by William Boyd
Hazel was struggling into a tight pink cotton mini-dress and she was wobbly on high-heeled patent-leather shoes. “I can’t stay here all night,” she said, not unreasonably. “I am going to the Executive. Josy Gboye is starring there.”
Morgan laughed sardonically. “Oh yeah? And I suppose you’re going alone.”
Hazel adjusted her wig, a heavily back-combed straight-haired black one modelled after the hair style of a British pop-singer. “Of course not,” she said simply, “I am going with my brother.” She fastened on her gold earrings. Morgan thought she looked like a tart, lurid and sexual, and deeply attractive. He realised he was jealous; he would have liked to be going to the Executive with her, but it functioned as an unofficial campaign headquarters for Adekunle’s party workers, and it would not be wise for him to be spotted there with the elections just a week away. Besides, the last person in the world he wanted to see at the moment was Adekunle. The barbecue at the club would be safer—safe and dull.
Hazel saw his smouldering look and came over to him. She put her arms round his waist.
“I want to go with you,” she said, nuzzling his chest. The stiff nylon hairs of the wig tickled Morgan’s nose making him want to sneeze. “But if you won’t allow me, what can I do?”
Confronted by this logic he decided to be unreasonable.
“All right,” he said. “All right. But be back here by 10:30. I think I’ll look in later.” He thought this highly improbable but he didn’t like being taken for granted.
He bent down and touched his lips to her neck. Her skin was smooth and dry. He smelt “Amby”—a skin lightening agent most Kinjanjan girls used—talcum powder and a thin acidic whiff of fresh perspiration. He suddenly felt very aroused. He never failed to register amazement at the swiftness of his erections—and their subsidence—in Africa. He pressed himself against Hazel, and she backed off laughing, her almond eyes creased thinner with amusement. She gave her infectious, high-pitched laugh.
“Dis man,” she said in pidgin English. “Dis man ’e nevah done satisfy, ah-ah!” She clapped her hands in delighted mirth.
For some reason Morgan found himself smiling bashfully, a schoolboy blush spreading slowly across his face.
Chapter 3
Morgan parked his Peugeot in the club car-park. He got out and gazed across the warm roofs of the other cars at the club building. It was a dark night and the gathering rainclouds had obscured the stars. A coolish breeze blew from the west and Morgan smelt the damp-earth odour of impending rain.
The club was situated to the north of the city in one of the more seemly purlieus. Nearby stood a dusty racecourse and polo ground and the only Nkongsamban cinema regularly frequented by Europeans. The club itself was a large sprawling building which had been added to many times in the last half century and its haphazard design illustrated a variety of solid colonial architectural styles. It boasted also half a dozen red-clay tennis courts, a sizeable swimming pool and a piebald eighteen-hole golf course. Inside were a couple of bars, a billiard room, a function suite of sorts that doubled as a discotheque and a large lounge-area filled with rickety under-stuffed armchairs which on festive occasions was cleared to provide space for dances, tombola and amateur dramatics or, should any crisis arise, acted as an assembly point for anxious expatriates.
It was a seedy-looking building, over-used, always seeming in need of a fresh coat of paint, but it was, by virtue of the poverty of alternatives, a popular place and Morgan, when he didn’t detest it as a repository for all the worst values of smug colonial British middle-classdom, often found himself savouring its atmosphere—the wide eaves providing ample shade for the long verandahs, the whirling roof fans rustling the tissue-thin airmail editions of The Times, the barefoot waiters in their white gold-buttoned uniforms clicking across the loose parquet flooring as they brought another tall green frosted bottle of beer to your chair.
But it wasn’t always shrouded in this nostalgic fog for him; there were bar-flies and bores, lounge-lizards and lechers. Adulterers and cuckolds brushed shoulders in the billiard rooms, idle wives played bridge or tennis or sunbathed round the pool, their children in the care of nannies, their housework undertaken by stewards, their husbands earning comfortable salaries all day. They gossiped and bitched, thought about having affairs and sometimes did, and the dangerous languor that infected their hot cloudless days set many a time-bomb ticking beneath their cosy, united nuclear families.
