A Good Man in Africa

1

‘Good man,’ said Dalmire, gratefully accepting the gin Morgan Leafy offered him, ‘Oh good man.’ He presents his eager male friendship like a gift, thought Morgan; he’s like a dog who wants me to throw a stick for him to chase. If he had a tail he’d be wagging it.

Morgan smiled and raised his own glass. I hate you, you smug bastard! he screamed inwardly. You shit, you little turd, you’ve ruined my life! But all he said was, ‘Congratulations. She’s a fabulous girl. Lovely. Lucky chap.’

Dalmire rose to his feet and went to the window that looked over the Deputy High Commission’s front drive. Heat vibrated up from the parked cars, and a dusty even light lay over the view. It was late afternoon, the temperature was in the low nineties, Christmas was less than a week away.

Morgan watched in disgust as Dalmire tugged and eased his sweaty trouser seat. Oh Priscilla, Priscilla, he asked himself, why him? Why Dalmire? Why not me?

‘When’s the great day then?’ he asked, his face all polite curiosity.

‘Not for a while,’ Dalmire replied. ‘Old Ma Fanshawe seems set on a spring wedding. So’s Pris. But I’m easy.’ He gestured at the sombre bank of clouds which loomed over the rusty sprawling mass that was the town of Nkongsamba, state capital of the Mid-Western region, Kinjanja, West Africa. ‘Looks like we’re in for a shower.’

Morgan thought about replacing the gin in his filing cabinet, decided against it and poured himself another stiff three-fingers. He waved the green bottle at Dalmire who threw up his hands in mock horror.

‘Lord no, Morgan, couldn’t take another. Better let the sun hit the yard-arm.’

Morgan shouted for Kojo, his secretary. The man promptly emerged from the outer office. He was small, neat and dapper with a starched white shirt, tie, blue flannels and black shoes loose on his feet. Every time he was in Kojo’s presence Morgan felt like a slob.

‘Ah, Kojo. Tonic, tonic. More tonic,’ he said, trying to keep himself in check.

‘Comin’, sah.’ Kojo turned to go.

‘Hold on. What’s that you’ve got?’ Kojo held several looping strands of paper-chain.

‘Christmas dec’rations, sah. Foryour office. I thought maybe this year…’

Morgan rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘Never, none of it in here.’ A merry bloody Christmas I’m having, he thought bitterly. Then, aware of the startled look on Dalmire’s face he said more reasonably, ‘Nevah bring ‘im for here — you sabi dis ting. I nevah like ‘im for dis place.’

Kojo smiled, ignoring the pidgin English. Morgan scrutinized the little man’s features for signs of resentment or contempt but found no trace. He felt ashamed of his boorishness: it wasn’t Kojo’s fault that Dalmire and Priscilla were engaged.

‘Of course not, sah,’ Kojo said politely. ‘It will be as usual. Tonic comin’ up.’ He left.

‘Good man?’ Dalmire asked, eyebrows raised.

‘Yes, he is actually,’ Morgan said, as though surprised by the thought. ‘You know: bloody efficient.’ He wished Dalmire would go. The news was too depressing for him to maintain his conviviality for much longer. He cursed himself futilely for not paying more attention to Priscilla these last weeks, but they had been impossible, amongst the worst he had ever experienced in his generally fraught existence in this stinking hot frustrating shit-hole of a country. Don’t think about it, he told himself, it’ll only seem worse. Think about Hazel instead — the new flat. Go to the barbecue at the club tonight. Do anything other than dwell on golden opportunities missed.

He looked at Dalmire, his subordinate, Secondary Secretary. He thought now that, in fact, he had really disliked him all along. From the day of his arrival. Something about his unreflecting Oxbridge assuredness; something about the way Fanshawe had instantly taken to him. Fanshawe was the Deputy High Commissioner in Nkongsamba, Priscilla was his daughter.

‘Glad you had a chance to have a chat with Morgan, Dickie,’ Fanshawe had said to Dalmire. ‘Old Nkongsamba hand is Morgan. Been here, oh, getting on for three years now, isn’t that right, Morgan? Part of the furniture almost, eh? Ha Ha. Good man though, Dickie. Finger on the pulse. Got great things planned, haven’t we Morgan, eh?’

Morgan had smiled broadly throughout the whole harangue, a brief but foul chant of rage running through his brain.

He looked at Dalmire now as he stood by the window. He was wearing a white shirt, white shorts, beige knee socks and well-polished, brown brogue shoes. That, Morgan decided, was another thing he despised about him: his affected old-colonial attire. Ghastly wide shorts, billowing Aertex shirts and his college tie, thin and discreetly banded. Morgan himself sported flared, light-coloured flannels, bright shirts and these new wide ties with fist-sized Windsor knots which, so his sister assured him, were the latest fashion back home. But when he met with Fanshawe, Dalmire, and Jones, the Commission’s accountant, they made him feel cheap and flashy, like some travelling salesman. Even Jones had taken up shorts since Dalmire’s arrival. Morgan detested the sight of his fat little Welsh knees peeking out between the hem of his shorts and the top of his socks like two bald, wrinkled babies’ heads.

Morgan wearily dragged his attention back to Dalmire who was saying something while still dreamily staring out of the window.

‘…the whole fate thing, gosh. Priscilla was just saying how extraordinary it was that my very first posting should be here.’

Morgan felt a sudden desire to weep hot tears of frustration. How dare he throw fate in his face? When it could so easily have been him standing there, the new fiancé, if Hazel had only kept…if Priscilla hadn’t…if Dalmire had never come…if Murray…Murray. He stopped the runaway car at the edge of the cliff. Yes, Murray. Fate had been working overtime.

Dalmire was still talking. ‘Don’t you agree, Morgan? Astonishing how these things happen?’

‘Quite,’ Morgan said, looking intently at the Annigoni reproduction of Her Majesty on his office wall. ‘Absolutely. No question.’ He sighed quietly. He cast a glance at Dalmire who was shaking his head in wonder at the miraculous nature of things. What was so remarkable about Dalmire? he wondered to himself. Mild, reasonably pleasant features, thick brown hair with a straight well-defined parting, slim, fit-looking build. In strong contrast to himself he had reluctantly to admit, but beyond that nothing but unexceptionable blandness. And, in truth, he had to concede also that Dalmire had always been amicable and subservient; there was no evident cause for the poisonous hate he now nurtured in his breast.

But he knew he hated Dalmire abstractly, sub specie aetemitatis, so to speak. He hated him because his life was so easy and his attitude, far from one of abject and astonished gratefulness that this should be so, seemed rather to indicate that this was as fixed and natural a state of affairs as the planetary orbits going on invisibly above their heads. He wasn’t even particularly clever. Checking up his A-level and degree results in his personal file Morgan had been amazed to discover how much worse Dalmire had done than he. And yet, and yet he had gone to Oxford, while Morgan went to some concrete and plate-glass building site in the Midlands. He already owned a house — in Brighton, legacy of some distant aunt — while Morgan’s UK base was his mother’s cramped semi-detached. And yet Dalmire had been posted abroad as soon as his training was over while Morgan had sweated three years in an overheated office off Kingsway. Dalmire’s parents lived in Gloucestershire, his father was a Lieutenant-Colonel. Morgan’s lived in Feltham, his father had been a catering manager at Heathrow…He could go on and on. It just wasn’t fair, he moaned to himself, and now he’s got Priscilla too. He wanted something harsh, cruel and inexplicable to happen to Dalmire; something shocking and arbitrary, just to put him in touch with real life again. But no, the final insult from a bourgeois, ex-public school God had allowed Priscilla to be swept off her feet within weeks of Dalmire’s arrival.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door and Denzil Jones, the accountant, poked his head round it.

‘Excuse me, Morgan. Ah, there you are, Dickie. See you at the club. Five-ish?’

‘Fine,’ Dalmire said. ‘Think you can cope with eighteen holes, Denzil?’

Jones laughed. ‘If you can, boyo, so can I. See you there, OK? Tara, Morgan.’Jones left.

Morgan reflected that of all the accents he disliked, the Welsh was the most irritating. Except possibly Australian…or perhaps Geordie come to that…

‘Good little golfer is Denzil,’ Dalmire volunteered amiably.

Morgan looked astonished. ‘Him? Golf? You must be kidding. With a gut like that?’ He sucked in his own. ‘I’m surprised he can see the ball.’

Dalmire screwed up his face in polite disagreement. ‘There’s more to Denzil than meets the eye. You’d be surprised. Handicap of seven. It’s all I can do to beat him.’ He paused, ‘Talking of golf I heard you used to play a bit. What about joining us?’

‘No thanks,’ Morgan said. ‘I’ve given up golf. It was ruining my mental equilibrium.’ He suddenly remembered something. ‘Tell me,’ he asked. ‘Do you ever see Murray on the course?’

‘Dr Murray?’

‘That’s the one. The Scottish chap. Doctor for the university.’

‘Yes, I see him down there at some point during the week. He’s quite good for an oldish fellow. I think he’s teaching his son to play at the moment — he’s usually been with a young kid the last week or so. Why?’

‘Just curious,’ Morgan said. ‘I wanted a word with him. Perhaps I’ll catch him at the club.’ He looked thoughtful.

‘How well do you know Murray then?’ Dalmire asked.

‘I only know him professionally,’ Morgan said evasively. ‘I had to see him for a while about a couple of months ago for…I wasn’t feeling so good. Just before you arrived in fact.’ Morgan’s face coloured as he remembered the most achingly embarrassing moments of his life, and he said with some venom, — ‘Actually I can’t stand the man. Sanctimonious, Calvinistic so-and-so. Totally unsympathetic — can’t think why he became a doctor — hectoring, bullying — sort of moral storm-trooper.’

Dalmire looked surprised. ‘Funny. I’ve heard he’s very well liked. Bit stern maybe — but then I don’t know him at all. They say he holds that university health service together. Been out here for ages, hasn’t he?’

‘I think so.’ Morgan felt a bit of a fool; he hadn’t meant his attack to be quite so vigorous, but Murray had that effect on him. ‘I suppose we just didn’t hit it off,’ he said. ‘Personality clash. The nature of the illness and so on.’ He left it at that.

He didn’t want to go on about Murray because he regarded the man as a wholly unwelcome and intensely annoying presence in his life. For some reason he seemed to stray across his path repeatedly; no matter what he did he seemed to run into Murray somewhere along the line. In fact, now he thought about it, in a way Murray had cost him Priscilla; indirectly, Murray was responsible for this latest disastrous piece of news that Dalmire had so smilingly brought him. He stiffened involuntarily with anger. Yes, he remembered, if Murray hadn’t told him that night…He stopped himself: he saw the if-clauses stretching away to the crack of doom. It was pointless, he told himself in a sudden chill of rationality, Murray — like young Dalmire — was simply a handy scapegoat, a useful objective correlative for his own stupid mistakes, his fervent pursuit of the cock-up, the banal farce he was so industriously trying to turn his life into: Morgan SNAFU Leafy, R.I.P.

He looked pointedly at his watch, then interrupted Dalmire’s reverie. ‘Look, Richard,’—he couldn’t bring himself to call Dalmire Dickie, not even now—‘I’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do…’

Dalmire looked at his feet and pushed both his palms forward, as if to support a toppling bookshelf. ‘Far be it from me, old man,’ he said mock-abjectly. ‘No no. You plug on.’ He walked to the door swishing an imaginary golf club. ‘Sure you don’t fancy a round this afternoon? Threesome?’

Morgan was sorely tried by the way Dalmire persistently accompanied his conversational remarks with visual analogues, as if he were a presenter on a TV show for the under-fives. So in response Morgan exaggeratedly shook his head and histrionically indicated towering reams of bumf in his in-tray. Dalmire flashed him a thumbs-up sign and slipped out of the door.

Morgan sat back in pained relief and gazed at the motionless fan set in the ceiling. He sat and listened to the hum of his air-conditioner. How, he asked himself with a smile of sad incredulity on his face, how could a demure, refined…sweet girl like Priscilla marry that crass nonentity, that ignorant scion of the English upper-middle classes? He pinched the top of his nose in heart-rending disbelief. She knew that I loved her, he told himself, why couldn’t she have seen…He checked the progress of his thoughts for the third time. He should stop deluding himself this way: he knew why.

He stood up and walked round his desk to the window. Dalmire had been right about the storm. There was a fuming cliff-edge of dense purple-grey clouds looming to the west of Nkongsamba. It would probably rain tonight; there invariably were a few thunderstorms at Christmas time. He stared out over the provincial capital. What a dead-end place, he thought, as he always did when he contemplated this view. The only large town in a small state in a not-very-significant West African country: the diplomatic posting of a lifetime! He sneered — you couldn’t even call it a backwater. He felt miserable: the irony wasn’t working for him today. Sometimes he panicked, imagining that the records of his posting had been lost, deep in some bottomless Whitehall file, and that nobody even remembered he was here. The thought made his scalp crawl.

Like Rome, Nkongsamba was built on seven hills, but there all similarity ended. Set in undulating tropical rain forest, from the air it resembled nothing so much as a giant pool of crapulous vomit on somebody’s expansive unmown lawn. Every building was roofed with corrugated iron in various advanced stages of rusty erosion, and from the window of the Commission — established nobly on a hill above the town — Morgan could see the roofs stretch before him, an ochrous tin checker-board, a bilious metallic sea, the paranoiac vision of a mad town planner. Apart from a single rearing skyscraper at the town’s centre, a bank, the modern studios of Kinjanjan Television and the large Kingsway general stores, few buildings reached higher than three storeys and most were crumbling mud-walled houses randomly clustered and packed alongside narrow potholed streets lined with deep purulent drains. Morgan liked to imagine the town as some immense yeast culture, left in a damp cupboard by an absent-minded lab technician, festering uncontrolled, running rampant in the ideal growing conditions.

Apart from the claustrophobic proximity of the buildings to one another, and the noisome cloying stench of rubbish and assorted decomposing matter, it was the heaving manifestation of organic life in all its forms that most struck Morgan about Nkongsamba. Entire generations of families sprawled outside the mud huts like auditioning extras for a ‘Four Ages of Man’ documentary, from wizened flat-breasted grandmothers to pot-bellied pikkins frowning with concentration as they peed into the gutters. Hens, goats and dogs scavenged every rubbish pile and accessible drain-bed in search of edible scraps, and the flow of pedestrians, treading a cautious path between the mad honking traffic and the crumbling edges of the storm-ditches, never ceased.

Among the brightly-clad swarming crowds were alarmingly deformed leprous beggars, with knobbled blunt limbs, who staggered, hopped and crawled along, occasionally, if in a particularly dire condition, propelling themselves about on little wooden trolleys. There were lissom motor-park touts escorting big-buttocked shop assistants; small boys selling tray-fuls of biros, combs, orange dusters, coathangers, sunglasses and cheap Russian watches; huge-humped white cows driven by solemn, thin-faced Fulanis from the North. Sometimes dusty, dirt-mantled lunatics from the forests could be seen weaving their nervous way among the throng in crazed incomprehension. One day Morgan had come across one standing at a busy road junction. He wore a filthy loin cloth and his hair was dyed mud-orange. He stood with wide unblinking eyes gazing at the Sargasso of humanity that passed before him, from time to time screaming shrill insults or curses, shuffling his feet in a token spell-casting dance. The crowd laughed or just ignored him — the mad are happily tolerated in Africa — content to let him gibber harmlessly on the pavement. For some reason Morgan had felt a sudden powerful bond of sympathy with this guileless fool in his hideously alien environment — he seemed to share and understand his point of view — and spontaneously he had thrust a pound note into his calloused hand as he edged past. The madman turned his yellow eyes on him for a brief moment before stuffing the note into his wide moist mouth where he chewed it up with a salivating relish.

