by William Boyd
He became a subdued solitary figure at work, dutifully adding charts, graphs and tables of statistics to the Project Kingpin file, restricting his discussions with his colleagues to business matters. He spent quiet, lonely nights at home, aimlessly flicking through his paperbacks, watching egregious Kinjanjan TV, steadily depleting his drinks trolley. He caught concerned glances from Friday and Moses over this untypical melancholia and careworn brooding. Friday even went so far as to approach him one evening and ask him what was wrong.
“Masta ’e nevah well,” Friday stated.
“No,” Morgan admitted.
“Wetin dis trouble? Make you tell me.”
Morgan thought of ways he could explain the nature of his problem. “C’est cafard,” he said finally, the French word summing everything up admirably.
“Ah bon,” Friday said. “Maintenant je comprends.”
As his problems continued and he found he was powerless to alleviate them he turned to alcohol, in dire need of its amnesiac properties. For the last three nights since his confession to Friday he’d drunk himself into a whimpering blob of self-pity, crouching in the corner of his sitting room, from time to time dragging himself across the floor to his drinks trolley to make lethal cocktails which he gulped down with all the relish of a Socrates draining his cup of hemlock. Occasionally he would break out into short periods of intense vein-popping rage. His face volcanic with fury, bellowing foul curses at all those who were conspiring to ruin his life, he would prance and fume around his house for a minute or two before it subsided, passing with the suddenness of a tropical storm.
With the dim logic of nauseous, grunge-encrusted mornings he would offer himself sound advice, tell himself to calm down, get back in control, and utter stern warnings about the possibility of cracking up.
Slowly but surely his own brand of aversion therapy seemed to be having some effect. He was sitting in his office one such bleary afternoon asking himself if he’d finally hit the bottom and could perhaps now contemplate the long climb back up, and wondering whether to get Kojo to make him another Alka-Seltzer to help him on his way, when there was a tentative knock on his door.
“Come in,” he said.
It was Dalmire.
“Have you got a minute, Morgan?” he said. “There’s something, ah, I’d sort of like you to know.”
“Sit down,” Morgan said, trying to keep the weariness from his voice. He massaged his temples. Dalmire was wearing his old-colonial outfit of white shorts and beige knee-socks. Morgan thought he looked slightly apprehensive.
“I wanted you to be the first to know,” he said. Then, correcting himself, “among the first to know.”
“Mmm? Know what?” Morgan said, raising his eyebrows politely, wondering why it was he could taste every filling in his head.
“Last night,” Dalmire said. “I know that once … well, that at one time you and she …” he paused. “It was just that I particularly wanted to tell you myself, wouldn’t have liked you to hear it from someone else.”
What is he wittering on about? Morgan thought. “I’m sorry, Richard,” he said, “but I’ve got a rather lax grip on things today and I’m just not with you. Do you think you could spell it out in words of one syllable?” He pointed to his head. “Touch of the morning afters.”
“Oh sorry,” Dalmire said with a prudent smile. “Must say I feel a bit that way myself.” He illustrated a rapidly expanding and contracting head with his hands. “All that champagne. Stronger than you think.”
“Champagne, you said?”
“Yes. For me and Priscilla.”
“You. And. Priscilla.”
“Yes,” Dalmire smiled modestly. “We got engaged last night.”
There was a long pause. A car tooted on the Nkongsamba road.
Morgan rose unsteadily to his feet, his face set. He wasn’t allowing himself to think. He’d switched on to remote control, automatic pilot. He wound his lips back from his furred teeth in what he hoped was the semblance of a congratulatory smile and cranked his arm across the desk.
“Congratulations,” he said, as Dalmire eagerly shook his outstretched hand. “Mar-marvellous news.” He turned to his filing cabinet. “What about a drink?” He held up the gin bottle he kept in the top drawer. Dalmire mimed enthusiastic assent. Morgan poured out two gins and added the remains of a tonic bottle. He handed the glass to Dalmire.
“Good man,” Dalmire said, gratefully accepting the gin. “Oh, good man.”
