Yours very sincerely, B.V.X. de Lancey
Isn’t he sly? I showed Ted the letter. He didn’t spot a thing. Then, very shy, as tho’ he was ashamed about it, he pulled another scrap of paper out of his pocket. It was the note I’d left for him before I rode off. I thought I’d just been telling him I was all right and I’d be coming back, or something, but all it said was “I love you. I love you. I love you.” We had a laugh at me being so silly with the opium, and then a bit of a snuggle, but actually it did make me feel rather dreadful.
Eleven
“Would you prefer me to move out?” said Jackland.
Miss Tressider was lying on the bed in black Bermuda shorts and a white, wide-collared blouse. On the side of her calf, where the tick had sucked, was a white circular patch with a dark spot at the centre. Jackland had just straightened from examining this. He had his reading spectacles on and a small square book in his hand. Miss Tressider did not remove her stare from the ceiling of the cabin.
“Not specially,” she said. “Your not being here won’t stop me from feeling perfectly ghastly. Being an actor I feel the need of an audience to be ghastly at. Do you want to go?”
“It isn’t …”
“You give that impression.”
“I don’t want to leave you. I want to go and ring Ilorin and make arrangements for you to go into hospital for treatment. I also want to get Sally to set up an immediate flight home, with medical attendance.”
“No.”
“My darling, I’m ninety per cent certain you have tick-fever.”
“It can wait another day.”
Jackland consulted the book in his hand.
“No longer a serious matter,” he read, “provided modem antibiotic treatment is supplied without delay.”
“One more day.”
“One more day and it’ll be Sunday. New Year’s Day. Monday’s a holiday too, like as not. I know the W.H.O. project has closed down already. I tried them.”
“So’ll your hospital be, too.”
“They’ll have emergency staff. If I ring them now, tell them who it is …”
“I am going to finish the film.”
“You have, darling. All that matters. We can do the landing-stage close-ups in the studio, and Janine can stand in …”
“It is going to be me in every fucking frame. Me. That’s final.”
“I wish I could say I found your courage …”
“For god’s sake, Nigel! I don’t even know if I’m ill. I’m so shit-scared I can’t tell. I knew something like this was going to hit me one day. I’ve spent the last ten years conning my body into reactions it had no reason to produce—weeping, feeling randy about men who were complete turn-offs, hysterics, breakdowns—how’m I to tell if it’s not doing that to me now? It knows I’m shit-scared, so it does the trick I’ve trained it to and gives me something to be scared of.”
“You have the classic symptoms of tick-fever.”
“It could run those at the drop of a hat.”
“You might at least …”
“I am going to do the departure scene, Nigel.”
“Let me advance another argument. It is a condition of your insurance that we take all reasonable care of your well-being. Not getting you immediately to a modem hospital …”
“I’ll sign something.”
“I don’t know that that would be adequate. You are not, so to speak, entirely your own property.”
“I am. I am. I am.”
“You are under contracts …”
“I refuse to talk about it any more. Anyway, you can’t do anything tonight. They’re still working on the trucks, aren’t they? And the ferry won’t be running.”
“Annie’s car is parked on the bridge. I thought I’d borrow that.”
Miss Tressider sighed, shivered, flicked a blanket over herself. She seemed to reduce her physical volume as the fever-chill took her. Jackland straightened the blanket and spread another over her but she didn’t thank him. He stood looking down, presumably choosing words for a fresh appeal. She spoke before he did.
“Did you screw her while you were in the harem?”
“No. Too hot, for one thing.”
“Not even tempted?”
“She was moderately attentive.”
“I could see that. A fresh experience missed, Nigel.”
“More in the savour than the act, probably. At my age …”
“You’re not going to get many more chances like that.”
“You’d have advised me to take it?”
“It would have given me an excuse to be bloody to you, which is what I feel like.”
“I want to take you to Ilorin. Tonight.”
“There won’t be anyone there.”
“Leave around four and we’ll be there by eight a.m. But if we wait till after the shooting we won’t be there till six in the evening. Sunday and Monday, both holidays, to come. Same applies about getting to London, only more so. Leave now, or as soon as we’ve got some flights booked, and you’ll be there Sunday. Leave tomorrow afternoon and it’ll be Tuesday, if not Wednesday.”
“Betty would have stuck it out.”
“You’re not her.”
“Yes I am.”
“Balls. It’s over, darling. It’s in the can, bar one last sequence we can do in the studio and with a stand-in. You’ve given absolutely everything possible, and much more than anyone else conceivably could have given. I thought I was an unimpressionable old sod, but watching you playing my mother I’ve been deeply moved. I feel extraordinarily lucky that you should have taken it on.”
“It happens. I get offered juicy parts with stupid great wads of money attached and I do them if I’m interested, and usually I get as much as I give, and that’s worth it. Then, suddenly—I don’t suppose it’s happened more than four or five times so far—I find myself playing someone who really matters. You can never give as much as you get. All you can give is all you’ve got. Betty. I owe it to her. No one knows about her, or if they did they’ve forgotten. I didn’t know it was going to be like this when I took her on. Alphonse was becoming a bore and I was mildly interested in you and there was a gap in my schedule, so I thought why not. Then you gave me the diary to read … There’s a ghost to be laid, Nigel. No one else can do it.”