Morgan thought shamefacedly of the episode as he surveyed the town. Depending on his mood Nkongsamba either invigorated or depressed him. Of late — or at least for the last three months — it had cast him into a scathing misanthropy, so profound that had he possessed a spare nuclear bomb or Polaris missile he would gladly have retargeted it here. Blitzed the seven hills in one second. Cleared the ground. Let the jungle creep back in.

For an instant he visualized the mushroom cloud. BOOM. The dust slowly falling and along with it a timeless weighty peace. But inside him he suspected it was probably futile. There was just too much raw, brutal life in the place to allow itself to be obliterated that easily. He thought it would be rather like that cockroach he had tried to kill at home the other night. He had been lost in some lurid paperback when out of the corner of his eye he’d seen a real monster — two inches long, brown and shiny like a tin toy, with two quivering whiskers — scuttling across the concrete floor of his sitting room. He had enveloped it in a noxious cloud of fly-spray, swatted it with his paperback, stamped on it, leapt up and down on the revolting creature like some demented Rumplestiltskin, but to no avail. Although it had been trailing a transparent ooze, its whiskers were buckled, it had lost a couple of legs and was only groggily keeping on course, it had nonetheless made the shelter of the skirting board.

He turned away from the view and the faint noise of tooting cars that came through the firmly closed windows. The rain would be nice, he thought, dampen the dust, provide a bit of coolness for an hour or so. It was important to keep cool, he said to himself, especially now. He felt fine in his office, he had his air-conditioner turned up high, but outside his enemy the sun lay in wait eager for battle to recommence. He had decided that his low heat threshold was something to do with his complexion: pale and creamy and well supported by a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. He had been in Africa for nearly three years and still hadn’t developed anything you could call a real tan. Just more freckles, zillions of them. He held his forearms up for scrutiny; from a distance he looked as though he was quite brown but as you drew closer the illusion was exposed. He was like some animated pointilliste painting. Still, he reflected, if his calculations were right, in another year all the freckles should merge together to form a continuous bronzed sheen, and then he wouldn’t need to sunbathe ever again.

In another year! He laughed harshly to himself; the way his life was currently going it would be a miracle if he lasted beyond Christmas and the elections. The mad implausibility of this last event made his head spin every time he thought about it. Only in Kinjanja, he thought, only in Kinjanja would they hold elections between Christmas and the New Year. Not just any old elections either, the Yuletide poll had all the signs of being the most important yet held in this benighted country’s short history. These thoughts brought him reluctantly back to his work and he moved away from the window, warily circling his desk as if it were wired to explode. Cautiously he sat down and opened the green file that lay to one side of his blotting pad. He read the familiar heading: KNP. The Kinjanjan National Party. He opened it and the still more familiar features of its Mid-West representative, Professor Chief Sam Adekunle smiled out at him from beneath the celebrated handlebar moustache and mutton-chop whiskers. Numbly he riffled through the pages, his eyes dully flitting over the projections and assessments, the graphs, demographic surveys, breakdown of manifestos and confidential analyses of the party’s political leanings. It was a good, capable piece of work: thorough, painstaking and professionally put together. And all done by him. He turned to the last page and read his final memorandum to the effect that the KNP and Adekunle were the most pro-British of the assorted rag-bag of political parties contesting the future elections and the one whose victory would be most likely to ensure the safety of UK investment — heavy, and heavily profitable — and to encourage its maintenance and expansion in the coming years. He remembered with little satisfaction now how pleased Fanshawe had been with his work, how the telex had buzzed and clattered between Nkongsamba and the capital on the coast, between Nkongsamba and London. Great work, Morgan, Fanshawe had said, keep it up, keep it up.

Morgan cursed his efficiency, his acuity, his confident evaluations. Fate sticking her oar in again, he thought grimly; why hadn’t he chosen the People’s Party of Kinjanja, or the Kinjanjan People’s Progress Party or even the United Party of Kinjanjan People? Because he was too bloody keen, he told himself, too effing smart, that’s why. Because for once in his life he’d wanted to do a good job, wanted some acclaim, wanted to get out. He slammed the file shut with a snarl of impotent anger. And now, he accused himself mercilessly, now Adekunle’s got you by the short and curlies, hasn’t he? Strung up and dangling.

Blackmail, so the detective novels he read informed him, was a nasty word, and he was surprised that he could pronounce it in such close association with his own name and suffer only minor qualms. Adekunle was blackmailing him — that much was clear — but perhaps his comparative equanimity stemmed from the bizarre nature of his blackmail task. However unpleasant it was it couldn’t be described as onerous, in fact he hadn’t done a thing about it in the ten days since it had been delivered. Adekunle could have asked for anything — the contents of the Commission’s filing cabinets, the names up for New Year honours, an OBE himself, free access to the diplomatic bag — and Morgan would have gladly complied, so desperate was he to keep his job. But, Adekunle had made one simple request; simple as far as he was concerned: nightmarish for Morgan. Get to know Dr Murray, Adekunle had said. That’s all, become his friend.

Morgan felt his brain slow to idle of its own accord, a kind of fail-safe device when it became dangerously overloaded. Murray. That bloody man again. Why, why did Adekunle want him to befriend Murray? What on earth could two such utterly different men as Murray and Adekunle have in common that would be of interest to either one? He hadn’t the faintest idea.

He shook his head violently, like a man with water stuck in his ear. He put the file away in its drawer and dispiritedly turned the key in the lock. He must have seemed like a gift of heaven to Adekunle, he decided; a fat white man joyfully offering himself for sacrifice…At this point he rolled down the reinforced titanium steel blinds around his imagination, a mental trick he had perfected: he didn’t want to think about the future and resolutely ordered his mind to ignore that forbidding dimension. He could achieve the same effect of solitary confinement, a sort of cerebral Coventry, with other recalcitrant faculties like memory or conscience which could be irritating, nagging things in certain circumstances. If they didn’t behave they didn’t get spoken to. He closed his eyes, leant back, took deep breaths and allowed only the monotonous hum of the air-conditioning unit to fill his head.

He was on the point of dozing off’ when he heard a rap on his door and, squinting through his eyelashes, saw Kojo enter.

‘Oh Christ,’ he said impatiently. ‘Yes, what is it?’

Kojo approached his desk, unaffected by his hostility. ‘The letters, sah. For signing.’

Muttering complaints under his breath Morgan went through the outgoing mail. Three negative RSVPs to semiofficial functions; invitations to prominent Britons inviting them to a Boxing Day buffet lunch to celebrate the honoured visit of the Duchess of Ripon to Nkongsamba; the usual visa acknowledgements, though here was one rejection for a so-called minister of the Non-Denominational Methodist Brethren’s Church of Kinjanja who wanted to visit a sister mission in Liverpool. Finally there was a note to the British Council in the capital saying yes, they could put up an itinerant poet for a couple of days while he partook in a festival of Anglo-Kinjanjan culture at the University of Nkongsamba. Morgan re-read the poet’s name: Greg Bilbow. He had never heard of him. He signed all the mail quickly, confident in Kojo’s immaculate typing. Keeping the Union Jack flying, he thought, making the world safe for Democracy. But then he checked his sneers. From one point of view it had been the mindless, pettifogging boredom of his work and the consequent desire to escape it that had made him attack the KNP dossier with such patriotic zest — and look at the can of worms that had turned out to be, he admonished himself ruefully.

He handed the letters back to Kojo and looked at his watch.

‘You off home now?’ he asked, trying to sound interested.

Kojo smiled. ‘Yes, sah.’

‘How’s the wife…and baby? Boy, isn’t it?’

‘She is well, sah. But…I have three children,’ Kojo reminded him gently.

‘Oh yes. Of course. Silly of me. All well, are they?’ He stood up and walked with Kojo to the door. The little man’s woolly head came up to Morgan’s armpit. Morgan peered into Kojo’s office: it was festooned with decorations, ablaze with cheap paper streamers.

‘You like Christmas, don’t you, Kojo?’

Kojo laughed. ‘Oh yes, sah. Very much. The birth of our Lord Jesus.’ Morgan remembered now that Kojo was a Catholic, he also recalled seeing him with his family — a tiny wife in splendid lace costume and three minute children all identically dressed in gleaming white shirts and red shorts outside the Catholic church on the way in to town a few Sundays ago.

Morgan looked at his diminutive secretary with unconcealed curiosity.

‘Everything OK, Kojo?’ he asked. ‘I mean, no problems, no major worries?’

‘I beg pardon, sah?’ Kojo replied, genuinely puzzled.

Morgan went on, not really sure what answer he was trying to elicit. ‘You’re quite…happy are you? Everything going swimmingly, nothing bothering you?’

Kojo recognized ‘happy’. He laughed a high wheezy infectious chuckle. ‘Oh yes. I am a very happy man.’ As he walked back to his desk Morgan could see Kojo’s thin shoulders still shaking with merriment. Kojo probably thought he was mad, Morgan concluded. A not unreasonable diagnosis under the circumstances, he had to admit.

He took up his position again at the window and looked down at the driveway, trying not to think about Priscilla and Dalmire. He saw Peter, the imbecilic and homicidal Commission driver polishing Fanshawe’s long black Austin Princess. He saw Jones walking out to his Volkswagen with the unrelentingly cheery Mrs Bryce, wife of a geologist from the university, who acted as Fanshawe’s secretary. There were a couple of expatriate wives who did part-time clerical and secretarial work around the Commission, but Mrs Bryce was the only regular one. She was very tall and thin and the calves of her legs were always covered with shilling-sized, angry red mosquito bites. Podgy Jones waddled along beside her. They stood for a moment next to Mrs Bryce’s mobylette and chatted earnestly. No doubt, Morgan thought sourly, she’s telling Jones she’s ‘the happiest woman in Nkongsamba’, how she never grumbles and how everything is really ‘nice’ if only you think about it in the proper way. Seeing how friendly Jones was being, Morgan half-heartedly wondered if they might be having an affair. In anywhere else but West Africa that notion would have raised shouts of incredulous laughter, but Morgan had known stranger couplings. Feeling vaguely grubby as he did so, he tried to imagine Jones and Mrs Bryce making the beast with two backs, but the incompatibility of their respective physiques defeated his best endeavours. He turned away from his window wondering why he always ended up thinking about sex. Was it normal, and were other people similarly preoccupied? It made him depressed.

If Mrs Bryce was on her way home, he reasoned, trying to shake the mood from his shoulders, then Fanshawe must have packed up for the day, and he had every intention of following suit. He was in the process of unslinging his lightweight tropical jacket from the hanger on the back of his office door when the internal phone on his desk rang. He picked it up.

‘Leafy,’ he barked aggressively into the instrument.

‘Ah, Morgan,’ said a plummy, cultured feminine voice on the other end, ‘Chloe here.’

For a couple of desperate seconds Morgan was convinced he knew no Chloe, until he suddenly linked the name with the person who was Fanshawe’s wife: Mrs Chloe Fanshawe, wife to the Deputy High Commissioner in Nkongsamba. The mental lapse came about because Morgan never thought of her as Chloe, and only seldom as Mrs Fanshawe. Usually the kindest epithets were the Fat Bitch, or the Old Bag. The problem was that they hated each other. There had been no overt hostility, no bitter confrontation, no single act that set off the conflict. It was an understanding that they had both seemed to reach quite spontaneously, entirely natural and unsurprising, as if it were some unique genetic accident that had brought about this animosity. Morgan sometimes thought it was quite mature of them tacitly to acknowledge it in this unfussy way: it made co-existence less complex. For example, he knew instantly that this pointed exchange of Christian names in fact meant that she wanted something of him; so, guardedly, he replied: ‘Hello…ah, yes, Chloe,’ testing the name on his tongue.

‘Not busy are you, Morgan?’ Ostensibly a question, it clearly functioned as a statement: no response was required. ‘Care to pop over for a sherry? Five minutes? See you then. ‘Bye.’ The line clicked.

Morgan thought. For a brief moment an unfamiliar elation bloomed in his chest as he considered that it might have something to do with Priscilla, solitary offspring of the Fan-shawe loins, but the sensation died as abruptly as it had arisen: Dalmire had been crowing in his office not twenty minutes ago — nothing could have changed that quickly.

Wondering what she wanted, Morgan pulled on his jacket and walked through Kojo’s office and down the stairs. The sudden transit from air-conditioned chill to late-afternoon heat and humidity affected him as shockingly as it always did. His eyes began to water slightly, he was suddenly aware of the contact between his flesh and the material of his clothing and the wide tops of his thighs chafed uncomfortably together beneath his damp groin. By the time he reached the foot of the main stairs and had walked through the entrance vestibule and out of the front door, all the benefits of his afternoon’s cool comfort had disappeared. The sun hung low over Nkongsamba making the storm clouds menacingly dark and its glare struck him full in the face. The sun shone large and red through the dust haze of the Harmattan — a hot dry mistral off the Sahara that visited West Africa every year at this time, and that cut the humidity by a negligible few percent, filled the air and every crevice with fine sandy dust, and cracked and warped wood and plastic like some invisible force-field.

Morgan turned around the side of the Commission and walked down the gravelled path towards Fanshawe’s official residence some hundred yards away in the spacious grounds. The Harmattan had withered every blade of grass to a uniform brown against which the clumps of hibiscus and thickets, of bouganvillea stood out like oases in a desert. To his left behind a straggling line of nim trees were the Commission’s servants’ quarters, two low concrete blocks that faced each other across a bald laterite square. Morgan could see, set up around the smoke-blackened verandahs of the quarters, the traders’ stalls bright with fruit and vegetables, and he could hear the singing of women as they pounded clothes at the concrete wash-place at the top end of the compound, the crying of children and the clucking of mangy hens. There were officially six dwelling units for the Commission’s staff but lean-tos had sprouted, grass shelters were erected, cousins, odd-job gardeners and nomadic relations had turned up, and on the last count forty-three people were living there. Fanshawe had asked Morgan to evict all unauthorized inhabitants, claiming that the noise level was becoming intolerable and that the rubbish dump behind the quarters was unsightly and encroaching on the main road. Morgan had yet to do anything about this, and he doubted strongly if he ever would.

He cut across the lawn to the front of Fanshawe’s house. He looked for Priscilla’s small Fiat and his heart leapt when he saw its rear poking out of the garage to the right of the house. She was at home then, he thought, unless Dalmire had taken her golfing. Self-consciously he adjusted the knot of his tie.

The Deputy High Commissioner’s residence in Nkong-samba was an imposing two-storeyed building. There was a porticoed entrance above steps which led up to a long stoop with a row of French windows running the length of it. Inside were high-ceilinged airy reception rooms, and the back of the house looked down upon one of the more select suburbs to the south-east of Nkongsamba. The sun was about to sink into the thunder clouds to the west and was casting dramatic beams onto the whitewashed façade.