So Morgan changed his mind about the club from time to time. It had provided him with a few sexual partners—the hard, thin-faced wife of a civil engineer with five children, the large, moustachioed energetic spouse of the Italian Fiat representative in Nkongsamba—and for this he was duly grateful. He liked the pool, too, when it was free of the wives and their screaming brats, and he happily took advantage of the tennis courts and golf course when he felt so inclined. What he didn’t like so much was the deadening familiarity of the place after three years, the same tiresome old bachelors, the sun-wrinkled, gin-sodden couples with their endless dinner invitations and impoverished conversations. Being First Secretary at the Commission made him something of a social catch, and anyone who thought they might have a remote chance of landing an OBE or MBE shamelessly sought his company, plied him with drinks and meals and with remarkable lack of subtlety would tell him of their years of unstinting service in Kinjanja, what they had achieved and sacrificed for Britain. After three years of this Morgan was beginning to think he deserved some sort of reward himself for the hours of his young life he had sacrificed listening to sententious political analyses and dreary racist diatribes.
There was another club up at the university where he was an honorary member and which he sometimes patronised. It had a swimming pool and tennis courts but no golf course, was newer and smaller and the intellectual level of its members marginally higher. These two places, the cinema and private dinner parties represented all the social outlets available to the expatriate population of Nkongsamba. It’s no wonder, Morgan thought as he made his way through the parked cars towards the fairy-lit club façade and the jangling sound of pop-music, that we’re such a desperate lot.
He walked into the colonnaded entrance porch of the club house. A large noticeboard was covered with club rules, minutes of meetings and announcements of forthcoming events. His jaundiced eye swiftly surveyed what was on offer: XMAS GALA PARTY, he read, TO BE ATTENDED BY HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF RIPON. He shuddered, wondering what had possessed him to agree to be Father Christmas. Next to that was the golf-club’s GRAND BOXING DAY COMPETITION, all welcome, prizes for everyone, sign below. He turned away in despair. Outside the main door was a newsagent’s kiosk that sold European newspapers and magazines. Tucked away amongst the display of heat-blanched copies of Newsweek, Marie-Claire and Bunte Morgan knew there were a few issues of American sex-magazines. He was surreptitiously leafing through one entitled Over-40—it was not a publication for gerontophiles, the number referred not to the models’ age but to their mammary development—when he heard footsteps on the concrete path behind him. Snatching up a copy of Reader’s Digest he looked round guiltily and saw Dr. Murray approaching, accompanied by a young boy.
Morgan felt contrasting emotions stampede through his body: hatred, reluctant admiration, fear and embarrassment. He did his utmost to affect nonchalance.
“Evening, Doctor,” he said with wide-eyed jocularity, indicating with one twirling hand the vague source of the pop-music. “Dancing tonight?”
Murray looked at him as if he were slightly mad, but said politely enough, “Not for me, I’m just dropping my son off here.” He introduced Morgan: “This is Mr. Leafy, from the Commission.” The boy seemed about fourteen, tall and slim with a lock of brown hair falling across his forehead. He had a distinct look of his father about him. He said hello as politely, too, but Morgan thought he detected a look of suspicious recognition in his eyes, as if somewhere, in unsavoury circumstances, they had met before.
Murray was ab
out fifty and also was tall and slim. He was wearing baggy dark flannels and a crisp white short-sleeved shirt; indeed, Morgan had never seen him in anything else. Murray had a strong sun-battered face with deep deltas of laugh lines around his eyes and short, wavy, pepper-and-salt hair. His nose seemed a little too small for his face, and his blue eyes sometimes had a humorous glint to them, but more often than not they were probing and unforgiving. Morgan knew the look well.
“You go on in,” Murray told his son. “Phone when you’re ready to come home.”
“OK, Dad,” said the boy looking a bit nervous, and he went into the club. Murray turned to go.
“Holidays?” Morgan asked, desperately keen to keep the conversation going, remembering with real anguish what Adekunle had ordered him to do.
Murray stopped. “Yes. All the family together now; my son arrived about a week ago.”
“Uh-uh,” Morgan said, his head a sudden echoing void. “Yes, I see, must be nice having him out here,” he said fatuously.
The penetrating look had returned to Murray’s eyes. “Is everything all right?” he asked. “No recurrence, everything functioning normally?”
