by John Harris
Jimmy sighed. “Anyway, thanks, Mr Swannack.”
“Sure. Nothing at all. Nothing at all.”
“Father!”
Swannack scowled like a sulky schoolboy and the hairs on his face seemed to revive a little under his annoyance.
“Stella,” he commented as he shuffled out, “your mother has more power in her command than the word of the Lord Himself.”
Stella watched him disappear, flapping his hands in argument as he joined Mrs Swannack round the door, then she began to stare towards Amama Town and the crowds again.
“They look too excited for comfort to me,” she said. “That’s quite a time they’re having down there.”
“I’ve a feeling it’s not the last either,” Jimmy said heavily. “I’ve a nasty suspicion that there’s worse to come.”
“Is it tough, Jimmy?” Stella asked quietly.
Jimmy nodded. “What did I pick myself in on?” he asked. “Who’d have thought when I signed up for this job that I’d find Gotto waiting for me. Hell, I think he hates the very earth of Africa. He hates the trees, the grass, the mountains, the sun, the swamps, and especially the mosquitoes.”
“Hard to please, isn’t he?”
“We haven’t seen him for days. He spends all his time over at King Tim with Sargy Asimani trying to mount a full-scale investigation. Asimani’s bored to tears with him but he’s trying hard to satisfy him without actually picking him a winner.”
“Have they found any loot?”
“No. Nothing. He’s only managed to make a lot more enemies and hear a lot of noisy threats that keep him indoors as soon as the sun goes down. Since Earnshaw wouldn’t lend him a gun, he’s taken to sleeping with the light on. It only serves to make him more tired and irritable. He locks everything up now – everything – and gives himself the heeby-jeebies because he has to unfasten half a dozen locks every time he wants a handkerchief to blow his nose,” Jimmy grinned. “Hell, he’s only to shove his stuff in one of those warped drawers and give it a damn’ good slam. It’d take six strong men to get it out then.”
He looked at Stella, his smile dying again. “Stella, these people aren’t hard to please. They’re a good-natured crowd and there’s nothing they like better than to laugh. If only he’d pull their legs a bit. They’d love it.”
“You can’t do that, Jimmy dear, with a temperament like he’s got. Even supposing he tried it, it wouldn’t go down the same way as when you and Earnshaw do it. And, anyway, I suppose he’s not to blame for his temperament. The poor man’s been starved of affection.”
“He’s been starved of something. Brains, I suspect.”
“He’s probably never had much love, Jimmy, from what you say. His mother doesn’t seem to do much except complain. His girlfriend doesn’t come across.”
“Neither does mine.”
Stella ignored him. “In fact,” she said, “nobody seems to like the man.”
“What do you expect? You get nothing out of this life unless you put something into it.”
“He tries hard, Jimmy. Or he did at first.”
Jimmy nodded. “I suppose you’re right,” he said heavily. “You usually are. But there’s nothing I can do. God knows, I’ve tried hard enough. I even persuaded Earnshaw to try, too. You know what happened.”
He looked at Stella. “Stella, what are we going to do with him? You’re wise as well as beautiful. What would you do?”
“Under the circumstances, I know what I’d do. It’s tough on him, but he’s not the only one concerned. I’d let someone know.”
“Oh, Lord, I can’t go telling tales about him. He is supposed to be in charge. He is supposed to be my boss. I’ve got a certain loyalty.”
“Women don’t clutter themselves up with loyalties,” Stella said firmly. “If someone hurts or annoys them, they don’t worry about things like that. It’s amazing how well it works out.”
“It’s an easy thing to say.”
“Jimmy,” Stella said urgently, worried by the nagged look on his face. “Are you sure you’re not making more trouble for yourself by not telling someone?”
“Perhaps I am, but really, Stella, he’s such a pathetic idiot. He’s never cottoned on to the fact that these people are human beings. He regards them rather as a cross between animals and curiosities.”
“Can’t we set Mother on to him? She might be able to tell him a thing or two. She’s been here long enough to know and, when she’s worked up, can she smite the Amalekites? She’s just the person to show him how they tick.”
“Nobody could show him anything about them,” Jimmy said. “All his ideas were preconceived before he left England and he sees no reason to change them now.”