Morgan was on the point of climbing up the steps when Fanshawe leaned over the stoop balustrade. He was wearing a lurid blue Chinese shirt with a round collar that was dotted with purple ideograms.

‘Evening, Morgan,’ he said briskly. ‘Anything I can do?’

Obviously he knew nothing of his wife’s phone call. This was a bad sign, Morgan felt worry tremors shiver through his body.

‘Chloe…Mrs Fanshawe asked me to look in,’ he explained.

‘Really?’ Fanshawe said as if unable to comprehend this aberration on his wife’s part. ‘Well, you’d better come on in.’

Morgan walked up the steps. Fanshawe stood beside a red plastic watering can. ‘Watering the plants,’ he said conversationally, nodding towards several crude black earthenware pots overflowing with fecund greenery. With an outspread palm he indicated the open door. Morgan went in and sat down.

He found it hard to fix or even identify his feelings about Fanshawe: they wavered between the three poles of nostril-wrinkling contempt, total indifference and temple-throbbing irritation like one of those executive toys where a wire-suspended ball vacillates between three magnets. He was a thin ascetic-looking man with balding grey hair brushed straight back from his forehead. He had a tiny, meticulously pruned moustache which maintained an exact horizontal line equidistant between his nose and upper lip. Its obliviousness of facial contours made him look as if he was always about to break into a smile even when he was at his most earnestly pro-British. Consequently Morgan found it almost impossible to take him seriously. Fanshawe was a Far East man and had spent his working life in consulates and embassies in such exotic places as Sumatra, Hong Kong, Saigon and Singapore. Nkongsamba was his last posting before his retirement and he interpreted it as a definite slight. He had almost two years left to serve and the prospect of eking them out as a Deputy High Commissioner in such a God-forsaken, insignificant spot was something his professional pride would not let him take easily. He nurtured a secret dream of a dramatic last posting, a brilliant finale to an uninspired career. This brought about periods of evangelical zeal in his administration of the Nkongsamba Commission, like a model prisoner on death-row hoping his good behaviour will bring him a last — minute reprieve. It also made him very depressed about living in Africa, particularly in a spot so comparatively uncivilized as Kinjanja. ‘Culture shock,’ he had mournfully told Morgan on several occasions, referring to his arrival on the dark continent. ‘Like a blow between the eyes. I don’t think Chloe will ever recover.’ Both Fanshawes were given to lyrical outbursts about the grace and dignity of the East, they would talk ecstatically about the centuries, the eons of culture and disciplined development the East had enjoyed. ‘Far more civilized than us, old man,’ Fanshawe would intone. ‘And the African, well, what can I say?’ Here would come a knowing smile and a cocked eyebrow. ‘A beautiful, elegant person, your Oriental. Harmony you know, that’s at the back of it all. Yin and Yang, that’s right isn’t it darling? Yin and Yang,’ he would call unselfconsciously across a crowded cocktail party to his embarrassed wife. Fanshawe had forced himself to believe all this, Morgan had come to realize, and like all zealots was incapable of even recognizing that any other point of view existed, and so Morgan had reluctantly given up trying to draw him into discussions about the grace and harmony of Gengis Khan, Changi Jail and Pearl Harbour. Fanshawe may have convinced himself, but as far as his wife was concerned Morgan knew instantly it was sheer affectation.

For example the Commission residence itself was got up like a cross between some makeshift Buddhist temple and a Chinese restaurant. There were carved wooden screens, paper lanterns, impossibly low furniture, stark driftwood flower arrangements, silk paintings and an immense brass gong in one corner hanging from a pole supported by two half life-size gilded wooden figures. Returning hbme with Priscilla one night (it seemed like years ago now, they had only just begun ‘going out’) Morgan, emboldened by the romance and drink, had seized the padded gong beater and effected a languid slow-motion swing at the gong, crying out in basso profundo over his shoulder ‘J- Arthur Rank presents’. It had not gone down well: the shocked, unlaughing expressions of the family, the heretical implications suffusing the strained silent atmosphere, the fumbling tense seconds as he nervously strove to replace the gong-beater on its tiny impractical hook…He shivered slightly as he remembered it now, seeing the gong reposing brassily in the corner, and wondered what the old bag wanted him for.

Fanshawe, as if reading his thoughts, said, ‘I imagine Chloe’ll be down any moment,’ and, equally on cue, his wife stepped sedately down the stairs that led up to the first floor. Before he had met this one, Morgan had assumed that people called Chloe were either the neurotic brilliant daughters of Oxbridge dons or else silly screaming debutantes. Mrs Fanshawe was neither of these and Morgan had had to revise his Chloe-category considerably to fit her in. She was tall and palely fleshy, a moderately ‘handsome’ woman gone to fat, with short, dyed black hair swept back in a dramatic wave from her face and held immovably in position by a fearsomely strong lacquer; even in the most intemperate breezes Morgan had never seen a single hair stir from the solid lapidary mass of her coiffed head. She had a chest like an opera singer too, a single wedge of heavily trussed and boned undergarmentry from which the rest of her body tapered gradually into surprisingly small and elegant feet; too small, Morgan always thought, to support the impressive disequilibrium of her bosom. She held herself in a manner that encouraged this conclusion: poised, feet slightly apart, thighs braced, head canted back as if she felt she was about to crash forward onto her face. She ventured into the sun rarely, maintaining her unexercised pallor like a memsahib from the Raj by means of this reticence and also with the aid of unsparing applications from her powder compact, which she wielded often, and in public. Her other favourite cosmetic tool was a bright scarlet lipstick, which only served to emphasize the thinness of her lips.

‘Ah, here you are at last, Morgan,’ she said (as if she were the one who had been kept waiting), sweeping across the room and cautiously lowering herself into a squat armchair. ‘Sherry I think, Arthur,’ she said to Fanshawe, who duly presented everyone with a pale Amontillado.

‘Well,’ Mrs Fanshawe exhaled, raising her glass. She then said something that, to Morgan’s ears, sounded very like Nakanahishana. ‘A Siamese toast,’ she added in condescending explanation.

‘Erm, nakahish… um, cheers,’ Morgan responded, taking a grudging sip at his warm cloying sherry and feeling sweat prickle all over his body. Nobody drank sherry in Africa, he fumed inwardly, and certainly not at this time of day when what your body craved for was something long, clinking with ice and possessing a kick like a mule. Morgan looked at Mrs Fanshawe’s pale knees as she resettled the hem of her Thai silk dress around them. Nobody, he was acutely aware, had so much as breathed the name of Priscilla, so he resolutely took the bull by the horns.

‘Marvellous news about Priscilla and…mmm, very pleased,’ he said feebly, raising his sticky glass to toast the couple for the second time that day.

‘Oh you’ve heard,’ Mrs Fanshawe enthused. ‘I’m so glad. Did Dickie tell you? We’re terribly pleased, aren’t we Arthur? He’s got such good prospects…Dickie, that is.’ It all came out in a rush and was followed by an awkward silence as the implied comparison was swiftly picked up and inwardly digested.

‘Priscilla will be down in a minute,’ Mrs Fanshawe continued, her pale skin refusing to colour. ‘She’ll be glad to see you.’

Sherry made Morgan depressed and this lie deepened the gloom that was settling on him as inevitably as night. He stared morosely at the dragon-patterned rugs on the Fanshawes’ floor as they filled him in on the details of Dickie and Priscilla’s good fortune and the excellent connections of her future in-laws.

‘…and, amazingly, it seems Dickie’s a family friend of the Duchess of Ripon. What do you think of that for a coincidence?’ Morgan looked up sharply. The request would be due soon; he had an infallible ear for topics being bodily dragged in. ‘Which is actually what I wanted to have a chat about, Morgan,’ she said predictably, running her hands beneath her buttocks, smoothing out the silk creases. ‘Have you got a cigarette there, Arthur?’ she asked her husband.

Fanshawe offered her a rosewood box inlaid with a mother-of-pearl Hokusai landscape. She took a cigarette frorn it which she screwed into a holder. Morgan waved the box away when it was presented to him. ‘Given up,’ he said. ‘Mustn’t tempt me, tut-tut.’ Why did he have to sound quite so cretinous? he wondered, as Mrs Fanshawe smiled at him through clenched teeth. She lit her cigarette. I know why she uses a holder, thought Morgan: she likes to bite things. The creases in Mrs Fanshawe’s soft throat disappeared momentarily as she threw her head back to blow smoke at the rotating ceiling fan.

‘Yes,’ she said, as if replying to a question, ‘the Duchess’ll be spending Christmas night here, arriving at some point on Christmas Day. She’s very graciously agreed to officiate at a children’s party in the afternoon at the club.’ She left it like that, vague and up in the air. Oh no, Morgan thought miserably; the games, she wants me to run the games. He set his features in a firm mask. He was going to refuse, he didn’t care how they pressured him, he was not going to spend Christmas trying to organize hordes of screaming brats.

Mrs Fanshawe tipped ash from her cigarette. ‘The Duchess,’ she continued airily, ‘is giving small presents to all the expatriate children, and,’ here she turned and beamed at Morgan, ‘we were hoping to get you in on this.’

Morgan was confused. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.’

Fanshawe broke in. ‘Christmas spirit, all that.’ Morgan was no wiser, but he felt apprehension hollow his chest.

‘Exactly,’ Mrs Fanshawe crowed as if everything was clear and above board. ‘We thought, didn’t we Arthur? that as we are the Duchess’s hosts it would be fitting if a senior member of the Commission were…were in some way involved with her own very generous act.’

Morgan was flustered. ‘You mean you want me to distribute the presents?’

‘Precisely,’ Mrs Fanshawe said. ‘We want you to be Father Christmas.’

Morgan felt the anger and outrage boil up inside him. He gripped the sides of his armchair and tried to control his voice. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he said slowly. ‘You want me to dress up as Father Christmas?’ He felt his top lip quiver with fury at the effrontery of their suggestion. Just who the hell did they think he was — court jester?

‘What’s this, Morgan?’ came a voice from the stairs. ‘Are you going to be Father Christmas?’ It was Priscilla. She wore white flared slacks and a powder-blue T — shirt. Morgan’s jumping heart lifted him to his feet. Priscilla. Those breasts…

He caught himself. ‘We-11,’ he said, making the word two syllables, the better to illustrate his reluctant refusal.

‘But that’s marvellous!’ Priscilla squealed, sitting herself down on the arm of a sofa. ‘You’ll make a super Santa. How clever of you, Mummy.’

Morgan felt even more confused: how could anyone misunderstand such a crude vocal inflection? But at the same time he was pleased: pleased she was pleased.

‘I don’t know,’ Morgan continued hesitantly, ‘I thought Dalm…Dickie would…’

A peal oflaughter greeted this half-suggestion. ‘Oh Morgan, don’t be such a silly,’ Priscilla exclaimed, ‘Dickie’s much too thin. Oops…’ She pulled down her bottom lip with her forefinger in mock-apology. ‘Oh God, sorry, Morgan.’ Everybody grinned, though, including him. He hated himself.

‘Go on,’ Priscilla said leaning back, pointing her breasts at him. ‘You’ll be fantastic.’

At that moment he would have done anything for her. ‘All right,’ he said, fully aware that he would probably regret this decision for the rest of his life. ‘Glad to.’

‘Good man,’ Fanshawe said, approaching with the sherry decanter. ‘Top you up, shall I?’

♦

Priscilla left at the same time as Morgan. She was going down to the club to meet Dalmire after his golf. Morgan walked with her to her car. His depression had deepened, he had a buzzing, incipient headache.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I meant to mention it: congratulations. He’s a nice chap, um, Dickie. Lucky man,’ he added, with what he hoped was a grin of wry defeat.

Priscilla gazed dreamily at the Commission. Her eyes swept round to the storm clouds behind which the sun had now sunk, rimming the purple cliffs with burning orange. ‘Thanks, Morgan,’ she said, then: ‘Look.’ She wriggled her hand at him. ‘Like it?’

Morgan gingerly took the offered finger and looked at the diamond ring. ‘Nice,’ he said, then added in an American accent, ‘A lat of racks.’

‘It’s his grandma’s’ Priscilla told him. ‘He had it sent out in the diplomatic bag when he knew he was going to propose. Isn’t he sweet?’

‘Mmm. Isn’t he,’ Morgan agreed, thinking: the conniving, covert little bastard.

Priscilla took her finger away and polished the stone against her left breast. Morgan felt his tongue swell to block his throat. She seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened between him and her, erased it completely from her memory, like cleaning condensation from a window, everything gone, even that night. He gulped: that night. The night she’d unzipped his flies…best to forget too, he supposed. He looked at her round plump face, her thick dark hair, cut boyishly short with a fringe that seemed to rest on her eyelashes. She was very nearly a pretty girl in a typically unambitious English Home Counties sort of way, but she was prevented from achieving this modest beauty by her nose. It was long and thin and turned up sharply at the end like a ski-jump. Even the most partisan observer, the most besotted lover, would have to admit it was a dominant feature which even overcame, ultimately, the potent distractions of her fabulous body. Morgan remembered an afternoon’s sunbathing with her when his eyes would run irresistibly up her slim legs, past her neat crutch, swoop over those impossible breasts to alight fixedly on that curious nose. She had a flawless complexion, her lips were, unlike her mother’s, generous and soft, her hair was shiny and lustrous. But…

Morgan of course didn’t give, or hadn’t given, a fart about her nose, but in a spirit of pure aesthetic objectivity he had to admit it was a prominent landmark. Perhaps after a decade or so across the breakfast table it might have begun to get on his nerves, he said to himself sour-grapily, feeling only marginally compensated.

They stood silently together for a moment, Morgan looking at a soldier-ant gamely negotiating the interminable mountain range of the driveway gravel, Priscilla holding up her ring to catch a fleeting shaft of sunlight.

‘Looks like it’s going to be a real storm,’ she remarked.

Morgan couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Pris,’ he said feelingly, ‘About that night, about us…’

She turned on him a smile of uncomprehending candour. ‘Do let’s not talk about it please, Morgan. It’s over now.’ She paused. ‘Dickie’ll be waiting for me down at the club. Can I give you a lift?’ She opened the door of her car and got in.

Morgan crouched down and looked in the window. He put on a serious face. ‘I know things have been bad lately, Pris, but I can explain. There are,’ he smiled faintly, ‘convincing reasons for everything, believe me.’ He thought for a second before deciding to add, ‘I think we should talk.’ It sounded good: mature, seasoned, unhysterical.

Priscilla had been fiddling with the key in the ignition. She flashed the same smile at him again: the one that said you can talk all you want but I can’t hear a thing.

‘Coming to the barbecue?’ she asked blithely.

‘What?’

‘Tonight. At the club.’

It was no use. ‘Yes, I expect so.’

‘See you there then,’ she said. She switched on the engine, backed out of the garage and headed off down the drive. Morgan watched it go. How could she treat him like this?

‘You bitch,’ he uttered softly at the departing car. ‘Selfish, unfeeling bitch.’