Morgan felt his face going hot. “Oh, yes,” he said hastily, “fine there. Absolutely.” He paused. “Listen,” he said in horribly inept bonhomie, “what about a game of golf? Must have a game sometime.” Why did Murray bring out the arsehole in him? he wondered, appalled at his lack of finesse.
Surprise registered for a moment on Murray’s face. “Well … yes, then. I didn’t know you were a golfer, Mr. Leafy?”
“Morgan, please.” Murray didn’t take up the friendly invitation. “Yes, I’m quite keen,” Morgan lied. “Funny we’ve never met on the course. When are you free?”
Murray shrugged. “Whenever suits you. Look, I must be going; my daughters are in the car. We’re off to the cinema,” he added in explanation. “The Ten Commandments.”
“Fine,” Morgan said, relief flooding his voice. At last he had some success to report to Adekunle. “Shall we say this Thursday afternoon. Four?”
“Good,” Murray agreed. “See you then, first tee.” He said goodnight and walked back to the car-park. Morgan watched him go; he suddenly felt weak from the tension. You bastard, he thought, if you only knew what you are putting me through.
He went shakily into the club, which was busy and, he noted with Scrooge-like displeasure, manifesting signs of Christmas everywhere you looked. The streamers, the baubles, the ruffled bells reminded him once again of his foolish undertaking to personify the spirit of this season himself and for a full minute he raged inwardly against the Fanshawes, mother and daughter. Outside in the club’s garden, spotlights lit up the barbecue. White-jacketed stewards gathered around three huge bath-sized grills made from oil-drums divided longitudinally. These were filled with glowing charcoal and above this hundreds of kebabs sizzled on wire netting laid across the drums. Morgan noticed Lee Wan, a Malay biochemist from the university, ladling out punch. A cheerful, friendly little man who organised pantomimes and children’s parties, he was also a seasoned reprobate, and, under his tutelage, Morgan had been introduced to Nkongsamba’s club-brothels some two months after his arrival in the country. He thought about joining the queue for the kebabs but his appetite had left him and he was beginning to wish he hadn’t come; the bustle and the seasonal gaiety were too overpowering in his present mood.
His eye caught a noticeboard with an arrow-shaped sign on it saying “Teenage disco, this way.” Morgan sighed, a mixture of longing and exasperation. With the advent of the Christmas holidays the expatriate population of Nkongsamba was sizeably increased by the arrival of all the sons and daughters from boarding-school in Britain and Europe. For a month the tennis courts and the swimming pool were taken over by these youthful hedonists. They would lie in groups around the pool’s edge, like basking seals, smoking and drinking, gambolling sexily in the water and occasionally kissing with shameless abandon. Late one evening he had wandered into one of the club’s teenage discos—some of the girls were breathtakingly attractive—and had found the room in total darkness. Three couples swayed on the dance floor in a position of vertical copulation and the perimeter armchairs were occupied by hunched and entwined combinations of two. Morgan had never, never been to a party like that in his life, far less when he was their age, and the unjustness of it all made him tremble with inarticulate envy.
A few of these teenagers wandered about the club now, casually dressed in jeans and T-shirts, laughing and joking. Morgan caught a glimpse of Murray’s son standing on his own, friendless apparently, eating a kebab. He gave him a wave but the boy didn’t react. Little creep, thought Morgan, as he turned and headed for the bar. He wanted a drink badly.
The expatriate community needed little excuse to come out in their droves to celebrate and the “Bumper Xmas Barbecue” was no exception. Morgan responded to the smiles and nods of recognition as he threaded his way through the press around the bar. The noise of conversation was intense and people had a flushed excited look. There were a few Kinjanjans among the predominantly European crowd, but not that many. The club was fully integrated but its black members seemed to keep away on the whole. They had better places to go, thought Morgan, wondering what was going on at the Hotel de Executive. He looked at his watch: just after nine—he would give Hazel a ring to make sure she complied with his 10:30 curfew. Then he remembered there was no phone in the flat; there was nothing to stop her staying out all night for all he’d know about it. He felt a violent rage building up inside him. Calm down, he told himself, calm down. Just because he was being blackmailed by an unscrupulous politician, just because the girl he wanted to marry had got engaged to his subordinate, just because his mistress was out getting up to God knew what with her “brother,” there was no reason for him to lose his rag, was there? Come on, he said to himself with withering scorn, be reasonable, it could be worse, couldn’t it?
