The Claws of Mercy

by John Harris

  At first, Jimmy had thought smugly that this habit of his was because Gotto found pleasure in his company, but it suddenly dawned on him with a shock of amazement that the real reason was that Gotto found no pleasure in his own company, and couldn’t stand being alone. The knowledge came to him while he was in the bathroom and he stopped in the middle of shaving. As he realised how right he was, he nodded to himself in the mirror, with a new feeling of confidence.

  The realisation helped him through the evening which, like all the others since his arrival, ended with Gotto stalking round the bungalow, unable to read, unable apparently to interest himself in anything, constantly treading on Jimmy’s heels as he busied himself with the exciting newness of the place.

  Finally, when Jimmy started to write letters, he crouched awkwardly in a chair alongside the table, fidgeting heavily, his long legs twisted round each other until they seemed deformed, making noisy comments on the month-old newspapers he rustled, obviously itching to get away from his own unbearable self.

  After an hour or so, Jimmy found himself repeating a phrase from the Colonial Office pamphlet he had studied back home in England, a phrase which, since meeting Gotto, had taken on a very real meaning – ‘People who do not like spending any time alone or who are dependent on amusements not of their own making are unsuited to a country like Sierra Leone.’

  “With which I entirely concur,” he said aloud.

  Gotto looked up. “What’s that?” he said.

  Jimmy lit a cigarette to hide his confusion. “Nothing,” he said. “Just thinking aloud. That’s all.”

  Gotto grunted. “What beats me,” he said in blank bewilderment, “is what you are supposed to do in the evenings here?”

  He looked hard at Jimmy, his eyes begging him to respond, but Jimmy only bent his head closer to the paper and wrote faster until the sweat dripped from the end of his nose. His letters home had suddenly become a burden to him, for his time had become too occupied with Stella Swannack for anything more than an occasional cursory attempt at correspondence.

  Gotto watched him for a while, then he fetched pen and paper himself and, placing a blotter under his wrist to soak up the sweat, also began to write.

  “I’m writing to Doris,” he pointed out loudly.

  “Good show,” Jimmy commented, his head still bent.

  “I don’t get many letters back,” Gotto said, after a long silence during which he chewed his pen end to splinters.

  “It’s not the number. It’s what they say in them,” Jimmy encouraged.

  To his surprise, Gotto promptly pushed across a letter, a cheerless, badly-written epistle scrawled in a round schoolgirl script. Jimmy looked up at him, holding the letter in his hand.

  “It’s from my girl,” Gotto said. “It’s from Doris. What do you think of it?”

  “You want me to read it?”

  “Yes. Go on. Tell me what you think.”

  Jimmy glanced at the letter, which was devoid of affection or a great deal of interest. There was no reference in it to being married.

  “Not a very demonstrative type,” he commented cautiously.

  “Well, no,” Gotto said, taking the letter back and searching through the ill-formed lines for something to reassure him. Like a dog looking for someone to pat him, Jimmy thought. “‘Hoping to see you soon,’ she says here. Think she’s wanting me to get home?”

  “I should say myself,” Jimmy said with the assurance of half a dozen light-hearted love affairs, “that she means exactly what she says: that she’s hoping to see you soon. Though, I must admit,” he continued, “she doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about that even.” He glanced across at Gotto and saw unexpectedly a look of earnest anxiety, a desire to learn the art of making friends that made him seem unutterably lonely.

  “You’re sure you’re not attaching too much to these letters, are you?” he asked more sympathetically.

  “Well–” Gotto rubbed his nose – “we were always very friendly.”

  “I thought you were almost engaged.”

  “Well, we are – almost.”

  “Ever kissed the damned woman?”

  Gotto sniggered and Jimmy began to doubt even this. “You know, Gotty, old boy,” he said, “women like a bloke to be pushing these days.”

  “Think it’s a good idea?”

  “It always was with me.”

  It was only when he looked round and saw Gotto’s resentful eyes that he realised that he had said the wrong thing again and he bent hurriedly to continue his letter.