2

Morgan walked morosely back to the Commission. He looked at his watch: half past five. He had told Hazel he’d be at the flat before five. He could smell smoke from the charcoal braziers in the servants’ quarters: dinner time, the Commission would be closed. He went in to the staff car park and saw his car was the only one remaining, his cream Peugeot 404, or ‘Peejott’ as they were known locally. He had bought it in the summer when everyone else was to leave. Hazel had suggested a Peugeot, they carried a lot of status in Kinjanja. By his car shall ye know him. Mercedes Benzes came at the top of the list; you hadn’t arrived until you did in a Mercedes. They were for heads of state, important government officials, high-ranking soldiers, very successful businessmen and chiefs. Next came the Peugeot, for the professional man: lawyers, senior civil servants, doctors, university heads of department. It spelt respectability. Citroens, grade three, were for young men on the make, pushy executives, lecturers, arrivistes of all kinds. Morgan publicly scoffed at such overt status symbols and justified buying a Peugeot for sound engineering reasons, but nonetheless, he enjoyed the appraising looks it received, felt vaguely flattered by the open weighing-up people subjected him to when he stepped out of the car: not important enough for a Merc, but a man of some quality just the same. It was too bad for Hazel that he only drove her about under cover of darkness; none of her friends had ever seen her in it.

He headed the car down to the main gate, saluted the night watchman and turned left down the long straight road into town. The Commission lay off the main road between the town of Nkongsamba and the state university campus. It was a two-mile drive down a gentle slope into the town. The Commission was placed atop a ridge of low hills that overlooked Nkongsamba from the north-east. One and a half miles further up the road lay the university campus where a significant portion of the expatriate British population of the Mid-West lived and worked.

Morgan considered going home for a shower but then abandoned the idea. Home was on an enclosed residential estate prosaically called New Reservation (he sometimes felt like an American Indian when he gave his address), which was about twenty minutes away from the Commission on the major highway north out of Nkongsamba. He had told his servants Moses and Friday to expect him back but he could always ring them from the club. It would keep the idle bastards on their toes, he thought savagely.

The road was lined with flamboyant trees on the point of bursting into radiant scarlet bloom. The rain, if it came tonight, would bring all the flowers out. He drove past the sawmill where Muller the saw-mill manager and West German charge d’affaires lived. There was a French agronomist at a nearby agricultural research station who looked after the interests of the few French people in the state, but between them and the Commission they made up the official diplomatic presence in Nkongsamba. All the big embassies and consulates were concentrated in the capital on the coast, a four-hour drive away on a deathtrap road.

He began to approach the outskirts of town. The verges widened, dusty and bare of grass; empty stalls and cleared rickety tables of day-time traders lined the route. He passed an AGIP filling station, a shoe factory and a vehicle park and then suddenly he was in the town, busy and bustling as people and cars made their laborious way home after work. There were some larger concrete buildings on the outskirts, covered in wrought-iron work and standing in their own low-walled gardens. Strange sweet burning smells were wafted into the car’s interior through the open window.

He slowed the car to walking pace as the streets narrowed andjoined the creeping honking procession of cars that clogged Nkongsamba eighteen hours out of twenty-four. He let his hand dangle out of the window and thought aimlessly about the day and the massed ranks of his current problems. He asked himself if he was really that bothered about Priscilla and Dalmire, if it really affected him that much. He got no clear answer: there was too much bruised masculine pride obscuring the view. He drove on past the swarming mud huts set a little below the level of the road, past the blue neon-lit barber shops, soft drink hoardings, the ubiquitous Coke signs, the open-air garages, furniture shops, tailors sewing furiously on clacking foot-powered machines. He saw the looming flood-lit façade of the Hotel de Executive and his heart sank as it had become used to these past two months, as the memories of his first confidential meeting with Adekunle — held within its walls — hurried into his mind. Tin advertisements glittered around its door, reflecting the lights that were going on now dusk was settling on the town. He heard the raucous blare of American soul-music emanating from within its courtyard-cum-dance floor. ‘Tonite!!’ proclaimed a blackboard propped outside the entrance. ‘Africa Jungle Beats. JOSE GBOYE and his top dandies band!!!! Fans! Be There!’ Morgan wondered if Josy Gboye had been playing that fateful evening.

He turned off the main road and went bumping over potholes up a steep street that led past the Sheila Cinema, which was offering Michele Morgan and Paul Hubschmid in Tell me Whom to Kill and Neela Akash, billed as a ‘sizzling and smashing Indian film’. He drove by the cinema and pulled the Peugeot into the forecourt of a chemist’s shop. He tipped the attendant a few coins and walked along the road ignoring the small boys running and chanting by his side. They were shouting ‘Oyibo, Oyibo’ which meant white man. It was something every Kinjanjan child did almost as a matter of course; it didn’t bother him, it was just a persistent reminder that he was a stranger in their country. He shook off his escort and two minutes’ brisk walking brought him to a newish row of shops. There was an optician’s, a Lebanese boutique and a shoe shop; above them were three flats. Hazel lived — courtesy of Morgan — above the boutique.

He looked quickly about him before running up the steps at the side of the building to the first floor communal passageway at the back. He took out his key and opened the door. The first thing he noticed was the smell of cigarette smoke and his tetchy mood sparked into anger as he had expressly banned Hazel from smoking now that he had given it up himself. The room was also dark as the shutten were closed. He groped for the light switch and flicked it down. Nothing happened.

‘Nevah powah for heah,’ said a voice.

Morgan jumped, alarm making his heart pound. ‘Who the hell is that?’ he demanded angrily, peering in the direction of the voice, and, as his eyes became accustomed to the murk, made out a figure sitting at the table. ‘And where’s Hazel for God’s sake?’ he continued in the same outraged tone, stamping across the room and throwing open the shutters.

He turned round. The unexpected visitor was a lanky black youth wearing a yellow shirt open to the waist and disgustingly tight grey trousers. He was also smoking a cigarette and wearing sunglasses. He raised a pale brown hand in Morgan’s direction.

‘Howdy,’ he said. ‘I’m Sonny.’

‘Oh yes?’ Morgan said, still fuming. He opened the door of the bedroom. Hazel’s cheap clothes lay scattered everywhere. He heard the sounds of splashing from the small bathroom. ‘It’s me!’ he bellowed and shut the door.

Sonny had risen to his feet. He was very tall and slim and he stared moodily down at the street below, smoke curling from his cigarette. He was wearing, Morgan noticed, very pointed brown shoes.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Sonny drawled, the mid-Atlantic tones grating on Morgan’s ear. ‘Nice place you got for Hazel.’ Morgan made no comment: Hazel had some explaining to do. Sonny glanced at his watch face on the inside of his wrist. ‘Ah-ah,’ he said, dropping his pose, ‘six o’clock done come. I must go.’ He loped to the door. ‘Thanks for the beer,’ he said, ‘so long,’ and he slipped out.

Morgan noticed two empty bottles of Star beer on the table. He strode to the kitchen and slammed open the fridge door. One bottle left. He calmed down slightly. If that bitch had given Sonny-boy all the beer, he told himself, he’d have strangled her. Then his face darkened. He asked himself what the bloody hell that lanky spiv had been doing in his flat anyway? Drinking his beer while Hazel washed. Muttering threateningly he poured himself a glass from the remaining bottle and went back to the bedroom door. ‘Hurry up,’ he shouted. He sat down on the plastic settee and stretched his legs out in front of him. He took a long draught of the beer and its chill briefly made his temples ache. He gazed possessively round the room. It had cost him a lot, but it was worth it to get Hazel out of the rancid hotels she had lived in previously. He wanted her away from the bars and the clubs, somewhere he knew she’d be, somewhere discreet where he could get hold of her when he wanted. Selim, the Lebanese boutique owner from whom he rented the flat could be trusted to keep what little he knew, or guessed, to himself.

The flat was small and crudely finished to the normal standards of Kinjanjan masonry and housefitting. Bare concrete walls with loose, fizzing light switches and waist-high electric points; angled door and window frames with sophisticated jamming potential, tapered skirting boards and so on, but at least it was a home of sorts. Hazel had placed a purple rush that on the terrazzo flooring but that was her sole contribution to the decor. Apart from the settee upon which he was now sitting the only other furniture Selim had supplied was a formica table with spavined aluminium legs and two steel-tube and canvas chairs of the sort that are normally seen stacked against the walls of assembly halls. The cramped kitchenette at one end of the main room contained a sink, a Calor-gas stove and a fridge. The only item Morgan had contributed to his love nest was a large standard fan which normally stood in the bedroom, gently rotating to and fro, blasting a steady stream of cool air onto the bed. Suddenly the lights went on, the fridge shuddered and started to grumble softly away.

Hazel walked into the room. She wore a threadbare pink towel wrapped around her body and secured beneath her armpits. She was without her wig and her short woolly cap of hair glistened with water droplets. She was a pretty girl with a light brown face and pointed chin. Her lips were large and her nose small and wide, only her eyes marred the classic negroid aspect of her features. They were thin and almond shaped and gave her a strange uncertain suspicious look. She was small with heavy breasts and hips and thin-calved legs. Her toes were bunched and buckled from the fashionable shoes she crammed her broad feet into. In the interests of gaudy sophistication she had plucked her eyebrows away to tiny apostrophe marks. In his less charitable moments Morgan accused her of being flighty and unashamedly venal — she had two illegitimate children who lived with her family back in her native village and of whom she rarely talked. She spoke instead of clothes and status, her two main interests in life, and Morgan fully realized that a white lover and this flat represented a leap of several rungs on this unpredictable ladder.

He had met her at a party at the university where she told him that at one time she’d been a primary school teacher, a career which he suspected she’d abandoned for casual prostitution, though he recognized that the term carried little opprobrium out here, as was witnessed by the unconcern over her two bastards. For all his cynical evaluation Hazel was necessary to him, more so now than ever, he realized, as a boost to his tottering ego and a source of reliable uncomplicated sex. At least, that was the plan, and he treated her selfishly and imperiously in the pursuance of it. But, somehow, it had never really worked out; the expected satisfaction had not materialized and he was faced with the growing suspicion these days that things were in reality running along some subtle scheme of Hazel’s devising and that it was he not her who was being exploited; a feeling that the unexplained presence of people like Sonny in his life only served to emphasize.

He noticed that she was holding an unlighted cigarette in her hand.

‘Can you give me a light?’ she asked as if he were a stranger.

Morgan sighed inwardly. He’d have to put a stop to this now. He stood up. ‘Look, I told you, no smoking.’

The cigarette drooped between her lips. ‘You have never come for three days,’ she said sulkily. ‘What am I supposed to do? And then you tell my guest to go,’ she added accusingly.

‘I didn’t tell him, he just went,’ Morgan said, then, wondering why he felt he had to defend himself, burst out: ‘Anyway, I don’t give a good God damn. When I give up smoking you do too, and no questions asked. What do you think it’s like for me to kiss you?’

She looked coy at this.

‘And,’ Morgan went on, ‘who was your ‘guest’ anyway? Sonny or whatever.’

She put the cigarette down on the table and secured the tuck in her towel. ‘It was my brother,’ she said flatly. Morgan felt his indignation seeping away. He tried to keep his eyes off the way her large breasts splayed beneath the towel, tried to ignore the tickle in his groin; he had to see this out first.

‘I thought you said you had no brothers.’

‘Yes, from my mother. This is same father different mother.’ She looked at him unperturbed. Morgan considered the veracity of her story: there was no way he could compete under these circumstances.

‘All right,’ he said grudgingly, ‘but I don’t want him to come here again, OK?’

♦

Morgan dropped the condom in the tin waste-paper basket under the sink in the bathroom. He was still being cautious. Murray had told him to ‘use the sheath at all times’. It was typical of Murray to call it a sheath, he thought; he could still hear the man’s dry Scottish accent. It was typical also, he reflected bitterly, how Murray’s influence reached into the most private areas of his life. He shook his head in resigned disbelief, it was uncanny how it happened. But also he was still not entirely happy with Hazel’s explanation of Sonny’s presence and he didn’t feel like taking any chances. He always expected Hazel to make a fuss about him using contraceptives and the implications they had, especially as he had forced her to go on the pill a couple of months ago, but she had made no visible sign or comment as he had laboriously rolled it down over his flagging erection. The fan had been turned up to full and had swept the bed with cool draughts, drying the sweat on his buttocks and back.

Afterwards, he found he could still taste the Fanshawes’ sherry in his mouth for some reason, and had sent a protesting Hazel out for some more beer to wash it away. ‘If you hadn’t given it to bloody Sonny-boy you wouldn’t have to go, would you?’ he had satisfyingly rebuked her.

While she was away he had decided to run a bath. This simple act was equally unreliable and ridden with pitfalls. He turned on the cold tap and for a full minute all he heard was a muted whistle of air, then the tap juddered, gave a couple of metallic snorts and a low-pressure stream haltingly flowed out for a while, filling the bath with two inches of water, before it was reduced to an ineffectual dribble. Morgan carefully lowered his sweaty body into this, gasping as his genitals were immersed. He soaped himself as best he could and splashed the lather off. Hazel brought him his beer and he sat for ten minutes or so in the bath sipping direct from the bottle. Presently a benign alcoholic haze began to fog all his undesirable memories. He turned on the tap again, found the pressure had built up and washed his hair.

When he stepped out of the bath he saw Hazel sitting in her bra and pants painting her fingernails. Morgan drained his beer bottle. There were two good things about living in Africa, he told himself convivially: just two. Beer and sex. Sex and beer. He wasn’t sure in what order he’d place them — he was indifferent really — but they were the only things in his life that didn’t consistently let him down. They sometimes did, but not in the randomly cruel and arbitrary way that the other features of the world conspired to confuse and frustrate him. They were as reliable as anything in this dreadful country, he thought, and, he reflected smugly, feeling more buoyant and pleased with himself all of a sudden, he was certainly getting enough of both.

He dried himself leisurely. Hazel had switched on her transistor radio and low monotonous soul-music issued from the crackling loud-speaker. Morgan thought about ordering it silenced but decided to be obliging and refrain. Hazel was reliable too, he thought kindly: well, almost, in her own bizarre way. He was grateful to her.

Standing rigidly to attention and craning his head forward Morgan could just see the tip of his penis beyond the burgeoning swell of his pot-belly. Beer and sex, he thought. When he couldn’t see it any more he’d go on a diet. He continued to pass the towel regularly over his body but it was no longer having any effect: he wasn’t wet exactly, but remained distinctly moist. He padded through to the bedroom and stood in front of the standard fan. He took a large tin of talcum powder from Hazel’s crowded dressing table and liberally dusted his armpits and groin. When his pubic hairs had turned a ghostly white he pulled on his underpants — pale blue billowing boxer shorts. This had been another of Murray’s recommendations. There was the man again, Morgan seethed, but he had to admit it made sense, and it was comfortable. Kin-janja’s humid clime was not suited for tight, genital-bunching hipster briefs: you had to let the air get to those dark dank places.

