Under the Skin

by Nina Bawden

  I enjoyed living with him. All the same, when I came back to his bungalow in the evening I had the feeling that I was returning, not to a township in Africa, but to the Surrey suburb that his golf and his squash and his mild eccentricities had created around him. The town itself, with its single street, its open sewers, the decaying front of the Good Luck Soda Bar, was neither English nor African. In spite of the Indian dukkas and the old men working Singer sewing-machines among the bales of bright, cheap cloth, it had the flimsy look of a film set depicting some American frontier town before the railways came. But the Administration buildings, set among the pale mauve of jacaranda trees and the comfortable Government bungalows surrounding the golf-course, carved out of Africa a tamed, rural landscape as gently, greenly English as Kent. When we sat on the veranda drinking pink gins before dinner, the frogs, bubbling away like demented prophets in the wilderness, seemed only a sound effect suggesting Africa; like the recording of

  seagulls used on the radio to set a desert island scene.

  At the club, after dinner, this feeling was enhanced; if it had not been for the bar at one end of the long, rectangular room and the African in a white robe behind it, we might have been in any country church hall, waiting for the vicar to arrive and the social to begin. Upright, institution chairs forlornly lined the walls; in one corner there was a dusty piano and high up near the ceilings clung tattered fragments of coloured paper, the remains of last year’s Christmas festivities. I think we went to the club for my benefit: Agnew was neither a drinking nor a social man. We usually sat at a table, alone under a bleak light. We could look at each other or at the row of broad, khaki backs at the bar. I don’t think Agnew was actually unpopular but his natural reserve and his age isolated him; occasionally a man would sit down to drink at our table but he always got up as soon as he decently could with the evident relief of a boy escaping from the headmaster’s study.

  Those evenings – the men drinking at the bar, their wives gossiping near the piano – produced in me a kind of watered down sadness. It depressed me to see leisure so tamely used. I was restless and full of energy; I found myself fretting like a boy at some dull, grown-up occasion.

  I said to Agnew, ‘Do Africans come here?’

  ‘Sometimes. But as guests only. This is a monoracial club. Queer term, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it supposed to be less offensive than Whites Only?’

  Agnew shifted his plump bottom on his chair. ‘Perhaps. I suppose it must seem stupid to visitors. I mean, in this country, at this time. But the other thing’s not easy, you know. We had a multi-racial club in my last district and it wasn’t a success.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘One of our members was the African matron from a big local hospital – a splendid woman, full of guts and intelligence. But all her education, all her training, had been in medicine, d’you see, so her vocabulary was very medical. She played a jolly good hand of bridge but when nature called she’d stand up and say, “Excuse me, I must urinate”. It upset the ladies.’ He looked at me. ‘Seriously though, it is difficult. Who do you let in, who do you keep out? I mean – Government servants are one thing, Africans actually in the Administration and some of the Indians, perhaps, but once you let them in, the undesirables turn up too.’

  ‘That’s always the excuse, isn’t it?’ I wasn’t, really, very interested. It seemed stupid, but otherwise unimportant.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Agnew said. ‘As a matter of fact, I did suggest some kind of limited membership for Africans at the last general meeting – we’d had a directive from On High – but there was too much feeling here. Small communities are very obsessional, especially when they’re fairly isolated, as we are here. There’s a lot of resentment at the moment – a lot of people who’d expected to live their lives out here feel the Government’s let them down. It makes them exaggerate their feelings against Africans – they’re the chaps who are going to take their jobs away from them. So we have to go very carefully. It’s like …’ he waved his hand in a vague, worried gesture ‘… like living in a firework factory. One spark and the whole boiling goes up.’ He looked at me half resentfully. ‘You’d understand if you lived here.’

  ‘Possibly.’ I smiled, to show I was not annoyed by this corny remark. ‘But doesn’t it make it rather difficult for people to meet Africans? Socially, I mean. Some people must want to.’

  ‘You do?’ He regarded me narrowly; it wasn’t difficult to guess what he was thinking. I was a liberal, a do-gooder, a nigger lover, probably even addicted to some nasty sexual practice.