Part Three
Chapter 1
Fanshawe and Morgan looked down at Innocence’s body. Morgan replaced the cloth. He felt tired, dirty, hungry and suddenly very sad. He couldn’t understand why Fanshawe had asked him to remove the cloth and looked scathingly at him as he stood there, his hands clasped behind his back, thoughtfully chewing his lower lip.
“Mmm. Uh-uh,” he said after a while. “So she’s still there.” Morgan gazed up at the clear morning sky in wonder at the man’s astonishing grasp of the facts. “Nasty business,” Fanshawe went on. “Very nasty business.” He turned away, making little whistling noises between his teeth. The small crowd of onlookers was reduced to mainly women and children; nearby a mammy was setting up her stall in blithe unconcern. On the ground by the body were little juju tokens: a pile of stones, two feathers and a leaf, an upended tin with a stone on top.
Morgan moved away and joined Fanshawe.
“What do you suggest we do?” Fanshawe asked.
“Me?” Morgan said, astonished to be still singled out.
“Yes, Morgan, you,” Fanshawe said firmly. “I’m putting you in charge of sorting out this whole unfortunate affair. I’m completely tied up with the Duchess’s visit and besides”—he waved his hand disdainfully at the body, the onlookers, the tokens—“all this is a mystery to me. Never could have happened out East,” he said shaking his head in sorrow at the folly of African ways.
Morgan swayed on his feet from tiredness. He glared at a naked child who had been staring at him and Fanshawe as they conversed. The child backed off but didn’t go away, obviously intensely curious to see what these two white men would get up to next. Morgan looked about him. People strolled to and fro; labourers bought food from the traders’ stalls, mammies weaved by with brimming water buckets on their heads, children gambolled about on the verandah. It was quieter than usual, as if out of respect for Innocence, but, Morgan saw, that was the only concession they were making. In fact the mood was more one of indifference, resigned imperturbability, in strong contrast to the brain-racking that he and Fanshawe were going through.
“Damn it,” Fanshawe said abruptly. “I’ve just thought. It can’t be here when the Duchess arrives.”
“Don’t worry, she’s not going to see it anyway,” Morgan said. He noticed the gender change. “See her,” he added defiantly.
“No,” Fanshawe agreed. “But that’s beside the point. It just won’t be right, if you see what I mean, knowing that there’s a dead body somewhere in the grounds. Not good enough, I’m afraid. You’ll just have to get rid of it. That’s all, Morgan. I’m relying on you.”
Morgan felt the retort form in his mouth but clenched his teeth to keep it back. He looked at Fanshawe’s thin face with its preposterous moustache, and if he could have arranged for a second thunderbolt would have directed it at him there and then.
“The problem is,” Morgan said reasonably, “that no one will remove the body until certain rites have been performed. Lightning strikes are very expensive, apparently, because it’s a rare sign of Shango’s displeasure. It costs, so I’m told, about sixty pounds but then there’s the special funeral after that—which is extra.”
“I see,” said Fanshawe. “What about her family?”
“There’s only Maria.”
“Hasn’t she got the money?”
Morgan was amazed at the thick-headedness of the man. “She has fifteen pounds,” he said flatly.
“Oh,” Fanshawe said, as if it were the result of a deliberate policy o
f spendthriftness on Maria’s part.
Morgan rubbed his forehead. “I asked Murray to help last night. But he wouldn’t lift a finger.” He looked to Fanshawe for support. “Very bad show, I thought.”
“You can’t blame Murray,” Fanshawe said at once.
“Why on earth not?” Morgan asked belligerently.
“He’s not allowed to set foot outside the university gates, that’s why. Kicks up no end of trouble apparently with the Nkongsamban health authorities. Seems there’s a lot of friction between the municipal workers and those at the health service. I believe it’s some sort of jealousy over their pay and conditions.”
“He never told me this,” Morgan protested.
“It’s common knowledge, old chap. Probably thought you knew all about it.”
Morgan sighed; that bit of information didn’t exactly help. “Well,” he went on doggedly, “the Ademola clinic say they’ll take her body if only we can get it down to them.”