He caught a glimpse of a section of his torso in Hazel’s dressing-table mirror. Fat lapped over the waist band of his boxer shorts. He was particularly distressed by the two pads that had seemingly clamped themselves immovably to his back — like tenacious alien parasites — in the region of his kidneys. He was getting too large: fifteen and a half stone at the last weigh-in. He winced at the memory. He had always been on the biggish side; in his beefy adolescence his mother had tactfully described him as ‘big-boned’, though ‘burly’ was how he now liked to see himself. He was of average height, around five foot nine or ten, and had always cut a stocky figure but in his getting-on-for-three years in Nkongsamba he had put on almost two stones and his silhouette seemed to bulk larger every week.

He crouched down and peered over Hazel’s shoulder at his face in the mirror. He fingered his jaw-line. Christ, he thought with some alarm, the bone is half an inch below the surface. He stretched his neck from side to side, turning his head and squinting at his profile. He had a broad face, it could carry the extra flesh not too badly, he reckoned. He smiled at himself, his strong smile, showing all his teeth. There was something vaguely Brandoish about him, he felt. Hazel looked up from her nail painting, thought he was smiling at her and smiled back.

Standing up he inflated his chest, sucked in his gut and flexed his buttocks. He didn’t really look thirty-four, he decided, that is, if you ignored his hair. His hair was the bane of his life: it was fine and wispy, pale reddish-brown and falling out. His temples took over more of his head every month. Somehow his widow’s peak held on, a hirsute promontory in an expanding sea of forehead. If his bloody receding didn’t stop soon, he reflected, he’d end up looking like a Huron Indian or one of those demented American Marines, currently wasting the inhabitants of South — East Asia, who shaved their heads leaving only a prickly stripe running down the centre. Gently, with all ten finger tips, he teased the soft hair across his brow: it was too sad really.

Back in his clothes he returned his attention to Hazel. She was spending a long time preparing herself for something, and it wasn’t for him. He looked around the room and its tawdriness set his spirits in the now familiar slide: the frame metal bed with its thin dunlopillo mattress, the cheap local furnishings, the bright ceiling light with its buzzing corona of flying insects and Hazel’s garish mini-skirts and shifts cast around the room as haphazardly as seaweed on a beach.

‘Can’t you keep this bloody place tidy?’ he said complain-ingly. Then: ‘And where are you going tonight?’

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 realized 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 whiffoffresh 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.

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 room, 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 like 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 sacrified 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 patronized. It had a swimming pool and tennis courts but no golf course, was newer and smaller and the intellectual levels 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 ofheat-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-eyedjocularity, 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 look 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 about 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,’ Morganlied. ‘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 organized 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 Xmas 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 mattre.’

‘Ah-ah.’ Friday exclaimed, ‘Sorry-oh, masta. Desole.’ 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 Morgan’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 realized 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 mid-twenties 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 realized 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.

‘Where’s Priscilla?’ he asked Dalmire. ‘I thought she was coming down to meet you.’

‘She’s off with Geraldine and the kids,’ Dalmire told him. Geraldine was Jones’s wife. ‘Getting some kebabs. You eating here?’ Dalmire asked. ‘Why don’t you join us?’

Jones seconded this suggestion. They both seemed genuine. The thought came to Morgan, as it had done a few times in the past when faced with similar unprompted invitations, that they actually liked him, wanted his company, found him intriguing and amusing. He was always a little nonplussed on these occasions too, sentiments of humble gratitude spontaneously rising up within him. However it annoyed him to feel grateful to people like Dalmire and Jones, it seemed demeaning in a way, so he made a point of ruthlessly expunging such emotions when they occurred.

‘Ah…no thanks,’ he said tapping the side of his nose again, playing out the role of rake, hell-raiser and debauchee they had created for him. ‘Must be going soon. Got a date.’

This initiated a series of throaty laughs, mutual rib-digging and low cries of’Wor-hor-hor.’ Morgan wondered why he did it. His musings were interrupted by the arrival of Priscilla and Geraldine. Geraldine Jones was wearing a green…frock was the only suitable word, that hung limply from her thin shoulders and displayed the top half of her wash-board chest. She had big eyes in a small face, like some potto or lemur, and short indeterminately brown hair.

‘Hello you lot,’ she said with forced cheeriness. ‘Hello Morgan, nice to see you. What’s all this laughter about?’

Morgan knew instantly the kind of response Jones would make to this question and watched with mounting horror as the little Welshman fashioned a crude leer out ofhis plump features, tilted his body forward confidentially and said in his sing-song voice, ‘Ow-er Mor-gan’s got a ro-man-tic ass-ig-na-tion.’

As the red mist of virulent wrath dimmed his view, Morgan felt like plucking the eyes from Jones’s face, stamping his head to a pulp, ramming all types of fiendishly blunt uneven instruments into his various orifices, but instead, by a ruthless act of self-control, he managed a twisted, white-lipped smile, acutely conscious of Priscilla stiffening perceptibly beside him. While his heart sank to his shoes, the mildly comforting thought came to him that this indicated she was not entirely indifferent as to how or with whom he spent his evenings. Nevertheless she moved round to stand by Dalmire, whose eyes were beginning to look distinctly glazed, and gave him a loving little peck on the forehead. Dalmire put his arm round her and patted her haunch. She looked Morgan in the eye: he thought he could read triumph there. Before she could speak Morgan blurted out the first innocuous thing that came into his head.

‘Met Dr Murray’s son tonight. Spit and image of his father.’ He craned his neck as though searching the room for him. As expected this got everybody following suit.

‘I’m sure I saw him out by the barbecue,’ Geraldine remarked. ‘Quiet boy, on his own. Shame.’

‘Marvellous doctor, that Murray,’ Jones affirmed importantly. ‘I don’t know what we’d have done without him, or what would have happened to Gareth and Bronwyn. It’s difficult, this country, for our two.’

Everybody looked serious for a moment, reflecting on this.

‘He could do with a dash of the old milk of human kindness I reckon,’ Morgan commented, inserting the knife half an inch.

Geraldine looked astonished. ‘Oh no, do you think so? I found him ever so nice and helpful.’

‘Depends what’s wrong with you I expect,’ Priscilla interjected. ‘There are so many hypochondriacs out here. I think Murray can spot them a mile off.’ There was more general agreement. Morgan didn’t like the sound of this one bit: what exactly did Priscilla know? he wondered uneasily.

One ofjones’s children ran up. It was the little girl Bronwyn and she was holding a red balloon. ‘Daddy, daddy, look what I’ve got,’ she piped. Jones picked her up and in a mood of bibulous fatherly love nuzzled her neck saying, ‘Oo’s a clever likkle girl en? Eh? Oo’s daddy’s likkle clever girlie? Brrrr,’ and so on until she screamed in panic to be put down. Whereupon everyone except Morgan leaned over her to admire the red balloon, commenting on its rare and exotic beauty and Bronwyn’s Nobel Prize-winning intelligence in acquiring it. Amongst the hullabaloo Morgan noticed Dalmire’s hand slide from Priscilla’s hip round to cup and squeeze her buttock. The green-eyed monster ruled in Morgan’s heart. Its reign, however, was shortly terminated by the arrival of a steward bearing a note. Bronwyn had now been joined by her brother Gareth, also clutching a balloon — only this time a yellow one — and also demanding acclaim and admiration so Morgan had plenty of undisturbed time to accept the note, thank the steward, look puzzled and read it. It said:

‘I am in the small bar. Why don’t you come and join me. Sam Adekunle.’

Morgan thought he was going to be sick, he even felt a bit unsteady on his feet. He thrust the note into his pocket and thought furiously. His deep concentration eventually impinged on the consciousness of the others present and they stopped talking and looked curiously at him.

‘Is everything all right?’ Priscilla asked.

‘Not bad news, is it?’ Jones laughed nervously. ‘Been stood up by the girlfriend?’

Morgan forced a smile. ‘God no.’ He played for time. ‘Worse than that.’ He said the first remotely plausible lie that came into his head. ‘Apparently some British Council poet we’re meant to be putting up has gone and got himself lost. Bloody artist, typical.’ He left it vague. ‘Ah well, duty calls.’ People commiserated, their conversation resumed. Morgan drained the last inch of his whisky, shuddered, and moved round the side of the group to put it on the bar.

He felt Priscilla’s hand on his arm. ‘Everything is all right, isn’t it, Morgan?’ She sounded concerned, and he was touched. He shot a glance at Dalmire, who was chatting to Jones, and looked back at Priscilla, taking in the shiny fringe, the silly nose, the fabulous breasts as if for the first time. Love bloomed like a napalm blast in his heart: a stupid, irrational drink-induced love that had little to do with the emotion spelt with a capital L. He thought: if only he could have her, somehow, before she and Dalmire got married then, well, everything would seem fairer, more even and proper. Her hand was still on his arm, Morgan laid his on top of hers.

‘Everything’s fine, Pris,’ he said softly, noble in defeat, trying to convey also that she was making a terrible mistake but ah well there you go. ‘Under the circumstances,’ he added wryly. He removed his hand to expose her engagement ring. Priscilla snatched it away, as if his arm had suddenly turned blazing hot, and tucked it in the pocket of her jeans. She looked down at her feet in confusion.

Morgan leaned forward. ‘You don’t want to listen to Denzil’s nonsense about me having a date,’ he whispered. ‘It’s just his curious Welsh sense of humour.’ He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder, then raised his voice. ‘Bye everyone,’ he called. ‘See you anon.’ He strode off, exulting momentarily at this superb turning of the tables until he recalled suddenly where he was striding to. His step faltered and he looked back longingly at the small circle of people he’d just left. He felt a terrible sense of isolation descend on him. Adekunle was waiting.

4

The small bar was the name given to the club room that overlooked the eighteenth hole. Normally it was occupied by perspiring golfers downing pints of shandy but at this time of night it was deserted. A sleepy steward slumped on the bar; Morgan wondered where Adekunle was, thankful for his discretion.

He heard his name called from the stoop. Walking out on to it he saw Adekunle’s bulk at the far end, the tip of his cigarette glowing in the darkness.

‘Ah, Mr Leafy,’ Adekunle said again, coming to meet him with his arm outstretched. ‘I think we will have rain tonight.’ Morgan shook hands with him and concurred nervously. Adekunle was a big man with bulging apple-cheeks and a well-padded jowl. He was a distinctive figure; images of his moustachioed face currently regaled hoardings throughout the Mid-West. Tonight he looked even larger than usual as he was in his full traditional costume, an embroidered, loose, knee-length cream tunic with prodigious wide sleeves that were folded back over his shoulders, matching cream pyjama trousers that tapered to the ankle and a black velvet, gold-threaded tarboosh that, in the Kinjanjan fashion, was crushed lopsidedly down on his head. The evident wealth and splendour of his outfit, plus his considerable girth made him seem like some all-powerful native potentate, an African Henry VIII.

‘Forgive the paraphernalia,’ he said. His voice was deep and educated, with a near-perfect English accent modulated by hints of American tones he’d picked up while studying at the Harvard Business School. ‘But I’m going on to a party rally.’

‘I didn’t expect you back so soon,’ Morgan ventured, his voice sounding unnaturally husky and at least two registers higher. ‘Did you have a good trip?’

Adekunle smiled broadly. ‘An excellent trip, thank you, most fruitful. London was cold and very crowded.’ Adekunle paused, and when he continued the genial note was missing from his voice. ‘I wanted to see you…urgently. So you can imagine how delighted I was to spy you out here. I am the bringer of bad news I am afraid,’ he puffed cigarette smoke out into the night. ‘As I feared we have a problem. A problem with Dr Murray.’

‘I’m glad,’ Morgan cleared the catch from his throat. ‘I mean I’m glad you were so discreet. My colleagues are out there.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ Adekunle said urbanely. ‘I fully understand your position.’

‘Listen,’ Morgan croaked, ‘would you mind if I got another drink?’ He paused, unsure if he could form the following words. ‘Before I hear your problem.’ He went into the bar, shook the steward awake and was given another whisky. He took a large gulp and rejoined Adekunle on the stoop. Adekunle lit another cigarette and asked in his unperturbed, sonorous voice, ‘Talking of Murray, how is your friendship with him progressing? Is everything going as planned?’

Morgan swallowed, he was glad at least to report some success. ‘Going quite well,’ he said weakly. ‘As you suggested I’ve been trying to mix with him socially which is…a little difficult as he’s not the most sociable man. However, I am playing golf with him later this week.’

‘Golf,’ Adekunle said reflectively. ‘Excellent. Just you and Murray?’

‘Yes…at least, I assume so.’

‘Good, Keep it that way.’

‘I hope you don’t mind me asking,’ Morgan said plaintively, ‘but what’s this all about? I’m afraid I don’t understand anything. Why is it so important for me to become friendly with Murray? What exactly do you expect me to do?’

Adekunle looked quizzically at Morgan. ‘I suppose I can tell you now,’ he said. ‘It is not unreasonable. Yes.’ He paused, and then said quite quickly as though it were the most natural thing in the world, ‘I want you to get to know Murray because I want you to bribe him.’

Morgan wasn’t at all sure he’d heard this correctly. ‘What?’ he said haltingly. ‘Murray? A bribe? You must be joking.’

‘I’m not joking, my friend,’ Adekunle said in a tone that effectively removed any doubt on that point from Morgan’s mind. He suddenly felt nauseous: a nightmare vision of the future was forming in his muddled brain; unrelated events in the past fell into their allotted places in the dreadful pattern; ambiguous remarks and attitudes suddenly became menacingly explicable. With some effort he managed to speak.

‘You want me to bribe Murray,’ he said faintly. ‘To do what?’

Adekunle took him by the arm and led him to the far end of the stoop. The bar lights cast a faint glow on them. In the darkness somewhere beyond the pool of light the fairways stretched out into the forest. ‘Let me explain,’ Adekunle said reasonably. ‘There is a building project at our university here in Nkongsamba in which I have a very great interest — not just because of my, ah, professorial connections with the university but for other reasons as well. You see,’ he went on, ‘the university is expanding and they want to build a new 500-room hall of residence and cafeteria. The land that they want to build the hall on belongs to me. I have been expecting to sell that land for some months now but there have been hold-ups.’ He held up his hand for silence as Morgan was about to interrupt. ‘There is also a university committee called the Buildings, Works and Sites Committee. Its job is to investigate and consider the viability of all new university building projects from the point of view of hygiene, social and environmental concerns and report its conclusions to the university senate. It is an important committee, in fact it carries a veto on all building projects and its chairman…’

‘Is Dr Alex Murray,’ Morgan gulped.

‘Precisely,’ Adekunle congratulated. ‘You are, as the saying goes, catching on.’ He plucked at the embroidery on his gown. ‘I became aware of the problem some time ago through certain contacts I have. But yesterday, on my return from London, I was informed by my sources that my worst fears have been realized. Dr Murray,’ there was a hint of annoyance as Adekunle pronounced the man’s name; Morgan knew how he felt, ‘Dr Murray intends to file a negative report on the proposed site. If he goes through with this the land will not be bought and there will be no sale.’ Adekunle smiled grimly. ‘I feared as much,’ he said. ‘I had to make preparations, which is why I…decided to, ah, how would you say? engage your services in this delicate matter of persuasion.’

‘You want me…’

‘I want you to persuade Dr Murray to change his mind.’

