelli rose to the occasion by ordering a large gin and French instead of his usual Scotch. Frances herself had put on a necklace, she could not think why, following the same instinct that had prompted Patsy: it wasn’t a very special necklace, it was a string of yellow glass beads she had had since childhood. David, in his khaki shirt, looked much the same as ever, but even David had a restless glint in his eyes. They talked a little of the trip they were to make the next day to the tin mine, and of the dangers of light aircraft, and then Patsy yawned, and stretched, and said ‘Oh God, I am bored with this bar, I seem to have spent the last five years in this bar, if only there were somewhere else to go, just for a change.’ She looked round her, histrionically, at the tiled table tops and white wire bird cages and plants and flowers, and then turned to David and said, ‘I’ll tell you what, David, why don’t you take us all for a drive? There’s no reason why we should stay shut up in this hotel, is there?
Why don’t you take us out for a spin in your nice new car?’
It seemed like a good idea, it was just what they wanted, they wondered why they hadn’t thought of it before. There’s nothing much to see, David told them, it’s a very dull town, there’s nothing to do and nothing to see: but they were not deterred. It will make a change, at least, said Patsy.
So after dinner, they met together again, and got into the car. To her annoyance Frances, who had determined to get in the front with David, found herself, through some strange last-minute manoeuvre that she was not quick enough to prevent, sitting in the back with Spirelli. Off they went, into the night, into the boring capital city of Adra. As David had predicted, there was not much to see: wide, well-lit streets (no shortage of space here), some large modern buildings, a mosque or two, a church, some Coca Cola signs, some brightly-coloured fountains in the main square, ostentatiously wasting gallons of precious water. It was a flat and arbitrary place. Not a bit like one’s idea of Timbuctoo, said Patsy, disappointed. Or does Timbuctoo look like this, now?
There was one street that showed signs of animation: there were stalls, cafes, people sitting at little tables on the pavement, men selling nuts and ice cream. ‘This is the Champs Elysées of Adra, said David, slowing down, as they drove past. ‘Or we could try the Old Quarter. But one can’t take the car in. And one can’t get a drink there. Or rather -’ glancing sideways at Patsy, in her white dress—‘you wouldn’t be able to get a drink there.’
‘Is it picturesque?’ asked Patsy.
‘No, not really,’ said David, who had himself quite liked it, with its narrow poky streets and odd little comers and seedy hot shabby cafes, its sackfuls of beans and flour and inedible sweetmeats. There was no point in going there with two women. Frances one might have risked, possibly, but not Patsy Comford.
So they settled for the Champs Elysées. As they walked from the parked car to the least dull of the cafes, Spirelli put his arm round Frances’s shoulders. So here we go, she thought. There was hardly enough spirit left in her to resist: his hand lay there, heavy and possessive and rather comfortable. The very slightest inclination on her own part would do the trick, she knew, and she knew that he would not miss it. She was annoyed with herself; she walked on, looking straight ahead. It was her own fault, it served her right. She thought of Karel, crossly. She had renounced him, but he wouldn’t go, he hung around her, with all his treacheries like teeth on a string round his neck, bewitching her, preventing her from living. She would sleep with Spirelli, and be rid of Karel. What else was she supposed to do?
They sat at a little table, and ordered some soft drinks and some hard drinks, and ate some little dry nutty objects of a curious texture and an evidently local nature: the kind of thing one did not get in the Hotel Sahara. ‘This is the real Adra,’ said David, grinning at them over the plastic tablecloth. They watched the local life go by: Frances and Patsy were the only women in sight. And Frances allowed Spirelli to follow up the advantage he thought he had gained. Perhaps he had gained it after all. How strange it must be, she thought, to be a man, and to be so persistent. She watched Spirelli watching her, carefully, as they talked of this and that: he was waiting for a sign, like an auctioneer. She must be very careful not to nod or wink by accident, or she would find herself in possession. She must be very careful not to drink too much. (A horrible flash flicked through her mind, of a bad scene in a hotel at Luxor: drink, chat, quarrels, academic disputes of ridiculous ferocity, broken glasses and finally a ghastly hot night in bed with a red-haired Canadian cameraman and broken air conditioning.) Spirelli filled her glass.
When they had sat there for as long as seemed tolerable, Patsy, still restless, suggested a drive in the country. ‘There isn’t any country,’ said David. ‘And anyway, it’s dark.’
‘I want to see,’ said Patsy.
‘Oh, all right,’ said David. ‘But it’s not like the Cotswolds out there, Pm warning you.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Patsy. ‘I want to see Africa.’