  I said flippantly, ‘I’m just a tourist who wants to hobnob with the natives.’ He frowned – that hadn’t gone down very well – so I added quickly, ‘I’m only here for a couple of months. I just want to learn as much as I can, outside my job too, and that includes meeting as many people as I can. Black and white.’

  Though true, this was embarrassing to say. I smiled, bright-eyed and enthusiastic, the keen student, though inwardly I felt annoyed – why should I have to act. I didn’t have any special feelings one way or the other. I was quite prepared to concede that some Africans could be as loathsome as some Englishmen. The trouble with men like Agnew, I thought pettishly, was that they pushed you into taking up an extreme position. You had to be pro or anti; they wouldn’t allow you to be neutral.

  ‘Oh,’ Agnew said. ‘There shouldn’t be any difficulty about that. This isn’t South Africa, you know.’ He smiled in a relieved, fatherly way. ‘We’ve got one charming chap, a young doctor. He studied in Chicago. If you like, I’ll get my wife to ask him to dinner.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to bother your wife.’

  ‘Hmm. Perhaps not. Well then, let’s see. There’s Chirk. He’s one of our D.O.’s He’s – he’s got a fairly wide circle of friends.’

  He looked round hopefully as if Chirk might spring out of the ground, like a genie. A man left the bar and wandered over to our table, glass in hand.

  ‘Can I get you anything, sir?’ he said.

  He was tall, well-set up with a young, smooth face and smooth, brown eyes that had a liquid, expansive air. He wore short khaki trousers and his legs were plump and white and very hairy.

  ‘No, thank you, Prout,’ Agnew said. ‘Do you know Mr Grant.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Prout said, and sounded it. ‘You’re the fisheries man, aren’t you? We must have a pow-wow sometime. We’ve got a few small ponds round here, though they’re pretty stinking examples, I’m afraid. No better than swamps – breeding grounds for malaria.’

  ‘What are they stocked with? One of the tilapias? Tilapia will often keep the mosquitoes down – they eat the algae.’

  He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know. Nor would their owners. Far as they’re concerned they’re just holes in the ground with fish in them.’

  ‘I expect they ought to be drained.’

  ‘I’ll say. But can you get anyone to do it? You talk till you’re blue in the face and all you get is grins. Passive resistance isn’t in it. No sirree. Besides, pond management’s too technical.’

  ‘So is any kind of farming. You have to keep up the propaganda. They’ve done it quite successfully in Uganda. It’s worth it if you need more animal protein.’

  ‘I suppose so. What are you up to, down at the station?’

  ‘Investigating a project for introducing two particular fish into African fresh waters. The black carp and the grass carp – the black’s a mollusc eater, it should help to control bilharzia.’ I added some simple details and he listened, nodding from time to time like a good pupil.

  ‘Well,’ he said finally. ‘You’re the expert.’ He smiled, he had an engaging, friendly smile. ‘I’ll pick your brains before you go, if you don’t mind. Not now, though. Pleasure before business. Work is the ruin of the drinking classes.’

  Agnew said, ‘Is Chirk around? I rather wanted to introduce him.’

  Prout’s smile vanished. He swallowed his beer and said, ‘He doesn’t come to the club. Doesn’t care for his
countrymen. Doesn’t like the colour of our skins.’ He looked at me carefully and added, in case I’d missed the point, ‘He’s a nigger lover. I daresay he’s at home – bloody place crawling with niggers as usual.’

  ‘Lay off, Prout,’ Agnew said.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Prout said cheerfully. He winked at me, a large, good-natured wink, and walked back to the bar.

  Agnew said, ‘He’s in for a tough time. He’s been in the service ten years but he was locally recruited as an agricultural officer – he came out originally to work for a tea firm. So when independence comes he won’t get a pension. Not exactly a jolly prospect.’

  He looked ruffled, an old hen fighting for her chicks. I said gently, ‘He doesn’t seem anxious to improve it.’

  ‘If that’s his attitude to Africans, d’you mean? Well – as far as that goes – I just don’t know. I doubt if Chirk has any better chance of employment under an independent government, and you’ll see what he’s like. If you really want to, that is. He’s an evangelist – Primitive Methodist or something.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘To tell you the truth, he does get under people’s skins.’