‘Oh my God,’ Morgan said feebly, suffering from an attack of neurotic clairvoyance. ‘I’m not sure…’

‘Please,’ Adekunle said silkily, squeezing Morgan’s arm. ‘Let us not talk of defeat.’

‘But what’s the problem?’ Morgan asked. ‘Why is he saying no?’

Adekunle flicked the stub of his cigarette out into the night. ‘There were certain objections to be expected: the proximity of Ondo village, the inconvenient course of the nearby river, but these were not major, they could be overcome without difficulty. Villagers can be persuaded to resettle, rivers can be diverted.’ He sighed with exasperation. ‘Unfortunately for all of us Dr Murray is very thorough. A very thorough man.’ He took a cigarette pack from a pocket in his robe. ‘Perhaps you know,’ he said, lighting a cigarette from it, ‘that my family are tribal chiefs in this part of the world. In fact we own a great deal of the land around Nkongsamba. But, alas, the expenses of political life are very considerable, and so two years ago I was obliged to sell some of my family’s land. Some land which now borders the proposed site for the new hall of residence.’ Adekunle smiled emptily. ‘I was chairman of the Nkongsamba Chamber of Commerce at the time and so it was, shall we say, convenient for me to sell it to the Nkongsamba Town Council. They own that land now.’

Morgan frowned. He wondered if in his naivety he was missing something very obvious. He still couldn’t see how it all tied in. Perhaps Adekunle’s ponderous euphemisms were a code he should have picked up on immediately. ‘Does Murray know you own the land?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Adekunle. ‘No, no. I am sure of that. None of these transactions occur under my own name,’ he said condescendingly, as if suppressing his frustration at Morgan’s slowness. ‘I don’t think,’ he went on, ‘that the University of Nkongsamba would spend hundreds of thousands of pounds if they knew it was going to their own Professor of Economics and Business Management. No,’ he continued, ‘the problem lies with the Town Council. The land I sold two years ago is today the new Nkongsamba municipal rubbish dump.’

‘Oh,’ Morgan said, suddenly seeing. ‘I see.’

‘They started dumping there about six months ago. At present the dump is still fairly small and insignificant and at some distance from the proposed hall site. However in another year it will be most obvious, in fact if they continue at this rate the rubbish will be pressing against the walls of the buildings. But if by then,’ he said fake-sadly, ‘construction is underway it will be too late to find a new site.’ Morgan was impressed by his concern for his students’ welfare. ‘Nobody,’ Adekunle said emphatically, ‘nobody could know this now. Unless they consulted the town planning records.’

‘And Murray has consulted the…yes.’

‘You have it, my friend. A very thorough man, as I said.’

‘But can’t you get them to move the dump or something?’ Morgan asked hopelessly.

Adekunle gave a scornful laugh at the impracticability of this suggestion. ‘And where will you put thousands of tons of decaying rubbish? Besides,’ he added, ‘since entering politics I have been obliged to abandon my more influential positions within the council for the sake of, what shall we say, probity.’ The word seemed to leave a sour taste in his mouth. ‘I am sorry, my friend, but there is no other way. And in any case it is vital that this deal goes through now. I cannot afford to wait.’ He spread his hands. ‘Election expenses. And when, I mean if, we win I will need substantial reserves. No, Murray must change his report. Without Murray there would be no problem, the land would have been sold already.’ He looked at Morgan. ‘You are a white man, a representative of Her Majesty the Queen’s Diplomatic Service and a friend of his. I am counting on you to change his mind.’

Morgan gazed bleakly heavenwards. He felt the weight and menace of the invisible black rainclouds above him as a personal threat, a final vindictive rebuff from a surly and spiteful God. The Canutian impossibility of the task Adekunle had set him made him want to laugh hysterically; the sheer audacity of the suggestion made him want to weep with helpless despair. Did the man know nothing of Murray? he wondered. Could he not see in those stern features the moral rectitude of a latter-day John Knox?

Morgan began, gently, to explain. ‘If you knew Dr Murray as well as I do, you would see the impossibility of…’

Adekunle interrupted. ‘Please, I do know Murray. He is a man, Mr Leafy, just an ordinary man like you and me. He is not a god, he is not some kind of heroic figure as I think you imagine him to be.’ Adekunle wagged an admonitory finger. ‘Don’t forget that,’ he cautioned, ‘in any of your dealings, with whoever it may be. Dr Murray is just a hard-working man, he has three children, schools in England are expensive.’ He smiled. ‘You didn’t think I was going to ask you to rely only on your…your powers of rhetoric. You can offer him ten thousand pounds sterling,’ he said flatly. ‘In any bank: Switzerland, Jersey, Guatemala — wherever.’

Morgan said nothing. He was thinking about ten thousand pounds.

‘Everybody, as the saying goes, has their price. I think ten thousand pounds will be sufficient for a poor man like Dr Murray.’

Morgan was rocked by the munificence of the bribe. Even Murray…Evil possibilities and vile scenarios began to swarm in Morgan’s head like blow-flies round rotting meat. Uppermost among them was the exquisite irony of seducing that severe self-righteous man. Just to be there, he thought, and watch the corruption spread through him like a stain. Adekunle’s broad lips were parted in a slight smile as he watched Morgan pondering.

‘You may be right,’ Morgan admitted. You may just be right.’

‘We don’t have a great deal of time,’ Adekunle warned. ‘This must be settled before the elections, certainly before the next meeting of the Buildings, Works and Sites Committee which is early in the new year.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I must leave. I will go round the back way.’ He crossed the stoop to the steps that led down to the golf course.-At the top of the steps he halted and turned to face Morgan.

‘I don’t like to remind you of your, let us say, obligation to me, Mr Leafy,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think I need remind you of possible unpleasant consequences either. But you can of course — when this matter is settled — rely on my absolute discretion, and,’ he smiled, preparing his final circumlocution, ‘shall we say my continued support in your line of work as long as you remain in my country?’ He turned and walked off into the dark.

5

When Morgan arrived home the first fat heavy drops of rain were spattering on his windscreen. He drove the Peugeot into the garage and got out. The pale grey dust of his driveway turned to black mud in front of his eyes as the torrent from the swollen clouds in the darkness above him unleashed itself upon the earth. He watched the force of the rain battering down, clattering tinnily on the corrugated iron of the garage roof, drowning the sound of the strong wind that thrashed through the bushes and trees in the garden.

The light was on above his front door but there was no other sign of life in the house. Where the hell were Friday and Moses? he wondered angrily. It was only a matter of thirty yards from the garage to the front door but in this rain he’d be soaked in seconds.

‘UMBRELLA!’ he bellowed in the direction of the house, hoping his voice would carry above the noise of the downpour. There was a brilliant flash of lightning, as if in sarcastic response to his faint cry, illuminating his garden in harsh monochrome for a brief instant, followed some moments later by a hill-cracking peal of thunder. Morgan restrained himself from shaking his fist at the dark sky as he sprinted splashily towards his house, leaping over the burbling stream that already gushed around the doorstep, and flinging himself panting onto the verandah.

His house was a long squat bungalow, set in a generous garden dotted with small groves of frangjpani and avocado trees and presided over by several towering casuerina pines. Only half the house — the two bedrooms and his study — was mosquito proofed. The other half, consisting of an airy dining⁄sitting room, kitchen and pantry, was fronted by the usual wide verandah upon which he now damply paced. The inundating rainstorm thundered on the roof and poured off the eaves in an extended sheet of water, turning the gravel gutters that surrounded the house into rushing streams that flowed across the wasted grass of the lawn to collect in an ever-widening pool at the bottom of the garden near the perimeter hedge of poinsettia. In the frequent flashes of sheet lightning Morgan could clearly see the silently expanding mini-lake, its surface tin-tacked by the heavy raindrops.

He slowly regained his breath, mildly alarmed that a thirty yard dash should leave him panting this way, kicked off his sodden shoes and went through to the kitchen in search of his servants. There, he found Friday asleep, sitting with his head pillowed on his arms at the scrubbed wooden table in the centre of the room. Leaving the light off he walked past him silently and looked out of the open kitchen door at the back garden. Beside the steps that led down from the kitchen stood an old table and, as he had expected, he saw his aged cook Moses sitting upon it — quite protected from the downpour by the eaves that projected a good six feet. Moses was sitting with his long shanks drawn up beneath him staring out at the curtain of rain. He was puffing away on his foul-smelling pipe and by his side there was a grimy calabash and a glass full of cloudy, pale green palm wine. Thunder barrages bracketed the sky overhead and the scene again flickered into ghostly life from the lightning. The weight of water falling on the earth seemed to have transformed the surface of the garden into a slow-moving, treacle-like tide. Water flowed, stopped, inched forward again; pools formed and broke, leaves and grass were transported short distances and dumped, and still the rain came down. It was a hell of a storm, Morgan thought.

Moses belched softly, turned to top up his glass and saw Morgan standing there with his hands on his hips. He threw down his pipe and leapt to his feet.

‘Ah-ah. De rain sah. I nevah go hear you one time, masta,’ he said and ducked up the steps past Morgan, switching on the kitchen light and shaking Friday awake who immediately began a long explanation of his extreme tiredness.

‘Shut up, Friday,’ Morgan ordered. ‘One cheese omelette please, Moses. And Friday, switch on my air-conditioner and bring me one bottle of beer.’ He went into the sitting room and switched on the lights and the roof fan, happy to have caught his servants napping.

He was halfway through his bottle of beer when Friday brought him his omelette and placed it on a side-table in front of him.

‘Ça va, masta?’ he asked cheerfully.

‘No it doesn’t,’ Morgan said. ‘I need a bloody fourchette and bloody couteau, don’t I?’ He shouted after Friday who’d dashed back to the kitchen, ‘Salt and pepper too!’

Friday was a very small, powerfully-built man in his early twenties who had come over from his French colony in search of work. Morgan had felt smart and cosmopolitan when he’d employed him — the nearest thing to a French maid in Kinjanja he’d wittily bragged — but the little man was hopelessly inept, had never got to grips with the English language, and was cordially detested by Moses, Morgan’s cook. Moses, in contrast, was thin and lanky and really quite old. No one knew his exact age — including Moses — but he had a wrinkled grizzled face and there were many grey spirals in his hair which probably meant he was well over sixty. He was a sly old man who filched professionally from Morgan and refused to let the demands of his job interfere unduly with his easy-going life. He could cook omelettes, fish cakes, a kind of stew, chicken curry, make rhubarb crumble and sherry trifle and that was it. Everyday the palm wine seller called at the kitchen door and Moses would buy a pint or two of the powerful drink. He cut up his own strong tobacco which he bought in moist strips like blackened bacon rinds and which he smoked in a tiny-bowled pipe that he always produced whenever he sat down to a tumbler of cloudy palm wine. What he could cook he cooked well however, and Morgan found that he tired of the diet less frequently than he might have supposed. It was enlivened from time to time by dinner invitations and, whenever the mood took him or whenever the prospect of fish cakes palled, he would eat at one of the clubs, in town or at the university, or at some of the Lebanese or Syrian restaurants whose kitchens were generally held to conform to minimal standards of hygiene.

When he had finished his omelette Morgan walked out to the verandah and peered into the night. The rain seemed to be abating, the thunder and lightning heading eastwards. He could hear the croaking of frogs and toads coming from trie blackness.

He decided to go to bed. He knew what it was like after rain: every insect sprouted wings and took to the air in mad untrained flight. He told Friday and Moses to lock up and go home. He snibbed the corridor door behind him, hearing as he did so the rumble of the glass doors of the living room being slid shut, and walked up the passageway to his bedroom.

He had a quick shower and dried himself off. He sat on the edge of the bath and thought about Murray. How would he approach the man? How would he introduce the idea of the bribe? How would Murray react? He suddenly felt appalled that he, an official of Her Majesty’s Government’s Diplomatic Service, should be casually plotting in such a corrupt and criminal way, that his filthy luck had placed him in such vile and unhappy circumstances. In search of some solace he switched his mind to the sex he had enjoyed with Hazel earlier that evening. It distracted him for a minute or two, but slowly and inevitably a not wholly unpleasant sense of melancholy began to descend on him as it often did at such times. The house was quiet apart from the comforting hum of his air-conditioner, the rain appeared to have stopped, only the eaves still dripped into the gravel gutter-beds. He fancied he could hear the crickets starting up outside, brr-brr, brrr-brrr, telling the world how cold they felt.

His thoughts turned, appropriately for a moody exile, to home. He thought about his mother in Feltham, a kindly fun-loving widow who, so she had hinted in her last letter, might really, finally, be marrying Reg, her boyfriend of many years. Reg was a newsagent, a nice man; Morgan had known him all his life. He was quite bald but was one of that deluded crew who think that a damp lock of hair bisecting the gleaming pate from ear to ear will effectively persuade people otherwise. Reg was all right, Morgan thought warmly: he was friendly, liked a drink, got on well with his mother. So were Jill and Tony, he added, his sister and brother-in-law. Yes, they were all nice; they rubbed along very happily whenever he went back home on leave.

But then a sudden anger flared up. They were all so bloody ordinary, he told himself ruthlessly, so depressingly unremarkable, so inoffensive. He thought of his father — an indistinct enigmatic figure to him now — who had died when Morgan was fifteen. Keeled over from a coronary while helping a workman install a new dishwashing unit in a Heathrow cafeteria. Morgan occasionally gazed at his parents’ smiling posed faces in the family snapshot album and wondered how on earth he had developed the way he had: selfish, fat and misanthropic.

He gloomily heaved himself to his feet, his backside sore from the unyielding bath-edge. He went disconsolately through to the bedroom and flung himself on the bed. Everything was going wrong. He shut his eyes and thought about his day: averagely disastrous. First Priscilla’s engagement, next the Father Christmas fiasco underway, then Adekunle’s ‘bad news’. Now all he had to do was bribe Murray: he was doing well. He turned round abruptly and pulled a pillow over his head. Good God, he thought, what a can of worms, what a fucking snake pit. Murray too. Somehow everything came back to Murray. The man had marched into his life with all the tact of an invading army. Three months ago he hardly knew him, was only barely aware of what he looked hke, and now he had to bribe him to help a devious politician pay for a crooked campaign. For an awful moment he thought he was going to cry mawkish, vinegary tears of self-pity, so he rudely sat himself upright, pounding pillows into shape with angry fists and snatched up a paperback. He glanced at the title. Hell comes Tomorrow! it screamed at him in vulgar red capitals. In a wave of premonitory disgust he flung it at the wall.

He switched out the bedside lamp and settled himself down, trying to get to sleep. He took uneasy, faltering stock of his day. Had he done anything he could be remotely proud of? Had he done anything good? Had he done anything thoughtful, unselfish or unmotivated? Had there been any event that wasn’t directed towards the sole end of furthering the material, physical and spiritual well-being of Morgan Leafy Esq.? Well…no. He had to admit it: a definite, unqualified no. Thinking back he ruefully acknowledged that he’d been rude, sulky, bullying, selfish, unpleasant, hypocritical, cowardly, conceited, fascist etc. etc. A normal sort of day. But, he thought. Yes, but. Was he any different from anyone else in this stinking country, in this wide swarming world? Again, as far as he could see, as far as his experience had dictated, no. No was the only honest answer. As usual this brutal analysis did not bring with it much comfort. Unsettled and unhappy he turned over, closed his eyes and called on sleep.

