by William Boyd
“You know,” she had said abruptly, looking at him with disturbing directness, “we needn’t meet here. We could go somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else?” he had said artlessly. “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.”
She had made a small grimace, as though it was a response she had expected. She hunched her shoulders. “One afternoon,” she said frankly, “we could go for a drive.”
He had felt touched and flattered by the candour of her approach, sensing vaguely the emotional effort required to make it. He was flattered because it was the first time this had happened to him—at least in daylight and under conditions of sobriety. He thought of his quarantine period, still with several days to run, and said with as much respect and gentlemanly understanding as he could marshal, laying his hand on her arm, “No, Celia, I don’t really think we should go for a drive, not now anyway.”
She had laughed with a hollow gaiety, and shook her hair. “No, you’re right,” she said. “Silly of me. I must be getting all confused.” She paused. “Thanks though,” she said earnestly and climbed into the car. She wound down the window. “We can still meet tomorrow, can’t we? Same time?”
As he lay back now he asked himself if he would have been so thoughtful and reticent if he hadn’t been working the dreaded gonococci out of his system. He didn’t press himself too strongly on that point, didn’t insist on an answer; it was sufficient, surely, that he’d behaved commendably, taken care that there was no reason for Celia to think she’d done anything cheap. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her turn over and unclip her bikini top to present a bare back to the sun. As she awkwardly attempted to slip her arms out of the straps one breast suddenly hung free like a bell before it was resnugged in its bra cup. He knew, then, that he was kidding himself; his mornings with Celia Adekunle had nothing to do with information-gathering.
A while later, after a swim and some conversation, he ordered drinks and a sandwich. The steward brought the clinking tray over. Celia looked across her vodka and tonic at him sipping his Coke and said, “I don’t know how you do it, Morgan. You must be the only man in Nkongsamba who doesn’t drink.”
Morgan tapped his stomach. “I promised myself I’d lose some beef.”
Celia laughed. “Well, drinking Coke won’t help.” She had a point there, he thought. He was about to say that he reckoned he’d be packing it in soon anyway when he saw a sight that made his chest thump with apprehension.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” he swore. Emerging from the ladies’ half of the changing block at the far end of the pool were Priscilla and her mother. Priscilla was wearing her reinforced Olokomeji costume while her mother favoured a short white towelling robe which blew apart as she walked to reveal an immense two-piece maroon swimsuit of the sort favoured by pregnant women or demure American matrons; the kind that has two loose theatre-curtain flaps hanging from the upper half that effectively retain the necessary modesty while allowing the wearer the freedom of a two piece—if she’s pregnant—or the impression she’s still young enough for one—if she’s conceited. Through the gap in the curtain Morgan caught a glimpse of very, very white skin, and above the top half noted the razor-thin crease of compressed cleavage surrounded by a juddering jelly-sea of tightly packed and constrained bosom. Two sturdy blue-veined thighs completed this vision of an ageing Juno, a thickened, middle-aged and middle-class Botticelli Venus returning to the waves, clutching in her right hand a rubber flower-bedecked bathing cap.
As they drew near it became obvious to Morgan that they had seen him but were, independently or by mutual pact, going to pretend they hadn’t. From sheer obstinacy he decided he wasn’t going to let this happen.
“Chloe! Priscilla!” he hailed as they came closer, the joviality of his tones belieing the nervousness he felt. He hadn’t seen Priscilla since the day he’d bumped into her and Dalmire at the club: Dalmire genial and talkative, Priscilla proudly independent. Recognition made inevitable by his shout, he saw her adopt this no-hard-feelings pose again.
“Hello,” she said gaily. “Thought I’d seen those trunks before.”