“Unfortunately that is an argument I am not intellectually equipped to grasp, let alone to rebut.”
“Thank God for small mercies.”
The effort of her previous speech, though it was only a slurred mutter, seemed to have heated her up again. She twitched the blankets aside, drew a sighing yawn, reached for the diary, put on her spectacles and, opening as usual at random, started to read. The air conditioner chewed at its indraught. Insects blipped against the skin of the cabin, enhancing its sense of being a sealed environment, a space capsule protecting its occupants from the void outside but continually bombarded by flecks of star-stuff. The impression was wrong. Just as the moths and beetles were not batting into the cabin by chance but had chosen their path towards some chink of light, so outside lay not emptiness but the excess of Africa.
Jackland, naturally, was fidgety. It was clear that Miss Tressider did not want to talk, but it was impossible for him to settle to work of his own. He spent a few minutes organizing his bed on the floor—years of experience ensured that he would sleep tolerably well under such conditions—then sat down with an air-line timetable (also a sign of those years) and began to make a list of flight-connections. There was evidently some gap in the chain. He leafed to and fro, looking for alternatives.
Suddenly he took off his spectacles, thought a few moments, and rose.
“Where are you going?” said Miss Tressider.
“Had an idea. I want to see if we can’t get you to London by mid-day Sunday, leaving here after the shooting. The flights don’t fit. I�
�m going to see if I can lay on a helicopter.”
“No.”
“Be sensible.”
“You’re going to drive me to Ilorin, Nigel.”
“All right. I am prepared to regard that as a probable course of action. I am not prepared to have other courses of action closed to you. Then Sally can get on with booking the seats. You don’t have to use them.”
“But you’re going to drive me to Ilorin. You and no one else.”
“I will also arrange either to borrow Annie’s car or to have a hired one waiting and ready.”
“A hired one means a driver. I just want you.”
“I will ring Annie at the palace.”
“Promise.”
“A conditional promise.”
“Don’t be long, Nigel. I’m frightened.”
She looked at him over the top of the diary, brilliant-eyed, flushed. Her obsession with his driving her to Ilorin might well be the beginnings of delirium. As he opened and closed the door the torrid, odour-thick air seemed to jostle in the slot of dark like an invisible crowd. Miss Tressider continued to make a pretence of reading the diary, flipping to and fro, reading little more than a line at a time, as if searching for the one talismanic sentence that would relieve her fever. She tugged her blankets over her when another fit of shivers shook her, but had tossed them off again by the time Jackland returned.
“How are you feeling?” he said.
“No bloodier than before.”
“Something’s up.”
She did not respond.
“Your friend Major Kadu is up to something.”
“That’s news?”
“At least it helps explain his general bloody-mindedness. He wanted an excuse to hang around Kiti. Pretending to be mainly interested in us, holding us up so we didn’t clear out too soon …”
“You had a lovely chat with him, Nigel? You asked him to come and lay a healing hand on me?”
“I asked him for a helicopter—pretty slim chance, I thought, but as far as I can make out there’s not one civilian helicopter to be had anywhere in Northern Nigeria. All grounded. Flight control decided to take the holiday off, or something. So I thought I’d try Kadu as a last chance. The first odd thing was that the switchboard was manned by someone who put me straight through to him. He was extremely brusque, just about to cut me off when I managed to slip in that it would be good publicity for the Nigerian Army. Silence. I thought I’d lost him. Then ‘A helicopter will be at your camp at twelve noon tomorrow, Mr Jackland. The Army will see to it. Good night.’ Click. Very rum.”
“What about Annie’s car? I don’t want a helicopter.”
“No answer from the palace. Sally’s still trying. But listen, I want you to understand that if we go to Ilorin by car there’s absolutely no way I can get you to London before Tuesday. I’ll come with you in the helicopter if there’s room.”
“You can’t talk in one of those things. Tomorrow I’m going to finish being Betty, and then you’re going to drive me to Ilorin and on the way you’re going to tell me what happened to her after. That’s her life, not mine, you see. It’s a way of letting her go. It’s important, Nigel. You remember how I called up Femora Feng by mistake and had to find a way of sending her back? It’s the same thing.”
“All right. I take your word for it.”
“Promise? Unconditional?”
Jackland hesitated, unusually disturbed. She pushed up her spectacles and stared at him, forcing her will through the shimmer and haze of fever.
“Yes,” he said.
Miss Tressider sighed and relaxed. Her eyes closed. The blotched patches on her cheeks lost their sharp edges. Small changes of posture signalled a slackening in the tension of the muscles, a tension no doubt stimulated by the earnestness of her argument, though that in turn might have been mainly the product of a fever-ridden brain. Jackland watched her for a while, then moved round the bed to slip the spectacles off her forehead and pull a blanket over her. He watched her again, and was just reaching for another blanket when there was a gentle double-tap at the door, barely louder than might have been produced by two of the battering insects, but somehow different. He finished spreading the blanket and then turned and opened the door. Annie Boyaba stood on the step of the cabin. She put a finger to her lips and moved immediately down into the shadow of the cabin wall.