“Mother’s pretty hot all the same, Jimmy, and honest, you do look sore about it all. I don’t like my Jimmy looking as though he ate something that disagreed with him.”
Jimmy looked up. “Your Jimmy,” he snorted. “I like that.”
Stella laughed and, putting her arms round his neck, kissed him quickly and dodged away before he could grab her. “Now, don’t get all worked up. You haven’t got the kind of face that goes with a bad temper.”
She took his hand. “Poor Jimmy,” she said, the teasing note dying out of her voice. “Listen, don’t let’s quarrel with each other. Let’s save our energies for dealing with friend Gotto.”
“Damn Gotto,” Jimmy snorted. “I’m sick of Gotto.”
“Jimmy darling,” Stella said patiently. “That’s no way to deal with him. That’ll get us nowhere. That’s just accepting him and putting up with everything. We’d be much wiser to think up some way of getting rid of him.”
“I’ve thought and thought,” Jimmy said, a driven look in his eyes. “And, short of going to Twigg about him, I can’t get rid of him. All I can do is put up with the fool.”
Jimmy drove home in a depressed mood, along the dark road where the palms were lit by the flickering gold of flames. He could hear the steady beat of the drums and see dark figures swaying and singing round the fires.
Gotto’s eyes had a tormented look in them when he arrived.
“This damned drumming,” he said immediately. “They’re all full of palm wine.”
Jimmy laughed. “They’re all right,” he said. “I didn’t notice any blood lust. Only the ordinary kind. I expect there’ll be a few hangovers in the morning, that’s all.”
When he got to bed, he found he was unable to fall asleep for some time and the noise of the drums and the singing from the town didn’t help. The following morning he woke late and when he went out to the station wagon, he saw Indian Joe waiting in the dusty Cadillac behind the bungalow. Zaidee sat at the wheel. While Jimmy was still hesitating, the Syrian heaved himself out of the car and came towards him.
He was smooth and silky and blandly friendly but also obviously angry.
“Mr Agnew,” he said. “This quarrelling with the fishermen does not become you. Haggling of this kind should be left to poor Syrians like me. We are the arguers on this coast. We are not able to become soldiers. We are too timid. We cannot become administrators. We are not clever enough. We have to be the shopkeepers. So we know how to quarrel. It is not fitting that the engineer of a mine should go in for haggling with the natives.”
“Mr Soloman,” Jimmy said wearily. “How about coming to the point? Is all this because the fishermen have been raiding you?”
The Syrian raised his eyebrows. “How did you guess, Mr Agnew? You have a Syrian’s intuition.”
No, I haven’t, you old devil, Jimmy thought angrily. It’s written all over your face. You’re frightened they’ll come again.
“Mr Soloman,” he said. “I’m busy. If you don’t like it, hadn’t you better go to the District Commissioner?”
Indian Joe threw up his hands in despair. “Mr Agnew, if I go to the District Commissioner, I shall only make trouble – perhaps for Mr Gotto.”
“That’s all right, Mr Soloman. We don’t mind.”
Ind
ian Joe’s face lengthened with surprise then he turned on his beaming smile again. “Ah, no, Mr Agnew. I’ll not worry the District Commissioner. He is a busy man.”
“Are you sure it isn’t because you don’t want him up here finding that rice is short?”
“Mr Agnew, I know nothing of the rice shortage.”
“What was it they were looking for in your store the other night then?”
The Syrian mopped his moist face and stared at Jimmy without blinking. “Mr Agnew, I have no rice. May Allah in his mercy strike me down if I lie. Mr Agnew, I like you. My daughter, Zaidee, like you.” Jimmy glanced at Zaidee’s angry face in the Cadillac and wasn’t so sure. “Very much she like you. We like you to come visiting. To have coffee with us. I would like to be your good friend. My daughter Zaidee would like to be your good friend, your very good friend–”
It was Jimmy’s turn to raise his eyebrows.
“–but, Mr Agnew, we cannot be good friends when we quarrel over rice.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to dispense with the friendship for the time being, Mr Soloman,” Jimmy said seriously. “I’ve no control over the fishermen. I’ve no control over Mr Gotto. If you want to do anything about it, the remedy’s in your own hands. Take it to the District Commissioner.”