He looked down, suddenly conscious of how prominently his groin bulged. “Yes,” he said, sensing the nervousness about to overwhelm him. “They are rather crying out for attention, aren’t they?” He hurriedly introduced Celia. “You know Celia Adekunle, I think. Chloe Fanshawe, Priscilla Fanshawe.” They agreed they did. Morgan sensed the eyes of Mrs. Fanshawe burning behind the opaque discs of the sunglasses she wore, sizing up, evaluating, condemning.
“Day off?” she asked through smiling teeth.
He was furious at the implication. He turned to face her. “All work and no play,” he said in a steely voice. “Don’t want Jack turning into a dull boy, do we.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as the hostility seemed to crackle between them. “Well, we mustn’t keep you,” Mrs. Fanshawe said. “Goodbye, Mrs. Adekunle … Morgan.” They marched off; Morgan stared hatefully at her broad beam.
“Goodness me,” Celia said. “What on earth did you do to offend her?”
“God knows,” Morgan said uncomfortably. “Something to do with being alive, I think.” He sat there in silence, seething and cursing at being witnessed like this.
“Morgan,” Celia said. “What’s going on …?”—for a horrible moment he thought she was going to ask about Priscilla, but the pause only came about because she was lighting a cigarette—“… between you and Sam? What’s this great interest all about?”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Nothing really,” he said cautiously, though he felt instinctively he could trust her, “just some footling idea of Fanshawe’s. He thinks Sam’s party’s going to win the election so we’re being very friendly.” His mind was still on Priscilla so he added without thinking, “That’s why we’re giving him the flight.”
“Flight? Where?”
“To London. For two weeks.” He looked round. “Oh Christ,” he said. “Didn’t you know? Shit, I’m sorry.”
Celia smiled grimly and took a long trembling drag on her cigarette. As she exhaled she shook her head. “No,” she replied. “I didn’t know. To London?”
“Yes,” he said, wondering if he’d given something vital away. “He asked specifically for two seats—I had the tickets delivered today—I just assumed he’d be taking you.… Perhaps it’s a surprise,” he added gamely.
She laughed harshly. “Fat chance,” she said. “You see, Sam’s got this possessive thing about me. He doesn’t allow me to leave the country. I haven’t been home for three years. He thinks that if I ever get back to Britain he’ll never see me again.”
Morgan swallowed. “Is he right? I mean, would you run away?”
She seemed quite composed again. “Oh yes,” she said. “Like a shot.”
Chapter 13
It was 3:45 in the afternoon. Morgan’s Peugeot was parked down a laterite track in the shade of a towering mango tree which stood somewhere in the middle of a half-grown teak forest. Slim twenty-foot teak trees stretched away on both sides of the track, their oversized soup-plate leaves hanging motionless in the afternoon’s torpid dust-heat. Celia Adekunle’s Mini was parked just in front of Morgan’s car which had all its doors open, as if the driver and passengers had suddenly abandoned it in the face of an ambush or air attack and run into the forest.
Celia and Morgan knelt naked facing each other on the towel-draped back seat. This seemed to be the point to which all their conversations and meetings had inevitably been heading. There was a sense of something final in the air, of something ended, reached. They had talked calmly, kissed and removed their clothes with no trace of self-consciousness. Beyond the pool of shadow cast by the mango tree the sun seemed to beat down on the growing forest with a metallic solid strength, like bars round a prison cell. Morgan felt a sweat-drop trickle down the side of his face. Celia’s hair looked damp and tousled. She dragged it back and held it off her neck with both hands, causing her small flat breasts with thei
r disproportionately large nipples to rise.
“Oh my God,” she said. “It’s too hot for sex.”
Morgan leant forward over his thickening penis and licked the shine between her breasts. He felt as though he were in some kind of tin sauna, every inch of his body was moist, warm and dripping.
“Oh no, it’s not,” he said.