  ‘I’d like to meet him all the same,’ I said.

  Chapter Three

  Chirk’s bungalow was bleak in a bachelor way: the cushions sagged in the Government chairs and the oil lamps were turned up too high, so that your eyes smarted. An expensive-looking gramophone was playing Beethoven’s Ninth. Refreshments were laid out on a deal table: ginger biscuits, milk and orange juice in tall jugs.

  ‘The juice is home-made,’ Chirk said. ‘I buy oranges in crates and my cook makes it fresh every morning. Essential to get your vitamins in this climate. I must apologize for not offering you beer. I’m not actually against alcohol – in fact I used to quite enjoy an occasional glass of sherry – but I gave it up because I felt it corrupted my African friends. Most of them are decent young Christians.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, feeling very old and pagan. Actually, Chirk must have been about thirty-five – my age – though he looked younger than I did, perhaps because of all that orange juice. He was very tall, with long, quick-striding legs that seemed to be fastened to his body somewhere in the region of his chest, giving him the appearance of an athletic pair of scissors. He had fair, limp hair and clear eyes set in the keen face of a scoutmaster. He watched me intently while I sipped at my juice. It was bitter. ‘Very nice,’ I said.

  ‘Good. Now you must meet some of the chaps.’ He bent towards me confidentially. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am you’ve come. It’s so good for them to meet a white man who’s on their side, who isn’t prejudiced, who’s ready to shake them by the hand and talk to them, man to man.’

  This speech depressed me. ‘I’m not on any side,’ I said weakly.

  He nodded understandingly, looking deep into my eyes. ‘If you lived here, you’d have to be,’ he said solemnly. He took my arm just above the elbow; I felt the grip of his fingers, like warm sausages, through the thin stuff of my coat.

  There were eleven or twelve Africans in the room, standing in small groups, stiff and shy, with glasses of non-alcoholic refreshment in their hands. The atmosphere was not gay. Chirk’s voice was the loudest of the party.

  ‘This is Tom, a new friend from England. Tom – this is Stephen – James – Absolom.…’ We smiled and clasped hands with meaningful heartiness, like masons making the secret sign. ‘Tom, this is your namesake, Thomas,’ Chirk said. He gave a whinnying laugh. ‘Doubting Thomas we used to call him but he is now strong for the Lord. Aren’t you, Thomas?’

  Thomas was a tiny man. His smile had a wizened, monkeyish melancholy. His hand felt like a chicken’s claw. He said sadly, ‘The Lord has done a lot for me, Mr. Chirk.’

  ‘My name is Ralph,’ Chirk chided him gently. Thomas smiled his sad smile and blinked, as if to hold back tears.

  ‘Mr. Ralph is very good to us all,’ he said. ‘He is very gentlemanly. I hope you are having an interesting stay in our country.’

  They all hoped I was having an interesting stay; I assured them that I was; after that, conversation died. We smiled with the determined brightness of people who are meeting each other for no other reason than meeting each other. Looking at all those beautiful, white teeth, I remembered that smiling is a sign of fear – or hate. Chirk trundled me round the room. Strong, as he would put it, for the brotherhood of man, brimming over with the love of God, he reminded me of a gracious dowager at a servant’s ball.

  He introduced me to two girls, both school-teachers, one plain, one pretty – the age-old combination. The plain one – whose name I instantly forgot – looked at us with that wooden expression which hides an agonized watchfulness and apprehension. The pretty one, Milly, giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. She had a lovely, oval face, firm, cone-shaped breasts, a narrow waist and swelling hips. When she went to the table to set down her empty glass she moved with a beautiful rolling gait. Her legs were long, more slender than a white woman’s, and ended in tapering feet that looked too small for her height; she was five foot eight or nine.

  ‘Milly is a school-teacher,’ Chirk said. ‘She’s just come here from Embu. She’s working hard on a correspondence course and hoping to get into university next year.’ He gave her shoulder an encouraging pat and moved away to hand round the ginger biscuits. His boisterous laugh rang out, high and lonely as a trumpet call on the eve of battle.

  Milly looked after him. Her expression was thoughtful but it was impossible to tell what she was thinking. She smiled at me; her teeth were polished and pearly as a baby girl’s.