Fanshawe looked at his watch, and then glanced finally at Innocence. “I’ll leave it all in your capable hands, Morgan. I must dash off now. Great shame,” he said, “great shame.” Morgan wondered if he was referring to Innocence’s horrible death or the way it was inconveniencing him.
“By the way, did that poet chappie ever turn up?” Fanshawe asked.
“What!?!”
“Priscilla said something about a poet gone missing.”
Morgan reminded himself of his spontaneous excuse of the previous night. He cursed silently, remembering that it wasn’t entirely fiction. There was a poet and he had invited him to stay at the Commission. He wondered when precisely he was due—he couldn’t recall the exact dates. The last thing he needed now was a poet turning up out of the blue looking for a bed. He’d check later; meanwhile he played for time.
“Oh yes. British Council man. Don’t worry, Arthur, everything’s under control.”
“Good,” Fanshawe said, taking a final look at Innocence. “Let me know how you get on.” He turned away and walked briskly back to the house.
That evening Morgan came back to stare at Innocence’s shrouded body. He shooed away a sniffing dog and tried to imagine the lump as a large cheery woman, but his tired brain saw only its lumpiness. It was half past nine. He had driven up to the Commission on an impulse, with a mad hope that something might have occurred in his absence to spirit Innocence away, but her stolid materiality rebuked him as he stood there, effectively dispersing his wild fancies. During the afternoon he had telephoned two other firms of undertakers who had readily agreed to remove the body, but both had evidently been repulsed, or more likely had been persuaded of the extreme consequences of getting on the wrong side of Shango.
He had sat on by the phone for a further half hour deliberating whether to ring Adekunle and inform him of the disastrous turn his “friendship” with Murray had taken. In the end, he had decided it would be safer for him to play a waiting game. Events were so totally beyond his control now that there was no telling what might happen next.
Today was Tuesday. He had intended playing golf with Murray on Thursday and Adekunle had requested a meeting before then. Morgan shuddered at the maze of complexities ahead of him and again cursed his irresoluteness, his shilly-shallying, the protracted moral dithering he indulged in. He made Hamlet look rash and hot-headed. He turned away from Innocence and walked dejectedly back across the laterite square towards the Commission, followed as ever by a small squad of curious children. Around about him hens pecked and goats chewed in the darkness, pungent cooking smells filled his nostrils from the charcoal braziers that glowed on the verandahs on either side. The night was hot and sultry, the constellations clear in the black sky above his head.
“Good evenin’, sah,” a voice called from one side. Morgan turned in its direction. Sitting on packing cases around a lantern were Isaac, Ezekiel and Joseph. They were wearing cloth wraps and were bare-chested with the exception of Isaac who wore a ragged vest. They were drinking what Morgan took to be palm wine.
“Evening,” Morgan said, approaching the verandah. There was a pause as if they were expecting him to say something. He thought for a few seconds and then added lamely, “She is still there.”
“Dat’s correct,” Isaac said. “Please, sah, save your time. Don’t send undertaking man for here again. Dey nevah go take her. Dis he be Shango killing. Dey no fit totch ’im.”
There were grunts of agreement from Ezekiel and Joseph. There was no animosity in Isaac’s tone; he was a patient teacher instructing a particularly backward child.
“But I have to try,” Morgan protested. “Mr. Fanshawe is not happy. The Duchess is coming.” There were tut-tuts of commiseration at his plight. Morgan looked at the three men sitting in front of their houses with their palm wine and confidence and suddenly felt lost in his sense of apartness.
“Don’t you mind?” he asked them suddenly. “That Innocence is lying out there?” He pointed in her general direction. “What do you think is going to happen?”
The three looked at each other as if they found it hard to understand him. “There is no problem,” Ezekiel said finally. “Make you bring one fetish priest, then you can take her.” There were amused chuckles at this. Things will take whatever course Shango has assigned, they seemed to be implying.
Morgan bade them goodnight and made his way back to his car.