6

The phone rang. It was beside his bed and its ring was, at this hour, loud and brain-curdling. As he picked up the receiver he glanced at the alarm clock. Twenty past twelve. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than ten minutes.

‘Hullo, Leafy here,’ he mumbled into the mouthpiece.

‘Hello, Morgan? Sorry to bother you at this hour. It’s Arthur Fanshawe here.’ Fanshawe’s voice was tense but solicitous.

‘Arthur,’ Morgan said. ‘Anything wrong?’

‘Yes,’ Fanshawe replied straightforwardly. ‘Something of a bugger actually. Can you get out here?’

‘What? Now?’ Morgan allowed more protest to creep into his tone than was wise.

‘If you don’t mind.’ Fanshawe was suddenly clipped, offended.

Morgan sat hunched on the edge of his bed. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Look, can you tell me what it is? I mean…are you sure I…?’ Fanshawe’s tingling silence on the other end was eloquent. ‘I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. ‘Bye.’ Morgan put the phone down. The stupid mad shit, he thought wrath-fully, what the hell’s going on? As far as he could remember he wasn’t even on standby duty. It was Dalmire tonight: had they disturbed Dickie’s beauty sleep?

Grumbling his doubt about this to himself, Morgan pulled on the clothes he had been wearing that day and splashed his face with water. Outside the rain had stopped and the dark moist night was dyspeptic with noises and mumblings. Toads burped, crickets trilled, bats swooped and beeped. As he walked across his verandah he saw squadrons of moths and flying ants battering around the front door light. Underfoot, his shoes crunched on the twitching drifts of myriads of exhausted insects, who had unfolded new wings at the onset of the rain and taken to the air for a brief joyous flight, lured by the glow of the hot bulb. His feet squelched on the mud of his garden path and driveway as he walked out towards his garage. Overhead the sky had cleared and the familiar wide canopy of stars shone down. You always saw more stars in Africa than you did back home, he thought.

The road to the Commission was quiet, a few taxis returning, late-night revellers and one enormous articulated lorry thundering heedlessly down the road south, piled high with ground-nut sacks. As he turned into the Commission’s car park he was annoyed to find it empty. Dalmire had clearly not been disturbed. If this problem was so all-fired important, he asked himself testily, where were the other members of staff? The Commission building appeared deserted too, with no lights shining.

Morgan parked his car and headed briskly across the dark garden to the Fanshawes’ residence which, as he approached, he could see was lit up like a liner on both floors. He guessed the problem was a domestic one and rolled his eyes heavenwards. Again he noticed no other cars in the driveway. Morgan ascended the steps and rapped on the glass door of the sitting room. Through it he could see Mrs Fanshawe and Priscilla sitting on one of the sofas. Priscilla had her arm round her mother’s broad shoulders. At Morgan’s cheery knock they both looked up in alarm, and Priscilla jumped to her feet and skipped across the room to open the door.

‘Oh Morgan,’ she said with relief in her voice, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come.’

The genuineness of her expression so astonished him that he almost failed to appreciate her trim beauty, her ruffled hair and the skimpiness of the Japanese housecoat she was wearing, the bottom of which stopped halfway down her thighs.

‘Hello, Morgan.’ It was Mrs Fanshawe. Morgan noticed that her eyes were red. Had she been crying? he wondered, never having seen her face register any of the softer emotions. ‘It’s so dreadful,’ she whimpered, remaining hunched on the sofa, a handkerchief balled in her hand, her large body quite disguised by a massive pale blue candlewick dressing-gown.

‘Drink?’ Priscilla asked.

‘Well…’ Morgan spun on his heel to survey the bottles on a shiny mahogany cabinet, rubbing his hands together as if he were cold.

‘The coffee will be ready now,’ Mrs Fanshawe intoned listlessly.

‘Coffee will be lovely,’ he said, a grin stamped across his face. ‘Milk and three sugars, please.’ He looked admiringly at Priscilla’s legs as she walked out of the sitting room to the kitchen.’Where’s Arthur?’ he asked, conscious ofhis superior’s absence. ‘Nothing’s happened to Arthur, has it?’ he asked again, realizing too late how unconcerned he sounded.

‘Of course not,’ Mrs Fanshawe snapped back in irritation.

That’s more like it, Morgan observed to himself, she’s coming round. ‘No,’ Mrs Fanshawe went on, ‘he’s outside,’ she waved at the darkness, ‘seeing if there’s anything he can do.’

The mystery was beginning to get on Morgan’s nerves. What in Christ’s name had they pulled him out of his bed for? ‘Urn, what exactly’s happened?’ he inquired politely.

‘It’s Innocence,’ Mrs Fanshawe said sadly.

‘Innocence?’ Morgan was frankly puzzled. Was this some obscure jibe at him because of his failure to divine what the problem was?

‘My maid,’ she explained crabbily. ‘My maid Innocence. She’s dead.’

‘Oh.’ Is that all? he screamed inwardly at her. Why am I bloody here then? He was about to pursue this line of enquiry with more vigour when he saw Fanshawe climbing the front steps.

‘Morgan,’ Fanshawe said wearily. ‘Glad you’re here.’ He looked most strange, Morgan thought. He was wearing a green silk Chinese dressing-gown with large orange lotus-type blossoms on it. A pair of striped Viyella pyjama bottoms clashed uneasily with this opulence. Fanshawe’s face was pale and his normally sleek grey hair stood up in fine wispy tufts.

‘Bloody awful problem we’ve got here,’ he admitted, shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘Thought you’d be the chap to deal with it.’ He looked Morgan in the eye. ‘Can’t understand these Africans at all,’ he said hopelessly, like a criminal confessing his guilt. ‘Just can’t make head nor tail of them, can’t figure out how the Kinjanjan mind works. Closed book to me. Now, if this were the East…’ he let the implied comment go unfinished. Morgan wondered why Fanshawe thought he’d be the ‘chap’ to deal with these unfathomable mysteries. Meanwhile Mrs Fanshawe had risen to her feet and was belting her dressing-gown tightly about her waist, thereby crudely accentuating the bodyforms which bulked beneath the candlewick shroud. Morgan inwardly remarked on the prodigious humps that defined her chest and how, curiously, they wobbled transversely as she marched over to her husband.

‘Come on, Arthur,’ she commanded. ‘Leave it to Morgan. He knows these people better than we.’

‘Just a sec,’ Morgan interrupted, before Fanshawe could be led off to bed. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t quite got the full picture yet. Innocence is dead, sure, but I don’t see where I fit in.’

‘Sorry,’ Fanshawe brushed his forehead absentmindedly with his palm. ‘Sorry I didn’t explain, it’s all been a bit of a shock. Innocence’s over at the servants’ quarters. She was struck by lightning during the storm, died instantly I believe. I called the police — a constable’s just arrived — but apparently there’s some ghastly mystical, what do they call it? juju problem. Magical hocus pocus, you know, couldn’t work out what they were talking about. Thought you were the man for that.’ He paused. ‘Can’t tell you anything else, I’m afraid. You’ll have to see if you can make any more sense of it. See if you can get the whole thing sorted out tonight.’ The Fanshawes moved to the foot of the stairs. ‘I think,’ said Fanshawe wearily, ‘it’s something to do with disposing of the body, I don’t know. Anyway Morgan, do your best, see you in the morning.’

Morgan said goodnight and the Fanshawes went off to their beds. He was about to make for the drinks, feeling sorely in need of one, when Priscilla returned with a cup of coffee for him. He took it from her, their fingertips touching briefly. He wondered what she was wearing under her robe. To his surprise she prodded Morgan’s stomach with a forefinger. ‘Yes, I thought so,’ she said. ‘Three sugars, no wonder. Must be like drinking syrup.’ She didn’t seem too worried about Innocence’s death, Morgan thought, in fact she was being very familiar. Was it a good sign?

‘By the way,’ Priscilla said. ‘Did you find that poet chap?’

‘Poet?’ Morgan’s mind went blank. Then he remembered his excuse from earlier in the evening. ‘Oh, that poet.’

‘Are there some more around?’

‘No, oh no. And…ah we never found the other one.’ He thought suddenly that he should be taking advantage of their being alone together. ‘Listen, Priscilla, can I…?’

‘Never mind,’ she interrupted brightly. ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up.’

‘What? Oh yes…but I…’ It was too late, she was already at the stairs.

‘Probably won’t see you in the morning,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it too awful about Innocence? ‘Night.’

She was gone, a flash of brown legs. This family, Morgan thought grimly, are not treating me right; they’re taking me too much for granted. First I’m Father Christmas, now I’m a bloody undertaker. He poured a slug of brandy into his coffee, stirred it up and drank it down. Right, he said to himself, let’s see what all the fuss is about.

♦

The Commission’s servants’ quarters consisted of two low mud-brick blocks facing each other across a well-trodden patch of laterite, down the middle of which ran a concrete sanitary lane. At one end of the square was a stand pipe and wash-place, a large concrete basin beneath a corrugated-iron roof supported by thick wooden poles. A large cotton tree stood by the wash-place. Around the two dwelling-units were many small lean-tos, traders’ stalls and shelters made from sticks, packing cases and palm fronds. Between the main road and the block furthest away from the Commission a sizeable dump had grown up over the years, on which sat two wheelless car chassis and which provided the main source of nourishment for the various goats, dogs and chickens that roamed about it unhindered.

As Morgan approached the quarters he became aware of the sounds of muted commotion. He could hear the babble of excited voices and a soft chanting wail of lamenting women. He began to feel a little nervous, considering for the first time what exactly he was going to meet. He was about to come up against death, after all, something he hadn’t done before. The death of Innocence. The improbable symbolic por-tentousness of this did not bring a smile to his lips. He walked round the comer of the nearest block and dimly made out a crowd of approximately thirty people gathered around the far end of the laterite compound near the base of the cotton tree. He walked across the compound carefully stepping over the sanitary ditch. He felt a slight twinge of alarm. He noticed some mothers with younger children sitting around lanterns on the small verandahs that ran the length of the blocks. As he approached the large group by the tree a figure detached itself from it and came towards him. It was, he soon saw, the policeman, dressed in immaculately starched khaki uniform of shirt, shorts and knee socks. In the starlight Morgan could see his black boots gleaming. He carried a torch and there was a long truncheon slung at his belt.

‘Evening, constable,’ Morgan said, all calm authority. ‘I’m Mr Leafy from the Commission. What exactly’s going on?’

‘Ah. The woman is dead, sah. Lightning done kill her one time.’ He turned and shone his torch. The crowd was not clustered around the body as Morgan had thought but was standing in appalled silence a safe ten yards away. The torch beam flicked across the black mass of Innocence’s body and there were appreciative gasps from the onlookers. Innocence had been struck down in the gap between the end of one of the blocks and the rough concrete base of the wash-place.

Morgan swallowed. ‘I suppose we’d better have a closer look.’ He didn’t know why he supposed this, but it was all he could think of doing. ‘May I?’ He took the constable’s torch and advanced towards the body. There was a collective intake of breath and much shifting about from the crowd as he did so. Morgan realized, with some alarm, as he approached that this — Innocence — was the first dead person he had ever encountered and he wasn’t quite sure what precisely he was expecting to see or how he would react.

Before he could get close enough however, someone ran out of the crowd and tugged at his sleeve. It was Isaac, Morgan saw on turning round, one of the Commission’s doormen and general factotum. He was a solemn-looking man with a Hitlerian toothbrush moustache.

‘Mr Leafy sah,’ he said. ‘I go beg you, sah. Don’t totch her. Make you nevah totch her, sah.’ His voice was serious.

Morgan looked at him in surprise. ‘Don’t worry Isaac,’ he said. ‘I’ve no intention of touching her.’

‘Be careful, sah, I beg you.’ Isaac’s eyes were wide with warning. ‘Dis he be Shango killing. Nevah totch the body.’

‘Sorry?’ Morgan said, keeping his torch beam well away from the inert dark lump that was Innocence’s body. ‘A Shango killing? Who the hell is Shango?’

Isaac pointed skywards. Morgan looked up at the stars. ‘Shango is God,’ Isaac said piously. ‘Shango is God for lightning.’ He illustrated this with a jagged sweep of his arm. ‘Shango done kill this woman. You cannot totch her. No person can totch her.’

Oh my sweet bloody Christ, Morgan thought sourly to himself, no wonder that sly bastard Fanshawe backed out of this one. Sweet effingjesus. ‘OK, Isaac,’ he said resignedly. ‘I won’t touch, but I have to look.’ He walked up to Innocence’s body and squatted on his haunches about three feet away. Clenching his jaw muscles he brought the torch beam up to play on Innocence’s face. He remembered her well, a fat jolly woman who was always in attendance at the Fanshawes’ functions. Now she lay dead on her side, the top half of her body twisted round so that her face blankly contemplated the sky whence the fatal lightning shaft had come. Not far from her body lay a galvanized steel bucket and scattered wrung bundles of washed clothes. Morgan imagined what must have happened. Washing some clothes when the storm broke, throw them into the bucket, prop bucket on head or shoulder and waddle-dash across the short distance from the wash-place to the shelter of the verandah. But she’d never made it. Morgan found himself wondering if lightning made a whooshing noise, if there was a crack, smoke…

He was quite emotionless as the beam hit Innocence’s face, only a taut, stretched feeling in his body. Her eyes and mouth were wide open, as if frozen in mid-yell. On her right shoulder and down the right side of her face was a curious scorch or burn mark, an oozing weal purple against her chocolaty skin. The rest of her body appeared quite untouched and solid in its ungainly repose. Her clothes were sodden — a cheap nylon short-sleeved blouse, a native cloth wrapper-skirt — drenched by the downpour. Her right hand was held out along the still damp ground, pale palm uppermost, fingers slightly curled.

Poor Innocence, he thought, what a way to go.

He rose to his feet and walked back towards Isaac, who had been joined by the constable. Morgan returned the torch to him.

‘Look, Isaac,’ Morgan said. ‘We have to move her.’ He felt a little unsteady on his feet. ‘We can’t just leave her lying there for Christ’s sake. Where’s her house?’ Isaac indicated a doorway in the middle of the block. ‘Has she any family?’ Morgan asked.

‘There is one daughter. Maria,’ Isaac told him. Morgan remembered her too, a slim teenage girl who also worked for the Fanshawes. She was only fourteen or fifteen. He sighed.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Isaac, will you and Ezekiel’, he mentioned the Commission porter, ‘help me move her into her house until we can get an undertaker to come? Ezekiel?’ he called into the crowd and Ezekiel emerged, a large bow-legged man with a pot-belly. He joined them a little unwillingly.

‘Constable,’ Morgan instructed, ‘if you take the arms with me, and you — Isaac — with Ezekiel take the legs. OK? Come on then.’

Nobody moved. There followed a brief impassioned burst of conversation in native dialect. Then Isaac spoke:

‘We cannot totch her, sah. Please, I beg you once more. Ifin you totch her before, you will bring yourself trouble. Bringing everyone wahallah. You no go die well,’ he finished up solemnly.