  She said, ‘Does Mr Chirk have dance records? I like to dance.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Though I was sure I knew the answer – dancing was surely corrupting, like drink? – I followed her to the gramophone. The young man standing there moved aside to allow us to shuffle through the discs; he watched us with a stern, distant air, not disapproving but disengaged, like an adult watching children play.

  ‘Mr Chirk only has classical music,’ he said politely when Milly’s complaining gurgles had made the object of our search plain to him. He looked at me. ‘I must introduce myself. I am Jason Nbola.’ His expression was friendly but aloof. This aloofness attracted me as did his whole appearance; his unusually narrow, rather intellectual face, the dark, conker-brown eyes, his throat, rising from his cream-coloured shirt like a column of polished wood. I watched him while I apologized to Milly. ‘I’m afraid I’m a rotten dancer, anyway. It wouldn’t have been much fun for you.’

  I felt regretful. I do not enjoy doing things badly but I wouldn’t have minded dancing badly with Milly. Though perhaps neither of us would have enjoyed it under Chirk’s inhibiting eye.

  ‘I could have taught you the Twist,’ Milly said. ‘When I was in Nairobi last year a friend of mine took me to the Equator Club. I learned, the Twist there, also the Madison.’

  Jason Nbola said gravely, ‘I should not tell Mr Chirk that. He will think you keep bad company.’

  Milly laughed, like a brook rippling. ‘Sometimes I like bad company.’

  She rolled her eyes at me flirtatiously. I felt a little more at ease. Chirk’s terrible, patronizing bonhomie – all the worse, somehow, because it wasn’t intended to be patronizing but was so sincerely, so honourably meant – and my own frightful presumption in wanting to ‘meet Africans’, like someone visiting a zoo, suddenly seemed quite unimportant because she was unaware of it. Or appeared to be unaware of it.

  Chirk came up then and put an arm round Jason’s shoulders. It meant nothing, except that he was one of those lonely men who are always touching people to decrease their loneliness. He boomed thinly in his high, unsexed voice, ‘I see you’ve met my very good friend, Jason. I think you’ll find him interesting to talk to. He’s a Community Development Officer – a most interesting, worth-while job.’ He beamed on us impartially, his open-air skin rosy and sweating. ‘Perhaps you might like him to show you one of the Youth Centres. They’re all run on
the Self-Help principle. I think you might find them very interesting indeed.’

  Jason did not respond to – indeed, seemed not to notice – Chirk’s embrace. There was no sign of either resentment or pleasure in his calm, young face; he simply stayed within the circle of the man’s arms and smiled gently, a smile in which you could read nothing at all. I realized that as with Milly I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling.

  Chirk squeezed Jason’s shoulder with his big, warm hand. ‘We’ll have a good talk about it later,’ he promised us – quite safely, I thought, because it was clear he would never stay long enough in one place to have a good talk about anything. He moved off, taking Milly with him – to my regret – and Jason said, ‘If you would like to do that, Mr Grant, it could easily be arranged.’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Would you really?’ He sounded uncertain.

  ‘Of course.’

  He nodded; there was just a hint of wariness in his eyes. He said, ‘Do you come from London, Mr Grant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have always wanted to visit London. Most of my friends would prefer to go to America, but for me it has always been London. I think it is the centre of the world for me as Delphi was for the Ancient Greeks. Do you often see the Royal Family, Mr Grant?’

  ‘Well,’ I said dubiously, ‘I’m not exactly on their lunching list.’

  ‘I mean on state occasions. Riding in their golden coach.’

  He was not child-like; he looked amused at his own eagerness. ‘They always seem such good people,’ he said. ‘Very gracious and good.’

  I drew a long breath. ‘I did see quite a lot of the Coronation, though that was a long time ago, of course.’ I glanced cautiously round the room but there was no one to hear me indulging in this slightly shameful reminiscence. ‘As a matter of fact, I was asked if I would drive one of the peers to the Abbey. He was an uncle of a colleague of mine, he was being a Gold Stick or something.…’ I paused, put off by a sudden, physical memory of that icy, early morning wait, the boredom, the grey skies, the rain.…