  For a long time the room was silent. Outside, the evening chorus from the frogs and the crickets was going full blast.

  “My God, that row,” Gotto said savagely, jerking a cigarette end through the window.

  “What row?”

  “The bloody livestock outside. When a chap wants to concentrate, that racket doesn’t help. It’s bad enough in the workings all day with the boys shrieking at you. Believe me, I had a bellyful this morning. I caught a nice old packet of trouble.”

  “Trouble?” The word had occurred so often in Jimmy’s early hours in Sierra Leone that it brought him upright in his chair immediately. “What trouble?”

  “I had to sling out half a dozen shovel boys.”

  “Half a dozen? What for?”

  “One of ’em was talking about bellyache and wanted to go up to Romney’s for treatment. Sheer laziness, that’s all. Momo stuck up for him, of course. Just as I expected. I told you he was a knife-in-the-back merchant. The bloke just wanted an hour’s slacking.”

  “What about the others? Were they sick, too?”

  “No. They just joined in. Brothers or something. I told the lot of ’em to get the hell out of it and I told Momo he’d be the next. That was the sort of thing that always got me the push back home. Chaps who wouldn’t do as they were told and went whining to the union when I tried to insist. It used to happen at Ma-Imi and for some reason Twigg always let ’em get away with it. Never supported me. That’s why I’m here, I expect. I think it was an insult sending me to Amama when I’m nearly due to go home. It was a job for a new man, not an old hand. I think it was a deliberate attempt by Twigg to spoil my record. Chap I never liked.”

  He looked round the bungalow with its shabby furniture and its unpainted doors, weathered by sun and rain to a flat silver grey, at the dusty concrete floor and the whitewashed walls marked by dirty fingers.

  “It’s a bit of a hole when you think of it, isn’t it?” he said, fanning himself with his writing pad.

  Jimmy was beginning to feel depressed under Gotto’s resentment when Romney appeared in the doorway, fat and heavy and hot. He seemed angry.

  “Hello,” he said, dropping into one of the chairs and fanning himself with his hat. “I’ve come to make a complaint. One of your people has been forbidding the boys to come up to my surgery.”

  Jimmy looked quickly at Gotto, who went white and said nothing.

  “Afraid they came, anyway,” Romney said, wheezing in the silent room. “But perhaps you’ll tell whoever it was that they’re always allowed to come up to my place when they’re sick. Jarvis encouraged it as a sort of welfare scheme. If they think they’re going to lose their wages by coming, they’ll not come and then the whole point of the surgery will be lost.”

  Again Jimmy looked at Gotto, who eventually offered a reply.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said. “It was me.”

  Romney looked surprised. “You?”

  “Yes.” Gotto’s expression was defiant. “We’ll never get anything done if they can just walk out when they like. It’s a good excuse to disappear and there isn’t a wog born who likes work.”

  Romney stared at him for a while without speaking, then he very deliberately took out his pipe, filled it and lit it. “Don’t be too certain, son,” he said quietly when he had finished brushing the tobacco from his trousers. “And don’t be too harsh.”

  “We pay them to work,” Gotto said stiffly, dogmatically.
“There’s nothing they can hold against me. It’s all within the rules. There’s nothing under any agreement that says they can go up to your place in working time.”

  “They always have.”

  “Well, they’d better stop. It’s a good excuse for slacking.”

  “Son” – Romney smiled gently – “when they come to my place they’re sick. They’re not concerned with getting wages without work. If they were really after hard cash, they’d be down in Freetown or Ma-Imi where they could earn more.”

  Gotto was pale and strained-looking. “I’ve got instructions to run this place,” he said. “Twigg put me in charge.”

  “Twigg wouldn’t have insisted on this,” Romney said, more sharply. “He encouraged it, in fact. It makes the boys content and gives them a feeling of security.”

  “He put me in charge,” Gotto repeated with stubborn desperation.

  Romney took a deep breath. “There’s one other point,” he said. “All the men you sacked are Mende.”

  “Who?”

  “Mende. The whole of Amama – the whole of Sierra Leone, come to that – is made up of Mende and Temne tribes, with a few other odds and ends like Kru and Kissy and Mandingo to make weight.”