Ezekiel nodded in glum agreement. ‘Plenty wahallah sah, for every people.’

The constable drew Morgan to one side. ‘Excuse, sah. This people are believing for Shango. They think that ifin they move this dead woman, they go die themselves one time.’ The constable smiled condescendingly. ‘They think Shango is angry with them. They have to make big juju here. Bring one fetish priest before.’

Wahallah, juju, fetish priest, lightning gods…Morgan stood in the dark compound, smelling the damp warm night, listening to its noises all around him, his eyes fixed on the body of the dead woman, wondering if it was all some frightful dream he was having. He massaged his temples with both hands. ‘Constable,’ he said conspiratorially, ‘will you help me move her — get her out of the way at least. The two of us should manage.’

‘Ah.’ The constable spread his hands. ‘I cannot. If I move the body before they make juju they will think I make Shango angry. They will not like it.’ He shrugged his shoulders in apology. ‘I must go. I will make my report.’ He saluted, turned and walked out of the compound.

Morgan felt waves of panic break in his mind. He thought hard. The crowd showed no signs of dispersing, they stood patiently in their group beneath the cotton tree, as though awaiting the arrival of some VIP, obsessed by this sign of Shango’s displeasure that the god had dropped in their back yard. Morgan called Isaac over. ‘Isaac,’ he said gently. ‘It is against the law to leave a body in the open like this. I have to call an undertaker. Now, will you let them remove the body?’

‘They will not,’ Isaac said equably.

‘Pardon?’

‘When they see that Shango has strock this woman. They will nevah lift her.’

Morgan smiled. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’ll just have to take our chances on that.’

♦

An hour later Morgan sat disconsolately on the concrete surround of the wash-place. Innocence still lay untouched half a dozen yards from his feet. He had phoned the police, who claimed that as no crime had been committed it was nothing to do with them. Then he had phoned a firm of undertakers in Nkongsamba, who said they would be out within the hour.

They had just left. Isaac and Ezekiel had spoken to them and the two undertakers, lugubriously dressed exactly like their European counterparts, had flatly refused to disturb the body until the fetish had been done. They even became quite angry for a while, accusing Morgan of trying to hoodwink them into offending Shango.

In the east the tree tops were silhouetted against a thin gash of pale lemon. It was ten to four. Innocence would be stiffening up now, he thought queasily, her eyes and mouth for ever open, her body permanently twisted round. He had tried to appeal to the servants’ Christianity — they were all Christians, this was no pocket of paganism — but their polite and unconcerned references to tribal protocol, the required summoning of the fetish priest, the various necessary rites, the obligatory slaughter of a goat, only confirmed to Morgan what he’d always expected: that they could shed their Christianity as easily as a pair of trousers. He stood up and went over to stare down at Innocence. Her death stirred nothing in him now. The fact that he was standing looking down at a dead person, someone who he had known, raised no emotions in him. She wasn’t a person anymore, she was an object — a thing — effectively reified by that lightning bolt: a thing, moreover, that was turning into a bloody great problem.

He felt very tired and rubbed his jaw, rasping the bristles on his face. It was still quite dark but through the nim trees he could see the corner of Fanshawe’s house. He pictured the family: father, mother and daughter sleeping soundly in their beds. While he stalked about this gloomy compound like some demon insisting on the body that was due to him. It made him sick, he hated every fucking one of them, their stinking bourgeois affectations, their ghastly fake chinoiserie, their prim enclosed little minds…He felt his face going hot. This was no good, he told himself, there was no point inveighing against the Fanshawes now, calm down, he advised, calm down. He walked over to the cotton tree. Only half a dozen maintained their vigil now, sitting on the high tangled roots that spread out from the base of the trunk like grotesque varicose veins.

‘Isaac?’ Morgan said hopefully.

A tall stooped figure rose up. ‘I am Joseph, sah. Joseph the cleaner. Isaac ‘e done go for sleep.’

Wise man, Morgan thought. ‘OK Joseph,’ he said firmly — it was like dealing with a gang of Old Testament prophets. ‘You savvy dis fetish thing?’

Joseph nodded. He had a shaven skull and was very black, almost Nubian in appearance. In the crepuscular light he looked two-dimensional, a hole cut out of the environment. ‘Yes, sah,’ he said. ‘I go savvy am.’

‘Fine,’ Morgan said, maintaining his businesslike tone. ‘Great. Go and get the juju man and we’ll do the fetish.’

‘Please, sah. I no fit do it,’Joseph said simply. ‘The family of this dead woman must do it.’

Oh bloody hell, swore Morgan despairingly, there’s always another hitch. ‘All right, you’d better get Maria,’ he said. Maybe there would be some way of ending this morbid farce after all. Soon Maria was brought, weeping and swollen-eyed and supported by two women. She was clutching a rosary in her hands. If it wasn’t so serious, Morgan thought to himself, it would be bloody funny.

‘Maria,’ he began gently, acutely conscious of his terminal fatigue, his frayed nerves and the massed forces of frustration hemming him in. ‘Maria, you know that before anyone will…move your mother, we have to get a fetish priest along?’ She weakly nodded her assent. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘it seems that only you can make this possible. You have to get the priest,’ At this point Maria let out a great wail of dismay and collapsed ‘into the arms of the two women. Morgan backed off in alarm. ‘Joseph,’ he called out. ‘Go and see what the matter is.’

Joseph returned shortly with the necessary information. ‘She is weeping, sah, because she says she has no money.’

‘Money?’ Morgan said in astonishment. ‘What does she want money for?’

‘To pay for the priest,’ Joseph said.

‘Well for Christ’s sake I’ll lend her a few bob,’ Morgan offered impatiently, reaching into his pockets. ‘How much does she need?’

Joseph did some mental calculations. ‘She need forty pound. No, but then she must purchase one goat and some beer.’ He shrugged, ‘I think fifty pound, maybe sixty. But there is funeral as well. For Shango killing you must have special funeral. She is crying because she only has fifteen pounds about.’

Morgan’s heart sank at this latest setback. Fifteen pounds was a reasonable monthly wage by Kinjanjan standards. He turned away and roamed the compound wildly, trying to coax his tired brain to come up with more alternatives. A faint greyness of coming dawn now charged the atmosphere. Time was running out for him. Fanshawe would be expecting some results after a night’s work, where in fact things hadn’t advanced one bit, he might as well have ignored Fanshawe’s summons for all the good he’d done. It wasn’t just what Fanshawe would say, though; there was the more serious problem of the effect of the African sun on Innocence’s body…He felt like tearing his hair out. What he needed was an organization not staffed with frigging Shango worshippers, some normal, ordinary people who did an efficient, orthodox job, who’d pick her up and stow her in a morgue somewhere until a funeral could be arranged. He’d done enough pussyfooting around pagan sensibilities, he decided, the time had surely come for some forthright energetic roughshod-riding.

As he thought about the options and courses open to him the answer came with a slow inevitability, like a tune in his head whose title he’d soon guess, given enough time. An efficient organization, unaffected by the Shango cult: there was only one in and around Nkongsamba which fitted that description and was suitable for the delicate task in hand. Only one. Murray. Murray and his University Health Service. Murray, with his loyal, well-drilled staff and his gleaming white ambulance. They could drive here, pick up Innocence and whisk her away before anyone had a chance to get hot under the collar.

The inevitability of the choice didn’t dispel all his doubts, however, nor the vaguely shaming irony of calling on the man he planned to bribe to help get him out of a sticky situation. As he strode through the dew-slicked grass back towards the Fanshawes’ house he tried to convince himself that he was doing the right thing, silence that warning bell which was persistently ringing somewhere at the back of his head. If you couldn’t ring a doctor about a death, he argued, what could you ring one about? And besides Murray wasn’t just a doctor, he was his doctor. What was more he was a white man, and white men in black Africa helped other white men in need. Damn it, Murray was practically a friend he told himself, weren’t they playing golf next Thursday? He felt a sudden warm glow of friendship towards the doctor, which he assiduously stoked up. Murray was a firm, unbending sort of man but the remarkable thing about him was that you knew where you stood. You took him as he was and that was how he took you. Yes, for all his unyielding ways he was a decent honest man. All inconvenient thoughts of the impending bribe were banished from his head as, buoyant with fellow feeling and sympathy and happily confident that this dreadful state of affairs would soon be a thing of the past, he leapt up the front door steps and quietly let himself in to the Fanshawes’ sitting room. He leafed through the telephone directory until he found the university exchange’s number. He dialled.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Will you put me through to Dr Murray’s house, please?’ He heard the clicks of the connection being made. The phone rang. And rang. He was about to ask the exchange to check if they had the right number when he heard the receiver being lifted.

‘Yes!’ The gruff venom in the voice disturbed Morgan.

‘Erm, Dr Murray?’ he inquired tentatively.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh good. Morgan…Morgan Leafy here. From the Commission. I’ve got a problem here and I…’

‘Medical?’ Murray’s terse Scottish voice had lost none of its hostility despite the fact that Morgan had identified himself. He was a little surprised at this and made a further effort to quell powerful second thoughts that suddenly rose in his mind. It was too late for them now, he had to go on.

‘Why yes. You don’t think I’d ring you if I…’

‘Have you phoned the university clinic?’ There was a note of resigned fatigue in Murray’s voice as he interrupted for the second time. It made Morgan feel a fool, cretinous.

‘Well no. But this is an emergency.’

‘The clinic is fully equipped to deal with an emergency,’ Murray said patiently. ‘My staff then make the decision whether to call me or not — it allows me to get a full night’s sleep from time to time. Ask the switchboard for the number. Goodbye.’

‘Just a moment,’ Morgan said, beginning to get angry himself at such peremptory treatment: the man was a doctor for God’s sake. ‘If you’d let me explain…I’ve got a dead woman on my hands and I…I need your help.’ Morgan could swear he heard Murray’s muffled oaths in the background.

‘Did you say dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘I take it it’s not Mrs or Miss Fanshawe.’

‘Godno,’ Morgan said, surprised. ‘It’s a Commission servant actually. Why do you ask?’

‘Because Mrs Fanshawe and her daughter are the only women at the Commission entitled to call on the University Health Service. We are forbidden to treat non-members of staff. We are expressly forbidden to operate outside the university boundaries apart from the British members of the Deputy High Commission. The duty sister at my clinic could have told you that, Mr Leafy. Now perhaps you’ll let me get some sleep.’ Murray’s Scottish accent imparted real harshness into his last words.

Morgan felt his frayed nerves begin to send off sparks. ‘For God’s sake,’ he exclaimed. ‘I don’t give a hoot about your rules and regulations, I’m asking you to help us out of a jam. This woman’s been struck by lightning, she’s quite dead but nobody’ll touch her because of some bloody mumbo-jumbo about some Shango-god or something.’ Morgan paused, this new upset was too dreadful to contemplate. He saw his last option disappearing as a result of Murray’s ridiculous intransigence. He felt desperation building up inside him. ‘It’s an appalling problem. I need you to take the body away. No one else will.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ he heard Murray expostulate, ‘(a) it’s five o’clock in the morning, (b) as I’ve told you I can do nothing for anyone who’s not a member of the university and (c) I do not run my health service on the basis of private favours. You’re asking me to violate the statutes of the University of Nkongsamba and betray official undertakings made to the City of Nkongsamba Health Authority on the grounds of so-called personal friendship. No, Mr Leafy. It is your problem, there is no way you can make it mine. Contact the proper authorities, that’s what they are there for. Now kindly leave me alone!’

Morgan sat shivering in his chair during this hectoring tirade. The enormous strains of the last twenty-four hours finally proved too much for him and without for a second thinking of the consequences he burst out, ‘And what about the fucking Hippocratic Oath eh? You’re a fucking doctor, aren’t you, you sanctimonious Scottish bastard…’

Murray slammed the phone down. Morgan tailed off, still muttering racist imprecations. The unmoving, the stubborn, the beam-headed…He threw back his head and bared his teeth in a silent scream of pent-up anger, frustration and hostility at the universe.

He staggered towards Fanshawe’s drinks cabinet and poured himself half a tumbler of gin. He walked out on to the back verandah and took a mouthful. His eyes streamed with tears and he shuddered as it went down. His view of the southern precincts of Nkongsamba bathed in a peachy matinal light shivered and went soft at the edges. He set down his glass with a rattle on the concrete balustrade at the edge of the stoop. He shook his head fiercely; a manic, berserk anger seemed to be rampaging there, like a lunatic in a padded cell. The bastard, he breathed out acid rancorous bile at the dawn, the dirty rotten filthy bastard! He went on, giving his imagination free rein. It seemed to help, at least minimally. He sensed overloaded systems responding to gentle tender hands at control. He felt like a skilled pilot nursing a grievously stricken airliner into a crash-landing. But as his anger began to subside and ratiocination asserted its dominance over the passions once more the consequences of his fury slowly brought themselves to his shocked attention. Oh no, he said haltingly to himself, oh no, the golf. That was away now. Gone, irretrievable. And Adekunle, he thought too, what would Adekunle say? He contemplated Adekunle’s wrath and shivered. How could he bribe Murray now? he asked himself. And Fanshawe? The body was still there. What was Fanshawe going to do when he found Innocence baking in the morning sun?

He threw the rest of the gin into a flowerbed. He felt sick, exhausted and grimy; it seemed as though some malicious person had prised apart his eyelids, lifted them up and emptied small phials of fine sand there. He’d handled everything so badly, misjudged and miscalculated all round. Par for the course, he thought cynically, no point in breaking the pattern. He knew in his heart that shit creek had claimed him this time. Full fathom five. He looked up through the brown water hoping for a flicker of sun. But it was all murk.

The new day burst cool over Nkongsamba with its usual display of crisp breathtaking beauty. Motionless smoke-threads rose from a thousand charcoal fires into pale blue skies. The green of the trees tested the gold of the kind morning sun like a bride discovering her trousseau. Ectoplasmic wisps of mist clung possessively to the meandering paths of creeks and streams and shrouded the taller hills. Africa at her most gloriously seductive.

But Morgan knew that Innocence lay not two hundred yards away. The jelly of her eyeballs dry and opaque. Her pink tongue contracting in her gaping mouth, mites and insects patrolling her body for moisture, her blood stagnant and pooling, her muscles and limbs stiff and unpliant.

He gazed blankly at the progress of the new day, indifferent to its splendour. Murray could have helped him if he had wanted to, he realized; if he had an iota of concern, a jot of feeling for him. But he didn’t give a fuck, that much was plain, he was more worried about his rule book, observing the letter of the law. Morgan squinted at the landscape watching its contours blur and elide. He was on his own as usual. He knew then that he wanted to bribe Murray, tarnish his gleaming image, foul his perfect reputation more than anything else in the world. More than he wanted rid of Innocence; more than he wanted to marry Priscilla; more than he wanted to sleep with any number of beautiful women. He felt quite weak with the power of his desire. Something drastic had to happen to that man’s conception of himself: it was long overdue, and he, Morgan Leafy, would make it his business to see that it occurred, especially now that Murray had deliberately struck him down in this way. So brutally — almost as Shango had felled Innocence.

It was all Murray’s fault, he said to himself quietly and calmly. Everything was Murray’s fault.