When they got back to the car, Frances got into the back with Spirelli without protest. It was accepted that she would sit there with him.
The country was flat: the road ran through it straight as a ruler. Stunted trees grew on either side of it, for this was the fertile part of Adra. The road went on forever.
‘You see,’ said David.
Frances sighed, heavily. Around them stretched the terrible space, and they looked out on it, as it passed. The earth was a kind of sandy red, stony and sandy at the same time. A little scrub grew near the road, fitfully cultivated, and beyond that, nothing. Frances felt that Spirelli was about to reach for her hand: oh well, so what, she thought, resigned, oh well, never mind. Idly, she tried one last spin of the wheel, one last conversational gambit, before the silence. What right had Karel to thrust her thus into the arms of strangers? One last desultory spin, and she would forget him.
‘How flat it is here,’ she said. ‘It was so rocky, up at Tizouk. Flat places are rather frightening, don’t you think?’
‘I was born in a flat place,’ said David, from the front, responding gallantly, and it seemed, consciously, to her tired appeal. ‘I was born in Tockley, Lines. Have you ever been to Tockley, Lines? It’s the flattest place in England.’
‘Tockley?’ said Frances, sitting suddenly forward in her seat. ‘Really, Tockley? I thought you came from Sheffield.’
‘I do, but I was born in Tockley, my family come from there.’
‘But how extraordinary, so do mine.’
‘What a coincidence.’
Spirelli sat back, Frances leant forward. The game was over; indeed, Frances, engrossed in this new subject, had forgotten that it had existed. In the next five minutes, instead of finding herself involved in a contract with Spirelli, she found instead that she was related to David Ollerenshaw through a communal great-great-grandfather: her grandfather Ted had been his grandfather Enoch’s first cousin. Astonished, delighted, amused, they traced connections: ‘But why had we never heard of each other?’ said Frances, from time to time, and both agreed that it was typical of the Ollerenshaw family that they should not have heard of each other. Enoch the bad, Enoch the wicked had been David’s own grandfather, and had dandled him on his knee and played ‘This is the way the fanner rides’ with him. What had they quarrelled about, Enoch and Ted? Nobody could remember, nobody knew.
‘My gran hated Enoch,’ said Frances.
‘Enoch hated your grandma,’ said David.
‘Perhaps that was what they quarrelled over,’ said Frances, and they agreed that this might have been so, and agreed that both of them had vaguely heard of a sister of Ted, an Auntie Con, who had hated everybody, and had been as mad as a hatter.
‘I don’t know if one ought to be pleased to belong to such a family at all,’ said Frances. ‘A terrible lot, they are, really. Bad blood, I’d say.’
‘You look all right to me,’ said David.
‘I look rather like you, in fact,’ said Frances, and as they drove back to the hotel the others agreed that this was so: that there was a distinct family resemblance between the two of them, and how amazing it was that nobody had spotted it so far. And when they got back, they ordered a bottle of Adran champagne to celebrate, and sat up late over it, the four of them, discussing endogamy, and exogamy, and the nuclear family, and genes and heredity, and incest. Spirelli, expert in family structures, drew them some diagrams of marriage patterns in Western Europe, and constructed for them a family tree, and proved to them that everybody was related to just about everybody, at remarkably few removes: but even he had to acknowledge that there was a certain degree of coincidence in the fact that David and Frances should have met so far from home in the middle of Africa.
‘Tell me,’ said Frances, finishing off her last glass, ‘did you have any sense of recognition when you first saw me? Did you think, I recognize her?’
David shook his head. ‘No, I can’t say I did. Did you?’
/> ‘I could easily persuade myself I did,’ she said. ‘But whether it would have been true or not, I don’t know.’
Spirelli, meanwhile, responding quickly to the change of play, was getting on with Patsy. Frances would have thought it beneath her dignity and his, but evidently this was not so. Frances felt reprieved, by sheer chance. How wise she had been to make a last conversational effort at that crucial moment, how kind of fate so elaborately to intervene. It was clearly much, much better for Patsy to sleep with Spirelli: both would enjoy it more. How astonishing people are, in the way they transfer their allegiances, she thought. And as she was thinking this, she caught Spirelli’s eye, and he winked, he actually winked at her. She thought she was slightly offended. Carefully, she rose to her feet, to take her leave.
‘I must go to bed,’ she said carefully, ‘if we have all those miles to fly tomorrow.’
‘I’ll walk up with you,’ said David.
And they left Patsy and Spirelli sitting there, as thick as thieves, as they walked off towards the lift.
The Realms of Gold Page 30