He ordered a large whisky from the steward and asked for the telephone. This was placed on the end of the bar for him and he edged his way round to it, stealing a sip from his glass, and dialled his home number.
“Allo?” It was Friday, Morgan’s house boy. He came from Dahomey and spoke French; his command of English was erratic.
“Friday,” Morgan said, “it’s master here.”
“Masta ’e no day. ’E nevah come home yet.”
Morgan turned his face away from the crowd; the anarchic fury exploding in his head caused him to squeeze his eyes shut as tightly as he could manage.
“Listen, you stupid bugger, it’s me,” he rasped into the receiver. “C’est moi, ton maître.”
“Ah-ah,” Friday exclaimed. “Sorry-oh, masta. Désolé.” He went on with a stream of apologies.
“Never mind, never mind,” Morgan rapped out. “I’ll be home at ten. Tell Moses I want an omelette. Yes, when I come in—a cheese omelette.” That should make them sick, he thought with evil satisfaction.
“Excuse, masta, can I go? My brother he …”
“No you bloody well can’t,” Morgan shouted, slamming down the phone. To his surprise he felt his hands shaking. Make them wait in for me, he thought blackly, they’ll just watch my television, eat my food and drink my booze. It was a full-time job getting your own back on the world, he reasoned; you couldn’t afford to weaken.
He heard someone call his name, and looked up. To his dismay he saw the grinning faces of Dalmire and Jones at the other end of the bar. They were beckoning him over. “Over here, Leafy,” he heard Jones shout beerily. It sounded like “Woava yur, Leefi.” God, he thought, that Welsh accent’s got to go. He pushed his way sullenly round to where they stood. Dalmire and Jones were a little tipsy. They were still in their golfing clothes and had obviously been drinking since the end of their game. Morgan thought they were like a couple of schoolboys who’d slipped away from an outing and dodged into a pub.
“Hello there, Morgan old man,” Dalmire said heartily, resting a hand on Morg
an’s shoulder. His speech was a little slurred, his normally even features slackened by the alcohol. “What’ll it be?”
“I’ll have another whisky, please,” Morgan said, trying to drive the coldness from his voice. He emptied his glass and put it on the bar. “Large, if you don’t mind.”
“A pleasure, squire,” Dalmire averred.
“Bloody ’ell,” Jones said, shaking his round dark head in admiration. “You can certainly put ’em away.” He giggled stupidly. Morgan noticed beer froth on his upper lip. Dalmire slapped Morgan powerfully on the back.
“He’s a good man, is Morgan,” he said thickly. Morgan wished he wouldn’t use that ghastly rugger-club expression. “Bloody good man,” he continued challengingly. “Fed me gin at half past three this afternoon. Bugger keeps it in his filing cabinet.” There was an explosion of laughter at this from Jones. Morgan glowered.
Jones grinned conspiratorially. “Quiet celebration, eh? Great news about Dickie and Pris, what do you say, Morgan? Marvellous.” He slipped his arm round Morgan’s shoulders. “Better not let Arthur catch you though,” he breathed into Morgan’s ear.
Morgan was about to describe in graphic detail what he would do to Fanshawe with the said gin-bottle if the former tried to tick him off about it when he realised that the Deputy High Commissioner was Dalmire’s prospective father-in-law, and so kept it to himself. He contented himself with smiling knowingly and tapping the side of his nose with his forefinger. This sent his two companions off into another attack of chuckles.
“God, aren’t you a fly one though,” Jones wheezed. “Yur, let’s have another round. Boy,” he called to the barman, “same again.”
Morgan looked resentfully at them: Dalmire, in his midtwenties flushed with drink like any adolescent; Jones, shiny fat face with puffy blue jowls married to a pale sickly wife with two pale sickly kids. It made you think, he said to himself, they certainly sent the dross out here. But then he realised he had included himself in the general condemnation, a thought which depressed him deeply for a moment before his pride told him he was different from the others, special, the exception to the rule. The self-evidence of this evaluation didn’t strike home with the convincing justness he had expected, so he changed the subject.