  “I know. I’m aware of that.”

  “You’ve already got more Temne working here than Mende, I think you’ll find. Now you’ve got rid of half a dozen more Mende.”

  “What about it?” Jimmy, watching the discussion with interest, saw that Gotto’s face was blank.

  “It’s very important to the Mende if you appear to show favour towards the Temne. You must know that.”

  Gotto’s face was sullen and unfriendly.

  “It isn’t serious in itself,” Romney continued. “As you know, they get on, but a quarrel between one or two of them can spread like wildfire.” The old man puffed sparks from his pipe and watched Gotto under his eyebrows.

  “I know they make a hell of a noise,” Gotto said.

  “It’s more than a noise. They each fetch their brothers and cousins and uncles and great-uncles, until it becomes a tribal affair. Then they start bringing in the septs of the tribe until it becomes quite big. I’m not trying to tell you your job, but I’ve lived here quite a long time. Why not leave it to Alf Momo? He’s very reliable and he knows the people.”

  “I’ll manage without consulting any African shift boss,” Gotto said, staring at the floor. “There’s nothing he knows that I don’t know. I went to mining school. He didn’t.”

  “Maybe he didn’t, son.” Romney rose and moved to the door. “But he’s an African. And you’re not.”

  The room was silent as the door shut. Jimmy sat waiting for Gotto to speak, agreeing with everything Romney had said but knowing that, since he had to live with Gotto, it might not be diplomatic to say so.

  “Silly old ass,” Gotto observed to himself after a while and Jimmy felt he was unhappy and unsure of himself. “Nosy old devil. What’s it got to do with him?”

  “There might be something in what he says,” Jimmy pointed out in the vague hope that Gotto might be persuaded.

  “Doctor Romney!” Gotto’s voice was a sneer. “Him and his hospital. Where does he get his money from anyway? Fiddle it?”

  “Earnshaw says he performed an operation on one of the chiefs out here who thought he was for the high jump and the old boy responded with a little hospital. It’s pretty rough and ready, of course, but Mrs Swannack and the mission help.”

  “A likely story. I don’t believe it. He and Earnshaw are as thick as thieves anyway. He comes from Birmingham and I lived there for a long time so I can soon get to know. There were a lot of Romneys round there. A big family of ’em. All doctors. I’ll bet he was one of ’em.”

  Gotto’s eyes had a blank bleak look in them. “Come to that, I’ll bet he’s not a proper doctor at all. I’ll bet there’s something fishy about him. Or why would he be out here in a God-forsaken joint like this when he could be earning thousands back home?”

  “Perhaps he likes it.”

  “More likely he was mixed up in some scandal and had to come out here to lie low. I seem to remember something about a Doctor Romney when I was a kid, now I come to think of it. I’ll write to Doris. She’ll know.”

  Jimmy was staring at Gotto now with a mixture of amazement and dislike.

  “That’s doing it a bit brown, isn’t it?” he ventured.

  Engrossed with his own thoughts, Gotto didn’t hear him. “I’ll get Doris to find out,” he continued, suddenly more cheerful. “There are plenty of Romneys still in Birmingham. I’ll bet people will remember. I’ll soon stop him coming here and telling me what to do. I’ll fix the old fool.”

  Six

  Gotto’s threats and the growing certainty that he was living with a troublemaker stayed in Jimmy’s mind for some time and, hard as he tried to avoid thinking of them, he could not thrust them aside. And, with each day that ended in its flare of gold among the palm trees, he found life being complicated further by a series of trivial incidents concerning Gotto and the African labourers. To be true, these were more wordy than important for the most part but, in the end, while Gotto was disinterestedly rattling the out-of-date newspapers after dinner, he found an excuse for leaving and made his way up to Earnshaw’s.