Chapter 2
The next morning Morgan drove to work earlier than usual and found to his surprise a small demonstration outside the Commission gates, which were firmly closed. There were about thirty or forty young men who looked like students, a few of them carrying hastily made-up placards. Morgan tooted his horn and they cleared the road obligingly with a few jeering cries and a brief chant of “UK out. UK out.” As the gate was being opened a head appeared at his window and Morgan recognised the serious unsmiling features of Femi Robinson, the Mid-West representative of the Marxist-Leninist People’s Party of Kinjanja.
“Mr. Leafy,” Robinson said. “We wish to protest with sincere vigour.” Robinson had a permanently worried expression which had furrowed deep inverted-v creases in his brow, and of course the thin sprinkling of pubic beard and swelling afro hair-style favoured by black American radicals. Morgan wondered how Robinson knew his name, as he took in the flimsy banners and placards. UK STAY OUT OF KINJANJAN POLITICS, they read, NO UK IMPERIALISM IN KINJANJA.
“What the hell is going on?” Morgan asked in astonishment.
“We are protesting against the, ah, destabilisatory tactics of the British Gov’ment in the internal politics of Kinjanja.”
Morgan tried to work a species of mystified smile onto his face that would suggest he hadn’t the slightest idea what Robinson was talking about, even though his brain was twinkling with warning lights like the console of a crashing airliner. Robinson flourished a copy of the Daily Graphic. Morgan saw a large picture of Adekunle at the foot of some aeroplane steps shaking hands with a morning-suited Foreign Office representative. The banner headline read: ADEKUNLE VISITS UK. Morgan felt his stomach swirl and tilt.
“Doesn’t mean a thing,” he asserted quickly and firmly. “Pure nonsense. KNP propaganda obviously. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” He set his car in motion and swept through the gates, hearing Robinson’s final shout of “Is that official?” dying away behind him.
Dry-mouthed he raced up the stairs into his office and snatched all three copies of the Kinjanjan daily papers off a startled Kojo’s desk. Each front page told the same story. Adekunle on official visit … invited to attend … greeted by under-Secretary of State … Consultations with Foreign Office … Morgan sat down, his head reeling. The elections were less than two weeks away; the whole tone of the reports emphasised the rightness of the KNP to rule Kinjanja in the considered opinion of the British Government.
Morgan urgently took stock of this frightful new development, contemplated the ramifications of this breach of confidence, tried to work out Adekunle’s motiv
es. Clearly it gave the KNP a vital boost of status and responsibility—equated them, no less, with the UPKP—the resident government. Such official fêting would be vastly impressive to the average undecided and literate Kinjanjan voter—but no doubt word would be swiftly conveyed to the grass roots. Nobody, after all, was consulting any other political party. It would also, of course, offend the others, especially the vocal minority—Femi Robinson and his ilk—but Morgan assumed that Adekunle would hold this a negligible price to pay for this coup in pre-election publicity.
He himself felt curiously distanced from it all—it could either be a catastrophic turn in events or quite insignificant. Project Kingpin was out in the open, but who cared? He realised too that he and Fanshawe had been successfully duped by Adekunle—manipulated and exploited with consummate ease. It didn’t surprise him that much; Project Kingpin had been bumbling and amateurish from the start, blown up out of all proportion by Fanshawe’s extravagant dreams. It seemed somehow fitting that it should now be exposed for what it was. But his heart was still racing from the unprecedented suddenness of its dissolution. He wondered how Fanshawe would react. His thoughts were interrupted by Kojo appearing in the doorway.
“Excuse, sah,” the little man said. “The porter says there is a Mr. Robinson at the front door requestin’ an urgent meeting.”
“No, no, no!” Morgan shouted. “Tell him to see Mr. Fanshawe.”
“Mr. Fanshawe is not here.”
“Oh Jesus Christ,” Morgan theatrically smote his brow. “Alright, send him up.”
Robinson soon arrived. Morgan noticed that he was wearing a black woollen polo-neck, black leather gloves and had put on a pair of cheap wire-framed sunglasses, every inch the black power activist. Morgan could see the sweat beading his nose and forehead.
“Mr. Robinson,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“We demand an explanation,” Robinson began officiously, rapping Morgan’s desk with a gloved finger. “By what or whose rights has the British Gov’ment the power to summon unelected political leaders to London for consultatory po’poses?”