He turned abruptly on his heel, leaving them staring after him, and drove to the mine with an uneasy mind.
When he got to the office, he found the lorry drivers and the shovel boys standing in a group shouting and arguing and immediately he felt that weight of foreboding like a rock round his neck again.
Momo came towards him, his face serious. “Boss Jimmy,” he said. “Boss Gotto sack twenty-three Temne boys for coming late.”
“Oh, my God!” Jimmy felt a wave of disgusted fury sweep over him. “What’s the trouble this time, Alf?”
“Drinking last night, Boss. Temne boy hurt by digger. You remember? Plenty boys come late. Boss Gotto give ’em all the sack. All Temne.”
Jimmy was conscious of a frustrated, thwarted anger.
“Boss,” Momo continued. “Boys always slow when they drink. Stop their money. But not sack them.” He stared hard and accusingly at Jimmy. “You tell Boss Twigg soon, Boss Jimmy?”
At lunch time, Romney and Earnshaw arrived at the bungalow. Romney’s face was dark with anger. Earnshaw wore his usual bored look – as though he were contemplating poaching someone’s pheasants. They found the atmosphere already explosive. The tempestuous argument between Jimmy and Gotto had died down to an incommunicative silence but the air seemed to crackle with fury.
Romney wasted no time with explanations but came immediately to the point.
“What the devil’s this mischief, Gotto?” he asked. “Twenty-three Temne shovel boys. Have you gone off your head?”
Gotto stared back defiantly. “Last time you complained because they were Mende. Now it’s because they’re Temne. Make up your mind.”
“But twenty-three of them, man. Every Mende man in Amama Town’s jeering.”
“They were late,” Gotto retorted. “I set on Mende – I found out they were Mende to please you – I try to oblige. They were there and willing to work. They hadn’t been drinking.”
“No, but they will one of these ’ere nights,” Earnshaw put in heavily. “Then I suppose you’ll sack all the Mende and set on a bunch of Temne again.”
“Good heavens, man,” Romney said. “If you’ve got to sack a few, mix ’em up a bit, can’t you?”
“No, I’m damned if I can.” Gotto was backing away into a corner of the room, the trapped, baited look he wore when confronted with his actions on his face again. “When I celebrate, I still have to be here at the proper time the next day.”
“Celebrate?” Earnshaw gave a sudden harsh cackle of mirthless laughter. “You’ve never celebrated nothing in your life.”
“The whole twenty-three of them are up outside Indian Joe’s store now, listening to Samuel Assissay,” Romney pointed out. “He’s letting them have it good and strong about the rice shortage.”
“We didn’t cause it.”
“I know you didn’t. I suppose they do, too, if the truth’s known, but at the moment while they’re angry they put the two together and that fool’s helping them. There’s quite a crowd round and it’s not all Temne. For God’s sake, let’s sort this thing out before there’s any trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“There could be.”
“I’ll warn Sergeant Asimani.”
Earnshaw laughed again, harshly and mirthlessly as before. “If Asimani see any trouble, he’ll lay low, mark my word, old lad. This place’s grown too big for its police force.” He flicked his fag-end out on to the dusty earth with his thumb and blinked at Gotto. “He got too much sense to try and argue with a mob with his few blokes.”
“Mob?” Gotto seemed a little dazed.
“Ain’t you ’eard?” Earnshaw started to scratch himself. “Out here, it’s a mob job or nothing at all. I seen rice riots, mate. Proper caper, they was.”
“Why not take these men on again?” Romney asked. “Before it’s too late. Better still, why not leave the labourers to Alf Momo?”
“I’m having no African running this place. Besides, the law’s on my side.”
Romney drew a deep breath. He was very concerned and had been for some time with Gotto’s activities. But, as he well knew, his concern was largely a selfish one. He was anxious to see the last of Gotto and the villagers contented again, but he knew his wish sprang chiefly from his own desire for peace and comfort.