“Most impressive,” Fanshawe said. “They were most impressed in the High Commission. Most impressed.” He handed back the Project Kingpin file. Morgan tucked it under his arm. Fanshawe had just returned from an important meeting in the capital. He settled back in his chair. “We’ve done well, Morgan,” he said. “Exactly the results I hoped this little … exercise would bring. I can tell you that as a result of our assessment of the political future in Kinjanja there’s talk of substantially increasing UK investment here. Going to buy more oil from them too.” He held his hand out across the table. “Pat on the back time, I think.” Morgan shook his hand, feeling a little foolish. “It’s not over yet though,” Fanshawe went on, wagging a cautionary finger. “Let’s hope they don’t lose the election.” He laughed “Mwah. Mwah-hwah-hwah.” He was joking.
Morgan managed a cheesy grin, a chill dispersing the brief warmth of self-congratulation. He wished in a way that Fanshawe took him along to these meetings he had at the High Commission in the capital; without that check, there was no telling what lies and embellishments he passed on. Fanshawe was still talking. Morgan heard the word “ambition.”
“Sorry, Arthur,” he redirected his attention. “What was that?”
Fanshawe frowned. “I was saying that the one thing we want to know a bit more about is Adekunle’s personal ambitions. Apparently there’s some feeling that he’s got his sights set higher than Foreign Minister. What do you think?”
“I’ll see what I can dig up,” Morgan said efficiently. He would ask Celia. He was seeing her again at six in the teak forest. Adekunle was out of town for a couple of days. The thought crossed his mind that this was using her rather. It crossed his mind and kept on going.
“I hear you’ve got a source very close to our Mr. Kingpin,” Fanshawe said slyly. His wife must have been talking, Morgan thought.
Morgan put on a stagily innocent look. “Oh, I just keep my ear to the ground, you know.”
Fanshawe chuckled. “Good man,” he said and stood up. “Well, I’m off to lunch.” Morgan deposited the file in his office and walked down the main stairs with him. They passed Dalmire’s office on the ground floor. Eight document-clutching visa supplicants sat outside the door on wooden benches.
Morgan and Fanshawe stood in the shade of the portico and gazed down the drive like a couple of squires surveying their property.
“I see Kingpin hasn’t got round to making his trip yet,” Fanshawe commented.
“No,” Morgan said. “I sent him the tickets a couple of days ago. He wanted the dates left open.”
“I know,” Fanshawe said. “It’s just that I keep getting asked when he’s coming. Trouble with the hotel apparently. Can’t you tell him to get his skates on?”
“He’s not that sort of a person,” Morgan explained. “But it must be soon, what with the elections being so close.”
“Beats me,” Fanshawe said. “I’d have thought these fellas would have jumped at the chance of a few days in London.…” He paused for a few seconds, as if pondering the natives’ curious behaviour. “Young Dalmire seems to have settled in well,” he said, changing tack.
“Yes,” Morgan agreed. Now they were a couple of house-masters discussing a new appointee to prefect. “Pleasant chap,” he added. He found the implied status and importance conferred by their conversation not at all unpleasant. For an instant he understood what it must have been like in the old days, as they scrunched onto the gravel on the driveway. The uniformed doorman saluted, the sweating gardeners in their tattered shorts stopped their hoeing and weeding to greet them with wide subservient smiles.
“We’ve got this official visit coming up soon too,” Fanshawe reminded him, gazing imperiously across the dusty brown lawn. “Duchess of Ripon. It seems she’ll be with us for Christmas now. Bit of a stopover before going down to the capital for the Independence celebrations at New Year.”
“Ah. Yes. I see,” Morgan nodded importantly; Fanshawe had already told him about this and he wondered what he could be leading up to.
“Thought it could be Dickie’s pigeon.”
“Sorry? Who?”
“Dalmire, Dickie Dalmire, man.”
“Oh yes.”
“Thought I’d let him handle the arrangements. Turns out his mother knows the Duchess quite well.”
“Right.” Morgan was surprised and a little resentful. “Best to keep it in the family, I suppose. I didn’t know there was this connection.”
“Neither did I,” Fanshawe said. “He told us all about it at dinner last night.”