Jackland glanced back. Miss Tressider lay still, not apparently noticing the warm draught of unfiltrated night. He moved out on to the step and closed the door.
“I’ve been trying to ring you,” he muttered.
“Where can we talk?”
Jackland stepped down beside her. The night was moonless, with only a few stars, faint and fuzzy, overhead, and over on the horizon the hazy aura from the few lights of Kiti Town. The embers of a fire glimmered at the end of the horseshoe of tents and cabins, whose windows provided a few bright squares of electric light. The loudest noise was the pulse of the generator that powered these and the air-conditioners. From one of the cabins came the sound of a radio playing Afro-Rock.
“I can’t go far,” said Jackland. “Mary’s not at all well. I have to keep an eye on her.”
“Oh.”
“That’s what I was trying to ring you about. I may have to drive her to Ilorin tomorrow, for tests and treatment. I don’t trust the local hire-cars to make the distance, nor our trucks, for that matter. I would be extremely grateful if you would lend me yours. More than grateful.”
No doubt Jackland had chosen to sail straight in in order to avoid misunderstandings about his motives and to emphasize the nature of his duty towards Miss Tressider. After more than twenty-four hours with the film unit Miss Boyaba could not be unaware of the relationship. Both faces were invisible to each other, apart from slight glints where an eyeball reflected one of the faint lights. She felt for his forearm and gripped it.
“My uncle sent me,” she whispered.
“The Sarkin?”
Not, from his tone, what Jackland had expected.
“He needs your help. There’s going to be a coup. The Army are arresting all the chiefs. That’s what Major Kadu’s here for. They cut off our telephone.”
“Are you sure?”
“Aunt Isai—that’s his daughter—she’s married to a colonel. She rang him up to tell him, in Kiti, of course. The telephone went dead. His waziri was turned back when he tried to leave the Old Town gate.”
“But they let you out?”
“No. There’s a door at the back of the Old Palace, half way up the wall, where they used to throw the rubbish out. Some of his people let us down from there.”
“He’s here?”
“Just out in the trees. We thought there might be soldiers …”
The noise of the night changed as the pop from Lagos broke off in the middle of a phrase. There was a short fanfare of brass, the classic tones of an announcer, and then a heavier voice speaking in slow sentences, the words inaudible at this distance but definitely English. Whoever was in control of the radio untuned the frequency and started to search the wavebands for more pop, only to find the same voice speaking from every station.
“What does he want me to do?” said Jackland.
“Take him to Tefuga.”
Jackland drew a breath but did not speak. As a journalist he must have been deeply intrigued to find himself involved in such an event. There were also calculations of interest—by no means all military coups are successful, and the brief broadcast announcing the take-over might well prove to be the high-water mark of this particular revolt. To have refused to help a senior politician in such circumstances could turn out awkward not only for Jackland but for the whole unit. But if the coup succeeded, to have helped might be even more dangerous.
“Please, Nigel.”
“I don’t think I can. I am absolutely committed to dr
iving Mary to Ilorin tomorrow morning.”
“In my car?”
“If possible.”
“There won’t be any hire-cars. Not with a coup on. You could take him to Tefuga first.”
“Even if we started at first light …”
“He wants to go now. Major Kadu’ll find he’s got away …”
“He’ll have road-blocks up already.”
“Uncle doesn’t want to use the Highway. He wants to go out along the old track.”
“In the dark?”
“He says he can find it. He got us here without going on the road. I was utterly lost. That’s why it’s got to be one of your trucks. And there’s no one else. Please, Nigel. I’ll give you my car if you’ll take him.”
“If it weren’t for Mary I would. But …”
“Please. He’s so sure you will. I warned him. He kept saying, ‘For the sake of his father he will do it.’ And then you can have my car.”
Jackland sighed.
“I’ll see what I can manage,” he said. “I can’t promise. The trucks aren’t mine to take, not like that. I’ll have to talk Malcolm round. He might be glad of a chance to dish Major Kadu. No. Second thoughts, I can’t tell him. I can’t tell anyone, in case things go wrong. I’ll just have to take one. Bugger. I don’t like this at all.”
“But you’re going to …”
“God. Yes, I suppose so. About twenty minutes. You’ll hear the engine start. Wait for me where the track runs off the road.”
It was in fact slightly more than that before Jackland was ready to go. Last of all he returned to Miss Tressider’s cabin. She was deep asleep. He tidied her blankets, then sat down and wrote a short note which he left propped up on the diary by her bedside.
Twelve
Wed August 6
Marvellous news! For me, I mean. Bit sad for Ted, tho’, cos it means Mr de Lancey’s winning. Not the whole game yet, but a set anyway. Thing is, we’re going on tour, specially ordered from Kaduna, and I’ve got to go too so as I can talk to the villagers! That’s in the actual memo. Ted brought it over and showed me. Terribly decent of him. It’s going to be a big show—the Resident (de L.), Ted, a detail of soldiers, our policeman and “a speaker of the Kiti language not allied to the family of the Bangwa Wangwa or any other dependant of the Emir”. There absolutely isn’t anyone else. So there.
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