At the same time, although Gotto was a vain, tiresome, self-dramatising fathead too much alert to suspicion, a man unable to exist alone and dangerous in a place like Amama, Romney knew that no one was more unhappy in Amama than he was and his loyalties were divided between his creature comfort and his humanity.
He gained control of his temper slowly and went on more calmly.
“Look,” he said patiently. “It’s not simply a matter of the law or taking sides. It’s not even a matter of having principles. It’s understanding that’s required. Why not try to understand?” It seemed as though he were trying to force his own understanding and compassion into Gotto.
“You can’t give and take on a matter of the law,” Gotto pointed out with a stiff-necked hostility. “It has to be upheld. I suppose it can be upheld.”
“Sure it can,” Earnshaw said drily. “Only by the time they got the law out here to Amama to uphold itself, it might be too late, mate.”
“There’ll be no trouble,” Gotto insisted. “You can’t let these black devils get away with it or they’ll be running the place before you know where you are.”
He put on his topee with a gesture that ended the argument and stalked out of the door.
Earnshaw pushed his hat back and stared after him.
“Gawd,” he said in wonderment. “Ain’t he a beaut? Ain’t he the solid bar gold? Talk about tell me the old old story. He won’t take a blind bit o’notice. Like water on a duck’s back, it is, and him looking at us like we come to mend the lavatory.”
Jimmy turned to Romney. “Doc,” he said, a note of pleading in his voice. “Why does he do it?”
“Because he’s a misfit, Jimmy.”
“Well, why didn’t someone realise he was a misfit? Why couldn’t he stay at home and leave us alone?”
“He’d be a misfit there, too, I suspect. He’d be a misfit anywhere.”
“Well, look here,” Jimmy said angrily. “I’m getting a bit browned off with him. I don’t care how long he has to go before the end of his tour. I’m all for telling Twigg. He’s had his chance. How about it?”
Romney looked at Earnshaw, who drew a deep breath before he spoke.
“I’ve telled him, old lad,” he said.
“You’ve told him? What did he say?”
Earnshaw grinned sheepishly. “He said, ‘Oh, that’ll be all right, old boy’.” He mimicked Twigg’s high-pitched voice as he spoke.
“Is that all?”
“That’s all. I telled him I thunk Gotto was going to be a proper old nuisance, as nice as I could – let him have it all done up like rabbit stew – on me way up from Freetown yest’y – and that’s what he say.”
“But he must be mad.”
“He ain’t so mad, kid.”
“He’s reacted as you’d expect him to react,” Romney said. “He’s taking the easy way out. He knows he hasn’t long to wait before Gotto goes home. He’s hoping all the time he’ll be able to avoid doing anything.”
Jimmy turned desperately towards him. “Doc,” he said anxiously. “What are the chances of him getting malaria? – a really good dose that would put him out of action for a bit.”
Romney laughed. “Fifty-fifty, Jimmy. But then, it’s also a fifty-fifty chance it might be you instead.”
Five
In spite of their fears, however, there was no further serious trouble at the mine for a while. Always there were murmurings in the town, though, and the fishermen from King Tim, with the noisy pyrotechnics so beloved of the indignant African, indulged in a prolonged protest movement among the flies which hovered everlastingly in the shade of the palm-thatch market stand in Amama where they sold their fish. There was always an audience for them, for there are always idlers in an African village. And, in the evenings, Samuel Assissay, his fanatical eyes burning, could be seen on the raised stone causeway near Indian Joe’s store, his back to the gasless gas lamp, haranguing the crowd, as likely as not with Indian Joe himself looking on from a chair in the doorway of his bar, fat, smooth, blinking like a cat in the late sunshine.
“De Lawd tell de humble black man to rise,” was Assissay’s battle-cry now. “He say dis mine which tear de black man’s earth is de bringer of his troubles. Always dere is trouble. It is like de ten plagues of Egypt. We have no rice. We have no happiness. Always dere is de white boss with whip and spur to drive us on–”
Like the fishermen, he also was never without an audience. There had always been plenty of talk in Amama, and there had always been heckling and interruptions when anyone got up to speak, for an African crowd loves an argument and, in a place like Amama, there was little else to occupy them. But now the mood of the listening crowd had become more silent and, in the silence, uglier.