Morgan walked round the flat with Hazel. It was sparsely furnished but it would do for her. It was in a good part of town too, as far as he was concerned. It wasn’t a slum, nor near one, and there were some shops around, which could explain his presence if he was ever seen in the street. And it was a district only rarely visited by expatriates. Their neighbours were the Lebanese landlord’s brother with his fat monoglot wife, and an assistant producer from the KTV studios. If he was discreet—or more importantly if Hazel was—there should be no problems, and it would in any event be better than the sordid hotel she had been staying in.
Mr. Selim, the landlord, was downstairs in his boutique and fabric shop waiting while Morgan looked over the premises. He wandered into the bedroom. There was an iron frame bed with a thin, pink and dubiously stained Dunlopillo mattress on it. Hazel came in and bounced up and down on the bed setting up a cacophony of shouting metal.
“Ah-ah,” she said in pidgin. “Dis bed ’e done need oilo.” This allusion to the main purpose of establishing her in the flat was another example of her compulsive tactlessness, Morgan thought. There was a kind of recalcitrant primitive innocence beneath the European clothes and make-up, a sort of happy fatalism. She contracted gonorrhoea, she was unfaithful, she cajoled him into renting her a flat—it was all the same to her. He could fume and rant, posture and pontificate, her attitude seemed to say, but pretty soon he’d calm down—the next time he felt like getting into bed. Lately he’d been finding this refusal to pretend, this satisfaction with brute facts intensely annoying, but, at the same time, he rather envied it. He suspected that life might possibly appear a lot less complicated that way.
Hazel came over and put her arms round his neck. She was wearing a short orange dress and white-rimmed sunglasses. “What do you think of it, Morgan?” she asked. She accentuated the second syllable when she pronounced his name. “It will be good. Don’t you think so?”
“Take those bloody sunglasses off,” he ordered crossly. She meekly complied. He looked around. “It’s a bit of a dump,” he said, “but it’ll do, I suppose.” Hazel gave a squeal of pleasure and kissed him. Morgan returned it. She took his bottom lip between her teeth and nibbled it gently.
Morgan broke away. He had not made love with Hazel since their quarantine period had ended. Something about the brazen health of her body was holding him back, also the obscure idea that he still had to punish her somehow, show he was maintaining his displeasure at her earlier conduct. He wondered if she appreciated the subtle vindictive motives behind his behaviour. No, he thought, she probably considered him an idiot. In compensation he reminded himself of Celia’s worn, flawed body, the small sagging breasts, the dull over-tanned skin, the appendix scar, her accommodating thighs. At least there was somebody who—however amazing it seemed—liked him for himself.
He looked at Hazel’s buttocks straining the orange fabric of her dress, her thin legs in their high heels, the false luxury of her wig. But he needed Hazel too, he conceded. The last time he’d met Celia she’d reminded him of the impending arrival of her two boys for their Christmas
holidays; it would be hard to meet then, she’d told him, if not impossible.
He congratulated himself on his well-laid contingency plans; he felt the satisfaction of a food-hoarder in a time of hardship—how clever he’d been, how well-off he’d be. But he also felt the inward bite of lonely selfishness and he despairingly admitted to himself that he just wasn’t the kind of man who could take the money and run; he always had to stop outside the bank and have a think about it.
“You haven’t told Mr. Selim who I am, have you?” Morgan demanded of Hazel. “He doesn’t know anything about me, does he?” Hazel assured him Selim knew no more than was absolutely necessary. Morgan hoped she was telling the truth. Selim was no fool; he’d guess what was going on—just as long as he didn’t make the connection between him and the Commission. A scandal of those proportions would be disastrous and not even the good opinions he’d amassed over Project Kingpin could help him there.
He counted out a month’s rent and handed the notes to Hazel. “There you are,” he said. “I’ll look in tomorrow evening, see how you’ve settled down. Expect me around seven.”