  Earnshaw’s house was like Earnshaw himself. Even outside, it looked untidy and none too clean. The path to the front door was edged by buried and up-ended beer bottles and at the side the bush encroached too closely for health. But, oddly, at the front, mixed up with old shoes and a dirty shirt and giving it a homely, lived-in look, were half a dozen white-painted petrol tins containing geraniums whose blood-red blooms looked purple in the moonlight. Suri, Earnshaw’s coxswain, and another African were sitting on the veranda, playing a native game similar to five-stones, noisy and excited and laughing.

  Unwashed and unshaven and still in his oil-stained shorts, his damp shirt on the chair back despite the darkness and the pinging of the mosquitoes round his bare flesh, Earnshaw sprawled under a lamp at the table, playing patience, in front of him a glass of water and a jar of stomach powder. His iron-grey hair stood straight up, uncombed and unbrushed, like the stubble in a newly-cut wheatfield. Behind him, balanced precariously on the old sewing machine Suri used to patch his shorts, his gramophone screeched barbarically across the room.

  He looked up as Jimmy entered and gave him a crafty grin.

  “Just keeping it on the run, old lad,” he said. He shoved the gin bottle across the untidy table and signed to Jimmy to find a seat.

  Jimmy removed a plate, a tin mug and a rifle and cleaning rags from a sagging basket chair and sat down.

  “I’d like–” he began but the music roaring across the room drowned the rest of his words.

  Earnshaw saw the glance he gave the gramophone and, becoming, conscious of the noise for the first time, snatched the needle off with an indigestive ‘brrrrp’. “Gawd, what a bloody row,” he commented.

  “Thanks,” Jimmy said heavily.

  “What’s up, old lad?” Earnshaw pushed his chair back and swung round. “You look proper in the dripping. Old How-To-Win-Friends-And-Influence-People been upsetting you?”

  Jimmy nodded. “I’d like a bit of advice,” he said.

  “Let it rip, kid. You got the deck.”

  Brushing occasionally at a too-venturesome mosquito, Earnshaw listened to Jimmy in silence, then suggested calling on Romney.

  “Old Doc’ll know,” he said. “There’s a bloke what wasn’t born yesterday. He don’t know what to do after thirty years out here, well, it’s time I ett my granny’s hat. He seen it all. He’s on the second time round now.”

  They found Romney sitting in the shabby little closet he used as a surgery, beneath an oil lamp that crowded the room with shadows. He was facing the doorway so that his view in daylight had contained the expanse of the hills in all their varying tints.

  The place was empty except for a bright native rug on the floor and a case fu
ll of books which were pockmarked with mildew. It was as bare as a prison cell – as bare as Romney could get it of trivialities – and it smelled of the hospital odour of antiseptics.

  Romney slowly dabbed at the perspiration on his forehead with a handkerchief and waited patiently, a little resentful at the intrusion into his leisure, as Jimmy laid out his facts. He looked comfortable and elderly with his book on his knees and his spectacles on the end of his nose. An insecticide spray gun was on the floor alongside with a glass in which a beetle was quietly drowning in the last drop of gin. He had had his evening swim in the pool behind his house that had been dammed from the clear mountain stream which ran into the river – the usual three times up and three times down – and he had a feeling of languor in his limbs. The evenings were the time of the day that Romney liked best. It was in the evenings when the night scents rose from the crowding undergrowth and the darkness turned the harshness of the day to the velvet of the night, and Romney didn’t welcome any interference with his enjoyment of them.

  He looked up over his spectacles as Jimmy spoke in an explosive indignation, odds and ends of law and order and the rights of man rattling round in his head like an armoured cavalcade.

  “Good heavens, son,” he said when he had finished. “What people say about me doesn’t worry me any more. You stop worrying about those things long before you reach seventy. In any case, he’s quite right. There was a little trouble with the Medical Council.”

  Jimmy’s jaw dropped and Romney waved a fat hand.

  “I stopped worrying about that years ago though, too. Don’t trouble yourself about me. Think about the Africans. They’re the ones who’re going to need your help, I suspect.”

  “He seems to have a thing about black men,” Jimmy agreed, still a little surprised by Romney’s revelation. “And, hell, they’re not half-wits. They’ve got feelings like he has. There are good ones as well as bad ones.”